The Twilight of Combustion Comes for Germany's Empire of Engines | Hacker News Reader

The Twilight of Combustion Comes for Germany's Empire of Engines

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57 pointspseudolus57 comments

It is very interesting to see the waxing and waning of technical skills and regions over long timescales. Both the Germans and the Japanese are renowned for mechanical ingeniousness, probably because mechanical knowledge was increasing rapidly at the time they began to industrialize. Now that mechanical systems are being replaced by mechatronic systems and software, these regions are experiencing relative decline.

I have always thought the US as the center of the global software industry was a bit incongruous given that this industry took root when the US was itself experiencing relative decline, but it's probably due to the invention of that other IC technology here, integrated circuits, more than anything else. For the same reason aerospace is still concentrated in the US.

It really shows how the first mover advantage in R&D can confer advantages that last for over a century.

Aren't Germany and Japan still by far the largest exporters of machine tools - i.e. the machines that make our machines?

Depends what kind of machine tools you're buying and whether you're counting units or dollars and whether you're including tooling in there. Like every other industry the cheap stuff at the bottom of the market moves way more units than the fancy stuff at the top (and as usual, a certain country in the far east makes most of the cheapest stuff).

Yeah, central Europe and Japan/Korea are big players but pretty much every "industrialized" nation has a noteworthy share of the industry.

The US is the leader of software

1) because software really got started in English. Since then it has been taught, documented, written about in books, blogs and tutorials in English, spoken about in English. Yes, there are translations, and in major languages they sometimes appear fast, but there is 100 times more in English, and you just don't get around becoming a great software developer without English.

2) because the largest software companies in essence make text based products. It's all about text on screens, text processing, text outputting and inputting.

Re 1: A 13 year old Spanish, French, German or Japanese kid is facing a double hurdle when trying to learn programming. Would Bill Gates or Zuckerberg have mastered programming already as kids if to do so they first would have had to learn Italian or Polish? Other countries that either have English as a first language (UK, Australia) or as a strong second language (Netherlands, Scandinavia) do far better than countries where English is a mediocre second language.

Re 2: Let's pretend that these countries that are not strong in English still somehow managed to produce vast numbers of great developers at a relatively early age, so that they have a large enough pool of potential founders of great companies. Could they then market their products at the local home market as virtually all the now great software companies did? Like Amazon selling books in Bellevue, Washington, Microsoft selling to hobbyists on the West Coast, Facebook to students at Harvard, Google at Stanford?

For text based products (text on screens) that would realistically require they launch in the local language, just like their American counterparts did.

Would an 18 year old Italian student have reached beyond Italy, had he launched his new social network at Bocconi? Or Twitter if it launched in Tel Aviv in Hebrew the first year or two? How far would Amazon have gotten, if it had started with the first 10,000 items in the store described in Russian? Microsoft DOS with Korean-inspired commands? How would a Serbian-first Google have fared in 1997-2000? Could it have beaten AltaVista?

That's a great point. My only question is, would software still be written mostly in English if Fairchild Semiconductor had been located in Stuttgart?

It may be so, given that English had become the lingua franca of what was after WWII called the first world for political rather than technological reasons.

What a sad day for driving enthusiasts everywhere. Went to the BMW dealer last fall to test drive a 2 series and was told there are no manual 2 series cars in all of North America and I would have to get one shipped in.

But progress is progress I guess and if people want rechargeable, self-driving, ugly crossovers they'll get them.

Are you prepared to cover the full costs of your "driving enthusiam"? Or do you wish for society to subsidize your personal enjoyment, comfort and lazyness at the cost of great financial, environmental and health costs to everyone else?

That's a lot of hyperboles and ad-hominem going on there.

There’s no hyperboles there. Cars, and ICE cars in particular, cause extreme health concerns from particles both exhausted and rubbed of from the tires. The vast majority of deaths in transportation are due to cars, and speeding ICE cars in particular. A primary cause of climate change (which in turn threatens the existence and/or sustenance of billions of people) is again the use of cars, in particular ICE cars, for personal transportation. Without those and the associated need for large amounts of otherwise unused spaces, many things could be done much more efficiently.

Given that the GP personally regretted the end of ICE cars, it seems not unreasonable to ask about their other feelings as well?

> Cars, and ICE cars in particular, cause extreme health concerns from particles both exhausted and rubbed of from the tires. The vast majority of deaths in transportation are due to cars, and speeding ICE cars in particular.

Except for tailpipe exhaust, electric cars are no different in this regard, so I'm not sure why you've singled out cars with internal combustion engines.

The world won't be going electric overnight. It can't physically speaking, and the power density of batteries is nowhere near where it would need to be to phase out internal combustion engines.

