A thread to discuss electric vehicles and hybrid technology. No politics, please.
Technology, commercial aspects and marketing are all on-topic.
- Companies (e.g. Tesla Inc.) are only on-topic when discussing their electric vehicle products and research, not their wider activities. The exception is when those wider activities directly impact (or are impacted by) their other business areas - e.g. if electric vehicle development is cut back due to losses in another part of the business.
- Technology that's not directly related to electric vehicles (e.g. general battery research) is off-topic unless you're discussing how it might be used for vehicles.
- If we're talking about individuals here, that should only be because they've said or done something directly relevant to the topic. Specifically, posts about Tesla do not automatically need to mention Elon Musk. And Musk's views, politics and personal life are firmly off-topic unless you can somehow show that they're relevant to electric cars.
Also, posting this late, so sorry for any misspellings I might have left in there.
(Mod edited to replace original post)
Edited by Mrph1 on Mar 29th 2024 at 4:14:39 PM
Lost in Space
News keeps rolling in. Again from InsideEVs: Polestar Precept Revealed With Inspiring Monologue By CEO
The Polestar Precept is a Swedish concept EV designed using sustainable materials and featuring a number of changes to traditional car design. Among other things, "[u]nlike many cars that try to hide their plethora of sensors for safety systems and semi-autonomous driving, this study fully embraces them and places them along where the grille would have been in a conventional car."
It has no rear window, instead using a camera-based system for its rear mirror. It also seems to have camera-based side "mirrors" as well. This is something we are going to see a lot more of in the future, I suspect, as regulators catch up to modern vehicle design. note We're expecting to see the Polestar at the 2020 Geneva Motor Show.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 25th 2020 at 11:44:45 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
The rental is apparently around $40, though I’m not sure if that’s for the entire range if the trailer or for a certain time frame.
That 350 mile figure is for the Renault Zoe, which IIRC is the most popular EV in Europe right now. It’s got a base range of 120 miles, so I’m not sure how that would translate to a longer-ranged EV.
They should have sent a poet.
Lost in Space
According to InsideEVs, the Tesla Model 3 was the best-selling plug-in vehicle in Europe in 2019 at 95,247 units, with the Renault Zoe in second place at 47,408. The year-over-year growth for all plug-in vehicles was 45% and market share increased to 3.6% (2.2% for battery-electric vehicles).
It makes a lot of sense to rent a third-party range extender for a vehicle with a 120 mile range. Less so for a vehicle with a 250+ mile range, but it obviously depends on how far you're going and how frequently you travel. This is one place where lifestyle is a significant factor in your choice of cars. For example, as infrequently as I drive long distances, 120 miles would be more than adequate for my personal car, but I would never take it on a road trip without an extender of some sort.
From the official website, the Zoe starts at around £25,670 in the UK, which is not a bad deal.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 25th 2020 at 12:04:55 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
My feeling is that it definitely depends on locality and driver habits like you’re saying. If your budget is a little lower and you don’t make long trips often, for example if you’re a city commuter, a cheaper EV with the option to rent an extender for the occasional long trip makes more sense, whereas someone living in a more suburban or rural area who regularly makes longer trips might just want to eat the cost at the beginning for the longer-ranged vehicle. I would bet that if you looked at the distribution you’d likely see that reflected in the sales of the two vehicles as well, with more spread out areas favoring the Tesla.
Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 25th 2020 at 9:03:07 AM
They should have sent a poet.
Lost in Space
The Zoe definitely highlights a missing market area for plug-in vehicles: less expensive cars that can compete in the lower end of the market yet still offer a compelling experience — i.e. sufficient range to be practical for more than just city driving. Even $40K (base spec Model 3) is too big a bite for a lot of consumers.
For that to happen on a large scale, we need to press on with improvements in battery technology. There are so many things that are on the verge of being made feasible. Tesla's Battery and Powertrain Investor Day in April is going to be massively anticipated, not just because it's Tesla, but because the company is at the leading edge of battery R&D and the things it's working on may make it into vehicles from many different manufacturers.
One thing we already know about through various leaks is that Tesla is partnering with CATL in China to produce cobalt-free LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries for its Made-in-China cars. The elimination of cobalt from the cathode cuts the cost by a significant amount (thought to be 10-20 percent) with a trade-off of slightly reduced energy density (meaning heavier packs). Simultaneously, Tesla is working on new battery formfactors, including eliminating the "modules" that are independently slotted into their battery packs. This will allow denser packing of the batteries as well as reduce weight and cost.
The elimination of cobalt also satisfies ethical concerns about sourcing of that material.
We need continual innovation and improvements to keep the trend of battery prices going down.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 25th 2020 at 12:19:57 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I guess my question here would then be why Tesla is seemingly uninterested in getting into the lower-end market. There’s tremendous interest in budget EVs, but perhaps by design Tesla seems content to stay in the midrange luxury market.
Perhaps it would make sense for them to license their chassis design out to smaller manufacturers to build low-end and utility vehicles on?
They should have sent a poet.
