
German Leaders at Odds with Industry Over Electric Cars - davidiach
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/german-government-at-odds-with-industry-over-electric-cars-a-1123436.html
======
LeanderK
German here. My Problem with the German Car Industry is that they still see
the car as a product, not as a platform. A car is a major investment and one
that sticks to me for a while. I must rely on the car manufactures to
continuously push updates and improve the lane-keeping assistant etc. (Maybe
even the style of the UI?). I don't see this happening, at all. The lane
keeping assistants get shipped and then forgotten, everybody is working on a
new integration that is maybe coming out in years (crazy to think about if
your only used to software-cycles). I don't want to be in the situation that i
can't pair my smartphone with my car next year because mercedes doesn't bother
updating it's software. Tesla does OTA updates and sees it's car as a
platform, at least in my perspective. Software is all i know and they don't
understand software yet. Softwares lives, unsupported software is dead.

I don't think that they are completely missing the electric car trend. They
are being cautious, but everybody is at least getting it's feet wet. I hope
they can then "just" scale their production. I don't think this is enough, but
i hope they can turn around quickly enough when this gets serious.

But overall the future doesn't look too good.

Besides, i don't have the money right now to buy a car (also i don't want to).

~~~
Matthias247
As someone who worked at one of the OEMs in the german automotive industry I
can second this. However the big problem is that the complete engineering
process that many of those companies have does not allow for any updates and a
car platform. The process is mostly: You write dozens of specifications for
specific components of a car and then get contracts with external suppliers
that develop and produce those. After the development cycle for a specific
model is over (~3-4years) all these components have been integrated into a
complete car that gets sold. When the next development cycle starts basically
everything is done from the beginning, since the components may be developed
and produced by completely different suppliers. So no chance to update
anything, since the component might have not only different hardware, but also
completely different software - even though it might look the same from user
perspective. One way to solve this would be to develop more software and
components in-house in order to continuously improve them. But as this is
against the established engineering process it will only be very slowly
introduced - if at all. In addition to that these companies mostly don't
understand software (and software development), so the results won't be great
in the beginning.

~~~
blumentopf
BMW has a subsidiary in Ulm (BMW Car-IT) working on the next head unit. This
will be designed and engineered in-house, at least to a large extent. Any
opinion on that? The current head unit generation is apparently sourced from a
3rd party. I interviewed there once, it was almost funny how much they
stressed that they're a software company, not a car company, kind of like
self-hypnosis. (Disclosure: I didn't get the job, neither wanted it after
seeing the situation on-site; didn't fit into their culture.) (Fun fact:
Company is full of ex-Nokians who they apparently scooped up when the local
Nokia subsidiary had layoffs.)

~~~
LeanderK
A bit off-topic. I recently had to endure an azure evangelist telling me on
literally every slide that they are now open (they had a big blue
"open"-rectangle on the upper-right edge). A moment later i got very, very
frustrated because a feature i had to use didn't work with the java-library
([https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-
java/issues/465](https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-java/issues/465) open
since February!), the node.js library and the Rest interface lacked critical
features so i was unable to authenticate programmatically (i think). Since i
am working on a Mac and don't have windows, i couldn't use the C# library
because it required dlls. In the end I had to code a simple proxy server in C#
in a text-editor on my mac and then push it to a azure server running windows,
compile it there and run it, just to get the data to my program. It was really
a horrible experience. Since then i just assume that somebody that really has
to stress something has in reality big problems/deficits in dealing with it.

~~~
xorxornop
Huh? But you can use C# on a Mac... I should know, I just came home from doing
that all day at work. .NET Core works great on Mac, and imports many dlls just
fine.

That being said if it was quite an old dll, and never compiled under PCL or
netstandard, maybe not. There's still Mono, but, well, I can definitely
understand reluctance in this case, and indeed would choose a different way in
a different language myself, if that was my only option left that way.

~~~
LeanderK
if i remember correctly the DLL was responsible for the library to not be
portable. It might be that i don't remember this correctly, but some crucial
part was not available so i could not use it.

------
julianpye
I worked together with many Japanese CE companies during the transition to
MP3. At first I was surprised why they were so slow to adapt and were happy to
work with the music industry who tried to ban unprotected MP3s and planned to
sell MP3s for $5. It went against everything that consumers wanted at the
time.

But... once you saw that these companies employed so many terrific engineers
who could build tiny miniaturized drives for tape decks, laser pickups that
could withstand vibrations, etc... it was understandable. All these engineers,
of which many were in their 50s were about to lose their value and their
expertise. The company tried to retrain quite a few of them to S/W
engineering. It was heartbreaking how ashamed many of them were about their
struggles.

The German ethos is quite similar to Japan. A prime responsibility is
employment and valuing their workforce. That is why they are so fearful of a
change in the entire eco-system of the internal combustion engine.

