And really if you think about it that shouldn't be surprising. The big car companies today don't need a miracle at all. They are in a pretty good spot. They know how to do all the really hard stuff about building a car (the actual manufacturing & quality control stuff - the things Tesla is really bad at and struggling hard to figure out). They just need to do the easy part of putting in an EV powertrain. And they are already used to dealing with multiple powertrains for the same car, even.
Tesla took the risk to prove it out, but there's no reason to believe the big companies will be unable to change course on this. It's not at all like the pre-iPhone vs. post-iPhone where the entire UX interaction across the entire platform changed. This is all things considered a pretty small part of the car that's changed, and in pretty straightforward ways.
$80k model x, est range 237 miles.
Tesla may have better battery tech at the end of the day, but it's very obviously not so far ahead. We're talking 10-20% differences at comparable price points even if Audi comes in under estimates.
And critically it's highly likely the Audi will have the build & interior quality of an $80k car, unlike the model x. Time will tell if people will ignore luxury to get a better 0-60 or not. Some certainly will, but most historically don't.
Tesla has a cost and experience advantage on batteries and electric powertrains. It becomes clear when you compare the stats of these competitors and realize they require 90kwh and 95kwh batteries to achieve the same range as a 75 kwh Model X.
That's not to mention the elephant in the room, which is fast charging. Tesla's supercharger network is leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else.
I'm hopeful Tesla will face some good competition from traditional automakers, but it's silly to act as if they've already been beat.
The Model S has a currently unique powertrain, but that's basically the only thing it has. Do you really think that can continue to be sufficient to move vehicles when competitors have a powertrain that's 80% the same as Tesla's, but an interior & build quality that's 10x Tesla's?
The real engineering advantage tesla has is their proven battery heating and cooling technology - none of the other companies have that, and the recent cars have adopted some of tesla's ideas about heating and cooling but they don't have experience.
Finally, don't forget that there's a world wide shortage of electric car batteries. that's why tesla had to build the irritatingly named giga factory, because without it they couldn't build a lot of evs. and other companies can't either, without new battery production coming online.
Audi announced they wouldn't keep the audi ev at dealers, it's special order. I don't know if this is because dealers didn't want it or they didn't want to train them or what. gm dealers are said to not be enthusiastic about the bolt.
If Elon should burn out and crash Tesla, it will still happen. Only instead of being Tesla delivering the death blow, it will be those electric golf carts growing up, turning into full cars, and wiping out traditional automakers.
Either way the underlying dynamic is the same. As batteries become good and cheap enough for mass cars, there is an opportunity for upstarts who only do electric to take on gas cars.
[1] https://www.vwvortex.com/news/volkswagen-news/d-electric-hat...
The majority of new vehicles being fully electric will happen pretty soon. The economics of this happening are incredibly compelling, essentially inevitable. I would put this occurring before 2025, but it's hard to say. If the Chinese keep up the heavy push toward electrification, it will probably be sooner. If not, then later.
No? Not even remotely close to true. The Model 3 broke into the best selling sedan list. That's great, but it's not even in the same ballpark as an EV taking the top vehicle sales spot much less EVs being the majority of new vehicles.
Just to return to reality here there are more F150s sold in 6 months than Tesla has sold in its lifetime (450k; https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America... vs. 300k; https://electrek.co/2018/02/14/tesla-delivered-300000th-vehi...)
In the first half of 2018 there were 8.5 million vehicles sold in the US alone. The Model 3's accomplishment of 40k vehicles is a rounding error.
His prediction was based on projecting technology curves out and comparing to a set of requirements around acceleration (able to merge onto a highway), range, and cost. Such projections out decades in advance are naturally imprecise. I would have considered it a darned good prediction if the first mass market electric cars had arrived anywhere between 2015 and 2025.
Sure. But the mistake everyone makes is that the drive train technology is not what differentiates a car.
It's the brand, the design, quality of interior, availability etc. Those are much harder for upstarts to get right as we've seen with Tesla.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/tesla-model-3-stuns-ger...
Also it's obviously much simpler and cleaner to build a car with just a touchscreen as its main interface. But the problem is its a nightmare for driving.
I was leery of the speedometer being in the center and not behind the steering wheel, but it isn’t all that different from diving a Mini, where the speedometer is a giant dial in the center console.
By the time electric is capable of being used for comparable cars at comparable prices for established lines of cars for established auto companies, they will be up against entrants in electric cars that have lower margins and more experience. When existing car manufacturers try to switch over they will wind up offering an inferior car at a worse price than the upstarts. This is a story that has played out many times in technology, and it never goes well for the established industry giants.
It doesn't matter if the competitors are delivering sports cars or glorified golf carts. What matters is that traditional auto companies with traditional dealer networks will be unable to compete head to head when they become competitive with the mass market.
Everyone knows about Tesla. Go look at https://www.fastcompany.com/40517240/the-biggest-electric-ve... for a company approaching the problem from the low end. There are a dozen more where BYD came from. And other markets where competitors are developing.
There are many niches around the world for electric vehicles. They are filled with companies who are salivating at the juicy pork chop that is the US car market. Technology does not, yet, allow them to compete head to head in Detroit's main product categories. But when they finally can, established automakers won't stand a chance.
Jaguar I-Pace. Mercedes EQC. BMW iX3.
Far superior to Tesla on all the metrics I mentioned before.
How are these even in the same ballpark as the Model S which has been out for 6 years and the Model 3 which has been selling in decent volume for months?
We have very little data about how production models of these vehicles drive/maintenance/etc.
It will be nice to see some competition to Telsa's Model X but none of them really compete with a Model 3 right now (ie, under $50k base).
The point is that the idea that the established car manufacturers can't make a decent electric car is ridiculous. They can. In fact they look significantly better than a Tesla.
Clearly they can make a car "better" than the Tesla (if you're leaving alone drivetrain), but they generally cost more.
That's the rub. Due to battery costs, any manufacturer not having a lock on battery supplies will either have to produce a vehicle that's weak on range/power or will cost more for the same range/power as a Tesla.
That's why plugin hybrids are all that the big manufacturers offer that honestly compete with Tesla's offerings. You need 1/5th the battery for a hybrid as you would a full EV.
Availability will be a huge problem for traditional makers as well, as we have already seen with all their electric cars. Its not clear at all that they can simply massively scale electronic cars. People who say that as soon as VW makes a electric car they can just produce millions is wildly optimistic.
And quality of the interior is one of the easier things to improve.
I think range, acceleration, mobile phone integration and digital features, 'autopilot' are far more important.
When you see Tesla causing drops to the tune of 15% or even 20% to the sales of premium ICE car brands, and who knows how much more it will be in the next quarters, a hit this big and this sudden can be quite destabilizing to a company with a highly optimized supply chain. Also, these companies haven't delivered something truly new in decades, and to do so now, under the gun, would require not a product revamp, but a culture revamp. Never heard one of those being pulled off.
Innovation is hard, let's ask for government assistance: https://www.reuters.com/article/autoshow-paris-electric-sque...
Yet most of their responses so far are on paper - they will start producing electric cars, sometime in the future.
Maybe VW. Maybe. But GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda... I don’t see it. Toyota is still trying to make hydrogen a thing, ferchrissake. Meanwhile Tesla is eating the luxury segment alive.
If — and it’s a big if — Tesla can achieve profitability with the Model 3 and get their crossover SUV into production, they’ll own the world.
And outside of Tesla there is not much, there is no electric car Android, specially outside of China.
The world is full of upstarts being crushed by large incumbents.
And don't remember we still have Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Amazon etc all still doing very well.