Feels like anyone going head to head with Tesla is in for a hard time. It must be very hard to compete with the cachet of Tesla and the speed with which they improve their vehicles.
Do any of these actually operate near 350kw with any production cars yet?
Anyways, it's a good thing for the whole electric vehicle ecosystem that multiple charging options become available. That multiple companies are competing on charging infrastructure is excellent!
> Do any of these actually operate near 350kw with any production cars yet?
Not yet. The Porsche Taycan is launching with 250 kw charging (with 350 kw charging to come in future) but I haven't seen any information on its charge curve. The Tesla Model 3 can charge at 250kw to about 20% state of charge and then it progressively drops off.
Would that just be locations or actual stalls ? Because the number of actual stalls I most often saw here in Germany from e.g Ionity is limited to 2. Which is a no-go for me.
I think Tesla's main problem now is that the major car companies will be releasing multiple EVs across multiple brands year after year. It's going to be difficult for Tesla to keep up.
I.e. the Mercedes CEO? Also for the other two.... really? Who t.f. wants voice control in their car? Better lights are nice, sure... but it's a minor improvement (most people drive most of the time by day, and even by night, all car lights are "good enough". I paid 2K EUR to get better lights in my car, and they're great when I have to use them, but even I wouldn't have picked my car based on this criteria.... I even hesitated to give the extra money!)
Mercedes has a voice controlled GPS navigator in older C models. It never understood where you want to go and the text input is atrouciously useless, just like the TV on screen keyboards. If you had it, you'd probably ended up using a paper map since it has way better ergonomics.
> Better lights are nice, sure... but it's a minor improvement
I love my fancy $10k headlights, they're a huge improvement when speeding through euro highways in the middle of the night. There's just nowhere for the cops (or anything else) to hide.
Yeah.. I've been hearing this since the Tesla Roasters came out in 2008. Yet, nothing in the market has yet to compete with the 2012 Model S when it comes to range/performance.
Tesla isn't the only one making poor tire choices, the BMW G12 came with awful noisy all season run-flats. At least they were rated for appropriate speeds though.
Given that Tesla isn't even trying to make nice cars the bad tires seem far less surprising.
I myself was waiting for the Taycan, its looks stunning, and is very impressive, but on pure specs, its actually the same size as a Model 3 Performance, and a little slower... So I just ordered a Model 3 Performance. I currently drive a Model S.
You don't buy a Porsche for 0 to 100 performance as there are better cars on the market for that. You buy a Porsche because you want the fastest track cars that will best any other car on the Nurburgring. The Taycan will be the fastest production electric car on the Ring.
I think there is a very high chance, that it will be, but right now the M3P, is beating even the BMW M3 and Mercedes C63 AMG around tracks, as shown by Top Gear and others. I do however think that people buy them, because they are performance luxury cars, with a great interior, and great features. Thats why I was looking at it anyway. Unfortunately because of the danish tax system, and when the car will be available, the Model 3 Performance, makes much better sense for me..
Honestly, the Model 3 and the Taycan will probably be miles apart. Some of my own reasons for wanting to wait for the Porsche instead of getting a Tesla:
Handling: There is no way the Tesla will handle similarly to a Porsche. Steering feel, cornering, road feel. Porsche is the king of handling for a reason, and I'm anxious to see what they can accomplish with the low CG of an electric vehicle.
Consistency: The Porsche can keep doing pulls from 100% down to 10% charge consistently with no performance degradation. This was actually Porsche's main focus, an actual electric track car.
Fit and Finish: Again, anybody who's seen both a Porsche and a Tesla up close will know it's not even a competition.
Charge Time: The Porsche will charge twice as fast as a Tesla, which (assuming you can find a fast enough charger) is pretty cool for quick recharges.
Porsche occupies a very interesting part of the market. At the low end it competes with BMW/Mercedes.
At the top end (Turbo S/GT3/GT2) it starts to compete with Aston Martin, then McLaren, then Ferrari/Lamborghini/etc. You can spend £45k for a basic Cayman up to £180k+ for a heavily optioned 911 Turbo S and more for lower volume/limited editions like the GT3, GT2 etc. (ignoring eg the 918)
So where the Taycan as a range places within that is quite relevant. All the signs at the moment are that it will price similar to the 911 ie probably starting at £65-70kish. But we only have one data point which is the £130k for the Turbo trim level.
The all-wheel drive dual motor car it's going to be around 130k USD. With that amount of money you could easily buy now any Model 3 (which could cover the day-to-day) AND another internal combustion engine car. I mean: okay, you'll have to maintain two cars vs. one but still.
This is definitely the most likely scenario. This has wider implications beyond car delivery, of course. If Chinese EV cars are acceptable to American consumers, then a lot has happened between now and then which is going to have serious impact on global trade.
They aren't competitors for the Model 3 but rather a Model Y.
And not sure why people are so obsessed with range. It's the megapixels/megahertz spec nonsense again. People don't buy ICE cars based purely on MPG but also for exterior/interior design, quality, comfort, brand, support, seating capacity etc and most importantly what the car says about you as a person.
People buy ICE cars knowing the petrol delivery infrastructure means they'll never run out of gas on a long trip. People are wary of short range electric vehicles because they might not find a charger in time, or the chargers they do find might be in use, and then they'll be stranded.
Range anxiety is definitely a thing, especially if you've never driven an EV and have heard it exists. The issue is a non-issue for most Tesla buyers who have home charging.
The situation will hopefully resolve itself unquestionably in the next 2-3 years.
Home charging isn't an option for a lot of people who don't have a garage or a driveway. We're going to see a lot of "electric petrol stations" being built very soon - it's already happening... https://fastnedcharging.com/en
I live in Sunderland in the North East of the UK. There is a Supercharger near where I live, but beyond that it's quite sparse - https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/findus#/bounds/65,55,34,-11,d?se... I'd be a bit apprehensive about relying on Superchargers alone if I had a Tesla (not that there's any chance of me owning one ever, I don't earn nearly enough).
The Supercharger network is not going to be a major thing anytime soon in Seattle where we have very cheap hydroelectric power (10c/kWh or less, hence why solar adoption here sucks [the weather isn't helping much either though it's less bad than people think]) and a packed city with terribly expensive real estate that makes it uneconomical for Tesla to build out massively in the city (plus our geography is stupid, look at the giant body of water splitting our city in two).
The Supercharger network will be used - and is currently used - to bridge longer commutes fast. Not for intra-city deployment; at least not at the moment.
Tesla considers having a single Supercharger stations as comprehensive? My city has one. A city of 300K + people. We have over 100 gas stations. Superchargers are a nice premium during the early adoption period but as the number of owners rise, its utility drops. Unless Tesla plans on increasing the number of stations by a magnitude, it won't be more than PR.
As a potential EV buyer, what concerns me is that a quoted 200 mile range sounds more like a 100 mile range after five years (so an older battery) in winter (when I'll want heating). That would limit me to driving only 50 miles from my home without having to alter my plans around charging, and I would want to add some contingency so perhaps that'd end up being 30 miles in practice.
Feel free to tell me that I'm being overly pessimistic, but that's how our consumer-hostile marketing culture (in general and not specifically the EV industry) has taught me to be. Rapid battery degradation in typical consumer devices also influences my impression.
Perhaps regularly replacing/refurbishing batteries would help with this. How would this affect the TCO when compared to a gasoline car? I don't know. What's the resale value of an old EV likely to be given the rapid development in the newest models, and how will that affect the TCO? Again, I don't know.
My BMW i3 has an 8 year 80% battery warranty. Tesla does very well with their battery management. Leaf is not so great, but far from 50% at 5 years unless you mistreat it AFAIK.
Yes, winter will reduce range. I had a worst-case trip this year, it was around -18 C outside and I had not had a chance to pre-heat the batteries. Car was 99% charged, showing 200 km range initially. After some 135 km the car showed about 10 km range left, when I finally got to a charger. This was with two passengers, both front seat heaters on, as well as the cabin heater working hard.
If we assume the estimated range left is somewhat accurate, that's about 63% the typical summer range of about 230 km. Had I preheated the batteries it would have been better, though I don't have any numbers.
Resale value is something I worry about too. That's part of the reason I went with an i3 rather than a more expensive Model 3. Though at least here in Norway, I expect EVs to be dominating soon, and with the price of gas I expect ICE resale value will take a hit.
I forgot to mention that it was a round-trip with an ~5 hour stop in the middle, which cooled the car down to well below freezing. So yea, really non-ideal, but these things happen so should be taken into account.
For what it’s worth, my 4.5 year old Model S has lost less than 2% of its original range.
You can’t compare with cheap electronic gadgets. Those push their batteries hard and do nothing to manage their temperature. Some EVs are similarly stupid; the Leaf, for example, is notorious for losing capacity fast. But good EVs will last much longer.
But its number one problem is lack of range. Solid-state batteries with better energy density will solve that problem, but those batteries aren't here yet.
Range/MPG can certainly be a determining factor for many. Many people might even narrow their focus to certain models based on range/mpg and not even look at those that don't check their marks.
That's my experience anyway, maybe you can provide a source that says otherwise?
so for newer/more expensive car with a 200+mile range? yeah, that's probably enough for most people, with enough reserve to get you to a supercharger. I mean, it is a pain, 'cause a lot of people like to park at the supercharger and it gets to be a problem, but geting gas is a pain, too... so sure, if your range is comfortably over 200 miles, for many people, maybe even most Americans, that should be plenty.
but that's the high end. and if they lose 20% range after 5 years, only the 'extended range' variants of the high end cars seem to have more than 200 miles.
As a more typical auto-buyer, (well, more typical than the 200 mile plus new car buyers) I'm looking to buy a car right now, as uber/lyft seem to be about 30% more expensive than they were pre-IPO, once you count the difference in special offers given to me. I've always regarded it as a luxury, but it slowly is getting too expensive for me.
One of the cars under consideration is a used leaf: a 2012 model year or thereabouts. It's an all around reasonable car, it's gone through most of it's depreciation curve, etc.. it's newer than the average car your average American is driving. It's got a usable range around 50 miles. (that's only down like 20% from what it advertised new)
this is... probably fine for me. I don't have charging facilities at home, and installing those in the shared garage would be iffy... would require HOA approval. but I do have (free!) charging facilities at work, 10 miles away.
