Volkswagen To Build Electric Versions of All 300 Models By 2030 (bloomberg.com) 168
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Officer Matthias Mueller announced sweeping plans to build electric versions of all 300 models in the group's lineup as the world's largest automaker accelerates the shift away from combustion engines and tries to draw a line under the emissions-cheating scandal. Speaking on the eve of the Frankfurt auto show, the CEO laid out the enormity of the task ahead, vowing to spend 20 billion euros ($24 billion) to develop and bring the models to market by 2030 and promising to plow another 50 billion euros into the batteries needed to power the cars. Volkswagen is throwing the fire power of its 12 brands behind the push, aiming to catch up with the likes of Tesla Inc. and transform from a battery-vehicle laggard into a leader. Underscoring the enormity of the shift taking place in the industry, Mueller said VW will need the equivalent of at least four gigafactories for battery cells by 2025 just to meet its own vehicle production. At 50 billion euros, the CEO announced one of the largest tenders in the industry's history for the procurement of batteries. By 2025, VW aims to have 50 purely battery-powered vehicles and 30 hybrid models in its lineup, with a goal of selling as many as 3 million purely battery-powered cars by then. The transformation will pick up speed after that to reach the 2030 goal as economies of scale and better infrastructure help bring down prices and accelerate sales.
They're gonna be great... (Score:3, Funny)
...but by 2040 we're going to find out those plumes of black smoke coming out of the electric cars weren't actually delicious all-nature chocolate powder.
Powered by Andrei Rossi's E-cat (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
they hint they might also have a cold fusion convertible model. Zero emissions.
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what we do however already know is that even if all cars in a dense city would be electric, it'd still be too polluting as a significant part of the polluting particles in the air are from the tires of the cars... :)
who's going to invent us some clean tires?
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EVs address two of three significant sources of particulates from automobiles:
1. Tailpipe -- cut to zero either by displacement to power stations or complete removal through use of renewables
2. Brakes -- cut substantially due to use of regenerative braking
3. Tires -- still an issue
Two out of three is better than none out of three. And yes, we need cleaner tires. But I still look forward to the day when that is the only remaining problem to address
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Let's break this down, shall we? You've got three assertions in there, two explicit and one implicit:
1. Electric cars have much higher mass than other cars
2. That leads to higher tyre and road wear
3. Tyre and road wear really matters
1. Ain't necessarily so. A Tesla Model X is 2300kg, a Land Rover Discovery is 3200kg. A Renault Zoe is heavier than a Renault Clio (1500kg vs 990kg), but obviously both are waaaay lighter than any SUV.
2. Obviously, for any one car, the heavier it is, the more tyre and road wear
It's not all *that* difficult (Score:2)
Make a lot of Chevy Volt-type cars, minimum all-electric range of 50 miles EPA & a turbocharged 2-liter engine engine.
BMW gets 230 HP out of a B38 3-cyl 1.5 L.
Use the electric motor to power the rear wheels; should make for a car that's fun to drive at legal speeds.
Can't wait to see what Bugatti comes up with (Score:2)
Bugatti holds various records for the fastest cars on the road. I cant wait to see how bonkers fast the Bugatti EV (whatever they come up with) ends up being.
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Tesla is in a close battle with Bugatti on accelerations. The Bugatti Veyron did 0-60 in 2,4 seconds. The Tesla P100D does it in 2,27 seconds. The Chiron now does it in 2,0 seconds. Etc. I can't see how electric isn't ultimately going to win this battle. The Teslas also cost 1 1/2 orders of magnitude less, and while they lose out on high-end acceleration, they clobber anything on the road off the line.
One thing Teslas don't do yet is that they're not track cars; they don't have the cooling level needed for
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In driving that you'll actually regularly experience as an owner, 0-60 is the most meaningful factor, and the fraction of that which matters the most is 0-30. The P100D beats the Veyron in the former, and clobbers it in the latter. The fact that the Veyron continues accelerating once you start hitting double the speed limit? Wow, what a totally meaningful trick for y
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Why do you keep talking about "races", as if we're talking about the track? This thread is about performance on the road. On the road, it's meaningless how fast you can go from, say, 100 to 150. How fast it peels off the line or when you want to pass someone is the future that matters.
Yeah, try again. The P100D does 0-30 in 0.87, while the Veyron does it in 1.32. That's "
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** is the figure that matters.
