Volvo Says It Will Only Make Electric and Hybrid Cars Starting in 2019 (npr.org) 240
Volvo has announced that starting in 2019, all of the new models it produces will be electric or hybrid. From a report: "This announcement marks the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car," said Hakan Samuelsson, Volvo president and chief executive, in a statement. "Volvo Cars has stated that it plans to have sold a total of 1 million electrified cars by 2025. When we said it we meant it. This is how we are going to do it." The move makes Volvo the first traditional automaker to set a date to phase out cars powered only by internal combustion engines, Reuters reports. The company said it will launch five fully electric cars between 2019 and 2021. Three of these will be Volvos, and two will be sold under the company's Polestar "electrified performance brand."
Meanwhile... (Score:5, Funny)
Somewhere in the world right now, Jeremy Clarkson is banging his head against a dashboard.
Re:Meanwhile... (Score:4, Informative)
Jeremy Clarkson liked the BMW i8 hybrid. I don't think he has a problem with hybrids so long as they are good hybrids;
"What we have here, then, is a car that runs silently on electric power when you just have to go to work. But that becomes a Porsche 911 when you are in the mood. This is a sport hybrid, but unlike other sport hybrids — the McLaren P1 and the Porsche 918 Spyder, for example — it does not cost eleven hundred and seventy thirteen million pounds."
[...]
Toyota had just about convinced the world that if you wanted a hybrid you could pretty much kiss goodbye to the concept of fun. But with the i8 BMW has shown this ain’t necessarily so.
I still believe that with hybrids we are going down the wrong road. But with an i8, going in completely the wrong direction is at least wonderfully enjoyable.
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I do agree that hybrids are a temporary solution at best. It's a lot of extra complexity and weight for a slight environmental be
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Let us also not forget the holy trinity... Porsche 918, McLaren P1, and the Ferrari TheFerrari.
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He didn't actually lie - Tesla sued TopGear for libel and defamation, the outcome of the case was that the judge found that top gear had been truthful, and that Tesla defamed TopGear, and were liable for £100,000 damages against TopGear.
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Or, you could, you know, actually present facts, such as a summary of the lower court rulings [wordpress.com] and the full appeals ruling [wordpress.com]. The judge did not find that "Tesla defamed TopGear" and was liable for "£100,000 damages". In Europe, if you lose a court case, you generally bear all of the cost of proceedings. The short of the case: The lower court judge argued (and the appeals judge concurred) that viewers should recognize that the show is an entertainment program and that reasonable buyers should understand t
just another Saab Story (Score:5, Funny)
Polestar? Really? (Score:2)
> Polestar "electrified performance brand."
Uhhh, should we tell them that's not a great brand name in north america?
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Their name is already Volvo.
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It's either a direct allusion to a pole dancer, or indirect one to porn star. I guess in european motorsports pole is associated with finishing first, but a lot of things don't translate well across the pond.
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It translates just fine if you have an adequate education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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To reiterate on the original poster's point, this is a poor choice of name for use in north america. Most Americans might recognize the name North Star but would find it difficult to draw the connection between that and what Pole Star means in that context.
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Why wouldn't Polestar be a great brand name in North America? It's been Volvo's race/tuning company for years.
You got it in one!
As a strategy, it may not be bad... (Score:3)
Volvo now has every incentive to make quicker progress on hybrid engines and electric motors than their otherwise ICE-involved competitors might. Of course, it may just be their board's latest brain fart as interpreted by their CEO, too. Time will tell. All I know is that it's a gutsy move.
Re:As a strategy, it may not be bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also a gutsy move not to. Emissions and mileage regulations are tightening. There's a crackdown against emissions cheaters. Consumers meanwhile expect better and better performance. Electric motors are really the only practical way to deliver high performance in the current regulatory regime - whether you're talking pure electric or hybrid. Electric motors actually become more efficient as they become more powerful, not less (upping the peak power requires lower resistance wiring, which wastes less energy when the vehicle is cruising)
There's also a serious danger for any automaker being behind the curve on electrification. Tesla's Model 3 production lines are finally going online for what will initially be several hundred thousand vehicles per year, with long-term plans aimed many times larger. Tesla could of course be completely wrong and the market could disappoint in the long-run. But for other manufacturers, the cost of letting your ability to mass-produce reliable electric vehicles stagnate would be a death knell if Tesla is right. Volvo can always go back to making pure gasoline cars if they're wrong, but they can't just suddenly jump to making hundreds of thousands or millions of EVs per year if they haven't built up to that point.
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Ah, yes, the modern "overdrive" is a handy-dandy burly conduit demassifier.
