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posted by martyb on Friday November 09 2018, @05:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the elektrowagen dept.

Reuters:

Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) intends to sell electric cars for less than 20,000 euros ($22,836) and protect German jobs by converting three factories to make Tesla (TSLA.O) rivals, a source familiar with the plans said.

VW and other carmakers are struggling to adapt quickly enough to stringent rules introduced after the carmaker was found to have cheated diesel emissions tests, with its chief executive Herbert Diess warning last month that Germany's auto industry faces extinction.

Plans for VW's electric car, known as "MEB entry" and with a production volume of 200,000 vehicles, are due to be discussed at a supervisory board meeting on Nov. 16, the source said.

Fallout from cheating on diesel emissions tests continues. If German automakers, of which VW is the largest, switch to electric vehicles (EVs), will other car companies have to follow suit?


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Knowledge Troll on Friday November 09 2018, @05:30PM (3 children)

    by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Friday November 09 2018, @05:30PM (#759947) Homepage Journal

    I don't understand why Elon is getting so weird with Tesla because the point when VW and earlier Mercedes as well as other manufacturers like Jaguar I believe started offering pure electric vehicles or plans to do so with release dates Tesla won.

    Everyone seems to have forgotten or never paid attention to the original stated goal for Tesla from Elon: scare the shit out of the established automotive industry so they have to admit electric cars are better and get them producing it. It does not mater if Tesla as a company dies because if the industry turns it has won.

    Good news Elon: mission accomplished! You did it! You can stop freaking out and being all weird about Tesla production numbers. Don't have to make your employees crunch on the factory floor like they work for a game company with a release date they missed (I bet those machines were manufactured really well). Now you can calm down, relax, and live with the realization that you did something significant for humans.

    That's not going too happen though. Tesla morphed into something else.

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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday November 09 2018, @05:35PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 09 2018, @05:35PM (#759952) Journal

    It's probably the huge financial losses that are making him act weird. This quarter's posted profits were some serious accounting trickery that can't be repeated, so unless Tesla Motors gets good at making cars faster and cheaper soon, the $$$ side of things looks real real bad. If I were him, cutting my losses by selling the car designs and branding to a company that can run a cost-effective factory would be the out I'd take.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by istartedi on Friday November 09 2018, @07:17PM (1 child)

    by istartedi (123) on Friday November 09 2018, @07:17PM (#760022) Journal

    He has to prove that electric cars are better *and* that you can make money with them. If Tesla went belly-up, the other companies would point to that as justification for shutting down their electric lines.

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    • (Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:59PM

      by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:59PM (#760387) Homepage Journal

      If the existing manufacturers already know how to make money building cars one way then why does Elon go beyond ignoring their collective wisdom from the last 100 years to the point where he tells them they flat out do not know what they are doing and are wrong and stupid. Then he sucks at running a factory and learns the hard way slowly that the incumbents are right. They do know how to make a really heavy complicated machine after doing it for 100 years.

      He learns the lesson from that specific point then continues to say they are stupid. Eventually maybe he'll get it and actually run a modern factory with known best practices. Is that how you prove to them electric cars are profitable? By running a factory like a software engineer right out of college?