Here's what you're missing... Most of the major automakers: Ford, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, etc do not have viable business models in the near future. They are so far behind in sustainable transportation its only a matter of time until they lose their economies of scale and are no longer viable businesses. It's an "Iphone moment"... the other car companies have great "flip phones" right now.
This seems really optimistic about the adoption of electric cars. I suspect adoption will be drastically slower than you're imagining, and hybrids as well as gas vehicles will remain relevant for a long time still. Toyota of course has the top-selling hybrid, and introduced a plug-in hybrid version recently. Ford was in the #2 spot and Toyota was again in the #3. Honda takes #5. I think the thesis of these automakers is that they can ride the transition from gas -> hybrid -> plugin hybrid -> electric. I hope you're right, but from what I see, it seems unlikely.
Additionally, Nissan has the #4-selling electric car, and Chevy has the #2.
Tesla has already sold every car they can manufacture, and their entry price is $40k-ish in the USA. Other manufacturers are limiting how many BEVs they produce, and still managing to sell most of the ones they build even though they are universally objectively worse than any Tesla offering.
Tesla Model 3 is the best selling BEV in every market it participates in (not sure about numbers compared to PHEVs). It is selling in comparable quantities to ICE vehicles in the same price range.
A significant number of people buying Model 3 are upgrading from cars costing half the price.
There is little to no indication that EV adoption will slow down (before pointing to a drop in Model 3 sales in the USA consider that the one factory supplies the entire world outside China).
Chinese Model 3 production only started in November. Check back in February, you’ll find it’s the highest selling vehicle (perhaps by model, though I am betting also by manufacturer).
Europe-wide, Tesla Model 3 is top of the charts by a wide margin. The articles you linked mentioned this, France and Germany are behind because the vast demand for Tesla in Netherlands and Norway is sucking all the supply up before France and Germany get a seat at the table.
As Fremont production improves and the German Tesla factory opens, we’ll see that lead grow as Europeans switch to BEVs en masse to escape the cheating ICE manufacturers.
You are basing that on less than one month of sales after the factory just opened. Your claim is bogus, acknowledge that and be prepared to wait for figures for a complete month of Model 3 actually being available in that market.
By February the factory should be working close to its capacity, let’s see what sales are like once Tesla is actually participating in that market.
5300 seems quite low given China’s size compared to, say, Australia. No doubt you will claim it is demand constrained, but that number looks like one boatload. That market is supply constrained.
We’re about one step away in battery tech (which Tesla leads on, among other things (efficiency, integration, etc) from a mid range electric car be upfront cost equivalent with an mid range gas car. Once that’s there, plus charging infrastructure (which is rapidly coming up) the other benefits (maintenance, torque, quiet, fuel costs, etc) will be front and center for every car buyer making the choice between the two technologies.
I don’t think it’s too optimistic. VW with the ID.3 seems like they’re the only ones who will be able to match the scale and qualities of product to the Model 3/Y in the near term.
do they have a roadmap for charging infrastructure? What if they sell millions and it takes 20min to charge knowing that most people will charge at similar times when going to work?
This assumption is wrong that everyone needs to charge before going to work. Once people started hitting queues at charging stations they will start charging at home over night. Though personally I think work place charging stations should be promoted where electric cars get charged at work using solar energy instead of at night at home using fossil fuel based electricity.
That may work in suburban America but I'm not so sure about the rest of the world. Most of my life I've lived in apartment complexes (US) / blocks of flats (Europe) where there was no car charging possibility when parking. It would require huge infrastructure changes to allow most people to be able to charge at home and work, this is different from gas powered vehicles where you need a relatively small number of (centralized) points that distribute fuel. With electric cars that number needs to be much larger and it's distributed.
It can be done over decades for sure but it won't happen overnight.
Hah.. also: fear of war (with Iran) -> oil went up -> people think e-cars will be more attractive -> TSLA up.
One time a few years ago, oil went down and TSLA followed. It'd be interesting to see what will happen with the incoming recession (although then all stocks might go down with people pulling out of the market).
> Additionally, Nissan has the #4-selling electric car, and Chevy has the #2.
