The race now is between established players catching up to Tesla and its technology, and Tesla catching up to established players with their capacity to produce cars at scale.
I'm under impression that the value of Tesla comes from the brand itself and Elon Musk's persona. The tech itself is nothing special, they are far behind in autonomous driving but the brand is very strong, they easily upsell "one day it will be autonomous" packages.
Their battery tech is better than everyones. ( Why is the Audi E-tron and Jaguar I-pace Less range than even the cheapest Tesla? )
Their autonomous is better than everyones. ( Don't know why you think they're far behind, the only other player with a comparable product is Supercruise and that is on one version of Cadillac ).
The data they have on their cars/collection pipeline is better than everyones.
Because their car is software there are all sorts of quality of life perks that exist from the dashboard.
So tired of hearing these cars aren't any better when they're some of the highest rated cars of all time and consistently compete with cars much more expensive.
The Audi e-tron deliberately over-provisioned the battery to give it a longer life and to enable faster charging. Only 88% of the battery (about 83 kwh) is available for use, but the upside of that is the e-tron can maintain a 150 kilowatt charge rate up to 80% state of charge which no other current EV can do:
https://support.fastned.nl/hc/en-gb/articles/115015420127-17...
Not even the Tesla Model 3 on the new Tesla V3 chargers:
https://electrek.co/2019/03/07/tesla-v3-supercharger-action-...
The e-tron's main problem is that it's too heavy for the battery it has. It either needs a bigger battery or a lighter construction or both.
But the Hyundai Kona EV, the Kia Niro EV, and the new Kia Soul EV all have good range for a good price. The Kona narrowly beat the Model X in this 1000 km road trip comparison:
https://insideevs.com/hyundai-kona-electric-race-tesla-model...
Tesla doesn't seem very far ahead.
No, the car has a computer that controls the systems in the car like all the modern cars. Receiving software updates to a computer is not a huge tech challenge. And no, you don't receive performance over the internet, you receive a driving configuration that may better utilize the hardware. Can be easily done by any manufacturer.
>Their autonomous is better than everyone
Factually wrong, they are a category down from actual self-driving tech developers. But if you decide to skip the self-driving part and call it driving assistant or something, then yes it's a pretty good driving assistant that can follow lines etc. Some people think that calling the driving assistance software an autopilot is borderline false advertisement.
Well they're the only people offering anything this quality unless your one of the hundreds of people in Phoenix that can order a Waymo (that still has a person driving).
>some people think that calling the driving assistance software an autopilot is borderline false advertisement.
Well my 'driving assistance' drove me 95% of the way to work this morning hands free feet free, seems pretty appropriate to call it autonomous to me.
It's really not about tech but about the brand. Since Stave Job is no longer with us, Musk happens to own the tech visionary title.
It can be annoying but I'm glad that Tesla exists an it's brand is pushing the big players into electric cars.
I don't understand. People went to sleep, their car updated via internet, and they woke up with more performant cars. This really happened. Obviously the car didn't changed the hardware, it changed the software, and the car drove better.
And yet almost all car companies are—with rare exceptions—entirely averse to the modification of car software updates for anything more substantial than bugfixes, device compatibility and trivial tweaks.
It might not be a tech challenge, but it is a corporate one. It seems like no car companies want their cars to ever change in any way, lest a single word of their owner's manuals might need to be rewritten.
BMW for example will provide software updates to their iDrive head units: either as a trivial patch for device compatibility, or as a more substantial update applied by the dealer. And the latter sounds great... EXCEPT that their system configuration is guided by the car's build date, and if a useful feature was released after your car was built, you probably won't get it.
By way of example, my May 2013 build date BMW F20 shipped with no screen overlay for volume changes. In order to get that overlay, I first had to get the software flashed by the dealer (there was an actual crashing bug which was another story) and then I had to "code" the car myself to make iDrive think its build date was a year later. Once I did that, I got a screen overlay for volume changes.
I think at one point they will have to shake up and change. If they are smart, their executives will drive Tesla's as their personal vehicles until they understand what's all about.
These are not hard tech problems but for example, with the iPhone, it took quite some time for Google and Samsung to grasp the new expectation but Nokia and Microsoft never cracked it.
