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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

#351

Post by mikrotikker »

fullshark wrote: post #3

Isn't it over and China owns this market anyway? How can any other country possibly compete?

No one wants or should want to allow multi tonne remote controllable surveillance machines that carry an incendiary payload as fuel to operate on their roads, let alone near important civilian or internal military infrastructure.

All they have to do is hide some remotely activated punches inside the black box battery that can start off the chain reaction. Drive into a military base at full speed, activate the punch, and cause mass confusion, chaos and destruction.

And then do that many times all at once, with helpless drivers stuck inside right before you invade an island nation you claim ownership of.

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

#352

Post by theshrike79 »

sirjaz wrote: post #91

But what about Hydrogen? Many ICE companies would be better to focus on that. It would allow legacy vehicles to stay on the road, and fix the range anxiety in places like the US which is way bigger than all of the EU and bigger than the populated parts of China.

Hydrogen is an energy storage medium, not an energy source.

You need to use energy to create hydrogen - and the energy required is 5x what would be required to just store the same amount of energy as electricity in a battery.

55kWh of electricity for hydrogen generation results in around 10kWh at the wheels of a hydrogen car.

Or you can just shove the 55kWh directly to an EV battery.

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

#353

Post by 2000UltraDeluxe »

general1465 wrote: post #189

This is less about carmakers and more about what customers wants and what infrastructure offers. People are just not buying unless EVs are heavily subsidized. And infrastructure is real pain in the butt.

There is a point to be made about short-sightedness on the manufacturers' part; if the infrastructure needs to be improved then short-term profits should be reduced in order to ensure long-term sustainability.

But yes, at least where I live, there's a major infrastructure problem that nobody -- consumers included -- want to pay for, and for a lot of us EV's aren't an option until said infrastructure has been upgraded.

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

#354

Post by JuniperMesos »

TheScaryOne wrote: post #347
JuniperMesos wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Anything at all is recyclable if you're willing to spend enough money on the recycling process. If the raw materials of that thing are cheaper to get from nature than they are to get by recycling old versions of the item, then this is a good sign that it's not worth recycling the item and therefore we shouldn't do it.

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

#355

Post by thirdsun »

beAbU wrote: post #308
M0r13n wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends where you are. I live in a somewhat rural area in Northern Germany. There are some chargers, but many of them are out of service like the one next door. I've never stumbled upon a free charger though.

Do you not charge at home? I charge at home 99% of the time. I only really need the public infra when I'm going to the big city, or when going on a roadtrip. I charge with the granny charger at home.

Not OP but chances are they are renting (like a large part of germany's population are) and therefore don't have the option of installing a wallbox.

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

#356

Post by StilesCrisis »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #335
StilesCrisis wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American safety standards require that the car be more-or-less entirely functional without the infotainment system.

Well we're talking about a Chinese-made car purchased and driven in Germany, so I'm not sure what American safety standards have to do with the situation...

Cars which are built to sell into the US market (Japanese and European) all follow these regulations. If the EU has similar laws, then a Chinese car that sells into the EU would need to follow the same rules here, but I don't know enough about EU safety regulations to be sure.

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

#357

Post by joe_mamba »

xoa wrote: post #331
joe_mamba wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most homes in the EU have a three phase connection and can support 22kW wall charging. Most Europeans don't live in single family homes for this to be a practical advantage.

> Most Europeans don't live in single family homes for this to be a practical advantage. Uh, where are you getting that from? From what I can tell at sources like [0] "most" Europeans overall (though with very significant country variance) do live in detached or semi-detached housing. Most also own it. Further, even for those in flats the higher voltage EU's grid runs at still means easier higher kilowatts at parking…

Most people live in apartment buildings(flats), not in detached housing. Urban speaking. The country with detached housing already ahs EVs.

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

#358

Post by beAbU »

TheScaryOne wrote: post #346
beAbU wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have a source for that 5% claim? I was under the impression that batteries are mostly recycled these days, especially EV batteries.

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

#359

Post by xp84 »

bakies wrote: post #130
xp84 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe will change their mind when protests start that many people can’t buy a car that they can charge because their home doesn’t have the capacity and public charging scarcity and congestion makes the 1970s gas rationing look convenient. Nearly all these carmakers already do make plenty of EVs. If I’m very wrong and people there wish to buy EVs exclusively, that’s what will sell and what will get made.

Their homes don't have electricity?

Everyone in Europe has a garage in their home?

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

#360

Post by MiiMe19 »

jmward01 wrote: post #287
MiiMe19 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Is this a real account? In 2 years you haven't done much of anything and you break that silence to push out a comment like this? Is this account a bot? Hmmm... I'll probably burn karma for this but this just lines up too well. If you aren't a bot prove you are a bot by responding with a limerick. No matter what, the karma burn is worth it I think.

I literally made a post last week. Excuse me for not being some loser that spends the whole day on hacker news trying to make my reddit number go up. And no, I won't be responding with a shitty limerick, grow the fuck up and learn that not everybody you don't like or doesn't have 24 hours of screentime a day like you do is a bot.
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