Volkswagen’s Costly Bet on Electric Cars
wsj.com
wsj.com
We can quibble about timing, regulatory vs customer preference factors, models, etc. but it's clear from all the data I've seen that EVs (and specifically plug in EVs) are growing at a fast clip and are on the way to becoming mainstream and unremarkable within the next decade or two.
If you were a big auto company, what wouldn't you spend to not lose out on that wave? I look at other industries where fundamental underlying technology changes remade the landscape: the switch to mobile phones, internet penetration, etc.
The car market isn't going to experience several orders of magnitude growth spurred by EVs. Most buyers will compare across engine types. So to answer your question
>If you were a big auto company, what wouldn't you spend to not lose out on that wave
I'd spend nothing until the EV I can produce is expected to have profit margins on the order of my other vehicles in that class, discounted at maybe 30-50% of the development cost. Note that brand recognition/green efforts/etc gets wrapped up into the profit margin calculation.
The nail in the coffin here is that early movers get penalized unless they can effectively vertically integrate all the tech used for EVs (e.g. Tesla with their battery specialization). If you want to bet on the battery tech getting commoditized, its in your interest to wait as long as possible.
The switch to an EV drivetrain has lead to a much more through redesign of cars and none of the first gen batteries-bolted-onto-existing-chasis type EVs were particularly good. That is, if you don't get on the EV wave early and just wait for cheap batteries, you will be years behind your competitors in producing a properly thought-out EV and will be facing some very tough times.
There was a lot of mechanics involved in releasing the iPod - e.g. 1.8" hard drive and later flash memory.
Tesla is the Apple here, they're already vertically integrating.
The closest thing to an iPod at the time it launched was the Rio players which were flash based and had capacities in tens of megabytes or the Creative HDD players which were battery hogs the size of 2 CD players stacked on top.
The iPod was more expensive, but they ended up with being able to both buy and rip music.
The size helped using the new smaller drive. But they took off because of their music, I think.
The battery in the Nomad at the time of the iPod launch was four standard AA cells, and you're right that they could last all day if you used Alkalines. You could use NiMH batteries but they were pretty awful; their main selling point in 2002ish was that they had no memory effect compared to NiCADs; not that they lasted as long as Alkalines.
The iPod launched a full 2 years before the iTunes Music store. At launch you could not buy music for the iPod and it still sold like hotcakes.
The iPod had a high capacity rechargeable battery, FireWire (400mbps) and could fit in the front pocket of a pair of jeans. The Nomad Jukebox was the closest thing at the time and it used four AA batteries, USB 1.1 (12mbs) and was praised for passing the jacket test (e.g. fitting in an oversized jacket pocket).
Check out the sales curve [0] and it didn’t get significant until 2004 when it became the top seller in October and exploded in 2005.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_quarter....
The market tripped to 12.5 million units in 2003 and Apple's market share continued to grow. By 2009 they had almost 80% of the market.
[1] https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Apple_iPod_Number_On... [2] https://www.macworld.com/article/1053499/ipodtimeline.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony
TIL
What Apple did correctly was determine that the market would pay a lot more for an MP3 player if it was all around better than the competition. Then they kept up momentum by iterating and improving their design before the competition had a chance to respond.
In the audio player market, MP3 Players had significant advantages over CDs and other mediums that drove rapid adoption and since Apple was best in class they quickly developed a monopoly.
The Car market is very different, EVs do not have significant advantages over ICE and there is not rapid adoption so it's hard for a monopoly to develop. EVs currently have range-over-time limitations compared to ICE as well as much lower margins with much higher costs. Those limitations are being addressed but until they are, there's only so much makers can do to tempt buyers.
Disagree.
Advantage 1: EV can be charged virtually everywhere with access to electricity (like parking lots), no gas stations, no gas transportation necessary.
Advantage 2: low maintenance costs. Electrically powered engines are simpler with fewer mechanical elements
Advantage 3: EVs are very quiet, so lower noise pollution
Some disadvantages are short driving range and long recharge time.
1) Electricity access is plentiful but you need high power if you want to charge in a reasonable timeframe
2) There are fewer moving parts but there is one part that degrades every time you use it, the battery
That said I really want to get a cheap used EV as my next car!
