Structurally, electrification, such as the mass production of electric vehicles, and digitalization need semiconductors, mostly of the high-end variety that can only be produced by the most advanced semiconductor foundries
There's nothing about electric car propulsion that requires "high end semiconductors". Auto companies have been pricing electric cars as a luxury product, and adding too much crap that has nothing to do with the powertrain to justify that to buyers.
The Ford F-150 Lightning’s extended range battery is currently only being offered as part of a $20k luxury electronics package starting at the XLT trim. The XLT is itself a mostly cosmetic $10k lighting package. You have to spend 80% over the base price to increase the battery capacity 30%.
Stellantis is worse. The all-electric Jeep Wrangler is supposed to come out in 2024 priced around $70,000. You have to get the "Rubicon" "trim level", which used to mean differential lockers and a lower low gear, but now includes such things as "biometric owner identification".
This kind of thinking is going to result in Chinese electric car manufacturers taking over the industry.
People will shell out insane amounts of money because of the Jeep brand. Clapped out, 10-year-old ones still can get $20k, even if you tried to take it remotely "off-road" it would break in 10 different ways.
If people made purely rational decisions when purchasing a car, the only manufactures left would be Toyota and Honda.
Always hilarious when people build $100K+ off-road ridiculous trucks, as unless you're totally loaded and don't care about smashing it up, it's going to get babied off-road or just never see more than a regular camping trip or some gravel. Actual hard-core off-roaders aren't driving super-expensive rigs; they're in crapcan K5 Blazers, Suzuki Samurais, old but built jeeps, tube frame customs, and side-by-sides. $40k in a SxS will get you about what a jeep would for 2x that money.
Don't even get me started on the bro dozer poser trucks. Those just exist to intimidate other people on the road, and with bumpers so high and tires + ground clearance that could easily run over something like a Corvette, they shouldn't be allowed on public roads. If only we had real vehicle inspection like some in the EU do.
> If people made purely rational decisions when purchasing a car, the only manufactures left would be Toyota and Honda.
Not sure if this is different regions or just dated. In Australia now, Honda is a joke. They are overpriced, offer terrible support, etc. Toyota is quality beige, overpriced but reliable, kind of like Sony TVs 15 years ago before Samsung and LG became dominate.
Just like with TVs, the Korean companies (Hyundai & Kia) are the smart money brands at least in the Australian Market.
Kia/Hyundai (they're basically the same company since they own each other) have had a horrible track record in the last few years. They cannot build an engine to save their lives. They scrimped on the quality of the piston rings and other internal components and they ware out very quickly.
A Kia with 150k miles is end of life, but a Honda/Toyota with that mileage is basically still being broken in, yet the Honda only has a $2k premium over the Kia.
a slightly off topic question from a novice with some messy off roading experience... is there a decent, efficient, smaller off road capable car? my current level of experience is driving through deepish (several inches) snow in chains and rocky road terrain in the eastern sierras .... in a subaru impreza...
and honestly I really feel like I want to do this more!
I've come the the conclusion that the only electric vehicle I'm likely to own is a custom conversion. I don't drive often, but when I do it's often a rental or car share. I've come to despise anti-privacy features that have become either standard or required on modern vehicles, from built-in connectivity to tpms, cars are getting to be worse than smartphones.
I'd absolutely kill for something like the K5 Blazer-E, but without the connectivity likely built into eCrate.
Same. I don't need a massive sedan or crossover, or massive range...I commute <10 miles per day, and have 7 family members within 15 miles. Most of my trips are just me, or just me and my son...why is the only electric coupe the Smart Car?
Your credibility is damaged by the fact that Stellantis has not announced any all-electric Jeep Wrangler, certainly not pricing or trim levels, and doesn't offer biometric owner identification on any current or future models either.
You seem to be getting upset about a situation that exists only in your (or someone else's) imagination.