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Considering the Italian location, I would call it: Bugatti Electra.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
(Yes, I know the difference between Greek and Latin :D )
However the name giver would be this Electra: http://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/Ny... [theoi.com]
Precambrian automotive industry (Score:2)
These long term plans make me laugh out loud!
It looks like "someone else's problem/project".
Or just investors' bait.
Tesla will bury them all.
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Considering that Germany once was the top notch researchers in electric cars (and Daimler is still dreaming about hydrogen powered fuel cell EV cars), it is a shame how the car industry here developed.
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Is that you, TTAC "Tesla Deathwatch"? ;)
/. Interface (Score:2)
An interesting article, to be sure, but WHAT THE HELL just happened to Slashdot? I just refreshed this page and Slashdot disappeared, and I instead got some mobile version of Beta on steroids. On a desktop.
Don't get too excited (Score:2)
They're giving themselves plenty of time on diesel and petrol, although I guess we'll see more 'stop the engine at the lights' in the near future.
From TFA, "By 2025, VW aims to have 50 purely battery-powered vehicles and 30 hybrid models in its lineup, with a goal of selling as many as 3 million all-electric cars by then."
'hybrid' can mean 'stop the engine at the lights', or it can mean something more like a Prius. There are a lot of years between then and now, so there's plenty of time for Nissan to beef u
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'hybrid' can mean 'stop the engine at the lights'
That is not what hybrid means.
And for your interest: all modern cars automatically stop the engine when you stop.
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The UK government recently stated that the sale of all non-hybrid cars would be stopped after 2040. During the ensuing news round-up and debate, it transpired that using a bit of battery to save the fuel while idling (ie. 'stop at the lights, but restart the engine to pull away') could be considered 'hybrid' in so much as it's not 100% hydrocarbon and using electrical power to fill the 'gaps'. It turns out that the industry calls this "micro hybrid", and indeed there are numerous varieties of implementation
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If it has no electric engine to drive the car, it is not a hybrid.
Obviously you found the name "micro hybrid" yourself. However I would hope people would slap the car manufactures on their wrist to coin such misnomers.
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No it can't. That's not a hybrid, idiot. That's a simple start-stop engine. Sheesh.
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Yes, start-stop is 'hybrid' - https://www.carsdirect.com/gre... [carsdirect.com]
So, it seems you're the idiot because you can't use the Internet.
Disasters (Score:2)
I am not sure I would want an EV if I was in FL at the moment. Given the grid is toast, exactly where does one fillup? Its not like you could truck in spare batteries to change out. And those long lines to fillup. Given it take a few minutes to fill a tank vs an hour or more to charge an EV, can you imagine the lines at the charge stations before the hurricane hit? ICE engines/tech has been around for a very long time and we know how to handle problem times, extreme cold, extreme heat conditions. How long b
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After Harvey, only one Supercharger station was noticed to have gone out, and only for a brief timeperiod. Superchargers survived serious damage to the buildings they were attached to - for example, one had a gaping hole in the hotel it was attached to, while another's adjacent building had the floor flooded with water.
Irma was different - probably the single greatest power loss incident in US history. Ten million customers were left without power, and in certain parts of the state, virtually everyone. Th
300 models? VW has more problems than diesel (Score:2)
that's about 200 models too many. 200 brand managers and staffs, 200 ad hierarchies, 200 sets of designers and dealerships and headaches too many. use those 12 brands to differentiate types of vehicles, put birds of a feather on the same lot. I bet the savings would just about pay the fines for those illegal stinkpots they pushed the past 8 years.
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Energy storage for an electric grid on an industrial scale is a HARD and environmentally messy thing to do. Doing it efficiently, depending on what efficiency you think is good enough, is not financially viable for much more than just peak load offsetting where the spot prices of power triple or more from base load costs..
We will be keeping those fossil fueled power generators around for a long time yet, or learning to live in the dark.
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We will be keeping those fossil fueled power generators around for a long time yet
There's usually an eye roll that goes along with these kinds of pedantic statements, because people who actually understand how things work (and I am not saying you are not one of them, you more than likely are just really simplifying the whole topic, and I understand and respect that) know we're not bringing fossil fuels to 0% anytime soon. The simplicity of your comment might as well have been, "ending usage of fossil fuels won't end hurricanes." That statement isn't incorrect, but it is a really simpli
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A couple of points...
1. Fossil fuels will be used until they are too expensive, on this we agree. However, if history is any indicator, fossil fuels are going to be available for a long time to come. All it takes is a small increase in the market price for fossil fuel and you end up getting large increases in "proven reserves" (those resources which are economically recoverable). The available proven reserves of fossil fuels has generally been rising up though this very day. This tells me we are far fro
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The U.S. has 20,000 MW of pumped storage on the grid right now (2% of U.S. grid capacity) and another 5% have been granted permits for construction.
Add 800 KV DC long distance transmission lines and electricity can be moved coast-to-coast with losses of only a few percent. Pumped storage can store electricity from anywhere in North America, and then supply it to anywhere in North America.
In fact, with 800 KV DC lines much of the need for storage disappears entirely. Grid supply can be balanced simply by mov
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One thing batteries are really nice for is voltage maintenance on long feeder lines. Things like the old Castle Valley battery on the Rattlesnake #22 line. When you have one long line serving a sparse population of customers, having a battery buffer halfway along its length lets you use a smaller, cheaper line (the buffer charges at night and then discharges during the day).
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Pumped storage is indeed the most usable solution, however, there are two things you simply must have to set up a system.
1. Hills or mountains. You have to pump the water up hill and the higher up you can go the better. This means you need some natural topography that has significant elevation changes where you can build some kind of storage pool up the hill. Usually they take a hill, flatten the top to build a pool. You won't be doing this in the plains, which are nearly table top flat and cover a sig
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If you have enough EV cars, you have a huge pool of grid storage ...
Cars connected to the grid.
Same for PV house owners that chose to also have a big battery. You can join them in a virtual power plant, use them as balancing power pool.
And before you yell your uninformed idiotic counters: we do that in Germany and other parts of Europe since nearly a decade. Every new battery bank house owners buy gets put into a virtual power plant. Unless of course he wants to life isolate, but for that a battery is still
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Do you have *any* idea how inefficient battery storage is? The BEST way to store electricity on an industrial scale is about 87% (pumped storage), batteries are barely over half that.... Chemical battery storage has *really* bad efficency ...
Don't miss my point here. Sure, you can have local systems, you can have a battery in your house, use the one in your EV to shift peak loads, but they literally suck power out of the system and waste it, a lot of it. Consuming MORE power is not the best answer here.
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As the OP is German, I'm sure he'd agree with you on the importance of reducing energy usage first. This is the country that developed Passivhaus, after all.
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Battery storage is about 95% efficient.
Significantly above pumped storage.
Go back into your cave, troll!
just don't think it is a viable solution to peak shifting/load balancing for things like solar or wind supply issues.
Actually it is, as Germany and other countries demonstrade since decades, stuoid troll.
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Battery storage is about 95% efficient. Significantly above pumped storage.
Go back into your cave, troll!
just don't think it is a viable solution to peak shifting/load balancing for things like solar or wind supply issues. Actually it is, as Germany and other countries demonstrade since decades, stuoid troll.
LOL... Unless they have changed the laws of physics and chemistry in the last decade, 95% is but a figment of your imagination. Chemical based batteries really suck efficiency wise. Lithium Ion batteries (Which are nearly the best rechargeable batteries out there for efficiency) max out at about 90% (dc in dc out), but that's just the battery. If you add in the AC-DC and DC-AC conversion losses and a few percent for I*R unavoidable losses you are well under 80% and likely under 70% for any kind of realist
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Lithium ion batteries and charging systems top out at 97% efficiency.
Sorry to slap it into your face. You are just a stupid american dumb idiot.
What the fuck would have the laws of thermodynamics to do with batteries? Hu?
Before you try to seek for an answer: nothing at all.
All your numbers are completely made up, you are even to dumb to google.
So assume 90% AC-DC conversion,
Yeah, and why do you assume that instead of for funk sake googeling the efficiency? Hae?
Idiot.
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Citation please....
My Li Ion numbers came from Wikipedia, which isn't the paragon of factual information but in this case looks correct. The AC-DC/DC-AC conversion numbers come from my knowledge as an electrical engineer. NOTHING is 100% efficient in converting energy from one form to another... And 97% just isn't possible in this case, given my understandings of Thermodynamics.. So where are you getting your information because I think they are wrong?
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Wow, still bullshit posts like this?
Still not able to google 'efficiency of lithium ion batteries'?
Wow, go back into your cave, troll.
NOTHING is 100% efficient in converting energy from one form to another
Wow, that is probably the stupids thing I ever heard.
First law of physics ... you might like to google for that too.
