Electric cars

Martyn1981

Excellent interview on Fully Charged looking at the barriers to EV adoption, or more correctly, how those barriers have fallen.

I was surprised at this, but the prediction is that the disruption 'S' curve really starts to take off in 2020, as range, cost, choice and practicality (charging) are all met.

Something else of interest was the point about ICE affordability from about 2025 onwards. The argument is quite simple - many/most cars are now on some form of lease, the lease has to take into account the re-sale value of the car at the end of the lease, by 2030 the value will be very small, so by 2025 leases will have to reflect this higher depreciation (per year) pushing up the cost considerably, and this effect will only get greater as time goes on. Interesting theory, sounds reasonable.

Definitely worth a watch from beginning to end.

Barriers to EV adoption | Fully Charged

Martyn1981

I think the 'big boys' have gotten the message -

Ford to invest $11bn and have 40 hybrid and fully electric vehicles by 2022

The planned investment is significantly higher than the previously announced target of $4.5bn by 2020

This paragraph suggests (to me) that the Chevy Bolt is a compliance car:

GM’s chief, Mary Barra, has promised investors the Detroit automaker will make money selling electric cars by 2021.

AnotherJoe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

This paragraph suggests (to me) that the Chevy Bolt is a compliance car:

Yes, it seems clear that GM have no plans to produce more than 30k cars a year, which AIUI is the limit for compliance cars.

FWIW Ford announced yesterday a forthcoming long range SUV type car for 2020 to be called Mach 1.

https://insideevs.com/ford-confirms-mach-1-performance-suv-2020-launch/

AnotherJoe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I believe that in the context of that post, 'companies that make gearboxes' (note the plural) = gearbox industry, not each individual company.

I think your desperation was best highlighted when you ignored coal/tin industry and instead tried to spin into mining industry.

So, I'll ask again - Do you think the industry producing single ratio fixed reduction gears, will be as large (in monetary terms) as the current gearbox industry producing large, heavy and expensive multi gear variable devices with reverse gears too?

Yes as the OP of that post I obviously meant the industry in totality, and foolishly didn’t see the need to caveat it with details that some smart companies might get out of the ICE gearbox industry into related or even totally different fields. But as this is the internet obviously I should have.

Point is, as said above, the “traditional” gearbox industry is going to go away. There might be one or two smarter survivors just as, for example I pointed out in another post, there’s a spark plug company that’s using its ceramic expertise to attempt to move into solid state batteries. But the spark plug and gearbox industries has as good prospects as the buggy whip industry had in 1900. Responding that Acme Buggy Whips transitioned into Acme custom steering wheel covers, doesn’t negate the general point that the buggy whip industry went away.

It all comes down to if you want to make clever points or debate the bigger picture seriously.

AnotherJoe

Gloomendoom wrote: »

On the contrary, I think you may be missing my point. To ensure that their business does not reduce massively, ZF are not sticking with gearbox production. They have diversified away from solely producing gearboxes and final drives to also producing integrated electric drive systems.

A quick glance at the picture I posted or better, a perusal of their website using the link I also posted should convince you that these integrated systems are equally as large and expensive as any conventional gearbox.

But ithat includes the engine, so in that example the ICE engine industry has gone away replaced by a simpler all in one unit. The point is that the size of those two industries, engine and gearbox, will be a small fraction of what replaces them after the transition . The fact that a clever company might be able to come up with a modular solution that replaces both (Bosch are doing the same BTW) doesn’t negate the general point that whole industries are going to massively downsize at best (from their POV) or simply vanish.

I don’t understand if the argument against this change is clever point scoring or the respondents genuinely don’t understand the massive changes that EV cars will bring about.

NigeWick

AnotherJoe wrote: »

doesn’t negate the general point that whole industries are going to massively downsize at best (from their POV) or simply vanish.

I believe you are correct and I don't think the bulk of the automotive industry understands just how huge that change is going to be when Transport as a Service really takes off in a few years time.

The large motor manufacturers have the ability to dominate the coming autonomous electric vehicle market but most are not putting in the effort to be first off the starting blocks. And, most do not realise that there just will not be the demand for the numbers of vehicles that they are used to producing.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

NigeWick wrote: »

I believe you are correct and I don't think the bulk of the automotive industry understands just how huge that change is going to be when Transport as a Service really takes off in a few years time.

I'm not convinced it ever will. There is nothing in EVs that makes TaaS more attractive as a business or usage proposition.

A number of people have had a crack at it already but they can't address the intangibles that make everyone in a country spend stupid amounts of money to have their own car on a drive. You'd think the prime example of TaaS would be the company car, and then you recognise that it is nearly impossible to get employees not to take ownership of a car, even with strict sharing rules. You just have to look at the thousands of dusty cars by the roadsides in London - where drivers will not use their cars for weeks on end because the public transport infrastructure is more effective than driving - to realise that there has to be a massive shift (and a system to allow people to be confident that come Bank Holiday Monday they will have their car to sit in a traffic jam).

All the infrastructure to enable TaaS has been around for years, and EVs are irrelevant to whether it takes off.

AdrianC

IanMSpencer wrote: »

I'm not convinced it ever will. There is nothing in EVs that makes TaaS more attractive as a business or usage proposition.
...
All the infrastructure to enable TaaS has been around for years, and EVs are irrelevant to whether it takes off.

TaaS is already a reality, both in the UK (various "car clubs" and short-term hire schemes) and especially in France - AutoLib has been live since 2011 in Paris, now Lyon and Bordeaux, and really very little different to all the "Borisbike" schemes, but La Rochelle had something similar using electric versions of Peugeot 106s and Citroen Saxos in the late 90s, early 00s.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

AdrianC wrote: »

TaaS is already a reality, both in the UK (various "car clubs" and short-term hire schemes) and especially in France - AutoLib has been live since 2011 in Paris, now Lyon and Bordeaux, and really very little different to all the "Borisbike" schemes, but La Rochelle had something similar using electric versions of Peugeot 106s and Citroen Saxos in the late 90s, early 00s.

There is a big difference between these small scale schemes and them "really taking off" to the extent it will undermine the car industry.

AdrianC

After six years of full-scale operation, the Paris scheme is 4,000 cars and 130,000 subscribers, in a city of 2m residents.

The question, therefore, is more one of why it hasn't "taken off" further as yet.

The cars, btw, are 160 mile urban official range electric-only, four seat, with over 5,000 charging points available.