German here. My Problem with the German Car Industry is that they still see the car as a product, not as a platform. A car is a major investment and one that sticks to me for a while. I must rely on the car manufactures to continuously push updates and improve the lane-keeping assistant etc. (Maybe even the style of the UI?). I don't see this happening, at all. The lane keeping assistants get shipped and then forgotten, everybody is working on a new integration that is maybe coming out in years (crazy to think about if your only used to software-cycles). I don't want to be in the situation that i can't pair my smartphone with my car next year because mercedes doesn't bother updating it's software. Tesla does OTA updates and sees it's car as a platform, at least in my perspective. Software is all i know and they don't understand software yet. Softwares lives, unsupported software is dead.
I don't think that they are completely missing the electric car trend. They are being cautious, but everybody is at least getting it's feet wet. I hope they can then "just" scale their production. I don't think this is enough, but i hope they can turn around quickly enough when this gets serious.
But overall the future doesn't look too good.
Besides, i don't have the money right now to buy a car (also i don't want to).
As someone who worked at one of the OEMs in the german automotive industry I can second this. However the big problem is that the complete engineering process that many of those companies have does not allow for any updates and a car platform. The process is mostly: You write dozens of specifications for specific components of a car and then get contracts with external suppliers that develop and produce those. After the development cycle for a specific model is over (~3-4years) all these components have been integrated into a complete car that gets sold. When the next development cycle starts basically everything is done from the beginning, since the components may be developed and produced by completely different suppliers. So no chance to update anything, since the component might have not only different hardware, but also completely different software - even though it might look the same from user perspective. One way to solve this would be to develop more software and components in-house in order to continuously improve them. But as this is against the established engineering process it will only be very slowly introduced - if at all. In addition to that these companies mostly don't understand software (and software development), so the results won't be great in the beginning.
BMW has a subsidiary in Ulm (BMW Car-IT) working on the next head unit. This will be designed and engineered in-house, at least to a large extent. Any opinion on that? The current head unit generation is apparently sourced from a 3rd party. I interviewed there once, it was almost funny how much they stressed that they're a software company, not a car company, kind of like self-hypnosis. (Disclosure: I didn't get the job, neither wanted it after seeing the situation on-site; didn't fit into their culture.) (Fun fact: Company is full of ex-Nokians who they apparently scooped up when the local Nokia subsidiary had layoffs.)
I know that Car IT has a large group there which originates from the Nokia office in Ulm. They also have lots of hiring postings on stackoverflow careers. But I don't really know how much they are doing in house within that group and which parts will still be externally sourced. Even if they are now doing more parts of the headunit themselves there will be still lots of other ECUs which are 100% external developments. For infotainment BMW probably has the most in-house efforts going on. Audi went another route and founded e-solutions as a joint venture together with Elektrobit, which is developing exclusively for Audi. Daimler is still mostly relying on external partners.
A bit off-topic. I recently had to endure an azure evangelist telling me on literally every slide that they are now open (they had a big blue "open"-rectangle on the upper-right edge). A moment later i got very, very frustrated because a feature i had to use didn't work with the java-library (https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-java/issues/465 open since February!), the node.js library and the Rest interface lacked critical features so i was unable to authenticate programmatically (i think). Since i am working on a Mac and don't have windows, i couldn't use the C# library because it required dlls. In the end I had to code a simple proxy server in C# in a text-editor on my mac and then push it to a azure server running windows, compile it there and run it, just to get the data to my program. It was really a horrible experience. Since then i just assume that somebody that really has to stress something has in reality big problems/deficits in dealing with it.
Huh? But you can use C# on a Mac... I should know, I just came home from doing that all day at work. .NET Core works great on Mac, and imports many dlls just fine.
That being said if it was quite an old dll, and never compiled under PCL or netstandard, maybe not. There's still Mono, but, well, I can definitely understand reluctance in this case, and indeed would choose a different way in a different language myself, if that was my only option left that way.
if i remember correctly the DLL was responsible for the library to not be portable. It might be that i don't remember this correctly, but some crucial part was not available so i could not use it.
Yeah, i don't have the feeling that they will ever even consider open-sourcing non-crucial (from the business perspective) components. There is much to be gained by working together on Computer Vision for example, just compare the german automotive industries approach to ML to something like googles.
Platforms are really great for the platform owners because they create lock-in.
A product is something you buy and own. It might not have the latest whizbang features but it does its job and won't stop working because a new version comes out. Kind of like software before it became apps or mobile phones before they became smart.
Cars are indeed becoming platforms. From Renault's leased batteries which contain some form of DRM, cloud-based access in Toyotas to Teslas updates and analytics. None of the above has really existed for a long time i.e. more than 10 years, so we don't know what will happen to these platform cars.
Cars are products not platforms, and it will be thus for the time being.
Cars are very complex. There's a lot going on. Changes to one small thing, affect many other things. Safety is a huge concern, and everything has to be tested, tested, tested.
I don't think Tesla's car is really a 'platform' - rather, maybe that have a more advanced and seamless means to update their software, after all, they are pretty new.
Perhaps internally - the software could be more 'platform-like' - in which case, re-using components could be easier, and upgrading legacy cars could be much more feasible.
Maybe we're arguing semantics ... but from a driver's perspective ... it's a 'product'. Some companies, because of their internal processes, just do a better job of keeping things up to date.
Tesla has cars, not platforms. There's not much commonality between Tesla models. Ford has five car platforms with 28 models built on them. In the auto business, "platforms" are a manufacturing economy; they mean little to the consumer.
I was using 'platform' in the computer sense, well, since this is HN :) after all.
