The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Within the next decade we might see companies like Hyundai/Kia, Toyota and Honda selling more EVs than ICE. Take the Kia Niro EV as an example: if the cost of batteries halved and the supply was unconstrained, there is little stopping that kind of product from dominating the market—starting with two-car households with off-street parking.
With their lithium cell investments, Telsa are well positioned to benefit from this boom, but they need to think carefully about their positioning. Right now they're a luxury brand with no serious competitors; when Telsa's drivetrain advantage is substantially neutralised, their mind share is likely to stagnate.
In my opinion Tesla needs to prepare to be in the budget space. They need to partner with an external manufacturer to sell a product with normal door handles that competes with Hyundai and Toyota. Because once the cost of batteries falls, I predict a substantial slice of their market will simply disappear to the economy manufacturers. I suspect that many people who love Telsa really just love the idea of electric vehicles and they'll be buying something more like the Kia Niro EV.
Plug-in electric sales in 2018 were up 61% over 2017, which was 51% higher than 2016 (via quick wikipedia check).
What numbers would you want to see before calling that a "boom"? How much higher than 60% growth does something have to have before it's not "strangled"?
I think that's silly. Clearly these things are going somewhere. Production at all levels is adapting to compete, and that means some areas (like Li production in the linked articles) are going to outstrip the field which remains limited by other things. But even right now they're clearly out of the "niche within a niche" category and growing very well.
The pure EV market will eventually dominate vehicle sales in most segments, and most of the rest will be PHEV. Have EVs even hit 1% of worldwide vehicle sales yet? Call me back when it passes 10% and we'll talk about an EV boom.
Global EV Sales In May 2019: Over 179,000 At 2.3% Market Share https://insideevs.com/news/357198/global-ev-sales-in-may-201...
The current trend is under 4 years until EV’s are 10% of global car sales. It’s likely adoption will slow down at some point, but 50% of all new car sales being EV could happen within 10 years. Though it would take much longer for EV’s to represent 1/2 of all cars on the road.
Next questions What is the sustainable growth rate? Higher than 60%? Lower?
And are we going to, in 10 years, see more EVs sold (for much less each) than ICE vehicles are sold today? The answer is we'd better, as we have to get those ICE vehicles off the road.
Battery and Charging point is still the biggest issue in most places around the world.
Would those actually be included in these figures?
The thing is that shifts in large markets like this take a long time to really be realized. It has taken Tesla 15 years to go from 0% to over 1%. Their current aggressive plans call to double that in another 2 years.
The real question is what kind of change can they make over the next 15 years. And for that, we need the crystal ball...
Edit: and 1.1% for 2018.
http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/u-s-auto-sales-figures-by-brand...
If I had a dollar.
The EV boom seems to tick both those boxes. Your wallet boom has only been going for a day, and you know better than me how sustainable it is.
Toyota RAV4 alone sold more than all plug-in cars combined.
Tesla alone (S, X, 3) will probably sell close to 350k (~85-90k/q), and they are not more than 10% of total EV.
Out in the real world very few people can afford a $45k+ car.
Apparently the biggest selling 'car' was the Ford F series, so not even one model and that sold just over a million.
https://www.motoringresearch.com/car-news/worlds-best-sellin...
Edit: Biggest selling in the world, in 2018
Add to that the slice of the market with access to off-street parking at work which can be retrofitted for charging. As EV sales grow, car parking will adapt and recharging will be bundled into the cost of parking. That's another 10–20%.
Once you've sold to those markets, the "robust charging network" will solve itself.
Cars spend most of their day sitting somewhere and most of that often less than a meter from any sort of electric grid connection (just most of those can't be hooked into today). (I like to play a game of spot the nearest electrical object from wherever I park. It's rarely hard.)
Fancier, higher voltage/current Level 2+ chargers are great, but it should be incredibly easy to very quickly up the number of Level 1 charging spots on the electric grid: aka add more traditional wall outlets in parking lots/garages/streets. That sort of bootstrap should be something we talk about more, because it really is hard to beat the ubiquity of our electric grid build-out already. We can take advantage of that.
- Experimental Toyota Prius: https://newatlas.com/toyota-prius-solar-roof/60461/
- Sono Sion: https://sonomotors.com/en/sion/
- Lightyear One: https://lightyear.one/
Even if you're only getting a small amount of range from solar in Winter, that's still less charging that has to come from the grid.
A 1.9 mile commute is what, 4 minutes drive?
I do say that in Summer you could get an average of 50 kilometres per day from solar in the Lightyear One (if you live somewhere sunny). That would cover the daily commute of many people. You could go months without plugging in.
I’ve also used my home rooftop solar PV to charge a Hyundai Kona. Unless this “lightyear one” has solar panels the size of six parking spaces, I suspect the reason they claim so much more than Toyota is because it’s BS.
Read the article again. You're confusing the small solar panel Toyota has as a current production option with the new experimental solar Prius which has much larger panels.
> I suspect the reason they claim so much more than Toyota is because it’s BS.
Based on what? The fact that the Lightyear One is being developed by members of Solar Team Eindhoven who have won the World Solar Challenge race three times? How many times have you won the World Solar Challenge?
Based on what?
Firstly, the moment you select "Summer" that drops to "2731 Wh, 30 km per day" so the headline figure of 59km is already exceeding even their claimed summer range by almost 100%. So they're fudging figures right from the front page.
