The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (2006)
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Creating an affordable EV at mass consumer scale is a much harder problem than creating a luxury EV at modest volume. However, if there was anyone I would bet on making this work and building an amazing car, it would be Elon Musk and team.
I don't think you've been car shopping much recently. 'Economy' cars like the Honda Civic, Mazda 3, Toyota Camry, etc. can easily push up against $30k with a few options. For some real sticker shock look at minivans, a Honda Odyssey can easily hit $40k-50k out the door.
With a five year loan or a three year lease and a bit of trade in from a previous car you can easily be driving a $35k car for just a few hundred bucks a month.
I'm having trouble finding a median car sale price -- there are a bunch of articles about the average cost of new cars -- but I doubt most families actually are spending that much on transportation. Once you cut out used cars, those without cars, and those spending significantly less for their Kia or Hyundai or whatever, I think you'll find that very few people spend $40k on a car. That's a luxury purchase.
You have probably already realised this if you've lived on the planet for more than 20ish years, but the majority of people certainly seem to be quite insane.
I think you're a bit out of touch. "Few" options? You can get a very, very high end Honda Civic at $30k+, in my opinion. Considering you can get a base Civic for around $16k-$18k, adding on a "few" options isn't going to almost double the price. You have to add quite a few options to get near that $30k number. Or pick a higher end Civic to start with.
> For some real sticker shock look at minivans, a Honda Odyssey can easily hit $40k-50k out the door.
First those are big vehicles so yes, obviously they're going to cost more. But $40k to $50k is with many options as well. You can get a base Odyssey between $28k to $30k depending on where you shop. Not everyone adds $10k to $20k in option.s In fact I would be shocked if any majority of customer adds on so many options.
The parent comment was talking specifically about what people pay and not about the price tag at the new car dealer.
It would be difficult to spend $30k on a new standard-engine Mazda 3. Mine was $18k brand new. The top standard-engine trim is around $25k. That other $10-17k is another $165-285/month over 5 years at 0% interest, and that is not an insignificant amount of money to many/most people.
If you can't save that much monthly in gas, and all you want is a boring, basic, reliable car, it's not worth it (yet). Tax incentives help, but Tesla is going to hit the 200,000 vehicle limit well before filling even all the Model 3 pre-orders.
Mazda doesn't even have a car in this segment. You should be comparing it against a BMW 3-series, Audi A4, Acura TL, Mercedes C-series, Lexus GS.
All of those vehicles start in the 30s, and you would be lucky to get out the door with reasonable options under $50K. You could probably get the BMW up to almost $100K when you start considering the M package and various sports options.
Indeed, that was my point. The claim that "'economy' cars like the Honda Civic, Mazda 3, Toyota Camry, etc. can easily push up against $30k with a few options" is trying to assert that people buying those kinds of cars are in the Model 3 market. But they really aren't. People buying small luxury sedans like the ones you've mentioned probably are, though.
This means the difference between what the median new-ish car price is when sold to an individual, vs. what the median price is for a new car sold to an individual is massive.
Honda Civic LX is 18,640, while the high-end "Touring" trim is $26,500.
http://automobiles.honda.com/tools/build-price/trims.aspx?Mo...
Mazda 3 is $17,845 to $25,795.
And these are at MSRP, and lulz to anyone who can't manage to get a car below MSRP. Pushing up against $30k? Are you kidding me?
Maybe a "racing" model, like Ford Focus ST or Subaru WRX (a small, but very powerful engine, costs premium) will get you to $30k. But you can deck-out these starter vehicles and keep costs around $20k easily.
And as others have said: normal people don't buy new cars.
On the other hand median just gives you the value that split the distribution in two exact parts.
Price/Income distributions are the perfect match if you want to see avg bias taken to its extreme.
e.g.
median of [2,2,2,2,2,2,2,100] = 2 average of [2,2,2,2,2,2,2,100] = 14.25
Average (or mean) is the sum of the values divided by the number of values. Because of the way it is calculated, it is more likely to skew when the data includes extremely large or extremely small values. Median on the other hand is a way to measure the "middle value". For data sets of odd cardinality, it is simply the middle value, and for even cardinality, it is the mean of the two middlemost values. You can have a large number of extreme values with no effect on the median value, depending on the data.
As an example let us look at a hypothetical neighborhood. We have a family making 50k, another 100k, another 150k. Their average salary is 100k with the same median. Assume some super rich guy making 10 million. Our average goes up to several million dollars, but the median sits at 125k, more representative of where the data is clumped.
None of this to say that median is a good measurement in what I'll call malicious data sets. Imagine a data set with 1000 entries of negative 10m and 1000 of positive 10m. If I add a new data point of 5000, this is my median but doesn't represent my data at all.
Bonus: there's also "mode" which measure the value that has the most entries. E.g. in a set of 1 2 2 2 3 4 5, mode is 2.