~~~
woodpanel
German here and no offense taken, but: What are your grounds for assuming that
it is a nation's work ethos that is keeping companies from innovating? How is
a multinational's German work ethos keeping it's Indian or US-American
employees from innovating? Why aren't German Ford-Workers failing in Germany
because of their american work ethos?

It is a rather cajoling prejudice. But in my experience of working in big
multinational companies (DAX or DJI enterprises) change isn't prohibited by
management's guilt or a society's taboo of layoffs. Instead it's the sheer
number of employees, responsibilities and added layers of business-structure.

What's adding to the complexity of business structure is that with every
country it operates in, new regulations and country specifics are to be dealt
with. No new merger or acquisition will result in equilibrium of efficiency.
You may have to - out of the most ridiculous reasons - work with a team that's
located in another company, city or time-zone - or complete different culture,
which means more overhead.

I think this work ethos cliche stems from a misconception. Yes, in Japan as in
Germany old employees are guarded like infants. But that's often due to the
old contracts that they got [1]. Those were granted seldomly since. Instead
most of these companies (or rather their work pipelines) are filled with temp
staff, external contractors and suppliers. There is no "ethos" protecting
those people from being fired immediately.

[1] Contracts of war-torn countries. Contracts of countries that just years
before believed that they would rule the world and now had to beg for glimpses
of sovereignty. Rebuilding the economy was more than about jobs. It was about
the gaining back sovereignty. That's why firing those 50 year olds is more
expensive than keeping them. And thats why the companies at the same time try
to dodge the necessity of having to employ someone just because some external
market demand.

~~~
luckydude
Forget the ethos part and read the first two paragraphs. He's saying that
there are a bunch of older people who know one domain and they aren't ready
for the transition to the next.

Then he says that he sees a parallel in where Germany is today. Frankly, so do
I. VW bet on diesel and gamed the system. It's not the cheating that is the
big problem, it's the investment in diesel when cities are full of smog and
the world is moving to electric.

In 10 years, heck, maybe in a year or two, that is going to look like a really
really bad idea.

~~~
kriro
On the other hand, Daimler is pretty well established in autonomous driving
(specifically trucks). I don't think any of the German car makers are
incapable of providing a good electric car but I think Tesla is way ahead of
all of them due to their culture and "software mindset" for lack of a better
word.

From my outsider looking in perspective I'd say BMW is the furthest along the
engineering-software spectrum as they are very active in Usability/UX and some
other areas.

------
maxxxxx
I have been around for long enough to see how the German car industry reacted
to safety belts, crash safety requirements, catalytic filters and tighter
emission rules. Every time they claimed that it would hurt business and cost
jobs. But they did perfectly fine or even used the new features as selling
point eventually.

It's pretty safe to ignore objections from industry. Most of the time they
just don't want to adapt and keep doing business as usual.

~~~
ams6110
Um, the Germans invented and pioneered all those safety things. Mercedes had
crumple zones and collapsible steering columns in the 1960s. They were among
the first with seat belts as standard, ditto airbags. They probably did object
to the emissions stuff because that reduced performance.

------
breatheoften
Quite interesting -- German government wants to keep the valuable parts of
future manufacturing processes in Germany whereas the companies don't care
where their future manufacturing value comes from and will remain more
interested in optimizing for their current revenue stream for some amount of
time in terms of how they deal with the German governments. That revenue will
eventually disappear though ... I wonder if they could put a hefty tax on the
gas powered cars but offer a rebate for that tax for every electric car sold
that is proportionate to the amount of the electric car value that was
domestically produced. Investment in domestic electric car production would
then become a direct mechanism for preserving their existing revenue stream
while forcing them to set themselves up for domestic production of electric
cars in the future ...

~~~
tanto
I am pretty sure that would violate a lot of international trade agreements.

~~~
Brakenshire
Unfortunately China seems to be engaged in exactly the same sort of behaviour.
1 in 7 cars has to be electric (fair enough), but the electric car has to be
manufactured by a company owned by Chinese citizens. It's a pity that Donald
Trump is going to dismantle the multilateral attempts to make China play by
the same rules as everyone else.