Construction equipment, farm equipment, loading and transportation equipment, lawn equipment etc... Still need compact, powerful power plants. Fossil fuels and petroleum is likely not going anywhere either. It's still needed for a lot of off-road uses, and as industrial precursors.

To the "do you expect society to subsidize yadda yadda" crowd:

Do not be so quick to evoke the power of society for or against your favorite/least favorite things. The United States is a blatant anomaly in terms of the proliferation of high tech infrastructure, given. But that has come as the byproduct of over 150 years of gradual industrialization.

Frankly I don't see ICE cars, or ICE car enthusiasts as as much a problem as poor city planning, over-emphasis on a consumerist lifestyle to fuel the economy, and an increasingly divisive and market subverted political system.

Besides which, speed does not correlate with deaths. Difference in speed does. If you want traffic related deaths to go away, stop looking at the enthusiasts, who are paying attention, and start looking at the ones who aren't paying attention.

A quick Autotrader search for new 2 series shows that is false. They are on the opposite side on the US from me but you could ship it or get your dealer to get it for you.

Crevier BMW in Cali looks like they’re horsing manual M240is.

Why don’t you order one, take the delivery in Munich, and save 5%?

Im going to guess that it’ll cost a fair bit more than 5% to get it home. Great holiday though.

Well, I did say last year.. In fact, at the time in the Atl dealership they only had 1 new manual car on the whole lot with a full parking garage.

Please pardon my friendly cheekiness:

What a sad day for horseback riding enthusiasts everywhere. Went to the livery stable last fall to test ride a quarter horse and was told there are no racing-trained quarter horses in all of North America and I would have to get one shipped in.

But progress is progress I guess and if people want mechanical, self-propelled, noisy carriages they'll get them.

It's different though, because horses are developed and manufactured by nature. They don't require a huge enterprise and depth of engineering to mass produce them, nor do they require fueling infrastructure. When the supply chain supporting the mass produced internal combustion engine dies, the internal combustion powered enthusiast car dies with it.

Um Horse drawn transport requires a large amount of infrastructure

> large

Animal drawn vehicles have been in use for millennia with nothing but nature to provide infrastructure. Relatively flat terrain for the path, a watering hole, whatever plant the animal ate. This was improved over centuries with actual infrastructure (a well) but you have to admit we're talking vastly different scales compared to anything auto.

So horse-drawn carriages don't need roads? I guess the Romans just built these for fun, then.

Snark aside, no... the roads definitely helped but the vast majority of such traffic for thousands of years was done over "ad-hoc" roads, basically a beaten path. A road implies a base - pavement, stones, etc. For most of the history of carriages they used mostly beaten paths. For most (all?) of the history of the automobile they used roads.

And I'm pretty sure that at any point in history probably until a century or two ago there were more "beaten paths" in the world than actual roads. Which isn't the case now.

My point stands, highlighted by the quote: "large". The network of roads built for carriages pales in comparison with the scale of the current infrastructure for cars. Which I assume was the whole point of the comparison in the comment I replied to. I just objected to the unnecessarily vague or misleading use of "large". There was a road infrastructure. Whether it was large depends on how creative you get with the reference point.

And I'm not even counting the fact that the infrastructure for cars includes far more than just the roads. In this context almost any other infrastructure of any kind built before the 20th century is absolutely tiny.

For a much smaller population that the point at the scale we are currently at you start to run into problems.

In places like Edinburgh's New Town - which were built at "peak horse" you have entire streets of mews properties that were originally built as stables for grand houses:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mews

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Town,_Edinburgh

If for some reason, we had as many horse riders as drivers, none of that would be true. Horses would be as much a part of modern industry as chicken and cattle already are. IOW, there would be huge enterprises to ensure only good genes went into new horses, enterprises to ensure a steady supply of fodder to keep the horses of megacities fed, proportionately larger sewage system, and so on.

Not sure what ugly crossovers have to do with technical progress; where I’m from they are all the rage, except they have internal combustion engines and you have to drive them yourself!

Hey, there's still options for driving fans: https://www.jaguar.com/about-jaguar/jaguar-classic/authentic...

Manual transmissions are a skill, albeit a declining one. There are certainly tricks that one can do with a manual that one cannot with any current electric. But there will be electric skills too. With the potential for literally instant response, exact throttle control will become more important than clutch skills. We won't be able to just mash the throttle down at every strait.

I think that some configurations of electric motors (ie one motor per wheel) could open up some new driving controls. F1 might not allow traction control, but there is no rule saying that drivers cannot manually prefer one motor over another. I could see the stick replaced with a stick that determines to which wheel power is sent.