I used to work at BlackBerry, and we had the 'platform' vs. 'product' debate a lot, but again it was a consumer thing, not internal, i.e. 'is a BlackBerry a solution, or a platform for other things'?
I worked together with many Japanese CE companies during the transition to MP3.
At first I was surprised why they were so slow to adapt and were happy to work with the music industry who tried to ban unprotected MP3s and planned to sell MP3s for $5.
It went against everything that consumers wanted at the time.
But... once you saw that these companies employed so many terrific engineers who could build tiny miniaturized drives for tape decks, laser pickups that could withstand vibrations, etc... it was understandable. All these engineers, of which many were in their 50s were about to lose their value and their expertise.
The company tried to retrain quite a few of them to S/W engineering. It was heartbreaking how ashamed many of them were about their struggles.
The German ethos is quite similar to Japan. A prime responsibility is employment and valuing their workforce. That is why they are so fearful of a change in the entire eco-system of the internal combustion engine.
German here and no offense taken, but: What are your grounds for assuming that it is a nation's work ethos that is keeping companies from innovating? How is a multinational's German work ethos keeping it's Indian or US-American employees from innovating? Why aren't German Ford-Workers failing in Germany because of their american work ethos?
It is a rather cajoling prejudice. But in my experience of working in big multinational companies (DAX or DJI enterprises) change isn't prohibited by management's guilt or a society's taboo of layoffs. Instead it's the sheer number of employees, responsibilities and added layers of business-structure.
What's adding to the complexity of business structure is that with every country it operates in, new regulations and country specifics are to be dealt with. No new merger or acquisition will result in equilibrium of efficiency. You may have to - out of the most ridiculous reasons - work with a team that's located in another company, city or time-zone - or complete different culture, which means more overhead.
I think this work ethos cliche stems from a misconception. Yes, in Japan as in Germany old employees are guarded like infants. But that's often due to the old contracts that they got [1]. Those were granted seldomly since. Instead most of these companies (or rather their work pipelines) are filled with temp staff, external contractors and suppliers. There is no "ethos" protecting those people from being fired immediately.
[1] Contracts of war-torn countries. Contracts of countries that just years before believed that they would rule the world and now had to beg for glimpses of sovereignty. Rebuilding the economy was more than about jobs. It was about the gaining back sovereignty. That's why firing those 50 year olds is more expensive than keeping them. And thats why the companies at the same time try to dodge the necessity of having to employ someone just because some external market demand.
Forget the ethos part and read the first two paragraphs. He's saying that there are a bunch of older people who know one domain and they aren't ready for the transition to the next.
Then he says that he sees a parallel in where Germany is today. Frankly, so do I. VW bet on diesel and gamed the system. It's not the cheating that is the big problem, it's the investment in diesel when cities are full of smog and the world is moving to electric.
In 10 years, heck, maybe in a year or two, that is going to look like a really really bad idea.
On the other hand, Daimler is pretty well established in autonomous driving (specifically trucks). I don't think any of the German car makers are incapable of providing a good electric car but I think Tesla is way ahead of all of them due to their culture and "software mindset" for lack of a better word.
From my outsider looking in perspective I'd say BMW is the furthest along the engineering-software spectrum as they are very active in Usability/UX and some other areas.
You think VW gamed the system alone? The whole EU regulation regarding cars (pollution and sales among most notable topic) have been made for, if not by, the EU car manufacturer cartel. No wonder those dinausores do not want changes. And pressuring politics by waving jobs loss is their regular argument.
Reminds me of a two pictures a guy took to document his toys for his renters insurance. In 2000 he had twelve electronic devices, in 2010 he had six. Half the devices had been rolled into his smart phone.
I have been around for long enough to see how the German car industry reacted to safety belts, crash safety requirements, catalytic filters and tighter emission rules. Every time they claimed that it would hurt business and cost jobs. But they did perfectly fine or even used the new features as selling point eventually.
It's pretty safe to ignore objections from industry. Most of the time they just don't want to adapt and keep doing business as usual.
Um, the Germans invented and pioneered all those safety things. Mercedes had crumple zones and collapsible steering columns in the 1960s. They were among the first with seat belts as standard, ditto airbags. They probably did object to the emissions stuff because that reduced performance.
Quite interesting -- German government wants to keep the valuable parts of future manufacturing processes in Germany whereas the companies don't care where their future manufacturing value comes from and will remain more interested in optimizing for their current revenue stream for some amount of time in terms of how they deal with the German governments. That revenue will eventually disappear though ... I wonder if they could put a hefty tax on the gas powered cars but offer a rebate for that tax for every electric car sold that is proportionate to the amount of the electric car value that was domestically produced. Investment in domestic electric car production would then become a direct mechanism for preserving their existing revenue stream while forcing them to set themselves up for domestic production of electric cars in the future ...
I'm surprised how short sighted these car manufacturers are. The German government seems right here: Germany derives a lot of value from owning (large parts of) the supply chain of the car industry. However, the car industry itself also benefits immensely from having so many high quality suppliers close by. One would think that forward looking CEOs want to ensure that this capability remains intact.
Unfortunately China seems to be engaged in exactly the same sort of behaviour. 1 in 7 cars has to be electric (fair enough), but the electric car has to be manufactured by a company owned by Chinese citizens. It's a pity that Donald Trump is going to dismantle the multilateral attempts to make China play by the same rules as everyone else.
