Electric cars a challenge for Japanese parts suppliers
2010 Nissan Leaf EV - Click above for high-res image gallery
One thing David Cole said when we talked to him at the Business of Plugging In expo was that parts suppliers need to change in order to keep up with the demand for new parts in electric vehicles. In Japan, the Nissan Leaf has become a sort of wake up call for Japanese parts companies, who can see firsthand that, when you scrap the ICE, thousands of parts that suppliers have been providing OEMs for decades are all of a sudden not needed. Bloomberg says that up to 40 percent of the parts in a typical car are engine components. In Japan, the domestic suppliers are in a "crisis-like situation" as they try to adapt to the new reality.
Japanese suppliers Tsubakimoto Chain Co. and NTN two suppliers profiled in the Bloomberg piece, but it's clear that this is going to be a tough road for almost everyone involved. Tsubakimoto's Toru Fujiwara told Bloomberg that, "With electric cars, there's no way we can apply our current technology. We have to come up with completely new technology." The company is spending 3.5 billion yen on battery-powered vehicle research this fiscal year. Of course, this is exactly the kind of challenge that is required to get off gas.
[Source: Bloomberg]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Zeph 6:52PM (11/21/2009)
They need to supply battery backs, both stock and extended range. A few other higher performance electrical components as well as enhanced engine management software.
But the hard truth is that, if done right, electric cars will need far fewer parts, will wear less, will last longer. One thing that might see a sales boom with a for now still hypothetical electric car revolution is tire sales, as these things will be far cheaper to run if done right, ie if we manage to stay clear of moronic battery lease schemes, and as such will be driven more. Good news for tire suppliers and shops, bad news for mechanics and autoparts stores.
However, imo it's better for a society to only do the work that needs to be done, to force people to do work that is not needed because of some abstract economic imperatives is just disguising slavery.
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Spec 4:21AM (11/24/2009)
Tire sale boom? wat? That makes no sense,
wincros 7:11PM (11/21/2009)
Bloomberg says that up to 40 percent of the parts in a typical car are engine components. In Japan, the domestic suppliers are in a "crisis-like situation" as they try to adapt to the new reality.
I think that is a bit of an exaggeration. When electric vehicles become 10 percent of the vehicles on the road and doubling every five years there may be a crisis. Right now there is zero percent and the start up of a small production line is hardly crisis time.
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David Martin 6:01AM (11/22/2009)
In the article I don't think that the suppliers had the space to fully detail their worries.
They are being squeezed from several directions.
Overcapacity in the automarket is around 25%, and unless you expect a miraculous recovery in the economy that capacity will have to be taken out.
In addition makers in India and China are taking out all the fancy extras and using low-cost labour to produce really cheap, basic cars which won't use all the fancy parts in current vehicles.
It is only import restrictions that stand against that killing the Western auto industry.
If you had a choice of buying a second hand vehicle, or spending the same $5k on a brand new one, even if basic, what would most people who need them for practical purposes like commuting to work do?
If you add EV vehicles to that mix, then optimism for many of the car part makers is hard to find.
Another trend is the reduction of traditional metal bashing.
Carbon fibre is still expensive, but I am looking at the basalt fibre as they are talking about for the EDAG:
http://www.gizmag.com/edag-light-car-updates/12826/
Corrosion problems should be much reduced
I can see the lifespan of a vehicle going up from the current c.14 years to at least 20 years.
Sure, some replacement parts will be needed during the vehicle lifetime, but you are basically looking at a reduction in parts needed for new vehicles of the order of 40-50% from this lifetime extension.
If you put the numbers together, no wonder the parts manufacturers are worried.
wincros 7:15PM (11/21/2009)
For anyone who is interested in the Leaf there was a very positive first drive by Dan Neil at the LA Times on Friday.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-neil20-2009nov20,0,5609464.column
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David Martin 3:42PM (11/22/2009)
Thanks. Enjoyed the read.
EV-1 8:44PM (11/21/2009)
..."when you scrap the ICE, thousands of parts that suppliers have been providing OEMs for decades are all of a sudden not needed."
Well Hallelujah !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Curt 10:17PM (11/21/2009)
Many of these parts suppliers will go out of business or they will merge with one another just to survive.
Will that ultimately be good for customers ? No one knows just yet.
More competition = better
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Dave D 11:20PM (11/21/2009)
Some of them will survive by producing electric A/C, power steering, heaters and other items that will no longer be driven by belts and vacuum pumps, etc.
I imagine in the long run there will be consolidation because there really will be less moving parts in the car overall...and a lot less things to repair/replace. But there will be tremendously more electronics so many new players will spring up there.
These types of changes just end up driving different jobs somewhere else. Perhaps those jobs will move into creating parts and repairing Smart Grid, or charging stations, or solar, etc.
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Mark_BC 12:17AM (11/22/2009)
I can't help but compare this to the emergence of digital photography. Film used to be king but eventually someone made a digital camera that was a decent enough alternative for some people that they switched. This started a market shift and the transition began. Technological innovations made digital cameras better and better which opened their market to more and more consumers, and in the end the transition was swift and brutal. Any company that didn't convert quickly went out of business, because basically, for 99% of the applications out there, digital is better than film. It was a major shift that almost completely destroyed a previous technology within 10 years.
I see the same thing happening with EV's over the next 10 years. It won't completely destroy the ICE, but it is going to eat up about 75% of the current market and take out a lot of inefficiency and baggage along the way.
It may be painful but in the end only good things can come from the shift to EV's overall. They will last much longer due to their paucity of moving parts. This will make it difficult for slacker companies like GM and Chrysler to keep up with the games of producing junk that breaks down every 4 months and the repair bills yielding more profit to the carmaker than the initial sale of the car.
Less parts means less parts manufacturers and fewer long term jobs, although I think it may be a while before that happens. Cars will be owned by their owners for a much longer time; what will change is a battery swap every 10 years. This means less long term profits for automakers, after the initial boom in the next 15 years as everyone switches over to EV's. Unfortunately that can't be avoided. It's what has happened with digital photography now. Everyone has one and getting them to buy a new one requires some pretty new innovations.
The auto industry would just love to keep things the way they are now and bury EV's forever but the free market, despite its many many shortcomings, will be fostering a very positive change. Soon the power will be taken out of the hands of the oil industry and the governments it conspires with, and put back into the hands of consumers. There is nothing they can do to stop it, for the simple reason that EV's are a significantly better product than ICE's and they will only get even better, at a rapid pace, considering the enticing market of 3 billion customers willing to fork over $20,000 for one to replace their archaic ICE.
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wincros 11:47AM (11/22/2009)
Bad comparison I think. Digital light sensing was a new technology and electronic which typically develops very quickly. It added instant feedback and digital "developing" to computers that everyone already had. That was enough for it to supersede film even before it improved on film images.
Electric motors are a mature technology. So they will not suddenly get better at what they do. Rechargeable chemical battery technology is not quick developing either with lead acid dominating for what? A hundred years? Lithium ion is too costly and not likely to come down in price much limiting the performance and range of reasonably price automobiles. Not another promising chemistry process on the horizon. Add the great loss of utility caused by the long time needed to recharge any chemistry based battery and what you get is a niche vehicle useful only for short trips away from where it rests during a recharge.
Nissan/Renault who are going at the electric car very aggressively only predict a small percentage of 10 percent in 15 years or so and they are marketing when they say that. Let me see. Expensive. Inconvenient. Only suitable as a second or third car in the family as a specialized commuter or local errand vehicle. So I think you are more than optimistic. If you don't think these things are important, think about it. How many golf carts in your neighborhood? They can do the local shopping.
David Martin 3:40PM (11/22/2009)
wincros said:
'Lithium ion is too costly and not likely to come down in price'
The major manufacturers disagree with you and have plans to reduce costs and price from around $600kwh to around $200kwh.
What is the basis of your statement?
And:
'Not another promising chemistry process on the horizon.'
Er....lithium/air, lithium/water, lithium/sulphur, zinc/air, boron/air, aluminium/air......
Where on earth did you get that statement from?
And:
'Add the great loss of utility caused by the long time needed to recharge any chemistry based battery and what you get is a niche vehicle'
Any chemistry based battery? To take just one example, if you feed zinc pellets into a battery, react it with air, and remove the residue as a zinc oxide slurry you certainly have fast 'charging'.
