Hi BabaRoga_space,
I know you’re just having a bit of fun but I’ll take you up on the challenge to see how much fundamental change the EV is capable of
and to help out with a little more research into BMW and the German auto industry's path toward EVs.
This article below was posted by asb83 last night when he was going long and getting excited about TA while posting FA articles.
I would call some of the innovation contained within the EV revolution fairly ground-breaking.
“The next step in storage technology is to turn electric cars into money makers for their owners. The latest global experiments along these lines entail hooking the cars’ batteries directly to power grids. These vehicle-to-grid connections enable reversible charging, the two-way transfer of electricity from cars to houses or back to power grids. A vehicle’s battery can power home appliances, sure. But more significantly, whenever it’s parked and plugged in, the car can make money by storing energy or helping stabilize supply and demand on the grid.
Drivers will be able to carry renewable energy wherever they go. “You can be a virtual grid,” says Fendt, of Mobility House, which works with Nissan Motor, Renault, the Dutch grid operator Tennet Holding, and other clients. “I take the sun around with me.”
I would call this something that an ICE car was never capable of. It's a sophisticated power plant that can earn you money and balance your power needs at home, talking to your solar and battery system to use it all for maximum efficiency and financial return.
Another ground-breaking aspect comes with the auto pilot feature.
https://www.*.com.au/tesla-takes-direct-aim-uber-lyft-with-robotaxi-plan-2019-4?r=US&IR=T
This is not entirely a feature that only EVs can use but its likely that the tech and control behind EVs will enable a lot more advanced features.
Elon has outlined a plan for cars, that are basically not used for 60%+ of any given day, to become part of self-driving Uber-style taxis, recharging themselves when necessary and returning to pick you up from work. Effectively earning you cash as you work (or not)Musk said that by “next year for sure, we will have over 1 million robo-taxis on the road.”Elon did some calculations that showed it could potentially make a Tesla pay for itself.
If these things sound far-fetched its worth realising that the tech for this kind of stuff is already there
and, to go back to the original analogy, that having a phone that does real time video calls was something that only Captain Kirk had when I was a kid.
I would add some further features that may break a bit more ground.
One would be that cities could probably start remodelling their streets.Initially, parking meters are being refitted to dual function as chargers.
The next evolution would see cars removed from the streets altogether as auto-pilot become standard.
Who needs car parking on the city street when your car can drop you and go park itself and be hailed to your location by your phone?We’d have multi-storey carpark (although probably something more like a CD stacker carousel) where they charged ( or went off an Ubered for you).
Streets would suddenly have a lot more space on them for cafes and trees and greenery.
Why not? The quality of the air would be a lot more breathable and the streets a lot quieter with the engine noise gone.
The difference between regular parking lots would be that there would be no need for pedestrian access and cars could be stacked and compressed much more efficiently, something that would be lethal if there were exhaust systems involved.
Have you been to Paris airport? Automated electric car sleds automatically “park” and retrieve cars in dense car parks more similar to a robotic drop-shipping warehouse. The parking bots are linked into the arrivals and cars are smartly retrieved and ready to drive off when you arrive.
So. You’re right. An EV probably won’t ever cook you dinner - but it may drive off to Macca’s and get you a burger and bring it home, or power that home’s kitchen (along with everything else in it) whilst its plugged into your house.
The BMW article posted today was click bait.It is an article from June when Kruger was probably fighting for his job against the board that wanted him ousted for his failures to improve the bottom line and get the car company aligned with an EV future.
So he bit back. As hard as he could.https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/nobody-wants-evs-says-bmw-119190/
He lost. That was the taste of sour grapes, hot on his breath.
The guy they talked to in the article, Frölich -he was in the running for the top job too.
He didn’t get it either, despite heading up the old EV department.
He says they're 5 years ahead in the article. Clearly nobody believed that.
Still they're not complete luddites. The original article had this
"BMW insists it will have 25 electrified cars (those with a plug, in BMW-speak) by 2025. It says it will increase its electrified vehicle volumes by 30 per cent a year from 2021 and it is turning its focus more and more to plug-in hybrids."
and later a bit more detail comes in from the similar article in forbes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2019/06/27/bmw-says-european-customers-arent-demanding-evs/#564ea05f141b"We want to sell 500,000 electrified vehicles from 2013-2019 and then step up a gear. By 2021 we would like to sell double the volume of electrified vehicles from 2019 and then every year we would like to sell 30% more than the previous year.
"We have two clear targets, the fifth generation electric drive train developed without rare earth minerals and from next year all of our production sites will be powered 100% by renewable energy."
Kruger will be replaced by a new boss, Oliver Zilfe on August 14th simply because he did not work hard enough to maximise the early good work done on the i3 and are now being skewered by Tesla and the other rival German auto companies who have caught them and passed them, not least of all VW who is leaving them behind in the dust.
There are many reasons for his failure and not least of all is that he was probably in love with how they did things now.
EVs are disruptive. The German auto industry is going to lose 10s of thousands of highly skilled jobs.
Don’t forget BMW’s headquarters are designed to look like an engine.
This article goes into the nuts and bolts
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-bmw-electric-car-german-engines/
You can see that there are a lot of parties, not least the auto unions who would be very nervous about Germany waving goodbye to the ICE engine. The whole German economy could take a massive hit. The article above goes into detail about numbers of parts that are no longer necessary to be made or tested. Savings from not having to make and test emissions control systems are gigantic in themselves.
Incoming boss Zipse is a lot more careful about the way he talks about EVs.
Its more interesting to read his take on things after Kruger. Embedded into it are some very interesting observations.https://www.bmwblog.com/2019/07/18/oliver-zipse-is-the-new-bmw-ceo-starting-august-16-2019/
He mentions how the auto industry has some reason to be feeling unfairly targeted by the pressure to reduce emissions when there are many polluters who have done very little to curb pollution.However with some studies saying that 75% of urban pollution comes from the tailpipe - then its a case of picking the low hanging fruit first.
Change they must. The leader of the German auto industry, VW has left them behind with the scale of its transformation to an EV only future.
“Three VW plants in Germany are set to retool to only make battery cars. The cost of transforming just one plant over the next two years? At least 1.2 billion euros.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-bmw-electric-car-german-engines/
On cost. There are sub $9000USD EVs in China already. They were announced in January.
You probably don’t want one, but there it is. Decent 350km range.
What's not to like - except its hideous styling and probably not approved for anywhere else but China yet.
Parity. It’s just around the corner.