Yes, fair enough, there were a lot of problems with it. The issue is I think Trump is opposed not just to the detail of the proposed deal, but to multilateral deals in general, presumably because he feels it means the US is bound by globalist institutions. But the US or Europe, or Japan, or any of the other countries involved in these deals, cannot accomplish a goal of preventing something like this on their own. They have to join together, and joining together means being bound by jointly created rules. In order to meet these goals, the US has to accept a role not just as a leader but also as one member among many (a role commensurate with a population and economy perhaps 15-30% of the total rather than as a hegemon talking to a minor ally).
I'm from the midwest (originally). The problem with any trade deal is that the middle class was told that it was going to be good for them and it wasn't. Yes, you can say they should have thought about it and they could have seen that trade deals even out labor costs but nobody told them that.
So today, any trade deal is viewed as "here we go again" no matter what the actual content says.
I think that's a fair point. There needs to be a lot more thought put into how trade deals can benefit the whole of society, and what social and political structures you need to help ordinary people prosper under those circumstances. Worth pointing out that there are also a lot of benefits for them as well. And I'm not sure we have a choice, global trade is clearly more efficient, individually countries will just be routed around if they isolate themselves, and if we managed a global shift towards protectionism we would serve to reduce global growth and probably increase conflict as more people struggle (in our own countries as well).
You'd think it would, but they're probably more arbitrary and less ideal than you would imagine them to be. For example, here in America we speak loudly about the importance of free trade, but we have a rather absurd number of cases where we don't allow it: we have ridiculous tariffs on things like cheese, sneakers and automotive parts. If I didn't know better, I would have thought that would violate international trade agreements.
VW made a bad bet on bad Diesel technology, and Toyota is making a bad bet on hydrogen technology. (The Toyota Mirai hydrogen-powered car, at California Toyota dealers now.[1] As of September 29, 2016, 641 cars have been sold. $57,500, including three years of liquid hydrogen.)
The German car companies have a problem. They have all that investment in the technology of making precision power machinery. But electric motors just aren't that complicated mechanically. Their edge over China disappears.
GM seems to get it. Chevrolet is shipping Chevy Bolts to dealers right now.
> GM seems to get it. Chevrolet is shipping Chevy Bolts to dealers right now.
All the German car makers are also shipping electric versions of their cars, just no one wants an electric Golf or up!.
> They have all that investment in the technology of making precision power machinery. But electric motors just aren't that complicated mechanically. Their edge over China disappears.
This is something that can be combined with a lot of other tech – there’s so much technology that can be precision-produced.
Speak for yourself. I have 28k miles on my e-Golf and I think it's a great car!
The problem is most people are shocked SHOCKED, when I tell that it's fully electric. They've never heard of such a thing until I told them because VW doesn't actually want people to buy the e-Golf, not the other way around. I still have yet to see an extensive tv or billboard campaign for the e-Golf. It's a compliance car and VW is only selling it because they have to.
Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my perfectly capable and affordable electric car.
No they made a bet on their employees, like all companies do, and it turned out bad. The diesel technology works, we tested them extensively in typical testing conditions and we accepted the vehicles. That there was deception in the company to hide that efficiency and power are different sides of the same coin isn't a failure in diesel technology.
Ever wondered why electric cars from established manufacturers are all ugly? that's why: they develop the technology but they don't want people to buy them yet. They are too good for the customer and they would not be able to make money off of them, after the initial sale.
Tesla doesn't count as an established manufacturer in this context. And the i8 is a hybrid, not a pure electric car. In any case, I don't think the original statement was meant to be absolute, just pointing out a trend.
BMW i3. Just look at that line under the window of the rear door. It's like the designer forgot how to draw for a split second and he never reviewed the design.
Oh, and I never understood why you have to change the design for an electric car? Just use the same design. The electric motor and batteries save space, they don't need more.
I agree with the GP and parent, and yes the i3 is awful (i3 driver here), but there are many EVs now that look like normal cars: Fiat 500e, VW Golf, Kia Soul, various Fords.
sometimes for improved aerodynamics, for example the ugly headlights on the Nissan Leaf break up airflow along the side of the car so that the drag caused by the side mirrors is reduced.
I think that the Model X is super ugly. The Model S is fine -- not a terribly attractive overall appearance, but nothing offensive, and the sleek details are nice. But the Model X looks like a Model S had a tumor. More traditional SUV styling would make it considerably more attractive (although I'm sure its drag profile would be considerably worse).
The key to electric vehicles is a shift to buy-by-the-ride (since you can get one that will take you wherever you want without worrying about range issues). That shift is also bad for most of the existing car manufacturers
> The key to electric vehicles is a shift to buy-by-the-ride
I don't agree with this, I think the immediate market for electric cars is commuter transport for households with two cars. If you have a car with 120 mile range, and you commute 80 miles a day, you will save tens of thousands of pounds/dollars/euros over the lifetime of the car, and you don't have to worry about range issues because you can just use your other car for long journeys. That is an enormous market, and the technology is already there to provision it.
> the immediate market for electric cars is commuter transport for households with two cars.
There is plenty of evidence that people don't want this. In fact I invested in a now failed company 15 years ago (Corbin Motors/Sparrow) whose business was predicated on this idea (Corbin had its own problems, but this caused me to dig into the market dynamics). Several companies in the US and Europe have gone bust with this model.
Sure, some people can afford to have a spare car for week ends, but not the majority. When they buy a car they typically want a "do everything" vehicle because it's typically the household's largest or second largest investment. The beige is that mummy drives the big SUV kids+weekend car, daddy drives a commuter car which is slightly more powerful than needed in order that he not feel emasculated.
> Sure, some people can afford to have a spare car for week ends, but not the majority. When they buy a car they typically want a "do everything" vehicle because it's typically the household's largest or second largest investment
You seem to be focused on single-car households - something that is incredibly uncommon in rural areas/suburbs.