Please explain the basis of your statements.
neptronix 5:42AM (11/22/2009)
Not a crisis, the industry is just changing over technologies..
For every transmission builder, oil pump maker, radiator producer, engine parts manufacturer that dies, a new electric motor, power controller, motor cooler, and battery producer will appear.
These guys are just being weenies. Better hurry up and adapt.
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Laurens 5:52AM (11/22/2009)
So the world changes...
Car brands are component integrators nowadays. A larger percentage of costs, goes into electronics. Suppliers move to low cost countries. Assembly plants follow. Etc. etc.. I doubt if the EV will have more impact than say the emerging of China on the world market.
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ben.trovato 10:00AM (11/22/2009)
This is why I really hope that the advent of electric cars will mean a load of new players in the market.
If established manufacturers and their associated industries are allowed to dominate the EV market, they'll just perpetuate their old games to get people to buy new every few years. There's probably no reason (apart from consumables, like battery, shocks, wiper blades) why an EV shouldn't last virtually forever. But that's not the business model of established manufacturers, who'll invent ways to make us want to change: ("That body style is so last-season...").
The end of the ICE should be an opportunity for a real paradigm shift. Will any manufacturer out there have the courage to offer an EV with a 500,000-mile/30 year warranty? Come on, now...
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Mark_BC 1:33PM (11/22/2009)
"Rechargeable chemical battery technology is not quick developing either with lead acid dominating for what? A hundred years?"
Lead acid dominated for 100 years because it was perfectly good at what it did -- turn a starter motor, and do it cheaply. There was no incentive to develop new battery technologies for turning starter motors. There is a HUGE incentive for developing better batteries used for moving the car because range is an important issue. Marketers will be competing against each other to claim they have the longest range car.
"Not another promising chemistry process on the horizon. "
Umm, lithium air, there's lots of promising technologies on the horizon and lots of companies feverishly working on it to get the patents and gobble up market share.
"Add the great loss of utility caused by the long time needed to recharge any chemistry based battery and what you get is a niche vehicle useful only for short trips away from where it rests during a recharge."
They can be quick charged in 30 minutes at a high capacity recharge station.
"Expensive. Inconvenient. Only suitable as a second or third car in the family as a specialized commuter or local errand vehicle."
No, the Nissan Leaf may be priced as low as $25,000 which would make it competitive. This price will only go down in the future as the currently infant lithium ion battery technology matures. And as I said, they aren't really inconvenient. You will be able to say good bye to the gas station. Charging overnight in your garage is more convenient. And if you drive more than 150 km a day then go to a fast recharge station or put a little genset on your trailer hitch.
"How many golf carts in your neighborhood?"
Neighborhood EV's are legally limited to 40 km/hr because they haven't gone through crash safety testing, and no major automaker who had the capital to do so was willing to invest in developing an EV which would basically make the rest of its product line obsolete. This pretty much shut EV's out of the market for a long time. This "hump" of mass production has now been surmounted by Nissan and Tesla and the race is now on.
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Alan 2:53PM (11/22/2009)
Yeah, why bother with the miniscule second car market as a starting point for EVs? Probably best not to bother at all, stupid idea anyway, using an electric motor to propel a vehcile, ridiculous.
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OpenMinded Patriot 5:34PM (11/24/2009)
About as ridiculous as those silly
global warming
and the earth being round
ideas...
EV-1 4:37AM (11/23/2009)
The electric motor is the best motor type in universe known to man.
Not only *absolutely superior efficiency*, but also VERY quiet,
completely emission-free,
close to maintainance-free,
no poisonous substances,
and a powerband that's so wide, nothing even comes close.
Add to all that, the VERY COMPACT dimensions
the featurelist provokes afterthought on the horrors of the so-called
"free market" and untamed capitalisn ( a.k.a. "greed" ).
The electric motor principle is unsurpassed as a supplier of mechanical energy.
I thought we learned that in school already.
Alan 6:27AM (11/23/2009)
Sorry I was of corse being sarcastic. It's a common theme for people to discount the second/commuter car market on here which I think is plenty big enough to get EVs started.