Mercedes-Benz scales back electric ambitions as EV pessimism grows
Mercedes-Benz scales back electric ambitions as EV pessimism grows
arstechnica.com
Mercedes-Benz scales back electric ambitions as EV pessimism grows
189 comments
-
It’s not EV’s I’m skeptical of hey.
It’s the cars they are making. The evs are all quite expensive and then all new cars seem to be taking the opportunity to tack on all these extra subscriptions and such.
I’m never buying a car where heated seats are bound to my car app account on a subscription like seriously…
-
We need an open source electric car.
-
Many EV are just wasting too much energy for useless stuff. I love the dacia spring, it so reduced, that it only wights about 1000kg and still has about 200km (33kw motor and 29kw/h battery(my version))
-
Bless your heart if you think this is limited to EVs.
-
Most of the car subscription items don't bother me. Many are like cosmetic skins in game. The car still works well without them. Lets look at Tesla just because they are popular:
- Full Self Drive, one-time $20k - No way is this required. Skipped it.
- Enhanced Autopilot, one-time $6k - Auto lane change and vehicle summon in a parking lot. Car drives fine without it. Skipped
- Acceleration boost, one-time $2k - Without this the car 0-60MPH is 4.2 seconds. That's PLENTY fast for me. Skipped
- Premium connectivity, recurring $10/month or $99/year - Gives you a web browser on the dash, photoview satellite images in navigation instead of line drawing, and lets you stream music from Slacker or stream your Netflix movies from the car cell radio. I don't need any of that and have better choices for music. I can stream video from my phone when I'm stopped if I need to.
None of that stuff is required and the usability and features of the car are still really good.
Further, for many of those factory hardware locked features there are one-time aftermarket solutions to enable them from third parties, though I have never had the need or desire for those things.
-
Honestly it’s sort of the principle of it.
Like the car has it, it’s already cost the manufacturer to install it sure there are ongoing dev costs for some things, but not all.
On top of that many manufacturers are locking the features to the one person.
So for example I pay for heated seats. Then I sell the car, and the new owner has to “buy” heated seats again.
I’m sorry I’m not supporting that bullshit or the manufacturers who are doing this one bit even if I don’t pay for a feature.
On top of that there are issues with servicing and also forced firmware updates.
A friend was late to work the other day because his Tesla was doing an update when he tried to leave, like what happens if someone was trying to rush a partner to a hospital or something and you happen to jump in the car as it’s mid way through an update.
I want to be in control of the things I own and pay for, that’s the whole point of owning something. Car manufacturers these days seem to be under the delusion that they still own our vehicles and we are just the money sacks they are renting them to.
This has been going on for a while, but seem much much worse on the electric cars.
Also frankly the infrastructure isn’t there in many places around the world.
It’s not just waiting to charge the car that’s the issue, it’s waiting for the charger… when each vehicle takes up to 30min-an hour to get a meaningful amount of range back suddenly you need like 10x as many charging stations as you had petrol/diesel pumps.
And while this may be in place in some places in the world it’s not in most. Add this to the fact that charging points are often out of order well you start to see the issue.
-
You missed the biggest flaw in all those arguments: "yet".
None of that stuff is required... yet. It will. As soon as the subscription model catches on, it will be required.
Just look at: everywhere. How far did video streaming go from cable? Well, it's not there... yet. But it's going there.
Don't think for a second this time will be different.
-
The biggest issue here is there's only one thing in that list I'd consider a subscription and that's the data connectivity. Especially in a Tesla where there's no option to have Android auto or apple carplay then the only ways you can stream audio would be through Bluetooth so no options to change anything other than skip and replay the songs in a playlist. I don't particularly mind there being a one time cost for most of those features even though they're ridiculously expensive but the worst of it is on Ford, GM and Stalantis.
Those 3 manufacturers (and maybe more? I'm not sure) have subscriptions for their self driving functions which are included in the car and already paid for. These functions are processed on the car so this is nothing more than a digital lock to features that are already included in the car price.
-
-
"Gas is a little more convenient, so lets destroy our sole, shared, communal ecosystem we all rely on from one breath to the next so I don't have to wait for my car to charge."
Oh humans, don't ever change. For Earth's long-term sake, we need to make sure we commit to our species' mass suicide for short term profit and convenience. No half measures.