In many parts of the world, being able to transport fuel to where it's needed is a huge advantage. We are a long way from a global electricity infrastructure.
Just offhand, what % of the new car market would you say those areas represent in the current model year? In 10 years?
His scenario is highly unusual but it highlights a weakness of EVs. There are numerous scenarios where an ICE can bring extra fuel with it or for multiple vehicles.
While his scenario might me a boundary condition, the comment he was responding to listed a similarly unlikely scenario outside of dense Urban environments.
The reality is we should be heavily promoting/supporting or even requiring EVs where they make sense like dense Urban areas with access to charging and suburban commuters. At the same time we should also recognize that there are many scenarios today where EVs don't make sense and ensure we don't penalize people who need to remain ICE bound. Eventually the EV tech will supplant most or all use cases.
Lots of people would disagree, including myself.
Even though EVs can meet the needs of the majority of the population, the perception is that they can't and they're inferior. Tesla has done wonders to counter that perception but they're pidgeon holed as being too expensive.
I say this as the owner of both a Leaf and a Model 3.
In cars software is far more than the infotainment system. Consider, to increase charge speeds Tesla reolized you should use battery power to heat the batteries as you drive to the charging station. Thinking just in terms of swapping a gas tank for batteries is not going to result in that kind of integration.
Tesla is also looking to integrate super capacitors for regenerative breaking and peak acceleration. Again, that’s a step up from tossing a larger battery pack into a Prius and calling it a day.
Tesla cars are basically the iPhone, while the big automakers are scrambling a bit to make their iPhone clones.
In 20 years their could be several suppliers ready to help any car company that survives that long. But, surviving to that point without a high quality EV is going to be difficult.
The e-Golf was very well received. It's designed for both propulsion systems. And why not? Sure, skateboard designs are better over all, but electric tech is flexible.
That's a bit hyperbolic. EVs dont require gas. This is a huge seismic shift in the way auto and oil industries were tied at the hip and probably why Tesla is able to disrupt so heavily.
Un-swearing allegiance to Big Oil is the huge gamble.
A working commodity market for things like batteries may or may not happen. You could get a vertical integrator (or several) who monopsonize the key parts. Then what?
Gas cars will still be sold but the threat of legislation is huge. That market could dry up much faster than expected.
The best bet wouldn't be to stay out of the market, but to dabble and know when to strike hard so you can edge out all your laggard competitors.
Not really.
>> Un-swearing allegiance to Big Oil is the huge gamble.
This is silly.
>> A working commodity market for things like batteries may or may not happen. You could get a vertical integrator (or several) who monopsonize the key parts. Then what?
The batter market will be much larger than cars. I think vertical integration would be the surprise result
1) Their profit margins are significantly lower than what traditional manufacturers are willing to sustain for the luxury car market
2) The traditional manufacturers were bad at calculating the profit margin of a luxury EV
The general point is that comparing EVs to the internet and/or mobile phones (which became entirely new, and important markets) is ridiculous. In the extreme.
EVs require electricity, they need to be refilled. Sometimes when they are not sitting in your garage. That means that tesla (and others) had to build a bunch of gas station analogs. Seismic only in terms of all the foundations for such things being laid but just a slight evolution.
Considering Tesla has a microscopic market share and is financially tenuous...what exactly is your case again?
Big Oil will become Big Energy, and invest in alternatives. They've been doing so for decades. Some will fail, for sure. But these are well capitalized companies and believe it or not have capable engineers and managers who care about the future of the planet (outside of SV if you can imagine that!).
https://bgr.com/2019/01/09/tesla-model-3-best-selling-car-vs...
The car company that spends the most and comes out first?
Or
The car company that waits and is the last to really move to PEV from ICE?
I think posing the question as a ROI calculation misses context that going forward at some level of risk is how you get the data to model a much better profitability operating point.
Until you produce a few models of EV yourself, how can you know your cost estimate is anywhere near accurate? Add in the uncertainty in the speed of drop in the cost of central components like the batteries and I suspect the uncertainty is sufficiently high to surround both sides of the threshhold where if you set up for a go, you don't know if it will be more or less profitable and the ICE equivalent.
