
Shift to electric vehicles will radically change auto factories - rmason
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2019/09/05/shift-electric-vehicles-radically-change-auto-factories/2208961001/
======
ccorda
> The Center for Automotive Research and other firms focusing on the impact of
> new technology on the auto industry don't expect electric vehicles to
> account for more than 10% of the sales market until the late 2020s. That's
> when electric vehicles could start to shake things up.

Consider California [1], where it'll likely cross that in the next few years.

    
    
      2015 | 1.7%
      2016 | 1.9%
      2017 | 2.6%
      2018 | 4.7%
      2019 | 5.6%
    

Or Norway, where it is already at 48% [2]

Both have higher gas prices and subsidies that help with TCO comparisons. But
EV costs have lots of economies of scale yet to achieve.

Hard to imagine it takes 10 more years for the rest of the country to catch up
to California.

[1] California New Car Dealer Association report Q2 19
[https://electrek.co/2019/08/19/tesla-sales-electric-car-
mark...](https://electrek.co/2019/08/19/tesla-sales-electric-car-market-
california-alive/)

[2] [https://insideevs.com/news/357526/june-2019-plugin-sales-
nor...](https://insideevs.com/news/357526/june-2019-plugin-sales-norway/)

~~~
mhandley
I wonder at what point most gas (petrol) stations start to be become
uneconomical to run? As they start to close down, maybe range anxiety will
start to become an issue for ICE vehicles. Is Norway getting close to this
threshold already?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Gasoline is already something of a loss leader...they're really convenience
stores with attached pumps. Though without the captive audience, and without
the space and infrastructure to replace the pumps with electric chargers, I
doubt that the convenience stores will have the same level of traffic.

~~~
hylaride
Until electric cars can fully charge in less than 5 minutes, people will need
something to do, so entertainment may become a thing (whether that's a coffee
shop of an arcade for the kids, or just a place to sit on your phone, I have
no idea).

~~~
mikekchar
As someone who owns an EV, but doesn't have a charger at home, I wish I could
up vote this more :-) The biggest surprise for me is how much I enjoy charging
the car -- it gets me out. If you put chargers around a pedestrian downtown
core, it would be absolutely amazing. However, I suspect it's going to be
_huge_ at the malls in NA.

~~~
clouddrover
McDonald's is installing chargers at their locations in Sweden:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QXo8TuvqQI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QXo8TuvqQI)

Presumably with the idea that they'll make money on the charging and get more
business for the restaurant.

------
simon_000666
Everybodies super paranoid about job loss in auto manufacture. If we all move
to electric cars, the charging infrastructure is going to need to be massive.
In cities, we will need chargers by every parking space and in towns/villages
every house will need its own charger. The building, installation, and
maintenance will be far from trivial for all these chargers. Also, battery
production, car battery refit, and recycling will become industries in
themselves. I'm not convinced that people are thinking about all these feeder
industries that will benefit from the adoption of electric vehicles. I don't
think these jobs will go away, just mutate into something else.

~~~
ghobs91
Same goes for solar panel/roof installation, backup battery installation,
burying power lines to improve storm resilience, etc. There's no shortage of
infrastructure that needs to be built to modernize our system.

Trying to artificially protect jobs in one industry while there's a huge labor
shortage in much more productive things like infrastructure modernization or
housing construction seems like the antithesis of an efficient market.

~~~
mr_overalls
Agreed. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, my family lived without
electricity for two weeks. We depended on our gasoline-powered truck to
procure food and water, transport an ailing grandmother for medical care, and
generally survive.

If we and others had depended on the existing electrical infrastructure to
power our vehicles, we would have been completely screwed. A chaotic,
uncomfortable situation would have become truly dangerous.

~~~
dzhiurgis
Or your car could power your house for a week...

~~~
pnutjam
If it was hybrid, but those seem less common now. Everything is pointing
towards fully electric.

~~~
rstuart4133
Our house uses 12kw hour per day, or 84kw hour per week. A Tesla model S has
up to 100kw hour battery.

------
edh649
This is true of the powertrain for vehicles, however there are still many many
other parts which go into a car. Most human jobs are in final assembly, needed
here due to the tight spaces and complex customisations in each different
vehicle, which will not change in electric vehicles.

There are plants out there where the electric vehicle model is produced on the
same body shop, paint, and final assembly lines. The same steps are taken just
with different parts/different dimensions.

~~~
Dumblydorr
Exactly, the article falls into a common trap, assuming too much automation
and job elimination due to tech. Looking at Tesla, they tried and failed to
very heavily roboticize their factory, when in reality humans are fairly cheap
for some manual tasks, and skilled laborers are becoming less frequent.

------
lnsru
I miss mentioning more capable production robots in this article. They are
already destroying jobs today. In another 5 years robots will do even more
tasks than today. Just look at the production line videos on YouTube for
different cars. Vehicles made using less parts will unavoidable lead to
factories without humans. Maybe couple bored to death guards will stay.