Most people living in suburbs/rural areas commute to work, but not more than maybe a dozen miles or so. There are cases where people need to commute farther, but commuting more than average range of an EV is uncommon as well.
So, this is where the second car as a EV fits nicely. One household member takes one car to work, the other takes the other car...
> The beige is that mummy drives the big SUV kids+weekend car, daddy drives a commuter car which is slightly more powerful than needed in order that he not feel emasculated.
This seems to contradict your earlier argument. In this scenario, the EV would replace the commuter car...
> In fact I invested in a now failed company 15 years ago
15 years is a long time, and markets change. Perhaps you were "too early".
New car companies have difficulty getting traction (Tesla being an exception, not the norm, and even then, their traction is minuscule compared to the broader market). Most people are going to stick with the main car brands, or a specific brand (due to brand loyalty). Just because a new EV car company failed 15 years ago doesn't mean existing brands can't succeed today.
I think the problem with the Sparrow is self-evident: It was amazingly unattractive. And it didn't help that it was used as the basis for a evil villain's car in Austin Powers Goldmember
I ran the numbers recently -- just bought a hybrid (non plugin) Ford Fusion. Getting between 45 - 50 mpg. If I use Tesla's numbers for charging kWh and range, and at 10 cents/kWh, it is equiv. to getting gas for my car at 1.90 per gallon. Which is pretty close to where gas is right now.
Now other markets have higher electric cost (and tiered electric -- so you have to use the numbers for the higher tier). On the flip side, gas won't stay at 2 bucks forever. But electric rates may go up too.
Cost of electric cars however will fall as the batteries get cheaper. Hybrid cars will fall in price but not as much simply because the batteries are a smaller proportion of the cost.
True. However we make purchases in the present, not the future.
People who need a car today and runs the numbers will probably come to similar conclusions: they might like to buy electric, but hybrids or even non-hybrids make more sense for at least the foreseeable future, due to wider availability, good track record, lack of severe depreciation, etc. Sadly, because of the rate of improvements in electric cars, they tend to depreciate at a much higher rate as well.
I don't think so. Cars are usually more than just getting from a to b.
Cars are a form of freedom. This buy the ride will revolutionize public transportation, but I doubt that it will fundamentally change the car industry.
The comment you replied to is the typical "city-dweller" POV. What few people realize is that there are millions of people that live in rural areas where the taxi/uber/shared asset model just does not work.
I (author of the comment you mention) personally need a 4WD dinosaur burner that will start after being left parked in the snow for a week away from where there's any sort of cell service. But I know that puts me in the minority and I also know don't need that all the time.
I don't see the "shared asset" model working at all. Not clear if it even works at the moment -- Uber's business is mostly cream-skimming the wealthiest users. But a self driving fleet can serve most rural communities as well (at the expense of a lower utilization rate than in urban areas). A car sitting in a driveway most of the time is a very expensive luxury. Most rural communities are less wealthy than most urban areas. A set of self-driving vehicles near by is a lot cheaper than a lot of idle cars.
Electric, and pay-by-the-ride are not panaceas. It's an 80/20 breakdown. I have, at one point, lived a ninety minute drive from the nearest town. I don't see how electric can handle what is really an edge case. I also don't understand the economics of electric utes (pickup trucks).
Another item is that in developing nations, where there is a burgeoning car market, for many people car ownership = status, at least for the time being, so car ownership is going to be a thing for a while before attitudes change.
I have a friend that lives in a rural area. So I asked him and he said it's 110 miles to Costco in Reno. Otherwise all his trips are short, few miles. If he could charge the car at Costco in Reno he could get away with an electric car with ~150 miles range.
One comment of mine, there is one gas station in his town, if that ever closed it'd make owning a gasoline powered car a right PITA because the next gas station is 40 miles away.
Why do people pretend that rural people are a majority or even close to it. In the US it's 20% of the population.
Edit:
No these services aren't suitable for everyone but they're suitable for a huge and growing amount of people, urbanization and civilization are the same thing. ICEs filling cities like Beijing carrying 1-2 people is literally killing people.
The "urban areas" where 80% of the US population resides is nothing like what most people would consider urban. I believe my neighbor's 35 acre orchard and forest is considered urban because we live in a town with a population of about 7,000 people.
"The Census Bureau defines "urban" for the 1990 census as
comprising all territory, population, and housing units in
urbanized areas and in places of 2,500 or more persons outside urbanized areas."
What does that have to do with the proliferation of self-driving and/or electrified cars? This is a non-sequitur. Do you think tractors and trucks will disappear?
I would assume people would not be okay tying up five figures of capital in a quickly depreciating asset that sits idle 95% of the time if other options are available (electric rideshare on demand).
"17 million new vehicles are sold per year in the US. Assume self driving vehicles replace 25% of those sales, eliminating the need for the rest (just for giggles). That's 12,750,000 vehicles that don't need to be built and sold per year. At the average sales price of a new car ($35K), that's $446,250,000,000 ($446 billion) in loans that don't need to be taken out, or capital that must be committed to purchasing those vehicles, and the same amount of labor that must be expended to repay the loans on those vehicles."
I get that these numbers are very hand wavy, but I think they illustrate the scale of the effects of self driving electric vehicle rideshare networks.
Disagree. The US is enourmous, and a car is the only option outside of major metros with public transit. I encourage you to attempt to get everywhere in Tampa, FL, Dallas, TX, or Atlanta, GA without a car.
Sometimes, depending on the season (fall when dealers are liquidating inventories to make room for the next model year), dealer inventories, etc., the 0.0%-0.9% 5yr financing on a new car makes for a lower monthly payment than the 5.9%-7.9% 4yr rate on a decent, low mileage, used car.
