[LG's announcement to stop making smartphones is a testament to how the technology and (economy of scale) of Apple and Samsung have evolved to a duopoly of smartphone brands. For most consumers, two choices are enough. Quick: name the third in line: Coca Cola, Pepsi and ...? Or McDonald's, Burger King and ...?)
Will the same happen for electric cars? Ford is already building their EVs on a VW chassis.
For example: whether you buy an electric Kia or electric Porsche, what are the real engineering differences between the car, considering:
- the drivetrain is electric - the center of gravity is lowered in almost all EVs because of the (current state of the art) of battery placement - Many key (security) parts are bought OEM from the same suppliers, including tyres, audio systems and airbags. - The manufacturer with the most driven miles will likely have the least amount of "bugs"
Will car brands go even more the way of fashion brands, where the difference between Porsche and Kia will be like the difference between Balenciaga and Nike: both are functional footwear, but I'd choose the Nikes and save the difference.
Will "internal luxury" and "prestige" take the overtone in marketing and branding for the next 20 years, as opposed to how "clean" a car is and the engineering of their engines? And, of this technology, how will supercar automakers adapt? E.g. why buy a Ferrari if the "soul" (engine) is replaced with an electric drivetrain that is likely less mature in engineering than what would be inside a Tesla S?
People buy a Toyota Corolla or Prius because it's below the median price, reliable and efficient. They will buy it and then never think about it again because it'll "just work."
People buy a Ford F150 because they either have some real use for a full-sized truck or, as we know is often the case, they want to feel like they are in the "big" vehicle, the "fancy" but "powerful" looking truck.
People buy a Porsche 911 because it's a symbol for having the money to throw at a fun, slightly exotic machine.
People buy a Tesla because it's a symbol of embracing the future, seeing cars as technology, and freeing them from generating exhaust and visiting gas stations.
People buy a Honda CR-V because it can do enough things well that they can just use it, fit people and stuff inside, feel safer when it snows, and so on.
People buy a Kia Soul because it's a little off the beaten path and comes in crazy colors.
Obviously the exact reasons behind each car purchase vary a little per person, but that's kind of the point. People want a car that feels like "them", and has enough practical use to justify their decision.
Automotive maker consolidation isn't new, just like any other industry, and it certainly would leave many unhappy if the options narrowed severely, because there are different use cases and preferences out there. For now, the market is so big that Toyota can have 6 different SUVs that are all slightly different, and you can configure a Ford F150 about a million different ways. (Though with colors converging back on black, white and gray, we're nearly back to the days of "You can have it any color, as long as it is black."
I think in this light you will have to look and see how luxury cars differentiate, even though a Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, and v6 Honda Accord all go very fast today. Luxury brands have fit and finish that isn't found on the similarly speedy v6 Honda accord. If Tesla would like to remain competitive in their price bracket, they will have to start offering an interior and overall fit and finish worthy of standing among other $30k-$40k cars on the market today. IMO from my own personal experiences with Teslas, some base model cars from other manufacturers on the market have less rattly and cheap feeling interiors, and a giant iPad is a poor (distracting) crutch.
1) Range anxiety
2) Recharge concerns (plays into range anxiety)
3) Novel technology fears (will my trusted mechanic of twenty years be able to handle this or am I stuck with the dealership?)
4) "Handling" -- will this drive like my old ICE car? Apparently a major irritation factor from some EV adopters I know, who disliked how out of control they felt.
5) Technology settling ... my guess is that the standard voltage systems within these vehicles will eventually settle on a standard between these vehicles, because people will be interested in the "pluggability" of EV options if they are that much simpler. Can I just plug in my dashcam, or do I need a voltage converter? I'm driving over to my friend's place, can I use his charger?
I'm probably missing a few.
Consider the Lotus Elise and the original Tesla Roadster. The Elise weighs in around 2,000 lbs. The Roadster is around 2,800 lbs. It's not 4,000 lbs, but it's a good chunk o' change more. I think we'll get closer eventually.
My wife has little interest in the driving and performance aspect of cars, and generally isn't into the blingbling aspect either. However she loves Porsche because she thinks they are some of the most beautiful cars in the world.
She is a fashion designer by trade, so her perspective is the opposite of yours - she would choose the Balenciaga because she feels the design is worth the premium despite being functionally the same (if not worse) than the Nike.
Speaking of Porsche, as well as other sporty manufacturers such as say, BMW (let's ignore the oldtimers cries of "BMW has lost its way!" for now), I think they're pushing the aspect of handling and "driving feel" as a differentiator even for their EVs vs. say, Tesla's offerings. Porsche can kinda do this IMHO because of their traditional market position, but other brands might have a harder time.
For example - Mazda. Praised by journalists and auto enthusiasts for having superb handling and driving feel. However most people in the market for a Mazda (Miata being an exception) probably don't care at all about how a car/CUV handles.
I think you’re correct that there will be less appeal from a technical performance perspective to buy an individual brand. All EVs have fast enough acceleration (some dangerously so.) So competition there is not going to continue. The new monstrous Hummer from GM has 0-60 times that rival super cars from a few years back.
There’s still some room for competition on handling, but eventually the skateboards will all have very similar suspensions.
So I believe we’re left with aesthetics, material choices, secondary features, and brand appeal. Are your vegan leather air conditioned seats hand stitched? Are your steerable headlights auto dimming with infrared vision?
If anyone could do more than idly speculate (probably dressed up with some tropes that play to the audience's confirmation bias to maximize virtue points) OEMs wouldn't be paying millions of dollars per year for the continued existence of their market and customer research teams.
The answers you're asking for don't yet exist. They are so many yet undetermined variables involved in predicting the future at the range you're asking about they're all just possibilities at this point.
Cars are already mostly sold on image. Image is the main differentiator already.
Here is what I think most people think about when buying a car: will be affordable (if you are not wealthy), the type of car (SVU, minivan, cross over, sedan, etc.), performance oriented (Mazda Zoom Zoom, or a Shelby, Mustang), whether it is ultra green/granola (Prius), Luxury (Audi, BMW, Lexus), or whether it is a high end status symbol (Porche), it is viewed as highly reliable (Toyota), and what is the resale value (Toyota.)
This will likely continue.
For me, a car is an appliance. It's a nuisance when it costs money. It's a nuisance when it breaks. It's good when it sits there and does nothing (other than taking up space), or gets me from A to B.
If I could get the equivalent of the $15 refurbished LG phone, in an electric car, I'd buy it. It has to be big enough to carry a double bass, no bigger.
Let's see what the younger generation thinks. I have two kids in college. They are both mostly ambivalent about cars. The car makers may be in a kind of last gasp, trying to appeal to those of us who can afford a new car before we're too old to drive.
From my standpoint, it will be interesting to see how things shake out when decent reliability data become available.
I'm surprised how many people don't realize that a VW Passat is a dressed down Audi (A/S/RS)6 is dressed up as Porsche Panamera.
Why do people spend hundreds of dollars on a brand of jeans, when they can buy levi's for 50 bucks (or other brands even cheaper).
The same can be said for many industries. Why did you buy the computer or keyboard you're currently typing on. Much of it may have been due to signaling, or it appealing to your tribe.
So will there be a "killer feature" for a car in the future? I suspect there isn't a killer feature today, and I don't suspect that change.
Once there is a self-driving (electric) car that you can order from your phone and that will — cheaply! — take you from point A to point B, the need in owning a car will (mostly) disappear.
The people would stop being car buyers. Instead, robo-taxi companies will buy most of the cars. For these, there would be no need in brands or marketing; some of them would just assemble and service their own fleets from readily-available parts, similar to how Amazon/Google/Microsoft self-assemble their own cloud servers (instead of buying them from Dell/HP).
Some people would still want to own their cars, like today some people own horses. They would be a negligible minority. There, it's likely that at least some of the manufacturers would be those who still don't exist today; they would disregard the no-longer-relevant mechanics (internal combustion engine, gearbox, etc.) and focus on overall end-user experience while utilizing readily-available parts.
I don't see that being terribly likely, but the next best thing would be one with software that isn't openly hostile to me. I don't want my car phoning home or being updated without my permission. I don't want my car lying to me, hiding, or refusing to disclose the status of sensors. I don't want an entertainment or navigation system I can't rip out and replace with one of my own choosing.
I'm afraid there will be none.
Hull shape, and the battery size is pretty much the only thing existing EVs differ from each other.
