This just sums up how tax payers subsidise EVs and some meme company takes the credit
So yes, I regret giving money to Tesla, but it is the least bad option out there as far as giving money to these car companies. The only winning move is to not play the game, but unfortunately that same government that is paying for the EV transition is the system that, by law, is denying my ability to live a car-free daily life.
There are no heroes here, nobody is doing exactly the right thing, but Tesla and the government are doing things partially right.
I haven't even mentioned how Tesla is the only company that doesn't sponsor at least one (I think they all sponsor multiple) traditionally powered racing teams, whose development goes into premium powered, traditional gas powered automobiles. Plus the advertisement of said vehicles.
Not exclusively. Formula 1 and Le Mans use hybrid engines. Formula E and Extreme E are battery electric racing series.
Why doesn't Tesla have a Formula E team?
Why would Tesla spend the minimum tens of millions of dollars to get into what is at best a side diversion from their main business? They certainly have better uses for that capital and talent.
Of course they do. They advertised at you and it worked. It's worked so well that you're even parroting their marketing messages for them, including the myth that they don't advertise.
> Why would Tesla spend the minimum tens of millions of dollars to get into what is at best a side diversion from their main business?
Formula E doesn't cost tens of millions of dollars. Team budgets in Formula E are $10 million. And Tesla doesn't need to own a team. They can be a powertrain supplier just like other car companies are suppliers and not team owners.
As for Formula E, that's a great question. It seems like it should be right up their alley, but I'm almost positive AI is verboten and that would be a non starter for Tesla.
Then they can join Roborace which is all about AI:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roborace
Although sometimes the AI is more artificial and less intelligent:
https://www.thedrive.com/news/37366/why-that-autonomous-race...
Thanks for this =)
Based on that conclusion, they decided the best overall strategy is to delay that future as long as possible, by any means necessary.
Basically, it was a bad strategy, as it was practically inevitable that at some point someone would "defect" and do BEVs. Not only did the automakers use a bad strategy, but they failed to pivot from that strategy once it was already blown to hell. Any one of them could be worth a lot more money now if they had simply taken EVs as seriously as Tesla did a decade ago. But none did.
Same problem with Kodak. The new technology is inevitable, and while you may delay it, you're killing your future by doing so. It's short term thinking.
The future might be companies like Hyundai or Toyota, who are investing in "all-of-the-above" technologies rather than betting everything on one idea.
Toyota, Hyundai, Honda are all investing and expanding investment. That’s for passenger cars specifically. Once you go into industrial and heavy transportation it’s a vast group of companies.
People who are paying attention knows that there’s a major revolution afoot. The people with tunnel vision are the people who don’t realize this or are ignorant of these events.
You're saying that without disclosing your financial stake. "HypX" is the name of a hydrogen car company.
So when you say "pretty soon now," you must mean 2040 at the earliest. There's certainly a chance, when you look at the progress of PV solar over the past 40 years, for example, but it is hugely speculative and a long term bet, not a short term one.
Besides, what do companies have to gain by waiting for the technology to be ready before investing? It’s weird how people here lament the lack of foresight in the car industry, and yet on this subject immediately reject any kind of forward planning.
Finally, most of the negative stuff you heard is probably marketing or propaganda from businesses that don’t want to see fuel cell succeed. “2x more energy” is a misleading claim, as fuel cells are technically batteries and should close the gap eventually. Plus, you save energy by avoiding heavy batteries, do better in cold weather, and need less raw materials during production.
By 2030 batteries will haven fallen dramatically in cost. It's not enough to show that electrolyzers are falling in cost, it also needs to be shown that they are falling faster than batteries, and will be able to catch up.
That's the missing logical link, and I haven't seen even the most optimistic hydrogen boosters produce numbers that show it to be possible. Definitely not before 2030.
There is a massive hydrogen PR push right now from natural gas companies with the hope that they can eek a few more years out before transitioning to the modern renewable economy. But even those folks don't say that fuel cell is going to be cheaper than typical passenger vehicle sized batteries.