~~~
wavefunction
If that's all the TPP were about, it wouldn't be so dreadful or maligned by so
many people.

That would be something I could support.

~~~
Brakenshire
Yes, fair enough, there were a lot of problems with it. The issue is I think
Trump is opposed not just to the detail of the proposed deal, but to
multilateral deals in general, presumably because he feels it means the US is
bound by globalist institutions. But the US or Europe, or Japan, or any of the
other countries involved in these deals, cannot accomplish a goal of
preventing something like this on their own. They have to join together, and
joining together means being bound by jointly created rules. In order to meet
these goals, the US has to accept a role not just as a leader but also as one
member among many (a role commensurate with a population and economy perhaps
15-30% of the total rather than as a hegemon talking to a minor ally).

~~~
luckydude
I'm from the midwest (originally). The problem with any trade deal is that the
middle class was told that it was going to be good for them and it wasn't.
Yes, you can say they should have thought about it and they could have seen
that trade deals even out labor costs but nobody told them that.

So today, any trade deal is viewed as "here we go again" no matter what the
actual content says.

~~~
Brakenshire
I think that's a fair point. There needs to be a lot more thought put into how
trade deals can benefit the whole of society, and what social and political
structures you need to help ordinary people prosper under those circumstances.
Worth pointing out that there are also a lot of benefits for them as well. And
I'm not sure we have a choice, global trade is clearly more efficient,
individually countries will just be routed around if they isolate themselves,
and if we managed a global shift towards protectionism we would serve to
reduce global growth and probably increase conflict as more people struggle
(in our own countries as well).

------
Animats
VW made a bad bet on bad Diesel technology, and Toyota is making a bad bet on
hydrogen technology. (The Toyota Mirai hydrogen-powered car, at California
Toyota dealers now.[1] As of September 29, 2016, 641 cars have been sold.
$57,500, including three years of liquid hydrogen.)

The German car companies have a problem. They have all that investment in the
technology of making precision power machinery. But electric motors just
aren't that complicated mechanically. Their edge over China disappears.

GM seems to get it. Chevrolet is shipping Chevy Bolts to dealers right now.

[1]
[https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/fcv.html](https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/fcv.html)

~~~
kuschku
> GM seems to get it. Chevrolet is shipping Chevy Bolts to dealers right now.

All the German car makers are also shipping electric versions of their cars,
just no one wants an electric Golf or up!.

> They have all that investment in the technology of making precision power
> machinery. But electric motors just aren't that complicated mechanically.
> Their edge over China disappears.

This is something that can be combined with a lot of other tech – there’s so
much technology that can be precision-produced.

~~~
spaceflunky
> just no one wants an electric Golf

Speak for yourself. I have 28k miles on my e-Golf and I think it's a great
car!

The problem is most people are shocked SHOCKED, when I tell that it's fully
electric. They've never heard of such a thing until I told them because VW
doesn't actually want people to buy the e-Golf, not the other way around. I
still have yet to see an extensive tv or billboard campaign for the e-Golf.
It's a compliance car and VW is only selling it because they have to.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my perfectly capable and affordable electric car.

~~~
kuschku
It’s what, 20%? 30%? 40%? more expensive than the normal version. I’m not sure
that the market for that exists.

~~~
spaceflunky
That's really comparing apples and oranges, but the se and sel gas models are
$26k and $28k respectively.

The sel egolf is $35k with $10k in discounts. So technically you get more for
less.

------
GoToRO
Ever wondered why electric cars from established manufacturers are all ugly?
that's why: they develop the technology but they don't want people to buy them
yet. They are too good for the customer and they would not be able to make
money off of them, after the initial sale.

