As EV Sales Slump, Volkswagen Scales Back Battery Factories Buildout (arstechnica.com) 141
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Volkswagen will wait to see what electric car demand is like before building out all six of its previously planned battery factories. Thomas Schmall, VW's board member in charge of technology, told a German newspaper that "building battery cell factories is not an end to itself" and that a goal of 200 GWh of lithium-ion cells by 2030 was not set in stone. [...] For VW, the previous goal of 200 GWh by 2030 from six factories (through a new subsidiary called PowerCo) could now be just 170 GWh capacity from three already-announced plants in Valencia, Spain; Ontario, Canada; and Salzgitter, Germany. If necessary, Schmall said that the Spanish and Canadian battery factories could be expanded to meet additional demand. This battery news follows another sign of slowing confidence in EVs at VW. Last week, it emerged that the company has pushed back plans for the ID.4's successor, which now may not see showrooms until 2032.
Building a wall. (Score:2)
Business of making powerwalls.
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Imagination (Score:5, Interesting)
There is tremendous need for cells to power home solar energy projects.
No reason VW couldn't parlay its organization into developing and selling those systems as well.
IFF it's a well-run nimble organization in a free market - perhaps none of those are true.
Maybe they really mean they spooled up for wet cell manufacturing and Samsuny/Toyota are about to make those obsolete?
There's more to this story.
Re: Imagination (Score:5, Insightful)
Traditional auto manufacturers aren't known for being nimble. Also, the batteries VW are making are likely overpriced relative to the imported ones from China, so the economics don't work.
Importantly, the heavier and cheaper sodium batteries will likely dominate in stationary applications like grid stabilization and photovoltaics. Automotive may stay with the lighter lithium chemistry, or for lower priced cars, switch chemistries too.
Another issue is the battery pack design has changed considerably in the last few years. What was a good design when VW designed the plant may no longer be competitive. GM ran into this issue in North America, and cancelled a bunch of battery plants as a result.
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Slowing down on Lion battery production also enables them to pivot to newer automotive battery tech better than if they overinvested in legacy tech.
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When it comes to E-Bikes, no name Chinese batteries are quite a bit cheaper than the "name" ones. It's a pity they occasionally burst into flames.
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There's rarely anything wrong with the batteries in Chinese e-bikes. The fundamental issue is the circuitry, protection systems, and charging systems around them. The Chinese absolutely dominate the battery industry and produce a lot of quality products for it. The differences in the brand vs no-name brand is the engineering around the battery itself.
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Of course they can. Just not with a dry powder or CO2 extinguisher. AVD extinguishers are a thing and are specifically designed to put out lithium fires. I highly recommend getting one if you're going to run battery storage at your house or if you're charging cheap Chinese DIY drones.
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There is tremendous need for cells to power home solar energy projects.
No reason VW couldn't parlay its organization into developing and selling those systems as well.
IFF it's a well-run nimble organization in a free market - perhaps none of those are true.
Maybe they really mean they spooled up for wet cell manufacturing and Samsuny/Toyota are about to make those obsolete?
There's more to this story.
Kinda, it depends how specialized those batteries are. One thing I'd expect for an automotive battery is it could take a ton of vibration and temperature variation not needed for a home battery setup. Possibly that makes them super overpriced for cars.
The other possibility is that they're simply not that nimble. I think the one-advantage of having an egotistical dictator like Musk in charge is he can say "do X" and now Tesla is doing X. It's probably a lot harder to open up a new product category at Volkswa
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Their battery tech isn't really optimized for home or grid scale storage. The chemistry they use is designed for high energy density and low weight. Static batteries usually use chemistries optimized for cost, trading weight. Some also favour chemistries that are safer, but lower energy density. They also don't have to deal with automotive temperature ranges and moisture levels.
They would have a hard time competing with Chinese manufacturers, who have more advanced technology anyway. A lot of R&D would
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No reason VW couldn't parlay its organization into developing and selling those systems as well.
You're implying that VW wants to be in the battery and energy business. They don't. There's plenty of reasons that companies don't just scale up to produce products outside of their core portfolio. Quite often it doesn't end very well.
The whole purpose of VW's battery production was to insulate their primary business from the shackles of Asian suppliers - same reason Tesla got into the battery business. Making batteries isn't magically a business in itself, it's just an internal supply chain optimisation.
