^^it will be easier to take Tesla private when confidence in the stock tanks. Probably around 5 or 10$ a share.

Lots of institutional investors will be taking a haircut and Musk will never have the name recognition to do something like that again.

A fair quantity of electrics are going to be manufactured in China this year. For their own and perhaps other Asian markets only at this stage. I read somewhere months ago perhaps half a million units. True or not it will soon be known.

I believe in conjunction the builder is installing charging outlets in parts of China themselves. I thought it was Volkswagon's golf as a platform. They have had existing manufacturing facilities there for quite some time.

From a manufacturing perspective that is perhaps the best place to build them. China has had more experience with the items that would power them than any other country I can think of.

Plus if the battery cost there is not out of sight. They may sell for less than a conventional car. China has had a lot of time now with lithium battery production and three phase converters and motors to run on them. There are components like transmissions, starters, and alternators that are not needed in electric cars. There is nothing to the three phase motors that run off the converters. They have no brushes or wear items other than the bearings. The cars require no exhaust systems, pollution items etc. either.

I suspect a lot of companies are making a misteak waiting for better battery technology. Sell what you can use now and upgrade the cars battery if better arrives.

Perhaps some company may make an electric car that is reasonable in price. Maybe that is even why volkswagon is doing it now there. Extreme range is not a great issue if there are fast charging places distributed across a country. At least one company installed a motor at each wheel a long time ago. Today you could put one motor on each rear wheel. Eliminating power transmission mechanicals a lot. No engine and other items that take up space make more room for battery capacity. At least one company put a motor at each wheel or used the wheels as part of the motor. A very long time ago.

Manufacturers are not going to destroy themselves by building them to last decades. Although it is quite easy to do that with electrics I suspect.

The only thing I am almost positive of. Oil companies are not going to like them being in common use. My guess is at this very time there are a lot of research teams working at developing better battery technology. It could be areal gold mind if accomplished by any developer.

Another approach may be that you buy the car but the battery is leased. You need a recharge on a trip. You stop at a designated place and the right equipment extracts it and installs a fully charged battery and you are on your way. This could occur in a shorter time period than it takes to fill a fuel tank. If the design intent and implementation is done right. When around home just charge it at your house. Or maybe it is just cheaper to have the exchange that is locally available installed. They will be able to buy electricity at far less cost than the individual can.

Providing this would probably be a monopoly situation. Not really desirable but that is the obvious direction a lot of things are going. Large companies either driving others out of the market. Or just continuously taking more of it is todays reality. It also would give some company the stimulation to build the electric cars. Providing the fuel for then essentially as well is a real motivation. This kind of sounds like volkswagon is attempting to do by setting up all kinds of recharging stations in China. They will obviously be buying the electricity cheaper and retailing it hopefully for less than it would cost through your meter. The problem with charging stations is it takes about 45 minutes. If they changed the battery very quickly at each place instead the electric car will kill the gas cars off.

I know it is possible to design the cars, battery configuration and removal/installation equipment to do a very quick change. In an almost seamless rapid fashion. You never own the battery in your car. The other advantage is the cars manufacturer does not need to build limited lifespan into their product. To have a healthy bottom line.

For a lot of reasons I expect north America will be late in the electric car game when and if it gets going in very high volume. Corporations that would be hurt by it are powerful enough to get laws enacted to delay them. Plus some countries have so huge a population with their citizens now able to purchase cars in high volume. They cannot tolerate the additional pollution of dino fuelled vehicles.

Howdy All,
Google lithium air battery.

__________________
Frank X. Morris
17 Kia Niro
08 Jeep Wrangler 4 door unlimited

Graphene based batteries are going to appear. They are to be a marked improvement they think.


A local person that has owned more than one electric car. Is claiming no difficulty in travelling decent distances already with enough charging stations available already to do so. According to him fuelling them is pretty reasonable in cost..

They potentially have advantages that will be hard to ignore.

This is funny because I have just read that people will not only turn to electric cars but will buy self-driving homes instead of normal apartments and houses https://tranio.com/articles/self-driving-mobile-homes-how-driverless-cars-will-change-the-property-market_5354/
Kind of fun, but living in this self-driving vehicles forever... I am not sure I'd go for that.