Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

Electric cars?

Would you buy an electric car?

  • Already own one

    Votes: 10 5.1%

  • Yes - would definitely buy

    Votes: 43 21.8%

  • Yes - preferred over petrol car if price/power/convenience similar

    Votes: 78 39.6%

  • Maybe - preference for neither, only concerned with costs etc

    Votes: 37 18.8%

  • No - prefer petrol car even if electric car has same price, power and convenience

    Votes: 25 12.7%

  • No - would never buy one

    Votes: 14 7.1%
  • Total voters
    197
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mullokintyre said:
On the contrary.
Economic activity is not a constant throughout a persons lifecycle,
According to this paper in Science direct

It has been commented in some other posts how some countries (Russia, China, Japan, Spain, Italy among others) have an ageing population that will have significant effects on many cultures and societies. There will be fewer young people to support more older people.
As people get older, they tend to spend less, I see it among my peer group as people start to worry about how long their super will last, or whether their govt pension will see them thru.
The spending on big ticket items like houses cars, bikes, boats, Helicopters and planes, TV's etc will wane.
Eating out becomes a chore as they are less willing to travel out at night. They are more likely to watch sport on TV than go to the trouble of attending the event. They will require a lot more of government support in the health system.
Mick
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Older people spend less on stuff as they enter their elder years, but their spending on services can rise dramatically as they start needing more medical and in home care.

Eg they might not replace their car, but they might replace their hip and get a cleaner etc, they might not eat out but the might get meals delivered regularly.

Also, aging population is probably only going to be a problem in countries that don’t allow immigration, large sections of the world have a young growing population, immigration from these countries can support the more mature economies.

And as I said, even as western nations population stagnate, we are going to see huge economic growth in India, Africa these populations have 3 massive drivers.

1, The birth rate is still positive and very high in Africa.

2, the exisiting population is young, and people are going to live longer.

3, Their standard of living will rise off a very low base.

So in Africa you will see a growing population and growing consumption per person.

——————

Also, developed economies are going to have robots. These robots are going to alleviate all sorts of problems people have predicted an aging population will cause.
 
For those with an interest;
www.thetechnologyletter.com

Silicon carbide and the age of electrification — The Technology Letter

Chips made of a special material called silicon carbide are transforming the automotive market, and remaking the businesses of companies such as Wolfspeed (WOLF) and ON Semiconductor (ON). The implications may stretch far beyond electric vehicles to all parts of the built environment.
www.thetechnologyletter.com www.thetechnologyletter.com
 
Just on the recent "debate" about the merits of software updates.
From The Driven
Tesla has recalled more than 1,000 of its top range Model S and Model X electric vehicles after acknowledging a steering fault that emerged after a recent software upgrade.
The recall – which affects all 1,012 Model S and Model X cars delivered in Australia since 2017 – was issued on Tuesday by the Department of Transport.
“Due to a recently changed software calibration issue, the Electronic Power Assist Steering system (EPAS) may not operate as intended,” the notice says.
“This may result in a reduced or loss of power steering assist and could require greater steering effort from the driver particularly at low speeds. Upon experiencing reduced or lost power steering assist, an audio alert will trigger, and a visual alert will appear on the instrument cluster.”
It follows the recall of more than 40,000 of the same electric models by Tesla in the US for the same reason, a loss of power steering assist.
Tesla blamed the problem on an October firmware release that caused some vehicles to lose their power steering, particularly when driving over bumpy roads and potholes.
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If and when my EV ever arrives, I will be turning off automatic updates until a few other suckers have tested it.

Mick
 
mullokintyre said:
At $181,000 plus on road costs, it is going to be a limited market no matter how many become available.
Mick
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“If you look at the market, it's probably around the $60-$80,000 mark which is where the competition is, where the volume is,” said Mr Mannering, adding he hoped to have the Q4 E-Tron selling within that bracket.
“I’m not exactly sure [but] that would be my wish,” he told Drive. “That’s our job with the factory, to negotiate the most competitive price.”
 
SirRumpole said:
“If you look at the market, it's probably around the $60-$80,000 mark which is where the competition is, where the volume is,” said Mr Mannering, adding he hoped to have the Q4 E-Tron selling within that bracket.
“I’m not exactly sure [but] that would be my wish,” he told Drive. “That’s our job with the factory, to negotiate the most competitive price.”
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To paraphrase another great genius, "tell him he's dreamin'.
I guess if they cut the battery pack by three quarters, made it only single drive, and took out three cup holders it might get down to that price.
Mick
 
Its taken a bit of time, but it would appear that Volkswagen ID4 will finally be coming to Australia.
From The Evil Murdoch Empire
Volkswagen Australia has been desperately trying to get its ID range of EVs – already very successful and widely loved overseas, the ID.4 won World Car of the Year in 2021 – down under for some time, but unfortunately head office in Germany kept laughing at them.

