Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 373 posts

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#181

Post by zjaffee »

kjksf wrote: post #120
dangrossman wrote: post #23

I don't think there's any "collusion" or other conspiracy to hold back electric vehicles, I think what BMW said is objectively true. Lithium batteries have cost too much in the past decade to put them into more than luxury cars or negative-profit compliance cars. Supply chains don't appear overnight. LG Chem, Samsung SDI, AESC/NEC, BYD, Foxconn, etc have been building factories and securing raw materials for many man…

I'm not saying there was conspiracy but there was complacency. The reasoning "batteries are expensive" is circular. As Musk said, technology doesn't advance as a function of time but as a function of R&D investment. See atomic bomb or space race for the most dramatic example of how throwing money at the problem compressed the timeline. Car batteries did not get cheaper because 2 years passed but because Tesla and Pan…

I'd argue that there are some conditional factors here and they largely revolve around human capital. In fields with a very small number of people with prior experience, throwing money at the problem won't necessarily accelerate the path as fast as one where there are a large number of qualified people to tackle the problem.

This said, continuing to throw money at a problem such that it leads to more and more people developing a skill set in the space would overtime help, but then again, they could reduce the amount of investment down the line, and you'd still have people who were highly specialized in said domain to target that problem anyways (abet being paid less).

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#182

Post by erikpukinskis »

davewritescode wrote: post #176
reubenswartz wrote: post #166

This 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 Tesl…

Hype aside, we can say for certain that Tesla is _trying_ to ramp to five figure weekly production. The evidence we’ve seen is the Gigafactory, and Tesla’s official (legally binding) production plans.

I haven’t seen any evidence that BMW or anyone other than perhaps Nissan, is currently trying to ramp production to 10k weekly.

It’s not that I don’t think any of these cars are serious about the ramp—surely at least one is. There’s just no evidence any specific one is serious about it, besides vague “we’re serious about it” statements.

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#183

Post by rohit2412 »

kjksf wrote: post #120
dangrossman wrote: post #23

I don't think there's any "collusion" or other conspiracy to hold back electric vehicles, I think what BMW said is objectively true. Lithium batteries have cost too much in the past decade to put them into more than luxury cars or negative-profit compliance cars. Supply chains don't appear overnight. LG Chem, Samsung SDI, AESC/NEC, BYD, Foxconn, etc have been building factories and securing raw materials for many man…

I'm not saying there was conspiracy but there was complacency. The reasoning "batteries are expensive" is circular. As Musk said, technology doesn't advance as a function of time but as a function of R&D investment. See atomic bomb or space race for the most dramatic example of how throwing money at the problem compressed the timeline. Car batteries did not get cheaper because 2 years passed but because Tesla and Pan…

Except batteries have become cheaper because of consumer electronics, not Tesla. https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/imonS5R0.ZB...

If what you said was true, only Panasonic would have cheap batteries. Not lg and Samsung.

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#184

Post by XJOKOLAT »

reubenswartz wrote: post #166

This 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…

The i3 is shit.

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#185

Post by ggg9990 »

reubenswartz wrote: post #166

This 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…

Microsoft would have never succeeded with an e-reader even if they had shipped it. Amazon succeeded because they already had a stranglehold on the print book market and skeptical publishers had little choice but to go all in on the Kindle. Consumers bought Kindles because Amazon was able to give them basically any book they wanted on the Kindle at the price they wanted (later deemed illegal), which Microsoft would have not been able to do.

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#186

Post by sweden »

davewritescode wrote: post #176
reubenswartz wrote: post #166

This 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 Tesl…

I don't think the situation isn't being oversimplified, I think OP's post is a good summary of the whole situation.

I also don't think the i3 is good value. If you compare it to a BWM series 1, you can get a better car for a better price. On the other hand, a Tesla Model 3 is perfectably comparable to a BWM series 1.

Tesla has been making good electric cars since 2012 and the BMW i3 was very limited in range until last year or so. The range was limited to 100km in a single charge and the car was being sold for more than 40000 euros (at least in Europe) which is very steep for such a crippled car.

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#187

Post by what_ever »

davewritescode wrote: post #176
reubenswartz wrote: post #166

This 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 Tesl…

I always find at least one completely unrelated comparisons or story in HN threads. I also hate the sorting of comments on HN. Is there a way to change it by hot/top like on Reddit? So often the first comment is completely off-topic/with examples in GP and turns into a thread of few more unrelated comparisons and anecdotes.

BMW and Microsoft are in way different situations. State of electric cars right now (mainstream) is nowhere close to state of ebook readers before Kindle.

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#188

Post by vesrah »

mulmen wrote: post #94
vesrah wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What modern BMW uses plugs that aren't pregapped?

I assume the plugs were pre-gapped at time of manufacture. Maybe they dropped this plug, maybe it was a bad batch or a defect, maybe they did it on purpose. For the shop rate at a BMW dealer they can take the time to check the gap. Regardless of the root cause the dealer installed a plug with the ground bent into the electrode which caused a misfire. They misdiagnosed it as a bent valve and told me that I probably mi…

That's pretty strange. It's possible for a mis-shift to not skip timing, but to be high enough to float the valves momentarily and allow for a valve (or more) to kiss a piston. This can lead to a very minor bend in valves to cause an idle misfire, until the valve eventually fatigues and drops. Diagnosable through a leakdown.

A foreign object through the intake tract would be a more likely case for a 0 gap plug, as it would basically require a broken piston or valve to otherwise close up the gap on the plug and you're not missing this.

Either way, absolutely terrible on their behalf and a zero sense diagnosis.

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#189

Post by dahauns »

gambiting wrote: post #36
dangrossman wrote: post #23

I don't think there's any "collusion" or other conspiracy to hold back electric vehicles, I think what BMW said is objectively true. Lithium batteries have cost too much in the past decade to put them into more than luxury cars or negative-profit compliance cars. Supply chains don't appear overnight. LG Chem, Samsung SDI, AESC/NEC, BYD, Foxconn, etc have been building factories and securing raw materials for many man…

Yep, especially since those companies really don't start with "we'll build a line that can assemble 100 cars a week and then work from there" like Tesla did - it's either a line that can assemble 10k cars/week, or nothing. And if the supply for whatever component isn't there yet to support that capacity, then it's not going to happen.

Sure they do - especially when the supply chain itself already offers services for that kind of volumes. Take Magna for example, they have worked with both BMW and Daimler(-Chrysler) on modern low to mid-volume assembly projects (while also manufacturing the G class super old-school style :) ) and their plant in Austria is specialized for quick retooling to new models. They're starting with the new Jaguar I-Pace EV this year.
Post reply on HN