But I am a bit unusual. I don't particularly like driving, not for daily, utilitarian purposes anyhow. If I buy the thing, as I'll be stepping down from taking uber/lyft everywhere, so I'm already all setup to use trains or airplanes for anything over 20 miles or so, and for that matter, I live with someone that owns a petrol car, so it's all just kinda extra.
but I work with a lot of people (a lot of very highly paid people, the sort who buy nice luxury cars) who have commutes that are more than 50 miles each way - and you usually want enough power that you can go a day without charging.
Now, I also have a bunch of co-workers who have Teslas with extended range packages, and there is some overlap with the long commutes. But... without those extended range packages, that would be pretty iffy. And these are people who have the luxury of replacing their car often; they really don't have to worry about things like battery degradation.
The average American is going to find a 50 mile range unacceptable; the average American would find the 150 mile range of the new base model nissan leaf to be pretty confining, for that matter. I'm gonna go ahead and say that 200 and change is gonna be the minimum for most people, and then only if they can install a charger (I.E. they don't live in an apartment.) or can charge at work.
(my work does tell me not to rely on work charging as my only charge... but eh, if the chargers are full/down one day a week or what have you, uber/lyft probably still has some legs.)
> And not sure why people are so obsessed with range.
Having recently bought an EV, range is one of the primary limitations of EVs and one of the parameters which varies greatly between manufacturers and models.
When you're out of juice you need to be near a charger, and you need to wait a fair bit to recharge compared to an ICE. So naturally you want to buy an EV which has sufficient range that you can do almost all of your driving without thinking about the range.
Tesla's getting into the "good enough" territory for most people but until most EVs are there, range will be one of the key metrics for EVs.
My first EV was an 80 mile Leaf. Now I have a 300 mile Model 3 that I take regular road trips in. To be quite honest, with the range hit in cold weather, (I take the car skiing,) 300 miles per charge just isn't enough.
EVs need about 400-500 miles range in order to have mass adoption. Anything less is delusional.
Yes. New ICE cars have a typical range of 300+ miles today. But most people don't drive 299 miles between filling up - they probably do more like 150 because psychology drives a lot of people towards looking to refill at the next cheap place as soon as they're below half a tank - because noone wants to be stranded because they chanced it then the range meter turned out to be wrong/the place they were planning on refueling turned out to be closed/whatever.
On top of that you can buy ICE cars with 600+ mile range in merely Okish conditions (80-100 litre fuel tank) today as an option. EVs just can't compete with that.
Until they can (and charging infrastructure is such that noone will worry about being able to charge overnight literally anywhere they might choose to go), they'll be competing in a much smaller market.
2) Tesla's big seller is the Model 3 which isn't a competitor for the Audi e-tron and I-Pace. And given the size difference probably isn't a competitor for the Model X either.
3) No one is claiming to be a Tesla killer since no one really has direct 3, X, S, Y competitors. The existing car companies are all off doing their own thing e.g. VW ID.3 (hatchback), Hyundai Kona (mini-SUV), Renault Zoe / Chevy Bolt / Nissan Leaf / BMW i3 (small-car) etc.
I'm not sure if we can talk about segments here. The Audi for example aims squarely for the same premium SUV owners. That they didn't make them larger I suspect is the result of inferior technology. With increased mass and air drag the already modest range would have become laughable.
The Model 3 is cleaning up in Norway, but the new contenders are absolutely "making a dent" with respect to S&X sales. Both the e-tron and I Pace are individually outselling S&X combined to date in 2019.
This is likely due to pent up demand, but it does show that Tesla's absolute domination of the US market hasn't played out in Europe.
If you're interested in widespread EV adoption, this is probably ideal. It's concerning to me that Tesla may have so much mind share that even genuine competitors once they arrive will struggle to sell enough to be profitable.
In which case, the steady state will be legacy auto makers doing the bare minimum as required under emissions legislation. In the EU that's probably ok, but not in the US.
Norway 2019 sales for reference:
Model 3: 10976
VW Golf: 6533
Leaf: 5441
BMW i3: 3671
E-Tron: 3114
I-Pace: 2372
IONIQ: 2168
Zoe: 1775
Model X: 1344
Model S: 969
That might be because Teslas seem relatively easy to set on fire that burns for a long time - that may be of interest to Electric Car owners in Norway (in the case you get stuck and it's cold)
Every electric car slated to arrive has been called a Tesla killer in article after article, sometimes individually, often as a collective.
Several of them are targeting Tesla owners with discounts, ads at superchargers, etc... The companies clearly think they are competing with Tesla, especially since they don't want to compete with themselves (ICE models).
As for doing their own thing, most have a battery shortage and are confined to small cars with relatively small battery packs for now until more batteries are available (none of whom are vertically integrating production).
Nissan Leaf has been on the market with a low price much longer. Sales have slumped since the Model 3 scaled up, news about their battery overheating, and their refusal to produce a vehicle with larger range. It is not a Tesla killer, but was for many a stop-gap solution while waiting for the 3, and Tesla will soon eclipse them in sales. That gap is unlikely to narrow
> Leaf has been on the market with a low price much longer.
So Nissan beat Tesla with a model not only in time to market but also with it's superior price, which resulted so far in selling twice as many cars as Tesla's direct competitors to the Nissan Leaf.
> It is not a Tesla killer
Nothing will ever be if the goalpost is kept moving like that.
Tesla is moving the goalposts by producing more and more electric vehicles that people want to buy.
The Nissan Leaf and Leaf Plus doesn't come into consideration for me because of its pitiful range, the ChADeMO connector and lack of active cooling for the battery pack.
Which happened mostly before the release of the 3. Since then the 3 has dominated, despite being more expensive. The question isn't whether the Leaf is a Tesla killer, the question is whether the 3 is a Leaf killer.
Because they feel they’re safer or cooler. Car companies are able to charge more for them so they’ve been pushing them in every way imaginable. Very weird that you didn’t know this.
A 2 seater Tesla would sell very well. Tesla would make it cool. There are already multiple companies that have recently made very cool designs for 2 seater EVs but failed due to bad leadership and running out of funding.
Unfortunately Elon is set on robotic Uber being the cheaper option.
You’re saying it’s comprable to 3 in size and features, but S&X in price? I really don’t intend to be snarky, but I haven’t seen it, and this would be the implication if what you say is correct.
Wikipedia calls the Model X, I-Pace and Model 3 "Mid-size luxury crossover SUV", "Compact luxury crossover SUV" and "Compact executive car" respectively.
The I-Pace has 8% less length, 8% less height, and 12% less weight than the Model X 90D. The widths are comparable.
The I-Pace has 9% more width, 9% more height, and 15% more weight than the Model 3 Range AWD. The lengths are comparable.
I would say this puts the I-Pace half way between the Model X and the Model 3 in terms of size. In terms of class, I'd say the I-Pace is closer to the Model X, both being luxury crossover SUVs.
More broadly, Jaguar is a historically British company, and Britain's roads and parking spaces are narrower than those in the US, so the truck and full-size SUV classes are much less popular.
So the accurate comparison is the i-Pace and the Model Y. Jaguar beat Tesla to market by 12-18 months in the segment. Will be interesting to see if they can capitalize on the head start.
It compares to the Model Y in size but to the Model X on price. This doesn’t seem like a winning combination.
Edit: that’s a bit too glib. I’m sure it’ll do just fine as a niche product for a certain group of buyers, which is what Jaguar is all about. It’s just not really competing with Tesla, which is trying hard to go after the mass market.
Based on sales, I still consider Tesla a niche. The Camry sells about 3x the Model 3. When you compare the M3/S to all of Nissan/Toyota/Honda/Kia/Hyundai/Mazda/Acura/Infinity/BMW/MB/VW-Audi sales in the US, it's a drop in the bucket. And that's just "imported" cars. Add US automakers and it drops even further.
EDIT- Forgot about Honda and the Korean car makers too.
Sure, the difference is that Tesla is aggressively expanding (sales have been increasing around 100% per year for the past few years) while Jaguar has its niche and is happy to stay there. The I-PACE can sell significantly fewer units than the Model Y (and almost certainly will) while still being successful. And conversely, Tesla sales matching Jaguar’s in the long term would spell doom for Tesla.
Model 3 was the 4th top selling car in the USA when measured by revenue, for 2018 as a whole, assuming this CleanTechnica article managed to estimate the average selling price to reasonable accuracy in January this year.
That's certainly not a drop in the bucket, and I think it's a stretch to call it niche as well. Will be interesting to see how 2019 as a whole turns out; with this ASP, they would dominate by revenue if their delivery numbers were anywhere close to the competition.
This is indeed what many people say. If you sit in in an i-Pace and a model 3, you wouldn't say that they are competition for each other any more than a Ford Focus is competition to a BMW 2-series, they are similar sizes, but very different trims and technology choices. The i-Pace has many options that the 3 doesn't (HUD, matriculates headlights, etc) and the 3 has arguably better self-driving tech, and over the air updates.
Most Tesla fans only count positive things for the 3 though, and so consider the i-Pace and the model 3 direct competition.
Well, model 3 is maybe a bit smaller but they are both more like sporty sedans than the model x.
Your comment might also be why the model 3 is selling like hot-cakes at the moment. The model 3 is also very efficient compared to the i-pace and charges faster. One sentiment that might be true regarding what you value in your car is that the model 3 is a better EV and the i-pace is a better car.
As for size, I recently got to compare my model x to my cousins i-pace and the internal size difference is quite substantial. The i-pace is however a very fun car to drive and it doesn't require that you go full 17" screen and strip the physical buttons. Some people value that too.
When Tesla's competitors stop designing and electric car and start designing a really great car that just happens to be electric then Tesla will have competition. Until then all the supposed Tesla competitors will be a joke.
For example it was recently reported that the Jaguar I-pace requires that you drive 17 MPH with the climate control off to achieve the manufacture specified range per charge. [0] They have 6 months worth of unsold inventory sitting on dealer lots in the US.
