Tesla Model 3 Hits Production | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Model 3 Hits Production

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401 pointsmfrommil209 comments

There is no way on god's earth that Tesla can ramp up production like that. I suspect the first cars that they sell will roll off the VP tools and not off the main lines anyway. With a lack of product maturation the quality of the first cars will be appalling too.

I'd bet that the guys at the coal face are wanting to kill their PR people right now for making promises that they know will get broken.

Disclosure: work in the automotive industry designing high volume production lines and planning vehicle launches.

I'm reminded a little of how the Blackberry board supposedly watched the iPhone announcement and insisted it was fake, as there was "no way" someone could build and profitably sell a phone with that feature-set.

Tesla might not do what they're promising. Hell, they probably won't do what they're promising. But pronouncing something impossible on the basis of industry experience can be a dangerous thing. Some things are considered unthinkable and impossible only until someone finds a way to do them, after which they are retroactively declared obvious and inevitable.

Certainly, Tesla seem to have the right ideas: Electric cars are inherently simpler, mechanically speaking, than gasoline cars, and they're leveraging this further by reducing the options and variability on the Model 3 to the absolute minimum. They also hired Peter Hochholdinger from Audi as VP of production, and he is pursuing a pretty extreme form of Industry 4.0[1] — with everything in their production process being instrumented, automated and designed for easy replacement.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_4.0 [2] http://www.mljournal-digital.com/meleadershipjournal/october...

I'm not sure how realities of production get beaten by "ideas". Yes, Tesla has excellent design and approach. That won't help them magically build in volume. Or quality - even very expensive Model S cars aren't really a paragon of build quality in their class.

Steve Jobs didn't promise production of 300mil iPhones in a year when they announced it.

I don't know if you've heard of this little thing called The Law of Accelerating Returns.

It's the law.

Ok, I get it, do not mock The Law of Accelerating Returns.

The body on an electric car is basically no different to an ICE car. The floor is flatter and thicker to accommodate the battery pack and no need for a tunnel to accommodate the drive train, but other than that they're about the same.

Tesla will almost certainly be using a combination of materials on the model 3; mild steels (cheap and cheerful, easy to press), aluminium (lightweight) and boron steels (strong). To join these materials you need a variety of techniques including resistance spot welding, aluminium RSW (altogether more difficult than steel because of the low melting point and high conductivity, and the fact that weld spatter sticks to the tip of the gun), riveting (for steel-Al joints), structural adhesives, flow drill screws, laser welds etc. All of these processes take serious time to calibrate and get right, and some are not all that robust (by high volume standards).

There are many quality loops with a vehicle launch. The tooling needs to be proven out. Tools get shimmed relentlessly to make up for panel variations - panel quality can vary from batch to batch within a press run. This is especially true for mixed material cars.

Believe me, these are not easy problems to solve and nothing I've seen and heard out of Tesla makes me think they've addressed any of these issues.

Is it possible that Musk has solved the problem, much like he or his employees have solved countless other tech problems, but Musk also knows what makes a sexy headline. Spot welding is hard to sell as flashy and new. If you can't do it on mars, it might not make good headlines.

Spot welding isn't hard, and wasn't claimed to be hard. Mixed Materials welding and joining is Hard (steel + aluminium/mild steel + high strength steel/ etc).

It isn't even that it's hard. I mean, it's been done before, many times. But there are processes here with a stack of key control parameters that can and will drift.

Panels will not be consistent - they never are (and you'd be surprised at the variation). Rivets will tumble in feed tubes or get trapped in escapements. Vision systems will get confused by ambient light or reflections at certain times of day. Weld spatter will accumulate on tips, and frequent tip dressing will change weld parameters (timing, pressure, current etc). Adhesives will be effected by temperature, humidity. Batches of sealer might not be consistent. Weld timers will fail. Power supplies will fail. Flow drill screws will deform, go off centre and be a bitch to get right. Laser welder lens will accumulate weld crud. People will mis-load parts. PIA bits will come in below the required quality. Tools will get shimmed wrong. Robots will be badly programmed.

All of this stuff will take time to get right. It isn't impossible, but it is very difficult to get a line performing reliably. Tesla will be integrating a lot of new technologies, and at volumes that they are not used to, in an area with no serious history of car building, in a high wage state. I doubt they can get the people to manage the line and maintain this equipment.

You make it sound like we already know about most of the problems and there is a ton of room for improvement in the current systems.

Isn't this exactly what Musk and his employees are good at fixing? I have seen no reason to bet against Musk, Your complaint is the same as the others saying he cannot do something. You seem to have expertise in how a thing is done now, not in how well it could be done.

He might be late, but he won't fail. As it is this is the scheduled shortened by 6 months.

If Musk solved the problem, they'd be producing the Model S faster already. ;)

If electric cars are so simple, why is the Tesla Model S so unreliable?

https://www.truedelta.com/Tesla-Model-S/reliability-1095

Conversely, the Toyota Prius is one of the most reliable cars. Yet it is mechanically complex with both an internal combustion engine and an electric motor, plus a CVT. So clearly engineering skill and manufacturing quality are bigger factors than the drive train.

How unreliable are ICEs these days - maybe its just me, but I've never had an engine problem in nearly 20 years of owning cars. Electrical problems, suspension problems, drainage problems - had all of them but never had a problem with the actual engine.

What is a drainage problem?

It's when you realize your OEM sunroof leaks just like an '70s aftermarket sunroof but there is a drain that keeps you from noticing. Or there was a drain, now it's full of dirt and debris and doesn't drain very well.

Window and trunk leaks

I had a Passat a few years back and it had a design flaw where the tray that holds the battery has drain holes that can get blocked and if they do it overflows into the interior of the car.

I used to park my car under trees that dropped leaves which blocked the battery compartment drainage holes and as I am in Scotland it can get quite wet. Ended up with car filled with 1" of water.... Interior of car had to be stripped, dried out and put back in by the dealer.

I'm always tempted to test drive stylish German cars but I swear 90% of the maintenance horror stories I've heard in the last 15 years have involved a German car.

VW in particular has a pretty poor reputation for long term reliability (also see Consumer Reports et al). The stories I hear about American cars, by contrast, tend to be poor reliability soon after purchase (followed by solid long term reliability)

Not sure I would describe a Passat as "stylish" :-)

The last internal engine problem I had was with a 200cid (3.2 liter) inline six from Ford - the pistons had to be de-carboned after a cross-country drive. This was in 1985, so I blame the 55 mph national speed limit for not letting the engine run harder. Ever since - I just do 5000 mile oil changes and 3 year coolant changes, and all is well. They're really quite reliable these days, even as the complexity has gone up with turbos, direct injection, variable valve timing, and so on.

Maybe it depends on the age of your car and how you drive it? I've had 4 Honda Accords from an 88 up to an 07 that all started exhibiting the same engine problems around the 200k mile mark. Blown head gaskets, burning oil, timing belt issues, etc.

I assume you were replacing the timining belts on schedule. Given the near legendary reliability of the Honda Accord it makes me wonder if there's something about the way you drive.

Even so, 200,000 miles is not too shabby. I don't think we have useful data on electric vehicles with that kind of mileage.

I have a honda with 226,000 miles. Starts and runs like new.

