So who's going to buy all these autonomous cars and EVs?

[silvrsvt]

http://autoweek.com/article/autonomous-cars/study-questions-investments-autonomous-vehicles?utm_source=DailyDrive20180622&utm_medium=enewsletter&utm_term=headline-center&utm_content=body&utm_campaign=awdailydrive

 

Just reconfirms what many of us have been saying about Autonomous cars and a lesser extent EVs

[NLPRacing]

As a person who travels a lot for work and has four outside salesmen that also travel a lot, I know I would very interested in buying autonomous cars. Especially after driving my brother in law's Tesla in LA traffic using autopilot.

[jasonj80]

http://autoweek.com/article/autonomous-cars/study-questions-investments-autonomous-vehicles?utm_source=DailyDrive20180622&utm_medium=enewsletter&utm_term=headline-center&utm_content=body&utm_campaign=awdailydrive

 

Just reconfirms what many of us have been saying about Autonomous cars and a lesser extent EVs

I think it is going end up being government mandated over the next 30+ years, You won't be able to buy ICE engines in some countries so EV will naturally be the mode of transportation. Same applies for Autonomy which will probably start on limited access roads where you enter and the car takes over. You wont be allowed on them if the car isn't in automatic mode.

[akirby]

EVs are going to be niche vehicles for at least another decade until technology takes another leap and prices come down more.

 

PHEVs are going to be the sweet spot with 80% of the benefits of an EV with no range issues. And great for CAFE.

 

Autonomous vehicles will end up being mostly limited to commercial/specialty use with the features becoming driver assists on personal vehicles.

 

That's my prediction.

[7Mary3]

Old train station + millennial's = EV/Autonomous Mobility leadership!

 

At least Ford is further along than FCA is. At least I hope they are.........

[mackinaw]

...... Especially after driving my brother in law's Tesla in LA traffic using autopilot.

 

How well does autopilot work when it's snowing outside?

[twintornados]

I would have bought one (autonomous vehicle) for my mother when she was still with us....

[rmc523]

As a person who travels a lot for work and has four outside salesmen that also travel a lot, I know I would very interested in buying autonomous cars. Especially after driving my brother in law's Tesla in LA traffic using autopilot.

 

I'd like it for long road trips or heavy traffic scenarios, but there are times where I want to drive.

[AlRozzi]

What about flying cars? Perhaps flying AV mobility is the future?

[NLPRacing]

 

How well does autopilot work when it's snowing outside?

 

No idea, it didn't snow while I was in LA.

 

 

I'd like it for long road trips or heavy traffic scenarios, but there are times where I want to drive.

 

Me too. I hope autonomous cars still have a "manual" mode.

Edited June 22, 2018 by NLPRacing

[rmc523]

What about flying cars? Perhaps flying AV mobility is the future?

 

I thought I read something that Uber is working on that.

 

More like a flying "pod" than a car though.

[jpd80]

The whole situation needs a dose of reality, everything is being hyped as if tens of millions of buyers

are ready to immediately take up AVs and EVs, there is plenty of time for both technologies to mature

and support tech and infrastructure to become established.

 

I agree with akirby's view that PHEV is the sweet spot and with wider use of hybrids, battery costs will

reduce even further. Gas and diesel engines today are pretty efficient save for slow speed stop go work

and roads that anything but flat.

 

I'm very excited by the vehicles Ford has planned in the next five or so years, I think they will set the

company up with the right transitional product focus that keeps customers happy and profits flowing

Edited June 22, 2018 by jpd80

[silvrsvt]

The whole situation needs a dose of reality, everything is being hyped as if tens of millions of buyers

are ready to immediately take up AVs and EVs, there is plenty of time for both technologies to mature

and support tech and infrastructure to become established.

 

I agree with akirby's view that PHEV is the sweet spot and with wider use of hybrids, battery costs will

reduce even further. Gas and diesel engines today are pretty efficient save for slow speed stop go work

and roads that anything but flat.

