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Comment by africanboy | Hacker News Reader

Tesla is not the only EV car on the market anymore.

The top selling EV in Europe in 2020 was the Renault Zoe, Volkswagen is catching up fast (they sold 56k ID 3 despite only going on sale in the second half of last year VS 85k Model 3 over 12 months), Tesla model 3 was second, but numbers are dropping.

If we are talking about quality, I think the new BMW and Mercedes will take the lead in the segment Tesla is being marketed right now.

Tesla numbers are good thanks to Norway buying a lot of them.

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Starting price of Renault ZOE is 30 490 euro vs. Tesla Model 3 is 48 000 euro.

The fact that Model 3 is second only to a car almost half the price is kind of crazy.

And Tesla will probably drop this price by some 5000 euro as soon as they will start production at Giga Berlin.

Also, this decade will not be about EV vs. ICE. It will be about self-driving.

My guess is that Tesla will have robotaxis driving all around the world somewhere after 2025, but before 2030.

Traditional car companies have no expertise in software as they themselves admit.

Zoe starts at € 38.900 in Italy the 77KWh is € 48.900

You are probably not accounting for VAT

AFAIK self driving as in unattended driving is not big in Europe, given that most of the driving happens in crowded cities and country roads.

Self driving is welcome on highways, but almost any modern car have some kind of auto pilot system that works well enough.

> Traditional car companies have no expertise in software as they themselves admit.

That's simply not true anymore.

All manufacturers are working on it, Honda will release a level 3 at the end of March this year, Tesla is a level 2 (if I am not wrong)

p.s. I am from Italy

Dutch website is claiming that Renault Zoe R110 Life costs 33 590 [0]. Seems like I've missed 3500 subsidy from Dutch government.

Nobody is able to do true self driving like a taxi in city today. But it will be possible in this decade (I have 95% confidence) and it will be happening in Europe as well. Whoever achieves true, reliable, widely deployed self-driving first will crash competition. Car ownership will effectively disappear in the decade after that i.e. 2030 and later.

[0] https://www.renault.nl/elektrische-autos/zoe.html

> Car ownership will effectively disappear in the next decade i.e. 2030 and later

as a former car owner that has been car-free for 7 years (using only car sharing and short term rentals) I sincerely hope you're right.

Note that the subsidies can be up to 10k here in Italy, but that's true for Tesla as well.

Maybe in cities. Nobody in rural areas or the suburbs is going to not buy a car because of self-driving rentals.

Yes, rural areas will probably be the last to switch since car density there is very low. But suburbs are certainly going to switch because it will make the life just much more pleasant. Drivers instead of paying attention to the road will be spending time on their phones. Instead of wasting time and space for parking they will just request cars on demand.

> AFAIK self driving as in unattended driving is not big in Europe, given that most of the driving happens in crowded cities and country roads.

In the UK at least they will not only have to work fine in very busy roads but also be fine in country lanes which are often very thin, very green, and pretty fast - this will be disproportionately a problem for Tesla's because this is where the rich live.

> My guess is that Tesla will have robotaxis driving all around the world somewhere after 2025, but before 2030.

Just like how they had a cross country summon in 2017, coast to coast drive in 2018, and tesla network "robotaxis" by 2019 already?

Yes, Musk is overly optimistic. On average you can double his predictions. And his missed predictions on self-driving are extreme even for him.

But Tesla is making progress. Maybe even more importantly, the world is making progress on fundamentals of machine learning. If you want more reliable estimate than Musk, then you can check forecast aggregators with established track record [0]. I've asked "When will Tesla self-driving taxis be available to Metaculus users?" [1] Metaculus being the forecast aggregator. Community predicts 25% before 2024, 50% before 2026, 75% before 2029, 95% before 2035.

I'm personally more aggressive and predict 95% before 2030.

[0] https://www.metaculus.com/questions/track-record/

[1] https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5304/widely-available-te...

I love how if Musk gets something wrong for years people who hate him relentlessly shit on him. However he has been right about so many other things, but those things are simply not talked about and all the experts who wrote op-eds telling him how wrong he was are long since forgotten.

And as soon as a prediction doesn't come true, they rejoice and celibate assuming because it hasn't come true in the original timeline it would never happen.

When SpaceX couldn't land the Falcon 9 for a couple years the amount of industry insider and SpaceX haters who celebrated was amazing to see, and now landing and re-flying boosters is beyond boring because it is so common.

I have seen this cycle so many times now. So, I guess sit around and feel superior for now, be sure in the fact that in 2027 nobody is gone remember all your comments.

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