The total world wide vehicle market is just under 70 million units a year. Tesla alone has guided for sales of 400k vehicles this year. If they roughly double their output on average each year they will be close to 20% of the total worldwide output in 5 years.
Where is Tesla's equivalent: minivan, yaris, rav4, tacoma, etc?
You don't really expect some soccer mom who buys a 30k minivan to buy a model X for 80k+? And I guess, the construction worker can pile his materials in the front trunk on the X too? I mean we only have 4 cars to pick from here..
And consider all of the places worldwide that Toyota sells to.. from rich countries to poor countries. They rely on infrastructure that is available globally to everyone, no matter your living situation. Even if you live in a poor country with little infrastructure and intermittent electricity, you can still get gas for your Toyota.
You might find this comparison silly... but you just said Tesla will produce 13m vehicles in 5 years.. making them 20% larger than Toyota, the worlds largest manufacturer.
In 5 years Tesla will be producing at least 7 models including 2 cars (S & 3) , 2 crossover/SUVs (X & Y), 1 sports car (roadster), 1 pick-up truck, 1 semi-truck.
https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/vws-91b-spend-evs-out...
Volkswagen's current and soon to be released battery electrics are the VW e-Up!, VW e-Golf (though this is being discontinued), VW ID.3, SEAT Mii Electric, SEAT el-Born, Skoda Citigo iV, Skoda Vision iV, Audi e-tron, and the Porsche Taycan.
Future Volkswagen battery electrics are the VW ID Crozz, VW ID Roomz, VW ID Buzz, Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo, Porsche Macan electric, Audi e-tron GT, and the Audi e-tron Q4. Volkwagen's roadmap is bigger and broader than Tesla's can be simply because Volkswagen operates at a larger scale.
Volkswagen sells EVs cheaper than any Tesla and Volkswagen also sells EVs more expensive than any Tesla, which is the point. The selection of EVs from Volkswagen is already broader than what Tesla offers.
The Porsche Taycan's Nürburgring lap time of 7:42 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m31EgQkswg) has apparently provoked Tesla into doing a lap in the Model S next week: https://electrek.co/2019/09/05/tesla-model-s-nurburgring-rac...
> They just don't have the battery cost advantage that Tesla has spent the last decade building.
The Volkswagen ID.3 will be cheaper than the equivalent range Tesla Model 3. The base model ID.3 (330km WLTP) will be around 30,000 euros, the midrange ID.3 (420km WLTP) will be around 40,000 euros, and I haven't seen pricing for the long range model (550km WLTP) but let's guess 50,000 euros. Volkswagen is officially launching the ID.3 in a few days. They might announce the final pricing then.
Of course, Musk will likely have the overheating protections disabled on the test car to keep the fanboys happy. Without that the Model S has no chance to beat the Taycan.
You then take 1/10th of the value of your stamp press and subtract it each year (depreciation). This is the amount subtracted from your profits each year.
Accounting as a profession has been around longer than tech companies. They know full well that companies buy fixed assets. Tesla isn’t some special case in this regard.
Tesla could potentially remain the number one EV manufacturer if the big manufacturers scale their EV efforts slowly and Tesla continues to expand aggressively.
Where there's a will there's a way. In ~20yr when they're old and cheap the Teslas are gonna make great scrapper cars. All that roof strength and low COG lends itself well to slapping an I-beam on the roof. Obviously a sedan is not a practical work vehicle though.
Too bad Tesla doesn't built their cars with provisions to accept a proper heavy duty roof rack since the vehicle is built to take it. I understand why they don't since that would be an invitation to do all things that would compromise aerodynamics and destroy your range.
Edit: It appears my depiction of poor people doing poor people things with Teslas may have offended some people. I'm not sorry. Nothing you can do will prevent Teslas from moving down the economic ladder with age and mileage just like every other vehicle.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a25933730/ford-f-150-elect...
In my opinion, there's also the question of whether we really want to further cement America's dependence on cars. We could be investing this money / effort into laying down bullet trains, expanding public transportation, and reforming zoning laws to make future cities more human-friendly.
It does seem rare for people to use their garages for cars. Half the time they're too small to get a car in and a human out though.
Because the people making electric cars know the buyer demographics and know those people have enough money to justify paying a premium for that thereby making it a marketable feature.
Nobody is wasting the money putting tree-trunk A-pillars and foot thick doors in a Chevy Aveo competitor because protection against something that's less than a once in a lifetime event for most people let alone the vehicle is not high on the priority list of those buyers.
Many people would still need cars, but instead of every family needing two cars, many could just have one. Then even for the people with cars, they might not drive as many miles on average with the new options open to them.
Obviously it would be easier to reduce car ownership in denser areas so that's where the bulk of the shift would happen.
Electric cars are the only option that can be rolled out fast enough. Of course we should start the transformation away from car dependence at the same time, just don't expect meaningful effects until after ICEs are already obsolete.
The whole company would have to scale accordingly. That's just not feasible. And I don't believe there has even been a hardware company in the world with exponential growth over an extended period of time.
You just said Tesla will deliver 13m in 5 years..
Tesla has up until now been an excellent example that a billion-dollar revenue business can be built much faster than 100 years ago.
Curves that look exponential turn out to be sigmoidal.
Expecting them to grow to a bigger manufacturer than Toyota in five years is laughably unrealistic.
Which they are unlikely to achieve this year. We can now finally see the year-over-year numbers (the ones that Tesla were telling us were 100s of % growth, due to new model launch a year ago), and those numbers might be down (ie no growth).
But as an industry, EVs will keep taking market share. They just make sense.