That doesn't sound like anything special. Engines have been computer controlled for a long time now. Depending on the temperature, fuel mixture, etc you can have a single engine with completely different characteristics. This is something VW took advantage of in Dieselgate by improving the performance of the car outside of emissions tests. If your car was affected the only thing that was changed by the recall was the software. Of course OTA updates are more convenient than driving to your dealer but software updates themselves are not a competitive advantage of Tesla.
Then lets see an example? As I asked the first time?
>but software updates themselves are not a competitive advantage of Tesla.
That is crazy to me. It's an advantage specific to Tesla. Clearly it's not game changing for a lot of people, but it is an advantage.
I swear that this applies to every industry, A "strong" personality in front of the company + avg product = Established brand
And the car companies are playing in mass market segments that Tesla isn't in e.g. Kia Soul, Renault Zoe, Ford Focus, VW e-Golf etc.
Comparing vaporware to current Tesla cars makes no sense at all.
And I still have a Volvo. The quality level is astoundingly bad. You don’t want a Volvo.
Tesla's just starting in that mass market segment. The prices are very very close to the ones you cite.
A stock-for-stock merger is also a possibility, it's been done before.
Also, I feel quite confident in stating that the short-term market cap of the two companies merged would be significantly higher than the two companies separate. Toyota has a P/E of 10 (!). A merger would make it "cool", giving it a better ratio. Not Tesla's ~50 (based on quadrupling the last quarter earnings; TTM earnings are negative), but something higher than 10. And since Toyota has significant earnings, increasing the multiple of a big number....
Long term I'm not so sure it's a good strategy but a superficially the synergy looks awesome: combine Tesla's innovation and hype with Toyota's ability to deliver high quality cars.
Culturally it may not be a good fit. Toyota, now days, is very conservative and risk-averse, and a Tesla under Toyota ownership may not have the freedom it needs to continue the kind of moon-shot innovation and investment that has got it where it is now.
From Toyota’s perspective, there’s nothing to stop them building high quality EVs in high volume and competing with Tesla. They don’t need to buy Tesla to do that.
I’m posting this now so I can say “told you so” in three years.
My interest in this story is actually Panasonic because I'm curious about how aggressively they will pursue the Japanese EV market. Nissan just sold their battery making division and apparently had talks with Panasonic, but those apparently broke down. I have no idea who will build Toyota's batteries (and probably every other Japanese car maker as they all went in together into a consortium for building EVs). Mitsubishi apparently use GS Yuasa, which is a fairly new Japanese company (15 years old) that was created from a group of companies that used to make lead acid batteries.
If Panasonic thinks that Tesla isn't going to perform, they may need to hustle to stay relevant.
Toyota and Panasonic recently announced a joint venture on EV battery production:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toyota-panasonic-idUSKCN1...
I have a Suzuki Lapin (80mpg!!), so I don’t pay enough attention. What’s your experience with charging on the go?
* It was quite unusual for anyone to drive further than 300km in a day,
* The cold weather rarely got too far below zero so the range reduction from cold weather would be much smaller,
* On-street parking isn't a thing so charging stations would be easier to put in.
They do great with small, fuel efficient cars (like your Lapin!), and the Leaf is good, but I'm left wondering why EVs haven't been as big as they could be
(edited for formatting)
Fukushima.
We've done a few longer road trips -- the longest one being about 350 km. I think it's safe to say that you need to plan to double the amount of time it would normally take you to get there (at least with our 30 KWh Leaf). However, I'm in my 50s and we also take my mother in law who is in her 80s, so... bathroom breaks are necessary anyway :-)
We drove to Takayama and I think we needed to stop 3 times to charge up. One positive is that there are charging stations on all of the toll roads as far as I can tell -- at least where we live. We stopped for breakfast, then stopped for the toilet and some omiyage shopping and then stopped for lunch. It seemed pretty natural.
On the way back we decided to take the non-toll roads for fun. It's a bit stressful, to be honest. There are actually lots of charging stations, so it's not really a problem. However, they are in weird places and the Navigation unit sometimes has some pretty strange ideas of the best way to get to the charging station. I'm still slowly getting the hang of setting up way points in the navigation unit on the Leaf -- the UI is absolutely horrible. But it can be done and I think once I play with it some more it won't be so bad.
I think the best thing about the experience was stopping in tiny towns that we would never have seen. To be honest, as a kind of lazy tourist trip, the 30 minute charging time is too short. Pretty much every time we stopped we felt rushed and had to get back to the car. I suppose in reality out in the mountains nobody drives an EV so we probably didn't need to worry.