Why now is a great time to buy an EV in the UK (Score:2)
according to The Guardian [theguardian.com] A secondhand EV is a possibility for many families as the cost of desirable models, including Kias and Teslas, falls to £15,000.
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Right up until something causes any damage whatsoever to something near the battery pack, at which point it's 10k+ to replace the battery. Electric vehicles, and indeed most modern vehicles, are effectively disposable tech because once damaged in any significant fashion it is cheaper for the insurer to write off the vehicles rather than replace all the expensive doodads.
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It seems that that is no longer true. If you read the article that I linked to you will see:
Re:Why now is a great time to buy an EV in the UK (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because I'm certainly going to believe the car salesman. Not to mention that I am talking about damage to the battery pack, not a faulty cell that needs replacing. These are two very different things.
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The article refers to Cleevely EV, who literally make a living in the UK by (among other things) repairing EV battery packs (not merely replacing cells), and have done for at least a decade. You guys cling to your stories in the teeth of abundant evidence to the contrary, and it’s so immature.
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The abundant evidence is not the article, it’s the repaired battery packs. Given that the assertion is “battery packs can’t be repaired”, then the existence of cars with repaired battery packs is ample demonstration that the assertion is false.
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Just like any other expensive-when-brand-new car: a car that cost $60k new, and then sold for $15k used, still has the same maintenance and repair costs of the original $60k car.
Ask anyone who's bought a used BMW 7-series or Mercedes S-class "because it was so cheap used" how that's worked out for them.
Batteries are still below par (Score:2, Informative)
1. They have to endure at least 500,000 km of driving.
2. Thermal runaway fire risk needs eliminated entirely. Probably goes in hand with #1.
3. The battery cost is still too high.
4. Charge range could be improved still. Or a lot more charging infrastructure needed. Which then leads to needing 10 minute recharging ability.
Re:Batteries are still below par (Score:5, Informative)
They have more efficient motors.
They are quieter.
No gases.
The range is enough for most.
They are cheaper to drive.
You can charge them at home.
But they are expensive to buy, so a short term downturn was not unexpected. In the future we can expect many technical improvements and cheaper cars.
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And because of that, the EU requires that electric cars manufactured after July 2019 must generate a sound of a certain volume when driving slower than 20 km/h.
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They are death traps for pedestrians who can't hear them coming
Pedestrians are "tuned-out" anyways with earplugs that blast music into their skulls, not in theory, but by observation and experience having ridden an electric motorcycle for years myself. No amount of noise (zero or an air horn) is enough to get pedestrians out of their technology-induced bubble trance.
Safety systems built into many EV's are not exclusive to electric vehicles but they sure are cheaper for manufacturers to implement on an EV platform... so we will see more of those on EVs. It's not vehicle
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They are death traps for pedestrians who can't hear them coming
Tire noise is still a thing. And the US government mandates that all EVs and hybrids make noise under some speed that is insufficient to produce tire noise
The gasses are just displaced to the mining, manufacturing, and power plant facilities
Mining and manufacturing takes place for every car you are going to buy, so that's not nearly the argument you think it is. And power plants operate at far higher efficiency than any automotive engine at extracting the energy from fuel. Also, renewable energy exists that doesn't put out any gasses at all.
People don't use them for road trips in large countries because the range and charging time is a headache.
So I didn't drive coast to coast across the US i
Re:Batteries are still below par (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Batteries are still below par (Score:4, Informative)
ICE Engines have no problem going a million in most cars if properly maintained.
Most Westerners are really unaware that a lot of these cars that just go away aren't scrapped, but shipped to Africa.
You'll find a lot of videos of these cars being driven around at well over a million kilometers, and they work just fine even as everything around the engine is falling apart:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The main problem is rubber hoses, gaskets and seals giving out and not being replaced. This results in needing to jury rig things like fuel lines in really weird ways to keep these cars going.
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Sure, if by proper maintenance you mean rebuilding the entire engine, just as a battery pack could be rebuilt.
Most ICEs will be severely worn and in need of a rebuild by 200k miles, maybe 350k miles at most. Sure they'll run, but they'll be burning oil and spewing blue smoke from the exhaust as a result, and compression and oil pressure will be reduced. Eventually it would become severe enough that the engine can no longer start or suffers a catastrophic failure, generally around 500k miles. There are only
Re:Batteries are still below par (Score:4, Informative)
This is a very popular myth driven mainly by sales pitches. Don't keep your car, instead just sell it to the dealer and get a new one so you don't get nasty surprises from the engine!
