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Comment by notJim | Hacker News Reader

This seems really optimistic about the adoption of electric cars. I suspect adoption will be drastically slower than you're imagining, and hybrids as well as gas vehicles will remain relevant for a long time still. Toyota of course has the top-selling hybrid, and introduced a plug-in hybrid version recently. Ford was in the #2 spot and Toyota was again in the #3. Honda takes #5. I think the thesis of these automakers is that they can ride the transition from gas -> hybrid -> plugin hybrid -> electric. I hope you're right, but from what I see, it seems unlikely.

Additionally, Nissan has the #4-selling electric car, and Chevy has the #2.

I think you are overstating your case.

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Tesla has already sold every car they can manufacture, and their entry price is $40k-ish in the USA. Other manufacturers are limiting how many BEVs they produce, and still managing to sell most of the ones they build even though they are universally objectively worse than any Tesla offering.

Tesla Model 3 is the best selling BEV in every market it participates in (not sure about numbers compared to PHEVs). It is selling in comparable quantities to ICE vehicles in the same price range.

A significant number of people buying Model 3 are upgrading from cars costing half the price.

There is little to no indication that EV adoption will slow down (before pointing to a drop in Model 3 sales in the USA consider that the one factory supplies the entire world outside China).

> Tesla Model 3 is the best selling BEV in every market it participates in

No, that's incorrect.

The Model 3 is the second best seller in France: https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2019/12/france-november-2019.h...

It's the third best seller in Germany: https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2019/12/germany-november-2019....

And it's the 9th best selling BEV in China: https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2019/12/china-november-2019-up...

Chinese Model 3 production only started in November. Check back in February, you’ll find it’s the highest selling vehicle (perhaps by model, though I am betting also by manufacturer).

Europe-wide, Tesla Model 3 is top of the charts by a wide margin. The articles you linked mentioned this, France and Germany are behind because the vast demand for Tesla in Netherlands and Norway is sucking all the supply up before France and Germany get a seat at the table.

As Fremont production improves and the German Tesla factory opens, we’ll see that lead grow as Europeans switch to BEVs en masse to escape the cheating ICE manufacturers.

It's not the best selling EV in the biggest EV market, China. Your claim was false. Cop to it instead of making excuses.

You are basing that on less than one month of sales after the factory just opened. Your claim is bogus, acknowledge that and be prepared to wait for figures for a complete month of Model 3 actually being available in that market.

By February the factory should be working close to its capacity, let’s see what sales are like once Tesla is actually participating in that market.

No, I'm basing that on the actual sales figures. The Model 3 has been on sale in China since March last year:

https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2019/04/china-march-2019.html

Well, learn a new thing every day :D

Let’s see what News February brings shall we?

5300 seems quite low given China’s size compared to, say, Australia. No doubt you will claim it is demand constrained, but that number looks like one boatload. That market is supply constrained.

We’re about one step away in battery tech (which Tesla leads on, among other things (efficiency, integration, etc) from a mid range electric car be upfront cost equivalent with an mid range gas car. Once that’s there, plus charging infrastructure (which is rapidly coming up) the other benefits (maintenance, torque, quiet, fuel costs, etc) will be front and center for every car buyer making the choice between the two technologies.

I don’t think it’s too optimistic. VW with the ID.3 seems like they’re the only ones who will be able to match the scale and qualities of product to the Model 3/Y in the near term.

We’ll see though. It’s interesting in any case.

do they have a roadmap for charging infrastructure? What if they sell millions and it takes 20min to charge knowing that most people will charge at similar times when going to work?

This assumption is wrong that everyone needs to charge before going to work. Once people started hitting queues at charging stations they will start charging at home over night. Though personally I think work place charging stations should be promoted where electric cars get charged at work using solar energy instead of at night at home using fossil fuel based electricity.

This test in LA is interesting, using existing power infrastructure:

https://electrek.co/2019/11/13/la-adds-hundreds-of-ev-charge...

Wouldn't most people just charge at home, overnight?

That may work in suburban America but I'm not so sure about the rest of the world. Most of my life I've lived in apartment complexes (US) / blocks of flats (Europe) where there was no car charging possibility when parking. It would require huge infrastructure changes to allow most people to be able to charge at home and work, this is different from gas powered vehicles where you need a relatively small number of (centralized) points that distribute fuel. With electric cars that number needs to be much larger and it's distributed.

