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A thread to discuss electric vehicles and hybrid technology. No politics, please.

Technology, commercial aspects and marketing are all on-topic.


  • Companies (e.g. Tesla Inc.) are only on-topic when discussing their electric vehicle products and research, not their wider activities. The exception is when those wider activities directly impact (or are impacted by) their other business areas - e.g. if electric vehicle development is cut back due to losses in another part of the business.

  • Technology that's not directly related to electric vehicles (e.g. general battery research) is off-topic unless you're discussing how it might be used for vehicles.

  • If we're talking about individuals here, that should only be because they've said or done something directly relevant to the topic. Specifically, posts about Tesla do not automatically need to mention Elon Musk. And Musk's views, politics and personal life are firmly off-topic unless you can somehow show that they're relevant to electric cars.

    Original post 
I was surprised there wasn't one already, so here's the spot to disscuss electric cars, hybrids, ect. No politicsing this thread please.

Also, posting this late, so sorry for any misspellings I might have left in there.

(Mod edited to replace original post)

Edited by Mrph1 on Mar 29th 2024 at 4:14:39 PM

RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Nero Fangirl
#251: Nov 12th 2019 at 5:43:08 PM

I think that seems a bit optimistic about BMW completely imploding.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#252: Nov 12th 2019 at 5:45:18 PM

It's a Twitter thread, not an academic research paper. I mention it because (a) I thought it was witty and apt; (b) BMW is losing massive market share to Tesla as its quintessential rival. The companies serve the same market and Tesla's product is vastly better.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#253: Nov 13th 2019 at 6:49:08 AM

Teslarati: Tesla receives license for Model 3 mass production in Gigafactory 3

This was the last regulatory hurdle needed to start production in in China. At an initial capacity of 150,000 cars per year, we'll soon begin to see the proof of Tesla's ability to sell cars to a Chinese populace hungry for high-quality electric vehicles, especially with the enthusiastic cooperation of the Chinese government.

Edit: Sorry, Tesla does still need a sale license. [1]

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 13th 2019 at 11:04:10 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#254: Nov 13th 2019 at 11:43:01 AM

Teslarati: Honda CEO denies electric cars, pledges hybrid support: ‘EVs will not be mainstream’

In a rather surprising interview, Honda CEO Takahiro Hachigo revealed that he does not believe in the widespread adoption of all-electric vehicles. This is why he noted that Honda will be focusing its efforts on gasoline-electric hybrid cars instead. This, according to Honda, is a more realistic way of approaching EVs.

Curiously, Honda is releasing its own battery-electric car, the creatively named Honda e, which has generated significant consumer interest, but in light of these comments it seems unlikely that it will be anything more than a "compliance car", built to be able to say that the company has one, but not intended for widespread production.

Hachigo also discussed his company's own self-driving technology, comparing it favorably to Tesla's Full Self-Driving, but the article notes that we have yet to see any information about a release of anything other than the basic lane-following, collision-avoidance tech that many cars have these days.

The whole thing feels like a "head in the sand" moment that will be seen as the point in time when Honda started losing.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 13th 2019 at 2:44:01 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
3of4 Just a harmless giant from a foreign land. from Five Seconds in the Future. Since: Jan, 2010 Relationship Status: GAR for Archer
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
#255: Nov 13th 2019 at 11:53:24 AM

Soo, I finally got fed up with public transport. I have no interest in a car, so what I'm getting next spring is this. I have been using my city's electric scooter share app for the last few months and the main issue is that its inner city only, so eventually I have to switch to bus and train.

Getting one of my own seems the logical step.

Edited by 3of4 on Nov 13th 2019 at 8:55:11 PM

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SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#256: Nov 13th 2019 at 12:17:31 PM

The whole thing feels like a "head in the sand" moment that will be seen as the point in time when Honda started losing.

Ha, I was thinking the same thing even before I was done scrolling through your post.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
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#257: Nov 13th 2019 at 1:05:10 PM

On the BMW/Tesla market share thing, though, I found some sales statistics for BMW and Tesla. Obviously, given that's where it's headquartered and focusing infrastructure building (and can do so), ~50% of Tesla's total sales last year were in the USA and another 15% were in China. By contrast, China topped the list for BMW at 25% and the USA is the second largest market at 14%, but 30% of its sales went to European markets (and presumably most of the rest was also European aside from the 3% Japan, lumped under "other").

The Twitter thread's getting a bit ahead of itself. Just a little.