Best way to buy a car is to pay cash for one that sold in high volume 6 or 8 years ago. Look for one that has been taken care of. Mileage is nearly irrelevant in that case. They don't command a price much above the neglected ones, but they have a ton of low-cost life left and insurance is cheap.
Doing some quick math the used car would have to be valued at 70% of the new car's value to make the monthly payments equal.
Edit: Also going to point out that you will lose about 10% of the new cars value just by driving it home and it will have a higher depreciation rate then the used car.
But the steep discounts offered, especially during the transition between model years makes it kind of work. Especially if you are looking for a used car with <40,000 miles and less than three years old. The same car, new, in the 2016 model year with a $8,000 incentive off the MSRP plus low interest...
I can see this being the one case where it's likely to make sense.
The low-mileage used car owners purchased at a higher price or buyers will use worse financing options. The dealership has an incentive to get the old models out, and the financial backing to cut interest, resulting in their being able to sell new cars for less than a low-mileage used model.
You usually need a car at rush hour, so I don't really see how car sharing would help with that. With the depreciating asset that sits idle 95% of the time you at least get the luxury of being stuck in a traffic jam at rush hour.
Car ownership is a pain. There's maintenance and a huge financial outlay for an asset that has a very low (typically less than 5%) utilization rate. The interest rate on the car loan which most people have is higher than that! But right now there's not much alternative except in some big cities.
Sure there are social reasons for car ownership but then again I see kids less and less interested in the car ecosystem. Hell, the mini I bought in 2009 devoted 40% of its manual to the entertainment system, which I consider a good thing.
The shift from cloth production->clothing purchase (many years ago) and from cooking to eating out (more recent) et al demonstrate that people are happy to outsource work when it's convenient and financially beneficial.
I suspect most people don't? Unlike many things you can own, owning a car is a visible blackhole of money. The problem with changing that dynamic is a continuance of convenience: can a clean vehicle be made available to me with nearly the same amount of notice?
All shared vehicles do is distribute that same cost though. The owners of the shared fleets aren't going to no recoup those costs. If anything it simply makes the lost money less visible, but still equally present. (Feel free to argue that the actual costs are less with more sharing)
If you mean "shared vehicles" by the Uber/Lyft model, I agree. If you mean "shared" as in a fleet, well, Daimler Benz probably has a better balance sheet than you do, and can borrow at prime.
I feel the same way about housing stock, BTW; the US model of home ownership only works because it is heavily subsidized by the federal government as a longstanding matter of policy (not counting the tax deduction for interest which simply preys upon people's financial ignorance). Almost everyone in the US would be better off it a set of large companies/REITs owned the majority of the housing stock and most people rented.
People want car ownership; it's built into the culture. The question is at what cost.
I have gotten rid of my car because Uber/Lyft and public transport/biking are SO much cheaper than owning a car. On the order of a few hundred dollars a month (if I had gotten a new car and insurance).
Additionally, I don't spend time parking or with car maintenance nor do I worry about speeding. In addition, I have more time to make or take phone calls on the road, do some light work on a laptop (with a mobile hotspot) or if I'm feeling tired, just nap.
Despite initial concerns, Ubering and Lyfting is simpler, faster, easier and far, far less stressful than driving. This only compounds for longer trips. There is nothing like an hour-long Uber ride where you basically take a nap and wake up when you've reached your destination or just calmly listening to a podcast or watching an online lecture and being able to take notes.
Now, that said, I'm becoming an avid outdoors person and I want a vehicle I can take on trips that can stow my gear. I use a car rental service for this (currently Turo) and that works well but, I wish there was a service that let me borrow my friends' cars but, got a daily insurance rider so that their asset would never be at risk and that I would be in compliance with the law in California that requires all drivers to have insurance. Something like what Google's ridesharing is doing but, for car borrowing.
Put a per-mile fee on there based on IRS mileage, slap a $5 per rental fee for putting all of this together and boom, you have something that would really revolutionize things.
Maybe you need to write the app and build the product behind it that lets people insure any vehicle for any journey and any amount of time with the proviso that it is not your vehicle and that the vehicle is otherwise insured and road legal. If the process was no more thought involving than paying for parking.
The business logic behind the insurance could be very different, a lot would be known about the journey to be undertaken, the app could be recording what really is happening, with a source of crash sensors and satnav it should be possible to identify what happened in ways current insurance can't do. You could make it so an app has to run during a one-off insurance permit, you could not do that for normal insurance.
You could get different rates for different cars that you can borrow, therefore if making a big one-off journey it might pay to borrow the eco-mini-car instead of something flash. Going into town then the sportscar might be worth the higher rate as the journey could be short. So you could end up borrowing different cars.
Now if you allow some charge back to the owner 'profit' then people just might have a fair incentive to lend you their vehicle. The app could even tell them how many pennies they are to earn.
I pretty much gave up on ridesharing after our daughter arrived, and use our own vehicles exclusively (each with a car seat semi-permanently installed).
It's interesting that the article implies that the German manufactures are so intent on keeping the 'value add' from the internal combustion motors. For the electric vehicles, value add is shifting, and if you look at Elon Musks strategies with Tesla, he's made a bet that it's shifting a significant portion to the power generation, and batteries.
"It's interesting that the article implies that the German manufactures are so intent on keeping the 'value add' from the internal combustion motors."
Enjoy that. Enjoy that right into the grave.
I bought two successive Audi A8s ... and then I saw a car that had derived AWD from two different motors and had a ridiculously low center of gravity due to the "skateboard design" and had faster acceleration than a supercar.
