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BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

reuters.com

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

#191

Post by thinkloop »

what_ever wrote: post #187
davewritescode wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (mainstrea…

It is sorted by top comments, with brand new comments getting top spot temporarily so they are not instantly buried.

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

#192

Post by odammit »

matwood wrote: post #148
odammit wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I’ve owned multiple Volts, and I’ll keep buying them because they’re affordable (until a “luxury” car is mostly* electric). I’d love to have a BMW. I’m finally in the bracket I can afford it, but I refuse to own a non-electric vehicle. People want electric vehicles and they want luxury, but Tesla’s are out of the price range for most people (for now). BMW can wait til 2020, but by then they’ll have missed the b…

Many would also say that Tesla's are only luxury in price. The interiors are not nearly as nice as those from BMW or Mercedes.

Exactly! Besides maybe the “entertainment package”.

I’ll end up buying a Tesla because it’s fully electric. I was on the wait list for a Model 3, but my previous volt lemon’d and I couldnt wait until an unknown delivery date, so I bought another Volt.*

The volt for now gets me the round trip. I need to charge anything beyond going to work and back.

I’m at 5000 miles with NO GAS! It’s rad!

* I know “you bought another volt when your first one lemon’d?!” Yeah totally. It was an awesome car and between GM and California’s lemon law I pretty much sold my old one back to GM for just shy of the original purchase price.

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

#193

Post by BoorishBears »

Spooky23 wrote: post #180
adrianN wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On lease EVs are extremely cheap but only because the market is niche. Dealers desperate to get them off their lots stack up incentives on top of existing rebates until people get to lease 40k cars for 100$ a month

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

#194

Post by petra »

ggg9990 wrote: post #185
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 ha…

Microsoft may have been able to use the threat of book piracy to push publisher to it's system, in the same way Apple did with the iPod and MP3 piracy.

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

#195

Post by rootusrootus »

athenot wrote: post #29
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…

It's also not helping that oil is relatively cheap at the moment.

That might very well continue to be a theme. Every time there is a significant tick upwards in EV usage and a corresponding drop in demand, the price of oil drops significantly. It's extremely sensitive to fairly small changes in demand.

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

#196

Post by mmalone »

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…

This is a whole lot of conjecture. Auto manufacturers were investing in alternative fuel way before Tesla came around. BMW lost some ground on electric because they made a huge bet on hydrogen in the late 90s/early 2000s that didn’t pan out (which is too bad because it probably would have been better and easier to transition to). There will always be nostalgia for the “purity” and raw mechanical feel of older big gas engines, but car people tend to like better cars, regardless of tech. Gas engines are getting smaller across the board. Many of the newest hypercars incorporate electric motors, and they’ve been generally well received.

I think what’s most likely is that they are right: they can’t reliably produce electric cars at scale that meet all of their requirements and customer expectations. Tesla is having trouble doing it, why wouldn’t BMW? Musk is charismatic and well liked. He is able to speculate wildly and miss deadlines with little consequence. I think BMW is right that they wouldn’t be given the same affordances by investors and consumers.

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

#197

Post by Havoc »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #182
davewritescode wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 on…

>Tesla is _trying_ to ramp to five figure weekly production.

For context BMW produces 40k cars a week in total vs the 2k of Tesla. So when BMW says "not profitable enough to scale up for volume production" - they probably know what they're talking about.

Sure it's 40k old fashioned petrols, but they seem pretty knowledgeable about scaling.

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

#198

Post by ggg9990 »

petra wrote: post #194
ggg9990 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Microsoft may have been able to use the threat of book piracy to push publisher to it's system, in the same way Apple did with the iPod and MP3 piracy.

Apple was able to do that because MP3 piracy was already rampant. e-book piracy was not.

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

#199

Post by mattigames »

thinkloop wrote: post #191
what_ever wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (mainstrea…

It is sorted by top comments, with brand new comments getting top spot temporarily so they are not instantly buried.

It's a bad system; it promotes upvoting the already top-comment and commenting on it or the initial replies to it; the best way would be to pseudo-randomize posts order but biased towards those with higher score (e.g. so the top-rated-comment sometimes appears second, some rare times third; and some extremely rare times forth [regardless of how old any of those comments are])

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

#200

Post by Cookingboy »

odammit wrote: post #141
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…

Sure, I’ve owned multiple Volts, and I’ll keep buying them because they’re affordable (until a “luxury” car is mostly* electric). I’d love to have a BMW. I’m finally in the bracket I can afford it, but I refuse to own a non-electric vehicle. People want electric vehicles and they want luxury, but Tesla’s are out of the price range for most people (for now). BMW can wait til 2020, but by then they’ll have missed the b…

>BMW can wait til 2020, but by then they’ll have missed the boat.

What boat? Are people going to stop buying cars in 2 years?

We aren't talking about cellphones here, 2 years, or even 5 years is nothing in the automotive industry. The current 3-series is 6 years old and a good 3-4 years behind competitors and is still selling strong.

Having a 2-3 years lead in this industry is literally less than half the lifecycle of a model.

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