I have replaced timing belt and water pump and motor mounts in addition to regular fluid changes. The timing belt and water pump work was proactive maintenance (the timing belt drives the water pump so they suggest replacing both at once since it's not really any extra work).

The motor mounts simply wore out. Not expensive to replace. Rubber mounts will wear out on a Tesla too, eventually.

Turbo-diesel fuel injection pumps are ... not the most reliable thing to have in a car.

Car guy here. Internal Combustion Engines have some pretty complex systems that pure electric systems don't need. Water cooling and engine oil spring to mind. Timing belts need to be changed, transition systems have problems with some regularity. (Granted, most performance electric cars have a transmission too, but you can almost get away without one, so I'm going to assume more simplicity of design)

Not arguing one way or another just providing data. My only electric car is an old converted Porsche. (Transmission is still there but you can basically slap it in third and leave it there) I'll never have to change the oil on that one again, and the electric motor is simple as can be. Battery management is kind of a pain, but that's because I don't have the kind of advanced battery management a mass market car would have.

I don't have enough data yet, but my experience suggests that electric cars will have a much lower maintenance load simply because of the reduced complexity. Of course all the automation and bells and whistles will still break, and the computer control systems will get wonky.

Because (personal opinion) the Tesla Model S isn't a particularly great car. Their success is largely in marketing, network, and visual appeal, not in the product itself.

If you pick a better (albeit less appealing) electric car, the reliability rate skyrockets. For instance, using your own source -- https://www.truedelta.com/Nissan-LEAF-vs-Tesla-Model-S-relia...

^ This. The Model S has a lot more in common with a mid-high range Mercedes or a low end Ferrari. Anybody who owns an exotic car like that will tell you, you do not buy those for the reliability.

It's also worth noting the Model S is, and is marketed to the audience for, a performance car. When you put down that kind of money, you're going to drive it like one. If you drove a Honda like a Ferrari you'd likely break a whole lot of it's "reliable" parts too.

A Mercedes limousine is hardly exotic, and neither is it unreliable.

What I found the most interesting in that comparison is that the Tesla, although having a lot more problems in other areas, had 0% issues in brakes and suspension.

Are they using some different much more advanced technology for those parts, or it's just some problem with the repair data?

I can only speak for the brakes. Teslas use regenerative braking on the motor before falling back to traditional frictional brake pads as I understand it. Essentially the motor is put in reverse and that drains off speed. That means less wear on the brakes and so they last much, much longer than an ICE car.

ICE hybrids use regenerative breaking.

My ICE car has regenerative braking. So this is not something exclusive to the EVs.

Regenerative braking only works if there is spare battery capacity to absorb the energy. In general that requires a large battery to be useful. A normal car battery is nowhere near large enough and is generally topped off by the alternator.

My ICE car has regenerative braking as well, but I certainly didn't buy it for that, nor have I been able to discern the impact of it. I have driven EVs before and the regenerative braking is unmistakable.

Really? Don't you need a big electric motor for that... and some substantial lithium ion batteries? Is your ICE car a hybrid?

No, it is not a hybrid. But it uses brake energy regeneration to charge car's battery when you are not accelerating. The effect is not as pronounced as on EV cars, but enough to not use brakes often in normal traffic. In the context of the GP statement, it does reduce some brake pads wear.

The Model S drivetrain is reasonably reliable. Most of the reliability problems (and I believe they have an average score now, not great but not terrible) are other parts of the car. Tesla likes their unnecessary "cool" tech, which also tends to break. The Model S has the extending door handles, and the X has ridiculous doors. Not that it's limited to these aspects of the vehicle, of course.

Note that the Prius doesn't have a CVT the way you'd normally think of one. It has a fixed planetary gear set which is able to somewhat emulate a CVT by using two electric motor-generators in conjunction with the engine. I mention this only because "CVT" usually makes people think of painful friction-based transmissions, whereas the Prius's transmission is much simpler than even a normal transmission. Your point that engineering skill and manufacturing quality are the main factors is spot-on.

My friend put 100,000 miles on his Tesla in a year and was never stranded. He drove 30,000 miles on a known faulty motor.

It's not more unreliable than an ICE vehicle. It's significantly more simple in design and for repair. These claims are FUD.

This seems unbelievable. That is 500 charge discharge cycles at 200 miles apiece. Since there are only 365 days in a year This means that your friend was driving more than 270 miles a day meaning he was at 55 mph that is 5 hours a day. This is on the order of a professional trucker once you count weekends.

This also discounts the difficultly of finding well space out chargers. It also discounts the schedule of your friend. This also makes me wonder what time you have left to socialize with your 'friend'.

If you are going to make bold claims some explanation of the detail would go a long way towards making them seem plausible.

Well when someone gets a million dollar settlement from their employer and gets to keep their Tesla paid for outright and has nothing better to do for a year they just drive around the country. So that's what he did.

Actually the Prius is less mechanically complex than a normal ICE-Car. The planetary gear is really simple and you don't need parts which are prone to wear like a high torque clutch or a complex gearbox.

It is very reliable not despite but because of it's unique powertrain concept.

> insisted it was fake, as there was "no way" someone could build and profitably sell a phone with that feature-set

A little context here might be good. The supposed disbelief of Blackberry was their carrier deal, as they themselves were not _allowed_ to sell phones with that feature set.

It wasn't unthinkable to build it engineering-wise. (It was expensive yet with underwhelming features, a 2G phone with no apps at a time when even feature phones had 3G and apps for almost five years.) It was unthinkable business-wise. Those rules are easier to play hard and fast with.

That there is unfounded criticism doesn't mean all criticisms is unfounded.

The carrier deal was also a surprise to them, but if you believe this anonymous former RIM engineer they also didn't think it was possible to do what the iPhone did and still have acceptable battery life:

"RIM was even in denial the day after the iPhone was announced with all hands meets claiming all manner of weird things about iPhone: it couldn't do what they were demonstrating without an insanely power hungry processor, it must have terrible battery life, etc. Imagine their surprise when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it. It was ridiculous, it was brilliant."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2044389

The iPhone is now a 10 year old device still selling like crazy. Thanks for the link.

Even just using Tesla's numbers, it's unlikely they can ramp up production.

They currently produce ~25K Model X and S per quarter, and they're having supply issues with battery packs. (see the other, recent thread on them)

How in the world are they going to be producing 20K Model 3s by December, without cannibalizing their more profitable existing sales, and judging by their own previous growth rate and demand problems?

> they're having supply issues with battery packs.

They are building a huge factory for making battery packs in Nevada. That's already operational and will be more so by December. I imagine that's part of the solution.

Commenting to remind myself to check back later and see if you were right!

By clicking on thr time string in the post, you will get to a page which will let you favorite the actual comment, without your own comment.

> I suspect the first cars that they sell will roll off the VP tools and not off the main lines anyway.

There a story a couple of months ago about the fact that they've saved a lot of time by going straight to the main production lines rather than building a testing line first?

Is this a good plan? Time will tell but I'm sure glad I'm not involved. :S

Sources:

http://www.newsweek.com/tesla-skips-traditional-manufacturin...

http://autoweek.com/article/green-cars/tesla-wont-test-model...

Edit: From the second link:

> Let's recap: Tesla's flawed Model X launch was partly due to not taking the time to adjust for problems identified in the soft-tooling phase of pre-production. The lesson Tesla learned? Don't bother with soft tooling for the Model 3.

