It's true there's a huge industry for white label car parts manufacturing in Japan. These companies are extremely agile. They will adapt. Taking contracts for novel new parts is their daily DNA. They already work extensively with foreign car companies, so they're not anchored to the foibles of Toyota and Nissan.
Furthermore, electric cars still need complex parts! Sensors of all types, electric windows and door locks, key fobs, air conditioners, steering wheels, windshield wiper motors, etc. The list is so very long.
I have one wild guess as counterpoint. Today's Japan would never mandate a shift to all-electric vehicles. Why? It would destroy their domestic car sales industry. In Japan, many people only keep their cars for a few years, then sell them back. Used Japanese domestic cars are worth a lot of money. These cars are exported to other countries around the world, where they're resold. I imagine Japan could no longer resell their domestic cars abroad, at such huge volume, if all their cars were electric. Many countries do not have the conditions or infrastructure to support large-scale deployment of EVs. Batteries would probably need to be replaced, lowering the profit on the resale. And so on.
Japan's GDP growth is actually good for an advanced economy, when you index it to the size of the working-age population.[1]
Japan's working-age population has been shrinking for quite a while now.
(China's is peaking about now, so it can expect total growth to slow down. Hence the measures taken by the CCP to try to increase fertility: lifting the one-child policy to three children, introducing tax breaks, limiting for-profit tutoring, and most recently cracking down on alternatives to making babies: video games and on-line shopping and social media.)
1. Japan's working age population peaked in 1997: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTJPM647S
Basically, if you for whatever reason become/are somewhat disabled, cognitively impaired, lose your family, are simply getting quite old and losing the ability to do what you used to, etc, there will always be some sort of job, often falling under the bloat of what you've listed after "on the other hand", that you'll be able to do if you want to, that will give you a stable income (even if small) and get you out of the house or whatever else and somewhere that you'll have a routine form of socialization amongst your co-workers and such.
Hanko: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_(East_Asia)#Japanese_usag...
LOL, that's not even wrong.
1) the companies may be agile, but there is a very big difference between competency in mechanical device/metal working/plastic moulds etc and ramping up electrical / battery / material science / control systems. I see similar challenges in the global 3rd party parts suppliers being valid too. The % of value add of an electric vehicle that the existing infra can support is significantly less than a vehicle with an ICE engine / transmission.
2) Batteries, with the right thermal and charge management systems can last the life of the vehicle itself, with the whole set of components reaching 1 mil km in distance with 1.5 mil km (1 mil miles) in reasonable approach.
3) charging infrastructure can scale with the number of vehicles - other countries have power grids too!
[1] https://www.mitsuba.co.jp/en/
Re: 2 and 3. I'm sure you're correct. But we're talking about salesmanship here. Logic and facts don't always have a buyer. They would need to find ways to sell those used cars to potentially skeptical markets abroad, in huge volume, where they've already got a great racket with ICE cars.
Very few countries have made sustained investment in lots of charging stations, particularly not the ones that Japan normally exports to. According to Wikipedia:
> The most popular destinations for used cars from Japan are Australia, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bolivia, Brunei, Canada, Congo, Dominican Republic, Eswatini, Georgia, Guyana, Hong Kong, Ireland,Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lesotho, Malaysia, Mongolia, Mozambique, Myanmar, New Zealand, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, United Kingdom, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
In the case of some of those countries like Kenya, Uganda, Congo, and Myanmar, not all households are electrified, so you can't reasonably expect them to have national charging grids.
1. Tesla uses Panasonic batteries. Japan already has quite a lot of domestic industry manufacturing those parts and the quality is also top notch.
2. Dunno about batteries, probably with proper management they can last long, but if you maximize performance they'll degrade just like horsepower pumped low capacity engines.
3. Remember Japan had the Fukushima nuclear accident and it has turned off nuclear powerplants and replaced the capacity with coal for almost 10 years. I don't know if the nuclear capacity they have left is even 100% back online.
Easily replaceable batteries is probably a better bet for preserving the retail value of electric cars. Purchases are probably going to be made assuming that the battery pack is worn, and can be replaced with a new battery pack which ideally makes use of more recent battery tech.
Reduced range is far more a "PR problem" than a "real problem". For the most part, people extrapolate from the problems they have with battery life in smartphones, which are constrained by size and thermal management in ways a car isn't, and assuming it is a problem where it isn't one in practice.
Do JAPANESE customers want it enough to pay for it?
If the answer is "no", nothing in existence can change the strategy, design or plans they have. That goes for industrial equipment, customer goods, and certainly for cars.
It doesn't matter who else does the alternative, or who else tries to shame them into something - it won't work. Gaijin opinions count for infinitely less than Nihongo opinions.
Anyone who's not Japanese and has done business with a Japanese business quickly finds this out. If you work for a US subsidiary, you quickly learn NOTHING you suggest will ever be adopted unless major Japanese markets says the same thing or think it's a good idea. And then it will only be implementing with a peculiar Japanese form.
It's just how reality is.
Government policy has a number of levers to pull that determine what customers "want" (see Federal Tax Credit for Electric Cars, or Norway's vehicle tax regime). Governments can also limit the customers choices by declaring no new ICE will sold by the year 20X0, even if the customers want it.
Traditional cars already have all of those things. For a given volume of cars, the quantity you need doesn't increase for an electric car. They're the status quo, not a way to make up for the loss of some other production.
And electric cars don't have cam shafts, exhaust pipes, fuel pumps, transmissions, emissions control systems, alternators, oil pans, spark plugs. That list is so very long too, and all of that is going away and not being replaced with anything.
This would be a good place to mention that even Tesla has long partnered with Panasonic to help with their supply of batteries.