It seems that the company’s executives can read and have the internet and thus noticed that, rather than encouraging and incentivising Australians to shift to EVs, the Morrison Government was doing the opposite, or at least that‘s how VW saw the situation.

Now that the mood around EVs has shifted under the Albanese Government, VW has announced it will finally be able to import the ID.4… late next year.
The ID.4 is VW’s first electric SUV and is classified as “mid-sized”, but it does feel particularly spacious inside, even in the rear seats, partly thanks to the flat floor, and lack of a transmission tunnel, allowed by its EV layout (EVs only have one gear and thus no conventional gearbox), and a 2765mm wheelbase.

More ID vehicles, built on the same platform, will follow, including the very cute ID.3 hatchback, a coupe-styled ID.5 and even an EV version of the venerable and venerated Kombi van, known as the ID.Buzz.
Pricing will, of course, define the success of Volkswagen’s ID range, and whether it can meet its bold target of outselling Tesla – currently the biggest-selling EV brand in Australia.

VW Australia hasn’t decided an exact figure yet, but it will have “target pricing” similar to its Tiguan 162TSI R-Line, which sells for $57,690. The ID.5 will then arrive at a price about $10K higher, so a $60-$70K range seems likely.

“Our goal is that we will outsell them (Tesla),” says Volkswagen Australia head of product for passenger vehicles, Michelle Rowney. “We are a volume brand and that’s what we want to do.

“We don’t look at [ID.4] as it sits in that little EV segment; it sits in the medium SUV segment, it suits the needs of a family car, it suits the needs of that segment.”
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The ID4 is second biggest selling EV behind the Tesla Y in Europe, and Volkswagen group overall has 20% share of the plug in Ev market in Europe. (from Inside EV ).
Mick
 
“Software is eating the world”. So proclaimed Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist, in 2011. Since then, the adage has been repeated often enough to become commonplace. Simon Wright, The Economist’s industry editor, and I saw this digestive process in action when we visited the Electronic Software Hub recently opened by Mercedes-Benz, a luxury carmaker. Imagine bolting a tech-company campus onto a car factory and you get a rough idea of what the eight-storey complex in southern Germany feels like.​
​
In the story I wrote with Simon this week, we explore how the auto industry, once the archetypal hardware business, has become ever more about software. Industry insiders now talk of “software-defined vehicles”, constantly updated “over the air” with new applications and features that continue to improve the car even after it’s left the factory floor. Less toaster, more smartphone.​
​
Software is not only changing cars, but also the companies that make them. The hardware age was characterised by hierarchical, process-driven organisations intensely focused on hitting the all-important “start of production” date, with new cars appearing in four-year cycles. The software age will be defined by decentralised and empowered teams of developers that deliver updates in rhythms counted not in years, but days or even hours.​
​
While this may be second nature for Tesla, Nio and other digitally native carmakers, incumbents must reinvent themselves. If they fail, they may well go the way of Nokia, which a few years back missed the shift to smartphones and quickly went from the king of mobile phones to a relic. (Although Nokia still exists, it no longer makes phones; another phonemaker uses its brand.)​


The race to reinvent the car industry

Can carmakers catch up with Tesla and pull off the shift to software?

After a day’s work, you are not quite ready to go home. Perhaps you fancy catching a film. You could head to the cinema. Instead, you retreat into your car. A few taps on the touchscreen dashboard and the vehicle turns into a multimedia cocoon. Light trickles down the interior surfaces like a waterfall. Speakers ooze surround-sound. Augmented-reality glasses make a screen appear in front of your eyes.

This immersive experience is at the core of what Nio, a Chinese electric-vehicle (ev) company, laid out as the future of the car at a launch party last month in Berlin. The firm wants its high-end evs to be a “second living room”. Forget horsepower, acceleration and design—Nio emphasises the two dozen high-resolution cameras and transistors (of which there are 68bn, about four times as many as in the latest iPhone) in their vehicles. “We have a supercomputer in our cars,” boasts Nio’s boss, William Li.