The Jeep Wrangler EV, while staying true to its traditional SUV characteristics, wouldn’t disappoint the modern customers who also take into consideration convenience and tech features. The off-road-focused electric SUV will boast several new-age features teased by Stellantis like Peer-to-Peer Charging, Remote Vehicle Tracking, Biometric Recognition, Jeep Drone Pairing, Jeep Trails, Group Ride, OTA Updates, and AR HUD.
No need for the snark. It is not official, and may not end up being accurate, but is what has been reported.
I would take the lightning over the TubroV6 everyday.
I would never buy a Turbo car or truck... but I also would not buy the Lightning today for the same reason. I like to keep my vehicles for a long time. long term reliability of the Turbo V6 is just not there, nor the battery life of the electrics
So until then I will stick with naturally aspirated v8's
Tesla and BMW have, but they're hardly the entire electric car market. Other all-electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf EV ($23k MSRP) or Chevy Bolt ($34k MSRP) are positively affordable compared to a Tesla Model 3 ($45k MSRP) or BMW i3 ($44k MSRP). Both of those are still cheap next to a Jaguar iPace ($70k MSRP) or a Tesla Model S ($95k) though.
Keep in mind that even a Honda Civic starts off at $22k MSRP these days.
I wish Tesla would cut the crap about self driving tech (which is probably driving up their margins and their stock value) and bring more affordable mass market cars to market. Clearly selling high margin cars is good for business but one can hope.
I strongly suspect that would be a disaster for their stock price.
They remain priced at $837B market cap (even after a dramatic recent rout where Elon sold the top and is now under SEC investigation for doing so), while Toyota has a $300B market cap. Toyota makes ~8M cars per year [1]. Tesla made 400K cars last year [2].
Toyota made 20X more cars and has a market cap just 36% of TSLA.
There's a few ways cultists (err, sorry, investors) justify this valuation gap.
1. Self driving cars.
2. High margins.
If you give up on self-driving and you start making lower-margin cars, you start to look an awful lot like a car company, which would mean you'd have to reduce their stock price to just 10-20% of where it's at right now. From $800 to $80-160. And that's generous, leaving room for some of their fun pet projects like the always-next-year solar roof tile [3].
Tesla seems overpriced when you look at their Solar/EV/battery sales, on the other hand Toyota is still pushing Hydrogen fuel cells which suggests active mismanagement to many investors.
As far as I am concerned the majority of the auto industry is a dumpster fire of incompetence. I don’t think Tesla is a good investment at this point, but a significant growth premium is perfectly reasonable IMO.
Sure a significant growth premium is reasonable, which is why I gave them one when I valued them between $80 and $160 per share.
Without a growth premium they'd be valued at $40.
They're currently valued the same as the entire rest of the auto industry combined. Plus a few utility companies. Plus the battery arm of Panasonic. There's growth premium, then there's fanciful delusions.
Like Toyota, I am still not convinced that our battery Tech is really there. We are starting to see more and more horror stories about Tesla battery Replacement costs on used vehicles, and recalls from major manufacturers.
The Resell value of battery cars may drop to Zero if very purchase is a $20,000 gamble if you will have have to replace the battery.
Personally I think hydrogen fuel cells is the better long term tech, but more than Toyota will need to adopt it
There are two different issues here. Assuming it’s a random risk you would expect car dealerships to offer some from of insurance/extended battery warranty.
However, if the batteries need to be replaced every say 12 years spending 16,500$ onto replace a 75kWh battery is less than gas prices over that time span. Further the labor is only 2,300 to replace a battery so falling battery prices could easily make that a pricey but expected repair that’s worth doing once.
Of course that’s assuming a full replacement is needed, the other option is to add capacity to adjust for reduced range. A 75kWh battery that lost 40% capacity only needs an additional 30kWh of batteries to be back to full capacity. An initial design leaving a void and appropriate hookups largely solves the problem of battery degradation.
