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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, VW, Daimler, BMW, GM, Ford, fiat-chrysler, Nissan, etc have spent the last 5-7 years telling us how they would beat Tesla. Now, like cold fusion, it will happen real soon.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If they build a $22,000 car that has 300 miles of range, does 0-60 in 5 seconds, and carries 4 adults comfortably, they'll sell millions of them.
And Tesla will have won.
https://www.tesla.com/blog/sec...
And the worms ate into his brain.
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.
Announce a 15K car in 2025 that runs on Atmospheric Engine, that gets free energy using the magnetic monopole and tapping into the zero point energy and the critical ingredient for the project, the red mercury has been secured. Then you are talking.
Er, what? no one would take such an announcement seriously?
Well, what makes you think they think other announcements and promises from that diesel cheat device innovator seriously?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Tesla is not competition for the big auto makers. Tesla is just an ego project for a man-child with too much money and time with nothing better to do. A pet project some chuckleheads take seriously for no logical reason. Pure emotion.
I tend to agree with you with regards to competition: Electric is going to be a big part of the future transportation and Tesla will find they are not alone in the performance electric market: Porsche is touting their coming E-Performance cars in a big bold announcement at the front of their web site; Jaguar's I-Pace SUV is on offer. And VW is the by far the biggest carmaking enterprise.
As for Tesla's leader, Elon Musk, I happen to think that promoting electric cars to help us kick the fossil fuel habit is one of the better things a person could offer humanity. So, yeah, there is literally not much that would be better to do.
If you read Slashdot, you should know that smart, technically savvy people oftan have their quirks. It's can be easy to make fun of such people, but they also deserve credit where credit is due.