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A lot of people who follow what's been happening with EVs think that certain legacy auto brands will evolve to survive as design and marketing organizations. (E
by stcredzero 5y ago
A lot of people who follow what's been happening with EVs think that certain legacy auto brands will evolve to survive as design and marketing organizations. (EDIT: Of EVs, specifically.) These companies will put their design on top of a skateboard/chassis designed and manufactured by another EV company, like Tesla. If brands don't survive as a separate (EDIT: EV) company, then they could also do this as a division of a parent auto company. This will probably happen to brands like Ferrari, Maserati, and Lamborghini.
Apple stands a good chance of breaking into that evolved form of the business. They are, after all, very good at marketing and design.
- baktubi 5y agoMy boobs will wiggle to-and-friggle. Wiggle they will wiggle. Electric vehicle jiggle. Wiggle the electric port bzzp. Downvote the shock goes, by the ever-too, over-too serious electric vehicle bzzps.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- BoorishBears 5y agoIt's hilarious reading comments like this. The car companies that have the supply chains, the know-how, and now the motivation to electrify (the key component previously missing), will somehow defer to Tesla to build their platforms. If Tesla can figure out how to turn their market cap larger than every other automaker into basic spare parts availability, that will be a starting point. - Also FYI, 2 out of 3 luxury manufacturers you mentioned already do that with established auto manufacturers The Maserati Ghibli platform can trace its roots to the Chrysler LX platform like most FCA products and is intermixed with Chrysler/Jeep parts Lamborghinis share platforms with various Audis Only Ferrari is really putting out really independent platforms
- matthewdgreen 5y agoI don’t know what supply chains the legacy automakers have, but it sure feels like they’re having trouble sourcing efficient batteries.
- BoorishBears 5y agoAre they? Or are they making cars that are less efficient, regardless of battery tech? The Taycan for example, is clearly not focused on being as efficient as possible. It's an opulent car with all the heavy soundproofing and insulation people buying these types of cars expect. The Mach E is probably the most normal looking EV suv, and it's Cd ends up being the highest of the bunch despite not even having door handles. I don't think efficiency is the big win people are acting like it is. Just like there are gas guzzlers and econoboxes that get miles and miles per gallon, there will be more or less efficient EVs. Efficiency by itself is not going to be a differentiator forever because past a certain range figure, most people's needs are met. From there "splurging" an extra 5 cents per mile to have their preferred car is not a problem
- jsight 5y agoI don't know why he used the term "efficient batteries". I don't really know what that means and basically agree with you. Ford doesn't have great driving efficiency, but it doesn't matter as they've solved for that by using a really big battery. However, they seem to be severely limited in production capacity due to the limited number of cells available. Right now, everyone other than Tesla seems to be hitting that issue, and Tesla is at least a year ahead. More if they can actually get the 4680 lines running on schedule, but that's a big if.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- matthewdgreen 5y agoThere is enough battery capacity to build plenty of Ford Mach-E's. But Ford can't afford to spend $100,000 to manufacture a $50K car, nor can they use recycled laptop batteries that make the car 1000lbs heavier. The problem here is sourcing batteries that are weight- and cost-efficient, and Tesla has been investing heavily in the production of such batteries.
- fomine3 5y agoSo using too much battery for car (or shortage of gigafactories) is current primary problem because EV production is constrained by battery supply, isn't it?
- mhh__ 5y agoI imagine Ferrari customers in particular would enjoy Silicon Valley chic and startup-quality fit and finish of a Tesla.
- stcredzero 5y agoI upvoted you. Tesla did indeed deserve to be called out for this. According to Sandy Munroe, they seem to have learned this lesson, though.
- rasz 5y agoYou would think that, yet this is what you get from Tesla in 2020 in NY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pg7JmKElUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pg7JmKElUw
- OnlineGladiator 5y ago> The car companies that have the supply chains, the know-how, and now the motivation to electrify The car companies supply chains are set up for ICE, not EV. Likewise, their know-how is also for ICE, not EV. It's like saying Kodak was in a prime position to take advantage of the digital camera (which they invented), but it was actually the opposite - they'd spent decades optimizing around a separate core technology and couldn't change until it was too late. I'm not a fan of Tesla for a myriad of reasons and I love cars. But the notion that traditional car companies can magically start cranking out profitable EVs (Tesla made most of their money from tax credits which are essentially gone now) is laughable.
- BoorishBears 5y agoDo people realize how little of a modern car's complexity is the powertrain? The eTron was built on a rework of the Audi platform that's in twelve ICEs before hosting it's first EV. I mean, there's a reason the manufacturers will give you a 100k mile powertrain warranty, but won't cover a broken cup holder past 40k. ICEs have been iterated to the point of boredom. Most engines today are 3rd or 4th generations of their original designs with emissions improvements and moderate power gains. Making flexible platforms, having a supply chain that isn't so starved they're actually able to provide parts post-sale (current global woes notwithstanding), things like that's... That's what make the notion that car manufacturers suddenly can't make cars just because the powertrain changed is what I find laughable. - Actually, funnily enough people don't realize this has actually happened before. 1970 Clean Air act and the 1970 oil crises might as well have been a "reset" in powertrain development. Many cars could no longer exist as they did, and manufacturers had to adjust to a completely new market, with new competition from efficient overseas competitors (who's efficient-focused powertrains previously had no place) Sound familiar? Some companies that were already floundering did fold. American Motors died off and Chrysler picked up the pieces. But for the most part the industry adjusted and moved on. Because at the end of the day the powertrain is just that, the powertrain. It's supposed to be boring for the manufacturers because people will put up with a infotainment system that can't play video games when you're parked, but they won't put up with an engine that works when it wants to.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
- while1fork 5y agoKoenigsegg does almost everything and has a lot of unique features like all carbon wheels.
- stcredzero 5y agoThe car companies that have the supply chains, the know-how, and now the motivation to electrify (the key component previously missing), will somehow defer to Tesla to build their platforms. That takes some doing, as GM is finding out with the Bolt EV catch-fire recall, costing them many 100's of millions. Even if they can source the batteries, and get to a minimum level of quality and dependability, they will probably still be far behind in terms of margins, power density, and efficiency -- for several years at least. Also FYI, 2 out of 3 luxury manufacturers you mentioned already do that with established auto manufacturers Indeed. And at this point, Tesla is the most established EV manufacturer.
- BoorishBears 5y agoLol those brands didn't randomly go to those manufacturers, Maserati is owned by FCA/"Stellantis" and Lamborghini is owned by VAG. I can't believe people are seriously entertaining the idea that a major auto manufacturer would need Tesla to make cars for them. At that point what is the manufacturer bringing? Tesla's totally-not-marketing has brought them more cachet than anyone "boring" like Ford or Toyota
- stcredzero 5y agoI can't believe people are seriously entertaining the idea that a major auto manufacturer would need Tesla to make cars for them. The trend I see, is that the more people know about what it takes to mass-manufacture an EV, the more they expect that legacy auto companies are going to turn to another manufacturer for the battery pack and the drivetrain. At that point what is the manufacturer bringing? The strength of the brand. It's hard to deny the brand strength of Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Maserati, and Lamborghini. People will pay ridiculous markups to own brands like that. This opens up the margins such companies would need to survive. Tesla's totally-not-marketing has brought them more cachet than anyone "boring" like Ford or Toyota Does Tesla have the equivalent cachet of Lamborghini? It's debatable, I think.
- BoorishBears 5y agoLuxury car brands are not major auto manufacturers by themselves, they're owned by them. A Rolls-Royce is a BMW. My M4 had RR chimes in it's hidden configuration settings. A Lamborghini is (usually these days) an Audi. The Urus is a Q8 and the Huracan is an R8 (or the other way around, hard to keep track at this point) A Maseratis has an infotainment system out of a Jeep Cherokee and shares transmission bugs with a Chrysler 300 Their brand cachet doesn't matter to this conversation because they're not the ones who control its application. The "boring" parent company will. And why will the parent company do that for their ultra-luxury brand that's all about image and not their normal cars? They won't. So the parent company needs to have a reason to go to Tesla. - A skateboard is not just a drivetrain, it's the entire platform. Manufacturers have just spent millions and billions in R&D to develop modular platforms that can do things like transition from ICE to BEV without feeling like an electrified ICE. They're going to throw that away? Because their margins on batteries aren't quite as good as Tesla? Lol if that's the case I think the last thing that helps margins is having someone else provide the whole platform.
- mhh__ 5y agoWhat's in it for Ferrari? Ferrari ship a few thousand cars a year, 10k tops, and much smaller companies already make electric supercars.