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First and second laws of thermodynamics back to you.... How the Newton's first law of motion has anything to do with a battery is a mystery to me. Perhaps you mean the first law of thermodynamics? (Energy is not created or destroyed)...I assume that's what you mean, because if not, what you are calling me applies more to you.
Now that we have that straight...
Lithium Ion battery charge discharge efficiency is 80-90%. Put 10 Watt hours in, get 8 or 9 out. This is straight from the Wikipedia article I found
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Neither the first nor second law has anything to do with electricity (none of them has)
The laws of thermodynamics are about stream engines (I simplified it a bit for you), or in other words: idealized gases under heat an pressure.
Or if you need more: :D
https://courses.lumenlearning.... [lumenlearning.com]
The Wikipedia article unfortunately regularly gets rewritten in an incomprehensible state and then fixed again
http://batteryuniversity.com/l... [batteryuniversity.com]
Efficiency of lithium ion batteries is about 99%.
P
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Neither the first nor second law has anything to do with electricity (none of them has)
Anybody who's taking a course in thermodynamics sees the folly in that statement. Thermodynamics has application in ALL cases where energy is transferred or transformed, this means heat, electricity, chemical reactions, and/or potential and kinetic energy even. Just because they teach thermodynamics using heat engines does not mean it only applies to heat engines. The rules are general and discuss energy in all forms, not just a form of energy known as heat. You are gravely mistaken.
You are wrong on your F
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Thermodynamics has application in ALL cases where energy is transferred or transformed
No it has not. Reads the damn wiki article.
A photon hits an electron, the electron changes "orbit". No energy "lost", no thermodynamics involved. The electron jumps back to its old orbit, it emits an identical photon, with same wavelength and energy: nothing lost, no thermodynamics involved.
Last time some school kid with no physics in school wrote such nonsense, I gave two dozens of examples. Perhaps you find my old post.
T
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Thermodynamics has application in ALL cases where energy is transferred or transformed No it has not. Reads the damn wiki article.
Thermodynamics applies to all transfers of energy, which includes electrical power, batteries and heat just to name a few. Until we agree on that, I'm not going further with you because these concepts are fundamental.
Thermodynamic laws you must understand the implications of are:
Energy can not be created or destroyed (Conservation of energy).
Transferring energy from one place to another and/or one form to another (i.e. doing work) increases Entropy.
I go no further with you until we can agree on these
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Thermodynamics applies to all transfers of energy, which includes electrical power ...
It does not
But if you believe otherwise that is your problem not mine.
After all you are not working in electric engineering :D
No, we can not agree on those laws. The first one is not a law, it is an axiom. One of our basic assumptions like conversation of momentum. I believe we only have those two :D
The second one is already wrong. Transfer of energy does not increase Entropy. Why would it?
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No, I'm not currently working as an Electrical Engineer... But I have used my Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering as a electronics engineer in the past.
We are at a impasse.. You won't agree to a common view of thermodynamics that I feel is fundamental and beyond debate, so we have no common ground to debate with. In my view you have already disqualified yourself as knowing anything about the topic being discussed, yet you make confident assertions of same which are simply wrong.
So, as it says i
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100MW is not a measure of storage... I'll assume you mean 100MW/hour...
I'll point out one thing... I think your numbers are wrong, or the amount of storage nearly pointless... The state of Texas, today, had a base load of 30,000 MW and a projected peak of nearly 55,000 MWh. That's JUST Texas on a 90 degree day. 100 MWh is spitting into the wind, 10X that would be required to have any meaningful amount of storage for one state and 20x that would still be spitting in the wind. Scale that up to nation wide
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what do the HECK do they have *300 models* for?
I had the same question. That does seem like a lot, but I bet most of them are just variants of a base model that are rationalized for different countries.
But the bigger issue is that it sounds like too grandiose a statement. (Dare I say Trumpish?) I would think they would have had better impact and a better impression of credibility if they committed to making 2-3 models successfully. Do the others once you have proven yourself.
Another problem -- at least for alert observing engineers -- is that both Mus
Re:Okay.... (Score:5, Interesting)
BMW's been milking the same systems data bus since... at least 1994 when they designed the E39 (5 series). It's been so successful they managed to add on GPS, navigation etc to it when all it was supposed to do was anti lock brakes and 6 CD changers. That system bus (down to the connectors) are present now in modern land rovers, making a 2017 land rover navigation unit compatible with a 1995 BMW 5 series.
