If Tesla Is the Apple of Electric Vehicles, Volkswagen Bets It Can Be Samsung

I have been eyeing an EV as my next car. The company that I think is best positioned is actually Hyundai/Kia. And like Samsung, again it’s a Korean company.

If you look at the Ioniq 5, this is exactly the type of design that I’d expect to see from Apple, more so than a Tesla. This may explain the discussion of a Hyundai apple partnership. Tesla has the worst parts of the Apple experience but they don’t yet have the quality and cohesion that makes people make that sacrifice and go all in on Apple.

The ioniq 5 has displays for side mirrors, unabashedly modern headlamps, front and rear sliding seats and console, vehicle to grid able to power large appliances, augmented reality heads up display, automatic lane change, parking, and other self driving features, an instrument cluster display (headphone jack?), and best in class rapid charging. Hyundai rethought the car in the context of EVs and has done some useful things like extending the wheelbase to grow the size of the cabin.

When you compare it to the egg like Tesla Model Y, I think the Hyundai shows a more cohesive design, offers more useful features and will be a better car overall. They also have real dealerships and the possibility of maintenance, and provide a warranty better than all other manufacturers.

Tesla definitely has a much stronger brand than Hyundai, but that will change as more people see cars like the Ioniq 5 on the road.

Tesla's build quality is closer to the kind of $50 Android phone you find on wish.com than it is to Apple's. I have no idea how Bloomberg clickbait articles end up on here so often, but this particular one is a new low - an article about VW that they've shoehorned both Tesla and Apple into for the clicks.

So in the ~50 posts written so far, the biggest word I don't see yet wrt Tesla is "supercharge", as-in their supercharging network. It remains an enormous Achilles' heel for competitors that really kind of puts a hard stop on a lot of other debate in my opinion. So far in the US at least it's still the case that everyone sort of seems to be assuming that eventually widespread generic charging networks will, like, just kind of happen on their own. And that probably will be true. Eventually. And I know there have been some haphazard plans to address it. But the fact on the ground remains that every other network seems to really suck in comparison to the infrastructure investment and quality-of-experience Tesla has made. Superchargers are starting to reach the point where they're reliably available nearly any time they're needed (ie., on trips beyond normal nightly charging). The experience of using them is convenient and pleasant. They're clean. They're not broken regularly. They work.

Yeah Telsa's quality control issues are real. I agree that cars like the Ioniq 5 look very interesting in terms of interior design and QoL features that I care way, way more about than some theoretical top speed or acceleration or whatever that I'll never remotely touch in my life. But then inevitably when considering full ICE replacement (and cars in the $30k+ price class for most of us are going to be main vehicles not just-for-going-around-town) it comes back around to the whole actually-getting-electricity-into-the-vehicle-on-long-trips bit and woof.

A few months back HN had a long thread on an HBR piece "Tesla’s charging stations left other manufacturers in the dust" [0], and it says it all. If other manufacturers can't get that sorted out it'll continue to be a major drag on their ambitions and give Tesla more runway to sort out their growing pains. Tesla is ultimately an electric infrastructure company along with cars, and I think that does matter at this stage of electrification.

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0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25930253

I would hope Volkswagen would aspire to be something greater than Samsung. Does this mean after 2 years they stop pushing updates to the car and no longer support it?

Tesla spent 20 billion to get where it is. By the time the other manufacturers spend 20 billion to catch up , Tesla will have spent another 20 billion.

An article from Wolf Street

Why the EV Battle Is Brutal for GM, Ford, Other Automakers

https://wolfstreet.com/2021/02/18/why-the-ev-battle-is-bruta...

One has to look at the sales of Non-Tesla EVs. You can get a lightly used Chevrolet BoltEV for USD $15,000. That is absolute collapse of the value. People get angry at Traditional Car companies when they put most of these models on limited, but look at the Sales of Jaguar, Audi. Benz does not even bring their EV to US.

If you are buying a new EV just buy a Tesla, they are a generation ahead in many things but also making their own seats, reducing the wiring in the car etc. neat innovations.

Tesla is a halo brand, but more than that they have optimized the many things in a car from first principles.