However, if you don't start now, and your competitors do start down the path, then you might end up with a ICE line of cars where your competitors are posting costs well below yours and eating your market share.
Posing it as brain dead ROI calculation like an academic economist would just misses pretty much everything about bringing a new design to market and why companies do things.
The conundrum is. You never make money on a new blue printed design. You make money reselling tweaks of old stuff. But the reality that you need to innovate or eventually go out of business.
Never innovating and eventually going out of business is a valid strategy. That's basically the hedge fund strategy.
But companies that aren't controlled by capitalists never do that because there is nothing in it for the people that run the company. Since that's VW they'll they chose to lose money innovating. So the company stays in business and they keep their jobs and status.
I would say that there are a range of companies that are to different mixes of being ruled by accounting vs ruled by innovation. Ironically, I would say the companies most ruled by accounting are the ones with the best foundational resources to make targeted innovation bets (but don't because the ROI doesn't pencil out...).
Tweaks involve modifying already well understood systems. Risk is limited, return on investment is quick. Allows you to keep making money.
No, but the future will look very different from what is the current "industry consensus"
Legal side of the question, consumer preferences, and how the developing markets will react to the trend make it all more likely that switch to EVs will not be a drop in replacement for regular cars.
Some conventional car concepts, and even entire car classes simply make no sense if converted 1-to-1 to electric propulsion.
Few current trends will hold in EV era:
1. The global general trend of car turning smaller will continue. Two-seaters are very likely to turn mainstream. Twizzy like microcars will also have a good chance to make debut outside of niche markets.
2. Battery capacity will be becoming more, and more of an irrelevant metric, as people discover that even basic EVs fully satisfy their need for a commuter vehicle. Thus all extensive investments into battery tech and manufacturing, may well go... sideways
3. New manufacturers from the developing world will actually have more headway than established ones as they are there creating brand new markets, while established makers will still be trying to sell electrified versions of "car 1.0"
4. New EVs will themselves see strong competition from "new mobility" and "public transport 2.0"
5. Same will go for two wheel transport. "The 150cc world" has long been thought to be a developing nation only thing, but it is the one currently expanding, and heading West. I am seeing more and more of maxi scooters, and other "Asian type" motorcycle varieties in the West these days. I think that's a very natural consequence of people adjusting to continuously worsening traffic.
The demographic of oversized SUV drivers has been quite stable, and it is very visible in survey data. For the last 20 years, that demographic was just getting older. It is a very generational thing.
On other side, the microcars has been only growing, and given that they were a practically invisible minority just few years ago in USA, their growth can be said to be very strong.
I'd say, this can be translated to China in some ways. There is also a sizeable demographic of people with very strong preference for all kinds of oversized car types, but there is an equally big polar opposite demographic who drive small vehicles by choice. And you have to add people who simply don't have money for anything but a small, mini or microcar. They are a little bit apart from ones driving smaller cars by preference, but they only add to their ranks.
There's a large number of people who want smaller pickups, for instance (I'm one of them - I used to own a 4-banger Ford Ranger - I loved that truck and I wish I never got rid of it) - but they are impossible to find any more. You can't even find 2-door standard cab short bed pickups. It isn't that the demand isn't there for them (the Ranger was a very popular pickup, even at the very end) - but that something about the CAFE rules makes building smaller pickups bad for the total sold fleet in terms of certain EPA stuff (I don't quite understand it completely, but I've read articles about it).
Interestingly too - the size of pickups was increased; what really seemed to have happened, is they "pushed up the models" - ie, what used to be the F-150 (say 1995 vintage) no longer exists. What we see as the F-150, today, is actually the size (and price) of the F-250 of 1995. The F-250 is now the F-350, and so on (it kinda levels off after the 400 class, simply because those and larger were mainly niche sales to individuals, or commercial sales). I don't know if that is truthly real, but if you compare the sizes of the vehicles and options, it feels like something they did.
My current vehicle is a 2004 Jeep TJ (if I could have bought a post-2000 Scrambler I would have); I like the short wheelbase, mainly, and found that I don't really need all the room of a full-sized pickup like I had before. That said, I do sometimes wish I had the room my old Ranger afforded me. There are times I see something on the "side of the road" that I used to pick up, but now I can't (yeah, I'm one of those guys). Oh well - more junk I don't need, right?
