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Comment by mdorazio | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of where you stand on whether this is the ideal truck for your particular use case, it's worth noting that Ford really nailed the general market aspect of this truck. It filled all 200,000 preorders in a few months, and has so much proven demand that they're expanding production lines. Hats off to Ford for taking a proven platform and electrifying it at a reasonable price without trying to be edgy (Cybertruck) or cater to a luxury niche (Rivian).

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It made me think of Apple's strategy with the first M1 computers; put ARM in proven, already beloved designs.

I'd love to have an electric vehicle and really like the idea of powering the house in the event of outages. Brilliant!

About those 200k reservations-- I wonder if all those people have assessed their garage space. I've owned an F150, they are huge.

In fact it appears that Ford is the one assessing garage spaces. The 4x4 Supercrew will fit in a standard American-sized single garage door [1]. The only question is length. I measured my garage and have talked to many F150 owners. The 5.5’ bed leaves inches to space in the average garage, and people set up a system to park them - tennis ball hanging from ceiling, parking block on the ground, etc. My own garage has a ceiling-mounted, motion-activated adjustable laser pointer above each parking space, which seems incredibly ridiculous, but hey, I’m a newcomer to this whole suburbs thing.

[1] https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America...

In my old house (built in 98) I had a 2000 F150. It fit in the garage, but barely. Garage was 20 foot deep, with a cement ledge of a couple feet where it attached to the house. I had to back the truck in, the back tires would bump against the ledge, and there was about 1 inch clearance on the back and front bumpers.

Okay so how many will they ship in 2022? 2023?

Everyone is coming out with an awesome BEV but no one other than Tesla ship any volume.

Rivian shipped under 1000 in 2021. Chevy stopped basically all shipments due to cars exploding. In 2022 I think the new Cadallic Escalade is coming, which had rave reviews but I am suspecting will be < 10k units.

Almost doesn’t matter how good these EV alternatives are if they can’t ship 100k units in the US.

>Almost doesn’t matter how good these EV alternatives are if they can’t ship 100k units in the US.

Rivian is basically a startup, they shouldn't be lumped in with everyone else's capabilities. As for the existing brands, I don't think it's because they're not capable. They're still printing money from their current vehicles so they're slowly rolling over engineering resources and funding to the EV side of things. The EV truck market is basically non-existent. Rivian is realistically the only manufacturer who has to worry about competition for the next few years. The F-Series generated $42 billion in revenue for 2019[1] without any EV powertrains offered. If Ford put 100% of their engineering manpower and funds towards EV's tomorrow they would cripple themselves.

[1]https://thenewswheel.com/ford-f-series-42-billion-revenue-20...

1) 150K/year production rate by mid-2023 just for the Lightning.

2) Millions of non-Tesla EVs are sold every year. Tesla is not the market leader in all regions.

3) The US is not the world's largest EV market. We're less important than Europe or China to car manufacturers when it comes to EVs.

4) GM EVs outsold Tesla EVs last year in China.

> 4) GM EVs outsold Tesla EVs last year in China.

I assume you mean in units sold rather than revenue acquired via EV sales? Because what GM is selling in China is just one step above a golf cart and can’t bring much money in. Also, I wonder if the product is more SAIC than GM, these are still Chinese majority owned JVs after all.

Why would it be relevant to talk in terms of market revenue in this case?

Because a near golf cart at $6k selling twice as many units as a model 3 at $40-50k isn’t very relevant either.

In what sense isn't it relevant? I still feel this is too focused on business and revenue against real value to society. Is a US$ 40-50k Model 3 more valuable to society, as a whole, than 10 simpler EV the size of a golf cart being used by people who can't afford a US$ 40-50k car?

> than 10 simpler EV the size of a golf cart being used by people who can't afford a US$ 40-50k car

You are looking at totally different markets. The model 3 is going to big cities, replacing ICE Toyotas and Hondas, fairly big cars for a middle class that wouldn't tolerate driving around in a golf cart (nor would such cars probably be allowed in those cities). Then we have small towns and rural areas where the $6k car is targeted. They wouldn't be interested in a model 3 either, nor would they be interested in an ICE Toyota Camry.

It’s still an ICE vehicle being taken off the road. Good enough in many cases.

Yes, but the comparison with the Tesla cars is not relevant.

> 4) GM EVs outsold Tesla EVs last year in China.

That's technically true but very misleading. GM owns a 44% stake in SAIC-GM-Wuling[1] which manufactures the Hongguang Mini EV. The Hongguang Mini costs $4,162-$5,607, seats four people, has a 17.4hp motor, and 75-106 miles of range. Its top speed is 62mph. It does not support fast charging so it can only add 12.5 miles of range per hour.

The Hongguang Mini is too unsafe to be sold in the US. It has no airbags and performs horribly in crash tests.[2] The battery pack also has minimal safety features[3] and no thermal management, meaning it will degrade quickly in hot climates and can be destroyed by below-freezing temperatures.

In short: A company that GM partially owns sold more roided-up golf carts than Tesla sold cars.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC-GM-Wuling

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-coIUMHp4g

3. https://www.winackbattery.com/news/Internal-Structure-of-SGM...

Hard to outsell someone in China who already has 4 factories when you don't have a factory on the same continent...

China is where Tesla's largest, highest production rate factory is located.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Shanghai

Highest theoretical production rate, they literally just started pumping out vehicles with any volume within the past year. Fremont has the highest production rate, where are you getting your information?

How long have GM had factories in China?

> "General Motors Co. traces its [Chinese] roots back to 1908. GM has 10 joint ventures, two wholly owned foreign enterprises and more than 58,000 employees in China." - From their website

> Fremont has the highest production rate, where are you getting your information?

It's in the link I already provided. Here's another source:

https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/giga-shanghai-november-2021...

Highest annualized rate, aka if they are operating at peak efficiency then it's the highest production plant. Fremont is still outpacing Shanghai in terms of volume total.

Your original comment that GM pumped out more EVs than Tesla in China is obvious since Tesla has just begun their production volume out of Shanghai with any scale, so not sure the point you were trying to make. With Berlin coming online soon too, Tesla is going to have a much bigger footprint in the EU/Asia combined.

Matt (parent) is a Tesla employee. It's strange how you weren't aware of your employer's largest factory existing upthread, but think its production numbers are also "obvious" to everyone.

Read into it as you wish but I was responding to your outlandish analysis with an equally outlandish one.

VW shipped more electric vehicles in Europe than Tesla.

Source? Tesla model 3 seems to be outselling all others by a large margin. https://www.statista.com/statistics/972845/electric-vehicles...

And December sales Tesla is still #1 https://cleantechnica.com/files/2022/01/Europe-Electric-Vehi...

Clean technica agrees that VW ships more. VW has more brands and models. Tesla model 3 may be the top seller, but it's one of only 2 models that Tesla has with significant volume. For instance Audi is a VW group company too. Together they have ~5 of the top 20 EVs.

[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2021/12/30/15-of-auto-sales-in-eur...

Volkswagen had 25.9% of the European EV market in 2021:

https://eu-evs.com/bestSellers/ALL/Groups/Year/2021

Volkswagen owns many automative brands (VW, Audi, Skoda, SEAT, Porsche, etc.) so sales are split across more brands and models:

https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/group.html

> Everyone is coming out with an awesome BEV but no one other than Tesla ship any volume.

The volume issues with Tesla in its initial days are well known.

I think Ford can step up.

> Almost doesn’t matter how good these EV alternatives are if they can’t ship 100k units in the US.

The US EV market is one third the size of the European and Chinese EV markets:

https://www.ev-volumes.com/country/total-world-plug-in-vehic...

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