Volkswagen To Spend Over $40 Billion on Electric and Self-Driving Cars (reuters.com) 99
Volkswagen plans to spend more than 34 billion euros ($40 billion) over the next five years on developing electric cars, autonomous driving and other new technologies, it said on Friday. "With the planning round now approved, we are laying the foundation for making Volkswagen the world's number one player in electric mobility by 2025," Chief Executive Matthias Mueller said in a statement.
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e-Golf is almost perfect (Score:2, Informative)
I took a *serious* look at the e-Golf last month. The only problem is that it has a 201 km range and the cottage is 250 km (like, within 10m of that number).There's a CCS on the route, but it's too close to the start point to be really useful, and there's not a lot of places in the middle to add one. So for me, something with 300 km range is pretty much a requirement.
The deal is pretty spectacular. Here in Ontario you get $14,000 back for buying an EV, and if you put in a Level 2 charger all your night time
Re:e-Golf is almost perfect (Score:5, Informative)
I have a 2015 eGolf - it has a remote that reports battery status (amongst other things).
It is indeed an almost perfect car - my lease is about to expire, and I'm seriously considering another one despite its range being roughly half that of the Bolt.
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My 2015 model has a range of 83 miles using the US tests or 118 miles based of NEDC. My 2015 model has never achieved more than 110 miles on a single charge even with the most careful 35 mph constant speed driving, its usual range, when not deliberately driving very carefully is around 80 miles for my commute (mostly freeway driving).
Long story short - the NEDC tests are not accurate, the US ones (at least in my experience) are pretty similar to reality. Based off the the US's testing, the 2018 eGolf has
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I just don't understand why someone would choose a Bolt unless they were either really opposed to waiting, or really hated minimalism. For example, you mention charge time; Model 3 charges 2 1/2 times faster than that. With a global charging network, single network, evenly spaced, well monitored and maintained (unlike CCS which is... well, not). With an onboard capability even faster for when charger powers rise. And on Bolt, even that level of fast charging is an optional extra. The interior is Fisher-
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Re: e-Golf is almost perfect (Score:2)
I don't like the look of Teslas. The front is the bit that bothers me, specifically the logo/grill area. It looks like the maitre d in Ferris Butler's Day Off...all snooty-nosed...ugly even.
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The only problem is that it has a 201 km range and the cottage is 250 km (like, within 10m of that number).
Beware. You should NEVER ever confuse a spec number with real world mileage, especially not from a company like Volkswagen (and I'm from Germany, trust me). You will only get that range out of the car under optimal conditions, in maybe late spring / early summer, with no interior heating or AC running, no headlights drawing power, and so on.
My imagination fails me when I try to picture the actual range you'll get in wintertime. In Canada? During our mild European winters, the effective range of a Nissan Le
Dieselgate will be good for humanity (Score:1)
VW Auto Group is one of the world's largest automakers, maybe the largest depending on how you count. They were in a unique position to make this happen, but not bothering to do so because they were profiting from business as usual. Now they're going balls-out into EVs in order to try to shake that reputation, which will benefit everyone.
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VW Auto Group is one of the world's largest automakers, maybe the largest depending on how you count. They were in a unique position to make this happen, but not bothering to do so because they were profiting from business as usual. Now they're going balls-out into EVs in order to try to shake that reputation, which will benefit everyone.
I believe VW's products are amazing, however, their business ethics, imho, are borderline criminal; unfortunately on the wrong side of that borderline.
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They'd be behind Tesla by 5 years if the product could be purchased TODAY. It can't. They haven't even rolled out a prototype that can compete with a 2012 Tesla Model S, and a prototype is expected several years before a purchasable product.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Tesla fan by any means, they're a horrible, slimy company, but I drive a Model S because there is simply no competing vehicle on the road yet. I'll be first in line when someone comes up with an actual competitor.
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That may be true, but $40B buys you a lot of expertise to bypass at least a few of those years by bringing in outside people. It also will allow you to progress much faster than the resources Tesla has available to them, and leverage their name and supply chain.
It's like a catharsis (Score:1)
It is startling how they have been plunging headfirst into electric. While they did cheat with diesel engines, they have huge expertise in that field, and the cheating was for cost and NIH reasons (they didn't want to use MB's SCR tech), not technical. I'd have thought they'd use mild or full hybridization, or even just more advanced actually clean diesels, at least as a transition.
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I'd have thought they'd use mild or full hybridization, or even just more advanced actually clean diesels, at least as a transition.
They are. The new A8 is a mild hybrid. The luxury market can pay for the new tech, which will filter into the majority of their vehicles before any of these EVs come out. They're probably waiting until more of the car can affordably be 48V, which in turn reduces the size of the 12V system.