Tesla's strength is in getting market share from buyers who first and foremost want a great car. Everyone else is targeting suckers willing to make decisions contrary to their economic interest to show they care about the environment.
> When Tesla's competitors stop designing and electric car and start designing a really great car that just happens to be electric then Tesla will have competition. Until then all the supposed Tesla competitors will be a joke.
This.
I never understood why car manufacturers all make such weird wacky electric cars. When the Model S came out it was such a relief that finally there was a _normal_ looking electric car.
What I want is an electric 5-series, not the wacky i3. Don't change the appearance, just the drive train.
Tesla is trying to make cars to compete with other makers’ non-electric cars.
Other makers are trying to make cars to compete with Tesla, without competing with their own non-electric cars.
Currently, it is probably impossible to achieve a good profit margin on a mass-market electric car. Battery costs are too high this early in the manufacturing process. Tesla is willing to operate at the bare edge of fiscal viability while they scale… maybe even below viability. Other makers would have to take a gigantic drop in profit to compete with that.
Tesla operates at no profit, but not because they couldn't with the hardware, but rather because they still need to scale.
The old manufacturers wouldn't even need to do much of that.
I had the 2013 then the 2015 Nissan Leaf. At least from the outside it meets the "Weird whacky" criteria. If you look at the 2019 Nissan Leaf, it looks very conventional.
It turns out there's a very good reason to do that: these early models appeal to early adopters. The range kinda sucked. And yet I was happy to be an early adopter because of my nerdiness—and the financial incentives made it hard to refuse. But it definitely required planing insofar as range was concerned. At the same time, knowing that I'm putting up with these inconveniences for benefit of having some new early tech that few others have... that was worth it to me. It was also worth it to some of my friends but definitely not to most of them, who wanted first and foremost a car that didn't come with a peculiar usage pattern.
Now the 2019 Nissan Leaf has twice the range as those older models, it looks "normal", doesn't require much forethought in terms of destination distances, and is marketed to a broader audience. At the same time, the tax incentives have almost all disappeared (the $5k Georgia one is gone) and that is the normal course of action because these cars don't carry the inconvenience that they used to.
Maybe I’m alone in this opinion but I’m tired of all these boring looking sedans. It seems all cars out there on the road look like identical bars of soap. Maybe the grill of this car looks a little different and the tail light cluster on that car has a different style but in general they all look the same. If a modern sedan is 10 meters away I can’t tell you if it’s a Camry, Civic, Accord, Taurus, Jetta, Altima, or any other model, unless I look at the badges.
When Tesla's competitors stop designing and electric car and start designing a really great car that just happens to be electric then Tesla will have competition. Until then all the supposed Tesla competitors will be a joke.
BMW electric Mini is due to go on the market in spring 2020 - they’re manufacturing them now in Oxford. I guess that counts as a 'real electric car'. Whether it’s a great one remains to be seen.
Range is not as great as the 3 (150 vs 210 miles IIRC?) but it’s a smaller car, so doesn’t have as much room for batteries as the 3 or S do.
I would say for the Mini range is not as important as for a Model 3. They are supposed to be city cars with a very specific design and great handling. They are usually way more expensive than competition with similar specs, but still sell a lot because of those two traits.
The EPA range of the electric mini is 114 miles, the Model 3LR is 310 miles. Make sure you use the same measurement standard when comparing vehicles: the WLTP standard massively overstates range.
The LR version of the model 3 costs a lot more than the Mini is projected to cost. Even the stock Model 3 costs £12k more than the currently planned price of the electric Mini (both including UK electric car grants.)
That’s why I compared the Mini with the range of the ordinary Model 3 & not the LR version. The price difference between the stock models is wide enough already - it seems completely unreasonable to compare a £25k electric vehicle with a £45k one!
In the US, the Tesla 3SR+ is $39K with a 220 mile range, and the electric Mini is projected to start at $35K-$38K with a 114 mile range. I don't expect the electric Mini to sell well in North America.
The Model 3 is basically an upscale take on a page out of the FCA playbook. It's a straight line rocket with a middle of the road interior crowned by a massive touchscreen.
Don't get me wrong, there's definitively something to be said for that but Tesla does not make good all around vehicles.
Tesla make vehicles that excel at a few things and are mediocre in most other regards. If they were great all around vehicles upper class suburbanites would be buying them as general daily drivers instead of task specific cars (commuting in this case), a market segment currently filled by the station wagon/crossover/small suv spectrum. For reasons that are outside the scope of this comment, I think Tesla is wise to build sedans for upscale buyers rather than enter the crossover and compact car free-for all.
Tesla's cars utterly dominate the sales charts for every segment they are in. If they're only being bought as a niche car, then I guess every other luxury automaker's cars are even more niche.
As an owner of a Model 3, I will say that it isn't just a really great car, it's the best car I've ever owned or driven. There are SO MANY different elements of the car-owning experience Tesla redesigned to make dramatically better for the user, not to mention the incredible performance of the car.
I've driven nothing but BMW for the last decade and several of my friends now drive Teslas. I can't think of a single aspect other than subjective preference for rear-wheel drive bias where the BMW is any better than the Tesla. And it is objectively worse on a number of easily measurable factors. Anyone who thinks these cars are not fantastic is in denial. Are they perfect? Of course not. But on virtually any measurable scale they absolutely blow their competition out of the water at their price-point.
> For example it was recently reported that the Jaguar I-pace requires that you drive 17 MPH with the climate control off to achieve the manufacture specified range per charge.
Official range numbers come from a government testing cycle (EPA in the US), so you should get the listed range under more or less the same conditions with any car.
Tesla seems to have the advantage that investors are willing to supply it with endless amounts of cash to fuel it's unprofitable operations year after year. In its 16 year history, it has never turned an annual profit. It has lost billions and billions of dollars. Tesla just received another $2 billion lifeline infusion earlier this year.
Other automakers have to play by more sane financial rules.
Specifically, Amazon was cash-flow positive but deliberately chose to reinvest all their profits into the company instead of paying out dividends, so that appears on the books as a loss but it really isn't.
Tesla makes a profit on every car that they sell[0].
There are more people wanting to buy Tesla's than they can currently produce[1].
Telsa needs to spend more money to increase production. They make money on each car sold and they can sell a lot more than they currently do. Tesla being in the red in order to increase production is the same scenario that Amazon was in.
That's a nice story, but the numbers don't support the narrative. Tesla's been reporting revenue for 13 years (that I can find). So I took the first 13 years of both Tesla and Amazon financials. Amazon was breakeven by year 7. Telsa is just losing more money as time goes on. (Apologies for bad HN formatting). Here's the data:
> The existing car companies are all off doing their own thing e.g. VW ID.3 (hatchback), Hyundai Kona (mini-SUV), Renault Zoe / Chevy Bolt / Nissan Leaf / BMW i3 (small-car) etc.
I'm not sure those are the strongest examples, as you can defend most of them (maybe not the BMW i3) as perfectly legitimate cars in the current market and maybe more than Tesla's counterparts:
* The S and 3 are almost retro in how much they resemble a traditional sedan, and supposedly that's not what Americans want in the current marketplace. (Enough so that both Ford and GM saw boosts on the stock market for abandoning the entire class of vehicles [admittedly, to imports and the S and 3].)
* The X looks like "soccer mom" minivan more than SUV, and I've seen Americans look down their nose at it as "uncool", very cool falcon doors aside.
Meanwhile:
* VW ID.3 looks like a modern reinvention of the classic VW Golf, a tried and true decades-spanning form factor. The VW Golf itself being something of the grand-papa of the modern hatchback trend and influencing almost everything else on the market (the Prius, the Tesla Model Y, everyone owes at least a little something to the Golf).
* The Hyundai Kona is in a class of SUV that is very popular in American and abroad. (Look at uglier ICE relatives like the Nissan Cube and the Honda Element, both of which have been relatively high sellers, despite their boxy, not-quite-a-full-SUV thing.)
* The Renault Zoe is in a somewhat common form factor space for European cars. Compare the Mini and the SMART.
* Chevy's Bolt is trying to be a normal "cross-over", and that's again where GM and Ford are almost entirely focused outside of trucks.
* Early versions of the Nissan Leaf were hatchbacks of a Prius (or Tesla Model Y) sort, and recent versions look like tradition sedans.
All of that is of course my opinion, but claiming that the existing car companies are doing their own thing and Tesla is somehow the only one doing "proper" cars seems to be the inverse of reality: Tesla is doing their own thing, and everybody else is trying to do what they think the market will best support (and it is not traditional looking sedans).
(Plus, the VW ID family is already gearing up to eat the rest of VW's lineup as they drop the diesel lineup like its hot. BMW is doing the same. We're about to the tipping point where EVs are beyond early adopter-focused, one-off models, and manufacturers are about to hit every form factor with an EV or two.)
Matching Tesla's models head to head isn't the only conceivable strategy for taking the electric car market from them.
It presupposes that Tesla has chosen to target the right market segments with the right type of products, and all you have to do to win is make better versions of those products.
I'm not saying that Tesla hasn't chosen correctly. Maybe their product lineup is optimal or maybe it isn't. I'm just saying that your criticism of the article is based on this assumption.
Germany has traditionally been a station wagon country. Although SUVs are everywhere now, you still see more station wagons. As I see it, SUVs are used as a status symbol and they have the advantage of an elevated driving position. Station wagons are generally used by people who "do stuff", who have to transport things or drive long distances. It it the car of the practical thinkers. Station wagons are also driven by salesmen who have to travel a lot, because station wagons tend to have a lower fuel consumption due to their smaller drag area. This is especially relevant on our Autobahn, where the higher speeds make aerodynamic drag pretty noticeable.
So yes, for practical reasons station wagons are great. I love mine.
One could make a mix between station wagon and suv. All it requires is height adjustable dampers.
Elevation is a classic status symbol think castle locations. Upper class started driving elevated cars SUVs and middle class want to move up in status.
Dough de Muro called it the "second worst car ever manufactured in the entire history of the automobile" :)
Actually, many upper class cars have height adaptable dampers. I know of one wealthy forest owner who bought the (at that time) super luxury Mercedes 500CL (W215) because the adaptable dampers also made it a great offroad car.