Secondly, that's 6.9 miles per kWh, whereas the Tesla Model 3 gets 4.1 EPA-rated miles per kWh [1]. So they're going to be 69% more efficient than Tesla?
A 69% increase in efficiency is a 40% drop in battery cost for the same range. To me it seems unlikely that Tesla, Hyundai, Nissan, Kia, Mercedes, Jaguar and Audi would have all left a cost saving that big on the table, if it was easy to achieve.
Thirdly, [2] says the Lightyear One has "five square meters of integrated solar cells", and that "The 12 km/h added by the solar roof and hood during daylight exposure extends the range as you drive", i.e. 7.4 miles/hour of solar charging. Even assuming they're 69% more efficient than Tesla, that means they're getting 1.08kW out of 5m² of solar panels.
For comparison, if you look at a random rooftop solar installation in California [3] with 40m² of panels, from 9am-5pm the mean output was 4.5kW - so with 5m² of panels, the output would only average 0.55kW. So the Lightyear One claims 96% more output - even making the very generous assumptions that "during daylight" is only the peak 8 hours a day, that the shade and angle of the car panels are as good as a residential rooftop solar installation, and ignoring winter and places less sunny than California. Unless they're using solar panels made of Unobtainium, used in price-no-object applications like satellites, this seems unlikely to me.
Seems to me there are two possibilities here:
1. They've developed an EV 69% more efficient than a Tesla, AND solar panels 96% more efficient than rooftop solar, AND rather than selling either of those technologies to the existing car or solar companies that would very much like them, they've decided to start their own car company.
2. They're quoting efficiency figures for driving at golf cart speeds, or solar figures for noon in the Sahara desert, or daily range figures assuming you'll visit a plug-in charger every so often.
I know which I think is more likely - and my €149,000 will be staying firmly in my pocket.
[1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1119556_tesla-model-3-r... [2] https://lightyear.one/lightyear-one/ [3] https://pvoutput.org/intraday.jsp?id=21356&sid=19238&dt=2019...
Try Madrid. Or Athens. Or Cairo. Or Sydney. Or Los Angeles. Or San Francisco.
> So they're going to be 69% more efficient than Tesla?
Yes. They're using in-wheel motors, they have better aero (shape, wheel covers, wing cameras), and they've focused on reducing weight.
Maybe read about the Lightyear One first before going off on a tangent.
If you think that's likely - and it would be great news for EVs and the environment if it was the case - I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree about the credibility of Lightyear's claims.
It's like you're not even reading what's in front of you. Compare and contrast the following cars:
- Lightyear One
- Tesla Model 3
- Mercedes EQC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JTew1D5Tk8
- Honda e: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEKq8jmckz0
- Porsche Taycan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohHEdaRhF1k
- VW ID.3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8cHHNPRg-c
Have a look at them all. Think about their shapes. Think about their weight. Think about the engineering and design trade offs that are being made. Think about materials and manufacturing costs. Think about the market segment they're targeting. None of this is amazing or mysterious.
The GM EV1 only seats 2 passengers, it's 1.77 m wide and 1.28m high, it even has fender skirts [2]. Its CdA of 0.367m² is still only 35% below the Tesla.
The Lightyear One seats "5 adult passengers", and it's 1.90m wide and 1.43m high.
So the Lightyear One is wider, higher, and has 3 more passengers than the EV1 - but it's going to have less drag?
One of us might not be reading what's in front of us, but I don't think it's me :-p
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient#Dr... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
Again, reading.
https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/electrek.co/2019/07/09/us-ele...
400k in China
https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2019/07/the-nu...
I'd bet that's where the shift comes from.
You are correct that the grid will need updating - all those houses using 15 amps more add up.
17kWh battery.
47 miles EV range.
Charge time @ 120V = 12 hours. It essentially can charge up to 4 miles of range per hour on a standard circuit in a US home. Cold weather? Your power needs go up, range goes down, and charge rate drops as well. 15 amps @ 120V EV charging is not practical for most EV owners, at this time, but you are correct that it is possible.
But more importantly, they can backup to gas so if you can only do 80% of your trip electric there is no real problem, you still are getting great fuel economy.
For the people for whom an electric car makes sense, the overwhelming majority could make due with a level 1 charger (12 amps 110 volts).
L1 charger provides 4-5 miles of charge per hour, so 8 hours in the garage at night would more than make up for the commute. If you have a larger range (200+ miles) you can make it up on the weekends.
If you have a 100+ mile commute each day, sure get a L2 charger. Or better yet, buy a hybrid.
It still have a 35x potential growth, so it can "boom" again, but the EV industry now is huge
One of the hyped upsides of electric cars is decreased maintenance costs leading to a decrease in per-km capital costs of driving. If this is true, unless induced demand from this causes people to drive more, EVs effectively will shrink the total car industry pie, leaving something less than 35x potential growth.
Big design changes like the shift to EV require lots of new parts to be designed, and every new part has a non-zero chance of a reliability issue. 5 years time, we'll be talking about the motor mount point which rusts through and causes a chunk of EV cars to fail.
A 2nd effect is as cars get more computerized, 3rd party repairs will get much harder, and manufacturers will drop support for first party repairs when it no longer makes financial sense, so a lot of otherwise good cars will get sent to the scrapheap because they couldn't get some firmware update etc. That will overall increase the cost of motoring.
Agree on digital scrapheap, although this applies to a lesser extent to ICE vehicle too. We should be demanding open sourcing of car code after warranty expires.
