All motors of every design are sealed, so there’s no regular lubrication of really anything. Brakes last 2 to 4 times as long depending on the regenerative brake setting and tires last longer for the same reason. If you have a vehicle with “torque vectoring”, which the Rivian and vehicles with “in-wheel” motors motors have, then tire life is dramatically improved.
EV’s are very bottom heavy because most use the “skateboard” architecture where the bottom of the chassis is all heavy batteries. This usually helps handling and makes rollover almost impossible for most EVs.
Yeah, that’s a no go where I live (Vermont). You know what a garage freezer/fridge combo is called up here? A double freezer. I found out the hard way my first year here.
Survey after survey shows that 90+% of EV owners will definitely get another EV when it’s time to get a new car. Only 1% said they will definitely get an ICE car next time (probably those who bought the horrific Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt). The war is over.
There is a metric shit-tonne of new models coming out in 2022. Meanwhile, Tesla has waiting times for all models; the more affordable, the longer the wait. The Model 3 and Y long range - probably the sweet spot for both models - the wait is 11 months. They’ve been upping their prices as a result.
However, they should now be starting to roll Model Ys out of GigaTexas, which is supposed to be able to produce a completed car every 45 seconds when at full capacity. The new construction process is expected to eliminate the build quality issues rife with Tesla to date. Add to that the new 4860 battery, that they will also make in Austin, and there should be cost savings to go with quality and performance enhancements.
Expect an EV price war coming soon. My lease is up in March 2023, and I am already watching this with great interest. I have so few miles on it that chopping it in early is a likely option - especially if buying from a “legacy auto” brand.
There’s a Chinese invasion coming with at least three and probably five or six EV manufacturers entering the US and European market in '22 and '23. Like Japanese manufacturers in the '70s, they’ll come in with really good cars for a really good price and legacy auto is going to be shell-shocked.
In Europe, EVs were around 1/4 of new car sales in the last quarter and on an exponential rise. Tesla will be well over 1 million cars next year even without the Cybertruck. They will be over 3 million per year rate in '23.
Chrysler is turning the badge into all EV in '24 ( I think), but that may be too late. The Dodge badge may not survive much longer as ICE performance can’t compete with EV performance. Ram makes superb ICE trucks and have an E Truck in the works. They may have a strong enough core customer base to make the change.
Ford and GM keep underestimating demand and haven’t made sufficient investment in factories to produce their EVs at scale. They will be fighting for their lives. The dealership system hobbles them vis a vis Tesla and others. That whole retail and service model is obsolete.
Battery tech development has actually accelerated. 400+ KWH/Kg is now in sight. At that point, most regional aviation becomes feasible and fuel and maintenance advantages will change that industry to electric much faster than could have been predicted even five years ago.
It’s a brave new world, and one of the most optimistic global trends of our time.
Chinese EVs are ridiculously cheap, but I don’t know how much of that is due to the dearth of safety equipment and creature comforts - which they will have to add to compete in other markets - and how much (if any - I really don’t know) is down to the government dictating pricing.
There is a school of though among EV nerds that all “legacy” auto manufacturers are already dead, they just don’t know it yet. Some may allow that VW might survive. I don’t subscribe to that, necessarily, but I can see some reality in how they are lagging behind and will need to flip their entire R&D budgets to EV technology, and then double it.
The problem is that they have been mostly working on electrifying existing models, which just results in horrible cars that are terrible at everything. When they come out with purpose built units, like the Chevy Bolt, they scrimp on the tech and so have to recall every single one because their cheap chargers cause some batteries in the pack to overheat and catch fire. On the opposite end, Nissan didn’t bother putting any thermal regulation on the Leaf’s battery, so exposure to “extreme” temperatures (for an Li battery) means they degrade faster than your iPhone.
This is the stuff Tesla was getting wrong 10 years ago, but now it’s known tech that should be standard in every EV, but these guys just wanted to rush one to market and it blew up in their faces. Meanwhile, Kia and Hyundai EVs are coming out with affordable models claiming 300+ miles of range and equipped with 800V charging systems that, on a DC fast-charger, can go from 10% to 80% - the “0-60” of charging metrics - in 18 minutes.
