They won’t because they know they don’t need to. The auto industry just got a huge PR boost through the whole UAW affair. They’ll leverage that position to lobby the government to continue the same protectionist policies that are already in place and if you don’t like it you can eat shit. Everyone wins, but you and the rich get richer selling you $42,999 MSRP (plus dealer tip) crossovers loaded with features that nobody asked for!
i mean, there are already cmpanies making ones at a lower price down the line (Rivian’s R3 target price is 35000) so saying 42999 is already being sort of dishonest.
Is it weird that I’m considering a Mexican citizenship? I mean it cones with a small truck that is actually useful for $15k, AND I can get more first world EV.
Don’t forget the features that people do want for safety and such are locked behind premium tiers too. But we can have Sirius XM ads and OnStar giving our data to insurance companies without consent.
LoL at the dealer tip. Even if the used market sucks, it’ll always be a better experience then buying at a stealership. The entire process is trash start to finish.
Beginning of covid was probably the best time to buy new through my entire life and I don’t ever see that situation ever coming back throughout the rest of my life.
Yeah. That’s my biggest question mark with these BYDs. Oh they’re made dirt cheap in unregulated markets? Definitely going to see some Li-Ion explosions in the near future.
Right. But bringing it over to the US would also mean the manufacturer would need to import it from wherever they’re making them. which also would raise the price.
People need to seriously consider 40mi range PHEVs.
Toyota Prius Prime, Ford Escape PHEV, and others have “EV-mode” buttons that drive exclusively on electric now. Meaning you could keep the gasoline for “emergency use only”, even as you enter highway speeds. (Older PHEVs would turn on the engine because they didn’t have this mode-selector button).
All the complexity of a gas engine, plus the cost of a battery. Just so you can use the range once or twice a year? What happens when you don’t use the gas engine for months and then go to start it with gelled gas? You’re trying to solve a problem that the article shows doesn’t exist for 99%
Batteries are more complex. A 200lb battery is less complex than 1000lb or 2000lb battery.
EDIT: I’m an electrical engineer. I can prove to you the complexities of a modern EV Battery. Or do you think 400V systems composed of parallel transistors, battery-management systems, and a whole slew of literally fucking computers estimating the internal-state of the thousands of individual cells that compose a modern EV is a “simple” task?
EDIT: Do you know what kind of degrees you need to design a battery-management system? To mass produce those circuit boards? And to do it all over again 2 years from now when all the chemistries change and therefore the internal estimates of each of these cells completely and drastically changes? No? Please stop pretending that “Batteries” are simple.
Case in point: it’s the battery that will most likely fail in ALL of the discussed designs here. Why? Because chemistry is incredibly difficult and hasn’t been solved yet. I do await for the future improvements in the EV battery pack that are sure to come over the next few years and decade… But let’s not pretend that anything is done R&D yet.
The gasoline engine? Okay we’re up to Atkinson cycle so that’s a bit different but was around in the 1800s anyway. Nothing is really new or complex here. The engines mechanics were understood nearly two centuries ago.
There’s a reason why gasoline engines are so reliable, while batteries keep having faults. Complexity has a lot to do with it.
What happens when you don’t use the gas engine for months and then go to start it with gelled gas?
If only computers existed and had timers that automatically burned off stale gasoline.
Also, just fill up 2 gallons or so to minimize the stale gasoline effect. You’ll only be filling up once or twice a month with all the EV driving you’ll be doing in practice.
You’re trying to solve a problem that the article shows doesn’t exist for 99%
No. The 800+ to 1500+ extra lbs of battery you lug around with a full 300mi electric car is what’s actually being wasted in practice.
The internal chemical structure of Li-ion is only designed to work for a limited number of charge/discharge cycles. As the chemistry is stressed out, the internal metals begin to form dendrites (or in more simple terms, spikes) internally.
We have reasonable estimates for how long this takes, but everyone’s battery pack is different. And the process is invisible (you have to cut open & destroy a battery to figure out how much of these dendrites or whatever have formed). So the best we got are some computers slapped on the outside of the battery pack that measures temperature, voltage, current, and time to guestimate the effects from the outside.