Wow. Is it just me or does that sound like "The unit tests kept failing and made us miss a deadline. No more unit tests!"

No, this is not a good plan at all, it's incredibly risky.

To get the car all road legal it needs to be crash tested - that is usually what the pre-volume builds are used for. If they fail (and they sometimes do, because you can't do a finite element analysis on an assembly as complex as a car in the variety of scenarios that you would crash test it) then you need to reengineer the car. This usually means panel gauge increases, sometimes it means additional reinforcement parts (boron steel inserts and brackets a lot of the time). If that happens the production could be delayed by months as they'd need to find a way to feed those parts to the line and modify any tooling that might be effected.

So these all sound like very true and good things. No reason to doubt there is a reason current big auto does it the way they do.

On the other hand, Musk hasn't been one to just say stuff and totally fail. By and large he is getting what he says he is getting, and on a close to reasonable time frame. If we stuck to what big auto said, there would be no autopilot, and EVs would still be a toy with a tiny range.

I have at this point little reason to doubt that they will pull this off.

Clearly making cars is a solved problem, millions are made every year. It SEEMS like Musk hires people that know their stuff.

So I am going long on Tesla, and short on existing big auto. Time will tell what happens ;)

> and on a close to reasonable time frame

woah, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. when elon says years, it's martian years as the meme goes, and not without reason. he's getting a better at estimation but is still an extreme optimist.

But Musk's numbers are much lower than everyone else's and he usually some percentage late, Not decades. Sometimes he is even on time.

He does things that many claim are literally impossible, who cares if they come 10% later and that is 3 months. If Telsa hits the production numbers by June they are still doing something that GM and Ford once said was decades in the future.

This is where I am too, I could see him aiming for 500k cars in 2018 and only shipping 425k due to some shortage. I could not see it taking until 2022 for him to get to the 500k mark.

Aren't we already past that point, though? This seems a bit like worrying that the horses might bolt today because the barn door was left open yesterday.

Yes, and that's the scary thing.

Elon tweeted a couple of days ago that Model 3 had all needed regulatory approvals, so I guess it passed the crash test. I can believe that you know a lot about building cars, but you don't seem to have any actual information about what's going on inside Tesla's Fremont factory.

I would have more confidence in this announcement if it was not made a day before Tesla announced that they are experiencing falling demand for their existing line and barely hit the bottom of their production forecast.

Their initial "hand over" is to employees, not real customers, so it is really just internal testing and does not indicate anything about when actual deliveries will begin.

Hitting delivery deadlines is actually worse than missing them if you are hitting them by pushing an unfinished product which is losing tons of money per unit due to inefficient production processes and creating huge future liabilities for warranty repairs, recalls, and negligence lawsuits if someone gets injured by a defect.

There is a reason why Goldman is revising their price target down on this news and their target is half the current stock price.

Those employees are still paying their own personal money for the car. They're as much "real customers" as you or me.

I suspect they're not paying what customers will pay and they're likely to be leases since they're effectively pre-production models and you'd have to be a big knucklehead to bet on the resale value of a pre-production Model 3.

Tesla offers zero employee discounts on their cars. Even Musk pays full price, on principle.

https://www.quora.com/Do-Tesla-employees-get-a-discount-on-T...

I imagine the value of a pre-production Model 3 will be quite good in ten years. Look at what the iPhone (original release) is worth. Or perhaps a Ford Model T?

Falling demand, really?

"After delivering 25,051 vehicles during the first quarter, it pushes deliveries to “approximately 47,100” according to the company. [For the year.] It represents a 53% increase over deliveries during the same period last year and both Model S and Model X deliveries were higher than during Q2 2016"

Maybe a plateau could be argued looking at the graph here.

https://electrek.co/2017/07/03/tesla-delivers-vehicles/

"After delivering 25,051 vehicles during the first quarter" ... they delivered 22,000 vehicles in the second quarter.

That sounds like a 12% decline to me. It sounds like a 12% decline to Goldman Sachs. I am not sure what you call it.

Car sales can be seasonal, or like Tesla said in their press release, they where supply constrained by their new 100 kWh battery. Just comparing numbers from the last two quarters is not really very informative. The previous quarter was an increase, the one before that a decrease, the one before that a substantial increase. More important is a trend. And I see a plateau when looking at the mast four quarters.

What do you think is a realistic goal for its production (numbers wise) of the Model 3 by the end of the year?

People said the exact same thing when Musk announced SpaceX. Then they said no big deal after the Falcon 1 worked, and laughed when Musk said he was going to land the Falcon 9 on a barge in the ocean, then he did. Next they said there was simply no way SpaceX would be able to refly a used first stage, which they've now successfully done twice.

History of his accomplishments show us "industry knowledge" doesn't really matter as he's trying to do things explicitly different than the rest of the industry.

What's more, a lot of the materials science and metalworking "lessons learned" (particularly when it comes to working with aluminum) at SpaceX are available to Tesla.

Really not the case. Space X have built, um, not many rockets. Tesla are planning to churn out hundreds of thousands of cars.

The key isn't being able to do it (as someone else said joining metals is a solved problem), it's being able to do it with high quality and in a reliable way. Do you think Space X joining techniques are optimised for making 100k joints in a factory environment?

You are entirely incorrect. SpaceX perfected friction stir welding for large sheets of aluminum for their fuel tanks. That tech was transferred that technology entirely to Tesla, who happen to make cars from large pieces of aluminum (Model X and S).

https://electrek.co/2015/05/24/spacex-transferred-novel-weld...

There is no way that they are using friction stir welding in a high volume line. It's a very slow process, visually it's horrible (big scar along the joint) and, though I've no experience with it I would have thought that pushing a spinning piece of metal at high temperatures through two thin abutting pressings would be highly unreliable.

"though I've no experience with it" - aka you're not qualified to answer whatsoever. At least you're honest in your trolling :)

SpaceX did not invent friction stir welding, but they did develop a mastery of the technique. Luckily, unlike you, they hire people who have experience in it. The strength of friction stir welds is one of the reasons they use it in the Model X and Model S vehicles, both which blew it out of the park regarding NTHSA safety standards.

Musk himself describes it here (for SpaceX):

https://www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/

They even mention a few of the aerospace bits they have in the Model S:

https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-model-s-achieves-best-safet...

Musk seems to set high goals with the full intention of meeting them, but shrugging it off if he's wrong in the end so long as progress was made. In the end the goal doesn't matter, just the progress, which was certainly affected positively by the goal.

Very well said.

Some goals are more strategic than realistic, and I think anyone can learn what strategic goals look like from Musks' ventures.

In my view strategic goals don't have the same form as SMART goals:

Traditional Smart - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound

Strategic Smart - Specific, Measurable, Advancing, Relevant, Terminable

The two differences, Advancing and Terminable, reflect the idea that strategic goals are geared towards innovation, not iteration. Advancing means that you don't actually know whether it is Attainable. Terminable means that the goal may be cancelled without major disruption to the business.

Entirely agreed. He loves to set lofty goals, and he does not always achieve them, but sometimes he does! Either way, he's unafraid to challenge virtually any status quo or existing understanding of things. This is why industry experience while relevant, doesn't always matter. Also, he moves his top talent between his companies at will, giving him an edge over other companies.

