Luxury Electric Cars, Why They Don't Sell

Why Luxury Electric Cars Don't Sell

"What's the biggest obstacle to electric car development?"

If 10 people were asked this question, 11 would have to answer: "Mileage anxiety". But many users may not realize that car companies have been trying to solve the range of this difficult problem, but often also for how to "let the user for more expensive electric cars to pay" this matter, a broken heart.

To be clear, if an electric car wants to sell for more than $500,000, then it has to offer a ride and performance experience that exceeds that of a traditional luxury car. Especially in the driving and ride comfort, electric cars have to come up with some real progress, not just rely on two motors "stupid fast" only.

But at the moment, this work is not going well.

Luxury car electric car, broken in which leg?

Despite China's new energy vehicle penetration rate continues to reach new heights, but luxury electric vehicles in which the role played is really not worth mentioning.

According to the data released by the passenger association, China **** sold about 1,841,000 new energy vehicles, of which 300,000 yuan or more of the proportion of luxury electric cars is only 6.6%. In contrast, the passenger car market from January to April this year, the passenger car market plate, more than 300,000 yuan of luxury car sales accounted for a full 13.9%. In other words, sales of luxury electric cars, completely failed to beat the broader market.

And if you look at the more familiar, $500,000-plus, "purer" luxury segment, the reality is even bleaker. The only luxury EV that has steadily surpassed the 1,000 mark in the last two months is the Kryptonite 009, and the Azera ES7 is only hovering around the 1,000 mark. By contrast, the BMW X5L has held up remarkably well, selling more units almost every month than all the 500,000 RMB+ EVs combined.

To be clear, there's still a problem with the product power of luxury EVs, especially those over $500,000, on their own. But the reason for that lies in the fact that electric cars have three arguably fatal shortcomings compared to fuel cars. And these shortcomings are subject to the laws of physics of our current universe, and it's hard to take shortcuts to get around them.

First, electric cars weigh too much. Take, for example, the BMW X5L, the benchmark mid-size SUV with a 3.0 TV6 engine, which has a top-end mass of 2,225 kilograms. And its "similar size" of the Azera ES8, the whole mass is as high as 3190 kg, almost a ton heavier.

As we all know, a car's drivability and comfort are closely related to its overall weight. Excessive weight not only leads to greater inertia, affecting handling and comfort, but also puts too much pressure on the tires and suspension, which are responsible for bearing the weight of the "legs and feet".

At the same time, the instantaneous torque of an electric car at startup is very high, which brings satisfactory acceleration results, but also increases the wear and tear on the tires. Normal fuel-car tires are often not optimized for this, so when I drove some EVs, I even heard the front wheels "scratching" during ejection, which is clearly not high-end.

Second, there's the issue of EV noise. Frankly speaking, EVs have much better NVH (noise, vibration and harshness) levels than fuel cars because of the absence of an engine. However, since the human ear perceives sound based on "attention" rather than decibels, once the biggest source is removed, people will naturally focus on the next level of noise. At this point, tire noise, wind noise, and even motor whine can become a pain point for drivers and passengers.

Particularly when EVs have no choice but to use more wear-resistant and heavier tires in order to cope with the wear and tear on the tires that come with a heavier body, the tire noise on the road becomes even more pronounced. You know, compared to the V6 or even V8 engine roar thick and through a high-grade strength, low-frequency and messy tire noise will only make people upset. That's why the likes of Mercedes-Benz and BMW have introduced some high-end electric cars that opt for analog sound to mask it all.

Finally, it's time to talk about the oldest problem with electric cars -- range. Although ultra-high-voltage fast technology has been putting out satellites lately, touting the "myth" that 10 minutes is enough to replenish 100 or even 200 kilometers of range, the number of charging piles capable of ultra-fast charging is still in the minority compared with the number of gas stations dotting the country and even the globe.

Once the power emergency, even if you are the purchase of nearly 6 million yuan price of Rolls-Royce Shining car owners, I'm afraid that you have to go and drive BYD, EA net car drivers together to compete for public **** charging pile. Therefore, as far as possible, the owners of luxury brands have spare electricity to drive home, or drive to the exclusive charging pile to replenish energy, this matter is very important.

Of course, all of these challenges need to be addressed collaboratively by automotive companies, and even the entire upstream and downstream supply chain. But in this case, tire companies, which are often ignored by car companies and even users, have given their own solutions.

From the F1 race track, learn how to build wheels

Although the four tires, whether in a car's visual or cost of existence is not high, but its design and manufacturing are not easy. In principle, tires have a so-called "devil's triangle" at the design level, where rolling resistance, abrasion resistance, and wet slip resistance are difficult to reconcile.

