Combined with the investments in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Michigan, this is "bet the company" levels of investment. I pray for Ford's sake they picked the right horse (vis-à-vis, e.g., hydrogen or ammonia).
Its a regulatory bet, not an engineering one. The West is making a civilizational bet on EVs so it's not Ford that loses the bet, its the entire West.
From a technical POV, I disagree with the bet. I think hybridization of ICE while transitioning to CNG+1%NH3 fuel (to have very high compression engines) makes a lot more sense.
Afterall, if you can make an ICE match an electrical power plant's carbon emissions, electric cars make very little sense in the short to mid term (until the marginal power is guaranteed to be sustainable).
EDIT:
A lot of comments so this would be my (preferred) solution. An hybrid ICE that:
- is like the Chevy Volt or Prius
- like the Mazda and Prius, runs on the miller cycle
- like a diesel has 20:1 compression. Knock and NOx considerations follow.
- like diesels has ureas/ammonia injection for NOx from high compression.
- like cars in the third world, runs on CNG (120 octane, high energy to carbon density)
- is sized for average power, not peak power, so when it runs, it runs at full open throttle.
All the bits Ive described exist already but no single car adopts them all.
Even if the carbon emissions match, the drivetrain in an ICE vehicle contains 2,000+ moving parts typically, whereas the drivetrain in an EV contains around 20. The benefits of TVs range beyond direct carbon emissions from the power unit.
Look, what follows is my opinion and why Im against EVs for the short to mid term future. Im not a domain expert, but I am a physicist and an engineer whose worked in energy and for the DOE on sustainable energy sources. Again, Im not a car engineer.
Carbon emissions is why we're transitioning. Its why EVs are made mandatory. Its the premise that the EV has to fulfill. Thousands of little ICE parts have little consequence since cars, typically, die for every other reason except engine failure. This has been the case since widespread adoption of automatic transmissions and fuel injection.
The math of EVs is pretty daunting too. Take an EV and ignore its greater sin of creation (ie resources to make one vs an ICE car). Now pretend it runs on pixie dust (ie actually zero emissions).
Now compare that to taking that EV's (electrically) massive battery and, instead hybridizing N number of vehicles. Ive run the numbers, and the EV has (much) greater CO2 emissions.
If you use regulatory power to funnel those batteries to preferentially hybridize contractors' vans and trucks (ie the F-250 and 350, not the wanna be cowboys' 150) the comparison sucks even more.
Note that this analysis uses efficiency numbers from current widespread ICE engines, not rather niche (for the West) CNG cars that can run at very high compression ratios (methane has an octane rating of about 120) and have much higher energy content per gram of CO2.
And you know what the funniest part of all of this is? We could slash transportation CO2 overnight by lowering and imposing lower speed limits.
But again, this is what Ive come to believe with car manufacturer and EPA data in excel. YMMV
Can you show the spreadsheet on this EV vs hybridizing N vehicles? Pretty tricky full lifecycle analysis to do. It would be a little bit strange intuitively since hybrids also take a lot of resources to build, as you must build a transmission, an engine, all the infrastructure around an engine, some kind of integration of that engine with the electric motor, AND the electric motor, AND a small battery pack.
Hybrids also have the highest fire risk of all types (EV vs ICE vs Hybrid)
This is the primary reason I wouldn't go back to combustion. The running costs of electric vehicles are absurdly low at times.
You can put 50k-100k miles on most EVs on sale today having only bought cabin air filters, tires and wiper blades in addition to the cost of the electricity - thats largely it!
A hybrid takes care of the brakes. What are the next big consumable in an ICE vs EV? Oil changes? Hardly a deal breaker. Air filters? $10 and often easier to instal than the cabin air filter.
With fuel injection, spark plugs can easily go 120k+ miles. I have never replaced them and no engine Ive owned ever seemed bothered by it.
Spark plug wiring? My uncle did that once on his civic... when it had 180k miles and was 25 years old. He was ready to junk the car, but he ended up driving it until he moved away and sold it.
If your ICE doesn't outlive your car (with regular oil changes) you drive like a maniac or buy cheap cars (you know the brands)
I get that on my ICE brakes too. My secret? Engine braking and taking my foot off the gas when the light ahead is red: something nobody seems to do sadly.
Are EV suspensions over-built enough to account for the extra weight they’re carrying? Imo that’s the big expense once vehicles start showing their age. Extremely dependent on road conditions though… not great in the salt belt.
No, all engineers working on EVs forgot to design suspension components strong enough for the mass of the car. At Tesla and Ford and GM they are all idiots.