SUVs are everywhere. Light trucks are everywhere. Minivans are everywhere. Most of these are in the $35K+ range (the F150 -- the top selling US vehicle -- has an average selling price of $41,776). Even a decently equipped Honda Accord (along with light trucks, the most popular car in the US. Not the Civic, but the Accord) is pushing past $30K.
Often the median and the average skew. But minus actual data beyond just anecdotes, the average is the best we have.
Since this doesn't include used cars, I think it's fair to say that the average household is spending less than that.
Yet the #1, most popular vehicle sold in the US, the Ford F-150, sells for over $41K generally. There are many other completely ordinary, most certainly mass produced, vehicles in that price range. Bought by entirely "normal" people.
These discussions always remind me of a great Onion article (http://www.theonion.com/article/sociologist-considers-own-be...) about projecting one's own lot across the population at large, and using our own situation and choices to define "normal".
Obviously it will be "mass-produced" for any reasonable definition of the phrase. My point was that this is still a luxury vehicle that will be purchased by people whose wallets will be able to handle production problems.
"Yet the #1, most popular vehicle sold in the US, the Ford F-150"
There is a reason for that. That is a work vehicle.
"These discussions always remind me of a great Onion article about projecting one's own lot across the population at large, and using our own situation and choices to define "normal"."
This is hilarious because it's exactly what I'm responding to. Some set of the HN crowd, despite this entire discussion, still seems to think $40k is a normal amount of money to spend on a car. It isn't. And, again, I think the evidence is on my side. The median family does not, in fact, buy $40k cars, regardless of whether you think I'm projecting or not.
Here, for example, is some information on median used car prices:
One minor counter to this is that you shouldn't get too caught up in the hype about this being a mass-produced car. HN and tech journalism is a bit of a bubble. Normal people do not spend $35-40k on a car.
You are moving the goal posts around to somehow derive a win through some simply wrong statements. That's hardly uncommon, and is the manifestation of ego.
There is a reason for that. That is a work vehicle.
The overwhelming bulk of F150s are bought for personal use, which is exactly why the average price is so high now. The work truck doesn't have the leather interior and xenon lighting package.
And, again, I think the evidence is on my side.
I have no idea what your "side" even is (though your core claims are simply wrong, it seems that you're trying to say that this is such an exclusive, abnormal price range of cars that the buyers are more forgiving? I find that almost impossible to believe: if you want to see an angry, demanding customer, get to know someone with a BMW 3-series). There are almost 18 million new vehicles sold in the US per year. The average price is pushing towards $35K. This is where Tesla is getting involved (I don't think anyone makes cars for the used car market...), exactly at the sweet spot of the average price.
Your priceonomics link has literally zero relevance to this, or data applicable to this discussion.
You desperately want to be right, and that's a pretty common sentiment. Fine. But your original claim was simply wrong (elsewhere you twisted it to not only somehow claim that these people aren't "normal", but also that people who buy a more expensive car are wrong and shouldn't be doing it anyways), however much you claim that people missed your ethereal point. The Tesla 3 absolutely falls within the realm of mass produced cars, and millions of entirely "normal" people are buying that price range of vehicle. They are targeting a completely ordinary market.
And then this is where it gets weird: they then tell you, nope, you're wrong, your point was whatever they first interpreted it to be, no matter that you just clarified that that wasn't your point and tried to clear up the confusion.
Please don't do this. It's a really uncharitable and unnecessary way to conduct a discussion. I just told you what I intended my point to be. What do you gain by claiming that I'm hiding some other actual point? What would I gain by hiding some other point? In this particular case, I didn't even put any blame on the reader. I blamed myself and apologized for being unclear. If that's goal-post moving, then what hope do any of us have?
He claimed :Normal people do not spend $35-40k on a car.
He further clarified that his definition of normal person to be one that doesn't tend to buy new cars, only used.
You point out that 18 million new cars are sold per year and that average new car price is over 30K a year. That completely misses the point that approx 60 million cars are sold in the US per year or around 1/3 of cars sold are new cars. The average price of a used car sold in the US is around $18,800. Therefore the average car sold is A) used B) cost less than $30K.
Number of Used cars sold: http://www.cnbc.com/2014/08/22/used-car-market-showing-no-si...
Average price of a Used car: http://www.edmunds.com/about/press/used-car-prices-increase-...
Creating an affordable EV at mass consumer scale is a much harder problem than creating a luxury EV at modest volume.
...which was advanced in the context that regular people wouldn't be as forgiving with Tesla's production problems as current owners have been. My point then (and now) was that we shouldn't get too carried away with that line of thinking, because the Model 3 is still going to be a luxury car that will be purchased by people who can afford to deal with some issues.
People who buy new BMWs (by analogy) know that they're going to cost more to fix than a used Honda Civic.
That was my entire point. If it wasn't clear, then I'll take the blame for that. What I won't cop to is some sort of concealed sociological attack. Now, if I know what's good for me, I'll shut up :P
Um, just wow. I find it hilarious that you seem incapable of understanding you are talking about new cars while dionidium is talking about used cars.