Nio is at the forefront of a revolution in the car industry: the archetypal hardware business is becoming ever more about software. Immutable objects that do not change after they leave the factory are turning into dynamic platforms for applications and features which can be updated “over the air”. Rather than deteriorate with age, such “software-defined vehicles” can improve over the years. Brands will become defined less by handling or mechanical excellence, and more by the services they offer, from safety features and infotainment to artificially intelligent driving aids. Nio’s cars come equipped with an ai assistant called Nomi, whose circular interface sits on top of the dashboard and smiles when you ask it questions.

Like all revolutions, this one promises to usher in a new world. It will certainly benefit motorists and digitally native carmakers such as Nio or Tesla, America’s ev champion. It will also claim victims, mostly among incumbent carmakers steeped in the culture of mechanical engineering. The boss of Volkswagen, Herbert Diess, recently lost his job after botching the German giant’s software plans. For many of vw’s rivals, too, the shift is proving thornier than managing the other big transition, from the internal-combustion engine to electric power. It may also prove more consequential. Luca de Meo, boss of Renault, a French carmaker, likens the situation to the upheaval wrought on telecommunications by the smartphone. The shift will define the fate of a global industry with revenues of nearly $3trn.

Cars have been accumulating software for decades. For the most part, however, code was deeply embedded in a car’s parts, powering the “electronic control units” of such things as the ignition, brakes and steering. Most of these programs were developed by the carmakers’ suppliers and came in completed units that were then assembled into a vehicle. Car firms “were mostly integrators”, explains Klaus Schmitz of Arthur D. Little, a consultancy.

In recent years this setup has started to collapse under its own complexity. As more software was added, it became harder to make all the pieces work together, explains Andreas Boes of isf Munich, a think-tank. In June 2020 vw postponed for months the launch of the id.3, a new ev, because of software troubles. Software engineers like to untangle such messes by creating a “platform”—to equip cars with a central computer powered by an operating system (os) that comes with standardised digital plugs for additional components (application programming interfaces, or apis, in the jargon) and a connection to the computing clouds.

20221119_WBC759.png
This technical transformation, in turn, has triggered a knotty cultural one. In the old hardware world, car companies were hierarchical, process-oriented organisations often run by big egos. Launching a new model took around four years and the focus fell on meeting the deadline for the all-important start of production. A new model was much the same as the old one, with precious little innovation, says Henrik Fisker, who once designed Aston Martin and bmw sports cars and now runs an ev startup bearing his name. In the new software world, by contrast, decentralised teams of developers focus more on problem-solving than on execution. Cars are updated in rhythms counted not in years but in days and sometimes hours. Products are never really finished.
This is second nature to newcomers such as Tesla—which was conceived as a software company that happened to make cars and is now the world’s most valuable carmaker—as well as Nio and others, whose valuations belie their current limited output (see chart). For the incumbents, it requires radical reinvention. Established carmakers are furiously recruiting chief software officers (csos), developing their own oss and holding “software days” to present digital strategy to investors. But most have yet to create an organisation capable of straddling hardware and software; to decide which pieces of software to keep firmly under their control and develop in-house and which to outsource; and to come up with a profitable business model for services made possible by all the code.
Take the organisational challenge first. The trick is to strike a balance between keeping development of software and hardware for different parts of a car in separate vertical groups and getting a “horizontal” software unit to write the programs, says Ondrej Burkacky of McKinsey, another consultancy. Cling too closely to the vertical approach and your software “will look like your org-chart”, he says—something plainly displayed on many incumbents’ car dashboards. Turn too horizontal and your software unit will get overwhelmed. That is what happened at vw, critics say, which installed its Cariad division in Ingolstadt, a six-hour drive from the group’s headquarters in Wolfsburg.

Gear shift​

Other carmakers are learning from vw’s mistakes and adopting more mixed models. bmw and Stellantis (whose biggest shareholder, Exor, also part-owns The Economist’s parent company) will spread their software teams around the world, closer to where the related hardware is made. Stellantis recently launched a “Data and Software Academy” intended to retrain more than 1,000 of the firm’s existing employees per year, as well as hiring talent worldwide, with the aim of having 4,500 engineers by 2024. Mercedes-Benz has just invested €200m ($206m) in an ultramodern “Electric Software Hub”, which will one day house 1,000 programmers in the middle of its research-and-development campus in Sindelfingen, close to its headquarters in Stuttgart. “Here they can easily work with any department,” explains Magnus Östberg, the firm’s CSO.

Each of these changes—to digital technology, organisation and business models—is a big shock on its own. Together they amount to a handbrake turn for an industry characterised by inertia. Many established firms still do not seem to accept the scale of the challenge. Digitisation has yet to creep into boardrooms: more than a third of board members at the four big German carmakers are mechanical engineers, and none comes from the tech industry.

