Posted on 09/12/2017 9:10:52 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
FRANKFURT - European car bosses are beginning to address the realities of mass vehicle electrification, and its consequences for jobs and profit, their minds focused by government pledges to outlaw the combustion engine.
As the latest such announcement on Monday by China added momentum to a push for zero-emissions motoring, Daimler, Volkswagen and PSA Group gave details about their electric programs that could give policymakers some pause.
Planned electric Mercedes models will initially be just half as profitable as conventional alternatives, Daimler warned - forcing the group to find savings by outsourcing more component manufacturing, which may in turn threaten German jobs.
“In-house production is almost irrelevant to the consumer,” Daimler boss Dieter Zetsche told reporters in the midst of a German election campaign in which automotive jobs have loomed large.
A phase-out of combustion engines by 2030 could cost 600,000 jobs in Germany alone, the country’s Ifo economic institute has warned.
Since the battery is the single biggest-value item in an electric car, however, experts point out that mass adoption would shift business and jobs from European suppliers to China, which already dominates the automotive power-pack market.
Independent analyst Richard Windsor warned that far from boosting the industry, a shift to electric cars - which are expected to last longer than combustion-engined equivalents and require less maintenance - could inflict long-term damage.
“Vehicle makers are queuing up to announce their commitment to electric vehicles but at the same time they may be cheering for their own demise,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Certainly, I don't. And that limits the practical range of a battery car to the capacity of the battery. Every stop for more energy has to be at a place where I can do something else (useful) for two hours while the battery is recharged. A five minute recharge of a gasoline tank imposes no such restrictions.
Spent 2 weeks at Lexington KY for work at the Lexmark printer factory around 2000.
Really liked KY and the people, everybody seemed friendly and harmonious compared to here in MA.
Considering CHINA i wonder if that factory is even still there now...
Yea i don’t see electric cars working in big states like yours or even in city’s.
What is a city resident gonna run an extension cord 2 blocks down the street to where they finally found a parking spot?
Are apartment complexes going to provide 150 charging stations for their residents?
What about our fragile power grid that can barely handle air conditioners?
We ready for the multi-billion dollar upgrade?
Here in MA our electric rate is through the roof because the moonbats refuse a pipeline to bring in more natural gas, the same moonbats are pushing electric vehicles.
bizzaro land i live in...
Hehehehe...as an old MG owner...I KNOW the UK will NOT be producing any of these newfangled “electric cars”!
The old WWII subs as well. They'd go out on a 90-day War Patrol and return with fuel left in the tanks.
I've often wondered why they couldn't be used in the highway tractor trailers or city buses. Perhaps an issue of scale.
It’s an issue of cost. Diesel is expensive, hybrid electric is expensive. Combine the two and it’s very expensive, as economical as the combination of the two may well be it’s just out of the market as far as cost, with passenger cars, pickup trucks, vans, etcetera. Maybe it’ll fly with semis and buses, but not private vehicles.
Good job!
What about our fragile power grid that can barely handle air conditioners?
It’s kinda comical. ELectric cars only work if only a very small part of the population uses them. As long as gas is cheap, this is going nowhere in the US. In Europe, where it is much easier to control the lemmings, anything is possible. And they get to be our canary in the coal mine. :)
Yea like my light bill will be lower than my gasoline bill.
I pay like 25 bucks a week on gas, electric cars are supposed to be a lot cheaper so i should expect my light bill to go up at most 50 dollars a month.....yea right.
Bullshit.
I pay about 450 a month for gasoline, but I have a very long commute.
Funny thing, too: With electric cars, they can monitor your power use. It’s a grid thing. With gasoline, it’s something you buy, like bread.
I need to mill that around a bit. The implications are interesting. For starters, in many areas, the less power you use, the less you pay per KWh.
I know that electric remote control cars are much more maintenance free than the gas powered ones. No comparison.
I got fed up with all the petroleum speculation, ups and downs, and I just finally wore out my old gasser, and have been saving for about 7 years with a budget towards picking up a fresher vehicle. I’m thinking a hybrid that would offset the speculative Market on petroleum and make it once again rather affordable for me to travel, which I have to do.
I have to travel and the cost of gasoline is almost making that aspect of my life prohibitively costly.
There have been some well-established technological hurdles regarding Battery Technology that have been cleared. But that technology is not quite on the market yet.
When it does come to market, batteries will be safer and they will be longer-lasting charges. But right now that technology is still in the developmental phase and hopefully it will come to Market soon. When it does, we all stand to benefit.
Ditto. From what I've read, current Tesla batteries are near the limit of how much energy can be dumped into them over a short period of time. There is still some wiggle room, but it isn't going to get much better. The supercharging stations also have some wiggle room under ideal conditions. If they increase the charge rate to double what is now, it will require special costly cooling at the supercharging stations. Most people won't be able to connect an uncooled power cable because of weight needed to dissipate the heat.
The gasoline engine on my 2010 Mazda 6 will probably last forever it’s EVERYTHING else that is failing, all electronic problems.
frigging lemon.
Electric cars will be no different except will even have MORE electronics to fail.
Driving a 8-10 year old car in the future is going to become extremely expensive.
I think the point is not yo simply to migrate people to electric cars, as you pointed out, to create an electric vehicle at a price point that is acceptable to consumers will only result in a vehicle that is for all intensive purposes.... impractical.
Since the market will invariably be driven my government mandate, this means that the government will leverage this intended design flaw to push for my public forms of transportation thereby creating a defacto dependency on another yet government program.
Force all the rural and suburban population to coalesce to urban centers... This is nothing ore than a ploy for pure government control over the populace.
“Furthermore, almost no one realizes that the charge in batteries decays, thus pissing away energy.”
not to mention transmission and charging losses ...
Precisely.
Not to mention that, absent an aluminum or plastic body/frame, road salt will disintegrate that pretty little overpriced electric toy just as fast as anything else on four wheels.
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