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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.
Yes, bring on the EV's. The more companies making EV's mean the more they have to complete with each other and the lower the price will become. That whole supply and demand thing.
...Except it may actually increase the cost, since there's only so much Lithium available to make batteries with. Almost 50% of the global lithium supply is bought up by battery manufacturers already, to handle the current demand. Not a ton of room for growth there.
The end of the internal combustion engine as a staple of ground vehicles is in progress, like it or not, and the age of the ubiquitos electric vehicle is dawning, like it or not. I, for one, think it'll be great; I've worked on ICE-based vehicles, in one form or another, my entire life, and let's face it: after a certain point in time, they became a real pain in the ass to deal with, both in complexity and in cost, even if you do the work yourself. Also, front wheel drive ICE vehicles with a manual trainsmission, replacing a clutch? Step 1: 'remove engine from vehicle'. That kills it for most home mechanics. Automatic transmissions? Over-complicated and expensive, and you can't rebuild one at home. And so on. I've never owned an electric vehicle yet, but I can just imagine how much less messy, complicated, and expensive they'll be to maintain, and with so many fewer moving parts, how little maintenance and repair they'll actually need.
Someone will now inevitably come along and point out how much it'll cost (at current prices) to replace all the battery packs in an EV. To that I say "So what?" As EVs become more and more ubiquitos, and battery technology and manufacturing techniques improve, as well as volume manufactured (and re-manufactured) increase, the price will go down, not up. At-home high-capacity charging stations will be more and more common in public places, and I'd imagine become a standard amenity when new homes are built (if not mandated in some states; California, I'm looking at you when I say that).
You can't even complain that they're slow. There'll be a new age of high-performance in the form of souped-up EVs.
The more big companies that get on board with this, the better.