The W215 is a beast. It's also very scary fast. There is also an upgraded version by AMG (CL55). I highly doubt Mercedes made money on any of them, and as a - former - owners, I was very happy that mine was under warranty because of the stuff that can break on that car and what it typically costs to fix it. The ride height adjustment system is great - when it works - just like the Citroen DS, it is the proverbial magic carpet ride but the technical complexity does not really help.
IMO SUVs are something that people of low status consider high status. They are primitive and brutal looking vehicles with pretty awful properties as driving machines: high weight, high drag, high center of gravity (which also forces comfort / safety compromises), much less room than station wagons. You can get cars that look and drive much nicer for the same money.
One of the big car makers actually had a full psychological workup on different SUV driver cohorts, and small females make up a disproportionate cohort for exactly this reason.
The perception is that the higher vantage makes things safer in spite of the reality that the SUV is less safe because it takes more physical strength to actually handle the car in emergency situations.
> ... is less safe because it takes more physical strength to actually handle the car in emergency situations.
Almost no driver you describe would be able to handle a 2000kg+ car (any type) without power steering and brake assistance which is why they all have this and this is no longer a problem.
The higher vantage point in combination with a bigger car also causes more low speed bumps and low speed pedestrian hits, but then again "you" are safe.
Station wagons that can compete with SUVs on price are rare, at least in Europe. Most station wagons are based on premium-ish sedans that can have 1.5x times the price of a Qashqai or an Outlander, not to talk of something like a Duster.
Yes, there's Ford Focus SW ans Škoda Octavia, er, Scout(?), but that's about it, and you'll probably get the same amount of boot space if you buy their crossover SUV instead.
It's better here in Europe with almost all car makers having their own station wagons and a lot of these station wagons are most-sold cars for their respective brands. Skoda Octavia/Fabia/Superb Kombi, Volkswagen Golf Variant, Passat Variant, Ford Focus SW, Toyota Corolla Touring Sports, Citroen C4, Honda Civic Tourer, Fiat Tipo Kombi, Hyundai i30, i40 SW, Kia Ceed SW, Mazda 6 Wagon, Opel Astra/Insignia Sports Tourer, Peugeot 508 SW, Renault Megane Grandtour, Seat Leon ST, Audi A4 Avant, BMW 3/5 Touring, Mercedes Benz B-Class to name a few, not including all those liftbacks, spacebacks and hatchback/kombi hybrids. SUVs/crossovers are on the rise, but I would say that Kombis are still one of the most sold cars in Europe.
I don't know if "looks cool" is the same thing as status (probably not) but station wagons in the US have a history of being the ugliest thing on the road. Maybe the only competitor for worst on the list of cool factor is the mini van.
Much of the US is a truck culture. You can drive more places and carry more cargo than anything else. In this case, status becomes proudly declaring yourself as blue collar as opposed to being high status. And have you ever seen a station wagon with a gun rack? SUV's are simply trucks for which the cargo is the family rather than a lawnmower.
What are the manufacturers going to do when trucks and SUV's are so popular and have a higher profit margin? Make more SUV's. Maybe car manufacturers even make ridiculous looking compacts as sacrificial models to sell more SUV's. You can have this ridiculous looking golf cart, or you can drive this magnificent tank.
Outside the US, SUV's are even popular in SE Asia. Which again I think is part culture (maybe US car culture transmitted through Hollywood) and manufacturer incentive. One of the few dealerships in the fast growing city I live in (Philippines) is loaded with SUV's. If that's all you see on the floor and everyone else is driving one, then that's probably what you are going to drive also.
In Europe, SUVs and crossovers are bought by people with children, back problems or those who think that it will make them look interesting. None of those are “cool”. Unless you like to holler at single moms at the playground boosting about the triple ISO fix childseat attachment.
Marketing does a great job into making you think that SUVs are for hip young people with active urban lifestyles but in reality it’s mainly old folks and parents who buy them.
Being in the market for such a car I realized that a Mercedes E-class or Skoda Superb (the combi/estate versions) have only slightly less cargo space than an Audi Q7 when the seats are up, and just about as much space with the seats folded.
From what I can tell most people who go for the SUV for practical reasons do it for the safety or the assumption that a bulkier car will have more room. A factor rarely considered is that big wheels and bulkier axles will eat some of the interior space. This being said most of the people I know (or know of) more or less drive those SUVs alone every day. I guess they get 2 birds with one stone: practical car that's also a status symbol, with the popular interpretation that bigger is better.
europe has also a radically different road network. i.e. urban-suv are doing better here than regular suv because of the difficulties in navigating cities on larger cars and are eating up station wagons too because they get a comparable load volume but none of the parking difficulties. (and they also cost less than full sized suvs and europe has been in a two decade recession, so there's that going for them too)
Most CUVs (or urban SUVs) don't really have as much cargo space as a combi. They are based on the platform of the "regular" sibling (sedan) but with the bigger wheels and axles taking up some of the interior space. The higher driving position comes at a price.
To put it in context, a VW Golf Combi or Peugeot 308 SW have 10+% more cargo space in a package that's slightly longer and narrower than equivalent CUVs like Skoda Karoq or Peugeot 3008 (2 of the roomiest CUVs out there). Whether you find width to be a bigger problem than length when navigating depends on where you live and how you drive. But the choice combi vs. CUV mostly comes mostly to image.
With most cars you get the option to fold the backseat. In the examples above the 308 SW has 660/1775 liters, the Karoq has 521/1810 liters.
As you can see the Karoq offers marginally more space only with the seats folded. But that to me feels like an exceptional usage scenario rather than the rule. With the seats up the difference is pretty massive (the SW has ~30% more cargo space) and I think this is the more useful number if you're interested in cargo space. If you want a higher driving position, or better ground clearance, etc. a SW won't really do it.
> SUV's are simply trucks for which the cargo is the family rather than a lawnmower.
In this discussion something should be pointed out: in the US there is a whole segment of SUV that is basically a truch chassis with a passenger compartment. This whole segment of car is more or less unknown outside the US. In the rest of the world the big SUV is the X5/Q7 segment, and below that there are smaller types of SUVs and crossovers. Some americans even argue that the term "SUV" should be reserved for that segment (truck SUV's) while regular "car SUV's" like an X5 are in fact crossovers. I'm from europe and think an SUV is any car similar to the X5 because using the term SUV for a segment that doesn't exist here makes no sense.
> What are the manufacturers going to do when trucks and SUV's are so popular and have a higher profit margin? Make more SUV's
I realize manufacturers can sell more expensive cars with higher margins if they sell SUV's, but as a consumer I seriously don't understand why I'd want to pay a large premium for an SUV over a good 4WD station wagon.
E.g. why would I pay a hefty premium for the Volvo XC60 (suv/crossover) over the V60XC? They aren't that different, but one is called a SUV/Crossover, and the other is a jacked up station wagon. I think the latter is actually better looking! https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a26135531/2020-volvo-v6...
Body-on-frame SUVs are also big in Australia. Most of the major companies there make one: Ford Everest, Holden TrailBlazer, Toyota Fortuner, etc.
Oddly enough, in the US body-on-frame SUVs are basically dying. They're only viable in the full-size segment, which is nonexistent in Europe. And we only have four companies that make them in that segment. We have the GM triplets (Chevy Tahoe/Suburban, GMC Yukon family, Cadillac Escalade family), the Ford twins (Ford Expedition/Lincoln Navigator), the Nissan twins (Nissan Armada/Infiniti QX80), and some offerings from Toyota (the Toyota Sequoia and the Toyota Land Cruiser/Lexus LX twins). And the only reason these still exist is because there are some upper-middle-class people who want to tow a boat or an RV trailer while hauling the whole family, and that's hard to do with a unibody (tho I'd love to see how the new Ford Explorer handles that, being RWD and all).
Smaller body-on-frame SUVs died here a long time ago, with the remaining stragglers being the Jeep Wrangler and Toyota 4Runner/Lexus GX twins... and both of those are also sold in Europe (with the latter being called the Toyota Land Cruiser in Europe, while Toyota in the US uses the Land Cruiser name for a larger SUV).
Honestly, I'm expecting full-size body-on-frame SUVs to eventually start dying off here as crossovers get larger and more powerful. Big crossovers like the Chevy Traverse can replace the Tahoe for most purposes that don't involve towing. And I'm definitely expecting the new Ford Explorer to cannibalize Expedition sales... it's almost as big now, and it's actually RWD. If Ford ever decides to make a second-generation Flex on a stretched Explorer platform, that could put the Expedition in a world of hurt (and I'm convinced the reason Ford has let the Flex die on the vine on purpose to keep it from torpedoing the Expedition). I don't think the big ones will go away entirely, because... well, because boats, but it's definitely going to become a much more niche segment.
Perhaps there is an economic factor too, i.e. that the truck SUVs like Ford Expedition (9000lbs capcity) are a much cheaper way to reach a big enough towing capacity than buying a european large unibody SUV like the Q7/Q8 (7700lbs capacity) which is effectively also very much a luxury car? If the towing requirement is between 7700 and 9000 lbs then of course they don't compete.
Anyway: the point was: some US consumers would call the X5/Q7 family "crossovers" because of their body style, whereas I'd call that "full size SUV", and that sometimes leads to confusion in the discussion.
Keeping the compact pickup truck around would have fended off widescale adoption of the SUV. But no, CAFE killed it [0], so now we have worse MPG issues, no small pickup trucks, and a shitload of SUVs and large trucks instead.
Well-intentioned regulation going bad. A story as old as America, really.
I used to think the same thing (I still do on principle, but...): The epitome of wanton American capitalism and excess. Every suburban family has one, whether they "need" it or not. Then I started paying a lot more attention to car crashes, in particular this one that happened recently (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNRxup0WhMo&feature=youtu.be, skip to 2:20 for the crash). A sedan utterly obliterated by a pickup going 90 mph. Made me realize one of the reasons why people have been moving away from them, because of shit like this. Despite the increased cost of maintenance and gas, I think my next vehicle will be something with a bit more size for more impact absorption.
Crashworthiness against a wall is almost independent of weight. Crash results against other cars are a function of weight, so yeah, you can crush the other guy instead. It's a very ugly arms race in that sense.