And then you go off the rails with some strange conspiracy theory about dionidium labeling people as not normal and that people buying luxury cards as wrong when no such thing happened.
I think you should apply your words to yourself and reflect a bit.
"Normal people do not spend $35-40k on a car."
That is dionidium's phrasing, and you're throwing slurs at me? Really?
"you seem incapable of understanding you are talking about new cars while dionidium is talking about used cars"
In a conversation that can only be about new cars, in a discussion that was about mass production (wait..were they talking about the mass production of used cars?)
EDIT: I realize now that talmand is simply a troll, and I apologize for biting.
I see you didn't reflect upon yourself. You really need to stop projecting. I suspect you are just having fun with us.
Normal people do not spend that much money on a car, new or used.
I would have to assume that all used cars were mass-produced at some point in the past, or were all used cars hand manufactured?
>> If you have nothing to add, maybe keep your nonsense to yourself.
Oh, yeah, you're just having fun at our expense.
1) It is absolutely true that they sell more retail trucks than fleet trucks
2) I was merely pointing out that it wouldn't be the most popular vehicle on the market without the fleet sales
3) This has nothing to do with my original point and I probably shouldn't even have responded to it
If you want controversial, here you go: a lot of people in this thread own cars that cost $40k and up on a salary that doesn't justify it. They think they can justify it. Everyone is telling them they can afford it. Their friends all have similar salaries and similar cars.
But they're spending too much.
http://www.financialsamurai.com/the-110th-rule-for-car-buyin...
Also is driving for Uber really good financial advice ?
And why do people use gross income. Should use net income. It's not like you can deduct your car on taxes.
Fact 1: there are a lot more super-expensive cars than super-cheap cars.
Fact 2: The guy you replied to is talking about what a family spends on a car, not what they spend on a new car
Fact 3: income inequality means there are a lot more poor families than wealthy families. income distribution in america is not a bell curve.
Regarding "Fact 2", I have no idea what they're even arguing. Their core point was absurd, and they really truly seem to think it's the rich who are buying $35K cars (not "normal", despite being utterly normal for new cars), which is laughable nonsense.
This is all just a diversion. The Tesla 3 is absolutely in the center of the average new car, that normal people buy. Tesla makes, unsurprisingly, vehicles for the new car market. Tens of millions of completely normal Americans buy new cars yearly.
Again, the data tells us that an enormous number of completely normal, ordinary Americans buy new cars regularly, and that they spend a lot. Anecdotes or personal projections can give us a completely skewed notion about this (e.g. I know zero people who own a gun. Therefore no one owns guns), but if you compare the data to your anecdote, clearly they don't correspond.
And FWIW (which is little), every one of my neighbors has vehicles worth well over the average. In the exurb town I live in on the outskirts of major city, you never, ever see an older car, or a junker, or anything of the sorts. Burger flippers have shiny new Kias. The middle class have giant SUVs. And so on.
That's what we're discussing. That the amount people pay for a car, is less than what people pay for a new car. That's the only point I leapt in to defend, and if you're arguing with me against other points, then you're talking to the wrong guy.
Look- the average number of arms for a tennis player is less than 2. Similarly, some (perhaps most) people spend their car-acquiring dollars on used cars. So, the average amount people spend on a car is less than the average sale price of a new car. QED, end of discussion.
Now, you want to argue that among people who buy a new car, $35k is acceptably average? Okay, fine, whatever, I don't care, and neither does anybody else in this thread.
This conversation is specifically and only about new cars, in this case the Tesla Model 3. It is outrageous that you're implying that I'm the one diverting the conversation, when the very root post by dionidium was a completely irrelevant non-sequitur as they injected some completely irrelevant sociology bias into the conversation. If we were discussing the average price of a fast food meal, would a comment about a Cup O' Noodles have any relevance?
No one cares to argue what people pay for used cars, or for no car at all, because that is irrelevant to this discussion.
I understand that's certainly how you've been behaving. Despite several people trying to disabuse you of that notion.
Rebutting an argument by claiming it is not based on any evidence? While providing absolutely no evidence of your own? Okay, cool.
> Regarding "Fact 2", I have no idea what they're even arguing
Their core point was if you're discussing people who buy new cars, you're already skewing away from the poorer demographics. People spend less on average to buy a car, than they do to buy a new car.
> The Tesla 3 is absolutely in the center of the average new car, that normal people buy
The tesla 3 is a little above the average price that people pay for a new car, among the fraction of people who buy new cars. Which most people don't do.
That's the mean price though, and the price curve has a very long tail. The median is significantly lower.
I expect it to be a great car but I see people looking at it who really aren't in a position to do so.
Repairing this thing out of warranty will be even more of a joke than with regular new cars (and that's already an economic tragedy.)
The only significant repairs I can imagine on this vehicle are replacing the tires or brakes. As long as the oil changes and maintenance are done regularly, I highly doubt the engine will have any problems until 200,000 miles or so, at which point the vehicle will be almost 20 years old and have cost about $1,000 a year to drive.