I've got a friend who has worked for Aerospace Corporation for close to 11 years as a structural engineer. He people when they have to stop removing things to prevent rockets from exploding (aka a rocket scientist). He told me ~5 years ago there was literally no way SpaceX could land orbital class rockets. Yeah, he doesn't say that anymore.

Disclosure: I've never worked in or around the automotive industry.

The amount of focus and effort Tesla has put toward the tech in the Model 3 pales in comparison to the amount they have put toward factory automation. Musk has said as much in multiple interviews. He's talked about how it's 10x harder to 'build the machines that build the machines'.

See also their acquisition of Grohmann Engineering.

Having said all that, we will have to wait and see. One thing I do know is that Musk's ventures have a long history of surprising the status quo.

There is no way anyone could ever profitably produce a rapidly reusable rocket. No one can make an online bank. No one can do solar profitably. No one can replace the yellow pages (Zip2 got passed on when an investor threw the yellow pages on the table). No one can make an electric vehicle that doesn't suck...

You might not be wrong, but the shorts get squeezed Everytime someone says this. I wouldn't bet against Tesla and the market is more than tolerant of these delays

There was an article recently where some higher ups talked about the engineering. They described focusing work on the factory itself instead of the product with the idea being that every time you improve or fix the factory, you gain many upsides in the final output.

Can't find the article but I was an interesting read

(Warning: biased source)

Electrek has an article quoting it. Elon was describing the idea of designing the "Machine that builds the Machines"[0].

“We realized that the true problem, the true difficulty, and where the greatest potential is – is building the machine that makes the machine. In other words, it’s building the factory. I’m really thinking of the factory like a product.”

[0]:https://electrek.co/2016/06/01/elon-musk-machines-making-mac...

> There is no way on god's earth that Tesla can ramp up production like that

I'm not clear what like that you are referring to, or what would be a more reasonable plan.

This is not gods earth. I would be interested in how they solved these challenges but you come off being someone who just points out problems which is not as helpful as someone who thinks of solutions, also not as abrasive either.

Not that it means much, but I saw a semi trailer full of new Model 3 on I-80 heading east near Des Moines Iowa today. All of them were black and still had factory wrap on the panels.

Model 3 or Model S? I suspect you mean Model S.

The front ends were covered by plastic wrap but I am certain they were Model 3 by the shape of the headlights and the overall length of the car. I regret that I didn't get a picture.

I assume they are press cars.

That is quite interesting. I didn't think they made anywhere near that many beta Model 3s to be shipping them like that.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14688616

Thanks. Didn't see that post yesterday before posting this one.

So is it likely (or even possible) that TSLA really is the most shorted stock on Earth? I've seen this tossed around repeatedly, although perhaps it's just a rumor.

On the other hand,

> Tesla said that it's now "rare" for a new Model X to have "initial quality problems." [1]

doesn't sound very pretty.

[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/03/tesla-delivers-22000-vehicles...

Tying novel ideas in a mass road vehicle is a very, very bad idea. If these ideas include supply chain and QC shortcuts, it pretty much guarantees failure. I applaud Tesla for "making EV sexy" and pushing existing OEMs, but unless Musk gets his ego in check and starts tackling the boring (no pun intended) problems instead of trying to promote himself as autonomous driving messiah, I don't see the first batch of mass produced 3s as having a high chance of being acceptable.

Why do you think they don't know about "boring" problems? They've been producing cars for years, it's their third model... Also, Musk isn't promoting himself as autonomous driving messiah, but as Mars colonization messiah :)

And soon he'll be a boring messiah!

Model 3 is the fourth model. Roadster, S, X, 3. Unless you're counting S and X as one, since they share the same platform.

Yes, you're right it's 3rd or 4th model depending on the way you count, main point still is it's not the first model :)

Not sure about Earth, but I think it is the most shorted stock on the US market. Something like $10B in short interest last time I checked a few weeks ago.

I believe it's in the top 3. Amazon and Alibaba are also contenders.

Disclosure: Short Tesla and Alibaba.

I wonder if Tesla is worried that this new model might cannibalize its more expensive, more profitable model S?

Also, I should think that the level of automation required to produce a mass market car on the scale necessary to be profitable would be insane... And I bet Toyota, GM and all the others have patents on many, if not all of these production automation technologies.

The robots are mostly build by german companies. Tesla aquired one such company a while ago.

> I wonder if Tesla is worried that this new model might cannibalize its more expensive, more profitable model S?

Obligatory "If you don't cannibalise yourself, someone else will" Steve Jobs quote! I see them aimed at different markets though; I could never justify buying a Model S, but a Model 3 is definitely feasible (especially in the UK where petrol prices are high).

-- Kodak

We only buy cars second hand (I think we paid €11k for our Prius), so I'm afraid we've got to wait a bit longer.

Not sure how much patents would be a problem.

They aren't selling car assembly robotics, so the biggest issue (one would think) would be acquiring the robotics in the first place, as it would be the theoretical company selling the robots that would be infringing any patents.

Tesla is (to my understanding) free to use whatever technology they like in their factories, patented or not, so long as the products they're selling are non-infringing.

I doubt it, suspect it's more likely to open them up to a whole new market.

For example, I would never consider dropping $90k on a car (unless I was earning many multiples of that a year), but $35k on a car that has the right range for me, and many of the mod cons of the grown up version? That's more likely.

Ask yourself this - why would anyone buy an A1, A3 or A4 when there is the A5, A7, TT and R8/RS8 from Audi? Because people want different things from cars.

Maybe a lot of people wanted to own a Tesla so badly that they were willing to stretch their finances to get it. Tesla has had a lot of hype, it can have that effect on people. In some European countries, there are Taxi drivers who drive Teslas (often for economical reasons).

Now these people can own a Tesla without hurting their bank account. I think that there is a reason why car brands are either luxury or mass market but not both.

I live in UK and I see loads of Teslas as taxis, which is almost unthinkable considering the cost of the car - and I don't mean luxury taxis, I mean it's common to see a normal curb-side taxi as a tesla. I suspect the fact that it's extremely cheap to run and tax balances off very high leasing cost and makes it worth it. I imagine nearly 100% of those sales will turn into Model 3s as soon as it's available.

Where do you live in the UK?! I'm in the north and have never seen a Tesla once (taxi or otherwise)!

I'm in the North(Newcastle) - there's plenty of Teslas as taxis around here, I see at least one on my way to work every day.

Tesla taxis are all over Amsterdam too. Mercedes used to the the standard for taxis here, but now Tesla seems to be taking over.

Using EV/Tesla as a taxi seems strange due to the charging time involved, you think it would limit the flexibility in terms of range or working hours although I believe the fast charging of the Tesla might be much more viable than a Leaf for instance.

Tesla has the early apple effect where people want it even though they don't know why they want it. Great marketing!

Acura has the exact same strategy price/model wise as Tesla, and they've done extremely well. They have their nicer-than-average entry-level car that shaped sport compact cars forever in the Integra, which became the RSX, and is now relaunched as the ILX. It was in the same price range as the Model 3 was for the same idea - average people who wanted to stretch to have a nice car.

Then they have the (now current) TLX, RDX normal SUV, MDX luxury SUV, etc etc and their Model S is the flagship Acura NSX.

Yes, Acura is a "luxury" brand, but so is Tesla, even with the Model 3 out.

