EVs Are Great Around Town, But.......

[NeilBlanchard]

It is not hard to see the massive effect that the Tesla Model 3 on the rest of the automotive industry.

It is the safest car. Ever.

The Model S is the next safest, and the Model X the next after that. All 3 are in another league from the rest of the vehicles being built today.

Electric cars are about 4X as efficient as the average ICE car. They are less expensive to drive; even with cheap gas.

Electric cars require virtually no regular maintenance.

The high performance electric cars, are supercars - or hypercars - at a fraction of the cost of those with ICE's. The Tesla Roadster 2 looks to redefine high performance.

The Rivian R1T will accelerate 0-60MPH in 3 seconds (or less?). That is a 5 seat pickup truck ... Oh, and it has full torque vectoring, and it is about 2X the efficiency of a Prius.

[redpoint5]

I'm a huge fan of EVs for all the reasons Neil points out.

That said, a $12,000 heavy "fuel tank", that takes ages to fill, that shrinks in capacity over time, that needs environmental regulation (heat and cool), is a serious drawback. Being able to "refill" at home is a huge bonus that tends to offset the "ages to fill" problem. It's still expensive and not convenient for traveling beyond the single charge range.

If EVs didn't have the battery liability, we'd get near 100% adoption instantly because they are so good.

[NeilBlanchard]

The battery is the crux, but it is not nearly as bad as you make it sound.

First of all, my family has had 2 EV's for about 5 years, and we have only used a quick charger about 2 dozen times; and used a public Level 2 a handful of times.

We have saved a LOT of time, by plugging in and charging at home - we share one Level 2 station between both cars. Waiting in line at the gas station (and maneuvering to get in line, at our best local gas station), and having to take them to the garage to get oil changed, and things fixed - and breathing fumes while pumping gas, altogether are much longer than waiting for a quick charge once in a while.

The cost of the battery is unlikely to matter. None of the 4 EV's we have had (3 leased, 1 purchased) have shown any noticeable loss of capacity; let alone need replacing.

Since we have solar panels on the roof (which should pay for themselves in 5-6 years), it only costs us about 1¢ or 1.5¢ per mile to drive them - INCLUDING regular maintenance.

[redpoint5]

The battery problems are exactly as bad as represented. It takes a lot of "saving" to make up for the extra $12,000 expense of the fuel tank, something that costs like $100 on a regular ICE vehicle.

I'm using the Bolt EV as an example since it's among the best and most affordable EVs. It seems to lose about 1% capacity for every 8,000 miles, which is not too bad compared to previous generation EVs. That represents only a 12.5% loss in capacity over 100,000 miles. It's still not nothing, and might be part of the reason EVs suffer catastrophic depreciation.

Any EV owner that regularly makes use of public chargers has anecdotes of charging attempts that were inconvenient; either by being in use by other vehicles, ICEd, broken, not within range, or slow to charge. EVs are not good long distance vehicles.

Cost per mile is amortized over the lifetime of vehicle ownership. When you go to sell the vehicle, the difference in purchase price and sale price is depreciation. Then add in any amount spent on electricity including the amortized cost of solar, and any maintenance. That final amount divided by total miles driven is the cost per mile, and it's way, way higher than 1 cent per mile.

EVs are great around town as a daily driver, but there are real reasons they aren't dominating sales.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

The problems Tesla ran into were no sign of incompetence. You simply cannot make progress without taking risks. You cannot iron out every detail beforehand. All you need is to know what you want to achieve, and systematically work to get there, learning and improving while doing so.

The entire Model 3 launch fiasco was the most likely outcome given the choices Musk made:

1. Set an unreasonably tight time table
2. Choose to automate things that your employees and the automation experts you hired said should be assembled manually.
3. Choose to skip soft tooling (To try to keep the unreasonable timetable)
4. Refuse to use industry standards like Kanban because they are industry standards.

Launching a new model is not that difficult but when a company chooses to cut corners bad things happen. There is nothing new about designing a steel unibody or building an assembly line. It is something that companies have been doing for decades but Musk bungled because he refused to learn from the market leaders.

Originally Posted by RedDevil

As long as demand for the high-end versions exceeds production capacity, it makes no sense to retool for the base model. I hope you can see that.

There should not be any retooling required. This is brand new assembly line made for a brand new product. The line should support full model flexibility from day 1.

I can see that it makes sense to start with more expenses models and then only add cheaper models as necessary to keep the production schedule full. The topic of discussion is when Tesla made that decision. I believe that was the plan from the start. I believe that when Musk promised in 2016 that Tesla would build a $35,000 Model 3 in 2017 he knew that would not happen. I believe Musk promised a $35K Model 3 for sale in 2017 to boost reservations.

Do you believe Tesla intended to launch the Model 3 with the $35,000 version?

[Isaac Zackary]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

The cost of the battery is unlikely to matter. None of the 4 EV's we have had (3 leased, 1 purchased) have shown any noticeable loss of capacity; let alone need replacing.