Mechanically, they are all very, very simple. Simpler than any IC car.
Compact wishbone suspension is used on pretty much every one of them, since all EVs are city cars, and you want as much space for batteries as possible, and as lower centre of mass as possible
And since all EVs are very heavy, you don't have much innovations in body design either, it just needs to be very strong, and very rigid to securely accommodate the battery pack.
This way the vision of "White Label, off the shelf cars" produced by some Foxconn like maker swallowing the market is very much real.
Porsche and certain other manufacturers will always be handling kings. (even if the lower center of gravity, means that all electric cars kind of handle well)
> Manufacturing consistency and quality
We see Tesla struggle with this, But, Toyota and Honda have this down to a science like no other manufacturer. There is a reason the Civic/Corolla/Camry/Accord quadrilateral is impenetrable.
Excellence in manufacturing also saves a lot of money.
So called super car brands will pivot to market on subjective qualities like “handling” since they can no longer complete on performance.
But until that point, it's all based on luxury status and branding (imho).
I think it would be a shame if all EVs ended up being essentially clones of each other. Maybe as the technology matures we'll start to see more variety of vehicles like pickup trucks (whether the cybertruck or just an ordinary pickup), off-road vehicles, and so on. I'd love to see someone start making EVs with manual transmissions, for people who actually like driving stickshift, but that seems to be an unpopular opinion.
The “soul” term is marketing BS like the soul patch mustang logo Ford decided to sticker on to the chin of its EV.
If you ever see one, look at the front. It’s totally got a soul patch. Eww.
As far as engine noise or rumble and that wonderful visceral feeling of the pistons and crankshaft throwing their weight around, I would agree there is something utterly cool about that. As there is of the clip-clop of a cantering horse as well. But again, calling it “soul” is just clever deceptive words that marketing came up with.
If any car has soul, it’s one where the founder poured his passion for years, nearly went bankrupt, persevered, redefined the limits, led a workforce that did the effort of a lifetime to help make the company survive and push out its most successful product that continues to be unmatched, all driven by a mission... now THAT is a story of soul.
The gas car companies want to claim the word for themselves though, just because they have a nice rumble and some fire and smoke, but more because they realize they are in trouble. Fire and smoke are romantic, no doubt, but you can’t replace that with a soul patch.
Geopolitics will matter: People and their governments will find further regulation appealing also because it can be a tool to drive local employment in manufacturing and related business. If a car manufactured in China, or using batteries manufactured in China, has an inherently worse CO2 footprint for a European consumer (because of the coal-heavy energy mix in China and the energy footprint of shipping to Europe) and this is penalized by regulations, you get factories in Europe as a result. This build-out will take some decades to settle, and there may yet be new tech surprises along the way that change the game.
As for car tech itself becoming a commodity - this has been the case for a long time already, even with ICE technology. Automotive supply chains are famously broad, long and overlapping between OEMs. Bob Lutz (GM, BMW, Chrysler, ...) said in 2015 "There are no bad cars anymore, only bad designs".
There's still tech competition for sure, and it's fun to follow - the Mercedes EQS will outdo the Model S in most respects and raise the bar of what's possible with an EV, heating things up a bit at the top end. Progress continues, egged on by regulations if nothing else, and by consumers seeking the best value for their money. But if you don't sweat the details, the good-enough options are plentiful.
Off the top of my head: brand reputation, looks, reliability, quality/roominess/aesthetics of the interior, misc. features, fuel efficiency, and obviously price.
For electric vehicles, all those same things still apply, with fuel efficiency being replaced by the range/energy density of the battery and efficiency of the motors to get more range from that battery.
Given this model shift, what differentiators exist? In a service world, it's all about timeliness, fitness for purpose, driver professionalism and cost. Nobody gives a shit about which hardware widget the manufacturer stuffed in the body anymore. It's literally irrelevant. They've lost the customer to the service provider, in the same way that telcos lost their customers to mobile device manufacturers. Telco data was commodified and SMS and phone use nosedived, just as vehicles are now commodified and demand for abnormal features is surely dwindling. Smart manufacturers will become the service provider, thereby vertically integrating to gain maximum profit, at the same time removing old customer-facing assumptions around vehicle maintenance and related logistics paths to minimize downtime and cut costs. Driving, at least in cities, will be seen as something poor people do to earn/save money. Fully autonomous EV fleet maintenance stations by 2035.
