2020 is not that far.
BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
331–340 of 373 posts
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Hydrogen fuel cells are electric and electric wasnt hard to imagine. Electric cars have been around since the 1880s.
Thanks for straightening me out on how the fuel cells work. I didn’t understand that.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 cos…
>So what's the plan exactly? Just buy the batteries? From whom?
One of the top lithium battery manufacturers as per my link. Lithium batteries are literally everywhere. Do you see Apple proudly proclaiming they make their own batteries for their ipads & how their battery knowledge is their key competitive advantage? No they use a supply chain.
Sure there will be a supply crunch, but even that is exaggerated in my view.
>Lithium mines can't produce enough lithium
See recent (last month) comment from Morgan Stanley:
>“We expect these supply additions to swamp forecast demand growth,”
https://www.ft.com/content/4faf029a-1ae7-11e8-aaca-4574d7dab...
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#334Earlier 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…
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…
Why would electric be hard to imagine? Any kid with a set of Hot Wheels new it could work. The problems 10-20 years ago still persist; range and recharge. Battery tech improves slowly compared to other tech.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#335Earlier 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.
This gets trotted out all the time. Norway is a very small country, in terms of population and GDP. Approximately 5 million people. Car ownership is about 58%, so roughly 3 million cars on the road. This is a nit, an infinitesimal number of cars. It's like using Arizona as an example. Same general population and GDP.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
The boat that has all the $100k sales on it from people that don’t want to wait 2-3 years for a BMW. That boat. It’s red row boat in case you’re curious.
That boat is super niche. Numbers of $100k cars Tesla sells per year is very small and actually is not growing. So that boat is quite small and I don't see the issue for BMW. You have to remember Tesla is losing hundreds of millions of dollars, so clearly that boat is not going to get far until they can start making money. Even Elon Musk won't be able to raise big rounds of new capital indefinitely.
That super niche boat is in a fleet of boats that are killing off old businesses that are lagging behind. Sure BMW may be doing great today, but how long until they’re a Borders.
I don’t agree with you, but I did use your golang auth project the other day. Good work! Thanks!
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#337Earlier 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…
Absolutely. "Tesla's" cells that have been showcased are 99% made possible by Panasonic. You don't need battery expertise to build a decent battery pack using off-the-shelf cells.
It's extremely frustrating how people here - who usually are at least moderately skeptical about other technologies - eat up piles of inaccurate battery news with gusto.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do those come strict conditions though? For example: don’t launch the car, don’t use ludicrous mode more than X times over the lifetime of the drivetrain, etc.
I am curious why people fixate on the battery so much. Several of my coworkers have had Teslas for years now. To my knowledge not a single one has had a battery failure. Of all the many complaints about Teslas, I think the batteries are the least of the worries. Plus Tesla would probably cover most battery failures even if they weren't covered by the letter of the warranty, simply because they can't afford to have ba…
Because they're used to crappy lead-acid batteries that need to be replaced regularly in ICE vehicles and which cause people to be stranded when they fail. Note that the Model Y will get rid of the 12V lead acid battery, which is a good thing (IMHO) if engineered correctly. One less maintenance item.
Also, consumer phone batteries (which are more aggressively charged/discharged and which usually use a different chemistry) don't last more than two or three years before showing significant capacity reduction.
Also, there were some problems with the early-year Leafs (2011-2012) losing range fast in hot climates. (Nissan solved the problem eventually via chemistry. Note this is not a problem for Teslas or Volts/Bolts due to a battery temperature management system able to cool the battery.)
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
They definitely haven't said that margins would be negative until the "distant future".
They are selling for a loss currently. Any margins from model S and X are being used to subsidise model 3 and overall they are still losing tons of money, profitability not even on the horizon. I wonder how long their current runway is without raising new cash again.
That is mostly right, but I was responding to someone who said that positive gross margins for the vehicle were only planned for the distant future. Their financial statement for last quarter implied that the 3 would have positive gross margins in late 2018.
Their cash position decreased by about 162 million last quarter and they have ~3.3 billion on hand at the end of Q4. There are a lot of risks still out there due to the production bottlenecks that currently exist (and maybe more on the horizon with S and X), but the cashflow situation isn't as horrible as some want to believe.
Re: BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 wher…
> rentier I don’t think that word means what you think it means... [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rentier
"rentier" is actually the german word for reindeer. The sentence reads rather funny if you are german.