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NOBODY will believe VW when they announce they've got a new, clean diesel. In addition, European countries are announcing future, across-the-board bans on diesels, because the soot they produce is so damaging to health and structures. There's no future in diesel cars, and spending any more money on developing a BETTER dead-end technology is foolish. You might as well tell Ko
Re: It's like a catharsis (Score:2)
Is it really about the soot? I don't see much about soot these days and it's more about the invisible particles (is that what you call soot?) and NOX gases. /Curious
Re: It's like a catharsis (Score:2)
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
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Yeah, that's not new and I actually have one of the affected vehicles, but I personally can distinguish between what diesels used to produce - horrible thick black soot, kind of like what comes out of a chimney when you clean it, and what the produce now, which is pretty much invisible - until it becomes smog, that is.
Nice but ... (Score:1)
I'd prefer that they spent a few billions on the people they defrauded and also spend lots of years in jail.
broken windows for everyone! (Score:1)
I'd prefer that they spent a few billions on the people they defrauded and also spend lots of years in jail.
Yeah let's close a few factories and throw a few thousand workers off their jobs so you can feel some vengeance
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I'd prefer that they spent a few billions on the people they defrauded and also spend lots of years in jail.
...spend lots of decades in jail. FTFY.
They should return all the money they cheated people of, plus 20% for the aggravation caused.
Cars of the future (Score:4, Insightful)
Electric cars are quick, efficient and quiet. Imagine NYC if the sound of engines were taken away. Imagine a small 40,000 person community. Imagine the tangible differences; less smog, less noise. This is a great solution for people that live in urban areas. I think people will find the ease of use, the different feel of being so quiet, and how little maintenance has to be done so appealing that it is going to become irresistible to almost anyone buying a new car, relatively soon.
--
"Life is a journey. When we stop, things don't go right." - Pope Francis
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Don't worry, humanity is working hard to screw it up yet.
New laws require all electric vehicles to include noisemakers which could potentially make them LOUDER than modern internal combustion vehicles (I wish I was joking!)
And most announced "electric" vehicles by all manufacturers (including VW) aren't actually electric anyway and are only hybrids.
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My first thought was "he's joking, right?"
My second was "better verify this".
My third was "Jaysus, he's not joking". Though it's not quite correct. Only electrics built after 2019 will require the noisemakers....
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google "red flag laws" while you're at it. It's exactly the same motivation. This has zero to do with safety, and everything to do with resistance to change.
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The noise is added so blind and inattentive pedestrians are aware that there's a moving car nearby. NHTSA noticed an uptick in low-speed accidents between hybrids/EVs and pedestrians, so jumped on a way to stop it before it became epidemic.
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There was actually no up-tick, and modern internal combustion cars are actually quieter than these vehicles, so the concept of it being for "safety" is easily disproven.
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In German, it is pronounced "Yes-us" (Score:2)
In many languages-other-than-English, the "J" is actually a "Y" sound, that is how we got from Yahshuah to Jesus and from YWYH to Jehovah -- see http://www.bing.com/videos/sea... [bing.com]
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New laws require all electric vehicles to include noisemakers which could potentially make them LOUDER than modern internal combustion vehicles (I wish I was joking!)
Only at low speed, where the sound might actually be a useful warning to pedestrians. Once the speed gets over 20 mph or so, the vehicle is moving fast enough that it would have to be really loud for a pedestrian to hear it at a useful distance.
The Nissan LEAF has always had such a noisemaker. It shuts off at about 20 mph.
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Safety is easy. There is ZERO safety benefit, and there is a safety danger to noise pollution that is well documented.
If it was really about safety, ALL vehicles would be required to be a minimum noise level, not just electric ones. Listen to a high end internal combustion vehicle some time, they're nearly silent at low speeds.
This is a modern "red flag law" designed to punish new technology. Nothing more.
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Engines only contribute about 1/3rd of the noise of a vehicle. Air being pushed out from between the wheels and pavement counts for most of the rest. EVs will help a bit, but wont fix the problem.
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Imagine NYC if the sound of engines were taken away.
Horns and angry shouting over the sound of a background drone will just be replaced with horns and angry shouting?
Re: Cars of the future (Score:2)
If you're referring to this article,
https://www.caranddriver.com/r... [caranddriver.com]
That's not really what they're saying. They are saying if you can't replace your own brake fluid or cabin air filter, or take it to a Firestone to do it, they will charge you $700 for it, which isn't terribly unlike any other luxury car service. What they don't tell you is how much they spent on oil changes, or transmission fluid, or brake service. Hint: they didn't spend anything on it. So including the savings on gas, that's a good deal
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Electric cars are quick, efficient and quiet. Imagine NYC if the sound of engines were taken away.
Are traffic problems not bad enough in NYC already? All it takes is for a few of those cars to run out of power per day.
The other week I was stuck on the A327 because an electric car (a Tesla no less) had run out of power. The A327 is mostly single lane each way so at peak hour there are practically no chances to overtake (and the Tesla driver refused to push his precious car off the road whilst waiting for recovery) I was relatively close but delayed by almost an hour. Not sure how many carbons my 3L tu
Vaporware (Score:3)
In software development, it's called vaporware if you're announcing how great the shit is that you're going to develop. VW is behind the pack at the moment, that's why they're blabbering about this, in my opinion.
