I mean that doesn't sound that bad? 2020 is only two years away.
BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
161–170 of 373 posts
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the issue is that it's $7500 in one transaction if a battery goes bad, versus the cost of fuel which is spread out over the lifetime of the car.
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.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> As Musk said, technology doesn't advance as a function of time but as a function of R&D investment. Sometimes. Technology is very path-dependent; to invent z, you need to have invented w, x, and y first. And even with infinite resources that takes time. We’ve been working on fusion for half a century and it might be ready in another half century. Will more investment help? Yeah, but tokamaks take time to build, and…
Without necessarily (or completely) disagreeing, I'm curious if you can further justify your assertion of the strong path-dependency. I am personally amazed when I contemplate the Apollo program or the Manhattan Project, and specifically the number of technologies that did not exist at the time. It strikes me that there's a clear observational bias here. Particularly in the modern era, we really only have a single data point around the development of any given technology (given how trivial communication and coordination are). Are there any examples from history of the same technology being developed independently with different dependencies?
Possibly relevant, given your choice of fusion as an example, is the somewhat famous graph from the 1976 U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration report on nuclear fusion[0]. We're obviously looking at a number of projections and can't know whether they were right or wrong, but it is noteworthy that we're not even pursuing a plan we believe will ever lead to nuclear fusion ("fusion never").
[0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusi...
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to get serious about developing EV technology, why not start with a big customer that has a use case that makes the problem a lot easier? Also, small vans for use inside cities is a big market. All delivery services need them, all kinds of workmen need them. With bans for Diesel cars in German cities on the horizon all kinds of businesses are complaining because Diesels are the only offering in that categ…
Sure, but can we at least admit that maybe VW did the math and decided it wasn't worth it to them? And that they could have arrived at this conclusion without deciding to sabotage EV development?
Sure, maybe they did the math, maybe they just couldn't be arsed. But whatever the real reason why they didn't take the job - someone else (DHL itself) actually did the correct math and is now actually a viable competitor for VW in this area. So yeah, again, maybe but they failed at it.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#165I 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…
"technology doesn't advance as a function of time but as a function of R&D investment"
Car companies are not in the business of advancing technology but making money. They will advance technology if they can sell more cars. Now with Tesla they have to respond and are slowly doing so.
Musk's motivation is technology for technology's sake. That's a totally different motivation than traditional car companies and that's the reason why Tesla is ahead in technology. It remains to be seen who ends up ahead in terms of business success.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#166This 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 burn gas. The notion that electric vehicles might be something more than compliance nightmares, that they might actually be better cars than gas-powered vehicles is foreign. It's like the Microsoft execs saying "of course the e-reader should also be able to open spreadsheets and what-not." Meanwhile, the Kindle is better as an e-reader because they started from the ground up.
Same thing with Tesla. (With whom, none of these companies would be talking about going electric.) They started from the ground up.
If BMW wanted to make money on electric vehicles, Tesla has proven that you can sell an $80-$100K+ electric car (with a ~$50K interior) with profitable unit economics. I'm pretty sure an electric 7-series would sell like hotcakes, and make money. Instead, you get the i3, which some people love, but it's certainly an acquired taste, and the 3 series e, which I drove recently-- it has about 11 miles of electric range. ;( If they just made it all electric, I'd buy one tomorrow at the already high 3-series prices. But the culture isn't there yet...
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I find it hard to believe that the major car plants can no longer make assembly lines that produce more than one design on an assembly line. this is not the problem i described. The problem is introducing a new model into an assembly line is a lot of work, and something which is not worth the effort if you are only going to produce a small amount of cars.
Absolutely not true. The Nissan Sunderland plant (which produces over 500K cars per year on two lines) produces both the Nissan Leaf and Infiniti Q30 in low volume on line two (might be line 1, not certain now). The Q30 was introduced from a slow ramp up without stopping production of the line around 18 months ago and is a low volume car.
It cost $375 million to retrofit the plant to support building the Q30: http://infinitinews.com/en-US/infiniti/usa/releases/infiniti...
That's in line with what the parent comment said; it's not cheap at all do add a new vehicle to an existing assembly line, and it's not worth it for low volume production.
Infinity also sold over 25 thousand Q(X)30s in 2017, so it's not as low volume as talked about in previous comments, either.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#168This 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.
They want them to look distinctive, because many buyers want everyone else to know they have an electric car. It's the same design strategy Toyota used with the Prius.
They end up looking like botched plastic surgery. Every EV outside Tesla is an abomination.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#169This 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.
I'm not sure if you know how innovative the BMW i3 is. They decided to go for an entirely different manufacturing process using Carbon Fibre instead of traditional steel stamping and it's entire supply chain is built on renewable energy. That's a big commitment on BMWs part. Alas, the market didn't think of it the same way. The i3 might not be a looker but it's probably one of the most innovative cars ever produced i…
It's ugly. It looks like a prop from Tron, and that movie was a flop.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Alas, the market didn't think of it the same way. The i3 might not be a looker ...from an American perspective. The i3 doesn't sell much in the US, but is I think the second highest selling EV in Europe at the moment, people here apparently don't have any problem with the way it looks.
In Copenhagen it's the only DriveNow car available, and I must admit that although I am a petrolhead, the i3 grew on me. What might look silly from the outside is an unparalleled experience in accelleration on the inside. Only Tesla's, motorcycles and proper sport cars can match the 0-50 km/h (which is everything you care about in a city commute).
Quite sure e-Golf, Leaf, the electric Kia all a good match.