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Comment by yungchin | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure this is bad news for Tesla, I'd say it's mostly bad news for the rest of us.

Tesla has reached enough scale to be more or less sustainable (in the sense that they don't need to be posting losses anymore), and I'd imagine they can continue to grow, if more slowly, without the rapid expansion of battery production capacity that this story is about.

But the great aim behind the gigafactory (at least, how I read it) was to drive battery cost down very aggressively, that is, working on the supply-side economics. This would then make EVs (not just Teslas) accessible to more people sooner, without all the subsidies (which have been a demand-side hack that didn't even work very well). If this means a slower clean transition (and I think it does) that's a sad outcome.

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> This would then make EVs (not just Teslas) accessible to more people sooner

Volkswagen will be taking orders for their new electric hatchback in a month. It's Europe only at this stage though:

https://www.electrive.com/2019/03/13/vw-id-3-introduced-it-i...

The cheapest variant is supposed to be priced under 30,000 euros. But let's see what the price and availability is like in a month.

Countries everywhere are taking down the subsidizing of electric cars ( In holland called, the Tesla-subsidie). This will hugely effect Tesla sales when they dont have an affordable car.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-electric-taxcredit-...

Its pretty bad news. I think the most important part of the electric car is the battery. Electric cars were more popular that the gas car car a 100 years ago. The crappy battery is why gas is more popular today.

What do the Tesla betters need to evolve into/achieve to not be deemed crappy anymore? What are the metrics we want to see that we don't have yet?

I recently made a 1600 mile trip by car. In all of the places we stopped, I saw exactly one place that had EV charging set up.

Tesla, and non-hybrid EV in general, have a co-dependent relationship with charging stations to overcome "range anxiety". This is especially true for those od us who live in cold climates and must drive in conditions unfavorable to operating batteries, such as -20 to -40 degree weather.

I'm also very curious to see what the electric pickup trucks that all the manufacturers are not-so-secretly working on end up being capable of. A frequent consequence of rural life is needing to haul heavy things, such as wood for repairing out buildings or outdoor furnaces, or towing boats to go fishing.

>I recently made a 1600 mile trip by car. In all of the places we stopped, I saw exactly one place that had EV charging set up.

I made a 2800 Km (5 days) trip through Italy a few months ago, it was a breeze with SC and abetterrouteplanner.com, never had to wait at chargers. To give you an idea what kind of roads we travelled: http://666kb.com/i/dxjj2jkx7h0uvhmmg.jpg

Range anxiety: 0. Cost: only road tolls. I can imagine range anxiety and charging costs being an issue with other brands of EV (non-Tesla chargers in Italy are often horrendously expensive) and of course there's more planning involved than with an ICE, but for Tesla owners, this has been a non-issue for quite a while (at least in western/central/northern Europe and most likely the USA).

> and most likely the USA

The USA is huge. Imagine an EU with 50 represented countries, and a common-ish heritage, spread them out across twice the land mass, and you have the USA- lots of cities, lots of land. Just like the EU, different countries (states) have different adoption rates. In short, parts of the USA have much better support and adoption of EV's, and the adoption will likely radiate out from there.

Right, though the parent specifically called out Tesla, which is funding superchargers across the USA regardless of local culture.

It's more of an issue with non-Tesla EVs, in the US and EU alike, as stated.

> most likely the USA

Only limited areas of the USA, as evidenced by my recent trip. That'll change over time, but as you also pointed out with the case of non-tesla chargers, one limitation of EV in general is the co-dependency on new infrastructure.

You can get from virtually anywhere in the USA to anywhere else in the USA using the supercharger network. The problem is you're expecting to see them on every corner like gas stations, but most people with electric vehicles charge every night. They wake up with a full tank. So they don't need charging stations for day to day use. Just longer road trips. So not as many are needed. They're also often tucked away in a hotel parking lot somewhere that you don't notice unless you're actively trying to find it.

> Only limited areas of the USA, as evidenced by my recent trip.

For Tesla chargers, that might be the case, but there are a lot more multi-standard chargers supporting CHAdeMO, CCS1 & 2, etc., than Tesla chargers in the USA. Tesla has the biggest single-owner network, but that doesn't actually put them ahead in infrastructure supporting their cars, because they are the only ones relying on single-owner infrastructure.

I did a bit of research along the route I followed, and the worst stretch seemed to be around 120 miles of no charging stations. The rest of the trip typically had them between 15 and 20 minutes away from the freeway.

If I needed to spend an hour (driving off freeway + charging) for every 200 or 250 or even 300 miles, that would have made the drive far less pleasant.

As someone who also travels by ICE vehicle I don't look for EV chargers and they're not on my mind so I don't see them. That's probably not at all the case for someone with an EV especially a Tesla owner who has that information at their fingertips in the vehicle. I know around here they're at malls, movie theaters and a little more off the highway than gas stations. That said I don't know where you were driving so it's entirely possible there weren't many charging stations around.

