How Tesla's Model 3 Could Conquer Low-End Luxury
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Unlike the markets for model S and X, cars in this segment rely on enormous volume to be successful both product-wise and financially, and, considering what we know about Tesla and how hard it is to mass manufacture such a complex product like a car, it's really questionable whether Tesla will be able to pull this one off. The relative success of the (niche) model S is no indicator here at all.
Unlike some here on HN may think, the automobile industry, especially in this segment, is already a hyper competitive space and the existing OEMs have not only the infrastructure and experience building high quality products that people actually want but also a far bigger war chest to battle it out with. I don't think anyone (including me) is hoping for them to fail but im certain that this will be a pivotal point for the company on whether they'll truly be able to become a mass market manufacturer or stay a niche luxury player they are now.
As for all the vaunted experience "building high quality product people actually want"? If 150,000 or so people want an all electric car that's fun to drive and has a 200+ mile range, they'll be buying it from Tesla, not BMW.
Yes, there are a lot of Elon fanboys here, but that's because people have been second guessing him for over a decade, and he's proven every time that he eventually does what he says.
Tesla and BMW are selling to a completely different audience.
Tesla does one thing very well, and that is to make great electric cars. Unlike BMW, Tesla does not have 30 models and hundreds of trims / power-train options.
Go to the entry level luxury ('executive')? Lexus, Acura, even Cadillac all have hybrids, with outright electrics planned over the next year to two (and despite pre-orders being available soon, it's not likely we'll see the 3 before 2017 - and that's only on the west coast; good luck getting an 3 in PA before 2019 - and as soon as you do see a firm delivery date, all those other manufacturers now have a concrete target to aim at).
It's not all a matter of "well, the S sold well, so the 3 will conquer."
Not even close.
But they all lack the coolness factor. Even for entry level luxury that is needed. I am sure they will all have electrics at some point, but in that market it will be a "me too" thing. And those that want the real thing will want a Tesla. For luxury market brands are everything, and Tesla has that.
Others to compete will have to offer something unique -- self driving, much longer range, and so on to be noticed.
I have a couple of coworkers with Teslas. I have far more with cars in the same market range that come from Porsche or Alfa or BMW or Mercedes or...
Tesla is something parallel (so maybe someone into Mercedes or Cadilac will not like Tesla and would not see the point). Let's say I wanted to buy an electric car. Even if BMW or Cadilac had more features, longer battery life, and even cost less. I would not buy it, and would rather spend more but get a Tesla.
Also, to illustrate my point, imagine when you are a kid perhaps and you want legos. But your parents buy you knock-offs. Functionally they are the same, you can build stuff from both, but emotionally it is not the same.
Not to mention, everyone I know with a Tesla is only considering Tesla for their next car.
Yes. I think there is almost a parellel market for. If I had $100k+ to throw for a car, I would not buy a Mercedes, BMW or Cadilac. I would still be driving a Honda Civic. But I would buy a Tesla.
For me I'll be looking into a family car in maybe 2 years as an upgrade, and having some form of Tesla on the horizon would definitely hold off until it was available.
It's just not just the price factor, its the cool factor, the tech factory AND the ev factor.
The fact that the article talks about petrol prices as a decision factor seems short sighted. Do we really think they arent going to shoot back up in the next 10 years AND that electric car charging infrastructure / prices wont come back down? Thats the sort of lifecycle thats going to matter for these
Looking at a 2013-2014 Nissan Leaf with 14K miles for about $9-$10k.
Earnings are expectedly bad -> stock takes a beating -> new car announced -> stock skyrockets -> debt raised at very high valuation -> long delays for car -> rinse, repeat
Bravo Elon, Bravo!
The biggest concern I have: superchargers. If they want to sell hundreds of thousands of Model 3 a year, what happens during Thanksgiving in the US? Newark, DE had 4 superchargers and they are now completing an upgrade to 12 or more. While there are other superchargers in New Jersey, Newark is a critical location between DC/NY/Philly and west. It takes 40 minutes to go from ~50 to 215 miles and that is if your supercharger isn't shared by another car (2 superchargers per transformer). Additionally, you won't get 215 miles because the heater will suck a lot of energy, and forget about charging to 300 unless you want to wait another 40+ minutes.
