On the other hand it seems unlikely to me that auto manufactures would allow their portfolio to be so exposed. If this accident had been more like the AKM fire, I'm sure Kia would have found a replacement chip.
And as others have pointed out, it's not like modern ICEs can be made for sale without quite a lot of advanced electronics.
[1]: https://www.audioholics.com/news/fire-destroys-akm-audio-chi... (also see comment from "Matthew J Poes").
Yet here we are.
>it's not like modern ICEs can be made for sale without quite a lot of advanced electronics.
Indeed. We're all doomed.
This argument is only being made because widespread EV adoption is a new phenomenon and they are still a fraction of the market of ICE cars.
We could flip the tables around. Modern car engines are highly precise machines. If we were just starting to make them, they too would have enormous supply chain problems. Only a couple of companies would realistically be able to produce the components with the required tolerances and lifespan.
Once most cars on the road are EVs, we'll have plenty of suppliers.
And yes, EVs _are_ reliable. Orders of magnitude less components and even fewer moving parts. ICE vehicles require a whole chain supplying more stuff all the time, even for vehicles already on the road.
Oh, and don't get started on battery materials. We too thought that our oil reserves were not able to satisfy the demand of so many cars (not to mention other industries). We found new reserves and some that were not economically feasible became available, as technology (and demand) improved.
No, it's being made because the manufacture of an EV and all of its component parts requires advanced materials and processes from around the globe.
>We could flip the tables around. Modern car engines are highly precise machines. If we were just starting to make them, they too would have enormous supply chain problems. Only a couple of companies would realistically be able to produce the components with the required tolerances and lifespan.
Pfff. I could make an ICE engine in my shed, if I wanted to.
>And yes, EVs _are_ reliable. Orders of magnitude less components and even fewer moving parts.
The stats don't support this. Just because a component shouldn't move, doesn't make it reliable. This is, honestly, a silly argument - everyone knows that the most unreliable and costly part of their car these days is the electronics.
https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/ev-reliability-varied-as-...
>Oh, and don't get started on battery materials. We too thought that our oil reserves were not able to satisfy the demand of so many cars (not to mention other industries). We found new reserves and some that were not economically feasible became available, as technology (and demand) improved.
True - but shows that EVs don't solve the "we're pulling huge amounts of resources out of the earth's crust" problem. Do you have any idea how much money is being made in the mining industry right now? My partner works in the industry. They don't know what to do with all of the money they are making.
They can even make it go to 11 on the performance spec.
I ordered a Ford Maverick Hybrid last year in October. Things that have been constraining items for Ford in that last year: Spray in Bed Liner
Co-Pilot 360 (Blind spot monitoring and such which is on both regular gas vehicles and hybrids)
Luxury Package (Again available across both gas and hybrid, I believe because of heated seats)
Tonneau Cover (Again available across both gas and hybrid)
Mud Flaps
Overall EVs are mostly new vehicles, new vehicles tend to require new parts so the supply chains are younger and less robust. Older EVs such as the Chevy Bolt seem to be available right now.
I am not saying an ICE is a better idea. I'm saying that an EV is, by some definition, unreliable from the drawing board onwards.
To really put the cat among the pigeons - does this make it, in a practical sense, less sustainable?
AFAIK the spray-in bedliner is a physical component.
Tonneau cover, depends on the model. Mine, there was a slight delay, but FWIW was a 'rolling' (i.e. no electronics) style.
Mud flaps, pretty sure are not electronic.
As another 'ancillary' item, wiring harnesses have been hard to come by, which has an impact on both ICE and EVs. Electronic, but not a silicon supply constrained component per se.
My point still stands - a dependency on electronics, and especially cutting-edge electronics, makes you dependendent on a complex and fragile global ecosystem.
Largely the main issue is reliability has nothing to do with it. It is all producibility. Currently every car company is struggling with producing vehicles ICE or EV. Nobody is asking is the Ford Bronco sustainable? Even though the wait time is longer than the Ioniq 5. Vehicles that people are not as excited about like the Prius or the Bolt are available right now.
Good luck doing that with an electric vehicle.
I believe the first EV might even predate the first ICE vehicle.
Reference: https://www.energy.gov/timeline/timeline-history-electric-ca....
https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-advice/who-invented-the-fir....
The ease with which you can make oil-based fuels convert chemical energy into mecahnical motion, is the reason that EV development largely stopped until quite recently. Efficient EVs are the pinnacle of materials and electronics engineering.
15-20 years from now, they'll likely look more like the pinnacle of engineering, but they are actually pretty crude right now.
The efficiencies of the various powertrain components are very high (eg, charging efficiency and motor controller efficiency). I really don't see how they can be improved by very much.
The main area of improvement is the battery.
>they are actually pretty crude right now
Interesting. I am assured that they are the latest and greatest in motorised transport!
> Interesting. I am assured that they are the latest and greatest in motorised transport!
These two concepts are not mutually exclusive.
Hopefully by then, we'll have solved the problem of how to sustainably fuel both the manufacturing process and the fuelling of EVs.
Bear in mind that no-one cares about things like iPhone integration, reversing cameras, lane assist, or any of the other pointless crap that overcomplicates modern vehicles.
It sure is. Given a year in my garage, I bet I can make a more useful, power-converting device from scratch using internal combustion tech than using electronics.
>I believe the first EV might even predate the first ICE vehicle.
I also believe that is true. What's old is new again - time to get rid of those "dinosuar tech" ICEs and move on to...the even older EV?
Somehow electric delivery trucks are the new hotness, yet here in the UK, (lead-acid powered) milk floats are also a symbol of a byegone age.
Even now, EVs barely compete on practically any metric with ICE cars (except tailpipe emissions) - in my opinion, the main drivers of market demand for EVs is marketing for the new shiny, and government regulation (at least here in the EU/UK. It will be illegal to manufacture an ICE, quite soon).
Not in a format that is useful for EVs, there hasn't. Only recent developments in semiconductors have made it viable to design a motor controller that is very efficient across a broad range of torques and speeds, and is also lightweight and cheap enough for use in a small passengar vehicle.
>example hybrid electric trains, elevators, water pumps.
Those examples of controllers have almost nothing in common with modern EV controllers.
> Not sure what metrics you are looking at but EVs cost less per mile to operate, accelerate faster, are quieter, and have lower maintenance.
Let's have a look at those.
I am not convinced that the "cost per mile to operate" has been fully worked out over the full lifetime and ownership of an EV - we have yet to see how the overall economics of EV ownership will work out as they filter down the 2nd hand market chain.
We will also see how the cost of maintentance works out - EVs are not currently known for being reliable.
https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/ev-reliability-varied-as-...
Accelerating quicker - well, that's fine, if you want to burn through battery, and mess around at the lights. It's also not too hard to find or modify a car to make it have more acceleration.
That just leaves quieter - which is an undeniable benefit, if only it were safe for multi-ton hunks of mobile metal to be silent. As it is, all the EVs I've seen have speaker-generated tones at low speeds.
Come to think of it, a video series about bootstrapping a 19th century machine shop from a 15th century blacksmith's shop would be extremely interesting.
I haven never heard of somebody talking about the "reliability" of a car, or any other durable good, in reference to the reliability of its supply chain. Saying that a product has a fragile supply chain is not a valid counterargument to somebody touting its reliability.
"EVs have an especially fragile supply chain" could be a true statement on its own, but "EVs have a fragile supply chain, therefore they're unreliable" is only true if we use a different definition of "reliability" than people typically use in the context you gave.