Toyota has the Prius, which is the car model that basically equaled "electric car" before Tesla even though it's "just" a hybrid. I wouldn't put Toyota out of the game yet.
> Both the Asian, European and American competitors will not only be 3-4 or even 5-6-7 years behind.
Where they will be in front of Tesla, however, and that for at least a decade: scaling and support. Once a car manufacturer figures out how to build a decent electric vehicle, it's easy to retool the factories. BMW with its i3/i8 series has experience with electric cars and with scaling while maintaining quality. Also, the big manufacturers have huge networks of dealers and service centers, which means that customers who value reliability and/or stress-free repairs are more likely to buy a BigCo car instead of a Tesla.
> They will be hundreds of millions of miles behind in terms of autonomy, and thousands of charging stations behind.
In Europe, charging station connectors should be standardized so there won't be a major advantage there. And autonomy... I would be surprised if big truck/bus vendors like MAN, Scania, Volvo and others don't have their newest fleet models send telemetry data back to home like Tesla does. Especially buses can deliver mountains of data about city travel back home.
tl; dr: I would not count on BigCar going belly-up, Tesla will imho just be a powerful competition but nothing like BigCar in scale.
I don't work in an automotive factory, but everyone I've asked about process engineering and factory tooling, has told me the opposite, that it is in fact quite expensive, both in capital and time, to retool.
>huge networks of dealers and service centers, which means that customers who value reliability and/or stress-free repairs are more likely to buy a BigCo car
It could be that I've simply had a completely different experience from you, but I've never really heard anyone I know say that the dealer experience was stress free or that the repairs made at dealers were reliable. In fact, almost everyone I know who is knowledgable about cars stays away from dealer service centers like the plague.
For some context I drive a 17 year old Civic that I mostly work on myself, although I do take it to a trustworthy independent shop for bigger repairs.
I actually think the current dealer network as well as the current private car ownership system might prove to be the biggest risks for the established players.
But it's certainly way cheaper and faster than to build a new factory like Tesla will have to do, which is what I wanted to say.
> It could be that I've simply had a completely different experience from you, but I've never really heard anyone I know say that the dealer experience was stress free or that the repairs made at dealers were reliable.
Different country maybe - I'm German. We don't have the kinds of issues the US has.
Not to pile on here, but I think this is one of the things that many Europeans underestimate with regards to Tesla in the US market. If Tesla can continue to sidestep the traditional dealer franchise network, and their lobbying efforts, while scaling, I think this could be one of their biggest advantages going against the established auto companies. Unless you've been subjected to it first hand I think it's difficult to understand just how awful the US dealer experience is. From what I've heard the transparency of the Tesla buying experience is a consistent selling point.
The problem is: a Tesla is radically different from any other car. You need specialized knowledge (especially in HV distribution) to properly repair it, and most likely also ultra-special tools, and from what I've heard (eg https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/replacement-parts-why-...) spare parts are extremely hard to come by, even for official Tesla shops.
So basically you need a massive network of official shops and dealers in order to assure the customers that their damaged/broken car is going to get fixed... and that's where BigCar has an advantage: all they need to do is to train one or two employees at each existing shop/dealer in how to service/repair an electric car, and they have the entire country serviced. Tesla on the other hand has to build the stores, hire and train personnel on their own... and that's a significant hit on capex.
Charging station coverage in the US is about where digital cellular coverage was in the mid-2000s. It exists in most places and in major population centers, but there are clear holes. Gas stations meanwhile are still ubiquitous.
The outlook may be different in 5-10 years, but right now in the US a plug-in hybrid is the best of both worlds IMO. Assuming your round-trip daily commute is within the electric range it's a de-facto pure EV, with the gasoline only kicking in for occasional longer trips.
Even this may be optimistic. I can name the 5 closest gas stations to my house (even though the closest is about 8 miles away), but I couldn't name a single charging station. Not one. I see Teslas on the road, so they must exist, but I haven't a clue where they are.
And Tesla's supercharger map: https://www.tesla.com/supercharger
I've found they tend to be out of the way or attached to shopping centers/big box stores/other places you wouldn't expect. It's rare to find a charging station with gas-station-like visibility, the numbers just aren't there yet I guess.
Indeed, it's much more complex than an EV. Yet as of February 2017 Toyota alone had delivered ten million hybrid vehicles, with 80,000 mile drive train warranties - better than Tesla offer and on a scale magnitudes greater.
Can charging stations not be standardized, like gas stations?
1. The fastest turn around times for charging are about 10x the fastest turn around times for fossil fuels. This presents a queuing problem limited by real estate.
2. The typical fossil fuel refilling time allows high turnover in supplemental facilities such as a Quickie Mart (or in many cases the fuel pumps are auxiliary to retail sales as the primary business). The recharge time of an electric vehicle does not support as high a turnover.
