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VW Plans A $ 22K Electric Car To Compete With Tesla, Transition From Combustion Engines (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters:
Volkswagen intends to sell electric cars for less than 20,000 euros ($22,836) and protect German jobs by converting three factories to make Tesla rivals, a source familiar with the plans said... Plans for VW's electric car, known as "MEB entry" and with a production volume of 200,000 vehicles, are due to be discussed at a supervisory board meeting on Nov. 16, the source said... The November 16 strategy meeting will discuss Volkswagen's transformation plan to shift from being Europe's largest maker of combustion engine vehicles into a mass producer of electric cars, another source familiar with the deliberations said.
VW's strategy shift comes as cities start to ban diesel engine vehicles, forcing carmakers to think of new ways to safeguard 600,000 German industrial jobs, of which 436,000 are at car companies and their suppliers.... The shift from combustion engines to electric cars would also cost 14,000 jobs at VW by 2020 as it takes less time to build an electric car than a conventional one and because jobs will shift overseas to battery manufacturers.
VW's strategy shift comes as cities start to ban diesel engine vehicles, forcing carmakers to think of new ways to safeguard 600,000 German industrial jobs, of which 436,000 are at car companies and their suppliers.... The shift from combustion engines to electric cars would also cost 14,000 jobs at VW by 2020 as it takes less time to build an electric car than a conventional one and because jobs will shift overseas to battery manufacturers.
More Lithium can be mined. The global supply can be increased.
Cobalt is the element that battery manufacturers worry about.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I don't think people quite grasp the absurd amount of electricity an electric car uses. Charging an EV requires something crazy like 400V at 35A. Charging a few of them won't be an issue - but if everyone were to switch over to electric vehicles, we'd need to start building more power plants, fast.
Ok, I have heard this stupid rhetoric more than enough. Its time that people stop spouting about shit they do not understand.
I have two electric cars. They are each driven daily as commuter vehicles. Each draws about 5kwh per day, and are charged at night. One uses a 30A 240V charger, the other uses a good old fashioned 15A 110V outlet. Neither requires any more charging than that for the vast majority of driving.
To put that in perspective, a single window air conditioner for a medium sized room uses about 7-10kwh per day during heavy use. My household uses an average of 32kwh per day of which less than 30% goes to the vehicles.
When you realize that the vast majority of EV charging will happen at home, at night, then there is no problem with electricity shortages or infrastructure limitations. Night time electricity usage is sufficiently lower than daytime usage that there is plenty of excess capacity available to handle EV charging, even if 100% of all vehicles sold from today forward were pure electric vehicles. In fact, the amount of electricity saved by switching from incandescent bulbs to LED bulbs, actually offsets around half of the entire increase that would result from a switch to 100% electric ground transportation. Because of that transittion, and the scaling up of solar power, there has actually been a glut of electricity which has been keeping electricity prices artificially low. This artificially low cost was part of the stimulus that drove the sharp increase in the cryptocurrency mining which has absorbed most of the excess electricity capacity.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted