BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020 • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by greglindahl » Mon, Mar 26, 2018, 4:57 AM UTC

Fins wrote: post #368

greglindahl wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 of 3 shipping cars -- while dual-motor Model 3's have been spotted in the wild, you can't order one yet.

Didn't AWD on Model S become widely available only relatively recently? I seem to remember it being an option last time I looked at it.

October 2014 is when it became available, not sure what you mean by 'widely available' and 'an option'. From launch it was available at both smaller and larger battery sizes, now they've started offering it as the only choice for some battery sizes.

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

#372

Post by bewo001 » Mon, Mar 26, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #241

reubenswartz wrote: post #166

This has a lot to do with culture. Microsoft had a mockup of an e-reader before the Kindle, but the powers that be in the company insisted that it should run Windows (not out of malice, but because that's how they saw the world.) When Bezos, who, at the time, ran a giant bookstore, started his Kindle project, he put them on a secret team in a different building. Car companies are run by people who love engines that b…

I think the comparison is slightly unfair. eReader OS choice is a purely "cultural" decision in a literal sense. If they really wanted to, they could have put two secret teams in two secret buildings. Doing what Tesla did, that costs serious money, carrying serious risk In fairness, at least bmw has the i3 and that's better than most. Also, what he says is true. The i3 is crap cost performance. It's just the only thi…

Going for the expensive toy niche of the market was really brilliant. Technological teething problems and high cost don't matter there as long as it is fun to drive.

German car manufacturers used to advertise their hydrogen/ electric car experiments as 'green'; targeted at eco-conscious young people and young families. Neither of them had the money for those low-volume cars or could live with the constraints of low range and a sparse network of charging stations. So they concluded that there wasn't a market at all.

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

#373

Post by Fins » Tue, Mar 27, 2018, 1:16 AM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #371

Fins wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't AWD on Model S become widely available only relatively recently? I seem to remember it being an option last time I looked at it.

October 2014 is when it became available, not sure what you mean by 'widely available' and 'an option'. From launch it was available at both smaller and larger battery sizes, now they've started offering it as the only choice for some battery sizes.

Well, an option, as an option on Model 3, yeah. Can't quite buy it.

In any case, yes, it seems that it is more available now than I thought. Now if it only felt as a 70K+ car...