Only I'm not sure whether this cancels out drag effects once your heavy windings become so large as to erupt, steampunk style, from the hood, like giant copperhead engine minions. Can't have everything, I guess. Still, the efficiency with
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The announcement is meaningless as far as all battery cars are concerned. Before making announcements on building a significant number of all electric cars, Volvo needs to figure out where they will be buying these batteries as supply is just too short to just wave their hands and hope to buy them on a barely existent open market.
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Right, because I'm totally sure that thought never occurred to them. Because they've totally stayed in business all this time by simply guessing that supply chains for all of their parts will be present.
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I'm sure it has occurred to them, but that doesn't mean there is no risk. In most cases, a given part for traditional ICE vehicles could be made by many different suppliers. Lose a supplier, for whatever reason, and you can pretty much guarantee that another will be able to fill the void. There are considerably fewer players in the market for the kind of batteries these cars require, and a disruption could leave them with inc
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The battery shortage is a well known choke point in the large scale production of electric vehicles that you cannot remove by waving your hands and saying "they're serious people, these guys from Volvo, I'm sure they've thought about the problem".
Both Tesla & Daimler have addressed the problem by revealing their plans for procuring the necessary batteries. Why not Volvo?
Volvo could make an announcement claiming that they would be powering their future vehicles with antimatter and I would be just as skep
Mild Hybrids (Score:5, Interesting)
All automakers are going to more or less follow suit soon enough. The benefits of a mild hybrid system far outweigh the essentially nonexistent drawbacks, and if you actually convert the whole car to 48V, then there really are no drawbacks.
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I hope they just do range extenders, basically generators to top up the battery. Hybrids are a waste of time, so many drawbacks compared to EVs.
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Hybrids are a waste of time, so many drawbacks compared to EVs.
The basic fundamental problem with EVs is just how many people cannot reasonably charge them at home at this time. Eventually, this will change, and they will become suitable for a larger percentage of the market. As it is, they suit the needs of many people, and by all means, I believe those people should purchase EVs ASAP. But they certainly do not suit the needs of enough people to justify the ICE going away, or even the EV taking the majority of the market share today.
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The only reason people demand that they be able to charge an EV at home is because it takes so long. It's terribly inconvenient to wait an hour to charge up a car at a public charging station. It's generally inconsequential to have it charge up while at home, where you can take off your shoes and have a beer while supper is in the oven.
If an EV could be charged to 100% in 5, or even 15, minutes regularly and not be concerned about battery damage then we would not even bother with home charging systems. A
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you don't pump gas into your car in your driveway either
That's because I can pump gas into my car and be off down the road in just a couple of minutes. It doesn't take best-case over an hour to refill it. Got any relevant objections?
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The problem with focusing solely on improving MPG is that it ignores other external losses. Adopting hybrids but ig
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I don't think anyone is going to say "well, hybrids mean we're still saving energy even if the lights are mistimed, so we will just ignore all the accidents and lost sales due to inefficiency which lead to lost tax revenues. But making all the vehicles hybrids will still save energy lost in towns where they deliberately make the light patterns suck in order to keep you downtown longer to increase the chance that you'll stop and buy something just to get out of the damned car, or more to the point, in the fa
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My fear is that the move towards mild hybrids will de-emphasize the importance of good traffic management in cities (e.g. synchronized lights to reduce the number of red lights you'll hit). Most of the fuel savings for hybrids comes in city driving, where they can recoup about 1/3 of the kinetic energy whenever the car brakes. So they decrease the fuel wasted from poor traffic management.
Not a problem in Europe where Volvo mostly sells their cars - Europe doesn't use giant light controlled junctions in 99% of cases.
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Its green light badly needs to be regulated by a vehicle sensor.
No, they don't need a sensor.
In college I remember a stretch of road like you describe where if you hit one light you hit them all. Then I ran an experiment, I drove faster and faster until I didn't hit a red light any more. The posted limit was 35 mph but if I drove at 40 mph I would hit only one light. That's just fucked up, the city timed the lights to ENCOURAGE speeding.
Where I live now many lights are run by sensors when in the past they were timed. Being that the roads are pretty flat and straight
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It often seems that denigrating mild hybrids is one of the few things fans of EVs and PHEVs and their detractors agree on. All the drawbacks and none of the benefits, fanboys on both sides often claim. But the facts simply don't back them up.
If we can actually modernize vehicle electrical systems and move beyond legacy cruft, an automaker would be nuts not to use mild hybrid tech throughout its fleet. It really is a lot simpler than a full parallel hybrid, and a lot less of a total overhaul of the automotiv
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You are mostly correct. Consider the strongest Tesla at 581kW. Assuming we do the same in one 48VDC motor we are talking more than 12kA !! Even more on the AC motor side. Even ignoring the massive wires (well bus bars) and converter costs, I don`t think this would be any safer than any higher voltage system, which is the general reason for going 48V.
I`ve tested short circuits with 24V systems with 100A capability, and the arc is scary as fuck without a contactor to do the contact. I did it once by hand thi
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Isn't it more like a couple hundred volts? [...] So you don't have to have cables the size of what holds up the Golden Gate Bridge?