~~~
plandis
Teslas Model X is ugly? The BMW i8 is ugly? I'd be very curious to see what a
none ugly car is in your opinion.

~~~
GoToRO
BMW i3. Just look at that line under the window of the rear door. It's like
the designer forgot how to draw for a split second and he never reviewed the
design.

Oh, and I never understood why you have to change the design for an electric
car? Just use the same design. The electric motor and batteries save space,
they don't need more.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/BM...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/83/BMW_i3_\(19939421151\).jpg/220px-
BMW_i3_\(19939421151\).jpg)

~~~
robterrell
I agree with the GP and parent, and yes the i3 is awful (i3 driver here), but
there are many EVs now that look like normal cars: Fiat 500e, VW Golf, Kia
Soul, various Fords.

~~~
BoorishBears
They look like normal versions of not- _that_ -normal looking cars (I mean,
the Kia Soul is pretty far from normal in my book).

I'd like to see EVs that just blend in with the average midsize sedans like
Camrys and Accords.

But obviously these EV designs have to meet some divergent design requirements
from those, so maybe it can't be done (cheaply enough?) yet.

------
gumby
The key to electric vehicles is a shift to buy-by-the-ride (since you can get
one that will take you wherever you want without worrying about range issues).
That shift is also bad for most of the existing car manufacturers

~~~
oblio
This assumes most people don't want car ownership.

~~~
rplst8
The comment you replied to is the typical "city-dweller" POV. What few people
realize is that there are millions of people that live in rural areas where
the taxi/uber/shared asset model just does not work.

~~~
mark_edward
Why do people pretend that rural people are a majority or even close to it. In
the US it's 20% of the population.

Edit:

No these services aren't suitable for everyone but they're suitable for a huge
and growing amount of people, urbanization and civilization are the same
thing. ICEs filling cities like Beijing carrying 1-2 people is literally
killing people.

~~~
wavefunction
Rural people are incredibly important to the other 80%.

~~~
usrusr
The combine harvester is incredibly important for everybody, yet nobody
considers them a mainstream mode of transport.

~~~
gumby
This was down voted so I upvoted it. It sounds flip but is insightful.

~~~
gumby
Huh, minus 3 for this comment as well. Are the differing needs of rural people
really not important to the average HN commenter?

------
digikata
It's interesting that the article implies that the German manufactures are so
intent on keeping the 'value add' from the internal combustion motors. For the
electric vehicles, value add is shifting, and if you look at Elon Musks
strategies with Tesla, he's made a bet that it's shifting a significant
portion to the power generation, and batteries.

~~~
rsync
"It's interesting that the article implies that the German manufactures are so
intent on keeping the 'value add' from the internal combustion motors."

Enjoy that. Enjoy that _right into the grave_.

I bought two successive Audi A8s ... and then I saw a car that had derived AWD
from two different motors and had a ridiculously low center of gravity due to
the "skateboard design" and had faster acceleration than a supercar.

Since that moment, German auto manufacturers have missed 2 new car (flagship
cars, even) sales from this consumer, and counting ...

~~~
BoorishBears
Your anecdotal experience doesn't really mean much.

I'm sure short term Audi is of the opinion that if you'd settle for a Tesla's
definition of luxury and refinement from their flagship, you weren't really
their target to begin with.

Longer term they probably realize they can't depend on Teslas never getting
better and will need to compete or other luxury brands will eat up the segment
(and probably wish they had just "done it right" for luxury EVs first)

Audi also probably comes from the school of thought if someone wants supercar
acceleration, they'll get a supercar (or a proper S-line)

------
B1FF_PSUVM
> "counting on the idea that the government has no interest in creating a
> crisis"

Yeah, that's what they've been doing with the software cheats in VW cars (aka
Dieselgate).

It's a total shame for the undeniably brilliant German engineering, and
they're handling it - collectively - by pretending it did not happen.

The silence is deafening. I doubt it will profit them in the long range.

~~~
petre
Well at least they got busted for it overseas. I won't be buying a VW anytime
soon.

------
rplst8
I wonder if anyone has thoroughly considered the impact of tens of thousands
of gas stations closing their doors as the demand for petroleum goes down.

~~~
knieveltech
That may not happen. According to various sources fuel sales are not where gas
stations make their money. On average they are only bringing in 3 cents of
profit on a gallon of fuel. They sell fuel primarily to attract customers and
then make their profits on sales of snacks, cigarettes, lottery tickets, and
the like. Disrupting the cycle of impulse buys by individuals lured to the
store to buy fuel is likely to have a measurable impact on business, but it is
unclear if this would drive any/some/most/all convenience stores out of
business.

~~~
rplst8
The gas gets them in the door. People are a lot less likely to stop if they
don't have to. Since electric cars take a lot longer to charge, they don't
mesh well with the convenience store model. More like restaurants.

I think convenience stores will go through quite a huge change in the next 20
years. Small mom and pop gas stations without much of a "store" to speak of
will probably disappear entirely.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I honestly can't think of the last time I've seen a gas station that only
sells gas or diesel. At least around here, they just don't exist. The "gas
station" _is_ the convenience store around here. I doubt their patronage would
drop off much if they stopped selling gas.

Gas stations around here sell anything from the usual cigaretter, pop & snacks
to really good "home made" food. I can think of one that had a small, very
good, Mexican restaurant in the back and another that made gyros, falafel,
etc. to order. I would go out of my way to stop at those.

But gas only? I simply can't remember seeing one in the last 10 years. The
closest is the ones that are service stations that happen to have a few gas
pumps.

