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Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

bloomberg.com

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Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#181

Post by fvdessen »

texasbigdata wrote: post #177
izacus wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a bizarre post - the "old" manufacturers have pretty much all released excellent EV cars across the market, many better than Tesla offerings in many ways. Why the wierd goalpost moving of having to do this 20 years ago?

I'm not really familiar with this market but I'll just quote one article from last week suggesting it's a bit more lopsided than that; things can change quickly obviously. "Tesla accounts for more than two-thirds of all-electric car registrations (almost 68%), which is a dominant position, but the non-Tesla electric vehicle sales are growing at a similar rate and potentially might outpace Tesla later this year." If y…

In Europe, Tesla is now at only 5% of total EV sales, and in a not entirely unrelated news the US gov is proposing to exclude EU made cars from the 7500$ EV subsidy.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#182

Post by KaiserPro »

2sk21 wrote: post #160

from the manufacturer's viewpoint the main problem with EVs is that there is much less scope for differentiation in the power train. Most manufacturers are going to be using similar battery technology. I think that motor technology will also become commoditized in due course. The only areas where manufacturers can genuinely differentiate themselves will be styling and software.

Skoda, VW & Seat all use(d) the same base for their hot hatches. Its not uncommon.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#183

Post by lambdasquirrel »

missjellyfish wrote: post #90
it_citizen wrote: post #20

While I like the technology aspect, I am secretly rooting for expensive cars to become uncool. Small boring self-driving cars, possibly collectively owned instead of big expensive individually owned cars often used as a proof of social status.

> Small boring self-driving cars, possibly collectively owned instead of big expensive individually owned cars often used as a proof of social status. So, a bus?

"Small."

Buses won't work in a lot of the U.S. because of last-mile issues, in the way the suburbs were designed.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#184

Post by gpderetta »

numpad0 wrote: post #96

Isn't this more about economically producing low-volume motors, than about designing in-wheel motors? Production process seen in the video looks way simpler, requiring far less jigs and process adjustments compared to more typical EV motors. I don't see Ferrari or performance cars divisions of Mercedes suddenly starting to ship 500hp motors at 10k units/year volume, so the production process would have to adjust acco…

Apparently Ferrari shipped ~10k cars a year in last few years. And the lower models have about 500hp (Don't quote me on these numbers, it was just 5s of googling it). Still Ferrari is moving from being a small exotic sports car manufacturer to a more generic luxury car manufacturer.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#185

Post by smcl »

biztos wrote: post #176
papito wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did do it 20 years ago. Actually, 25 years ago. GM's EV1 was a car well ahead of its time, even with a decent range, but then it mysteriously disappeared. This is covered in the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" (on Amazon). So it's not like Elon Musk paved the way for electric cars - he just faced fewer headwinds. And let us not forget, he did not actually found Tesla, he acquired it. The company also b…

> drinking alone in a club (who does that?) Every single drinking person who has a club to go to and needs to do some thinking, for starters.

Pub I can see, but drowning your sorrows alone in a club is an odd one

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#186

Post by anon_123g987 »

texasbigdata wrote: post #177
izacus wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a bizarre post - the "old" manufacturers have pretty much all released excellent EV cars across the market, many better than Tesla offerings in many ways. Why the wierd goalpost moving of having to do this 20 years ago?

I'm not really familiar with this market but I'll just quote one article from last week suggesting it's a bit more lopsided than that; things can change quickly obviously. "Tesla accounts for more than two-thirds of all-electric car registrations (almost 68%), which is a dominant position, but the non-Tesla electric vehicle sales are growing at a similar rate and potentially might outpace Tesla later this year." If y…

In 2021, worldwide, Tesla had 21% of the purely electric market and 14% of the plug-in market, down from the previous year's 23% and 16%, respectively.

Source: https://insideevs.com/news/564800/world-top-oem-sales-2021/

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#187

Post by codeulike »

izacus wrote: post #172
texasbigdata wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reticence is the old attitude that you basically had to drag the old car manufacturers to electric, then they insisted on doing design after design of the clearly inferior hydrogen alternative, it's hard to take them seriously now that they're just responding to stay relevant / alive. If they really "cared" about EV this would have come 20 years earlier given the sheer scale of endowed resources they had.…

What a bizarre post - the "old" manufacturers have pretty much all released excellent EV cars across the market, many better than Tesla offerings in many ways. Why the wierd goalpost moving of having to do this 20 years ago?

the "old" manufacturers have pretty much all released excellent EV cars across the market

They are just about getting there as of last year, after 15 years of saying they were going to. e.g. look back at VWs claims about how they were going to be an EV leader back in 2013, vs how long it took them to actually get the ID3/ID4 done.

e.g.

"Volkswagen Group will be the world leader in electric and hybrid cars by 2018, it says.

The bold claim came not from an offhand comment by an executive at this week's Frankfurt Auto Show, but in a press release announcing that the VW Group had set its "sights on market leadership in electric mobility by 2018."

“We are starting at exactly the right time," said Group CEO Martin Winterkorn before the show.

"We are electrifying all vehicle classes, and therefore have everything we need to make the Volkswagen Group the top automaker in all respects, including electric mobility, by 2018."

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1086902_volkswagen-will...

But yes as of now there are a lot of good cars from a lot of manufacturers.

Tesla had to give the industry an almighty kick up the backside to get us here though

Without Tesla all we'd have is stuff like the 2016 Leaf with 100 mile range because 'market research shows people just want an ev for running around town'

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#188

Post by Hypocritelefty »

devnulll wrote: post #4

> Putting a motor on each wheel — or at least one on each axle — could translate into hair-raising EV driving performance. I don't understand this. My Plaid Tesla has a motor on each of the rear axles, and it's direct coupled to the wheel. The already are doing torque vectoring. Like all things in engineering, the trade-off's are critical. This article doesn't go at all into the pros/cons of the approach Tesla (and o…

No post body was provided.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#189

Post by dagw »

smcl wrote: post #185
biztos wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> drinking alone in a club (who does that?) Every single drinking person who has a club to go to and needs to do some thinking, for starters.

Pub I can see, but drowning your sorrows alone in a club is an odd one

"Club" can mean both a private members club with various facilities, including a bar, as well as a place where people party and dance all night to loud music.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#190

Post by avidphantasm »

rmason wrote: post #122
xbmcuser wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partly I agree and its the reason I have been disappointed specially in Toyota trying to protect it cash cow and supply chain. They are not really getting into electric cars. Even today they are trying to hedge with hydrogen fuel cars its as they feel hydrogen cars will require the least amount of changes for their supply chain.

Toyota made the largest bet on hydrogen of any car manufacturer. They stubbornly stuck to it and were slow in developing EV's. They're playing fast catchup but will be a few years behind everyone else. What that costs them in market share is anyone's guess. I thought the laggard would be Chrysler/Stellantis but they're getting set to introduce a number of models starting next year. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/toy…

Well, it’s far from clear that we’ll be able to meet climate goals with EVs due to material shortages. Hydrogen alternatives may help with this. Also, if we can build out hydrogen production, this may open up opportunities to retrofit existing ICEs to burn hydrogen. Lastly, while Toyota may be behind on EVs from a product POV, it’s arguable how far behind they are from an engineering POV. Toyota has had by far the best hybrid EV platform for the past 25 years, and have been incrementally improving it throughout. Hybrids are harder to make than EVs, yet have all the same components (esp. the plug-in variety). I think Toyota will be fine in the EV well before they need to stop selling ICE cars.
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