A good Wednesday morning to you all, but especially to Autopian publisher Matt Hardigree, who turns 40 today [Ed Note: It was yesterday – MH]. Please wish him well in the comments, and let him know he barely looks a day over 38. We’re celebrating around here by doing Matt’s favorite thing in the world: talking about EV tax credits, e-fuels and ChatGPT in cars for the morning news roundup.
Hyundai, Kia Are Losers In Revised EV Tax Credit Scheme
It’s my personal belief that the Inflation Reduction Act’s EV provisions are a good thing, for they’re already proving extremely effective in both modernizing how the tax credit scheme worked and building a homegrown car and battery production infrastructure. But there are winners and losers in every game. So far, the winners here are the EVs that happen to be built in America, for buyers cannot secure the tax credits of up to $7,500 unless the car’s final assembly is completed here.
The losers are Hyundai, Kia and Genesis. You have to feel bad for those guys; they rolled out some of the best EVs in the game, saw rising sales and seemed poised to be one of Tesla’s most fearsome competitors. Unfortunately, they are all, for now, built in South Korea, so they don’t get tax credits anymore. The LA Times had a whole story about this recently. Hyundai Motor Group has—or thought it had—a pretty good relationship with the Biden administration, but it got burned in the end.
The new U.S.-focused credits are having an immediate effect on sales, reports Automotive News today. (So are the price cuts instituted by Tesla and Ford, to be fair.) Experian data for new-vehicle registrations shows that the Koreans are already taking a hit:
That last bit is awesome news, actually. EV sales are up! We love to see it, folks.
The Hyundai Motor Group isn’t taking this lying down, obviously. The upcoming Genesis GV70 Electrified will be built in Alabama, so it’ll qualify for tax credits. The company is also making big investments in EV and battery production here, and it has the scale and power to set that up relatively quickly. But these things don’t happen overnight.
Insert The Hindenburg Joke Of Your Choosing Here
Other people you should feel bad for today include Akio Toyoda, outgoing Toyota CEO, hydrogen evangelist, EV skeptic and avid motorsports fan. He was supposed to race a hydrogen-powered Corolla race car at Japan’s Super Taikyu series this weekend, but unfortunately, the car went up in flames instead. More from Automotive News:
Granted, it’s not like gasoline and battery-electric cars don’t have fires. But it’s still a bummer of a way for Akio to go out before he retires from the CEO job. Or maybe not. I get a sense the dude will just spend most of his free time doing track days, as some guys do with golf when they retire.
How BMW Views E-Fuels
E-Fuels are getting a lot of attention lately as the German auto industry has a “Wait a minute, what the actual fuck” moment as it realizes the implications of the EU’s possible ban on internal combustion cars after 2035. That very likely could have a huge impact on its auto sector jobs, so certain German political parties are making a last-minute bet to save the engine business. Porsche, in particular, is making a big investment here as it seeks to preserve what it has, even as it also makes a big push for more EVs soon.
Over at Road & Track, former Roadshow/CNET Cars boss and friend of the site Tim Stevens has a great explainer on how this stuff could work, complete with a trip to Chile to personally test Porsche’s e-fuels. It’s a good read and essential if you want to understand this better.
My take is that this technology certainly has potential, but it’s also in its infancy; this is like a Hail Mary play with five seconds left in the game, not a viable powertrain strategy that could keep engines running forever. (Plus, e-fuels still burn carbon in engines; they are only technically carbon-neutral when they’re made with expensive, complex direct-air carbon capture technology.)
Porsche wants to do this so it can save the flat-six. Understandable, but maybe not in line with reality. So where does BMW stand on this? In this short Reuters dispatch, CEO Oliver Zipse says they’re more plausible for use in existing cars, rather than new ones:
“The main impact of e-fuels is on existing fleets, not in the regulation of new vehicles being hotly discussed in Europe,” Zipse said.
“We aren’t discussing the existing fleet. The only opportunity to make a difference there is e-fuels. I agree strongly with the colleagues proposing that, particularly because our motors are prepared for it,” he added.
Not Quite ChatGMC Yet, I’m Afraid
GM spokesman Stuart Fowle said the company hasn’t confirmed any specific plans to deploy an AI voice assistant at this point, but that the company’s software engineers are studying the space.
