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BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

reuters.com

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

#91

Post by lumberjack »

adrianN wrote: post #67
lumberjack wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way I see it Tesla proves that a mass market EV is still not possible. Either you take it from the fact that they failed to come up with anything revolutionary in terms of the Model 3; price/range still on par with other offerings. Or you take their lowest cost estimates for their battery packs and then you try to build the rest of the car with the remaining $12k (for the total price of a people's car that everyone c…

The German Post approached VW to have them develop electric cars for deliveries in cities. VW refused, so they just hired a couple of students and started/bought their own company. They get requests from all kinds of businesses now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter To me that doesn't sound like there is no market, it sounds like big car manufactures want to milk their ICEs as long as possible.

Yeah, I know about these. But these are intracity delivery vehicles. The restrictions in their domain of use make the problem simpler. My university has a couple and all they do is transport stuff between the two campuses. I think, although the average commute is probably way lower than a 80km, people would still be reluctant to buy it. For example the Mitsubishi i-MiEV has been around since 2009, is the least expensive amongst EVs (besides Chinese EVs probably) and has a range of 100km to 160km (depending on different metrics) and that didn't sell very well. Only 38.000 units sold.

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

#92

Post by Systemic33 »

Brakenshire wrote: post #66
rwbt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you know how innovative the BMW i3 is. They decided to go for an entirely different manufacturing process using Carbon Fibre instead of traditional steel stamping and it's entire supply chain is built on renewable energy. That's a big commitment on BMWs part. Alas, the market didn't think of it the same way. The i3 might not be a looker but it's probably one of the most innovative cars ever produced i…

> Alas, the market didn't think of it the same way. The i3 might not be a looker ...from an American perspective. The i3 doesn't sell much in the US, but is I think the second highest selling EV in Europe at the moment, people here apparently don't have any problem with the way it looks.

In Copenhagen it's the only DriveNow car available, and I must admit that although I am a petrolhead, the i3 grew on me.

What might look silly from the outside is an unparalleled experience in accelleration on the inside. Only Tesla's, motorcycles and proper sport cars can match the 0-50 km/h (which is everything you care about in a city commute).

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

#93

Post by dragonwriter »

mulmen wrote: post #75
toomuchtodo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dealer network is an unnecessary middle man acting as a parasite extracting value from the system. You can enforce the right to repair through legislation without dealers. > What takes time is building the facilities and technology to create reliable and serviceable electric vehicles. The battery supply chain is the hardest part, but EV powertrains are so much more simple than an internal combustion powertrain. T…

EV drive trains are more simple but that's not really a problem with modern ICE drive trains. That technology is so mature and well developed that any car is going to go at least 100k miles, well beyond any warranty period. There are benefits to the electric drive train but that's not the limitation. The rest of the car isn't really any different and because the battery is so expensive (as you point out) the rest of…

> That technology is so mature and well developed that any car is going to go at least 100k miles, well beyond any warranty period.

100k miles isn't “well beyond any warranty period” for non-EV powertrains; a number of car brands have a base (not extended) 10yr/100k mile powertrains warranty.

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

#94

Post by mulmen »

vesrah wrote: post #80
mulmen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with BMW dealerships is that they are borderline criminal organizations. I have never taken my car in for a repair without them breaking something else. I was quoted $15,000.00 for a new head because they failed to gap a spark plug. They remove the access panel in the aero pan when doing oil changes and don't replace it. They over torque everything (drain plug, filter cover, etc). They broke a wiring ha…

What modern BMW uses plugs that aren't pregapped?

I assume the plugs were pre-gapped at time of manufacture. Maybe they dropped this plug, maybe it was a bad batch or a defect, maybe they did it on purpose. For the shop rate at a BMW dealer they can take the time to check the gap. Regardless of the root cause the dealer installed a plug with the ground bent into the electrode which caused a misfire.