When you design something for a ton of passenger cars, usually you want to design common systems to cut down on parts; in the late 90s-mid-2000s VW group cars (VW and Audi in particular) had awful window motors that failed all the time due to shared parts. The pontiac solstice sports car was basically assembled out of random parts from the GM parts bin and was even advertised as such.
I would imagine that if you're going to do EVs big, you will need some sort of modern systems bus that handles navigation, self driving CPU + sensors, battery charging, cooling, voltage etc etc, yes there will be a gas or diesel engine in a lot of these but effectively you're designing a shared platform for the next generation of cars; when you have 300 models (or likely sub-models) the more common parts you can use the better your cost savings.
Sheet metal, cars typically get a total redesign every 5-7 years. The mechanics are somewhat easy to retool for, and already budgeted for, but it's all the self-driving sensors, AI, CPU, charging wiring etc that needs to have a solid foundation so that they can make that big step forward and have many many interchangeable parts.
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Electric cars have great potential for standardization. Build a basic skateboard-type platform with individual motors at the wheels, with options to extend the track and wheelbase. Boom, you've just made a platform for all of your vehicles. Need a small city car? Use the smallest configuration with 2WD, add a hatchback body on top. Need an SUV? Use a larger configuration with motors at all four wheels, add taller suspension, put a roomy SUV body on top. Need a limo with plenty of rear legroom? Use the longe
Re:Okay.... (Score:5, Informative)
That's basically how Teslas are built. Model S and X are built on the same skateboard. Model 3 and Y are built on the same skateboard, smaller than the MX/MY one. The two skateboard designs are very similar, although the M3/MY skateboard is updated based on the latest technology and "lessons learned" in the MS/MX line.
As a random example: M3/MY have no battery pack heater. Tesla has always been great with heat management (shunting heat to/from the drive unit(s), battery pack, cabin, compressor, and radiators so that whatever needs more heat gets it and whatever loses it). With the new design, rather than having a dedicated heater, they deliberately run the motor(s) inefficiently (when at a standstill, with 0% efficiency), wasting all energy as resistive heating in the stator which is captured and shunted to the pack. It costs them nothing extra to do this (since the waveforms created by the IGBTs in the inverter are fully customizeable) but eliminates another part (the pack heater) to manufacture, install, and which could potentially break.
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Maybe that was where I heard the idea, actually.
Thanks for the info about the pack heating, that's pretty ingenious.
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Tesla comes up with the most off-the-wall engineering solutions. Another good example with the Model 3: have you seen their new "leverless" air-vanes (electronic-controlled direction so that it can remember drivers / passengers and how they like their airflow in what conditions)? Most people assumed that there were a bunch of linear actuators in there ducting the flow, and some were complaining that Tesla would complicate the design and add expensive parts and their controllers for something that's not tha
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in the late 90s-mid-2000s VW group cars (VW and Audi in particular) had awful window motors that failed all the time due to shared parts
In the mid-90s, I was told by a colleague who'd done systems support for Audi dealerships that a regional manager had ordered that all window motors were to be replaced until further notice. The rumor he'd heard was that it was to clear up a serious overstock of the parts which always seemed dubious to me.
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Nothing like driving down the road at 15mph and your rear passenger window just falls into the door, shattering in to a million pieces. I'm sure VW has fixed the QC issues but after having that happen twice I'm sort of done with them. Ever since I've shared that story, family members come back to me, they say they're having dinner with a friend and their friend's kid had the window fall in to the door for no reason and they ask them if they had a VW or Audi and the friend is always suprised that they guesse
They ALREADY have. (Score:2)
I would think they would have had better impact and a better impression of credibility if they committed to making 2-3 models successfully. Do the others once you have proven yourself.
The already have, both... :
- ultra small and low cost VW UP!
- the iconic VW Golf
are available as electric variant as VW-eUP! and VW e-Golf.
But you probably haven't heard much about them because VW only taugh about putting marketing money and massively advertising them in the wake of the diesel scandal.
Another problem -- at least for alert observing engineers -- is that both Musk and Nissan have shown that in order to make a successful EV one of the best practices is to design it as an EV from scratch. VW's announcement makes it sound like they are going to squeeze batteries and electric motors into their existing ICE designs.
(And you can add Renault to the list, they share their EV R&D with Nissan - they developped the "Zéro émission" platform together).
Yup, the current 2 above mentionned vehicles seem to me a l
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300 doesn't seem like that much considering their size and global reach. They have Volkswagen, Audi, Seat, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Ducati, and Scania. Some of those brands are just rebadged cars and some are trucks or motorcycles - but all can be electrified.
in order to make a successful EV one of the best practices is to design it as an EV from scratch.
That is probably true, but then again they have 13 years, which is at least 2 platform changes away for most models. They can probably come up with a platform that shares body and non-drivetrain parts but has dramatically different guts to keep t
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Volkswagen is the mother company.
They have their own brand, VW, but they own: Porsche, Audi, Seat, Bentley, Scoda, Scania AB, Ducatti, Lamburghini and probably a few more I don't recall right now.
And keep in mind that every "model" comes in various variations, that probably count as "model", too.
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The Teslas and Nissans are more or less simply ICE designs converted for *one* electric engine.
If they were true advanced electric vehicles they had a linear engine in each wheel.
But: then they had no "electronic stabilization", anti blocking brakes etc. p.p.
To be able to use certified modern mechatronics (and anti blocking breaking systems are mandatory by law since nearly a decade), you basically are either required to buy of the shelf components or build your own ones and get them certificated.
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If they were true advanced electric vehicles they had a linear engine in each wheel.
Are you talking about a motor in each hub? (Seen that as far back as the '60s in Popular Science)
That idea has been considered and rejected for multiple reasons as a bad idea. Particularly if you are designing a vehicle for high speed.
This why not inwheel hub engines [tesla.com] thread on Telsa's site hits the major issues.
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That is nonsense,
It was/is actually a very good idea. And Germany was leading in research about those topics.
You have 4 wheels drive, slip control, non blocking braking, all for free, without any other hardware.
Of course for tesla it was difficult, given in the posts above already. They wanted:need to use off the shelf components for slip control and non blocking breaking.
Bottom line 4 linear engines would be much more efficient.
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Re:Okay.... (Score:5, Informative)
"what do the HECK do they have *300 models* for?!?!?!?!
Volkswagen Auto Group is one of the largest vehicle manufacturing companies on the planet.
Between VW, Audi, Seat, Skoda, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti, Ducati, MAN, and Scania, plus world-wide distribution of different models, 300 seems on the low side.
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It definitely is a lot. That is almost 30 models per brand. I hope it will not bite them in the ass. They could streamline it a bit to be honest.
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Volkswagen AG is also known as the Volkswagon Group. They comprise of many "companies" which you may know including: Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, SEAT, koda and of course Volkswagen branded cars themselves.
There are per country differences between cars as well as country specific models too. I actually thought it may be possible to get to 300 without seeing the list of other brandnames, but this is not surprising at all.
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Re:Okay.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the very concept is broken. If you want an electric vehicle to be good (and competitive), you don't "electrify" a vehicle designed for an internal combustion engine. You end up needlessly poor aero drag (having the shape designed around containing an ICE), high center of gravity (batteries are best kept as a base "skateboard" at the bottom of the vehicle) and thus poorer handling/safety, poor packing density (little range and/or awkward shaped / hard to manufacture packs), and a bunch of other issues.
EVs should be designed from the start as EVs. Battery at the bottom, everything else sitting atop it, and a shape having nothing to do with the constraints of ICEs. Motors located inline with the wheels that they drive - ideally 2 motors if you can afford it for AWD, otherwise FWD or RWD as per consumer preference (generally RWD). Etc. By the way, the reason that you really want two motors (beyond gaining the benefits of AWD without having to add a heavy front-rear linkage) is that you can gear them differently. This lets you "sleep" the motor that's operating outside of its ideal power band during normal operation (instantly waking it when you need more torque or traction), which means greater efficiency, and thus range. It also lets you combine both high acceleration at low speeds and at higher speeds (with a higher top speed) rather than having to pick.
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My mistake. Apparently gasoline vehicles are built around a skateboard like this. [hybridcars.com] Silly me for not knowing that!
My mistake. "The engines are in front" - my dang lying eyes convinced me that they were built into the skateboard between the wheels [greenoptimistic.com]. Silly me for trusting them! My dang eyes also lied to me about there being a frunk where you'd normally find an engine on an ICE [teslarati.com]. I better have them checked out.
Silly, silly me.
And you're right. It totally makes sense to continue to build highly suboptimal vehicl
Re: Okay.... (Score:3)
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They'll just have a large "lubrication oil" tank. People will just have to refill it every 300 miles or so.
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If I were a big auto CEO, I'd go all in for synthetic fuel.
How hard can it be to make an engine compatible with burning ethanol or bio-diesel? I guess it must be more than trivial or else every new car would have it by now. Still, that's got to be easier to do than switch all of your manufacturing to a whole new kind of power plant.
The way cars are built now are to accommodate an internal combustion engine. Change that and the shape of the vehicle should shift with it. If you bolt an electric drive train to a vehicle built for an ICE then you're making compromi
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Ethanol and bio-diesel are essentially trivial.
For ethanol, you just need a bit of programming and compatible rubber parts. For bio-diesel, that's essentially nothing. Older diesel engines can burn almost anything, from rocket fuel to vegetable oil and used motor oil. Newer engines may be more picky, especially about impurities, but for the rest, that's just a matter of programming again.
In France, there is already ethanol mixed with gasoline (usually 10%). I don't know about diesel but some people illegall
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Biodiesel is NOT "vegetable oil". It is synthesized from vegetable oil and other bio sources by a complex chemical process of esterification. Idiots who burn SVO (straight vegetable oil) or WVO (waste vegetable oil) or any kind of "grease" in their diesels end up with a disgusting gooey mess in their expensive fuel injection system.
Even true biodiesel has its drawbacks. The viscosity isn't the same as the proper diesel fuel the engine was designed for. That matters when you're dealing with the 1000-bar-plus
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Not hard at all, but there are tradeoffs. And what are you trying to accomplish? It certainly wouldn't eliminate exhaust emissions. And ethanol gives absolutely terrible fuel efficiency, and sky-high cost. Biodiesel is a much, much better choice, except that it is a problem with the insanely high-tech, high-strung injection systems that have replaced the dead-simple diesel injection of yore.
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And what are you trying to accomplish?
Being "green".
If the goal is to "greenwash" your line of vehicles then you can do that with bio-fuels. The choice between electric and bio-fuel vehicles is not mutually exclusive so they could do both. As they intend to produce some models as hybrids then they could have bio-fuel compatible ICEs in those hybrids.
They want to make up for past sins of being polluters so they came up with the idea of electric vehicles. They could do that also with bio-fuels. I'm just curious why they aren't doing that. Ju
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Every new car can run on Bio Diesel. Since 20 years or so.
There are some cars that have problems with the hoses transporting the fuel.
Conversion to Ethanol is simple, too. Basically all old cars that use "normal gasoline" instead of "super", burn ethanol out of the box.
However: in the long run both biodiesel and ethanol production use to much land and produce to much CO2 in the whole processing chain to make it feasible for nations or the planet to got there.
Not far from my house is a gas station that sells
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Biodiesel & Ethanol are boondoggles
I know that. You know that. Lots of people know that. You know who doesn't know that? Or, more likely, know it but would rather not admit it publicly? Legislators. They'll let this slide so long as voters will cast a vote for them over it.
Same for electric vehicles, they are a boondoggle too. Volkswagen will go for it so long as it makes people feel better and covers up past sins.
which leaves us with walking, horses or electric vehicles.
I believe electric vehicles will fall out of favor soon. We'll see some sort of synthetic fuel replace it. It might be h
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Legislators know a lot of things, but DON'T GIVE A SHIT.
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Your post negates nothing I've said. As soon as someone figures out how to turn a cheap and green energy source, like hydro, into a valuable liquid fuel then electric vehicles aren't any more green than any thing else. They also start to look real expensive and inconvenient.
Turning wind and solar energy into a liquid fuel also solves the problem of storage. You might have hydro but not everyone else does. What people do have, almost by definition, is land to build a fuel synthesis plant. I say by defin
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Do you have a source for that? Because I was looking and can't find an easy source for the relative importance of tailpipe, brakes and tires. And much as I'd like to take your word for it, you're just an AC on Slashdot...
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Vinod Khosla, who's famously referred to EVs & fuel cells as "just toys", has been touting biobutanol for some time
"Advantages/Disadvantages
Due to its low vapor pressure it can be easily blended with gasoline
It contains nearly as much energy as gasoline (ethanol only contains 66% as much.
Because it separates less easily in the presence of water it is better adapted to be used in the present distribution system than ethanol
Because it is less corrosive, it is also expected to be more suitable for use in e
Re:PC baloney (Score:5, Insightful)
As a general rule, if you, average Slashdotter, think you've figured out something nobody in the entire world has, you're probably just missing something.
