by BeauV » Wed Aug 15, 2018 11:33 am
Didn't Porsche end up putting a flywheel into it's race cars because it couldn't do re-charge on braking quickly enough. I think it was about two or three years ago. I remember it because the flywheel went some insanely fast speed at full chat and they could dump something like 2,000 HP (that's undoubtedly not the right number) into it for 5 seconds without things falling apart. I remember the discussion about the gyro effect of the flywheel.
Larry, don't get me wrong, Porsche is a great engineering company and once the VW Group stops spending zillions trying to restore their image after the diesel lying escapade, they will continue as one of the truly great examples of how a government and a public company can work together to really do well. But, physics is physics and the current claims of 15 minute re-charge time don't pass the sniff test. As someone who would LOVE to spend 15 minutes at a re-charger, vs the 45 min. we currently take, I'm seriously interested in the answer to the question.
I find it fascinating that folks in the auto industry have consistently failed to realize what consumers actually want in their car. The starkest example was actually Porsche's initial SUV. Almost everyone, and especially Porsche die-hards, thought that the idea of brand extension to and SUV was idiotic. Let alone a large water cooled V8 based beast. The car made the company what it is today. Similarly, there is constantly a discussion of "range" for electric cars, but when one surveys customers they are fully aware that they don't need long range and they don't rank it very high. Yet the press and the industry keeps harping on it, and the customers keep buying what they wish. In the "range" case, it appears that experts haven't quite figured out that for many it's just fine that they have one long-range car and one short-range electric. My Admiral and I are really odd in that we have two electric cars, most customers have quite reasonably brought a petrochemical car for range and an electric for the majority of their driving around town. I wasn't able to dig it up, but a survey showed that in families who owned one of each, the electric car got used nearly 3 times as often.
Meanwhile, in each market Tesla has entered it has absolutely clobbered the established vendors. Can you imagine what Toyota/Lexus would have given to go from zero to market share in mid-sized lux sedans larger than all other competitors combined in less than a year? While there are certainly plenty of reasons to think Tesla will have trouble, most of them revolving around the highly amplified behavior of the CEO - which sells a lot of ads, the customers adore the cars and keep buying them. I think that the auto industry experts would do far better if they talked to significant numbers of customers rather than other industry experts and auto industry shills. Then, they might have actually produced the market demand that Tesla is capitalizing on. There really isn't all that much innovative stuff in a Tesla, but it is driving into established market segments like a bulldozer with clever marketing and a better product.
If I were MBZ, BMW, Lexus, Porsche, etc.... I would be mortified that I had missed the actual market demand by more than 5 or 10 years. But, one has to remember that a decade ago the auto industry was on its ass and places like Chrysler and GM were being bailed out. It's hard to be "innovative" and "market focused" when you're staring at insolvency. Of course VW group hasn't really had that problem with the solid underwriting of the German and Saxony state governments.
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Beau - can be found at Four One Five - Two Six Nine - Four Five Eight Nine
