BMW US CEO: "Electric cars don't work"

prizrak

prizrak

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engadget said:
CE-Oh no he didn't!: BMW exec says electric vehicles 'won't work,' but would love to sell you one anyway
By Amar Toor posted Apr 26th 2011 8:27AM
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Jim O'Donnell, CEO and chairman of BMW North America, recently sat down with the Detroit News to discuss the ActiveE -- an electric version of BMW's 1 Series coupe, available for lease in the US this fall. Most CEOs would've probably used the opportunity to wax PR poetic about their company's bold, forward-looking ethos, because that's what CEOs do. O'Donnell, however, used the occasion to let us in on a dirty little secret: EVs don't actually work. According to O'Donnell's undoubtedly robust calculations, EVs won't work for "at least 90-percent" of the human population, at current battery ranges. The situation is so dire, in fact, that the US government shouldn't even bother wasting its $7,500 tax credits on frivolous things like innovation, national security and clean air.
"I believe in a free economy. I think we should abolish all tax credits. What they are doing is putting a bet on technology, which is not appropriate. As a taxpayer, I am not sure this is the right way to go."
O'Donnell went on to say he's "far more optimistic" about diesel's chances of increasing BMW's US market share -- because, you know, it's not like the oil industry gets any tax breaks, or anything. And it's not like diverting some money away from oil subsidies and putting it toward EV technology would create the "level playing field" that O'Donnell and his company so desperately need. No siree, the US energy market is just as pure and fair as it's always been -- and it certainly doesn't deserve to be corrupted by an EV tax credit pestilence. That said, O'Donnell would still really appreciate it if we buy the battery-powered i3 when it launches in 2013. Who knows? He may even throw in a free bridge, too.
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AFAIK, the tax credit comes in the form of a deduction. That would mean that you'd have to pay $7500 or more in taxes in order to qualify for the complete credit.
 
I think its more interesting that an EV manufacturer pretty much came out and said they are useless.
 
prizrak said:
I think its more interesting that an EV manufacturer pretty much came out and said they are useless.
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Read it differently: Instead of reading "useless for 90% of humanity" you could read "a good solution for 700 million people".
 
Finally, someone said it. FFS.

The US is fairly spread out. If you live in an urban area, congrats, you can have cute little EVs and not have to pay anything at the gas pump. That must be nice.

I, on the other hand, don't. I eat up 60 miles just coming to and going from the nearest city of medium size--not counting whatever miles I'd eat up driving around in said city. If I wanted to go to a larger city, forget it. Dallas is the closest, and it's a good two hours away if I haul arse at normal gas-guzzlin' freeway speeds.

I said this in the Evo thread, but if Mitsu banks too heavily on straight-up EVs, they're done over in Tyler/Longview. Too many rural residents and not enough range in current EV tech to get us places. Either they fix the range issue, or nope--it's simply not a feasible solution in this area.

Thank goodness the BMW CEO is at least being realistic about it. The ActiveE will surely be a cute little runabout for city dwellers to have, but unless Bimmer comes out with something genuinely groundbreaking in regards to range or battery charging, that's all it'll be.

With the number of automakers coming out with EVs and the limited market for them in this country, I also have to wonder about saturation. If this is only a feasible option for, say, 10% of the population, they're barking up the wrong tree, IMHO. The remaining 90% of the population still needs to get places, and the guys pouring their R&D money into making their traditionally-powered engines more efficient (Mazda's SKYACTIV), experimenting with hybrid systems (as much as we don't typically like them, Porsche, Toyota, GM, Ford, etc., etc. are at least still serving the non-city-dwelling population's need for better fuel economy with these), and experimenting with alternative fuel sources that could be extended to larger markets (Honda's Clarity) get more respect from me for actually looking at the bigger picture.
 
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Read it differently: Instead of reading "useless for 90% of humanity" you could read "a good solution for 700 million people".
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Except that it is not a *good* solution. It *works* for those 700 million people but by no means is it actually a good solution. These cars are extremely dirty to produce, depending on where you live just as dirty to charge, tend to be more expensive than "conventional" cars and tend to lack the same amenities/utilities.

Mind you the 700 million people in question are not necessarily the people who would want to or will buy those EVs they are simply the people who by virtue of their geographical location and driving patterns would be able to use an electric car. However when you get right down to it, those people tend to live in urban areas where public transportation is likely both very accessible and a better solution than driving.

For instance my car is mostly used on the weekends or for random errands, I cannot afford to drive to work simply because parking fees would be around $200/month and that is not counting fuel and tolls. Considering my driving patterns I could absolutely live with an electric car (a Tesla Roadster :twisted:) but I wouldn't want to for one for two it would cost me way more than my current vehicle.

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The ActiveE will surely be a cute little runabout for city dwellers to have
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Not even, in addition to what I outlined above there is also the status issue. If you look at cars around NYC you will notice that the vast majority of them are either fairly new (5 years or newer) and a large portion of them are also upmarket brands. There are tons of BMWs, Audis, MBs running around majority being 3/5 series or equivalent. The 1 series is as rare as exotics around here because the car is not a necessity when one is bought it is bought as a status symbol/luxury item where practicality is not the main concern.
 