(Pretty sure Lexus is similar in branding/pricing with the Integra being equivalent to the IS 300 as the entry-level car, with it being a predominantly luxury brand. Obviously both Acura/Lexus are spinoffs of Honda/Toyota for the US/CAN market.)

We are still talking $35k-$100k, in essence, the exact same price range that BMW lives in.

I'm in Norway. I've ridden in a Tesla taxi.

Yes, the upfront cost of the car is high. But on the other hand, the gas and maintenance costs make up for it. I completely understand the switch. Plus, the ride is nice, comfortable, and quiet for the passenger.

Do you have numbers for the maintenance? Consumer Reports and insurance companies claim that maintenance is expensive for Teslas, even among luxury cars.

As I understand it, repairs are expensive, but general maintenance is less, because there isn't as much to maintain.

A Tesla has all the same bearings, bushings and whatnot holding it off the ground and putting power to the road.

EV gets rid of a ton of leak points compared to ICE. All the normal wear and tear stuff is exorbitantly expensive with Tesla because of how few shops can service them and you usually have to go through Tesla for parts.

You're parroting Tesla's Marketing.

Any mechanical product with 1000s and 1000s of parts made by complex machines also, with 1000s of ways to make mistakes is going to have lots of opportunity for problems that need fixing.

How can a 100.000EUR car (ultra-premium market) be cannibalized by a 35.000EUR car (family limo / hatchback market)?

I don't see people that can easily drop a 100k on a car decide that they're suddenly buy an average Joe car.

I have some people at work who really want a Tesla. Like they would never ever consider spending 100k Euro on a Merc S class or an Audi A8, but they are willing to take on a huge financial commitment just to drive a Tesla - it's a brand + hype thing. I suspect that most of them will end up getting a Model 3 instead since that's far more into their price bracket.

I still think you are right - if you can "easily" drop 100k on a model S you are not going to buy the Model 3 instead. But if you were saving up for a model S and would have eventually bought it had Model 3 not became available, then yeah, Model 3 has just cannibalized those sales.

I don't think these people are a big segment of the market. When you drop from 100k to 35k you are opening the doors for a whole bigger market.

They wouldn't be a big segment of the typical market for a car in this price range, but Tesla is different. A huge number of Tesla owners upgraded from Priuses or similar, and never would have considered a $70,000+ car otherwise. I was one of them, and if the Model 3 had been available a couple of years ago I really doubt I would have purchased a Model S. (Not that I regret it in the least, I just would have taken a cheaper option if there had been one.)

The power of the other companies would not be their patents or such related to production, its their ability to produce in any number they choose to do so. Hell GM proved they could pivot/etc with speed when they delivered a well developed and beat expectations "affordable" two hundred mile range EV before Tesla.

While its cool Tesla has entered "production" with the model 3 I haven't seen one story on what the actual production line looks like. How many people are hired for it and trained? Did they get all the equipment in, installed, and certified? Surely these can be found out.

I hope this is not like the X launch where some insiders made jokes about the paint being practically wet in regards to how close they cut it getting just the stage vehicles delivered.

the big concerns going forward are obviously cannibalization of the S sales and the fact these cars will be in the hands of people who won't be as accepting of issues as the early adopters have been. its easy to dismiss issues with your third, fourth, or fifth family vehicle. However some of the 3 buyers will be likely pushing their finances and this will be their only or second.

I remember hearing some time back that Tesla's entire electric car plan was to produce the more expensive, luxury cars first, using the benefits (monetary and production improvements and so on) from those to start making more affordable electric cars - because understandably, most folks can't understand the more expensive ones. The vision is more to make sure everyone can own an electric car, hence the cheaper models.

So no, I truly don't think that is a worry. I think this is just continuation of the bigger picture and a calculated risk.

They clearly are worried about exactly that. They've spent the past year discouraging people from reserving a Model 3, in a clear attempt to drive more Model S/X sales. Elon has gone on a couple of Twitter sprees to tell people that the Model 3 exists to be cheaper, won't be as good as the S, and that you should buy an S or X if you want the best Tesla has to offer. Just the other day Tesla shaved a full second off the low-end Model S's 0-60 time, which is likely intended to give the S a solid performance edge over the 3.

My fear is more that due to model S many people have unrealistic expectations about a $35k car and end up disappointed.

HOV lanes in Bay Area will get so crowded...

Assuming they're not now. 8-9 AM work-days it seems that the HOV lane is only marginally faster. Going back from Mountain View to San Jose at 4-5 is equally as bad with traffic grinding to a halt near the Montegue Express exit in any lane.

It's kind of ridiculous actually because even if you're in a 4 person carpool its pretty horrific.

It's quite busy but still saves me around 10 minutes from Cupertino to West San Jose.

That's California for you:

The people who use the lanes, by and large, don't need them[1], and simultaneously, California subsidizes and encourages electric car driving while having, by far, the absolute worst electrical infrastructure in the country, with no real plan to improve it[2]

Don't worry, somehow, they are saving the environment in all this, despite the fact that most cars these days probably put out less emissions than a family that ate too many beans.

[1] They are pretty much rich people lanes. None of the very large number of day laborers, etc, could afford an electric car (and there are no electric trucks they could use), but also probably spend significantly more away from their families than people who do use them.

[2] Yes, the math says that if everyone in california drove an electric car, we'd be in trouble. Even if they only charge off peak. The same is even more true of the US, I did the math out in an earlier HN post, IIRC it comes out to something ridiculous like double or triple all current residential electric usage on a yearly basis.

"The same is even more true of the US, I did the math out in an earlier HN post, IIRC it comes out to something ridiculous like double or triple all current residential electric usage on a yearly basis."

In NYC, we get uncomfortably close to peak electrical capacity on hot summer days, to the point where the utilities beg us to reduce consumption (e.g., e-mails at work saying the power company is asking us to turn off computers and lights that we aren't using). Even at night, people are running their air conditioners full blast. When we've maxed out the nuclear and gas power plants, we fire up the dirty, old oil-fired power plants as the generators of last resort.

I can't imagine NYC being able to convert a significant number of cars to electric with the existing power infrastructure.

> we fire up the dirty, old oil-fired power plants as the generators of last resort.

But it's probably still a net win if that extra electricity is going to power electric cars, because a power plant is more efficient than thousands of internal combustion engines.

See: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-li...

Good lord that is a long-winded post. Not just in scope, but the writing style rambles and opines endlessly.

For the record, I'm excited for the Model 3, and would buy a Model S if I could afford it.

That said, the claim in that reference is problematic for many reasons, which I didn't notice were addressed: 1) Thermal efficiency in a vehicle is converted directly to mechanical energy. A power plant must convert thermal energy into electrical energy (losses involved), transmit it long distances across an energy grid (more losses involved), store it in a battery (more losses), and convert it back to mechanical energy (even more losses). 2) EVs like the Model S lug around as much as >1,000s of lbs of batteries. That's monstrously inefficient when specifically compared to the energy density of gasoline. 3) Some power generators may emit more pollution than modern cars-1

From a public policy perspective, the low-hanging fruits in the fight for cleaner emissions are to get people in gas guzzlers into Civics and Accords, not to get people in Civics and Accords in to EVs. That, and public transportation, bicycling infrastructure, and raising the price of carbon to align with the public cost of it.

1-https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-cars-are...