Every single hydrogen powered vehicle is already going to have a battery in it, to manage variable output. The question is, if hydrogen machinery gets cheaper than battery, at what range capacity does it make sense to include both battery and hydrogen. If it's at 1000 miles, 500 miles, or 300 miles, or 100 miles, and that all depends on the cost ratio of the two, and hydrogen being significantly cheaper than battery.
I don't think people fully grasp that hydrogen is made from water, and has a theoretical lowest possible cost of almost $0. A tank of hydrogen is just a dumb tank too, not a series of sophisticated battery cells. It's batteries that will have trouble keeping up on cost, not hydrogen. In fact, on a cost per range basis, the latest Mirai is already cheaper than competing battery electric cars. This suggests that the crossover point is nearly reached.
So we should stop thinking about batteries as if they have any kind of permanent lead here. The real missing logical link is ignoring the speed of hydrogen and fuel cell advancement, not the other way around.
What about the PR from big battery and electric car companies? These companies might too be dead within a decade or so. And yes, the hydrogen boosters very much say that fuel cell cars will be cheaper than battery powered cars. Toyota thinks fuel cell cars will be as cheap as the Corolla is today.
Some fuel cell cars use a capacitor instead. You only need 1-2 kWh for a passenger car for that purpose anyways. Probably anything past 100 miles will make more sense using fuel cells than batteries.
The laws of physics demand that compressing hydrogen so that a usable amount can be stored in a vehicle requires energy.
So by saying "almost $0" you're saying that electricity is "even less than almost $0". Which might be correct, industrial scale solar PV energy is cheap and will get a lot cheaper over the next decade.
But of course electric cars benefit from cheap electricity even more than hydrogen cars do.
> In fact, on a cost per range basis, the latest Mirai is already cheaper than competing battery electric cars.
Sure, if you use grey hydrogen created from natural gas rather than green hydrogen created from water and electricity. Grey hydrogen is far from carbon-free.
> It's batteries that will have trouble keeping up on cost
That's a strong claim, given that battery prices have historically dropped 80% per decade and show no signs of slowing down.
> These companies might too be dead within a decade or so.
The lack of hydrogen filling stations is the biggest roadblock for this among many big roadblocks.
The notion that batteries are superior than fuel cells at utilizing low cost electricity is fundamentally in error. People have traditionally made the argument batteries are more efficient, but the gap is continuously shrinking and likely will become a non-factor. Meanwhile, you benefit from lower weight, less material cost, faster refueling, cold weather performance, and various other advantages. So it could easily be more cost effective to power a car using hydrogen than with cheap electricity than with batteries in the majority of cases.
> Sure, if you use grey hydrogen created from natural gas rather than green hydrogen created from water and electricity. Grey hydrogen is far from carbon-free.
You're conflating two different things: fuel cells and green hydrogen production. Fuel cell cars are in a lot of ways already competitive with battery electric on their own merits. Hydrogen production is going to be dependent on electrolysis. Even so, as electrolysis costs come down this too will be become cheaper than fossil fuel sources of hydrogen
It's also a lazy argument, as fuel cells have the possibility of being zero emissions the same way batteries have. In fact, this was repeated against battery electric cars historically, since electricity production is heavily based on fossil fuels. So repeating it against fuel cell cars is just playing the role of luddite again.
> That's a strong claim, given that battery prices have historically dropped 80% per decade and show no signs of slowing down.
That's from a very high base and is misleading. Regardless, fuel cell costs are also dropping extremely fast, but unlike batteries don't have the floor of material costs. It's likely that fuel cells will be much cheaper than batteries in the long run. Toyota for instance believes that a fuel cell car can cost the same as a Corolla. Electrolysis costs are also dropping in a similar way and you can expect green hydrogen production to be minimally capital intensive.
> The lack of hydrogen filling stations is the biggest roadblock for this among many big roadblocks.
It's starting to look like the hydrogen refueling infrastructure will be cheaper than the equivalent battery charging infrastructure. Some recent studies are suggesting this.
Crazy rich individuals do.
Do they have police in place to watch if you own/use a car?