"For a given volume of cars" still holds. If the world is buying more cars, the manufacturer of piston rings is losing the opportunity to expand their business instead of shutting it down, and is inclined to resist.
> What they may lose in cam shaft sales, they may gain in EV part sales anyway.
The whole point is that EVs have significantly fewer parts, and especially fewer moving parts that wear out.
> Battery sales.
The local supplier of bespoke transmission linkages for specific models of Toyota then has to enter into a global commodity market in competition with multi-billion dollar international companies like LG and Tesla and other commodity suppliers in China, South Korea, Germany or Texas.
> This would be a good place to mention that even Tesla has long partnered with Panasonic to help with their supply of batteries.
They did this when they were a tiny upstart with no internal production capacity. They're now constructing their own battery factories on three continents. Anyone converting their whole lineup to electric is likely to do the same because it's the single most expensive part of the car.
Denso (34% of revenue in traditional thermal control, i.e. radiators, water pumps, etc., also famous for spark plugs) will take a hit.
The thousands of much smaller companies that specialise in precisely fabricating minor parts (say, exhaust pipe mounts or engine mounts), less so. The expertise is not so transferable.
There will be change, and everybody hates that.
I imagine Toyota, the largest US car maker and probably globally the largest, is in deep trouble and is in total denial about it. Hitching your future to hydrogen which at it's best is probably about equal to EVs in cost, and which is so far behind practical use as a fuel that by the time (10? 20? years) a generation, transport, and fuelling infrastructure was built out, EVs probably will be 1/2 the cost they are now.
This is absolutely baffling to me, given, as you noted, generation, transport, and fueling issues.
Stevie Wonder would have no problem seeing the problem with hydrogen, and yet Toyota still can't see it?
I'm guessing Nissan, GM, and Tesla have fairly robust patent portfolios related to recent EV tech.
Toyota probably has some stuff to offer related to the electrical side of the hybrid drive, but it's probably a far weaker portfolio-- some of their stuff is near the end of the patent lifecycle, and some is only useful in the context of range extended or hybrid-electric designs.
That means they can't offer a compelling cross-license agreement. It might cost them hundreds or thousands of dollars per vehicle to license the patents at "market rates", particularly of other players see it as a way to hobble a huge competitor.
OTOH, if they can make hydrogen work, they probably hold a lot more cards to deal with other manufacturers.
I'm surprised there wasn't more two-pronged thinking though. The selling point of hydrogen fuel-cell was that it was less subject to range anxiety, but we knew there are clearly identifiable markets where that message was a non-starter. No point selling a 500km range to a city dweller whose longest journey is 25km, but you could sell them a vehicle with Ni-MH batteries left over from 1990s laptops and it would cover their needs.
This would have allowed them to focus on the markets where liquid/gaseous fuel would make its last stands. I'd think freight would be the big one-- even if there's a charging station every 100km along the interstate, business wants to minimize fueling stops, so being able to say "800km+ range-- a full shift of driving on one tank of hydrogen" would set the bar high for electric competition.
three major reasons for this, fairly separate from car-electrification.
1) mandatory (paid, around 900usd) motor-vehicle inspections at 3 years
2) cost of mechanical maintenance in Japan (few car shops, huge prices)
3) no tax reduction on older/vintage/used/low-cost vehicles (like the US value-based registration costs)
I don't disagree that the auto industry of Japan is likely also protecting their own interests -- but driving in Japan has always been a pretty big personal burden on people; I see no reason why electric cars are going to get a pass from the three things I listed, they require maintenance, have a high value, and fail inspections, too.
unless laws change those failed inspection cars are either getting exported , fixed, or destroyed. there is still an export element available there.
The drive train is enormously different. And that's the part that breaks the most.
Here are a few differences, off the top of my head (I'm not an auto engineer):
Much simpler cooling. Extracting heat from batteries is easier than from an IC engine.
No need for high temperature moving parts like pistons and valves. No need for oil under high pressure to cool and lubricate those parts. No need for a turbocharger, spinning at 100,000 plus RPM.
No need for a complicated system of storing and delivering gasoline (tanks, pumps, injectors).
No need for pollution mitigation such as EGR and Urea injection.
No need for expensive catalytic converters. Around here, those are routinely stolen for the metals, in daylight, right off parked cars.
No need for a transmission. Except for exotics such as a Porsche Taycan.
No need for a transfer case. If there's a motor for each wheel then there's not even a need for a differential.
I think the totality of differences in the drive train is profound. The change isn't minor. To riff on something that Jules Winnfield said: ain't the same fuckin' ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same fuckin' sport
By contrast, under normal operating conditions, most of the wear parts of the engine and driveline are running in a sealed environment, bathed in the appropriate lubricant, and, in the case of the engine, actively cooled to maintain optional running conditions.
Al the parts that make up an ICE are incredibly mature technology. The engineering work to get the tolerances and everything else worked out that has been done over the last hundred years is unreal. And it's happened in concert with work by chemists in the lubrication industry, and every other ancillary industry. The level of reliability under normal use with regular maintenance defies belief. Like, when was the last time you gave your spark plugs even a moment's thought? The progress in metallurgy, fueling and ignition systems has made them an all but lifetime part on modern cars.
I would actually wager that for most people, the least reliable and most aggravating part of their car is now the infotainment system.
I carry a portable jumpstarter because you just dont know when your car will refuse to turn on.
At this point long-term real-world data is available for Tesla Model S, and it loses about 4-5% per 100,000 miles.
Will electric motors be more reliable than internal combustion engines? Probably. But it's a difference that's not going to be noticable by most people.
Tesla Model 3 apparently has a 6 year service interval.
Electric cars are still greatly more efficient on energy usage compared to gasoline cars. You'd have to grossly overcharge for electricity to make the comparison anywhere close.
