Comment by flexie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by flexie | Hacker News Reader

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German car makers don't have infinite money. They run huge operations on tiny margins and cannot afford to cannibalize the sale of their upper-end cars with cheaper electric cars.

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.

I agree that the transition to EV is one of the biggest challenges the German car industry is facing.

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.

Yup exactly this. Many people fail to understand that what Tesla built already the Germans did not even start to think about.

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.

So let's hope they get a good trade deal with the UK after Brexit.

There are many other cars that could be compared to Model 3. Mazdas, VWs, Hyundais, Hondas. If we take only size, price, performance and interior quality into consideration then Model 3 is certainly not the best choice. But it's an EV. And others are not.

There's a lot of EV's comparable to the Model 3 in both price and range. There's a lot of EV's comparable to the Model 3 in range and price. VW e-golf costs about the same (or less) with comparable range and size. Hyundai IONIQ is cheaper with about the same range and size. Then you have the ugly EV's like Nissan Leaf and Kia Soul. Cheaper and with comparable range and size (perhaps a bit smaller trunk).

> There's a lot of EV's comparable to the Model 3 in both price and range

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.

http://i.imgur.com/M4o8czW.png

Why are people not hyped about the bolt as much as they are about 3? It looks like a comparable car which is available now, instead of in 2019.

There is no fast charging network to support the Bolt. The supercharger network is a huge competitive advantage for Tesla.

It's a GM, so it looks like it was made to appear in a Transformers movie and people trust a largely unproven manufacturer like Tesla to make something more reliable.

People seem pretty enthused about it in meatspace, if not online.

You are right, I personally think the Bolt is a great entrant and worthy of a very close look.

Good timing: http://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-model-3-chevrolet-bolt-...

Thanks. I might have compared range using different range standards.

I'm confused - what other range standard is there, other than "when you charge it full, then drive till it stops, this is how far you go" ?

Range depends on driving style, speed, temperature and probably a million different variables. I think there's like three different standards of determining "range" and they vary quite a bit.

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