My hope is that Tesla has the same vision as Nissan and others with wireless road charging. That sounds crazy and inefficient, but I don't see any way you are going to accommodate thousands of Model 3, Model S, and Model X drivers Thanksgiving 2018.
Elon has said from day 1 that the supercharger network would be designed to grow ahead of demand. This is definitely well-planned for and not at all something they're sitting they're frantically wondering how they'll manage.
According to their website, there are currently over 3500 superchargers. If they sell 500,000 cars in 2017, which of course they won't nor do they plan to, that's 142 drivers per charger if they didn't build any more.
Imagine if you only had to share a gas station with 142 other people total. Do you think you'd ever even see them at all, let alone have to wait?
Note that the geographic distribution of chargers matches the distribution of owners, i.e. more chargers in urban areas, so there will not be overload on some and underdemand on others.
And I think you're not grasping how small a number 142 is for a full-fledged gas station.
There are over 200 million people in the US with driver's licenses, and over 114,000 gas stations. If only half of those people are driving, that's almost 900 drivers per gas station.
142 is nothing! Particularly since this isn't accounting for the fact that many/most Tesla owners fill up at home. The competition for charging space you're anticipating is simply an imagined worry.
Supercharger stations accept people who are on long trips and take 40-something minutes to fill up at best case.
So it's reasonable to say that the usage patterns are totally different.
http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...
Maybe 40% of gas cars will need to stop for fuel during a trip of that length, assuming a range of 500 miles and refueling when near empty. EVs should be able to make it directly, since they'll start at 100%.
You're absolutely right that the network needs to be sized for peak demand much higher than average demand, but even then I think it's less than what you'd need for the same number of gas cars.
By the way, don't mention headlights. Their power consumption is absolutely negligible. Heat, for sure, but not lights.
Put it another way: if you somehow convinced the car to leave the headlights on permanently, and you weren't plugged in, the headlights by themselves would take nearly two months to drain a 60kWh traction battery from 100%.
Out of curiosity, what's the "sweet spot" for efficiency for a Tesla? I imagine modern highway speeds aren't the best because of wind resistance. I wonder what the energy consumption is at, say, 45mph. Would you be able to extend the range significantly that way?
On the other hand, it's an amazingly small amount of energy. A 90kWh battery holds the equivalent energy of 2.7 gallons of gasoline. It's just that the electric drivetrain is 90+% efficient at turning that into motion.
The optimal speed for maximum range is about 25MPH. The slower you go, the less energy you waste fighting air resistance. I assume that below that speed, the energy that goes into maintaining the various systems start to cancel out the gains from going slower. The current record for a Model S is 452.8 miles, which took almost 20 hours. Not exactly practical.
Slowing down more reasonable amounts definitely helps. According to Tesla's range calculator, with a 70F outside temperature and no climate control, a 90D can expect to go 275 miles at 70MPH on level ground. Drop to 65MPH and you can get 302 miles. At 60MPH, the range is 332 miles.
This is always good to keep in mind on longer trips. You can watch your projected state of charge on arrival, and if it starts to drop below where you're comfortable, just slow down a little bit and that should solve the problem. Obviously, it's best if you don't have to do this, but it's a good plan B or plan C to keep in your pocket.
The only problem with that kind of comparison is that the energy in combustible liquids isn't actually usable for propulsion like that. There's no way (that we know of yet) to turn 90+% of the energy in gasoline into propulsion; most of it is just going to be wasted as heat due to the Carnot Cycle. Of course, if your goal is to simply produce heat (like for heating a building), fossil fuels are pretty effective at that.
Gasoline-powered fuel cells might do somewhat better than regular ICEs, but still nowhere near 90+%. In a nutshell, electricity is by far the most efficient form of energy transfer we've found so far. Everything else ends up wasting lots of energy to heat any time it's converted from one form to another, but a good electric motor can convert electric energy to mechanical energy with 98% efficiency (and vice-versa, with generators).
It also illustrates some side issues, like why an EV will suffer significant range loss when you need a lot of heat, while a normal car doesn't care.
