The Model 3 is comparable to the C-Class in both price and size but vastly outperforms the C-Class on driving performance if the reviews are to be believed. The bling-bling leather, chrome and wood of the German high-end cars is more luxurious, but is not for everyone.
Let's see. My guess is as good as yours but I think the Germans will bleed if they don't transition to EVs very fast. If Tesla has the market for itself in all of 2018-2020, it might be too late for VW, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
Right now, they have plans and talk, but not a single competitive EV on the market, no fleet of hundreds of thousands of self driving cars recording and learning, no network of superchargers, no thousands of talented EV and AI engineers, no remote update, no battery factories.
I sure hope they wake up. Competition will only be good for us consumers.
No, there isn't.
Here's a chart made by a Redditor comparing price with range of all the Evs on the market. Checkout how much of an outlier the Model 3 Long Range is.
Even the Standard Model 3 has much more range than all the other EVs except the Bolt, and other Teslas.
Good timing: http://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-model-3-chevrolet-bolt-...
Sure they have a lot of expertise about building classical cars and engines no doubt about that. But TESLA is an entirely different product. It's not only a product it's a PLATFORM.
German car makers are building good machines but that's what it's about them. They give a sense a feel of luxury and high quality. Tesla built a product and additional services around their PLATFORM in the way american companies are famous for. The future generations of buyer/renters are tech savvy people not interested that much in the machine itself but about the whole range of additional services that come with the platform.
Who would have known 15 years ago that a major industry (~ 800K jobs in Germany, directly or indirect) would have to face such a storm? Fierce international competition, technologies threatening to erode key value chains - one could wonder what big strategic consultancies have preaching to the car industry executives all years long, what the innovation departments have been doing, and how company culture and the connection of management with state politics has failed to make change.
To be fair, there have been large scale mobility projects in Germany, both in the EV field, and smart transportation systems e.g. interconnection the vehicle and road infrastructure with the user. So there has been very early efforts in experimenting with these concepts.
One thing is for sure: It will be an interesting case study afterwards.
Joking aside - Yes, German car makers are behind on electric vehicles, but all (except mercedes now) have one. They are late, they probably are at a disadvantage, but IMHO the game is not over yet.
Or maybe it's because that's what people buy, since diesel is cheaper than the upfront cost of an electric car.
I think it is a big fallacy to claim that Diesel cars are so popular, if you consider how the public has been mislead about the illegal levels of pollution produced by the cars and that they have been sold without a working exhaust cleaning. Besides that affordable electric cars are a very recent thing, are Diesel engine cars going to be popular, if they are more expensive to buy (1-2k) and operate (regular AdBlue refill)?
They might not have been practical, but affordable lead-acid based EVs already existed during the rise of small diesel.
>more expensive to buy (1-2k) and operate (regular AdBlue refill)?
Adblue is pretty cheap and isn't going to be used up that fast, most people are more concerned about the filter blocking up because of short commutes not leaving enough time for it to fully warmup.
If they have not come around by now, I seriously doubt they will make serious investments in electric cars unless the government forces them.
Tesla is a youngling with heavy investment and no guaranteed future. Like so many tech firms it could be gone in a flash. Once the Euro EV subsidies and tax breaks disappear as the have begun to do in Denmark Tesla will be on a level playing field. Expect the opposing teams to foul if it means scoring goals.
But one party asking for a ban on ICE by 2030 is not sufficient against the German car industry.
Just to be clear, I would be very happy to see the streets rid of petrol-burning engines as soon as possible. But I doubt it will actually happen by 2030, there is too much inertia in the industry that has done quite well with one-track thinking for about a hundred years.
Someone here on HN recently quoted a business consultant saying, "culture eats strategy for breakfast". This would explain perfectly why it took two outsider companies - Google and Tesla - to develop the technology for autonomous cars and electric cars.
I feel reminded of the story of Xerox and its PARC research facility - if Xerox had played their cards right, they could have been Microsoft AND Apple combined. But the inflexible bureaucratic hulking giant that Xerox had become was unable to adapt to the new technology. IMHO, the current car companies are facing a similar situation right now. If they do not get on top of that development now, they could quite likely end up like Xerox did with the computer market.
The Bundesrat has actually passed a joint statement of the Länder to do such a ban.
In short, odds are greater that Tesla will exist in a post-combustion world than established automakers.
I mean look at the battery supply chain alone. For them to deliver at Tesla's scale, they'd need enough batteries, which, right now, would require major investment a la Tesla's Gigafactory: which is set to produce more batteries at one factory than the entire world's current output... all to support Tesla products.
At what phase are the established automakers in their infrastructure investments? They're all years behind. And I'm afraid they won't catch up.
The gigafactory is huge as one building. As a car manufacturing plant it's not that big, compared to the cities that some of the other manufacturers have.