"What could be better than the telegraph!"
"What could be better than the telephone!"
"What could be better than the personal telephone!"
"What could be better than the portable personal telephone!"
"lol - I have a super computer in my pocket"
One day, a computer will fit on a desk (1974)
maschinenbau said:Car companies (like every corporation) are driven to create value for shareholders. That is every corporation's #1 goal, no matter what.
Value of a stock is affected by telling potential shareholders what you're doing now to create value in the future.
Shareholders think electric and autonomous are the future, because that's what every car and tech company is talking about, therefore any company not investing (or claiming to invest) in that tech may not create value in the future.
No matter what a carmaker actually puts out over the next few years (or 5 or 10 or 20), they have to at least be talking about electric and autonomous right now to keep investors happy.
That is what you're seeing today.
I agree with you. But I do think that the reason investors are so keen on electrification/autonomous driving/ride sharing/etc has less to do with just talking heads creating buzz, and more to do with the reason why they're talking about it. It represents a new market. It allows a shuffling of market share compared to the very mature US auto market that we currently know. And that has the potential to lead to explosive gains in share price compared to the slow, steady march of the current situation. Everybody wants big gains, and they want them now. Electrification and the buzzy future stuff offers a lot more potential for that than traditional vehicles do at this point. Electric and autonomous vehicles should eventually be more profitable for automakers as well, which only makes Wall St slobber even more over vast untapped profits. From an investor's viewpoint electrification, etc pretty much boils down to: New revenue streams + increased profit per unit = GAINZ!!!
In reply to T.J. :
Your post prompted me to go look at some data (which I have not seen for a few years since I last looked into this topic). This is something that I found. Do you have something that suggest something different?
If a company made a sporty rwd car that didn't weigh a ton at ~400hp that was electric and sold for under $40k I would be all for it.
So far all these cars have been straight up POS econoboxes or tanks. Aside the Tesla Roadster which is 911 prices.
I was hoping Tesla would make a Model 3 with the baseline RWD Model S engine that makes like 400hp. They didn't.
In reply to STM317 :
I think there's also one other factor, which is that the manufacturers cannot *appear* to be fall behind in the eye of the public, especially one of the largest manufacturers of cars in the world and an industrial giant of Germany/Europe. Just as Ford had a big lead in auto a hundred years ago, those who invest in the future will also have a lead (example: Ford utilizing Toyota technology for its hybrid cars). Once the market believes that a company is a follower rather than a leader, in an era of technology upheaval, then it's a spiral of death (everything from stock price to recruiting top engineers to a seat at the table on future regulation, etc.).
In reply to bcp2011 :
Nope, your graph shows what I expected. I suspect hard coal dropped off for the similar reasons that it dropped off in the US - they have already mined the easiest to get to hard coal, so now they depend more and more on lignite as a fraction of their overall coal usage. So just eyeballing numbers from 2010 and comparing them to 2017, renewables jumped up from something like 16% of their energy mix to just about 50%. Nukes dropped from about 22% down to just under 12%. Fossil fuels dropped from about 56% to just under 50%. If they would've kept their nukes in service so they produced the same energy as in 2010, then fossil fuels would now account for only 40% of their energy instead of the 50% they do today.
So, shutting down their nukes has resulted in releasing more CO2 than if they would've kept them in service.
I'm not claiming that CO2 emissions are higher than they were in 2010, I am claiming that they are higher than they would've been if they kept their nukes. Renewables cannot provide a stable grid without some (at this time) nonexistent energy storage system or without nukes or fossil plants providing the base load. They chose to phase out nukes because of Fukishima and as a result are not getting the CO2 reduction they could be getting from their renewables.
In reply to T.J. :
Understand your point now. Your prior point read closer to them relying more on coal, which I read as an absolute statement, when I think your meant it as a relative statement (e.g., they are relying more on coal *than if they had kept the nukes*).
On the point of stable grid - agreed on the baseload issue. I wonder how much of baseload can be provided between wind, solar, and concentrated solar at scale and % of times when gas or battery would be needed.
dculberson said:In reply to Javelin :
Exactly. P90d has an 11.x 1/4 mile unless it had ludicrous mode in which case it’s a 10 second car. So he was a bad driver, and there’s nothing to be learned about the car from that.
This was in 2014, I don't think Ludicrous existed yet.
Why must electric cars be a silver bullet?
