BMW is accelerating electrification plans
electrive.com
electrive.com
https://twitter.com/masegoslin/status/1132389324140343297/vi...
And here they are grouped by model:
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/24/visualization-2012-2019...
BMW is in sixth place currently.
Tesla has taken such a beating in the press about the Model 3 which is really misleading I guess when you look at these charts.. the Model 3 has stomped everything else on the market very quickly.
Also keep in mind if you look at the new electric vehicles, there isn't a one out today that beats the 2012 Model S in range (265 miles). Why is this? Because of the battery chemistry and drivetrain work that tesla has done which is leagues ahead of anyone. More vendors doing EVs might also make it cheaper to source some of the various components. I think more EVs is a net good for Tesla honestly as it pushes them more into the mainstream.
I doubt that. It's much more likely because something like the Leaf is nearly half the cost of a Tesla model S and are made at a profit. At one point Tesla had a big lead, but Nissan has been making hte Leaf for nearly a decade now. It's unlikely that any significant gap is there because of technology reasons.
Tesla’s software, engine tech, and battery production would be a nice addition to Big Autos stack.
I’ve seen a few teams or line of businesses rally “Let’s get back our unique culture” after the merge. Not gonna happen if MegaCorp bought you. Everyone else already cashed out or left.
Not to mention that that sort of acquisition could be seen as "mission accomplished" given the right M&A voodoo or PR spin.
Tesla isn't immune to capitalism and is itself a product of it.
- Tesla's Model 3 interior is highly polarizing; you either love it or hate it. That will help carve out a niche even if all else is equal
- but most importantly, it's all about the batteries. Audi had to scale back e-tron production for 2019 due to battery supply issues; what's going to happen when the big carmakers need several orders of magnitude more batteries? Tesla has their own battery factory. OTOH, there are a LOT of chinese battery factories being built right now, we may see battery prices fall through the floor if they are overbuilding. Anybody who's watched the DRAM market over the past few decades knows what happens when you need really expensive factories to build a commodity...
1: https://electrek.co/2019/02/21/tesla-efficiency-range-test-a...
2: https://www.electrive.com/2019/04/23/audi-revises-production...
> As for Audi, I think that they are intentionally giving up their efficiency in order to protect the battery pack and get a higher charge rate.
Range is battery capacity divided by efficiency. You can give up range to protect the battery, by limiting the charging capacity or the discharge depth, but you cannot give up efficiency.
There are likely a multitude of factors from motors, to drivetrain, to drag, to gross weight which contribute to Audi’s lower efficiency e-Tron. They have a fairly large battery, although smaller capacity than Tesla’s largest, but only get ~200mi of range out of it. Their efficiency and range is lower than the 2012 Model S. This is one area where Tesla has an indisputable technical lead.
You could argue, for example, that Audi sacrifices efficiency to have lower interior noise levels, or that they had a body design with higher drag they weren’t willing to compromise. But drag and weight alone don’t fully account for the large efficiency difference.
I'm not convinced their superior efficiency is an unbridgeable moat either.
My biggest concern is their, and their CEOs approach to certain things, destroying goodwill to the point they cease being the tech darling. If you want to compete with BMW or Mercedes, you need the brand name and the engineering.
Tesla is at present way ahead of all the other auto companies here. That's because Musk realized a decade ago how important battery production is, and so Tesla and Panasonic built a battery factory that was about 10 times larger than any existing one. But who knows what the future will bring.
I hate the experience of buying a car. I hate going to a dealership. I hate haggling. I hate having to say no to every crap they want to sell me.
I think Tesla is a breath of fresh air in the car industry, and I think they're going to continue trying to do things differently than everyone else. We'll see how that spans out in the future, and if they're going to keep being able to fix these issues we've just come to accept with the traditional car industry.
I am very skeptical that this is ever going to happen, at least in any meaningful way. It's been pretty well established over the past couple of decades that corporations cannot steer away from their core profit centers, and thus far the auto manufacturers have done nothing to disprove this theory. So far, they have almost exclusively done nothing other than announcing future plans, but have not been able to pivot away from their core competencies.
There is a widespread belief that it is inevitable that Detroit, etc., will start producing EVs, and once they do so that Tesla will be crushed in very short order. I have seen no evidence to support this belief, despite Tesla having been in the market for over a decade.
Also governments at some point will start forcing their hand (and probably China will do that way before US given the current trend).
So businesses making good decisions because of climate change... a good thing? But maybe too late?
That is honestly less than I expected.
The general public is rarely the biggest cause, and even the best intentioned personal initiative like becoming vegan can fail to have any positive impact down the line.