“As part of its growth strategy, General Motors views digital software and services as a core market where we intend to lead within the transportation sector. The Ultifi software platform the company will deploy this year will enable a new era of software-defined vehicles with digital experiences that can grow and evolve over time,” Fowle said, noting that the shift won’t just be about the evolution of voice commands.
How this blew up so much, I do not know. Possible use cases include prompts that tell a driver how to change a tire in case of an emergency, or vastly more advanced AI-driven virtual assistants for cars. Is it possible this stuff will catch on in vehicles? Sure, maybe. I have no idea.
But the whole auto industry is reeling a bit after the reality check we saw last year from autonomous cars, specifically fully driverless robo-taxis. We’d all do well to take a deep breath and not assume every piece of brand-new tech is The Next Big Thing That Will Change Everything®.
Don’t even get me started on crypto, either.
Your Turn
Do you think generative AI has any sort of role in cars? If so, what would you like to see it do?
TL;DR: e-fuels have some good niche applications, particularly for aviation and small numbers of stragglers after a mass pivot away from fossil fuel dependence. But treating it as a mainstream solution is a recipe for disaster.
By my calculations, converting the US consumer passenger fleet to BEVs would require 1200TWh/yr, or 29% increase in electricity generation. Spread out over the next 15 years, that’s well within our capabilities.
Hydrogen fuel cells, due to losses in production, distribution, and drivetrain, would require 4.3x as much electricity per mile, or a 125% increase in electricity generation.
E-fuels are just hydrogen with extra steps — they lose less energy during distribution (no pressurization) but then they get burned in an ICE engine at 25% thermal efficiency instead of a fuel cell at 50%. I estimate e-fuels will take 6-8x as much electricity per mile as BEVs, or about a 200% increase in electricity generation for the fleet. The fungibility of electricity means that despite economy of scale, e-fuels will always cost at least 6-8x as much to run as BEVs (today, that adds up to $7.50/gal absolute minimum, more likely >$10 during amortization). When the energy industry cannot expand fast enough to support e-fuels, it becomes an energy crisis. When consumers can’t afford to drive to work and $9t worth of passenger vehicles become paperweights, it becomes a financial crisis, too.
Because of the potentially crippling cost to consumers and the definitely crippling cost to energy infrastructure, I don’t think it’s smart to plan on using e-fuels to power more than a handful of vehicles. Classic cars? Sure. Airplanes? Makes sense to me, the US uses 17% as much jet fuel as gasoline, so that’s a reasonably small niche. Pivot to mass transit and/or BEVs by 2030 and use e-fuels by 2050 to power any ICE vehicles that haven’t rusted out? Absolutely, that’s ideal. But if we count on e-fuels to run a significant portion of the fleet, the money isn’t there and the laws of physics are merciless, so we’d be painting ourselves into a corner with a combined financial and energy crisis to which the only solution will be “drill, baby, drill.”
And though it’s not terribly relevant, I feel the need to bring up raw material availability.
According to the USGS, there are 89Mt of surveyed lithium deposits so far. At 8kg/car and 80m cars/yr, we’ve found enough lithium to run the global car industry on BEVs for 139 years. Extraction of the second half of that could be challenging, but we have a century to figure it out. With recent advances in sodium-ion and aluminum-graphene batteries, we won’t even need to use large quantities of lithium soon.
Meanwhile, for H2 production for FCEVs and e-fuels, the PEMs used in large-scale electrolysis rely on iridium, among other extremely-limited platinum group metals. There is… significantly more concern that those could run out or become prohibitively rare.
I have a modest proposal: we can just mine asteroids for the iridium and uplift our hydrogen from the sun which has the added benefit of cooling off the sun and ending global warming. (also extending the sun’s lifetime)
I would like to see an AI that could help turn on the blinkers for Tesla and BMW drivers and prevent them from speeding over an intersection when the traffic lights has “just” turned red.
I mean that annoying vibrating lane keep something is a thing already and the beeping sound preventing you from backing into a fire hydrant is almost standard everywhere, so it’s not that far out, is it?
Speaking as a chemist, it has always bothered me how the word ‘carbon’ is used when talking fuels and pollution. We don’t ‘burn carbon’ and create ‘carbon pollution’. We burn hydrocarbons and make carbon dioxide pollution. Yes, both hydrocarbons and CO2 contain carbon, but we can afford to be a little more scientifically accurate!
When I hear carbon, my mind goes right to elemental carbon.