It isn't. Think about your starter motor. The wire that feeds that is probably somewhere between 00 and 2 gauge, and that has to operate at typically somewhere 11-12 volts, and sometimes as low at 10 volts in order to meet expectations. In addition, we're talking here about a mild hybrid, with a small battery. It's not going to have long electric range, nor operate at full speed on electric-only. The benefit is that it's going to provide some regeneration, and allow you to use a smaller ICE because it doesn
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..no, you're completely and totally wrong, as is very often the case for you. Read this: https://www.toyota-tech.eu/HYB [toyota-tech.eu]...
Sorry, dumbshit coward, the Prius is not a mild hybrid [jalopnik.com]. It's too bad you don't know what we're talking about, because maybe then you could have made a contribution. Unfortunately, you wouldn't have done so anyway, because that would be scary and you are a coward.
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No, straight up hybrids are not allowed in the car pool lane any more. Only full on EVs, and plug in hybrids, and they'll only be allowed in until jan 1st 2019.
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No, straight up hybrids are not allowed in the car pool lane any more. Only full on EVs, and plug in hybrids, and they'll only be allowed in until jan 1st 2019.
And of course, hydrogen vehicles. Non-plugins don't even get a tax credit any more, neither from CA nor the USA. But the systems are cheap enough and save enough fuel for the average driver such that it is worth it to pay the small premium for the system. Automakers are already beginning their conversions to 48V in order to save weight, and there is a significant push to convert all the assorted hardware in the car to 48V so that they don't need a parallel 12V system, which is why the mild hybrid systems ar
Electric vehicles cheaper than fossil fuels (Score:3, Insightful)
All automobile manufacturers project the cost to buy a fossil fuel vehicle will be more than for an all electric vehicle starting next model year.
(yes, I invest in automobile firms, sorry if you never read the internal news)
Adapt. Nobody cares for your failed fossil fuel religion.
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All automobile manufacturers project the cost to buy a fossil fuel vehicle will be more than for an all electric vehicle starting next model year.
Could you clarify what you mean by that?
Waiting for plug-in electric light pickup truck (Score:2)
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Would a WiFi jammer keep it at Level 2 charging for you?
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What market segments? (Score:2)
Is this an announcement that Volvo is getting out of the heavy truck market? They make some of the best equipment in that market.
Re: What market segments? (Score:2, Informative)
Volvo CE and Volvo Cars are two different companies. Volvo Cars is a Chinese subsidiary and Volvo CE is a Swedish company traded on a public stock market.
A drop in the bucket (Score:2)
Volvo is a high-end, low-volume manufacturer. Worldwide sales are about half a million [volvocars.com] out of total worldwide sales of nearly 90 million [businessinsider.com].
Whether this is a smart move in their chosen market segment remains to be seen. But it's not going to noticeably move the needle in the overall market.
The roar of the internal combustion engine. (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember when I was a kid, growing up in Miami. We would go to the unlimited hydroplane races at Marine Stadium on Key Biscayne. Back then, all the Unlimited Hydro's were powered by Rolls Royce Merlin engines. Yea, surplus engines from P-51's and Spitfires. There was/is nothing like the sound of that Merlin engine screaming by. If you've never heard it, I can't explain it. Fast forward a few years into the future, and I attend the Hydro races in Detroit, and all the unlimited Hydro's are using jet engines. The go by and it's just a "whoosh" sound. All the fun and excitement were gone. Last Hydro race I ever went to. Or take a dragster or funny car burning Nitro, that sound, that smell. Yea, the electrics and jet powered race vehicles may be faster, but they're just boring. This may sound silly, but soon there will be a generation that never knows the sound of a tightly tuned internal combustion engine on a Formula 1 or even a Ducati. We won't even get behind the wheel, we will just whoosh along in boring electric vehicles. I think Jeff Beck said about self driving cars, who the hell would want that. What's the fun in that. Hell, I even miss the sound of a raspy old Bultaco, Husky or CZ 2-Stroke. I'll go back to yelling at the clouds now.
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I even miss the sound of a raspy old Bultaco, Husky or CZ 2-Stroke. I'll go back to yelling at the clouds now.
Those old onion-in-the-belt engines were awesome to behold, but they also spewed unburned fuel out of their arseholes like an angry fat man who hit every buffet in Vegas in one day. Now we can make electric dirt bikes that have fantastic performance, don't shake your hindquarters into puzzle pieces, and which will still have juice left when you're all tired out. They might be less interesting to watch, but manufacturers don't make the big bucks selling bikes to racers. They make 'em selling them to customer
Re:The roar of the internal combustion engine. (Score:5, Interesting)
Boring electric vehicles that have almost no "top speed" and can accelerate faster than just about anything on the planet.
