Just as a reminder: it is now year 21 after Prius.
BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
171–180 of 373 posts
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Batteries can be repaired, just like an engine. And the battery rarely goes immediately bad. But I think this isn't the main issue, as cars already have to deal with the same problem of being totalled.
A car being totalled is covered by insurance. A car whose engine blows up outside the warranty period is covered by its owner's paycheck.
But as noted by another user, batteries come with long warranties. (100k miles, sometimes)
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a very good point. But I will see if BMW actually does mass produce EVs. It's not that expensive. If you can afford $10,000-$20,000 over the life of a car in fuel (plus a few thousand in oil changes and brake jobs), you can afford a $7500 battery. Especially since that pulls thousands of dollars worth of complexity out of the drivetrain.
I love how every time there's a discussion about car operating costs here, at least someone mentions oil changes as if they were a substantial part. Many European cars with a long-life oil change program have oil changes as far as 18,000 miles apart. While I haven't averaged quite that high, for me oil changes still account for only about 2% of the fuel costs. With any new car the depreciation in value dominates most…
Electric cars retain the value of their battery packs, however. Look up the price of a used Model S, for instance.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#174Tesla shareholders are effectively funding R&D for BMW/Honda/Toyota/GM/Ford etc.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#175As an outsider, I forecast that in Europe the demand for the gas guzzling cars will be on a sharp decline in not more than a year. BMW and any other car company that are reluctant in adapting to the future, will be troubled economically for offering units that will not anymore be demanded.
I mean, really, who would buy the old tech (combustion engine) when even the manufacturer itself (BMW) announces that they are soon (in 2 years) to be obsolete? Cars are expensive and not supposed to be such a short-term investments.
They will have to export all their inventories produced in those 2 years to less humanitarian countries like mine, where hardly anybody considers gas emissions as a problem for us to act upon, and government does not promote EVs by any means. It is only logical for them to regard such countries as a market to dump their previous-gen technologies.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#176This has a lot to do with culture. Microsoft had a mockup of an e-reader before the Kindle, but the powers that be in the company insisted that it should run Windows (not out of malice, but because that's how they saw the world.) When Bezos, who, at the time, ran a giant bookstore, started his Kindle project, he put them on a secret team in a different building. Car companies are run by people who love engines that b…
I think you’re way oversimplifying the situation. BMW isn’t anything like Microsoft.
It’s important to remember that, if you count hybrids, BMW already sells more electrified cars than Tesla and the vast majority of them at a more affordable price point than Tesla (the i3 is a pretty good value).
BMW sells a ton of cars and has made pretty good progress on the electric front. They’re just not a hype machine like Tesla.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#177This has been said many times, but it feels like all the manufacturers colluded to make EV cars extremely ugly and undesirable. Prime example being the BMW i3. Of all the nice looking cars they have in their line up, one has to wonder why they went with an i3. Put that same capability in a 3-series and it would have been a different story.
The Audi a3 e-tron looks like any other "normal" Audi
Isn't A3 e-Tron a plug-in, not a pure EV?
It is pretty nice to drive though.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#178Even if they mass produced an EV, I still wouldn't buy one from them. Reason - 1. they will nickel and dime customers like crazy and charge for LED lights, 17" wheels, CarPlay subscription 2. iDrive is a relic from 90s, an archaic infotainment systems 3. 3 series drivability is no better than a Honda at this point. I used to own a e92, but F30 is a joks 4. Awful dealer network 5. They probably won't invest in a charging network
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#179As an outsider, I forecast that in Europe the demand for the gas guzzling cars will be on a sharp decline in not more than a year. BMW and any other car company that are reluctant in adapting to the future, will be troubled economically for offering units that will not anymore be demanded. I mean, really, who would buy the old tech (combustion engine) when even the manufacturer itself (BMW) announces that they are so…
I can assure you this won't happen in a year. For most people it's a worse and more expensive product.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Way I see it Tesla proves that a mass market EV is still not possible. Either you take it from the fact that they failed to come up with anything revolutionary in terms of the Model 3; price/range still on par with other offerings. Or you take their lowest cost estimates for their battery packs and then you try to build the rest of the car with the remaining $12k (for the total price of a people's car that everyone c…
The German Post approached VW to have them develop electric cars for deliveries in cities. VW refused, so they just hired a couple of students and started/bought their own company. They get requests from all kinds of businesses now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter To me that doesn't sound like there is no market, it sounds like big car manufactures want to milk their ICEs as long as possible.
The market is very niche. One of the best values in cars right now is off lease Volts — my neighbor just picked one up for like $16k.
Personally, I’m an ideal EV candidate. But it just costs more, especially when you price in electrical work for home chargers, etc. The TCO of a nicely equipped Accord is far less, and will be for a long time.