I do not want to dismiss the efforts of Audi or Jaguar but I think their initial focus was being good examples for their respective brands with regards to their packaging. Their interior quality of a different generation and caliber than Tesla. The EV part was an important concern but secondary. They can still rack up significant ZEV credits in California letting them off the hook of buying them from others.
Tesla needs to refresh the S and X to improve interior fit and finish but also concentrate on making them quieter, an issue I have with my 3. without the drone of a motor every sound stands out and EVs tend to ride on stiffer, noisier, tires.
As for difficulty, other than i3 and Tesla cars I do not believe any other EV was a clean sheet design. Even the Leaf appears based on traditional cars. the Bolt is simply a spark when a new motor cradle and battery back pushed under it. The Hyundai/Kia models are all adaptions. Not 100% sure about the iPace but Jaguar even contracted out assembly.
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The manufacturing difficulty is probably secondary to the seismic shift crossing the auto industry and associated industries. EVs don't need the large established dealership base and their included maintenance facilities. Secondary market means little use for parts stores and their suppliers. Gas stations will be right out with most charging done at destination points. Manufacturing of the autos themselves will implode the number of employees and that will lead to union difficulty in some countries; where they sit on boards and can stymie the move to EVs and loss of production jobs.
The Kia Niro EV numbers you mention are not EPA which was 258. I mention this because your other numbers were EPA.
Teslas offer a different USP than E-Tron/I-Pace alikes. It's EV vs. Premium-Cars that happen to be EVs.
If you've never owned a (premium) car and thus have no feeling for differences in interior- and general-manufacturing-quality, a Tesla is the reasonable choice (it even maybe that an Audi's interior will come across as needlessly pretentious).
However, if you've driven premium Audis/Jags you will notice what Teslas are lacking.
It's reasonable to assume that Teslas are thus more likely to be bought by newly affluent millennials (than by already affluent people), though being a TSLA stockholder I wonder how large that group of millennials might be outside of my software engineering bubble.
The nav/display is obviously better in the Tesla (although my Golf didn't have the digital cockpit that they're putting in the new ones). Both cars have their 'fancy' seating material (leather/fake leather/whatever) on the seating surfaces only, cloth elsewhere (and, by the way, I hate leather seats, I just want cloth in everything.. I'm just saying, this is one way premium cars are differentiated, is by FULL leather). The most galling thing to me on the R, the only real sign of cost cutting, was the manual passenger seat, where the 3 has a power seat. A low end touch on both is the totally spartan, stripped out finishing of the trunk/hatch area.
No swiveling headlights on the 3, but the headlights are actually better, significantly so, particularly on high beam.
Perhaps one thing that keeps me from being as critical of the 3 is that it's an appliance to me. I'm a german car fan, and I hate sedans. My BMWs and VWs have been cars I'm passionate about. The Tesla just takes me from Point A to Point B. And it's a fantastic car. But maybe that makes my expectations lower.
Do you miss having the hatchback? That is one my bigger gripes with the M3. This would be my only car.
I love driving the 3, and ours is an RWD LR with the 18" eco crap tires. I can't say I miss driving the R, but I miss the way it looks and having that unique car that I'm passionate about, and I really enjoyed having a manual transmission.
I have a manual sports car as well, but you know what, I always choose the 3 when I need to go run an errand, so maybe that's all you need to know. Just about the only time I've driven my sports car in the past year is 2 track days. Hardly any street miles.
I never understood that. Why does power source matter in the context of dealership base and maintenance? EVs still break.
Having seen the interior of an automatic gearbox, the surprising thing to me is that conventional automobiles are as reliable as they are.
Mind you, we also live within walking distance of both dealerships, and personally know my mom's mechanic. As is always the case, your mileage may vary.
Kinda off topic, but you could always just get one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Upgraded-Bluetooth-Transmitter-Sumind...
Although they didn't get new hardware, the UI has gained lots of features (not that all changes were popular)
If you own something like a Subaru or Hyundai, then you'd best find a good indie mechanic.
According to Tesla a comparative ICE drivetrain will have around 200 moving parts, while one of their vehicles will have roughly 17.
