None of those companies builds their own motors and batteries. They get them as kits, same as you can get ICE engines.
It’s simpler to integrate, that’s for sure, but not orders of magnitude.
It’s simpler to integrate, that’s for sure, but not orders of magnitude.
India and China have several EVs targeted at their domestic market priced around 5000$ selling in rather large volumes. Nothing world shocking in terms of performance or range but they are basically very nice city cars. Mass producing small vehicles with off the shelf cheap batteries and electro motors is going to be vastly simpler than producing a lot of fragile ICE technology in need of frequent servicing, spare parts, etc. Basically, take the engine out of any cheap washing machine (around 1500kw), add some basic mechanics for wheels, steering, brakes and a battery and you have a nice vehicle. That's pretty much all the technology you need. A handy mechanic could probably put together a nice car from parts like that for next to nothing.
I know someone who bought a house in a community near a golf course in SoCal, and it came with an extra garage door and nook just sized for a golf cart (he didn't have or use a cart, but the house was built with that feature).
In comparison an electrical motor is just a motor, battery and charger in the minimal setup
There really is an order of magnitude difference in the complexity.
The typical ICE already has electric batteries and motors. But the EV does not have the ICE parts. No dealing with oils either.
And the fact that non-yokels also build cars, does not diminish the point.
Building an ice vs electric vehicle in the discussion context means design plus build, not a kit or retrofit. It's a bit different.
Note that in 1900 the electric car was also seen as viable and people were building it. For "reasons" the ICE took off, while the electric car remained as mostly a thing people did in their garage.
(Most diaries and reports at the time seemed to imply that the DIY car people of the early 1900s much preferred the simplicity of the electric car and had some miracle happened at the time in battery chemistry the world would have shifted a much different direction.)
- The oil lubrication system, starter/alternator, various belts, and gearbox (if front wheel drive) are typically part of the engine package so don't really impact complexity.
- Liquid cooling is required for EVs if they're going to perform equivalently to a modern ICE car.
- EVs contain high voltage / high current wiring that needs to be considered carefully in terms of crash safety.
I'm not against EVs here, I think they're great. But if you want more than the old "drop a forklift motor and some batteries into a donor car" DIY build, an EV isn't actually that much simpler to assemble.