From here: https://insideevs.com/news/343998/monthly-plug-in-ev-sales-s... - by # of units sold, no one is even close to the Model 3. People with money to buy electric cars with can probably afford a $50k car (Model 3) that does everything well over $less cars that do everything kinda poorly.
It's not optimism, it's arithmetic: Tesla is stealing units from the other car companies. The other car companies require those unit sales to keep the prices the where they are otherwise they have to raise prices (same goes for insurance).
Sure maybe for the next 2-5 years people will do business as normal but are you really going to buy a Corolla for $30K when you can get a Tesla Model 3 for $30K? That is what will cause a quick shift.
A new Model 3 is 36k, a new Corolla is 19.6k MSRP. Realistically you can get the Toyota for less than half the price of the Tesla. I am not convinced that gap can be closed in 5 years, much less 2.
Corolla gets 32mpg. Assume 200,000 miles over the life of the corolla, that’s 6250 gallons of fuel. $2.79/gallon where I live for $17437 of fuel over the life of the corolla. $19600+17437=$37k
The Tesla requires 50,000 kWh to drive 200,000 miles. At $0.08/kWh (what I’m paying), that’s just $4000 in electricity.
$36k + $4k = $40k
That’s surprisingly close for a Tesla Model 3 versus a Corolla.
8 cents per kw/hr is nearly the cheapest rate in America.
And most people will not be on track to drive 200k miles in their car before the loan is paid off. Which leaves them upfronting a very large percentage of the savings.
Current electric car prices already make economic sense for car fleets where maintenance and fuel saving make it cheaper. One of the reasons delivery companies have been interested in electric vans.
They're going to follow customer demand. If demand for electric cars remains low, they aren't going to abandon the types of cars that are selling really well for them in order to simplify the production process. And there are a lot of reasons to think that demand for electric cars is not going to skyrocket all of a sudden: range anxiety, lack of charging stations, gas prices being fairly low, the time it takes to charge, etc.
Fuel prices in the USA are quite low. There isn’t much demand for a plugin hybrid. People looking for “green” cred and branding may go straight to an electric car, while everyone else buys SUVs and light trucks.
Most of the major automakers work in 5 year cycles, where the cars are basically the same for 5 years but get cosmetic changes. Major design changes need to be part of the next cycle if its non-trivial.
In addition to the very large market opportunity for their stationary storage batteries and solar panels / solar tiles. You can sell those big grid scale megapacks to virtually every government in the world. You can't necessarily sell Tesla cars to every person in most of the third world (or western first world for that matter!).
There is also the potential taxi and trucking businesses if they ever nail self driving. These side businesses are what a lot of people are missing in the comments only talking about Tesla's car business. They are diversifying in a way that some other car companies aren't. I'm not 100% sure that the self driving tech will get where it needs to be for this to become viable anytime soon, but the same applies to Uber and they have a market cap near $60 billion largely based off that same upside.
John Q. Public has no reason to buy an EV. Today's gas prices don't put the same dent in his pocket that $5/gallon* gas did. And there's good reason to believe that $5/gallon gas is probably never coming back.
I am for EVs, Tesla, and anything that can keep us from making large portions of Earth unarable and uninhabitable. But most people's car-buying decisions are driven by economic realities, not environmental concern.
*$5/gallon US average price - I understand it's frequently this high on the coasts and in large cities, and it's almost always higher in countries with appropriately levied fuel taxes.
If commercials tell me anything about what car buyers value, there are so many other apsects John Q Public would appreciate!
John likes fast cars. And oh boy my Nissan Leaf is fun to drive! Mountain driving feels like floating silently into the air. Instant torque, no gear shifting.
John may also appreciate the extra leg room, as even a compact car gains a lot of room without a gas engine.
John also likes saving money and convenience. And while gas isn't super expensive, I wake up every morning with a full charge for about $1. Gas stations just aren't a part of my life. (charging away from home is still a PITA, FWIW)
John might also like skipping the majority of standard maintenance. No oil changes. No random belts. Less brake wear (I think?) from regeneration. Sure, after 100k you'll probably want a new battery, but it's a known cost that's dropping.
Maybe EVs need to drop the 'environmental' badge and focus on how awesome they are.
