Electric + Human-Powered Vehicles

[stevebrooks]

Another new entry to the Australian EV market, Leapmotor. The vehicle looks an attractive buy, still to expensive of course, but there are supposedly future models coming to target various market segments:

https://www.news.com.au/technology/moto ... 881992b8f3

[stevebrooks]

It's like, you know, competition brings prices down!

MG has slashed the price of its MG4 electric car by $10,000 in response to increased competition in the class.

New brands such as XPeng, Zeekr and Leapmotor are preparing to introduce EVs in Australia in coming months, while established rivals such as Hyundai have their own breed cheap EVs on the way.

So MG has cut the cheapest version of its MG4 Electric to $30,990 drive-away, down from about $41,000 drive-away.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/moto ... 74ae672d9a

[stylofone]

It's like, you know, competition brings prices down!

MG has slashed the price of its MG4 electric car by $10,000 in response to increased competition in the class.

New brands such as XPeng, Zeekr and Leapmotor are preparing to introduce EVs in Australia in coming months, while established rivals such as Hyundai have their own breed cheap EVs on the way.

So MG has cut the cheapest version of its MG4 Electric to $30,990 drive-away, down from about $41,000 drive-away.

There have been lots of price cuts recently but this one looks a bit more significant to me. The race is now on to break the $30K price barrier.

EVs are still expensive, but the gap is shrinking. Comparing like with like is a bit tricky. The petrol MG3 is around $20K, roughly a $10k difference, but it's slightly smaller and plainer and I think more towards the sub-compact category, so the larger EV MG4 now compares very well. The price trajectories would suggest MG EVs could achieve price parity with their own ICE models in a couple of years... I was thinking 2028 would be the crossover point. The acceleration of the technology is continuing.

I still have doubts abut the longevity and build quality of the Chinese makes. The Hyundai Inster (mentioned by stevebrooks a while ago) would appear to be a challenger from a more tested Korean manufacturer, but they will have to pull something out of the hat to get close to price competitiveness with the Chinese.

The legacy makers will really be shaken up, they already have to partner with the Chinese to stay in the game, so China wins either way. I note Toyota is getting BYD to build drivetrains for its Chinese made EV models.

[stevebrooks]

The price trajectories would suggest MG EVs could achieve price parity with their own ICE models in a couple of years

The thing is if they can get purchase price close to ICE parity then EV's will win every time due to lower fuel and maintenance cost. Of course we still don't have enough info re: long term reliability of EV's, it concerns me that EV's are trying so hard to go high tech which of course is going to impact reliability somewhat, a good old low tech EV with just the minimum required safety electronics would be so much better than the full fat screen monsters we have at the moment. I've always enjoyed the conversion videos on youtube where they take an ICE mini or land rover for instance and put an electric motor and batteries in and that's about it, why can't we have that sort of thing in a factory original, just electric motor, battery and everything else relatively simple to keep costs and long term maintenance down.

[Wrenn]

re: long term reliability of EV's

I don't know about other brands but there are a bunch of Teslas out there with 500k+ miles before needing battery changes. This is more than double the mileage of the average car before it's replaced. Motors might be replaced earlier, but I don't know the details on that.

These are older models and the tech is still improving.

[stylofone]

re: long term reliability of EV's

I don't know about other brands but there are a bunch of Teslas out there with 500k+ miles before needing battery changes. This is more than double the mileage of the average car before it's replaced. Motors might be replaced earlier, but I don't know the details on that.

These are older models and the tech is still improving.

Regarding BYDs, MGs, GWM etc., for me the longevity/build quality question arises not because they are EVs or they are Chinese, it's more because they are new or relatively untested makers under pressure to get new models to market and get out of the "valley of death" (the period when investment, R&D etc. runs its course and the company needs to start making money on a model). It's always been the case for carmakers, it's not EV-specific, sometimes the cheaper new kids on the block to tend to rust or fall apart a bit sooner than the more experienced makers. Also I'm a bit prejudiced because every car I've ever owned has been Japanese: Datsun, Mitsubishi, Daihatsu, Toyota (4 different ones), Suzuki, Honda.

I would never consider an American car. Also, owning a Tesla is now akin to being a Nazi sympathiser in my opinion.

The battery issue doesn't bother me because of articles like this, and the expectation that by the time I am able to buy an EV, the technology will be better still.

https://thedriven.io/2024/09/19/new-stu ... e-vehicle/

[stevebrooks]

re: long term reliability of EV's

I don't know about other brands but there are a bunch of Teslas out there with 500k+ miles before needing battery changes. This is more than double the mileage of the average car before it's replaced. Motors might be replaced earlier, but I don't know the details on that.

These are older models and the tech is still improving.

Yeah if batteries last that long that's not a problem, I am more thinking of the electronics, that is the screens and other stuff. There's a good argument for keeping stuff as simple as possible while providing the same level of utility.