That's an interesting interpretation of the data. To me, it looks like Model S/X sales have noticeably dropped since the introduction of the Jaguar and Audi.
I don't think there will be a singular Tesla killer, but rather, Tesla is increasingly going to be attacked by all sides: Hyundai/Nissan/GM on the mass market side, Jaguar/Audi/Mercedes/BMW on the luxury side, and Porsche on the ultra luxury high end. The Model 3/Y is currently positioned in the premium segment between mass market and luxury. That's sorta Honda/Toyota territory; I think they'll need to bring out EVs for Tesla to be in serious trouble.
Perhaps the model 3 is cannibalizing s and x sales instead? It is much more modern and nearly identical in speed and has ample storage and comfort. The s is better if you need more space and longer range, x if storage is your need. I imagine s and x are a hard sell with the steering wheel UX being much more complex and confusing plus the similarities compared with the model 3 for a much higher price tag.
What happened with the Model 3 in 2019 that would cause the drop off in 2019 sales? If anything, the Model 3 would've impacted sales from 2017-onward when it was introduced.
It began selling in large quantities and more locales. Word of mouth, access to test drive, and the vast amount of internet/media hype, and nearly comparable performance could combine to reduce likelihood to buy above the 3.
Another aspect is repair. Speaking as someone who works full time as an engine mechanic, sourcing parts or even being allowed to do repair work for a Tesla is a tedious process. Everything comes from one factory with no distribution network, so a door panel repair can take months to fix
. In contrast, I can get nearly any part for an Audi delivered to the shop in 2 days and the digital books for service interval and installation are all at my fingertips.
My personal experience with Audi was what you described. Car was involved in a fender bender. Insurance said bring the car to any shop. New parts were ordered (presumably pre-painted) and installed with the car returned in 3 days.
I think it has some impact. People who would buy a Tesla are clued into doing online research, and see the news about their repair problems.
I personally would have already leased/bought a Model 3 if I didn't have serious concerns about their supply chain and repair issues brought to light by people like Rich Rebuilds and others. I am waiting it out to see if it improves, or if Tesla goes bankrupt/forced merged and their IP lives on elsewhere.
This to me is the biggest issue with Tesla- they aren't a startup that just did its first big product release and is struggling to keep up with demand, they are a 16 year old company that is still failing to keep up with demand and can not support its customer base.
They aren't building on a scale never seen before, this is relatively small scale for the traditional manufacturers. Yet you hear stories about how 3's in particular seem to be in some cases thrown out the door out of sheer will.
Tesla is just kind of fascinating this way- pushing the envelope in so many places, but just floundering to get the basics right in so many others. I really hope they succeed, and may even buy a model 3 when I am next in the market for a new car, but I feel they are still selling to "early adopters" when they really should have been out of these growing pains years ago. I would never recommend one to my less tech enthused family members.
I considered a Tesla but Tesla simply sucks as a car company. Body gaps are quite bad, apparently a bit improved on model 3. However, TFL (youtube car review channel) damaged a quarter panel/bumper on their car. It took 4-5 months for the whole repair because waiting on parts. This is simply unacceptable. I cannot comprehend who would want to own a car like that.
Plus, there was a guy rebuilding a crashed model S and had issues sourcing some components, then Tesla gave him issues activating the car.
A kid in my office said the same thing and I have no idea where people are getting this from. A brand new Model 3 costs about as much as an Audi A4, BMW 3-Series, or Mercedes-Benz C-Class.
The Model 3 is a compact executive car, and competes directly in that category. It is for the mass affluent. Not the mass market.
This assumes those companies will solve the energy storage issue in a reasonable amount of time.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. Tesla does a lot of shit wrong, but Musk is ahead of people RE: batteries and energy storage importance.
I am reminded of Bezos saying that their headstart in AWS with no viable competitor for years and years on end is what catapulted Amazon to what it is today. Tesla has a shot of making that true with regard to batteries.
Serious question- what is Tesla's technological advantage with batteries? I always hear people say that Tesla batteries are above and beyond all competitors, and then I read articles like this which make me doubt that claim: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-7364605/Tes...
1. A Tesla goes about 50% further per KwH than an e-tron.
2. Audi had to scale back 2019 production of etron due to battery apply supply issues. It calls into question Volkswagen group's ability to make millions of EVs in 2022 as planned if they can't make 50,000 etrons in 2019. https://www.electrive.com/2019/04/23/audi-revises-production...
What Car? claims its test cycle is more realistic and more representative of actual range. The best Tesla finishes fourth. The Kia e-Niro is equal second with the Jaguar I-Pace and the Hyundai Kona is first.
That's a pretty nice test cycle. But they oddly hobbled Tesla by choosing the model 3 variant that substantially sacrifices range for performance (mostly with an inefficient but fun wheel+tire).
If they had chosen one of the other Model 3 variants it would have likely been #1 by some margin, yet still with significantly higher performance than the other top contenders.
On the plus side, the fact there is competition at all is utterly wonderful. In the same test a few years ago it would've been all Teslas at the top.
> But they oddly hobbled Tesla by choosing the model 3 variant that substantially sacrifices range for performance
Maybe, maybe not. On the EPA test cycle the Model 3 Long Range and the Model 3 Performance all wheel drive models both claim a range of 310 miles. But on the WLTP test cycle the Long Range gets 348 miles and the Performance gets 329 miles. The rear wheel drive Model 3 Long Range was discontinued.
It'd be interesting to see the comparison under What Car?'s test cycle but they might end up pretty similar to each other.
Well, they didn't include any of Tesla's long range models and i-pace owners have been saying (on forums) that their real world range is much less than the official number.
Panasonic makes the battery cells. Tesla makes the battery packs, which is the product that counts in the end. This happens under the same roof. Tesla was also heavily involved in developing the battery cell chemistry and design.
AFAICT, the value of Tesla’s battery packs is that they’re cheaper, have better longevity and charge rate than the competition, and that this is due to the vertical integration of the whole design & manufacturing process. So, many small details slightly better than the competition, at lower cost. Also, Tesla’s drivetrain & pack integration is more efficient than competition due to many tiny improvements, leading to fewer kWh & hence dollars of cost per mile of range.
Just saw one in the back country in Finland. Really deep in the sticks and on a small road. Was a great moment seeing it there. The electric revolution is coming along and unstoppably.
Now would be a great time to get a career going in electrification. Electric installation / Solar power installation you name it, the demand will skyrocket.
"Electric installation / Solar power installation you name it, the demand will skyrocket."
They go bankrupt left and right, just like solar manufacturers, because it's a race to the bottom. Race to bankruptcy it almost seems. I think it's a horrible market to be in right now.
Solar power installation you name it, the demand will skyrocket.
I work tangentially to that field and the problem is that the competition is fierce. Every old roofing company is now a solar installation company and a new solar panel company (reselling the same Chinese panels with thinner and thinner margins) is popping up every week. The only place I can see any margins is specializing in designing and setting up large industrial scale setups.
Tesla is only incidentally a car company, it is primarily a battery company. If any of these competitors really scale up it will be because Tesla chose to sell them the batteries.
It'll be a few more years before you can realistically start talking about failure.
No one reasonably expected the old car companies to leapfrog Tesla in a year or two. This is going to be a long battle for market share. It'll take a while for the "newcomers" to get the consumer trust in their electric cars that Tesla already enjoys.
What I'd like to know is how much money they're losing per car sold on these models. Jaguar have acknowledged that they're deeper in the red due to higher than expected i-Pace costs. If they have negative margins on these cars, perhaps they don't really want to sell more than the budgeted 10K/year or so.
The I-Pace is a great car however they can't produce enough of them for demand (the waiting list was around 8 months when I left and was growing). The tooling in most of the factories is still configured for ICE and they are now repurposing some of the car factories in the midlands to be dedicated to electric vehicles.
EVs are still luxury market focussed, even with my salary I couldn't afford an E-Golf, unless I leased it.
Uh no, there is at least a six month supply of i-paces at US dealers now because nobody is buying them. The i-pace is actually quite nice, but terrible efficiency and no charger network makes it a tough sell.
> they can't produce enough of them for demand (the waiting list was around 8 months when I left and was growing)
> there is at least a six month supply of i-paces at US dealers now
Both of those could have been true at different times: dealers ordered large allocations of them thinking they'd dent Tesla's market, then the ex-Jaguar employee left, and as the i-Paces arrived, they simply didn't sell. That sounds logical with my own experiences with those - the early reviews sounded like Jag had really nailed it, but when I saw my first i-Pace in person, man, no way was I gonna buy one. It's just flat out not attractive, which is a shocker for Jag.
It happened to Nissan with the first-gen Leafs. Couldn’t make them fast enough, until the early adopters ran out and Leafs started to pile up on dealer lots.
Why do they need to 'kill' Tesla? The long-term potential market for electric cars is presumably large enough for a number of competitors to exist in it. If it isn't, then it's going to be hard for anyone to make money at it.
My cynical side says that if they manage to kill Tesla, they can go back to the leisurely pace of updates that suits them. Say hello to 100km batteries being standard, with 300km and 400km packs sold as premium extras.
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[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 239 ms ] threadAnd in fact will soon have more 350kw chargers than Tesla.
Ionity is installing 350kw chargers in Europe: https://ionity.eu/en/design-and-tech.html
And so is Fastned: https://fastnedcharging.com/en/blog/post/fastned-opens-its-f...
Anyways, it's a good thing for the whole electric vehicle ecosystem that multiple charging options become available. That multiple companies are competing on charging infrastructure is excellent!
Not yet. The Porsche Taycan is launching with 250 kw charging (with 350 kw charging to come in future) but I haven't seen any information on its charge curve. The Tesla Model 3 can charge at 250kw to about 20% state of charge and then it progressively drops off.
The EQC has more sophisticated headlights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZMNkMadYTQ
And the EQC has voice control (although they really need a better triggering phrase than "Mercedes"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JTew1D5Tk8
I think Tesla's main problem now is that the major car companies will be releasing multiple EVs across multiple brands year after year. It's going to be difficult for Tesla to keep up.