I have always suspected, and it's now being borne out, that being "into" fast cars was nothing to do with performance, or handling, or engineering. It was about making loud noises and getting dirty and feeling manly.
Now that every car on the road can do 130mph, nobody cares. Now that electric cars/bikes out-accelerate everything else, nobody cares. Now that even Harley Davidson have electric models, nobody cares.
It was never about the engineering. It was about making noise, and being seen to make noise.
Formula One is as boring as fuck, since they keep making silly rules to dial everything back to "safety". Noisy cars are boring as fuck, since every decent car is whisper silent and can out-perform all the others. Even convertibles - why on EARTH is it at all fashionable to show the world that you can't afford air-con and would rather have every bug smacking you in the face?
Fact is, the ICE's days are numbered. Environmental factors, cost, wear on parts, etc. Almost every car on the road is technically better than a Formula One car from my parent's generation. You can't really speed anyway because of the cameras, and even when you do, they are designed so that it doesn't actually feel fast at all (a dangerous combination).
How about we get over "WOAH! CARS ARE BIG AND LOUD AND NOISY AND LOOK AT ME COMING!", finally? Most kids these days have zero interest in cars, for the same reason they have zero interest in computers - the point are which they were "amazing" was in the previous generation. Now everything's a Formula 1, and you can't do anything with it.
My technician bought himself a brand new car last year. Was telling me all about specs, sporty wheels, such-and-such-a-limited-edition, etc. Spent a fortune. Turned out that, when we checked the specs, the car I had bought a few years before outperformed every spec he gave but didn't look like a terrible boy-racer tricked-out car from the 80's, could carry 5 and a ton of luggage, and was whisper-quiet internally.
Cars are no longer the must-have teenager item. They have Uber if they want to go somewhere. As such, those still clinging to that idea are clinging to a childhood, not to a fascination with engineering. We've been using sub-standard engines for decades because nobody "wanted" an electric car. Now that they do, they win on almost every metric.
P.S. I don't like electric cars, but because of practicality - purchase cost, replacement cost, range. My father was also a motor engineer for decades, built all his own tricked-out cars, did all kinds of stuff in his youth, massive garage dedicated to the hobby, etc. He bought a second-hand Volvo last year.
Cars are just utility vehicles now. And so the sporty ones make no sense. And a battery-powered Harley will beat just about anything away at the lights. Fact is, nobody really cares any more except the guy who bought the Harley because of the Harley name.
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It was never about the engineering. It was about making noise, and being seen to make noise.
You hit around it, but you really missed the point. It was about more than the noise. It was about engineering. But mostly, it was about challenging your mates and building a better "it" than they build. It was about making you car do more than what the other guys could get their cars to do. It was about building a computer that would play the latest games smoother than the other guys in your group. The noise was just a side-effect that showcased your accomplishment. The liquid cooling setup and LEDs
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If it was about engineering then that Miami guy wouldn't complain about jet engines. They are marvels of engineering compared to piston engines.
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This. 327 times this.
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How about we get over "WOAH! CARS ARE BIG AND LOUD AND NOISY AND LOOK AT ME COMING!", finally?
I give a shit what my car sounds or looks like to anyone else. What I care about is what it sounds like to me, and what it looks like to me. Someone once said that if you don't turn around to look at your car at least once as you walk away, you've got the wrong car. I want my car's styling to say something positive to me. Oddly, the styling of my 1998 A8 is for me (all the style is on the inside, what there is of it) but the exhaust note is for everyone else, you can only hear it inside the car when you tot
Re:The roar of the internal combustion engine. (Score:5, Insightful)
self driving cars, who the hell would want that
A commuter driving the same route to work every day. Or a parent dropping off the kids and doing shopping.
In other words, the vast majority of drivers.
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I remember when I was a kid, growing up in Miami. We would go to the unlimited hydroplane races at Marine Stadium on Key Biscayne. Back then, all the Unlimited Hydro's were powered by Rolls Royce Merlin engines. Yea, surplus engines from P-51's and Spitfires. There was/is nothing like the sound of that Merlin engine screaming by. If you've never heard it, I can't explain it. Fast forward a few years into the future, and I attend the Hydro races in Detroit, and all the unlimited Hydro's are using jet engines. The go by and it's just a "whoosh" sound. All the fun and excitement were gone. Last Hydro race I ever went to. Or take a dragster or funny car burning Nitro, that sound, that smell. Yea, the electrics and jet powered race vehicles may be faster, but they're just boring. This may sound silly, but soon there will be a generation that never knows the sound of a tightly tuned internal combustion engine on a Formula 1 or even a Ducati. We won't even get behind the wheel, we will just whoosh along in boring electric vehicles. I think Jeff Beck said about self driving cars, who the hell would want that. What's the fun in that. Hell, I even miss the sound of a raspy old Bultaco, Husky or CZ 2-Stroke. I'll go back to yelling at the clouds now.
