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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

#341

Post by kube-system »

breve wrote: post #305
kube-system wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do, however they have been very vocal in their reluctance to invest in that strategy.

Toyota's strategy is working. They have been the best selling automaker for the last six years straight. Last year they had record sales: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota... As time goes on BEVs will make up a greater percentage of their sales. As BEVs get cheaper and more practical demand will keep going up. Toyota will follow BEV demand.

What I said wasn’t a criticism, simply a fact.

I’m personally a huge fan of hybrids

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

#342

Post by jolux »

consp wrote: post #127
jolux wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could definitely buy the Focus in the US.

Same name, mostly same internal components, different chassis (mostly bigger) afaik. Same for Fiesta's except for some models (e.g. ST). I know for the Fiesta since the electronics are the same but the dash components are made for a bigger chassis (to make it fit you have to dremel quite a bit).

Huh, interesting. Looks like they were indeed quite different until the Mk3 in 2012

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

#343

Post by tetris11 »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #337
tetris11 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You buy a car, and it lasts maybe 10 years, and then you sell it on to someone else and they drive it for maybe another 10 years. Updates should not be neccesary. An update can affect the resale value of my car by downclocking it "for safety"

If the manufacturer downclocks your car for safety, can't you sue them for the loss of value? Surely they're admitting that they sold you an unsafe vehicle.

See Google and the Pixel4 battery debacle.

In theory if you bought your phone from one of their vendors you could get your cash back. In practice, the phone was old enough to have already been resold and there's no way you could claim that rebate

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

#344

Post by JuniperMesos »

TheScaryOne wrote: post #336
dcferreira wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious where you got those numbers from. I did a quick search and find wildly different numbers (depending on method and source, from ~60% to >98%). However I don't find anywhere claiming anywhere near Example source of manufacturers claiming >95% [0]. 0: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-well-can-electric-vehicl...

"Despite their wide use, it is estimated that only 5% of lithium batteries are currently recycled." https://www.ameslab.gov/news/new-lithium-ion-battery-recycli...

This is probably because it's not economical to recycle lithium ion batteries, certainly not for the lithium itself. Lithium is an extremely abundant element. If this ever stopped being the case, or if there are other battery components that were scarce enough to make batteries economical to recycle, we'd start doing that.

There's no virtue in recycling equipment for recycling's sake alone, we do it in exactly the situations where some raw material in the equipment is expensive enough to justify the cost of the recycling process.

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

#345

Post by TheScaryOne »

Marsymars wrote: post #333
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.

Shouldn't that still be covered under the battery warranty? Related: The problem I have with Fiat is that there's an obvious step to combat the impression of poor reliability/durability: Increase the standard warranty. If Fiat declines to increase the standard warranty, the impression is even worse — it's that they're not increasing the warranty because it isn't financially viable for them to do so, because the relia…

>Compare to e.g. Hyundai with a 10-year/100k-mile powertrain and 5-year/60k-mile general in the USA.

Most cars are sold by the first owner between 30,000 and 60,000 miles. Hyundai's warranty is cut in half for the second owner, 5/50k powertrain and 2.5/30k general. There's nothing to cover, so it's basically free to put 10/100k in all of the commercials.

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

#346

Post by TheScaryOne »

beAbU wrote: post #311
pink_eye wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Lithium batteries are highly recyclable

And fake meat is highly edible. But do many people eat fake meat? No. Do many people recycle lithium ion batteries? Also, no. Less than 5% is the current estimate for what percent of lithium ion batteries is recycled.

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

#347

Post by TheScaryOne »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #344
TheScaryOne wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Despite their wide use, it is estimated that only 5% of lithium batteries are currently recycled." https://www.ameslab.gov/news/new-lithium-ion-battery-recycli...

This is probably because it's not economical to recycle lithium ion batteries, certainly not for the lithium itself. Lithium is an extremely abundant element. If this ever stopped being the case, or if there are other battery components that were scarce enough to make batteries economical to recycle, we'd start doing that. There's no virtue in recycling equipment for recycling's sake alone, we do it in exactly the si…

Your argument can't be both that "the batteries are recyclable" and "well duh no one does it because it doesn't make any money."

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

#348

Post by useftmly »

jmward01 wrote: post #247

I see arguments in the comments about 'I had a disappointing experience a few years ago' where the entire point is that China has been betting on the future and putting the work in to get there. They had disappointing experiences too, but they learned and improved. We just give up. The whole point of this article and the rise of china in general is that the west keeps looking at just the now and 5 years ago and sayin…

[dead]

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

#349

Post by Marsymars »

TheScaryOne wrote: post #345
Marsymars wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't that still be covered under the battery warranty? Related: The problem I have with Fiat is that there's an obvious step to combat the impression of poor reliability/durability: Increase the standard warranty. If Fiat declines to increase the standard warranty, the impression is even worse — it's that they're not increasing the warranty because it isn't financially viable for them to do so, because the relia…

>Compare to e.g. Hyundai with a 10-year/100k-mile powertrain and 5-year/60k-mile general in the USA. Most cars are sold by the first owner between 30,000 and 60,000 miles. Hyundai's warranty is cut in half for the second owner, 5/50k powertrain and 2.5/30k general. There's nothing to cover, so it's basically free to put 10/100k in all of the commercials.

If it's basically free, then Fiat should offer it for the 500e, and I might consider buying one.

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

#350

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ericmay wrote: post #332
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is creating and making markets where they are allowed to create/make markets. The western auto manufacturers are turtling up via protectionism, and they are no longer aiming to compete on their products.

> China is creating and making markets where they are allowed to create/make markets. What's the median income in Africa, and how much is the cost of a new Chinese EV that is supposed to be sold in Africa? I'm not sure, do you happen to know? > The western auto manufacturers are turtling up via protectionism, and they are no longer aiming to compete on their products. Chinese automakers were/are subsidized by the CCP…

> What's the median income in Africa, and how much is the cost of a new Chinese EV that is supposed to be sold in Africa? I'm not sure, do you happen to know?

Africans are poor but Chinese EVs are cheap. What’s more, they can earn more with better tools, like Chinese EVs and Chinese investments in green energy. If you’ve been to a bunch of poor countries you know how it works by now. Yes, $10k is a lot of money in those places, but it isn’t a horrible amount of money and is realistic for lots of non-rich people.

> Chinese automakers were/are subsidized by the CCP (including "investment" deals via Belt and Road), it's a response to that. Even today China requires joint ventures for western automakers to operate in China (to my knowledge). China already turtled up via protectionism.

Yes, thats definitely fair. But they didn’t turtle up, they innovated and developed new tech instead. The difference is that China used protectionism to catch up, the USA is using protectionism to…be lazy and dumb. Which one do you think will pay off?

> When you say western automakers aren't aiming to compete on their products what do you mean? The quality of the vehicles? Capabilities? Cost? All of the above?

Yes. Germany has the best bet of catching up, the American auto corps have been dying for a couple of decades now and are probably beyond help. Japan (not western, but usually included) made dumb bets on hydrogen that it still isn’t walking back.

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