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Comment by sremani | Hacker News Reader

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.

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I'm pretty impressed with VW's pivot into EV production. They are getting a lot right with the modular drivetrain, circular battery supply chain, vertical integration (in fact a friend commented their Power Day presentation slides looked a lot like Tesla's Battery Day). They have a huge lead in Europe with brand recognition (most people have forgotten dieselgate already), and the proof is in the pudding is what I see on the roads: lots of ID.3's out there driving around.

My main concern as a VW shareholder would be what the gross margins are like on their EV programme. They've been quite close-lipped about that (I even read some earnings calls trying to find out); analysts don't seem really sure either. But building an EV these days isn't just about the drivetrain, it's also about the over-the-air updates and all the other technology that goes into them, and that stuff all together is hard to get right. (I think VW had quite some teething problems with their software).

VW is my current favourite besides Tesla though. They have the most concrete roadmap, they have EV's on the road now (beating Tesla on deliveries in some countries), they have the capital and the engineering expertise.

I do think Toyota's solid state battery might have some promise but there's so little information that it seems more aspirational to me than a concrete strategy. I'd love to see Toyota be one of the legacy manufacturers that successfully competes in the EV age though, as a company they've done a lot of pioneering work in manufacturing.

Definitely interesting times!

Toyota strategy is basically

a) be big

b) hint at having amazing technology that literally blows everybody away but never show it or put a timeline on it

c) bash EV in public as much as possible and lobby against them.

Here in Norway where we have a decent used EV market the teslas depreciates at about the same rate as the others. This was not the case in the beginning but it was mainly because tesla kept increasing the price of the model S.

I have a tesla (Model X raven long range) and an ioniq (28 kWh) EV, they're both good for their uses but I am more worried about the depreciation on the tesla than the hyundai. That said it will take a lot for me to get another brand than tesla for the main vehicle. The ioniq is nice but it's still a "fossil" with electric drive train. The X is like a space ship!

Regarding the samsung of EVs, I think it will be Hyundai or Kia not Vw. They have sold a lot of e-golfs etc but the new ID.3 is so plagued by software and hardware errors that I would never get one. I think the Japanese are too slow out of the gate, maybe with the exception of nissan but even the latter has stagnated since they first introduced the leaf.

VW has Euro 7 and a lot of customers who only buy local. They don't need to compete on quality to do well, they just have to beat a certain price point once the next round of EU emissions kick in.

As someone who's owned a Volkswagen that was fun to drive but had some engineering flaws, I'm not looking to return to that experience with a Tesla. Even VW never had (as far as I know) a car that could rip its own bumper off if you managed to catch a puddle wrong. Tesla is an amazing halo brand but their cars are (IMHO) first and foremost about the driving experience including range. The regular paint flaws, seam alignment issues, bumper problem and rust issues make me think they still have some work to do for fit and finish. Don't get me wrong: they're probably the best out there for now, but they could improve. And eventually competitors may be able to offer a compelling mix of performance and range along with build quality that drains Tesla customers who were compromising. VW doesn't have to match Tesla point for point, they just have to make something good enough people will buy it instead.

If GM had built the exact same cars Tesla makes instead of Tesla, they'd have been laughed out of business.

Seats and wiring huh? Wouldn't a BMW with xDrive be better?

With respect to the previous poster those weren't the best examples

I'd chose battery tech, self-driving stack, operating system, design and manufacturing expertise i.e. full body vehicle stamping

I know my examples are not shiny. I am not a Tesla fanboy, but I have watched Sandy Monroe interview Musk, and my examples show how deep and wide the innovation goes that seem trivial from outside.

Self-driving stack is crap compared to Waymo. No lidar. That's a dangerous piece of crap.

The evidence would suggest you don't need Lidar, one example is this video comparing them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sibfRCgMiFE&ab_channel=Whole...

Bearing in mind that the Tesla is a Beta too, I'd say its far from certain which stack is crap

But I'll happily review more evidence in a year or two :)

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