Electric cars need to have separate motors to drive the AC compressor instead of a simple belt.
Electric cars need resistive and/or reverse cycle heating instead of using engine heat.
Electric cars (if they care about battery longevity) need elaborate heating/cooling systems for the battery.
Nearly every car over 10 years old has failed AC. In most EV cars, the AC is critical to maintaining battery health. I could imagine a failed AC unit causing the battery to over/under heat, and the resulting damage causing the entire car be scrapped.
I think that a fleet of 10 electric cars owned over 10 years is likely to cost less than half in maintenance costs than a comparable fleet of 10 ICE cars over 10 years.
Of course batteries are coming down in price. Time will tell how this plays out.
Most manufacturers, including Tesla, provide an 8 year warranty on battery and drivetrain.
There's a school of thought that past the warranty period, the traction battery is likely going to last the lifetime of the vehicle, by definition (in that when the battery dies, there is likely no economically sound way to replace with a new battery, so the choices are fit a junkyard battery or junk the car).
While I can imagine that being a very likely scenario; I can also imagine a future where someone down at the local shopping mall will change the battery out for a Chinese compatible unit while you do your shopping. In the same way the currently do for phone batteries, screens etc.
It would be great for standard agencies / governments to get out in front of the electric car industry and demand standardised form factors for batteries and charging infrastructure. At the moment it would probably limit innovation too much though.
They don't really exist today, because contrary to what anti-EV FUDsters believe, there just aren't many EVs with worn out batteries yet. Perhaps there are a few, but the number of EVs written off in accidents (and thus making donor batteries available) is much, much greater.
https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty
You'll be getting less range over time as the battery degrades. Eventually you'll have to replace the battery to get the range back.
We don't yet know how they stand up over >8 years of service, of course, but there are many examples of very high milage Tesla vehicles (> 200,000 miles) that are still on their original battery and show only modest degradation.
Why are you sure? If it's not under warranty, it's not under warranty. If it's considered a fault then it would be warranted.
Personally, I wish they would decouple the platform from the comfort center. Have chassis form factors for various purposes (single person/roadster, crossover, truck, utility, etc) and branded “comfort centers” housing the human interface stuff. Make it so the comfort center can be changed out when ever and keeping the same underlying platform.
Teslas have quite poor reliability so far:
- https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27725/tesla-fleet-company-stru...
- https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...
I'm sure Tesla will improve with time but they're not going to out-Toyota Toyota any time soon.
(2009 when they built first US production line to 2015).
https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/the-most-and-least-expe...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-13/toyotas-a...
Toyota has the most flexible production and the most reliable cars. Toyota isn't the biggest selling brand by accident.
I got pretty close a few weeks ago to picking up a Model 3P but the maintenance stories spooked me. I am just not enough of an EV/Tesla enthusiast to deal with that on my commuter car.
Maintenance itself (oil changes, minor repairs) is something I'd like to eliminate, but that's a lower priority. Electric cars score better here, but it's not my top concern.
The real, key issue (to me) is whether the drivetrain is expensive. If it's expensive to build, and if it can fail in a way that something needs to be replaced, then it's going to be expensive to repair if/when needed.
And both gas cars and electric cars have expensive drivetrains, just for different reasons. On a gas car, major engine and transmission work is expensive. On an electric car, battery pack replacement is expensive.
Maybe one is less expensive than the other, so there could still be a net win here, but I definitely don't think electric cars have completely escaped the problem.
I drive a 15 year old Volvo wagon that almost never needs service :)
Of course I exaggerate - I probably average $150/month in maintenance. Sorry, but the chances of Tesla doing the same over 15 years is zero.
Electric motors have way fewer moving parts and fluids and currently are generally expected to outlast any car frame they are put in.
Most EVs advantage regenerative braking so break maintenance cycles are also longer to comparably sized ICE vehicles.
The other maintenance risks are the exact same between an EV and any other car, things like: HVAC, plastic degradation, rust, and accident damage.
The one unique Tesla risk on a 15-year horizon is their software updates. Their penchant for over-the-air software updates is handy in the short term, but possibly a risk in the long term lifespan of a vehicle. Though that's a risk Tesla would hopefully be incentivized to avoid (for bad PR at least), and possibly a mitigatable risk.
Most cars have a vigorous service schedule that is an endless sea of tire rotations, brake servicing, oil changes, belt replacements, among all of the unexpected maintenance of thousands of moving, wearing parts.
A Tesla or a comparable EV, in contrast, is a cartoonishly simplified variation with magnitudes fewer parts and maintenance needs. The probability of an EV requiring less maintenance than a ICE car is 100%.
Of course right now those EVs come at a premium, but as they hit the mainstream this is going to be a critical differentiation.
If Tesla is to ever have the same reputation, it will be because they made issues trivial to diagnose, dead simple to replace and allowed other manufactures to make replacement parts.
However, this whole argument is moot, because the era of the 15-30 year daily driver is over anyway. When my ignition computer failed, it was $35 to swap one out from a junkyard. You just have to unplug the old one, and plug in the new one and off you go. What's the procedure for replacing a computer on a 2018 Tesla in the year 2038?
Furthermore, any new car has little maintenance to really worry about within the first 100k miles. If you are upper middle class in a bougie area, you're probably buying a new car before maintenance is really an issue anyway. (cue everyone chiming in that their Subaru's turbo blew up 100 miles outside of warranty)
It isn't obvious to me people are asking for vehicles to last a million miles, people aren't clamouring for current vehicles that have done a million miles or are old enough to have done. That million mile car is also going to be a 20+ year old car, with 20 year old safety features, and 20 year old phone integration, and its also going to take 20 years for Tesla to establish that reputation.
