[NickyC]

Fairly substantial news. With all the big players coming online, it will be interesting to see how Tesla can perform.

http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1...tric-car-brand

"Eventually, Volvo’s entire lineup will consist of pure electric cars. Just don’t expect the internal combustion engine to disappear from the lineup anytime soon."

[The Wind Breezes]

Sick!!! Maybe now I can get BMW to kick me a plugin-only i3 dirt cheap for around town.

[bimmer456]

Hopefully the hybrids will still have exhaust note. Likely the engines will be 4 cylinders so can't hope for too much unless there are performance exhausts that can make it sound better.

[The Wind Breezes]

If you actually like DRIVING, trust me, you'll love the silent torque of electric. Volvo aside, I mean. I doubt they'll have anything too cool no matter WHAT the powerplant.

If you just like to make noise, well, you can shoot guns, build a pulsejet, get a really powerful audio system, or buy a motorcycle but don't ride it just start it up and rev it a lot. lol

[bimmer456]

Originally Posted by The Wind Breezes

If you actually like DRIVING, trust me, you'll love the silent torque of electric. Volvo aside, I mean. I doubt they'll have anything too cool no matter WHAT the powerplant.

If you just like to make noise, well, you can shoot guns, build a pulsejet, get a really powerful audio system, or buy a motorcycle but don't ride it just start it up and rev it a lot. lol

No more manual transmission, unless they make it like the CRZ. Hybrids will be necessary until people no longer live in apartments. Can't imagine landords retrofitting the car ports with electric charging anytime soon or faster charge times at stations and more of them. The drawback of all electric like the tesla is you need to constantly charge the thing, even if you're not driving it for months, or the battery will die, so you're using electricity even when you're not driving. With an ICE, you also need to trickle charge the 12 volt battery, or you can get a new one but I don't think it use as much to trickle charge.

[Z K]

Originally Posted by bimmer456

No more manual transmission, unless they make it like the CRZ. Hybrids will be necessary until people no longer live in apartments. Can't imagine landords retrofitting the car ports with electric charging anytime soon or faster charge times at stations and more of them.

Public charging stations suck... there's usually a bunch of people charging and waiting to charge their cars - you never get to use them.

[bimmer456]

Originally Posted by Z K

Public charging stations suck... there's usually a bunch of people charging and waiting to charge their cars - you never get to use them.

Yes that's the problem with tesla super charges lol, long lines so they stopped being free. Every gas station needs to have charging stations and I don't see any at all the stations I've visited in the past year. And 30 minutes to charge your car is too long, battery swapping at every station isn't happening with different cars and batteries.

[mkoesel]

As noted in the article, Audi and Mercedes have said they are headed the same route (not on as aggressive a timetable as Volvo, however).

Mercedes new M256 inline 6 cylinder is a pretty neat design. I expect other manufacturers will adopt similar designs in the next few years including 48V systems. Soon, non-hybridized ICE engines or ICE powertrain setups will begin to disappear just as fast as naturally aspirated engines started disappearing seven or eight years ago. In other words we should expect to see this change occur pretty rapidly. Though not every engine has become turbocharged, I think that every engine will eventually be accompanied by some sort of electric motor. Probably by the end of next decade (end of 2029) we'll see this at 95%+ for light duty trucks and passenger cars.

[The Wind Breezes]

Originally Posted by bimmer456

No more manual transmission, unless they make it like the CRZ. Can't imagine landords retrofitting the car ports with electric charging anytime soon or faster charge times at stations and more of them. The drawback of all electric like the tesla is you need to constantly charge the thing, even if you're not driving it for months, or the battery will die, so you're using electricity even when you're not driving.

No more transmission period. One gear is quite doable with the power density and torque curve of electrics, and once again, it's freaking awesome. I don't see the charging thing as an issue whatsoever. For the small amount of relatively well off people in a given complex who own electric cars, they can figure out how and where to charge and install additional electrical as necessary. By the time poor people in apartments are buying electric vehicles, well, the infrastructure will already be taken care of. Presumably that's quite a ways down the road unless battery technology takes a massive leap forward or we subsidize the hell out of EVs.

The power depletion is an issue of the car's software. They'll fix that for sure if they haven't already. To generalize, you can keep a lithium battery stored around 50% state of charge for quite some time and it will not only not self discharge to any significant degree but the quality will be maintained. And I don't know about other cars, but Tesla has a pretty sick unconditional warranty on their batteries, I think it's 8 years.