That said, in democracies, personal attitude matters to politicians. Being associated to poluting industry become a career terminating scandal waiting to happen in a society composed of vegan, composting, plastic avoiding, electric car driving, eco-home living population. Similarly poluting companies become easy targets for a new generation of politicians.
In society there are, however, needs that have to be covered by the said poluting companies, and I've encountered plenty individuals oblivious to the fact that we don't have working alternatives yet, unfortunately. I understand why the struggle against polution trend had to adopt religious attitude, but I'm a bit worried about the (current cultural stigma) collateral damage and especially about its eventual long term fallout.
One one hand you are lying to yourself if you think your new electric car is more environmental friendly, on the other hand you have to start somewhere perhaps.
Battery recycling and reprocessing is already mandatory in many countries, to avoid contamination by landfill leaks. It is just question of scale.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-...
T̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶r̶t̶i̶c̶l̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶o̶l̶d̶e̶r̶ (didn't read the date correctly), but the inconclusiveness of the battery factor remains. Driving in winter with all electric gadgets turned on and you get additional numbers that are totally different compared to summer.
And dependable numbers on battery refurbishment will only be available in a decade or so. It is not just "easy".
Tragically even if you think you're helping with recycling, apparently that trash just gets shipped to Asia and be incinerated..
So yes, I firmly believe that purchasing EVs is not just a heroic act, but one that is unquestionably necessary.
That said, I have read comment from the various motor show in the last 2 years and apparently the lack of apparent enthousiasm around electric was more a question of protecting the sales of the already designed last generation of non-electric car. Apparently the only interesting things auto-makers had to say was about electric.
This could be a case of BMW no so much as accelerating its plan rather than accelerating the publication of its plans.
Personally, I've lived in many cities, suburbs, and rural areas in the northeast US (population-dense, relatively friendly toward ecological initiatives) and tried to use public transit whenever possible. My experience is that public transport outside cities is practically nonexistent. In cities, there are only buses and they're annoying/slow/don't go where you need them.
Only now that I live in the immediate vicinity of Boston do I have useful public transit options, yet still, owning a car is a necessity to get to anything outside the city.
A typical suburb in the US will have no public transportation, and be so sprawled out that bicycling or walking between places would be impossible for a working adult.
In America, most suburbs are bad for walking, actively hostile to biking, and have either no public transit or nearly unusable public transit.
The cities are usually not much better, either. Only a handful in the US have public transit that can even be called decent, let alone good.
In the US only.
I wonder if 30 to 40 years from now, we'll be having the same convo about electric cars that we are having about recycling plastic? Something that seemed good on the surface, but masked all kinds of externalities.
I mean, at least electric should be a bit better than ICE in daily use. But will making these things at scale in the first place cost too much in the way of carbon production? Or other forms of pollution that we as consumers don't even know about yet? You may say, "well it was your job as a consumer to know the impact your purchases were having." But I'm just not that knowledgeable about that stuff. I don't know if a billion electric cars are bad or good? And it might not even be the cars, just the fact that we have to make the roads may be polluting somehow? Or whatever? It's just too much for a consumer to know. Should I be buying electric? Or supporting mass public transit? Which is better? Or is it just a question of which is worse? There's a lot to think about there.
Or maybe it's just me?
If a car is needed it depends how you're planning to power it.
This answer[0] does a great job of looking at the energy inputs of building a car. I thought the up-front cost would be higher but the emissions from producing a car are comparable to the emissions of using the car for a few years.
So if the choice is between a used ICE car and a new EV and charging it with renewable energy, it's (surprisingly) probably worth buying the new EV.
If you're planning to charge it with power from a coal plant though you should probably get the used ICE car.
[0] https://www.quora.com/How-much-energy-is-required-to-build-a... [1] https://ecf.com/news-and-events/news/how-much-co2-does-cycli...
That depends. There are streets in the UK so polluted that jogging on them, breathing in lots more bad air, is actually worse for you than not jogging. Similarly, the violent accident rate for bicycle commuters is scary. I don't know of any regular commuter who hasn't been to hospital at least once.
Having said that I have had a hospital visit.
There are certainly parts of the US where a car is necessary, but 90% is pushing it. It may well be that 90% of people think that they need a car, though.
Being car-less in America is hard, I lived in a the suburb of a main city and if I was to use transit options to get to work I would have spent 3 hours a day on commute alone. That's simply not feasible. Similarly I used to work a job from midnight to noon (and a year later noon to midnight) and there simply was no feasible transit option for such a schedule, and with the sprawling nature of the suburb carpooling wasn't much of an option either.