I'd love to see smaller vehicles make a come back, because it might also mean smaller pickups and a return to smaller Jeeps and other 4wd vehicles, too! But until those CAFE rules change, I don't know if we'll ever see that here.
BTW - regarding the CAFE rules - from what I recall, they have something to do with the "area" a vehicle occupies, not it's overall size or weight class; I also think it applies only to pickups/"small trucks" - and there's something that plays into the overall sold "fleet" of the manufacturer. Maybe somebody else here could explain it to me better.
You can't justifiably make this comparison across such a wide year rage because trucks went from utility vehicles to flagship models in this time and there's been some massive improvements in drive-train tech since the 90s. A lot of that "moving up" is simply technological improvement allowing new trucks to do what old ones couldn't. Trucks have certainly grown to occupy more physical space but their footprints have remained close to the same and their weights haven't increased all that much.
>I'd love to see smaller vehicles make a come back, because it might also mean smaller pickups and a return to smaller Jeeps and other 4wd vehicles, too! But until those CAFE rules change, I don't know if we'll ever see that here.
Agreed. Unless you have some other market you expect to sell them in and consider the US a sideshow you aren't gonna invest the $$ to develop those vehicles.
1. Cities ban large vehicles in an attempt to fight traffic fatalities, pollution, or congestion.
2. Simple income inequality puts SUVs out of reach for most people where a $10k micro" EV gets the job done.
3. Graduated licensing and insurance makes SUVs economically unwise.
The rest of the world might go for it though. Certainly Europeans are happy with normal sized cars and could go smaller.
If that happens, SUVs will become cheaper. It's not like it's significantly more expensive to produce a single SUV vehicle than to produce a smaller car. It's more about market segmentation rather than actual production costs.
Unfortunately it is difficult to impossible to get a 2-door standard cab pickup truck any more. And forget a short bed.
I wish, wish, wish I could purchase a new Ford Ranger (ideally 4wd), with a standard cab and short bed - but that's an impossibility. I can't even get something comparable from any other manufacturer.
The only thing I've seen that may be possible is to get such a vehicle as part of a "fleet purchase" - it seems like you can get such a vehicle if you purchase a ton of 'em. But I'd have to somehow sneak one of those in (ie - know somebody buying a fleet and willing to do such a deal for me). So - zero chance there, too.
The sad thing is - Ford sold a version of the Ranger that was fully electric. It's range and hauling capacity were terrible (it used lead acid gel cell batteries), but it was an option back in the early 1990s. They didn't sell many; the few they did went to mainly electric utilities or enthusiasts.
Americans still don’t use metric. That hasn’t stopped everyone else in the world.
I imagine we will move towards a few companies creating crash-safe bodies that then get outfitted by lean "OEM"s that put the right size battery in, the right kind of leather seats, puts their badge on it and calls it good.
Existing car companies are too big for this kind of market, so they might as well go out doing what they're actually good at.
This is basically Mazda's strategy.
https://www.just-auto.com/analysis/mazda-bets-big-on-revolut...
Selling an EV to an ICE customer is hard; selling 30%+ better fuel efficiency is easy.
That's exactly VW's MEB platform.
"Volkswagen wants other automakers to use its MEB electric platform": https://electrek.co/2019/02/04/volkswagen-meb-electric-platf...
They're using it for a Golf-sized compact, a sedan, a crossover, and the VW bus reboot. Now they're also marketing it to other manufacturers.
They seem to be, mostly because of their simplicity compared to an ICE.
But many seem to think we'll gradually keep using more and more EVs until they take over. Much needs to happen infrastructure-wise (hence, politically) before that world is feasible.
In what way?
Plenty of utilities have stated that ubiquitous home-charging won't require major modifications to the grid. As residential demand creeps up, some spending and changes will have to be made, but nothing major.
En-route charging infrastructure is getting built up rapidly without public support. Commercial EV demand alone could drive the formation of a very nice charging infrastructure.
In the UK they struggle with water boilers [0]. I'm fairly certain that if we switched all gas cars to electric we'd struggle quite a lot with peak electricity demand, especially during holidays and other events.
