Remember the solar shingles at the SolarCity acquisition presentation? Non-functional aspirational mock-ups to squeeze through a deal to bail out family.
I worked at solar city for a couple of months last year. The solar shingles are bought from as panels from China, disassembled and then put together anew. I was personally in charge of testing each shingle worked so I know they take solar power and convert it. A lot of the shingles would crack (we had boxes full of junk ones) but overall I think they are manufacturing a real product (even if it’s just a snazzy upgrade of Chinese panels)
Show us where they sell those slate or terracotta solar tiles they demonstrated. They are sourcing pure black tiles from China, that anyone can buy. That's it.
Why do you want an older prototype when there is something in production right now with much better specs and pricing? They have obviously iterated on the product and is now on version 3.
> They are sourcing pure black tiles from China, that anyone can buy.
Wait, there's someone else on the market selling solar roof tiles in the US with a 30 year warranty and rated to survive hits from 1.75" diameter hail and 166 mph winds? This is the first time I am hearing of it!
Surely if it is all just bought from an upstream supplier surely someone else can also make bank buying it in bulk and reselling it undercutting Tesla. I would be interested to see a link to this supplier/installer.
Maybe you can't buy them elsewhere in the US because Tesla has an exclusive distributorship deal. That's very different than what was presented during the solar city acquisition, and billion in subsidies for the New York plant...
You can also buy the Boring Company's state of the art brick machine invention on Ali Baba. The cyber quad was a Yamaha four wheeler with some steel panels and I believe a motor setup from someone else's electric bike.
You can literally buy a Solar Roof right now and they are hiring installers around the country. Their solar roof sales tripled in the last quarter compared to the quarter prior to that. I suppose all those home-owners are perfectly happy paying $32k+ for "non-functional aspirational mock-ups".
Tesla sold ~50k cars in 2015. They sold ~250k cars last year. They are on track to sell 500k this year. See a trend there? And they just laid out concrete plans on how to grow by ~50% annually over the next 10 years. You are on hackernews. Surely you know how compounded growth works. Where do you think all this added market share comes from?
Toyota's sales dropped by over 20% this year compared to the same time last year. Ford's global sales dropped over 30% this year and they lost billions of dollars. In the same time period, in the midst of a global pandemic, and having to shut down their main factory for over 8 weeks, Tesla's deliveries grew 20% YoY in the first half of 2020. The Model 3 outsold even the Camry and Accord in California earlier this year.
"The horse-breeder laughs at the automobile man because he thinks no one can afford to buy one. Where is the horse breeder today?"
You're not describing compounded growth, you're describing S-curve growth, meaning that they're close to plateauing. Based on numbers out of Europe, it appears that Tesla has already nearly saturated the market of potential upper-class EV buyers, barring the actual introduction of a $25k EV with 500+ miles of range, or substantial upgrades to the interiors of their cars.
Toyota's sales dropped by over 20% this year compared to the same time last year. Ford's global sales dropped over 30% this year and they lost billions of dollars.
True, as did Tesla's sales (see linked pdf below for % sales reduction for 2020). Notably, Tesla's profits were (again) due to higher regulatory credit sales to other car companies. Indeed, this continues the trend of Tesla recording a profit only in quarters in which it is able to make regulatory credit sales. And while Ford reported a loss on vehicle sales...like Tesla...they similarly reported a Q2 profit due to non-vehicle income (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/30/ford-f-earnings-q2-2020.html).
Tesla's deliveries grew 20% YoY in the first half of 2020.
Yes, it's also a common complaint on the Tesla forums that cars built in 2019 weren't deliverable for months due to shoddy work requiring weeks or months of fixes. It's not surprising that deliveries would grow in 2020 as they finally had the time to fix the cars they already built so they could actually deliver them. Notably, their YoY numbers for H12020 for California are down almost 19%.
The Model 3 outsold even the Camry and Accord in California earlier this year.
The horse-breeder laughs at the automobile man because he thinks no one can afford to buy one. Where is the horse breeder today?"