The dearth of manual transmission cars in the US has more to do with the franchise dealer floorplan financing system than with electric cars. Right now electrics and hybrids still have only a tiny market share.

Most US customers prefer to buy a new car off the lot and drive it home today rather than ordering exactly what they want and waiting for the factory to build it. So dealers have to forecast what customers want and stock those as inventory. Dealers finance their inventory so they live or die by turnover rates. Thus they mostly only stock the most popular models, colors, and options that sell fast. Customers who want automatic transmissions are usually unwilling to buy a manual, whereas customers who would prefer a manual will usually be willing to buy an automatic. So the dealers hardly order any manuals even when manufacturers still offer them.

We need better road pricing mechanisms for electric vehicles. If roads can no longer be funded at least by fuel taxes, that leaves an immediate revenue shortfall. Simply increasing registration fees does not consider variable levels and times of car use.

Ideally we would have an open standard used by all vehicles to communicate position in real time to the Government. This could be used for road pricing and integrated into the display panel of the vehicle.

Roads in the US are already >50% not funded by fuel taxes. What's wrong with tolls and other means, or say primarily taxing large trucks, which primarily do most of the wear, if you're concerned about fairness?

> Ideally [...] all vehicles to communicate position in real time to the Government

It is not often that one man's "ideally" is another man's "dystopia" so succinctly.

That still fails to address congestion. The problem is similar to the electricity sector - we spend a lot of money creating capacity to handle peak-loads. If we simply time-shifted some road demand, or generally reduced the peak levels of road use, it would have a non-linearly positive benefit.

A rough example: people often decide to buy lunch from cafe's at the arbitrary time of 12:00 midday onwards, forming large queues. If more people bought at 11:30am, the actual time difference is minor, but demand can be handled a lot more effectively. Same thing with people arbitrarily deciding to leave work and drive home simultaneously at an arbitrary 5:00pm. If using the road at that time cost $2, and 30 minutes earlier $0.50, you can very effectively shift demand and improve overall efficiency substantially.

This is speaking from the POV of road use in cities. Its also very transparent to road users how to best optimise their road usage, since travel times, congestion levels etc. can be monitored and forecast centrally and effectively, and then signalled with road pricing, instead of individual drivers needing to do all that themselves.

The other problem is that by simply restricting axle weight for highway use, we ignore potential economic efficiencies. For example, a single super-heavy truck might create $100 of road damage, but deliver $1000 on economic benefits (eg. replacing two trucks). The user should be able to pay for the damage that they cause. This could be integrated into a smart road-pricing system that considers vehicle axle weight.

Singapore has such a system which works very well - but it relies on a large box on the dashboard and AFAIK doesn't considered axle weight.

BMW, the focus of the article, is also in a lot of danger as a brand. For a very long time they had the position as one of the best driving everyday cars because of their mechanical skill in the engine, chassis, and suspension parts of the car.

There appear to be two problems with that going forward.

First, other makes now have good suspension and chassis. This is a mature area of development, so the gains that BMW can make over their competitors is going to be small and expensive.

Second, what will differentiate one EV from another will be more software than hardware, and it’s not clear to me if companies like BMW will be able to dominate in that area.

I'd have thought EVs will still be differentiated on cost, comfort, appearance, performance, quality, non software features and "branding" - just like current cars?

Edit: Just for the record, I've owned 1 BMW, didn't like it that much (uncomfortable, low quality for cost) wouldn't buy another one.

And the whole switch to FWD before going electeric. They're already killing the brand.

Are they? Their FWD cars sell like hotcakes, and I honestly doubt 99% of their customers notice or care what kind of drivetrain runs the car. I'd like to think I'm a petrolhead and I'm constantly shocked by how little people know about the cars they buy. It's a miracle they manage to remember if the car takes petrol or diesel, honestly. Most of my friends bought their cars without doing any sort of research - it was a matter of picking one that looked most interesting + the config was within their price range, engine type/drive train be damned. The pinacle of this is a guy I know who has a GLE63S, so I thought it would be super cool to talk to him about the hand-built V8 in his car - his reaction was literally "custom built....what?". He bought it because he likes the look and the sound(and he's rich enough to afford it), but I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't know that his car is 4 wheel drive for instance.

People generally don't care.

They're riding on the brand equity they built up in the past, and on the halo effect of their high-end cars. But there is a well established precedent of luxury goods makers enjoying a large price premium for products of minimally higher physical utility. They are selling socially valuable tokens of prestige more than they are transportation machines, and will be OK in the end.

The reason why people don't care is because they never actually put their car even anywhere near the limit. In the Netherlands for example you are either driving on a perfectly immaculate and smooth highway at 130 kph max or driving in a busy city. There is nothing to differentiate a €20000 car from a €80000 BMW in these conditions except for the leather seats.