I believe low-cost "city shopping bag" is the future of electric cars and biggest market. And if some sort of modular platform emerges, it will dominate the market. It may even be required by law (like EU requires USB chargers on phones).
I am from EU, but I believe China, India, Russia markets are similar. Look at Dacia Spring or Citroen AMI for examples.
One big thing is that they are closed ecosystems and you can't really modify or work on your car. In some cases, it seems that they make it intentionally difficult to fix it modify the vehicle, like Tesla.
I think options are another big thing that falls under this. They do have a bunch of options, but there aren't any stripes down versions. I get that the margins are low so they have to offer higher end, more expensive vehicles. I just want a simple work truck...
Oh, and physical buttons/switches for vehicle controls.
With only electric vehicles the air will cease to be continually poisoned by emissions and then roads and streets will start to move indoors. Covered roads will become practical with electric only vehicles and the majority of those e-vehicles will be a lot smaller than the current average ICE car because electric technologies make smaller vehicles much more practical. The current boom in e-bikes is just the beginning of a major trend to electric smaller vehicles.
A lot more quickly than you expect ICE vehicles will be restricted to the highways and periphery of towns and cities because they'll be too big, heavy and poisonous. In a word they'll become unsafe for urban transport and our cities will become much more healthy and livable.
Hopefully Biden's infrastructure push will help the industry consolidate into a standard that works as well as Supercharger, but for all EVs. Going on a road trip in a non-Tesla EV requires a lot of planning and a little bit of luck, since you've got to make sure you can find Level 3 chargers along the way and hope they're actually operational. IMO one of the goals should be to put good L3 chargers pretty much everywhere a gas station is today. The fact that this isn't already happening suggests that this simply isn't profitable (not enough demand, expense of installation).
Here's What The World's Cheapest Electric Car Is Like To Drive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GG1RC7GV0Y
You can already order one of these golf-kart like cars from China for less than $5,000 shipped. An easy to mass produce skateboard platform is bound to emerge, so basically who ever has the cheapest reasonably good batteries and marketing wins.
Thus, there will always be a diverse set of EVs to choose from, catering to different market segments.
What might be interesting is that currently new engines are a huge investment because of all the emissions compliance work, but that doesn’t seem to exist with electric drivetrains, so there might be a lot of interesting quick iteration there.
If everything goes fully electric, we'll just be back into pre-2000 territory, where every car was ICE and they differentiated on handling, interior features, styling, and engine power.
https://siamagazin.com/a-self-balancing-two-wheeled-motorcyc...
Creates a neater interface for various subsystems as well. Rather than centralizing all the signals and doing it there.
The advertising industry has made billions and billions trying to convince very similar products are the unique and different.
RC and Wendy's immediately came to mind.
basically being able to make a 6-7 hour drive without stopping would be great for beach trips without having to worry about finding a charger halfway through your trip.
charge before you go, charge after you get to your destination would be ideal
Let's me take a step back in time and talk about a different domain.
I've been flying electric powered RC planes and helicopters since the early 80's. Back then it was very rare to see people at flying fields with electrics. I was usually the only one at a field with 20 to 30 flyers. In fact, I used to design and manufacture motor controllers because the available ESC's were shit. The point is, it was "the early years".
All we could use back then was Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) cells. They could deliver the necessary current, yet imposed a size and weight penalty. My most powerful plane used a pack consisting of 27 NiCd cells. It was a rocketship and could go straight up at an impressive rate, but the thing was heavy (don't remember, I think it was about 8 lbs).
Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMh) came along and looked promising but didn't really make a huge difference, certainly not for high current, high performance applications --which is most of what I was interested in.
And then we got Lithium-Polymer (LiPo). This was a technology that delivered (just guessing) twice the volumetric energy density, which meant a battery half the volume and half the weight of the old NiCd pack delivered substantially more energy while being able to supply high currents. This is when my planes went from 27 NiCd cells to a LiPo pack with just six cells. My helicopters use one or two of the same packs. And, of course, LiPo's made drones possible due to the same energy/weight ratio.
Back to cars.
This is it. Energy storage technology with twice the volumetric energy density is where the inflection point will be. Same metrics, half the battery pack volume and mass, two to four times the energy storage capacity.