As cells fail, modern BMS systems will reroute power away from degenerated cells. Its not that the problem was solved per se, its that modern battery packs have a bunch of extra cells waiting in reserve to pretend that nothing has happened to the end user. But this process eventually breaks enough cells that the whole pack fails and inevitably needs replacement.
Exactly when depends on how many cells were left in reserve, how much “fast charging” you do (which is extremely harsh on the internal chemicals), the temperature of the pack under use, and any aggressive driving you might do that heats up the pack more than usual.
Its… really complex. There’s a lot of research going on right now to try to stop these dendrites from forming.
EDIT: In any case, Consumer Reports reliability surveys on various parts of say… a Toyota Prius Prime or other PHEVs. Go look at them all, see what parts fail. Its the battery.
It’s interesting to be on the other side of watching a subject matter expert being downvoted by laymen suffering from Dunning Kruger. Their feelings will always Trump your knowledge.
I’ve read enough on these systems to understand you’re speaking the truth here. Thanks for trying. I learned some new details on these system’s complexities.
I chose Toyota first for a reason. The other two are just common PHEVs that came to my mind.
In all three cases, the Battery Pack is one of the least-reliable parts of the car. Even for notoriously unreliable cars, the worst part remains the battery.
I’m not kidding when I say that the battery pack is one of the most complex and least-understood parts of EVs, Hybrids, or PHEVs.
EDIT: Wanna go Honda? Guess what part was least reliable again.
Consumer Reports conducts surveys where they ask car-owners of various model years how many issues, and what kind of issues, their cars have.
I know the difference from “predicted reliability” and their “Reliability history” page. There’s a reason why I’m posting history. These survey results look back into the past and is more appropriate for our discussion.
Before criticizing my methodology, you probably should see what pages I’m posting and understand the material I’m quoting.
The reliability data comes from our Auto Reliability Surveys of Consumer Reports members. In all, we received responses on over 330,000 vehicles in our 2023 surveys, detailing 2000 to 2023 models and some early 2024 vehicles.
Electric vehicle owners continue to report far more problems with their vehicles than owners of conventional cars or hybrids, according to Consumer Reports’ newly released annual car reliability survey. The survey reveals that, on average, EVs from the past three model years had 79 percent more problems than conventional cars. Based on owner responses on more than 330,000 vehicles, the survey covers 20 potential problem areas, including engine, transmission, electric motors, leaks, and infotainment systems.
It is physically impossible for an EV with much fewer parts, all of which require no maintenance, to be less reliable than a gas car with highly complex parts like transmissions and differentials and combustion engines.
I’ve worked on both for a living. I’ve seen first hand which cars come into the shop and how frequently. I used problem tracking websites like Identifix daily to see common failures on all the cars I work on.
EVs rarely break.
Gas vehicles turn into paperweights if you go too long without changing the oil.
It is physically impossible for an EV with much fewer parts, all of which require no maintenance, to be less reliable than a gas car with highly complex parts like transmissions and differentials and combustion engines.
And transistors, and transformers, battery management systems, and inverters aren’t complex?
Are you making fun of my degree? Power engineering is a masters-level subject at a minimum, and easily reaches into the PH.d level.
As I stated earlier. I’ve got an electrical engineering degree. When EV buffs talk about the “simplicity” of EVs I can’t help but roll my eyes. Yall probably can’t even pick out the right chips for a Li-ion BMS, or tell me the differences between LiFePo4 or NMC Li-ion is.
There’s some highly technical magic going on here. MOSFETs, Power-circuits, complex inverters, microcontrollers to carefully time the movement of electricity with the movement of those magnets. There’s a hell of a lot more complexity in there than people realize. And when things go wrong, there’s not much else to do but replace the entire damn part, because it requires a very advanced facility to create electric motors, the chemistry behind these cells, or PCBs for those battery packs.
BMS systems are far from it. Lots of technical work going into simplifying measuring techniques, automatic switching between series parallel linking of cells based on system needs (at my company)… but the essentials of measuring current, thermal and voltage? Lmao. I’m making fun of your degree, as a holder and EIT myself.