------
woodandsteel
What the article gets right is that the ev revolution is, after decades of
wishes and slow progress, finally taking off. It is also right about the great
changes it will bring to the auto industry.

What the article gets very wrong is the timeline. It says,"The Center for
Automotive Research and other firms focusing on the impact of new technology
on the auto industry don't expect electric vehicles to account for more than
10% of the sales market until the late 2020s"

No, that's all wrong. The big shift is going to start to happen around 2023
when battery prices will fall low enough that ev's will start to have sticker
price parity with ice's. Ev sales will explode, slowed down only by how fast
production can be increased. By the end of the 2020's they will be over 50%.

------
sunstone
The shift to electric autos will reduce their cost a lot and also therefore
the economic foot print of the auto industry. At the same time though, many
other forms of transportation will become economic that were not economic in
the past and this will create many new jobs. You can see this starting already
with electric bikes but that's just the first obvious sector. It's difficult
to say exactly how things will turn out in terms of total employment but the
result will certainly be better than just assuming a decline in autos and no
other innovations with the new technologies.

------
PorterDuff
It seems to me that any fundamental change in a product line will result in
job loss at this point in time, this is on top of a fewer-parts-in-the-car
issue. Cleansheet chances to redesign the supply chain and assembly system
gives you the opportunity to modernize (ie. simplify and automate) while
you're at it.

It's also an excellent opportunity to out-source or in-source depending on the
facts of the matter. 52 card pick up.

------
torginus
I'm afraid of the future with regards to electric cars. The simplicity and
efficiency of current designs means that any further improvements in car
quality are pretty unlikely, save for battery improvements. This suggests that
electric cars of the future will be like the smartphones of today: containing
largerly the same, or equivalent components with very little to differentiate
between them, which means the competition largely boils down to price. And low
prices can be only achieved through economies of scale, leading to a winner
takes all situation.

~~~
rmason
A major point of difference between car manufacturers will be software. Yes
software will eat the car industry! Tesla and Silicon Valley have a huge
advantage right now. But don't bet against Detroit, they will catch up because
if they don't it's the ball game.

Also I've been predicting for some time that there will be a renaissance in
car manufacturing. There's already a company in Italy selling a 'sled'
complete with batteries. You get six people in a garage in Detroit that are
good with carbon fiber and they can become a car manufacturer. I bet there are
lots of under served niches not being filed.

~~~
hvidgaard
My professional opinion is that Tesla seems to have an advantage because other
manufactures do not invest in software properly. The moment one of the big
manufactures embrace proper best practice software development and security
(i.e. pay for it), that manufacture will gain a significant advantage.

~~~
bluGill
Car manufactures have been doing ECUs for years. That is software that needs
to work without bugs or it will destroy the engine. You never hear of bugs in
them (it happens, but you don't hear of it) because they have figured out best
practices that are unknown outside of cars and aviation.

VW emissions was not a bug, it was intentional.

~~~
magduf
He's not talking about ECU firmware, he's talking about infotainment software.
You can't use the best practices for ECU firmware development as you use for
other types of software development: it would never get done! Safety-critical
software running on bare-metal or an RTOS (like for ECUs, ABS controllers,
avionics, etc.) isn't much like software for doing GPS mapping and other
infotainment functions, and the development process is entirely different. The
latter has orders of magnitude more lines of code and is far simpler in scope.

The OP is right; currently, automakers basically outsource all their
infotainment software, and generally do a poor job with it, though it's
getting better. Considering how much drivers now interact with these or
similar systems (usually on their phones), to do things like stream music and
especially navigate, automakers should be doing a better job integrating this
stuff into the cockpits for ease of use and safety.

~~~
rusticpenn
I don't agree with you. There are several tools used in the creation of ECU
firmware (and writing it). The software used for detection of car on rollers
or road (diesel scandal) was one such tool for example.

~~~
magduf
What the heck are you talking about? Are you responding to a different post or
something? You're not addressing anything I wrote there at all, you're talking
about something completely different. My main point was that you can't use the
practices used for ECU firmware for other types of software (anything that
uses a general-purpose OS), and it's true, it's an entirely different kind of
software development.

------
pmorici
These estimates about when electric vehicles are going to take off all seem
naively conservative.

The total world wide vehicle market is just under 70 million units a year.
Tesla alone has guided for sales of 400k vehicles this year. If they roughly
double their output on average each year they will be close to 20% of the
total worldwide output in 5 years.

~~~
rgbrenner
That's naively optimistic. Take a look through the number of vehicles
manufactured by Toyota:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toyota_vehicles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toyota_vehicles)
Each one of those represents a market segment that Toyota serves.

Where is Tesla's equivalent: minivan, yaris, rav4, tacoma, etc?

You don't really expect some soccer mom who buys a 30k minivan to buy a model
X for 80k+? And I guess, the construction worker can pile his materials in the
front trunk on the X too? I mean we only have 4 cars to pick from here..

And consider all of the places worldwide that Toyota sells to.. from rich
countries to poor countries. They rely on infrastructure that is available
globally to everyone, no matter your living situation. Even if you live in a
poor country with little infrastructure and intermittent electricity, you can
still get gas for your Toyota.

You might find this comparison silly... but you just said Tesla will produce
13m vehicles in 5 years.. making them 20% larger than Toyota, the worlds
largest manufacturer.