Fun is pretty subjective. I'm not a car guy and don't have much experience with nice cars.
But, this isn't a nice car- I paid $6,500. I'm just comparing it to every ICE car I've driven (aside from that one time I got 20 minutes in a Lamborghini), and definitely every ICE car you can purchase used for $6,500.
But given the acceleration and smoothness, I'm just betting it's more fun to drive than nearly every car described in commercials fun to drive.
for $6500 you're probably right, unless you're willing to purchase a "project" vehicle. I bet it's a lot more peppy than a 1.5L honda civic. I mainly ask because I see the MSRP for a new leaf is almost $30k, which is where you can start getting into some new entry-level performance cars or a lightly used bmw coupe.
On the Model 3, if you enable Hold mode, then it's possible to drive without EVER using the brakes outside of emergency situations. The rotors and pads will theoretically last forever outside of environmental damage.
While I like the idea of Hold mode, not regularly using the brake will cause the breaking reflex action to fade with time. You really want to have a good "slam the breaks" reflex if you drive a car On the other hand, maybe Tesla feels their automatic systems will break better than humans and this is not really a problem to worry about.
I think njarboe feels that it is the human reflex to 'slam the brakes' will fade if the human doesn't use it enough in 'hold' mode, not the mechanism in the car.
Correct. Moving your foot from the accelerator to the brake is a much practiced motion and your body can do it very quickly without much thought. I rarely use cruse control, so when I do and think I might want to brake soon, I get nervous. I don't really know where the brake is. At that point I put my foot back on the accelerator and now my body knows how to hit the brake again.
Which is why the cybertruck announcement was so huge. The styling dominated the headline, but IMO the biggest news was the pricing. $40K for a full size medium duty crew cab pickup is cheaper than the equivalent gasoline truck.
As a counter point to this, gas in Atlanta costs $3.11 for premium. A BMW 3 series gets about 30mpg. Driving 1000 miles per month in the BMW costs $104 in gas.
GA Power offers $.01 per kilowatt hour rates in the middle of the night. A Tesla Model 3 gets 2.91 miles / kWh. Driving 1000 miles per month in the Tesla costs $3.44.
Fueling the Tesla costs $1200 less per year than the BMW if you drive an average number of miles, and we haven't even gotten to the cost of oil changes and brake pads.
Isn't this ignoring other parts of the world? Europe single handidly can drive this market. Also large portions of asia that would love affordable electric vehicles (not ness "cars") for their densely populated cities. Never mind the short range cargo vehicle market throughout the world.
Europe currently faces a bit of an chicken and egg problem with the EV market. European manufacturers don't produce meaningful EVs which results in no subsidies that would accelerate the market (or those subsidies are also available to hybrids in their lineup which won't be driven in EV mode). In turn they don't have any incentive to move forward with their EV lineup, as most people are loyal to their local manufacturers.
> as most people are loyal to their local manufacturers.
This is perhaps true for a few countries making good cars. The rest of EU is more than happy to drive German and French cars (if they can afford it, of course).
The EU has introduced fleet CO2 emission standards that are going to go up every year. As a consequence the European manufacturers are scrambling to design and produce ev's.
Well, in truth they most likely have something like a decade or so to adjust which is both not a lot and enough for such organizations to adjust.
Sure some manufacturers will go bust and collapse, but other will adapt, and new ones will be created.
I'm quite puzzled by Tesla's valuation, such a valuation is betting on it becoming a huge actor in the post IC automobile industry which is not a given.
I'm also skeptical about the "Iphone moment", functionally the Iphone was a huge step forward (basically having a small computer in your pocket vs having something just doing phone calls, SMSes and snake), but a Tesla, well, right now, it's still a car which does more or less the same thing as any other car (just slightly better in some aspect, slightly worst in others).
It's also not the same market, the Iphone appeared in the booming market of mobile phones which was seeing exponential growth at the time. And also, the gain in functionality and convenience was enough to transform the market from consumers willing to pay at most ~100$ for a flip phone to consumers willing to pay 1000$ for a smartphone with all that entails in term margins and profitability.
The car market by contrast, is not seeing such a growth, and it's unlikely consumers will be willing to spend that much more for their car.