Right now, I'm driving a Renault Zoe. This is an extremely practical car. The NEDC range is 400 km (250 miles), which realistically is 275 km (170 miles). VW is getting closer, but AFAIK right now does not have anything like that.
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VW isn't "behind the pack" they're behind a couple of early technology leaders. VW is actually at the front of the "pack" of major manufacturers who are still WAY behind the curve on electrification.
That said, it's absolutely pathetic that nearly 10 years after Tesla announced the Model S that there still isn't a single competitor to that vehicle. (And how I wish there was, I'm sick of Tesla's slimy unethical behaviour!)
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They aren't profitable, but that's nothing to do with the vehicles themselves, they actually have among the highest profit margins in the auto industry on each vehicle sold. The losses are all on the business expansion side, building out new stores, service centres, factories, etc. Things a traditional automaker wouldn't have to worry about in this space. In short, Tesla has a spending problem, not an income problem.
I'm not exactly Tesla's biggest fan (I personally think they're the scummiest company I've e
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I don't think you've looked at the numbers at all.
They ARE like Amazon there, they're plowing more money in to capital expansion than they're making on vehicle sales. If they had built a battery factory the size they needed for the vehicles they were producing, or kept the same number of stores they already had, etc, they'd be profitable already. But instead they built a much bigger battery factory than they have any need for yet, and built out more stores, in more countries. This costs a lot of money.
I per
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VW isn't "behind the pack" they're behind a couple of early technology leaders. VW is actually at the front of the "pack" of major manufacturers who are still WAY behind the curve on electrification.
That said, it's absolutely pathetic that nearly 10 years after Tesla announced the Model S that there still isn't a single competitor to that vehicle. (And how I wish there was, I'm sick of Tesla's slimy unethical behaviour!)
Not really, VW is about average at best, probably a bit worse than Renault or GM.
BMW is ostensibly at the head of the pack because they've been selling dedicated electric cars (i3 and i8) as well as hybrid versions of their existing cars (I.E. a 330e plug in hybrid) in good numbers. After that you've got Toyota and probably Mitsubishi with their PHEV range.
The problem VW has is that when Toyota was developing petrol hybrids, VW sank all of its money into Diesels which seemed like a good idea given the
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The i8 isn't a "dedicated electric car" it's a hybrid. You can't buy one without a gasoline engine, or with a battery pack big enough to do anything at all. The i3 is a different matter of course, but I would bet the majority of those are hybrid as well (they sell both hybrid and ev versions)
As for Toyota, their ev efforts have been the epitome of "compliance". And while Mitsubishi technically has the imiev, it's hardly been a blockbuster hit. Meanwhile Volkswagen's egolf actually gets really good reviews.
V
They used to be made in Germany (Score:2)
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Made in Germany is synonymous with quality much as Made in USA once was.
Re: They used to be made in Germany (Score:2)
I don't recall that ever being the case for the USA... certainly not for automotive.
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Sadly, most of the VW models sold in North America are made in Mexico. For obvious reasons, VW doesn't publicize that fact.
Dont worry, the ones made in Germany are just as crappy.
Besides, the whole "made in" is a misnomer these days, parts come in from all over the world and are just assembled in the final location. In fact the "Golf" is made in several locations, Spain as the Seat Leon, Czech Republic as the Skoda Octavia, all the same parts, just a different final assembly location.
Very few cars are made woe to go in the same country, most of these are hyper expensive (think McLaren expensive). I've had Japanese cars wi
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Perhaps you're right, since most cars are made by robots and automated machinery anyways these days what difference is it what country they come from. It's nothing new, even Harley-Davidson motorcycles have had Japanese electronics going back to the 70s. But Mexico?
I think it matters a little, but not as much as it used to. Although manufacturing is largely automated, process is still human designed and controlled. Things like QA/QC, although the Japanese have successfully run factories in Thailand for years now without a huge problem. As long as VW, GM, et al. are running the Mexico plants right, there shouldn't be an appreciable drop in quality. IIRC, dont VW make the Golf in Mexico because of tariffs on German cars? Same with VM assembling Korean cars in CKD form (
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VW making electic cars? (Score:1)
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I bought it for towing, and was surprised at how fuel efficient it is. This
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To condense your comment. NOx is generated any time you have a high pressure, high temperature environment in air. It actually doesn't have anything to do with the fuel being burned as it's a natural reaction at those conditions between the nitrogen and oxygen in the air. But diesel engines by their very nature need higher pressures and higher temperatures to ignite the diesel. This means any air passing through the engine is going to generate NOx at much higher rates than gasoline.
You can scrub NOx in a ca
Re: VW making electic cars? (Score:2)
I had my Audi A1 1.6 diesel "fixed" and they didn't add any urea device. I'm not sure what they did actually.
It's a big market (Score:1)
Typical Volkswagon Quality Engineering? (Score:2)
Will these cars be rated to run 1,000 miles on a single standard D-Cell battery based on Volkswagon engineer testing?