311–320 of 373 posts
That's strangely worded headline. "Not viable until 2020"? I see it more as "as soon as 2020." Do people not realize that's like 2 years away? If we can start mass production of electric cars by then, that'd be amazing
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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...
And even if you solve that -somehow - a hydrogen car will always be more complex to build than an EV. Simply because you need the plumbing and storage at the very least.
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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…
> if you count hybrids With the imminent 48volt revolution in ICE cars, any vehicle can be a hybrid with next to no engineering at all. The leap from electrified to electric is huge, so comparing the two is kinda silly.
It's simpler to make a fully electric car, than a hybrid, 48v ICE or not.
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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…
But later, these oil mafias systematically destroyed that to the extent that many people in US believe that climate change is fiction.
My point being, sustainable sources of fuel are being either systematically undermined or for the lack of interest.
if we did not have $$$ from the oil interests against these alternate fuel then just imagine how much R &D would have happened till now!!
Even Nicholas Tesla had an electric car's design back in the 1800s, if that tech had been evolved to say Hydrogen fuel or ethanol or anything that doesn't shoot down our atmosphere then things would have been remarkably different now.
So, yes, there is a path dependent approach to science and technology, but for alternate fuel, the path was made ugly by $$$ from the oil interests
"Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak."
They are obviously going to say this to keep investors from betting their money on Tesla.
BMW surely has money from their other class of vehicles to continue funding their electric motor expedition.
This 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…
Bad example, Surface >>>> Kindle. Putting windows on their tablet is absolutely the right decision. Missing out on the tiny ebook reading market is pretty irrelevant for MS.
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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…
Only the cheapest (and TT) Audi models are based on MQB. From A4 up it’s MLB – the luxury variant. Also, for the new cars Audi will share the tech not with the cheaper makes, but upwards: with Porsche, Bentley, Lamborghini and so on. It already happened with Q7/Q8/Urus/Betayga. It’s also not exactly true that the driving characteristics are the same across the board. Usually Seats are on the sporty side with stiff ri…
But the exact timing also depends on the fact that only Tesla tried really hard to bring the electric car to the mainstream. Actually, BMW was pretty early to the game with the i3 - an excellent car which came to market as early as 2013. Certainly not a huge seller at its price, but quite a good electric car. The main problem was the lack of quick iterations, it has gotten one battery upgrade since then, no variations like the rumored i5 came to be.
As 2020 is almost around the corner, let's hope that BMW comes out with exciting electric cars. Also VW seems to be set to release a couple of very serious electric offerings in that time frame (I.D, Buzz).
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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…
I don't think the situation isn't being oversimplified, I think OP's post is a good summary of the whole situation. I also don't think the i3 is good value. If you compare it to a BWM series 1, you can get a better car for a better price. On the other hand, a Tesla Model 3 is perfectably comparable to a BWM series 1. Tesla has been making good electric cars since 2012 and the BMW i3 was very limited in range until la…
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Hydrogen is a different kind of ICE. They could imagine it. Electric was hard to imagine. I'm not even disagreeing with the main premise of the article-- there's no way BMW could shift the bulk of its production to electric right now. I'm just saying the could for some of the high(er?/est?) end vehicles that have low volume anyway, and they can charge ~$100K for the gas versions. Electric would be faster and have mor…
The first cars were electric. Electricity powering cars isn’t hard to to envision.
But yes, there were many electric car models in the beginning of 1900's.