That's not to say you're wrong, but it will take a fundamental change in peoples understanding of car ownership closer to how they own houses, that will take time, longer than Tesla has.
Brake pads should last twice as long on an EV because the motor is used to recuperate energy. Here's a good braking demonstration with the Audi e-tron descending Pikes Peak:
https://jalopnik.com/the-truth-about-brake-pad-replacement-i...
Having arrived at more than a few broken chargers the former is going to give them a lead for a good while.
Depends where you are I suppose. In addition to Tesla's network, Europe has:
- Ionity: https://ionity.eu/
- FastNed: https://fastnedcharging.com/en/
- Allego: https://www.allego.eu/
- GIREVE: https://www.gireve.com/en/
And more. All standardized on CCS type 2 plugs which is another plus.
Tesla was recently denied a government subsidy in New York because they're not offering CCS charging, which is fair enough. If they're not going to make it available to all EVs then the utility of the infrastructure is limited and they shouldn't get any discounts funded with public money:
https://electrek.co/2019/07/23/new-york-pressures-tesla-to-o...
As for Tesla, they don't have any intent on being in the proper budget space, ie $15k mini cars. They've stated they will release a compact car in 3-5 years (no other info), but I doubt it'll ever cost less than $25k, probably more like $30k. And that's probably just fine and dandy with Tesla, as Apple has shown capturing a high-end clientele and their fat profits is a great place to be.
Their plan for the "budget" space is robotaxis, which of course depends on their FSD program. We'll see how that goes.
I understand this, but the numbers are incredibly location dependent. Where I am, there is no time of day metering, and electricity is $0.15/kWh. Gas is $1.16/litre.
As an example, to drive 100km in a model 3 (20kWh) is about $3, vs my current fuel efficient Yaris (I get 5.9l/100km) is $6.85. At that price difference of $3.85/100km, I have to drive 500,000km for the fuel to break even with the purchase price difference. Different cars and target markets, of course, as you mention.
I really want a large carbon tax placed on fuel, to make the calculation work for me to go electric. A $30k (Canadian) car would help the calculation, as well.
The business plan always was to start at the high end with the Roadster, then the deluxe sedan and then the affordable Model 3. The Model 3 has cheaper door handles than the Model S.
Tesla is about building car factories rather than cars. Once you have the robots doing as they are told then you can make whatever you want.
If you had to recycle a Lamborghini and a Dacia Sandero then you would probably end up with near equal piles of raw materials for both vehicles, give or take a bit of steel.
The other input is energy. The cylinder head on the Lamborghini takes a bit more work to make than the lump of iron that comes with the Dacia. But, if you have built out lots of renewable power then you can get those CNC machines and other robots doing overtime.
Tesla with their vertical integration business model are finding customers at their price point and they can't make cars quick enough. Despite the sceptics, it is working.
Personally I think the budget space will be filled with an electric version of a 'Dacia Sandero' but made in China. EVs are more pleasant to be in as there is not the vibration and noise from the engine, or the local cloud of pollution.
Because of this and the realities of driving in city/town areas there really is a need for a vehicle far simpler than a Model 3, something without the bells and whistles. Honda have something in the works that is nearer the brief. They are going with a low range EV that is not going to pretend to do hundreds of miles on a charge. This is for the two car family where car two just needs to do the shopping, pick the kids up and get into congestion charging zones. In China there are plenty of BYD fit for purpose EVs that are budget and will be making their way to Western markets in due course.
The legacy brands in Europe and the USA are stuck with having to do things the old way with existing supply chains. To make an EV all they need is to buy the bits from Bosch and shove them in to final assembly but they aren't doing it.
They aren't very aggressive about growing the market though.
What about the charging infrastructure itself?
The first point in particular doesn't seem to get the attention it deserves.
As an example some places (try to) ban crypto mining because the extra power load effectively makes power more expensive for everyone.
The residential grid is built with a particular established demand for power. EV charging would significantly change that in many places.
If natural charging patterns are not advantageous enough it's fairly straight forward to install smart meters that charge a different electricity price depending on time of day. The options range from simple off-peak pricing already offered in many places all the way up to live updating prices based on electricity spot prices and transmission capacity (this would also go a long way towards using solar and wind more efficiently).
The big problems are likely shops offering EV charging and industrial facilities with fairly constant power requirements charging trucks and heavy equipment. But those are comparatively easy to scale.
The big question is how you deal with the peaks. Ideally all cars would be able to charge overnight, so you could potentially spread that demand over 12 hours or more.
https://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDes...
Don't get me wrong—I think the Model 3 is a (mostly) stellar product and I'd love nothing more than to see Tesla come to dominate American car manufacturing. But for that to happen they'll need to swallow their design egos and offer simpler cars with normal door handles and widely available parts for inexpensive repairs. Until that happens they'll find their growth ceiling very soon.
Many of the big manufacturers have realized this in the last year or so, and are scrambling like crazy to get into EV's. The best example is VW, which in the last year has signed contracts for 48 billion dollars worth of batteries, and is building three big EV manufacturing plants and partially converting 4 old ICE plants, and has a couple of dozen models coming out in the next 5 years.