-
I mean its the same reason that EVs were considered before public transit.
Convenience over an actual solution, every time.
-
I would argue that moving to evs puts the cost burdens on companies and consumers where a functioning public transit system would cost a shit ton and only be able to occur by taxing people which people won't vote for.
Also when I went on a walk today while visiting my mother, I knocked on a neighbors door to let them know their hazard lights were on in the driveway. I didn't want their battery to die so I went to door. They wouldn't even open the door while clearly being able to see my mother standing behind me who lives a few doors down. I had to speak through the door to tell her. That older lady will never take public transit with all the fear we have engrained into the public.
-
I think combining both makes sense: Usually I use the bike or public transit to get around. But today I rented an EV from a local rideshare company (Skoda Enyaq iV80 4x4) because we had to move an entire rack of equipment between two cities for work.
-
I can decide to buy an EV, and it will work with what I have available to give me essentially the same functionality as a gasoline car, but easier on the environment and more convenient to charge at home.
Transit requires a majority of the population and political leaders to decide, huge amounts of money and many years. I have very little say in it happening and it won’t happen for years
-
Transportation is a tiny fraction of carbon emissions. And EVs are a small improvement within that. Regulations and investment into things that matter are the only way out of this problem.
-
Transportation is 28% of GHG emissions. EVs are a huge improvement even before we add more clean energy on the grid.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
-
-
yeah because the solution is not for us all to individually get a less energy demanding car. its a collective change in our ways, humane public transport.
-
-
Wrong. We want affordable EVs, ideally not not sold by an openly fascist billionaire eternally-divorced childmanboy.
-
My first complaint with Tesla is the shit tablet for everything. I don't want to have to look at a screen while trying to drive. Elon is a shit but every publicly traded company is going to be owned in some regard by a billionaire fascist.
-
-
The only thing worse for adoption than only selling high priced EVs, is attempting to sell high priced EVs when interest rates are high.
Plus, no one ever talks about the switchover to NACS plugs in the US. Except for Tesla, most companies have announced they will switch plugs on a year or two. I hear “in a year or two these old ones will be difficult to charge and lose all its resale value”, so why would I buy?
-
I plan on waiting for NACS myself, but they do have adapters coming to use Tesla chargers on current non-NACS EVs. Some will provide them for free to recent owners.
-
In Ireland the Tesla chargers have both plugs. The NACS is already attached to a CCS plug in the charger. Depending on the car it releases the combo plug or just the NACS plus. Cool mechanism.
-
It's more parts that you must bring with you. Also adapters always break and give you compatibility headaches... They should retrofit the port on the car for a nominal fee (say 5 hours of labour).
-
-
-
Actually it's just pessimism of the likes of Mercedes-Benz. I'm not going to buy an expensive electrical car in the same way I'm not going to buy an expensive ICE car.
Make cheap electrical cars and we can talk.
-
Very true. VW had a really cheap one, and it sold out immediately. Still removed it for no reason.
MONEY
-
Volvo is bringing a 36k one to market this summer. While that's still very expensive it's less expensive than the average of 50k (45k with rebates) you see from domestic manufacturers.
If they manage to dodge the inevitable court case for selling at a loss and make it stick we should see more stuff like the Chevy Bolt.
-
-
How’s BYD going? They seem unstoppable
-
Non-existent in the US thanks to whack-ass tariffs unfortunately. We love hindering our adoption of climate change reducing technology for political points.
-
-
-
How about you make one that doesn’t cost 30k more than a normal car… gees.
-
You make an excellent point!
I expect electric will soon be much cheaper than gas cars. Battery prices are still falling, despite the demand outpacing supply. Lithium refineries and mines are in the works and should be online in 5 years.
More importantly, electric cars are much simpler than gas cars. Anyone saying otherwise has no appreciation for the genius behind modern motors, transmissions, traction control and exhaust systems. There are an order of magnitude the number of moving parts in a combustion engine than an electric motor.
The price is higher because of the still-young supply chain for batteries and the infantile production lines for EVs.
-
It will become a subscription business with EULA.
It should really replace this petrol powered junk but this is what ultimately happens with such suits in charge. Do you think people will choose better? How many Fairphones or Linux desktops have you seen in real life? They choose slavery.