I know you’re joking, but given consumer indifference to mpg but laser focus on range, I wouldn’t be surprised if weight-reduction-at-all-costs took a front row seat for EVs.
Auto engineers work first for the marketing department. And range sells.
Few buyers run a “10 year TCO and then residual value” calculation.
From new, you will get to 100k miles with the above on majority of decent EVs on sale.
Beyond 100k, there isn't much, but you will likely need to do things like brake disc replacement or some shock work, but the costs are still minimal vs ICE car maintenance at this stage in an ICE car's lifecycle. If you do pads and discs at 100k on an EV, you will generally be good to 200k again. The shock work is no different to what a gas car might need at this stage.
Thanks to regen braking, the lifespan of the braking system consumable components is increased enormously vs combustion.
The batteries are still generally giving useable performance/range up to 300k on a lot of used Teslas, but this will vary depending how the owner looked after the battery. Lots of DC supercharging generates a lot of heat and isnt great for long term range. A tesla mainly charged on AC at home will keep great battery range for a very long time though. I'm planning to keep my EV for a crazy long period of time, given the lack of operating costs. The range loss on an mainly AC charged EV can be surprisingly minimal.
The only fluids are some coolants generally, and those are easily/cheaply replaced usually on a ~10 year cycle. Most EVs are just scaled up electric toy RC cars in terms of their architecture - really! - the number of drivetrain components is incredibly small.
> ICE car maintenance at this stage in an ICE car's lifecycle.
What become the big ICE maintenance issues at this point? I know spark plugs can be a royal pain on some vehicles but at least iridium plugs last a very long time.
(I’ll admit, I’m starting to deal with more seal leaks at 15 years. Need to track it down to avoid adding ~2L oil between my 10k mile oil change. And I’ve been neglecting trans/diff flushes)
My biggest groan over the next few years will be suspension parts and not just the struts. All them “sealed” “forever” control arms and such without grease points, ugh.
I hope people realize that fuel cell cars are also EVs, and have only a handful more moving parts to deal with. People have mislead themselves into thinking the BEV is synonymous with all EVs. This type of thinking could easily lead people into making serious mistakes.
The history of fuel cell cars doesn't exactly paint a happy picture...
I think its critically important we have managed to profitably make EVs at scale - no one has ever turned a profit on fuel cell cars, and indeed often sold them at enormous losses. See any of the ones Toyota shipped - the Mirai is sold at an incredible loss.
This isn't to say these can't be fixed, but the best fuel cell cars simply haven't been as good as the best EVs to date accross a number of objective/subjective measures.
You do realize that BEVs predate internal combustion cars? You could've said the same thing about all EVs just a few years ago.
The problem with BEVs is that they have gigantic resource requirements. It is very much replacing one problematic resource base with another. Fuel cell cars lack this problem. It is not inconceivable that this fundamental problem will force our hand in the future.
Also, like I said, a fuel cell car is an EV. Your story about the Mirai losing money is not different than accusing Tesla of doing the same. Arguably even more absurd, since Mirai should cost less to make.
> You do realize that BEVs predate internal combustion cars? You could've said the same thing about all EVs just a few years ago.
Toyota and others have tried and failed for decades, yes. The order of events is irrelevant to the discussion.
BEV sales managed to reach profitability at scale in less than a decade.
BEVs also have benefit of sharing technologies with many other devices, in a way fuel cell does not - its not surprising to me at all BEV is winning, and by a huge margin.
Supplying and pumping compressed hydrogen at temperatures well below freezing (the typical solution) at the pump is also not all that simple compared to an EV plug or even good ole' gas, and the range offered by the compressed tank is not all that amazing either.
Fuel cell tech will find uses I'm sure, but its not going to be affordable personal transport.
I was thinking more like solar panels charging high capacity batteries that allow people to live off grid reducing the need to implement expensive to maintain infrastructure to rural locations.
Sure, everything they did was, on paper, the correct move. The general prediction of the direction of computing was more or less correct. It just didn't happen on the timescale they envisioned, and simpler and cheaper short-term solutions turned out to be way better. Not to mention that simpler and cheaper solutions are way more flexible and faster moving, meaning nation-scale projects are often way too slow and cumbersome to even do the thing they were supposed to do.
Huge regulatory bets on transportation technology have the same problem. It wouldn't shock me if all of this ends in disappointment and bailouts.
