
Volvo signals 'end of the solely combustion engine-powered car' - JLK_121416
http://www.autonews.com/article/20170705/COPY01/307069997/volvo-steers-toward-electrified-future
======
worldsayshi
Can we please standardize charging stations to not require a person to
manually establish a connection? It seems that it would pose such an awkward
and unnecessary hurdle. Especially in the coming age of self driving cars.

Every time you arrive or leave you have to remember to (dis-)connect the
charger. Why not just have some kind of inductive energy transfer or I
dunno... something.

Edit1: Heh, this could work I guess:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI)
\- seems it could be too expensive for mass-usage though.

Edit2: This is more what I had in mind:
[https://www.pluglesspower.com/](https://www.pluglesspower.com/)

~~~
jdietrich
>Can we please standardize charging stations to not require a person to
manually establish a connection? It seems that it would pose such an awkward
and unnecessary hurdle.

It's a total non-issue in practice. Inductive charging has barely made an
impact for mobile phones, because plugging in a cable just isn't a big chore.
It very quickly becomes an automatic habit that requires no conscious effort.

~~~
aninhumer
While it's obviously impractical for cars, my experience using a wireless
charger with my phone is that despite being a seemingly minor change, it makes
quite a bit of difference for me in practice.

Plugging in a micro USB cable is often quite fiddly, and sometimes the cable
can fall behind the table and require crawling around on the floor. Not to
mention the cables and ports can be quite fragile and end up breaking or
becoming loose. Also if I want to use my phone occasionally while I'm sitting
at my desk, I either have to have an awkward cable hanging off it, or plug and
unplug it repeatedly.

For these reasons, I found I'd occasionally leave my phone unplugged by
mistake and have low charge in the morning. Since I got a wireless charger
that never happens.

That said, most of these advantages would come equally well from a docking
station, the only problem being there's no standardisation for that.

~~~
munchbunny
While I mostly agree, my experience with wireless charging in general (with
the Qi) has been finicky - if you're off my more than about 2-3mm, your phone
won't charge.

The Nexus 5 charger had a small addition that more or less addressed the
problem entirely: it added magnets at the corners of the chargers that would
align with something (probably other magnets?) inside the phone, so you would
know where the sweet spot was because it would pull your phone and hand into
it. But with generic Qi chargers, I would have to fiddle around and check the
charge symbol.

~~~
aninhumer
I'm using a generic charger, and while you do have to position it correctly, I
find it fairly forgiving. Basically as long as I vaguely line it up with the
pad surface it works fine, and there's an LED that turns green to let me know
it's correct.

I didn't know the official Nexus 5 charger used magnets though. I passed on it
because IIRC it was a weird cylinder stand that looked less stable than the
generic flat pad I bought. (That and it was a good bit more expensive.)

EDIT: I just played around with mine now, and the margin for error is at least
a couple of cm. I think my sense of neatness objects to the offset before the
charger does.

------
L15p3r
Seems like Musk is starting to succeed in his plan in forcing the car makers
to go electric

~~~
comboy
Exactly my thoughts. Plus, I wonder where are they going to get batteries from
;) Current hybrids pure electric range is laughable.

~~~
johansch
> Plus, I wonder where are they going to get batteries from ;)

Maybe here:

[http://nordic.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-former-right-
ha...](http://nordic.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-former-right-hand-man-is-
opening-a-$4billion-battery-factory-in-sweden-2017-3/)

~~~
ckastner
Or rather from Panasonic. That's where Tesla get's its batteries from.

(Tesla financed the Gigafactory, but it is operated by Panasonic, and they
previously bought their lithium-battery cells from Panasonic. This is
according to Tesla's own 10-K filings [1,2]).

[1]
[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459016...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459016013195/tsla-10k_20151231.htm)

[2]
[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459017...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459017003118/tsla-10k_20161231.htm)

------
okket
Maybe this has something to do with the new Chinese owners? Maybe they see the
future differently? And also, maybe, these owners have a somewhat privileged
access to the largest battery production in the world?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Not wrong, but the reasoning is off. China has basically mandated from the top
a huge push in electric vehicles. This hmeans everyone has to ramp up on their
tech. Toyota was for example hugely caught off guard because they were betting
on hydrogen. Geely and other Chinese companies are quicker to receive these
signals.

~~~
leojg
why not both? hydrogen cells seems to me as a great tech with a lot of
potential.