Horse breeders are better off today than they were back then. Horses cost more than cars. And with all due respect, the guy who said that quote knew jack shit about the rarity with which people actually used horses for traveling in the U.S. Most people outside of rural America didn't have space for a horse. Cars took off precisely because they were easier to maintain and store than horses.
Indeed, the comparison is somewhat apt but in a different manner than you intended: EVs are the horses in this situation: most people don't have the means to charge EVs at home (or the money to afford the cost of installing a charger), nor do they have the spare time to spend hours charging their EVs, which severely limits the market of people who can buy EVs. For the foreseeable future, regular ICE cars are still far more convenient...as they were against horses more than a century ago.
[citations needed]. Their model Y numbers show that their deliveries are growing consistently.
> Based on numbers out of Europe, it appears that Tesla has already nearly saturated the market of potential upper-class EV buyers
Europe gets its Teslas by ship in blocks and this results in lumpy numbers. And even then lower numbers could also be due to the fact that they have a local factory being built out in Berlin right now, which would result in cheaper cars.
> Notably, Tesla's profits were (again) due to higher regulatory credit sales to other car companies.
If you look at their balance sheet, you would see that their operating expenses have been flat over the last several quarters while revenues and deliveries/production have gone up. Regulatory credit sales exist, and I do not fault them for using that to further invest their returns into growth instead of showing a profit.
Currently, just the current sales of Model 3, S and X alone more than cover all of their operating expenses every quarter. Model Y and future models only add to their income going forward.
Further evidence of this is that one year ago they had $2B in cash. They raised $10B from capital raises after that. They now have $12-$13B in cash, during a year where they brought a factory from zero to full production + started work on two more factories. This demonstrates significant positive cash-flow.
> EVs are the horses in this situation ... most people don't have the means to charge EVs at home... nor do they have the spare time to spend hours charging their EVs
I owned an EV in a small town in Iowa for over one year living in an apartment with no access to home charging. I hardly had to wait "hours for charging their EVs". I charged while grocery shopping or going to the gym and that was perfectly suffice even in peak winter. Many employers here offer at least 120V outlets in their employee parking lots which is again, enough for commutes. 150-250kW supercharging makes road-trips easy as well.
> or the foreseeable future, regular ICE cars are still far more convenient
Tesla is constantly driving down the cost and even right now, from a cost-of-ownership sense an EV is a no-brainer in the price range that it sits in. They have also dominated every market segment they have entered so far and also taken market share from lower-end vehicles [https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-cars-trade-in-...].
As the effects of climate-change become more drastic, there will be regulatory moves to curb ICE vehicles as well as add more charging infrastructure. You can already see some of this in CA right now. Britain is planning on banning ICE vehicle sales by 2030, California by 2035.
So what is your point? Are you saying that Tesla is outsourcing manufacturing or something? Are you serious? You can literally visit one of their factories and see the cars being made.
My Model 3 gets 310 miles on a charge as they "claimed" it has, while no other manufacturer's EV gets even close. It goes 0-60 in under 4 seconds now while it was closer to 4.4 when I bought it. It charges at 250kW as "claimed". The UX on their display is super-smooth compared to clunky screens and buttons/dials on legacy auto's cars.
What are these technologies that you say they are claiming to have but do not have?
I wonder if they will adjust this price for inflation in 3 years.
Imagine how disruptive it would be if Tesla actually released something like this to undercut the internal combustion engine competition. Our noise pollution would surely go down...
"The design offers five times the energy density of the existing cells it uses, as well as six times the power and an overall 16% improvement in range for vehicles in which it’s used."
I might be missing something here but if the energy density is '5x' more wouldn't there be a greater increase of range than 16%(barring that the weight doesn't go up significantly)?
Even if the weight of the cells doesn't change that much, if the new cells aren't as heat tolerant then there might be significantly more weight and space allocated for cooling, meaning you get less cells
I think that one of the big advantages of tabless batteries is supposed to be that they have a much larger contact area which makes them easier to cool, particularly spirally wound Li-Ion which is going to be hottest near the core.
But this is an area of active research and a fairly complex modeling problem, and I’m no expert.
