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I gotta say this makes a surprising amount of sense. - Turkey is the perfect size for a relatively beefy electric car battery to make through in one charge, ef

I gotta say this makes a surprising amount of sense. - Turkey is the perfect size for a relatively beefy electric car battery to make through in one charge, effectively removing the range anxiety. - This car will likely be immediately competitive in at least the Turkish market because Turkish taxes are crazy on transport. Gasoline is taxed at ~70%, cars are taxed at 68% (50% + 18% VAT). A domestic car will probably avoid the 50% on purchase and a domestic electric car will entirely avoid taxes on gas. Taxes make this a good deal at almost any price the average Turkish consumer can buy. - With the current very low, out of whack exchange rate (1USD:6TRY) this will also become competitive in at least Southern European markets fairly fast as well. - Since this is government sponsored they can also do a fairly fast rollout of electric charging stations by offering generous incentives. If that doesn’t work, they have the eminent domain hammer, and they will definitely just build it themselves as part of the electric service. - This also avoids the heavy industry required to build ICE cars, which has environmental costs. That cause is becoming popular with the electorate as well, exemplified in the stiff backlash against the country’s first nuclear reactor. - Lastly, Turkey has been building cars for the past 35 years and it’s gotten pretty good at it - many of the entry to mid level marques of European conglomerates are built in Turkish factories. This is an entry into luxury segment, it is not an entry into car manufacturing. That knowledge of being able to build safe and solid European cars already exists in there. If you’ve visited Europe, you likely already ridden a Turkish-made car (taxis) and if you live in Europe, chances are you might own one without knowing. - As a bonus point, I would say the choice of an Italian designer over a Turkish one bodes well for the effort because somebody actually made a level headed, reasoned call on this and not a nationalistic one.