There are potential market shift possible which could be caused by things like reliable autonomous vehicles, tighter regulations forbidding IC vehicles in some cities, cheaper cars (as EV are mechanically simpler, it's a possibility), but these are somewhat elusive.
> Iphone was a huge step forward (basically having a small computer in your pocket vs having something just doing phone calls, SMSes and snake)
The iPhone wasn't the first smartphone. In fact when released it was significantly inferior to existing Symbian and Nokia offering in terms of "objectively useful" stuff like browser behavior, modem bandwidth and third party app support. Obviously it was transformatively better, in ways that the established players didn't understand enough to emulate, but it's not correct to imagine it as a first mover.
In fact the Tesla/Apple comparison seems almost perfectly apt to me.
I still like reading the essay [1] from former Vice Chairman and Head of Product Development of General Motors Bob Lutz from time to time: “Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap.”
I personally have bought my last internal combustion engine car. I had planned to purchase another vehicle by now, but will wait for the Model 3 (perhaps another?) to mature a bit then go electric. I’m curious how many others out there have changed their calculus, too. I think it’s very analogous to iPhone’s rise, which must account for the stock.
iPhones did not need a charging network. They did not have any disadvantages besides the high price, which made them even more desirable. But I just do not see average people who live in condos buy an EV anytime soon.
> They did not have any disadvantages besides the high price
iPhones couldn't run Flash (which powered all of the interactive content on the internet at the time), couldn't send MMS (which was the way everyone shared photos at the time) or run apps (which was how feature phones added functionality at the time).
"Why on Earth would anyone want one of those!?" was a pretty common reaction, yet they still sold like hotcakes. In the case of Flash and MMS, the whole mobile internet changed to suit the iPhone. In the case of apps, Steve Jobs finally relented, leading to the single biggest software marketplace in the world.
That reaction really only came from makers of competing phones. (RIM execs famously refused to believe the battery life was possible, Balmer threw very unconvincing dismissals.)
The only commonwealthidespread complaint was about the lack of 3G and copy/paste.
However, the overwhelming response to the iPhone was extremely positive. Even from non Apple sources.
RIM didn’t think the iPhone was possible when it was first released. Google instantly changed the direction of their Android project when the iPhone was released.
"Too expensive" is a perfectly fine thing to think about a product like that, and is very far away from thinking nobody wants it.
Qwerty keyboards were always a niche, and "nice, but I don't need one" is reasonably classified as an underestimate of the product but it's still approval.
I still want a slide out keyboard like my Nokia N900 had... and if you don't think $1000 is overpriced for an I-Phone, you probably haven't tried a $300 phone that has very similar capabilities...
It really wasn't that popular initially, at least nowhere near what it is today. There were only 1.5 million sales in 2007, and about 12 million in 2008. For comparison, there were over 210 million sold in 2018.
Actually, the first one wasn't in that much demand, because it had laughably slow processor and cell standard support even by 2007 standards (no UMTS, which was already available on cell networks back then, just not with an iPhone). Apple fanboys stood in line for it and since Apple wasn't able to even produce enough for them, it seemed like "everyone wanted one".
The iPhone 3G changed this fundamentally; you didn't have to be a die-hard Apple fanboy to justify wanting one of those, because it was the only phone on the market that actually gave you sufficiently usable mobile access to "the real Internet".
I certainly didn't stand in line. The iPhone seemed primitive and lacking to me at the time. And I wasn't alone in spending lots of money on alternative phones.
The original iPhone sold for $600 and a 2 year AT&T contract.
The iPhone had a ton of pricing headway to make itself more attractive.
Tesla is almost the exact opposite.
Now, this isn’t an argument against Tesla or its stock price (that’s a different argument altogether). This is an argument against the idea That Tesla and the iPhone are in any way comparable.
The iPhone hit in a market where competitors have mutually agreed to hide away from regulator attention as long as possible.
That is most certainly not the state of the car industry.
And you can see how "old industry" will play with old wet cell batteries and newer batteries in data center spaces (newer batteries are considerably safer in reality with each cell monitored, with the battery wall automatically removing problematic cells, and requiring less than a fifth of the space of wet cells). However wet cell manufacturers have been really good at manipulating and adding regulations that make newer batteries untenable to have since regulations are purposely broad enough that each inspector you bring in will cited the same regulation as having a different meaning.
On top of that: no (physical) keyboard, no GPS, no 3G support.
They were almost the textbook definition of a disruptive product (worse on traditional metrics by which products compete, but better on some key factors that have customer value)...
Then you need to look closer. A long range model 3 can go 310 miles and charge quickly at superchargers. Condo dwellers can basically treat this car just like a gas car with fewer fillup options.
A lot of people should do the math on the model 3. The math is current car payment + 90% gas payment = new car payment on a model 3. The remaining 10% is what you pay for electricity.
> Condo dwellers can basically treat this car just like a gas car with fewer fillup options
The building that I live in is going to run out of physical space for electric meters long before it has issues with electrical capacity. My neighbor opted to forgo having a charger for his Model 3 and instead put one into the garage of his weekend home (he doesn't drive much during the week so he'll be ok).
Given existing equipment on the market now, our building can support maybe 10-15% electric cars. If you are designing a new building, there is no limitation. Our condo board has been searching for a solution and has found some things that are "promising", but nothing that will solve our problem before we run out of space. Again, this is a physical space limitation for the meters, not electrical capacity. And it's a problem where the solution will have to interface with the existing built environment and the existing electrical grid and the existing safety codes, etc. If all you pay attention to are single family homes with garages, you'll never know this is an issue until sales take a nosedive in big cities.
All the charger networks have solved this. Just choose a network (Chargepoint, Semaconnect, etc.), put in a 2- or 4-connection charger, and each EV owner pays for each charge with an RFID card or their phone. There are also online services for scheduling and paying for use of private (not-smart) chargers (evmatch.com), and others that specialize in your exact problem (multiple chargers in shared dwellings): evercharge.net
In a condo building, each parking space is deeded to the owner as a limited common element for the exclusive use of the owner. The charger in the parking space is owned by the owner of the parking space and the electrical connection runs to a utility closet that the electrical utility controls.
In a new building, you just design the electrical system so this is a non-issue. In an existing building, it's not so simple. Any state that has a lot of condos is going to have 100+ years of condominium laws that govern the ownership and usage of space in a condominium. You can't force someone to share their space and you can't authorize someone to enter someone else's space.
Condo associations that want to solve this can. It isn't a technical problem and it won't slow down EV adoption very much. It is kind of like adding satellite TV and plenty of HOAs have figured that one out despite not having it wired into the building. Yes, specific organizations will be slower than others, but as the demand ramps up more and more people will want this solved in their own HOA and they'll start getting it done like dominoes.
People on our condo board have owned Teslas for years. We are a building that is out in front of it. Coax cable doesn't carry 240V power. This isn't something you can hand-wave away.
At least in Germany, that math doesn't add up. Electricity is - if it's not heavily subsidized, which had been the case for a long time with a lot of EV charging spots over here, although only by accident - at least about 50% of the comparable gas price per mileage. Can be even more than 100% in some corner cases, but I think 50% is a good approximation, assuming you charge mostly at home.
I drive a hybrid and charge at home. My stats on electricity costs, after almost two years, is that my electric kilometers cost me 1/3 of my gasoline kilometers. For reference, it's in Portugal where electricity cost 0.2€/kWh and gasoline 1.5-1.6€/L.
And there's the local difference that makes or breaks this kind of calculation. For Germany these numbers currently are more like 0.3€/kWh and 1.2-1.3€/l.
Portugal has the fourth most expensive electricity in the EU. You are unfortunately above our level, because of taxation (Germany holds the top spot). Throughout the EU, the calculation is better for EVs. The median is at about 15¢/kWh.
I love the implicit assumption that electric vehicle adoption will run rampant, but at the same time, electricity costs will remain "negligible" and charging/pricing won't adapt to the increased demand...
Higher costs for electricity would be a great problem to have because solar is already competitive at current prices. Costs would have to go up 5x at least to make even a bad EV in an expensive kW/h locale cost as much as a gasoline car. At that rate almost anybody could make money deploying solar generation and storage in a remote locale, and of course for those with the luxury of having a roof.