If you want to follow these developments, a good source is cleantechnica.com. Another is electrek.co
To make electric cars cheaply, it will take several changes, some of which look promising, but should not be underestimated for time and difficulty:
It will take widespread adoption of level 4 autonomy to make crashes rare
Scaled-down lightweight EVs will have to become available and accepted, especially w.r.t. safety
It will take finding the sweet spot for some markets: E.g. on-demand scooters, privately owned semi-enclosed trikes with light-enough removable battery packs for apartment dwellers, etc. Vehicles will need a "Cambrian explosion" of variety.
It will take regulatory changes to support the above
Other form factors are nice, but also indirectly related.
On the other hand it may only take one tiny disruption in ICE engine supply chains, or one large production ramp up to an order of scale efficiency boost to drop EVs below ICE vehicle costs on a like-model for like-model basis. With all of the major German automakers now on an "electrify everything by 2023" plan, one or both of those disruptions may exactly happen within the next five years.
Then what will happen in the 5-10 year time frame is that EVs will be significantly cheaper than ICE vehicles (maybe not purchase price at first, but certainly TCO).
Is there electricity anywhere near where you park? Think about what it would cost to set up a plug. It might be quite a bit, but unless electricity is really far away, it's not a crazy amount either.
If buying an EV would save you a significant amount of money over a 10 year period, it's likely that you'd be willing to use some of that savings to pay to have a plug set up. Maybe you can't set up that plug yourself, but as long as you're willing to pay a bit extra over the cost of electricity, there's going to be companies willing to set up plugs along the street. Once investors see that the transition to EVs is guaranteed, I'm certain there will be a rush to put up chargers, since the company that gets a street is likely to keep a monopoly on that street for a long time.
The other way to get street side charging is simply to get governments to do it. That's what Oslo has done. They started out being free, but now there's a reasonable fee on them, and I think that's much more sustainable. With some luck in the elections I could see something like that happening in several areas of the US. It'll be much easier to sell this policy once EVs are a bit cheaper, so I think it's possible if democrats gain some control, especially if they gain some support for some kind of Green New Deal. It's a great investment to boost the economy long term. Generates lots of decent work in the short term, and massive benefits to the public in the long term since it'll guarantee them cheap charging, leading to big savings to operate their vehicles.
There's another way to think about it: setting up a plug for your car is a very tiny fraction of the work/infrastructure required for your apartment, which somehow you found the way to pay for (either directly, or through renting). This kind of work is relatively easy to finance if the demand is there, since it's an investment that's likely to last a very long time and generate a lot of value.
There's also the fast charging model, which can be OK if you have a car with a fairly large battery and don't drive too much. You might be able to get by with charging once a week, and you could probably do it at a location where you'd spend some time anyway, such as a supermarket, near a restaurant or exercise studio. It causes some extra wear on the battery, but not an unreasonable amount.
Seems to be a different story in the US versus Europe.
In Europe they have a lot more competitors either with cars now or coming soon e.g. VW ID3, VW Polestar 2, BMW i3, Honda e, Peuegot e-208, Renault Zoe, Nissan Leaf, Hyundai Kona EV, Mercedes EQC400/EQS, Audi eTron, Jaguar I-PACE etc.
Tesla has largely had the market to itself but now you are seeing much higher quality cars with only slightly less range.
I'm personally looking forward to the Hyundai/Kia models, as they seem to be closest to getting the formula right—enough range, enough power, enough fit and finish. Once the cost and supply of batteries is "solved" they could dominate the economy segment for a while.
- Volkswagen ID.3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8cHHNPRg-c
- SEAT el-Born: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZI7WFtwc8g
- Skoda Vision iV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f1g9xl6W_E
- Audi Q4 e-tron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiwevzHsCbU
Hyundai may also have some battery problems to deal with at the moment:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/electric-car-catches...
- The Volkswagen ID.R set the fastest Goodwood hill time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8il5ohB8FYk
- The VW ID.R set the fastest Pikes Peak time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnH15dejp0s
- The VW ID.R set the fastest electric time (second fastest overall time) at the Nürburgring-Nordschleife: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRCiGABQupA
- Audi is already in Formula E: https://www.audi.com/en/experience-audi/audi-sport/audi-raci...
- And Porsche is joining Formula E next season: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUrkD7WTs0w
Which they'll use to advertise the Porsche Taycan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohHEdaRhF1k
Volkswagen is investing a lot in electrics. They're doing it to clean up their image from the diesel emissions scandal, to meet the new emissions standards being set by the EU and others, and to avoid being locked out of markets which have already set timetables for banning ICE cars (like Norway and the city of Paris).
(And thankfully their EVs won't have their junky and jerky DSG transmissions...so that's another plus.)
Nope. I'm just across the issues and the state of play more than you are.
In my opinion Apple needs to prepare to be in the budget space. They need to partner with an external manufacturer to sell a product with a physical keyboard that competes with Blackberry and Palm. Because once the cost of touchscreens falls, I predict a substantial slice of their market will simply disappear to the economy manufacturers. I suspect that many people who love Apple really just love the idea of smartphones and they'll be buying something more like the Blackberry Curve 8300.
-sjwright, maybe, circa 2008
1. Smartphones provided a new type of utility and a very significant leap of value to the user (I bet most people do other stuff than calling for the vast majority of time spent with their phones, which was not the case with feature phones or generally before the iPhone). Electric cars provide a minor difference in new utility and probably also value. It's more a difference in the means rather than a difference of the end result.
