Would you have an electric car if you had the money for a new car and were in the market for one?

[Mr. Dazzle]

All the modern Beemers, Jags etc I've driven will let you just tap the flappy paddle/slap the gear stick three times and bang it through three gears no problem. In sports mode the BMWs will bounce off the rev limiter rather than changing up too.

You can't "block shift" of course though. Quite often in my car I'll do 3rd to 6th coming out of roundabouts my wife's old Civic Type R hated going "up/down" on the gearshift when it was cold so you'd often drive it in 2nd, 4th and 6th only in winter.

[Potter]

In sports mode the BMWs will bounce off the rev limiter rather than changing up too.

The 911 does that but then it really clunks into the next gear, people have recommended to use it in manual if you put it into race mode, under normal circumstances you can't feel the changes in auto but when you're ragging it then I don't like the clunks, the auto box is good but not that good. I've heard it's a different box in the GT3 and much better but I've never been in an auto car that didn't clunk a bit if you're ragging it.

[Yorick]

Think about that and then how you have to throttle back, push the clutch pedal down, change gear, then release the clutch and apply throttle again. It probably doesn't seem so bad now!

I like smooth and manual means I can change smoothly if I want to knock it down three gears, a fully auto means I just have to floor the pedal and wait.
The PDK is ok because it has three ways to change gear, with the paddles, with the stick or fully auto and you don't need to mess about, so I can be in fully auto and still use the paddles if I want to drop it down a few. I also like the sequential race car style gearstick in the 911 push forward or backwards to change.

In my TT it had a Sport mode. Was always in the right gear with revs high. Loved it.

[Horse]

Mr Dazzle has been saying for ages that big developments in battery tech were imminent. Perhaps this is one?

https://www-thebrighterside-news.cdn.am ... 15-minutes

QuantumScape has announced impressive performance figures for what may be the first commercially viable lithium metal solid state battery. They claim that they can increase the autonomy of an electric car by up to 80%, and it that it can charge from 0 to 80% in just 15 minutes.

By using a solid electrolyte instead of the typical liquid solution, solid-state batteries can store considerably more energy by weight and volume than lithium-ion batteries; but yet, making a battery that is reliable and has a useful life appropriate to any driver's needs - high charge and discharge rates, long service life, and without any temperature or safety concerns - has proven difficult up to now.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Solid State is probably gonna be on the market within 5 years. Lots of the OEMs have prototypes in active development. Mercedes just bought a solid state battery manufacturer and you don't do that unless you plan to use em.

Charged by nuclear fusion generated electricity, naturally.

[Potter]

Solid State is probably gonna be on the market within 5 years.

Which means the current crop of cars (until then) will be obsolete and a big negative equity package waiting to drop?

[Horse]

[Mussels]

That Tesla doesn't meet safety requirements for the power it puts out, it gets kicked out for that rather than being too fast.
The track marshal seems a bit fed up with people turning up to show how quickly their one trick pony covers a short distance so they can put it on YouTube. I can understand that, it's like an F1 team discovering a new type of engine that's in the rules but produces twice the power, it gets boring quickly.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Solid State is probably gonna be on the market within 5 years.

Which means the current crop of cars (until then) will be obsolete and a big negative equity package waiting to drop?

You're a cheery sort, aren't you?

It's not like the supply is suddenly gonna switch over to all Solid State one morning. But yes I expect it'll have an impact. Times are a changin' and there're gonna be shifts.

[Potter]

You're a cheery sort, aren't you?

It's not like the supply is suddenly gonna switch over to all Solid State one morning. But yes I expect it'll have an impact. Times are a changin' and there're gonna be shifts.

You have to consider it though, imagine you drop £50k on a new car now, then in a week it's announced that solid state (or something equally as good) is now viable. Every manufacturer will switch over, because why wouldn't they, then your £50k car is going to take a massive hit - unless the retrofit is cheap enough (or the manufacturer ties a retrofit in with your deal so you don't get hammered when the technology changes).

The petrol engine has been around so long that changes were incremental and steady, but EVs are probably more prone to disruptive technology changes.

[Mussels]

You're a cheery sort, aren't you?

It's not like the supply is suddenly gonna switch over to all Solid State one morning. But yes I expect it'll have an impact. Times are a changin' and there're gonna be shifts.

You have to consider it though, imagine you drop £50k on a new car now, then in a week it's announced that solid state (or something equally as good) is now viable. Every manufacturer will switch over, because why wouldn't they, then your £50k car is going to take a massive hit - unless the retrofit is cheap enough (or the manufacturer ties a retrofit in with your deal so you don't get hammered when the technology changes).

The petrol engine has been around so long that changes were incremental and steady, but EVs are probably more prone to disruptive technology changes.

I wouldn't be too bothered about new tech emerging if the current tech was sufficient for most people's needs, as it isn't then 60k premium cars will depreciate fast. Short range town cars may be OK as they will still do the desired job.

[Rockburner]

You're a cheery sort, aren't you?

It's not like the supply is suddenly gonna switch over to all Solid State one morning. But yes I expect it'll have an impact. Times are a changin' and there're gonna be shifts.

You have to consider it though, imagine you drop £50k on a new car now, then in a week it's announced that solid state (or something equally as good) is now viable. Every manufacturer will switch over, because why wouldn't they, then your £50k car is going to take a massive hit - unless the retrofit is cheap enough (or the manufacturer ties a retrofit in with your deal so you don't get hammered when the technology changes).

The petrol engine has been around so long that changes were incremental and steady, but EVs are probably more prone to disruptive technology changes.

Bringing production facilities online and into the full end-to-end cycle is going to take more than a week. Battery production production lines will take months or years to switch over to new designs/materials/method etc. and that's AFTER all the safety testing and vehicle design & prototyping time.