They misdiagnosed it as a bent valve and told me that I probably missed a shift at freeway speed and slammed the car into second gear, causing the engine to over-rev and skip a tooth on the timing chain. Somehow this bent only one valve and the other 23 are still fine. Oh and it ran fine until they had it in their shop. Also the timing chain is still in the correct timing.

I told them to get bent and took it to an independent shop that fixed the problem for $45.00.

The BMW dealer claimed there was low compression and a misfire on cylinder 4. My independent mechanic found perfect compression on all six cylinders and a misfire on cylinder 6 (the one with the bent plug).

I went back to the BMW dealer and they refunded me the $4,000.00 in unnecessary repairs they did. At this point I think they are either intentionally sabotaging customer cars because they get away with it or the incentives drive them to employ complete idiots. Either way the most dangerous place to take a BMW is the dealer.

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

#95

Post by mulmen »

tsomctl wrote: post #84
vesrah wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What modern BMW uses plugs that aren't pregapped?

Used spark plugs are going to have a bigger gap.

These were (supposedly) new plugs. The car threw up a service light around 60k miles for new coils and plugs. This is routine maintenance.

The problem was not a gap that was too large, the problem was 0 gap.

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

#96

Post by IAmEveryone »

ploxiln wrote: post #76
rwbt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you know how innovative the BMW i3 is. They decided to go for an entirely different manufacturing process using Carbon Fibre instead of traditional steel stamping and it's entire supply chain is built on renewable energy. That's a big commitment on BMWs part. Alas, the market didn't think of it the same way. The i3 might not be a looker but it's probably one of the most innovative cars ever produced i…

Sounds more like a vanity project, than a real commercially competitive product.

It’s a learning project.

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

#97

Post by ebbv »

dangrossman wrote: post #23

I don't think there's any "collusion" or other conspiracy to hold back electric vehicles, I think what BMW said is objectively true. Lithium batteries have cost too much in the past decade to put them into more than luxury cars or negative-profit compliance cars. Supply chains don't appear overnight. LG Chem, Samsung SDI, AESC/NEC, BYD, Foxconn, etc have been building factories and securing raw materials for many man…

This is just straight up baloney. The Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Bolt show this to just not be true at all.

It's not that car companies like BMW and Honda and others who are being slow to release EVs are colluding so much as they are just dragging their feet because ICE engine vehicles are much more profitable right now (not requiring changes to their supply chain and manufacturing methods, or training of dealerships and service departments, etc.)

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

#98

Post by Robotbeat »

kazen44 wrote: post #54
BadassFractal wrote: post #19

Great, more opportunity for Tesla to scale up and eat their lunch. Innovator's dilemma at work.

The problem is, tesla is not a car manfucturer. They make a tiny amount of cars compared to the masses that BMW, VW and the likes produce. Also, tesla has an enourmous fault tolerance compared to these guys, not to mention they produce cars which are quite more complex. You cannot afford to "patch up" cars if you are producing thousands a week, that would make you run out of money very quickly.

The original target for the Gigafactory was 500,000 cars per year by 2020. They have a pretty good chance of actually exceeding that.

The increased the aggressiveness of their own schedule. If they hadn't, we'd either be marveling at the speed of their scale-up.

So, it gives their competitors ability to point and laugh a little bit longer while avoiding investing in EV ramp-up.

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

#99

Post by _ea1k »

dangrossman wrote: post #73
sweden wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree, most of the current electric car offerings on the market are more expensive than the base price of the Model 3 (looking at the BMW i3 in Europe, the base price is 45000 dollars). Tesla is a company that was built from the ground up, without any prior design and manufacturing experience, and they have been mass producing cars for only 5 or 6 years. You can't simply expect them to have the same busi…

The base price on the Model 3 today is $49,000 and Tesla's own IR documents state that they don't expect to have a positive gross margin, even at that price point, until some time in the distant future after production is fully ramped up at both Fremont and the Gigafactory. It's not a very good example of the point I think you're trying to make.

They definitely haven't said that margins would be negative until the "distant future".
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