They meant energy storage capacity instead of density. The energy density is only 16% higher.
The new cells are 46mmx80mm vs 21x700 for the previous model.
Tesla just made ICE cars obsolete. How is this not on the front page of HN? It's even trending on twitter. It's very strange this isn't on the front of HN.
Who's paying you to downplay what was actually announced?
1)56% reduction in cost (which blows way past the $100/kwh holy grail for EV to sub $40). This by itself is insane and most people in the industry thought it wont happen for at least another decade. This puts the last nail in the coffin for the future of ICE cars.
2) 54% increase in range. The new Model S will have minimum 520mi of range and much more actually when they start production. Range anxiety gone out the window.
3) New manufacturing tech along with vertical integration will allow Tesla to scale 55x their current rate of production and become the world's largest auto manufacturer by many multiples. Tesla will not only produce their own battery cells but they're even getting into mining!!
Along with many other things announced in 3+ hour technical video. But yea 16% density improvement is the only takeaway from this...
Edit: I like how you're editing your original comment after I've already replied without any mention of it. Please practice honest forum etiquette.
> Who's paying you to downplay what was actually announced?
Insinuations of shillage are not allowed here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules. That means also: please avoid the flamewar style in general.
That's just from the improvement of the cells themselves, they also talked about an additional 10% decrease in mass and a 14% increase in range due to the integration of the battery pack into the body of the car, which the new, larger cells will allow them to do. An overall improvement of 30% range with these changes ain't too shabby, and that's from incremental improvements to what they are already doing. Honestly everything they covered today seemed so straight forward and feasible that it just seemed kind of boring, but the changes combined are quite impressive. The important part of the presentation really, is the total overall cost reduction of the battery pack of 56%, that's what leads them to believe they can produce a $25,000 car.
No, it didn't. It announced it is confident that in the near future it will be able to deliver the same thing it's said it would deliver in the nearish future a decade ago, which is an entry level electric car at a little under double the MSRP of the cheapest major manufacturer ICE cars in the US, and which will still be in many respects (especially range) far more limited than even the cheapest ICE cars.
They didn't make ICE cars obsolete. They didn't even announce something that, if/when delivered as predicted, will make ICE cars obsolete.
> It announced it is confident that in the near future it will be able to deliver the same thing it's said it would deliver in the nearish future a decade ago
They also said that this one will be fully self-driving.
I'm not gonna hold my breath...
They're absolutely pushing the state of the art forward, kudos for that, but they're constantly overpromising and underdelivering.
With gas prices so low and likely to remain as such until the economy recovers, ICE cars are a better short term investment(on a personal level. I'm not counting externalities or AGW here).
There's something about Musk that rubs me the wrong way, but I do hope he succeeds in making electric vehicles the norm. That said, ICE cars won't die until we force them to die with carbon taxes and other disincentives.
Copy pasting previous comment since the number of people misrepresenting the ground breaking tech that was announced is to high to spend energy on:
1)56% reduction in cost (which blows way past the $100/kwh holy grail for EV to sub $40). This by itself is insane and most people in the industry thought it wont happen for at least another decade. This puts the last nail in the coffin for the future of ICE cars.
2) 54% increase in range. The new Model S will have minimum 520mi of range and much more actually when they start production. Range anxiety gone out the window.
3) New manufacturing tech along with vertical integration will allow Tesla to scale 55x their current rate of production and become the world's largest auto manufacturer by many multiples. Tesla will not only produce their own battery cells but they're even getting into mining!!
lol no they didnt.
In reality what they announced was a new battery cell with 16% higher energy density, and a new version of their supercar/Model S that costs way more than $100k. Thats impressive and great for their cars but in not way makes ICE cars obsolete.
Most other things was Elon making claims. People have learnt over the years that Elon's claims can not be trusted. Sometimes he delivers, but often he doesnt or at least way way behind schedule.
Currently EVs are < 1% of cars. What Tesla showed today was a path to increase that significantly with the cost per kWh reduced by 56% and 7x improvement in factory production footprint.
