Convince congress to extend the federal tax rebate (no real increase in spending just keeping what’s already there) by like 2 years which is just maybe $1-2B more and electric will be the way to go for good!
US consumer auto sales per year are in the 16-17 million range. I personally wouldn't consider 3% to be "almost 10%", do you?
But I don't think they realistically can hit 500,000 cars next year, either. They moved 70k cars in Q3. There's no reason to believe they can double that in 6 months or so particularly as the Model S & X sales have been fairly stable. So that means the Model 3 needs to somehow grow to around 400k/year in order to get to 500k cars next year.
They state production of Model 3 was up to 5,300 per week and that the production system had stabilized with gradual monthly improvements. So currently Tesla can only even build 275k Model 3's a year. I don't think doubling that in such a short time frame meshes with Tesla's comments of "gradual monthly improvements."
350,000 cars in 2019 seems much more likely assuming Model 3 demand holds strong.
The parent comment said "cars." You switched that to consumer auto sales. 6.3 million passenger cars were sold in the US in 2017. With passenger car sales declining and generally losing popularity in the US (dropping from 7.9m in 2014), it's plausible that 500,000 will in fact be "almost" 10% of total cars sold in the US in 2019.
But not all of those sales will be in the US. According to the Q3 update document:
"The mid-sized premium sedan market in Europe is more than twice as big as the same segment in the US. This is why we are excited to bring Model 3 to Europe early next year. "
Which would make it even less likely Tesla can hit 10% of US passenger car sales as they'll be sacrificing what little production they have to try and break into other markets.
Anyway just hitting 10k/week in 2019 isn't sufficient for the 500k number. They'd need to average 10k week for the entirety of 2019. Very different things.
Time will tell how good of a choice it is.
But it is good enough.
And now we're plugging high-powered LED bulbs into them. Technology finds a way. Be first!
Despite this disadvantage the Telsa battery cost, power density, cost per kwh, peak power, and longevity are unmatched. Especially as measure by real people driving real cars on real roads.
So sure in theory batteries with more surface area would have greater package efficiencies. So far nobody has managed to.
There's way more to a battery than just density; however, one of the things that needs to be managed is the heat generated during charging. There might be a case to be made for slightly suboptimal packaging strategies if it makes cooling all those cells that much easier.
Automakers putting battery packs in the trunk of their cars are complaining about battery size.
Is anyone complaining the floor on a Tesla is too thick and compromises interior space? Of course not.
The packaging probably DOES add a not-insignificant amount to the total weight of the pack vs an ideal battery of some custom design. But again, you have to weigh (ha!) all of the factors.
However, http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/163/9/A1846.full points out some of the details.
Money quote: For automotive applications where 80% capacity is considered end-of-life, using tab cooling rather than surface cooling would therefore be equivalent to extending the lifetime of a pack by 3 times, or reducing the lifetime cost by 66%.
Meaning battery packs that last not 150,000 miles, but 450,000 miles.
If you do, suddenly that empty space becomes precious.
The fact that other carmakers started using it is a good sign.
They are able to make the cheapest batteries for cars and have seemed to be pretty successful...
18650 is the cell form factor, not a specific anode/cathode/electrolyte combo. There have been leaps and bounds in cell chemistry over the last 10 years which have made it possible to build high-end expensive cars, but we still need about double the performance of current tech to achieve true low cost mass adoption. A $45,000 car with 300 miles range is just barely enough to convince well off people to buy a new toy. The first $20,000 EV with 300 miles range will change the world.
Is that really feasible? That's roughly BMW and Mercedes combined in the US.
It's really easy to forget on the West Coast of the US that BWM, Mercedes and the like are actually rare in the rest of the country.
I'm going to guess it will be a mix of both, but the govt(s) will be slow to do either, until they realize, too late, that they didn't meet their income goals on fuel taxes last year and suddenly have a shortfall in the budget :)
I suspect most states/countries will eventually adopt a combination of higher annual registration fees and mileage-based road user charges.
As for the charging @ home vs a supercharger(and the like) I agree with you, but the government is not known for always being wise or letting facts get in the way of something they want to do :) They understand a "Gas tax", so including EV chargers as part of the gas tax is easy to understand and easy to approve.
Also it's likely to be evened out by someone who's registered in Idaho, but is driving in Washington. And in any case, the taxes can be adjusted to account for a fraction of cases like that.
This is also more fair than fuel taxes because low-efficiency vehicles aren't necessarily doing more road damage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#United_States
"""
Renewable energy: $7.3 billion (45 percent)
Energy efficiency: $4.8 billion (29 percent)
Fossil fuels: $3.2 billion (20 percent)
Nuclear energy: $1.1 billion (7 percent)
"""
Perhaps not for you, but it sure did[1]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reor...