companies can look at Tesla patents and try to copy them without infringing. That is probably happening now.
Ford only selling electric cars in Europe by 2030
I agree. I feel this is more about selling cars in 2021 then what cars will be manufactured in 2035. GM (and now Ford) are promoting themselves as environmentalists and visionaries.
I’m sure GM, Ford, and other car manufacturers are making long-term plans for what kinds of cars they will be making in fifteen years. And including electric power is an obvious part of those plans. So obvious, in fact, that they don’t mind telling their competitors what they’re working on.
If GM has ideas that will revolutionize the automobile industry, they’re working on them in secret in order to get ahead of their competitors. When you announce your future plans this openly, it’s just present day advertising.
They can also take apart the cars and find out the trade secrets that aren’t covered by patents. Car companies have been doing this (with Tesla and others) since forever.
Although one of Tesla’s big advantages is the software that manages the battery charge level. I doubt that is easily reproduced. In fact, I understand that VWs new EVs were delayed due to software issues, though I don’t know exactly what the issues were.
Another advantage Tesla has is that it’s a new company, without the baggage of a hundred years of making internal combustion engines. I believe the Big Three manufacturers are confronting opposition from the United Auto Workers, who are afraid that their members will have fewer job opportunities in an electric future. (The actual motor in an EV is far simpler, so many of the skills that union members now possess will be needed.)
Given the lead times for tooling factories and then designing the vehicles, I’d say Fords 2030 plan is pretty ambitious. The 2021 models are already being sold, the 2022 models should begin producing in just a few months, with tooling being tested now, and the 2023 models are well along in design already.
From the other end of the telescope, the 2030 model year starts selling in Fall 2029 and need to start detailed design more like 2027. The factory to build them, or their upstream-most components needs to be in general design already today.
This isn’t virtue signalling. This is evidently a plan that a lot of people are working hard to deliver.
Interesting idea
I think it can be both. Its virtue-signaling because a) companies rarely talk about big strategic plans 10 years in advance, and b) if they miss the mark by a decade there’s no real consequences to the fib.
If Ford is really serious here, they have a nigh impossible mountain to climb. They launched their first electric just this year. Though restricting it to Europe probably allows them to drag their feet on Trucks, SUVs and Vans quite a bit.
Bill Gates points out that if electric cars are powered from fossil fuel plants it’s not that much of a change.
Yeah. Everything is easier in a place where small = lightweight cars are the norm and everything is close together, so 200 miles 300+ kms is a long distance.
Crawl walk run. And as you say, the fact Ford seems to be trailing the other majors in first introduction of EVs means they better get crawling ASAP if they want to run in 2030.
I don’t know anything about the regional sales mix of the majors today. If (totally made up numbers for examples) Ford makes 10% of their total worldwide sales in Europe and GM makes 30% of theirs in Europe, Ford’s 2030 promise may in fact be smaller, easier, and less risky (to the bottom line) than GM’s 2035 promise.
For darn sure they’re all afraid that the European governments will stick to their timetable and they don’t want to be locked out of that market. To a much greater degree than the US, EU and European national regulators are willing to make big business squeal in pain to achieve their regulatory goals.
Finally, a bit of protectionism is never far from Euro-regulators’ minds. If, come 2030, PSA, Fiat, Daimler, BMW, etc., are ready with EVs while Ford, GM, and Nissan are not, It’d be very tempting for the EU regulators to say “To bad so sad, EVs only from now on.” So non-EU manufacturers can’t stand to be too much later to the EV party than their Euro-based counterparts.
While it’s not a fundamental change to our power generation, it is a significant one. Large, stationary power plants are much better at reducing emissions than millions of ICE in cars. And by staggering the charging times for cars you can balance the load much more efficiently, reducing the number of power plants needed for peak times.
Doesn’t Europe have fairly generous tax breaks for EV purchases, and very expensive gas/diesel? It might be easier to sell EVs there.
This is a good thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if their timeline changed but I bet it’ll happen eventually.
Most EVs are cleaner than their gas-powered equivalents even when powered completely by coal. When they are powered by low-carbon sources like natural gas, they are much cleaner. And as you add no-carbon sources to the mix, even when fossil fuels are still used, they get better yet.
A gas car gets dirtier over time due to wear and tear causing it to be less efficient. An EV gets cleaner over time because renewable sources are constantly being added. My EV will likely be (indirectly) emitting no CO2 at all by the time I sell it.
Working on plans in 2021 to build electric cars by 2035 is sound business practice. Making public announcements in 2021 about the electric cars you’re going to build in 2035 is virtue signaling.
I can see situations where it wouldn’t be virtual signaling, although obviously it can have some virtue signaling qualities in addition to being other things. Because GM is not in the business of supporting charging stations. If they announce plans to cut (plug in?) the cord cold turkey, and other people take it as an honest signal that GM is serious about the switch, the charging stations might get built for them without having to go outside of their area of expertise. This might be a smart move for a company that is in the business of building cars rather than infrastructure.
Is there a difference between “virtue signaling” and adverting? I see Boeing ads on TV, despite the fact most of us are not in the market for a 757. Companies like to market their brand, and that doesn’t seem any worse than telling me 8,250 times a day how I can save 15% of my car insurance.
Yes, it still is. Even if the grid is 100% dirty energy, it’s easier to contain pollution at a single source than hundreds of millions of individual sources. But, of course, nowhere is 100% dirty energy, and we’re pretty much improving across the board, so as we gain better energy production, our fleet of cars are there to immediately benefit from it, not benefit after some sort of 10 or 15 year lag as you would get if you decided to only start going electric after we hit some threshold for clean energy production. Additionally, it’s trivial for an electric car to also have regenerative braking, so it has the benefits of getting regenerative braking on your whole lineup, which increases the energy efficiency of driving.
In any case, Bill Gates mentioning this is more of a “we need to get cleaner energy” point, not “we shouldn’t be pushing electric cars.”
There is the same neighborhood. But I feel advertising is directed more towards selling a particular product. “Virtue signaling” (which is not the term I would have chosen because of its use in other contexts) is when a company is trying to promote its image as a company you would like to buy products from.
I’m glad that both car companies and governments are making these efforts, but realistically, I expect these plans to slip in both timeline and scope before they come to fruition. “All of our cars electric by 2035” might easily turn into “over 90% of our cars electric or hybrid by 2040”.
And others have already pointed out that electric cars are more efficient (i.e., lower-emitting) than gasoline even with coal power plants, and that they’ll get more so as we transition to cleaner power. But yet another point to stress is that they’ll actually ease the transition. If a car is plugged in for 12 hours every night but only needs 6 hours to fully charge, you can (almost always) turn the charger on only when the windmills are running, making the demand variable to match the variable supply of the wind, and thus largely eliminating the biggest problem with wind power.