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GM, Daimler, BMW, Audi, Peugeot...are they serious about EVs?
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Written on: 25 April 2009 [14:24]
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ecoadmin
Administrator
Topic creator
registered since: 20.07.2007
Posts: 585
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Last year the oil price has reached a new peak. People started to look for alternatives and the discussion about 'environmentally-friendly' cars was re-launched. The result was that automakers started to announce new hybrids, EVs and tried hard to polish their image to appear politically correct. Digging a bit deeper the truth is showing another picture. Many start-ups in the business, (e.g. Aptera, Mindset) tell another story. People closely involved with alternative transport solutions have made similar experiences when talking to executives of automakers at top level of management: There is no interest in the electric car. Period. There is a very good reason for this. Today a car consists of thousands of parts. Most of them are coming from external suppliers. To the suppliers it doesn't matter to whom they sell these parts to. Now imagine this: You have been producing cars and combustion engines for a hundred years. These engines are reliable and well known. Over the years, more and more parts are produced by external suppliers. Your main activities have been reduced to the development of the engine, the design and the assembly of the car. The existence of your beloved ICE is at stake and threatened by the introduction of an electric motor. What do you do? It is no secret that the most of automobile industry is doing everything they can to prevent the takeover of the electric motor as main power source to drive cars. Most automakers have become fat and unflexible over the years. Just like their cars. Completely unable to change fast enough with time. Examples can be seen all over the world. GM, Saab, Opel-Vauxhall, Chrysler. The list goes on. Who has ever thought that Fiat has to teach Chrysler how to build more efficient cars? The automakers also claim that the battery technology is not ready yet. I say, the automakers are not ready yet! If you would ask a doctor, he would strongly recommend to loose weight (incl. the weight of the car...) and lo! ...the car goes for miles and miles...The lower weight of the car would also have a huge impact on the costs. Fewer batteries would be needed... [b] Twike 890
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Written on: 27 April 2009 [12:21]
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Yardonn
 
registered since: 22.08.2007
Posts: 160
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Even though weight is a problem, it isn't the only one. On flat areas and with regenerative breaking, in fact weight is a minor problem. Obviosly loosing weight would be a good idea, but that is not enought. An electric Car today simply needs to much energy, due to many reasons. For example airresistance, Rolling-resitance, energy used for cooling/heating. Other problem with reducing carweight is that coustomers obviosly rather buy heavy cars. Or how do you explain the avererage weight of a car today.... So in my eyes manufacturers are right, the majority of people is not ready to buy light cars ("Is this safe?"). And most of the cars that are bought by customers today can not economicaly fueled by batteries... As we (reading the forum)) know, there are electric cars. From Twike over Cityel to my Alleweder just to name a few. But look at the redicoulus low sales figures. As Long as these vehicels are solld on two oder at most 3 digit numbers, no automaker will be interestet, because everything below 6 digit numbers within a few years is by their tearm of production a failure. I don't think they are threatened. They are just sitting there, now and then spending some "peanuts" on studies or testfleets, waiting for the electic movement really to become a mass movement. On that point, they will use the power of there development-departsments and their highly efficient (mass-)production kapacities to produce affortable, professional designed electric mobility. When it comes to earning the fruit of their decades of electric-mobility development, most of these small pioners of electric mobility will be wipped out by the cheap mass-production products of big manufactures. They know how to build electric car. They just don't see a way to sell masses of them. Alleweder 4
http://www.akkurad.com allmost full weather protection for one person at 0 - 1.5 kWh / 100 km CityEl as secondary E-Car |
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