New vehicles are incredibly reliable (compared to vehicles produced in the 20th century) and are likely to last a long time, although the electronics will surely be dated when they are 20 years old.
The tesla vehicles have an 8 year warranty on the battery pack, which is the only item besides tires, brakes, and windshield wiper blades that is likely to wear out.
This is Tesla marketing through and through. Look at all the problems the Model S owners have had and reconsider the statement.
I think the Tesla 3 is going to do very nicely in that market given its artificial constraints.
Given the lethality of air pollution in Beijing, I'm not sure it's fair to call "artificial" those emission-limiting constraints.
Otherwise, you'll also have to call "artificial" the constraint that one can't shoot/knife/strangle people who go out of their ways to be pains in asses, however genuine and natural the urge might seem :-)
Other than that, yes, China is likely to be a very good market for Tesla, at least until local knock-off become available. I'd actually be surprised if Tesla's worldwide production matched China's demand.
BYD already produces electric cars that are even subsidized in many cities. However, the people in Beijing buying Teslas would rather buy a BMW or Audi anyways if they could get the license plates for them, and they wouldn't be caught dead in a Chinese-brand car (and the way the BYD electric taxis have been rumored to just explode, they think being caught dead in them is a possibility).
If Chinese demand is sufficient, I'm sure tesla would just open up a factory or two in China to supply it. They might even take on a Chinese partner in a JV given that they are so willing to share patents with competitors anyways (with the bonus that the partner would provide much of the RMB capital to startup, it's the one thing China has a lot of).
Really? I can't imagine anyone who's actually driven a Tesla wanting to go back to an ICE vehicle.
People aren't buying Teslas because they're greener or cheaper to operate or even because of government incentives (although those are additional, feel-good benefits).
They're buying them because they're better cars. Faster, quieter, more fun to drive, filled with the latest technology.
EV's are great for a number of use cases but they are not even close to a viable option for many uses of ICE's at the present. No doubt this will change but even if a Tesla is a 'better car' than my daily driver 'Faster', 'Quieter', 'more fun to drive' and 'filled with the latest technology' do not move the needle for me relative to 'can function anywhere on the European continent without any worry whatsoever', 'fuels up in < 5 minutes to 'full charge' and another 600 km of range', 'does not require specialty knowledge or a dealership for basic maintenance'.
Oh, and if with 'faster' you are talking about acceleration then I really don't know why that would even be a factor because in normal daily driving that's the least of your problems and so on. This appears to be an argument based mostly on emotion rather than actual facts around transportation.
Taxi services, commuting, local transport are all excellent use cases for EVs. Going longer distances a hybrid is right now probably the best you can do and it will be a while before EVs will be able to compete across the board with ICE's. You'll know when we have achieved parity because gas stations will start closing, or will replace pumps with EV super charging stations en-masse.
NB Is anyone looking into solving this particular problem - because it's one that a lot of people will face.
1 - I mention this as it is inconceivable to me that I would move simply to have a different kind of car.
I'm assuming that the council will install charging stands at some point - if these had dedicated parking (and no residents parking charge!) then that would encourage people to use them.
Some properties in the street have coal holes in the road - that might an interesting place to install charging paraphernalia.
Some boroughs of London are quite well covered, with charging points every 1-2 blocks or so (Westminster), where as other parts are pretty useless (Camden). Because the charge point spots are reserved for EVs only, and can only be used while charging, you can usually find an available one pretty easily.
There's talk of designing charge points that can easily be attached to existing street light poles, so in terms of infrastructure the cost to implement charging points on every street should not be unreasonable, once the demand is there.
I see Teslas and BMW i3's parked on the street near me regularly in London with no obvious access to a nearby charging point, so it's certainly possible to use an EV this way at the moment - if not entirely as convenient as having your own charge point. If you're only driving around the city then you probably don't actually need to charge all that often (maybe once a week or so), and for long-distance trips you can stop at a fast charger or supercharger.
Now that's a sensible idea.
I have seen a couple of Teslas in Edinburgh - but they look like people commuting into the city. Not seen an electric car parked anywhere that looked like the owner lived there.
Our car usage doesn't really fit with current electric cars usage - but I'd love to try if we had a suitable home and a need to commute by car (both my wife and I walk to work at the moment).
Edit: Another option would be to buy a garage - but at £60K to £80K that would rather defeat the purpose of buying an electric car to save money!
What was the range of the first ICE vehicle I bought on a tank of gas? 300 miles. What's the range of the Tesla model S? Also 300 miles.
For most consumers, they will actually spend less time waiting for fuel, since the Tesla charges in your garage at night while you're otherwise occupied, and an ICE vehicle requires you to wait in freezing outside temperatures while fueling it about once per week.
Not sure if this is still planned, but at one point the intention was to have automated stations that would pull off your battery and replace it with a freshly-charged one, which should take about the same time as a gas station stop.
They're well-made, sure, but they're foremost a luxury and status symbol. They're better than other status symbols because they actually have functional value that comes close to their market value, but they're still a status symbol.