If someone downvote, can you point out what is incorrect? It feels like saying anything negative about Tesla/EVs on HN is just downvoted without regard for merit.

It's not just a question of thermodynamic efficiency. Cars have emission control systems (catalytic converters, etc.) that mitigate some of the pollutants, and perhaps most importantly, use a much cleaner fuel (the heavy fuel oil burned in power plants produces soot, sulfur compounds, etc. which the more highly refined hydrocarbons in gasoline do not).

I don't think he was talking about thermodynamic efficiency. But filtering efficiency. Filtering one big power plant is easier than filtering many independently owned cars. Also the power plants filter is stationary and the cars filters must move.

Cars are not as dirty as they used to be, but the internal combustion engine is still incredibly inefficient, and has only a narrow band where it runs at optimal efficiency.

It is of course possible to make power plants even dirtier and less efficient, but it's also possible to make them cleaner and more efficient, which is of course what we should be doing.

If demand substantially increases then more baseload capacity will likely be built.

And it looks like New York peaks at around 4-5pm, with a drop off around 8-10pm. EVs will likely charge at night, meaning they won't have as much impact on the peak.

Edit: source for load http://mis.nyiso.com/public/htm/isolf/20170705isolf.htm

They will have to setup some kind of timer or incentive to charge off peak, because otherwise, most cars are going to be plugged in around 5 to 6 right when people pull into their garage.

That's true. If they wanted, Tesla could easily add this functionality.

I'm not too familiar with ny in particular, but there are systems that allow for metering based on peak/off peak usage. Looks like coned allows this.

Most cars already do this. In a Chevy Volt and Ford C-MAX Energi, for instance, you tell it what time you leave for work in the morning (say 7:00am), and then it automatically waits to charge until the middle of the night to ensure the battery is full when you leave the next morning.

Even if you plug it in right at 5pm, it doesn't actually start drawing electricity until later at night.

This feature it set just one time only, and works automatically forever afterwards. It's been common on most electric cars since 2013.

Yes, I assumed that the option existed, but I think you are going to see a lot of people who want their car to start charging right when they get home in case they plan to take the car out again that evening or even for emergency issues like what if a child gets sick in the night and the car hasn't started charging yet. Obviously won't be the case for everyone but I can see it being a reason to charge immediately.

Seems like a perfect situation for Photo Voltaics...

Yes, they are rich people lanes, although cars like the leaf and the bolt make them more accessible to "middle" class people compared to a tesla for most people an electric car isn't practical and would have to be a secondary vehicle for only commuting which again makes it for rich people. Although, like many laws in California, it seems like a good idea to promote electric cars, allowing them to use the carpool infrastructure just doesn't seem like a good plan.

The Fiat 500e is extremely cheap to lease ($87/month). Last year there was even a point where it was $1500 down, since you get a $2500 incentive check from California if you got that deal you were basically being paid to take it.

Most people would be fine with an EV given how much they actually drive, it's not just for rich people.

and then you ignore that a cheap ev can't be the only car for a person, specially out of san fran.

so now you have two insurances. two garages or live well enough to have two street parking. two maintenance bills. etc. etc.

You can't street park an EV, you have to run a 220V outlet to your garage if you plan to drive it two days in a row. Which means nobody in an apartment can use one.

Why can't a cheap ev be a person's only car in SF?

But what about the one time per decade that they decide to make a road trip to Miami?

rent a car?

Why can't a cheap EV be the only car for a person? Most people drive <100 miles each day. When/if you need to drive further than that, there's plenty of companies very willing to rent you an ICE vehicle.

I drive a four door sedan currently. It doesn't handle 100% of my motoring needs, that doesn't mean I need to own a moving van for that 0.1% of the time I need it. I just go rent it. It also isn't able to be checked as luggage when I travel, and so I rent a car when I arrive at my destination (if needed). I don't pay someone to transport the car to wherever I'm going.

This argument that EVs need to support 100% of all driving needs before they are acceptable is ridiculous. No vehicle handles 100% of driving needs.

My current car is a BMW M3, but I'm replacing it with a 530e (plugin hybrid). The 530e can't do everything the M3 could do from a performance standpoint, but it will be able to handle 80-90% of my driving needs in 100% electric mode. I'm 100% confident that my fiance's next car will be a pure electric vehicle (likely a next-gen Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt) that will handle 100% of her average daily driving needs. The only time we'll need to rent a car for her is when she needs to go on drives longer than 200 miles or so. That only happens 3 or 4 times a year, so we're not too worried about it as Enterprise will "pick us up."

we both know you never used any of the m3 performance features. ever. even that one time when you think you did when you stepped on the gas after the red light.

m3 has such tight bearings that all it does outside of a track is break internal engine parts 80% earlier than any other consumer car.

now, even if you think renting a car that one time a month you need more than 100 miles, for most people it's a hassle they want to avoid more than you want to spend money.

and lastly, buying a new 530e will keep you carbon negative for two decades at least. not buying a new car is infinitely better than even buying electric.

Well, first off, you're wrong regarding my use of the M3's performance features. I did European delivery, and did 900+ miles of Autobahn driving in the car, most of which was spent cruising at 140 mph+, including three or four runs up to 165 mph+. Also, when I had the chance, I would take it to the mountains of North Georgia/Western North Carolina to push the car to my limits. Having both done multi-day performance driving schools with BMW's own driving instructors up in Spartanburg, SC, as well as having done hot laps with those same instructors on the Daytona road course, I know the car is capable of performing beyond my own limits, but I am capable of pushing it to about 9/10ths on a track and 8/10ths on a suitable mountain road.

So yeah, I used the performance features of the M3 on many occasions.

That being said, I live in Florida, and the car was, frankly, boring to drive on Florida roads. Driving fast in a straight line at speeds that won't result in my arrest aren't a stretch for the car, and driving the car at my limits makes me a threat to the safety of other people sharing the road with me when I find corners. There is a sweeping right hander on the Interstate off ramp near my house that I could take at 110 mph without the car, or me, breaking a sweat.

Moving on...

You might be right that renting a car once a month is a hassle for people. But I don't think most people go on 100+ mile drives every month (or at least average one trip like that each month).

And I always love how people talk about how much better it is for the environment it is to buy a used car rather than a new car, as if used cars just appear out of the ether. The people who buy my off-lease cars share in the carbon footprint of producing the car.

And even ignoring that, the lifetime carbon footprint of an EV, PHEV, or even just a non-plugin HEV is going to be lower than that of a ICE-only equivalent vehicle.

never suggested a used car. but instead just maintaining one for much, much longer than the average American does.

replacing a good that lasts 100yrs if well cared for every two years is the best example of the disposable society insanity.

Maintainenace bill on a EV? There is near nothing in them. Battery. Check. 4 E-Motors. Check. End of List.

I didn't realize that EVs no longer use tires, brakes, brake fluids.

Tesla recommends a $700/yr maintenance package, this "EV doesn't require maintenance" myth needs to die.

Pretty much the only routine you save from ICE is the oil change per 10k miles.

Actually, the wear on the brakes is significantly less because most braking is done by regeneration from the motor(s). There's no transmission fluid, no belts, no fuel air, or oil filters to replace. It is a significantly less complicated system.

Electric cars leverage heavily regenerative braking, which substantially reduces wear and tear on the friction brake system. So the brake pads and fluid will require a lot less maintenance.

