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Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

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Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#271

Post by epistasis »

justapassenger wrote: post #198
epistasis wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's at around 9% of market share and doubling annually. https://www.iea.org/commentaries/electric-cars-fend-off-supp... They are missing out on the easy part of the S-curve of adoption, and will have a far far harder time securing key competitive tech and supply chains by entering too late There are currently ~8 major battery manufacturers, and right now a large bevy of battery startups. But right now is probably th…

You don’t need to be manufacturing batteries to make EVs. Even vertical integration darling, Tesla, is buying most of their batteries (and the tech behind them) from suppliers like BYD and Panasonic. Their in-house efforts so far are not yielding any massive success. Batteries at the core are commodities, where you have laser thin margins and supplier model that is pulling R&D costs from many companies is basically o…

When batteries are the primary bottleneck on production, the primary source of innovation, change, and price drops, then in that case batteries are not mere commodities but a key technology in the car.

The rest of an EV is pretty simple. Drivetrain is no longer a really hard component, as electric motors are far more straight forward.

> > It’s a car that’s hard part.

Countries that try to kickstart a new car industry often outsource the drivetrain, as it's the most difficult part to build.

With EVs, batteries are by far the touchiest and most difficult part to build. Companies that outsource battery design, or at a bare minimum are not intimated involved with the batteries for their own packs, will be left behind.

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#272

Post by Cupertino95014 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #267
phtrivier wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will sound tongue in cheek, and to some extend it is, but if the last few years have shown us anything, it's the perils of starting a sentence by "xxx won't yyy" (for several values of x and y.)

That's an extrapolation. There hasn't ever been in a country that decided to sanction themselves within wartime from most of the world economy, and leaked documents show that one of the reason China wants Taiwan to begin with is to make their trade more secure.

I don't even know what the first sentence is supposed to mean. Germany knew they would be blockaded by the Brits in WW I and II and proceeded to go to war anyway, so didn't they "decided [sic] to sanction themselves within wartime from most of the world economy"?

Japan continued with their China war in the 1930s, despite sanctions from the US and the West, so didn't they?

As for the "leaked documents", the claim on Taiwan is that it is an inseparable part of China, and not that they want "to make their trade more secure."

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#273

Post by Cupertino95014 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #266
Cupertino95014 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War is hell. In WW I, the Germans didn't move to "unrestricted submarine warfare" until 1917. The fact that the CCP doesn't plan for it now means absolutely nothing.

First of all, this isn't WW1. Secondly, there is a difference between using violence to impose an embargo on someone else (what Germany did and what the US threatens to do) and embargoing yourself, which no country has ever done ever.

I think you are just embarrassing yourself now. You say "This isn't WW I" but then you claim that there hasn't ever been something. Either history is relevant, or it isn't.

Edit: you can't "impose an embargo" on another country. That's a misunderstanding of the word. You can "blockade" them. Blockades are a feature of almost every war.

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#274

Post by vel0city »

MerelyMortal wrote: post #105
martin_bech wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the infrastructure needed would be bonkers, and creating fuelibg stations is not really a solved problem. You also loose a big amount of energy converting from electric to hydrogen and back. The cars themselves almost always have low storage because the tanks are very big. Hydrogen car performance is also a lot lower then pure EV.

The infrastructure needed to create a power grid for people to charge electric vehicles at home would be double-bonkers. Upgrading fueling stations seems much easier than mining all of the copper needed to add all of the extra lines for EV charging, and then upgrading the whole national grid. Supposedly one company has claimed 95% efficiency on creating hydrogen from electrolysis: https://newatlas.com/energy/hysata-e…

There's already tons of available lines going to a ton of people's homes. It only took a dozen or so feet of cable to add a 14-50 outlet in my garage.

Their homes were built expecting them to be able to pull 150-200A of power. It doesn't take that much power to charge an EV overnight. Mine charges way faster than it needs to on 32A 240V.