2. Phones are significantly cheaper than cars. Thus, there's a much larger market unit wise than cars (there are probably a similar number of units in use at any point in time, but cars don't get thrown away after 2 years...)
Apple did something similar which is pretty well known in disruption theory. They moved up the market and became a truly premium phone company. That's also why they have a quite small portion of the market unit wise (less than 10%?). They are actually not dominating the industry, they are a niche player (but very successful at that, as seen profit wise, especially compared to their competitors). They are also really good at being a premium phone maker, and have leveraged a lot of other core competencies (look up on Wikipedia for more about that concept) well such as their software competencies and their ecosystem thinking (locking their users into their ecosystem and providing most key parts of that ecosystem).
So what about Tesla? They are hardly as good as Apple premium wise. The market for premium is also a lot smaller for cars, especially if you move upwards from where Tesla is right now. It's also very hard to make a profit in that market, and most make a profit by combining a mass scale operation (more or less all premium car brands are owned by one of the big car companies). So is (more) premium a great direction for Tesla? I doubt it. It will hinder economies of scale which have proven difficult to not have.
So, unless Tesla partner up, don't believe electric car engines/drive trains will become commoditized in the near future and/or have some significant premium/lock-in/ecosystem stuff up their sleeve, it looks like budget is the way to go... They might stay in the premium but not luxury segment, but it's cut throat with lots of competition. To me that sounds like a lost opportunity and waste of some significant base innovation.
And... I guess above is why Tesla seems to desperately try to find additional competitive barriers; self driving, fully automated manufacturing, quick charge network, etc. But, they are long shots so far. It's difficult to innovate one area, very much so multiple areas simultaneously.
Apple didn't build products for the budget market and as a result they lost about 90% of their global market share to Android.
They're fine.
The door handles are a symptom of the design ego of Tesla. It's the same thing with the elimination of nearly all physical buttons. It's the right instinct but they've taken it too far.
And the S and X door handles can be repaired for much less than people are buying the replacements. The rebuild kit uses stainless parts instead of cast.
https://evtuning.com/products/model-s-door-handle-rebuild-ki...
I think you've forgotten of the days when you could literally snap door handles off of Audis by pulling too hard.
I don’t really see EV becoming wide spread (I.e. ~50% of the market) for at least 10-15 years. Even then, power prices will spike at homes. I don’t even want to imagine what that’ll cost.
I understand the argument that it's easier to upgrade centralized power generation to green technologies than the entire fleet of vehicles, but the timing is critical if that is to be a net win for emissions, a nuance which seems to be swept under the rug as everyone's keen to avoid fuel taxes by switching to EVs.
Of course, if everyone switches to EV electricity demand will spike and prices will rise, and governments will be eager to reclaim lost fuel tax revenue with other automobile focused taxes. It might not stay cheaper.
Look at the graph in the article. Lithium cost $5000/ton 4 years ago. Now it costs more than $11,000/ton. The only difference is the period in between where the price of lithium was almost $21,000/ton.
Presumably the mines operation 4 years ago were profitable. Now there's all these additional mines, and demand still has the price doubled in 4 years. And yet somehow the story is that EVs aren't succeeding? I see just the opposite- EVs are succeeding so much that the industry supporting them is growing and profiting very nicely.
That isn't the story. Even the headline calls it an "electric-car boom". The story is that there is a rush to build lithium mines to get ahead of the demand, which seems eminently reasonable.
I worked on a bunch of projects in 16/17 and what I told all my clients is get to production and lock down offtake agreements ASAP as the amount of projects coming online was huge for the short term (with regards to hard rock lithium) and even worse long term (salars etc).
Even the most optimistic of ev adoption rates showed oversupply by 2023.
Some other facts I remember just as points of interest:
* lithium market is opaque. No open market and all contract based so very difficult to price.
* one major unknown that will further add to supply is recycling, with some tech I remember showing cost effective recycling of up to 80% of lithium.
* major bottleneck in short to medium term are the converters ability to refine. Premium will be placed on higher % Li product to increase recovery rates.
So yeah no surprising at all. (Am a mining/mechanical engineer)
With regard to opening the market I personally don’t think so. If the market didn’t have big players in it then yes it probably would have by now. That being said there were/are a lot of mid stage converters coming online that are disrupting the old guard and taking whatever is out there and not being secretive on pricing so maybe?
People in .cz think this is a gold mine but investors don't seem to agree
Firstly it’s an underground mine which is inherently much higher risk/cost compared to open cut.
Second logistically it’s a world away from customers (Asia etc)
Again if they had kicked it off back when, and were in production now they could have locked in some good terms from the starved customers and maybe set themselves up as a player, unfortunately I think they have missed the boat.
Interesting, I didn't know this. Do you know why? Are other metals mostly open (like gold) or mostly like this?
The high torque nature and predicable nature (at least in the case of garbage trucks and buses) make them ideal candidates for EV. Arguably much more viable use case (at least initially) than household vehicles.
I know Leafs have had their service lives (at least for their batteries) revised up recently. Solid state is where it’s at.
The idea that these things place a “huge strain on the grid” as the poster above suggests just sounds like more made up FUD.
The examples I mentioned are from London, which has a growing fleet of hundreds of heavy electric vehicles (city buses, UPS trucks, etc). All of these charge exclusively overnight.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/De7IXxoW4AASSm5.jpg
The postal service here got 4-5 tiers of electric vehicles too, from large vans, to tiny trucks, to "golf-carts", to electric cargo trikes, to a sidewalk friendly electric trolly.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric-buses-201...
