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Comment by lumberjack | Hacker News Reader

If you do the math, best case scenario: Tesla's budget model will have twice the range (~200 miles) of the Nissan Leaf at the same price point ($30k). This assumes that Tesla is capable of a $35k model today. My estimate for a 200 mile battery power pack today is around $20,000 going by what amateur EV enthusiasts have managed, using the same 18650 cells.

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It's seems a little unlikely that the Leaf would see 0 progress.

There's also a Bolt in the room. It's pretty likely to ship this year, with a 200 mile range and competitive price point.

The Bolt is probably the closest competitor to what Tesla is doing right now for EVs. They have the range, but they still haven't figured out styling or performance, nor is the charging infrastructure as robust yet.

>The Bolt is probably the closest competitor to what Tesla is doing right now for EVs.

The Model S is 2x the price (and 10x the car). I don't think they are competition.

Or do you mean the Model 3? As of right now it's nothing but a prototype, so I'm not sure that's competition either. Theoretically it will be $30k with 200mile range, but I'm skeptical.

I meant the Model 3. Theoretically it will be $35k for a base model with 200 mile range, and the Bolt is also not much less theoretical than the Model 3 at this point. There are lots of reasons to be skeptical about the time frame of availability and hitting production numbers of the Model 3, but Tesla has been pretty good about hitting the raw performance and price numbers they announce.

Doesn't the Bolt use a fairly standard charging cable? I see those connectors in parking garages and grocery store parking lots.

There are adapters for Teslas to use basically every standardized(or otherwise) EV charging connector. No other brand has access to the long-range and fast-charging supercharger network however, which is a rather large part of the value proposition of owning a Tesla for many people, as it mostly removes the need to rent or own a vehicle for longer trips.

But the supercharger network is woefully inadequate for the number of Model 3 vehicles they intend to produce. Either Tesla is going to have to put a whole lot of money into its supercharger network (more than they've announced, certainly), or they'll have to restrict it to Model S owners.

I recall (at the M3 event) that Elon said what they plan to build (2X current stalls) by the time Model 3 is released. Of course that's inadequate for future demand; it seems that they're scaling the network linearly with the number of cars sold which have access to the network.

Unfortunately, most of the public charging stations out there are pretty pointless due to their slow charging speed.

Without faster charging, you can't do long-distance travel (nobody wants to stop for 4-8 hours in the middle of a road trip to recharge), so the only value they offer is for longer charging sessions while the driver is already in the area for work/shopping/etc. However, even then, you can't really rely on their availability, since it's always possible someone will already be there tying up the station for an 8-hour stretch...so they really aren't terribly useful or convenient for the vast majority of EV owners.

I would argue that the only charging network out there that really makes sense is Tesla's Supercharger network: it actually charges fast enough to make road trips practical, is generally quite reliable, and typically includes at least 6-8 stalls per station to avoid congestion during peak travel times. This gives Tesla a huge competitive advantage over other EV manufacturers, and I think it'll be a long time before anyone catches up to them in this regard.

A slower charging network could be useful for putting a charging station at every parking space at say workplaces, where your car will be left for an extended time Slower chargers are presumably cheaper to build and run, so they might make more sense there. But otherwise completely agreed that superchargers are basically the only type of charger that makes sense for 99% of the rest of use cases that a gas station would normally take care of.

Yeah if there were parking garages or lots where every parking space had a charging port, that would be awesome, and could actually be part of a practical solution in the long term. Unfortunately most garages I've seen have somewhere from zero to two spots in the entire garage :(

Facebook HQ has around 150 L2 chargers. It's just a matter of time.

I'm not exactly sure what facebook having 150 car chargers has to do with the rest of the world getting car chargers.

They aren't the only company with more than 0-2 chargers per parking lot, I could name a bunch of others. The point I'm making is that more chargers are on the way.

In Palo Alto, I can tell that there are a bunch of EVs that charge overnight at the L2 chargers in various city garages -- dunno if their apartment complex won't install chargers or if they're waiting to get a charger installed. Either way, it's extremely useful to a minority of EV owners.

The Bolt will also not be able to ship in nearly the volumes of Tesla Model 3.

Wikipedia has 2 sources that report that the plan is 25k-30k cars per year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Bolt). Now that Model 3 received so many reservations, I'd guess that GM is planning on raising that number.

That's a good thing, but just like Tesla, they have to build lots of battery factories to do it. Or their suppliers have to. This process is underway, but unless there are massive projects happening right now that I'm not aware of, their production will be lagging Tesla's by a wide margin.