There are many vying to be Samsung of EVs but only time will tell. My Bet is still on the Japanese.. with solid state battery. I have been wrong a lot so.. lets just call it a hunch.

Out of anyone, Nissan I think has a better chance to become a dominant EV player, they've got a decade of experience with the LEAF. They were running a bit behind, but Ariya looks a lot more mature than the id.4.

Volkswagen is a large conglomerate, they own both "economy" brands like VW itself (which is already simplified since the VW brand also sells low-end luxury cars like the Phaeton) but also premium brands like Porsche (well actually they don't own them, it's complicated), Bugatti, Bentley and Lamborghini. If they leverage their technology platform correctly they could outcompete Tesla in many areas, though it remains to be seen if they are actually able to.

EV, if they are individual is not a solution.

Building a 2T machine to transport 95% of the time 80kg of human is the problem.

Having fuel, lithium, hydrogen or something else will not solve the big problem: we need to put more people in cars and reduce the amount of cars that we need.

Volkswagen Group manufactures several brands: Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, SEAT, Škoda, MAN, Scania, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini.

Volkswagen will use the same EV platform in Volkswagen, Audi, SEAT and Škoda brands. Porsche makes their own. Volkswagen

Tesla competes mostly with Volkswagen, Audi and Porche. Seat and Škoda will be cheaper models.

Not that I’ve given it tons of thought, but Tesla seems more like the Motorola (thinking of the razr in particular here in that both seem to be more status symbols than anything) to some future innovators on the horizon.

Its amazing to me how people always want to analyze everything in terms of the Smartphone market.

This is nonsense. It simply doesn't make sense. They are completely different industries, completely different players and very different geopolitics.

One is a tiny consumer product for your pocket that gets replaced every 2-3 years that is easy to transport, the other is a huge consumer product people often keep for 5-10 years that is hard to transport.

Sure, both have Li-Ion battery but again its totally different. In a phone the battery is a small part of the overall price, while for a car its a huge factor in the overall price.

Tesla is not like Apple, in many ways and Volkswagen is not like Samsung in many ways. Tesla is like Apple in some ways but not in others. The same for VW.

The car market simply does not operate like the cellphone market, the role of software is different. The geopolitics are different, every 'Western' government that has a car industry is bent on defending it. Even outside of that, producing cars is such a massive capital intensive business that hits your cash-flow localization of production is basically a requirement for the biggest players.

Tesla is amazingly successful and have a strategy of strong vertical integration. They have a tech future centered image promising fun, good performance and environmentally friendly. They are building up localized production of a few models that they want to sell in very high numbers globally. They are hell bent on increasing battery production and on solving self driving.

Tesla will continue to grow at a quite rapid rate year over year and no matter if other EV come into the market that will likely not destroy Tesla growth anytime soon. Tesla is one of the largest costumers of all of the major battery companies and is turning itself into one of the largest battery producers as well. That alone is a huge advantage as with the continuing cost curves, it is likely almost all EV that can be produced, will be produced and will be sold.

They have also smartly invested in charging network and are an omnipresent symbol of EV along all major routes in the developed world and they are expanding that network every day.

VW is the first really big monster company that has fully realized not just that it needs to be done, but also that all the talk about how the car industry talk about how easy EV were and if they wanted Tesla would be crushed is not the case. Going into EV on large scale is breathtakingly difficult and VW has mobilized the whole company, made huge investment both in suppliers both now and future suppliers, they have transform their internal plans (of all their companies) and are trying to execute. They are doing quite a good job along most levels.

VW and Tesla will both be large parts of the EV future, whatever will happen in terms of mobility service, self-driving and so on.

There are open question for VW about how to transition such a large company but Tesla also have open question about continuing to execute a massive growth strategy. Both companies are set up for success if they continue to execute at a high level.

Wouldn't this require Volkswagen to be the primary provider of battery tech? Isn't this what Telsa's already is doing, so wouldn't that mean Tesla is more like Apple+Samsung?

Telsa plans to build 3TWh of battery production capacity in the same timeframe as VW plans to build 240GWh.

They got the shitty software part down just right :D