Use this calculator to see the difference in fuel vs. electric costs:
Gas cost per mile at 30mpg @ $3.00/gal is $0.10.
In most cases, yes, it's going to save money. You'd need a high MPG car in an expensive electricity state that has somewhat cheap gas to really flip that.
Also you lucked out with a particularly reliable model. I can guarantee you there are plenty of 20-year-old cars that are riddled with engine and tranny problems.
Surprised me given their reputation. I will not be buying any more of them.
How many miles do you have on your focus? My edge started degrading fast after about 100,000 miles.
Almost never. EV motors and their gears don't have the problem of injected pollutants in the oil. This is why most are expected to last a million miles or more.
The lack of a transmission also eliminates a major point of failure (gear shifting)
> But batteries have thousands of parts and electrical connections.
Those aren't mechanical parts, that's the big difference. When people talk about EVs having fewer parts, they are referring to the moving parts. The parts that most commonly fail in ICE.
Define "many" and give a citation.
Tesla warranty for the drive unit is 8 years/120,000 miles. I doubt they'd set it that high if the expectation was that these drive units are going to fail all over the place.
Compare that to both ford and toyota which have a 5 years/60,000 miles powertrain warranty
> And batteries do also fail
They can due to manufacturing faults. However, both batteries and engines follow more of a washtub curve.
> Not sure why you would say otherwise.
You are overstating the failures of both.
But they are not cheaper, yet. Vehicles available in both IC and electric consistently cost much more for the electric model. The base model Chevy Spark is $13,600. The base model Chevy Bolt (which GM says is the successor to the electric version of the Spark) is $36,500. The base model Ford F-150 is $29,290. The base model electric Ford F-150 is about $40,000.
2022 is going to be interesting for electric vehicles. That's the year electric trucks, from Ford to Freightliner to Volvo, ship in volume. Possibly Tesla, too. Suddenly, electric vehicles will be very mainstream, doing routine jobs.
I think electric vehicles are mainstream there, already. It wouldn’t surprise me if all further winning bids were fully electric.
For example, googling “public transport bus tenders electric” gives me
- https://www.sustainable-bus.com/news/de-lijn-tender-350-elec... (Belgium, 350 buses)
- https://www.sustainable-bus.com/news/tm-barcelona-tender-ele... (Barcelona, 210 buses)
- https://www.electrive.com/2020/11/23/amsterdams-gvb-to-procu... (Amsterdam, 142 buses)
Meanwhile Ford is definitely playing catch up and the Electric F-150 seems like it's charging for all of the above ("luxury base package", R&D costs from too many years in the hydrogen wilderness, "new and innovative" model retooling costs, etc). (Ford's an interesting dark horse in the 2022/2023 statements crowd. I think they are hedging too many bets right now, and playing way to conservatively. Current estimates are that if they got their head in the game and cut the Electric F-150 base price in half they'd dominate the US market very quickly, and there's some sentiment that if they weren't playing dumb amortization games with themselves and very easily created a less luxury package base model they are possibly in a position to do exactly that. Based on current estimates of true marginal costs.)
The part that I find most interesting is that Chinese manufacturers with no ICE legacy are building cheaper cars than everyone else right now and it is amazing to watch. There are sub-$1000 cars on Alibaba today! Those sub-$1000 cars might not be strongly interesting to US market preferences right now (where "big" and "truck-like" dominate perhaps way too much), but if it is an early warning sign that the margin wars in EVs are about to get started then it is a really exciting and encouraging one.
Electric still has the issue that you have to charge for like 40 minutes on a long road trip, which personally seems more frequent than I would like. It takes a 6 hr drive from LA to SF and makes it a 7 hr drive, that's quite material when you're trying to get from one place to another.
The new Rav 4 Toyota Plug-in Hybrid is really amazing. 42 miles on electric, gas for the long road trips. It also is the fastest production Toyota (I think?).
42 miles is really a lot of miles for most daily commutes. In the near future we'll have electric chargers at most commuter destinations so that's really a 84 mile round trip which is hopefully enough for most daily commutes. I suspect as electric improves in general, PHEVs can also squeeze out more from their pure electric side.
With all that being said, I'm still drawn to the Tesla as my next vehicle only to support Elon and his manic missions to improve humanity. But all things being equal, it's hard to ignore the superior build quality and convenience of the new Japanese PHEVs.
I think you are correct - you just missed that the 10-15 years was 2010-2025. It has already happened.
We are on the verge of a hockey stick of adoption of purely electric cars.
The frustrating recalcitrance of incumbents (like Volvo and BMW) was their attempt to recoup billions in investments in the last 1-2 generations of vehicles - costs that had already been sunk.
That is why after 10 years of concept cars and "e-initiatives" and weird tron-cars we finally have actual electric cars coming out of Audi/BMW/Volvo.
They were just stalling...
(Anecdotally, as a buyer that invested in a Volt in 2011, I feel the exact same way. The Volt was a wonderful choice for 2011 but in 2022 I see a lot fewer reasons you wouldn't just buy a full EV.)
Recently did an eight hour drive in a model 3. We stopped more frequently than the Tesla strictly required - once for a bathroom break and a quick coffee, once for food, and once for a more substantive charge.
The nice thing was that by timing the shorter stops to also be at a supercharger, we did the electric equivalent of a ‘splash and dash’ - we got ~2 x 15minutes of charging time ‘free’ - as we’d stopped anyway, and the additional time spent to plug in is about 30 seconds.
I suspect people who think that a Tesla would be substantively worse than an ICE car for long trips are either far edge-case car users… or are seriously underestimating them time they spend not driving during a long trip, and then compare that unrealistic best-case situation with the likely case for an EV.
a break or breaks totalling at least 45 minutes after no more than 4 hours 30 minutes driving
They are professional drivers.
To speed up EV adoption, improve road safety and make an attainable mileage goal for EVs we could use legislation to require a 30 minutes break after three hours of car driving.
This would be unpopular and initially hard to enforce, but if you were in an accident after driving without a break for six hours then you would not do it again as the law would make you the dangerous driver and your insurance would not help.
Trucks have a tachograph, this could be mandated for cars too.
You want to force everyone to take a 30min break automatically? How about i want to drive somewhere that takes 3h50 ? Or whst if there are more drivers in the car and we can stop for a quick change of drivers? Or.. whatever. I agree that driving without pausing and resting is bad but your solution is worse. It is my car, i should be able to stop whenever i want to, not when some system tells me to.
Even if you can shorten the stop times by changing drivers, it is a big relief to get out of the car for at least a few minutes, literally stretch your legs, visit a bathroom and perhaps get a coffee or a snack.
BTW: Did you know you can bring snacks and even coffee with you in your car? Those don't have to be purchased on route. You'll even get lower prices and a wider selection.
I would assume, as the number of electric cars rises, more and more restaurants see this as a business opportunity to offer charging while eating.
Did you know you can bring snacks and even coffee with you in your car?
As a German, I find the pure thought of doing so, horrend.
In the US, the infrastructure costs to get fast chargers next to most good restaurants is prohibitive. Especially good restaurants that are between major cities.
> As a German...
No wonder you are so opposed to the idea of a 6 hour journey without taking a break. In the US, a road trip usually involves planning to minimize total stops. It's not uncommon to bring snacks/drinks/coffee with you in thermoses/coolers.
(Also, nitpick, the word you want to use is "horrible" not "horrend" if you want to sound correct to the widest group of English speakers)
(Also, nitpick, the word you want to use is "horrible" not "horrend" if you want to sound correct to the widest group of English speakers)
That was intentional, to create an exaggerated phrasing of the statement. Beyond stating a truth, that many Germans would consider it offensive to eat and drink in their cars, I also wanted to make some fun out of how protective some of them are, as well as making some fun of those, like Americans, who think their car is a great place to eat and drink :)
I am very aware of the differences in driving habits between Germany and the US, having driven in both (though not taken longer road trips in the US). There is certainly a significant size difference between the US and Germany, but considering how large the EU is and crossing borders inside the EU usually isn't any different from crossing state borders in the US, there would be large distances to drive in the EU too.
Still, I think road tripping is larger in the US. Might be interesting to consider the reasons for this. To a large part probably, because the open borders in the EU are a more recent thing. Also, because passenger trains are still a very important means of transportation. And in general, population density seems to be higher, it is very easy to find something interesting much more nearby. For Germany specifically, you also have to consider driving speeds. If traffic isn't too heavy, there are still many sections of the Autobahn without limits, so travelling at 100-120mph is quite common. Which on the one side makes for quicker progress but also, you don't want to try to eat or drink at those speeds :)
People also conflate 5 minutes of refueling with 5 minute stops. EVs charge while you go the bathroom, stretch your legs, eat, and anything else you and you passengers might do while stopped. I find in practice if you're roadtripping with more then 1 other person it's basically impossible to go longer than 3 hour legs and stop for less than 15-20 minutes. That's puts you right in range where you spend less than 10 minutes waiting for the car for every 3 hours travelled.
https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=80f2be62-b42e-4b5...
This is definitely something to emphasize. Because of the difference in the refueling too, gas refueling is by necessity a "serial" task: you need to watch the vehicle every minute of that refueling because it is a dangerous substance with bad edge case behaviors, including but not limited to accidental over-fills that at the very least are obnoxious for over-charging you (if not the immense physical danger it might put you and your vehicle in).
EV charging is an easy parallel task: just like you don't have to watch your phone for every minute that you plug it in. You aren't wasting 15-20 minutes staring at a gallon counter and checking your car for leaks of explosive liquids.
Obviously there are lots of unsafe drivers out there (and lots of us on our worst days where we feel such unsafety a calculated risk) that will risk it anyway and try to parallelize tasks while refueling with gasoline, but I know I have at least one story where that went wrong (a fuel line bust while buying snacks). Electricity is so much tamer in comparison.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36302930/tesla-model-s-lo...
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a33824052/adjustment-f...
Less than 5% of daily trips are over 30mi [1]. One study found 70+ mi trips are barely 1% of journeys [2].
Also your example of LA-SF as an example of it being a real drag on time is instead perhaps the canonical best route, for Teslas at least. That’s the corridor between where they are manufactured and their largest market, SoCal. SuperChargers are plentiful, including the super fast 250 kW version that can do 1000mi/hr (when you are at low state of charge.) It also has in the PCH a beautiful view that you’ll want to stop and take in.
So there’s no way you’ll actually spend an hour out of your way, but if you do, why would that single hour actually be material, when the trip is less than 1% of your journeys? Why pick a PHEV for your edge cases?
Rent another car for that trip. Or take a flight (SF-LA fact: that’s also the busiest airline route in the country [3] by aircraft flown; second busiest by passengers moved)
I get the whole “I probably won’t, but I like knowing I could” sense of spontaneity but it just seems a waste to have two separate propulsion systems and the associated complexity just for that.
[1] https://nhts.ornl.gov/vehicle-trips [2] https://www.solarjourneyusa.com/EVdistanceAnalysis.php [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_ai...
You can disagree, but it's a reasonable point
Let's subdivide trips into A <42 mi, 42 mi < B < 150 mi and 150 mi < C. (These numbers assume no charging at the other end. We can tweak the actual numbers up by assuming charging at the other end.)