Re:PC baloney (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know who this VW joker is, but he probably didn't work his way up from the engineering shop.
Matthias Müller started out as an apprentice tool and die maker at Audi and then studied engineering at Munich University of Applied Sciences. After that, he got a job in the product planning at Audi and gradually worked his way up to become the manager in charge of product planning. After that, he subsequently became coordinator of sports brands for the VW Group, CEO of Porsche and, after the resignation of prof. dr. Martin Winterkorn in 2015, CEO of the VW Group.
However, please don't get readily available facts get in the way of your presumptions.
Then why are EVs more efficient, safe, & relia (Score:2)
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Really? So when you discover that you need gas on your way home, you arrive home only 2 minutes later than you would have otherwise? I'm going to call BS on that one.
Do you know how long it takes to fill up an EV? 20 seconds. Ten to connect the cable and ten to disconnect. The fact that the charging at home happens while you sleep doesn't affect you one bit. And that's the vast majority of a person's usage. For the minority - long trips? Supercharging happens while you eat lunch and on bathroom breaks
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For your somewhat less common requirement it may not be better, but for most people it is. Charging at home is so much more convenient than having to go and pump smelly liquid at a dirty petrol station (not to mention the cost), and it's better for everyone's health too.
There will always be some uses where ICE is more suitable I imagine, the question is not if EVs are "better" it's what percentage of people they are better for.
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>fills up in two minutes
but can't be filled up at home, can't be filled up overnight, can't be filled up on a delay switch when fuel is particularly cheap, can't be ready with a full tank every morning, etc etc
>can be filled up out of a man-portable container of gasoline in an emergency
but can't be filled up from a plug point in an emergency
>goes at least 400 miles between fill-ups
about 90miles more than a Tesla, 160 more than a Bolt, and about twice the range of a Renault Zoe, so a genuine advanta
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So, you're saying th
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When were you last in a Model 3? Right, you weren't. So all you have to go on are reviews. Very well, start reading them [slashdot.org].
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1) "will" -> "does". The car already exists.
2) Not according to every review from everyone who's actually been in the car.
Furthermore, I'm going to bet that you've never even been in an S or X (hint: there's two expensive models, and that's if you don't count the Roadster).
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Get in line behind me. [tesla.com] Those at the head of the line are already getting theirs. Which is nice because it means more and more sightings, videos, pics, etc every day.
Pre- or post refresh, and what interior option? Funny that they've captured a third of the US luxury sedan market, almost 50% more than the next closest competitor, with a "Kia-like" interior, huh?
And FYI, I'll take professional reviewers opi
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Seriously? Because you can't put your hands on it a second after you say "yes" that means it's not for sale? Is "any product that has a waiting list isn't really for sale" actually your argument here?
Around a hundred [wordpress.com], as per the production ramp.
Taxis? Right. So probably pre-facelift / first generation base interior / no PUP.
No, th
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Except for the fact that you can actually buy it, and people are at present taking deliveries.
Luxury sedans are a vehicle class. You don't get to make up a new definition for it; it already has one. Model S is in the luxury sedan segment (there's some debate over whether it belongs in the "large luxury sedan" segment or "midsize luxury sedan" segment)
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Merely even refining transportation fuels is a much less efficient process than charging li-ions.
Li-ions don't work by oxidation processes, th
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I see one huge flaw with this plan: The way to get a successful electric car is NOT to stick a battery+electric motor onto an existing design - that just gets you yet another bunch of compliance cars with sub-par performance and driving characteristics that no one actually wants to use.
Concentrate on just a few models.
Design these new models as all electric models from the ground up.
Distribution of components is radically different than classic internal combustion based cars- you can have multiple small
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BMW i3 is a good example that designing an electric-only car is no guarantee of success. Haven't driven it, but from the perspective of practicality: -very high floor and low ceiling in the rear, thus nowhere to put your legs, feet, and head -cannot open rear doors without first opening the front -front doors ~10 cm wider than in most cars The first two make it a two-person car. The last two make it useless in tight parking spaces. It is so much larger on the outside than even e.g. Smart ForFour or VW e-Up (in which four average-sized adults can sit just fine) that I really don't see a point.
Look and feel of the i3 interior, on the other hand, is fantastic.
You also forgot it's ugly as shit, especially that damn 2-tone exterior. That's why so many people have gushed over Tesla: their cars actually look good.
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Tesla 3 is fugly,