However it seems that Tesla is actually trying to reduce its price point to make their products more affordable -- and that they're not as interested in treating their product as a fashion brand (yet).
Not sure why this opinion is downvoted, but I agree.
The Model S is quite an engineering feat, particularly the D. But the Model 3? There are quite a few cars in that segment that have the performance and "luxury" of that car for cheaper. Being electric (and a Tesla) is the only selling point, and I don't value it that much.
I want an electric car as a commuter; something that I can go back and forth to work in every day, and charge at night. A high-torque, RWD electric car is a tough sell for the winters we get here, especially at the ~$50,000 CDN it will likely cost.
Once they get used to it, I think Tesla will be a hit. It's just not that way yet.
and btw, bmw already sell a EV for under 35k for over a year.
Neither is anyone else. People buy Teslas because they are the best car money can buy.
I can't imagine you can make a valid case that there is one best car that money can buy, presumably for everyone who can afford one.
2. To match your claim, it would have to have the highest reviews on every publication/outlet.
I'm simply pointing out how vast your claim is that somehow every single car buyer who can afford one would want to buy one. Think about the luxury large SUV market, or the coupe market, or the exotic coupe market, or the super-luxury sedan market, etc.
Burning coal (especially when coupled with electric motors, which have efficiencies of 90%+) is more efficient than burning gasoline.
The thought of charging your vehicle with electricity is seen as a low-class activity, for those who can't afford a "real gasoline" vehicle.
Cars the size of the 3 place in the teens to mid twenties though there are examples outside those ranges. The issues EVs have always faced is that many families if not individuals cannot afford a car with any limitations. By that I mean, both cars have to be able to wholly do the duty of each which usually involves going anywhere at any time.
Two hundred mile EVs might change that but only to a point. It will take a proliferation of charging stations and change in public use of them.
Between the Tesla 3 and Chevrolet Bolt the real change here is that the consumer EV market, the "median price market" has finally matured. All previous generation EVs which include the Leaf, i3, Focus, and eGolf, are as near to being obsolete as they can be. Sure they use still but their range limitation is even more exaggerated, especially at the price points being set by GM and Tesla
That may be true for the US market but Tesla is selling globally now. Trucks don't sell very well in Europe for example.
IMHO, one of the biggest problems from the tech side (I know that there are many hard problems, but this concerns me the most) is battery manufacturing.
They already have built the gigafactory which produces (or will produce) more batteries (or the power they produce) than the rest factories in the world.
But battery technology must have a breakthrough and probably sooner than most of us think. Currently known lithium reserves will 'support global demand until 2100' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Reserves). Also, very efficient battery recycling and reuse must be further developed.
I hope that in 100 years, we'll discover and develop battery technology which is affordable, ecological (will not deplete Earth's recourses completely), efficient (e.g. power to weight ratio), etc. I know that there is development going for this, but I think it will be a long time until new battery tech will be in our home.
If all else fails, you can extract an essentially limitless amount from seawater, but that would be much more difficult and expensive that current methods, so nobody's bothering to find out how to do it cheaply at scale (yet?).
In any case, elemental lithium is a very small part of the cost of a lithium-ion cell, so this shouldn't impact the EV market much. And you can already recycle the lithium from batteries, so once you have enough to support the world's transport needs, you're pretty much set.
I personally applaud his bravery, changing the established order is hard and carries great risk.
He is the real consortium of products and can shift money between these industries at will.
The risk here for all of his companies is that he is building a house of cards, one company collapse could bring it all down.
Or if they all succeed, he may become one of he most powerful entrepreneurs in history.
Which is his real 'secret plan'
It's not simply that he's a great entrepreneur, it's that his goals seem to be slightly different from others. Every business owner wants to make a lot of money, but Musk has decided to do that via pushing humanity into a Sci-fi future as soon as possible.
"Disrupt the oil industry's hold on america"
His goals are crazy. Crazy awesome.
Tesla - energy storage and AI assisted vehicle research
And then there is the miscellaneous stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musk_electric_jet
It's obvious that his real 'secret plan' is an ironman suit.
"Build sports car.
Use that money to build an affordable car.
Use that money to build an even more affordable car.
While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options.
Don't tell anyone."
Who has the best margins in the automotive industry? Porsche. In fact, it's almost always been Porsche since their recovery from the mid-90s. Porsche's margins are so good, investors are complaining that the high-volume Macan is dragging down margins to a "terrible" 16% from their typical 19-20% -- which (the 19-20%) is double what Audi's (#2 for industry margins) margins are. To put this in perspective, Porsche brings in as much profit (in Euros) as the Volkswagen brand, despite selling 2% as many cars.
Porsche commands their premium by finding a niche and trying to be the most desirable in it. They have competitors, but they offer a package people are simply willing to pay a lot more for. There were never a lot of competitors to Porsche's sports cars in their price range -- Corvette aside, Porsche still commands a huge chunk of the traditional $50-150K sports car market, and has a very devoted fanbase. They also carved out a significant chunk of the high-end SUV market.