 

I'm very excited by the vehicles Ford has planned in the next five or so years, I think they will set the

company up with the right transitional product focus that keeps customers happy and profits flowing

 

 

Most of this is coming from players who are outside of the standard automotive market that where primary players in the IT industry and are looking at branching out because the markets they are in mature without much growth potential.

 

The autonomous marketplace has a long way to go yet-so many needed upgrades to support them and figuring out the legalese of them actually operating on the road. Not to mention I think level 4 autonomous would be the most popular form, it also from the legal stand-point the most dangerous since your mixing Human and Computer interaction together.

 

EV's are about 10-15 years away from becoming mainstream-price and performance are the two biggest hurdles. If someone can make an EV CUV about the size of an Escape for $35-40K with a range of 250 miles and still make money on it-that would be the game changer the market place needs.

[theoldwizard]

Ford CEO Jim Hacket decreed that all Leadership Level employees watch the following lecture by Tony Seba. There are some pretty radical thoughts in it.

Clean Disruption - Energy & Transportation

Tony Seba is predicting the end of ALL internal combustion engines be 2030, only 12 years away. IMHO, this is HIGHLY UNLIKELY.

I am not the only person who thinks this. The following is from Bloomberg magazine from a few years ago. The have a very different opinion

A shift is under way that will lead to widespread adoption of EVs in the next decade.

Of course the simple question that no one has answered is "Where is all of the electric power going to come from ?"

Edited June 26, 2018 by theoldwizard

[twintornados]

 

...Of course the simple question that no one has answered is "Where is all of the electric power going to come from ?"

.

All the leftover gasoline that will no longer be burned will go into the coal plants for electricity generation?

[blksn8k2]

.

All the leftover gasoline that will no longer be burned will go into the coal plants for electricity generation?

 

I doubt there would be any economic reason to refine crude oil into gasoline if all you wanted to do was burn it in a boiler. If anything, whatever coal fired power plants are left (if any) might be converted to burn less volatile oil. Many have already been converted to burn natural gas. Believe it or not, coal is still one of the most efficient fuels. We just need to have enough incentives to develop cleaner ways to burn it and still maintain the efficiencies.

[akirby]

And we'll have flying cars by the 80s.

 

Now if you said that we won't have any stand alone ICEs in passenger vehicles I might believe that (excluding trucks and vans). I think hybrids and PHEVs will still be the majority of electified vehicles not pure EVs. PHEVs give you 80% of the EV benefits with none of the range issues.

[92merc]

I know up here in ND, we have a hyrdro power plant. But a lot of wind power as well. Most of those are actually Minnesota companies that have built wind farms to ship the electricity back to MN. Some stays here. But we are also phasing out coal power for natural gas. With the Bakken oil field producing a lot of gas, these NG power plants can fire up fairly quickly.

 

Another issue to EV's is the electric motors. "Most" motors use rare earth metals. And a lot of those come from China. So it's not just lithium needed for batteries. But you need rare metals to make the permanent magnets in the motors too. Those same metals are also used in the wind turbines for the generation side.

 

So you're either polluting by mining those metals. Or you're still making CO2 with NG power plants. So the overall effect of switching to EV's isn't as rosy as people like to think.

 

And with Fukushima, it's highly unlikely we see an expansion in nuclear power.

[twintornados]

 

I doubt there would be any economic reason to refine crude oil into gasoline if all you wanted to do was burn it in a boiler. If anything, whatever coal fired power plants are left (if any) might be converted to burn less volatile oil. Many have already been converted to burn natural gas. Believe it or not, coal is still one of the most efficient fuels. We just need to have enough incentives to develop cleaner ways to burn it and still maintain the efficiencies.

.

I was just kiddin' ...

 

Edited June 25, 2018 by twintornados

[2b2]

Ford CEO Jim Hacket decreed that all Leadership Level employees watch the following lecture by Tony Seba. There are some pretty radical thoughts in it.