They can be used in situations where electrical chargers are not avaiable.

~~~
skywhopper
Hydrogen fuel cells are essentially just a really complicated battery. The
technology undoubtedly has uses, but powering automobiles seems a poor choice.
30 years ago, it probably seemed more reasonable to transition the gasoline
shipping-and-pumping power delivery to hydrogen, but the primary benefit is
just the zero-emission aspect (at the car itself at least). But today,
chemical battery tech has progressed to the point that it's on the edge of
full practicality, and hydrogen isn't really any closer to reality than in was
in the 90s.

------
hjalle
Almost 3 years ago the CEO (Håkan Samuelsson) said that he did not believe in
pure elecric cars but rather hybrids[1]. Will be interesting to see if that
still holds or if he has changed his beliefs.

[1] [http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/rena-elbilar-tror-vi-inte-
pa/](http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/rena-elbilar-tror-vi-inte-pa/) (translated,
[https://translate.google.se/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y&prev=...](https://translate.google.se/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dn.se%2Fekonomi%2Frena-
elbilar-tror-vi-inte-pa%2F&edit-text=))

~~~
gutnor
3 years ago was also before the diesel gate.

Here in Europe, we moved from Diesel is king to the specialist press running
article on why you can still consider buying a Diesel car in 2017 in some
condition. That triggered countries like Germany to announce plan to ban gas
car sales in a decade.

Regardless what Volvo CEO thought 3 years ago, the market has shifted in a
clear direction and it is his job to adapt.

In a similar fashion Porsche CEO said he did not believe in automated car. You
don't buy a 150K Porsche sport car to let it drive itself. That's probably
true, but I expect him to change his mind less than a second after it is clear
that some countries will forbid non-automated car to access some public road
in the near future.

~~~
gambiting
>>that some countries will forbid non-automated car to access some public road
in the near future.

I am sorry, but I don't believe that will happen in anything that could be
described as _near_ future. I don't see any actual bans to be introduced any
sooner than 30-50 years from now, and even then only if:

1) the technology gets _really_ good, not just "kind of good but only when the
conditions are optimal"

2) the technology gets cheap enough that you can put it on a kind of car that
nowadays is sold new without A/C and electric windows and don't impact the
price of the car too much.

~~~
xoa
Beyond gutnor's reply, cars are just fundamentally ripe for disruption. The
benefits of personalized arbitrary-point-to-point mechanized transport are so
compelling that society has been willing to put up with an enormous price for
it, but that doesn't mean the current situation isn't still terrible and ready
for a real tipping point effect the instant it becomes feasible. The only
reason we've had manual driving at all was because humanity's development of
mechanical tech greatly outstripped its development of information capture and
processing tech, but that was always a temporary situation. Think about the
incredible pressures on the current system:

\- Well over a million deaths a year worldwide, if we're talking America then
30k-40k+ here alone. Tens of millions disabled/injured, at ruinous expense.
Even more accidents that "merely" cause significant damage, again at major
expense.

\- The huge insurance and societal costs necessary to sustain the above.

\- People who cannot drive in a society where that's immensely limiting. This
sandwiches both sides of demographics. Particularly in the First World,
demographic trends are resulting in an ever increasing number of elderly who
cannot drive any longer. And it's always been a hassle and disruption for
parents to need to shuttle around children, or arrange for the same, or just
do without.

\- A fear, justified or not, that terrorists will make increasing use of the
fact that cars are an excellent way to deliver a tremendous amount of energy
into a set of targets even without any sort of purpose-made weapons onboard
and are not something that can be done without.

\- The immense waste in incredibly valuable land resources needed for
overbuilding parking, wide lanes, and other support infrastructure needed for
human driven vehicles.

\- The immense waste in human time and stress due to traffic and other
conditions that could be ameliorated or even eliminated by automatic control.

Etc etc etc. The principle problem with both your arguments 1 & 2 is that you
make them in a vacuum outside of the massive negatives that we live with right
now. As with many disruptive new technologies, self-driving cars don't have to
live up to any particular ideal, they merely need to be _better then what we
've got_. And frankly that's just not a very high bar. It's not just economics
it's politics, if you look through the above list you should be able to easily
identify some of the most powerful interest groups and societal motivators in
existence, touching almost all of society in general. Once the avalanche gets
going feedbacks are going to reinforce pretty rapidly.

~~~
gambiting
I don't dismiss the benefits of automated driving on society, literally
everything you said is true and I agree with it 100% - I'm just saying that I
feel like the tech isn't _anywhere_ near ready for mass deployment, it feels
like a gimmick or a really fancy adaptive cruise control at best, or that
people who talk about it come from a Star Wars universe where being surrounded
by super high-tech stuff is just normal and indistinguishable from magic.

Seeing the current state of the best-of-the-best from Tesla and Deimler,
autonomous driving is _decent_ , but it seems full of the same issues as image
recognition - and that was predicted to take at most few years to perfect 50
years ago. Today in 2017 you can fool the best image recognition algorithm
with a sofa in a zebra print - it comes with 90% confidence match for a zebra
because the pattern is right. I firmly stand by my feeling that getting to
anything approaching L5 autonomy will take half a century, and that's not
_near_ future in my mind.

