In my guesstimation, Tesla will be making electric cars with a range to dollar ratio that can’t possibly be matched by incumbents for the foreseeable future.
VW and the rest are more capable of producing a refined car, but (again, my opinion) Tesla’s EV advantage is similar to the big three’s various inertial advantages that they enjoyed in the mid-20th century.
Perhaps more US-specific: buying a Tesla over something like a VW ID.4 gives you the supercharger network. It will be years if not decades before the general open standard charging network can compete with that benefit of ownership.
Tesla Y is for sure faster and the better drive. It's also like 10-15k more expensive and that's not even before VW's rebates. The interior was weird -- tiny headrests, tiny mirrors, and really poor back visibility. A giant screen in middle and nothing else wasn't particularly great, and I don't have CarPlay (I know Tesla has a lot of functionality in their system, but I'd personally rather drive it all from my phone to have a more continuous experience in car and out of car). On that screen was a 'video game'-ified representation of what Autopilot was seeing... not only distracting, but kept being wrong while I was stopped at a red light staring at it as it missed the cars in front of me and kept rapidly alternating what direction the incoming lane was going to turn. And that's driving the car? Scary!
I don't care about being faster, the ID.4 is plenty fast. I also don't really care about 250mi versus 350mi range or whatever right now.. all are inconvenient for a super long trip. I just recently drove from SF to near Canada... that was a very long multi-day drive and I would for sure not want to have multiple 35m+ stops in addition to the long drive. Until the technology gets WAYYY better I'll just rent ICE cars for a very long drive. Until then 250mi is plenty to get around the Bay Area knowing I can just plugin at home overnight to recharge.
VW has build a Electrify America charging network from a 2B settlement for their diesel emissions standards. If they're smart they'll capitalize on this and win much more in the long run by becoming Exxon AND a car company... their network isn't exclusive to their cars.
With everyone coming online in the next couple years, Tesla is going to have very real competition. I don't think the areas that they're better at are quite as make/break for car decision making as they claim to be. Elon Musk himself certainly doesn't help as a very divisive figure (and was part of the reason I didn't want a Tesla).
Btw it’s -9k with rebates. But I also leased as I anticipate it being uncompetitive in 3 years. Everyone has EVs coming so the tech and competition will mature quickly. This is a first gen car for VW.
It is good though that you got your vehicle on lease. If it is like my first-generation A4, everything will start to fall apart after 3 years.
The visualization happening there is more limited than what the car actually sees via the cameras, probably for performance reasons (it runs on a Intel Atom processor in the 3/Y) - you can see a more detailed representation on page 8 of https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/4E7BR9_TSLA_Q3_2020_Updat... and you can see more from public personalities with access to the beta https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tesla+fsd+beta
This is true, but BEV sales is currently only 3% or so of the total automobile market. There is so much room for growth. Tesla, VW, GM, and practically all major automakers pour money into BEV not to take a share in the 3% slice of the market.
Tesla will remain the leader in the BEV in the foreseeable future even with more competition. Smaller slide likely, but of a much bigger pie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSmSiOo-v8s
Tesla likes to maximize their EPA test cycle results to make the advertising look good, but it doesn't necessarily translate to real world results.
It's important to appreciate that the utility of energy efficiency metrics are different for ICE and EV. In an ICE car, fuel efficiency is pretty much just a stand-in for running costs and tailpipe pollution, so it makes sense for the test cycle to represent a plausible balance of city and highway driving.
But when it comes to vehicle range, you mostly care about range in the context of long distance driving. What matters is highway cruising efficiency, not some emissions-focused test cycle. So when judging the range of an EV, it should be as simple as highway efficiency multiplied by usable battery capacity.
It's not enough of a difference to account for the range deficit. Add on 12.6 miles for the Model Y and 7.3 miles for the Mach E. The Mustang still comes out on top:
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1131706_tesla-saves-mor...
> But when it comes to vehicle range, you mostly care about range in the context of long distance driving.
Yes, the Mach E does it better.
> What matters is highway cruising efficiency
No. What matters is how far you can drive for the money you spent.
My point was about efficiency, not range. Range can easily be made higher by putting in a bigger battery, which is precisely what Ford did here. Quoting from your own citation: "Keep in mind that the Tesla Model Y is more efficient than the Mach E but it has a smaller battery. Its battery pack is 75 kWh nominal. The battery pack in the Mach E is quite large, it's basically 99 kWh nominal."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSmSiOo-v8s&t=61s
Note that the above are nominal (i.e. physical) battery capacities. Ford generally promotes the usable capacity of the battery, which is 88 kWh. The equivalent usable capacity of the Tesla battery is unknown, but it's likely to be a similar fraction.