3. Fossil fuels allow better arbitrage for business operators. Cheap gasoline can sit onsite or in transit in tanks to be sold later at a higher price. Electricity prices are typically set by a single local provider and electricity cannot be stored.
The real-estate is the real problem. The Tesla charging station near me is on the parking lot perimeter of a shopping mall. It's almost certainly cheap, but not exactly convenient to either the nearest interstate (ten minutes in traffic) nor the stores in the Mall (1/4 mile each way across a sea of asphalt and it's not really a shopping mall anyone would pull of the interstate for).
Shopping at the mall is great if I don't have to be anywhere any time soon and I've got some money to spend on things I probably don't really need. But having to do so every two hundred miles smells more of nuisance than of pleasure.
Just an FYI, you can set a Tesla to keep the interior of the car cool even when you're not in it. I've seen pictures of people leaving notes on their windows telling people not to smash the window to save the dog left inside because the A/C is still running.
And if you're going to be at your destination for several hours, you can still remotely turn the A/C on in preparation for leaving.
Sure most of my trips are less than 200 miles. But the majority of the miles I drive are on trips of 200+.
I can see no reality in which make-exclusive charging stations are viable.
Sure some will be left in the dust because they missed the good wagon, but a large chunk of them will survive and thrive.
Right know Tesla's production is quite small compared to other manufacturers, and even the Model 3 is quite expensive. Most people want a car to go reliably from point A to point B, for a relatively small cost. At 30000 to 35000 dollars, the Model 3 is 50% more expensive than a "good enough" car that fulfills basic needs like daily commutes and a few long trips a year. The Model 3 is still a car for people who likes interesting cars and have the money to buy it.
Also right now, even "quite expensive" electric cars are not yet as convenient as traditional cars. IMHO, EV will become a truly viable alternative when they reach the 3 twos: 20 minutes recharge for 200 kilometers of autonomy, at price of 20000 dollars.
~200 km is the distance traveled between pauses on long trips, ~20 minutes is the duration of the pauses, ~20000 dollars is a bit arbitrarily, but I think it's the average price a middle class family is willing to pay for its main car. Of course it's a general approximation, but I think it's still a quite generous target for EV.
Another possible outcome might not come from the traditional car manufacturers but from China or maybe India. Pollution is a huge issue there given the population density and these countries might need EV to reduce it. "Necessity is the mother of invention", local manufacturers might take a lead because of it.
Totally unacceptable. 5 minutes for 4-500 kilometers of autonomy is where it's at. I will not but EV until that happens. I am willing to sacrafice 200km of autonomy ( from my current 600-700km with Civic 1.6 diesel ) for EV.
Everything else is just annoyance for my style of life with daily commute and kids. I don't want to charge for 20 minutes every week at some random charge station.
Considering my friends and family who feel the same I don't think other manufacturers will have any issues catching up with Tesla in 10-20 years.
When they do get rolling, they'll develop a lot of momentum, but it may be too late for some.
The thing is, even without Tesla in the picture, the auto market looks like crap. Yet somehow, Tesla is able to attract private capital (or at least better press)…
But that the world's largest car manufacturer has to team up with another of the large manufacturers just to get a viable EV competitor on the market doesn't bode well. Right now they really don't have any decent EV on the market, any of them.
Toyota hopes to introduce a solid state battery type at some point in the early 2020s. Check it out here, where you can also see their latest EV concept car for ride sharing: prototype:https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/25/toyota-future-ev-battery...
At that time, Tesla's Model 3 will have been on the market some 3-7 years. Will they be able to catch up? I am not sure - To me it seems like the usual traditional car company in denial thinking it needs to make weird cars for weird EV fans. This is Mazda's much better looking concept: http://www.stuartsgarages.com/web/mazda-electric-car-planned... No vital specs such as range has been provided, though.
Both the Asian, European and American competitors will not only be 3-4 or even 5-6-7 years behind. They will be hundreds of millions of miles behind in terms of autonomy, and thousands of charging stations behind. And so far, they are still stuck with the old structure of dealerships when accessing the markets; dealers that in many of the markets used to make a good chunk of their income on repairs and spare parts, both which is likely to be less important with EVs. And a large part of their manufacturing infrastructure and employees can only be used for combustion engine cars.
For each of them, if they flunk their first serious attempt at launching a competitive EV, you can add another 3 years or whatever the developing to production cycle is for vehicles. Right now, I have seen no-one - not a single one of them - with specs and design for even as much as a concept car that compares to the long range Model 3 now in production.
My bet is that those of the traditional combustion engine manufacturers that flunk their first attempt (and right now they all look as if they try to fail), will suffer huge losses from 2020- 2025 and that some of them may never recover.