>What Tesla showed today was a path to increase that significantly with the cost per kWh reduced by 56% and 7x improvement in factory production footprint.
I'm going to withhold judgment until they are actually doing any of these things.
as i said, Elon making claims. In 2016 he claimed that by 2018 their battery packs would cost less than $100/kwh. Its 2020 now and they still cost around $150. Why do you believe him this time?
I'll be interested once Tesla actually delivers on those claims.
you are right. The $150/kwh is current industry estimates of Tesla's cost. The exact number isnt really important, the point is that years ago they where supposed to be at $100 and now they once again claim they'll be at $100 in a couple years. "We promise guys, this time we know what we are talking about"
When demand exceeds supply, it makes sense to prioritize higher margin cars first. They did release $35k model 3 but people were willing to pay more for a few extras.
Model 3 was hyped as $35k car, with an additional $7.5k tax credit on top of that for early adopters. In reality it's $45-50k car. What they do offer for $35k is purely to tick the box (and also when it finally arrived tax breaks were long gone for Tesla).
If history repeats itself this new model will be first true $35k Tesla.
$35k was _before_ tax incentives, FYI, so actual price was lower $35k. And it's still technically available, only the tax incentives are gone so it's only $35k.
It was hyped as a $35k car, but Tesla never said they would release the $35k version first. In addition, Tesla had released the most expensive versions of the S/X first. Doing the opposite with the 3 would have been the exception.
Currently EVs are < 1% of cars. What Tesla showed today was a path to increase that significantly with the cost per kWh reduced by 56% and 7x improvement in factory production footprint. This is 12-18 months away. World changing stuff.
No, it’s a huge revelation. Their tabless batteries allow them to fix all these problem and give them a quite sensible reduction in $/KW and a good increase in range.
Combined with the other innovations that they introduced they have achieved half the cost/KW.
Please explain me how this is not a big revelation.
Technology wise it is not something entirely new. Just in their particular case, it worked very well for the cost, ... if we are to believe them.
Even if the entire battery will got to 50% of its current cost, Teslas will still be quite expensive cars, which have many expensive things other than the battery: Aluminum body for example.
The reason this is amazing is that they are starting to plateau in their reduction of cost per kwh, but with these changes they might be able to push through the plateau and redefine the cost of batteries.
A 50% reduction in cost per kwh at this stage is probably a much much more difficult problem than tesla has ever solved. There are always diminishing returns on investment and if they can break that trend by rethinking everything from the ground up that's amazing.
The reason everyone is so quiet is because relative to the last 10 years this doesn't sound impressive. But when you consider all the low hanging fruits have been picked, I think it is really impressive.
Elon said on the call, as companies get bigger they usually innovate slower. It is amazing that Tesla is trying to not do this.
2-3 years away in Musk-time so likely 5-6 years away in actual time. It’s pretty neat to see what the plans are but overall this is a big letdown. I was hoping some fundamental breakthrough in battery tech or just generally something other than “bigger economy of scale.”
I guess? It's more of a battery manufacturing breakthrough than a battery tech breakthrough. I'm not trying to rag on Tesla. It is quite a breakthrough that will help achieve better manufacturing throughput, it just did not live up to the hype that Elon generated. I was hoping that Tesla had a breakthrough in regard to some new exotic battery type.
The time line fits - in around 3 years would be 2020 as the article was published in 2018.
only now they laid out how they plan to achieve this. granted in "elon time" correcting to 2023 now
(a plus of another 2 years given "around 3 years = in exactly 3 years as per cnbc article of 2018)
For context $25,000 now in Europe buys a basic Volkswagen/Seat/Skoda city car that does about 150 miles to a battery charge. Though not a Tesla for good and bad.
A Volkswagen ID.3 costs 25% less than the cheapest Model 3, and has a little bit more range on the WLTP cycle.
You can't get the new e-up! yet, but it'll be half the price of the cheapest Model 3, with half the range.
You can get a Polestar 2 for as much as a Long Range Model 3, you'll only get 80% of the range of the Tesla, but you'll get an actual, good-looking, car.