There is huge unmet demand for this, which is why cities are so much more expensive than far-based lifestyles these days.
One can appreciate Tesla and not like Musk. Even as a Tesla investor, not a huge fan. I see him as a necessary evil. The cars sells, and that’s all that’s important.
The leaf's entertainment system, for example, does the job it's intended to do fine, the tesla one is designed to innovate.
They are empirically desirable because they've sold half a million of them.
I don't need my critical transportation bricked by a failed update, or removing functionality so they can charge me extra to re-enable it, or any of the other nonsense routinely seen from device makers.
Feature. It's a car and software should be finished when it leaves the factory. Any other excuse is nonsense.
> no lane keeping (“autopilot”) on older versions.
That's your job and its called driving. If you cant handle that simple task then you should not be driving.
Ah, the "just suck it up and man up" argument. Lovely. I hope you drive a manual car with no power steering no power brakes and no abs. Heaven forbid the car helped you with the sacred art of driving, right?
It's just lane keeping. It helps immensely with focus on long trips.
If you have trouble keeping lanes and are not fatigued then I suggest you put your fucking phone down or see a doctor. This new trend of passing responsibility to technology has got to stop. It's fueld by greed, built on human laziness and fostered by stupidity. People need to grow up and accept responsibility.
>>As a responsible driver that means I pull off the road at a rest stop and rest.
No one is saying otherwise. This technology doesn't allow you to drive further while tired. It stops you from becoming tired in the first place.
>>People need to grow up and accept responsibility.
And people need to grow up and see that some inventions are not as bad as they think they are ;-)
>>suggest you put your fucking phone down or see a doctor
I've flagged your comment because it isn't how conversations on HN should go like.
You aren't making a unique argument about lane keeping that wasn't made about all these other improved technologies in decades past.
In the near future people might not even be driving their cars at all. What excuse are you gonna have then as for why people actually shouldn't demand that manufacturers provide that feature?
One of Tesla's biggest achievements was that they produced an EV that actually looks like a cool, desireable, premium car.
There are other EVs now that fit that description, but they are significantly more expensive than the Model3 and ModelY.
Tesla's big bet on the supercharger network was the game changer. Before that, EVs we're only a 'second car' for commuting. With the SC network, an EV was parity with ICs, not a set of green/cost tradeoffs.
I think it's similar to how the iPhone is the sexy mobile, but there's actually far more cheapo Android devices and feature-phones out there in use.
The problem was that they never made enough of them because their respective manufacturers didn't believe the market was very large, largely because battery technology when they were first released simply wasn't as good as it is now.
Car manufacturers are masters of marketing. Their choices in how they market these cars are very intentional.
And then Tesla comes along with great engineering and a more conservative body design and eats their lunches.
If Nissan Leaf was sold out in U.S. it's only because Nissan decided not to make enough of them. Or they made exactly the very small amount that people were willing to buy.
Bolt was even worse. They did 23k in 2017 and dropped to 16k in 2019. GM dealers were so desperate to get rid of them that at some point they offered up to $10k cash rebate. At that despite the fact that GM admitted they are loosing money on Bolt even when sold at full price.
20k a year in U.S. market of ~10 million cars is a rounding error. Whatever the reason, no one except Tesla was selling EV cars in US at non-laughable numbers.
In contrast, Tesla sales went from 50k in 2017 to 195k in 2019.
Note that Tesla is also losing money on the Model 3 (and indeed, all models of Teslas) when using the same accounting practices as other automakers. Tesla only has high margins when using non-standard accounting.
Even if they are, so what? Tesla's stated goal was to shepherd in the mass adoption of EVs as quickly as possible. They only need to remain in business long enough for every major auto manufacturer to start selling EVs in mass quantities. Once that happens they can just vanish and they'll have won.
Moreover, CA and the EU have far more to do with EV adoption that Tesla, by creating the market incentives for consumers to buy EVs and other green vehicles, and the clean car credits that have singlehandedly kept Tesla afloat the past 5 years while they lose money making cars.