If you’re into BMS systems at all, you know that the ridiculous levels of modeling are chemistry / cell specific, to the point that would make the typical layman’s eyes glaze over. A litany of cell types (NMC, LiFePo4, NCA) and more as new chemistries are invented (or go in and out of fashion) requires updates to BMS, the modeling of how the internals of the cells work, and how all of that is related to the voltage/current/temperatures of individual cells.
Measuring voltage/current? Yeah, that’s easy.
INTERPRETING voltage/current? That’s the hard part. And requires a giant mess of R&D effort on these cells and their individual chemistries.
There’s nothing “simple” about that battery pack. The shear number of control systems that go into a modern battery-pack it should be proof enough to you.
Not only is there difficulty in building and manufacturing this… there’s also difficulty in maintaining this item. I mean yeah, we don’t maintain it, its just replaced wholesale. But there’s also the whole 400V will-instantly-kill-a-technician problem if they’re not careful.
Sorry, I have designed complex 4 and 6 layer high speed FPGA boards, this BMS board looks moderately dense but not crazy, nor does it look like it’s dealing with high speed signaling.
Try dealing with RF or something, those PCBs are quite a bit crazier.
The models for the cells are implemented in software. You know what’s easy to update in place? software. You know what’s hard to update in place? Mechanical systems. That’s my point.
Lmao go for it, I deal with systems shoving kiloamps at multi-tens of kv around quickly, I’ll chalk it up to a small fry “power” electronics engineer not knowing better, as is customary for you so far.
GaN MOSFETs, because igbts are too slow, tech you, @dragontamer, haven’t even gotten to touch yet. TeChNiCaL MaGiC in your parlance.
So you do touch BMS systems and understand that the hundreds or thousands of MOSFETs that control the electrical currents of a ten-thousand cell battery pack are arranged in systems of series and parallel … Running advanced modeling software that tries to peer into the internal chemistry of modern cells…
Yet you want to convince me that this is simpler than the like, 15 gears that make up Toyotas Powersplit Device?
How do you account for tribological degradation in tolerances over time? There are techniques to negate the problem entirely, my 40+ year old Japanese motorcycle uses high-ish pressure hydrodynamic bearings to allow oil to be the “wear” surface… But it isn’t foolproof.
Newer techniques rely on better metallurgy, oil additives which precipitate on designated surfaces, etc etc etc. It’s one of those things you and I have both observed where the more you look at it, the more complex it gets.
Now change gears (haha) and observe the complexity of analog/digital systems. You and I front-load the complexity, so that any configuration changes should (mostly) be possible in software. “Oh no, we didn’t use this particular junction of p-n MOSFETs”… They added $3 to the BOM, but our flexibility/redundancy is increased.
Look, you should know as well as any EE that solid state systems, when run within parameters, have a tremendous unchanging mtbf. While there are currently issues with undersizing MOSFETs and igbts, I expect our engineering models (in our heads) of what to expect from these evolving electronic components to adapt to these new operating environs, the already reasonable reliability will only increase.
Failure of these packs and their bms’ are low enough that we can point to specific failures, versus how often we see someone with serious ICE engine issues in the local mechanic’s shop.
Moving parts wear out due to friction. The electronic parts you listed are not moving parts and rarely fail. I would know, as an automotive technician they come to me when they break.
If you really were an engineer, you would know about minimizing points of failure. And you would be able to recognize gas vehicles have exponentially more points of failure due to the amount of moving parts and sealing surfaces and combustion temperatures.
It’s easy to claim you’re an engineer on the internet. But you’re definitely not talking like an engineer.
Engineers look at empirical results most of all. They don’t dismiss large, 300,000+ car surveys just because they’re inconvenient to your argument.
I’ve said my piece on the reliability of battery designs over the past 5 years. Hopefully battery engineers improve their reliability moving forward. I don’t think it’s going to be easy though, as the simulated models of the internals of Li-ion cells is just such a devilishly difficult problem.
I’d want to raise the question of if “battery problems” may be a catch-all for other self-reported electrical problems but that’d be getting alarmingly close to “moving goalposts”.
That’s it. There are other categories for electrical problems. Ex:
ELECTRIC SYSTEM: Alternator, starter, regular battery, battery cables, engine harness, coil, ignition switch, electronic ignition, spark plugs and wires failure, auto stop/start.