Specifically, rolling resistance is the force that prevents the tire from moving forward, is a comprehensive effect, which is often directly related to the tire's grip (also known as traction). Tires that have a strong grip and a large contact surface between the tire and the ground tend to have more rolling resistance. That's why off-road tires and snow tires, where grip is the number one priority, tend to have more complex transverse tread patterns, and AT tires will even have tread blocks. The tread and wall of these tires, on the other hand, are softer, especially snow tires and AT tires, and we can even create a spongy texture when we press on them with our hands.

In contrast, our common city car tires have more longitudinal tread patterns and look more regular.

Of course, the tires will deform during driving due to the weight of the body, the road undulation, and this time the part of the tire contacting the ground will produce sliding friction. This not only brings annoying tire noise, but also wears out the tires and increases energy consumption. In order to make tires more wear-resistant, designers have to work in the area of materials to make the tread and wall of the tire harder and more resistant to wear. This, in turn, affects the tire's grip to some extent, making the vehicle perform poorly on wet and icy roads.

So how do you make a trade-off between tires for luxury EVs? A few days ago, I was at Pirelli's factory in Yanzhou City, Shandong Province, and spoke with Pierangelo Misani, the company's global director of research and development and executive vice president of Cyber technology.

In response to the demand for luxury electric vehicles, Pirelli has launched ELECT, an electric vehicle tire technology. Misani told the author that this tire is particularly focused on the pain points that exist in the areas of range and noise control of electric vehicles, and has already been used in the BMW i4M50, Polaris 2BSTedition270 and Audi e-tron and other high-end models to achieve the original fitment.

First of all, ELECT arranges the horizontal pattern as little as possible at the design level. At the material level, ELECT uses new materials with more silicon, which reduces rolling resistance. As a result, a darker material has been added to the ribbed portion of the tire's tread proper in order to eliminate static electricity from the tire and the EV itself. All of these designs have helped to increase the range of the EV by as much as 10 percent (as measured by comparing the Pirelli SCORPIONELECT and Pirelli SCORPION tires).

Secondly, in order to improve the vehicle's handling and to cope with the greater weight of the vehicle while improving grip at the moment of acceleration, Pirelli's ELECT improves the structural strength of the tires while raising their grounding level by 3.5 percent and improving pressure distribution.

Finally, at the level of enhancing vehicle quietness, ELECT does this by means of a sound-absorbing device arranged on the inside wall of the tire. This design consists mainly of a piece of sound-absorbing foam that has been fixed to the inner tire liner by a special glue, which reduces the filtering frequencies in the car by up to 50%, thus improving ride comfort.

Interestingly, when talking about the background of the development of the ELECT technology, Misani revealed to the author that by becoming the exclusive tire sponsor of Formula One, Pirelli "accidentally" gained access to new scenarios for the development and testing of tires for electric vehicles." Although F1 may not seem to have anything to do with electric cars, many of the challenges they face are similar."

The first and foremost is that F1, like electric cars, places high demands on the load capacity and grip of tires." Despite the lightness of F1 cars (for the 2023 season, the FIA requires a minimum weight of 798 kg for an F1 car plus driver and fuel), the downforce of the vehicle will be more than 2 tons when traveling at speeds beyond 220 km/h." Misani told the author, "Especially when cornering at high speeds, the vehicle will generate more than 4G of body overload, not to mention the enormous torque during acceleration." And in his opinion, these are the perfect testing grounds to validate new technologies.

In fact, the ELECT technology uses the lip technology proven on F1 race tires to enhance the connection between the tread and the tire wall.

What is even less well known are the changes that the specificities of F1 racing have brought to Pirelli's tire development and validation process." Since F1 cars are not allowed to be road-tested on a race track before the season, a great deal of development and testing is done in simulators, so we use the experience we have gained from F1 races in tire development as well. This type of simulation testing has allowed us to shorten our development cycle significantly and to have a clearer target."

Pirelli tires with ELECT technology are already stocked on several luxury brands' electric cars. It is believed that as luxury car brands such as BBA and Porsche make their presence felt in the EV sector, more and more new cars will come from the factory with original EV-specific tires.

Written in the end

Launched for the electric car product tire manufacturers, in addition to Pirelli, there are Michelin and Ma the two veteran tire manufacturers. Obviously for the electric car market, the old tire makers are rubbing their hands together, hoping to seize the new opportunity of electrification and keep the turf they have staked out in the fuel-car era.

So it seems that the majority of national brands really need to work hard. After all, our car companies have already crushed the joint venture brands in terms of sales, and the tire thing shouldn't be left behind.