> "Further the labor is only 2,300 to replace a battery"
Why so much? Almost three working days at $100/hour?? Here[1] for example is a video of a Nio ES6 electric car in China with a battery swap station you can book on a smartphone, drive into, and it robotically swaps the discharged battery for a charged one in ~8 minutes, with possibly one person working there dealing with paperwork (of all things).
https://youtu.be/DPVrraVbEIM?t=82 shows me that removing a Tesla Model 3 battery needs the front and rear seats, center console, and all the carpet and interior bits removed, because there are bolts going down to the battery pack. That explains the price.
I didn’t mean that 2300 was low, rather that labor is often equally or more expensive than the part but in this case it’s (only) 14%. Which means if the battery price drops by half you will see a replacement costs drop to 9,400.
>>if the batteries need to be replaced every say 12 years spending 16,500$ onto replace a 75kWh battery is less than gas prices over that time span.
That is a far too simplistic way to look at the issue, and one that is at odds with how the majority of people budget their lives. So even if technically correct (and I have not done the math to confirm) it has little relvance to the resell value of the car.
Reality does not often matter, for example certain model of cars have become known for being "trash" simply because of a 1% failure rate of a part. Most people will never have the failure but the resell value of that model takes a HUGE impact because of the perception.
If electric vehicles are PERCEIVED by the public as being unreliable past 10 years old, the resell value of older battery electrics will approach zero. You need this resell market to support new sales. The exception to this is normally the "luxury" market which is somewhat insulated by resell value because the owners typically do not care. This is also why most of the battery electrics are in that market.
But if you want to replace the Camry, or the F150, Resell value is Critical as most people only keep their car for 5-6 years, and the typical car is sold 3-4 times in it life.
As it stands right now, the battery powered car needs at least 1 full replacement to get the same life of a typical ICE car. That replacement, is more expensive than an engine for an ICE, and it typically more than the car is worth, that makes these cars a ticking time bomb to most used car purchasers. Even if the cost of gas is more over the 12-15 life. That plays no part in the metric of used car value
You say that yet EV sales and used EV sales aren’t facing that issue. A low mileage 2012 Model S is still worth ~37k, and 2013 are selling around 39k. It’s easy enough to see why, a 250 mile range * 1,000 charge cycles ~= 250,000 miles.
As to the underlying perception, I expect people will see old EV’s as being a great long term investment because they have vastly fewer bits that need to be replaced. People will be talking about slapping a new battery into an EV with 250k miles, and spend less on gas and repairs as you aim for 500k miles. Especially after a few more battery price drops.
Primary reason for that is battery issue has not reached the wider market, Tesla's are still a novelty, and owning one is an aspirational desire for many people, it is not a utilitarian car like a Camry.
Also you talking about a Car, when new in 2012 Dollars was $93,000 (that is $114,000 in today;s dollars), that is an EXTREME deprecation rate.
For comparison lets look at the Most popular vehicle in 2012, the F150. The most expensive F150 that year was the Harley Davidson Edition @ $53,000, That same truck 10 years later sells for $28,000 or 53% of its original value
The Tesla Model S Performance at a Original Price of $93,000 selling for $37,000 or 40% of its original price. Another Key factor here as well that tips this even more to the F150, is that the majority of F150s on the market from 2012 have 150,000+ miles on them, where the majority of 2012 Model S on the market have 1/2 that or less.
The Tesla Resell value is value is already in the tank compared to ICE, and that is with its cult like status symbol. Other Battery vehicles that do not have this cult like status are FAR FAR worse, and Tesla's will at some point see a similar fate if they ever become the next Honda or Toyota
A 9 year old BMW model 7 which ran 74+k new with 78k miles is only 20k, that’s at best retaining 27% of it’s value after 9 years. A 10 year old 150k mile BMW model 7 is down at 15k that’s down to 20% of it’s purchased price.
Depreciation is simply higher on more expensive cars, look at a wider selection of cars and 40% after 10 years is quite good especially on a 100k car. That said anything unusual such as the F150 Harley Davidson you looked at tends to retain it’s value much better.
BMW is hardly the example I would use to defend your stance, BMW are also widely known for their expensive maintenance costs as they age, that is the reason why they are soo poorly valued.
