Elon Musk talks Tesla: "We dug our own grave with the Cybertruck"
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I've been strolling around Shenzen for the last 2 weeks. By my estimation, roughly 50%-70% of cars on the road are already EVs. 100% of my Didi (China's Uber) rides have been EVs. I could be wrong but Shenzen might have banned new ICE cars already.
I went into a mall in Shenzen and noticed that Huawei had a store and they made electric cars.[0] This was a shock to me because I always thought that Huawei was a phone and networking company. I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of the interior and the build quality of the Huawei cars. The build quality felt better than Teslas.
The shock factor is that a phone/networking company is capable of pushing out decent quality EVs already. It seems like there is a huge build up of EV talent here along with an unmatched supply chain to mass manufacture EV cars.
So while Tesla is struggling to mass produce the cybertruck, China doesn't seem like it's having any issues mass producing EVs. Heck, US media made me think that mass manufacturing EVs is as hard as building the large hadron collider. But in China, every random company and grandma seem to be designing and producing EVs.
PS. It's not just Shenzen. I also went to more rural places in Guangdong and there were still around 20-30% EVs on the road. Guangzhou, another Tier 1 city next to Shenzen was probably around 30 - 40% EVs by my estimation.
[0]It seems like Huawei makes the platform of the car I saw (Aito M7) but the brand of the car is Aito.
What is weirdly missing is Japanese hybrid/ice/electric cars. They are almost non-existent in Shenzen despite dominating in most areas of the world. Also, I can't recall seeing any Korean cars here.
There were a few Toyata ICE cars in the rural areas I visited but it seems like they're going away fast.
Some popular brands going fully electric in some years, most aiming for 50-80% fully electric before 2030. BMW/Porsche, politicians and population still wanting ICE cars.
Chinese brands are arriving, they are being slowly accepted, mainly because of their good price. Not hearing good things about the dealerships though. Dealerships are not getting replacement parts or enough support from China basically.
With ICE, the engine is the industry. With EVs, the secret sauce is the battery. Not saying the other parts are easy. But the core of the value add has shifted upstream. And in that domain, China absolutely dominates.
> ... has about 70% of the world’s production capacity of cathodes (the part of the cell that receives electrons) and more than 80% of anodes (the part that releases electrons on discharge), and well over half of electrolyte and separator output. Those parts come together to make a lithium-ion battery, more than three quarters of which are made in China and mostly by just two firms — Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. and BYD Co.
Tesla using CATL batteries in their entry level Model 3 is a huge breakthrough for Chinese battery manufacturers.
No points to drivetrain?
None that I've seen. Or at least, none that are proprietary to a single battery electric manufacturer to the extent of posing a moat such as engines or batteries. (This is partly a curse of electric motors' versatility compared with ICE engines, which don't scale to alternate applications as easily.)
China, despite being a major oil producer, is still a net importer [1]. America is a net exporter [2]. To a significant degree, this underlies the cultures' divergent views towards EVs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_China
[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-poised-become-net...
I asked a few DiDi drivers why they only use EVs. They basically told me that oil is expensive and electricity is cheaper. It's only profitably to drive EVs as DiDis because of that.
China is a net importer of oil.
100% of my DiDi rides in Shenzen and around 80% in rural areas were EVs.
If China could drive EV adoption via gas prices alone, you would think they wouldn't have provided so many incentives for buying EVs.
I suppose there is a difference in driving volume between the average commuter and a DiDi driver. The gas vs electricity price can add up.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/270537/forecast-for-elec...
I would however agree that they do now currently dominate the market for EVs (including the high end and mid market), and that dominance will only expand over the next decade. I can't see any way for EU or US to reverse it now, but they could keep up better if they tried.
And EV companies in China are not magical, and most arent incredibly good at EV manifacture. Many of them are losing money just as in the West. And there is consolidation in that market, just as in the West.
And EV account for like 25% of new cars, so they are not that far ahead. And of course, in China they often have much smaller cars, so pure numbers arent a great comparison depending on what you are analysing.
