SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the Detroit-on-another-deathwatch-and-still-doesn't-know-it dept.
The BBC and many other sources report:
The US car industry will be wrecked if President Trump relaxes emissions standards, California's governor says.
Jerry Brown said China would dominate car manufacture because it was heavily promoting the electric vehicles that would dominate the future.
He said huge investment was needed on electric vehicles, along with federal rules to encourage their purchase.
He said President Trump and US car-makers were "half asleep" and hadn't understood the scale of the challenge.
He told BBC Radio 4's Costing the Earth: "There will be a serious threat to the US auto industry.
Unlike many in Silicon Valley, Gov. Brown seems to want the USA car industry to survive this Chinese nationally supported onslaught.
While not specifically mentioned in the article, China is working on cars at all price points, not just early adopters that can afford a Tesla or other luxury car. The Chinese stuff may be junk now (think about the batteries in Chinese "hoverboards") but it won't be for long, they learn fast. Here's a little minivan that's headed to production, https://carnewschina.com/2017/09/28/new-photos-sinogold-gm3-electric-mpv-china/
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 14 2017, @01:43AM
> Apparently they have a problem getting their robots to weld body parts.
The story I saw said the change from aluminum bodies (S & X) to some fancy new high strength steels for the Model 3 might be part of the problem. New ultra high strength steel alloys have great properties (strength, elongation, etc) and can almost be tailored to the application...but welding them without destroying the good properties is tricky.
Also, one article suggested that the stamped panels weren't fitting together too well. If there are gaps, spot welding doesn't work (or might work, but not well). Guessing further, stamping/forming the ultra high strength steels is also tricky, the amount of spring-back (because of the high strength) means stamping dies have to be specially shaped to generate the desired parts.