My year old Model S is already surpassed by the new Raven powertrain architecture, providing another 40 miles of range per full charge versus the “old” version (330 miles->370 miles).
"Reduce" for the sake of reduction is just poor behavioral economics & hence hasn't actually demonstrably made much of a difference to this world.
Reduce as a side effect of a true benefit/efficiency (think how much lesser power is consumed per unit compute today vs. even 5 years ago) makes a lot of sense.
America conciously builds sprawling suburbs that require private cars to get around.
We can choose to build a society that does not need as much car use.
But Singapore also air conditions everything which is a fairly heavy energy use in tropical climate much like how heating is a massive energy use in northern climates and spends a lot of effort/energy on keeping sidewalks, grounds and pavements manicured, watered & in good repair.
As the founder of Singapore argued, the lifestyle gain - though at the cost of consuming more energy is a massive competitive advantage in productivity and in attracting, developing & retaining talent. https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew...
While luxury cars are often heavier, and perhaps built without as much presumption that the owners will be concerned about fuel mileage/costs, there are many anomalies where apparently smallish cars are surprisingly heavy. And even 'economy' cars have become quite portly. Just look at the Honda civic hatch, from 1990-now going from 2165 Lbs to 2763 Lbs -- that extra 600Lbs is over 27% heavier -- a lot more mass to accelerate. Or, check out the Nissan Maxima sedan at 3676 Lbs! That's most of the way to my old BMW X5's 4100Lbs. Meanwhile a friend's C6 Corvette weighed in at ~3140 Lbs and got over 32mpg on the highway between the low CD and lighter weight. Look beyond the luxury to the design & build.
Drivetrain type is completely orthogonal to weight as a performance factor for a vehicle.
Weight will affect the efficiency of every drivetrain (unless you have a drivetrain that can zero out the inertial properties of nearby mass).
I was only suggesting that luxury is a less important factor than weight to consider for efficiency.
Moreover, if we could have lighter batteries, the lighter hybrid or all electric would be even more efficient.
How many hybrids/electics do you see being made with lead-acid batteries (extremely reliable, proven, safe), vs Li-Ion? Basically none. Because the weight is so much of an issue that it makes them impractical.
Just because one factor (hybrid or electric drive train) can compensate for another factor (weight), does not make that factor irrelevant.
You just need to look at the dance the price of oil and the health of the economy go through to realise money and energy are deeply intertwined. It’s not obvious to me that we can completely decouple them.
The price of oil itself has no correlation with carbon output. (Total production numbers might tell you something, but that is only vaguely related to price in market economics, given the competing forces of supply and demand. Total usage numbers would tell you a lot more, but isn't a statistic even tracked by economics and if it has any correlation on price depends on the type of demand [elastic versus static] whether it is following/lagging or pushing the price.)
Sure money and energy can be considered intertwined, but not all energy is carbon, don't forget that as much as business tries to underprice it, a lot of the energy reflected in a supply chain is labor (which admittedly people do also produce carbon, but exhalation effort is not something I've ever seen properly reflected in someone's wages).
So again: higher prices in EVs and EV supply chains absolutely does not correlate with carbon costs. EVs generally have less material because a) weight matters a lot more, and b) fewer moving parts / simpler drive trains.
Price differences likely reflect other market realities such as supply/demand and things like perceived luxury.
All in, over their lifetimes, those non-fashionable solar panels will save far more carbon than the tesla. So unless you have already maxed your solar options, the tesla is more fashion statement than "green" decision.
"The real green decision" is whatever is more environmentally-friendly than what you would have done otherwise.
Are any of BMWs existing or 25 new electric cars any good though? I tried out the i3 but its range is tiny.
Also, BMW and intel need to have a chat and sort out some differentiation in the i numbers they use.
The market for this is as a second car for commutes of up to 30-40 miles each way. Double if your work place has a level 2 charger. Add 30-50% for the newer models. I'm willing to guess that covers, what, 75% of two car households? Range is just not a problem.
It's also a pretty cheap car for the quality level. Mine was $20K, more then 50% off the $56K on the sticker, off a 10K lease with 2 years left on the warranty. Hardly used. There was a whole line of these off lease cars at the dealer. He preferred to sell gas vehicles - no need to talk about range.
I didn't mention the quietness, acceleration, build quality, low maintenance, etc. As you can tell I've become a bit of a bore about them and got two friends to buy one. If I have to drive my wife's SUV now I feel dirty.
Yikes, they didn't take a bath, they were drugged, bound up in a sack and thrown into the river.
In the last year the big car companies have finally realized this, and that they are in danger of going bankrupt if they get left behind, and so they are seriously getting behind making EV's. To give one outstanding example VW has signed contracts for 48 billion dollars worth of batteries.