I think electric cars are great...but not the solution to everything. In fact going ALL electric is going to have its own environmental and social challenges just like coal, gas,in nuclear and wind do. The real silver bullet is diversity. Some places/situations ICE will be the best answer, others electric.
Personally I want an ICE and electric vehicle as it makes power outages/gas shortages a non issue.
IMO the push back that comes from the neysayers is mostly around the fanatic "savior" complex that is associated with electric/hybrids. Electric cars are needed and in many areas should be the majority, but the hysteria that they are some environmental savior is niave.
At this point, given that China and a large chunk of the EU are/will be mandating electric vehicles, the plusses and minuses of them cease to matter to the car companies. VW wants to keep on selling a ton of cars in those markets, and so it will produce a ton of EVs.
In North America, we'll get whatever fits the CAFE requirements, which at this point looks like small displacement turbo 4s until someone fixes the broken fuel economy testing.
I just saw this that they are planning on testing an electrified autobahn for semis so basically a trolley semi trucks.
it will be interesting maybe the lack of turns will help it. Here in Edmonton we used to have a bunch of trolley bus lines here downtown and throughout the city for years but they were notorious for coming off etc plus they were very reliable and the city had to have a diesel bus of standby for every trolley bus.
I think VW's plans are reasonable, not overly optimistic at all. I'm getting more and more confident over time that I'm gonna win that bet with volvoclearinghouse 
New battery technologies are going to completely change the game, first solid-state lithium which it seems will be going into the Tesla Roadster 2.0 and the Tesla Semi based on their specs, and next the dual-carbon battery which is far safer and faster to charge than li-ion, and far less environmentally damaging to manufacture than any battery that's come before.
There won't be much demand for ICE-powered cars/pickups in the future. EVs hitting the market now can already do an 80% quick charge in 20 minutes - and that's if you manage to deplete the "full tank" you can leave home with every morning.
On the energy grid side of things, renewable power with storage is already becoming competitive with fossil power on price in some places. Economics will force a carbon-neutral power grid within just a few decades even if governments continue to halfass the response to climate change.
In reply to GameboyRMH :
Doubtful. You're lucky, though, my Mazda 3 has a pretty small tank. 
Although, you're doubly lucky, I can't seem to recall what exactly the bet was for. At least I no longer confuse you for ProDarwin.
In reply to bcp2011 :
I should've been more clear in my first post. Thanks for making me clarify and think about what I typed.
volvoclearinghouse said:In reply to GameboyRMH :
Doubtful. You're lucky, though, my Mazda 3 has a pretty small tank.
Although, you're doubly lucky, I can't seem to recall what exactly the bet was for. At least I no longer confuse you for ProDarwin.
The bet was that half of new car sales by volume will be non-ICE by 2027:
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/france-to-ban-fuel-powered-cars-by-2040/130794/page3/
In reply to GameboyRMH :
Yep, that's what I remembered. Now, the question is, how semantic are we going to be? I ask because the bet was on "cars". Ford won't sell a single car next year, GM is culling most of its cars, and sedan sales are down pretty universally.
On the flip side of this, Ford is very much still going to be selling Fx50's in 2027, and while they may offer an electric option by then, my guess is that the take rate will be like 5%. Ford sells more Fx50's than most other manufacturers sell cars.
volvoclearinghouse said:In reply to GameboyRMH :
Yep, that's what I remembered. Now, the question is, how semantic are we going to be? I ask because the bet was on "cars". Ford won't sell a single car next year, GM is culling most of its cars, and sedan sales are down pretty universally.
On the flip side of this, Ford is very much still going to be selling Fx50's in 2027, and while they may offer an electric option by then, my guess is that the take rate will be like 5%. Ford sells more Fx50's than most other manufacturers sell cars.
In the US. In China, they will buy EVs and many more vehicles total than here.
kanaric said:If a company made a sporty rwd car that didn't weigh a ton at ~400hp that was electric and sold for under $40k I would be all for it.
How many ICE cars that match those specs are there on the market? Not damn many. Sorry. Just because you want everything for nothing doesn't mean anyone has to give it to you.
I was talking with my oldest last night, he is almost old enough to get his permit, that I would not be surprised if by the time his 8 year old sister is my age, late 40's, cars will be self driving and electric. If you want to drive yourself in an ICE vehicle it will be like a track day is now. Pay some money, go to a closed road and have fun.