Reality check: for modern engines, million kilometers with proper maintenance is just fine. Here's a video of a prius prime that at the time of inspection was 341k miles in heavy duty use:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
You'll find owner in the pinned comments, the vehicle is mainly ran in charge mode, i.e. ICE engine running most of the time to keep battery topped up. He's a long range courier, running car for long periods of time at highway speeds (which is why he can't use it as PHEV all that much). He's well over half a million miles at this point, and it's completely fine.
The origin of this myth is pre-1990s engines (pre-autocad era) when tolerances and spacing was done by hand resulting in metal on metal contact at some points in the engine. "Blue smoke" is when you start getting oil in the ignition chamber because metal on metal wore through the o-rings/seals/cylinder walls. Modern cars do not suffer form this at anywhere near these rates, and post autocad engines that don't have design defects are far more durable.
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This is completely wrong. ICE engines Toyota uses are literally the same engines they use in their non-hybrids with minor valve timing differences. One of the reasons Toyotas are as reliable as they are is because they design things once, and then they use and reuse them for decades in everything they do, main changes being correcting minor flaws that are found over time. For example the current 1,8 L engine 2ZR family was used in gen 4 prius and current gen corollas started its life in 2007 as a pure ICE e
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Granted. If you are going through your third gearbox in 100000km, you have a problem beyond the scope of this discussion.
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Car salesmen will definitely pitch that at you to encourage a lucrative trade-in but it's absolutely not a myth, it's a generally accurate rule of thumb, and I'd encourage anyone to ask a mechanic about it. Newer engines are designed with better tolerances and will generally last longer, but not enough to regularly make it to 500k miles or more in decent condition (also extended cruising is very easy on the engine vs. stop-and-go driving and more warmup cycles, AKA a more common commuting use case). Also no
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This is the same issue I addressed in another post trying this same angle. The "regularly make it in decent condition" is true for median, because most cars are not maintained properly.
I really enjoy watching JustRolledIn because it shows the extremes of this problem, but it's an indication of a much wider problem in general. Maintenance costs money, and every recession people pinch on out. "Maybe I'll just put this little bit more expensive oil that says it will last 30000 km instead of normal 15000 and sk
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When you're literally looking at a video of just such a vehicle, and you're going "this isn't real".
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Now point to any engine design that has a mean failure rate anywhere approaching that. Sure, you can find that one miracle of assembly and thread-the-needle-from-100-yards odds that goes the distance, but if every other engine of the same type shits the bed well before hitting the mark, then you're just looking at a video of a statistical outlier, which is amusing as a curiosity but not really relevant to the discussion.
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This changes the topic. Mean failure rate is significantly reduced by not following correct maintenance regime, accidents and so on. My specific caveat was if those are excluded.
You just need one look at https://www.youtube.com/justro... [youtube.com] to see why and how mean failure rates on engines are much lower than what they would be with proper maintenance procedures across the board.
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Small correction: inverted the claim in my head. It should obviously state "much high than they would be with proper maintenance..."
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And here you inadvertently point to yet another advantage of EVs over ICE engines: no need for complicated maintenance regimes to ensure they last. Turns out that all that bollocks about “ooh, gotta protect the battery by charging only between 20 and 80% and ignoring the buffers and the BMS that the manufacturers already provide” and “ooh, mustn’t charge on a rapid ever, for that will permanently and instantly reduce the SoH by 98%” was just bollocks, and designed to point atte
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Of course. Electric engine is a much more simple beast. The complexity in EV is battery and heat management.
Problem: both are much more expensive problems to manage than ICE and its heat management.
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Nah. That’s what a BMS is for. It’s been solved for a decade. It’s not like theres a maintenance cost associated with battery management. The BMS takes care of it in the background, for free.
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You should tell Nissan that. They have one of the most popular EVs on the market, and their BMS is so excellent, that their cars become negative value in about a decade.
Because battery chews through overprovisioning, and range goes down almost like you're burning lithium in the battery for fuel to drive.
Most people forget that pretty much the main selling point that propelled Tesla to where it is today is superior thermal management of the battery compared to all the competition.
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So if we exclude easily observable reality, then everything lasts forever.
You still aren't winning the argument.