~~~
WorldMaker
"Mostly" gas only pumps started reappearing in the last 10 years as a part of
big supermarket chains. From one point of view they are mostly just gas pump
islands floating in a sea of parking, but from the other point of view the
nearby supermarket is simply an absurdly large convenience store.

------
garyclarke27
Problem I think is still range. Tesla model S is no doubt a great, albeit very
expensive, car, but it's real world range on European motorways, is still
pathetic. At 100 mph, range is is measly 100 miles, my BMW 535d does 500 miles
at this speed, even in the UK averaging 110 mph is quite common, when not too
busy. In Germany one regularly sees cars travelling at 140+ mph for long
stretches, which would be impossible for a Tesla.

~~~
macns
_At 100 mph, range is is measly 100 miles_

Where did you get those numbers? Tesla's range calculator claims different[1].
Can you also point to a similar calculator from BMW? All I found is for
electric; why is there not one for gas fueled cars?

EDIT: forgot the link[1]
[https://www.tesla.com/en_EU/models?redirect=no#range-
calcula...](https://www.tesla.com/en_EU/models?redirect=no#range-calculator)

~~~
kuschku
The calculator doesn’t even allow setting the value to 100mph, so it can’t
claim different?

~~~
macns
Good point. I just discovered it doesn't allow you to go more than 120km, and
at 100km/h the speed to range ratio is 4.5 whereas at +20km/h ratio drops to
2.9 on the 75 model, and to 3.76 on the P100D model.

So, the 160km/h to 160km makes more sense now.

------
wallace_f
I know HN has a large fanbase of Tesla and Elon Musk, but yet I'm still
surprised to see no one address the problem of the supply side of renewables
before moving towards a larger consumer base of electric cars.

I would be a very happy man to be able to own a Tesla Model S, but gasoline
just has some advantages, especially so if we still are powering the majority
of our grid with fossil fuels: 1) it has extremely high energy density
relative to lithium ion batteries, 2) IC technology is very well-developed, 3)
it is low cost in the near-term, and 4) no energy loss through transmission
over the grid.

Depending on where you live, most of the juice you put in your Tesla (or other
EV) is generated by fossil fuels, anyways. It seems to me that we're putting
the cart before the horse. We need to solve the problem of powering our grid
with renewables first before we should pressure the car makers out of economic
equilibrium.

~~~
greglindahl
How about people with both an electric car and solar panels? How about people
who pay for carbon offsets and own an electric car? Or people who voted for
renewables minimums and own an electric car?

I'm also unsure what you mean by "pressure the car makers out of economic
equilibrium"? Are you referring to the economic equilibrium with negative
externalities paid for? California started down the path of encouraging
electric cars because of smog, which has a large negative effect on LA and the
SF Bay area.

~~~
wallace_f
Like I said, I would be very proud to own a Tesla, and to have resources to
send funds towards renewable energy resources. However, while that is great to
be able to make those purchases, let's not conflate 2 separate economic
choices. I can obviously buy renewable energy certificates without buying an
electric car, and I can buy an electric car without buying RECs. The question
I posed was: should we get more renewable energy on the grid before forcing
EVs onto the market? That is in the context of the article which discusses
government influencing public policy -- if made those aforementioned
individual choices that's great, I think well of you for doing that.

> I'm also unsure what you mean by "pressure the car makers out of economic
> equilibrium"?

No worries. Here is the Wikipedia definition:

> In economics, economic equilibrium is a state where economic forces such as
> supply and demand are balanced and in the absence of external influences the
> values of economic variables will not change

So take that and put it in the context of the article. From the article:

> The government in Berlin fears that German automobile companies are lagging
> behind as electric cars pick up speed around the world

> The Chancellery and the Economics Ministry have spent years trying to
> persuade German manufacturers to establish their own joint battery-cell
> manufacturing facility.

Does that make sense?

Since the German car manufacturers are for-profit corporations who exist to
make profit, their profit-maximizing strategy is to produce at market
equilibrium the products which consumers demand. What the article discusses is
that they are "lagging behind." You should place your null hypothesis on their
products as responding to market forces, not that successful corporations do
not produce what their markets demand.

You bring up negative externalities, which are a prudent factor to account
for, and is a reason why free markets don't always lead to optimal outcomes.
So that's a perfect example of a reason to have a government which can
effectively regulate, if you care about human welfare and economic prosperity.

In this case, is it the right call for the government to force electric cars
into the market? There are pros and cons, and it depends on a number of given
factors. If our effort is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, do we produce
less or more by switching to electric cars? It's a complex question, but if
renewable energy production remains constant, the increased load on the grid
will come from fossil fuels, so the answer could actually be more. Counter
intiuitive, but generating and transmitting electricity over the grid and
storing it in relatively very heavy batteries that most be moved with the
vehicle all create inefficiencies.

It's not such a simple yes or no question, either. Like you pointed out,
residents of LA and SF may wish to effectively relocate their pollution from
their respective urban centers to remote areas where energy generation occurs,
and that appears to make sense: less people live in remote areas.