Since that moment, German auto manufacturers have missed 2 new car (flagship cars, even) sales from this consumer, and counting ...
Your anecdotal experience doesn't really mean much.
I'm sure short term Audi is of the opinion that if you'd settle for a Tesla's definition of luxury and refinement from their flagship, you weren't really their target to begin with.
Longer term they probably realize they can't depend on Teslas never getting better and will need to compete or other luxury brands will eat up the segment (and probably wish they had just "done it right" for luxury EVs first)
Audi also probably comes from the school of thought if someone wants supercar acceleration, they'll get a supercar (or a proper S-line)
I wonder if anyone has thoroughly considered the impact of tens of thousands of gas stations closing their doors as the demand for petroleum goes down.
A classic response to this is "Did anybody consider the economic impact on ferriers when the demand for horses goes down?"
And yeah, there are people projecting such impacts, but overall it's usually considered valuable to innovate. Some jobs will inevitably be left behind as older tech becomes obsolete. There's been a few different ideas on how to solve this problem, but none of them are perfect.
The money-making part of a gas station for most of the last century has almost always been the convenience store, not the gas pumps. People will still need restroom breaks and quick snacks in an electric car present/future.
That may not happen. According to various sources fuel sales are not where gas stations make their money. On average they are only bringing in 3 cents of profit on a gallon of fuel. They sell fuel primarily to attract customers and then make their profits on sales of snacks, cigarettes, lottery tickets, and the like. Disrupting the cycle of impulse buys by individuals lured to the store to buy fuel is likely to have a measurable impact on business, but it is unclear if this would drive any/some/most/all convenience stores out of business.
The gas gets them in the door. People are a lot less likely to stop if they don't have to. Since electric cars take a lot longer to charge, they don't mesh well with the convenience store model. More like restaurants.
I think convenience stores will go through quite a huge change in the next 20 years. Small mom and pop gas stations without much of a "store" to speak of will probably disappear entirely.
I honestly can't think of the last time I've seen a gas station that only sells gas or diesel. At least around here, they just don't exist. The "gas station" is the convenience store around here. I doubt their patronage would drop off much if they stopped selling gas.
Gas stations around here sell anything from the usual cigaretter, pop & snacks to really good "home made" food. I can think of one that had a small, very good, Mexican restaurant in the back and another that made gyros, falafel, etc. to order. I would go out of my way to stop at those.
But gas only? I simply can't remember seeing one in the last 10 years. The closest is the ones that are service stations that happen to have a few gas pumps.
"Mostly" gas only pumps started reappearing in the last 10 years as a part of big supermarket chains. From one point of view they are mostly just gas pump islands floating in a sea of parking, but from the other point of view the nearby supermarket is simply an absurdly large convenience store.
Also we'll see many service businesses (e.g. restaurants, theaters, public garages, malls) offering electric car charging for free or for a smallish fee depending on their type. So, instead of going to a gas station, you would go to a nearest mall, let the car charging while you do the shopping.
Since I got an electric car I only go to an old gas station to wash the car. There may be ways for them to stay in business, but I still think it will be disruptive for many.
Occasionally I need to clean my windshield or put some air in my tires... maybe twice a year? I don't think that's going to help the gas stations stay in business.
Yeah, the Saudis, North African states, Iran and Russia will be making a lot less money from oil. What's not to like about that? Their economies are almost entirely oil and gas reliant.
Problem I think is still range.
Tesla model S is no doubt a great, albeit very expensive, car, but it's real world range on European motorways, is still pathetic.
At 100 mph, range is is measly 100 miles, my BMW 535d does 500 miles at this speed, even in the UK averaging 110 mph is quite common, when not too busy.
In Germany one regularly sees cars travelling at 140+ mph for long stretches, which would be impossible for a Tesla.
> even in the UK averaging 110 mph is quite common
The UK provides open-data reports about traffic flow for different road types [1].
The UK speed limit for motorways is 70mph. 46% of traffic exceed that (in free-flow traffic conditions), but only 11% exceed 80mph, and just 1% exceed 90mph, so I wouldn't describe 110mph as "quite common".
Where did you get those numbers? Tesla's range calculator claims different[1]. Can you also point to a similar calculator from BMW? All I found is for electric; why is there not one for gas fueled cars?
Good point. I just discovered it doesn't allow you to go more than 120km, and at 100km/h the speed to range ratio is 4.5 whereas at +20km/h ratio drops to 2.9 on the 75 model, and to 3.76 on the P100D model.
Germany doesn't have speed limits on most motorways. They have the 20+ minute stau instead. Otherwise the speed limit on most of Europe's motorways is 130 km/h.
I know HN has a large fanbase of Tesla and Elon Musk, but yet I'm still surprised to see no one address the problem of the supply side of renewables before moving towards a larger consumer base of electric cars.
I would be a very happy man to be able to own a Tesla Model S, but gasoline just has some advantages, especially so if we still are powering the majority of our grid with fossil fuels: 1) it has extremely high energy density relative to lithium ion batteries, 2) IC technology is very well-developed, 3) it is low cost in the near-term, and 4) no energy loss through transmission over the grid.
Depending on where you live, most of the juice you put in your Tesla (or other EV) is generated by fossil fuels, anyways. It seems to me that we're putting the cart before the horse. We need to solve the problem of powering our grid with renewables first before we should pressure the car makers out of economic equilibrium.
How about people with both an electric car and solar panels? How about people who pay for carbon offsets and own an electric car? Or people who voted for renewables minimums and own an electric car?