In reply to Aaron_King :
Yeah, I was just sort of coming back to this thread as I reconciled myself with the notion that I've already had one electric car, and am pretty much on board with another when it's got enough range. At this point, I think I could actually get one that does without spending Tesla money, we just have lots of life left in the Mini.
I've also already mostly accepted that even "fun" modern cars like our Mini or the WRX we had don't do much for me, so I'm already reaching into the past for my vehicular fun.
And wrapping it all up, I've more or less quit riding motorcycles on the street in favor of track days. While trying to have all my driving fun at the track and autocross sounds a bit awkward, when it comes down to it, I think I'm already halfway there. I hope and suspect that it'll be some time before we lose the ability to use old vehicles for the odd pleasure trip. JKB's classic Mini reminded me that there is *some* fun to be had with the right car on public roads, in the classic Slow Car Fast style, when the vehicle's so awesome that you don't know or care you're genuinely going slow...
But yeah; I think it might not actually ruin my life if we're tapering off ICEs for normal cars. Change is the only constant. My '63 Ranchero is from nearly halfway back through the history of the motorcar. Cars feel like they've been around so long, but in terms of human history, not so much.
I'm glad the process to produce materials to make batteries has no adverse effect on the environment.
I'm glad that the power plants needed to produce electricity for electric cars don't contribute to "environmental" issues.
I'm glad producing brand new cars has little to no effect on the environment as well.
I'm glad the North American power grid can sustain this type of influx!
All great bi-products from electric cars!
Seriously though I'm not against electric cars (minus the fact that there are no cool engine noises) but they aren't the solution to all of the problems. Most of this is picking up your laundry that needs to be folded from your couch and putting it on your bed. It's not getting folded or put away just being put out of sight and out of mind until it's too late and you need to go to bed.
Electric cars actually make almost all of those problems smaller immediately.
The environmental impact of creating batteries is far less than that of extracting, refining, and transporting gas/diesel. And upcoming battery types could phase out the need for rare earth metals (like dual-carbon or room-temperature flouride batteries)
The vast majority of power plants needed to charge EVs produce far less pollution per kilowatt than any ICE, and can be cleaned up centrally. As renewable+storage continues to get cheaper vs. fossil fuels, it will have to happen or it will be expensive.
New cars...well new EVs aren't necessarily cleaner to produce in the first place, but that's more of a new car problem than an EV problem.
Power grids can sustain, and in fact may need, the influx, because power usage has plateaued in recent years due to efficiency increases, and the power grids want some growth in demand. EV charging could deliver it.
GameboyRMH said:
The vast majority of power plants needed to charge EVs produce far less pollution per kilowatt than any ICE, and can be cleaned up centrally.
Are you sure about that?
The reason the PZEV (Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle) limit exists at all is that OEM's proved that ICEs can be cleaner than power plants The agreement for the PZEV level is 5 PZEV cars would be the equivallent of one EV in terms of HC, NOx, CO, and PM. Keeping gas ICE engines really clean is pretty easy these days, to the point that the entire fleet being sold in 2023 will average what what used to be called PZEV.
In reply to DirtyBird222 :
Have you looked into the oil refining process and it's efficiency? I have (tho very limited technical / scientific knowledge) because my company invested in refineries. If I remember correctly somewhere around 15% of the refined fuel from the refinery is needed to boil the same amount of oil for the next batch. Then you have to take into account extraction, transportation to/from refinery, and finally the ICE to utilize the energy. I've not done any research on well to miles efficiency, but I can't imagine that number is high.
The alternative is using solar panels (or wind, or water, or whatever) to charge a car, bypassing extraction, bypassing grid and transmission loss (doesn't apply to central power), and bypassing any pollutants from the ICE. Free energy outside of initial capital cost. Besides lower (or zero) fuel costs, there's also savings on maintenance.
I'm a car nut through and through, and I don't have a hybrid or electric car at the moment, but the math of solar panels and an electric car is hard to argue with. My current car will likely be relegated to a track car next year as a result.
alfadriver said:Are you sure about that?
The reason the PZEV (Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle) limit exists at all is that OEM's proved that ICEs can be cleaner than power plants The agreement for the PZEV level is 5 PZEV cars would be the equivallent of one EV in terms of HC, NOx, CO, and PM. Keeping gas ICE engines really clean is pretty easy these days, to the point that the entire fleet being sold in 2023 will average what what used to be called PZEV.
That's true if you don't include CO2, but CO2 emission is the most important waste gas to reduce these days now that everything else can be taken care of as you point out.
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