[bimmer456]

Originally Posted by The Wind Breezes

No more transmission period. One gear is quite doable with the power density and torque curve of electrics, and once again, it's freaking awesome. I don't see the charging thing as an issue whatsoever. For the small amount of relatively well off people in a given complex who own electric cars, they can figure out how and where to charge and install additional electrical as necessary. By the time poor people in apartments are buying electric vehicles, well, the infrastructure will already be taken care of. Presumably that's quite a ways down the road unless battery technology takes a massive leap forward or we subsidize the hell out of EVs.

The power depletion is an issue of the car's software. They'll fix that for sure if they haven't already. To generalize, you can keep a lithium battery stored around 50% state of charge for quite some time and it will not only not self discharge to any significant degree but the quality will be maintained. And I don't know about other cars, but Tesla has a pretty sick unconditional warranty on their batteries, I think it's 8 years.

After 8 years, the battery costs $10-15K to replace, negating the cost saving of electric charging vs. gasoline or diesel. In the meantime, your battery is gradualy declining, losing power and range until it is deamed below acceptable standard per Tesla. The hybrid cars will likely still have a transmission unless they're like the konegsegg regera which I don't see happening soon.

[The Wind Breezes]

Originally Posted by bimmer456

After 8 years, the battery costs $10-15K to replace, negating the cost saving of electric charging vs. gasoline or diesel. In the meantime, your battery is gradualy declining, losing power and range until it is deamed below acceptable standard per Tesla. The hybrid cars will likely still have a transmission unless they're like the konegsegg regera which I don't see happening soon.

Except for very unusual situations nobody is buying electric cars for cost savings. That's just not going to happen until the batteries are better / cheaper. People buy electric cars because they're awesome. The cost savings over combustion cars will come later as technology develops.

Hybrids don't need a billion horsepower to get away with having no transmission, especially series hybrids. One of my electric bikes has 8 hp (input power, output is less), weighs 200 lbs with me on it, and goes 0-60 (the top speed) pretty fast. If you extrapolate, you can see it doesn't take much power at all to make a single speed feasible with the torque curve of an electric motor. And by the time you extrapolate to say, a 4000 lb car with 160 hp OUTPUT (or whatever) you've got enough power to go well over 100 MPH in any car with the slightest attention paid to aerodynamics. Up that to a lowly 300 hp and you'll have remarkably sport acceleration off the line. Even a chevy volt has decent get up and go at low speed, by economy car standards (it's an overpriced economy car).

[eluded]

BMW will follow and then everything will be self driving.

[Megabrode]

Saw this today:

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017...tric.html?_r=0

Volvo may have more reason than most to build electrics -- been to Beijing lately? -- and could be starting a trend.

As a basically green guy, I'm slightly conflicted to say I'm very glad I purchased a fine example of the first and no doubt last fire-breathing, carbon-monoxide-belching V8 M3. At 71, I may also have purchased my final vehicle of any kind. In the immortal words of the mortal Dylan Thomas:

"Do not go gentle into that good night.
"Rage, rage against the dying of the light"

[BEM-S4]

Originally Posted by bimmer456

After 8 years, the battery costs $10-15K to replace, negating the cost saving of electric charging vs. gasoline or diesel. In the meantime, your battery is gradualy declining, losing power and range until it is deamed below acceptable standard per Tesla. The hybrid cars will likely still have a transmission unless they're like the konegsegg regera which I don't see happening soon.

The other dirty little secret no one really talks about is how nasty nickel mining is.

That aside, Volvo timing worked out perfectly. Nothing like a giant Chinese bankroll to finance all of the development costs here.

[Meeni]

Originally Posted by bimmer456

After 8 years, the battery costs $10-15K to replace, negating the cost saving of electric charging vs. gasoline or diesel. In the meantime, your battery is gradualy declining, losing power and range until it is deamed below acceptable standard per Tesla. The hybrid cars will likely still have a transmission unless they're like the konegsegg regera which I don't see happening soon.

This is basically a lie. There are plenty of gen1 Prius still strolling around with the original battery pack.

[Law]

Originally Posted by Meeni

This is basically a lie. There are plenty of gen1 Prius still strolling around with the original battery pack.

That's what you think.
In fact, many of them have the batteries replaced (there's even threads on priuschat and Youtube DIYs).

I've personally seen a Gen 1 get its battery replaced at an indy shop.
The battery is about the size of a rectangular coffee table that sits under the rear seat and the cost before labor is in the thousands.

Obviously they're not strolling around with a "I JUST SPENT A FEW GRAND ON A NEW BATTERY" sticker on their window, but that doesn't change the fact that lithium batteries go bad over time.