The real upside is longevity. While it is a miraculous feat that machines, such as transmissions, last as long as they do today - they're not needed in electric vehicles. I think it's fair to assume we all expect 100k miles and more out of a car produced in the last decade. The two main components of a traditional ICE vehicle are the main contributors to longevity of a vehicle: engine and drivetrain. Those two items are of such high cost to replace many people will not consider the repair as replacement is more feasible.
As electric cars stand today longevity is significantly improved immediately. The major failure components will be batteries and electric motors. However the former can be considered a wear item and is, generally easy, to replace. The latter is also much cheaper and more simple to replace compared to the ICE equivalent. That being said the expectations of a BEV today are 300k+ miles with significantly less wear maintenance.
Finally as electric vehicles tend to be more modular it may very well be that we finally start to see platforms instead of model year differentials. If I have 'platform 1' here are motor, battery, electronics, etc upgrade options. We haven't seen this that bluntly yet, but I hope we get there. Cars today are built as non-upgradeable partially due to the built in life cycling / planned obsolescence the manufacturers have created for improved sales. It would be great if we could truly move cars to a more repair / upgrade centric platform. Not only could this spur new forms of labor and business but help waste reduction and overall manufacturing waste and pollution.
We've had the car for 7 years and probably 80k of those miles. We had to get the brakes and tires replaced very early on, and have just done a second round of replacing both within the past 6 months. We needed a new muffler and starter last summer. A week ago, we replaced the front struts. I put in new spark plugs and O2 sensors this past month, mainly because they seemed like easy things to swap out and cheap insurance against them going bad down the line. We get the tires rotated and oil changed every 6k miles. Have replaced the transmission fluid once.
So yes, more than nothing, but doing maintenance two or three times a year for a total of maybe $3k over the time we've had the vehicle seems quite reasonable.
I was talking with the sales guy when I picked the car up on our most recent visit, and he commented that he had a Civic that he sold a couple years ago when it had 350k miles, and the guy he sold it to is still using it as his daily driver.
Modern cars, particularly the ones out of Asia, have extremely reliable engines and drivetrains. Worry about a car with 100k miles being near the end of its life is outdated. I would trust a well maintained car from the past 15 years to 250k miles and probably beyond.
The 100k claim is of course utter BS for a modern car (or US built quality is as inferior as some people claim - which I doubt), but it comes at a cost.
Are there "wear items" in ICE vehicles that cost anything like as much as replacing the batteries in an EV?
The standard length of operation of a gas ICE doesn't compete with electric, even early in the stage of BEV.
[0] https://electrek.co/2016/11/01/tesla-battery-degradation/
For some value of "last" ... what percentage degradation are we seeing at 100k, 150k, 200k miles?
> The standard length of operation of a gas ICE doesn't compete with electric
Can you expand on this statement?
As I've pointed out before[0], the ICE vehicle I drive cost $13,800 new including all taxes, and its servicing needs (and costs) and depreciation curve are all well understood.
EVs? Not so much.
I'm not stating that other manufacturers would not allow repairs, but that Tesla has been particularly hostile to people who like working on their cars.
If you buy a new ICE powered vehicle, how many of any of the parts you mention would one expect to replace in - for instance - the first three years of the vehicles' life?
Our experience is that the first few years of a ICE vehicle's life involves changing oil and oil filters and most likely not a whole lot else:
Although from my experience things not related to drivetrain break:
* Suspension
* Brakes
* Steering rack.
As these components handle the most peak force.
I wonder how much the average dealership makes off repairs covered by warranty, compared to out of pocket repairs.
Does this kind of stuff not happen to EVs?
http://www.safercar.gov/staticfiles/safercar/pdf/EA11-001_cl...
[1] - https://www.bts.gov/content/average-age-automobiles-and-truc...
If the average age of all cars on the road is 12 years, where's the data for 12 year old EVs?
I don't really believe this is true. This is Tesla marketing spin. At one point every vehicle produced was having the drive unit replaced. There have been issues with water ingress and seat problems. Scour the Tesla motors forums.
Also, since it's the car is an iPhone model there aren't any aftermarket repairs. Seems to me to worse in every way despite the original spin on maintenance.
It drives like the day I bought it.