The energy requirements for the kind of full and rapid electrification being pushed (cars, trucks, boats, ships, aircraft, homes) seems daunting to me. Yes, Tesla's Master Plan Part 3 lays it out, and yet the scale of the thing is like nothing the US has done, well, I think I can say, ever.
I mean, we have to build brand-new grid-scale clean energy generation at a scale of almost five times currently installed power generation capacity. That also means the grid capacity to carry it.
My fear is that the haste could create some really serious power problems as the infrastructure lags vehicle deployment.
On the other hand, if things get ugly people won't buy them. This is also a problem. I firmly believe electric cars are the future. We are simply putting fantasy before reality. Reality means that power generation expansion must come first and cars follow based on quotas established to maintain generation/grid integrity.
> We are simply putting fantasy before reality. Reality means that power generation expansion must come first and cars follow based on quotas established to maintain generation/grid integrity.
None of the players are willing to expand power generation for some future possibility, we have to scale up demand before they're willing to invest in that.
It also ignores that the biggest problem currently isn't generation but is scheduling, if more utilities had the capability to help homeowners schedule charging based on system demand we'd barely need any increase in generation to begin with as we don't have much trouble generating the needed power over the scale of a night, but if everyone tries to pull an 11kwh charge at the same time (similar to California having issues in the evening as everyone turns up the AC when people arive home) we do have a problem. Even california with all it's problem has enough capacity if there was better scheduling available to help flatten the curve.
> Even california with all it's problem has enough capacity if there was better scheduling available to help flatten the curve.
I don't think so. Not enough power. I am in CA. Power problems are already serious enough.
Scheduling is one of those things that sounds great on paper. What do you think are the chances of people who do not own EV's having any interest in being regulated to help people buying $50K to $120K cars? Less than zero.
Also, power problems are guaranteed. This isn't theoretical and one can't wave it away with concepts such as scheduling. Tesla's Master Plan Part 3 explains that we have to go from 1,200 GW of power generation today to 5,338 GW for full electrification. That, again, cannot be waved-off with scheduling. Even half of that cannot be solved by shuffling cards. The problem is real and power generation has to come ahead of electrification.
I am not saying we need to double power generation five years before adding electric cars. No. What I am pointing out is that we are putting the cart before the horse.
CA says no more ICE vehicles after 2030 (I forget the year, I think that's right). That's 7 years from today. And yet, we did not simultaneously announce immediate projects to add power generation and delivery in support of the new vehicles to be sold starting in 2030.
How long does it take to add non-trivial power generation? Decades?
Somewhere around TWO MILLION new cars are sold in CA per year. The grid and power generation isn't ready for two million electric cars added every year starting in 2030. Those projects had to be launched three years ago, not five years from now.
> Scheduling is one of those things that sounds great on paper. What do you think are the chances of people who do not own EV's having any interest in being regulated to help people buying $50K to $120K cars? Less than zero.
With proper incentives a lot. The grid has more than enough capacity for the needed watt hours needed in any given day, so if we can get people to cool their homes down more during lulls in usage, and charge their cars during those periods too it would take a lot of slack, ACs are likely a much bigger hit to most grids in the southwest over the next several decades than EVs will be. With well regulated (see not Texas) demand pricing it shouldn't be hard to convince people to do a couple times a year changes to their thermostats & enable settings on their EVSEs or EV to lower usage during peak.
Your argument mostly boils down to "what if everyone stopped to fill up gas at the same time, there's not enough pumps, we can't support ICE vehicles".
Also sorry if I came off as dick-ish, I don't disagree that we should be expanding energy production as fast & cleanly as we can, but I think we as a society are much to unwilling to take the slightest inconvenience, and it feels like with scheduling too many people are at the position of "we've tried the absolute minimum and it didn't solve it, it's doing more isn't going to work."
> The grid has more than enough capacity for the needed watt hours needed in any given day
Just want to make sure I am clear on what you are saying:
Are you saying that's the case for the cars and loads we have today? Or, are you saying we have enough for a full transition to EV's?
> Also sorry if I came off as dick-ish, I don't disagree that we should be expanding energy production
No worries. Thanks for the gesture. It indicates a desire to have a conversation, rather than wanting to throw fecal matter at each other, which, sadly, can happen even on HN with some people.
I am simply trying to understand the reality of this energy transition, rather than the many fantasies out there. When politicians make claims nobody asks the hard questions. Well, OK, I understand that most reporters don't have a clue. Most politicians don't have a clue. Which means we end-up with uncontested statements that, if repeated enough time, tend to become reality in the minds of people who will ultimately vote for this stuff in one way or another. We have to be careful that we don't make massive bets on flawed "religious" assumptions.