decafbad 7y ago
The company will build a generic charging infrastructure in return to state support it gets. This way people can see advantages of electric vehicles. We expect a huge impact on fossil fuel dependency.
latchkey 7y ago
I went to Turkey in 2010. Drove about 2500km around the country. One thing that stood out to me was the amount of work going into making really epic stretches of highways. I was driving on 6+ lane highways that were so new, there wasn't even stripes on the roads. It is neat to understand now that they were also building the infrastructure to support these cars.
ptaipale 7y ago
If Turkey intends to sell domestic cars at lower taxes than imported / ones manufactured by foreign companies in Turkey, then it can expect repercussions in its free trade deals with other countries. Not that Erdogan couldn't have such arrogant ideas, but it's not going to fly like that. Also, I don't get that idea about Turkey being perfect size for making through its area with an electric car. Turkey is not a small country, Istanbul-Ankara is 450 km, Ankara-Gaziantep is 700 km, and that's not yet even close to "through" the country. Not that this is necessarily so relevant.
- yesplorer 7y ago
  They don't have to do anything special. Once it's made in their country, import duties a will not be applied, just like it works everywhere else. That is a significant discount on the price.
  - chipperyman573 7y ago
    I think GP is saying that other countries will charge similar tariffs on imported Turkish cars
  - sudosysgen 7y ago
    So far, these are taxes, not tariffs. If they want to charge it to only foreign cars, then they would be tariffs. If they are tariffs, then that will fuck their trade deals, and their domestic car industry. Which they are not in position to suffer.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Import duties are tariffs. The only way it wouldn’t be a tariff is if it applied to domestic cars as well.
- rolleiflex 7y ago
  Turkey has two population clusters, one in the western side of the country along the Istanbul - Ankara - Izmir triangle, whose population is largely Turkish and connected to Europe. The second, much poorer population cluster (1/3 the size of the first) is in the Kurdish-dominated southeast whose economy is based on its interaction with the Middle East. As long as you don’t jump clusters you’re very well within the range of this car, which seems to have a 300mi range in theory. It remains to be seen how this will work in reality, but on paper it sounds plausible.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
There is a huge difference between being the country someone else manufactures their cars in, and doing your own. Even if they are requiring IP-transferring joint ventures like the Chinese do, it will still take a long time for them to develop their own brands to export quality. The Japanese has a distinct advantage in that they didn’t go the joint venture route and developed their own brands directly.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  And that route is pretty much closed today. If you want to go and re-do the Japanese path starting with motorcycles and then working your way up through simple cars and then more and more luxurious and complex versions then today's 'simple' car is much more complex than the simple cars that Japan started out with. The barrier to entry is much higher than it was in the 50's and the 60's, this goes for any manufacturer. Witness the amount of crap leveled at Tesla for fit-and-finish when none of that would have even been a footnote for a new car launch several decades ago. Just for a reminder of how bad it really was: at the end of the British Leyland body assembly line men with large hammers would whack the doors from below to make them close properly. Body panels were simply not made to the same standard that they are today and people didn't care that much about such stuff.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    >at the end of the British Leyland body assembly line men with large hammers would whack the doors from below to make them close properly. Not that your point about inherent complexity doesn't stand but having to whack body panels to make them fit just means the dies are at the end of their lives. They certainly would have fit without mechanical persuasion when the dies were new. The hood of any late 90s International S-series is a good example of this.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      There is a reason why almost all British car companies went out of business.
tus88 7y ago
Don't you need a rich economy for advanced products to be successful and profitable?
- jacobush 7y ago
  They are a pretty rich economy, despite Erdogans best efforts to botch it.
  - elfexec 7y ago
    Since 2003 when erdogan came to power, the turkish economy grew 4 or 5X. There are lost of areas to criticize when it comes to erdogan, but the economy really ain't it.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      As I said, despite his actions. It’s not like putting 100k political opponents in prison is a boost to the economy. (And to teleforce, ad hominem? Really? Someone is hot for autocrats. That is how you do an ad hominem.)
      - elfexec 7y ago
        > As I said, despite his actions. And I said since 2003. Before the coup attempt ( in 2016 ), his actions boosted turkey economy 5X. It has slipped since the coup attempt but that's to be expected. Political stability is required for economy prosperity. > It’s not like putting 100k political opponents in prison is a boost to the economy. What should he do with coup plotters? Throw them a parade?
        jacobush 7y ago
        Do you really believe he found 100k coup plotters overnight.