We can ignore, for our analysis A. Those are 100% plug in. By your sources, 95-99% of trips are in the "A" column, depending on charging on the other side.
So, you then ask "why is it material to stop for a supercharge on 1% of the trips". In this case, you kinda seem to have lost the thread. Why worry about your gas emissions if it's only 1% of the trips? Why advocate renting a second ICE car for a long trip instead of just having a single car where the switchover point to burning gas is just 250 miles shorter a trip?
But really, it's how do you estimate B vs. C. If B is 99% of the combination, a pure EV may be best. If you think C is 99%, then a PHEV is best. In between, you have to make your choices. And those numbers can be highly personal. If you live 400 miles from the grandparents and (the other way) the city you like to visit for a weekend every month, it's clear you want a PHEV. If you those numbers are 100 miles, you probably don't.
The long range model S can drive from SF to LA on a single charge.
Even taking into account a supercharge stop, it takes <10 minutes to charge enough to extend your range to make it to grandma's house. In practice, that's faster than a stop at a gas station.
Obviously grandma will need charging at their house to do this^, but if you're driving 400+ miles you're usually going to stay the night which means you can plug into a normal outlet and charge over night.
As for speed of filing up, that's insane. One undisputed benefit of ICE cars or PHEVs is that gasoline refill is (a) everywhere and (b) significantly faster per mile.
Going from an empty tank to a full tank often takes less than 5 minutes, counting time getting on/off the highway.
PHEVs do that all in the same car. Since much of the charging stations have been monopolized by Tesla in the US, I think PHEVs are the solution to infrastructure growing pains.
I don’t have this issue with any gasoline stations.
It would be great if they could be altruistic to let anyone use them, but altruism isn't really a good path to profits in our society
Good on Tesla for building a solution, but their stations are monopolized, and this isn’t good for EV adoption overall. It’s good for Tesla.
No one's preventing anyone from building a better solution and making it available to consumers. Not a monopoly
Are any of these what you meant? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly
None of those seem to apply to Tesla's charging stations to me. Could you explain more about what you're trying to say here?
https://www.wordnik.com/words/monopolize
Tesla's network of fast charging stations are owned by the manufacturer of the car, and they exclude others from using their network.
IIRC, the EU forced all EVs to adopt an industry standard charger interface. So, yes, it's a stupid US thing.
https://electrek.co/2021/08/18/tesla-prepping-giant-supercha...
OT: I have a question about PHEVs that I haven't been able to find a clear answer too. Maybe someone here knows.
It is generally considered bad for an ICE car if you go too long without driving it [1]. That article says you should drive it for at least 10 minutes at highway speeds every two to three weeks.
If I had a PHEV, I could easily go for months where I drive a few times a week, but always entirely for trips that can be done without using the ICE engine. That would prevent the problems mentioned in that article that aren't specific to the ICE engine, but the fuel and fluid problems could still be an issue.
My question is do the PHEVs handle that automatically, such as by keeping track of ICE usage and automatically running the ICE engine occasionally on trips that could normally be done without it? Or is this something I'd be expected to keep track of, and say, skip plugging it in every now and then to force it to use the ICE engine?
[1] https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/how-long-can-a-...
I believe it last happened on Friday when I started the car and it was on for roughly 10 minutes. Have to say I was really wondering "what's wrong with the car" :)
Another thing that car is having is pressurized gasoline tank to avoid degradation of the fuel. If I'm correct this is reason behind it https://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/238063...
Tesla charging options are so plentiful…
I say this to people and they say “but Teslas are so expensive.” And then they end up buying an Audi or BMW, and when they later test drive a Tesla, they regret their decision.
There is a chicken and egg problem here. In parts of the country that rely on sparse networks of gas stations for their cars, few people would buy a BEV unless all of those gas stations simultaneously added chargers in the complete absence of local demand.
You misspelled "California". In major US cities, you are lucky to have one super-charger per million people. If you live in an apartment (as many people do) and cannot charge your car in the parking lot (which, due to power load requirements, most people cannot), you don't have a great way to keep your Tesla filled up.
And about apartments… you’re replying to someone who managed very well with two Teslas in an apartment for two years with no at home charging options. We rarely used the local supercharger, although it helped when fast charging was needed. J1772 chargers are plentiful and cheap (sometimes free).
Nowadays we found a way to make a 110 cord reach, and while slow, it easily keeps two cars well charged.
This is real life experience for me. It’s worked great.
And where do you live that that's the case? Because they're probably far more common in California (or the PNW) than elsewhere in America.
For comparison, the Nissan Leaf E+ is quoted[1] at a full-charge mileage range of 239 miles.
> Electric still has the issue that you have to charge for like 40 minutes on a long road trip, which personally seems more frequent than I would like.
Agreed, stopping often to charge can be a hassle, but if you only have to stop once from SF-LA (perhaps taking a break and having a bite to eat while away from the wheel), that'd seem fairly reasonable.
Worth also noting apparent conflicting reports about the emissions claims made by PHEV manufacturers; see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54170207 ("Plug-in hybrids are a 'wolf in sheep's clothing'") for two different points of view.
[1] - https://www.nissan.co.uk/vehicles/new-vehicles/leaf/range-ch...
I have heard stories and seen pictures of people waiting to charge in California, but I have never personally waited for a supercharger on my many road trips. The infrastructure needs to be built out to keep pace with EV adoption, but my understanding is the california problem is more about how long it takes to get building permits in the state than any lack of desire to add chargers.
As for poor routing, the fastest chargers are rarely more than a few hundred meters from major routes. A couple times they have been more convenient than gas stations. The only charger I've been to that was more than 2-3 lights away from the highway is Owen Sound, Ontario, but that city is known as a travel black hole and doesn't have a ring road or fast way through.
