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Comment by village-idiot | Hacker News Reader

BMW, the focus of the article, is also in a lot of danger as a brand. For a very long time they had the position as one of the best driving everyday cars because of their mechanical skill in the engine, chassis, and suspension parts of the car.

There appear to be two problems with that going forward.

First, other makes now have good suspension and chassis. This is a mature area of development, so the gains that BMW can make over their competitors is going to be small and expensive.

Second, what will differentiate one EV from another will be more software than hardware, and it’s not clear to me if companies like BMW will be able to dominate in that area.

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I'd have thought EVs will still be differentiated on cost, comfort, appearance, performance, quality, non software features and "branding" - just like current cars?

Edit: Just for the record, I've owned 1 BMW, didn't like it that much (uncomfortable, low quality for cost) wouldn't buy another one.

Electric will be the death of the brand. BMW's require such expensive service, it's laughable compared to other brands.

Unless they get really inventive on failure items (This one $1200 capacitor failed, proprietary, only available from dealer kind of thing). Even then, I'm assuming there's only so much people will take.

The whole point of a brand is that people make buying decisions based on irrational ephemera as opposed to utility. Once you establish a luxury brand then charging ridiculous prices for the same utility only reinforces brand perception because consumers have no ability or desire to judge things based on utility and so they equate paying more with a better product, or at least with personal prestige.

BMW will do just fine.

The point I'm trying to make is, revenue dealers (and BMW) receive from service and maintenance will decline. Margins on cars will have to increase to make up the difference. BMW might not be able to differentiate on a performance-basis in an all-electric segment.

People want fast cars that look nice. BMW fits that bill today. In an all-electric segment, why pay a premium for the BMW name if there's no appreciable performance difference? Surely, some will, but will it be enough to sustain the brand? I don't think so.

Not to mention that the majority of engineers within the company will not willingly work full steam ahead on an enterprise that will destroy their life's work and make many of them obsolete (as they are combustion engine experts).

I am not familiar with EV internals, but do modern EVs have an electric drive train:ie, are there drive shafts and differentials and clutches in the modern EV or is it just independent motors coupled to the wheels?

What about breaking? Is done on the wheel or on the motor?

Breaking is generally done with both using the electric motor as a generator and with breaks. A lot of driving in a Tesla for example means you hardly use the breaks at all.

The drivetrain is relatively simple. One motor on the rear or front axel, sometimes one on each. https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-drivetrain-design-el...

> are there drive shafts and differentials and clutches in the modern EV or is it just independent motors coupled to the wheels?

All of the above, although by far the most common power train arrangement is motor per axle with a 2-speed transmission for however many axles are driven. Regenerative braking is done at the motor and augmented by conventional brakes.

Very few designs use motor-per-wheel.

What electric cars uses clutches? Which use 2-speed transmissions? Tesla doesn’t seem to use either.

The Tesla sportster had a two-speed transmission, and I'm fairly certain the model S also used one as well. I know they replaced a ton of them on the early production.

Later production doesn't seem to find the transmission necessary.

No drive shafts, no clutches. I always thought it should be a motor for each wheel, but nobody seems to be doing that now. Both physical brakes and regenerative braking exist.

(One real surprise with our new Bolt is that you can't do regenerative braking when the battery is full - there's no place to dump the energy. Makes sense once you think about it).

The simplicity of electric cars is one of their big advantages, but also one of the reasons that US dealers (other than Tesla, obviously) aren't enthusiastic about selling them. There's almost no periodic maintenance to be done, and little to break, so little in the way of post-sale revenue.

There are some companies working on "1 motor 1 wheel", it's still very early on though...

Doesn't that cause problems with relatively high unsprung mass - which causes its own problems?

Usually the motors are still mounted to the chassis with some type of halfshaft interface in those cars rather than being directly mounted to try wheels; there's just more of them

The first "1 motor 1 wheel" design I can think of is from 1904: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner-Porsche

So it isn't THAT early, if you add in 115 years of development.

braking: both, recuperation is done on engine side, but there are still brakes at the wheels.

Recuperation doesn't cover all necessary brake performance, plus, you don't want to have a car without brakes at the wheels. The moment the driveshaft breaks, you wouldn't be able to brake your car, if braking was only facilitated by the engine.

This actually killed at least one race driver, Jochen Rindt, Monza 1970, in his Lotus 72.

Another question about braking.

When the car brakes about 70% of breaking force is at the front wheels, so wouldn't regenerative breaking be more effective for the cars with the motor at the front and not at the back (like in Tesla)?

While true that breaking with the front tires would be more effective. In a BEV the weight distribution is closer to 50:50 so rear breaking is more effective than in a normal ICE car with the engine in the front.

This gives regenerative braking more than enough grip for normal braking but probably not emergency braking which would require more braking power. So what it comes down to is that if the rear tires are not breaking loose and the car isn't using friction brakes then the car is recovering as much energy as it can with regenerative breaking.

And the whole switch to FWD before going electeric. They're already killing the brand.

Are they? Their FWD cars sell like hotcakes, and I honestly doubt 99% of their customers notice or care what kind of drivetrain runs the car. I'd like to think I'm a petrolhead and I'm constantly shocked by how little people know about the cars they buy. It's a miracle they manage to remember if the car takes petrol or diesel, honestly. Most of my friends bought their cars without doing any sort of research - it was a matter of picking one that looked most interesting + the config was within their price range, engine type/drive train be damned. The pinacle of this is a guy I know who has a GLE63S, so I thought it would be super cool to talk to him about the hand-built V8 in his car - his reaction was literally "custom built....what?". He bought it because he likes the look and the sound(and he's rich enough to afford it), but I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't know that his car is 4 wheel drive for instance.

People generally don't care.

They're riding on the brand equity they built up in the past, and on the halo effect of their high-end cars. But there is a well established precedent of luxury goods makers enjoying a large price premium for products of minimally higher physical utility. They are selling socially valuable tokens of prestige more than they are transportation machines, and will be OK in the end.

The reason why people don't care is because they never actually put their car even anywhere near the limit. In the Netherlands for example you are either driving on a perfectly immaculate and smooth highway at 130 kph max or driving in a busy city. There is nothing to differentiate a €20000 car from a €80000 BMW in these conditions except for the leather seats.

People generally don’t care. Indeed. But for those who valued the brand (not the badge), they are devaluing the brand.

I saw the black flag over the horizon when they switched to mcphearson struts over double wishbone suspension.

Anecdotally I heard a few people grumbling about mini-coopers because they wanted basically an FWD BMW but had to settle on something ugly.

Maybe BMW has finally heard from them.

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