Shift to electric vehicles will radically change auto factories
detroitnews.com
detroitnews.com
Consider California [1], where it'll likely cross that in the next few years.
2015 | 1.7%
2016 | 1.9%
2017 | 2.6%
2018 | 4.7%
2019 | 5.6%
Both have higher gas prices and subsidies that help with TCO comparisons. But EV costs have lots of economies of scale yet to achieve.
Hard to imagine it takes 10 more years for the rest of the country to catch up to California.
[1] California New Car Dealer Association report Q2 19 https://electrek.co/2019/08/19/tesla-sales-electric-car-mark...
[2] https://insideevs.com/news/357526/june-2019-plugin-sales-nor...
The above assumes 100% electric. However I think electric will hit a plateau at around 90%. For that last 10 % (might be 5) the power to weight advantage of liquid fuel is important enough to keep a few trucks on the road (not cars or SUVs, but perhaps buses and motor homes). While it is possible to make a truck work on electric, many of them are already weight constrained, (because roads and bridges cannot handle anything heavier) or license constrained (without a CDL you can only haul so much), either way less weight in the fuel system translates into more weight they can haul. There is a lot of energy in 100 gallons (400 liters) of diesel fuel, and big trucks and equipment will burn that much fuel in a day. So long as liquid fuel ( including biodiesel) is available some applications will be willing to pay a premium to get it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QXo8TuvqQI
Presumably with the idea that they'll make money on the charging and get more business for the restaurant.
If I need gas and I have to pick up my kids after school or haul them to any appointment or other event it's not "okay" that I have to sit and wait for 30 mins. for my car to charge. Not. Going. To. Work.
Also, I live in a place that gets extremely cold, life threateningly cold. If my EV fails in that weather I could die.
Makes more sense to put chargers in places people park, like grocery stores.
IIRC CA already requires new buildings to be prepped for charging stations.
I mean, why drive somewhere to charge when you can plug in overnight and wake up to a car with 200km+ more worth of charge?
This would tie up their charging infrastructure and space for a longer time, making less money. Gas stations & charging venues are usually space-constrained because they're located on expensive real estate. Their goal is to maximize revenue and throughput in small spaces.
Makes me wonder what benefits there are to convenience store sales in states where "full service" is required.
Usually the charging stations are a different company like fortum, ionity, tesla etc. They make money on hot dogs anyway and they sell more hot dogs to people charging 15-20 minutes than people tanking for 3 minutes and drive on.
They will re-structure and monetize electrical charging in some manner. After all, the global governments need a way to recapture the vast amounts of gasoline taxes imposed on regular cars.
The way I see that is people in those places don't have automotive needs that are that different[1] than elsewhere. And 20-30% of them find BEV's to be viable enough option.
Take away BEV's are mainstream viable and not a niche product.
[1] Figure 2. https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/CA-city...
[2] Though I suspect they are less sensitive to range and price than other places.
They live in a huge, built-up, tech-heavy area that's urban for miles around, with sealed roads and a regular grid structure. Their automotive needs are completely different to someone living in an isolated rural location.
So an electric car they could charge at home and would get them to the city and back would be 'fine'
At that rate, California won't surpass 10% until the mid-2020s--maybe 2024/5. Remember, it's already 2019 and in a few months, it'll be 2020. Late-2020s is only a 3-4 years past the mid-2020s.
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2019/8/27/128006-156...
from here https://seekingalpha.com/article/4288312-bulls-bears-wrong-t...
From "China remains in pole position for electric vehicle uptake despite cuts to subsidies"
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/05/electric_cars_canal...
Maybe if we had a universal battery and simple swap out solution. Something like a car wash where you drive onto a track and a machine swaps out the battery?
Trying to artificially protect jobs in one industry while there's a huge labor shortage in much more productive things like infrastructure modernization or housing construction seems like the antithesis of an efficient market.
If we and others had depended on the existing electrical infrastructure to power our vehicles, we would have been completely screwed. A chaotic, uncomfortable situation would have become truly dangerous.
In general, I suspect electric is better in the average case, and gasoline in the case of emergencies. We see this with household power: most people power their houses with electricity, but may use a gas backup generator. For the similar reasons, we should probably drive electric cars to work but continue using gasoline-powered ambulances.
Or this kind of hybrid?
If you close a factory in city X and open 2 400km away in city Y people in city X strictly lost jobs.
There are a number of alternatives that are not nearly as onerous. EVs do not need charging every day, and few people in cities need to drive every day. If you only drive 10 miles a week you can just charge once or twice a month; I already have to move my car twice a month for street cleaning.