They’ve grossly underestimated demand as well. They can’t build anywhere close to enough to meet the demand. On the other hand, relating to your point on R&D, I just minutes ago saw that Hyundai has shuttered their engine development center and transferred the engineers to their electric car operation.
To be fair, this doesn’t mean a whole lot. In the vast majority of cases, the people who are buying EVs have done their homework and decided that it fits with their needs and lifestyle. The rest simply aren’t buying EVs… yet.
There is no “war”. EVs are coming. The big makers will be making EVs. I’m not sure why there is this prevailing thinking that Ford and GM are going to stubbornly reject them and choose to die on the ICE hill.
The price of EVs has been a major barrier to entry, but that’s changing fast. There isn’t an EV for the person who buys a beige Toyota Corolla and drives it until the wheels fall off…yet. As Tex said, there’s a slew of Chinese manufacturers about to breakout into the world, and their stuff is simple and cheap.
GM has committed to being all electric, and I think Ford has (but I’m not 100% sure about that). The problem they have is that they have let others steal a march on them and, by leaving this gap in their market, they will not be in a position to push out competitors before they get a foothold. Tesla being the poster child here, but there will be others.
The thing about EVs - that Chevy fucked up in blazing style with the Bolt - is that making cars is no longer about the things they’re good at. It’s not about tweaking an ICE to get a few more horses or torques out of it while fudging the fuel economy stats. It’s about electric motors and managing (electric) power. Sony are getting into the EV business. Sony!
Plus, GM and Ford don’t have a knowledge of batteries or electric motors that is better than anyone else’s. In fact, they probably know less than many of their direct competitors. They can acquire it, but that takes time and money. Even then, they still have to re-tool their manufacturing and create entirely new supply chains for the components they need. All while supporting their ICE business to keep the lights on.
Meanwhile, Musk is making his own batteries and has figured out how to make his cars by pressing the front and back ends out of liquid metal and bolting them to the battery pack to make a rolling chassis from 3 parts with no welds - which is why he can roll a car off the line every 45 seconds.
I don’t think they planned to die on the ICE hill, but it’s entirely possible they will.
My wife does some work for Hyundai and a lot of the engineers have been moving departments and they’re hiring armies of programmers. Additionally LG Chemical spun their battery division off into a separate company last year because they’re about to be even more important in the EV industry. The Hyundai and Kia productions will scale so I don’t think that will be an issue. Koreans are risk adverse when it comes to new things but once those things are proven their adoption speed is incredible. Another thing to remember is that while Hyundai/Kia are big global companies their main focus is always domestic first.
Interesting series of articles in the New York Times over the past month or so concerning the present and future difficulties the U.S. is having and will have in securing supplies of cobalt, lithium and nickel - key minerals for the production of the electric vehicle batteries. China recently purchased cobalt rights in the Congo which accounts for 2/3s of the world’s production. Russia and China are the lending contenders in locking up Bolivia’s vast lithium reserves. Tesla is working to become the leading mineral developer in nickel rich New Caledonia but is making little headway against environmental concerns and objections by the local natives.
For the foreseeable future, U.S. electric vehicle manufacturers will be relying on China to provide power.
I saw that they’re still being pushed - and subsidized - by the government to prioritize hydrogen powered vehicles, which are pretty much only used in South Korea and is now dead technology. It’s one of the things hobbling the production volume of models on their shared EV platform.
Having said that, I believe it is only they, VW and Toyota/Subaru who have production vehicles on dedicated EV platforms in the market currently. Everyone else is still working on it while electrifying their existing platforms, which just leads to bad cars because of the weight and where the spaces are.
But you’re right about batteries. That’s now the be-all, end-all of car manufacturing; that, and the power management system you use to run them. If you’re a car maker who wants to be able to make a better mousetrap (or more profit off a slightly lesser mousetrap), you’re going to have to make your own batteries.