> Afterall, if you can make an ICE match an electrical power plant's carbon emissions, electric cars make very little sense in the short to mid term (until the marginal power is guaranteed to be sustainable)
Doesn't the need for a car engine to be light enough and small enough to work in the car mean that power plants will almost always be able to be cleaner?
You can make the car engine more efficient by making it be a small generator that is working at optimal RPMs rather than the variable RPMs driving the car itself.
Consider some of the various hybrid approaches.
Honda has the IMA. The insight is an ICE car with an "underpowered" gas motor that has an electric motor to assist it. If it runs out of gas, it's out of gas and doesn't move.
Toyota's Prius is an electric car with a gas motor that switches on when optimal. If you run out of gas in the Prius, the car will go for some further distance until the battery goes dead.
> When the battery is depleted, the range extender engine kicks in to generate electricity for the motor, as GM noted in its press materials. But when the battery is depleted and the car is running at 70 mph or above, the planetary gearset transmits additional motive force directly from the engine to the wheels.
... however, this also should take into account the efficiency of the power grid too.
A hybrid car in part of the grid that is heavily coal can be efficient in terms of CO2 than an electric car because it is burning gas more cleanly than the grid is burning coal.
This is an excellent question but a massive one to answer. Probably the length of a scientific paper. It'd involve thermo, engineering economics, etc.
To keep it short, yes there is a return to scale, but it's a diminishing one. Gas turbines run at about 55% thermal efficiency. Large of small it matters little, that limit is set by the blade materials' melting temperature (which sets longevity).
Your car typically runs at about 30%, its efficiency partially offset by heat losses to the cylinder walls (ie the larger the better), but is mostly set by engineering decisions other than fuel efficiency (one big cylinder has less surface heat loss than four little guys but would be unbalanced)
But there are so many legacy design decisions in an ICE that no longer apply if we have hybrid drivetrains and ammonia/urea injection (to mitigate NOx from high compression).
The Prius challenged a lot (but not all) of these decisions and remains, in my opinion, the most revolutionary car of the past 50 years.
I really believe that an fossil fuel car engine can get an efficiency within the transmission losses of the best gas power plant. But even if ICE development were frozen, hybrids still make more sense, from a CO2 POV, than EVs
Whats the co2 and environmental impact of building out CNG infrastructure for refueling? That seems vastly more costly in terms of resources than running wires to charge EVs. Especially when the electricity needed to charge an EV is the same as the electricity/energy needed to refine a tank of gasoline.
How much electricity will be needed to compress and refine the natural gas into fuel tanks? How big and heavy are those tanks?
Electric cars have something that previous "green" vehicles never had: rapid acceleration.
EVs are downright fun to drive. Sure they don't have the handling of a lightweight Porsche, but being able to walk a Mustang GT with an F-150 lightning on the highway drag race is something all the "truck guys" can brag about. That's a very important selling factor, especially from a test-drive perspective.
The biggest hurdle is fast-charging infrastructure in cities, but for the majority of Americans that live in suburban/rural areas with a garage, it won't be hard to install a charging system.
>Sure they don't have the handling of a lightweight Porsche, but
Be careful with those old concepts. Lighter weight is no longer always better for handling. Drivers state the Taycan has better turn in and a more neutral balance due to the low center of gravity when directly compared to the 911.
>Electric cars have something that previous "green" vehicles never had: rapid acceleration.
If people really cared about acceleration, why would they buy standard versions of the Model 3/Y (which outsell performance versions)? It's quick, but there are cheaper vehicles that outperform it 0-60.
You sure? The standard Tesla models are quite fast for price point. the standard hyundai, kia, ford, vw crossover EVs are slower, but faster than their ICE counterparts
I drove a Tesla for the first time thinking I was going to like the driver assist and tech the most. The only thing my friends and I could talk about afterwards was how fucking fast the thing was.
VW is putting $200B into the transition, so they're not alone in betting the company. I think it's the right move, but since there are companies who aren't putting the same level of resources in as VW & Ford, we will see who the winners are in a few years.
Never going to happen. That will require an Act of Congress, and Congress cant agree on what color the sky is.
Even if it did, it will be marred with all kinds of overreach ripe for judical review and delay,
even if it got past the court challenges, it would be subject to reversal when the power inevitably shifts again...
If Ford is "bet the company" based on some kind of need for Federal Action (which would be very out of character for Ford anyway) they are placing a losing bet. GM would be more likely to look to the Federal Government to enforce their sales model, they are subbed Government Motors after all... ;)
EV rebates got bundled into the Inflation Reduction Act and passed last year. The Act of Congress has already happened.
Further encouragements to go electric will happen through the EPA who already have the congressional authority to regulate tailpipes. Anything they do will be challenged in court, but if they can get it through the courts they can do a lot without an Act of Congress.
I did not realize a Tax Credit, that also has a TON of strings attached that as it phases into more protectionism fewer and fewer EV's will be able to quality for, and it at odds with other Environmental / Climate protections (like the requirement that Lithium some from approved NA vendors, but then disallowing new Lithium manufacturing in the US) is now a Mandate the produce EV's
The claim I responded to was that Congress was going to Mandate the production of EV's, not that congress was going to pass a terrible protectionist law that provide weak credits for EV's....
There is zero chance the manufacturing environment can move that fast. I know I work in it.
The government can place all the magic words on the page they want, there are structural limits to how fast mines, plants, and other things can be built, even if Ford, GM, VW etc can switch their factories to EV's there is an entire supply chain that can not spin up that fast. Copper and Lithium production alone would need to increase by like 900%, that is not happening in just a few years time.
> The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) amended the Qualified Plug-in Electric Drive Motor Vehicle Credit (IRC 30D), now known as the Clean Vehicle Credit, and added a new requirement for final assembly in North America that took effect on August 17, 2022. For new electric, fuel cell electric, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles acquired, delivered, and placed in service after August 16, 2022, this final assembly requirement applies. For vehicles placed in service on or after January 1, 2023, the Clean Vehicle Credit provisions are subject to updated guidance from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. [1]
The IRA was a bipartisan law passed by Congress. Part of it renewed a credit of up to $7500 per purchase of an EV that underwent final assembly in North America.
Additionally, California (which by all accounts sets national car standards) has passed updated regulations to phase-out the sale of ICE cars within the next 10 years. This is also a very important piece of legislation that will help the Ford decision.
I see very little evidence that hydrogen or ammonia powered cars have anywhere near the probability of success that battery electric cars do, for a number of reasons.
If anything, companies like Ford are taking the pragmatic approach, while Toyota has wasted years with their idiotic stubbornness towards pushing hydrogen fuel cells.
I know they were dumping a ton of cash into software to try and catch Tesla in FSD, but it remains to be seen whether any of that is a good investment at the moment.
This is technically true but they sort won in a prisoners dilemma type situation. Had no auto makers been bailed out, the shared suppliers may have all folded causing Ford to go under. So while they didn't take any direct money, the bailouts kept their upstream suppliers afloat. Ford also benefits from high import tariffs on foreign built trucks, a tariff basically designed to protect the F-150. If you check subsidy tracker[1], you're see that Ford is an enormous recipient of corporate welfare. They've received $5 billion from Michigan alone since just 2010.
Rivian didn't exist, and Toyota didn't enter the US market until a year after the tariff and didn't build trucks for the US market then. Sure GM builds trucks too and benefits, but it was basically designed as a giveaway to Ford while keeping VW light trucks out of the US market in retaliation for Germany tariffs on chicken.
> No American truck buyer wants a Mitsubishi or Hyundai truck. Full stop.
Then why maintain a tariff from 1964 designed by the Johnson administration?
Money is fungible and government handouts are government handouts. Moreover, many of those subsidies are in the form of bonds, low interest loans, and so on not just tax credits.
If you think even about the etymology of "hand-out", it is not in fact the government handing out money — the company is handing less money to the government.
When the federal government gives a tax credit for installing residential solar panels, it is not a "consumer bailout" or "welfare".
We have a perfectly good term for this, which is "tax credit", because that is what it is.
From a technical POV, I disagree with the bet. I think hybridization of ICE while transitioning to CNG+1%NH3 fuel (to have very high compression engines) makes a lot more sense.
Afterall, if you can make an ICE match an electrical power plant's carbon emissions, electric cars make very little sense in the short to mid term (until the marginal power is guaranteed to be sustainable).
EDIT:
A lot of comments so this would be my (preferred) solution. An hybrid ICE that:
- is like the Chevy Volt or Prius
- like the Mazda and Prius, runs on the miller cycle
- like a diesel has 20:1 compression. Knock and NOx considerations follow.
- like diesels has ureas/ammonia injection for NOx from high compression.
- like cars in the third world, runs on CNG (120 octane, high energy to carbon density)
- is sized for average power, not peak power, so when it runs, it runs at full open throttle.
All the bits Ive described exist already but no single car adopts them all.