~~~
greglindahl
No, what you say doesn't make sense.

I will point out one thing that requires renewables and electric cars to be
encouraged together: electric cars that charge when solar or wind energy is
available can help smooth consumption to match output. This works easiest when
cars are long-range (i.e. don't have to charge every day) and can plug in at
both the solar peak and wind peak (day and night, respectively.)

~~~
wallace_f
Well if something doesn't make sense, I'd appreciate if you were able to point
out exactly what it is that doesn't, since I took the time to write you a
detailed response. Otherwise it just comes across as dismissive and honestly a
little bit insulting.

What you are talking about here is what is called vehicle-to-grid (V2G) load
balancing. That is actually a technology that is really interesting and
exciting possibility for the future, but is just that. So I guess that irony
is that you're requirement that these two things be encouraged together is the
one thing I can see that doesn't make sense at the moment - V2G is still
honestly in development. There is a lot of scepticism about how practical it
will be in practice, i.e. IIRC the efficiency of each grid->car->grid cycle is
only about 60%.

~~~
greglindahl
I am not talking about grid->car->grid, I'm talking about a slightly more
advanced version of time-of-day charging for cars: grid->car. That's a
smartphone app, not rocket science. Tesla's API is already capable of
supporting it.

All studies of "what happens when electric cars are a significant % of
electricity consumption?" involve this. It's super-useful because it's storage
with no cost: it only cycles batteries that would have been cycled already,
just at a different time of day or day of week. The key thing is that a long-
range car doesn't have to be charged to 100% by morning, every morning.

As for your complaint that I didn't respond to your entire rant, sorry. You
started by claiming that "no one" was doing something, which really isn't true
except for some bizarre combination of things that appears to only exist for
you. You seem to think that the German government is wrong for pointing out to
German car-makers that it's stupid to ignore California's mandate, even though
you admit that California has a reasonable smog-based reason for having a
mandate. Next time that you think that "no one" is doing the right thing,
consider that you don't agree with most people about what the right thing is.

~~~
wallace_f
Your misdirection of this topic to discuss a moot point (renewables and EVs
being encouraged together) is interesting. I don't think anyone is arguing
that both aren't good, but it doesn't have much to say about the question I
posed..?

It's great if you're willing to charge your vehicle at off-peak. That's not
much of a game-changer, though.

The rest of your post is unnecessarily inflammatory, i.e. dismissing my
explanation as a rant. I'm not sure what your problem is but you haven't
addressed what at all was incorrect, and all you've done is ignore the
question raised and as for a matter of fact, rant on a tangent about something
we already agree on.

Your final argument makes no sense. Here was my problem: > no one address the
problem of the supply side of renewables before moving towards a larger
consumer base of electric cars.

You don't think increasing renewable energy production is an issue, at all? Oh
wait, but you just did! In fact, you actually tried to argue with me about
something to do with renewables and EVs being encouraged together. Why..?

The fact is you're clearly confused and going in circles, which doesn't add
anything to the conversation. All you've accomplished in this post is to show
that you're disagreeable in terms of facts and attitude -- you've posted
blatantly wrong information (some nonsense about Tesla's battery production,
which many corrected you on immediately), and you write this crap with a
condescending attitude.

> You seem to think that the German government is wrong for pointing out to
> German car-makers that it's stupid to ignore California's mandate, even
> though you admit that California has a reasonable smog-based reason for
> having a mandate.

Are you sure you are thinking clearly right now? What I said had to do with
localized pollution, and do you see the irony in your post -- you're accusing
me of being naive for disagreeing with what (ostensibly, at best) "most
people" think is the right thing, yet you're over, and over again suggesting
that you know better than the German automakers how to run their business.
Further, you're not taking the time to think about what it is I am addressing
as a problem: it's not that EVs are bad, but that we need renewables capacity
to support EVs (again, why did you seem to want to argue with me on this???).
I don't think you really read what I wrote -- I think you skimmed it and some
words aroused your emotions and you are responding emotionally.

Anyways, since you didn't respond to my question, I have another one for you:
Why do you need to respond like such a smug jerk? Not just here, but in your
post history as well. My favourites are the smug hints that you own a Tesla.

The fact is you can disagree with someone without insulting them, and I don't
think you even took the time to read what I wrote and understand where I'm
coming from (afterall, there are a great number of economists saying these
same very things, you can start reading here:
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-
explains/2014/12/ec...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-
explains/2014/12/economist-explains-18)).

