This is good news. I love the look & function of the high-end Teslas, and the practicality and running costs of the Nissan Leafs, but there is an enormous gap in the market for an electric "normal family car." Companies like Ford, Volvo, GM, VW etc indicating that they are moving into this space is great news. Excited to see what will be available in a few years.
Ford giving electric car investment a jolt to the tune of $11bn
American auto enormity Ford will increase its investment in electric vehicles to $11bn (£7.97bn) in the next five years, it announced yesterday at the North American International Auto Show. With its planned doubling of expenditure from $3.5bn (£3.26bn), it will create 16 fully electric cars and 24 plug-in hybrids by 2022, a …
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Monday 15th January 2018 17:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: If you build them...
I guess the way to think of it would be: here is the currently model with a revised engine. Once they have the power plant sorted, weight distribution and stuff in place, its no more and possibly less than development than a conventional car. They have everything else. The variation in engine trims will be power output and capacity.
I would expect depreciation to be on par with the current models given that they are a volume manufacturer. Question is what will be the starting price point; how quickly will that feed into the 2nd hand market; will there be some car-as-a service model where the vehicle is relatively cheap but the battery is the thing you pay for and stuff like that.
After that then I suppose is the charging market geared up for mass adoption and the tax man.
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Tuesday 16th January 2018 09:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: If you build them...
I guess the way to think of it would be: here is the currently model with a revised engine. Once they have the power plant sorted, weight distribution and stuff in place, its no more and possibly less than development than a conventional car.
That's an approach doomed to failure. The existing ICE cars are designed from the ground up around the needs of the engine and a mechanical drive train. Putting a battery pack and electric drive train into that is going to be more expensive than it needs to be and performance compromised. Take one example: the whole front end of the body shell is designed to support the weight of the engine block, control its torque and vibrations, making it far heavier than it needs to be for an EV. The gear box is a heavy, complicated piece of kit that an EV doesn't need (or not in the ICE format), requiring hydraulic or mechanical clutches - again, weight, torque, mechanical links. The front end aerodynamic design of an ICE has is centred around the need to cool the engine - so very inefficient for an EV, or a lot of design work to change that.
Such an approach can be made to work in technical sense - but it will produce far inferior products compared to starting from scratch with a new model. What can work will be if Ford produce 100% new EVs that occupy the same market niche as a similarly named predecessor, and try and keep the appearance similar to the old model. As for hybrids - waste of time. All the problems of both ICE and EV, double the complexity of either, with the sole benefit being that it addresses range anxiety. That's not the way forward.
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Friday 19th January 2018 16:37 GMT wiggers
Re: If you build them...
"what happens when your infernal combustion engine wears out?"
Current vehicle design is such that the engine should last the life of the car, if properly maintained. So when the engine needs replacement it is generally uneconomic to do so and the vehicle is scrapped. This is factored into the depreciation costs, the assumption is that a new engine won't be required for the foreseeable future.
There are not nearly enough EVs in the used car market for this calculation to be made, so it is a big unknown. Leasing companies will need to work this out as this affects their rates.
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Tuesday 16th January 2018 08:56 GMT Phil O'Sophical
Re: If you build them...
I also wonder how fast the electric power industry can ramp up to provide charging points.
They'll cover the whole country, provided you're not more than 4km from a town, and will offer "up to" 30 minute recharges, which may actually take all day when the network is busy.
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Monday 15th January 2018 23:09 GMT veti
Re: If you build them...
The question is, how long will Ford undertake to keep selling replacement batteries?
If the answer to that is a long time, then depreciation will be very low - much better than most of the conventional range, because there's so much less maintenance needed on an electric car. The battery is the only thing that's likely to become obsolete quickly, and if Ford will undertake to maintain that, the car should be able to go for decades.
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Monday 15th January 2018 23:22 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: If you build them...
"The question is, how long will Ford undertake to keep selling replacement batteries?"
Hopefully, they will use modular packs. Single small pack for a small car, double pack for larger, and maybe triple or quad packs for range/performance. This keeps costs down for them rather than having a unique battery pack for each model.
Eventually, batteries pack formats and comms to the car may be regulated such that packs will fit multiple makes/models and will communicate their characteristics to the car, eg capacity, charging rates, voltages etc in the same way SATA hard discs tell the PC about their characteristics. This also allows for new battery types/chemistries since the battery will be "intelligent".
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Tuesday 16th January 2018 12:07 GMT Geoff Campbell
Re: Alas, poor Tesla
Nah. Tesla have made huge advances in the way cars are built generally, and EVs specifically, which it seems none of the current competition recognise. Off the top of my head:
Custom-built chassis, with the batteries held low and filling pretty much the entire chassis;
Water-cooled and properly managed battery pack;
Proper user interface, based on sound UI principles rather than splattering switches and knobs all over the place;
Regular software updates delivered to all cars OTA, at no cost, with bug fixes and new features;
Really, really big electric motor(s), giving huge performance;
Most important of all, the Supercharger network, meaning long-distance travel is trivially easy.
