I had the opportunity to attend the press only early opening of the largest automobile fair - the IAA in Frankfurt, Germany.
And to give the most important impressions first:
1.) Electric cars are becoming mainstream
2.) If you are a car manufacturer and have no EV platform available as of now, you are in very big trouble
3.) Tesla might get decent headwind as nearly all premium car manufacturers roll out high quality mid class cars
Most impressive for me was actually the VW ID3 platform.
Just after dieselgate 48 months ago they startet do develop this platform and boy have they succeeded:
Comparable to the golf-class size of cars they developed what they call the EV construction kit that can be rolled out to their whole car family in the future. While there are already Porsche, Audi, VW and Skoda EV vehicles, the ID3 platform is a whole new level. And it counters also the usual arguments against EV:
While the "CO2- break even" to normal cars could be calculated to be around 40,000 to 60,000 km at the ID3 (dependent on the power generation mix), it is actually at ZERO!! This is because VW takes care that trough the whole supply chain every single battery cell, every single bolt is produced carbon neutral!
And the next big thing:
The entry level car with 330 km range is priced at 30,000 € only, while the longest ranged car has more then 500 km range.
Now this is really mainstream..
The car enters production now, the first 25,000 cars should be delivered in spring of 2020, up from summer 2020 the annual production should be around 100,000 cars/year.
VW will ultimately built some of the battery cells themselves but until then they will use Samsung SDI and LG Chem cells which is IMHO a statement in itself.
But have a look for yourself:
Even more interesting (especially if you are a Tesla fan) look at the next generation, the ID4:
On the ID4 platform they will bring a sedan comparable with the Tesla3, a buggy, a new bus, a SUV and etc..
And they will roll out the platforms to all their other labels..
Audi showed for example:
What about the other manufacturers?
Daimler / Mercedes is concentrating on their EQC400 SUV EV wich is already in production and was cruising around over the whole exhibition area as VIP shuttle.
as the batteries are part of the chassis there is still enough loading space in the back:
Apart from that they also have a full electric van and the full electric micro-car smart.. but unfortunately the were reluctant to give any price point.. which is IMHO very bad and revealing.
aaannnddd they showed the new vision EQS
and also some self-driving cars:
as well as some other interesting studies:
BMW was actually quite a disappointment for me.. the once lead the heard with their i-3 and i-8 EV and EVH cars but have since lost all steam.
They have a car called i-next - very autonomous and EV - that should come out in 2021 but they do not tell you yet any specs and price points... I fear because they do not have them yet..
What about the batteries?
A Chinese company called SVOLT gave me a pitch about their roadmap.. and as you can see batteries still have enormous potential:
what else?
For all the petro-heads I will make another post about all the supercars by tonight...
https://steemit.com/appics/@solarwarrior/iaa-frankfurt-automobile-fair-post-for-the-petrolheads
I was there today as well - the VW ID I found not very impressive I must say. I liked this car ;-) ok, it is just a show car ...
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ID3 impressive maybe not from the looks... but the price / range/ annual production numbers is very impressive
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I actually found the e UP! more impressive - after the German subsidy this car costs only 17,500 Euro - and you can lease it for 149 Euro per month!
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yes... but the e UP! as well as the skoda e pendant is a prior generation to the ID3 platform..
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I know, but the price is impressive
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true!
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Electric cars are definitely the future. That's pretty awesome that VW is making a zero carbon footprint vehicle. That's amazing. Especially after the whole scandle 2 years ago. Those concept cars in the pictures are incredible as well. Looks like a really cool event. Nice post!
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Hi @solarwarrior
Wow
I was very impressed by the beauty of those cars and best of all the great variety, right now tesla should start worrying, you will have a lot of competition and that's good because the costs to buy an electric car will go down.
I thank you for that opportunity and for sharing a first-class experience, the best of all is to be able to enjoy watching those cars from your publication.
I hope to attend an event like that one day,
Greetings from Venezuela.
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@solarwarrior, Good to know that you've attended this Exclusive event. Genuinely speaking i am not a big fan of cars from very young age, and now current picture is more disturbing and by that i mean, it feels that more than humans, cars and two wheelers are bought and world is filled with the vehicles and for many this situation creating kinds of issues.
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👍
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Is it REALLY, finally starting to mainstream? It's about time!! And feels like it's taken forever. Not seeing a sexy pickup in that range LOL but if I had to choose a little plastic city car, it'd probably be the Audi. :)
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They're really beautiful!
I think the most important challenge is to achieve mass sales. For this you would have to work on the production costs and everything related to that.
Grettings!
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Dear @solarwarrior
I'm not much into car industry since I failed my driving licence twice and I never cared to try again. Somehow I accepted the fact that I'm not into cars and I never felt thrilled with driving. My wife keep saying that somethings wrong with me :)
That's also my impression. Lately I've noticed that company in my hometown in Poland: https://www.vozilla.pl/ (you can change to english).
They rent out electric cars and it's becoming very popular.
However my impression is that lack of infrastructure will still not allow to use those cars almost anywhere outside major cities. It may take years before infrastructure will be developed well enough.
Anyway, at the end of the day one need to be quite wealthy (at least at this time) to drive electric cars. Majority of world population will most likely stick to their own old, cheap auto. This is clearly market for wealthy individuals and it will stay that way for years to come.
Hope you're gonna have an easy monday :)
Yours,Piotr
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Hello dear @solarwarrior, great exhibition and what a privilege to be there.
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The future is great fod the tecnologhy ans civilses world. Looking at it, the electric car wil really be awesome to try out and get to learn more about its features also
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The world is revolving truly and looking at it, it acrually seems the electiric car is here to stay. I believe in the duture, i will have one also to myself
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Howdy dear @solarwarrior.
I have always been fascinated by vehicle exposures. Prototypes always cause furor.
Obviously electric vehicles are in the arena. For obvious reasons this should be the standard for the next decades. The planet can no longer endure pollution.
Within these models there was no one to recharge with solar energy?
I have also read about motors that run on water.
There was no similar proposal at this car show?
Your friend, Juan.
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forget this water engine! that's a scam.. just think about the basic chemistry... if you combine hydrogen and oxygen you will get water + energy... so water is the chemical compound that has less energy than the basics its built from.. so what can you do with water to gain energy out of it? I have no idea how that could work in theory..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Meyer%27s_water_fuel_cell
Solar will definitely be a nice add on.. at least some parts of the cars roof should be fitted..
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Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell
The water fuel cell is a technical design of a "perpetual motion machine" created by American Stanley Allen Meyer (August 24, 1940 – March 20, 1998). Meyer claimed that an automobile retrofitted with the device could use water as fuel instead of gasoline. Meyer's claims about his "Water Fuel Cell" and the car that it powered were found to be fraudulent by an Ohio court in 1996.
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Every time there is certainty that electric cars are the future something comes along. AI is definitely going to continue to work its way into auto. Electric cars seem to adopt AI faster than combustibles.
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Hey there @solarwarrior! We thought you might be interested in our project to build a solar/wind farm using the Steem blockchain.
https://steempeak.com/solairitas/@solairitas/solairitas-white-paper
Thanks for your time!
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View or trade
BEER
.Hey @solarwarrior, here is a little bit of
BEER
for you. Enjoy it!Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
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I think that engineers know the main thing they should do about Tesla - not just technical side, but software improvements as well. In my humble opinion, Tesla has the best software core processes than any other EV I've tried. If you're not quite sure about purchasing it and still hesitating, you can simply rent a Tesla via this resource. It allows to get all the well-known models of Tesla for couple of days or couple of weeks.
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