Quote:
Originally Posted by DoubleF
I think sometimes the bigger issue isn't technology or physical constraints but marketing. I think some people that roll coal literally love the fact it's basically loud and obnoxious. In the long run, I think PHEV will be the future. I think the Japanese automakers are right on this one. Relying too heavily on a single technology for long term change is creating an issue in the pure EV market.
IMO the long run (and I've thought this for a while before Tesla truly dominated) is a modular vehicle that is comprised of 3-5 primary components (depending on the definition of primary components). After a while IMO people will be able to consider keeping vehicle cockpits and then just upgrading their interface/motors etc. IMO it could revolutionize the repair market. Imagine if you could basically go somewhere, standardize an EV design where the electric motor/battery pack swap within an hour or two, then send the vehicle back. Regardless of what issues you had, you could in theory just address it by swapping it all out. Then the repair company/automaker could on their own time investigate the swapped out components to figure out if they could refurbish, recycle etc. whatever is pulled out. This should have helped the rotting EV issue from before.
TBH, I thought Tesla was going to go in this direction when they first said that their biggest breakthrough in production was basically designing a vehicle that was like a battery pack on a skateboard. I was kinda surprised they discontinued it after a while. I thought if they finished off that modular concept and allowed people to upgrade vehicles to basically the latest and greatest, they'd have continued to dominate the vehicle market for more than a decade.
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I was hoping that GM would go down the "skateboard" route in the early 2000s when they introduced the Autonomy platform although it was fuel cell and not battery.