I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. Despite all the religion-fuelled comments here, the infernal combustion engine isn't going anywhere soon. It's way too cheap and plentiful.
s/only make/make only/ (Score:2)
The summary as it stands does not say what it means to say. Why is it so hard to position the word "only" in the right place in a sentence?
It's not as impressive as it sounds first (Score:3, Insightful)
The first time you read the title, it seems like Volvo will only sell electric cars in 2 years time and they will become another Tesla.
Then, if you pay attention, it says that starting 2019, all new models will have an electric engine in them. Yes, this includes mild hybrids, basically energy recovery systems where the electric engine only gives a boost, but it's too small to drive on electric power alone. And yes, they will keep producing the old models for a while.
This is good news, but by no means earth-shattering. I understand most of the European manufacturers will introduce mild hybrids across their range, due to very strict emission standards coming 2020. A PR coup for Volvo, for making public a decision that everyone in the industry will eventually take, and soon.
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> I wasn't going to buy one of those pieces of crap, anyway
You took time out of your day to tell us what you don't do so you could complain about it.
Wow.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Funny)
"... and now they won't even make the type of car that I would consider buying."
Sounds like the bus and a lot of walking is in your future.
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What is the problem about having a hybrid car?
Do you just like the idea of polluting the environment more and paying more for Gasoline every month?
Re: Ha! (Score:5, Informative)
You realize that there are Prius autos out there that are hitting 500,000 miles on their original batteries, yes? Or that electrics have about 2,000 fewer parts to wear out and break as opposed to ICEs?
And I just saw an article recently that ran down the top 20 most common repairs needed by modern ICE-powered cars... and none of them apply to EVs.
If you're wanting reliability, a simple electric motor beats an ICE hands down, and twice on Sunday.
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Nissan Leaf batteries have been proven over 200k miles, and that's the old chemistry. Some Tesla cars have double that, again with no issues.
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You realize that there are Prius autos out there that are hitting 500,000 miles on their original batteries, yes? Or that electrics have about 2,000 fewer parts to wear out and break as opposed to ICEs?
And I just saw an article recently that ran down the top 20 most common repairs needed by modern ICE-powered cars... and none of them apply to EVs.
If you're wanting reliability, a simple electric motor beats an ICE hands down, and twice on Sunday.
Agreed on the batteries. People still act as if Hybrid technology is so new as to not be proven yet. The Prius has been available in North America and Europe since 2000. Seventeen years. If there was a massive problem with premature battery failure we'd have heard about it by now. It's no more statistically significant than major powertrain issues on an ICE vehicle.
On repairs, in my experience, a lot of repairs done to ICE cars could easily be applicable to Hybrid or Electric cars. Tires still wear out, tie
Re: Ha! (Score:2)
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Of course, and it will outperform any petrol car on the market while doing so.
I don't know how far down the road you'll get, but you'll get there fast.
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My car is 11 years old and there are no design constraints in it preventing me from hoping it will last five more years without major expenses. You can't say that about a hybrid or an electric. It WILL need an expensive new battery long before it is 16 years old.
Hmm,
How many times did you have to do an Oil/Filter/Spark Plug etc. Change. How much GAS cost for 100KMs vs. Cost of Electricity to charge it for 100KM. So on and so forth.
I don't foresee the batteries as a long term issue. What will eventually happen, once there are enough EVs on the road, you will see batteries becomming a standard and battery stations will start cropping up.
Essentially Gas stations will start carrying these standard batteries, you will pay monthly/yearly fee for the service. Once you are
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Gas is getting cheaper and cheaper....especially as oil prices drop per barrel.
Hell, gas is less than $1.99/gallon in most of the US today...its cheap to drive a IC car these days.
Why are you and others harping on gasoline costs, when they have been dropping for years now?
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Yeah, you're right. And everyone knows there is infinite, endless petroleum underground. Price of oil doesn't wildly fluctuate with political, economic, and butterfly flapping effects so whatever the price is now is what it will continue to be until the rapture, right?
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I remember having a conversation about drilling in ANWR and the argument against it was that any wells started there today would not produce for 5 years, so it would do nothing for today's prices. Sure enough prices did drop, and about 5 years after that conversation prices spiked. Supply and demand bit us in the ass. If we had more supply then prices would not have spiked like that.
Sure would have been nice if we started drilling 10 years ago when I had that conversation.
The amount of oil in the ground
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What will eventually happen, once there are enough EVs on the road, you will see batteries becomming a standard and battery stations will start cropping up.
Essentially Gas stations will start carrying these standard batteries, you will pay monthly/yearly fee for the service. Once you are running low, you pull into these battery stations and someone or robotically, your battery will be replaced with a fully charged one.