What competes with the Model S and Model X? Nothing from a powertrain perspective. Add in clever packaging and other features that are largely exclusive and they've created a niche for themselves.
The Model 3 is Tesla's Cayenne/Macan. The volume play to ensure their top-end electric vehicles can continue to command their prices, and to provide cash for general operations. Being the mass market player is admirable, but if someone (or several companies) outplay or match you, you could be in for a rough ride. To me, Tesla made the smart play by focusing on higher-margin vehicles.
You can't really split Porsche off from the rest of the Volkswagen group; their margins derive largely from taking commodity VAG platforms* and adding bespoke engines, tuning magic and brand cachet.
If they had to return to the pre-1990s stand-alone operating model they'd be as unprofitable as, well, Tesla.
If you do want to compare them to another car company it'd be AMG or Alpina who operate in the same manner and enjoy the same benefits of mass-produced chassis.
* which are developed with a lot of Porsche input but are made on common production lines before being shipped to the 'brands' for completion
'if you want to have EV, all you have to do is buy the best cars we just made' kind of.
How Time have not managed to throw him Person of the Year yet, I cannot understand. The cars, the solar network and SpaceX. They're huge undertakings.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11419772
may be a reason why Musk isn't there yet.
The article compares the Model 3 to the Bolt. I think in the second phase of his unveiling, Musk will announce that the Model 3 will be self-driving. There were strong indications in his Twitter AMA yesterday that it won't be driven like a normal car.
In what sense? Look at European NCAP safety ratings; the Model S is great, but certainly didn't "top anything else". There are quite a few cars with better overall safety ratings.
And speed? Good acceleration, sure. But not faster than anything else. Top speed either. Where does this myth originate?
For speed I meant the 0 to 100km/h, but anyway you're right, not the fastest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest_production_car... , only number 6. Maybe seeing it faster than a McLaren made me assume it was number one.
Some people are skeptical about electric cars because the estimate life span of a battery is around eight years. But reading the article above (and others) you can see the batteries are not an issue anymore.
I was also a little skeptical about electric cars but I think the absolute pros are:
* Electricity can come from any source (coal, nuclear, sun, water, waste, aliens).
* No emission (in cities).
* No noise pollution.
Signals electronics (displays, sensors, etc) use so little energy compared to power electronics (the drivetrain system) that it doesn't really matter.
1 W * 1,000,000 cars is still 1 MW.
It's like saying a javascript file of 1MB is ok because there are images of 10MB on the same page.
A million of those cars is 200,000 MW
Amdahl's law: when optimizing performance, target the largest consumer first. And in this case the engine is the largest, by at least 5 orders of magnitude
It would save much more electricity educating people to drive less aggressively and use less braking than to remove the sensors
Is it? I thought it meant no harm to the environment. If the charging station is powered by solar energy, I don't see how using the otherwise wasted energy wrong.
It's all about scale.
Of course some solar panels are not going to harm the world. But what if we need, lets say, 1% of the earth covered with solar panels?
If it's hard to predict the effects it might be dangerous.
EVs will still generate a fair amount of noise pollution. There will be important improvements for city quality of life, mostly in reductions in the sub 35kmh acceleration/deceleration moments. But for highway speeds the reductions will not be that big.
Check this interesting wikipedia article for reference. Linking to the part that lists the basic variables that affect Roadway Noise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadway_noise#Description_of_b...
It's just crazy to see them beat the competition so badly.
I remember seeing the concept car for the Chevy Volt a few years ago and thinking how cool it was.
Then they released it and made it aerodynamic and thus BORING.
It's pretty nuts this car is 35k and the list of advantages to disadvantages can be summed as.
There's no reason to buy any other car.
On the other hand, Tesla will not sell you the parts. Tesla can at any time deactivate your vehicle if they think it's not fit for driving(as they already do in case of accidents), even remotely, and you have to bring it to their dealership to have it reactivated after it passes their tests. I can't think of any conventional car that you have to do that for, I've seen Range Rovers after horrible crashes that have been fixed and put on the road again, and no one had to ask Land Rover for permission to do that.
But even if we forget about that - the biggest cost of owning a second hand Tesla is always going to be the battery. As the value of a Tesla falls down with time, the cost of a new battery for it will remain constant, making a purchase of a second hand Tesla prohibitive. Think about it this way - a cost of 2009 MacBook might have fallen down to around ~$100, but a new battery for it will cost you ~$150. The computer got cheap with time but the parts remained the same price, making a purchase of a 7-year old laptop a bad idea, unless you can do without a battery(and obviously you can't do that in a car).
In conventional cars, if you have a 20-year old Mercedes with a dead engine, you go online and find the same engine, with fewer miles on it and in running condition, you buy it for a few hundred dollars, get it installed and you are back on the road. In a Tesla, no one is going to fit you a second-hand electric motor if your old one dies, because Tesla won't allow it.
