Posted on 09/16/2019 7:28:11 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
"The IAA2019 is a huge fail," tweeted former Opel CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann. "It's a sad shadow of what it used to be."
Nearly two-thirds of the world's car producers were absent. And word on the German street is that Daimler and Volkswagen Group seriously considered pulling out of the show months before its opening. When pressured by the German car association, they remained.
But, in the end, an awe-dropping 24 brands were absent and the number of exhibitors fell 20 percent. And to cap it off, the head of the German car lobby, which hosts the show, abruptly resigned.
Even more worrisome: This is Frankfurt. In prior years, the biennial show has been a bellwether for the European industry.
The cloud of electrification, and its acceptance, hangs over Europe.
"There will be a major challenge for next year" concerning electrics, Audi CEO Bram Schot said last week. "You need a consumer willing to pay."
Audi's Schot perhaps said it best: "There will be dancing at a lot of weddings. The question is: What wedding?
(Excerpt) Read more at autonews.com ...
Any idea why so many vehicles are ugly today?
Because they cannot start with a clean sheet of paper.
Frontend, backend, rollover... collision requirements.
Exterior lighting, line of sight for the driver, mirrors.
After all that and more, a low drag coefficient is very nice.
Then the design team gets to select the color scheme.
They are designed to be difficult to reshape after accidents, so expensive replacement parts have to be bought after accidents rather rather cheaply hammering panels back into shape.
Yes, imagine a beast of burden designed by a federal government DoT committee.
I would say boring , not ugly. Why can’t we have choice between front wheel drive and rear wheel drive? To get rear wheel drive you have to go to high end nameplates...
The cloud consists of legally enforced electrification on a less than eager public. Clearly the buyers must be punished until they are happy.
Europe is headed for a camel and donkey shortage before they know it.
Two Arab guys I worked with, showed up on a camel one day.
They said it only needs grass, goes between the lanes, no license plates...
One afternoon there is a second camel in the lot!
Amar says how will we know ours?
Jamal lifts the tale on the camel and says, yesterday I heard the gate guard say look at the camel with two assholes!!!
LOL - I think you're right...
Do you want to drive a small electric in a highway full of 6,000 pound vehicles driven by technology distracted idiots?
Most new cars weight about half that.
The new Vette is about 3600 pounds.
But makes no difference because a legally loaded semi is 80,000 pounds.
Yes, imagine a beast of burden designed by a federal government DoT committee.
YOU GOT IT!
To get rear wheel drive you have to go to high end nameplates...
Except for drifters and those looking for serious weight transfer, why front-wheel drive?
Amen.
Most people have absolutely no idea the volume of parts actually manufactured in Mexican plants.
Not sure how’d you confirm this, but I suspect if Mexico just decided to stop, or disappeared, the entire industry would be offline until they could spin up Central Europe and non-China Asia.
Some of the parts are manufactured in Central Europe and Asia, but nothing like Mexico. They are the last of the truly inexpensive, moderately-skilled labor on Earth.
I enjoy driving. I like manual transmissions and rear wheel drive because the car handles “properly”. It feels better that is why all the high end cars are either rear wheel drive or all wheel drive. Front wheel drive is pedestrian i.e. for non discerning prols.
Or the USA.
Making car parts is so automated so that if made in the USA the cost difference would be unnoticeable in the final retail price of the car.
By the year 1970 people will have flying cars.
There are a bunch of stories out claiming that they will be cheaper than regular cars in a few more years because of declining battery prices. I am sorry to tell you that this is mostly nonsense. It is based on the expectation that previous declines in price will continue. But that is not realistic in this instance. The prices are more likely to go up than down.
Most electric car batteries have been based on the 18650 3.7v Li-ion cell. I have been buying them from Chinese retailers for over ten years for flashlights and computer battery refurbishing. The price on these have not gone down much during that time period although the quality has. The thing that has changed with these cells is that you can now but then on Amazon and not have to wait for a month.
The tested capacity of the cheaper batteries has gone way down. If you order a batch of 18650 cells with an advertised capacity of 3500mah and you get them for $3 a piece... I can pretty much guarantee that they will not have even half that capacity when you test them. The Chinese are known for wildly exaggerating their specs, and that explains a good deal of the chattering by advocates about falling battery prices and better performance. It is mostly nonsense.
The price of a quality cell is not much different than it was 10 years ago other than that they are a commodity item whose price fluctuates depending on market conditions. So people can cherry pick their data to demonstrate non-existent trends. When there is more manufacturing capacity than demand the price goes down. But since the raw materials are also commodities subject to market conditions the cost to produce the cells goes up and down also. If the price for the finished product goes down too much the manufactures lose a lot of money and go out of business.
The cells themselves have changed very little; the way they make them has changed very little. The economy of scale is unlikely to lower the price much more than it already has. So no, electric cars are not going to be cheaper to produce than normal cars any time soon despite the greenie hype. Their predictions are about as reliable as the climate models used by Al Gore 13 years ago in his block buster movie. I'm other words they lie.
Freakin’ Google autocorrect makes me crazy!
I think the 1960 model may have been worse. Matter of opinion though. They were both fugly.
I think they are using more plastics to reduce weight. It clashes with the regular body panels. $.02
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