I'm also unsure what you mean by "pressure the car makers out of economic equilibrium"? Are you referring to the economic equilibrium with negative externalities paid for? California started down the path of encouraging electric cars because of smog, which has a large negative effect on LA and the SF Bay area.
Like I said, I would be very proud to own a Tesla, and to have resources to send funds towards renewable energy resources. However, while that is great to be able to make those purchases, let's not conflate 2 separate economic choices. I can obviously buy renewable energy certificates without buying an electric car, and I can buy an electric car without buying RECs. The question I posed was: should we get more renewable energy on the grid before forcing EVs onto the market? That is in the context of the article which discusses government influencing public policy -- if made those aforementioned individual choices that's great, I think well of you for doing that.
> I'm also unsure what you mean by "pressure the car makers out of economic equilibrium"?
No worries. Here is the Wikipedia definition:
> In economics, economic equilibrium is a state where economic forces such as supply and demand are balanced and in the absence of external influences the values of economic variables will not change
So take that and put it in the context of the article. From the article:
> The government in Berlin fears that German automobile companies are lagging behind as electric cars pick up speed around the world
> The Chancellery and the Economics Ministry have spent years trying to persuade German manufacturers to establish their own joint battery-cell manufacturing facility.
Does that make sense?
Since the German car manufacturers are for-profit corporations who exist to make profit, their profit-maximizing strategy is to produce at market equilibrium the products which consumers demand. What the article discusses is that they are "lagging behind." You should place your null hypothesis on their products as responding to market forces, not that successful corporations do not produce what their markets demand.
You bring up negative externalities, which are a prudent factor to account for, and is a reason why free markets don't always lead to optimal outcomes. So that's a perfect example of a reason to have a government which can effectively regulate, if you care about human welfare and economic prosperity.
In this case, is it the right call for the government to force electric cars into the market? There are pros and cons, and it depends on a number of given factors. If our effort is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, do we produce less or more by switching to electric cars? It's a complex question, but if renewable energy production remains constant, the increased load on the grid will come from fossil fuels, so the answer could actually be more. Counter intiuitive, but generating and transmitting electricity over the grid and storing it in relatively very heavy batteries that most be moved with the vehicle all create inefficiencies.
It's not such a simple yes or no question, either. Like you pointed out, residents of LA and SF may wish to effectively relocate their pollution from their respective urban centers to remote areas where energy generation occurs, and that appears to make sense: less people live in remote areas.
I will point out one thing that requires renewables and electric cars to be encouraged together: electric cars that charge when solar or wind energy is available can help smooth consumption to match output. This works easiest when cars are long-range (i.e. don't have to charge every day) and can plug in at both the solar peak and wind peak (day and night, respectively.)
Well if something doesn't make sense, I'd appreciate if you were able to point out exactly what it is that doesn't, since I took the time to write you a detailed response. Otherwise it just comes across as dismissive and honestly a little bit insulting.
What you are talking about here is what is called vehicle-to-grid (V2G) load balancing. That is actually a technology that is really interesting and exciting possibility for the future, but is just that. So I guess that irony is that you're requirement that these two things be encouraged together is the one thing I can see that doesn't make sense at the moment - V2G is still honestly in development. There is a lot of scepticism about how practical it will be in practice, i.e. IIRC the efficiency of each grid->car->grid cycle is only about 60%.
I am not talking about grid->car->grid, I'm talking about a slightly more advanced version of time-of-day charging for cars: grid->car. That's a smartphone app, not rocket science. Tesla's API is already capable of supporting it.
All studies of "what happens when electric cars are a significant % of electricity consumption?" involve this. It's super-useful because it's storage with no cost: it only cycles batteries that would have been cycled already, just at a different time of day or day of week. The key thing is that a long-range car doesn't have to be charged to 100% by morning, every morning.
As for your complaint that I didn't respond to your entire rant, sorry. You started by claiming that "no one" was doing something, which really isn't true except for some bizarre combination of things that appears to only exist for you. You seem to think that the German government is wrong for pointing out to German car-makers that it's stupid to ignore California's mandate, even though you admit that California has a reasonable smog-based reason for having a mandate. Next time that you think that "no one" is doing the right thing, consider that you don't agree with most people about what the right thing is.
Using tour car battery as electricity storage? That's brilliant. Only that one is normally at work when their car is idling during peak solar hours, so it would rather make more sense for companies to build parkings with solar charge stations and provide them as emplyoment benefits to employees with EVs.
Your misdirection of this topic to discuss a moot point (renewables and EVs being encouraged together) is interesting. I don't think anyone is arguing that both aren't good, but it doesn't have much to say about the question I posed..?
It's great if you're willing to charge your vehicle at off-peak. That's not much of a game-changer, though.
The rest of your post is unnecessarily inflammatory, i.e. dismissing my explanation as a rant. I'm not sure what your problem is but you haven't addressed what at all was incorrect, and all you've done is ignore the question raised and as for a matter of fact, rant on a tangent about something we already agree on.
Your final argument makes no sense. Here was my problem:
> no one address the problem of the supply side of renewables before moving towards a larger consumer base of electric cars.
You don't think increasing renewable energy production is an issue, at all? Oh wait, but you just did! In fact, you actually tried to argue with me about something to do with renewables and EVs being encouraged together. Why..?
The fact is you're clearly confused and going in circles, which doesn't add anything to the conversation. All you've accomplished in this post is to show that you're disagreeable in terms of facts and attitude -- you've posted blatantly wrong information (some nonsense about Tesla's battery production, which many corrected you on immediately), and you write this crap with a condescending attitude.