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#275

Post by Amezarak »

electrondood wrote: post #243
nr2x wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re precisely identifying why Tesla is well and truly fucked. The big automakers know how to make cars at scale and once they decide to it’s easy. They may be slow giants, but Tesla lost the advantage of being small and quick. German, Japanese, and American manufacturers were the biggest national security components of WWII. Tesla is a second tier interest of a CEO who prefers to be an online troll than ke…

> Tesla is well and truly fucked Sorry, this is just absurd. Tesla is the only company designing for massive scale and ruthless simplification from the start. Their entire DNA is based on YAGNI. Every other legacy automaker is pinned between their dealerships, their dependence on consumer debt, their own massive debt, and the fact that they'll need to cannibalize existing business to pivot to EVs. No other company ow…

> Tesla is the only company designing for massive scale

In 2020 GM sold 6.8 million vehicles. The other manufacturers are already operating at massive scale. Or are you arguing the automotive market will suddenly dramatically increase in a way existing manufacturers can't deal with? That consumers will suddenly be flush with cash to buy more brand new cars than they are already buying and Tesla will be the most popular option? This is very hard for me to imagine.

> their dependence on consumer debt

??? Teslas are not cheap. I will not be able to afford a Tesla for the forseeable future. Unless Teslas comes down below 25k, no Teslas are in my future, another ICE car or hybrid will be. How is Tesla not dependent on consumer debt? Or do you mean something else by this?

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#276

Post by timwaagh »

cumshitpiss wrote: post #81
bell-cot wrote: post #67

> Automotive giant Ford is shoring up its battery supply chain — partly by importing lower-cost, iron-based batteries popular in China — as it sprints to increase electric vehicle production. Old geezer's perspective: Back in its heyday, Ford Motor was one of the most vertically integrated (large manufacturing) companies in the world. They owned and operated their own fleet of ore carriers (cargo ships), to haul iron…

What's wrong with trading with China?

Themz commies something something pooh bear.

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#277

Post by sitkack »

HWR_14 wrote: post #260
sitkack wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain this with a couple sentences, I don't understand.

Totally made up example (with easy to follow numbers): Let's say GM, Chevrolet and Ford all buy 12V car batteries from BatteryCo at the rate of 1,000,000 a year (each). BatteryCo has fixed annual costs of $3,000,000 and per battery costs of $1. Right now, Ford pays $2/battery. If GM and Chevrolet both go out of business, Ford's 1,000,000 batteries need to absorb the whole fixed operating cost of $3,000,000. Therefore…

Thank you and @throwaway_4ever, excellent explanation!

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#278

Post by jacquesm »

yetihehe wrote: post #217
vishnugupta wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s mentioned in a well made Netflix documentary about the downfall of Boeing I think. “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” is the documentary title.

I think that this documentary is about McDonell Douglas, not MacDonald.

Exactly.

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#279

Post by freemint »

bell-cot wrote: post #67

> Automotive giant Ford is shoring up its battery supply chain — partly by importing lower-cost, iron-based batteries popular in China — as it sprints to increase electric vehicle production. Old geezer's perspective: Back in its heyday, Ford Motor was one of the most vertically integrated (large manufacturing) companies in the world. They owned and operated their own fleet of ore carriers (cargo ships), to haul iron…

The west completely ignored graphite + iron phosphate as electrode combination for cars while China researched it for decades. Packing innovation from China made that combination feasible to use in electric cars. Those packaging innovations are way more impressive then what Tesla is doing.

Re: Ford's answer to EV supply chain hell: Cheaper batteries

#280

Post by nl »

smaudet wrote: post #167
nl wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gas based production is no better because of the CO2 emissions of course.

There is a promising electrolysis route as well now, zero emissions: https://newatlas.com/energy/hysata-efficient-hydrogen-electr...

As with all promising research papers, believe it when you see it in commerical-scale use.

In the past most catalyst improvements have run into problems with maintenance.

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