Hacker News Reader

Comment by tootie | Hacker News Reader

It's unbelievable that the established auto makers are just falling further and further behind on EVs while Tesla is opening the market wider and wider.

View on HN

The Ford F-150 Lightning is about to drop. VW group is making massive investments in EVs. BMWs vision is to be the premier green automaker by 2030. Don't act like these companies are still sitting on their hands.

In < 5 years from now, the best selling EV will be the F-150 Lightning.

I don't know about that. Sure, the F-150 is a nice option but what is Ford doing in terms of self driving. Tesla is tackling multiple issues at the same time, most car companies playing catch up usually just care about the EV part but not the self driving aspect. In 5 years Tesla will still be the dominant EV imo because feature wise their cars will be so far ahead of everyone else.

I think the main goal of EV's is to be more environmentally friendly. Self driving doesn't contribute to that goal and i don't think it's a thing that will make or break these other manufacturer's efforts.

The trailing manufacturers aren’t building EVs primarily to be environmentally friendly. They are trying to compete for revenue of the growing market.

And also self driving does allow for resource efficiency, which is environmentally friendly. Self driving cars have the potential to drive closer, making better use of limited road surface area and reducing traffic (which reduces emissions of other cars in the same jam). It also allows for fewer cars to serve more passengers.

I think it will be a big factor. Yes, they are two separate things in the car industry. But if I have a choice between two EVs, one with self driving and another with no self driving you bet I'm going to pick the one with self driving. And I'm willing to bet a lot of others will too.

Self-driving does contribute, because the other cars stay parked 98% of the time. Why build cars and batteries and not use them as much as possible?

You also can't discount the Supercharger network, which gives Tesla a huge advantage over every other auto manufacturer.

Tesla will open their charging network to all brands soon:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/28/22596337/tesla-supercharg...

Closed charging networks with proprietary plugs don't help you as a driver. It's just dumb, incompatible infrastructure.

Imagine if you had different electrical sockets for every different brand of appliance in your house. Imagine if you had to used branded fuel for your particular brand of ICE vehicle. It'd be stupid.

Tesla already uses CCS type 2 combo in Europe. They've released a CCS type 1 combo adapter in Korea, but the adapter will not charge as fast as having a CCS inlet on the car.

With the addition of CCS plugs on their chargers in North America and with the eventual availability of the CCS adapter to support legacy vehicles, hopefully Tesla will join the rest of the industry and start putting CCS type 1 combo inlets on the cars in North America soon.

They already offer it to a lot of manufacturers but they mostly refuse. Prime example of this was Porsche. I still can't believe they turned down that offer.

That's history. It's over. CCS won industry support, the Tesla plug didn't.

Ford is going to have bad margins on f150. It’s going to require bigger packs and have less range.

> Sure, the F-150 is a nice option but what is Ford doing in terms of self driving.

In 5 years time, Tesla won't have solved self-driving, there'll be few distinguishing features between Tesla's self driving and whatever Ford will call its advanced driver-assist tech. If self-driving is completely solved by then, Ford will have the option of licensing Waymo's Driver platform (I predict that Waymo will not venture into large-scale vehicle manufacturing)

Bold claim. How large will the Lightning's charging network be in 5 years? I have multiple local superchargers, whereas my only nearby high speed third party charger frequently has broken stalls.

It will be as big as Tesla's plus all the other charging networks combined because the Lightning uses CCS Type 1 Combo. Tesla will open their network to all other brands soon:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/28/22596337/tesla-supercharg...

They'll start in Europe first because Tesla already uses CCS in Europe.

Keep in mind that people routinely overestimate change in the short run but underestimate it in the long run.

Changing those traditional carmakers is difficult, which makes them appear fall short of your expectations of the short run. And I do expect many won't make it. But those that can change will be a force to be reckoned with in the long run.

That's partly my point though. The big guys all realized which way the wind was blowing about 7 years after it should have been obvious and are still figuring out what to invest in. Tesla could barely get a car off it's assembly line not too long ago and they have most of the market share. They should have caught up a while ago instead of making promises for 2030.

