Tesla shareholders are effectively funding R&D for BMW/Honda/Toyota/GM/Ford etc.
There's a sizable number of shareholders that are happy to be doing so; an electric world to them is better than an ICE one.
BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
211–220 of 373 posts
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#212Earlier 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…
why are we counting hybrids? I'd really like an all electric car, but right I literally only have 2 options right now because i have a long commute. Tesla or Bolt. Nothing else has long enough range for me to get to work and back with any kind of leeway if I need to run to the store or something after work. It's incredibly frustrating that there aren't more competitors making serious cars that aren't just compliance…
What's the problem with decent plug-in hybrids? For most people, 50 miles of pure electric range (Chevy Volt, Hyundai Ioniq, Honda Clarity) is more than enough for daily driving, and if you run out of electricity once or twice a month, you just run on petrol.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#213This 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…
IMHO, this is nonsense. General Motors (the stodgiest of the big old-school car companies) is already, today, mass-producing two EV models (Bolt and Volt) in much bigger numbers than Tesla. Car companies see the writing on the wall. They don't love gas-burning motors, they love making money.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#214This 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…
I wouldn't rule a hydrogen fuel cell revolution out yet. If humans develop technology that allows hydrogen fuel to be safely generated at the pumping station, then transportation costs for hydrogen fuel would be greatly reduced and thus the efficiency over batteries could be realized.
I used this as my source for efficiencies: https://electrek.co/2017/10/26/toyota-elon-musk-fuel-cell-hy...
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#215Earlier 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…
why are we counting hybrids? I'd really like an all electric car, but right I literally only have 2 options right now because i have a long commute. Tesla or Bolt. Nothing else has long enough range for me to get to work and back with any kind of leeway if I need to run to the store or something after work. It's incredibly frustrating that there aren't more competitors making serious cars that aren't just compliance…
Electric cars still suck in the winter. Air resistance, electric heating, and poor cold weather performance of LiIon batteries deplete the usable range. At the very least manufacturers need to provide auxiliary fossil fuel heating systems that aren't a hazard like current kerosene heater hacks. There is also the problem that pure electrics are largely off limits to the rentier population with no access to a plug where they park their car.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a BMW owner, I don't have a desire to own an electric BMW. The magic of what Tesla's doing is the cool tech that makes one lust after one of their cars in ways you don't lust after other 'boring' sedans. (of course, you might still lust after a gas sports car!) The secret sauce is the community, the supercharger network, the ability to seamlessly plan a trip with every charge stop pre-populated and supercharger av…
> As a BMW owner, I don't have a desire to own an electric BMW. The magic of what Tesla's doing is the cool tech that makes one lust after one of their cars in ways you don't lust after other 'boring' sedans. The biggest issue with BMWs is overcomplicated electronics and software leading to bugs or eventual weird glitches. I stopped buying them because of this, and IMO the Teslas looks even worse. I see a lot of used…
I'd say it's largely an early-adopter problem, but likely will stand for at least the next 5 years, which is critical when making a purchase today.
Tesla charging infrastructure "just works", and charges quickly, at generally-known rates.
I've perused other charging station maps and they're all hit-or-miss. You'll get 220v but not high amperage. You'll find the charger does't work. You'll find the chargers are full and cars are just parked there not going anywhere (Tesla works around this by charging people money for leaving their cars on a charger after they're full). You'll find the charger is private -- can only be used by employees of the office building you drove to, relying on finding a charger there.
That said, this system works fine for 99.9% of daily driving where you charge in known places -- every day at home, or every day at work, or whatever. But the more I've looked into the charging infrastructure for non-Tesla vehicles, the LESS impressed I've been. At many of these public chargers you'll have to be parked for 4+ hours to get even 20-30 miles' worth of charge.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would it need to destroy the dealer network and the right to repair your own car? Only because Tesla runs their business like a software house doesn't mean the others need to follow suit. The German car makers also make gas powered vehicles versions of some of their fleet which are quite different from gasoline cars. What takes time is building the facilities and technology to create reliable and serviceable elec…
because dealers don't want to sell evs very much because they have less maintenance, they are basically reducing their future revenue for every ev they sell.
Margins on cars alone are small. Dealers make something like a third of their revenue from their service contracts.
(Well, that and undercarriage coatings...)
With EV's breaking down less often and less routine maintenance because they just have fewer moving parts, that's going to destroy the dealer business model.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 da…
The Apollo program could never have happened without the decades of rocketry work that took place before that time. It's not like the US started from scratch in 1961 and landed a man on the moon in 1969; while the work involved to pull that off was incredible, there were decades of work prior to that, much of which involved the exact same people, that made Apollo possible.
Wikipedia, citing "Ward (2005). Dr. Space: The Life of Werner von Braun. ISBN 978-1-591-14926-2."
> Apollo program director Sam Phillips was quoted as saying that he did not think that the United States would have reached the Moon as quickly as it did without von Braun's help. Later, after discussing it with colleagues, he amended this to say that he did not believe the United States would have reached the Moon at all.
Wernher von Braun worked on rockets since the 1930's, inspired by the writings of Hermann Oberth, whom he later worked with at Peenemünde. The first V-2 rockets were launched in 1944. Von Braun continued working on rockets continuously until he retired in the 1970's, after working on the Apollo program.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 da…
You have to remember there’s a huge gulf between building something once and mass producing something, putting it in market and having it produce profits. Electricly powered vehicles existed before the American civil war, it’s taken until now for them to have any hope of success in the market.
The Romans had steam engines, too. It took until the 18th or 19th century for metallurgy to catch up to the point where steam engines were worthwhile.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is usually the case. Retooling an assembly line is a ton of work, and NOT producing at scale is impossible for modern, highly automated car factories like VW, Mercedes or BMW own. Producing 100 cars is simply not possible in these factories, because it would mean massive losses to the factory owner. Also, car manufacturers do not want one supplier for a part, they want several. Mostly as a backup and also to mak…
Nowadays, modularization is key. A common toolkit/template, optimized for keeping large parts of the manufacturing process the same. Take VW for example, with their Modularer Querbaukasten (arguably the most well-known example, although others like Toyota have done this for longer). Cars from the Polo up to the Passat are based on the same platform, retooling is kept as low as possible. All big players have gone modu…
VW has been moving almost all transverse front-wheel drive/all wheel drive cars to the MQB platform for a while now. This includes sub-brands such as Audi, Seat and Skoda. The benefit is that all cars based on this platform become much cheaper to design and build. The downside is that the cars end up being the same, drive the same, feel the same, etc - which I find quite boring, but that might not be an issue at all for the average motorist.