No, it isn't. First, Hawthorne has been a huge pain for owners. Lines waiting to charge. Second, there are several places which are mind-boggling as to why they "planned" it the way they did viz.: Philly to Pittsburgh you have to route through Baltimore and stop at Hagerstown in winter, then stop again at Somerset due to the massive elevation change. If Tesla had put a supercharger at Breezewood there'd be no problem. See the Tesla forum for complaints.
> that's 142 drivers per charger
This is a straw man. Few people will be charging at the Mitchell, SD supercharger. I chose Newark as an example because it is at a rest stop (contrast with others your have to go out of the way to get to) and it is right in the middle of a large metros. If you want to do the math on how many people will be stopping to charge there spending 30+ minutes each -- again, assuming you get the transformer to yourself -- I don't think it'll work out well.
I'm sure you're right, some areas will end up overburdened-- and they'll fix it.
That says a lot about people who buy Teslas.
Also when analyzing scarcity of chargers you should look at popular travel routes, not population distribution.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but your analysis is weak in those points.
Disclaimer: I work for a competing car company, any opinions are solely my own.
I think electric only makes a lot of sense for many applications, but certainly not all.
Anyway, my points above were related to Supercharger congestion in holiday seasons - something that will be even crazier in the Chinese market with the Lunar New Year.
I bring up China because they are the largest car market, and the Chinese govt is pushing for fuel efficiency and pollution reduction, both of which electric cars achieve.
It's a huge difference from 20 years ago when gas stations were nasty, dingy places with the worst bathrooms in the world.
It's not as good in the Northeast, however. Most of the gas stations up there tend to be small and pretty crappy.
I also don't think it's necessary.
As the number of electric cars increase, the number of places you can charge your car tends to increase too - and not just Tesla's own infrastructure, but the businesses that want your money too. You can see this already on sites like plugshare - the number of places that have some kind of charging infrastructure is quite widespread.
I expect that more and more businesses which are adjacent to highways will be installing charging facilities in their parking lots for customers. You'll probably have to pay for charging, but it'll be more widespread.
There is a wireless car charging experiment going on in GB, and Nissan has this: https://youtu.be/9zZ2h2MRCe0?t=276
Stopping to charge is unlikely the future, but it isn't clear what is.
They have a lot of significant hurdles to get over to prove the technology is workable and worthwhile.
The install and maintenance costs alone I suspect will kill it unless they can make it just as durable and easily repairable as the existing road surfaces.
The S was an amazing consumerist statement that unlocked a class of people willing to spend 100k+ on a car because of its Eco-cache. For several years I thought it would be my next vehicle, then I watched the age, saw their poor quality interiors and decided I could get a lot more from BMW at half the cost.
I'm the person who would buy a Model 3, as I currently own a BMW Gran Coupe. But look at a Designo AMG C Class coupe or an M4. These offer thrilling rides, high quality interiors, and handling the current S doesn't even offer short of the D version. The Model 3 will have to be down market from there, putting them way behind the current market offering. This is a high competition low margin arena, and they can't even profit in the high margin low competition space yet.
I hope the Model 3 succeeds, but it will have to be amazing.
Tell me one thing: these other companies with all this money to burn, where are they going to get batteries?
Oh....I forgot, from the overwhelmingly abundant supply that's readily available.
Really makes you wonder why Tesla is building the largest battery factory in the world, which they had to start planning and construction for multiple years in advance....it almost leads you to wonder if perhaps there's nowhere else to get them from.
It doesn't matter how much money they have. Even Apple can't conjure a battery factory out of thin air. Rest assured money is not slowing down the progress of the gigafactory. It's not as if "if only tesla had more money, they could finish the factory sooner!" They're going as fast as construction allows.
At this point, it is no longer a game where more money will help, and most observers don't get that. Elon has said this explicitly time and again, and for some reason people ignore him.
That's not to say that electric doesn't matter. The fact that the Model S is electric is key. It's just not for "green" reasons. Electric is better in many ways: performance, noise, convenience, cargo capacity, and the simple luxury of never having to mess with volatile, carcinogenic chemicals just to make the car go.
Tesla has convinced a lot of people that electric is better. Until and unless these other companies put out good EVs, the Model 3 isn't going to face competition from better products, not as far as those people are concerned.
Unfortunately, BMW is a joke these days. They used to be good though.
I know a couple people in the former category who own multiple cars that cost 6 figures. They'd buy a Tesla just because they want one without cost considerations. They also have a Ferrari, a Porsche, etc. Pretty much any iconic brand of luxury car they have at least 1.
The low end luxury market are engineers, doctors, etc. and they will seriously consider buying a minivan or a SUV or whatever instead. It is a completely different market and one that [frankly] is just as likely to dip into brands like the Prius hybrid.
I'm sure Tesla will get sales but imagining some sort of dominance is silly.
I would say this is a big "it depends". I think I'm in that low-end luxury market. I paid 36k for my car, when all is said and done. I absolutely did not consider minivans or SUVs, and for one really big reason: I don't have kids. Kids aren't even on the horizon. When I look at minivans and SUVs, I think of mobiles that, while great people movers are, generally, not very fun cars to drive (there are some amazing Mazdas and Acuras in this collection, though).
I bought a Subaru WRX, because I like the way it feels; but, I am VERY excited about this new Tesla, and I completely believe that the next car I purchase, bar getting a huge amount of money that I can choose to not be practical with, is going to be an electric card, and is also probably going to be a Tesla.
I have a friend who owns a 90k Infiniti. He prefers luxury more than I do; but, he's 100% on the Tesla bandwagon and is very excited at the prospect of owning one. He'll be one of the first in line when they announce the price.
I have another friend, similar market. He owns an Audi ... A5? S5?
Barring my infiniti-owning friend, we are people that like cars and want a little extra. We definitely do exist, and I suspect many of us will be looking very intently at that Tesla.
Yes but is there 175k every year such as the article implies? I'm skeptical.
I can believe there is going to be 100k in sales but that isn't a market dominating product. I could even see it hitting 200k that first year due to pent up demand but it won't sustain it.
I think the BMW 3-series will hold it's buyers pretty well, though. There's just something, especially in the tech community, about owning a BMW 3-series. They might as well be the Toyota Corolla of some parking lots I've seen.
That is all I was trying to say really. The article doesn't know either and you can't extrapolate markets like that.
Minivans and SUVs are also handy if you do outdoor activities involving a lot of gear--including boats, etc. that go on the roof. A number of paddling friends I know actually consider minivans more practical than SUVs for this purpose.
Of course, said activities also often involve going to places where electric cars aren't practical--even if they didn't have gull-wing doors that preclude roofracks.
That said, I also have a small second vehicle. But then I paid $18K for it in 1998 or so and it's still going strong at 170K miles. (Honda Del Sol.)
People said the same thing about the S. And now we have a car that's going to be $28k after tax rebate, before add-ons. Idk about you but I know a very large number of people who are willing to spend more than they ought to on a car they can only narrowly afford just because.
Tesla is the height of cool in the car industry at the moment. If people will buy a brand new ~$20-25k generic car, you don't think they'll spend a few thousand extra to get the hot new thing, the 2017 car version of what the iPhone was in 2007? Especially when it means no more paying for gas, and having autopilot?
I didn't.
> Tesla is the height of cool in the car industry at the moment. If people will buy a brand new ~$20-25k generic car, you don't think they'll spend a few thousand extra to get the hot new thing, the 2017 car version of what the iPhone was in 2007? Especially when it means no more paying for gas, and having autopilot?
1) I said it won't be market dominant beyond the first year, at most.
2) It'll have very limited self-driving features, that isn't the same thing as autopilot.
> People said the same thing about the S. And now we have a car that's going to be $28k after tax rebate, before add-ons. Idk about you but I know a very large number of people who are willing to spend more than they ought to on a car they can only narrowly afford just because.
I'm genuinely amused how quick you are to defend the fact people exist rather than trying to provide any kind of evidence they exist in such massive quantities.
Do you have a source for this? Because everything I've read to date on the Model 3 indicates that it will have Autopilot.
Although, like the Model S/X, you will probably have to pay for the features to be enabled (the hardware is still present).
