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Comment by joe_mamba | Hacker News Reader

I think Ferrari, Lambo, Rolls Royce, Bugatti, Zonda etc. will do just fine with selling luxury ICEs with many cylinders that go vroom to rich people. In fact they'll probably do better as global wealth gap increases.

It's the Audis, BMWs, Mercedes, etc of Europe they'll probably end up the way of Philips, Blaupunkt, Alcatel, Grundig, Nokia, Thomson, Gigaset, SAgem, etc. meaning selling off their consumer civilian operations to chinese OEMs and all that remain will be the recognizable name badge put on imported Chinese components assembled in EU, while the small remaining European operations focus on vehicles and powertrains for defense/naval/aerospace/etc.

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No way that European car companies give up that easily. I bet you didn't know that VW is currently the #1 EV seller in Europe and #1 car seller in China (with a small but increasing fraction of EVs there, though):

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

Same VW models in China cost about 50% less than in EU.

Which should in itself tell you that VW can compete on price if it has to.

I never said they can't sell in China. My question with this was if they can maintain the same levels of profitability they enjoyed during the ICE glory days, as a lot of EU economies are dependent on the profitability of the auto sector. If profits slump, then so will the lives of a lot of working class Europeans. Keep in mind the auto sector used the be the biggest R&D spender in EU.

Some companies accept a profit loss in some markets compensated by the profit gains in others in the interest of capturing a growing market so this might distort VW's success in China.

VW is too slow and bureaucratic to compete with China

FUD

I can’t speak for all of the western world, but European car makers don’t seem to be struggling selling EVs on the UK.

the question is where they'll be able to sell them: Europe is going to ban the sale of ICE cars from 2035 so, unless someone finds a loophole, that's a whole market gone.

Europe will change their mind when protests start that many people can’t buy a car that they can charge because their home doesn’t have the capacity and public charging scarcity and congestion makes the 1970s gas rationing look convenient.

Nearly all these carmakers already do make plenty of EVs. If I’m very wrong and people there wish to buy EVs exclusively, that’s what will sell and what will get made.

Their homes don't have electricity?

A standard wall socket doesn't provide enough amperage to charge an EV at reasonable rate if you use your car more than once or twice a week. Maybe this is less of a problem in the EU where people generally have shorter commutes, but I could definitely still see it being an issue.

I know multiple people that have had to upgrade the main electrical panel in their home to support an EV charger, because their older building did not have enough capacity.

Don't forget that in the EU household circuits tend to support higher loads than US household circuits.

EU typically from what I've read uses 240 V compared to 120 V in the US. They are usually 16 A compared to 15 A in the US.

That gives them 3840 W vs 1800 W for the US, but that would just be for intermittent loads. For continuous loads you are supposed to derate that. In the US the continuous limit is 1440 W. From what I've read it is 2800 W in much of Europe.

At 3.5 miles/kWh that gives 5 miles/hour charging in the US and 9.8 miles/hour in the EU.

In most of the EU that would be enough to cover the average daily commute with 2 hours of charging.

Most homes in the EU have a three phase connection and can support 22kW wall charging.

Homes in the EU can draw more power than homes in the US as we use 240V with the same amount of amps. That’s also part of the reason why we use kettles as we can boil water roughly 2x faster (they can draw up to 3kW while operating!)

>Most homes in the EU have a three phase connection and can support 22kW wall charging.

Most Europeans don't live in single family homes for this to be a practical advantage.

>Most Europeans don't live in single family homes for this to be a practical advantage.

Uh, where are you getting that from? From what I can tell at sources like [0] "most" Europeans overall (though with very significant country variance) do live in detached or semi-detached housing. Most also own it. Further, even for those in flats the higher voltage EU's grid runs at still means easier higher kilowatts at parking lot or garage chargers, so it's still an advantage anyway?

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0: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d...

Most people live in apartment buildings(flats), not in detached housing. Urban speaking. The country with detached housing already ahs EVs.

Many people live in apartments and they do not have a garage.

You cannot connect a cable from your home at the 10th floor to a car that may be hundreds of m away.

There are companies selling streetlight replacements with chargers. They may get a lot of business in the next decade.

Everyone in Europe has a garage in their home?

I'm European, in my 40 years living in Europe I have never had a garage. I don't know where you're getting that idea from.

Garage is not a requirement

> Europe is going to ban the sale of ICE cars from 2035 so

A law made up on the way the economy and purchasing power was going in 2020. The reality now is way different. If you don't adjust laws based on economic reality you're gonna have a bad time.

Zonda is a model from Pagani Automobili.

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