Tesla states that Model 3 will achieve 215 miles of range. I think that the manufacturing section of Elon Musk's recently published master plan was partly intended to prepare investors for not turning a profit in the next few years. Quote:

> A first principles physics analysis of automotive production suggests that somewhere between a 5 to 10 fold improvement is achievable by version 3 on a roughly 2 year iteration cycle. The first Model 3 factory machine should be thought of as version 0.5, with version 1.0 probably in 2018.

How much will the version of the Model 3 with 215 miles of range cost, though? I know that with the Model S, the headline price was for a heavily range-reduced version that Tesla didn't actually end up making - the handful that shipped were actually the next model up with a software restriction added.

According to the Model 3 announcement, the base model will have at least 215 miles of range. The Model S was never announced with any specific range for the base model afaik, it was always marketed that the 40kwh model would have low range. It didn't sell very well, which is why they ended up being software restricted 60kwh models for initial reservations and never sold it after that.

The Leaf is still very popular despite the range. There are a few near me parked on the road, where there aren't even any charging points.

Range anxiety will probably decrease as charging infrastructure improves, so maybe this is less of an issue than it was. In principle there are already more places you could charge an EV than fill up a liquid fuel vehicle. It might just not be very practical or require a long cable getting in the way.

In principle, sure, in practice, each liquid fueling station has multiple pumps each with a throughput of 1 vehicle every 3 or so minutes. Charging stations on the other hand usually just have one or two plugs with a throughput of 30 minutes/vehicle best case and 8 hours/vehicle worst case. It isn't even close in practice.

It's not quite that simple. Every person has a charging station at their house, almost nobody has a liquid fuel station at home. Every liquid fuel station customer is not necessarily someone that will need remote charging much of the time.

I don't have a charging station where I live. There are no power outlets in the shared garage. There are also no power outlets at any of the street parking spots my neighbors use.

Yes, I was a bit hasty to say every person has a charging station at home. I knew there were cases where it wasn't going to be true, but wasn't thinking it would be as common as many assigned condo/apartment spaces. There are apparently laws popping up in states regarding the ability of tenants to put their own charging infrastructure[1] in place, but we would probably be better served by complexes putting in a few shared community stations (depending on size of complex). IMO, when there are more cheap electric options (maybe now?), this would be a good stimulus target.

1: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/17/business/la-fi-assoc...

Every person has a charging station? There are vast numbers of apartments in the world that have zero parking, it is all street parking. Look at capitol hill in Seattle for an example.

Perhaps the discussion would be better served by attempting to look to see whether your point has already been made before commenting? In this case, it was, and I responded to it appropriately (which is to admit I was wrong).

If you live in one of the most walkable neighborhoods in Seattle[0], why would you have a car at all, much less an electric one?

[0] https://www.walkscore.com/WA/Seattle/Capitol_Hill

Because there are people in my household who commute to work evenings in Issaquah and Everett.

Tesla's battery costs right now(pre-gigafactory) are closer to $200/kwh, so for a 60kwh battery(gets 200mi range on the model s) that is only $12k.

I'd love to see the progression of costs over the years... Would be useful for extrapolation. Where'd you get the more current figure?

This article is a good resource http://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/15/ev-battery-prices-lookin...

Awesome to see market leaders like Tesla beating all possible projections (they're basically already living in 2020 on the chart at the end of the article).

Given that all forecasts had prices trending downward and eventually hitting the fabled $100/Kwh rate, this bodes well for continued progress as all these large-scale production facilities extract efficiencies...

The next leaf will have the same range of ~200 miles.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1104610_next-nissan-leaf...

I think their plan has it costing less than 10k. 1 kwh of cells is ~$100 USD. They will likely use a 60 Kwh pack to hit the 200 mile minimum, or possibly a little bit larger with a 220 mile range.

The current best guess is a 55kWh pack in the base Model 3. The Model S 60kWh has a 210 miles range, and the Model 3 will be smaller and should be somewhat more efficient.

And yes, there is no way that the Model 3's battery pack will cost anything close to $20,000. That's more like what the Model S's pack cost originally, years ago. The Model 3's entire existence is based on the Gigafactory cutting costs by a decent multiple from that level.

Range is not solely due to the battery pack; weight, frontal area and drag have a big impact.

Nonetheless $20k is high for a 200 mile pack even today. It should be around half the cost.

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