~~~
njarboe
Imagine in the middle of every American interstate a light-weight, elevated
track holding up a lane in each direction designed for automated cars. Tech
today could easily drive vehicles in such a controlled space at high speed and
density. Switch to manual upon exit. At 100mph and 40ft per car one gets a
rate of 13200 cars per hour. This is on par with the capacity of the current 5
lane Bay Bridge at 9,000 per hour [1]. This could be the future, if society
could embrace it. (Electric?) automatic cars would be adopted very quickly if
you got to use such a system for commuting and cross country travel. As
driving tech got better cars could travel right next to each other on long
trips to get the aerodynamic benefits of trains. Google, Apple - you have
billions sitting around. How about building a demo track and start building
the system on the 280 and 101 for a nice loop.

[1] Wish I had a better reference ([http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-
ross/article/Peak-hour-...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-
ross/article/Peak-hour-tolls-have-little-effect-on-Bay-Bridge-5487995.php))

------
coldcode
Plug in ignores one very large population: people who live in apartments.
Unless the apartment builders start to consider charging stations sufficient
to the population, plug-ins are pointless. A hybrid works since I don't need a
plug.

~~~
lmm
Apartment builders won't start putting in charging stations until they see
residents wanting to plug in. For cars intended to last for years it makes
sense to put the plug in now - installing charging stations in existing
parking lots is more practical than adding plugs to existing cars.

~~~
selectodude
My apartment building doesn’t provide off-street parking. I’d love an electric
car but it’s far from an option.

------
devy
While Tesla's leading a electric vehicles revolution and having an immense
success in introducing the mainstream consumers to it, majority of the
traditional big automakers are getting it and aggressively shifting their
production plans to EV: BMW, Volvo, Mercedes, GM, Nissan. BMW's plan is even
to go all-in on EV[1] and will compete with Tesla head-to-head. [2]

[1]: [http://www.thedrive.com/sheetmetal/10002/bmw-going-all-in-
on...](http://www.thedrive.com/sheetmetal/10002/bmw-going-all-in-on-electric-
cars-after-ev-sales-jump-50-percent)

[2]: [https://global.handelsblatt.com/companies-markets/bmw-set-
to...](https://global.handelsblatt.com/companies-markets/bmw-set-to-introduce-
electric-3-series-789071)

------
jksmith
I love advancement of technology and when a major player steps up to the plate
to execute it (with risk).

Volvo also has a marine division and I'd love to see them come up with a way
to migrate the technology. Could finally crack the 10-20k engine service hour
mark, so no more $75k overhauls. Would be a gamechanger for the midsize
yacht/sport fisher industry. Right now combustion engine overhauls can happen
all over the place. 1k hours, 5k hours, because of lots of variable. Do you
have an open checkbook service policy, do you let your boat sit too long, do
you run it hard too much, did run it at too low rpms, etc.

~~~
slac
Sadly not the same Volvo. Volvo Cars is owned by Geely, a Chinese company.
Volvo Trucks is publicly listed, no clue who owns marine division if it still
exists..

~~~
moogly
Volvo Penta is still owned by the Volvo Group. Volvo Cars and Volvo Aero
(aerospace: jet and rocket engines) are the two big companies that no longer
are part of the Volvo Group.

------
throwawaymanbot
One has to wonder if every car is electric or Hybrid gas/electric, where we
will mine the ingredients to make all these batteries? Theres only so much of
it to go around apparently.

------
agumonkey
Shouldn't it be mandatory for ICE car manufacturers to make hybrids only ? It
would push the market up, simplify through less options and help ecology and
health in the process.

~~~
rciorba
It should be mandatory to hit MPG and emission targets, not to force a certain
technology.

~~~
agumonkey
First, companies lied about emissions. Second, hybrid would probably tone down
emissions in cities tremendously, even consumption. I have no actual data, but
the amount of time spent at low speed or waiting is staggering. A tiny DC
motor + regenerative breaking is great.

~~~
freehunter
The lying about emissions thing only became a problem because the testing
wasn't sufficient enough to catch the cheats. Companies are going to cheat,
they're going to lie, they're going to skirt as much regulation as they can.
That's a fact of capitalism, companies are going to do whatever they can to
make as much money as possible. It's the job of government inspectors to make
sure the regulations are being followed properly and punish the companies when
they fail to meet expectations.

Real-world testing scenarios, code review, and a corporate death penalty to
follow it up would go a long way towards stopping them.

~~~
greedo
Not sure cheating, lying and skirting regulations are a fact of capitalism so
much as a fact of any economic system. Many Soviet factories lied to meet
quotas, both numerical and qualitative.

~~~
freehunter
Well that phrase was attached to the idea that followed it in the same
sentence more than it was attached to the entirely different sentence that
came before it. People lie and cheat inherently, but the goal of capitalism is
to make as much money as possible. So naturally companies are going to do
that, which is why government regulation exists.

Note that I'm not trying to compare economic systems or argue for/against any
particular economic system, just pointing out that the goal of capitalism is
to make money, people inherently cheat and lie, so in a capitalistic society
people will lie and cheat to make money. We all know this is true, which is
why private companies are regulated by public agencies. The diesel cheating
scandal was a failure of regulation enforcement more than anything.