You have all sorts of excuses to dismiss Tesla's success in the market. Nissan and GM under produced, Nissan adopted Toyota's Prius ugly car strategy, now that EVs are cool the incumbents will out produce Tesla, Tesla is only successful because of everyone else, Tesla only exists because of government handouts, blah blah blah...
You are trying to come up with every angle you can to excuse away the the fact that Tesla has been successful making a product people actually wanted and not a compliance vehicle purposefully made unattractive to ensure only a limited audience would purchase it.
That's not true, people were leasing Leafs for tax credits the dumping them as soon as the lease expired. There was a glut of off lease Leafs on the market as early as 2017. I picked up a 2015 Leaf with 15k miles on it for ~$14k off lease in 2017 before the Model 3 went into production.
Nissan started manufacturing Leafs in 2010 and it wasn't until fall 2020 that they managed to build their 500,000th. By comparison, the Model 3 went into production in 2017 and they built the 500,000th in March of 2020.
Tesla managed to build and sell more EVs in under than 3 years than Nissan did in 10. Either Nissan was stifling production or there was no demand for the product.
By comparison, the Model 3 went into production in 2017 and they built the 500,000th in March of 2020.
BMW, VW, Toyota, and Ford have all launched new models in significantly greater numbers over shorter timeframes and with fewer employees than Tesla. The Passat, for example, went from 50,000 cars made/year (at the Chattanooga factory) to 250,000 cars made/year in just over a year, with 1/5 the employees of the Tesla line, minimal rework required...and here's the real kicker: while making an actual profit per car under standard accounting practices (not Tesla's imaginary profit per car that leaves out costs the other automakers include in unit economics).
No there wasn't. Leaf sales dropped 43% from 2014 to 2015 and were even worse in 2016 for a number of reasons. The first was the Bolt was announced in early 2016 and the Model 3 in mid 2016 [1]. The second reason was the 2016 cost $5000 more than the 2015 because of a larger battery that only gave it 27% greater range (107 miles total)[1]. The third reason was that cosmetically it was unchanged from prior years [1]. The final reason was that there was an influx of cheap Leafs on the market[2].
The only waiting list in 2016 was for receiving your EV Rebate from the state[3].
The waiting list for the original Leaf was only 20,000 compared to the Model 3 which exceeded 300,000.
> BMW, VW, Toyota, and Ford have all launched new models in significantly greater numbers over shorter timeframes and with fewer employees than Tesla.
Ok? Incumbent car manufacturers who have been building cars for 50+ years can ramp up manufacturing of a new model ICE faster than a company that's just over a decade old that had to build an entirely new factory from the ground up. That should surprise no one.
So what about EVs? VW only managed to product around 30k of the ID.3 in 2020, it wants to build 300k in 2021. Ford's new Mach-E is limited to 50k units in 2021. Why? Both are due in large part to production constraints with the battery. The battery problem isn't going to go away and everyone, including Tesla is being throttled by it.
[1] https://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/05/facing-bolt-tesla-nissan... [2] https://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/16/cheap-used-nissan-leaf-e... [3] https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/s...
If you had bothered to read your sources, you would have seen that the reason the used Leafs were so cheap was due to battery issues with the early generation Leafs, which is why demand was so high for new Leafs.
Maybe because it's not true?
> If you had bothered to read your sources, you would have seen that the reason the used Leafs were so cheap was due to battery issues with the early generation Leafs...
If that were true then the 2014 and 2015 Leaf would have been fine since they used the new lizard chemistry. It was only the 2013 or older Leafs that had issues and only in hot dry climates like Texas and Arizona.
Leafs were cheap primarily because there was a glut of off lease vehicles. They were leased for federal and state tax rebates, in Georgia you got enough back in rebates to pay for the entirety of a 2 year lease, 2 years of insurance, and still have some left over. Lots of people leased them, and then when the lease was up they didn't want to renew the lease or buy them.
When I bought my off lease Leaf, I was talking with the salesman and he said he bought one off lease with less than 1000 miles on it because it had just been parked the whole time.
And the $TSLA price it's not just some random number mostly irrelevant to daily operations of the company, they sold/issued many shares at such valuations.