German electric car factories shut down as Chinese electric cars take over the market

[Redaktion]

Volkswagen is stopping production at two German electric car factories due to concerns about declining demand. Meanwhile, Chinese rival BYD is celebrating record sales in Europe. This raises the question of whether VW's problem is a result of outdated technology and poor value for money.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/German-electric-car-factories-shut-down-as-Chinese-electric-cars-take-over-the-market.1143447.0.html

[astolfo]

"The VW plants in Zwickau and Emden specialize in electric cars and so are particularly vulnerable to the short-term "slump in demand", as claimed by the company. According to media reports, business with combustion engines continues to be strong. At the main plant in Wolfsburg, for example, special shifts are planned for almost every weekend until Christmas due to the allegedly strong demand for bestsellers such as the Golf, Tiguan and Tayron. Volkswagen reportedly has had to ramp up production there in order to work through a growing order backlog."

VW should just cut its losses and invest into hydrogen as energy source or battery technologies that they can profit off from.

ICE cars will still be as strong as ever because EV are only a concern for city folks and Europe in general. They bring more inconveniencies than benefits in the long term, and money would be better spent in making ICE cars more reliable/efficient.

I think Honda and Toyota are approaching this in the right direction, investing in hybrid engines

[A]

"The VW plants in Zwickau and Emden specialize in electric cars and so are particularly vulnerable to the short-term "slump in demand", as claimed by the company. According to media reports, business with combustion engines continues to be strong. At the main plant in Wolfsburg, for example, special shifts are planned for almost every weekend until Christmas due to the allegedly strong demand for bestsellers such as the Golf, Tiguan and Tayron. Volkswagen reportedly has had to ramp up production there in order to work through a growing order backlog."

VW should just cut its losses and invest into hydrogen as energy source or battery technologies that they can profit off from.

ICE cars will still be as strong as ever because EV are only a concern for city folks and Europe in general. They bring more inconveniencies than benefits in the long term, and money would be better spent in making ICE cars more reliable/efficient.

I think Honda and Toyota are approaching this in the right direction, investing in hybrid engines

Since the Chinese are doing fine, the issue shows it is mostly a VW issue. Part of the reason why old companies disappear and new ones take their place is due to too much invested in older technology so they neglect progress in newer tech. Not to mention it doesn't help when their dealers anti-sell EVs

VW should consider spinning off EVs into a separate brand and separate board independent from old ones if they wish to survive

Hydrogen is a dead end technology. If not for the Japanese government forcing Toyota, Honda and other Japanese brands to push that dead end tech, nobody would bother.

As for ICE in general, there is already little room for improvement in ICE. You can spend hundreds of billions to get 1% improvement if not less.

EVs are the future one way or another, and like any big shift in technology. You either go all in, or suffer the same way Kodak did despite Kodak was the one who invented the digital camera.

[heffeque]

VW should just cut its losses and invest into hydrogen as energy source or battery technologies that they can profit off from.

Are you from the past?
Hydrogen is terrible compared electric vehicles.
It only makes sense if you are on the petroleum lobby, as the cheapest hydrogen (and still orders of magnitude more expensive than plain electricity for EVs) is taken from dirty sources.

Hydrogen is expensive to buy, extremely complex, breaks easily, is a headache to maintain, expensive to store, expensive to use, expensive to repair, dirty to produce (even when it's "green", it's wasting 3x the energy required compared to electricity of a standard EV), dangerous (more explosive than gasoline), etc.

There are literally no advantages of hydrogen vs EV.
If you can name just one, please do so.

[Enrico Frahn]

There are literally no advantages of hydrogen vs EV.
If you can name just one, please do so.

You can fully refuel a hydrogen car in a couple of minutes, which is not possible with EVs.

[Terror Byte]

"The VW plants in Zwickau and Emden specialize in electric cars and so are particularly vulnerable to the short-term "slump in demand", as claimed by the company. According to media reports, business with combustion engines continues to be strong. At the main plant in Wolfsburg, for example, special shifts are planned for almost every weekend until Christmas due to the allegedly strong demand for bestsellers such as the Golf, Tiguan and Tayron. Volkswagen reportedly has had to ramp up production there in order to work through a growing order backlog."

VW should just cut its losses and invest into hydrogen as energy source or battery technologies that they can profit off from.

They bring more inconveniencies than benefits in the long term, and money would be better spent in making ICE cars more reliable/efficient.

This is one crazy post.

Hydrogen is a dead end for mass transportation. It may play a role in heaby vehicles, and for clean steel, concrete etc, but will paly no role for normal road cars. Aside from the limitations and problems with storage, no on will spend the billions of dollars tryingto put in refueling infrastructure alongside the billions we are putting in for EV charging infrastructure. The biggest reason it shouldnever take off is that only 0.04% of global hydrogen production is clean and green and we only make a paltry 97 million tons.

As for EV's bringing more incvoveniences than benefits, where on hell did you get that nonsense from? ICE's can only realise small improvements going forward. Yes they will still be around for a lot more years and the EU's insane 2035 deadline will never happen, but currently hybrid is the most sense for most people especially rural peopele.

[A]

There are literally no advantages of hydrogen vs EV.
If you can name just one, please do so.

You can fully refuel a hydrogen car in a couple of minutes, which is not possible with EVs.

That sounds good in theory, poor in practice. The reason is because you can't just put in hydrogen, you need to compress the hydrogen first. So the first car gets to fill up in 10 minutes, the next car will take 30min to an hour. And you better hope the compressor is running properly as those break down all the time. You also fill up an hour only to get stuck at half range because the compressor ran only at 5k psi. And god forbid some CO/CO2 gets in, then your fuel cell is now a brick.

Meanwhile EVs continue to improve their charge speed, current quickest production EV can charge 200 miles in 11 minutes

[Germano]

EV are only feasible if you either have a huge charging infrastructure (AFAIK no country in Europe fits that definition yet) or can charge at home.

Another problem is long trips. Until the electric charging network can compete with ICE in speed and availability, PHEV offers the best of both worlds.

But even PHEV requires charging at home for maximum efficiency.

If you can't charge at home, EV / PHEV will make your life miserable, best to get a hybrid ICE engine unless all you do is inner city driving.

[Worgarthe]

You can fully refuel a hydrogen car in a couple of minutes, which is not possible with EVs.

I knew you'd say that one.

You are actually wrong: Refilling a hydrogen car takes longer than charging a modern EV.

It does show that you really have no clue.

3-5 minutes is really that long nowadays?

Here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9WqDCybmvKQ

Modern EVs charge much faster than that?

[anan]

3-5 minutes is really that long nowadays?

Modern EVs charge much faster than that?

But at what price? In the video he paid 129$ for 358mi of range. Which tracks with hydrogen being more expensive to run on than gasoline. EVs at least can be cheaper when charged at home.
Also, Mirai's hydrogen tanks take up 1/3 of space by volume. It is very impractical as a car. It is like an H1 Hummer - huge on the outside, very cramped on the inside.
Regarding any type of hybrid - as said by others - they basically inherit any potential problems from ICE and EVs. Modern turbocharged ICE engines last way less than the ones of yesteryear. Taxi drivers like Priuses because they can be bought for pennies when their battery goes out. The battery can be repaired but insurance does not do that. They can only replace it with new and that is prohibitively expensive. Thus they are written off, sold cheaply and then individual battery cells are replaced by new owners.
EVs are hyped up by the many improvements (SS, Na batteries). Not all of those have materialized yet. But the constant flow of improvements work in their favor And there are specific timelines when those will be in production vehicles.
While many revolutionary ICE engine technologies pop up. None have moved from a prototype phase.