After a half century of jaw-boning about the need for renewable "green" energy, we now have a repeatable scalable tech template similar to the [oil well + refinery + piston engine] or [coal mine + pulverizer + furnace + turbine] tech templates that scaled fossil fuel energy. It is: [wind turbines and/or solar PV panels + lithium ion cells].
By repeatable and scalable tech template I mean something that no longer requires non-incremental forms of R&D. We no longer have to think that deeply about it. It's now in the realm of "see that stuff? Build more stuff like that."
The solar/wind+li-ion template can, if scaled, power almost all current human industrial activity with the exception of long-haul heavy vehicles (land, sea, or air) and rockets. Those are important things but they're collectively less than a quarter of all fossil fuel use.
The key is "if scaled." We are going to need more lithium. Good news is that it's not really all that rare. Bad news is that until quite recently there hasn't been serious investment in getting it. Look at what we invest in getting oil vs. lithium.
That's because until quite recently there hasn't been the demand to justify that investment. Now there is. Lithium prices have exploded, signaling the need for more. The price signals are working. Good.
It's normal during this kind of scaling to have periods where it looks like investment is outpacing demand and vice versa. Demand and supply don't scale at the same rate so you get price spikes in both directions. This doesn't change the underlying reality now in effect.
Getting back to an actual discussion of lithium, it'll be very interesting to see if the Goodenough solid electrolyte batter works well enough with sodium. If so, a lot of expensive lithium mines will be worth a lot less over time!
The Goodenough battery (he invented LiON batteries for those who don't know) looks to improve on LiON in most important areas:
- higher energy density (~2x)
- not flammable
- faster charge rates
- many more charge cycles (~100x more)
- better performance in cold conditions
- either lithium or *sodium* based glass electrolyte
https://www.texasmonthly.com/energy/all-charged-up-john-good...
Phones that fully charge in five minutes, then last twice as long...and can go for many thousands of charge cycles?
Count me in!
Goodenough is 97 years old and while he is still apparently sharp, he is not leading the lab that gets publicity under his name. From what I've seen he's more of a mentor. I, and many others[1], are extremely skeptical of the claims coming from that group. At best, they have been putting out very misleading papers that gloss over key factors or lie by omission to make their research look like they're making massive breakthroughs. At worst, many of their claims break basic rules of conservation of energy.
Either way they haven't given much evidence they have a better battery. One of the ways they produce these claims is by creating several cells, each optimized for maximum performance in one area while totally sacrificing every other metric. Then they put every good metric in the abstract and conclusion, while if the battery was balanced for lifespan, power, and capacity it would perform poorly in all ways. Beyond that they also make some absurdly high ion mobility claims in mundane materials, and nonsensical energy balances. Honestly, it has a lot of signs of bunk science... but it does seem mixed in with good (but routine) work, so it's kind of perplexing.
That article is from the October, 2017 issue. What have they found after two years? Progress, no progress?
Here's another interesting battery from a company called XNRGI:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/xnrgi-develops-ev-ba...
We'll have to wait and see if it lives up to XNRGI's claims.
The great thing about mines is that you can just leave the lithium in the ground if the current prices aren't right.
Eventually you pay off the land and your costs go down. You can keep equipment running for a long time, but it wears out. You are risking all the time though that the mineral demand might drop and now you have a worthless mine (which you need to do environmental cleanup). With equipment you risk a new process making your old equipment unable to produce what the market demands so you have to replace it.
Of course everybody understands you plan on mining for longer than 5 years. However you have a 5 year plan to get the mine operating and prove it can make money.
I don't remember exact context, but I recall a long time ago someone was talking about shipping medicine and such to a particularly poor area of Africa, and the reply was basically "There are no roads here to ship the medicine on."
NiCad for example is great for low temperature environments and they can deliver almost 100% of their capacity at the maximum rated discharge. They are essentially lead-acid with a tad more energy density and being very sensitive about how they're charged.
NiMH don't have that great of a capacity at maximum rated discharge but they do have a very very low internal resistance while still (almost) matching Lithium batteries in energy density. Additionally, they are almost perfectly constant voltage until discharged, making them suitable for applications where you might not want a complicated voltage controller.
Lithium is actually a fairly difficult cell. Drawing maximum discharge will reduce capacity, they don't like shocks or extreme temperatures and their voltage stability is meh at best. They also heat up a lot when charging or discharging, making cooling circuits required in some scenarios. They do have extraordinary energy density though.
Don't discount other battery types; battery chemistry dictates the behaviour of the battery under load scenarios, Lithium batteries aren't always the answer.
Also it’s just as difficult to leave it in the ground. Any decent mining operation takes at minimum 2-3 from construction to production so you still need to take that into account (unless you lock down some offtake agreements to hedge the risk)
Of course great and not so great are by my definition of great. You can do should do your own investigation.
Look at what they've done with their control of rare earth metals.
Artificial scarcity and resource hoarding is something that needs to be considered.
Cobalt is tricky because in most places it's a byproduct of nickel mining, and it is only mined on its own in a couple places (notably the DRC). Despite that it's fairly likely that it will scale well, and it also becomes less and less relevant as electrodes reduce the amount of cobalt they use.
Virgin spheroidal graphite is another possibly-constrained supply, as it's a very particular kind of hard coal. Luckily it can be produced artificially- batteries use a roughly 40-60 mix and it costs roughly the same. IIRC natural graphite has a slightly higher power output and synthetic graphite has higher capacity, due to the nanoscale patterning of the graphite grains. As coal mining decreases graphite will probably just become more artificially produced, since it can be made from essentially anything.