> You seem to think that the German government is wrong for pointing out to German car-makers that it's stupid to ignore California's mandate, even though you admit that California has a reasonable smog-based reason for having a mandate.
Are you sure you are thinking clearly right now? What I said had to do with localized pollution, and do you see the irony in your post -- you're accusing me of being naive for disagreeing with what (ostensibly, at best) "most people" think is the right thing, yet you're over, and over again suggesting that you know better than the German automakers how to run their business. Further, you're not taking the time to think about what it is I am addressing as a problem: it's not that EVs are bad, but that we need renewables capacity to support EVs (again, why did you seem to want to argue with me on this???). I don't think you really read what I wrote -- I think you skimmed it and some words aroused your emotions and you are responding emotionally.
Anyways, since you didn't respond to my question, I have another one for you: Why do you need to respond like such a smug jerk? Not just here, but in your post history as well. My favourites are the smug hints that you own a Tesla.
The fact is you can disagree with someone without insulting them, and I don't think you even took the time to read what I wrote and understand where I'm coming from (afterall, there are a great number of economists saying these same very things, you can start reading here: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/12/ec...).
Any sane and unbiased person can freely read what is written here and draw their own conclusions. I never called you any names. Everyone here is free to see that you wrote some unnecessarily inflammatory and condescending comments yourself. Bring your negativity elsewhere, like I said, it's possible that you can disagree with someone without insulting them.
I liken it to the time period when Kodak had made the first digital camera, but allowed other companies to surpass them and eat their breakfast, and now Kodak is bankrupt.
The german (and american) auto companies will either need to drastically alter their composition or other companies will take their place.
I think it's a somewhat apt comparison in that if the ICE money-making portion does not use those profits to develop good EV alternatives, newcomers can leapfrog them.
On the other hand, Kodak was a little different, they feared selling digital would eat into their "film" business. But EV does not eat into the manufacturers' "petro" business because most MFG are not selling fuels. So it's not like they have a perverse incentive is what I'm saying and Kodak suffered from perverse incentives.
It's not about perverse incentives, it's about "the secret sauce".
Traditional car manufacturers perfected the ICE and dealership network, while the "secret sauce" of electric cars is batteries and network of charging stations.
Practically, GM is right now at a disadvantage relative to Tesla
I don't see much disadvantage. It's not like Tesla is designing and manufacturing the batteries they use all by themselves. Sure, they have input --as Boeing has input w/re GE engines.
Given that Tesla will be charging for their networks, it's not an advantage over other charging networks, so overall it'll be a non-issue. Having dealerships does grant the traditional MFGs some advantage but that may erode in the future if dealerships become less necessary in helping the sales of cars (ie. become more on-demand fleets). ICE car MFGs also have _capacity_. Tesla does not have the capacity right now.
Tesla designs and manufactures battery packs. GM is on record saying that it took them a long time and a lot of money to develop the battery pack for the Bolt.
GM didn't develop the battery pack for the Bolt. The battery cells, battery pack, charging systems, motors, computers and infotainment systems in the Bolt are all designed and manufactured by LG Chem.
Tesla uses Panasonic cells to make their batteries[1]. I'm sure Tesla has some circuitry/electronics to control the cells, but it's not like the key battery technology is all Tesla's.
The Gig Factory allows Tesla to ensure they have enough batteries for their car fleet so that they don't suffer from shortages as other MFGs put a demand on suppliers.
All major car manufacturers have plans to introduce EV very soon or have already done so. It's no comparison with cameras or TVs where some companies ignored new technology. The question for car manufacturers is just how fast it will happen. For a company the size of VW it's very risky to go into the new technology too fast if consumers don't want it yet. They still need to produce their current products (and make money doing so).
Finding a way to shift towards EV while maintaining economies of scale is the crucial part here. Tesla doesn't have that problem because they don't have the legacy. But they also couldn't produce 10mln vehicles/year within a few years and are not yet profitable.
I actually think that companies have realized how dramatic the shift will be. But EVs are still just a niche and will likely not gain traction before 2020 or so. Reducing capacity of ICE vehicles before EVs really take of is too risky. However, having EV models ready means you can likely shift most production within a few years and probably produce at very low costs.
In addition to that, brand reputation is very important when it comes to cars. Especially regarding security. Tesla has a great record but many Chinese producers do not. That's why you hardly find any Chinese cars on European roads. This will probably not change with EVs, people would still prefer a Toyota/VW/BMW to a lesser known Chinese brand (even if there's no evidence to back that up).
Except that digital photography was better in almost every way than film-and-print photography. Electric cars have some advantages but are (at present) woefully inadequate in other ways. I don't think the comparison is the same.
Early digital cameras were worse in almost every way, picture resolution, noise, color. The only thing they had going for them was that you could quickly look at the pictures on a computer screen and didn't need to buy film rolls. It took a while until digital was somewhat comparable with analog film for professional use. Quite similar to the electric car situation now actually.
Nothing beyond the funny level. Occasionally, people who somehow got their hands on the naming rights to a vintage brand long dead are using "electric!" as a hand-wavey excuse as to how they will reconstitute the name to its former glory, but those rarely get to their second concept rendering. And then there are probably some leftovers from the era of approaching EV from the bottom, with minimalistic vehicles that are more in line with electric assist velomobiles than by electrifying big, heavy cars. But those are more established niche than startup.
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I don't think that they are completely missing the electric car trend. They are being cautious, but everybody is at least getting it's feet wet. I hope they can then "just" scale their production. I don't think this is enough, but i hope they can turn around quickly enough when this gets serious.
But overall the future doesn't look too good.
Besides, i don't have the money right now to buy a car (also i don't want to).