By Lon Hosford
1/30/2022
These are my notes from the meeting featuring Jim Weichel and the future of electric vehicles and the manufacturing of vehicles.
This presentation was the second of our 2022 two part series on Electric Vehicles. The first was Everything You Need to Know about EVs.
Jim’s Electric Vehicle Buying Criteria
One takeaway from this presentation was Jim’s Criteria For EV Selection. You find these in slide 5 on his presentation slides included later in this article. He had 7 key items in his list.
The driving range on a charge was one criteria. At this time he was recommending a range over 250 miles. An important exception is if you thought your usage would be mainly urban. In that case you could bump the range down a notch to 150 or higher miles.
2022 Electric Vehicle Shopping Guide
Jim provided us with a shopping catalog of many models on the market. He included manufacturers such as Volvo, BMW, Kia, Ford, Audi, Chevrolet, Volkswagen and his fav Tesla. He even included electric pickup trucks in his electric vehicle shopping guide.
Revolution in Car Manufacturing Innovation
One part of his presentation that stood out for me. This was the pioneering Tesla was making in the manufacture of vehicles. For example the ability to integrate improvements, suggestions and ideas quickly. Tesla provides stations in the production line to work on the idea. Once perfected work the station with improvements back into the production line in real time.
Tesla is several years in the lead on manufacturing innovation. Unfortunately most of the rest of the vehicle manufacturing industry has a lot of catching up to do. Some companies have stated dates that they want to catch Tesla’s manufacturing innovations. Jim hinted that by their stated dates, Tesla manufacturing innovation may well be beyond them still.
Electric Vehicle Design Feature Comparisons
There is much detail in the presentation slide for anyone wanting to learn about the distinction between different vehicle design. You will find many details. You might consider battery sizes, efficiency ratings and number of components per vehicle. Jim pointed out that software is going to provide regular updates to existing vehicles. This means that you get new features without any component changes and Tesla is already doing that.