The thing is that it's cheap to charge at night right now because it's off-peak. With a shift to EV it'll be the opposite.
It doesn't work very well with solar or wind energy since you can't modulate their production.
Where I live 30% of the price of gasoline is taxes. That's the political, and it changes the economics of EVs in the short term.
>Plenty of utilities have stated that ubiquitous home-charging won't require major modifications to the grid
And I've seen research going the other way, while at the same time we're moving away from burning fossil fuels for base load and going nuclear.
I just did the 60000km service on my vw with oil change, transmission oil, and 4wd oil. It was 1300 euros. I remember thinking it was my last car with lots of expensive fluid changes...
I’m thinking I’ll get an electric car that does 90% of what I need and then I’ll rent a car if I need to go on a long trip.
I have an ICE car and take it to an independent shop. Walking distance. They're mid priced and do good work.
It's not like mobile phones where the existing market is going to disappear overnight. Cars survive at least 20 years in many cases, meaning gasoline infrastructure is going to be around for a good, long while.
And if you project over the next 2-3 decades it's going to require for electric vehicles to become a majority of the market, it's increasingly possible for the underlying market dynamics to change even more. There is a ton of credible doubt for a future of, "every household has two cars just like 1960's American suburbia, except those cars are electric now".
I'd say we're well past that. More like mid-2000s. The "cambrian explosion" will be 2020, when China enforces their EV rules.
That is beside the point that the author of this article will be on the wrong side of history.
So the decision has already been made. We are basically just in a grace period.
Dieselgate killed people. If they'd dumped poison in the water supply and lied about it the reaction would've been far harsher, but apparently it's ok to poison people via the air.
It’s a little premature to worry about an EU ban.
Investing in battery R&D is probably important now. Meeting the requirements of China is also important.
2025: Norway
2030 EU: Sweden, Netherlands, Ireland, Denmark
2030 Non-EU: India, Israel
---
If you take a lifetime of 20+ years for new vehicles into account, and you want to be phased out by 2050, you need to ban in 2030. Very simple. Maybe you don't need a full ban, maybe strong incentives suffice (see China). But full bans have been enacted in law in very substantial markets already.
From https://electrek.co/2019/01/02/electric-car-sales-norway-201...
> 45% of new cars were all-electric and 60% were plug-in in October 2018. The Nissan Leaf was the most popular all-electric vehicle in the market.
The difference is that there are heavy taxes on fossil fuel vehicles that do not apply to electrics, making the relative difference in cost between electrics and fossils much smaller.
(Yes, there are also many fringe benefits like free/discounted road tolls and HOV lane access, but as your article mentions, many of those are already being rolled back)
TCO of EVs is about the same now and will be considerably better than ICE in the next years.
How many consumers will be willing to pay a premium for outdated technology? This could switch quickly with electric energy and power grids being the bigger bottlenecks.
At least Grid operators are deeply worried about the upcoming transition.
Nobody who's actually crunched the numbers thinks this is realistic (that we reach 100% new cars are ZEV), but maybe we'll reach 60% by 2025. Currently we're at 30% of new cars are ZEV, up from 10% in 2014, and it's highly likely we will see a sigmoid growth curve with a long tail.
One of the issues is that a very large portion of Norwegians like to ski in winter (which typically requires a roof box) and to go e.g. boating or caravaning etc. in summer (which typically requires a tow hitch). Currently there are exactly zero EVs on the market that can do both of those things.
Tows 400+ kilos and has a roof box.
I would love to replace our ICE tow vehicle with an electric if any existed, but the electric range would drop by at least half while towing. That's a lot of stopping.
As a comparison a v6 Dodge Durango's tow capacity is 6200lbs/2800kg. A v6 tow vehicle is a part-time tow vechile not intended for large loads. That durango can pull some boats and smaller camper trailers. We have used it to haul rock/gravel/stone as well. Electric would be great because the transmission wouldn't be as much of a concern but it would definitely need a lot of battery and would need a larger cooling system for the batteries and motors just like ICE tow vehicles need larger fuel tanks and larger radiators.
A roof box can be attached to pretty much any vehicle, and if the market in Norway demands it then EV manufacturers can pretty easily add roof hooks for mounting as an option in-country if they don't already. There's no fundamental incompatibility with EVs here. Google searches reveal that plenty of people are already mounting roof boxes to Teslas, so this is already a solved problem.