That is the trend Tesla is going towards, and it is not a trend to defend your position that Battery cars can / should replace ICE
The market can not bear every car having a resell value like BMW's
This is the problem with your argumentation or rather we seem to be having 2 different conversation
The topic here, I thought, was the problem with Electrics replacing the common car, highlight luxury example is not the point and I am not sure how you believe that refute the idea that batteries will be a liability for resell value
So far you are just tossing out example of vehicle resell with out explaining how or why this refutes my position that selling used electric vehicle will be increasing hard, thus lowering their resell value, if the uncerntiy of battery replacement costs loom in the future buyers mind.
no one is going to buy a 10 year ICE car if they think the engine will need to be replaced in 2 years, like wise no one is going to buy a 10 year old electric car if they think the battery (@$15,000) will need to be replaced in 2 years.
This fact will hurt the electric car adoption, and could / will prevent it from being anything more than a luxury item for rich people, who instead of being able to sell it to a less well off person, will have to sell it for scrap making our waste problem even worse
Ok, sure let’s step away from actual data and work in theory.
> lowering resale value, if the uncertainty of battery replacement costs loom in the future buyers mind.
Saying batteries are a liability for resale value is no different than saying engines are a liability for resale value. High mileage cars have lower value than low mileage cars because they face more mechanical issues. The question is just how much.
> no one is going to buy a 10 year old electric car if they think the battery (@$15,000) will need to be replaced in 2 years.
This breaks down you you start running the numbers. Look at it this way, people are going to buy an EV that will last another 5 years before needing a battery at some price let’s call it 15k. Take an otherwise identical car and say it needs a 15k new battery right now is it worth 0$? No it’s worth more than that because after replacing the battery you have a car that’s going to last longer than 5 years. It’s also going to have the full range of a new car etc.
Essentially, it’s only a bad idea to replace the battery when a car with a new battery would be worth less than the cost to replace that battery. Of course the random factor could also play a role, but that’s down to design or manufacturing defects not some inherent issue with EV’s. Put another way some ICE cars had huge issues with head gasket replacement etc, but people singled out specific makes and models with issues rather than saying the ICE was simply an unworkable design.
PS: Saying it needs a replacement at some fixed point isn’t generally true. Battery’s rarely just fail, it’s normally a steady degradation such that someone can say range will be at least X miles for N years if I drive 13k miles per year but someone that doesn’t need as long a range or drives fewer miles could go much longer without replacing the battery. Presumably the market will do some filtering so people with lower range requirements will be getting great deals.
A majority of Americans cannot afford an unexpected expense of $1,000, let alone $16,500. The fact that its cheaper than the amount of gas you'd pay over that lifetime is irrelevant considering most Americans are not rich enough to shop comparatively like that. It's expensive to be poor.
> A majority of Americans cannot afford an unexpected expense of $1,000
1. Those statistics typically use a very misleading definition of 'afford'.
2. It would be the exact opposite of unexpected, and even if you procrastinate you just get reduced range and the car keeps working.
And you could probably get a monthly payment plan for an electric car battery.
> The fact that its cheaper than the amount of gas you'd pay over that lifetime is irrelevant considering most Americans are not rich enough to shop comparatively like that. It's expensive to be poor.
You'd pay the new battery money after saving on gas for 12 years. Replacement batteries are not an "expensive to be poor" problem.
>>You'd pay the new battery money after saving on gas for 12 years.
How do you figure? For example lets look at my buying pattern
Some One leases a new Vehicle... 3-4 years later they return it, that is when I come in, I buy a Lease Return almost every time. I keep that for 5-6 years. At which point I sell or trade for another lease return. the car is typically about 9-10 years old at that point. Someone Buys this from me or the dealer then 2 years later is hit with a $16,000-$20,000 bill
People do not normally keep a car for 12 years... So you would not have "saved" for 12 years
>Those statistics typically use a very misleading definition of 'afford'.
It is not really, as it is based on cash savings of a person to incur the expense with out using debt. If we are talking about a $16-20,000 expense on a 12 year old car, it is unlikely anyone will finance that expense has it would exceed the cars resell value. No lender is going to give you a loan to replace the battery. This problem exists today with many hybrids.