        rth 7y ago
mprev 7y ago
Can you clarify your point about making it through Turkey on one charge. It’s around 1,000 miles wide so I’m not sure I understand.
jacquesm 7y ago
> With the current very low, out of whack exchange rate (1USD:6TRY) this will also become competitive in at least Southern European markets fairly fast as well. That depends on how it will fare in the crash tests. here is some more video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLCJpE0OMfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLCJpE0OMfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv4bYn-JitA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv4bYn-JitA One comment on that last video: "The country owes $ 500 billion to the outside world. It is a bit of a dream to give 22 billion Turkish liras and establish the factory of such a car and put it into mass production. Not very convincing. Because such games are played by the government in our country for years. They issue a new domestic car before each election. Whenever we launch a new vehicle, we know that there is an early election in the near future." Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOGG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOGG "The first two prototypes were produced in Italy by Pininfarina. The car manufacturing plant will be in Gemlik, Bursa."
- rth 7y ago
  First, 22 billion Turkish lira investment coming from local billionaires/companies according to newspapers, not from states pocket. The biggest problem of Turkish economy is the lack of gasoline and imported cars. The country pay $20B for gasoline and 76% of the gasoline consumed for cars (remaining percentage for airline and sea vehicles). They import over 500M cars every year. Probably $30B to $40B goes to imported cars (it would be over $100B including taxes) These issues, makes the negative trade gap in the balance sheet. Overall, seems producing electric car will help a lot for Turkish economy, and Turkey might pay it's debt very short period by this step.
  - sobani 7y ago
    > They import over 500M cars every year. Turkey has a population of 82M, so this seems unlikely.
    - rth 7y ago
      Thanks for pointing out, should be "over 500k annually"
ineedasername 7y ago
The problem I see is the taxes themselves. If they are making purchase and use of vehicles p prohibitively expensive, they are too high and are inhibiting growth and quality of life. Other car companies probably already reach a higher cost-quality balance than Turkey will get. There's something to be said for the economic stimulus of home grown industry, but you can also get a lot of that by working with a big manufacturer on a custom design built for & in your own country.
- megablast 7y ago
  > they are too high and are inhibiting growth and quality of life If they are making cars more expensive, they are improving quality of life. Less death, less pollution, less huge cost of extra traffic and roads and hospitals. Turkey has a fantastic bus system with very comfortable buses more like airplanes (they have a host to bring tea, and have tv's in every chair).
  - st1ck 7y ago
    I'd rather prefer to have WC on a bus than tea. I did appreciate electric outlets though.
  - Marsymars 7y ago
    > If they are making cars more expensive, they are improving quality of life. Less death, less pollution, less huge cost of extra traffic and roads and hospitals. That's assuming that they're bringing the expense of cars more in line with their true cost including negative externalities. Once they're increasing the expense beyond that, it's a net QoL decrease.
agumonkey 7y ago
I'm shocked it never occured to me that big countries were impeding EV growth .. interesting note.
- rolleiflex 7y ago
  I’ve always thought this is quite similar to the wireless service. Smaller, densely populated European countries (compared to the size of the US) can much more quickly deliver new technologies at a much cheaper cost compared to the US, which has to basically cover half a continent of sparsely populated towns of several hundred people 50 miles across and a gaping nothing in between. As a result, cell service is 5-10x cheaper for the same amount of LTE data in Turkey compared to the US. For example, the last time I was there, 15gb LTE was about $7 pre-paid. The same kind of penetration efficiency is in play when you’re trying to bootstrap a whole new infrastructure network like electric car charging stations.
  - netcan 7y ago
    Communication infrastructure is more of a "US did bad" scenario than an "other countries did good" one. US policy people were tied down to various abstract philosophical/economic ideas (and their refutations) which made comms, especially cellular services generally more expensive than other places. Coarse theory and such. It's partly cyclical. Following the antitrust actions (Bell etc), the US had a great Telecom market. In the 90s, compared to almost any other country, US telecom service was amazing. Most other countries were highly ideological about "key industries" like telecommunications and it resulted in a mess. In the cellular/broadband age, the situation reversed. Turkey is more of the "norm." US is the outlier.
csomar 7y ago
I'll believe it when I see it but I'd not be very surprised if they pull this off. Turkey has been able to pull off lots of giant infrastructure projects like the new Airport, Metros, Highways, Bridges, etc... I think the government is very functional from that aspect.
- roberson87 7y ago
  Just came back from Turkey and have to agree. The new airport is excellent and they are currently building a new metro to/from airport. I was surprised at how well run some of the government services are. Just wish more people spoke English.