The Korean car makers are not getting screwed. The game is in the USA. They decided to stay home and benefit their builders the US IRA is a US policy. Why should we continue supporting the whole world?
Unless something like nuclear fusion comes along to provide practically unlimited, super cheap electricity, I doubt the efuels will ever see more than niche application. The amount of electricity needed for electrolysis to fuel an H2 vehicle is around 2.5-4x that needed to fuel a BEV, and adding in direct air capture of CO2 and additional processing steps just adds to the inefficiency of efuels. I haven’t seen a number, but I’m guessing 5-10x the electricity needed for efuels as compared to BEV. Just the direct air capture of CO2 I’ve seen quoted as costing $700/ton currently, with potential to drop to $300/ton, which just for that component would probably be ~$3-7/gallon for the efuel.
The cost of the efuel is starting out at ~$45/gallon, and they are hoping to drop it to ~$7.50/gallon eventually- https://www.motortrend.com/features/porsche-supercup-efuel-direct-air-carbon-capture/, then it still needs to be shipped and distributed. And this production cost is for the best place they could find to produce it. The efuels seem like a great way to keep a small number of classic cars on the road without using fossil fuels, but given the huge inefficiencies of stripping CO2 out of the air, splitting water, and then synthetically building up the molecules, anyone hoping to see this for under $8-10/gallon are likely to be quite disappointed.
“Do you think generative AI has any sort of role in cars?”
MichaelScottScreamingNoAtToby.gif
“ Hyundai Motor Group has—or thought it had—a pretty good relationship with the Biden administration, but it got burned in the end.”. Ummm and GM didn’t? While I’m at it, a bit of clarification on the manufacturing rules please? Are cars required to be manufactured in America or North America. I see both being used in articles here and elsewhere and it’s my understanding (could be mistaken) that GM is not qualifying because of it’s plants are in Mexico.
“Porsche wants to do this so it can save the flat-six. Understandable, but maybe not in line with reality.”
…get it? In-line?
*ba-dum-tssss*
Interesting slant…
Alternative ICE fuels are a great idea to look at, but if it was economical we’d be doing a ton of it already (looks at ethanol in the corner and frowns.) The real issue is: where are we going to get the stuff we need to build and repair roads? Last I checked something like 30% of each barrel of oil gets kicked to asphalt production — and we’re going to get the gasoline of the top of that barrel anyway because it was a waste product before we stated using it for cars. Do we need synthetic gas?
It’s my understanding that a lot of the wells currently not worth pumping aren’t actually dry, it’s that the crude oil provided is now far too crude to refine efficiently.
I haven’t heard anything about a coming asphalt shortage, even when oil sector publications. It’s a big assumption, but I’m assuming there’s no problem.
Win on Sunday, sell on Monday. That’s the rule. It sucks when the car burns on Sunday though.
I’m just so absolutely exhausted of giving a mountain of factual evidence and expert testimony showing that this “EVERYTHING MUST BE EV” is both completely stupid and utterly unattainable, that I’m just not going to bother any more. Using logic, providing facts and evidence on this, is clearly as administering medicine to the dead.
This does not mean it changes the facts. It simply means I recognize any attempt to educate or inform here as a waste of energy.
You probably saw all the headlines about General Motors integrating generative text AI like ChatGPT into its cars soon.
To the surprise of exactly NOBODY who knows what I do for a living and on the side, I have a pretty substantial background in AI theory. Shit like ChatGPT is implementation branch, preventing misuse or AI that tries to commit genocide is ethics, how it behaves in response to inputs is research, but what AI actually fucking is? That’s theory.
You want to figure out if your product is actually AI, you don’t ask a researcher or ethicist. You call a theorist. And any one worth a damn will look you straight in the eye and tell you two things. One, ChatGPT is not artificial intelligence. Two, not one single overhyped product out there is artificial intelligence.
None. Zero. Absolutely nothing.
ChatGPT and it’s ilk are bad pattern regurgitators. I don’t give a shit what some Google ‘researcher’ or OpenAI implementer says. They don’t get to rewrite literally decades of theory so they can falsely market their crapware. All those systems are classic examples of GIGO; Garbage In, Garbage Out. They do nothing more than regurgitate what they are fed with minor alterations.
Which is exactly why every time someone unleashes yet another one, within an hour the 4chan crowd has it saying Nazis did nothing wrong. ChatGPT is not fucking AI. Actual AI when fed Wikipedia does not need hard-coded rails that reject anything relating to Nazis. An actual AI will conclude from the body of data and contextualization that Nazis are bad.
All LLMs and ‘generative AI’ are – every last one – is mad libs with plagiarizing. That’s it. No more and no less. They’re about as ‘artificially intelligent’ as a rock.
And theorists are not ‘sour grapes’ or luddites. This is the kind of shit that traces back to I, Robot’s Three Laws of Robotics. You’re talking 70+ years of “what is an artificial intelligence?” The most basic, fundamental concept. And the super short, I know nothing about AI but want to say something smart answer is: an artificial intelligence needs to be able to come to an independent conclusion based on the input it is provided without hand-holding or substantial guidance.
To elaborate: let’s say we feed our AI the entirety of Wikipedia. If I ask it who designed the Corvette C4, and it says Dave McLellan, that’s just a search engine. If I ask it which Corvette has the largest engine, and it says the 1970-1972 Corvette with the 454, well! Now we’re getting a little closer, because it’s having to draw conclusions from disparate numbers (cubic inches to liters and multiple data sources.) Then if we ask it specifically: what is the most powerful Corvette? If it says the C8 Z06, then it’s not AI. The only correct answer is the Callaway C20 SC757 (757HP, 777ft/lbs) by being able to make the correlation between the question, infer the scope, adjust the context (using the statement that it has a 36/36k warranty and is sold through Chevrolet dealers,) and tell you exactly what car you’re going to die in.
And it has to do this with only – ONLY – Wikipedia data. No searching the Internet, no Google, no additional inputs from Callaway or GM or anyone else. It gets nothing but the Wikipedia pages that are linked to the Chevrolet Corvette C8 page and it’s child links. And that would still be an extremely, extremely limited AI. Because you’re really not going very far past ‘the round peg goes in the round hole, so without trying, I know the square peg goes in the square hole.’
A real, medium to strong AI can respond to ‘what is the best looking Corvette’ with an independently formed opinion with clear reasoning; a strong AI can defend that opinion. Obviously I’m simplifying the absolute hell out of everything, but that really is the gist of it. I personally coined the ‘ABC Test’; it needs to differentiate an apple, bucket, and cat. It needs to define each and what it is used for, without copy-pasting (unless it cites.) It needs to express a consistent opinion on each and defend or rationalize the opinion without plagiarizing. And finally choose a favorite, express why, and stick with it instead of telling you what you want to hear.
And to be clear; that’s not even sapient thought level, folks. That’s literally on par with your dog knowing not to eat the plastic bag and having a favorite toy, with the caveat of if you had a dog to human translator.
Wow, too superior for me clearly. So superior I won’t bother with the rest of your comment.
How do we report this as Spam?
You go back to the other site.
I don’t need to add anything to your well written rant. I wrote a novel that is about the birth of true artificial intelligence so I can see the bullshit so easily with everything labelled as an AI right now. The sad thing is, it’s like anything else. The public believes it if you parrot it enough.
I think it would only qualify as AI when it starts arguing about whether the Callaway classifies as a Corvette or not. (clearly it is not, proving that Rootwyrm is a bot)
I said the C20 Callaway Corvette SC627.
Not the abomination that is the C21 Callaway AeroWagen which frankly, hasn’t been classified. Everyone was too busy throwing up in their mouths to give an answer.
Calm down
The inflation reduction act is generally a good thing, but I feel the “built in NA” should have been phased in like the battery provision. Also the income caps are too low. I would have loved to get a PHEV/BEV used using the 4k tax credit but I make more than $75k a year (NYC cost of living).
Thx Mansion..
Agreed on the phase-in, although at least the hard cut has lit a fire under the manufacturers’ butts.
However, if national policy were based on cost-of-living in NYC it would throw everything out of whack. Y’all are nuts. 😛
Happy Birthday Matt!
Hyundai/Kia can’t build their Georgia plant fast enough
It’d go faster if the gubmint let them hire children again!
Turning 40 wasn’t so bad, because you were 39 the day before and you don’t feel any different so you tell everybody you’re basically still in your 30s anyways.
Turning 41 is different though, now you’re solidly in your 40s.
Do you think generative AI has any sort of role in cars? If so, what would you like to see it do?
