Australian Atheists Forum

stevebrooks wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 2:03 amSeriously that's not a bad plan though, wait until all the big players get batteries and etc sorted, make sure the first EV you release is a really good one. By waiting and licensing the tech, or even just re-badging good EV's from other companies, it could save them a lot of money in the long term. Do they need to spend a lot of money developing battery tech? Nope, wait until it's ready and go then. Whether it's 5 years or more, or even less, not every company needs to develop their own tech.

I do see the logic in that, but I wonder if that is a smart long term strategy, as you say they end up just rebadging the cars of others or buying the battery, motor and electrics off a competitor as Toyota did with BYD. I wonder how they compete when you do that. As for me I would definitely just stick with cheaper cars from BYD than paying more for a BYD with a Mazda badge.

See what happens though I guess, as you say it may turn out to be a smarter strategy due to the rate of technological change at the moment.

joele wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 9:14 am

stevebrooks wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 2:03 amSeriously that's not a bad plan though, wait until all the big players get batteries and etc sorted, make sure the first EV you release is a really good one. By waiting and licensing the tech, or even just re-badging good EV's from other companies, it could save them a lot of money in the long term. Do they need to spend a lot of money developing battery tech? Nope, wait until it's ready and go then. Whether it's 5 years or more, or even less, not every company needs to develop their own tech.

I do see the logic in that, but I wonder if that is a smart long term strategy, as you say they end up just rebadging the cars of others or buying the battery, motor and electrics off a competitor as Toyota did with BYD. I wonder how they compete when you do that. As for me I would definitely just stick with cheaper cars from BYD than paying more for a BYD with a Mazda badge.

See what happens though I guess, as you say it may turn out to be a smarter strategy due to the rate of technological change at the moment.

Well I do look back on Mazda being one of the few car manufacturers to develop their own unique mass market motor. I don't count car makers like Ferrari and Lamborghini in the same group because essentially their motors are custom made, but the Mazda Rotary was meant to compete with the likes of the V8's and V6's used in other mass market cars. Sure other car makers designed and built their own motors, but they were essentially variations of existing designs that have been used for many years and for which a lot of industry knowledge already existed. But Mazda designed and built a unique motor of their own for which there was no previously existing knowledge base. So as far as designing and building new tech, I would say Mazda is in a privileged position of knowing when to head out on their own and when to wait and utilise others tech. Essentially, when you get down to it, the unique identifier of a modern EV isn't going to be battery tech or motors because they will all be made in a few massive factories and everyone will essentially have the same base to work with. Body design, interior design and of course price will be the main determiner of which EV to buy, and price might very well depend on how much you have invested in R&D for batteries and other such tech.

Really whether Mazda's route is the best one to follow is not going to be apparent for a few more years, but I can see them buying the base, battery, motors etc as a package an putting their own body and interior on that base and maybe still coming out cheaper than other companies that have to recover R&D investments.

Kia EV5 now using BYD battery too for China built cars which will include the RHD ones coming to Australia

Think there will be a torrent of new EVs next year, will be interesting to see if prices drop or they are all > 60k (for traditional brands).

https://www.drive.com.au/news/2024-kia- ... -in-china/

Not quite the header, but there's an urgent recall on some LG solar batteries. See linky.



https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/c ... ing-notice

Irrev-Black wrote: ↑Tue Nov 21, 2023 7:38 pm Not quite the header, but there's an urgent recall on some LG solar batteries. See linky.

Yep those NMC batteries are the gift that keeps on giving, I think I mentioned in another thread (earlier in this one) arguing with multiple solar installers who kept trying to promise me the LG NMC batteries are safer than LiFePO4 (before one finally agreed to install what I wanted).

P.S. LG Solutions are tooling up to make LiFePO4 batteries in their Michigan factories.

https://insideevs.com/news/587166/lges- ... -michigan/

Another advance in battery tech...

https://reneweconomy.com.au/northvolt-h ... -vehicles/

A note stuck on a pillar in the Village Centre car park, Batemans Bay, perhaps making its way there after being stuck on an EV windscreen. The tone of it fuels my sense of unease at interacting with the "mainstream" community. This follows my interaction with a respectable-seeming boomer woman in Bunnings whose eyes flashed red for a moment as she told me that catastrophic bushfires are caused by arsonists and fuel load in national parks, not climate change.

Too many "normal" people are deluded, scary and weird. Be careful out there, anti-EV road rage crimes could be the next trend.

stylofone wrote: ↑Wed Nov 22, 2023 1:20 pmToo many "normal" people are deluded, scary and weird. Be careful out there, anti-EV road rage crimes could be the next trend.

Yeah, I was actually thinking of removing the little EV badge (which you might have seen in my debadging post) I had left on the car..

Hard to know but I have had a few ranger driving types tailgating me for no apparent reason and few dirty looks in car-parks when plugging in to charge.. I don't think it is such a huge issues that it concerns me safety wise, though I suppose tail-gating is a safety issue.

I also do wonder about the pathological state of people that feel the need to do that (as per your post) or park in EV spots with "Fuck You EV drivers" notes left on their wind-shields.. Some crazy people out there.

stylofone wrote: ↑Wed Nov 22, 2023 1:20 pm A note stuck on a pillar in the Village Centre car park, Batemans Bay, perhaps making its way there after being stuck on an EV windscreen. The tone of it fuels my sense of unease at interacting with the "mainstream" community. This follows my interaction with a respectable-seeming boomer woman in Bunnings whose eyes flashed red for a moment as she told me that catastrophic bushfires are caused by arsonists and fuel load in national parks, not climate change.

Too many "normal" people are deluded, scary and weird. Be careful out there, anti-EV road rage crimes could be the next trend.

nuttynote.jpg

I always get a wry smile from those sorts of things, where exactly does she think the exact same stuff used in her phone comes from if not child slavery? Now I do agree there is too much child slavery (more than zero is too much of course) but this sort of thing won't stop it, developing tech that doesn't rely on stuff that's dug out of the ground in 3rd world countries may very well do, and the drive to develop different battery tech is driven almost solely by EV development. Phone and laptops alone wouldn't have driven the huge battery tech developments we have seen in the last few years, they could easily have gone on for another 10 or 20 years using the same battery tech. Some people are just idiots.

The future of "affordable" electric cars?

As one of the comments said, the VW beetle (EV) of our time?