I know my routes are niche (which is why the traffic is on the other road), but for me it just didn’t make sense yet.
Your use case is quite interesting. Got an example?
The lack of waypoints in the Tesla navigation is their biggest missing piece of software currently. The navigation is extremely good about recalculating both the directions and charge plan as as you go even if you deviate from the suggested route. I sometimes cheat a little by navigating to a midway point. For example, I set Orangeville as the destination leaving Kitchener-Waterloo for Sudbury since I didn’t feel like going through Toronto.
The worst detour I've experienced in recent years was a serious accident in the middle-of-nowhere Utah, which closed the highway in both directions for almost 24 hours. The shortest paved detour around the accident added 150km of nothingness to the trip.
In the short run (5 years), I agree that PHEVs are the best use of the available battery materials supply if we want to get to low hanging fruit of 90% consumer trips are EV.
Teslas are great and they absolutely should pursue the research on full-EV vehicles because that is the 10 year future. But how many PHEVs could be made out of a P-100's battery? 10?
... that is assuming the mainline autos hadn't been dragging their feet for 20 years putting a goddamn electric plug on their hybrids, and not pushing the technology.
That Toyota so stringently resists even a plug in for their platforms in 2021 (for example, the new Toyota minivan is a hybrid with no option for a plug) is so mindboggling it must be intentional.
Electrical charging stations will be everywhere, very soon ,very fast. All restaurants, gas stations and kiosks will have plenty. To attract customers and to earn an extra buck. It's very cheap to install compared to tanks and pumps for flammable and hazardous liquid fuels.
Many others have lane keep systems that are designed to kill -- if you accidentally fall asleep at the wheel or become incapacitated, it will shut the lane keep system off and crash, instead of attempting to coming to a clean stop and putting on emergency flashers, which is what Tesla does.
When we were looking at plug-in hybrid options nothing else even came close in terms of mileage, which I found really surprising. It was our top criteria when selecting a vehicle.
It seems the car is much more complex, but it's not really. The electrical motor makes it possible to have a way less complex ICE engine, for many reasons. It's still an ICE car, but pollution & consumption is halfed.
There is a reason why Toyota Priuses (started building them 20yrs ago) and now Corollas are so reliable and cheap to maintain that you can find them in any cab.
Considering how constrained we are by battery supply I suspect we would have got much more bang for our buck by using plugins as a stepping stone to full EV's.
People point to Lithium as a limitation, but the price recently crashes in 2019 due to over investment demonstrating much faster EV adoption would and is possible.
I'll add that hybrids are more profitable for any manufacturer because it means that you can't take it to your family mechanic for service (You need special training and equipment to work on them because it's high voltage). Because the dealers are making a lot on service, the manufacturer can cut their bonus on sales.
The big mechanical advantage in simplicity is the transmission. While they’re called “eCVTs” in some cases, the transmission is better described as “almost no transmission”. They do not use the same belt and cone system that gasoline CVT vehicles use.
In Toyota systems they use a simple fixed planetary gearset and can vary the output speed simply by varying the ratios of speed of the two electric motors and the gasoline engine, rather than mechanically changing the ratio of the gears like a traditional transmission.
The Honda hybrid system is even more simple. They just directly drive the wheels with an electric motor and use the gasoline engine as a generator. (With the exception of a single lockup clutch that allows the engine to drive the wheels at a fixed ratio at highway speeds)
Hyundai is a weird exception. Their hybrids have traditional transmissions attached to them.
Except for some computerized parts of the system, the majority of them can be worked on by any mechanic, or even shade tree mechanics. The high voltage system requires care, but there are simple procedures to work on it safely. You can find many YouTube videos with instructions on tasks like rebuilding a battery pack, that dealers won’t even do. Most parts on a car aren’t the high voltage system anyway.
The amazing thing about them is that they have no parts that need friction to work like belts, CVT axles or even the clutch. Nor do they have any moving parts like a regular transmission which shift into place.
It's 2 electric motors connected via a planetary gearset to the ICE. Nothing can get out of alignment or get loose.
Parallel hybrids ICEs are just as complex as normal ICEs.
This is a great video on eCVT.
- At least 9 of the top 50 Germany companies are directly associated with the auto industry
- The top 5 global automobile suppliers is composed of 4 European companies and 1 Japanese
- there's a lot of auto industry lobbying for status quo in the EU, just see the generalized state of diesel engines cheating on tests and the level of actions taken afterwards to just treat it as a no problem
OTOH this is their reason. Japan needs to retool ASAP. They’re the most technologically advanced country in the world though and they have the best process management, so they can do it.
Whoever is saying electric vehicles has reduced complexity has no idea what they are taking about. Literally none. It’s complete fantasy.
The THEORY you could make an EV less complex is probably true, but the REALITY is not.
There isn’t a single EV in the world today that is less complex than it’s non-EV relative.
Chrysler and GM EV and HEV specially I’ve worked on both have entirely separate bus systems just for the power train, this is on top of the already existing PT bus that the ICE vehicles all have. The battery heater, the battery pump/cooler, the multiple charging systems, the additions to the transmissions systems, the ABS systems with ICE that handle stability control were already complex, now more so because they are entirely new devices that bring in regenerative braking and efficiency. All the software has changed around target torques/rpm/target gear for mileage. There is no other brand that defies my assertion.
Literally everything in an EV is more complex. Didn’t have to be, but is.
Edit: lol first hand knowledge of complex systems, physical layout, mounting, diagnostics, wiring, their signals and data patterns… nope, wrong! Classic HN
I imagine you’re getting down votes because your comment seems to only consider complexity in EV’s and doesn’t talk about the complexity found in ICE vehicles.