This is not a Level 4 Autonomous car[1], as they've made clear repeatedly and why they use the term Autopilot.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification
A level 3 or 4 autonomous car is a true autopilot.
Tesla is level 2.
The Pilot is always required to monitor the systems and be able to take control - so the analogy to a Level 2 autonomy car system like Tesla's Autopilot is quite correct.
Anyway, my point is if you keep talking about Tesla's lack of autopilot - regardless of the case - you're going to just confuse most people, because clearly they do have that.
If you want to refer to Level 4 systems, perhaps 'driverless' or 'self driving' are better terms to use.
I think Tesla is poised to do quite well in that market. Their marketing is generally very good, and they are not above putting a couple flashy features in the car that no one else has (gull wing doors).
The Model 3 may not be able to compete with ICE cars on cost per mile when gas is <$2/gallon, or on maintenance costs, but the Model 3's price point is still one where looking cool is more important than the bottom line.
What?
Perhaps with the exception of Lexus (Toyota), the iconic luxury brands have abysmal track records for reliability. And when they do need parts, they tend to require slightly special parts that are exorbitantly expensive.
In what universe does an electric car, which doesn't even need oil changes, fail to compete with this?
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/door-handle-issues-s...
Body squeaks and rattles are common too - in a car that can easily hit six digits, I do not want to merely put a hand on the dash and have it squeak and give way.
All mass-production cars these days are very reliable. Even the ones that are less so, are not that bad. And they all have warranties.
Electrics probably win on reliability/maintenance if you compare the numbers in a spreadsheet, but when you get into the "status" car range, it's just not something that's going to be the deciding factor in a purchase, IMO.
A V6 Accord Touring with navigation is almost 35K. A Mini Cooper can run close to 40k with options.
I'd rather buy a Tesla for 35K than a Honda or Mini any day, that's why I'm putting down a deposit.
Like I said, purely anecdotal but I know 30-40 people, many of whom aren't in tech, who plan on putting a deposit down on the first day. It's literally 1 out of 6 people I talk to. When I mention "I won't buy another car unless it's a Tesla" I often hear "me too." Many of these people I was shocked even knew what Tesla was, let alone were waiting for this car. I've only driven BMWs and Infinitis and won't buy a gas vehicle again after driving a Model S. A 35K Model 3, assuming it performs similar to a 60KwH Model S has a couple advantages over a 3 series. 1) With tax incentives, it can be had for much cheaper in many states 2) if you factor in gas savings, it brings it closer to 25K. I really think it will appeal to the BMW crowd as well as those who would never touch a BMW because of the image it portrays.
You're making it sound as if Tesla is riding the edge of bankruptcy, and Elon Musk is up late fretting over spreadsheets wondering where he'll find the money to make payroll.
On the contrary to your unsourced assertion that they won't be profitable until 2020, he just said in the last quarterly investors' call that Tesla was likely to be profitable this year. [1]
As for "burning through massive amounts of cash," again you're making it sound like money is just slipping through their fingers with no return. This is such a misleading sentence on its own. Yes, they have enormous capital expenditures because they're doing something extremely difficult that requires the construction of enormous facilities and requires immense amounts of engineering work. And by all accounts, given that they're now selling about 50,000 cards a year (sorry, how many were they selling two years ago? four years ago? looks like the number is going up) and given the reviews of the S and the X, they're doing a superb job delivering results from those expenditures. Their expenditures are not "out of control" nor unplanned-- they're spending exactly what they need to in order to accomplish a near-impossible goal.
Given where they've gone from 2009 to 2016, you think that between now and 2020 it's all going to collapse in on itself, the Model 3 will reveal itself to be a poorly designed flop that few will buy, or they'll find themselves unable to actually manufacture it? Where exactly are you seeing evidence of a downward trend or a failure waiting to happen?
You sound like one of those people on the radio that proclaim apocalyptic double-meaning in random numbers they've taken out of the Bible.
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-results-idUSKCN0VJ2J...