Speaking of slavery, China does make better cars with great price. I just wonder how many gigabyte per month these cars send to China? So it's either future Mercedes car with Apple carOS coming with subscription or Chinese spycar. Make your choice.
Or choose community/cycle transport, something better fit to 2024.
-
-
Their EV is about $8k more than a similar MB ICE SUV. Seems to be they just want to keep making easy money off innovating pay walls for remote start.
-
Have you not seen what geely are doing?
-
I haven't. Whatre they doing?
-
I haven't. Whatre they doing?
-
-
Probably because they are far more complicated than a regular car and have expensive batteries with precious metals? Oh and we haven't been mass producing them for 100 years either.
-
An EV is on all fronts more simple. It’s the reason so many new car companies are being started.
It absolutely has an upfront cost to design and ramp up production though.
-
Bro it's just a battery, some motors, a computer, an IO system, and some brakes. An amateur with money and free time could rip the guts out of a traditional car and make it fully electric by following an online tutorial.
-
No. No, they are not more complicated.
You can learn to build your own brushless motor on YouTube that's close to as good as anything the major manufacturers are using. You'd need a whole machine shop to build an ICE, and it's not going to be nearly as good as a crate engine from a company that dumped billions of dollars into R&D.
Battery chemistry is complicated, but you can buy the modules and build a pack yourself. There's quite a bit of safety knowledge that goes into this so you don't burn your house down, but it's all out there.
Even if you bought all the major components and dropped them into a rolling chassis, an EV would be significantly easier to build than an ICE. It's not even close.
-
-
-
Toyota say they can make 90 hybrids using the same raw materials as one BEV or six PHEVs, leading to a 37-fold reduction in lifetime carbon emissions .
There's the rub. 'The market' is demanding EVs with massive range-per-charge, leading to huuuge batteries (of which only 10% capacity is used, most of the time) and high prices. It's all a bit crazy.
-
I'm very skeptical of anything Toyota says about EVs.
Toyota Rav4 PHEV 18.1kWh Toyota Rav4 Hybrid ~1.6kWh Model Y LR 81kWh
81 / 18.1 = 4.48 PHEV 81 / 1.6 = 50.6 Hybrids
-
90 hybrids using the same raw materials as one BEV or six PHEVs
** for one material, compared to one battery chemistry, for hypothetical vehicles
Did you catch the news a week or so ago about mining and ore processors shutting down because they got ahead of EV demand
Edit: fix auto-correct
-
The market wants more Chevy Bolts. They didn't have a 200 mile range. The market wants them so badly that GM unkilled the production line.
Of course they're on the same EV platform as all of the other GM BEVs that's a lemon lottery.
Volvo is going to beat the pants off this market with their 36k EV. Assuming of course our government doesn't swoop in to protect GM and Ford.
-
-
This is really sad. Their ambition should be to be leading innovators and build the best possible EVs and not just give up.
-
They never wanted to innovate. They have entire warehouses full of IC engines and related parts. It's far cheaper to just slap those together.
-
-
My doubt about electric vehicles is based on my doubt that the automotive industry will produce a quality product at a reasonable price. They're no different than any other short-term profit based business.
-
I agree. They seem to put everything in the cars and sell them as luxury EVs. Give me a basic car for $15k.
-
My doubt is based on the fact that public transportation and bicycle infrastructure is the obvious better and more environmentally economical solution for the majority of the population that lives in cities.
I say this as a gear head, do we really want people on the roads that don't want to be driving? It should be a choice, not a requirement. Plus, driving in cities sucks.
-
-
I'm really optimistic about electric vehicles, I don't know what you're talking about. LOL.
-
Are you still optimistic after looking at the price of a Mercedes EV?
-
-
Wish they would take the hybrid model and flip it. I love my gas/EV hybrid but the EV side of things is only good for 50miles or so. Its much more a gas vehicle really than an EV. Why not a primarily EV vehicle with large battery and a small gas generator for those Oh crap, I need another 50-100 miles right now with no time to charge moments?
-
Because you waste a lot energy transporting a heavy mostly useless gas tank and motor. In the other hand, if gas is main motor, you can use the battery / EV motor to get brake energy back and accelerate faster.
