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So 'basic' electric vehicles have lower manufacturing hurdles to overcome?

• frik 10y ago
  Which hurdles? Electric vehicles are a solved problem. It's just the battery and the electronic to charge the battery were innovation is really needed to extend the reach. In NYC around 1910 all Cabs were full electric, the first official car of an Us president was an electric one. The post services in various countries used full electric cars up to the 1970s. Overall an electric vehicle has less parts and is simpler to design and produce. In China you see already many electric cars and even big Chinese built all electric SUVs. It seems like certain manufacturer of the old age will face reality very soon. There will be a disruption of the market, and they waited for decades and now they will loose a lot of market share.
  • kwhitefoot 10y ago
    And milk floats in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ethical-hipsters-are-driving-return-of-electric-milk-floats-6cdv5tdjw https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ethical-hipsters-are-driv....
• HenryBemis 10y ago
  "Hurdles" is too ambiguous and vague. I think the issue was cost and not application of existing technologies. If specs do not require for a 800km autonomy, max speed of 170km/h and no leather seats, no auto-pilot, no high-end stereo system, and so on, then yes ("money" or lack of IT is a big "hurdle".. no?)
• LordHeini 10y ago
  No the vehicle has to fit their specs which are rather specific. Some specs are seemingly "low tec" in some areas but not in others. For example range:a lot of routes do not exceed 50 km but standard manufacturers cramp as much range as possible into their vehicles thus driving the weight and price up. A delivery vehicle like this does not need the range but good luck telling that your average car manufacturer who also has to think about other customers (who usually care a lot about range). Then the vehicle has a hight floor making it back friendly for the delivery person which is something unwanted in your average delivery truck. It limits the height of the goods you can transport but the Post does not deliver packages that huge. This is a special vehicle for a certain purpose and no commerial manufacturer had interest in developing something like this.
  • jacquesm 10y ago
    Sounds like an excellent opportunity for a customization of an existing vehicle.
    • anentropic 10y ago
      not if existing vehicle is already more expensive than it needs to be, due to meeting non-requirements for DHL
      • jacquesm 10y ago
        They're charging 32000 euros for those things, that's a lot of budget to work with.
        • allengeorge 10y ago
          For an already customized version. Once you start by buying a stock electric vehicle you've already blown a large chunk of your budget.
          • jacquesm 10y ago
            http://business.citroen.nl/bedrijfswagens/citroen-berlingo-electric.html http://business.citroen.nl/bedrijfswagens/citroen-berlingo-e... Which leaves 8K to do the customization and would not require the capital investment, on top of that they would have a much higher resale value when no longer needed.
            • josefx 10y ago
              The largest model of that has less load volume than the smallest "Work" model. Customizing that is going to cost.
            • Klinky 10y ago
              Modifying 10,000 vehicles will certainly require large capital investment.
• Sanddancer 10y ago
  Not really basic. It's being designed as an urban delivery vehicle, so built for lots of starts and stops, carrying a half a ton of cargo, and be able to maneuver city streets. Those sorts of conditions mean you're going to need a vehicle with a beefy chassis, beefy suspension, engine with a lot of torque and to be comfortable to get in and out of several dozen times a day. Those really aren't all that basic; you're building a freight platform with a wheelbase that's significantly smaller than the traditional freight vehicle. The US postal service is looking at building a similar vehicle to replace their iconic Grumman LLVs, and the entire cost of the program is expected to be into the billions of dollars. You'd be surprised how complicated "basic" can be.
• rodgerd 10y ago
  The Post can make an objective decision about how much range they actually need, while regular carmakers have to built range vastly higher than most buyers will ever use, because those buyers will worry about whether they'll need it once a year.