It can be done over decades for sure but it won't happen overnight.

I can see charging trucks going around all night and topping vehicles up mobile resupply like.

charging trucks that run diesel generators ?

Or with big batteries.

The number one factor that leads to one future or the other is battery price.

With high battery prices the market stays with hybrids longer.

With cheap and plentiful batteries it moves faster to full EV.

What'll be interesting is if some vendors have access to lots of cheap batteries and so are living in one future while competitors are in the other.

Hah.. also: fear of war (with Iran) -> oil went up -> people think e-cars will be more attractive -> TSLA up.

One time a few years ago, oil went down and TSLA followed. It'd be interesting to see what will happen with the incoming recession (although then all stocks might go down with people pulling out of the market).

A few fairly large economies are planning to ban sales of new fossil fuel powered cars by 2030 and a bunch more by 2040. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...

> Additionally, Nissan has the #4-selling electric car, and Chevy has the #2.

From here: https://insideevs.com/news/343998/monthly-plug-in-ev-sales-s... - by # of units sold, no one is even close to the Model 3. People with money to buy electric cars with can probably afford a $50k car (Model 3) that does everything well over $less cars that do everything kinda poorly.

You linked to something that only looked at a small fraction of the global market.

It's not optimism, it's arithmetic: Tesla is stealing units from the other car companies. The other car companies require those unit sales to keep the prices the where they are otherwise they have to raise prices (same goes for insurance).

Sure maybe for the next 2-5 years people will do business as normal but are you really going to buy a Corolla for $30K when you can get a Tesla Model 3 for $30K? That is what will cause a quick shift.

A new Model 3 is 36k, a new Corolla is 19.6k MSRP. Realistically you can get the Toyota for less than half the price of the Tesla. I am not convinced that gap can be closed in 5 years, much less 2.

Corolla gets 32mpg. Assume 200,000 miles over the life of the corolla, that’s 6250 gallons of fuel. $2.79/gallon where I live for $17437 of fuel over the life of the corolla. $19600+17437=$37k

The Tesla requires 50,000 kWh to drive 200,000 miles. At $0.08/kWh (what I’m paying), that’s just $4000 in electricity. $36k + $4k = $40k

That’s surprisingly close for a Tesla Model 3 versus a Corolla.

8 cents per kw/hr is nearly the cheapest rate in America.

And most people will not be on track to drive 200k miles in their car before the loan is paid off. Which leaves them upfronting a very large percentage of the savings.

https://www.srpnet.com/prices/home/electricvehicle.aspx

Yes, Arizona has good rates.

Current electric car prices already make economic sense for car fleets where maintenance and fuel saving make it cheaper. One of the reasons delivery companies have been interested in electric vans.

I spec'd it at the top of the line Corolla ~25K. Change it to a Camry if we're getting nit-picky

Automakers don't like gas/electric hybrids as they are more complex to design and manufacture than either gas or electric vehicles.

Fuel-cell/electric hybrids are a different value proposition and will keep going.

But they'll increasingly drop gas hybrids and jump to full electric, perhaps after the next generation of vehicles.

Honda's Tesla killing fuel cell civic has a price tag of $300K+.

They're going to follow customer demand. If demand for electric cars remains low, they aren't going to abandon the types of cars that are selling really well for them in order to simplify the production process. And there are a lot of reasons to think that demand for electric cars is not going to skyrocket all of a sudden: range anxiety, lack of charging stations, gas prices being fairly low, the time it takes to charge, etc.

> Toyota of course has the top-selling hybrid, and introduced a plug-in hybrid version recently.

I thought that was in 2012? Of course "recently" is kind of subjective.

Edit: Ah, so they only introduced plug-in hybrids in the United States in 2016. Wonder what took them so long.

Fuel prices in the USA are quite low. There isn’t much demand for a plugin hybrid. People looking for “green” cred and branding may go straight to an electric car, while everyone else buys SUVs and light trucks.

Most of the major automakers work in 5 year cycles, where the cars are basically the same for 5 years but get cosmetic changes. Major design changes need to be part of the next cycle if its non-trivial.

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