-
Yeah, seems like there could be a point where the gas engine sufficient to generate an emergency charge could be small enough that the impact while non negligible would be worth the elimination of battery fear. The tank could be empty most of the time and just available for a quick gas station fill if on a long trip and battery prediction is insufficient to reach the destination. Alternatively fast capacitor charges or a small swappable emergency battery that gas stations could carry for evs seem like systemic changes that could help with this issue.
-
-
Because 90% of the time 50 miles is enough for you (maybe not you, but most people) to get through the day and charge it, while you will only need gas on those long occasional trips.
-
People keep saying this, but when I'm buying a 40k car I want to be able to go shopping and cross country with my family. The fact that I'll only use it for the occasional family trip is irrelevant. The point is my current ICE car does both things without any worry. If EVs want to win they need to be better than the ICE counterparts.
I want to reduce emissions but you'll never get adoption of something that's objectively worse. If I have to worry if it will start in the winter or reach the next town on my trip, it's a non-starter. And that's even before we get to the insane prices of new cars.
-
Yes
-
-
-
Meanwhile BYD is absolutely exploding in popularity. The problem isn’t “EV pessimism” it’s that some governments are fighting it so hard that it’s difficult out for citizens (USA) to make it work. Didn’t Biden promise a network of EV chargers across the nation?
And instead he made it illegal to import affordable Chinese cars. I’m sick of seeing articles phrased like this
-
Did Biden forget which about the magic wands, which you obviously know all about, that cause charge stations to spontaneously appear?
I mean, the first of the ones funded went into operation in December of 2023, which was the earliest it could as that is when funding was available and enough time had passed to get it permitted and installed, but wave the damned wand!!!!! demands internet padme. /sIn case anyone wants to know what is really going on with the EV charge stations;
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/first-ev-charging-station-funded-by-bidens-infrastructure-law-goes-online-2023-12-11/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/biden-pours-623-million-into-ev-charging-void/
-
-
there's a lot of abbreviations in the article that I don't understand or know lol. what's a BEV? HPEV? etc.
Good article tho. From my limited view prices definitely are a huge limiting factor for electric vehicles, though they brought up a good point about the charge times. I guess if people treated it like their phones (charge every night) then it wouldn't be a problem?
Honestly not surprised that demand has dropped for them though. Anyone who was interested in it has either decided it's not worth it or already has one. Price puts them out of most people's budget, and with rising costs and stagnant wages, people can't really afford to take on monthly payments anymore. The environmental friendliness of them is heavily marketed, but won't bring into effect the large scale, immediate change we need to slow climate change. Plus there's the whole Tesla thing with delayed shipping and paywalling features built into software (admittedly not up to brush with Tesla tho).
For a while they were a new, impressive technology, and while I still think they're cool, until they become very, very cheap and accessible, I won't be getting one. The fad is starting to die out.
-
Yes completely agree. Especially the price, most people don't want to pay or can't afford a 45-50k usd car after subsidies. (This is the minimum pricepoint to get something comparable to an average gas car, both trim wise and to get an at least acceptable range)
And let's be honest about the subsidies, they just allow the car companies to charge a higher price in the first place.. I expect the price to be about the same after they are gone.
-
More market share for Volkswagen I guess. I just wish I knew which VW stocks to purchase, there are so many...
-
Someone more educated, please explain to me, why it’s impossible to just take the existing industry, take all the know how and engineering and direct efforts into electrifying (converting) existing cars instead of building new ones.
If the world was perfect and there was no nuance, no bad actors, no human factor involved - would it be a viable solution to cut back on the emissions without getting rid of the comfort that a car affords?
-
You'd need to gut the car completely and rebuild it, it would be more work than starting from scratch.
-
When you mass-manufacture things, they’re made in a very specific way using a very specific amount of material in a very specific size and shape in a very specific spot in order to accommodate the exact stuff that goes into the final product.
-
You can absolutely and fairly easily convert pretty much any car to electric power. It's been done a thousand times.
But that doesn't make anybody any money.
-
But that doesn't make anybody any money.
Of course it does, there's a shitload of parts that needs to be sourced, and most people will need someone to perform the conversion. There's a substatial amount of money changing hands in that kind of rebuild.
The bigger issue is getting the car approved for public roads after the rebuild. Depending on the country, that is nearly (if not entirely) impossible.