  - xenospn 7y ago
    I crossed Turkey years ago (back in 2005-6) from Georgia all the way to Istanbul. Even then, they had very impressive freeways crossing very difficult terrain, that must have costa fortune to build and maintain.
buboard 7y ago
What's the electric grid situation in turkey? Can it sustain substantial car loads, and would this work outside big cities?
- rolleiflex 7y ago
  Disclaimer: not an expert. It does have a decent, modern baseline grid running at 220v (EU standard). This is more amenable to EV than US 110v, but otherwise insignificant. A nontrivial portion of the base demand is supplied by hydroelectric dams, thus renewable, some old coal plants as generators of last resort, largely being replaced by natural gas plants for environmental and efficiency reasons. A new nuclear plant is going online in the next few years in Sinop. I don’t think load created by EVs would make a significant difference. It’s a developed country connected into the European grid, if it can’t generate it’ll buy from its neighbours and sell to its citizens at a premium.
  - BrandoElFollito 7y ago
    Nitpick: EU standard for tension is 230V (used to be 220V)
    - rolleiflex 7y ago
      My apologies, you are correct. Turkey is also 230V it appears. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/World_Map_of_Mains_Voltages_and_Frequencies%2C_Detailed.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/World_Ma...
aphextron 7y ago
Where are they getting the batteries? Electric cars are an extremely simple, mature technology that is decades old. Building one isn't hard. The real trick is high volume production of high capacity lithium ion batteries, and the associated pack technology. This is why the Europeans are still massively behind Japan, Korea, and the US (Tesla) with EVs. They can't get enough cells to manufacture cars in high enough volume to be profitable, because they are simply buying them from LG Chem and Panasonic. If Turkey isn't investing billions into battery production, then the whole endeavor is a pointless prestige project.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  Don't really understand the point about autarky. Sure you can build all the wheel yourself but historically that haven't made competitive industry, rather, it made horribly inefficient state owned enteprise and produced extremely poor product. And it's not like global battery supply is monopolized - you can get battery packs from Panasonic, BYD or LG Chem, and it will be both cheaper and better than whatever Turkey can come up in a few year.
- rth 7y ago
  Zorlu Enerji (It's a well known Turkish energy company as well as part of the TOGG) already invested 4.5 billion USD to build up a battery factory together with Chinese GSR Capital. It was some years ago IIRC
  - olivermarks 7y ago
    https://www.dailysabah.com/technology/2018/02/27/turkeys-zorlu-chinas-gsr-capital-sign-45b-deal-for-battery-production https://www.dailysabah.com/technology/2018/02/27/turkeys-zor... As with Tesla's Panasonic partnership the huge Chinese investment in battery tech defines who really steers these early days attempts at mass market EV's
throwawayEV 7y ago
> - Turkey is the perfect size for a relatively beefy electric car battery to make through in one charge, effectively removing the range anxiety. I would also like to buy one 2.000 km battery. Where are they sold and what are they made of? > - Lastly, Turkey has been building cars for the past 35 years and it’s gotten pretty good at it - many of the entry to mid level marques of European conglomerates are built in Turkish factories. This is an entry into luxury segment, it is not an entry into car manufacturing. That knowledge of being able to build safe and solid European cars already exists in there. If you’ve visited Europe, you likely already ridden a Turkish-made car (taxis) and if you live in Europe, chances are you might own one without knowing. Having been working for large OEMs (Bosch/Continental - the primary components such as brakes, infotainments, sensors, etc., essentially the Legos that all "completely different" marques use to put their cars together, regardless whether being an EV/ICE/flying saucer/whatever), I cannot see how being a manufacture for a foreign car brand helps in any way in building your own car. Have you ever been in a car factory? It is full of bio-robots. Go here, press this button, put the torque wrench on this until it makes "wrrrrr" and that's it. Yes, you save pennies on low-skilled labor to staff your factory, but you need a complete different skillset to start producing your own car. I'm not familiar with what is actually being done in Turkey, maybe they have some awesome R&D, but using an argument like "everybody has already driven a Turkey-made car" is like saying "country X can start its own space program, because major LEO launch paths go over that country, so every rocket has flown through there"... No offense to Turkey, I'm from a (different) country where many foreign brands assemble their cars too, and it is just that, trained assemblers, not at all helpful at launching your own brand/model.
- alanbernstein 7y ago
  Are you saying that there is no advantage to having experience in designing and operating a car factory? The stories about Tesla seem to provide arguments both for and against that idea. They made choices for speed and efficiency that no other manufacturer would have tried. Those tradeoffs seem to have paid off so far, but not without some significant cost. It seems plausible that a car maker starting from scratch might make a simple, dumb mistake, that totally compromises the reliability of the car.