Euodiachloris Since: Oct, 2010
#258: Nov 13th 2019 at 1:22:26 PM

[up]Africa, Australasia and South America buy cars, you know. And, Beemers are quite popular.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#259: Nov 13th 2019 at 1:24:17 PM

The point is that Gigafactory 3 in China now directly competes with BMW's luxury sedan market in China, and GF4 will hit its European market. I wasn't basing that off the Twitter thread, either. Bloomberg's own survey data, which has been posted about here several times, shows BMW as the most vulnerable legacy automaker to Tesla's increasing market share.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Nero Fangirl
#260: Nov 13th 2019 at 2:49:30 PM

[up][up] Yeah, but the European data was specific only down to Italy; given that anything below Japan was sub-3% of BMW's new sales and 2/3 of Europe (and nothing in the middle east, but honestly that doesn't surprise me; too cheap) wasn't present in any capacity, and Africa is not renowned as a market for brand-new sports cars, I think it's somewhat easy to conclude that a sizeable portion of the "other" consists of the various lower-population markets in Europe.

[up] There's that and there's "I think the Twitter people are being a bit overenthusiastic" and checking why. To assume BMW's complete collapse based on competition that has thus far mostly taken place away from a large portion of their markets and assume that nothing is going to change?

"Why are they building a car factory in Germany" is pretty easily boiled down to two things; you've got four countries with a sizeable chunk of automative manufacture within Europe, France never can get rid of recurring industrial action, Italy's I presume being discounted because of historical economic problems and unfriendly governments, and the UK is going through economic suicide. It only really leaves one major place where you might have a good chance of starting with me a more experienced workforce.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#261: Nov 13th 2019 at 2:58:19 PM

To clarify, Tesla is not building a factory in Germany to drive BMW out of business. That's absurd. BMW is, however, the OEM that is most vulnerable to losing market share to Tesla's products.

To avoid this, the legacy manufacturers need to invest heavily in and fully commit to replacing their product lines with battery-electric vehicles. Those that don't will die; it's just a matter of time. BEVs make ICVs as obsolete as the horse and buggy.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 13th 2019 at 6:03:08 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
KnightofLsama Since: Sep, 2010
#262: Nov 14th 2019 at 3:17:10 AM

[up] You mean kept as historical curios and tourist traps?

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#263: Nov 14th 2019 at 5:24:52 AM

"In the twentieth century, and well into the twenty-first, we dug dead plants out of the ground and burned them to power our society. Cars ran on this highly flammable and toxic liquid, which also caused vast amounts of air pollution and nearly killed us all with global warming. To make things worse, people drove them manually, which led to countless crashes and deaths. It was a dark time for humanity."

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 14th 2019 at 8:43:28 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
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#264: Nov 14th 2019 at 6:22:28 AM

I would regard that as one shoddy museum piece. Too negative, misses out on the entire chemical manufacture side of things, treats oil as mysterious goop. [lol]

[up][up] Probably going to hang on a lot longer in the sector of things that are too large or have weight limits or go too far to stick batteries in, too small for nuclear reactors.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#265: Nov 14th 2019 at 7:22:46 AM

It's true that planes and ships will use fossil fuels for a while longer, but battery technology for aircraft is already being developed. We can already make trains that run on electricity.

Cross-posting with climate change topic... Teslarati: Fossil fuel dependence will increase until 2030s due to SUV demand: Energy Agency

The International Energy Agency has reported that global demand for SUVs will offset any reduction in overall automobile emissions due to electrification until well into the 2030s. The obsession with these larger vehicles in the U.S., Europe, and China is accelerating and killing the planet.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
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#266: Nov 14th 2019 at 7:27:56 AM

I'd say more than a while longer, definitely for shipping. Long journeys with no chance to stop and recharge? The energy density of hydrocarbons is high and ships are large enough to have highly efficient engines.

I hope you mean some form of battery related train and not the one that's hooked up to the power grid, since that's not really a surprise.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#267: Nov 14th 2019 at 7:33:21 AM

No, I mean grid-connected. Of course, I have no information about any current effort to make long-distance trains run on electricity. For ships, it's worth considering a few factors:

  1. The weight of batteries, or rather their energy density, is not an issue to the degree that it would be with airplanes, or even cars, particularly for larger craft.
  2. Solar panels would seem to be a viable option for ships due to the high available surface area.

Honestly, these are less pressing matters. Passenger vehicles are the largest single contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector. Globally, the top three contributors of GHGs are electricity/heat, agriculture/forestry, and industry. Transportation represents only 14 percent, but 29 percent in the U.S. (Source: EPA website)

Unfortunately, even the most committed green energy company like Tesla can't do anything about agricultural emissions.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 14th 2019 at 10:40:49 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
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#268: Nov 14th 2019 at 7:38:54 AM

The weight is still a clear issue when we're were talking a difference in energy densities of an entire order of magnitude or more, when the entire purpose of said vehicle is to move things. That's less room for cargo without increasing the size (and larger ships come with navigation problems). On top of having a much higher unladen weight with its own problems.