If you take an existing ICE platform and adapt it for EV’s of course it’s going to end up more complex from a control perspective. You’ve taken the existing complexity of the ICE platform and just strapped all the EV stuff onto the side.
Perhaps if you could talk about the mechanical complexity found in the ICE powertrain and compare the to an EV you might get a better response.
The number of high load mechanical components found in an ICE powertrain is huge. Components that are forced to operate under an extremely wide range of temperatures and loads, which just don’t exist in EVs.
When ICE cars fail it’s almost certainly a mechanical failure. Software based control systems generally don’t fail, they either work or they don’t. You don’t get “wear” in software.
Now control systems mistakes can result unnecessary wear in mechanical parts, and premature failure. But having fewer mechanical parts significantly reduces the surface area for control errors.
What part of “There isn’t a single EV in the world today that is less complex than it’s non-EV relative.” doesn’t cover that it’s a relative difference?
I don’t care about complexity of ICE. That’s our baseline.
There isn’t a single system in EVs that is less complex. Period. You won’t break a fuel pump in a full EV, but will in a hybrid or plug in hybrid, and you’ll break the battery pump in a full EV… so where are you better off there?
If you want to change the topic to reliability, we scrap thousands of tons of electric motors. Sometimes because the connection to the battery is bad (source and drain terminals). Sometimes there is nothing wrong with them, but the dealer fails to diagnose issues like they can with ICE components, most of the time we have no idea what is wrong with them.
Having fewer mechanical parts is better, sure, ok, but do you realize how many more parts are added to EV systems?
You are thinking in terms of classic vehicle design practices. What you are failing to understand, being an outsider, is that we used to design things the good/hard way because they had to last for 60,000 miles without major replacements… now… since as you write there is a lot more software, we design rough enough to get it on to the storage lot awaiting shipping, we get it refined enough by the time the dealers get them, and we keep refining software updates over the year. I have a 2021 company vehicle, the Linux-based radio completely resets going down the road probably once every 100 miles. It’s a completely known issue and the supplier will probably push a fix in 6 months. No one cares. This would have been inexcusable years ago.
Right, software doesn’t wear. But it has a lot more bugs and bullshit. You don’t develop new issues years later - oh wait, yes, we do, all the time. Mechanical parts have a lineage and a hundred years of how to make an x or y, i can replace almost any part and we know approximately when they will fail. Software, relatively the Wild West.
This is why they want OTA updates so badly. To finish them in your driveway.
If my life depended on a vehicle, I’d take a 2014 Jeep Wrangler (or similar decontented vehicle) over any 2021 vehicle by any mfg, that’s ICE or not. But double true that I wouldn’t trust my life on an EV in 2021.
I own an EV (plug in hybrid and a often use a full electric) and like them. But I don’t trust them because I’ve seen the sausage being made.
The typical "EV is simpler" HN take, I think, instead is thinking of mechanical system complexity and mostly ignoring the digital domain. We can see how all those valves, cams, counter-balance shafts, lubrication systems, fuel systems, and emission control systems go away, and they were the root of our most expensive car maintenance nightmares so far. It is hard to compare these apples and oranges, taking away a bunch of mechanical systems, which were exquisitely modular, and replacing them with highly integrated electronic components.
That’s a good point. You aren’t going to have an NVLD leak in an EV.
But… what people aren’t realizing is how much is added to EVs that replaces all this.
How many people realize there is a heating and cooling system for the batteries? Pumps, radiators, heating elements, all sorts of modules for each component, the entire generator system. And it’s all brand new.
There is however a staggering difference between companies. Compare cooling in Ford Mustang Mach-E and Tesla Model Y.
Tesla just brutally crashes Ford in how much they are able to reduce number of parts, especially hoses and hose connectors. Tesla has something like 3x less hoses, 3x less parts and half the mass of the coolant in the loop (22kg vs 9 kg).
Maybe part of what you are seeing is inexperience and incompetence of ICE car manufacturers.
There are also other things that legacy car manufacturers are not willing to risk like megacasting. Something like 50 parts reduction in one cast, and good chunk of the factory floor for Tesla. And apparently the idea was out there long before Tesla but nobody tried it. While Musk loves taking financial risks if they can deliver significant engineering benefits.
Not to mention that while Tesla may be not great at software engineering, ICE car companies and their supply chains are just ridiculously bad at it.
I'm glad to read that. I've been feeling a bit backwards by holding on to my Jeep in a world slowly being filled by EVs, but you just made me feel better about it.
I like the JL interior and feel but holy hell I just don’t trust the whole thing yet.
Ok, so a person who is designing and testing components of these systems is pessimistic, but people who are just using theories and idealism are cheerleading, what does that tell you?
Also, it’s not pessimism. It’s just the reality. Automotive engineering has never been sloppier. It’s also never been less complex. It’s ALSO only getting more complex with EV. Be upset about that all you like, but it’s how it is.
So my original point is that anyone who says EVs are less complex is completely dealing with fantasy.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Particularly because:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Tesla's EVs are overly complex, overly sophisticated. That doesn't need to be the case. Tesla adds enormous amounts of system and software complexity to try to be on the bleeding edge of supposed innovation. Tesla is selling that premise, that brand/image. If you remove it, people won't desire their cars as much, and certainly not at Tesla's price point.
You can make a far less complex, lower cost, 'dumb' EV. China is doing it right now and selling a lot of them.
What'll you'll see out of places like China over the next few decades, are hyper mass produced, high reliability, low cost, low complexity EVs that don't chase the cutting edge. China isn't yet great on reliability in auto manufacturing, they will be however if you iterate them forward in time.
