I bet that selling the credits was never in the Tesla business plan. But it is now!
"25,913% Growth In Tesla Sales In 6 Years"
I don't know how people reconcile these kinds of statements. Unless they're arguing that Q1 2019 is an inflection point and sales will taper off for the foreseeable future?
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/04/25913-growth-in-tesla-s...
[0] https://insideevs.com/news/343787/tesla-sales-down-for-q1-20...
As for demand, you are missing the big picture of the technology adoption curve. There is a massive learning curve which needs to be climbed in terms of producing EVs and particularly batteries at the scale required. Never mind the charging infrastructure or changing consumer habits. The market is growing as fast as possible and is totally supply constrained and will be likely for the next decade plus.
It’s not that the big 3 aren’t even trying. It’s that they can’t try. If you are buying 3rd-party assembled batteries and motors to put into your EVs you are likely able to produce a meaningless number of units at a near zero or negative margin. They were never going to invest the $20 billion in R&D to canabalize themselves. It always had to be an outsider who would have to make the push.
Can you elaborate on this please? I would never own or drive a Prius, or really a hybrid of any kind. I do own a Model 3. I see it as polar opposite to a hybrid.
Without the Prius to pave the way, Tesla would never exist, because nobody would have invested in an EV company without the Prius proof.
Just low quality articles - most other car makers have long delivery times for EV due to demand, 6 to 18 months in some cases. Their real problem is that they can't or don't want (negative margin?) to produce in quantities.
Another effective way of doing this is adding the cost of pollution into the price of the car as tax making ICE expensive and electric cheap. That is done here and the demand is very high. ICEs generally have > 100% tax.
Because the market isn't there. I know we like to believe otherwise but the majority do not care. They will reply to a survey with what the expect the person asking wants but at the end of the day they have no reason to change their buying habits.
I really enjoy my Tesla 3 but I am a fan of sedans and coupes. The Y will make it more useful to some but even then it won't solve the immediate issue. That for all their supposed warts petrol powered cars don't require you to change anything you are currently doing. The habits we have established over generations are so ingrained that the time spent fueling and maintenance is not an issue. Now of course they could just plug in at home but people see the costs for charging station installs and say screw it. Infrastructure won't fix this. EV's just don't match petrol cars in common capability in the eyes of shoppers.
Finally, there just isn't enough coverage of the type of vehicles people are buying let alone at any reasonable price. Don't get fixated on the average selling price of cars to determine where an EV should be priced. Vehicles not clean sheet designed to be EV show their failings right up front and cause people to price compare to the petrol version; this includes the Chevrolet Bolt, the Hyundai and Kia cars, and even the Audi and Jaguar cars. Those last two are both incredibly disappointing on range.
Range also is only considered valid for fair weather or better. Get into the 40F/4C ranges and watch your range go goodbye. I can travel anywhere in the US easily with the 3 without concern but not in winter, I do damn well better than any other maker's EV in that regard. Range needs to be much higher to offset any concern owners have, to let them be lazy in charging. Charging speeds aren't too much of an issue but will be once range comes up.
Another option in the range category is, get mid one hundred mile range models out but get them as close to 20k without tax incentives. that might get some of the local only crowd to jump but that is a very price sensitive area.
My next car will absolutely be a Prius/Insight/Ioniq, but a full EV is not a reasonable consideration, and not because of range or habits but 100% because of infrastructure. Despite a majority-freeway commute I still pass 5 or 6 gas stations going to and from work every day. I ought to be passing at least one charging station.
(I bought the LEAF with the intent to mostly charge at home. Since then, our company moved and we have chargepoints at work, but I agree with your overall point that no charging at home or work is a deal-breaker. I disagree that that is meaningfully ameliorated if there was an intra-commute charging station.)
Helping people not driving an electric understand that charging stations exist and are in abundance, thereby alleviating concerns that an electric will leave them stranded. I know where at least ten gas stations are in my normal driving radius, and where some are in adjacent towns. I have no clue where the nearest charging station is, even though I'm aware that some exist. To the average person, it appears as though charging stations don't exist at all and gas stations are in abundance. It's a mindshare thing.
I feel like throwing out exact numbers is disingenuous at best since a lot of things vary charge rate (state of charge, temperature, type of charger, etc...), but 20 minutes will almost always get you to the next charger or a destination in the Model 3.
And while I agree it's not quite "charge on your way home from work", it is something that at least Tesla is working on. Their "Supercharger v3" stalls cuts the stop times roughly in half in the ideal situations. And IMO "stop for 10 minutes on the way home" is absolutely acceptable.
My LEAF has a fast charger (CHAdeMO) and a 6.6kW Level 2 charger. My car has seen a CHAdeMO charger exactly once in its lifetime and that was before delivery. Most non-Teslas are charging at 3.3 or 6.6 kW (~12 or ~24 miles per hour of charge).
Keeping charging stations hidden from view reinforces the notion that you're SOL for long-range trips. Having them be visible and in abundance, even though they wouldn't need them often, would go a long way towards reassuring people that charging stations aren't these incredibly rare things that you won't be able to find when you really need one.
Perhaps they need to be, because to the average person it seems as if there is a complete dearth of charging stations.
it takes about an hour to charge a tesla most of the way full at a supercharger. no one is gonna wait that long with their car. who knows when they'll be back?
while you aren't wrong (it's actually much longer than an hour from low-charge to 100%!), there is a caveat that charging in the 20-80% range is significantly faster, so stopping at a supercharger for more than 30 minutes is almost always slower than only charging the range which can charge most quickly and move on to the next one or your destination. And because of that Tesla has begun limiting max charge at busy supercharger locations to help prevent the issue of no stalls being available in the first place.
The superchargers are also networked and you can see how many stalls are open at any time, which really helps relieve any anxiety i had about it. Many other charging networks (like Chargepoint) are networked as well, and can show you how many are available, and even peak usage times.
It seemed like it really solved the range issue while being a true “plug-in” electric vehicle for daily use.
I think he paid $33k.
It completely failed in the market.
Not sure what to make of that.
This is the biggest concern for me and by extension I assume many others who live in the South of the United States. It's May and temperatures are not yet topping 40C but they're 32+ at the high and projected to stay that way for months. Even with Tesla's heat management and water cooling for their batteries this potentially means slowed charging rates at superchargers and less range because you have to constantly cool the interior.
The price points, models, and distribution/service channel limit unit volume more than differences in the operating model of EVs.
I'd see it more as, the demand for electric utility vehicles and industrial transportation systems (truck, etc.) is so great that the demand for personal EV transportation cannot supplant the economies of maintaining an ICE production line.
But, as the article explains this may change in the close to near future, and indeed the technology to supplant the former segments of transportation is definitely on the horizon.
Take this with a grain of salt, but I happen to know that automobile clubs around the world expect that within 5 years, the automotive industry will be radically different to what it is today - they, too, are hedging their bets, and investing in social-sharing technology for the clubs to be promoting when the tech, and consumer expectations around personal transportation, inevitably changes.
The fact that companies are going out, buying credits, subsidising lower emitters says to me that the systems working perfectly.