The highest Gigafactory output is Shanghai, by far. To me, this demonstrates China's EV manufacturing prowess, if we didn't know already.
>And EV companies in China are not magical, and most arent incredibly good at EV manifacture. Many of them are losing money just as in the West. And there is consolidation in that market, just as in the West.
I'm not saying that many of them aren't losing money. What shocked me the most was the relentless pace of EV adoption in China along with just how many different companies design and make EVs there.
>And EV account for like 25% of new cars, so they are not that far ahead. And of course, in China they often have much smaller cars, so pure numbers arent a great comparison depending on what you are analysing.
The 25% seem to match my observation in non-Shenzen areas, which I mentioned in my original post.
But the 25% isn't what is impressive. It's the pace of adoption. SCMP reported the 25% number in May 2023, which is probably where you got it from. But it was only 12.5% in 2022. It doubled within one year. Would it impress you if it's 50% in 2024?
Doesn't Shenzhen have similar regulations as Beijing? If they are providing different and larger quotas for people to register EVs, you'll see more EVs simply because that is what the government is allowing people to buy.
In my opinion, it isn't what the government is doing to encourage people to buy EVs that is impressive. It's the fact that they can fill the demand.
Its the first costume built factory. And has been expanded. Its hard for the others to catch up.
Aren't China produced Model 3/Y still very popular in China? See https://insideevs.com/news/685905/china-tesla-retail-sales-a....
Chinese build quality is getting better, but they still have "problems" producing cars, you just don't hear about them as much as Tesla these days. You'll still see a lot of foreign brands on the road (even if they are made in China due to tariffs). Those government officials aren't going to slum it and not get driven around in Black Audis.
It's the future.
EVs are definitely the future. But SZ's adoption is a bit biased, I wouldn't read too much into it.
And I am saying that as owner of Skoda Enyaq.
It’s easier to build more nuclear power plants than to import more oil in the long term.
.... Lol, Elon proving he's a "visionary" that can't see the relative size difference between a Lego and fucking body panels
"We gotta have nanometer accuracy, transistors are way cheaper if they can do it so can we!"
Tool and Die Maker: "Just finished honing all the stamps and dies to < 10 micron accuracy."
Industrial Engineer: "Got it. I have scheduled inspection of all stamps to occur after every 5 units produced to keep an eye on wear."
Assembly Line Worker: "These panel gaps are still all over the place."
Piece of Sheet Metal: "lol, I like to crinkle in unexpected and erratic ways!"
We dug our own grave.
You are fired.
He/She is fired.
You are fired.
You are fired.
They are fired.
It just feels like to me that this car model will become a drag on Tesla both in terms of capital investment and a drain on the engineers time to iron out all the problems.
Couldn't they have kept the weird shape but just used the same material as with the other cars. At least you would have a lot more re-use in that scenario.
Tesla has effectively one product: Model Y, which is a variant of an existing model, the Model 3, introduced in 2017.
Cybertruck is the only new thing that had prospects of mass sales. The Semi is handmade in small quantities. No new Roadster, apparently. If anything were as far along as Cybertruck was a year ago, we would be awash in hype for it.
Tesla has a product pipeline issue. The reason that is important is that Tesla took EVs seriously when other car makers did not, which gave tesla a multi-year head start. But now some competitors like Hyundai/Kia have broad product lines and are bringing out second-generation prodcuts.
"Musk made much of this at the time, claiming that the body and bed of a conventional truck did nothing useful. `They are carried like cargo, like a sack of potatoes,' he said in 2019."
This is wrong headed. Indeed, the "body and bed" are not part of the stressed chassis in a conventional truck. This is a feature: trucks are made like this to isolate high stress to the frame. Trucks are expected to deal with enormous loads; certain medium duty trucks have towing capacities over 3.5x their own mass, and the frame actively flexes under these conditions. The last thing you want is a bunch of coachwork bending around with the frame.
They're also designed thus to adapt: beds and cabs vary based on model, and can be subsequently modified. That's part of the value proposition of a truck.
So this isn't so much a truck as an electric Hummer: the ultimate embiggening of the passenger car.