Very significant portions of the trip were between large cities. If we had had to zig-zag back and forth between cities with movie theaters or shopping malls that had charges, it would have added a significant number of hours to the trip.

Even with an ICE, there was a (small) amount of range anxiety, in that some areas had 30-45 miles between exits with gas stations near by. Get caught up in a podcast or some good music, and if you're not paying attention, it's not impossible to run out of gas out there.

Better build quality for one. The experience of actually driving a Tesla is undeniably sweet, but the panel gaps, the feeling of cheap half-assedness about details is not (especially at the Tesla price). More broadly price and range need to improve for those of us not willing to spend a premium just because it’s Tesla, and who don’t make only small commutes in a place full of superchargers. For me as well, OTA updates and the willingness of the CEO to go public blaming the driver for an accident is a no-go as well as all-touchscreen controls.

I am not saying tesla specifically. I am saying the reason why gas car beat out the electric a 100 years ago was because of the battery.

Cost, weight, power density.

cost (max 15000€/$ for a low end EV) range (400-500km minimum) charging infrastructure (at home and on the highway) charging speed (not longer than 20min)

I agree with this as a dream list (at which point electric cars are better than ICE cars in every way), but we don't need all of them for batteries "to not be deemed crappy anymore"

For me personally, if I can get the first two, then I'll gladly give a bit on the third (even though I regularly do a one-day, 1400km drive and 1-hr charging times would slow me down dramatically).

Tesla right now has the range pretty alright, and the charging speed not bad (but not close to your 20 min full charge), but the cost is just too high. I'll keep driving my 7 year old Yaris.

The Tesla Supercharger v3 DOES achieve this. Can do >210 miles of charging in 20 minutes. 67% state of charge on a Model 3 LR in just 20 minutes, which works out to 210 miles of range on the EPA standard, and about 400km of range on the European standard. The Tesla Supercharger v3 DOES achieve this. Can do >210 miles of charging in 20 minutes. 67% state of charge on a Model 3 LR in just 20 minutes, which works out to 210 miles of range on the EPA standard, and about 400km of range on the European standard. https://electrek.co/2019/03/07/tesla-v3-supercharger-action-...

https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/03/D1CpC...

I think you've got a formatting issue doubling up your comment.

That graph shows it charging from ~10% to ~65% in 20 minutes - assuming that is a long range model, that works out to (523km*0.55=) 290km range in 20 minutes.

I know Supercharger v3 is great, and i'd be satisfied with that speed (as I stated). I was replying to someone who wants sub 20 minutes for (what I assume to be) a full charge.

Ah, you're correct about the starting at 10%. I had misread the graph.

Other than the cost one, Tesla has achieved this, as I pointed out below.

Reproduced here: The Tesla Supercharger v3 DOES achieve this. Can do >210 miles of charging in 20 minutes. 67% state of charge on a Model 3 LR in just 20 minutes, which works out to 210 miles of range on the EPA standard, and over 430km of range on the European standard. The Tesla Supercharger v3 DOES achieve this. Can do >210 miles of charging in 20 minutes. 67% state of charge on a Model 3 LR in just 20 minutes, which works out to 210 miles of range on the EPA standard, which works out to about 400km of range in 20 minutes charging on the European standard. https://electrek.co/2019/03/07/tesla-v3-supercharger-action-...

https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/03/D1CpC...

I think the Chinese operations are going to source batteries in China. Not sure if that means battery production in gigafactory 3 or not, but it should mean lithium ion production should continue to expand. Not to mention all the new entrants into the EV market. Lithium ion battery production should continue to increase and bring prices down. I'm hoping we see a $25,000 BEV with 200+ Mile range in the next 5 years.

> Tesla has reached enough scale to be more or less sustainable (in the sense that they don't need to be posting losses anymore)

I really wish that Tesla had reached that point as that would mean that it's almost possible to profitably produce electric cars, but they clearly haven't.

Tesla itself don't have to be the ones manufacturing the batteries. Given that manufacturing seems to be the part of the value chain that Tesla is the worst at, I don't think the gigafactory was ever going to be that valuable or effective anyway.

Their battery factory is Tesla's primary competitive advantage. They are far ahead of almost any other manufacturer in terms of battery chemistry (<3% cobalt [0], less lithium, etc) and battery pack manufacturing (first to do thermal management -> long battery life).

[0] https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-batteries-cobalt-vol...

Battery design is one of their primary competitive advantages, along with marketing and the supercharger network. Large scale manufacturing isn’t.

It was all the rage not for back that Tesla was a battery company, not a car company.

If they’re not scaling cars or batteries, then peak Tesla would be inevitable.

It will be extremely hard for Tesla to be break-even or better.

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