People generally don’t care. Indeed. But for those who valued the brand (not the badge), they are devaluing the brand.

I saw the black flag over the horizon when they switched to mcphearson struts over double wishbone suspension.

Anecdotally I heard a few people grumbling about mini-coopers because they wanted basically an FWD BMW but had to settle on something ugly.

Maybe BMW has finally heard from them.

Electric will be the death of the brand. BMW's require such expensive service, it's laughable compared to other brands.

Unless they get really inventive on failure items (This one $1200 capacitor failed, proprietary, only available from dealer kind of thing). Even then, I'm assuming there's only so much people will take.

The whole point of a brand is that people make buying decisions based on irrational ephemera as opposed to utility. Once you establish a luxury brand then charging ridiculous prices for the same utility only reinforces brand perception because consumers have no ability or desire to judge things based on utility and so they equate paying more with a better product, or at least with personal prestige.

BMW will do just fine.

The point I'm trying to make is, revenue dealers (and BMW) receive from service and maintenance will decline. Margins on cars will have to increase to make up the difference. BMW might not be able to differentiate on a performance-basis in an all-electric segment.

People want fast cars that look nice. BMW fits that bill today. In an all-electric segment, why pay a premium for the BMW name if there's no appreciable performance difference? Surely, some will, but will it be enough to sustain the brand? I don't think so.

I am not familiar with EV internals, but do modern EVs have an electric drive train:ie, are there drive shafts and differentials and clutches in the modern EV or is it just independent motors coupled to the wheels?

What about breaking? Is done on the wheel or on the motor?

Breaking is generally done with both using the electric motor as a generator and with breaks. A lot of driving in a Tesla for example means you hardly use the breaks at all.

The drivetrain is relatively simple. One motor on the rear or front axel, sometimes one on each. https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-drivetrain-design-el...

> are there drive shafts and differentials and clutches in the modern EV or is it just independent motors coupled to the wheels?

All of the above, although by far the most common power train arrangement is motor per axle with a 2-speed transmission for however many axles are driven. Regenerative braking is done at the motor and augmented by conventional brakes.

Very few designs use motor-per-wheel.

What electric cars uses clutches? Which use 2-speed transmissions? Tesla doesn’t seem to use either.

The Tesla sportster had a two-speed transmission, and I'm fairly certain the model S also used one as well. I know they replaced a ton of them on the early production.

Later production doesn't seem to find the transmission necessary.

No drive shafts, no clutches. I always thought it should be a motor for each wheel, but nobody seems to be doing that now. Both physical brakes and regenerative braking exist.

(One real surprise with our new Bolt is that you can't do regenerative braking when the battery is full - there's no place to dump the energy. Makes sense once you think about it).

The simplicity of electric cars is one of their big advantages, but also one of the reasons that US dealers (other than Tesla, obviously) aren't enthusiastic about selling them. There's almost no periodic maintenance to be done, and little to break, so little in the way of post-sale revenue.

There are some companies working on "1 motor 1 wheel", it's still very early on though...

Doesn't that cause problems with relatively high unsprung mass - which causes its own problems?

Usually the motors are still mounted to the chassis with some type of halfshaft interface in those cars rather than being directly mounted to try wheels; there's just more of them

The first "1 motor 1 wheel" design I can think of is from 1904: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner-Porsche

So it isn't THAT early, if you add in 115 years of development.

braking: both, recuperation is done on engine side, but there are still brakes at the wheels.

Recuperation doesn't cover all necessary brake performance, plus, you don't want to have a car without brakes at the wheels. The moment the driveshaft breaks, you wouldn't be able to brake your car, if braking was only facilitated by the engine.

This actually killed at least one race driver, Jochen Rindt, Monza 1970, in his Lotus 72.

Another question about braking.

When the car brakes about 70% of breaking force is at the front wheels, so wouldn't regenerative breaking be more effective for the cars with the motor at the front and not at the back (like in Tesla)?

While true that breaking with the front tires would be more effective. In a BEV the weight distribution is closer to 50:50 so rear breaking is more effective than in a normal ICE car with the engine in the front.

This gives regenerative braking more than enough grip for normal braking but probably not emergency braking which would require more braking power. So what it comes down to is that if the rear tires are not breaking loose and the car isn't using friction brakes then the car is recovering as much energy as it can with regenerative breaking.

Not to mention that the majority of engineers within the company will not willingly work full steam ahead on an enterprise that will destroy their life's work and make many of them obsolete (as they are combustion engine experts).

It does make the electric car seem attractive.

Waiting for the flood of affordable electric cars that are supposed to arrive soon.

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