You correctly point out that what matters is how far you can drive for the money you spent. I agree. When you add up the money you spent on electricity to fill up the battery, then the Model Y goes further per dollar spent on electricity.
It isn't unknown and it's not a similar fraction. It's 73 kWh usable in the Model Y:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYxTJzZ5sJY
A better question is why does Tesla not reveal such a basic detail in its marketing.
> When you add up the money you spent on electricity to fill up the battery, then the Model Y goes further per dollar spent on electricity.
You aren't going to see much benefit from that. The difference is 6%.
The Mustang Mach E is thousands of dollars cheaper than the Model Y with the current incentives that it qualifies for. The California Route 1 trim is cheaper even without incentives and gets even more range because it's rear wheel drive. That's a lot of charging to make up the difference.
Nonetheless, even if we accept your logic, your point remains a weird one. The vehicle with a 88 kWh "usable" capacity goes a little bit further on the highway compared to the vehicle with a 73 kWh "usable" capacity. Is this supposed to be a surprise to anyone?
My point was about efficiency, not range. Range can easily be made higher by putting in a bigger battery, which is precisely what Ford did here. Quoting from your own citation: "Keep in mind that the Tesla Model Y is more efficient than the Mach E but it has a smaller battery." That was my point. You're making another point and I'm not disagreeing with it.
It isn't weird that car buyers consider how much the car will cost them.
> Is this supposed to be a surprise to anyone?
This has all been a surprise to you. You're not across the detail but that's okay. Now you know more.
Most reviews also note that tesla clings to their bullshit remaining range number until the battery is near depletion then suddenly drops. Other EVs have a remaining distance gauge that closely matches actual remaining range.
our 2019 100D promised 491 kilometres of electrically-powered zero emission motoring while the Porsche’s said the Taycan would only be able to manage 345 km.
the Porsche had almost exactly delivered its expected range — 342 km according to our calculations, versus its original 345-km claim — the Model S was all but as dead as a door-nail at 355 klicks. For the record, the Tesla underperformed its predicted range by some 136 kilometres, or negative 27 per cent, while the Taycan exceeded its EPA rating by 15 klicks (more than four per cent).
Also, surprisingly actual road mileage is better in the Mach-e too[1].
Tesla felt like a car built around the software and ford felt like a car with the software as an afterthought. But I like driving cars (drive a manual right now), so, don’t really care as much about the software as others.
[1] https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-range-and-cons...
The stations seems to cost a few hundred thousand dollars.
So they have a lead, but it's roughly a billion dollars (or maybe 2) to build out something similar, that isn't going to take decades.
There are tens of thousands of places that might install a couple high power chargers (restaurants and similar). Doesn't take that many of them to add a lot of capacity, even if it isn't spaced out quite as well.
Telsa also is the only car manu. was access to enough batteries to ship car in en masse. All the the companies making evs are significantly limited by batteries. Finally teslas have much better energy efficiency/mile. 800v charging and car systems is one area tesla is behind (they are 400v).
I would expect battery production capacity to be somewhat lumpy (with big shifts when new mines or factories open). That can take a long time and I haven't looked at where things are, but it also means that there can be a very sudden shift.
Also Tesla has two full production lines for the station gear. One in Shanghai and one in Buffalo NY. Electrify America is a hodgepodge of 4 different suppliers gear.
It's sort of neutral that there's more than one manufacturer of the other chargers, if the chargers work well with vehicles it doesn't matter if they come from 15 factories or 2.
Tesla clearly has a lead. My point is that it is unlikely to be durable.
Long term? While I don't feel confident hazarding a guess when the ICE–EV inflection point will occur, I expect that inflection point to be marked by a series of corporate collapses as the transition (or indeed the failure to transition) ultimately bankrupts them.
https://insideevs.com/news/389891/exclusive-interview-electr...
“Electrify America currently uses units made by ABB, BTC, Signet, and Efacec. Every time they have a software or hardware update, it has to be done on all four brands, and they don't always all work the same afterward. Fitezek has to work out the kinks with all four partners and they all respond on different timelines. I could see that this was clearly a pain point for him.”
That isn't true today, never mind the future. If you want range to dollars then the Chevy Bolt is hard to beat. Especially with deals like this:
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/chevy-bolt-ev-available-f...
It's also important to consider real world miles versus paper miles. Tesla's EPA range figures are inflated. On paper, the Tesla Model Y should have more range than the Ford Mustang Mach E. But in real world driving the Mach E has the greater range: