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Comment by jokoon | Hacker News Reader

When are they going to build a small, cheap electric car? Model S, X, Y, 3 all those cars are heavy tanks.

I'm quite tired of those companies always aiming for rich customers. If Musk was really for the environment, he would try to make those cars affordable.

I guess Tesla doesn't have the production capacity to make a high production cheaper car yet?

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They are beyond production capacity with "rich cars" (IMO Y and 3 especially are firmly middle class cars). Why would they go into a market that's even higher volume and lower margins when they can't cover the more profitable market demand ?

If anything, other manufacturers are trying to get out of that market segment because regulation is making it too unprofitable to be in (eg. mandatory safety features, CO2 emissions rates for ICEs), a lot of A segment is not getting refreshed in EU/is being discontinued. You will probably see small "expensive" cars like Electric Mini and Smart cars.

$60k electric cars are mostly an upper middle class thing. I haven’t met anyone who is under $100k/yr individual income and bought a Tesla. (Excluding bank of mom and dad)

It’s not a civic.

There are tonnes of reasonably priced PHEVs from other manufacturers, that are IMO great choices for people who simply want reliable, flexible cars that use very little gas. For example the PHEV versions of the Toyota RAV4, Kia Niro, Hyundai Santa Fe and Ioniq, Honda Clarity, Ford Escape, etc. Fully electric for city driving, gas when you need it for long trips, reasonably priced, from manufacturers who have been making reliable cars for decades. More practical and generally cheaper than fully electric cars.

Tesla are a luxury brand, and they know it, I think they’d have trouble competing in the more mass market/practical space. They’ll probably move there eventually, but I’m not surprised they’re sticking with their more luxury niche for now, they’re probably not yet capable of keeping costs as low as traditional car makers, while keeping quality high. They’re basically still learning how to build cars at scale.

> When are they going to build a small, cheap electric car?

plenty of good cheap Ev... coming from China:

1- Ora Cat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14XESFFx46M

2- Leapmotor T03

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkOqIEUAlw4

There was a recent Sandy Munro video, where he basically stated that because the Chinese started on the EV bandwagon much earlier (due to executive fiat) They simply have more options...not because they are any more genius, but simply because they had the time and the drive to actually work on the damn thing.

He was called to consult on various cars, and by seeing the progress of their operations, he can see that the Chinese have strengthened their supply lines, removed a lot of the kinks and ramped up production and are getting good with design and fit/finish quality.

If you want cheap EV, look to China

There is talk of a Model 2 being exactly that car. Personally I'm happy with my Bolt(random fires notwithstanding) and find it fills that niche. If the Model 2 is out next year when my lease expires I'd consider it, but I suspect I'll stick with the Bolt since it will be fairly mature by then. I don't like the idea of buying a newly designed vehicle before the faults have been shaken out.

Well, the reality is that they also have to create and run a profitable business, as well, which they would have failed at if they started with cheaper vehicles. It seems likely they'll go downmarket eventually, once they have the scale to survive off of the lower margins that come with cheaper cars.

Exactly. They won't lower their prices and margins until their months of backlog clear up either because of less customers buying at that price point or more cars being build.

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