Also... who complains about how loud a Tesla is?
People who have driven in a Mercedes EQC.
Compare UK prices for the EQC: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/mercedes-benz/eqc/specs
And the Model X: https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/modelx/design?redirect=no#batter...
I love my fancy $10k headlights, they're a huge improvement when speeding through euro highways in the middle of the night. There's just nowhere for the cops (or anything else) to hide.
If you try to do the same in a Model S you'll just overheat it.
Tons of road noise, tons of wind noise. Although the Teslas had worse tires on them.
Given that Tesla isn't even trying to make nice cars the bad tires seem far less surprising.
I'll admit that the Taycan will be very nice looking, but it will also be about twice the price, if going for the same performance.
Handling: There is no way the Tesla will handle similarly to a Porsche. Steering feel, cornering, road feel. Porsche is the king of handling for a reason, and I'm anxious to see what they can accomplish with the low CG of an electric vehicle.
Consistency: The Porsche can keep doing pulls from 100% down to 10% charge consistently with no performance degradation. This was actually Porsche's main focus, an actual electric track car.
Fit and Finish: Again, anybody who's seen both a Porsche and a Tesla up close will know it's not even a competition.
Charge Time: The Porsche will charge twice as fast as a Tesla, which (assuming you can find a fast enough charger) is pretty cool for quick recharges.
>> price is not that ridiculous
This seems like an insanely unlikely combination.
So where the Taycan as a range places within that is quite relevant. All the signs at the moment are that it will price similar to the 911 ie probably starting at £65-70kish. But we only have one data point which is the £130k for the Turbo trim level.
Yes, a product that you can't currently buy is a good competitor for products you can.
seems like they're aiming for Model S level pticing, too.
And not sure why people are so obsessed with range. It's the megapixels/megahertz spec nonsense again. People don't buy ICE cars based purely on MPG but also for exterior/interior design, quality, comfort, brand, support, seating capacity etc and most importantly what the car says about you as a person.
The situation will hopefully resolve itself unquestionably in the next 2-3 years.
Edit: Also it's notably cheaper than the one you linked, generally below $0.20/kWh according to https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-supercharger-tiered-pricing-... compared with $0.35/kWh
The Supercharger network will be used - and is currently used - to bridge longer commutes fast. Not for intra-city deployment; at least not at the moment.
Feel free to tell me that I'm being overly pessimistic, but that's how our consumer-hostile marketing culture (in general and not specifically the EV industry) has taught me to be. Rapid battery degradation in typical consumer devices also influences my impression.
Perhaps regularly replacing/refurbishing batteries would help with this. How would this affect the TCO when compared to a gasoline car? I don't know. What's the resale value of an old EV likely to be given the rapid development in the newest models, and how will that affect the TCO? Again, I don't know.
Yes, winter will reduce range. I had a worst-case trip this year, it was around -18 C outside and I had not had a chance to pre-heat the batteries. Car was 99% charged, showing 200 km range initially. After some 135 km the car showed about 10 km range left, when I finally got to a charger. This was with two passengers, both front seat heaters on, as well as the cabin heater working hard.
If we assume the estimated range left is somewhat accurate, that's about 63% the typical summer range of about 230 km. Had I preheated the batteries it would have been better, though I don't have any numbers.
Resale value is something I worry about too. That's part of the reason I went with an i3 rather than a more expensive Model 3. Though at least here in Norway, I expect EVs to be dominating soon, and with the price of gas I expect ICE resale value will take a hit.
> Leaf is not so great, but far from 50% at 5 years unless you mistreat it AFAIK.
I got to 50% by combining reduced range from an old battery with reduced range from winter use.
> about 63%
So 80% (your battery warranty minimum) of 63% is 50.4%, so was my 50% guess spot on then, or have I missed something?
Yeah I misread your text slightly.
You can’t compare with cheap electronic gadgets. Those push their batteries hard and do nothing to manage their temperature. Some EVs are similarly stupid; the Leaf, for example, is notorious for losing capacity fast. But good EVs will last much longer.
Because range typically isn't a problem with ICE cars.
I really like the Honda e. It looks good and has good features:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEKq8jmckz0
But its number one problem is lack of range. Solid-state batteries with better energy density will solve that problem, but those batteries aren't here yet.
That's my experience anyway, maybe you can provide a source that says otherwise?
Because people like doing road trips, staying away from home for a few days at a time
so for newer/more expensive car with a 200+mile range? yeah, that's probably enough for most people, with enough reserve to get you to a supercharger. I mean, it is a pain, 'cause a lot of people like to park at the supercharger and it gets to be a problem, but geting gas is a pain, too... so sure, if your range is comfortably over 200 miles, for many people, maybe even most Americans, that should be plenty.
but that's the high end. and if they lose 20% range after 5 years, only the 'extended range' variants of the high end cars seem to have more than 200 miles.
As a more typical auto-buyer, (well, more typical than the 200 mile plus new car buyers) I'm looking to buy a car right now, as uber/lyft seem to be about 30% more expensive than they were pre-IPO, once you count the difference in special offers given to me. I've always regarded it as a luxury, but it slowly is getting too expensive for me.
One of the cars under consideration is a used leaf: a 2012 model year or thereabouts. It's an all around reasonable car, it's gone through most of it's depreciation curve, etc.. it's newer than the average car your average American is driving. It's got a usable range around 50 miles. (that's only down like 20% from what it advertised new)
this is... probably fine for me. I don't have charging facilities at home, and installing those in the shared garage would be iffy... would require HOA approval. but I do have (free!) charging facilities at work, 10 miles away.
But I am a bit unusual. I don't particularly like driving, not for daily, utilitarian purposes anyhow. If I buy the thing, as I'll be stepping down from taking uber/lyft everywhere, so I'm already all setup to use trains or airplanes for anything over 20 miles or so, and for that matter, I live with someone that owns a petrol car, so it's all just kinda extra.
but I work with a lot of people (a lot of very highly paid people, the sort who buy nice luxury cars) who have commutes that are more than 50 miles each way - and you usually want enough power that you can go a day without charging.
Now, I also have a bunch of co-workers who have Teslas with extended range packages, and there is some overlap with the long commutes. But... without those extended range packages, that would be pretty iffy. And these are people who have the luxury of replacing their car often; they really don't have to worry about things like battery degradation.
The average American is going to find a 50 mile range unacceptable; the average American would find the 150 mile range of the new base model nissan leaf to be pretty confining, for that matter. I'm gonna go ahead and say that 200 and change is gonna be the minimum for most people, and then only if they can install a charger (I.E. they don't live in an apartment.) or can charge at work.
(my work does tell me not to rely on work charging as my only charge... but eh, if the chargers are full/down one day a week or what have you, uber/lyft probably still has some legs.)
Having recently bought an EV, range is one of the primary limitations of EVs and one of the parameters which varies greatly between manufacturers and models.
When you're out of juice you need to be near a charger, and you need to wait a fair bit to recharge compared to an ICE. So naturally you want to buy an EV which has sufficient range that you can do almost all of your driving without thinking about the range.
Tesla's getting into the "good enough" territory for most people but until most EVs are there, range will be one of the key metrics for EVs.
EVs need about 400-500 miles range in order to have mass adoption. Anything less is delusional.
On top of that you can buy ICE cars with 600+ mile range in merely Okish conditions (80-100 litre fuel tank) today as an option. EVs just can't compete with that.
Until they can (and charging infrastructure is such that noone will worry about being able to charge overnight literally anywhere they might choose to go), they'll be competing in a much smaller market.
1) It's only about the US.
2) Tesla's big seller is the Model 3 which isn't a competitor for the Audi e-tron and I-Pace. And given the size difference probably isn't a competitor for the Model X either.
3) No one is claiming to be a Tesla killer since no one really has direct 3, X, S, Y competitors. The existing car companies are all off doing their own thing e.g. VW ID.3 (hatchback), Hyundai Kona (mini-SUV), Renault Zoe / Chevy Bolt / Nissan Leaf / BMW i3 (small-car) etc.
But it's more than a little disingenuous to compare cars from different segments.
This is likely due to pent up demand, but it does show that Tesla's absolute domination of the US market hasn't played out in Europe.
If you're interested in widespread EV adoption, this is probably ideal. It's concerning to me that Tesla may have so much mind share that even genuine competitors once they arrive will struggle to sell enough to be profitable.
In which case, the steady state will be legacy auto makers doing the bare minimum as required under emissions legislation. In the EU that's probably ok, but not in the US.
Norway 2019 sales for reference:
Model 3: 10976 VW Golf: 6533 Leaf: 5441 BMW i3: 3671 E-Tron: 3114 I-Pace: 2372 IONIQ: 2168 Zoe: 1775 Model X: 1344 Model S: 969
Now, add to that the model 3 outselling the Model S by a factor of 11 to 1 this year, that is amazing.
Several of them are targeting Tesla owners with discounts, ads at superchargers, etc... The companies clearly think they are competing with Tesla, especially since they don't want to compete with themselves (ICE models).
As for doing their own thing, most have a battery shortage and are confined to small cars with relatively small battery packs for now until more batteries are available (none of whom are vertically integrating production).
The number of Nissan Leafs sold so far are close to twice the number of Tesla model Ss sold.
So Nissan beat Tesla with a model not only in time to market but also with it's superior price, which resulted so far in selling twice as many cars as Tesla's direct competitors to the Nissan Leaf.
> It is not a Tesla killer
Nothing will ever be if the goalpost is kept moving like that.
The Nissan Leaf and Leaf Plus doesn't come into consideration for me because of its pitiful range, the ChADeMO connector and lack of active cooling for the battery pack.
>> Tesla Model S
Not comparable cars.
Not comparable, but look at the post that was the origin of that response, it was only about "electric cars" in general.
Meanwhile a hatchback and a lift back are hardly not competing in the same market segment.
Tesla has sold 1.6x the number of Model 3's in the past 2 years than Nissan has sold Leaf's... ever.
Sources (US):
* 136K Leafs: http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/nissan/nissan-leaf...
* 223K Model 3s: http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/tesla/tesla-model-...
People do cross comparisons and generally prefer the Model 3 for a variety of reasons. And it's cheaper.