Just as a note, that's not always true. Replacing brake pads is one thing, but if you need to take the caliper off for service or air gets into the ABS system, you may find yourself unable to properly bleed the brakes without access to the tools needed to get the ECU to bleed the ABS system.
Depending on the car there really might not be any feasible way to complete some repair other than to have the dealer fix it. It's not even just obscure dealer only parts that other vendors don't make. When it comes to anything related to programming control modules, the manufacturers seem to want to lock this down as much as possible.
Flushing the brakes is fine on every car I've ever heard of. Bleeding air out of the brakes is where it can get more complicated but I'm only talking about cases where air could've feasibly have gotten into the ABS unit. So if you were flushing out some old brake fluid and you managed to drain the reservoir without noticing it, now you have air in the master cylinder and potentially the ABS unit.
I would argue any suspension parts are user servicable, engines too. The computer doesn't car if you work on the car. Those plastic covers are just to make it look good. Now diagnostics are definitely different. But you can buy a service guide, a scan-tool, and maybe a multi-meter, and you can diagnose any modern car. You could probably fix them too. The addition of the computer has not changed the makeup of a cars engine, just the addition of sensors.
I still don't see why it would have to go to a dealer. Anything related to programming control modules? Are we tuning the car or repairing it?
By disconnecting hoses or removing parts that suddenly make it an open system.
>Taking a caliper off does nothing to introduce air into the system.
No but gravity does, the brake calipers themselves actually don't move that far at all between no brake and full brake. It's only moving a tiny amount of fluid into the brake so just an air bubble or two is all it takes for the petal to go to the floor without doing much in the way of applying pressure.
>still trying to square how you think it's ok to replace pads but not take a caliper off, but it may come down to interpretation
What I meant was to totally remove the caliper from the car and disconnect the banjo bolt for the hose. As for just changing pads, you leave that alone and just remove the bolt for one slide pin and then the whole caliper flips up exposing the pads on most cars.
The concern for needing to bleed the brake system completely instead of just a bit at a wheel is if you need to do anything like replace the master cylinder or there was a leak in a wheel cylinder that was fixed but had already drawn air in through half of the master cylinder. If there is a slow leak in a hose or seal it's not uncommon for someone to never check brake fluid level and the low brake fluid sensor might not even come on if it's stuck in position over the course of 15-20 years. Even if it does someone might ignore the brake indicator light because they can still stop okay until it draws air in.
>The addition of the computer has not changed the makeup of a cars engine, just the addition of sensors.
Not too drastically but the computer still needs to know when certain things are changed depending on the vehicle. For instance, on certain BMWs if the battery under the seat is replaced, there is some kind of battery management system that needs to be reset. Failure to reset this can even cause damage to the replacement battery according to BMW. http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?1355106-Why...
>Anything related to programming control modules?
"Programming" isn't exactly what I would've called it but for better or for worse, that's the terminology. You're not flashing new software on it so much as configuring it. It's as much programming as "programming" an answering machine is. With that said, let's say I need to replace an instrument panel, ECU, PCM, body ECU, etc, then I very well might need a special tool to pair it with the car. For a new ECU or instrument panel you might need to program in the VIN, mileage, emissions related settings, etc. The point being that while it's not a given that you'll need some obscure dealer only tool to do that, things are trending more and more towards that. Adding more computers and sensors is certainly a good thing in the automotive world but it can be a detriment to repairability until manufacturers start being a bit more reasonable with access to all of the firmware on a modern car.
You do make a good point about the motors, though. I haven't seen much hope for an outside replacement for that, though.
I don't know about legal threats, but there is information available online about how to access the Model S CAN bus:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Exploring-the-Tesla-Model-S-...
The little third party garage I've used for years has enough of the diagnostic computer kit to handle most problems. When something unusual pops up they have a good relationship with at least some of the main dealers to proceed - without me having to pay main dealer prices on anything.
They have the added advantage that I trust them to have done the work they say they have.
They're not unusual as far as independents go, just a couple of guys doing a good job.
I don't think many independents can support electric vehicles, but I'm sure specialists will spring up as the market continues to mature.
If the product is successful, similar services will emerge for Tesla products.
Do you think that will still be true in 8, 12, or 15 years?
There's nothing about an EV that makes it fundamentally more difficult to service or repair compared to an ICE vehicle, other than the fact that they're not as common yet. But in time, EVs will be as ordinary as any Honda.
There's some interesting videos on YouTube where a guy in Switzerland bought a used Tesla motor and inverter, dragged it back to his flat and managed to power it up and spin it using his own custom built universal controller (he's planning to use it in his own electric car conversion).
The point is: EV aren't some magic black box that can't be understood by normal people. They can be hacked, serviced, repaired just like any other car.
The BMW electric cars (i3 and i8) are quite successful, beating Tesla sales-wise in Germany and selling half as many world-wide.
The great weakness of the Tesla S in the German market ist the German autobahn, where it runs out of energy very quickly (after an hour or so for aggressive drivers). The Tesla S is not designed for sustained high speeds.