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What do you think the argument is about?
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Diesels can last 500k.
But I agree that it's silly to say that 500k is a "need" for a battery. Very few people keep their cars that long.
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I've never been in a car that's driven that far. They usually fall apart way before then. And also electric cars are way less flammable than a tank of volatile hydrocarbons.
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EVs have five fires per billion miles traveled, while gasoline-powered vehicles have 55 fires per billion miles.
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Putting out an EV fire is very, very difficult. And ugly.
Gasoline fires, not so much.
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And that's a totally unsolvable problem, according to nobody at all.
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Welcome to the world of risk = frequency times severity. If you can quantify how much more severe an EV fire is, than you can assess the relative risks of each. FWIW, I think the severity is basically the same: an ICE fire or an EV fire both result in a write off of the car, and rarely but sometimes cause harm to people. So what will matter is the frequency, which is much lower.
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Let's put this in some perspective:
Let's say you're building an EV. If you talk to anyone in the EV business, and you discuss the possibility (however remote) of a battery fire during the manufacturing process, you'll get varying answers depending on the facility, but in some cases you'd be looking at a serious workplace incident requiring millions of dollars in cleanup costs, and possibly billions in facility costs, depending on where and when the battery catches fire. According to what I've heard from a
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The inconvenience of charging seems to be the biggest complaint about EV's. You would think that could be mitigated, at least somewhat, by installing a solar panel on the roof of the car. I'll admit I don't know enough about solar technology to know if a panel that size could produce sufficient power, but I'm surprised nobody is looking into developing it. A car that could charge itself anywhere would certainly overcome a lot of complaints.
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A solar panel in ideal conditions supplies 300W-400W. An EV in motion draws 9000W-10,000W. The solar panel on the roof will, at best result in like a 3-4% range improvement and drastically raise the price of the car.
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The inconvenience of charging seems to be the biggest complaint about EV's.
This is mainly an objection by people considering an EV.
Once you own an EV, you realize it's much less of an issue than expected.
I've had my EV for nine years. I do 99% of my charging at home, which is way more convenient than going to a gas station with an ICE car.
Sure, a couple of times a year, I have to take a 40-minute break to eat lunch while my car charges, but that's still more convenient than dozens of gas station stops would've been.
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The inconvenience of charging is largely an inconvenience of ignorance.
It's actually the reverse if you have a garage with electricity in it, because it becomes "the convenience of never having to stand in the rain / snow at a gas pump shivering ever again."
Re:Batteries are still below par (Score:4, Interesting)
1. A typical petrol engine will only last about 300,000 miles, and that assuming you regularly maintain and replace parts of it. So it's not even a like-for-like comparison, as EV drivetrains are largely maintenance free. There's no engine oil, no spark plugs, no coolant fluid that needs topping up.
Even first generation EV batteries in Nissan Leafs could do 500k kilometres though, but the main factor was how much they were used. Taxi firms would get over 500k km out of them, rapid charging every single day. What degraded them was leaving them was not using them regularly. If you are getting that kind of mileage on your vehicles, EV batteries should last you that long.
2. EVs are less flammable than fossil cars. Maybe we should abandon ICE until fire risk can be eliminated entirely.
3. Battery cost is reaching parity with ICE now. Some European manufacturers are offering EV versions at the same prices as fossil models, and Chinese manufacturers are undercutting them.
4. Nio now have their battery swap tech down to 4 minutes 20 seconds. You don't even need to get out of the car, you just pay on the car's screen, it parks itself in the bay, and 4 minutes later you drive away with a charged battery. Publicly deployed tech.
Rapid charging has been demonstrated at under 5 minutes in the lab, and on public 400kW chargers you can do a sub-10 minute charge in ideal conditions.
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I reckon the battery swap stuff is mostly not going to happen.
From almost every perspective, that is complexity, effect on car design and weight, logistics, expense of swap stations, it's worse. It is of course faster, but charging time is decreasing rapidly and as you point out the difference between ideal charging and av swap is 5 minutes.
That kind of thing only matters to the most dedicated of road warriors, and charging is likely to improve as well.
Not that I have a horse in this race, but it's my predi
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Nio seem to disagree, as they continue to develop the technology.
The speed at which it happens would be a big bonus for lower cost cars. No need to have a more expensive rapid charging capable battery, cooling system, and charging electronics. It doesn't compromise the car design much, given that most of them have the battery under the floor anyway these days. Could be an attractive feature on affordable EVs.