You are still right about the tires though.

> Tesla recommends a $700/yr maintenance package, this "EV doesn't require maintenance" myth needs to die.

You need to know the context and back story of this before claiming that it's something Tesla "recommends". Tesla did not offer maintenance initially, and it was not in the books until it became a top-requested and top-discussed subject on owner message boards. The company then reluctantly admitted that fear of not finding a suitable repair shop drove buyers' decisions towards not buying and started offering the plan.

The year 1 service, for example, includes such onerous tasks as "Key fob battery replacement" and "Wiper blade set replacement". If you want to save money or for whatever reason refuse to set a foot inside a Tesla Service Center, you don't really need to. Until year 4, looks like.

https://www.tesla.com/support/maintenance-plans?redirect=no

The link you posted directly contradicts your post.

The year 2 service is almost identical to year 4, and year 1 includes a fluid service that isn't covered in later years.

Here is the Chevy Bolt maintenance schedule from GM: https://my.chevrolet.com/content/dam/gmownercenter/gmna/dyna...

Tire rotations, cabin air filter replacement every so often, and a coolant fluid replacement at 150k miles.

Nearly all braking is done via regenerative braking and not friction brakes so brake maintenance won't be needed for a very long time.

Steering system, suspension, tires, wiring, brakes, boots, joints, etc...

There's more to a car than the engine. Electric vehicles shave off engine, transmission(?), and fuel system, but add batteries, high-power electronics, and electric motors (presumably with either a transmission or some way to adjust back-EMF).

The majority of the time inspecting a car is spent elsewhere than the engine. Most shops just plug into the OBD and give a visual inspection of timing belt, fan belt, etc. and look at maintenance stickers.

For whatever reason, those extreme subsidy deals don't reach Northern California.

> Don't worry, somehow, they are saving the environment in all this, despite the fact that most cars these days probably put out less emissions than a family that ate too many beans.

First, this comparison is wrong. Cars generate roughly 5,000 liters of of CO2 per gallon. A human passes about one liter of gas per day, maybe two.

But even if you were right, what's the point of this comparison? We can eliminate the CO2 emissions from cars, but we can't do that to people, and we really need to cut these emissions a lot, or the earth will cook.

https://ollilaasanen.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/humans-cows-me... Humans pass 1L per day

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t... Cars generate ~9kg CO2/gallon

http://www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/volume-to-weight/substanc... CO2 is 1.8 grams per liter

Furthermore, human CO2 emissions come from plants as part of the normal carbon cycle - they're not an ecological problem. It's carbon-from-the-ground that's a problem.

CO2 is fungible.

Yes, but surface-level biology is pretty much carbon neutral. All of the carbon you exhale to the atmosphere comes from the food you eat, which gets its carbon from the atmosphere via photosynthesis.

Obviously there are edge cases, but by and large Global Warming is happening because we're pulling carbon out of the ground and putting it in the sky.

The catch is, modern agriculture isn't limited to "surface-level biology."

>All of the carbon you exhale to the atmosphere comes from the food you eat, which gets its carbon from the atmosphere via photosynthesis.

This is true, but also misleading. When you include the nitrous oxide, methane, diesel fuel, and loss of soil carbon, agriculture is actually net CO2e positive.

>Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (24% of 2010 global greenhouse gas emissions): Greenhouse gas emissions from this sector come mostly from agriculture (cultivation of crops and livestock) and deforestation. This estimate does not include the CO2 that ecosystems remove from the atmosphere by sequestering carbon in biomass, dead organic matter, and soils, which offset approximately 20% of emissions from this sector.

So in other words, globally our agriculture emits 5 units of CO2e for every 1 unit sequestered by photosynthesis.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/ghg_report/ghg_nit...

When you include the entire supply chain from field-to-fork (agriculture, transport, refrigeration, processing, preparation) the general rule of thumb is that 10 kilocalories of fossil fuel energy go into making 1 kilocalorie of food.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/10-calories-...

So you agree that engine emissions are the problem then, good.

I'm sorry, you lost me. What do you mean?

It is undeniable that transportation is a major contributor to the greenhouse catastrophe, accounting for 27% of U.S. emissions and 14% of global emissions.

I'm a huge proponent of electric cars and solar panels, but let's not kid ourselves that they'll solve climate change all by themselves. Those are necessary, but not sufficient. We also need to figure out how to grow food without long-term desertification of the continent.

Great information here. This is well understood on my end. I just wanted to make a quick point because the topic was on food consumption and I don't think many people ever truly connect the dots between carbon atoms in the atmosphere -> carbon atoms in their salad -> carbon atoms in their breath (atmosphere).

Indeed, and I should have been clear that I was elaborating on your excellent post, not suggesting any error/omission/ignorance on your part. My intent was to comment on the idea ("if you just consider this one fact, it could be misleading"), not to say anything negative about you personally. My apologies that it came across that way.

So no worries, and no criticism intended. After all, how could anyone say everything that's possibly relevant in one comment? And more to the point, why in hell would anyone want to? :)

congrats on winning the didn't-get-the-joke award!

his point was that hov lane is elitist, only to help car companies and rich ppl. not to fight pollution.

instead you researched if not eating beans would offset your hummer co2. geez.

For context, after converting 50,000,000 vehicles from internal combustion to electric, the effect would be similar to eliminating 1 container ship (likely used to cargo all the materials and components necessary to build those cars). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping...

I don't think this is a fair comparison. The article you reference specifically mentions "one giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars", but it doesn't seem to mention any comparison to Co2. The parent was talking about CO2.

It's fair to say that removing 50 million vehicles is equal to removing one container ship in terms of sulphur dioxide, or other pollutants, though

"Cars generate roughly 5,000 liters of of CO2 per gallon."

That is a typical passenger vehicle, which is also quite old. Not a current vehicle. SEe the calculations, which explicitly states: "This is representative of the light duty passenger vehicle fleet as a whole, including both new and existing vehicles. "

I'm kind of uninterested in participating in this global hate fest further, but let me quantify this for real for you:

I have a lab certified co and co2 monitor i use as part of a supplied air system (For spraying wood coatings that contain isocyanate).

If i take a car from the late 80's or early 90's, put it in the garage with the monitor, and start it, the monitor will go off in few minutes telling me it's unsafe.

If i take a car produced today, and put it in the garage, and start it, it takes many hours before that happens. In fact, depending how well sealed the garage is, it won't happen at all.

(as an aside, this also means it's become much harder for people to commit car based suicide unless they have a very well sealed car, etc)

So i'm going to go with "This statistic is true but grossly misleading". It tells you nothing about what converting a newer car to an electric car does in terms of emissions.

Worse, given that it is mostly caused by existing vehicles, and even there, it is mostly caused precisely by the vehicles this subsidizing will do nothing to replace. It is precisely the people i talked about you need to get to drive electric cars. Not the rich people driving very up to date low-emissions vehicles anyway.

So you can cite this kind of stuff all you want. It doesn't make the plan of rich people lanes any better for the environment.

(Which is why people go for these very silly proxy and indirect support arguments to make themselves feel better).

"But even if you were right, what's the point of this comparison? We can eliminate the CO2 emissions from cars, but we can't do that to people, and we really need to cut these emissions a lot, or the earth will cook. "

I actually completely agree, but that's completely irrelevant to giving special treatment in HOV lanes to people who mostly owned cars that were not the problem anyway!

