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Originally Posted by glennQNYC
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Originally Posted by zenmaster
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Originally Posted by Fundguy1
Zenmaster, that's an opinion, not a fact. Markets will dictate that. Oil prices will dictate that. The technology will dictate that. You can't say combustion cars haven't also been nor will the y stop to continue to advance. Compare the family sedan of the mid 80s to one today. Ev need to not only become equals to today's tech. They need to become equals to tomorrow's tech too. And also need to become economically and feature wise preferable to the combustion cars of tomorrow to have a meaningful impact. I don't see that for decades or more nor do I see corporations willing to pay huge sums for decades to bet it happens. There is no guarentee batteries will someday be higher capacity, cheap, enviromentally friendly, reliable, and fast charging. Its speculation. And all theset things and others need to happen to make that a reality. 15 yrs ago everyone was betting on fuel cells. The speculation was they would be the dominant fuel source by now. The outlook was the tech would be perfected a decade ago. I don't see any. Do you?
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Yes. Even if somehow there were zero technological advances in EV, the manufacturing technologies alone would achieve cost parity with ICE. Battery production simply scales well. But, in additional to production advances there are technological advances in battery materials and chemistry. There is no guarantee that higher capacity (energy density) will continue to improve, but such industry stagnation would have to somehow be the safe bet in order for an auto manufacturer to ignore EV R&D, right? I wouldn't take such a bet with my company. Since the trend is in fact a steady improvement, the prudent thing to do would be to put more investment in the "i" program.
http://insideevs.com/electric-cars-t...thin-a-decade/ |
Pouring more resources to the i division doesn't seem at all prudent when the most important thing is missing... Sales. |
Also the supplier is Samsung so technically their the ones pouring resources into the battery tech not BMW. BMW however gets to pay to use it under whatever agreement they agreed upon when the project started.
These batteries are used elsewhere not just in the i3 so it will improve even if BMW doesn't care.
Standard supplier, OE relationship.
Our suppliers are always working on bettering their technology and trying to make us buy it. Weather we do or not is up to us since we are the OE but if it was preparatory and BMW designed it only worked in the i3 then it be different.
I also read that theirs a better battery coming in 2019 that will get the car over 200+ miles.
Hey upgradability is great, having a car that will never rust or corrode is also a big win.