> it is based on cash savings of a person to incur the expense with out using debt
When you use debt every day, it doesn't matter very much whether you put an unexpected expense on debt. What matters is how fast you'd pay that off. If it will be gone in a couple months, that's afforded. And that's a lot of people when it comes to sudden hundreds-of-dollars expenses.
> No lender is going to give you a loan to replace the battery.
You can get a loan to buy a car, why not a battery for a car? I expect it to become possible as these things become more common.
> it is unlikely anyone will finance that expense has it would exceed the cars resell value.
Once you put in a new battery pack, won't the value go up a lot?
And basically every new car becomes worth significantly less than the loan value in the first week. This isn't a new problem.
> the car is typically about 9-10 years old at that point. Someone Buys this from me or the dealer then 2 years later is hit with a $16,000-$20,000 bill
If they've only had the car for 2 years then they've barely lost any capacity. Would they even need to replace it so soon?
But if we look at it in simple terms and say the battery is 80% dead, then shouldn't the part of the car's value represented by the battery be reduced by $14k when they buy it? Either way the answer is to consider 80% of a battery as part of the price, just like any other worn out parts a used car might have.
>And basically every new car becomes worth significantly less than the loan value in the first week. This isn't a new problem.
Actually it is, that is why most lenders require you to have Gap Insurance in addition to liability on a new Car Loan
Now i suppose "battery" insurance could also emerge as a new product, but hat really do not change my position any
>If they've only had the car for 2 years then they've barely lost any capacity. Would they even need to replace it so soon?
Are you not following the conversation? Or do you believe every time the car is resold the battery is going to be replaced?
In my hypothetical, a person buys a 10Year old car, then 2 years later they need a battery replacement costing more than the car is worth. They have only had the car for 2 years, but the battery did not magically become new when the car was resold.
> Either way the answer is to consider 80% of a battery as part of the price
The open question is if this can be accurately predicted, sure if you can pull up a report and with 99% percent accuracy show the wear level of the battery that may not be an issue.
My understanding however that this is a "best guess" and is not very accurate and predicting when a battery will actually fail, the health monitor of battery pack far from being as exact as you seem to make it out to be.
> Actually it is, that is why most lenders require you to have Gap Insurance in addition to liability on a new Car Loan
Actually it is... what?
I said it's not a new problem.
And you can use the same solution: get $3k of gap insurance on your new battery.
> but hat really do not change my position any
Why doesn't that change your position? You're saying it's hard to save up that much money, but if you can finance it like a car purchase then you don't need to save up that much money.
> Are you not following the conversation? Or do you believe every time the car is resold the battery is going to be replaced?
I am following.
I was suggesting that batteries don't usually outright fail. If you start with a vehicle at 75% of original range, you don't care as much that it dropped to 70% of original, and you could continue to ride that battery down the slope.
> The open question is if this can be accurately predicted, sure if you can pull up a report and with 99% percent accuracy show the wear level of the battery that may not be an issue.
If batteries are completely failing without much warning then that's probably a job for insurance? But you need enough people to start having that problem before that product will exist. I doubt we'll reach a point where it's a widespread problem and no insurance is available either.
But even if you can't measure the specific battery, if they've used it an average amount for 10 years, and most batteries last 12 at that use, then it should still cause a huge discount.
The stock market doesn't value a company solely by what it's doing today, but also by what people think it could do tomorrow.
Toyota is rock solid and stable. In 10 years you can bet they'll be making the same number of low margin cars they do today (same as 10 and 20 years ago) and making the same amount of money. (again, same as 10 and 20 years ago)
Their stock price is reflective of that - there is essentially no plan or path to "growth".
Tesla is growing MASSIVELY. It's basically a certainty they'll be making 2+ Million high margin cars by 2023, likely up to 5 Million in the next 5-10 years. The stock price reflects that massive growth.
