The EV twists and turns

Issue #213, July 24, 2023

The electric vehicle (EV) industry continues to witness twists and turns. Tesla may have to relook at its strategy of selling a handful models and frequent software upgrades, reports The Economist. Deproduction or retrieving valuable parts from an end-of-life vehicles for reuse and refurbishment is a business of its own. Electric trucks seem to face additional head wind when compared to cars, as their batteries cost thrice more than that of a car. Miners resort to machine learning for optimal mining of critical metals while Brazil insists on continuing usage of its biofuel or ethanol mixed flex-fuel engines. Cyber policies in India need a relook. Here are some twists and turns in the EV or broader auto industry.

Tesla's EV domination

Tesla's focus on streamlined manufacturing of only a handful of models has kept costs at bay. But in order to remain a disruptive force, Tesla may, paradoxically, need to become a bit more like the stodgy car business it has disrupted. Tesla manufactures just five models (if you count the Cybertruck) and relies heavily on two of them. And both models are ageing. The Model y is three years old and the Model 3 has just turned six, which makes them less desirable in a business where novelty has historically counted for a lot. The company will need to go well beyond its current strategy of offering frequent software updates that improve some of its cars’ features or add new ones. - The Economist

Deproduction for end-of-life vehicles

Advanced “deproduction” lines are turning the car business into a circular industry. A “deproduction” process for “end-of-life vehicles” (ELVs), something that looks much like a modern car-assembly line, but which runs backwards. When an ELV arrives, it is assessed for parts that could be reused or refurbished, the details of which go into an elaborate computer system which oversees the entire process. The car is then “depolluted”, which involves removing the wheels and decanting fuel, oil and air-conditioning gases. The vehicle is then loaded onto the line. Technicians, using much the same equipment found in modern car plants, systematically remove everything that a different set of technicians had carefully screwed into place years before. Some parts are sent for recycling. Others are cleaned, tested and put up for resale. The bare shell of the vehicle is fed into a crusher. - The Economist

Electric trucks and 3X battery cost

The effort to reduce carbon emissions by transitioning to electric vehicles isn’t going as well as it might seem, specifically for trucks. Electric trucks have some advantages over their diesel counterparts, but also some disadvantages. Battery-powered trucks face hurdles that electric cars don’t. Among them: They can cost more than three times as much as a similar diesel model. - WSJ

ML for mining

Miners are turning to machine learning, cutting-edge chemistry and other innovative means to increase the supply of critical materials such as copper and graphite amid the rising demand for green technologies.?- Wall Street Journal

Brazil's flexible-fuel vehicles

For two decades, Brazil’s unique solution to curb tailpipe emissions — specialty cars powered by any mix of gasoline and ethanol — helped it boast a fraction of the roadway pollution of other countries its size. Now, it threatens to hold it back. As governments in many of the world’s other top economies lay out detailed plans to eventually end the sale of combustion-engine cars, Brazil is digging in its heels. The country’s most popular models are so-called flexible-fuel vehicles capable of running completely on biofuel produced from sugar cane, making them by most accounts cleaner than pure gasoline engines. - Bloomberg

Updating cybersecurity policies

Vehicles are becoming more connected and software-defined. This creates the scope for increased cyber attacks on them. Before 2013, India did not have a cybersecurity policy. In order to protect public and private infrastructure from cyberattacks, the country introduced the National Cybersecurity Policy (2013), a framework developed by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology. The existing policy is being reworked and the government has set up a task force. - ET Auto