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Heh, I'm actually seeing more and more of the 1 series here because they're small, cute, and get sent off with Daddy's Little Girl to college. Apparently they're not bad to hoon, either--there were quite a few out at the BMWCCA track event I was at a while back. Sort of want (just not in electric trim).

I can see the electric version being a hit with the eco-conscious hippiesnobs of the universe (Seattle/Bellevue comes to mind here, or any urban area heavily populated by Prii). EVs--as a whole--just don't make a lick o' sense out where I live.
 
ninjacoco said:
Heh, I'm actually seeing more and more of the 1 series here because they're small, cute, and get sent off with Daddy's Little Girl to college. Apparently they're not bad to hoon, either--there were quite a few out at the BMWCCA track event I was at a while back. Sort of want (just not in electric trim).

I can see the electric version being a hit with the eco-conscious hippiesnobs of the universe (Seattle/Bellevue comes to mind here, or any urban area heavily populated by Prii). EVs--as a whole--just don't make a lick o' sense out where I live.
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Williamsburg and Park Slope hoods here would be all over that.
 
I agree. I'm from Iceland and EV's won't work here either. It's too cold and travels between towns are too long and isolated. Mind you this SHOULD be the perfect place to run EV's as our energy is 100% renewable and green as grass, but storing that energy is still a problem.
 
Tax credit on the wrong technology! How socialist.

Problems as I see it:

Electric cars
1. Take way too long to recharge from a demestic supply
2. How are you going to tax the electricity so you get the same amount as you get from petrol/Diesel
3. Range problems
4. Weight problems
5. The mains electricity is not generated from renewables or carbon free sources so it makes the greenie case null and void.

Hybrid cars:
1. Still use fossil fuels - see above
2. Why have two engines when one is working it is lugging around the other and visa versa and weight costs
3. Limited space in the car it has to accomodate two engines after all and is complex/expensive to build.
4. They have no economic case but for distortions in the tax systems of various countries

Basically, they are pants.
 
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It's a good thing that the majority of the worlds population lives in large urban centers and would benefit from electric vehicle technology. Just because it won't fit you doesn't mean it won't fit someone. All they need is to make recharging fast, and extend the range to about 100 mi and just about every urban dweller would be well taken care of. Surburban and rural types can have gas or hydrogen or whatever long range solution is eventually developed.

I hate when people shit on technology because its not fully developed. I bet they would be the same ones who stuck to horses and naysayed the devils machinery in the 1890s, but then looked like jackasses when the Model T came out.
 
RaptorJesus said:
It's a good thing that the majority of the worlds population lives in large urban centers and would benefit from electric vehicle technology. Just because it won't fit you doesn't mean it won't fit someone. All they need is to make recharging fast, and extend the range to about 100 mi and just about every urban dweller would be well taken care of. Surburban and rural types can have gas or hydrogen or whatever long range solution is eventually developed.

I hate when people shit on technology because its not fully developed. I bet they would be the same ones who stuck to horses and naysayed the devils machinery in the 1890s, but then looked like jackasses The Amish when the Model T Ford Fusion came out.
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Cobol74 said:
I have always favoured the one horse power car. ...
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I read/heard somewhere that one horse produces 10hp, go figure....
t's a good thing that the majority of the worlds population lives in large urban centers and would benefit from electric vehicle technology. Just because it won't fit you doesn't mean it won't fit someone. All they need is to make recharging fast, and extend the range to about 100 mi and just about every urban dweller would be well taken care of. Surburban and rural types can have gas or hydrogen or whatever long range solution is eventually developed.
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Best solution for large urban center still is and always will be mass transit. You can look at LA for one of the extreme examples of what happens when you have a large population that uses personal transportation for commute. I'm sure you see plenty of traffic in your own hometown at rush hour/weekend/holiday time and you know what I'm talking about.
I hate when people shit on technology because its not fully developed. I bet they would be the same ones who stuck to horses and naysayed the devils machinery in the 1890s, but then looked like jackasses when the Model T came out.
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There is such a thing as dead end technology. Vacuum tubes might be fully developed but they are still useless next to transistors. There is already a very good and real alternative to ICE and that FCEV. They still produce no emissions, still run on electricity and still take about as long to refuel as a regular ICE vehicle. AFAIK FC's are also smaller and lighter than batteries making FCEVs more efficient.

In addition charging an EV no matter how long it takes is a major drain on the power grid, while filling up an FCEV is not. Even if a station is making its own H (easy enough since all gas stations have industrial water supply and power) they would not have to be making it constantly and could do it overnight when the power demand on the grid is lower. Obviously shipped H wouldn't have any drain on local power resources at all.

As it stands right now a single H pump can serve more vehicles than a single EV charger as it takes at best 20 minutes to charge a current EV.

