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BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

reuters.com

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Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#321

Post by ptaipale »

sweden wrote: post #186
davewritescode wrote: post #176

Earlier 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…

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…

> Tesla Model 3 is perfectably comparable to a BWM series 1.

Except that one cannot buy the Model 3.

Its total production numbers in 2017 (1700 cars) were less than 1 percent of the BMW 1 series (over 200 000 per year).

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#322

Post by ianai »

hvidgaard wrote: post #313
djrogers wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Going from ICE to Hybrid is not "next to no engineering at all". Not even close. To be a hybrid you take an existing car, put in everything you would in an electric car, except smaller and you have to place alongside the ICE. The gearbox is none trivial to make to incorporate both efficiently. It's simpler to make a fully electric car, than a hybrid, 48v ICE or not.

Anecdote: my rav4 hybrid really impresses upon me how complicated hybrids must be to engineer. It’s tempting to see it as “just two electric motors, a battery pack, and an ICE drive train”. But it’s clearly juggling many factors to figure out the optimal source of each increment of force.

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#323

Post by ianai »

mattigames wrote: post #199
thinkloop wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is sorted by top comments, with brand new comments getting top spot temporarily so they are not instantly buried.

It's a bad system; it promotes upvoting the already top-comment and commenting on it or the initial replies to it; the best way would be to pseudo-randomize posts order but biased towards those with higher score (e.g. so the top-rated-comment sometimes appears second, some rare times third; and some extremely rare times forth [regardless of how old any of those comments are])

I wonder if a two or three column view would be better. Could have a current best and newest sort. Third column could be random.

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#324

Post by gepi79 »

tzakrajs wrote: post #214
mmalone wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I wonder why there is not more talk and research of other liquid fuels that are not as dangerous and inefficient as hydrogen gas.

Example: Methanol or ethanol for flow batteries. https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2017/Q2/instantly-r...

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#325

Post by ptaipale »

adrianN wrote: post #296
reubenswartz wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not arguing with the comment ranking. ;-) However, I don't think electric cars are "mainstream", outside of a small slice of people, which probably overlaps pretty well with HN. ;) They have great mindshare thanks to Tesla's marketing (and because they're pretty damn good cars), but they're a blip in terms of overall car sales volume unless you filter by really high end sedans and SUVs.

In Norway 40% of the sold cars are plug-in electric.

That number appears to include plug-in hybrids.

In January and February this year, 4324 electric cars were registered [1]. Total registration number for this period was 24199 [2].

That would be 18 % electric. There's been a large subsidy to electric cars which is effectively a subsidy to rich people...

[1] http://www.ssb.no/en/transport-og-reiseliv/artikler-og-publi...

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#326

Post by mf2hd »

Havoc wrote: post #227
kokx wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are both having trouble scaling up different parts of the production line. So far, it seems that Tesla has been focussing quite a lot on getting great at producing batteries, including the logistics for that. Which is what they seem to be good at (given that they produce industrial size battery stations and batteries for home use as well). But they do not have as much experience in managing a mass produc…

I don't quite see lithium battery tech to be a market dominating advantage. Case in point - despite branding Gigafactory is at least in part a Panasonic operation. Don't believe me? See panasonic annual report: https://www.panasonic.com/global/corporate/ir/pdf/panasonic_... Largest lithium battery supplier in the world? Panasonic. https://www.statista.com/statistics/235323/lithium-batteries... BMW doesn't need experi…

I think it's quite the opposite, battery production is the key.

The problem is that no one can mass produce batteries for cars at this scale. As of now the projected capacity of the Gigafactory is enough batteries for 500k cars / year. By 2020 it will be 1.5M cars / year. This is more batteries than the whole world produced in 2013.

By 2020 Tesla is gonna have a lot of experience how to do this efficiently so the cost will be much lower. They are gonna have a new gigafactory in the EU. Lithium mines can't produce enough lithium at this scale so Tesla already makes deals with them to ramp up the production.

BMW makes 2.5 million cars a year. So what's the plan exactly? Just buy the batteries? From whom? When every other large car manufacturer wants to buy batteries and there is not enough on the market the price will go up.

Every time I read something like Volkswagen|Mercedes|Audi|whatever plans to sell x ev cars by 2020 I never see any mention about who is going to make the batteries.

I think the large car manufacturers are already behind, they should start working on their battery factories right now.

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#327

Post by usrusr »

detaro wrote: post #78
mulmen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking of starting a blog about RC planes, but I'm going to outsource the development. I submitted a bid to IBM but they haven't replied! On top of that Boeing said they're not interested in assembling my plane! Clearly these incumbents are holding me back. /s Sarcasm aside maybe it just wasn't worth it to VW to take on a relatively small project outside of their core competency?

If making delivery vans for one of the biggest users of delivery vehicles in Germany (that uses tons of VW vans currently) is "a small project outside their core competency", VW really is in trouble.

Their core competency, beside ICE engines, it's furnishing out vehicles with all the expensive, heavy cruft customers have come to expect from big brands vehicle makers, even in supposedly utilitarian delivery vans.

The streetscooter, on the other hand, is really just the most barebone thing you could build around a battery. This saves a lot of money for a startup, but at a big brand with all the processes for sophistication, deviating from the established path would eat much of the savings.

But that's not the only problem: many of the same people who are enthusiastic about the pragmatic minimalism of the streetscooter due to the underdog image would punish the same car if it was made by VW or any other of the big ones. And that's not just interior finishing and amenities, the same applies to more serious things like safety and reliability. People will cut streetscooter a lot of slack where they would be unforgiving towards a big brand.

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#328

Post by rcxdude »

kazen44 wrote: post #64
ecpottinger wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but that does not ring true to me. I used to work on the assembly at a GM truck plant, and one of the amazing things was the range of different units that came down the line. 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. Also by that logic there should be no Nissan Leaf. Last but not least, if BMW waits too long they…

> 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.

As an interesting tidbit on this point, the reason robotics is favored by car manufacturers in production plants is not because it's cheaper (it's actually more expensive), but because it's more flexible, i.e. changing a line to manufacture a new line is cheaper. This runs counter to most people's intuition of robotics.

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#329

Post by FabHK »

mattigames wrote: post #199
thinkloop wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is sorted by top comments, with brand new comments getting top spot temporarily so they are not instantly buried.

It's a bad system; it promotes upvoting the already top-comment and commenting on it or the initial replies to it; the best way would be to pseudo-randomize posts order but biased towards those with higher score (e.g. so the top-rated-comment sometimes appears second, some rare times third; and some extremely rare times forth [regardless of how old any of those comments are])

An option to hide/expand comment trees might help, as you could easily hide the first comment (and everything that hangs off it) and check out the next ones (without having to manually scan indentation).

Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

#330

Post by rcxdude »

RivieraKid wrote: post #179
ThoAppelsin wrote: post #175

As an outsider, I forecast that in Europe the demand for the gas guzzling cars will be on a sharp decline in not more than a year. BMW and any other car company that are reluctant in adapting to the future, will be troubled economically for offering units that will not anymore be demanded. I mean, really, who would buy the old tech (combustion engine) when even the manufacturer itself (BMW) announces that they are so…

I can assure you this won't happen in a year. For most people it's a worse and more expensive product.

Indeed. The car industry seems to be committing to it but it's unclear the market will swallow it.
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