It's gambling, and people are betting that Tesla is going to grow massively, and that Toyota is going to stay more-or-less constant.
> Tesla is growing MASSIVELY. It's basically a certainty they'll be making 2+ Million high margin cars by 2023, likely up to 5 Million in the next 5-10 years. The stock price reflects that massive growth.
So 5-10 years from now they'll still produce half as many cars as Toyota. Assuming they can do so without reducing their margins, and that in the interceding decade, not a single other mainstream automaker will produce a competitive vehicle. That's quite an assumption.
Based on their growth trajectories, they won't reach Toyota's production rate until about 10 years from now - in spite of being valued the same as the entire rest of the auto industry put together today.
It's like if the odds of a horse to win are 1:10 but you're betting 100:1. It's irrational and has no basis when compared to other similar companies.
They're not betting that the "company will do great in the future" - that's not really how this works - they're betting number go up.
There's a lot of ways for number to go up, some to do with the underlying business, and some to do with short-term price action gambling. The difference is the former is sustainable over time - positive sum even - the latter is not, and the market will usually drain the latter out.
Tesla is a good company. But Toyota can't really grow much more because most of humanity has ridden or owned or knows someone who owns a Toyota. Short of selling Toyotas to alien civilizations, "GROWTH" here comes off as a weak shill for TLSA stock.
Well, 300k a quarter is 3x as much as 400k per year, so if you keep everything else the same it turns your estimate into $240-480 a share and that would be a much more survivable drop.
3. Growth. It makes sense to value Tesla at 3 times Toyota if starting three years from now Tesla is selling four times as many cars as Toyota at the same margin. Might not happen, but I think that's what a lot of investors were betting on. Not to say there aren't a lot of cultists too...
The other auto makers are also in self driving '.they are only doing quiet R&D, but if you are betting on automation Tesla isn't the best long term bet even before you look at potential upside.
Yeah, Uber had this realization a few years ago too. If you recall, they were also developing self-driving technology in hopes of reducing their cost basis. However, they abandoned the project after an internal report leaked indicating that it wouldn't get them more than, IIRC, a 5% uplift - for exactly the reason you say. Once one company has it, the rest will not be far behind.
Self driving is a marketing side show, they are really just focused on manufacturing scaling right now and opening factories ASAP to meet demand. And because they are having a hard time meeting demand, they have no need at the time to make cheaper market versions, which will make their demand problem worse. They announced recently that they are not focusing on new models this year, just scaling. They are in mega scaling mode.
IMO the key competitive advantage they have in the us/can market is their supercharger network and how they are ahead tech wise, making them %20 better cars than current competitors.
Why would they do that? Being a luxury brand has a lot of advantages. No reason for them to dilute it with cheap offerings - others could pick up that market, if they want to.
Is that the US? Pricing can be weird depending on region. In AU a leaf starts at $50K, a model3 at $60K, not much difference really. The cheapest here actually is the MG at 45K. But more competitors are starting to ramp so I expect prices will drop across the board as EV becomes a commodity.
Exactly! I would love to own a simple compact car like the Honda Fit or similar with an electric drive train and without leather seats, fancy wheels and various electronic assistive driving features.
I love our Leaf but ProPilot isn't that great, very much version 0.1 of something that might be less crap in future. The adaptive cruise control bit is fantastic but lane following only works when you're on very well marked roads that don't curve much i.e. highway driving and comes with a page-long list of times when it just won't work (driving into the sun, with wipers on, in fog, etc etc). Anywhere other than the highway it'll dance on and off every five seconds. Plus you have to weld your hands to the wheel and continuously wiggle a little or it'll turn itself off, which makes it mostly pointless.
Self-park is similarly crappy. Way too slow to be of any use.
Unless you're buying new though it's certainly worth getting one with ProPilot because the price difference in the second hand market is practically nothing. I dunno if the lower trim levels come with the 360 camera either but that's a great feature as well.
I maintain that most of the car's electronic guts (minus infotainment and auto-steer etc) could be done with a handful of 8051s. The problem is almost nobody it seems knows assembly anymore. The standards of CAN and LIN were created in the days of 8-bit MPUs, even I2C is quite old.