I think it's important not to conflate Tesla and electric vehicles. They are building luxury vehicles that have the added complexity and added unreliability that implies.
Disclaimer: living in Japan for three years.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LcZCb06SsxI
Their ebikes are swell too: https://www.yamahabicycles.com/bikes/
90% in-city, now fully electric 10% road trips which may be hundreds of miles beyond BEV range
For us the added complexity is the price of not being SOL if we want to go more than 250 miles in one go.
For those long road trips we're getting exceedingly good hybrid mileage. In town, it's indeed proving all-electric.
If the battery range were 100 miles instead of 40-50 it'd probably be 95% - 5%...
I have a hybrid car and I am not sure it makes sense ecologically. My main reason is the driving experience (especially when starting, it is much better than traditional engine).
If I drive to the mountains (500+ km), I would like to be able to recharge on the way. It takes 20 min per car, so if a full tank is 4 min, we need 5 times more chargers than gas distributors. Good luck bringing that power to a highway stop area.
A rest stop on the main highway between Melbourne to Sydney - a popular route without covid lockdowns... - will often have 4 chargers.
At Easter, wait times would be measured in hours if a significant number of vehicles were EV.
Unlike America these days.
They've done the calculations based on physics, chemistry and economics and the numbers REALLY do not work.
It's also people who do not have degrees in EE, ME or ChemE who argue this but they also don't know that they are talking about.
> https://www.meti.go.jp/english/policy/energy_environment/glo...
> https://www.jaea.go.jp/04/o-arai/en/research/research_03.htm...
Switching dozens of millions cars to battery-electric drive trains is not a viable strategy, especially for the logistics sector.
Germany produces 1.6 TWh of electricity per day. Charging 50 million electric cars with a 50-kWh-battery would require 2.5 TWh of electricity. Even if you just charge 1/4 of those cars, you’d still 0,625 TWh, so almost 50% of what Germany produces in a single day.
Germany has around 47 million passenger cars according to the national vehicle agency (KBA).
Battery-electric cars are simply no viable solution to get dozens of million cars have emission-free.
Let alone the ridiculous ranges of these BEVs. A regular Opel Astra Diesel achieves with 1000 km range with a single tank-fill while even the best BEVs will only achieve 400 km on average.
A Diesel can be refilled in 5 minutes, a BEV takes at least 30 to 60 minutes, in many cases even longer due to the lack of sufficient high-current power chargers.
BEVs are simply a step backwards in both comfort abd usability. That’s why they’re no serious alternative and Japan’s hydrogen approach is much more promising. Especially with passenger trains already running on hydrogen and German company Deutz just having introduced a high-power hydrogen engine.
The biggest comfort advantage of BEV for the common user is, to rarely have to recharge on the road. If you plug in your BEV into a plain wall socket even every night, you start with a full charge every morning, removing the need to do on the road so in most cases.
The Ioniq 5 already advertises recharge times in 18 minutes, so choose that one, if recharging on the road is common for you, or just buy a Tesla, which are pretty close to that and have the best charging network.
If you want to have "green" hydrogen, you have to use 2-3x as much electricity and for the average consumer, hydrogen cars are clearly a step backwards towards BEV.
Could you explain this part? I'm surprised the production of hydrocarbon would use electrical energy.
I can't name precise numbers - my calculation was really only the worst case szenario. Some calculations claim, going fully electric with cars would only add about 10% to the electricity consumption for all the electricity saved in the fuel supply.
If you use real usage numbers you get only an 8 percent increase over current energy demand.
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natur...
> Especially with passenger trains already running on hydrogen
Passenger trains, trucks and ships are a different story.
In some countries, sure. But most rail in Japan is already electrified - 70% of the system [1]. The remainder would be low ridership routes, many of which the rail companies want to close - but if they don't, perhaps partially battery operated trains would be feasible - charge at every stop and at intermediate locations as needed.
Additionally, trucking routes in Japan are much shorter and slower than North America, making BEV trucks more feasible.
Ships I agree with you, hydrogen is likely best way forward
Comfort? Really? Quiet inside and out, no vibrations, no exhaust fumes, no transmission tunnels for extra leg room, pre-heating or cooling when plugged in at home…
I find much to disagree with in your comment, but this is the most clearly wrong part. Nobody fills up their gas tank every single day, and with a 50 kWh battery nobody is charging it fully everyday.
My wife and I are planning a road trip though, from Boston to Bar Harbor, Maine. After looking up the route on PlugShare I need to make one stop at a fast charger (about 30 minutes) somewhere along I-95. Hardly a big deal.
UHhhhhhh what? Have you never done a 10 hour drive split up with your spouse before? Just FYI, its not particularly unsafe and it happens all the time.
Electric vehicles can be charged at home and at the office, thus eliminating most refueling stops.
IMO this is a fantastic feature. I don’t own a car currently, but in my previous (gas) car, I always dreaded that refueling stop and would typically put it off until the car was running on empty. The ability to fuel my car while it is parked is a significant benefit in my book, and certainly outweighs the road trip hassle of slower charges.
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-2030-power-use-f...
This is the real reason i think, Japan is scared of the reduced complexity of electric cars meaning that their engineering and supply chain advantages are diminished. Also having a large existing ecosystem built for fossil cars means it is harder for them to change. China is the big winner from that (and consumers from cheaper electric cars hopefully).
This is also a reason I am not that fond of hybrids. It's a nice idea, but I would rather just have the electric engine that is less likely to have mechanical issues.
The dirty power plants are not the real problem, because when when coal/gas power generation is eventually taken offline this immediately benefits all the electric cars that use that power. Getting people to switch to electric should be be main focus, and mandating that fossil engines will not be sold in the future is the best way to do this.