~~~
pmorici
Sure is, you can haggle about whether it will be in 5 years, 8 years or
somewhere in between but I think Tesla growing as big as Toyota is almost
inevitable.

In 5 years Tesla will be producing at least 7 models including 2 cars (S & 3)
, 2 crossover/SUVs (X & Y), 1 sports car (roadster), 1 pick-up truck, 1 semi-
truck.

~~~
clouddrover
I don't think Tesla will get as big as Toyota. Toyota is the second highest
selling car company, and they're a close second to Volkswagen. Volkswagen
Group will be the biggest electric car company in a few years because they're
spending the most money on it:

[https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/vws-91b-spend-evs-
out...](https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/vws-91b-spend-evs-outpaces-
investment-rivals)

Volkswagen's current and soon to be released battery electrics are the VW
e-Up!, VW e-Golf (though this is being discontinued), VW ID.3, SEAT Mii
Electric, SEAT el-Born, Skoda Citigo iV, Skoda Vision iV, Audi e-tron, and the
Porsche Taycan.

Future Volkswagen battery electrics are the VW ID Crozz, VW ID Roomz, VW ID
Buzz, Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo, Porsche Macan electric, Audi e-tron GT,
and the Audi e-tron Q4. Volkwagen's roadmap is bigger and broader than Tesla's
can be simply because Volkswagen operates at a larger scale.

~~~
pmorici
I doubt VW will be able to compete with Tesla in the near term on EV's. Look
at the Taycan for example. It's a nice looking car but unless you had brand
loyalty to Porsche it doesn't stack up against the Model S. It's slower in
both acceleration and top speed, has less range and for that less good car you
pay a lot more money. VWs struggle is going to be producing a car that can
compete on specs with Tesla at a similar price point. They just don't have the
battery cost advantage that Tesla has spent the last decade building.

~~~
clouddrover
> _I doubt VW will be able to compete with Tesla in the near term on EV 's._

Volkswagen sells EVs cheaper than any Tesla and Volkswagen also sells EVs more
expensive than any Tesla, which is the point. The selection of EVs from
Volkswagen is already broader than what Tesla offers.

The Porsche Taycan's Nürburgring lap time of 7:42
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m31EgQkswg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m31EgQkswg))
has apparently provoked Tesla into doing a lap in the Model S next week:
[https://electrek.co/2019/09/05/tesla-model-s-nurburgring-
rac...](https://electrek.co/2019/09/05/tesla-model-s-nurburgring-race-track-
beat-porsche-taycan/)

> _They just don 't have the battery cost advantage that Tesla has spent the
> last decade building._

The Volkswagen ID.3 will be cheaper than the equivalent range Tesla Model 3.
The base model ID.3 (330km WLTP) will be around 30,000 euros, the midrange
ID.3 (420km WLTP) will be around 40,000 euros, and I haven't seen pricing for
the long range model (550km WLTP) but let's guess 50,000 euros. Volkswagen is
officially launching the ID.3 in a few days. They might announce the final
pricing then.

~~~
ttkari
It's well known that the Teslas are no good on race tracks as they typically
cannot complete even a single hot lap without overheating. In this respect the
Taycan is in an entirely different class, it has higher voltage electrics
(800V) which allows it to run at sustained high power for much longer periods.

Of course, Musk will likely have the overheating protections disabled on the
test car to keep the fanboys happy. Without that the Model S has no chance to
beat the Taycan.

------
auiya
I think it's still super premature to assume society will all just shift to
EVs, considering the advances being made in zero emissions synthetic fuels,
and the utter stagnation in advances for battery tech. Even Porsche who just
released an amazing EV to much fanfare is investing heavily in this research,
and should it be properly industrialized, it has potential to be highly
disruptive to the EV market. All the infrastructure is already there, and
altering an existing ICE to run on 100 octane-equivalent synthetic fuel is
trivial. If you think big oil is just going to sit idly by and watch the
entire transportation industry abandon them, you'd have to be quite naive.

~~~
auiya
EVs are by no means a panacea, and synthetic fuels are an awesome maturing
tech that can go a great deal further to reduce our green house gas emissions,
while not requiring an entirely new supply chain infrastructure be built to
accommodate. Even Bill Gates has thrown lots of money into Carbon Engineering
in Canada to further develop synthetic, carbon neutral fuels.

[https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15355097/audi-makes-
synth...](https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15355097/audi-makes-synthetic-
gasoline-using-zero-petroleum/)

[https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/tech/synfuel-
syntheti...](https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/tech/synfuel-synthetic-
fuel-for-cars-and-how-it-works/)