An apartment depending of where it is may put in batteries if it is in a location where power sagging/failures happen often.
Remember the entire world is not North America or Europe.
I have nothing against them/people who use them but I’m not convinced that it’s the solution to the looming crisis/possibly explosive break up in our love affair with crude oil. Plus, I’m a little afraid that here in the US we’re about a minute away from destroying Appalachia even moreso—I.e. due to particularly destructive coal mining practices and mountain topping, etc. So I’m apprehensive about increased strain on the power grid. (And I’m not keen on nuclear power either). But I welcome some kind of paradigm shift/future work that reveals I am wrong in this regard. It would be awesome if someone re-engineered and improved some aspects of these things rendering them more effective and less destructive.
(Edited at 2:24EST for typos)
That's seriously disappointing :(
Now, you have: https://assets.weforum.org/editor/large_opfwi0Tq43oLA-yv3bAv...
One a country tells its population to go electric and put the infrastructure in place to support that, people adopt EVs at a pretty fast pace and end up pretty happy about it.
Electric cars are way havier than most cars and have so much traction that road maintenance will be much more expensive when everybody has an electric car.
This is why countries like Norway and the Netherlands are thinking about raising the road tax for electric vehicles.
I also think this is why brands like Toyota are still thinking about hydrogen cars. They still don't believe 100% in electric battery cars.
Are electric Cars heavier? Yes...but not really by much. Sure a Model S is heavy, but it is a full size car designed to compare with other 4000-pound range cars and a side effect of the platform's age meanwhile a Model 3 is less than 10% heavier than a BMW 3 series.
The traction idea is just absurd.
The real reason why Norway wants to raise the road tax is because the taxes they use on gas cars and gas itself is used to pay for road repair and if there are no gas cars then there is no road upkeep budget.
Also, Toyota wants to do hydrogen because they are materials-cheap, offer specific marketable advantages, and easy to build under current architectures enabling larger profits.
But ... I don't see what that really has to do with paying for roads. We will replace the gas tax, and in fact most places are already talking about how to do it. Doesn't seem like an intractable problem at all, and will probably be fixed well before EV adoption gets into the double digits.
The traction idea is not absurd. Tesla owners claim the tires last around 25000 kilometers instead of 60000 when the drive 'insane' all the time.
Takeshi Uchiyamanda was always talking about the environment when he talked about hydrogen. And even now he sees that battey cars are taking off he still stand by his point.
But that is all marketing talk?
Euro Electric car models (like the e-golf or such) are generally adapted gasoline models that require additional hardware to make the design work, this is obviously inefficient. To make it clear, the current non-tesla/Jag/Audi EVs are almost all examples of designs that will not be seen in the future so I don't think they are fair to compare. The VW ID3 would probably be the best example of a future euro electric car.
The traction idea is absurd for a few reasons: 1: fast cars exist currently. 2: There is no proof to the idea that accelerating hard has any effect at all on roads. 3: Tesla's Performance is incredible, sure...but that's a $100K car, it is not what will be sold mass market or bought mass market. It's priced near that of a Porsche 911 turbo, which accelerates somewhat near to the level of the Model S and has never been this kind of issue.
As for hydrogen, look at this Toyota-press chart: https://insideevs.com/news/353600/toyota-six-global-bevs/
1: they are not all in on FCEV 2: Their own chart shows them believing that BEVs will eventually outsell Fuel Cell (but of course not before FC takes off..which it hasn't. )
> - It does not matter how many passenger cars drive on the roads. Only heavy transport wears it down, says Arild Ragnøy at the Norwegian Public Roads Administration.
> - All the analyzes I have seen show that all wear and tear comes from the heavy trucks, zero from private cars, says Harald Tune Larsen at the Department of Transport Economics.
Source: https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/nxE5/Bare-de-tunge-kjoret...
(Also by current law, EVs will never pay more than 50% of ICE taxes and fees, for toll roads, public parking, etc.)
What about electric trucks and other heavy vehicles? Or is there little difference since these vehicles would probably have been diesel with a lot of potential torque anyways?
I live in a pretty steep hillside of the town, and the electric garbage truck here handles it like a boss. It's made by Geesinknorba, but I couldn't find any specs.
Not really. As far as I've read, road wear grows exponentially with weight. Ah, you think, so EVs WILL make it much worse. No. What it means is that road wear is heavily dominated by heavy duty vehicles. Big trucks and such. Not personal cars. What EVs would add is a drop in the bucket.
The traction thing depends on the vehicle. My EV (Kia Soul EV) defaults to an "Eco" mode where traction is limited. The range you get is heavily dependent on driving style, so EV owners do have incentive to drive smoothly. It also increases tire wear. Most people don't like to throw away money. Yeah, you get some Tesla owners that will use "insane" mode all the time.. but that's probably a minority.
"This is why countries like Norway and the Netherlands are thinking about raising the road tax for electric vehicles."
Norway is pretty damn far away from making EVs pay more than ICE. There's still a lot of financial incentives for EVs, and pretty much everyone is on board with phasing them out slowly and keeping with the target of 100% of new cars being zero emission in the 2025-2030 time frame.
They just added toll fees for EVs in Oslo, but it's still much less than what ICEs pay.
Sensationalist media articles win both ways :-)