-
-
The industry did that during the “compliance” era where they had to hit emissions targets in places like California. The cars were much heavier and didn’t go as far as current EVs. A lot of vestigial metal designed to hold parts that weren’t present in the EV version. A lot less space for batteries since the car was designed for a different layout (gas tanks, engine parts, transmissions).
There are cheap EVs in other markets like Europe. The VW ID3 is a good example. They aren’t shipped here because the industry believes that Americans only want SUVs and giant trucks. This is a problem that plagues combustion cars as well. Ford completely stopped shipping sedans in the US, and companies like Mazda no longer ship smaller trucks in the states.
-
To which cars are you comparing the vw id3? In Germany, the cheapest settings will result in a price of 40.000€ which is expensive for my taste. But I don't have a clue about the us ev market.
-
I am “the other market” haha. But even in Europe it’s mostly Tesla’s that you see. At least in the parts that I’ve lived in.
The American truck culture is weird to me.
-
-
-
My biggest EV doubt is that everyone living in a condo/apartment doesn't have the option to install charging ports in their own parking space, so plug-in EVs are a terrible option ATM. I'll get on board when I see the change happen but knowing landlords I'm doubtful.
-
Where I live, this is changing already. I suspect it comes down to your lawmakers and how you vote more than landlords. Landlords will never do something unless it makes them easy money. Though, ev chargers can be profitable, so maybe they are just dumb.
-
I think we need street lighting with charging points.
-
Not to mention the infrastructure upgrades it would take to mass-install enough plugs in every condo
-
A big part of why the tesla plug was chosen as the north american standard plug is the lack of infrastructure upgrades needed. Apparently it uses exactly 1 phase of a commercial electric line so it needs far less infrastructure to add charging if there is commercial electric already. For example they'd be able to install just an outlet on every streetlight.
-
You don't need one for every condo. Though that would be awesome. It's not like you need to charge every day.
-
-
-
Mercedes Bends.
-
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Today, Mercedes published its annual results for 2023, and it's clear that the company has little confidence that any region will be ready for EVs-only sales by that date.
Here in the US, established automakers like Ford and General Motors have already told investors that their EV plans were overambitious or focused on the wrong market segments, like full-size pickups, and this week saw startups Rivian and Lucid both forecast much-reduced production in 2024.
It's tempting to try to find a single reason for this growth in EV pessimism—unsympathetic actors like car dealers flush with record profits complaining about having to learn to sell something new make for easy villains in this story.
In part, BEVs remain a little too unfamiliar for a large swath of the general public to make them feel comfortable spending tens of thousands of dollars or euros.
Those gas station visits have also made drivers expect to be able to refuel in a few minutes, something that just isn't possible with even the fastest fast-charging BEVs.
Hybrid powertrains in particular provide a cost-effective, efficient alternative to just burning liquid hydrocarbons, and in terms of reducing fleet carbon emissions, OEMs like Toyota say they can make 90 HEVs using the same raw materials as one BEV or six PHEVs, leading to a 37-fold reduction in lifetime carbon emissions.
The original article contains 605 words, the summary contains 222 words. Saved 63%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
-
Finally someone sees common sense. EV's simply do not make sense. Petrol is the way to go. Just make the engines cleaner and leaner.
For the majority of the planet, petrol is far more accessible and affordable than electricity.
I'm sticking with petrol no matter what they say
-
Internal combustion has had over a century of research and engineering going into making the engines "cleaner and leaner". It's like squeezing blood out of a stone, that's why you end up with features like auto-stop (where it cuts the engine if you idle for a bit) which barely save on petrol, but it's a saving so they throw it in. Petrol is inherently dirty.
-
I'm sure there is more that can be done. I've heard that Porsche have developed a cleaner fuel that can power petrol cars. I'm waiting so that what that is.
Unfortunately the car manufacturers typically have supported the petrol suppliers, which are big powerful entities, but if they stop doing that and really focus on clean fuel, I'm sure it can be achieved.
EV's at the moment are NOT good for the environment and create WAY more pollution than petrol cars in their manufacturing process. Making batteries produces WAY more pollution than what petrol cars with catalytic converters will ever make in a lifetime. This is a fact.
-
-
no matter what they say
Tell me you are incapable of critical thinking without telling me you are incapable of critical thinking.
-
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1142087_toyota-exec-says-evs-won-t-top-30-wants-new-engines
Er......you might want to rethink that statement.
-
-
189 comments