ELECTRICAL ACCESSORIES: Cruise control, clock, warning lights, body control module, keyless entry, wiper motor or washer, tire pressure monitor, interior or exterior lights, horn, gauges, 12V power plug, USB port, alarm or security system, remote engine start, headlights, automatic headlights, automatic wipers, wireless charging pad.
IN-CAR ELECTRONICS: CD player, rear entertainment system (rear screen or DVD player), radio, speakers, in-dash GPS, display screen freezes or goes blank, phone pairing (e.g., Bluetooth), voice control commands, steering wheel controls, portable music device interface (e.g., iPod/MP3 player), backup or other camera/sensors, Android Auto/Apple CarPlay, infotainment hardware replacement, software over-the-air fixes, head-up display.
The Consumer Reports Survey is very clear. “EV Battery” problems mean exactly the battery. There’s other categories for other cases.
The whole table didn’t fit inside of my screenshot. (I can only screencap what is on my screen…). The “In Car Electronics” also have a 3% failure rate, but are at the bottom of the chart. But between that and EV Battery, they are the #1 failure points of a modern car.
He’s been posting like this in multiple threads with one or two others. The way he’s pushing hybrids and talking up Prius makes it seems like a Toyota shill.
The concern is that you have basically two different drivetrains to worry about, where if either fail you’re (potentially, depending on what/where/etc fails) without an operational vehicle at worst.
Meanwhile, the Toyota Prius has been sitting on the top reliable cars for the last 20+ years…
There’s like, statistics… ya know? We don’t have to hypothesize the problems or “expected” problems. We can look at these cars and their long history now and see where the problems occurred.
Sure, a PHEV battery a bit larger and might postpone things a bit longer but why sign up for a future guaranteed replacement item?
Because replacing a 200lb battery is easier than replacing a 1000lb battery in a full EV.
You’re right. Battery packs have limited durability / cycles. Its just how the chemistry works. The question is if you want to have a 200lbs of it or if you want 1000lbs of it.
This is utter horseshit. Gas cars fail way more because they have way more parts and all of those parts require more maintenance.
I would know, I bought a house and put a kid through college with the money I made fixing gas cars and now I’m changing careers cause EVs are taking over and they rarely break.
The batteries degrade over time slowly, especially compared to gas engines. Just compare the warranties! Gas drivetrains get 3 year / 36k mile warranties. EV battery warranties are 8-10 years.
If I have a 400 V 50 kWh battery and charge at 400 V 50 kW, won’t it be charging at 1 C? Like you could use the Nissan leaf as an example but it’s dishonest since it’s the worst type of battery cooling, air, which makes the cells die prematurely.
Tesla is one of the more failure prone brands. Hybrids are a bad solution since it won’t address the problem fully, and only serves to lengthen the ICE industry.
Hybrids are a bad solution since it won’t address the problem fully
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
There’s no perfection in engineering. Just a series of compromises. Anyone who is an absolutionist is going to have a bad time in engineering, policies, and politics.
Which is why converting 100-million ICE cars to 100-million Hybrids is our best chance for reducing our fossil fuel consumption.
We are Li-ion limited right now, and will continue to be Li-ion limited for the near future. Hybrids are magic technology because not only is Li-ion chemistry available, but also cheaper/easier to manufacture NiMH (Nickle Metal Hydride), which grossly reduces fossil fuel consumption on the order of 30% to 40%. (50mpg vs 30mpg is 40% savings).
You wish to deny the intermediate step just because… of your weird obsessive compulsive desire of perfection? We all know that 100-million EVs is out of the picture, even on the scale of 10 years of progress and production. We’re literally going to run out of Lithium by 2025 and become production constrained.
When the battery tech is ready. Sodium-Batteries are coming as are Silicon-Lithium, both of which will improve our chances. There’s also recycling centers that aren’t functional yet before Li-ion is a truly green solution.
How many EVs do you think can be made in the next 10 years? Now multiply that by 5 to 20 (because PHEVs / Hybrids use 5x to 20x fewer batteries than a pure EV). How much fossil fuel savings do we get from 20x more Hybrids (or 5x more PHEVs) ??
Its an intermediate step, but economically speaking its a necessary economic step because its more efficient to transition from ICE -> Hybrid/PHEV -> EV, than to not do so. Especially given the economic realities of spinning up Li-ion production.