The problem is battery packs in electric cars are normally designed to maximize dimensions of the car model since they struggle to get the range they get. Someone (Tesla? Nissan?) tried swappable battery packs, but I think they withdrew from the market.
What may be doable is an addon. For normal driving the built-in batteries are sufficient. For extended range rent either a standard format swappable battery pack, or an ICE Genset that mounts on the roof, trunk, or in a trailer.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Informative)
Damn that electric card! ;)
Meanwhile, in the real world, multiple studies have reached the same conclusion: on the US's current grid, a complete switchover to EVs:
* PM increases.
* You would see more SOx, except that grid operators are largely capped; in order to sell more power, they have to improve their sulfur scrubbing (and it's well worth them in order to sell more power). In short there's little change.
* NOx is relatively unchanged.
* VOCs go way down
* CO goes way down
* CO2 gets about a 30% reduction
Also:
* All regions of the US grid have enough generation capacity for a complete EV switchover with no new construciton needed except for the hydro-rich Pacific Northwest.
* Local grids however need to be upgraded in many places.
* That said, nobody is talking about a magic fairy coming along and converting all cars to EVs overnight; even the most rushed production pace would be far slower than the pace of grid maintenance and upgrades.
Lastly:
* Gasoline is getting dirtier, as producers increasingly switch to deeper reservoirs, bitumen, tight oil, deepwater crude, etc, which involve more emissions in their production.
* Electricity is getting cleaner, and surprisingly fast, with most new power being gas, wind, and increasingly, solar.
* EVs continue to get cleaner over time as the grid does.
On to your other claims:
No, they don't. The two rarest elements involved in lithium ion batteries are lithium and cobalt, which rank only after nitrogen in Earth's crustal abundance. Their raw material prices of 1-2 dozen dollars per kilogram give a good clue that they're not exactly hard to come by. Li-ion batteries don't even use all that much lithium anyway. By contrast, while gasoline cars don't use a tremendous amount of it, they require platinum or other metals in their catalytic converters and some times spark plugs, which most definitely are rare.
Most cobalt is not directly mined. It's a byproduct of mining the copper used for things like powering the computer you're typing on. Lithium is rarely "strip mined"; it's one of the most environmentally-friendly means of production you can get. It involves pumping brine from under the surface of a playa and drying it in the sun on the surface. Most such playas flood annually, wiping out the evidence that the mine ever was there.
(Note that while all li-ion batteries use lithium, not all use cobalt. Some for example, use iron phosphate, spinels, etc.)
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, I forgot to mention: grid emissions are largely emitted in less densely populated areas, at altitude. Vehicle emissions are largely emitted at street level, predominantly in more densely populated areas. This amplifies the health effects significantly, particularly for short-lived pollutants.
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You could also note that
1. Internal Combustion Engines in cars get about 20% thermal efficiency, while the efficiency of thermal steam turbines are gt 60%
2. Coal plants are getting phased out for gas and solar, so their argument is diminishing even as we quibble
All of this BS being thrown by the incumbent US car makers is solely to support their sunk costs in manufacturing equipment for ICE's, and has nothing to do with the value of what people are purchasing
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Thanks! Great info, wish I had mod points to give.
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Look pal, no one is going to come and take away your 1971 Maverick Grabber. You can drive that baby into the ground, or wrap it around a tree, whatever, no one cares. Eventually, it will go off the driveable list one way or another. Or gasoline will become so rare that it will be affordable only for wealthy douches or by special permit only. Parts will become harder and harder to get, if you can afford it you'll have to buy a few extra whole cars to keep as donors, etc.
So enjoy your thoughtless pursuits
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Informative)
Energy cost is precisely the issue. Energy in oil production almost always corresponds directly to CO2 emissions.
No, but as I mentioned, price does. And neither lithium carbonate nor cobalt oxide (aka the raw materials) are particularly expensive. Furthermore, the person said "rare", which does mean abundance.
Dominate overwhelmingly at present (although pegmatites might make a comeback due to booming demand). No, it's not particularly energy intensive, and I'm going to dispute the statement that the evaporation ponds stick around through flood (unless you have something to back that up); production cost reports regularly note that the annual loss of the evaporation ponds makes flooding salars more expensive to produce from (but they represent some of the largest and richest resources). They're made of salt. You don't flood something made of salt, with water, and then have it stick around.
The GP was trying to make the produditon of lithium sound like some scar-gouging strip mine. Here's what it actually looks like [google.com]. It's hard to think of a means of mining that has less impact on the landscape.
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The real obstacles are needing to increase total electric generation capacity as you slowly replace oil. . .
