Soleil EV Weekly Gazette:

Porsche showed pre-production images of their electric Macan. The 'E-Macan' will be based on the VW/Audi PPE platform (same as the Taycan with 800V architecture) and should offer range greater than 400km from a single charge. Porsche will extend the life-cycle of the current Macan and sell it alongside the EV version, and will presumably make the decision as when to axe it based on demand. The name for the 'E-Macan', scheduled to be released in 2023, has not been finalized.

Ford announced the 'Lightning' name for its electric F150, and plans a virtual launch on May 19, 2021, and will enter production the first quarter of 2022. Ford announced that the Lightning will have bi-directional charging, so it can power accessories on the job, or act as a battery storage unit and power your house in the event of an electrical grid outage.

Mary Berra, CEO of GM, announced the electrified GMC Silverado Pick Up will be a volume model, unlike the GMC Hummer variants which all sell for over $100,000.

VW announced the first Canadian deliveries of the ID.4 will start in Canada in the late summer/early fall of 2021, but only in BC, Ontario and Quebec. Base price is just under $45,000 meaning it qualifies for a $5k Federal rebate. The rest of the country will have to wait until 2022.

Elon Musk elaborated on his view of autonomous driving that will be purely camera based (no Radar or Lidar). Teslas use cameras to categorize images, infer their size, speed and trajectory, and compute how far they are away from the car. Radar and Lidar use radio signals and lasers to bounce off objects and measure exactly how far away they are - at the expense of cost and complexity. Many experts question whether a camera system alone can offer 'bet your life on it' reliability.

"When radar and vision disagree, which one do you believe? Vision has much more precision, so better to double down on vision than do sensor fusion. Sensors are a bitstream and cameras have several orders of magnitude more bits/sec than radar (or lidar). Radar must meaningfully increase signal/noise of bitstream to be worth complexity of integrating it. As vision processing gets better, it just leaves radar far behind."

- Elon Musk

R & D spending Transitions Out of Internal Combustion Engines Into Software

It has been 145 years since Nicolaus Otto invented the Internal Combustion Engine and it has been developed steadily since. The almost century and a half of development has seen cast blocks and heads replace individual cylinders, multi-valve cylinder heads, electronic control over fuel delivery and spark, Turbo and superchargers, variable valve timing, and specific output that has gone from under 10hp per Litre to over 200hp for each Litre of displacement. Now legacy manufacturers have announced that they are ceasing development of their combustion engines, and focusing on electrification and software.

GM announced the intent to have a completely electric fleet by 2035, Jaguar by 2025 and Bentley by 2030. Porsche expects over 50% of sales will be EV by 2025. McLaren will launch only hybrids from now on and will cease ICE engine development by 2030 and sales by 2035.

Combustion engines are scheduled to be banned in many markets between 2030 and 2040.

There is some attention being paid to cleaner burning fuel: Either directly burning hydrogen that can be created with clean electricity, or by combining the Hydrogen with captured C02 and creating hydrocarbons, that could make a difference keeping ICE vehicles on the road longer.

E-Fuels, while expensive to produce (10x gasoline at the present prototype stage), require no infrastructure changes or changes to the current combustion engines.

Converting current ICE engines to run on Hydrogen saves several processing steps, but requires changes to the vehicles engine and fuel system and the infrastructure to distribute the fuel.

But at the end of the day, the concept of burning fuel to move a complex assembly of moving parts produces more heat than motion, and there is no new technology which can compensate for the heat and frictional losses.

The ICE engine has simply reached the limit of practical advancement.

“The EU plans for an even stricter Euro 7 emissions standard are technically a huge challenge with little benefit for the environment at the same time. This extremely restricts the combustion engine...Audi will no longer develop a new internal combustion engine, but will adapt our existing internal combustion engines to new emission guidelines”

-Markus Duesmann,

CEO Audi

E-Fuels, while expensive to produce (10x gasoline at the present prototype stage), require no infrastructure changes or changes to the current combustion engines.

Jet turbines used in aircraft have a much better future as they are twice as efficient as internal combustion engines. There is no easy way to convert aircraft to electrical power as the energy storage per weight of liquid fuel is much higher than battery storage. Electric long-haul aircraft are an impossibility with current technology.

At the same time as legacy manufacturers are realizing that they are behind in software development compared to Tesla and other EV start ups. The VW Audi group has committed 27Bn in spending on Digitization which includes the formation of several internal business units, and outside collaborations with Microsoft and other tech firms. VW plans to employ 10,000 people worldwide to their software divisions with the aim of increasing the percentage of software developed in house from 10% to over 60%.

Some EV Start Ups, such as Fisker, won't even build their own cars - farming them out to suppliers like Magna. They will be in the software business, not manufacturing.

EV designs are consolidating. Many manufacturers will make only a single vehicle platform, albeit with several motor options and battery sizes. To differentiate the product, manufacturers will have to look to the digital suite of conveniences from autonomous driving, streaming services and over-the-air updates.