This definitely exposes the Tesla shills on hacker news lol lol
Probably have someone shares, a tesla, or a poster of musk hanging in their bedroom.
Ford Makes $29B Commitment to Electric and Self-Driving Cars
111–120 of 183 posts
Re: Ford Makes $29B Commitment to Electric and Self-Driving Cars
#112What are your favorite battery related stocks? Lithium mining companies? I've been reading on solid state batteries to find some new trends, but it seems they are using same composition as lithium ion technology.
ALB and SQM are two of the big boys. Can't say either is my favorite but I am long an upside butterfly on ALB. Not a fan of SQM because of nepotism and bribery at the top. Seems like a really underdeveloped sector. I don't think people realize how earth-shatteringly huge lithium is about to be.
I don't think people realize how earth-shatteringly huge lithium is about to be.
I've previously heard the lithium story.
I've also read that it doesn't take all that much lithium to build a EV battery. If it were that precious then they would be recycling the lithium from old batteries, but they aren't. And there are tons of new lithium supply just around the corner.
I don't really know any of that for sure. Just a feeling I get from keeping not-so-close tabs on the industry.
Re: Ford Makes $29B Commitment to Electric and Self-Driving Cars
#113EVs make sense but at this point self driving cars are fantasy vaporware. Executives should be tired of embarrassing themselves in public with grand pronouncements of “just 6 more months!” by this point.
Yandex had demonstrated their self-driving car technology in Las Vegas with just a safety engineer in the front passenger seat (NVO Mode) providing demonstration rides of its self-driving car on the public streets of Las Vegas starting from the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino during CES 2019.
CES 2019 - https://youtu.be/uRyTEW2OuWw
MKBHD review riding the Yandex car in CES 2019 - https://youtu.be/gfWjsKsEry0
Ann Arbor, MI in Aug 2020 - https://youtu.be/nhqyrze30bk
I may be wrong but the reason why I guess it remains vaporware to the masses might have something to do with the regulatory and bureaucratic red tapes that ensures it continues to stay a vaporware.
Re: Ford Makes $29B Commitment to Electric and Self-Driving Cars
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tesla is just going through the growing pains of ramping production so their repair story is still a work in progress at the moment. They make it work as needed, but it’s not always ideal nor as widely available everywhere as people hope yet. It will get better. Disabling supercharging for DIY battery fix/hack jobs I assume is done to protect the network so that other cars are not impacted by a potentially incorrect…
>I believe it’s usually a heathy practice in life to look for the straightforward explanations that don’t assume bad motives in the part of the actor you are looking at. I hope that you balance it with a healthy skepticism of a publicly traded company's justifications for their profits. Tesla sells heated seats etc and when you buy it, what you get is a software update enabling the existing hardware - it's artificial…
> I hope that you balance it with a healthy skepticism
Sure. And I have personal experience with service that tells me they aren’t so evil at all. I give the personal experience more weight than internet theories from people who don’t know of what they speak. Not referring to you necessarily but in general there are a lot of highly opinionated people here who have never bothered to acquaint themselves with the actual facts, instead relying on internet rumors or opinions from random people like Linus on Youtube, an expert on, of all things, PC hardware.
> Tesla sells heated seats etc and when you buy it, what you get is a software update enabling the existing hardware - it's artificial scarcity
That’s just an uninformed opinion. Tesla already explained why they did this, and the reasons were legitimate.
Re: Ford Makes $29B Commitment to Electric and Self-Driving Cars
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
This so much sounds like all the PR stunt cars that renault put out. You literally have to lease a battery on top of the absurd prices, and you cannot get it changed for free, even when you lease it. Which makes all their cars basically useless after a year of usage, because the batteries are embedded in their chassis. Every time I compare European manufacturers to Tesla and Nissan, they are such a bad joke. Nissan h…
While praising Nissan, you know that they’re basically owned by Renault? And didn’t Renault start selling cars with batteries, without forcing you to lease them, years ago? Or are there still some markets where they don’t do it?
What is the status of Nissan-Renault after the whole Carlos Ghosn debacle?
Re: Ford Makes $29B Commitment to Electric and Self-Driving Cars
#116Has anyone noticed that Ford and GM have made commitments to EV just after the change of administration? Given that the new administration has already committed to moving the Federal fleet to EVs and is going "all in" on full commitment to reducing emissions, this is positioning by the auto manufacturers. There is also now alignment between the Californian emission standards and the Federal government, which means th…
Yes but at least Ford didn’t lobby against the California standards as heavily as GM did during the Trump years.
Re: Ford Makes $29B Commitment to Electric and Self-Driving Cars
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
ALB and SQM are two of the big boys. Can't say either is my favorite but I am long an upside butterfly on ALB. Not a fan of SQM because of nepotism and bribery at the top. Seems like a really underdeveloped sector. I don't think people realize how earth-shatteringly huge lithium is about to be.
I don't think people realize how earth-shatteringly huge lithium is about to be. I've previously heard the lithium story. I've also read that it doesn't take all that much lithium to build a EV battery. If it were that precious then they would be recycling the lithium from old batteries, but they aren't. And there are tons of new lithium supply just around the corner. I don't really know any of that for sure. Just a…
Nickel is a lot more of a limiting factor than Lithium. This is straight from the horses mouth (Elon). See the recent news about Indonesia. Elon is always a step or two ahead.
Re: Ford Makes $29B Commitment to Electric and Self-Driving Cars
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are so many more issues. They have lots of plants that Tesla doesn't need or want. Even worse, you can't close down those plants because of unions and politics. Tesla doesn't want unions in general. Battery being the limiting factor means that having more ability to produce cars is basically useless.
The fact that "Tesla doesn't want unions in general" is a sad anti-pattern. Unions are the way that labor negotiates with capital on an equal basis. The fact that the US has a badly flawed labor market where things that shouldn't be tied to employment (eg healthcare, pensions/retirement) are still tied to employment, is a bug, not a feature. Tesla will not be able to avoid "unions" if they manufacture in Europe. Neit…
Tesla gives almost all their factory workers stock. I think that’s worked out well.
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-giga-berlin-starting-wages-r...
Re: Ford Makes $29B Commitment to Electric and Self-Driving Cars
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are more right than wrong in your prediction, but “over the next two years” seems so incredibly optimistic that I’m inclined to call it naïveté instead.
Within 4 years, Tesla is going to be selling EVs for $25k. The Cybertruck is 18-24 months out. Rivian is going to be launching their electric truck in the next 18 months as well. That puts Ford's front line vehicle squarely in the headlights. If Ford can't mass produce EVs at a reasonable price in the next 2 years, things are going get increasingly ugly for them. Not end of line in 2 years, but it's just going to get…
> Within 4 years, Tesla is going to be selling EVs for $25k.
They've been saying that since 2018
Re: Ford Makes $29B Commitment to Electric and Self-Driving Cars
#120Electric cars - I get it... but who would in their right mind let their Ford drive itself?! Why is the self-driving a thing mostly in America? Don't people here enjoy driving? If they don't, why not focus on the more economical and environmentally-friendly mass transit instead? In Europe, people get a car and get behind the wheel, because they enjoy the experience, not because it gets them in the most efficient way from point A to point B. Or maybe in the last 20+ years I've been living in the States things have changed back in Europe?