
The Twilight of Combustion Comes for Germany's Empire of Engines - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-bmw-electric-car-german-engines/
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jackcosgrove
It is very interesting to see the waxing and waning of technical skills and
regions over long timescales. Both the Germans and the Japanese are renowned
for mechanical ingeniousness, probably because mechanical knowledge was
increasing rapidly at the time they began to industrialize. Now that
mechanical systems are being replaced by mechatronic systems and software,
these regions are experiencing relative decline.

I have always thought the US as the center of the global software industry was
a bit incongruous given that this industry took root when the US was itself
experiencing relative decline, but it's probably due to the invention of that
other IC technology here, integrated circuits, more than anything else. For
the same reason aerospace is still concentrated in the US.

It really shows how the first mover advantage in R&D can confer advantages
that last for over a century.

~~~
arethuza
Aren't Germany and Japan still by far the largest exporters of machine tools -
i.e. the machines that make our machines?

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dsfyu404ed
Depends what kind of machine tools you're buying and whether you're counting
units or dollars and whether you're including tooling in there. Like every
other industry the cheap stuff at the bottom of the market moves way more
units than the fancy stuff at the top (and as usual, a certain country in the
far east makes most of the cheapest stuff).

Yeah, central Europe and Japan/Korea are big players but pretty much every
"industrialized" nation has a noteworthy share of the industry.

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0xDEEPFAC
What a sad day for driving enthusiasts everywhere. Went to the BMW dealer last
fall to test drive a 2 series and was told there are no manual 2 series cars
in all of North America and I would have to get one shipped in.

But progress is progress I guess and if people want rechargeable, self-
driving, ugly crossovers they'll get them.

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claudius
Are you prepared to cover the full costs of your "driving enthusiam"? Or do
you wish for society to subsidize your personal enjoyment, comfort and
lazyness at the cost of great financial, environmental and health costs to
everyone else?

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lagadu
That's a lot of hyperboles and ad-hominem going on there.

~~~
claudius
There’s no hyperboles there. Cars, and ICE cars in particular, cause extreme
health concerns from particles both exhausted and rubbed of from the tires.
The vast majority of deaths in transportation are due to cars, and speeding
ICE cars in particular. A primary cause of climate change (which in turn
threatens the existence and/or sustenance of billions of people) is again the
use of cars, in particular ICE cars, for personal transportation. Without
those and the associated need for large amounts of otherwise unused spaces,
many things could be done much more efficiently.

Given that the GP personally regretted the end of ICE cars, it seems not
unreasonable to ask about their other feelings as well?

~~~
frosted-flakes
> Cars, and ICE cars in particular, cause extreme health concerns from
> particles both exhausted and rubbed of from the tires. The vast majority of
> deaths in transportation are due to cars, and speeding ICE cars in
> particular.

Except for tailpipe exhaust, electric cars are no different in this regard, so
I'm not sure why you've singled out cars with internal combustion engines.

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Creationer
We need better road pricing mechanisms for electric vehicles. If roads can no
longer be funded at least by fuel taxes, that leaves an immediate revenue
shortfall. Simply increasing registration fees does not consider variable
levels and times of car use.

Ideally we would have an open standard used by all vehicles to communicate
position in real time to the Government. This could be used for road pricing
and integrated into the display panel of the vehicle.

~~~
simonsarris
Roads in the US are already >50% not funded by fuel taxes. What's wrong with
tolls and other means, or say _primarily_ taxing large trucks, which
_primarily_ do most of the wear, if you're concerned about fairness?

> Ideally [...] all vehicles to communicate position in real time to the
> Government

It is not often that one man's "ideally" is another man's "dystopia" so
succinctly.

~~~
Creationer
That still fails to address congestion. The problem is similar to the
electricity sector - we spend a lot of money creating capacity to handle peak-
loads. If we simply time-shifted some road demand, or generally reduced the
peak levels of road use, it would have a non-linearly positive benefit.

A rough example: people often decide to buy lunch from cafe's at the arbitrary
time of 12:00 midday onwards, forming large queues. If more people bought at
11:30am, the actual time difference is minor, but demand can be handled a lot
more effectively. Same thing with people arbitrarily deciding to leave work
and drive home simultaneously at an arbitrary 5:00pm. If using the road at
that time cost $2, and 30 minutes earlier $0.50, you can very effectively
shift demand and improve overall efficiency substantially.

This is speaking from the POV of road use in cities. Its also very transparent
to road users how to best optimise their road usage, since travel times,
congestion levels etc. can be monitored and forecast centrally and
effectively, and then signalled with road pricing, instead of individual
drivers needing to do all that themselves.

The other problem is that by simply restricting axle weight for highway use,
we ignore potential economic efficiencies. For example, a single super-heavy
truck might create $100 of road damage, but deliver $1000 on economic benefits
(eg. replacing two trucks). The user should be able to pay for the damage that
they cause. This could be integrated into a smart road-pricing system that
considers vehicle axle weight.

Singapore has such a system which works very well - but it relies on a large
box on the dashboard and AFAIK doesn't considered axle weight.

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village-idiot
BMW, the focus of the article, is also in a lot of danger as a brand. For a
very long time they had the position as one of the best driving everyday cars
because of their mechanical skill in the engine, chassis, and suspension parts
of the car.

There appear to be two problems with that going forward.

First, other makes now have good suspension and chassis. This is a mature area
of development, so the gains that BMW can make over their competitors is going
to be small and expensive.

Second, what will differentiate one EV from another will be more software than
hardware, and it’s not clear to me if companies like BMW will be able to
dominate in that area.

~~~
billfruit
I am not familiar with EV internals, but do modern EVs have an electric drive
train:ie, are there drive shafts and differentials and clutches in the modern
EV or is it just independent motors coupled to the wheels?

What about breaking? Is done on the wheel or on the motor?

~~~
corbet
No drive shafts, no clutches. I always thought it should be a motor for each
wheel, but nobody seems to be doing that now. Both physical brakes and
regenerative braking exist.

(One real surprise with our new Bolt is that you can't do regenerative braking
when the battery is full - there's no place to dump the energy. Makes sense
once you think about it).

The simplicity of electric cars is one of their big advantages, but also one
of the reasons that US dealers (other than Tesla, obviously) aren't
enthusiastic about selling them. There's almost no periodic maintenance to be
done, and little to break, so little in the way of post-sale revenue.

~~~
zaarn
There are some companies working on "1 motor 1 wheel", it's still very early
on though...

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arethuza
Doesn't that cause problems with relatively high unsprung mass - which causes
its own problems?

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tomatotomato37
Usually the motors are still mounted to the chassis with some type of
halfshaft interface in those cars rather than being directly mounted to try
wheels; there's just more of them

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RickJWagner
It does make the electric car seem attractive.

Waiting for the flood of affordable electric cars that are supposed to arrive
soon.