Or you can get an Audi e-tron or Mercedes EQC for a bit more than a Model Y. They have less range and performance, but smoke the Model Y completely on everything else.
There's plenty of competition for Tesla in Europe, and their sales numbers also reflect that, they got 9% of the new BEV sales in Norway in August, for example. Yes, Tesla is the world leader when it comes to extracting range and performance out of their battery packs, but their competition is better at everything else, and different consumers like different things.
If you look at the Chinese market, basically the likes of Tesla and VW are an extremely lucrative but relatively small part of a market that is simply huge with an average sales price well below the cheapest cars in the EU or US. The US and much of the EU is simply not covering the low end of the market at all that exists in China and other developing markets.
There are Chinese and Indian car manufacturers in the process of ramping up production of EVs that cost in the order of as little as 5000$. These replace similarly priced petrol cars that were never even on the market in the EU and the US. They're not going to be breaking any records in terms of range, premium features, etc. But they'll be affordable for the masses in developing economies. Basically it's cheap manufacturing and mass production of outdated but proven technology.
Selling a 5000$ car in the EU or US is not a thing. It's not a technical problem but a problem of that market not making sense when you can also sell a 25K, 50K or 75K model to the same person and when you are essentially supply limited. Creating that market would erode the high end of the market. And this is where manufacturers earn their profits. This problem does not exist in developing markets where that high end is comparatively small because of the income distribution being different.
Simply put there's a huge amount of people for whom 5K is about the maximum they are going to be able to spend on a car. Most of those people are not in the EU or the US. Hence the volume production of cheap EVs for that segment is happening in markets where these people do exist in large numbers.
Even the differences between the EU and the US are kind of striking here. The US does not like small cars. The EU does not like big cars. There are a lot of cars on the market in the EU that are not even for sale in the US. And vice versa. There are dominant car brands in the EU that have 0 sales in the US.
So, Tesla saying that they will go as low as 25K is basically a function of their growth plans in the US. They've nailed the high end of the market and are profitable there. They are now about to enter the middle segment of the market. They are literally ramping up production and new factories as fast as they can. Every kwh of battery they produce they can sell. So, dropping the price point of products only happens when the market for higher priced cars gets to the saturation point. There's no need for them to go any lower than that before that.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 56.4 ms ] threadTesla has 3 factories on two continents pumping out ~500k cars per year, 1 million+ cars on the road, and two more factories under construction.
If you can't see the difference ... I don't know what to tell you. My condolences.
Show us where they sell those slate or terracotta solar tiles they demonstrated. They are sourcing pure black tiles from China, that anyone can buy. That's it.
> They are sourcing pure black tiles from China, that anyone can buy.
Wait, there's someone else on the market selling solar roof tiles in the US with a 30 year warranty and rated to survive hits from 1.75" diameter hail and 166 mph winds? This is the first time I am hearing of it!
Surely if it is all just bought from an upstream supplier surely someone else can also make bank buying it in bulk and reselling it undercutting Tesla. I would be interested to see a link to this supplier/installer.
Thanks.
https://l0dl1j3lc42iebd82042pgl2-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/01/29/does-tesla-make-solar...
Maybe you can't buy them elsewhere in the US because Tesla has an exclusive distributorship deal. That's very different than what was presented during the solar city acquisition, and billion in subsidies for the New York plant...
You can also buy the Boring Company's state of the art brick machine invention on Ali Baba. The cyber quad was a Yamaha four wheeler with some steel panels and I believe a motor setup from someone else's electric bike.
For comparison, Toyota sold more than 10.4 million cars in 2019.
Ford sold more F150s in 2019 than Tesla has sold cars in the past 3 years.
Toyota's sales dropped by over 20% this year compared to the same time last year. Ford's global sales dropped over 30% this year and they lost billions of dollars. In the same time period, in the midst of a global pandemic, and having to shut down their main factory for over 8 weeks, Tesla's deliveries grew 20% YoY in the first half of 2020. The Model 3 outsold even the Camry and Accord in California earlier this year.
"The horse-breeder laughs at the automobile man because he thinks no one can afford to buy one. Where is the horse breeder today?"