Solar panels on shipping run into enormous logistical issues because that's where the cargo goes and what infrastructure is set up to work with. Never mind that exposure to the ocean in bad weather would do hell on them...

Less pressing just means that there's longer to think about the problems. We still have to do it eventually.

Edited by RainehDaze on Nov 14th 2019 at 3:41:36 PM

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#269: Nov 14th 2019 at 8:25:21 AM

So, um, about that. Clean Technica has our backs: Electric-Hybrid Yacht With 26 KW Of Solar Power Under Construction

The SILENT 80, from SILENT-YACHTS, is a trans-ocean electric-hybrid catamaran with a 26 kW solar power system onboard. There are several options for propulsion, including a configuration with the very large solar power system, batteries, electric motors, and a generator that burns fuel to also charge the batteries. With this option, the vessel produces very little noise, especially relative to power yachts of the same size, which typically use diesel engines.

[...]

Under normal sunny conditions, the boat can cruise day and night at a constant speed of 5 knots.

This ain't a cargo ship, but it's an interesting attempt to show how one can approach carbon-neutral ocean travel.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 14th 2019 at 11:26:50 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Nero Fangirl
#270: Nov 14th 2019 at 9:17:48 AM

Well, I'm hardly surprised it's being done with a yacht. Note the design—it's a shallow catamaran; it has very little in the water by design. Impressive to get the battery weight down though... not sure how the panels hold up to the south sea or storm conditions. I'm curious.

Cargo ships produce effectively Megawatts from their engines, upwards of 100,000 HP. That's the hard part. Even as huge as they are, I don't think there's enough surface area on them for panels for that.

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#271: Nov 14th 2019 at 10:11:12 AM

Trains on electricity is really simple, put some overhead lines over the tracks, buy or produce appropriate trains, and hook the overhead line to appropriate powerplants.

The Swiss federal railway company has a whole network of hydropower plants to keep the trains running.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
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#272: Nov 14th 2019 at 10:14:28 AM

The advantage of trains is you know exactly where they're going.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#273: Nov 14th 2019 at 7:26:40 PM

Teslarati: Tesla sends out invites for its Cybertruck unveiling with new pickup teaser

The event will be Thursday, Nov 21 at the Tesla Design Center in Hawthorne, CA. As is typical for Tesla, the invitation contains Easter eggs if you play with the contrast, showing wheels and hints of an elongated bed. Tesla has also filed trademarks for the words "Cybertruck" and "CYBRTRK". The hype is reaching crazy levels.

Elon Musk has previously shared information stating that the Cybertruck is expected to have a base price of $49,000 and 400 to 500 miles of range. That's incredibly impressive and hints at significant advances in battery technology in terms of price per kWh.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 14th 2019 at 10:27:48 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#274: Nov 15th 2019 at 9:22:12 AM

Clean Technica: Volkswagen EV Factory In Chattanooga Will Include Battery Pack Manufacturing

Volkswagen broke ground on its long planned EV factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee this week. The $800 million facility will manufacture electric cars based on the company’s new MEB platform, with the first cars scheduled to roll off the line in 2022. [...] The company says the first vehicle built at the new factory will be an SUV model but did not offer any further details.

While the new factory has been planned for almost a year, TechCrunch reports there was a surprise announcement during the groundbreaking ceremonies. Volkswagen says a portion of the new 564,000 square foot factory will be devoted to making battery packs. We don’t know at the moment what company will supply the battery cells for the US-made cars.

We need more of this. More!!

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 15th 2019 at 12:24:27 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#275: Nov 15th 2019 at 12:43:00 PM

Elektrek: Ford Mustang Mach E specs leaked

The leak was from Ford's own website, but was taken down immediately after being discovered. The official reveal date is November 17. Here are the versions and rough specs:

  • First Edition: $59,900 MSRP (EPA est. 270 miles, mid 5-second, AWD, 19” wheels)
  • Select: $43,895 MSRP (EPA est. 230 miles, mid 5-second, AWD or RWD, 18” wheels)
  • Premium: $50,600 MSRP (EPA est. 300 miles, mid 5-second, AWD or RWD, 19” wheels)
  • California Route 1: $52,400 (EPA est. 300 miles, mid 6-second, AWD, 18” wheels)
  • GT: $60,500 (EPA est. 235 miles, mid 3-second, AWD, 20” wheels)

Seems pretty snazzy, and I have always liked the Mustang's styling, although this is... an SUV? Okay, Ford, you do you. When I think of a 'stang, I think of a sports car.

Ford seems to be positioning its Mach E against the Tesla Model Y, which will release slightly before it. Hey, the more the merrier. Tesla's goal is to transition the world to clean energy, so all aboard!

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 15th 2019 at 3:45:31 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

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