MitchJi
10 MW
This is obvious to most of us, what's interesting is that a VW executive is starting to figure this out:
http://europe.autonews.com/article/20170710/COPY/307149996/industry-needs-40-gigafactories-vw-says
EHRA-LESSIEN, Germany — A massive shortage of lithium ion battery cells could plague the global car industry in the coming decade if capacity equivalent to 40 Tesla gigafactories is not added by 2025, according to estimates from Volkswagen Group.
Ulrich Eichhorn, head of r&d for the world's largest carmaker, increased projections made just 13 months ago for his company's needs in 2025. Eichhorn's forecast is based on targets that a quarter of its group volume will come from the sale of electric vehicles by then.
<Snip>
The most interesting part IMO:
He said the refining industry was built around the combustion engine and suggested that, if not for the oil boom in Texas at the dawn of the automobile era, cars might have been powered by electricity from the start.
Volkswagen founder Ferdinand Porsche, for example, unveiled at the 1900 Paris World Exhibition an electric car with wheel-hub motors for propulsion, a vehicle he designed long before the original Beetle.
"If the technologies had been reversed, it would be hard to conceive an engineer now successfully proposing that combustion engines replace electric cars," Eichhorn said. "Imagine that person would say, 'Rather than having maximum torque available from the start like an electric car, it had to ramp up over time.'
"Imagine he then said it involved a device where thousands of tiny explosions occur every minute using a toxic and highly flammable liquid that had to be stored in the vehicle somewhere. And then imagine him saying that this fuel came almost entirely from crisis regions. What do you think his boss might have said to him?"
http://europe.autonews.com/article/20170710/COPY/307149996/industry-needs-40-gigafactories-vw-says
EHRA-LESSIEN, Germany — A massive shortage of lithium ion battery cells could plague the global car industry in the coming decade if capacity equivalent to 40 Tesla gigafactories is not added by 2025, according to estimates from Volkswagen Group.
Ulrich Eichhorn, head of r&d for the world's largest carmaker, increased projections made just 13 months ago for his company's needs in 2025. Eichhorn's forecast is based on targets that a quarter of its group volume will come from the sale of electric vehicles by then.
<Snip>
The most interesting part IMO:
He said the refining industry was built around the combustion engine and suggested that, if not for the oil boom in Texas at the dawn of the automobile era, cars might have been powered by electricity from the start.
Volkswagen founder Ferdinand Porsche, for example, unveiled at the 1900 Paris World Exhibition an electric car with wheel-hub motors for propulsion, a vehicle he designed long before the original Beetle.
"If the technologies had been reversed, it would be hard to conceive an engineer now successfully proposing that combustion engines replace electric cars," Eichhorn said. "Imagine that person would say, 'Rather than having maximum torque available from the start like an electric car, it had to ramp up over time.'
"Imagine he then said it involved a device where thousands of tiny explosions occur every minute using a toxic and highly flammable liquid that had to be stored in the vehicle somewhere. And then imagine him saying that this fuel came almost entirely from crisis regions. What do you think his boss might have said to him?"