Unfortunately Elon is set on robotic Uber being the cheaper option.
The I-Pace has 8% less length, 8% less height, and 12% less weight than the Model X 90D. The widths are comparable.
The I-Pace has 9% more width, 9% more height, and 15% more weight than the Model 3 Range AWD. The lengths are comparable.
I would say this puts the I-Pace half way between the Model X and the Model 3 in terms of size. In terms of class, I'd say the I-Pace is closer to the Model X, both being luxury crossover SUVs.
More broadly, Jaguar is a historically British company, and Britain's roads and parking spaces are narrower than those in the US, so the truck and full-size SUV classes are much less popular.
Edit: that’s a bit too glib. I’m sure it’ll do just fine as a niche product for a certain group of buyers, which is what Jaguar is all about. It’s just not really competing with Tesla, which is trying hard to go after the mass market.
EDIT- Forgot about Honda and the Korean car makers too.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/28/tesla-model-3-1-best-se...
That's certainly not a drop in the bucket, and I think it's a stretch to call it niche as well. Will be interesting to see how 2019 as a whole turns out; with this ASP, they would dominate by revenue if their delivery numbers were anywhere close to the competition.
Nokia used to sell way more phones than anyone else too.
Most Tesla fans only count positive things for the 3 though, and so consider the i-Pace and the model 3 direct competition.
Your comment might also be why the model 3 is selling like hot-cakes at the moment. The model 3 is also very efficient compared to the i-pace and charges faster. One sentiment that might be true regarding what you value in your car is that the model 3 is a better EV and the i-pace is a better car.
As for size, I recently got to compare my model x to my cousins i-pace and the internal size difference is quite substantial. The i-pace is however a very fun car to drive and it doesn't require that you go full 17" screen and strip the physical buttons. Some people value that too.
For example it was recently reported that the Jaguar I-pace requires that you drive 17 MPH with the climate control off to achieve the manufacture specified range per charge. [0] They have 6 months worth of unsold inventory sitting on dealer lots in the US.
Tesla's strength is in getting market share from buyers who first and foremost want a great car. Everyone else is targeting suckers willing to make decisions contrary to their economic interest to show they care about the environment.
[0] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/08/13/jaguar-i-pace-sales-hav...
This.
I never understood why car manufacturers all make such weird wacky electric cars. When the Model S came out it was such a relief that finally there was a _normal_ looking electric car.
What I want is an electric 5-series, not the wacky i3. Don't change the appearance, just the drive train.
Other makers are trying to make cars to compete with Tesla, without competing with their own non-electric cars.
Currently, it is probably impossible to achieve a good profit margin on a mass-market electric car. Battery costs are too high this early in the manufacturing process. Tesla is willing to operate at the bare edge of fiscal viability while they scale… maybe even below viability. Other makers would have to take a gigantic drop in profit to compete with that.
Tesla operates at no profit, but not because they couldn't with the hardware, but rather because they still need to scale. The old manufacturers wouldn't even need to do much of that.
It turns out there's a very good reason to do that: these early models appeal to early adopters. The range kinda sucked. And yet I was happy to be an early adopter because of my nerdiness—and the financial incentives made it hard to refuse. But it definitely required planing insofar as range was concerned. At the same time, knowing that I'm putting up with these inconveniences for benefit of having some new early tech that few others have... that was worth it to me. It was also worth it to some of my friends but definitely not to most of them, who wanted first and foremost a car that didn't come with a peculiar usage pattern.
Now the 2019 Nissan Leaf has twice the range as those older models, it looks "normal", doesn't require much forethought in terms of destination distances, and is marketed to a broader audience. At the same time, the tax incentives have almost all disappeared (the $5k Georgia one is gone) and that is the normal course of action because these cars don't carry the inconvenience that they used to.
Let’s get some more variety.
BMW electric Mini is due to go on the market in spring 2020 - they’re manufacturing them now in Oxford. I guess that counts as a 'real electric car'. Whether it’s a great one remains to be seen.
Range is not as great as the 3 (150 vs 210 miles IIRC?) but it’s a smaller car, so doesn’t have as much room for batteries as the 3 or S do.
That’s why I compared the Mini with the range of the ordinary Model 3 & not the LR version. The price difference between the stock models is wide enough already - it seems completely unreasonable to compare a £25k electric vehicle with a £45k one!
The Model 3 is basically an upscale take on a page out of the FCA playbook. It's a straight line rocket with a middle of the road interior crowned by a massive touchscreen.
Don't get me wrong, there's definitively something to be said for that but Tesla does not make good all around vehicles.
Tesla make vehicles that excel at a few things and are mediocre in most other regards. If they were great all around vehicles upper class suburbanites would be buying them as general daily drivers instead of task specific cars (commuting in this case), a market segment currently filled by the station wagon/crossover/small suv spectrum. For reasons that are outside the scope of this comment, I think Tesla is wise to build sedans for upscale buyers rather than enter the crossover and compact car free-for all.
As an owner of a Model 3, I will say that it isn't just a really great car, it's the best car I've ever owned or driven. There are SO MANY different elements of the car-owning experience Tesla redesigned to make dramatically better for the user, not to mention the incredible performance of the car.
Normal European city driving then.
Other automakers have to play by more sane financial rules.
I don’t think that’s something that could be said about Amazon.
Whereas Tesla does indeed have some systemic financial issues.
In other words Amazon could have been "profitable" on a GAAP accounting basis fairly early on, but Tesla would struggle to do that.
There are more people wanting to buy Tesla's than they can currently produce[1].
Telsa needs to spend more money to increase production. They make money on each car sold and they can sell a lot more than they currently do. Tesla being in the red in order to increase production is the same scenario that Amazon was in.
[0] https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/07/26/tesla-management-t...
[1] https://electrek.co/2018/07/03/tesla-model-3-long-backlog-re...
Tesla annual net income, in millions:
Year 1: -$78
Year 2: -$82
Year 3: -$56
Year 4: -$154
Year 5: -$254
Year 6: -$396
Year 7: -$74
Year 8: -$294
Year 9: -$889
Year 10: -$675
Year 11: -$1,961
Year 12: -$976
Q1+Q2 Year 13: -$1110
Amazon annual net income, in millions (rounded):
Year 1: $0
Year 2: -$100
Year 3: -$700
Year 4: -$1400
Year 5: -$600
Year 6: -$100
Year 7: $0
Year 8: $600
Year 9: $400
Year 10: $200
Year 11: $500
Year 12: $600
Year 13: $900
I'm not sure those are the strongest examples, as you can defend most of them (maybe not the BMW i3) as perfectly legitimate cars in the current market and maybe more than Tesla's counterparts:
* The S and 3 are almost retro in how much they resemble a traditional sedan, and supposedly that's not what Americans want in the current marketplace. (Enough so that both Ford and GM saw boosts on the stock market for abandoning the entire class of vehicles [admittedly, to imports and the S and 3].)
* The X looks like "soccer mom" minivan more than SUV, and I've seen Americans look down their nose at it as "uncool", very cool falcon doors aside.
Meanwhile:
* VW ID.3 looks like a modern reinvention of the classic VW Golf, a tried and true decades-spanning form factor. The VW Golf itself being something of the grand-papa of the modern hatchback trend and influencing almost everything else on the market (the Prius, the Tesla Model Y, everyone owes at least a little something to the Golf).
* The Hyundai Kona is in a class of SUV that is very popular in American and abroad. (Look at uglier ICE relatives like the Nissan Cube and the Honda Element, both of which have been relatively high sellers, despite their boxy, not-quite-a-full-SUV thing.)
* The Renault Zoe is in a somewhat common form factor space for European cars. Compare the Mini and the SMART.
* Chevy's Bolt is trying to be a normal "cross-over", and that's again where GM and Ford are almost entirely focused outside of trucks.
* Early versions of the Nissan Leaf were hatchbacks of a Prius (or Tesla Model Y) sort, and recent versions look like tradition sedans.
All of that is of course my opinion, but claiming that the existing car companies are doing their own thing and Tesla is somehow the only one doing "proper" cars seems to be the inverse of reality: Tesla is doing their own thing, and everybody else is trying to do what they think the market will best support (and it is not traditional looking sedans).
(Plus, the VW ID family is already gearing up to eat the rest of VW's lineup as they drop the diesel lineup like its hot. BMW is doing the same. We're about to the tipping point where EVs are beyond early adopter-focused, one-off models, and manufacturers are about to hit every form factor with an EV or two.)
It presupposes that Tesla has chosen to target the right market segments with the right type of products, and all you have to do to win is make better versions of those products.
I'm not saying that Tesla hasn't chosen correctly. Maybe their product lineup is optimal or maybe it isn't. I'm just saying that your criticism of the article is based on this assumption.
SUV's are terrible.
So yes, for practical reasons station wagons are great. I love mine.
Elevation is a classic status symbol think castle locations. Upper class started driving elevated cars SUVs and middle class want to move up in status.
Actually, many upper class cars have height adaptable dampers. I know of one wealthy forest owner who bought the (at that time) super luxury Mercedes 500CL (W215) because the adaptable dampers also made it a great offroad car.
One of the big car makers actually had a full psychological workup on different SUV driver cohorts, and small females make up a disproportionate cohort for exactly this reason.
The perception is that the higher vantage makes things safer in spite of the reality that the SUV is less safe because it takes more physical strength to actually handle the car in emergency situations.
Almost no driver you describe would be able to handle a 2000kg+ car (any type) without power steering and brake assistance which is why they all have this and this is no longer a problem.
The higher vantage point in combination with a bigger car also causes more low speed bumps and low speed pedestrian hits, but then again "you" are safe.
Yes, there's Ford Focus SW ans Škoda Octavia, er, Scout(?), but that's about it, and you'll probably get the same amount of boot space if you buy their crossover SUV instead.
Much of the US is a truck culture. You can drive more places and carry more cargo than anything else. In this case, status becomes proudly declaring yourself as blue collar as opposed to being high status. And have you ever seen a station wagon with a gun rack? SUV's are simply trucks for which the cargo is the family rather than a lawnmower.