Lost in Space
I wouldn't say "uninterested", but my understanding of the company's core strategy is to work from the top down. As Elon said way back in the twenty-aughts, he would build a high-end sports car, use the profits to develop a luxury sedan, use that money to develop a mid-range sedan, and so on.
Frankly, Tesla has so many balls in the air right now that it's amazing it can take on more projects, but there has been noise out of China that the vehicle that will be designed at the new center they're setting up in Shanghai will be smaller and cheaper than the Model 3. This will be targeted at the Chinese market first because, frankly, they are the world's largest market for electric vehicles. However, it or a variant may make it back into the worldwide market.
Like all companies, Tesla sells to demand. In the U.S., the biggest market share is in pickups and SUVs, so of course the Model Y and Cybertruck will be targeted there first. In China, smaller cars are most in demand, so of course that will be the first market for Tesla's next design. (Model Y will be coming to both Europe and China, but later than the U.S.)
I have no doubt that we'll see a competitive vehicle from Tesla in the 20-30K range eventually, but it may be several years down the road.
Tesla actually did sell powertrains to other companies back in 2015-2016. I don't have the details at hand, but that deal ended. The idea that Tesla could become a dedicated powertrain company, selling its battery-electric technology (and its self-driving technology, I assume) to OEMs who would build and sell the final products is not crazy, but it seems that traditional automakers aren't interested.
Elon has also discussed commoditizing the Gigafactory. Rather than build and sell its own cars (or in addition to, more properly), Tesla would build and sell the factories that make the cars. Consider the idea of manufacturing capex as a product in and of itself.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 25th 2020 at 12:43:08 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
My hope is that the top-down strategy doesn’t eventually come back to bite them. While it sounds reasonable, there’s an opportunity there for another company to swoop in and capture that market the way Tesla has captured the market for high-end EVs, especially within the next few years. All it takes is one hot model and inertia will do the rest of the work, as we’ve seen many times in the auto industry.
Their business strategy seems to be a little all over the place, which is good for a company trying to get their name out and become a hot commodity but not so good for long-term success.
Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 25th 2020 at 9:43:08 AM
They should have sent a poet.
Lost in Space
The problem there is that it's not economically viable to build a low-end EV with current battery prices. Any OEM trying it would have to take a loss on the front-end, and then how would it make that up? The traditional answer is service, but EVs don't need much of it.
The battery skateboard on a Tesla Model 3 is estimated to cost somewhere in the $12-13K range. There's not much room left in there for a $25K car with equivalent range. It is extremely improbable that any other manufacturer could jump into the gap, not without an independent breakthrough in battery prices.
What we are more likely to see is a gradual trend downward in EV prices as the cost of batteries declines year-over-year. This is of course not counting one of those breakthroughs, but who is going to come up with it? Name one OEM that's got a serious battery R&D division. A lot of innovation comes from startups, and If you look around at all of those that are working on promising battery tech, Tesla has bought or established relationships with most of them.
Let me be clear that I don't want Tesla to be the only game in town. As much as I cheer for it (unashamedly), competition is necessary and good in any consumer market. I would like nothing more than for major OEMs to fully commit to electrification. To quote Cuba Gooding, Jr, "Show me the money!"
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 25th 2020 at 12:51:54 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I mean, if that’s a bet you’re willing to stake the future of the company on that’s one thing, but improbable and impossible are two very different things. Considering the money being poured into R&D for electric vehicles by basically every manufacturer on earth I wouldn’t be so quick to assume no breakthrough is coming. The first manufacturer to sell a properly functional low-end EV is going to dominate the market for years to come, and right now it’s a race to see who gets there first. Disdain for the concept as a whole cleared the way for Tesla to win the first round even with a few stumbles but that’s not necessarily the case any more.
I’m sure even an avid Tesla supporter can acknowledge the next few years are going to be make or break for Tesla, and personally from where I’m standing I hope they succeed because it would be a shame for an innovative product to be relegated to the luxury market or as a supplier.
I’ll also point out that if the skateboard really is around that price, a 25K car on the platform seems totally achievable. A minimal interior and cheap bodywork can easily be done in the 10-15K price range.
Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 25th 2020 at 9:58:09 AM
They should have sent a poet.
Lost in Space
I completely agree with you. I want Tesla to survive because it is an awesome company. In 2019, it proved it can be economically sustainable, with positive free cash flow and 2 profitable quarters. Going forward, its challenge will be to continue expanding to satisfy demand while maintaining customer service and product quality.
Frankly, I'm not worried about the demand side. Tesla is selling every car it can roll off of its production lines. It faces a huge supply challenge and is building manufacturing capacity as quickly as it possibly can. Aside from some catastrophic stumble or external crisis that cannot be predicted, I don't see a reasonable scenario where it fails.
It's also important to note that if we get a rush of OEMs producing attractive, competitive mass-market EVs, that is a win for everyone.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 25th 2020 at 1:01:18 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
My worry is less that they won’t sell cars and more that someone else will beat them to the punch so to speak in the low-end and utility markets. That’s where the real opportunity for massive growth is over the next decade or so, even moreso than the growth we’ve seen up until this point. If someone else gets in first then Tesla is going to be stuck in the midrange and luxury markets, which are profitable but do have a sort of plateau as we’ve seen with conventional cars.