Also IMO it would be stupid to have BMW petrol stations, Renault petrol stations etc, the local authorities may need to give some incentives for the businesses to add generic charging stations, this could be like part of the petrol tax will go into subsidizing the chargers or putting public charging stations.
Wholeheartedly agree - but EV use is growing faster that local authorities can build out supply in some areas and flawed capacity planning means there are chargers going unused in others. There's fewer independent suppliers as there are with petrol stations so the market incentive for other companies to pick up the middle ground isn't clear yet (esp compared with at home/work usage).
So a fair solution would be to get a percent from the petrol taxes and help people that want to install a charger. You can probably do similar programs for apartment associations to install chargers for the entire building parking space/street.
Its quite like going to get gas from a gas station. It just takes a while longer. You don't let the car run to empty before you fill it back up. Easy enough fix for your first issue. And for the second, you just wait for a port to come free. That's how supercharger stations are working all across the US.
it may work for some people, but AFAIK the traffic at a mall is higher on certain days and hours so you may not find a charger, then what do you do if you are on low?
Your underground parking already has an electricity supply, at least for the lighting. It's not impossible for the owner of the building to install additional circuits for charging cars.
I live in the Netherlands and the FastNed charging network is almost been fully rolled out, as well as charging stations from other vendors (like Shell, NLE, and Tesla). Charging options are plentiful here, and most of them are fast (175kW) chargers.
This kind of build out can go really quickly because the hardest part (the cables) are already there. We've got about 10 years now to build out the infrastructure which is plenty of time. Great for the economy too.
- Ionity: https://ionity.eu/
- Fastned: https://fastned.nl/en/ (their blog is also interesting: https://fastned.nl/en/blog)
- ultra E: https://www.ultra-e.eu/
- Ovo Energy is putting charging points in streetlamps in London: https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/urban-charging
Porsche is putting in chargers for customers at its dealerships, etc.
So, let's get informed people. EVs matter for climate change but blatant disinformation gets us nowhere.
today, mid to slightly lower than mid two hundred mile range EVs are where consumer priced EVs will reign. Everything else needs to exist beyond that to show value and seriousness because those range numbers still require fair to nice weather to achieve. In some countries there could be a good market for the one hundred mile club but that would take some seriously aggressive pricing to convince people
Plus "electrified" does not imply full EV. that is the cop out for PHEV. Worse their new Mini E is again a disappointment in range and cost. Considering where it landed it makes me wonder what BMW will need to charge for range competitive with a Tesla 3 LR. Audi and Jaguar did the EV movement no favors with their lack luster attempts
The 2020 Porsche Taycan (300 miles), 2020 Mercedes EQC (293 miles), 2019 Audi E-Tron (204 miles), 2019 VW e-Golf (125 miles), 2019 BMW i3 (126 miles) still don't beat my 2018 Model 3 LR AWD (325 miles). On the most recent TSLA Investor's call, Musk said that Tesla isn't far from 400 mile batteries. Additionally, they just bought Maxwell Technologies known for their work on ultracapacitors to improve lithium ion battery efficiency. More electric vehicles also forces more policy makers to think seriously about EV charging infrastructure and helps sway public opinion. More EVs on the road is a net win for Tesla.
BMW has a stake in the Ionity charging network, a joint venture of a few companies: https://ionity.eu/en/about.html
BMW also sells home charging units: https://charging.bmwgroup.com/web/360electric-international/...
Your claim is wrong.
I own a Tesla Model 3, my wife drives a BMW i3, my daughter has a leaf.
The ONLY car we can effectively travel outside of the greater Tampa area without major headache is the Tesla.
The ONLY car that I would try to drive to New York from Florida in is the Tesla. (Yes, we've done it.. but would only try it in the Tesla)
One thing I have been waiting to see is a push to have gas stations adopt EV charging on a large scale. Gas stations, particularly ones along interstate routes, often double as rest stops and usually have large parking areas with small marts, and a couple of fast food options. If companies partnered with a major gas pump operator like chevron, shell or mobile to offer even a small number of charging stations with each gas station (even just 2 to 4 at each site in the 50-100kw range.. though the wiring would most likely need to be upgraded to support this) things would shift rapidly I think. I know charge times remain an issue, but if you are taking a rest stop anyway.. the 30-40 minutes of charge is not as big of an issue.
A government subsidy could also be introduced to help offset some of the cost of upgrading these gas stations. An increased tax on Gasoline could go towards paying for such a subsidy. Also I think we need to take another look at nuclear power to help charge those EVs, but that is another conversation.