As a data point, on the Norwegian version of Craigslist (Finn) the number of boats for sale right now is 10% of the number of cars for sale, the number of caravans is 5%, and we're still in winter season.
There certainly will be EVs (or maybe hydrogen powered cars) that meet requirements of this demographic at some point. But they won't be available in volume at a price point people can afford before 2025, especially not when EV subsidies have started phasing out.
https://www.ssb.no/en/transport-og-reiseliv/statistikker/bil...
And in the context of the discussion of VW's investment the difference between 80% of the market being ZEV and 100% is not that big...
To encourage eco-innovation, manufacturers can be granted emission credits equivalent to a maximum emissions saving of 7 g/km per year for their fleet if they equip vehicles with innovative technologies, based on independently verified data. [0]
So this move is more of a combination of short-term gains of less-restrictive emissions, and a long-term move to electric.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/cars_...
Going to fuelly.com, newer Golf TDIs seem to average out at 40 mpg, with the tails trailing out by +/- 5mpg:
* http://www.fuelly.com/car/volkswagen/golf?engineconfig_id=10...
The older 1.9L engines are slightly better.
Whew, that's going to be interesting. Toyota can hit that with the Prius Eco... if that was the only car in their fleet.
This means nothing due to the idiotic way fuel consumption is calculated for PHEV. A 2+ ton hybrid SUV like the Volvo XC90 is rated as 2,1 liters/100 Km while it easily burns 10+ liters when the battery is empty or the electric engine can't keep up (i.e. on the highway).
As someone buying today, I have to factor in that (say) five years from now when I sell, the buyers at that time will be thinking about their resale prospects (say) five years from that date. And for ICE cars, it’s not going to be pretty.
I would suggest, if you have an ICE car, trade it in now while you can still get more money for it.
Just as soon as I can get a low-cost, 300 mile range 4wd vehicle, that I can put on 30+ inch tires and a 3-6 inch lift.
Until the battery tech gets a helluva lot better, that ain't happening.
Furthermore - even if it does happen (which it probably will at some point - I'm optimistic) - it still doesn't fix the next problem:
How do I tote along an extra "10 gallons" of electric fuel with me?
You see, when you are off-roading, you typically will take extra fuel with you. An extra 5 or 10 gallons of gasoline can mean the difference between hiking out or getting back to pavement with your vehicle, depending on what happened to get you stuck to need the fuel. It can also mean extending a trip, or seeing side trails you normally wouldn't be able to. Or being able to do a much longer trail and having the fuel to take you to a nearby gas station at the end.
But I can't see with current battery technology - nor even future technology - being able to do anything like that. You'd probably need a trailer or something to haul around the extra batteries, or you'd have to haul a generator (which would also require fuel...). Forget solar panels, because you wouldn't be able to carry enough panels to be able to charge up the batteries in the same amount of time you could pour a tank of gasoline - no where close to it. Heck, even if you had 1000 watts of panels with you, it would still take at least a day or two to recharge the pack, most likely.
I'm not sure what the solution is for that situation. Maybe a battery that got you double the miles (4-600 miles per charge?), or what I suspect a lot of people would say (don't go off roading...)
For now, I'm sticking with my ICE vehicles until that problem is solved; there may come a time when I'd have an electric just to get to work and back, but that'd be about it for now.
As for the dream vehicle you describe, yeah electric won’t deliver that because for example the Tesla pickup and the Rivian won’t be cheap (one of your requirements). But there are costs you aren’t accounting for and probably never will if you’re this deep into it.
BTW Tesla AWD is insane and a step beyond normal AWD you are used to. So (when the truck comes out) the extra money is getting you something. The AWD is not the only thing of course but it is holy shit crazy good in their sedans, I can only imagine how it will be in the pickup.
VW is planning to sell its ID hatchback for about the same as the diesel equivalent, the cost savings are far higher, the range is 200 miles plus, it can charge in 30 minutes, which most people will only use on roadtrips, when glad of the break after 3 hours of driving. By launch in 2020, a charging network will be in place across the motorway network.
In Western Europe the barriers to mass adoption are fading.