- Dumblydorr 5y agoTesla isn't doing that and afaik has no plans to do so. They would much rather put their own fully integrated stack right onto their own skateboard and make the full profit. Elon is a huge fan of vertical integration, why would he change to help his competitors? Skateboards simply aren't that hard to make, the legacy makers will have them within a decade. They won't be as efficient or have large capacity as Tesla, because meanwhile Tesla will keep building on it's technical lead and stay on top for at least a few years, in my estimation. They'll potentially be lapped by miraculous new battery designs, but with current batteries? Who can top Tesla in the 2020s?
- mikepurvis 5y agoI'm also a bit skeptical about the skateboard hype. Like, wasn't this what the legacy auto manufacturers learned in the 90s as competition ramped up from Asia, that it really wasn't worth the diversion of having half a dozen barely-differentiated cars on the same "platform" being badged and marketed in different ways (think Taurus/Sable/Continental, etc). Basically, all the specs that matter will be coming from the skateboard as far as performance, battery life, handling, and so on. What incentive is there to try to build a new box when someone else is making the chocolates?
- darkwater 5y agoKia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 5 have the same skateboard (today I learnt this naming), are obviusly 2 similar cars but have enough differences on the aestethic side to interest different people. External look is still a thing when choosing a car (right after the brand).
- quartesixte 5y agoExternal look can also affect drive handling (weight distribution, aero, general bulk/length concerns for city streets/parking)!
- oblio 5y ago> Like, wasn't this what the legacy auto manufacturers learned in the 90s as competition ramped up from Asia, that it really wasn't worth the diversion of having half a dozen barely-differentiated cars on the same "platform" being badged and marketed in different ways (think Taurus/Sable/Continental, etc). Volkswagen is a top 3 auto manufacturer and was top 1 recently. Volkswagen, Skoda, Seat, Audi go exactly against what you're saying.
- NortySpock 5y agoAlso, sort of related: earliest concepts I've heard of for the Skateboard model of EVs was ~2002 by GM. https://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2002-10/hy-wire-act/ https://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2002-10/hy-wire-act/ https://books.google.com/books?id=aQAAAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA49&dq=%22popular%20science%22%20%22skateboard%22%20%22garage%22%20%22electric%22&pg=PA49#v=onepage&q=%22popular%20science%22%20%22skateboard%22%20%22garage%22%20%22electric%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=aQAAAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA49&dq=%...
- bydo 5y agoFerarri and Maserati are already part of Fiat. Lamborghini is owned by Volkswagen. Edit: My mistake, Maserati is owned by Stellantis, which is the parent company of Fiat's parent company, and Ferrari went independent in 2015. So this does still apply to Ferrari.
- stcredzero 5y agoIf brands don't survive as a separate company, then they could also do this as a division of a parent auto company.
- Someone 5y agoI think it’s more that more and more brands will become just that: brands owned by a much larger group. There’s a lot of consolidation going on in the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSA_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSA_Group already had quite a few brands, but merged with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Chrysler_Automobiles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Chrysler_Automobiles to form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellantis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellantis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group similarly, has quite a few brands. Ferrari at sometime was part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Chrysler_Automobiles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Chrysler_Automobiles, the predecessor of PSA group. Maserati already is part of a larger group. It is owned by Stellantis. Lamborghini is owned by Audi, which is owned by Volkswagen.
- reducesuffering 5y agoOh man, Stellantis... It's like all the most soon-to-be-obsolete automakers decided to band together to form a last ditch effort in the soon-to-be-EV world but only made it easier to short their collective downfall. Chrysler really never even close to recovered from 2008.
- csmeder 5y agoThe sale of Volvo to Geely blows my mind in particular when you realize $1.5b is only 30,000 BTC. Geely bought Volvo for the cost of 6 pizzas [1]. [1] Ford paid $6.5 billion for Volvo in 1999, ten years later, in 2010 10,000 Bitcoins was worth 2 large pizzas, and 8 years later in 2018 Ford sold Volvo to Chinese carmaker Geely for $1.5 billion (30,000 BTC by today's valuation).
- gorbypark 5y agoI know it’ll probably never happen but I always thought it would be cool if there was an industry standard (or probably a few for different wheel bases) skateboard to cab interface/mounting points so that one could buy a skateboard from a choice of manufacturers and then pick a cab from another. I’m guessing the skateboard manufacturers would eventually consolidate into just a few, but cab makers could range from cheaper imports all the way up to super high end custom built ones. The ability to upgrade either a skateboard or cab independently from each other would be pretty sweet, too.