The other benefit beyond speed is that you essentially have an infinite battery warranty. You can sw
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Just my guess at the future really. If they want to try, more power to them as it were.
The battery chemistry thing is a marginal improvement, but will depend how it's done. There's surprisingly little to the fast charging: it's basically a direct connection across the battery with the onboard circuitry telling the fast charger what voltage/ current to push. You need that for the shower charging anyway. In you do need a capable cooling system, but you also need one capable of dealing with the maximum draw to
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I don't normally bother with trolls who can't be bothered to google stuff, but here's Nio's sub 5 minute battery swap in action at a public location: https://youtu.be/pg8fynU5LpA [youtu.be]
Note the taxis using it. In the video Bjorn swaps for a lower state of charge battery, just to see if it is possible, and because he is doing some charging tests. Normally you would get a battery at 90% charge.
Tesla chargers and cars are mediocre by modern standards. 400kW chargers are available in Norway, but to get those speeds yo
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That's because the US is well behind the curve when it comes to EVs and related technology. The dominance of Tesla seems to be holding you back too.
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1. They can
2. Why? You don’t require zero fire risk for ICE vehicles, indeed ICE vehicles are much more likely to catch fire, so why require it for EVs?
3. Too high is subjective, and costs continue to drop.
4. Charge range continues to improve, infra continues to be built out, charge speeds continue to improve, and anyway huge numbers of drivers can charge at home which is a unique benefit of EVs available to essentially zero ICE drivers
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1. We have ample evidence that plenty of cars do in fact have battery packs that last over 500,000km of driving. Heck we've evidence of Teslas with perfectly functioning battery packs which have done 500,000 MILES of driving. But your arbitrary bullshit is just that. The average car hits the landfill at around 200,000miles or 320,000km. Why did you move the goalposts for EVs?
2. No we don't need to eliminate the risk of thermal runaway. The risk of an EV fire is already lower than that of an ICE fire. That i
The real EV revolution (Score:2)
Re: The real EV revolution (Score:2)
Speaking as someone who owns a full ev and a plug in hybrid, the battery technology already is good enough for evs to replace ice completely. Whatâ(TM)s missing is the charging infrastructure. Faster charging technology and higher capacity batteries will mitigate the shortcomings of the charging infrastructure though. Of course there are corner cases where ICE is marginally more convenient than EV at present, but if you have access to overnight charging electric wind hands down for day to day convenien
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PHEV is the easiest drivetrain to live with in a daily basis.
Well, it depends on your usage and situation. If you have home charging, you only need public chargers if you're driving more than your vehicle's range in a single day. With a modern 250+ mile EV, some people would only use a public charger once or twice a year. So it winds up being easier and less time consuming than taking your car somewhere to fill it up every week or two.
Not slumping (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Not slumping (Score:5, Informative)
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55% higher than what? I'm of course not saying these are the actual numbers, but 155 cars is 55% higher than 100 cars.
If someone justifies building supply based on a rate of increase, then the actual absolute numbers are irrelevant.
Re: Not slumping (Score:2)
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VW is highly dependent on sales in places like China where they are losing ground rapidly. They still haven't cracked the North American market to the extent they'd like.
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VW, in common with every other western automaker, ICE or EV or both, is having its butt kicked in China by Chinese automakers, and it’s a huge problem for them all.
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How are fossil cars doing by comparison? Seems like it's more of a general slow-down in the industry, as pandemic delayed demand dries up and the economic outlook is uncertain.
Used EV prices are good right now, you can get long range cars with low mileage at attractive prices.
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More ICE vehicles = more emissions (Score:2)
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False Headline (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no EV slump. Electric vehicles sales continue to accelerate. Worldwide sales seem to have gone from around just over 10 million in 2022, to just under 14 mllion in 2023. A dramatic increase. (Source: International Energy Agency, chart below)
https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales
The slump is in American and European EV sales. Because, aside from Tesla, Western EVs are overpriced and underfeatured. They have inconsistent, faulty software, and are generally less reliable than gas cars. Also, they are being sold at a considerable loss, again, aside from Tesla. They can't reach profitability without scale, and they can't reach scale without the capital investments needed to do so.
The article should be more closely called "Western Car Makers fall behind as global EV Sales Explode".
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The analogy with Apple extends even further. Who needs to standardize with the rest of the ecosystem? We’re just fine using inches and pounds!
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Sometimes America is a fast follower and gets things right. Sometimes America isn’t a fast follower and just gets stuck with worse. And sometimes America is a fast follower and gets things badly wrong.
Take card payments. The UK switched to chip and pin from 2004 to 2005, to contactless in 2007, and adopted Apple Pay and then other systems from 2015. Each time, the move was pretty much wholesale. I was stunned to be in Chicago last year — 2023, for god’s sake — and in a pizza restaura
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Their newest offering the Cybertruck shipped with promised features that still have not been software enabled. All the corners on the thing are skin cuts waiting to happen, and it is way overpriced while still losing money for the maker.
All cars are overpriced now. Including Tesla.
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There is no EV slump. Electric vehicles sales continue to accelerate. Worldwide sales seem to have gone
VW is not a world wide car manufacturer. They don't have much business in the 3rd world or Asia. Your post is irrelevant to both them and the topic. The reality is they are experiencing a slump.
Re: False Headline (Score:2)
There is a tremendous slump in VWG sales across the board, which is absolutely no surprise given what a terrible, atrocious, shit company VWG and especially the VWFS are.
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But your comment about first-world EVs is probably wrong. It’s not unusual to see Teslas driving around with >200,000km on
I guess Musk was right again. (Score:3, Interesting)
My regard for Musk has taken a fair amount of damage over his antics that we do not need to discuss here. Yet credit where due.
He realized that a) batteries would improve over time, b) batteries would become lower cost over time, c) batteries had a market and use case other than the motor cars, and d) it would take substantial investment to make that all happen.
All the other auto makers including VW had more or less the same data but either could not or would not take action on it. It is almost as if they ran the numbers with the battery market metrics of 2005 for all pro-forma years. (I would expect them to be smarter than that but who knows)
It was only when Tesla hit $1T market cap that they took action including GM who "led the way."
So this news is no surprise. Established corporations are all about risk avoidance and you see that in operation here.
Re:I guess Musk was right again. (Score:5, Insightful)
The last 5 years are different. His political shenanigans are affecting his reputation, and “X” is looking like a big right-wing money-losing fiasco.
I dont consider myself a Musk fan, but he’s objectively the most successful industrial businessman of his generation. But he’s also past his prime and it’s showing.
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And now they’re all kilometers behind his businesses, in both EVs and in space vehicles.
In space yes, in EVs not so much (at least outside of America). The VW group sells about twice as many new EVs as Tesla does, and Telsa is virtually neck to neck with BMW, Geely-Volvo and Stellantis, and in many cases those others have far better and more capable cares on the market. Tesla isn't the cheapest, isn't the most luxurious, doesn't have the longest range, arguably is however still the fastest though I doubt their sales are made up of ludicrous speed Plaid models, doesn't charge the fastest, and o
entirely predictable (Score:4, Insightful)
Bleeding edge buyers with lots of disposable income and willing to tolerate any inconvenience: already bought
Early-adopters with lots of income and a still high tolerance for inconvenience: already bought
Everyone else: waiting.
Nobody in the lower 80% of incomes can afford an EV as their only car, whether it's for reasons of pure cost (mostly), or for the still high level of general inconvenience PARTICULARLY if you don't own your own home (something becoming increasingly rare amongst the bottom 3/4 of the economic tiers).
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You forget those who get one as a free to use company car.
building bombs (Score:2)
I'd be very cautious about building and selling batteries which are potential bombs.
A safer alternative is needed for domestic solar batteries, as well as automotive.
Fuck, I don't want to be in a car which turns into a fire which can't be extinguished.
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hmm (Score:2)
Bring back the tdi (Score:2)
Better in every regard, at least the alltrac and the touareg were.
No surprise (Score:2)
Anyone who ever had to deal with VWG, VWFS and their atrocious management and DMV-like company culture knows exactly why they are circling the drain so much. Software is not a Querbausatz.
Really? No Funny? (Score:2)
Lots of comments, but not a joke to be found anywhere? But what sort of joke would I have been looking for... Not a ripe topic?
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And the government's duty is to whom? That's right! The people who don't want to buy those damn cars! Do you seriously think people are going to tolerate a mandate to buy cars they already rejected in the marketplace? Good luck with that!