IMO portable batteries are the most obvious solution. The lifetime-amortized cost of batteries is <20 cents per kWh, and for larger batteries with low discharge demands it's <5 cents. A small UPS-sized truck drives down your street in the afternoon, dropping off low-profile batteries underneath your car while another guy plugs them in. In the morning the batteries get picked up and taken to be recharged.
In the end the infrastructure is about the same level of effort, but I think the portable vision is much easier to conceptualize. A lot of jobs would be opened for people making these charging trucks. Many more would be opened to drive and operate them, but I'm not sure auto plant workers would want that.
> in towns/villages every house will need its own charger
Unfortunately these jobs are not transferable to auto workers. The processes to make chargers are highly automated, unlike auto manufacturing (outside frame and component production). There will be a lot of very well paying electrician jobs opening... but that's not a profession you can just jump into, despite the number of people who try (and cause fires doing so).
Well now, this really depends on the city. Not everyone is living in bike-friendly cities, nor public transport works equally well everywhere. I know quite a few cities where practically everyone who can afford a car is using it as their primary means of getting to work and back home.
And the infrastructure needed to charge EVs largely already exists in the current electric grid. A simple adapter allows people to charge at home, and renovating current gas stations to become charging stations will be cheaper than many alternatives.
There are plants out there where the electric vehicle model is produced on the same body shop, paint, and final assembly lines. The same steps are taken just with different parts/different dimensions.
As more and more people decide to forgo owning a vehicle and just summon autos as needed, the market demand for a variety of different makes and models will decrease considerably. And autonomous fleets will likely want to standardize as much as possible, to make repairs simple and cheap. Ultimately only a fraction of designs may be needed of those on offer today, and the more standardized the options the more likely those will become automated.
What the article gets very wrong is the timeline. It says,"The Center for Automotive Research and other firms focusing on the impact of new technology on the auto industry don't expect electric vehicles to account for more than 10% of the sales market until the late 2020s"
No, that's all wrong. The big shift is going to start to happen around 2023 when battery prices will fall low enough that ev's will start to have sticker price parity with ice's. Ev sales will explode, slowed down only by how fast production can be increased. By the end of the 2020's they will be over 50%.
It's also an excellent opportunity to out-source or in-source depending on the facts of the matter. 52 card pick up.
Also I've been predicting for some time that there will be a renaissance in car manufacturing. There's already a company in Italy selling a 'sled' complete with batteries. You get six people in a garage in Detroit that are good with carbon fiber and they can become a car manufacturer. I bet there are lots of under served niches not being filed.
Volkswagen will also license their MEB electric platform to anyone who wants it.
e.Go will be using the MEB platform for their small city cars: https://electrek.co/2019/03/07/e-go-electric-car-vw-meb-plat...
Ford will be using the MEB platform for at least one model: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/vw-argo-ai-investment-for...
Of course the infotainment software do not have to adhere to such stringent requirement, but if they don't push OTA updates for that, then they might as well to avoid crappy software.
VW emissions was not a bug, it was intentional.
The OP is right; currently, automakers basically outsource all their infotainment software, and generally do a poor job with it, though it's getting better. Considering how much drivers now interact with these or similar systems (usually on their phones), to do things like stream music and especially navigate, automakers should be doing a better job integrating this stuff into the cockpits for ease of use and safety.
A subsequent review of their ECU code was quite worrying - it was to put it mildly, a cluster fuck that would result in deaths sooner or later.
E.g. NVH has been getting better pretty much every year despite the fact that car companies have been working on it for decades
The total world wide vehicle market is just under 70 million units a year. Tesla alone has guided for sales of 400k vehicles this year. If they roughly double their output on average each year they will be close to 20% of the total worldwide output in 5 years.
Where is Tesla's equivalent: minivan, yaris, rav4, tacoma, etc?
You don't really expect some soccer mom who buys a 30k minivan to buy a model X for 80k+? And I guess, the construction worker can pile his materials in the front trunk on the X too? I mean we only have 4 cars to pick from here..
And consider all of the places worldwide that Toyota sells to.. from rich countries to poor countries. They rely on infrastructure that is available globally to everyone, no matter your living situation. Even if you live in a poor country with little infrastructure and intermittent electricity, you can still get gas for your Toyota.
You might find this comparison silly... but you just said Tesla will produce 13m vehicles in 5 years.. making them 20% larger than Toyota, the worlds largest manufacturer.
Where there's a will there's a way. In ~20yr when they're old and cheap the Teslas are gonna make great scrapper cars. All that roof strength and low COG lends itself well to slapping an I-beam on the roof. Obviously a sedan is not a practical work vehicle though.