Every buyer's/leaser's circumstances are different. And this plus the battery "problem" is what prevents mass EV adoption. I live where it's cool and my Leaf didn't lose hardly any capacity. But my needs to drive far in below 0°F weather over miles and miles of barren highway with no place to plug in ended up making me rethink whether owning an EV was really such a good idea in my situation.

For others, they live where it's hot and where batteries die quickly. Others can only afford used cars, so whether EV's come with a warranty or not makes no difference for them. Some have to drive long distances like me. Some of us live where Tesla hasn't even started putting in quick charging stations. I did a 700 mile trip, mostly at speeds of 35mph and charging off of 120V outlets for the most part in my 2013 Leaf, which even though I bought used and got a 24% Colorado tax credit was still the most expensive car I had ever bought. Sure, all that was fun for me, but for someone else that's ridiculous.

The point is that if for any one small reason an EV doesn't look like it will work out, people just won't buy one.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zackary

The point is that if for any one small reason an EV doesn't look like it will work out, people just won't buy one.

That is key. Most people are looking for one do-it-all vehicle even if they own multiple vehicles.

Pair an EV with a hybrid or conventional ICE vehicle and the range doesn't matter. Most couples could own at least 1 EV but it would take a new way of thinking about things.

My Spark EV has never left the Portland Metro area and won't while I have it. That's fine because we drive the wagon on road trips.

[redpoint5]

...and yet, Tesla as a business persists.

Then that's a fraction of the mentionable companies Musk has played pivotal roles in:

Zip2
X.com and PayPal
SpaceX
Tesla
SolarCity
Gigafactory
Hyperloop
OpenAI
Neuralink
The Boring Company

If competence is only arriving at the optimal solution to a problem on the first try, then it exists only as a concept and not attributable to any person in history.

There are plenty of derogatory labels that come to mind when thinking of Musk, but incompetence is pretty far down the list.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by JSH

The entire Model 3 launch fiasco was the most likely outcome given the choices Musk made:

1. Set an unreasonably tight time table
2. Choose to automate things that your employees and the automation experts you hired said should be assembled manually.
3. Choose to skip soft tooling (To try to keep the unreasonable timetable)
4. Refuse to use industry standards like Kanban because they are industry standards.

There's a reason Kanban and likewise aren't used everywhere. Same with soft tooling. Tesla uses a try and learn method, which is good - if you make sure you do not repeat the same mistake (or if you do, you must recognize it and learn from that).

Originally Posted by JSH

Launching a new model is not that difficult but when a company chooses to cut corners bad things happen. There is nothing new about designing a steel unibody or building an assembly line. It is something that companies have been doing for decades but Musk bungled because he refused to learn from the market leaders.

Tesla did not design 'a' steel unibody, but one specifically tailor made for a BEV, with unrivaled safety. Tesla had reasons not to use traditional assembly line technology, and maybe some of that backfired, but not all. Progress comes at a cost.

Originally Posted by JSH

There should not be any retooling required. This is brand new assembly line made for a brand new product. The line should support full model flexibility from day 1.

It's not the car there but the battery module assembly in the Gigafactory. For what I know a different sized battery needs different tooling, ideally a completely separate line. But that's costly.

Originally Posted by JSH

I can see that it makes sense to start with more expenses models and then only add cheaper models as necessary to keep the production schedule full. The topic of discussion is when Tesla made that decision. I believe that was the plan from the start. I believe that when Musk promised in 2016 that Tesla would build a $35,000 Model 3 in 2017 he knew that would not happen. I believe Musk promised a $35K Model 3 for sale in 2017 to boost reservations.

Do you believe Tesla intended to launch the Model 3 with the $35,000 version?

Yes, of course. Tesla's schedules are tight but possible if nothing major goes wrong. Cutting edge technology projects habitually go way past their original planning, with that in mind Tesla does not do too badly.

What Musk did not foresee (and what amazed me greatly) was the lax response of the industry. From the moment the original Roadster came out it was obvious that high performance, reasonable range EVs were a reality.
Nothing much happened. The Leaf and Zoe had small ranges and looked odd. The luxury and performance marked ignored EVs (except for that other startup, Fisker). So the market for upscale versions of the Model 3 was bigger than could be expected.

Musk did not expect the severity of the startup problems nor the lax response of the competition, otherwise the base model would already be on sale. He wanted to boost reservations, fully expecting to deliver.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

It's not the car there but the battery module assembly in the Gigafactory. For what I know a different sized battery needs different tooling, ideally a completely separate line. But that's costly.

OTOH, sensible design would make the battery out of smaller, identical modules, so you could put say 6, 8, or 10 of them in a car. And really sensible design would standardize the size and connectors between manufacturers, the same way that AAA, AA, C, and D sized batteries, or the way you can easily upgrade say the disk drive in your computer without having to buy a manufacturer-specific model. (Well, unless you bought an Apple product :-()

Musk did not expect the severity of the startup problems nor the lax response of the competition, otherwise the base model would already be on sale. He wanted to boost reservations, fully expecting to deliver.

IDK. I think a lot of the problems are down to his decisions. It seems as though for every good idea he comes up with, he has to do something really dumb to balance things.