The battery on the i3 is warrantied for 8 years or 100,000 miles, with a drop below 70% of the original capacity considered to be a battery failure.
Tesla also have an 8-year battery warranty, with unlimited miles, but (afaik) they do not explicitly specify what level of capacity loss would be a warranty failure.
Considering most people are unlikely to exceed 100,000 miles in 8 years in a "city car" like the i3, is this really a horrible warranty?
But these are worst-case scenarios. Hopefully the batteries will last much longer than what they're warrantied for.
And with any luck, affordable aftermarket battery replacements will be common enough by the time the battery needs replacing (and may give a lot more range, too).
Won't this be the case for any car though, especially sports cars which usually have a lower range? If you are driving at an average speed of 160km/h+ then you are going to need to stop fairly often. With the current EV technology any car will feel limited compared to an oil powered car which you can 'recharge' in under 5 minutes.
That's why in a market with a high speed road network, the whole gambit of marketing EV as sexy fast car fails. It's trivial to make an EV max out traction for acceleration (aka "american fast") but battery density makes it impossible to give them any semblance of high speed endurance ("german fast").
It's therefore absolutely no surprise that the german car industry is doomed to focus on boring "reasonable city car" for their EV efforts and does not build their own entries for the Tesla class of cars. They have to skip the training wheels phase of building expensive luxury acceleration monsters and jump right into the much more difficult task of selling boring, reasonable cars that won't take a deadly hit when the manual says that you can't go fast if you want to see anything close to the advertised range. The autobahn has been a successful marketing stunt for many decades ("might be designed by engineers who push 200 km/h every day on their way to work" was an implicit ingredient of brand identities), but for electric, it is suddenly backfiring.
OK, if you're averaging 200 km/h on the Autobahn then you will run out of energy pretty quickly. But this is just as true with ICE vehicles. If you're getting twice the energy consumption in an EV then you'll also be getting twice the fuel consumption in an ICE, and you'll have to stop and refuel pretty quickly.
So, with an EV, as long as there is a fast enough charger at the other end, who cares? You travelled 200km in that hour, you probably got where you wanted to go. Even if you spend 25 minutes recharging at a supercharger, you still got there quicker than if you drove at 100km/h!
Audi are already talking about 800V, ~300kW fast chargers that can recharge that 200km of range in 10 minutes. At these kind of speeds, the difference between recharging an EV and refuelling an ICE car becomes pretty negligable.
The Tesla S is not designed for sustained high speeds.
Simply not true. There's plenty of Tesla videos on YouTube showing sustained, comfortable driving at 200km/h+ autobahn speeds.
The recommended average speed on the Autobahn is 130 km/h. In reality due to congestion, noise reduction, construction work and maintenance there are probably more stretches with limits below that than not (typically 80 km/h or 60 km/h around roadworks, though there are also plenty of 100 km/h and 120 km/h stretches for no obvious reasons). Typical comfortable driving speed tends to be no more than 180 km/h, though if you don't want to have to break and accelerate all the time you probably don't want to go too far beyond 160 km/h.
I won't deny that depending on the time of day and the particular route you may be able to drive 200+ km/h on the Autobahn but talking about the implications of 200 km/h average speed as if it was an even remotely realistic representation is frankly absurd.
They have not made a single dollar of profit. Yes, it's an incredibly successful and impressive technology demonstration, but production at the scale that is now required is completely different from the development stage.
One example: regular manufacturers are only able to keep their high production numbers because they are able to compensate for hiccups in the supply chain for one model by having evolved to be able to switch a factory to another model in a very short timeframe. A monoculture like Tesla (only model 3 in significant numbers) prevents this.
This seems beyond out-of-touch. There are plenty of good reasons. Cost, size, and the fact that you might need a car now and can't actually buy a Model 3 yet would be chief among them.
It seems like a pretty great car if you're in its particular market though.
This amazes me so much. I cannot believe that companies like Volkswagen basically ignore the EV market (except some half-assed E-Golf or something). I mean even if it really turns out to be fad - which I don't believe - don't they want to hedge their bets a little bit? Has nobody there ever heard of companies like Nokia, Blackberry, etc.?
All the while denying that it's a good idea. Baffling.
There's a video talk on youtube by one of the original Tesla co-founders, Marc Tarpenning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf15nMnayXk
and his take on it (in amongst lots of other cool info), learned from later consulting for those same companies, was that the car companies outsourced everything but the engine. Then tesla came along, bought all the standard parts (windscreen wipers etc.) from these third party companies, and have no need for ICE engines.
So now you have people, who built their entire corporate status hierarchy around ICE engine experience, trying to start afresh.
Use that money to build an affordable car
Use that money to build an even more affordable car
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He's definitely a visionary. It's amazing how he followed up his plans to the dot.
-Mahatma Gandhi
> First they ignore you
Tesla Roadster
> then they laugh at you
http://www.spike.com/video-clips/c3neux/top-gear-reviews-the...
> then they fight you
Tesla Model S + EV clones
> then you win.
Tesla Model 3