And yet it doesn't end there. There are two more factors. Cost and charging.
Cost should be self-evident. The battery pack represents a massive portion of the COGS of an electric vehicle. This needs to be cut in half and, eventually, half again.
Charging is the elephant in the room. This is particularly evident during emergencies. I still remember when fires here in CA caused massive problems for electric vehicle owners. One of the worse things one could face as a parent is having an emergency and realizing that your vehicles are range limited and impossible to charge.
And so this key differentiator is both an internal and external factor.
I think the external is portion is easy to understand: The installed based of gas stations dwarfs the installed base of electric charging stations. Not only that, even if we had the same number of available electric stations, the realities of charging are not in favor of electric vehicles. This, once again, has two elements to it.
First, batteries take a long time to charge. If we establish this at 10x fuel filling time (3 minutes for gasoline, 30 minutes for charging), this means you need 10x the charging systems per station in order to service the same number of vehicles per unit time when compared to a typical gas station. In most places this is impossible.
Even if you could install 10x the charging systems in order to be able to service the same number of vehicles, you now face the next --and very serious-- problem: Energy demand.
Stated in the simplest possible terms: A rapid charging network with enough capacity to service a non-trivial number of electric vehicles would require an equally non-trivial amount of energy production capacity increase.
The only way I see a path to deliver this would be nuclear energy. In a place like the US you would probably have to build somewhere in the order of twenty new nuclear power plants distributed across the nation. Each country in Europe would likely need a few. Asia, a bunch of them.
Here's where the electric equation collides with reality: Transition to electric vehicles today, with current technology, and face the reality that we might actually produce far more pollution due to the massive step change in energy requirement.
Distributed solar network? Beyond massive, whatever that means. What's the energy, pollution and CO2 footprint of what it would take to manufacture, I don't know, 10x the solar panels we make today? Not to mention the resource utilization, mining and environmental damage this might cause. Likely not a solution. I think nuclear is the only solution. And, at least in the US, it could take thirty years to build just one nuclear plant; with twenty being almost unimaginable. If we started today the energy infrastructure would not be there until 2050. We should have gotten serious about nuclear energy a few decades ago.
This simple analysis tells me that the key differentiator (and the missing link to achieve mass transition to electric vehicles) has got to be something fundamentally different from the battery technology we use today. I think this means some kind of a fuel cell-type technology where recharging can be delivered in a few minutes through the exchange or replacement of a consumable/recyclable/rechargeable liquid.
I am not sure what else would make sense.
And, of course, all of this has to be evaluated on the basis of whether or not we are actually making the world a better place. It is easy to think that electrics make things better while not realizing that electrics at scale --done wrong-- could actually bring forth an ecological disaster the likes of which we have not seen yet.
Again, think 1.4 billion electric vehicles, don't think about your Tesla on your driveway. You have the ability to have that vehicle on your driveway because the source and nature of the energy it requires to operate doesn't quite move the needle, in terms of local or global scale. Also, the origins and source of that energy can remain, shall we say, conveniently ignored.
I am NOT down on electrics. We were ready to buy a couple of Teslas a few years back. When the California fires happened and we saw what was going on with Teslas we had to think things through. Living in fire and earthquake country you have to be aware of these things. We ultimately decided to wait until the infrastructure matured. Not the vehicles, the infrastructure. We want electric vehicles, but they cannot impose restrictions we don't currently have on their usage. That's our metric. Others are free to develop their own.
Which brings me to what I do not think is a key differentiator/technology for electrics to be successful: Self driving.
In my opinion this is a solution looking for a problem.
The evidence is simple: There are somewhere in the order of 1.4 billion cars on the road. People are driving them around every day. No problem to fix. For us this represents exactly 0% of the many variables involved in making a purchasing decision. It isn't important to most people (1.4 billion vehicles without it) and I don't think this is what will compel mass transition to a technology that currently has serious infrastructure issues.
If I have a normal car, and I'm wearing AR, I can re-skin it with unreal engine. The most interesting technologies aren't about transportation -- they're about human augmentation, transhumanism. A car is just too big to be a great augment. If I were CEO of Apple I would take a hard pass on "Apple Car" project and focus the company on AR.
Plus, cars are expensive. Not always a great investment, or necessary