GJC
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Tuesday 16th January 2018 13:10 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Alas, poor Tesla
None of those are necessarily advances, or advantages. Chassis design is something ICE makers know all about, so low CoG/CoM to improve handling. Plus they also know a lot about suspension design, so may be able to avoid suspension collapses that seem to affect the Model S. The new Ford GT has a rather fancy and complex suspension system that lets drivers change the handling based on how much blood they want to pee.
The UI is perhaps more user choice, and personally I prefer having important switches and knobs easily to hand rather than potentially having to look at a screen to check mode, swipe/stab virtual buttons and see a message pop up saying 'Airbags Now Deploying'. And if there's a problem with the screen, a traditional car may still be driven safely. OTA updates is also a feature on other cars, but cost would be included in the TCO. Tesla's burning cash, so may at some point have those updates free while in warranty, and then chargeable as part of an extended service plan.
ICE makers also know a lot about electric motors. A typical car has a lot of motors for power everything, especially if it's a convertible with automatic roof. Think one Honda had 16 motors just for that, which seemed like a handy way to guarantee future service revenues. So they may also have smaller electric motors that offer similar performance, but weigh and cost less.
And the Supercharger network is a cost, especially when the EU and other nations are looking to standardise EV charging connectors and rates. That may mean some revenues for charging non-Teslas, but long distance travel isn't 'trivially easy' when it involves much slower charging than for ICE vehicles.
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Tuesday 16th January 2018 13:21 GMT Geoff Campbell
Re: Alas, poor Tesla
Those are the things that I personally see as advantages, having driven a Tesla for a few months, and many other makes of cars for decades before that.
What your message basically says is "yes, but the incumbents can do all of that, even better!". I have no doubt that they can. So why aren't they?
GJC
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Tuesday 16th January 2018 23:34 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: Alas, poor Tesla
What your message basically says is "yes, but the incumbents can do all of that, even better!". I have no doubt that they can. So why aren't they?
Well, they are. Ford already has a Focus EV on sale, and now look to be expanding. BMW has an EV, Citroen, and of course Nissan. Leaf's sold 300,000 compacts whilst Tesla's still hand-finishing their Model 3s. Tesla may have done some pump priming, but now the dinosaurs are really coming.
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Wednesday 17th January 2018 09:59 GMT Geoff Campbell
Re: Alas, poor Tesla
Those are mostly compliance cars, made by taking an existing body and bunging a few batteries and a weak electric motor in them. Poor performance, poor range, no support infrastructure.
The Leaf is OK, and the GM Bolt is showing some promise, but those are the only two I can see as at all worthy, and neither are even close to anything Tesla are doing, and have been doing for years. Battery management in particular is a real problem in most EVs except for Tesla.
GJC
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Monday 15th January 2018 16:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
Better late than never
but the Tesla fanbois' are already crowing.... Where's the billion or so to build your own Supercharger network?
It seems that in the USA no EV other than a Tesla can succeed because no one else has a charging network.{rubbish but there you go}
Here in Europe with standard CP plugs/sockets this is not so much of a problem.
{Disclaimer. I am a Model 3 reservation holder but I know that Elon Musk can't walk on water and is not the new messiah.}
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Tuesday 16th January 2018 09:57 GMT An nonymous Cowerd
Tesla & Ford
I have tested the model-S in my lab, for a week. it was a very nice car at €98K, tho' actually drove too fast around town. I was planning to charge it (with its personalised universal charging adapter dongle , kept in the boot , at ~150KW) but after a couple of cycles at a couple of hours @ ~50KW my lab 3-phase tripped, permanently. Lab is now being rewired.
Good luck to all city-centres in meeting the demands of the market, it is however nice to see that Ford is rising to the actualité of the near future.
<mods> I didn't mention toxic nano-particles from d****l engines this time or any particular way that city-centres might also meet the challenges of the charging infrastructure, I will carry on testing. I still think panic! is the correct reaction, but then I am an optimist, and I live in a small village - with fresh air.
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Tuesday 16th January 2018 15:59 GMT Noel Bourke
Re: Tesla & Ford
Uh what?
The onboard charger in a model S & X is only 3-phase 16.5kW. With the UMC (what you call the "universal charging adapter dongle") the limit is 230V 40A or 9.2kW. 9.2kW is a substantial amount of load for a domestic electricity connection (for example here in Ireland our standard and "enhanced" single phase domestic connections top out at ~12kW and 18kW respectively). Depending on where you live these limits are different, Italy, for example, despite often having three-phase in a domestic setting for high powered devices, has very low current limits for each phase.
The superchargers can supply DC power at up to 150kW. It is not possible to charge at these rates without reverse engineering and emulating Tesla's supercharger protocol and you need an external inverter the size of a fridge freezer.
For typical consumer use (even for me with my 200km+ daily commute that I've been doing in an EV for four years), 3 to 7kW is sufficient to fill the car overnight. There are multiple EVs in my household and we use load sharing chargepoints which automatically allocate power among themselves based on the available current (pre-set limit) and the demands of the connected vehicles. Even Tesla's basic €400 wall charger has load sharing abilities.
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Monday 15th January 2018 17:54 GMT mark l 2
I think the only viable electric vehicles will be hybrid for the foreseeable future in the UK unless we can charge up full electric cars as quickly as we can refuel petrol and diesel cars. A large proportion of people don't have a don't have a driveway on which to park the car so charging up overnight isn't really an option. Even if i could park directly outside my house, (which I can't always do) I couldn't run a cable from my house to the car as it would have to go across the public pavement and would therefore become a trip hazard. Also the local youths would probably have great fun going round unplugging everyone's cars from the power at night as well, meaning you would wake up to find not enough charge in the battery to get to work the next day.
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Monday 15th January 2018 18:31 GMT maffski
A large proportion of people don't have a don't have a driveway
Yes, in the same way that the large number of families with children mean there is no market at all for two seat sports cars.
Just because it isn't the right set of features and compromises for you (or me) doesn't mean that it isn't suitable for enough of the market to be viable.
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Tuesday 16th January 2018 18:23 GMT strum
Re: A large proportion of people don't have a don't have a driveway
>Just because it isn't the right set of features and compromises for you
The thing is - Mark 12's circumstance (urban terrace/no driveway) describes a sizeable part of the leccy market. EVs make most sense with regular, short journeys. So, it would help if a method existed for people like him (and me) to recharge overnight.
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Tuesday 16th January 2018 23:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: A large proportion of people don't have a don't have a driveway
You'll need to speak to your municipal leaders about that, as you'd need "reserved" parking in front of your own house to insure you are close to where you have trenched a power feed to the curb in a lock box (to keep away freeloaders) or the city will need to install curbside charging (and billing) stations in residential areas. I imagine cities/neighborhoods where parking isn't a problem would adopt the former, and those with more contentious parking situations the latter.
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Monday 15th January 2018 19:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
You have to start somewhere
If you wait until a product is suitable for 100% of the market you will never release it. This is less of a problem in the US since most people outside big cities have garages, and while the charge rate may be slow with the typical circuits (you could upgrade the typical 115v/15A circuit to 230v/20A without changing the wiring) that's not a problem for overnight - once people get into the habit of plugging in whenever they park.
Most people in the US wouldn't want an electric as their ONLY car because of range problems - even with a supercharger having to wait a half hour every four hours of driving would be pretty annoying. But replacing one of the two cars the average US household owns, outside of bit cities like NYC or SF, or replacing one car in the whatever percent of UK households have a garage, is not an insignificant sized target market.
The infrastructure problems for those who park on the street, better charging for long distance driving (or better batteries so it is less of a problem) will get solved down the road (no pun intended)
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Monday 15th January 2018 22:06 GMT Mark 85
We have that problem (no driveways) here in the States. Then there are those with more than one or two cars and need to part the excess on the street.
As for the youth unplugging... here they'd probably unplug it, steal the cable and sell it for the copper value.
I think I'll hang onto my gas powered cars for now.
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Tuesday 16th January 2018 10:01 GMT Aitor 1
My problem too
I can either sacrifice my front garden or not charge my car.. and yes, I probably cant put a charging station in front of my house.
As for batteries being charged in say 5 minutes.. I dont see how this could be done, the amps required would make it impossible.. and add to that the batteries would burst in flames...
So many things are going to change in the next years.. chargers everywhere I guess.
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Tuesday 16th January 2018 14:47 GMT An nonymous Cowerd
Re: solved (for one particular case)
what the (electric) Norwegian fjord ferries do (as the ships were impossible to charge quickly) is to buy two or three battery packs. Battery A moves the ship across the fjord, where it docks with Battery B which has been trickle charged overnight. Then as the cars/parrots unload, Battery B connects and delivers everything it has, as an *almost* impossible busbar melting impulse. The ship then sets off for Battery C back at the home harbour. . .rinse & repeat etc. I have no idea if the resultant charging mag field is what is actually causing the aurora borealis or not - could be co-incidence
for homes & Ford's not Fjords, the best idea so-far seems to be to offer a street charger per 8 houses or so, a bit more thinking is needed, soon, hopefully, somewhere. I'd probably start with a Mayor.
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Monday 15th January 2018 20:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Give me range...
May I humbly suggest that you invest your $200,000 (or more) in the new Tesla Roadster.
Performance is better than an F1 car and it has oodles of range.
I'll stick with my Leaf. Does what I want it and does not cost me an arm and a leg (or three)
As for those who demand 2min charging for 200miles before even considering an EV, I've driven the Leaf from London to Edinburgh and back and didn't run out of leccy once thanks to the rapid chargers at Motorway Service Stations.
I'll be at the El Reg seminar on EV's at the end of the month... Will you?
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Monday 15th January 2018 23:32 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: Give me range...
"I've driven the Leaf from London to Edinburgh and back and didn't run out of leccy once thanks to the rapid chargers at Motorway Service Stations."
This. The poster above said, it could be pretty annoying having to stop and charge for 30 mins every 4 hours. As someone who drives 1000 miles most weeks, I'd say that encouraging people to NOT drive for more than 4 hours at a time without a decent break is a good thing. Our company policy, in line with Govt/AA/RAC advice is to take a minimum of a 10 minute break every 100 miles.
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