There exists a Hybrid in every vehicle segment, and its technology available to Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Ford, GM, Stellanis, BMW and more.
The only reason we’re not converting to Hybrids is because online idiots have decided to kill the idea and never give them a proper try. But the market is healing, people are realizing how reliable and practical they are today.
EVs should continue developing of course. But the immediate best move for our society is to immediately move to hybrids and off of traditional ICE. And the technology is in fact, available today… and at cheap prices… to allow for such a move.
What we need is EV fans to get off the backs of people buying a $23,000 Corolla Hybrid or $25,000 Ford Maverick. They need to congratulate these car drivers for making a better environmental choice and something that fit their budget. Trying to get the poor or middle class to buy $40,000+ class EVs is insane. It feels even more insane to fund that through $7500 tax credits, but even with that tax credit the Hybrids are still winning out.
The US has a deeper systemical issue of corruption regarding energy sources and pricing, I’ll agree that hybrids are the better solution when ICE fuels pay to carry their costs.
Another EV fanboy complaining about corrupt taxes and policies who likely benefits from $7500 direct handouts as well as pays $0 in gas tax aka how most states pay for Road Infrastructure.
Politics is shit. Let’s not go there. There’s black marks everywhere.
Btw. I support EV subsidies. But I admit that they are in fact, one of those subsidies you are complaining about. I feel like the subsidy regime favors EVs and therefore we EV fans should celebrate it… not bite the hand that feeds us.
We aren’t going to reach widespread adoption of electrified transit unless we have large scale subsidies like this.
Why is it that all the batteries are the things that fail in these designs?
And why is it that the gasoline engine lasts for a decade or longer, with very few repair issues? In fact, when was the last time you heard of an old car where the engine needed to be replaced?
When old cars break down, its the suspensions, the belts… radiator (those things rust / break surprisingly often), etc. etc. Its not really the ICE parts that break down.
The overall numbers are a bit misleading yes. But…
Fisher says there are always exceptions to these reliability trends, which is why it’s vital to consider the reliability score of any model before buying. “PHEVs as a class are unreliable, but the Toyota RAV4 Prime plug-in hybrid is one of the most reliable models in our survey this year. Similarly, the Ford F-150 hybrid has transmission and other issues that buck the trend of strong hybrid reliability.”
So its still possible to pick out reliable PHEVs with research (and EVs I guess). But all this “Hybrids are more complex” is a crock of bullshit. They’re literally the most reliable vehicle on the market when taken as a whole.
Gas vehicles have complex combustion engines, transmissions, differentials, emission systems all of which require maintenance and can leak fluids that are expensive to fix. All of which are common points of failure. Everyone I know owns a car and all of their cars have had problems with one or more of these systems. These are all facts that are common knowledge and don’t need any supporting evidence.
EVs have 1 common point of failure. The battery. That’s because there isn’t anything else to break on them. They’re simple and durable.
“Stats” means statistics. Go see which parts are failing out there. I brought up Consumer Reports survey that has 300,000+ cars as part of their yearly study. I dunno exactly what you think has a better statistic than Consumer Reports survey, but I’m curious.
What parts of cars are failing? Across different brands, across different designs, etc. etc. Is there any pattern?
Answer: I already told you above, and have posted the articles and survey results.
There’s no control arm failures in Teslas? There’s no rust on cybertrucks? There’s no complaints about malfunctioning wiper blades? There’s no complaints about phantom braking? There are no spurious battery failures that leave people stranded on the side of the road? There’s no 12V battery failures that lock the car?
There’s lots of reasons why any car, electric or ICE, could fail. So instead of theorycrafting it all, I suggest the following.
Run a survey
Ask people what failed in the survey.
Tally up the results.
Survey says? Batteries are the part that most commonly breaks. EV components in general are the least reliable (be it EV Motor in Tesla Model S, Battery packs in most EV or electrified designs, 800V chargers hooked up to other systems, and the like). All in all, the least reliable vehicle you can buy is an EV, while… strangely enough… Hybrid vehicles rank on the top of reliability.
