>The only differentiating factor is the ability to produce high quality batteries in massive volume.
Software. The differentiating factor is software. Batteries will soon commoditize. What will make cars unique is how effortless they are to interface with, and things like suspension tweaks in over the air updates. Much like the transition from N64 cartridges to DLC, they dont need to sell a finished product any longer, youre buying into an update stream. Buy from a vendor you trust to keep iterating in a way you like (increased features or increased stability.)
Re:Sony Announces Electric Concept Car
by dogma1138 on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @09:10PM
(#21987577)
The only difference is that patching a game crashing bug is quite different than patching a car crashing bug. We have recalls for that reason today and many of these recalls are due to software errors not necessarily hardware defects.
>Nissan has been pumping them out at volume for nearly a decade now.
Nissan is a automobile company 80 years of history. That is hardly "anyone".
Re:Sony Announces Electric Concept Car
by aphextron on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @02:56PM
(#21984091)
>Nissan is a automobile company 80 years of history. That is hardly "anyone".
My point is that it's not rocket science or cutting edge tech. The processes are well known and defined, it's just a matter of investing the capital and putting them in place.
15 years ago, sure. But EVs are mature tech at this point. Nissan has been pumping them out at volume for nearly a decade now. Every other manufacturer now has at least one or two models in development or coming to market. The only differentiating factor is the ability to produce high quality batteries in massive volume.
This is why Nissan was so successful with the Leaf. They had their own battery production facilities in place to provide the volume needed. So far Tesla has been the only other manufacturer with a similar capability. It's also why the Europeans are so far behind the Japanese, Koreans, and the US in EV sales. None of them have their own battery production capacity, and are forced to buy from Panasonic or LG Chem.