It's all fine and good to talk about how technology will be developing and how it will work better at some point in the future but currently it doesn't work and considering there is already a more than viable alternative one has to question what would be the point of making it work?
 
prizrak said:
I read/heard somewhere that one horse produces 10hp, go figure....

Best solution for large urban center still is and always will be mass transit. You can look at LA for one of the extreme examples of what happens when you have a large population that uses personal transportation for commute. I'm sure you see plenty of traffic in your own hometown at rush hour/weekend/holiday time and you know what I'm talking about.

There is such a thing as dead end technology. Vacuum tubes might be fully developed but they are still useless next to transistors. There is already a very good and real alternative to ICE and that FCEV. They still produce no emissions, still run on electricity and still take about as long to refuel as a regular ICE vehicle. AFAIK FC's are also smaller and lighter than batteries making FCEVs more efficient.

In addition charging an EV no matter how long it takes is a major drain on the power grid, while filling up an FCEV is not. Even if a station is making its own H (easy enough since all gas stations have industrial water supply and power) they would not have to be making it constantly and could do it overnight when the power demand on the grid is lower. Obviously shipped H wouldn't have any drain on local power resources at all.

As it stands right now a single H pump can serve more vehicles than a single EV charger as it takes at best 20 minutes to charge a current EV.

It's all fine and good to talk about how technology will be developing and how it will work better at some point in the future but currently it doesn't work and considering there is already a more than viable alternative one has to question what would be the point of making it work?
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Why not, I see no point in pursuing all realms of technology to their end point. As a part of the uninformed majority, I'll be willing to let some smart electrical engineers pursue it till they reach an end point. HFC is not the one and only answer, and to declare it the winner when it's not fully developed as well seems premature. I say let's take every form of alternative propulsion as far as we can go. It wouldn't have done well to have ICE designers give up in the early days, and I don't think its productive to stifle engineering and creativity now.
 
RaptorJesus said:
Why not, I see no point in pursuing all realms of technology to their end point.
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There reason against pursuing all realms of tech to their end point its called opportunity cost. If you are spending time/money on one thing you will have less time/money to spend on the other and considering that the product manufacturer is basically saying it's pointless...
As a part of the uninformed majority, I'll be willing to let some smart electrical engineers pursue it till they reach an end point. HFC is not the one and only answer, and to declare it the winner when it's not fully developed as well seems premature. I say let's take every form of alternative propulsion as far as we can go.
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Again you run up against opportunity cost. I would also like to remind you that battery and electric motor technologies are far from new, the first batteries were around for over 2000 years. When cars were first starting up there were more electric cars than there were ICE cars but ICE won because of all the same problems that plague electrics right now.

Also keep in mind that battery tech in cars is no different from battery tech in your laptop or your cell and that commercial development of rechargeable and long lasting batteries has been going on for decades and while there have been clear improvements the best way to get more battery life is still to make a bigger battery and/or to decrease the amount of power it uses. The problem with the latter is that any BEV with any kind of decent range is generally heavier (by a good margin) than a comparable ICE car (because of batteries) and therefore additional battery capacity increases the amount of power the motor will require.

You [erroneously] assume that BEVs are new and unproven tech, they are not (hell WW2 submarines ran on battery power while underwater), the tech is mature and has been in active development for decades its just being used to power cars now.

It wouldn't have done well to have ICE designers give up in the early days, and I don't think its productive to stifle engineering and creativity now.
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ICE took a fairly long time to become mainstream and actually had very clear and obvious benefits over any other propulsion technology at the time. Even the first ones were compact enough to be put into small vehicles but could be made larger to accommodate larger vehicles. They could make power using only one tank, as opposed to two like the steam engine, were faster and had better range than electric vehicles (still true to a point), were quick and easy to refuel (still true) and (also unlike steam engines) could be used as soon as they started.

Another thing to keep in mind is that when cars were first being made they had no competition, their only competition was a horse. BEV's have to compete with a well established and mature technology with an easily accessible world wide infrastructure of fuel and service.
 
prizrak said:
There reason against pursuing all realms of tech to their end point its called opportunity cost. If you are spending time/money on one thing you will have less time/money to spend on the other and considering that the product manufacturer is basically saying it's pointless...
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:lol: Fortunately for us, there's not just one scientist, with one source of funding, pursuing alternative forms of energy.

The title is also misleading, and skews what the CEO said. If electric cars didn't work for anyone at all then BMW wouldn't be selling them.
 
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tigger said:
:lol: Fortunately for us, there's not just one scientist, with one source of funding, pursuing alternative forms of energy.

The title is also misleading, and skews what the CEO said. If electric cars didn't work for anyone at all then BMW wouldn't be selling them.
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It's true there isn't one scientist but at the same time electric car R&D is mainly limited to the auto manufacturers and they are already working on ICE, BEV and some (Honda and Hyundai) on FCEVs. Unfortunately technological advancement depends on funding so any funding diverted into one tech will slow the other tech (within that firm not world at large obviously).

I pretty much took the title from the story but I agree with you.
 
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