All of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNyXYPhnUIs&t=14s
Sorry Hyundai, but as long as South Korea continues its own protectionist ways, you’ll get no sympathy from me.
No shit. They let the crooked Samsung head out of prison because they were worried about the company.
And we bailed out GM, which, in a truly free market economy, should have died a self-inflicted death and been replaced in the marketplace by a car company that actually knows how to car company.
Indeed. GM and Chrysler never should have been bailed out. I think a similar set of circumstances is coming soon. Once energy becomes greatly more expensive than it is today coinciding with economic collapse, the long-running CUV/SUV/truck fad will be dealt a massive blow, and the need for inexpensive long-range EVs with small battery packs and few margin-padding features will make itself very apparent, but none of the automakers will be prepared to make or sell them.
Odd how America and North America are used interchangeably when discussing the Inflation Recovery Act, with the Mach E being built in Mexico…
The EV act should only cars built within the United States.
That would likely conflict with the USMCA trade agreement, which guarantees “domestic” status within the three participating countries for automobiles and automobile parts made in all three, a carryover from a similar provision in NAFTA, which, in turn, was a carryover and expansion of a similar provision in the US-Canada trade deal that preceded NAFTA.
We could pass legislation to do it, but it would be a be a violation of that agreement, and Mexico and/or Canada would be free to take proportionate punitive action with some new protectionist moves of their own
Whenever i see USMCA I think United States Marine Corp Fu**in A! Actually, I think United States Marine Corps and wonder why the A is there. Today’s United States Marine Corp brought to you by the letter A?
Up here in Canada it is CUSMA because we want to be first. I don’t know why they couldn’t just call it NAFTA 2. Much better acronym.
NAFTA 2: Electric Boogaloo
the CUMSA? Tecumseh!
I doubt the wording requires one countries tax payers to subsidize the rest.i actuality despite it being about cars it is a tax policy. You buy the car you get a tax rebate of $7,500.
HBD Hardigree!
Matt, your birthday was yesterday? We should have gotten you a pi.
COTD, or maybe it should have been COTY?
Raspberry?
If I could use natural language voice commands, not unlike the Star Trek computer, ton control the functions of my car. Turn on the heat to 75, turn on rear defroster, etc. and have it actually work rather than ask me to confirm something completely different; i.e. The car responds with “Would you like me to open the trunk?”.
My 2008 Honda had voice commands. You basically had to memorize the correct syntax to get it to do anything and it was easier to reach over and use the physical controls. As an example, say you wanted to find a local burger joint on the factory nav. You could say “Find nearest American” and it would look up American restaurants. Find nearest Wendy’s, McDonalds, or hamburger wouldn’t return anything.
Plus I should be able to do things like “Mazda, set voice commands to driver only, authorization Data-alpha-gamma-1701” and prevent the passengers from jacking around with things. 😛
“Self destruct set for 60 seconds, does the first officer concur?”
When HAL starts driving you places IT wants to go.
Open the garage bay doors, HAL.
I’m sorry, Data. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
I bet they have enough Majel Barret voice samples to make that the computer voice.
Hardigree… you’se a youngin’! Happy birthday.
So not only do Hyundais get stolen, but now their thunder got stolen too!
Scuderia Toyota
That BMW is a cool color
Cars come in cool colors in pictures. In the real world they are only gray.
The initial pictures for the 2023 Prius were shown in yellow and orange, but neither of those colors are available in the configurator (at least in the US).
Happy Birthday Matt! You barely look a day over 40, mate.
Whoops, maybe my emphatic language was a problem.
Didn’t we do basically this Flush a couple days ago? I don’t need my car to learn. I just want it to do what it is supposed to do when I provide the inputs, whether those inputs be shifting, steering, pedals, or voice. You want the infotainment system to understand drivers better? Better mics, not AI. You want the steer-by-wire to decide when to turn more sharply or more gradually? No you don’t. You want predictable response. Maybe programmable, maybe speed-sensitive, but not AI-determined.
I can see an alternative ICE fuel taking over petroleum during the EV transition period. We know that many petroleum-fueled things will not be going electric anytime soon- heavy trucks, construction equipment, watercraft, trains, etc. They might go electric someday, but not likely in my lifetime.
While we’re at it, a green alternative to using kerosene for jet fuel would be really great, because we’ll never “EV” airplanes.