No, it won’t. People who drive f150s want a super-duty, not a tesla. They want dualies, lift kits. I’m sure Ford did their market research to make sure it would sell. The bean counters also confidently predicted trump would lose in ‘16. But I predicted he would win and I predict the lightning will lose. Plus you’ve forgotten the most important part: Ford fucking sucks. They can’t make a good EV, apparently not even on paper and certainly not in any physical sense. They have no charging infrastructure. All they have is an army of slack jawed idiots who buy Ford vehicles on principle.

> But I predicted he would win and I predict the lightning will lose.

You made one correct prediction in a completely different domain 5 years ago, and this is relevant how?

Keep in mind that the F150 has been the most popular vehicle in the US for many decades. You might be in a bubble where it seems irrelevant but those "slack jawed idiots" buy a lot of vehicles.

> The Ford F-150 Lighting is about to drop. (…) In < 5 years from now, the best selling EV will be the F-150 Lighting.

Copied from another comment…

> They're planning on making:[1]

> 2022: 15,000

> 2023: 55,000

> 2024: 80,000

[1] https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/ford-f-150-lightning-e...

So I don’t really see how you think the F-150 lightning will be the best selling EV in < 5 years when they don’t even plan on making 200k of them in the first three years.

> The Ford F-150 Lightning is about to drop.

So? Where will Ford get the massive amount of batteries? You understand that until like 6 month ago, the CEO of Ford claims that batteries were no issues and they had to do zero investment into batteries. They said the they will simply buy on the open market.

Once they actually tried that the realized they were delusional and now made a dedicated partnerships to build their own dedicated plants.

Pickup market is 2M vehicles a year, Ford will not even be producing 100k F-150E by 2024.

Tesla in comparison is in construction of building a factory (including a dedicated battery and battery cathode factory) that should be able to produce 500k a year.

> VW group is making massive investments in EVs.

They are second in the market and their CEO just had a 'panic' meeting because they can see how they are not catching up as fast as they hopped.

Elon Musk literally was just invited to speak to VW managers to help them out.

> BMWs vision is to be the premier green automaker by 2030.

And I'm gone have body like Pitt in Fight Club by 2030. BMW is not even building dedicated EV platforms yet. They are years behind. Let them actually produce and sell some BEV before they make big claims.

> In < 5 years from now, the best selling EV will be the F-150 Lightning.

Tesla will be selling around 1M Model Y by then, maybe more. There is 0 chance this is the case.

And Cybertruck alone is very likely gone beat F-150 Lighting.

Is it though? Tesla had a vision for EVs from the very beginning and most of the industry really didn't believe Tesla would see the light at the end of the tunnel, so they put off becoming competitors. Now Tesla is hitting an incredible stride and the rest of the car manufacturers are scrambling to put something together.

Even so it seems the administration pretends they don't exist [1] or even wants to take their marketshare [2]. The established automakers have a cozier relationship with the established politicians I guess.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-05/biden-snu...

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/14/tesla-toyota-and-honda-criti...

> The established automakers

You misspelled "unions".

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/chrysler/2021/10/19/s...

This is completely unsubstantiated. In 2020, Tesla had about 1/4 of the EV market and 1/6 if you count plug-in hybrids. This is big but not overwhelming considering they were the first to market with a serious product.

I have not seen any recent market share for 2021 but given onslaught of new products from every legacy car maker, I see no reason to believe they are falling behind. If anything, they are catching up.

https://insideevs.com/news/486325/world-top-ev-automotive-gr...

But, Biden praised GM and Ford for leading the EV revolution! /s

Of course Elon and the pro Tesla media spun it that way. Biden praised GM and Ford as two of the _traditional automakers_ who had showed the most willingness to embrace the EV revolution.

Biden praised everyone expect Tesla (GM, Ford and Stelantis). For leading EV, lol.

This makes zero sense, given how these traditional automakers are dragging their feets. Unless they expect to, once again, be helped by the government when things will get ugly.

Honestly, it makes some amount of sense.

Being generous, the thinking might be that you praise the slow kids who struggle to learn when they are successful in order to motivate and encourage them to keep going. The kid who's a natural talent and highly self motivated doesn't necessarily need accolades from authority figures.

Still feels cheap, and only a fool wouldn't see how ridiculous the praise is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com