Electrical utilities have an issue of trying to balance out peak demand vs supply. Demand usually goes up and down during the day, with peaks early in the morning and at dinner time, and lows overnight. On the supply side large nuke plants can't spool up and down quickly, and the wind may blow windmills at random. Currently utilities use concepts such as interruptable industrial customers that can be shutdown if the utility needs the capacity. There is also customers charged time of day billing. With a larg
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Exactly. Utilities have been salivating over the prospect of electric cars for quite some time; they've been early adopters, even when the tech wasn't up to snuff, and provided significant support for some of the early cross-country EV road trips. They don't just mean more sales, they mean more sales predominantly at times when demand is low, meaning they can use their existing infrastructure to make them more money. The fact that it's at worst a steady draw, and at best a draw which they can adjust withi
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Use nuclear power and all this pollution goes away.
To the haters that think nuclear waste is an impossible problem to solve I counter with fourth generation reactors that don't produce waste like the old ones did. Far preferable to the waste produced with coal, solar, or wind.
Re:Ha! (Score:4, Interesting)
I wasn't going to buy one of those pieces of crap, anyway, and now they won't even make the type of car that I would consider buying.
That's exactly why this is the right move for the kind of customer that Volvo is pursuing. Whether pursuing that kind of customer is a good idea or not is another issue. As far as I can tell, it's the middle class, and the middle class is shrinking. At least they finally figured out that they have to make their cars tall if they want to sell them.
Volvo is already selling a highly fancy-pants twincharged (super+turbo) engine with all the bells and whistles. They're fairly well-committed to taking the high-tech solution. But what do you have against hybrids? The Germans and the Koreans alike are now using it to make cars better first, and more efficient second. They still achieve significant efficiency gains, while also improving performance — sometimes by quite a lot, because the electric motor ideally complements the gasoline engine. The electric motor makes peak torque near stall, while the gasoline engine makes it much higher, especially if it is not turbocharged.
But let's say you have a tiny little engine, a big but cheap turbo, and a 48 volt lithium ion mild hybrid system. Your electric motor fills in down low to make up for the lack of torque in the engine, and for the long spool-up time on the turbocharger. The turbo comes on in the mid-range and continues to let the itty bitty engine make more power well into the high rpm/load range, as the electric motor fades away. How can that be a bad thing? The only reason you might [reasonably] complain is if it's mated to a CVT, but you can as easily use a DCT and get almost the same efficiency. Because you're doing torque fill with the electric motor, the clutches in the DCT will last essentially forever.
Automakers have to achieve mileage improvements both in specific segments, and also across their range. For the big guys who make vehicles in multiple segments, there's low-hanging fruit that they're already picking in weight reduction, Ford with Aluminum and GM with ultra high-strength steel. Dodge doesn't sell anywhere near as many pickups, and I'm not sure if FCA even has a plan there. For someone like Volvo, who only sells cars and unrelated heavy trucks into the USA, they have to literally get those mileage improvements across their range — that is, in all of their vehicles.
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Your electric motor fills in down low to make up for the lack of torque in the engine, and for the long spool-up time on the turbocharger.
Would not an electric driven supercharger fix the problem of spool up time for an exhaust driven turbocharger?
If you have an electric motor assisting the ICE after the transmission then does one need a dual clutch transmission for smooth shifting and constant torque to the wheels?
Thinking about this some I consider that a clutch is not even needed to switch gears if the engine and gearing can be synchronized. People do clutchless shifting all the time once they learn the proper way to do it, and not trash
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Perhaps you could explain where I am mistaken?
I'll elaborate further. Consider a drive train with ICE -> transmission -> electric motor -> differential -> wheels. The transmission is capable of park, neutral, and at least two forward gear ratios.
Process to move car from standstill:
With ICE running and transmission in neutral the driver pushes accelerator and electric motor propels the vehicle. When transmission input to output ratio matches first gear shift engage first gear.
Up shift:
As car a
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I hope you realize your parents aren't going to drive you around forever.
Re:not market forces - govt regulation... (Score:4, Insightful)
Says someone who obviously wasn't around CA in the '70s. Thing is, "consumers" also want air they can breath, and water they can drink....
Sulfates and other pollutants are directly related to acidification of rainfall and as such our streams, rivers, lakes, and groundwater; directly contribute to asthma and lung cancer and other health related issues; and, of course, to our carbon footprint.
And, like coal, if an older technology can no longer do its job from both an economic and environmental standpoint, then, like horses and steam engines, it's time for it to go.
Re:Vulvas like battery power (Score:4, Insightful)
Regarding Subaru: "In an interview published Sunday by Bloomberg, the company's CEO Yasuyuki Yoshinaga said that it plans to make all-electric versions of existing models rather than develop new vehicle lines for the new powertrains."
Tesla is selling the S and X and soon the M3. Fischer is pushing forward. Chevrolet is selling the Volt and Bolt. Toyota, of course, is selling the Prius Prime PHEV plus several other hybrids. Honda has the Clarity plus hybrids. Nissan Leaf. BMW is selling the i3 and teasing the i8. Kia Soul EV and Niro. Fiat 500e. Hyundai Ioniq.
Tell your gf that they're coming, like it or not.
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Hybrids bring one advantage to the table, especially as congestion gets worse: At idle, the IC engine can be turned off so the vehicle takes zero power, other than to handle the HVAC and electronics. This means less pollution overall.
Of course, a hybrid with an inverter is useful if one has a house or condo and power goes out. It is a lot quieter and likely more fuel efficient than a generator.
Slashdot news alert: Priuses aren't profitable? (Score:2)
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I'm planning to buy a Leaf this fall, so I'm in favor of electric cars and I do think that they are the future. However, at this point, very few of them are profitable for the manufacturers. The CEO of Fiat told people not to buy the 500e, the Soul EV is very limited in availability. Just last month the Leaf was available with a $10k rebate. It seems like GM loses ~$7k on each Bolt right now. Tesla seems like one of the few which would be making money if they weren't reinvesting.
One problem with the rapid a
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On this note, I just mentioned to one of my lezzie gfs this article. I don't know if she was joking, but she said she'd have to switch to Subaru. She and her mate (her choice of words) both drive Volvos.
Bullshit. You and she and I all know that she's going to switch to a tacoma with a camper shell.
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It seems you're confusing "hybrids" and "plug-in hybrids". Hybrids do not plug in at all.
Out of curiosity, what sort of "getting away to the mountains" route are you concerned about?
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I'm not the OP, but I regularly (3 or more times a year) "get away to the mountains" by driving 250 miles with 4-6 people plus skis, an elevation change of ~5k feet, and often 6 inches of fresh snow on the road when I'm nearing the resort. Maybe a Model X would let me do that, but I think I'll keep an ICE for that type of stuff for a while. But 95% of my driving is not that, and we have 3 drivers in the house, so I'll be getting an electric car soon.
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I was asking the OP, not a general "can anyone present an example (without any route specifics that could be crossreferenced with charger locations) which might be difficult for some of the shorter-range Teslas".
The only detail you actually gave of utility concerning your route is the altitude change. A net gain in 5000 feet corresponds to roughly 50km (31mi) of range loss for a Model S. If you're talking a heavier vehicle, it'd be more. I have no clue what percentage of your "250 miles" is covered in snow
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What on Earth do you think I was replying to? How do you expect me to estimate the ability of a vehicle to reach a destination without any clue what route they're talking about and what's along that route? Simply knowing the temperature (which, by the way, they didn't give - and I'm not a moron who doesn't know that "snow means cold") and "how many passengers" are in some undisclosed vehicle, is not nearly enough. The number of passengers is far less important than the
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From the Volvo PR: "This means that there will in future be no Volvo cars without an electric motor, as pure ICE cars are gradually phased out and replaced by ICE cars that are enhanced with electrified options."
Re:Need for speed? (Score:5, Informative)
2017 Chevy Corvette 0-60 in 3.6 sec. 1/4 mile in 12.3 sec. 296 mile range.
2017 Tesla model S (sedan): 0-60 in 2.28 sec. 1/4 mile in 10.5 sec. 310 mile range.
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So, like, what's the time it takes each car to go 800 miles?
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2017 Chevy Corvette 0-60 in 3.6 sec. 1/4 mile in 12.3 sec. 296 mile range. About USD 50,000
2017 Tesla model S (sedan): 0-60 in 2.28 sec. 1/4 mile in 10.5 sec. 310 mile range. About USD 100,000
Heck of a difference, but it looks like we are getting there. (Read this and weep, Jeremy Clarkson)
Cleaner air. Quieter. And what will we do with all those petrol station ("gas" stations)?
Of course the next step, moving away from private vehicle to shared ones will give an interesting opportunity for garage conversions
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That number is also 0 for the Corvette. What's your point again here?
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"2017 Tesla Model S 0-60 in 5.0, 1/4 mile in 13.6."
Your numbers are out of date. Tesla just updated the car and even the base Model S 75 without dual motors can now hit 60 in 4.3 seconds and costs $69,500 but you also get a $7500 tax credit bringing it down to $62,000. For that you get a car that needs very little servicing and you can get free supercharging for the life of the car with a referral. I know which one I would prefer.
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Some people prefer to buy fast cars (like my corvette.) Until we can expect the same performance and range, there will always be a market for internet combustion engines.
No problem, as long as you pay for the very high pollution cost associated with your choice.
Currently, you do not. The market for internal combustion engines will be much smaller when the pollution cost is not externalized to the rest of the world.
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Don't know which Corvette you have but Teslas are faster than your Corvette.
Fastest Corvette is 3.8 0-60
Fastest Tesla is 3..2
Even my "non-performance" Tesla is 4.2 which is faster than most Corvettes.