What are the manufacturers going to do when trucks and SUV's are so popular and have a higher profit margin? Make more SUV's. Maybe car manufacturers even make ridiculous looking compacts as sacrificial models to sell more SUV's. You can have this ridiculous looking golf cart, or you can drive this magnificent tank.
Outside the US, SUV's are even popular in SE Asia. Which again I think is part culture (maybe US car culture transmitted through Hollywood) and manufacturer incentive. One of the few dealerships in the fast growing city I live in (Philippines) is loaded with SUV's. If that's all you see on the floor and everyone else is driving one, then that's probably what you are going to drive also.
This applies to practically every American designed car before ~2010
The US had a long history of very nice looking cars up until the 1980s through 2010s...
Marketing does a great job into making you think that SUVs are for hip young people with active urban lifestyles but in reality it’s mainly old folks and parents who buy them.
From what I can tell most people who go for the SUV for practical reasons do it for the safety or the assumption that a bulkier car will have more room. A factor rarely considered is that big wheels and bulkier axles will eat some of the interior space. This being said most of the people I know (or know of) more or less drive those SUVs alone every day. I guess they get 2 birds with one stone: practical car that's also a status symbol, with the popular interpretation that bigger is better.
To put it in context, a VW Golf Combi or Peugeot 308 SW have 10+% more cargo space in a package that's slightly longer and narrower than equivalent CUVs like Skoda Karoq or Peugeot 3008 (2 of the roomiest CUVs out there). Whether you find width to be a bigger problem than length when navigating depends on where you live and how you drive. But the choice combi vs. CUV mostly comes mostly to image.
As you can see the Karoq offers marginally more space only with the seats folded. But that to me feels like an exceptional usage scenario rather than the rule. With the seats up the difference is pretty massive (the SW has ~30% more cargo space) and I think this is the more useful number if you're interested in cargo space. If you want a higher driving position, or better ground clearance, etc. a SW won't really do it.
In this discussion something should be pointed out: in the US there is a whole segment of SUV that is basically a truch chassis with a passenger compartment. This whole segment of car is more or less unknown outside the US. In the rest of the world the big SUV is the X5/Q7 segment, and below that there are smaller types of SUVs and crossovers. Some americans even argue that the term "SUV" should be reserved for that segment (truck SUV's) while regular "car SUV's" like an X5 are in fact crossovers. I'm from europe and think an SUV is any car similar to the X5 because using the term SUV for a segment that doesn't exist here makes no sense.
> What are the manufacturers going to do when trucks and SUV's are so popular and have a higher profit margin? Make more SUV's
I realize manufacturers can sell more expensive cars with higher margins if they sell SUV's, but as a consumer I seriously don't understand why I'd want to pay a large premium for an SUV over a good 4WD station wagon.
E.g. why would I pay a hefty premium for the Volvo XC60 (suv/crossover) over the V60XC? They aren't that different, but one is called a SUV/Crossover, and the other is a jacked up station wagon. I think the latter is actually better looking! https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a26135531/2020-volvo-v6...
Oddly enough, in the US body-on-frame SUVs are basically dying. They're only viable in the full-size segment, which is nonexistent in Europe. And we only have four companies that make them in that segment. We have the GM triplets (Chevy Tahoe/Suburban, GMC Yukon family, Cadillac Escalade family), the Ford twins (Ford Expedition/Lincoln Navigator), the Nissan twins (Nissan Armada/Infiniti QX80), and some offerings from Toyota (the Toyota Sequoia and the Toyota Land Cruiser/Lexus LX twins). And the only reason these still exist is because there are some upper-middle-class people who want to tow a boat or an RV trailer while hauling the whole family, and that's hard to do with a unibody (tho I'd love to see how the new Ford Explorer handles that, being RWD and all).
Smaller body-on-frame SUVs died here a long time ago, with the remaining stragglers being the Jeep Wrangler and Toyota 4Runner/Lexus GX twins... and both of those are also sold in Europe (with the latter being called the Toyota Land Cruiser in Europe, while Toyota in the US uses the Land Cruiser name for a larger SUV).
Honestly, I'm expecting full-size body-on-frame SUVs to eventually start dying off here as crossovers get larger and more powerful. Big crossovers like the Chevy Traverse can replace the Tahoe for most purposes that don't involve towing. And I'm definitely expecting the new Ford Explorer to cannibalize Expedition sales... it's almost as big now, and it's actually RWD. If Ford ever decides to make a second-generation Flex on a stretched Explorer platform, that could put the Expedition in a world of hurt (and I'm convinced the reason Ford has let the Flex die on the vine on purpose to keep it from torpedoing the Expedition). I don't think the big ones will go away entirely, because... well, because boats, but it's definitely going to become a much more niche segment.
Anyway: the point was: some US consumers would call the X5/Q7 family "crossovers" because of their body style, whereas I'd call that "full size SUV", and that sometimes leads to confusion in the discussion.
Well-intentioned regulation going bad. A story as old as America, really.
[0]: https://jalopnik.com/how-the-government-killed-fuel-efficien...
I don't think there will be a singular Tesla killer, but rather, Tesla is increasingly going to be attacked by all sides: Hyundai/Nissan/GM on the mass market side, Jaguar/Audi/Mercedes/BMW on the luxury side, and Porsche on the ultra luxury high end. The Model 3/Y is currently positioned in the premium segment between mass market and luxury. That's sorta Honda/Toyota territory; I think they'll need to bring out EVs for Tesla to be in serious trouble.
I personally would have already leased/bought a Model 3 if I didn't have serious concerns about their supply chain and repair issues brought to light by people like Rich Rebuilds and others. I am waiting it out to see if it improves, or if Tesla goes bankrupt/forced merged and their IP lives on elsewhere.
They aren't building on a scale never seen before, this is relatively small scale for the traditional manufacturers. Yet you hear stories about how 3's in particular seem to be in some cases thrown out the door out of sheer will.
Tesla is just kind of fascinating this way- pushing the envelope in so many places, but just floundering to get the basics right in so many others. I really hope they succeed, and may even buy a model 3 when I am next in the market for a new car, but I feel they are still selling to "early adopters" when they really should have been out of these growing pains years ago. I would never recommend one to my less tech enthused family members.
Plus, there was a guy rebuilding a crashed model S and had issues sourcing some components, then Tesla gave him issues activating the car.
A kid in my office said the same thing and I have no idea where people are getting this from. A brand new Model 3 costs about as much as an Audi A4, BMW 3-Series, or Mercedes-Benz C-Class.
The Model 3 is a compact executive car, and competes directly in that category. It is for the mass affluent. Not the mass market.
But if we're talking about actually sitting in the car, Tesla is definitely in Honda/Toyota territory.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. Tesla does a lot of shit wrong, but Musk is ahead of people RE: batteries and energy storage importance.
I am reminded of Bezos saying that their headstart in AWS with no viable competitor for years and years on end is what catapulted Amazon to what it is today. Tesla has a shot of making that true with regard to batteries.
2. Audi had to scale back 2019 production of etron due to battery apply supply issues. It calls into question Volkswagen group's ability to make millions of EVs in 2022 as planned if they can't make 50,000 etrons in 2019. https://www.electrive.com/2019/04/23/audi-revises-production...
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-7137701/Bes...
https://whatcar.com/news/what-car-real-range-which-electric-...
What Car? claims its test cycle is more realistic and more representative of actual range. The best Tesla finishes fourth. The Kia e-Niro is equal second with the Jaguar I-Pace and the Hyundai Kona is first.
If they had chosen one of the other Model 3 variants it would have likely been #1 by some margin, yet still with significantly higher performance than the other top contenders.
On the plus side, the fact there is competition at all is utterly wonderful. In the same test a few years ago it would've been all Teslas at the top.
Maybe, maybe not. On the EPA test cycle the Model 3 Long Range and the Model 3 Performance all wheel drive models both claim a range of 310 miles. But on the WLTP test cycle the Long Range gets 348 miles and the Performance gets 329 miles. The rear wheel drive Model 3 Long Range was discontinued.
It'd be interesting to see the comparison under What Car?'s test cycle but they might end up pretty similar to each other.
How far can the best Tesla go in 24 hours? The Porsche Taycan can do 3,425 KMs:
https://electrek.co/2019/08/19/porsche-taycan-electric-car-2...
AFAICT, the value of Tesla’s battery packs is that they’re cheaper, have better longevity and charge rate than the competition, and that this is due to the vertical integration of the whole design & manufacturing process. So, many small details slightly better than the competition, at lower cost. Also, Tesla’s drivetrain & pack integration is more efficient than competition due to many tiny improvements, leading to fewer kWh & hence dollars of cost per mile of range.
On the other hand, despite the Prius, Toyota seem to be laggards in this area.
But then, I just honestly do not see how anyone in good conscience could give even a red cent to Elon.
They go bankrupt left and right, just like solar manufacturers, because it's a race to the bottom. Race to bankruptcy it almost seems. I think it's a horrible market to be in right now.
I work tangentially to that field and the problem is that the competition is fierce. Every old roofing company is now a solar installation company and a new solar panel company (reselling the same Chinese panels with thinner and thinner margins) is popping up every week. The only place I can see any margins is specializing in designing and setting up large industrial scale setups.
No one reasonably expected the old car companies to leapfrog Tesla in a year or two. This is going to be a long battle for market share. It'll take a while for the "newcomers" to get the consumer trust in their electric cars that Tesla already enjoys.
The I-Pace is a great car however they can't produce enough of them for demand (the waiting list was around 8 months when I left and was growing). The tooling in most of the factories is still configured for ICE and they are now repurposing some of the car factories in the midlands to be dedicated to electric vehicles.
EVs are still luxury market focussed, even with my salary I couldn't afford an E-Golf, unless I leased it.
> there is at least a six month supply of i-paces at US dealers now
Both of those could have been true at different times: dealers ordered large allocations of them thinking they'd dent Tesla's market, then the ex-Jaguar employee left, and as the i-Paces arrived, they simply didn't sell. That sounds logical with my own experiences with those - the early reviews sounded like Jag had really nailed it, but when I saw my first i-Pace in person, man, no way was I gonna buy one. It's just flat out not attractive, which is a shocker for Jag.