andyalan10 wrote:Given China electric car sales currently down 34% year on year on subsidy cuts, and the non-existent progress in India and Indonesia, the second and third most populous countries in Asia I don't think Asia is "spoken for".
China is rationalising their BEV production, given their credits system you are still either going to have to sell BEV's or buy credits from somebody who does if you want to sell petrol cars in China. India might be moving more slowly, but then India doesn't have the level of government control that China does or the ability to direct the world's largest automotive industry to fulfill its goals, and China has a far more conspicuous local air pollution problem to address. With the greatest of respect to Indonesia Asia is the one place on the planet where a country of quarter a billion people isn't going to tip the scales.
andyalan10 wrote:I see a significant role for large heavy Lithium Ion Batteries in large heavy cars, but I am also sure they are not the only technological answer and I'm unsure that they are the best answer for anything. I think one of the best developments is recent times is that major manufacturers have decided to bet on different strategies, with VW saying we need a dedicated battery only platform and Volvo and PSA saying the customer wants a car we should be able to provide that car with petrol/diesel/hybrid power trains depending on their needs and the regulatory framework.
The other side of that coin is that VW can afford to produce petrol cars which are designed to the limits and advantages of petrol cars, and electric cars which are designed to the limits and advantages of electric cars, whilst PSA and Volvo are forced to take in to account the restrictions of an electric architecture when designing a petrol car and the restrictions of a petrol architecture whilst designing an electric car.
With VW you buy a Golf if you want petrol and an id.3 if you want electric, both markets are serviced by dedicated platforms, something which is possible because of the sheer number of cars that VW sells. VW are providing the same choice of powertrains as Volvo and PSA, but packaged in a box which is designed specifically for that powertrain. The customer doesn't lose any choice, but gains a more refined product in every case.
You can make perfectly decent cars using a split architecture, for example the e-golf, or by building electric on fossil fuel platforms, for example the e-tron, but can you really push the design limits or achieve the same manufacturing efficiency as a dedicated factory of either persuasion pumping out dedicated vehicles which identify unambiguously as electric or fossil fuel?
The difference is that VW can address the switchover at a factory level taking full advantage of both electric and fossil, whilst manufacturers with lower outputs have to address it at a line, or even a car level. The i-pace for example is manufactured on the same line as the e-pace by Magna Steyr in Austria. I think this is how you manage the electric transition if you can't simply turn off a factory here and one over there for conversion as and when it becomes necessary, or build a new plant here knowing that in 24 months you'll be happily shipping 300,000 units a year from it to eager customers. I don't think it's how you go about it if you have a choice, I think it is what you do if you don't have the scale to switch an entire factory or an entire market segment.
andyalan10 wrote:I also find it hard to reconcile the twin arguments about BEVs. They are far simpler in terms of number of components and more easy to package, and they require much greater economies of scale and vast amounts of money to develop. Both of those things can't be true can they?
I've seen the argument that BEV's are simpler disputed, based on the complexity of the battery pack which is often treated as a a single component but contains many parts and much fine work connecting them. Tesla packs to take an extreme example contain literally thousands of cells. I'm quite happy with the idea that even if BEV's are simpler than fossil fuel vehicles the difference isn't as big as those whose mental schematic of a BEV consists of an AA battery wired to a lego motor, controlled by a single spring loaded pedal believe.
But even if it were simple to construct a BEV, you can only do that once you've designed the platform, developed the supply chains, and managed to corner a shipment of very in demand batteries, all of which are easier the bigger you are, and easier to recoup the more units you sell.