(I like assembly, but would never suggest it for a professional situation unless painted into some unforeseen corner, and assy would be the only way out.)
I would not get into a car implemented with 8051s. I entered the market on a project where an 8051 only had to manage a 2x16 character display, 16-key pad, and several motor/limit switches. The dang thing was challenged at that.
ESP32 / STM32 can do a whole heck of a lot, they're getting popular in modular synths now too. AFAIK a lot of vehicles use RTOSes for anything related to driving / vehicle stability, but I think they can use mostly whatever for infotainment, and that "whatever" seems to be largely low / mid-range stuff running absolutely garbage software that only gets updated if NHTSA makes them.
That checks out. I've contemplated getting one of those CANbus/ESP32 combos but I'm just not feeling lucky enough to muck around with my car's network for grins.
No, 8051 is just a sloppy piece of silicon. I wrote a symbolic linker and tokenizer for B-52 BASIC and an EPROM formatter so we could cross-develop on PC. We just had a busy little system and 8051 was not very reliable for anything realtime.
Squillions of them. Microchip, Silicon Labs, Infineon, and Maxim all produce such µCs, like the Silicon Labs EFM8BB - up to 50MHz, a small handful of kb of program space, a smaller on-die RAM, off you go. Or pick a more specialised IC like the Cypress FX2LP family of USB controllers - they embed an 8051 core so you can apply firmware using cheap, widely available tools.
My point wasn't to encourage 8051s in cars; it was to say that many, many types of fairly mundane MPUs can do the work needed for most of the car's subsystems. Yes, Cortex M0+ chips are just fine for this, and are (relatively) blazing fast.
I know Tesla was able to pivot to different MPUs during the shortage, because the code is pretty much decently layered; so only the Low Level code to wrap the peripherals needed to change.
It's true, it's hard to replace MOSFETs when you have 1KV / hundreds of amps needs --- however, it is possible to make MOSFET arrays using lower-capable parts.
Obviously, infotainment and AI-ish tasks are not what I'm talking about.
> There's nothing about electric car propulsion that requires "high end semiconductors".
Fundamentally, no, but that doesn't mean that these cars have been designed with chip availability in mind, so at least one of the components in the cars relies on chips that are not in supply. It's not a fundamental requirement but due to how they are being built. The article is still wrong though, namely because there is nothing special about electric cars. For ICE cars, there are supply chain issues too.
I saw a news video (CNBC?) on YouTube looking into how the chip supply shortage is affecting car sales. One of the car manufacturer representatives said they have had to cut features like power windows / locks, as may be expected.
However, he said heated seats (and some other luxury things) are an absolutely critical feature that couldn't possibly be omitted in an emergency situation like this. They're essentially as critical as having the steering wheel or brakes.
If you are doing a new design and estimates of area, pads, packaging and volumes are in the right place, TSMC 28nm or Intel 22nm are both very nice design points.
Proven tech, single patterned mask sets, fully amortized fabs.
At typical automobile volume, it is unlikely that a sub 10nm design would pencil out.
(Edit : oops - Vision and/or ML engines for self-driving or driver assist might get there as long as the design is not dedicated to typical car volume)
MOSFETs (both Si/SiC and more recent GaN) switching transistors may be made on special (Epi or Sapphire) wafers, but the Fabs are very old school (e.g. 2-6in vs 12in for CMOS) and the process geometries are practically neolithic (e.g. 90s). Processing equipment is more limited by the lack of desire to build or support something so old. Die sizes are also quite reasonable (e.g. 4kW/cm2) However, there is still enormous capacity for processing them around the world (both in US/EU, and around Asia).
Perhaps, for the new GaN on Sapphire wafers there could be a significant manufacturing limit? Mostly, those are used for Blue LEDs today.