Toyota's sales dropped by over 20% this year compared to the same time last year. Ford's global sales dropped over 30% this year and they lost billions of dollars.
True, as did Tesla's sales (see linked pdf below for % sales reduction for 2020). Notably, Tesla's profits were (again) due to higher regulatory credit sales to other car companies. Indeed, this continues the trend of Tesla recording a profit only in quarters in which it is able to make regulatory credit sales. And while Ford reported a loss on vehicle sales...like Tesla...they similarly reported a Q2 profit due to non-vehicle income (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/30/ford-f-earnings-q2-2020.html).
Tesla's deliveries grew 20% YoY in the first half of 2020.
Yes, it's also a common complaint on the Tesla forums that cars built in 2019 weren't deliverable for months due to shoddy work requiring weeks or months of fixes. It's not surprising that deliveries would grow in 2020 as they finally had the time to fix the cars they already built so they could actually deliver them. Notably, their YoY numbers for H12020 for California are down almost 19%.
The Model 3 outsold even the Camry and Accord in California earlier this year.
This is false. Tesla reported 43,706 new Model 3 registrations in Q1+Q2 2020, while Toyota reported 43,821 new Camry registrations for the same period. (https://www.cncda.org/wp-content/uploads/Cal-Covering-1Q-20-..., https://www.cncda.org/wp-content/uploads/Cal-Covering-2Q-20....)
The horse-breeder laughs at the automobile man because he thinks no one can afford to buy one. Where is the horse breeder today?"
Horse breeders are better off today than they were back then. Horses cost more than cars. And with all due respect, the guy who said that quote knew jack shit about the rarity with which people actually used horses for traveling in the U.S. Most people outside of rural America didn't have space for a horse. Cars took off precisely because they were easier to maintain and store than horses.
Indeed, the comparison is somewhat apt but in a different manner than you intended: EVs are the horses in this situation: most people don't have the means to charge EVs at home (or the money to afford the cost of installing a charger), nor do they have the spare time to spend hours charging their EVs, which severely limits the market of people who can buy EVs. For the foreseeable future, regular ICE cars are still far more convenient...as they were against horses more than a century ago.
[citations needed]. Their model Y numbers show that their deliveries are growing consistently.
> Based on numbers out of Europe, it appears that Tesla has already nearly saturated the market of potential upper-class EV buyers
Europe gets its Teslas by ship in blocks and this results in lumpy numbers. And even then lower numbers could also be due to the fact that they have a local factory being built out in Berlin right now, which would result in cheaper cars.
> Notably, Tesla's profits were (again) due to higher regulatory credit sales to other car companies.
If you look at their balance sheet, you would see that their operating expenses have been flat over the last several quarters while revenues and deliveries/production have gone up. Regulatory credit sales exist, and I do not fault them for using that to further invest their returns into growth instead of showing a profit.
Currently, just the current sales of Model 3, S and X alone more than cover all of their operating expenses every quarter. Model Y and future models only add to their income going forward.
Further evidence of this is that one year ago they had $2B in cash. They raised $10B from capital raises after that. They now have $12-$13B in cash, during a year where they brought a factory from zero to full production + started work on two more factories. This demonstrates significant positive cash-flow.
> EVs are the horses in this situation ... most people don't have the means to charge EVs at home... nor do they have the spare time to spend hours charging their EVs
I owned an EV in a small town in Iowa for over one year living in an apartment with no access to home charging. I hardly had to wait "hours for charging their EVs". I charged while grocery shopping or going to the gym and that was perfectly suffice even in peak winter. Many employers here offer at least 120V outlets in their employee parking lots which is again, enough for commutes. 150-250kW supercharging makes road-trips easy as well.
> or the foreseeable future, regular ICE cars are still far more convenient
Tesla is constantly driving down the cost and even right now, from a cost-of-ownership sense an EV is a no-brainer in the price range that it sits in. They have also dominated every market segment they have entered so far and also taken market share from lower-end vehicles [https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-cars-trade-in-...].