IE you'd be much better off saying "if you trade in your car from 1970 for an electric car, you get a sticker", instead of "if you trade your 2016 PZEV for a 2017 tesla, you get a sticker".

I don't have an issue with them being supposed "rich people lanes" if it's how companies gradually bring EVs to market and eventually to lower price points.

LA already has "rich people lanes".[1] There are paid toll transponders that let cars drive in the express lane. Price is about $1/mile.

[1] https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/home/index.shtml

Seattle also has these. Dynamic pricing based on congestion charges between 50c and $7.50. After that price it's HOV only.

> while having, by far, the absolute worst electrical infrastructure in the country

Source please?

> None of the very large number of day laborers, etc, could afford an electric car

Used Nissan LEAF's start around $7k, even in the Bay Area. With $0 down, that works out to about $125/month car payment. For the vast majority of drivers -- if you can afford a regular car, you can easily afford an electric one instead.

> Yes, the math says that if everyone in california drove an electric car, we'd be in trouble. Even if they only charge off peak.

An electric car can charge on power draws all the way down to 1.4kW (that's a standard 15amp 3-prong US household outlet). An electric car charging likely uses less electricity per second than the Air Conditioner or Clothing Dryer you already have in your home.

There is no doomsday scenario for the electric grid. Electric Cars simply don't draw enough power to do any of the things you've described. Especially once you factor in that their charging mostly happens off-peak anyway.

RWC to Mountain View (southbound) is still faster. The construction in Palo Alto still screws everything up but that's expected.

The nice thing about a car with Autopilot is that it makes driving in heavy traffic less stressful. You still lose the time, but the trip is almost as relaxing as being a passenger during heavy traffic.

How's the reliability on the new Autopilot these days? Last I heard it still didn't inspire much faith but I know they've been pumping out updates.

I wouldn't trust it on high-speed high-traffic roads, but it's good in high-speed & low-traffic (cruise control on long trips) and low-speed & high-traffic (traffic jams).

I live in Denver and we only have a few HOV lanes, but none on my commute. I'm fortunate enough to live close enough to one of the, somewhat weak, train system lines and now commute vis public transit and drive my car maybe 1x/2weeks. It's been really liberating. We still need one car for the family, but not one per working adult.

No worries, they will add more.

Before you disagree, remember there was a time they went from exactly zero HOV lanes to one.. which is an infinite increase. This time they will go from whatever they have now (usually one) to two, which is at most only a 100% increase.

Also keep in mind the day will come that all roads will only permit electric vehicles, essentially meaning all lanes are "HOV". So from 2017 -> the future we must transition to that, which means we have to start adding HOV lanes sooner or later.

> Also keep in mind the day will come that all roads will only permit electric vehicles,

That would be pretty dumb. This is a very strange claim from an overlander (assuming you agree with it); surely you're aware that batteries are nowhere near the energy density of chemical fuel, and probably won't be for a long time. We're even further away from practical electric ATVs or motorcycles. Banning gas vehicles in the next ~50 years would be incredibly destructive to rural areas and outdoor recreation.

By the time it would be semi-feasible to outlaw gas vehicles, there'd probably be no point, because electrics would be cheaper for most consumers anyway.

I believe it will happen, it's not really relevant if I agree with it.

Think about how much battery tech has improved in the last 50 years, now extrapolate forward 50 more.

Gasoline and the fumes cars pump into our towns are carcinogenic, and it will be banned. Maybe not in my lifetime, but it will happen.

>We're even further away from practical electric ATVs or motorcycles

I literally googled "electric motorcycles" and the first result proved you wrong: http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/motorcycles/

Googling "electric ATV" again proves you wrong: http://www.polaris.com/en-us/ranger-utv/ranger-ev-avalanche-...

As far as banning non-zero emission vehicles? In cities, especially in Europe, it's likely to happen a lot sooner than you might think.

And sure, rural areas will depend on ICE vehicles for longer than urban areas. That's no different than how there are plenty of places where it still makes more sense to ride a horse than to drive a vehicle. Edge cases are edge cases.

Neither of those vehicles are suitable for 95% of the tasks that people use motorcycles or ATVs for. Googling the existence of something does not qualify you to comment on its usefulness or practicality. You haven't "proved" anything. Once you understand the different varieties of ATVs and motorcycles and their respective use cases, feel free to look for viable electric options again.

Rural areas are not an edge case; they are a large portion of the population. The demographics that constitute HN tend to forget this.

What in the hell are 95% of motorcycles doing that can't be handled by a motorcycle with 108 miles of combined highway/city range? I have plenty of friends who ride motorcycles to work or on the weekend, and aside from not being obnoxiously loud, the motorcycles that company sells would do everything they want save for track days/illegally going 150+ on public streets.

And what are ATVs doing that can't be handled by a vehicle with 500 lbs of load capacity in the bed and can tow 3/4 of a ton? Oh, and it has a range of 50 miles.

I have family that own ATVs, and use them for hunting and fishing, and the Ranger would handle their needs 100% of the time. How many people are taking ATVs out for 50+ mile drives? I guarantee you it isn't 95% of them.

I grew up in a rural area. Maybe not west Texas rural, but Appalachian foothills rural. This ATV would handle just about all the needs of most of the people I knew growing up who wanted an ATV. Heck, the fact that it's quiet, might be a really good thing for them when hunting.

And rural areas ARE an edge case. They're 15% of the US population. Sure, they have special use cases, but your whole "95%" statement is completely false.

And as to the "once you understand the different varieties of ATVs and motorcycles" statement. Electric motorcycles and ATVs don't have to cover 100% of all use cases before they are viable. So stop trying to say they do. There are plenty of areas in which electrics are perfectly viable, and it's probably over 50% today, and it will only continue to grow as battery tech improves.

And there you have it. 2040.

I very much plan to be alive then.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/06/france-ban-...

What’s an HOV lane?

Also known as a "carpool lane" - requires 2 or 3 passengers to use, and is a way to ease congestion on freeways.

And in a lot of jurisdictions electric vehicles even with one passenger is allowed in them.

"High Occupancy Vehicle", typically a car with 3 or more people in it. To allow use of the lanes for electric cars is technically cheating.

Any fellow reservation holders have an idea of when to start expecting our units to roll out? I'm told the #'s are not sequential and correspond to regions instead...

https://teslanomics.co/model-3-delivery-estimator

And accompanying YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcgvAYKro10&t=1648s

An extra month delay if you are an existing tesla owner?

You get it faster if you're already an owner.

Yep, I clearly got my Yes/No around the wrong way....

Seems to be way off. It has me as Mid Jan, and I'm located in Canada and not an exisiting owner. Considering they don't expect production to hit 20k units until decemember, they're probably at least 6 months off estimates.

I've heard you're not supposed to buy these cars, but lease them somehow. The article mentions the buying price, but what about leasing?

The last time I felt like this was with Fiskar.

Here's hoping they are successful and safe too!

How long do the batteries last? I've heard replacement batteries will be $20,000.

According to Tesla [0], 8 years is the minimum expected lifetime. After that point the battery will still work just fine, but the capacity can drop below 80% of total.

[0]: https://www.tesla.com/blog/infinite-mile-warranty

Finally! Thanks for sharing.

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