decafbad 7y ago

The company will build a generic charging infrastructure in return to state support it gets. This way people can see advantages of electric vehicles. We expect a huge impact on fossil fuel dependency.

latchkey 7y ago

I went to Turkey in 2010. Drove about 2500km around the country. One thing that stood out to me was the amount of work going into making really epic stretches of highways. I was driving on 6+ lane highways that were so new, there wasn't even stripes on the roads. It is neat to understand now that they were also building the infrastructure to support these cars.

ptaipale 7y ago

If Turkey intends to sell domestic cars at lower taxes than imported / ones manufactured by foreign companies in Turkey, then it can expect repercussions in its free trade deals with other countries. Not that Erdogan couldn't have such arrogant ideas, but it's not going to fly like that. Also, I don't get that idea about Turkey being perfect size for making through its area with an electric car. Turkey is not a small country, Istanbul-Ankara is 450 km, Ankara-Gaziantep is 700 km, and that's not yet even close to "through" the country. Not that this is necessarily so relevant.

yesplorer 7y ago
They don't have to do anything special. Once it's made in their country, import duties a will not be applied, just like it works everywhere else. That is a significant discount on the price.
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  I think GP is saying that other countries will charge similar tariffs on imported Turkish cars
- sudosysgen 7y ago
  So far, these are taxes, not tariffs. If they want to charge it to only foreign cars, then they would be tariffs. If they are tariffs, then that will fuck their trade deals, and their domestic car industry. Which they are not in position to suffer.
- kortilla 7y ago
  Import duties are tariffs. The only way it wouldn’t be a tariff is if it applied to domestic cars as well.
rolleiflex 7y ago
Turkey has two population clusters, one in the western side of the country along the Istanbul - Ankara - Izmir triangle, whose population is largely Turkish and connected to Europe. The second, much poorer population cluster (1/3 the size of the first) is in the Kurdish-dominated southeast whose economy is based on its interaction with the Middle East. As long as you don’t jump clusters you’re very well within the range of this car, which seems to have a 300mi range in theory. It remains to be seen how this will work in reality, but on paper it sounds plausible.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

There is a huge difference between being the country someone else manufactures their cars in, and doing your own. Even if they are requiring IP-transferring joint ventures like the Chinese do, it will still take a long time for them to develop their own brands to export quality. The Japanese has a distinct advantage in that they didn’t go the joint venture route and developed their own brands directly.

jacquesm 7y ago
And that route is pretty much closed today. If you want to go and re-do the Japanese path starting with motorcycles and then working your way up through simple cars and then more and more luxurious and complex versions then today's 'simple' car is much more complex than the simple cars that Japan started out with. The barrier to entry is much higher than it was in the 50's and the 60's, this goes for any manufacturer. Witness the amount of crap leveled at Tesla for fit-and-finish when none of that would have even been a footnote for a new car launch several decades ago. Just for a reminder of how bad it really was: at the end of the British Leyland body assembly line men with large hammers would whack the doors from below to make them close properly. Body panels were simply not made to the same standard that they are today and people didn't care that much about such stuff.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >at the end of the British Leyland body assembly line men with large hammers would whack the doors from below to make them close properly. Not that your point about inherent complexity doesn't stand but having to whack body panels to make them fit just means the dies are at the end of their lives. They certainly would have fit without mechanical persuasion when the dies were new. The hood of any late 90s International S-series is a good example of this.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    There is a reason why almost all British car companies went out of business.

tus88 7y ago

Don't you need a rich economy for advanced products to be successful and profitable?

jacobush 7y ago
They are a pretty rich economy, despite Erdogans best efforts to botch it.
- elfexec 7y ago
  Since 2003 when erdogan came to power, the turkish economy grew 4 or 5X. There are lost of areas to criticize when it comes to erdogan, but the economy really ain't it.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    As I said, despite his actions. It’s not like putting 100k political opponents in prison is a boost to the economy. (And to teleforce, ad hominem? Really? Someone is hot for autocrats. That is how you do an ad hominem.)
    - elfexec 7y ago
      > As I said, despite his actions. And I said since 2003. Before the coup attempt ( in 2016 ), his actions boosted turkey economy 5X. It has slipped since the coup attempt but that's to be expected. Political stability is required for economy prosperity. > It’s not like putting 100k political opponents in prison is a boost to the economy. What should he do with coup plotters? Throw them a parade?
      - jacobush 7y ago
        Do you really believe he found 100k coup plotters overnight.
        rth 7y ago

mprev 7y ago

Can you clarify your point about making it through Turkey on one charge. It’s around 1,000 miles wide so I’m not sure I understand.

jacquesm 7y ago

> With the current very low, out of whack exchange rate (1USD:6TRY) this will also become competitive in at least Southern European markets fairly fast as well. That depends on how it will fare in the crash tests. here is some more video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLCJpE0OMfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLCJpE0OMfQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv4bYn-JitA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv4bYn-JitA One comment on that last video: "The country owes $ 500 billion to the outside world. It is a bit of a dream to give 22 billion Turkish liras and establish the factory of such a car and put it into mass production. Not very convincing. Because such games are played by the government in our country for years. They issue a new domestic car before each election. Whenever we launch a new vehicle, we know that there is an early election in the near future." Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOGG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOGG "The first two prototypes were produced in Italy by Pininfarina. The car manufacturing plant will be in Gemlik, Bursa."