All of our road trips have actually been in the mountains because we wanted to get some experience with that. It's kind of shocking when you are going uphill to realise that you probably won't even be able to do 100 km before you have to stop. But then on the way down it's just coasting all the way. For example, we went up to a small town near mount Fuji and had to stop 3 times to get up the mountain. On the way back we went nearly 300 km without stopping :-)
Anyway, I hope that gives you some idea. My biggest advice for anyone getting an EV is to definitely get a navigation unit that allows you to navigate to the charging stations. I can't remember if it's an option on the Leaf, but for road trips or going places that you've never been before, it's practically necessary (there are mobile apps, but it's stressful enough trying to juggle it without having to worry about dealing with your mobile while driving!). The other thing is we have a subscription for recharging which costs 3000 yen per month. It's a no-brainer for us since we can't recharge at home, but if you want to do any travelling, it's pretty much essential. For us it means we pay only 3000 yen (about $30) a month for fuel, which is practically paying for the car (we bought it used). We also got in on a deal that for the first 2 years we get 3000 yen worth of JCB gift certificates (which are accepted practically everywhere), so we essentially get free fuel for those 2 years.
In the end, it really depends on lifestyle. My wife is the busy, busy, go, go type of person, but I'm hugely laid back. I recharge the car almost every time because I enjoy relaxing and programming for an hour every couple of days. When we travel, I don't want to get there as soon as possible -- I want to relax and enjoy the journey. It suits be very well and even my wife says that she's happy we got an EV. I asked her if she would do it again if she had the chance and she said yes, so I don't think we'll ever go back to an ICE. However, I don't think it would be for everyone -- at least not until the rush mentality of our culture calms down a bit. YMMV ;-)
And they are probably right that at this point they are more for early adopters. But in the coming few years that will inevitably change.
Compare the efficiency of their vehicles (especially the Model 3), to something like the I-Pace or e-tron.
But Tesla’s real advantage lies in it’s software, it’s autopilot, it’s economies of scale in battery production, and it’s supercharger network. Competitors will eventually catch up with all this stuff, but it won’t happen overnight.
Software isn't that special and some companies far eclipse it e.g. Volvo Polestar 2. Autopilot is a death trap so no advantage there. Supercharger network is definitely a big one but not for much longer.
Most established carmakers haven't yet realized (in terms of adapting their engineering) that this, combined with the very high conversion efficiency of electric motors, means that electric cars get much greater advantages from efficiency improvements than ICE cars do. Single-digit improvements to efficiency in motors, inverters/power electronics and aerodynamics/roll resistance translate almost directly to single-digit improvements in range. And hence also allow smaller batteries, cheaper construction, lighter construction, which again allows a smaller battery.
You can see this very clearly in Audi and Jaguar's models, that have significantly lower range than Tesla's cars for each kWh of battery capacity.
https://insideevs.com/hyundai-kona-electric-race-tesla-model...
The Kona narrowly beat the Model X.
I have actually not seen a working prototype of this software. All videos I have seen just show a dummy screen with nobody actually using it. Do you have a source you could post that explains how this software far eclipses the Tesla software?
> Autopilot is a death trap so no advantage there.
Could you explain this more? All data I have seen shows Autopilot is much safer than a human driver.
This is why I get annoyed when somebody argues that Tesla doesn't do false marketing. Why would this guy think that autopilot is safer than a human driver, when they aren't even comparable. Why would you compare an assistance system to a human. Isn't that done to imply that autopilot is actually driverless?
The other piece of technology Tesla has is the driving data from all those cars on the road already. This is an important asset for autonomous driving because machine learning benefits from greater volumes of data.
Neither one of these puts Tesla so far ahead of the game that the competition can't catch up. But they're real advantages that could keep Tesla in the game if they can sort out their manufacturing process.
Here is a good article on the direction of the japanese car industry.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/japan-bets-on-a-h...
Imagine if Toyota bought Tesla. That may be the best outcome possible as the platform would suddenly be at scale.
The technology could be added to all Toyota cars ICE included (with their level of fit and finish) and the ‘electric only’ line would be supported while it ramped up and lowered cost.
This would solve a lot of Tesla’s problems and make the outcome far more likely to be positive. As it stands, I want a Tesla, but I am not going to buy one because 1) cost vs quality 2) likelihood of implosion