They're doing that in Europe:
https://electrek.co/2017/09/27/shell-new-electric-car-chargi...
Walmart and Target in the US are partnering with charging networks to put fast chargers in their parking lots:
https://electrek.co/2018/04/18/vw-electrify-america-walmart-...
https://electrek.co/2018/04/24/target-tesla-chargepoint-elec...
https://www.walgreens.com/topic/sr/sr_electric_vehicle_charg...
Teslas come with a J-1772 adapter so you can charge them there as well. Many hotels, airports, malls and parking garages have chargers now as well. I really think we are at a tipping point, one of the annoying things now is when you get to a charger it's busy. Some of the busiest Tesla superchargers you have to wait 15-20 minutes sometimes for a spot to open up.
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/electrify-america-350-kw-...
https://insideevs.com/news/341596/evgo-launches-350-kw-ultra...
And in Europe Fastned and Ionity are also installing 350 kW chargers:
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/ionity-launches-first-350...
https://fastned.nl/en/blog/post/fastned-opens-its-first-350k...
The home charging units are nice, but not, I think, what people usually mean when they are discussing charging infrastructure. What people typically mean in that context is "chargers I can use when I am traveling." In that context, GPs "they won't invest a dime" statement is understandable in its sentiment, even if not entirely true. Auto manufacturers do not seem to be taking charging infrastructure needs seriously. Although it is good that this seems to be changing, it's not happening quickly enough.
If anything, the lack of progress on this front is further evidence that the traditional auto companies do not take EVs seriously, and have no intentions of doing so.
They're part of IONITY (along with VW, Daimler, and Ford).
There are 668 Tesla superchargers currently open in the US alone and 20 were opened this month alone per: https://supercharge.info/changes
Ionity doesn't have any in the US. They're a European network. You're probably thinking of Electrify America:
https://www.electrifyamerica.com/
Electrify America is also partnering with ChargePoint to effectively unify their networks, the advantage being you can use one account across both networks:
https://media.electrifyamerica.com/en-us/releases/64
And don't forget that if you have a CCS car you can also charge it on any other CCS charging network, such as EVgo.
From what I understand from watching the Fully Charged Show there is plenty of charging infrastructure being put in place in mainland Europe. However, we are more like two or three plugs at a motorway service station (with one broken) fifty miles away rather than every lamp post having a plug on it.
Really it is the electricity companies rather than the auto manufacturers who are taking that part up, much like how BMW et al. don't own petrol filling stations they don't own the charging infrastructure.
It's probably also relevant that the usual mains sockets in a European house can provide around 3kW, around double the US. Installing a new circuit (with thicker wiring) increases that to around 7kW at a fairly low expense. That makes it much easier to charge at home (spend €150 to have the extra circuit installed), or when visiting a house/office (use the nearest normal socket).
I'm sorry this is making me sound like a Tesla fan but I'm really not. It's just the current state of the world. Tesla showed these carmakers the way to go, and instead they decided to go the wrong way and put the burden on us the consumers. That stinks in my opinion and I'm just mad about it.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/05/inside-electrify-americ...
Tesla has over 1500 charger stations (and 13,000 stalls) in north america right now, Electrify america is planning 500 stations (2,000 stalls) by the end of 2019.
If you take a look at tesla's map they not only have significantly more coverage, but they have a lot more density around cities where from what I can see EA has just a couple stations. Not to mention that EA seems to only have a few stalls at each location, compared to 6+ in most places for the tesla superchargers that i've personally seen.
I'm all for more chargers, and I'm excited that EA is happening, but Tesla is pretty much unparalleled right now when it comes to charging infrastructure, by quite a large margin.
And roaming agreements with other networks, such as ChargePoint:
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/11/electrify-america-charg...
Tesla has what they call "Destination chargers" which are a similar speed/level, and I don't know of any counts of them off the top of my head, but they probably outnumber the Superchargers by 3-to-1 (as a complete guess based on how many show up around me on the map).
If we're comparing DC fast charging to DC fast charging, neither of those really count, and if you're on a road trip, neither Destination chargers nor chargepoint chargers are a realistic option unless you are stopping for several hours.
No, they do fast chargers as well:
They've got quite a few! Thanks!
Why a subsidiary brand? Is BMW itself too cool for an EV?
On a more serious note, this is not the kind of message that makes me convinced they are really serious about EVs.
This announcement is just accelerating that schedule, so about half the models should be full EV and the others will be hybrid. I agree it would be nice to get more details regarding plug-in capabilities.
I wonder what the motivation for this is.
https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/tesla-model-3-outsell...
I can't see BMW being worried about 1 month of sales by a competitor but its possible.