That’s survey data, pragmatic, what has actually happened. Its not 2015 anymore where talking out your ass about theoretical complexity is useful anymore. Its 2024, we can look back at the last 9 years of EVs and see what has failed.
Sorry, fellow me/ee, disagree on complexity, having worked directly with both. Advantage of mechanical systems: theoretically predictable action, repeated endlessly so long as torque at the tires is req’d. Reality: tolerances in various parts open over time, resulting in a nonlinear decrease in efficiency and power. A symphony of hundreds of bolted joints, springs, tappets and valves, a sum of thousands of parts dancing while a complex ECU watches over the system. A single part or joint far enough out of tolerance will cause very, very expensive damage.
Battery powered vehicles: motor has full torque at close to zero RPM, all components in the control system are solid state, and software (always updateable) handles control decisions. Electric motor has 6 to 30 parts, based on whether liquid cooled or air cooled.
Hybrids have been out for over 20 years, and this simply isn’t an issue.
Furthermore, “a problem that doesn’t exist for 99%” is false because this article is just talking about averages. When you look at the average mileage driven per state, it ranges from 9,900 miles to over 24,000 miles per year. There is no one size fits all solution. Would you rather someone drive an old Suburban 100 miles per day or a Prius prime 100 miles per day? It’s that simple. These people aren’t going to buy a BEV until the segment is nearly ubiquitous, if ever.
I think people use the gas more than twice a year. For me, the electric could suffice for weekday commutes, but weekend trips end up requiring the gas.
I have personally avoided EVs in favor of PHEVs because I think charging all the time would be a pain. EVs like Tesla claim you get like 320 miles of range, but that’s on a full battery and they recommend only charge to 80%. So it drops to 256 miles. However even that is on the high end as driving at normal highway speeds, using AC or heat, in cold weather all kill the range even further. Tesla actually got caught exaggerating the range and canceling customer appointments over the issue. So, a realistic estimate there is probably more like 175 miles left. From there you probably don’t want to risk getting stranded and would need to find a charge with no less than 25 miles left. This gives an effective range of more like 150 miles out of the claimed 320. If you’re on a road trip, stopping every 150 miles for 20-40 minutes is going to be a pain.
As a model 3 owner of 5 years, your math is just wrong and charging is a minor inconvenience if you have a level 2 charger at home or work. I went the first 3 years with no home charging.
I went well over 200 miles on my first road trip with the Tesla … on highway, with heat, and my speed demon teen exceeding 90 mph when I wasn’t looking
If you can use a charger at home, most charging is a non-event. Plug it in when you get home and it’s just always ready to go.
I’ve only ever charged on the road once. It was 15 minutes of walking around Walmart
All the complexity of a gas engine, plus the cost of a battery.
We’ve been building hybrids for decades with no observable decrease in reliability.
What happens when you don’t use the gas engine for months
These operating modes are accounted for by the OEMs. They pressurize the gas tank to improve longevity. They’ll periodically enter “maintenance mode” to waste gas as necessary. Most people just drive around with a very small amount in the tank until they need it.
You’re trying to solve a problem that the article shows doesn’t exist for 99%
The article is wrong and stupid. Its most certainly exists for anyone who ever travels outside of their daily commute. Which is virtually everyone.
There are 1000s of Priuses that require repairs every year, including the batteries that also go bad. So, all of the normal gas engine maintenance, plus the risk of a battery going bad too. It’s just basic logic.
Once or twice a year? Do you mean daily? We have a phev Prius and it is great. It is able to run EV mode to work, but the trip home requires hybrid mode.
If you took the cost of gas engine and had a bigger battery instead, you could make it home without burning gas. How often do you travel more than 250 miles round trip? For me, that’s only once or twice a year.
That sound way WAY too general of a thing to even be patentable. What is this world? I’ll patent “an object with a flat or flatish surface of appropriate material a human can sit on by placing their behind on it and relaxing their legs. It can be used on the floor, where it also can be stored while not in use.”
I may have some names and details wrong here, but Elon is not the brains of AI.
He did start Open AI to find some people with the brains.
Andrej Karpathy was the mastermind of Tesla’s FSD. He left the company after it was clear his developments would get FSD solved with enough data and compute. He’s no longer at Tesla, but it is primarity his work that everything is based on.