I can afford any production car. I choose not to allocate money that way and I’m far from unique there.
We drive 10K miles per year across two drivers. My daily electric (LEAF) costs me $0.05/mi for energy (and I love it). My wife’s SUV costs $0.10/mi for gas and a few pennies for oil (and she loves it). She pays $600/year max for fuel. That covers about a month of Tesla car payment.
Ah, it doesn't work out in your case because you've already made the transition to electric. We went from two gas guzzlers (one of them was a 40mpg diesel, the other a fairly typical 25mpg) to one model 3 and the financing equation easily works in our case. Obviously not everyone is going to give up a car, and the math doesn't work for everyone. But more people should be doing the math rather than just looking at the sticker price of the teslas.
Going from $0.11/mi to $0.05/mi ($0.20/kWh in MA) even at 20K miles per year saves $100/mo. That’s not economically compelling. Driving 1/4 of that (per driver) is even less compelling. I bought an electric because I wanted one (and there was $10K in government cheese in the trunk).
$100/mo is pretty compelling to lots of people. Why throw money away? My locale is even better because I pay $0.08/kwH (Portland, Oregon). We like to ski; every time we drive up the mountain was $50 in gas for our Ford Escape. Now it's roughly $5. That alone represents $180 a month. In the summer we have different hobbies that are equally travel intensive so it's a year-round win.
Why spend $50K or more to save $100 or even $180 a month for maybe 8 years and get $10-20K back at the end? That’s just not compelling on an RoI basis.
There are many reasons to like a Tesla. It’s almost surely not the cheapest way to motor though. A $5K Honda and investing the difference will be wildly cheaper during the ownership period (including no need to carry collision/comprehensive insurance!) and have a much higher residual value (in the investment account). To me, that should be more compelling to many people.
> But I just do not see average people who live in condos buy an EV anytime soon.
Depending on where you live, there are sometimes EV charging spots in apartments/condos. To me, this is pretty clearly a supply/demand issue.
Today, there aren't enough EV drivers for condos to care, but as the percentage of people who own EVs increases, more places will install chargers. It's the exact same process that resulted in gas stations being everywhere.
And you'll start to see free charging evaporate (or appear in the form of rising rent/HOA fees). Condos can afford to "subsidize" a couple of free spots for a complex, but they're not going to be saying "free electric charging for hundreds of vehicles".
You'll probably end up paying to have one installed at a dedicated parking spot and get the power charged to you. It's going to be the equivalent of renting a spot in a carport instead of a standard uncovered parking. Most of the Apartments I've rented have had covered or garage parking available, I've never paid the extra for it, but it's there.
Condo associations in my city have been permissive/proactive about this issue, wiring a few parking spots near the building with 220v, and assessing the owner with the cost. Our city has also installed charging stations at public buildings to encourage EV adoption.
It's really unknown at that time. If (IF) a few changes in techniques, materials and manufacturing processes align, with the climate friendly mentality, it's far from impossible that ICE will vanish fast and be replaced by EVs.
Of course these are all IFs:
- battery chemistry: change in electrolyte, if not solid state
- modular wiring (way less expensive cable to make and install)
These two are worked on as of now, if they pan out, that's another drop in price and increase in usability.
Taking in account that the amount of money flowing into EVs has most probably increase by an order of magnitude (German brands, etc, all are investing). This may very well cause an overall drop in prices in all parts. Commoditization..
You are right about infrastructure, but I'm not convinced it's going to be a deal breaker for many people living in condos.
Even a level 1 charger (1.4kW) can add >50 miles worth of charge overnight (12h) and people living in condos tend to have a shorter commute.
And it's going to get better - for example Ontario mandates 20% parking spaces have charger installed and remaining 80% be ready to have one installed since 2018. IIRC the requirement is 200A per parking spot.
it's certainly a little inconvenient but people are already buying evs who live in condos in Seattle and San Francisco and probably other places. Don't forget apartments, they have the same issue
The higher end apartment buildings are getting chargers here in the Seattle area, while the lower ones are still slow on the uptake. It is just a matter of time now, anyways.