Too bad Tesla doesn't built their cars with provisions to accept a proper heavy duty roof rack since the vehicle is built to take it. I understand why they don't since that would be an invitation to do all things that would compromise aerodynamics and destroy your range.
Edit: It appears my depiction of poor people doing poor people things with Teslas may have offended some people. I'm not sorry. Nothing you can do will prevent Teslas from moving down the economic ladder with age and mileage just like every other vehicle.
In 5 years Tesla will be producing at least 7 models including 2 cars (S & 3) , 2 crossover/SUVs (X & Y), 1 sports car (roadster), 1 pick-up truck, 1 semi-truck.
https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/vws-91b-spend-evs-out...
Volkswagen's current and soon to be released battery electrics are the VW e-Up!, VW e-Golf (though this is being discontinued), VW ID.3, SEAT Mii Electric, SEAT el-Born, Skoda Citigo iV, Skoda Vision iV, Audi e-tron, and the Porsche Taycan.
Future Volkswagen battery electrics are the VW ID Crozz, VW ID Roomz, VW ID Buzz, Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo, Porsche Macan electric, Audi e-tron GT, and the Audi e-tron Q4. Volkwagen's roadmap is bigger and broader than Tesla's can be simply because Volkswagen operates at a larger scale.
Volkswagen sells EVs cheaper than any Tesla and Volkswagen also sells EVs more expensive than any Tesla, which is the point. The selection of EVs from Volkswagen is already broader than what Tesla offers.
The Porsche Taycan's Nürburgring lap time of 7:42 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m31EgQkswg) has apparently provoked Tesla into doing a lap in the Model S next week: https://electrek.co/2019/09/05/tesla-model-s-nurburgring-rac...
> They just don't have the battery cost advantage that Tesla has spent the last decade building.
The Volkswagen ID.3 will be cheaper than the equivalent range Tesla Model 3. The base model ID.3 (330km WLTP) will be around 30,000 euros, the midrange ID.3 (420km WLTP) will be around 40,000 euros, and I haven't seen pricing for the long range model (550km WLTP) but let's guess 50,000 euros. Volkswagen is officially launching the ID.3 in a few days. They might announce the final pricing then.
Of course, Musk will likely have the overheating protections disabled on the test car to keep the fanboys happy. Without that the Model S has no chance to beat the Taycan.
You then take 1/10th of the value of your stamp press and subtract it each year (depreciation). This is the amount subtracted from your profits each year.
Accounting as a profession has been around longer than tech companies. They know full well that companies buy fixed assets. Tesla isn’t some special case in this regard.
Tesla could potentially remain the number one EV manufacturer if the big manufacturers scale their EV efforts slowly and Tesla continues to expand aggressively.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a25933730/ford-f-150-elect...
In my opinion, there's also the question of whether we really want to further cement America's dependence on cars. We could be investing this money / effort into laying down bullet trains, expanding public transportation, and reforming zoning laws to make future cities more human-friendly.
Many people would still need cars, but instead of every family needing two cars, many could just have one. Then even for the people with cars, they might not drive as many miles on average with the new options open to them.
Obviously it would be easier to reduce car ownership in denser areas so that's where the bulk of the shift would happen.
Electric cars are the only option that can be rolled out fast enough. Of course we should start the transformation away from car dependence at the same time, just don't expect meaningful effects until after ICEs are already obsolete.
Because the people making electric cars know the buyer demographics and know those people have enough money to justify paying a premium for that thereby making it a marketable feature.
Nobody is wasting the money putting tree-trunk A-pillars and foot thick doors in a Chevy Aveo competitor because protection against something that's less than a once in a lifetime event for most people let alone the vehicle is not high on the priority list of those buyers.
It does seem rare for people to use their garages for cars. Half the time they're too small to get a car in and a human out though.
The whole company would have to scale accordingly. That's just not feasible. And I don't believe there has even been a hardware company in the world with exponential growth over an extended period of time.
You just said Tesla will deliver 13m in 5 years..
Tesla has up until now been an excellent example that a billion-dollar revenue business can be built much faster than 100 years ago.
Curves that look exponential turn out to be sigmoidal.
Expecting them to grow to a bigger manufacturer than Toyota in five years is laughably unrealistic.
Which they are unlikely to achieve this year. We can now finally see the year-over-year numbers (the ones that Tesla were telling us were 100s of % growth, due to new model launch a year ago), and those numbers might be down (ie no growth).
But as an industry, EVs will keep taking market share. They just make sense.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15355097/audi-makes-synth...
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/tech/synfuel-syntheti...
Also, is it fully true that the infrastructure is already here (ie, a gasoline pump could be converted to a synthetic one) ?