Clean Disruption - Energy & Transportation

Tony Seba is predicting the end of ALL internal combustion engines be 2030, only 12 years away. IMHO, this is HIGHLY UNLIKELY...

just saw the first minute

just long enough for an issue with his presentation:

He compared the NYC EasterParade in 1900 to 1913

but

those years were carefully chosen imho FOR THE OPTICS (Hate that phrase).

 

The first U.S. automobile was 1805, patented in 1789 googled;

the Model T which brought cars-to-the-masses started in Oct 1908 wiki'ed.

 

nice use of rhetoric/manipulation

 

...coal is still one of the most efficient fuels. We just need to have enough incentives to develop cleaner ways to burn it and still maintain the efficiencies.

...coal is still one of the most SIMPLE fuels!

imho that's why the additional tech to make it clean isn't done = bad for profits

Edited June 25, 2018 by 2b2

[bzcat]

EVs are going to be niche vehicles for at least another decade until technology takes another leap and prices come down more.

 

PHEVs are going to be the sweet spot with 80% of the benefits of an EV with no range issues. And great for CAFE.

 

Autonomous vehicles will end up being mostly limited to commercial/specialty use with the features becoming driver assists on personal vehicles.

 

That's my prediction.

 

EV probably won't be a niche for that long because US is an outlier in terms of average annual mileage traveled... Low range EV (something like the Focus EV or the original Nissan Leaf with <100 mile range) will dominate global sales because that's actually what most motorist want. And the price gap on new low range EV is decreasing rapidly to the point that it will reach parity with ICE soon. We drive a lot in the US while the rest of the world doesn't really drive that much so our perspective on what is a reasonable EV range is really warped. For example, a three years old 30,000 miles (~50k km) car is a low mileage used car in the US but crazy high mileage in most Asian and a lot of European countries.

 

So EV will adopt fairly quickly in just about every country except a few like US or Canada where the average daily commute distance is equivalent of a weekend road trip to another province or a foreign country.

 

PHEV or hybrids will be pretty much standard by 2025. Only the cheapest of cheap cars will continue to be stand alone ICE. Just look at what each company is planning right now... not a lot of ICE only car on the drawing board. Just about everything has batteries in it.

 

And agreed on AV... it will primarily be a fleet vehicle solution for a foreseeable future.

Edited June 25, 2018 by bzcat

[jpd80]

In countries outside the US, you find that BEVs are much more expensive that in the US where they are

subsidized by government tax credit schemes. Also the charging networks outside the USA is still

not advanced.

 

What will be driving BEVs in those areas more than the US will be the hurt of high fuel prices but,

I suspect that hybrid and PHEV will be the thing that goes forward well in advance of BEVs.

[AGR]

When will EVs take off in a big way? There's two factors. One is cost. EVs are projected to reach cost parity with ICE cars by the mid 20s. The other is charge time. VW is building a charge network that eventually be able to charge in 15 minutes. The big question is, what is an acceptable trade-off for charge times on a road trip vs. not having to visit a refueling station the other 350 days in a year? Nobody knows that answer yet.
Just a few items: Tesla's motors don't use rare earth minerals. And where will they get the electricity? The answer was in the Detroit News today. The local utility was fretting that they would be forced by the Trump Administration to use more expensive coal instead of cheaper natural gas, wind and solar.

As for autonomous technology, it's further in the future.

Edited June 26, 2018 by AGR

[theoldwizard]

...coal is still one of the most SIMPLE fuels!

imho that's why the additional tech to make it clean isn't done = bad for profits

I disagree with this !

 

The cost of mining and transporting coal is significant. Stock piling it and processing it for consumption os also significant. Last, something your don't here much about, is coal ash. This is a classic solid waste problem but finding places to "dig a hole and bury it" is become more and more difficult especially because most coal ash is considered "toxic" because of its high content of heavy metals.

 

Natural gas is much SIMPLER !!

[theoldwizard]

Tesla's motors don't use rare earth minerals.

I find this statement very hard to believe ! Do you have a reference ?