If it were my choice, I would have tried to get in there as early as possible while traditional automakers were still reeling and worried about the high-end market later, though I understand that probably wouldn’t have been as successful from a marketing and branding point of view.
Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 25th 2020 at 10:04:40 AM
They should have sent a poet.
Lost in Space
Forget Tesla. Tesla is a brand. The important thing is that we transition globally away from petroleum cars as soon as possible. That takes precedence over everything else. My greatest fear is that other manufacturers won't join in rapidly enough and we'll get this slow, painful transition with traditional OEMs failing one by one as they miss the boat, with a single company (or one big company and a few small competitors) taking over the entire market and gas cars persisting for 30 or 40 more years.
It would be really cool if cars of the next generation could all drive themselves (and fart on demand), but it's not necessary.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 25th 2020 at 2:30:12 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Well, to that end I think things like the trailer that started this conversation are great. We want to lower the bar to entry for EVs and make them more attractive to the average buyer as quickly as possible.
They should have sent a poet.
Lost in Space
Agreed. Range extenders like that are a nice thing to have if you need them. The most important part, as you implied, is to get the cars out there so people can buy them. It's funny that we should look to China as a model, but if you look at global plug-in sales, China is by far the most diverse market. In turn, Tesla has over 50% of the U.S. plug-in market share but only 13% of the global share.
Clearly, the United States has a critical deficiency in rates of PHEV and EV adoption, which can be blamed on a large number of factors: dealers passively refusing to sell them, extreme political pressure from the fossil fuel industry, a cultural love of large, inefficient vehicles, etc.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 25th 2020 at 4:16:59 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
There’s definitely a cultural bias against EVs in the US, but I wonder how much of that disparity is also due to the fact that budget EVs aren’t too common here? If you look at those sales figures for the Zoe in Europe they’re blowing sales of things like the Bolt or Leaf in the US out of the water. The only vehicles that are gaining any real traction in the US are Tesla’s, which further cements the idea of electric as a luxury market.
They should have sent a poet.
Lost in Space
But why isn't the Zoe sold in the U.S.? Nobody wants a little city car with 120 miles of range... or so the cultural belief goes.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I have to imagine there’s a market for vehicles like that somewhere in the US, major metro areas for example. I can’t imagine many city commuters do more than 50 miles on a daily basis, and big cities tend to have the best charging infrastructure. I can’t help but feel like even in the places where those vehicles would do well the perception of an electric vehicle as a luxury good works against adoption.
I think bringing more affordable vehicles, and especially electric utility vehicles to market could have a big impact on adoption.
Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 25th 2020 at 1:32:39 AM
They should have sent a poet.
Figure of Hourai
I imagine you also get a fun combo of big cities being the place where such short range is so practical (at least in the US; within most European countries that's fine for normal purposes and rarely is "I might need to drive to another country" such a concern) but also the place where you're most likely to not have somewhere to just charge it at home, which combines with needing charging infrastructure and thus: a budget car where the owner needs to be happy with spending that time just sat around doing nothing.
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Lost in Space
Everybody in the U.S. imagines that they might need to drive 300 miles at any moment, or haul a thousand pounds of cargo. Not having the immediate freedom do to so is seen as intolerable.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Which is why I mentioned electric delivery and utility vehicles earlier. If people see workmen and delivery guys driving electric trucks with no issue, or electric semis and heavy vehicles they’d probably be more likely to consider them for a personal vehicle.
They should have sent a poet.
Lost in Space
Well, Rivian is making electric delivery trucks for Amazon, and Tesla is making the Semi, so those questions are being addressed.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
As someone who actually does drive 300 miles twice a week, and often has to haul large items for home repair, I would totally buy a cybertruck if I could afford one.
I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies
Lost in Space
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I would buy a Cybertruck just to have one, since they are so insane that I would turn heads everywhere I went, and the thing is practically indestructible so I could laugh at people trying to vandalize it (while reporting them to the police with Sentry Mode video). Of course, I am not in the market for a pickup, nor am I ever likely to be, so it's a moot point.
(FYI, someone posted a render of the Cybertruck with a bubble blower on the back, so they could reverse coal-roll shithead F-150 owners. I think that would be hilarious, especially as no IC pickup is ever going to beat Cybertruck on acceleration. For extra insult to their masculinity, the bubbles should be pink.)
What I still don't get is how they're going to hit that 250 mile range at a $40K price point given the tech this thing is supposed to have (never mind its weight). That and the safety issues, but if you can drive a dump truck around with a steel body, I don't see why regulators would would frown at this, especially since it's likely to be considered a Class II vehicle. An F-250 or Ram 2500 is going to plow right through a passenger car just as easily; it just won't be as likely to survive the event.
If Tesla actually makes good on the promise of the Cybertruck, it is going to be an unqualified game changer. I am cautiously enthusiastic.
Edited by Fighteer on Feb 26th 2020 at 9:37:34 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I'm sure that figure would depend on the efficiency of the vehicle it's connected to, but it is impressive. I wonder what the price is.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"