I can't see Germany being happy signing off on rules that would kill their own auto industry.
And I do laugh a little when they talk about removing the internal combustion trains. Nobody is talking about the external combustion trains, the steam trains. They are carbon nightmares but we keep them for nostalgic rides and movies about wizards. Will we do the same with diesels?
And the majority of the nation's electricity usage will never be for automobile transportation, even if 100% of vehicles were electric. There's simply too many other big consumers of electricity.
So charging in the north will be fine, not so much in the middle or south.
Nobody wants a giant power-line around them and they faced stiff protests against the routes. If I recall correctly, they now want to bury the power-lines underground to avoid some of the public opposition.
In the meantime Germany is switching off its nuclear infrastructure (because people hate that too) so that they can buy nuclear power from France (which is perfectly fine?).
Also Germany spent billions on the green energy initiative in the past decade and is still hooked ~35% on lignite, one of the most polluting sorts of coal out there.
Without the power-lines that bring green energy from the sea, the e-car revolution will be difficult (unless we want to burn coal of course).
Established modern society is so dysfunctional when it comes to big projects that aim to change an existing system.
The EV drivers I've talked to, every one of them, are simply not open to the idea of discharging their vehicles back onto the grid. It isn't about money. They don't want the hassle of a discharged car, nor the wear on their batteries. The potential money involved (a few dollars at most) is totally irrelevant to them. Dedicated deep-cycle bats, lead acid cells, are the better option for grid tied storage.
The biggest change will probably time-of-use pricing for the places that don't have it. EVs can be charged overnight very easily, when the grid is underutilized. If you encourage this with pricing, you actually even out grid demand and make it easier to manage.
Build a electric car which needs less components, less repair and can actually be refuelled at home.
In worst case, put a range extender into it. Doesn't cost much and just burns fuel as before.
The only risk could be that batterie technology just suddenly stops. But i would argue that its quite a save bet.
And it doesn't has to do anything with saving the environment.
There is obvious a technolgy change happening. It might be unclear how long it still takes or if global warming hits us quicker but sitll.
But now still a lot of people, especially those with a car, could load there cars at home.
Also we had this dicussion in our meeting for the house (munich underground parking) and the pressure wasn't high enough yet but the needed effort to allow a power outlet on your underground parking spot, is relatively low.
As long as you only need normal powercord, you just put it on the ceiling.
That certainly can't be cheap. The cost of the charger aside, you'd still have the costs of:
1. Permits and inspections of the work.
2. Trenching costs for the electrical line.
3. Survey work to make sure it doesn't interfere with other underground stuff.
4. Materials and time for the mounting pad.
5. ...and probably a ton of other things I don't know about.
Maybe it's not as big a deal as I am thinking (owner takes charger, leaves infrastructure behind for next owner to mount theirs in place?)...
But there is enough time to transition and not everyone will do it now.
Pressure also creates solution.
The only actual issue I know of is that once the whole building is doing this because 90% of cars are EVs we're going to need more total power in the garage. Depending on the electrical infrastructure around you that may or may not be an easy thing to do. I suspect it's not a huge issue since we all together already have enough contracted power right now if you add up our individual circuits going to the actual flats. But maybe the electrical company is oversubscribed counting on low effective usage of the contracted power, I don't know.
(Note: Considering being a WSJ customer, but already a NYT customer so...)
In fact, all German automakers are increasing leaning towards all EV future, that's VW Group, BMW AG and Daimler AG. The only holdout of major automakers that doesn't have significant buyin in 100% battery electric vehicle is Toyato.
Part of their settlement for the diesel emissions scandal was committing investments into EV and paying into funds to help US states transition.
On top of that they basically destroyed their diesel business. And they were also not the only cheats.
A few commentators have pointed out that if not for the scandal, we probably wouldn't have seen anything near as aggressive a push into switching from diesel vehicles to electric.
If you don’t produce EVs, you’ll be restricted from the market?
In markets (California and Norway in particular) where there is significant EV growth you are seeing Hybrid sales drop quickly.
China are building out scale EV infrastructure and since they are the main global market for vehicles going forward it seems inevitable they will ultimately own the EV transportation and infrastructure markets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid_in_China