As the effects of climate-change become more drastic, there will be regulatory moves to curb ICE vehicles as well as add more charging infrastructure. You can already see some of this in CA right now. Britain is planning on banning ICE vehicle sales by 2030, California by 2035.
And Theranos was testing people's blood. Just not with the technology they claimed to have.
My Model 3 gets 310 miles on a charge as they "claimed" it has, while no other manufacturer's EV gets even close. It goes 0-60 in under 4 seconds now while it was closer to 4.4 when I bought it. It charges at 250kW as "claimed". The UX on their display is super-smooth compared to clunky screens and buttons/dials on legacy auto's cars.
What are these technologies that you say they are claiming to have but do not have?
Imagine how disruptive it would be if Tesla actually released something like this to undercut the internal combustion engine competition. Our noise pollution would surely go down...
If that starts spilling over into auto (with low interest loans, etc.) or consumer goods, we could see it increase.
The Fed just alluded to being okay with inflation above 2% for a few years if the weighted average was below 2% due to years like these.
I might be missing something here but if the energy density is '5x' more wouldn't there be a greater increase of range than 16%(barring that the weight doesn't go up significantly)?
But this is an area of active research and a fairly complex modeling problem, and I’m no expert.
Nice claims currently, but we'll see which ones are correct/feasible.
1)56% reduction in cost (which blows way past the $100/kwh holy grail for EV to sub $40). This by itself is insane and most people in the industry thought it wont happen for at least another decade. This puts the last nail in the coffin for the future of ICE cars.
2) 54% increase in range. The new Model S will have minimum 520mi of range and much more actually when they start production. Range anxiety gone out the window.
3) New manufacturing tech along with vertical integration will allow Tesla to scale 55x their current rate of production and become the world's largest auto manufacturer by many multiples. Tesla will not only produce their own battery cells but they're even getting into mining!!
Along with many other things announced in 3+ hour technical video. But yea 16% density improvement is the only takeaway from this...
Edit: I like how you're editing your original comment after I've already replied without any mention of it. Please practice honest forum etiquette.
Insinuations of shillage are not allowed here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules. That means also: please avoid the flamewar style in general.
And accusing me of being paid is weird. It's probably my first post about Tesla and I post here regularly ;) - i also visited your history :)
No, it didn't. It announced it is confident that in the near future it will be able to deliver the same thing it's said it would deliver in the nearish future a decade ago, which is an entry level electric car at a little under double the MSRP of the cheapest major manufacturer ICE cars in the US, and which will still be in many respects (especially range) far more limited than even the cheapest ICE cars.
They didn't make ICE cars obsolete. They didn't even announce something that, if/when delivered as predicted, will make ICE cars obsolete.
They also said that this one will be fully self-driving.
I'm not gonna hold my breath...
They're absolutely pushing the state of the art forward, kudos for that, but they're constantly overpromising and underdelivering.
There's something about Musk that rubs me the wrong way, but I do hope he succeeds in making electric vehicles the norm. That said, ICE cars won't die until we force them to die with carbon taxes and other disincentives.
1)56% reduction in cost (which blows way past the $100/kwh holy grail for EV to sub $40). This by itself is insane and most people in the industry thought it wont happen for at least another decade. This puts the last nail in the coffin for the future of ICE cars.
2) 54% increase in range. The new Model S will have minimum 520mi of range and much more actually when they start production. Range anxiety gone out the window.
3) New manufacturing tech along with vertical integration will allow Tesla to scale 55x their current rate of production and become the world's largest auto manufacturer by many multiples. Tesla will not only produce their own battery cells but they're even getting into mining!!
Along with many other things announced in a 3+ hour technical video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6T9xIeZTds
It's about double the launch price of the 11 Pro Max, so not really.
Most other things was Elon making claims. People have learnt over the years that Elon's claims can not be trusted. Sometimes he delivers, but often he doesnt or at least way way behind schedule.
I'm going to withhold judgment until they are actually doing any of these things.
as i said, Elon making claims. In 2016 he claimed that by 2018 their battery packs would cost less than $100/kwh. Its 2020 now and they still cost around $150. Why do you believe him this time?
I'll be interested once Tesla actually delivers on those claims.
I'd be interested in seeing a source for this. afaik there aren't any public sources on what price Tesla pays for $/kWh at pack level.
Why do you think it's going to be different with this car? They will announce $25k and then it will be $35k with a $25k dark pattern option.
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1127490_the-35k-tesla-m...
If history repeats itself this new model will be first true $35k Tesla.
Only move forward is the order of the day.
Which is not to excuse the dark pattern in any way. But we often give the status quo way too much of a pass, just because it's the status quo.
Is something wrong with the $38k version?
They tell they can make cells with conventional cathodes even bigger.
The problem with cylindrical cells is that they are very sensitive to mechanical shrinkage, and expansion, and this puts an upper limit on their size.
Even if the entire battery will got to 50% of its current cost, Teslas will still be quite expensive cars, which have many expensive things other than the battery: Aluminum body for example.
Ah, yes. Tesla always has something "around the corner" that will fix all their problems.
>Please explain me how this is not a big revelation
Just because Musk says something in a presentation doesn't mean it exists. Full-self-driving is also a "big revelation".
A 50% reduction in cost per kwh at this stage is probably a much much more difficult problem than tesla has ever solved. There are always diminishing returns on investment and if they can break that trend by rethinking everything from the ground up that's amazing.
The reason everyone is so quiet is because relative to the last 10 years this doesn't sound impressive. But when you consider all the low hanging fruits have been picked, I think it is really impressive.
Elon said on the call, as companies get bigger they usually innovate slower. It is amazing that Tesla is trying to not do this.
This is not a new claim. Take it with a grain of salt.
only now they laid out how they plan to achieve this. granted in "elon time" correcting to 2023 now (a plus of another 2 years given "around 3 years = in exactly 3 years as per cnbc article of 2018)
You can't get the new e-up! yet, but it'll be half the price of the cheapest Model 3, with half the range.
You can get a Polestar 2 for as much as a Long Range Model 3, you'll only get 80% of the range of the Tesla, but you'll get an actual, good-looking, car.
Or you can get an Audi e-tron or Mercedes EQC for a bit more than a Model Y. They have less range and performance, but smoke the Model Y completely on everything else.
There's plenty of competition for Tesla in Europe, and their sales numbers also reflect that, they got 9% of the new BEV sales in Norway in August, for example. Yes, Tesla is the world leader when it comes to extracting range and performance out of their battery packs, but their competition is better at everything else, and different consumers like different things.
There are Chinese and Indian car manufacturers in the process of ramping up production of EVs that cost in the order of as little as 5000$. These replace similarly priced petrol cars that were never even on the market in the EU and the US. They're not going to be breaking any records in terms of range, premium features, etc. But they'll be affordable for the masses in developing economies. Basically it's cheap manufacturing and mass production of outdated but proven technology.
Selling a 5000$ car in the EU or US is not a thing. It's not a technical problem but a problem of that market not making sense when you can also sell a 25K, 50K or 75K model to the same person and when you are essentially supply limited. Creating that market would erode the high end of the market. And this is where manufacturers earn their profits. This problem does not exist in developing markets where that high end is comparatively small because of the income distribution being different.
Simply put there's a huge amount of people for whom 5K is about the maximum they are going to be able to spend on a car. Most of those people are not in the EU or the US. Hence the volume production of cheap EVs for that segment is happening in markets where these people do exist in large numbers.
Even the differences between the EU and the US are kind of striking here. The US does not like small cars. The EU does not like big cars. There are a lot of cars on the market in the EU that are not even for sale in the US. And vice versa. There are dominant car brands in the EU that have 0 sales in the US.
So, Tesla saying that they will go as low as 25K is basically a function of their growth plans in the US. They've nailed the high end of the market and are profitable there. They are now about to enter the middle segment of the market. They are literally ramping up production and new factories as fast as they can. Every kwh of battery they produce they can sell. So, dropping the price point of products only happens when the market for higher priced cars gets to the saturation point. There's no need for them to go any lower than that before that.