For instance;

As we can see, the Innolux screen is tested to roughly the lowest “Grade 4” standard, although even there its high temperature storage testing (as well as high temperatures in thermal cycling testing) falls slightly short. Electronic parts qualified for “passenger compartment hotspots” like a central display are typically tested to Grade 2, which the Innolux would almost certainly fail to pass. Dashboards and center stacks see some of the highest interior temperatures in a car, with +80C easily achieved through solar radiation and ambient temperature alone, and the nearby HVAC unit, the in-car processor for Autopilot and the display processor itselfadding considerable thermal load.

Tesla’s decision to use a large display that wasn’t tested to higher automotive grade standards had fairly predictable results.

So the large screen in the Tesla isn't rated to the same standard as other automotive electronics that would be installed in that area of the vehicle and often exposed to direct sunlight. In fact some issues with the screen are so common that Tesla is no longer covering them under warranty...which seems rather strange. Here's the article that exposed these problems.

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/tes ... de-matters

Now it seems this should be a huge issue, fact is the only way to tell how fast you are moving in a Tesla is to actually look at the large screen, the large screen that seems to be....well, not suitable for purpose. Other cars from other manufacturers often use a smaller screen just for the driver info like speed, and being much smaller this could be made at a much higher standard. I mean the only thing you really need is a speedometer, other things, while important, aren't that significant, but if your only source of all info is a faulty screen, well that's an issue.

In fact Tesla mitigated some of this issue by making the aircon run when the interior gets hot to keep it cool, so if you park all day in the hot sun there's a good chance you are wasting money just keeping the car cool to protect the display, which does seem counterproductive if you purchased a EV to save on fuel costs.

[stylofone]

I was just reading about the implications of autonomous vehicles. The prediction in this paper is that when cars are self driving it will coincide with a radical fall in EV prices, meaning operating a taxi will really easy and cheap, and car ownership will fade away and be replaced by a thing called Transport as a Service (TaaS), which will make more sense than having your own car.

Demand for new vehicles will plummet: 70% fewer passenger cars
and trucks will be manufactured each year. This could result in total
disruption of the car value chain, with car dealers, maintenance and
insurance companies suffering almost complete destruction. Car
manufacturers will have options to adapt, either as low-margin, high-
volume assemblers of A-EVs, or by becoming TaaS providers. Both
strategies will be characterized by high levels of competition, with new
entrants from other industries. The value in the sector will be mainly
in the vehicle operating systems, computing platforms and the TaaS
platforms

It's from a 2017 report. (Link below). I have my doubts about autonomous vehicles. I head an expert on the radio recently saying they are great when there are only computer-driven cars, but are not great at dealing with the unpredictable actions of human drivers, so we'll see. The predictions of chaos in the oil industry as demand drops are more straightforward.

https://tonyseba.com/wp-content/uploads ... AL-LRR.pdf

[stevebrooks]

The Shark 6 by Byd, seems to hit a sweet spot for Hybrid Ute. 80km range on battery alone, which probably means 90% of your driving will be on electric because most people if using it as a work/home vehicle will be on electric most of the time in town, with a motor just for charging the battery when on long drives. Seems a reasonable price as well for a modern Ute, $60,000 is not an unreasonable price for this class of vehicle.

The dual-cab four-wheel drive Shark 6 has a spacious five-seat body - back seat leg and headroom is terrific - but does things very differently to other utes, as we learnt during a brief drive in China.

The Shark 6 has two electric motors powered by a 29.58kWh battery. It can drive about 80km on electricity alone.

But it also has a 1.5-litre four-cylinder turbocharged engine that predominantly acts as a generator to extend the range.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/moto ... d48d571a9a

[stevebrooks]

Oh looking here, bold headlines and warnings;

1600 jobs slashed as ‘green revolution’ stalls at Northvolt

Nope, it didn't stall, they got greedy and destroyed themselves!

It reported the company had a pot of funding worth $22 billion last year which it spent “far and wide” in projects like developing a sodium-ion cell battery and working on wood-based batteries with a paper company.

Northvolt said it was spending on average $434 million a month with the aim of becoming a vertically integrated European battery giant with intensive manufacturing sites in Canada, Germany, Poland and Sweden.

However, it lost sight of its core money-making purpose of making EV batteries on time for its big clients like BMW — which spectacularly pulled the plug on a $3 billion order of cells in May because of delays.

In other word they lost a 3 billion order because they were twats, par for the course, people who don't understand how to run a business jumping on the band wagon thinking they can do anything they want with no oversight or business plan.

I mean, "it lost sight of making EV batteries?" They started a business making EV batteries, how can you lose sight of that?

https://www.news.com.au/technology/moto ... 0bdcf2c056