rth 7y ago
First, 22 billion Turkish lira investment coming from local billionaires/companies according to newspapers, not from states pocket. The biggest problem of Turkish economy is the lack of gasoline and imported cars. The country pay $20B for gasoline and 76% of the gasoline consumed for cars (remaining percentage for airline and sea vehicles). They import over 500M cars every year. Probably $30B to $40B goes to imported cars (it would be over $100B including taxes) These issues, makes the negative trade gap in the balance sheet. Overall, seems producing electric car will help a lot for Turkish economy, and Turkey might pay it's debt very short period by this step.
- sobani 7y ago
  > They import over 500M cars every year. Turkey has a population of 82M, so this seems unlikely.
  - rth 7y ago
    Thanks for pointing out, should be "over 500k annually"

ineedasername 7y ago

The problem I see is the taxes themselves. If they are making purchase and use of vehicles p prohibitively expensive, they are too high and are inhibiting growth and quality of life. Other car companies probably already reach a higher cost-quality balance than Turkey will get. There's something to be said for the economic stimulus of home grown industry, but you can also get a lot of that by working with a big manufacturer on a custom design built for & in your own country.

megablast 7y ago
> they are too high and are inhibiting growth and quality of life If they are making cars more expensive, they are improving quality of life. Less death, less pollution, less huge cost of extra traffic and roads and hospitals. Turkey has a fantastic bus system with very comfortable buses more like airplanes (they have a host to bring tea, and have tv's in every chair).
- st1ck 7y ago
  I'd rather prefer to have WC on a bus than tea. I did appreciate electric outlets though.
- Marsymars 7y ago
  > If they are making cars more expensive, they are improving quality of life. Less death, less pollution, less huge cost of extra traffic and roads and hospitals. That's assuming that they're bringing the expense of cars more in line with their true cost including negative externalities. Once they're increasing the expense beyond that, it's a net QoL decrease.

agumonkey 7y ago

I'm shocked it never occured to me that big countries were impeding EV growth .. interesting note.

rolleiflex 7y ago
I’ve always thought this is quite similar to the wireless service. Smaller, densely populated European countries (compared to the size of the US) can much more quickly deliver new technologies at a much cheaper cost compared to the US, which has to basically cover half a continent of sparsely populated towns of several hundred people 50 miles across and a gaping nothing in between. As a result, cell service is 5-10x cheaper for the same amount of LTE data in Turkey compared to the US. For example, the last time I was there, 15gb LTE was about $7 pre-paid. The same kind of penetration efficiency is in play when you’re trying to bootstrap a whole new infrastructure network like electric car charging stations.
- netcan 7y ago
  Communication infrastructure is more of a "US did bad" scenario than an "other countries did good" one. US policy people were tied down to various abstract philosophical/economic ideas (and their refutations) which made comms, especially cellular services generally more expensive than other places. Coarse theory and such. It's partly cyclical. Following the antitrust actions (Bell etc), the US had a great Telecom market. In the 90s, compared to almost any other country, US telecom service was amazing. Most other countries were highly ideological about "key industries" like telecommunications and it resulted in a mess. In the cellular/broadband age, the situation reversed. Turkey is more of the "norm." US is the outlier.

csomar 7y ago

I'll believe it when I see it but I'd not be very surprised if they pull this off. Turkey has been able to pull off lots of giant infrastructure projects like the new Airport, Metros, Highways, Bridges, etc... I think the government is very functional from that aspect.

roberson87 7y ago
Just came back from Turkey and have to agree. The new airport is excellent and they are currently building a new metro to/from airport. I was surprised at how well run some of the government services are. Just wish more people spoke English.
- xenospn 7y ago
  I crossed Turkey years ago (back in 2005-6) from Georgia all the way to Istanbul. Even then, they had very impressive freeways crossing very difficult terrain, that must have costa fortune to build and maintain.

buboard 7y ago

What's the electric grid situation in turkey? Can it sustain substantial car loads, and would this work outside big cities?