In the meantime, Elon is indeed saying whatever he has to to keep investors from losing their shit with impatience over a startup that's been working for over a decade without having transformed the world yet-- they've grown too accustomed to Dropbox's and Facebooks. If he let them speculate wildly without occasionally throwing them a bone, he would end up with a feedback cycle of bad press for no reason-- an analyst would downgrade Tesla for [some reason], a hundred articles would be written with titles like "Is this the end of Tesla?", and the cycle repeats. This is what he's keeping at bay while they prepare their grand slam.
Whereas in contrast you're considering evidence of Tesla's somewhat success in the high end market as an ironclad guarantee that it's not possible that the 3 could be a flop in a -vastly- different market.
I personally do believe their success is assured-- their success thus far combined with Elon's past and simultaneous other accomplishments seem to me as the very definition of ironclad evidence that this man achieves what he sets out to do. I just can't picture headlines in 5 years reading "How the man who landed the first rockets failed the auto industry." It just seems far-fetched.
And I don't think the market is as vastly different as you believe. At both levels you have people with money who want something shiny. And there are more people with $40k than there are people with $90k.
Time will tell.
says that they plan to be cashflow positive by Q3 this year.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2016/02/11/tes...
says that they are cashflow positive in "core operations related to the Model S. Which can be defined as the production and distribution of the vehicle, and sales of the premium sedan to its leasing partners. This excludes costs incurred in the build out of service centers, production facilities, stores and charging stations."
Tesla has $2 billion in long-term debt. Today's corporate debt is generally the cheapest corporate debt in world history. Stacked against $1.2 billion in cash, and the ability to dilute to raise more cash at will, as the market is still giving them a $30 billion valuation.
That $2 billion in debt is trivial to manage. It would have to be $10+ billion for them to be close to debt-laden, and even then with debt costs as they are, they could deal with it.
What I heard is that they are having a harder time raising money, they can't issue more convertible bonds, and they can't go to the markets again for another secondary. They need to start collateralizing their factories and other assets to get more money to pay for their gigafactory, etc.
If they hit on all cylinders they might survive, but if anything goes wrong in the next few years, they could very well topple under their debt. I heard that they have only sold about 1000 Model X's and are still working out the kinks. They needed 3 years for the Model S to be free from problems, so expect at least that much, not including the huge piece of glass used in the Model X.
At that ratio, you could be looking at $35,000 to $66,150.
And that's not assuming (which is entirely possible) that the $35K is the "with all possible eligible rebates" price. Without that it's more likely to expect that you're looking at a $45K base.
The rest is spot on, of course.
http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/zero-s/
The motorcycle market is approximately 1/30 the volume (in terms dollars even less) of the automobile market.
1) "I can't work on it, myself"
2) "It'll have terrible resale value" considering the life of batteries
3) It's definitely going to have a computer in it, and probably be phoning home all the time and that data could be siphoned to find out where I've been and how fast I've gone.
4) Cars with modern computers are scary easy to hack
5) I just don't drive
6) I haven't driven an electric car and so I have biases
7) I do very long road trips with very short pit-stops. Electric cars will never be able to do that (for some size of 'ever')
8) I'm over 60, and the technology won't be where I want it by the time I'm likely to leave this earth.
9) (added) I don't think we'll need to own electric cars. I think Uber or some other company will send out electric cars to us that will drive autonomously to their destination, and I think this will happen before I need to buy a new car.
There's several potential reasons.
4) Cars with computers: what are the alternatives?
7) Short pit-stops: 30 minutes for 170 miles at a supercharger, for free (estimated to cost Tesla around $2K over the lifetime of the vehicle). The company expects to reduce this to 10 minutes in the next few years. [1]
9) Car ownership: Good point. But the low cost of fuel and maintenance will accelerate the switch to EVs. This way, you might use them and we might even own them - provided that we launch local cooperative fleets to replace Uber.
[0] http://electrek.co/2015/05/08/tesla-model-s-battery-degradat...
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/516876/forget-battery-swa...
I think we'll see challenging times ahead for Tesla
If/when they have to stand up another assembly plant, that will be on the order of $2-5 billion and 2-5 years.
I would imagine that at some point they will enter a joint venture with another OEM rather than expand into another assembly site.
1. 24hr x 365 day @ 1 veh per minute would be 525,949 vehicles per year.
Disclaimer: I work for a Tesla competitor, any opinions are solely my own.