~~~
greglindahl
I can't answer why you think calling me names is going to help, sorry. Maybe
you've mistaken HN for a different kind of forum?

~~~
wallace_f
Any sane and unbiased person can freely read what is written here and draw
their own conclusions. I never called you any names. Everyone here is free to
see that you wrote some unnecessarily inflammatory and condescending comments
yourself. Bring your negativity elsewhere, like I said, it's possible that you
can disagree with someone without insulting them.

------
sickbeard
The article makes it sound like electric cars are everywhere and manufacturers
are still making gas vehicles.

~~~
bluehawk
I liken it to the time period when Kodak had made the first digital camera,
but allowed other companies to surpass them and eat their breakfast, and now
Kodak is bankrupt.

The german (and american) auto companies will either need to drastically alter
their composition or other companies will take their place.

~~~
mc32
I think it's a somewhat apt comparison in that if the ICE money-making portion
does not use those profits to develop good EV alternatives, newcomers can
leapfrog them.

On the other hand, Kodak was a little different, they feared selling digital
would eat into their "film" business. But EV does not eat into the
manufacturers' "petro" business because most MFG are not selling fuels. So
it's not like they have a perverse incentive is what I'm saying and Kodak
suffered from perverse incentives.

~~~
gyjvdf
It's not about perverse incentives, it's about "the secret sauce".

Traditional car manufacturers perfected the ICE and dealership network, while
the "secret sauce" of electric cars is batteries and network of charging
stations.

Practically, GM is right now at a disadvantage relative to Tesla

~~~
mc32
I don't see much disadvantage. It's not like Tesla is designing and
manufacturing the batteries they use all by themselves. Sure, they have input
--as Boeing has input w/re GE engines.

Given that Tesla will be charging for their networks, it's not an advantage
over other charging networks, so overall it'll be a non-issue. Having
dealerships does grant the traditional MFGs some advantage but that may erode
in the future if dealerships become less necessary in helping the sales of
cars (ie. become more on-demand fleets). ICE car MFGs also have _capacity_.
Tesla does not have the capacity right now.

~~~
greglindahl
Tesla designs and manufactures battery packs. GM is on record saying that it
took them a long time and a lot of money to develop the battery pack for the
Bolt.

~~~
dangrossman
GM didn't develop the battery pack for the Bolt. The battery cells, battery
pack, charging systems, motors, computers and infotainment systems in the Bolt
are all designed and manufactured by LG Chem.

------
wslh
Too big to compete.

------
coldcode
Subsidies in the US will probably vanish next year as well, but I think the
benefits still make them viable.

~~~
greglindahl
Subsidies for fossil fuels will vanish?! Bold prediction. /s

------
mathiasben
Are there any German start-ups building an electric car?

~~~
kuschku
No startups, but there’s other companies that have never been involved with
cars before that are now building electric vehicles.

Deutsche Post DHL (Germany’s federal mail service) is now building their
delivery vehicles themselves, so they can get electric ones quickly.

[http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/deutsche-post-baut-elektro-
aut...](http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/deutsche-post-baut-elektro-auto-blamage-
fuer-die-deutschen-autobauer-a-1107782.html)

