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Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

theguardian.com

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Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#311

Post by beAbU »

pink_eye wrote: post #293
olyjohn wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend has had one for about 6 years and put about 40,000 miles on his. Then one day some battery control module died. Now the car is a brick, and isn't worth fixing. The whole battery has to come out to get to the module, and it's possible that the battery itself is still bad. But we won't know until the module is replaced... which means putting the battery back into the car before knowing it's condition.

How is all this Battery waste good for the environment? #ElectrifiedEnvironmentalDestruction

Ice car engines also sometimes grenade themselves for no reason sometimes. Same story: too expensive to fix and on cheaper cars that means a write off.

Lithium batteries are highly recyclable, so is all the copper in the motor. I can promise you that fiat will never en on a landfill battery and all.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#312

Post by demosito666 »

kubb wrote: post #281
epolanski wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it? Tesla is literally the first mover. Volkswagen group sells 30 EVs. Both Mercedes and BMW have 8. Stellantis has at least a couple dozens.

It's completely dominated by China in terms of volume, cost, and battery supply chain. They have the maturity, and are still pulling away. Unprotected, western EV manufacturers die on the spot. Which is fine by me, until the Chinese don't have to compete on cost anymore, and can dictate the price. To claim that what they need to succeed is less protectionism is a misunderstanding.

> Which is fine by me

The issue with car industry at least in Europe is not price. This is the last branch that is more or less alive, employs a lot of people and generates added value domestically. If it’s ceded to China, that means that you are at the next stage of deindustrialisation. From where we stand, it looks like that would mean economy collapse and crisis that we haven’t seen since… ever? If this is the way, we’ll have to figure how to live without relying on jobs as the way to survive (ubi, resource-based economy, etc). Since this is not even on the horizon, keep the tariffs for now, thank you.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#313

Post by masklinn »

beAbU wrote: post #310
overfeed wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a prerequisite: I see lots of people plugging their cars at public chargers in my residential area; I assume they charge once a week while doing groceries or dining out.

Public charging can easily be 2x or 3x as expensive.

And being in your car doing nothing waiting for the charge for 25mn is frustrating. Even more so when it’s the height of summer (and that was in a car where the AC didn’t block charging).

If you can time it with some errands it’s less of a hassle, but that was one of the main non-car annoyances with my EV rental (the other was the flakiness / unreliability of getting a charging session to start).

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#314

Post by sparqlittlestar »

baka367 wrote: post #93
thyristan wrote: post #31

Western car makers learned the hard lesson that, at least in most of Europe, electricity prices are far too high, EV prices are too high, and customers do know how to use their calculators. In Germany, the only thing propping up the EV market are tax subsidies for commercially used EVs, so company cars are very likely to be EV or at least hybrid. For the rest of sales? Only idealists buy EVs, and then only those with…

Oh please, it hit two euros a liter thanks to the orange turd

In the Netherlands, its over €2,50

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#315

Post by silon42 »

georgefrowny wrote: post #303
M0r13n wrote: post #82

I've had a rough time with the last two EVs I've owned. I bought a Honda e in 2020 because of its retro-future charm, but ended up being disappointed by several things: - the range was miserable - the software quality was bad - no OTA updates ever (despite Honda's promises) - slow charging - poor public charging infrastructure in Germany I should have known that a 35 kW battery wouldn't deliver great range or chargin…

I really don't know why EVs necessitate a new software platform. Car makers are shit at software. Actually nearly everyone is shit at software. I know they want to turn their cars into mobile subscription-based analytics platforms for the money but combining it with the concept of the drivetrain power supply is just unnecessary and it's actually potentially lethal for the future company. Yes it's a nice try to bamboo…

Yeah, I don't want OTA or "software"... Just make it simple and make it work. For everything complicated that needs"fixing" there's a phone.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#316

Post by silon42 »

PearlRiver wrote: post #283
M0r13n wrote: post #82

I've had a rough time with the last two EVs I've owned. I bought a Honda e in 2020 because of its retro-future charm, but ended up being disappointed by several things: - the range was miserable - the software quality was bad - no OTA updates ever (despite Honda's promises) - slow charging - poor public charging infrastructure in Germany I should have known that a 35 kW battery wouldn't deliver great range or chargin…

Germany is a car country. They live in the cult of ICE. It seems to me that the less people give a shit about cars the more likely they are to embrace EV.

Or maybe there aren't good EVs... however, ICEs are becoming worse, so the crossover might be happening eventually.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#318

Post by padjo »

themafia wrote: post #228
padjo wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making me very happy with my decision in 2021 to resist the appealing design of the Honda and buy an id3 with a reasonably sized battery. Also your in winter are you running the heater constantly? I find just dressing for outdoors, leaving the heater off and using heated seats/wheel means I only lose maybe 15% range.

> are you running the heater constantly? Something every car prior to this has been able to do without any impact on performance. > means I only lose maybe 15% range. Which could be a reasonable sacrifice if you choose to make it. It's certainly not included in the marketing for these vehicles.

What is your point exactly? That EVs manufacturers should be held to standards higher than everyone else who markets products by focusing on the upsides? Or that we should continue to use inefficient climate destroying technology because it happened to provide a side benefit that we've become habituated to?

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#319

Post by nslsm »

padjo wrote: post #318
themafia wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are you running the heater constantly? Something every car prior to this has been able to do without any impact on performance. > means I only lose maybe 15% range. Which could be a reasonable sacrifice if you choose to make it. It's certainly not included in the marketing for these vehicles.

What is your point exactly? That EVs manufacturers should be held to standards higher than everyone else who markets products by focusing on the upsides? Or that we should continue to use inefficient climate destroying technology because it happened to provide a side benefit that we've become habituated to?

> That EVs manufacturers should be held to standards higher than everyone else who markets products by focusing on the upsides?

Eh, yes? They are presenting a new technology and want us to switch - they should prove their technology is superior.

Re: Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance

#320

Post by pshirshov »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #202
pshirshov wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> poor public charging infrastructure in Germany Dunno, had a trip through it last year, there are more than enough chargers. Some of them were literally free. I have 70kWh battery though. Also, I paid much less than 40k for my chinese SUV. The software is buggy though, a random reboot on motorway doesn't feel nice.

Does the random reboot affect the motor, lights, defogger, signals, anything else absolutely essential to driving? Don't get me wrong, I'd be annoyed and unsettled if the sound system or gps or whatever rebooted while I was driving, I'm just curious just how dire it is

Lane keeping stops working for a minute, so the car suddenly feels like a dumb one.
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