For now, though, the digital race is still to be won. Even as the car industry struggles with software, the upstarts have much to learn about getting Spaltmaßright at scale, maintaining complex supply chains and building trust in their brands. “Incumbents are not doomed like Nokia,” says Christoph Bornschein of tlgg, another consultancy, referring to a once-dominant firm caught out by the smartphone revolution. “But they have only a narrow window of opportunity to get their act together.” ■

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China's LDV first to market with a readily available E.V ute, that is if you can afford it.
It does tend to show the limitations of heavy electric vehicles, it is nearly a ton heavier than the ICE T60.

www.drive.com.au

2023 LDV eT60 price and specs: Australia's first electric ute costs from $92,990

Australia's first electric ute – the LDV eT60 from China – has gone on sale with a high price and limited driving range. But there is already a waiting list to buy one.
www.drive.com.au www.drive.com.au
  • 2023 LDV eT60 price and specifications
  • Australia's first electric ute comes from China
  • Electric driving range of 330km halved when towing or carrying a load, 2WD only
  • Priced from $92,990 drive-away, more than double the cost of the top diesel version
For now the electric LDV eT60 is offered in one model grade. It comes with a generous 88.55kWh battery pack which, in a passenger car, would offer about 500km driving range.
However, in the LDV eT60, maximum driving range on a single charge is listed at 330km because of the heavy-duty workhorse vehicle's extra weight and tall body.
The LDV eT60 ute unladen tips the scales at 3050kg.
LDV data shows driving range is halved when towing or carrying a heavy load.
 
sptrawler said:
China's LDV first to market with a readily available E.V ute, that is if you can afford it.
It does tend to show the limitations of heavy electric vehicles, it is nearly a ton heavier than the ICE T60.

www.drive.com.au

2023 LDV eT60 price and specs: Australia's first electric ute costs from $92,990

Australia's first electric ute – the LDV eT60 from China – has gone on sale with a high price and limited driving range. But there is already a waiting list to buy one.
www.drive.com.au www.drive.com.au
  • 2023 LDV eT60 price and specifications
  • Australia's first electric ute comes from China
  • Electric driving range of 330km halved when towing or carrying a load, 2WD only
  • Priced from $92,990 drive-away, more than double the cost of the top diesel version
For now the electric LDV eT60 is offered in one model grade. It comes with a generous 88.55kWh battery pack which, in a passenger car, would offer about 500km driving range.
However, in the LDV eT60, maximum driving range on a single charge is listed at 330km because of the heavy-duty workhorse vehicle's extra weight and tall body.
The LDV eT60 ute unladen tips the scales at 3050kg.
LDV data shows driving range is halved when towing or carrying a heavy load.
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LDV :vomit: I hope their EVs are 100% better than their diesel vans. Prices are low for a reason, cheap materials don't last in our Australian environment, poor availability of parts.
 
On a side note, I have only done 1,200klm in the Kona, but now the weather is warming up I'm a bit surprised how much the A/C reduces your available battery.
Like today driving on the freeway, at start the gauge said something like 410km to empty, as soon as I put on the A/C it dropped to something like 365km to empty.
I'm glad I chose to not get a sunroof, especially with W.A summers, they are bloody hot.
 
sptrawler said:
$93,000 might be cheap to some, to me it is a bloody lot of money, for a work vehicle that can only cover 150klm when loaded. ?
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Wrong way around. Compared to what other manufacturers will be offering the pricing is low, but the product is cheap.
 
sptrawler said:
On a side note, I have only done 1,200klm in the Kona, but now the weather is warming up I'm a bit surprised how much the A/C reduces your available battery.
Like today driving on the freeway, at start the gauge said something like 410km to empty, as soon as I put on the A/C it dropped to something like 365km to empty.
I'm glad I chose to not get a sunroof, especially with W.A summers, they are bloody hot.
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That doesn’t sound right, you should take closer note & clarify with the company.

Latest OTA update for my model allows me to see the power usage -

95FA7CA7-C1D4-4C52-9987-DFACC2118518.jpeg
 
I will take more notice and correlate some data.
Ive order a bluetooth obd2 transmitter and will download an EV app.
The Kona guessameter is supposed to be one of the most accurate of the EV manufacturers, apparently from what Ive read the Tesla distance guessameter is a bit optimistic.
It will be an interesting project, because I travel a set route every week, I should be able to get some fairly good data.
 
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