You'll likely see each manufacturer sell off the 'old-tech' cars at knock down prices as they bring the new facilities up to speed.

[Potter]

...and that's AFTER all the safety testing and vehicle design & prototyping time.

That's all happening now though.

It may take some time (months rather than years) to get from viable product to market, but I would guess months rather than years because whoever cracks the technology will want to exploit it asap. Look at computers in the 90's, as soon as you bought something it was obsolete because stuff was coming out so fast, I remember ordering a computer for our kids a couple of months before Christmas (IIRC it was a 133mhz chip) and by the time we picked it up there were two new ones that had already come out and we were discussing whether to upgrade straight away - in fact that was just the start of it, I think we upgraded stuff on a monthly basis because games and hardware was coming out that we couldn't keep up with.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Our motors are a big step up in power density and efficiency...quite literally off the charts when you compare them to anything else you can buy today. They're a new architecture of motor you can't get anywhere else. At the moment though the only way a member of the public can get one is to buy an expensive super car.

In about 3 years time a midly well off person will be able to buy a premium-but-not-exotic car with one in. It'll be in the upper reaches of said manufacturers product line, but not a sypercar.

3 years after that normal people might be able to get one

It'll be the same with solid state batteries. Nothing is gonna switch over night. It'll be order of magnitude faster than ICE vehicle developments for sure, but not a sudden flick of a switch.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Look at computers in the 90's, as soon as you bought something it was obsolete because stuff was coming out so fast

Reminds me of this "funny" from the glory days of chain emails and AoL.

Edit: lolz at number 7 though. Life imitating art.

GM replies to Bill Gates

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated "if GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued the following press release -

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics -

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Only one person at a time could use the car unless you bought "car NT", but then you would have to buy more seats.

6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would only run on five percent of the roads.

7. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "General Protection Fault" warning light.

10. The airbag system would ask "are you sure?" before deploying.

11. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

12. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the cars performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Dept.

13. Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

14. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.

[Horse]

At the moment
In about 3 years
3 years after that

Yup, the way of tech.

The first car that I was aware of having full LED headlights was the Audi R8. First sold in 2006, don't know when it got to the UK. My, relatively cheap sedate and normal, Leon is 2017 reg., and has them.

Re PCs, a colleague bought a new PC on 18 months 'pay later' - by which time it was obsolete and worthless. But ... he had 18 months use of it.

Cars depreciate anyway, three years can take off a huge chunk of value and it's not as if they will stop working!

[Potter]

Our motors are a big step up in power density and efficiency...quite literally off the charts when you compare them to anything else you can buy today. They're a new architecture of motor you can't get anywhere else. At the moment though the only way a member of the public can get one is to buy an expensive super car.

In about 3 years time a midly well off person will be able to buy a premium-but-not-exotic car with one in. It'll be in the upper reaches of said manufacturers product line, but not a sypercar.

3 years after that normal people might be able to get one

It'll be the same with solid state batteries. Nothing is gonna switch over night. It'll be order of magnitude faster than ICE vehicle developments for sure, but not a sudden flick of a switch.

That business model doesn't make sense with the new EVs though.
If expensive technology is not widely accepted and only used on premium products then it takes ages to trickle down, but if a manufacturer suddenly cracks the battery/distance/charging issue, and the economy of scale means that they're banging thousands out a week, you'll then see it come through a lot quicker.

[weeksy]

Our motors are a big step up in power density and efficiency...quite literally off the charts when you compare them to anything else you can buy today. They're a new architecture of motor you can't get anywhere else. At the moment though the only way a member of the public can get one is to buy an expensive super car.

In about 3 years time a midly well off person will be able to buy a premium-but-not-exotic car with one in. It'll be in the upper reaches of said manufacturers product line, but not a sypercar.

3 years after that normal people might be able to get one

It'll be the same with solid state batteries. Nothing is gonna switch over night. It'll be order of magnitude faster than ICE vehicle developments for sure, but not a sudden flick of a switch.

That business model doesn't make sense with the new EVs though.
If expensive technology is not widely accepted and only used on premium products then it takes ages to trickle down, but if a manufacturer suddenly cracks the battery/distance/charging issue, and the economy of scale means that they're banging thousands out a week, you'll then see it come through a lot quicker.

Lol you're aware he's not just guessing and what he's written is what he does for a living and has for a decade or two? But you're going to tell him he's completely wrong?

Lol

[Mr. Dazzle]

Well yeah...that...:

When I say "you'll be able to buy one of these motors in 3 years" or whatever I'm not basing it on the Internet. I'm basing it on the fact I'm designing it and I have a very clear view of the product strategy of at least one OEM out for the next 10 years. .

I've spent my whole working life bringing new technology to market. Right now we're living through the most disruptive period since probably the end of WW2, but it still won't be fast enough to completely knacker your PCP deal

[Potter]

Lol you're aware he's not just guessing and what he's written is what he does for a living and has for a decade or two? But you're going to tell him he's completely wrong?

Lol

I also used to help design motors and PMGs for one of the world biggest manufacturers with about 80k employees, I'm a bit behind on the technology now because then I moved into post-sales, in fact if you received a worldwide technical bulletin for that global company back then I wrote it. What I do now is a bit different - but the business practises are still valid.

High end low volume (where I think he works now) isn't the same as where I ended up in high end high volume, which is where I think the technology will move to once it's viable for mass production.

VHS recorders were high end low volume at first, my posh mate was the only one at school that had one, but within a year or two we all had them.

BTW I'm not telling him he's completely wrong, your hard-on for me means you read what you want to read into anything I post, I'm challenging his opinion as an engineer against my years of experience of the manufacturing business - because I don't know what he knows and he doesn't know what I know.