Those appear to marketing names applied to DC Chargers. I suspect that the GaN2&3 refer to higher frequency operation. This may be due to lower parasitic capacitances, and would allow smaller components/inductors to be used at comparable efficiencies and lower cost. Certainly, the wafers and materials seem to be the same.
The do need high frequencies. It's orders of magnitude slower than digital, but the amount of power being switched presents entirely new problems. You could flip your statement around and say that digital circuits are less complex because they're low power. But that would be equally meaningless.
Digital FETs are CMOS made with fins or whatever to switch as fast as possible. Analog FETs are something else to make clean predictable signals from mature manufacturing processes. Power FETs are big arrays of trenches to not destroy themselves. You can't really compare them. That would be like comparing a racecar to a passenger van to a rock hauler. They're all vehicles, but they have different purposes and success metrics.
I am not an professional EE, but a person who professionally works on circuits from time to time.
That's absolutely not the case. The higher is the switching frequency, they higher are the switching losses in a MOSFET.
MOSFET is an electrostatic device, the charge needs to both go in, and out from the gate. The more switching, the more current goes through the gate back-and-forth.
You're talking about different things. A slow FET has a slow rise time. It spends more time crossing through the inefficient region between fully off and fully on. Switching frequency is how often you cross in one direction.
Up to a point, you can decrease total converter loss by trading conduction loss for switching loss by increasing frequency and resizing components. After that point, you start losing efficiency again. There's a sweet spot.
Yes, I see your nickname. That's the case if we go into details.
I think he specifically means high-end, high-frequency power FETs, since all the rage today is about them.
I would add that there is no real need for super-high-end switches in EVs, and component size for them is not a huge premium. There is no shortage of smart inverter topologies which achieve very good size, and efficiency without using any kind of fancy GaN of SiC switches. They will not be as small as them on the lower end, but around 100kw there is virtually no difference.
It's not a detail. It's a more complete picture. Both of your comments are different slices of the same pie.
I don't see anything written above that pertains specifically to any type of FET.
Your last paragraph is a new topic. It's true that Si can be as efficient as SiC and GaN, despite what the marketing usually says. But there are other benefits to new materials. They already support higher voltages with planar technology, and 3D will increase that further. Gate driving will get easier and more rugged.
> Your last paragraph is a new topic. It's true that Si can be as efficient as SiC and GaN, despite what the marketing usually says. But there are other benefits to new materials. They already support higher voltages with planar technology, and 3D will increase that further. Gate driving will get easier and more rugged.
There are 1000V+ silicon switches today which are not as fast, but have for, for example, very good RDSon. 1000V I think is an upper limit one would go for passenger car EV motors.
Automakers prefer low end chips because cars are an extreme environment. Cars need to start at -70c and +50c. For that latter one some of them need to work when it is sunny and they are inside the car which adds a lot more.
By “high end semiconductor” do we only mean small process size? There are other areas of “high end” capability, like the efficiency gains promised from using more exotic semiconductor materials.
Also, lots of silicon that goes into cars isn't of the high-end variety. A ton of infotainment systems, for example, run low to mid-tier chips, not always current-gen. If an auto mfg can get away with using a $3 part instead of a $5 even though it makes the UI laggy and sucky to use, they'll consider it. TV mfgs are also notorious for this, especially when it comes to under-speccing RAM.
Not the bare propulsion, but battery management does require sophisticated sensors and software that has to run in real time in order to carefully manage the charging and discharging of the batteries. If you don't do that, your battery life will suck. I could see that driving a need for high end semiconductors for electric vehicles.
I suppose they need things ICE cars don't usually have, to control multiple motors, a torque controller, regenerative braking, battery management, charge controllers, electric heating, and so on. But then ICE has to manage things they don't, like O2 sensors, ignition timing, etc.
I disagree. Electrical vehicles require a larger chip area, typically chip quality is determined by degree of successful ion impregnation into the substrate. This is why die location can determine higher potential chip performance.
There's nothing about electric car propulsion that requires "high end semiconductors". Auto companies have been pricing electric cars as a luxury product, and adding too much crap that has nothing to do with the powertrain to justify that to buyers.