Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 373 posts

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

#341

Post by pathseeker »

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.

Norway is a very small slice of rich people. Not mainstream by any means.

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

#342

Post by pathseeker »

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])

IIRC people replying to a comment without upvoting it will down-rank it. So OT discussions survive only if they are highly upvoted.

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

#343

Post by Robotbeat »

djrogers wrote: post #235
Robotbeat wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very good point. But I will see if BMW actually does mass produce EVs. It's not that expensive. If you can afford $10,000-$20,000 over the life of a car in fuel (plus a few thousand in oil changes and brake jobs), you can afford a $7500 battery. Especially since that pulls thousands of dollars worth of complexity out of the drivetrain.

That $7500 battery need to be paid for up front, and consumes electricity that is not free.

Usually financed at a low interest rate. Electricity isn't free, but in my case costs about the equivalent of $1/gallon for gas (locally, gas is currently about $2.40). So overall, still definitely a win.

For gasoline, I consider it as essentially financed as well. Going to the gas station is basically paying off part of the debt I got by buying a gasoline consuming vehicle. Electricity, too, but electricity is much cheaper, and I can get out of debt there by buying a solar power system (unlike gasoline which is not feasible to produce on your own nor store a car-lifetime's worth).

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

#344

Post by nugi »

Robotbeat wrote: post #173
YSFEJ4SWJUVU6 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how every time there's a discussion about car operating costs here, at least someone mentions oil changes as if they were a substantial part. Many European cars with a long-life oil change program have oil changes as far as 18,000 miles apart. While I haven't averaged quite that high, for me oil changes still account for only about 2% of the fuel costs. With any new car the depreciation in value dominates most…

Electric cars retain the value of their battery packs, however. Look up the price of a used Model S, for instance.

And cars retain the value of their gas tanks. The difference is that gas tanks very seldom if ever 'wear out' and are $100-500 to replace. Battery packs are a wear item. Even a 100k warranty seems absurd to me. I have 2 cars with over 200k that need no major work. That steps hard on the narrative that eveltric cars need less maintance. If making cars electric means making them diaposible, Id rather petrol, and so would the environment.

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

#345

Post by nugi »

ghaff wrote: post #71
toomuchtodo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software is covered around copyright law, which is different than right to repair. I'm fine not owning the software my Tesla runs, nor having access to the source code, but I agree that legislation should require Tesla provide tooling that allows for diagnostics and canbus control for repairs (such as for issuing commands to the powertrain and ancillary systems).

AFAIK Tesla only provides access to service manuals in Massachusetts which has a right to repair law. Online subscription that’s just $30 per hour or $3000 per year.

Which is why I will never own, or reccomend their brand. Don't give up rights for gadgets.

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

#346

Post by nugi »

jgibson wrote: post #57
lttlrck wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it eliminate dealer service revenue? If anything goes wrong on a car these days it has been my experience it's quite unlikely to be anything specific to ICE. It'll be electromechanical (mirrors, seats, windows, locks), electrical (heating, cooling), mechanical (suspension bushes, axle boots, springs) and the biggest wear items brake and tires also remain...

Tires are definitely still a factor, but regenerative braking reduces the wear on the brakes quite significantly. You also don't have a lot of the "regular maintenance" items like oil changes, transmission fluid changes, coolant flushing, spark plugs, air intake filters, exhaust gas sensors and so on.

Less wear is actually worse for brakes. The hard use of brakes coats the iron surface with pad material. Without this coating, braking is uneven and not 100%. This is why many mfgs have brake bedding coatings and/or procedures. On a related note, most 'warped rotors' are not warped, but have uneven pad deposits, creating stickier spots on the rotor/drum.

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

#347

Post by Havoc »

jhall1468 wrote: post #299
Havoc wrote: post #227

Earlier 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…

Panasonic owns a small part. There's over 300 Tesla employees at the factory vs ~50 Panasonic, and Tesla owns the building and the land. Panasonic leases part of the building and owns some of the equipment. If BMW is buying from the manufacturer, there's a high chance Tesla will be one of them.

>Panasonic owns a small part. There's over 300 Tesla employees at the factory vs ~50 Panasonic, and Tesla owns the building and the land.

That's good info. Thanks

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

#348

Post by eip »

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...

> If humans develop technology that allows hydrogen fuel to be safely generated at the pumping station

The technology to produce hydrogen from water at efficiencies far exceeding Faraday has been known since the 1970s. It was perfected in the 1990s. Toyota has been sitting on it for two decades. That's why they are still leaning towards fuel cells.

Permanent batteries were also developed in the 1970s. They are currently in use by the military.

The problem isn't technology and hasn't been for a long time.

The problem is the international slavery system runs on oil and will for the foreseeable future.

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

#349

Post by devy »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #278
devy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BMW is one of the most progressive major auto maker in the world today. This news is not news at all and was in line with previous announcements on BMW i-series, which is the only current BMW line up that contains fully electric vehicles. Mass making electric vehicles at the same being profitable is HARD given the current technology status quo, yet crucial for any auto maker want to be in the game long term. By 2025,…

The i-Series are not all-electric: only the base-model i3 is - which has an unimpressive range without the optional gasoline-powered range extender, while the i8 is a hybrid with a 3-cylinder engine.

Range extender on i3 is a motorcycle gas engine that serves as a generator to continuously recharge the car's lithium ion batteries. i8 does use the same engine for powertrain though.

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

#350

Post by philwelch »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #252
itp wrote: post #163

Earlier 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…

What would be the point of pursuing fusion? We don’t even have the political will to deploy fission. Funding a fusion program would be like buying a car while your license is suspended.

We should absolutely be deploying fission on a wide scale, but the issues with waste disposal and radioactive contamination, while vastly overplayed, also go away with fusion.

Also, fusion could be orders of magnitude more efficient than fission, to the point where we can solve literally all of our sustainability problems just by throwing energy at the problem. Too much CO2 in the atmosphere? Build a factory that uses electricity to extract CO2 from the air, combine it with water, and recycle it back into hydrocarbons. Not enough water? Build desalination plants--the only reason we don't is because they're energy-intensive and energy is expensive. Need a sustainable source of nitrogen-based fertilizers? Extract nitrogen from the air. Batteries don't store as much energy as hydrocarbons? Manufacture EVEN MORE hydrocarbons out of the air and water and then use them to power your airplanes, in a closed-loop system where you're not even increasing the net amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

You can make a great sustainability case with fission. With fusion, you can make an incredible sustainability case and take away all of the fears involved. And by the time we get around to inventing it, odds are we're going to be fucked enough not to have any other choice but to adopt it.

Post reply on HN