rolleiflex 7y ago
Disclaimer: not an expert. It does have a decent, modern baseline grid running at 220v (EU standard). This is more amenable to EV than US 110v, but otherwise insignificant. A nontrivial portion of the base demand is supplied by hydroelectric dams, thus renewable, some old coal plants as generators of last resort, largely being replaced by natural gas plants for environmental and efficiency reasons. A new nuclear plant is going online in the next few years in Sinop. I don’t think load created by EVs would make a significant difference. It’s a developed country connected into the European grid, if it can’t generate it’ll buy from its neighbours and sell to its citizens at a premium.
- BrandoElFollito 7y ago
  Nitpick: EU standard for tension is 230V (used to be 220V)
  - rolleiflex 7y ago
    My apologies, you are correct. Turkey is also 230V it appears. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/World_Map_of_Mains_Voltages_and_Frequencies%2C_Detailed.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/World_Ma...

aphextron 7y ago

Where are they getting the batteries? Electric cars are an extremely simple, mature technology that is decades old. Building one isn't hard. The real trick is high volume production of high capacity lithium ion batteries, and the associated pack technology. This is why the Europeans are still massively behind Japan, Korea, and the US (Tesla) with EVs. They can't get enough cells to manufacture cars in high enough volume to be profitable, because they are simply buying them from LG Chem and Panasonic. If Turkey isn't investing billions into battery production, then the whole endeavor is a pointless prestige project.

Aperocky 7y ago
Don't really understand the point about autarky. Sure you can build all the wheel yourself but historically that haven't made competitive industry, rather, it made horribly inefficient state owned enteprise and produced extremely poor product. And it's not like global battery supply is monopolized - you can get battery packs from Panasonic, BYD or LG Chem, and it will be both cheaper and better than whatever Turkey can come up in a few year.
rth 7y ago
Zorlu Enerji (It's a well known Turkish energy company as well as part of the TOGG) already invested 4.5 billion USD to build up a battery factory together with Chinese GSR Capital. It was some years ago IIRC
- olivermarks 7y ago
  https://www.dailysabah.com/technology/2018/02/27/turkeys-zorlu-chinas-gsr-capital-sign-45b-deal-for-battery-production https://www.dailysabah.com/technology/2018/02/27/turkeys-zor... As with Tesla's Panasonic partnership the huge Chinese investment in battery tech defines who really steers these early days attempts at mass market EV's

throwawayEV 7y ago

> - Turkey is the perfect size for a relatively beefy electric car battery to make through in one charge, effectively removing the range anxiety. I would also like to buy one 2.000 km battery. Where are they sold and what are they made of? > - Lastly, Turkey has been building cars for the past 35 years and it’s gotten pretty good at it - many of the entry to mid level marques of European conglomerates are built in Turkish factories. This is an entry into luxury segment, it is not an entry into car manufacturing. That knowledge of being able to build safe and solid European cars already exists in there. If you’ve visited Europe, you likely already ridden a Turkish-made car (taxis) and if you live in Europe, chances are you might own one without knowing. Having been working for large OEMs (Bosch/Continental - the primary components such as brakes, infotainments, sensors, etc., essentially the Legos that all "completely different" marques use to put their cars together, regardless whether being an EV/ICE/flying saucer/whatever), I cannot see how being a manufacture for a foreign car brand helps in any way in building your own car. Have you ever been in a car factory? It is full of bio-robots. Go here, press this button, put the torque wrench on this until it makes "wrrrrr" and that's it. Yes, you save pennies on low-skilled labor to staff your factory, but you need a complete different skillset to start producing your own car. I'm not familiar with what is actually being done in Turkey, maybe they have some awesome R&D, but using an argument like "everybody has already driven a Turkey-made car" is like saying "country X can start its own space program, because major LEO launch paths go over that country, so every rocket has flown through there"... No offense to Turkey, I'm from a (different) country where many foreign brands assemble their cars too, and it is just that, trained assemblers, not at all helpful at launching your own brand/model.

alanbernstein 7y ago
Are you saying that there is no advantage to having experience in designing and operating a car factory? The stories about Tesla seem to provide arguments both for and against that idea. They made choices for speed and efficiency that no other manufacturer would have tried. Those tradeoffs seem to have paid off so far, but not without some significant cost. It seems plausible that a car maker starting from scratch might make a simple, dumb mistake, that totally compromises the reliability of the car.