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Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

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Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#71

Post by at-fates-hands »

pmarreck wrote: post #55
archildress wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great point. Tesla is, to me, fundamentally a battery company.

Tesla will inevitably be a battery company because battery energy density, charge time and cost are the #1 things holding back electric vehicles from prime-time, and because of the huge investment into Gigafactory. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla ends up licensing their battery tech and that supercharging becomes a standard.

>> I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla ends up licensing their battery tech and that supercharging becomes a standard.

I would bet it is actually. Licensing is really where the money is. They've built a substantial lead in the EV market and have some pretty impressive technology.

If Musk is really serious about expanding the markets he says he is, the fastest way to do that is license his technology to other companies. Let them help him increase these EV markets far faster and scale up far greater than Tesla ever could on their own.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#72

Post by _ea1k »

Klathmon wrote: post #30
archildress wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great point. Tesla is, to me, fundamentally a battery company.

To me, Tesla feels like a "marketing" company. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Yes, their battery tech is improving, and they make pretty damn good cars, but most of all Tesla is getting people excited for electric cars. Before they came around, electric cars were shitty ecoboxes that were worse in just about every way to an ICE car. They were ugly, had no range, were missing features, expensive, slow charging, e…

I think that describing them as a "marketing" company oversimplifies things in important ways as Tesla wouldn't have been successful without a lot of other key attributes as well (financial planning, product development, extensive development of the product's complements, etc).

I do think that you are exactly right in regards to their competitive advantage, though. A company that competes with them will need to do a lot of work to convince the market that their electric car is in the same class as a Tesla. That will take years of work, a lot of money, and it will require them to do some things that risk damaging their existing business.

I suspect that we are actually agreeing here and maybe I'm just saying it in a different way?

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#73

Post by Klathmon »

_ea1k wrote: post #72
Klathmon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, Tesla feels like a "marketing" company. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Yes, their battery tech is improving, and they make pretty damn good cars, but most of all Tesla is getting people excited for electric cars. Before they came around, electric cars were shitty ecoboxes that were worse in just about every way to an ICE car. They were ugly, had no range, were missing features, expensive, slow charging, e…

I think that describing them as a "marketing" company oversimplifies things in important ways as Tesla wouldn't have been successful without a lot of other key attributes as well (financial planning, product development, extensive development of the product's complements, etc). I do think that you are exactly right in regards to their competitive advantage, though. A company that competes with them will need to do a…

I agree 100% and I think we are saying the same thing.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#74

Post by _ea1k »

mikkael wrote: post #33

Surely a nice car. But I wonder where all this electrical power for all those electrical cars in the future will come from? Probably from nuclear power plants with their still unresolved nuclear waste problematics - not even speaking about nuclear accidents. From this point of view I have some doubts that mass adoption of affordable electrical cars will be beneficial for the environment...

When discussing battery powered vehicles, solar and other intermittent power sources are the obvious answer. The economics are better than gasoline and they pair nicely with energy storage systems.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#75

Post by [deleted] »

raphaelj wrote: post #53
Cyph0n wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Tesla's battery tech developed by Panasonic? And I believe that some of their initial Autopilot tech was sourced from Mercedes. It's very difficult to find an auto manufacturer that can build a car from the ground up, primarily because the economics aren't scalable.

I think Tesla was relying on MobileEye for Autopilot. Now they are using NVidia chips instead.

[deleted]

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#76

Post by ams6110 »

ohstopitu wrote: post #57

This is a pet peeve of mine, but I don't get why cars need to change design (subjective: and make them ulgy) just because they are EVs? Tesla showed the world that a car could look like a "car" and still be electric. I'm all for innovations in design, but weird/ugly designs are also a reason that stops people from buying electric cars.

I think it's a result of wind-tunnel design and also trying to maximize interior space on a small chassis. I agree though, I don't like the look of most compact cars these days and even the Model 3 has sort of a weird looking "bulldog" snout for a front end.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#78

Post by mikkael »

garbot wrote: post #34
mikkael wrote: post #33

Surely a nice car. But I wonder where all this electrical power for all those electrical cars in the future will come from? Probably from nuclear power plants with their still unresolved nuclear waste problematics - not even speaking about nuclear accidents. From this point of view I have some doubts that mass adoption of affordable electrical cars will be beneficial for the environment...

Not entirely sure if these stats are up to date, but the US is still using fossil fuels for the majority of its energy. http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=us_energy_...

Thanks. And yes, currently we can still burn fossil fuels to satisfy our hunger for energy but I was projecting into the future. My thinking goes like this: Let's define the amount of current electrical power used for non-automotive purposes as E0(2016). Currently there is only a negligible amount of electrical cars, so the amount of energy used for automotive purposes Ea(2016) will be comparatively close to 0. I think in a (maybe not so) distant future time point t where electrical cars have mass adoption (just think of a scenario where all cars on the street are electrical) we will in addition to non-automotive energy E0(t) need electrical power for automotive purposes Ea(t) for every car on the street. And Ea(t) >> Ea(2016) will be huge. Where will such a huge amount of electrical power come from if not from nuclear power plants with all their problems? Other points to consider: 1. At some point in the future fossil fuels will run out - so no fossil fuel cars and no fossil fuel power plants any more. So E0(t) will also not come from fossil fuels anymore. As a sidenote on today's situation: I don't see a big difference for the environment whether a car burns the fossil fuel or a electrical car uses energy created by power plants that burn fossil fuels... 2. We have a growing earth population which will even increase the amount of energy consumed for non-automotive purposes in the future, so E0(t) > E0(2016). 3. Increased demand for electrical energy together with decreased amount of energy providers (fossil fuel power plants will be no more) will increase energy prices in the future.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#79

Post by maxsilver »

ohstopitu wrote: post #57

This is a pet peeve of mine, but I don't get why cars need to change design (subjective: and make them ulgy) just because they are EVs? Tesla showed the world that a car could look like a "car" and still be electric. I'm all for innovations in design, but weird/ugly designs are also a reason that stops people from buying electric cars.

Did they change the design? This looks just like every other small hatchback sold (it looks just like my Toyota Yaris, for instance).

If you just don't like that type of car, I'm confident this tech will move up to full-size sedans in a few years as production scales up.

Re: Chevrolet Bolt EV Is the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year

#80

Post by scragg »

ohstopitu wrote: post #57

This is a pet peeve of mine, but I don't get why cars need to change design (subjective: and make them ulgy) just because they are EVs? Tesla showed the world that a car could look like a "car" and still be electric. I'm all for innovations in design, but weird/ugly designs are also a reason that stops people from buying electric cars.

It's simple, if the made this car look good they would never keep up with demand.
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