Jim Keller was lead developer of the FSD inferrence chip I think. He also helps develop chips for Apple and Intel. He is not at Tesla.
Emil Talpes is lead architect of Dojo chip
Ganesh Venkataramanan is lead architect of Dojo supercomputer system
What we can credit Elon with is telling folks to make a robo taxi back in 2015 and paying people to do it, but thats about it. Keep in mind he became the richest man in the world for doing this. He doesnt need more compensation at the expense of Tesla and its shareholders.
If Elon died today Tesla would be just fine. I’d argue even better… A lot of folks I talk to think Teslas are cool cars, but hate Elon’s toxic personality and fear his attacks on free speech. They don’t want to support such a maniacal weirdo.
It’s so illegal I think it might even be sufficient to pierce the corporate veil and charge Musk directly with attempted blackmail. I mean, that’s what he’s trying to do - blackmail and extort Tesla shareholders.
It only took one shareholder to sue and invalidate his last compensation package. I suspect that same shareholder or a few others are game to try it again, especially if this time it’s coming from a more direct threat to the company and those shares’ value.
Somewhat Ironically, the tariff increase against Chinese cars is mostly for political show. There are virtually no Chinese cars being sold in the US, and those that are sold are not chinese brands but American brands (e.g. Buick, Lincoln) manufactured in China. The reason there are no Chinese brands on the market is that the existing 25% tariff is already enough to make it very unattractive.
However Biden is hoping to win the support of United Auto Workers and the like, who are all afraid of losing their jobs to Chinese workers getting paid a tenth of what they make or w/e. Trump has been using the same talking points, suggesting tariffs on Chinese cars built in Mexico (I don’t think that’s a real thing at this point, just something that could happen). It’s all political theater.
Clean shipping could be a big difference in the fight against climate change. Normal container ships use the dirtiest fuel available and contribute to 3% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
No thank you. Made in fucking CCP run China is not the same as the 1980's high quality Japanese cars and motorcycles. Furthermore, the Chinese will face patent infringements that will block importation to the 1st World, with exception to Volvo.
It’s been obvious for at least ten years now that the Chinese are going to use the transition to EVs to try and take a big bite out of the automotive world market. But western manufacturers just sat on their hands. Now that it’s actually happening the only answer they have is cry for protectionism.
So basically the way Japan took prominence in the auto industry after the 1970s oil shocks?
Or how the Koreans moved from also-rans in CRTs to the forefront of the flat-panel display market?
Or how GM consumed the century-old locomotive industry during the rise of diesel?
A seismic change in an industry always invites new competitors. There’s no room for Surprised Pikachu faces here.
The more interesting question: is this a classic Innovator’s Dilemma: they don’t want to compete with BYD on a $16k EV for a global market when they can still sell $40k petrol SUVs to a diminishing slice of the first world? Or is it an admission their processes and designs are so ossified that they can’t compete?
Don’t pull the cheap-labour card. If there’s more than a $1000-per-car difference in price to build a car in a modern automated factory in China vs Mexico, then something is very wrong with your process.
My opinion is that the US and European incumbents are basically in the grip of the financial industry. All that counts are short term returns. Technically, they’d be up to the challenge but that would mean reduced margins in the short to medium term which is why it’s not happening.
The problem is, the rest of the world are the ones who will end up suffering. The company runners mostly take their golden parachutes and peace out to a board position on one of the surviving companies while they sit on the beach near their thirteenth house.
It isn’t a true Innovators dilemma because the petrol cars they make don’t require any further innovation.
All the innovation can happen in the EV drive train, any other innovations can apply equally to both ICE and EV models.
You’re right the innovation is also on the production line.
The fact is China is investing in technology and innovation has halted or been misapplied elsewhere.
Look at Motorsport. Formula E is dominated by Stelantis but a European and American conglomerate. F1 by Europe and Japan. New technology in endurance racing by Europe and Japan.
The US has one high quality player in the EV power train world and that is because they joined with other companies.
The US has fallen into the middle ground of not being high quality, and not being cheap.
The US auto sector has globally fallen towards the missing middle. They can escape by going in either direction. Or European and Japanese makers will take the premium market while China takes the basic volume consumer market.
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