Instead, I would think most cars going into the dealership network are either:
1. Having a part replaced under warranty because it is faulty or there is a recall
2. Having a service under a service pack or because the car is still in warranty
3. Having some kind of interior defect fixed (rattling in the cabin, infotainment issue, etc)
and that these issues are still common enough in EVs that I don't expect the dealership network to change much.
I'm not sure if oil changes are the biggest source of profit, but they probably are the highest volume service. And those get customers in the shop for generally unnecessary upsells (like pumping cleaner into the climate control system to "flush" it? that is a scam, right?).
Marketplace's analysis: https://www.marketplace.org/2017/08/24/sustainability/whats-...
If anything, proprietary software will keep standard updates at the dealer. (Though I expect the schedule will drop way down.)
The only way to know is to consistently and regularly have used oil analysis done. For my part, I change my oil every 3k or sooner because my vehicle gets put on a race track occasionally, which changes wear patterns and an oil change is cheap insurance. For full synthetics on a car which mostly sees highway miles 10k intervals are fine, but 15k and 20k intervals are ridiculous. For most cars in the US which see significant traffic a 5k interval is correct as stop and go traffic is actually harder on the engine than almost anything else.
Side note: A kilometer is just a little over half a mile. A 10k KM OCI is equivalent roughly to a 6500 mile OCI. So there isn’t that much difference between the US and European intervals.
Maybe that was true decades ago, but it's no longer true. They prey on the misinformed. To be charitable, maybe they know many people wait too long, but I doubt it.
I went every 10k miles or so.
Other cars can go longer distances without an oil change, as you say.
In us oil changes are 3k-5k miles. which is ~5k km to ~8k km whereas in Europe it's 10k to 20k.
I find 8k-10k figure to be close enough and realistic.
5k km for old cars with non-synthetic oil.
20k km I highly suspect is a pipe dream from BMW marketing material ensuring that after about 120k the car would have no resale value.
Full synthetic oil/filter is about $60 to change here.
> Oil changes color as it captures contaminates such as soot, carbon deposits, etc. It can operate effectively while brown-ish, but if the oil is carrying too much it will blacken and start to thicken at which point it will be much less effective at lubricating your engine.
Modern synthetic oils last much longer.
Modern engines are designed with much, much better tolerances than before and crank cases no longer vent into the atmosphere. If you use new synthetic oil in an old small-block Chevy, the oil will hold up for a long time, but it will be so contaminated by gasoline, moisture, and debris that it will still require shorter replacement intervals.
Tesla make it's difficult to fix their cars by restricting parts or bricking their cars that have been in a crash. Whilst you can get your traditional car fixed pretty much anywhere, likely to get your Tesla fixed you need the dealership more than ever.
Information based on the Rich Rebuilds YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfV0_wbjG8KJADuZT2ct4SA
Out of the engine related problems, the cam belt and clutch are the things that's caused issues in the last 5 years across my various cars.
You need less qualified people, less time, less parts, less often for repairs that a handy person can often do themselves and save on labor and parts. Significant sources of income are therefore shrunk for dealerships.
I know people who have paid people to replace the bulbs on a car. My wife rarely even bothers to refill the washer and I can count on 1 hand the number of times she's checker her oil in the nearly 20 years of owning a car.
Most people either don't care how cars work, don't have the technical capabilities to fix their own car or simply don't want to.
To be fair most newer cars need a fair amount of front bodywork pulled to change a bulb and most crossovers require pulling tail light housings which can be kind of intimidating for someone who's never done anything more than changed windshield wipers.
Surely you don't want people to drive 200km to the nearest service station, no matter if that's once a year or once every 3 years? Maybe that's the difference - customers expect EVs to be bleeding edge, so the service can be a hassle, and you can still get away with it?
You should however be changing your brake fluid every 2 years regardless of whether or not you have regenerative braking. Brake fluid degrades over time as water gets absorbed.
Let me introduce you to the transverse mounted V6...
>You should however be changing your brake fluid every 2 years regardless of whether or not you have regenerative braking. Brake fluid degrades over time as water gets absorbed.
Yeah you should replace it every now and then but two years is BS though. In many states the fluid never gets touched until the brake lines rust out which can be a decade or more. Brake fluid is one of those things that people really harp on (cynically I think this is because harping on anything that's safety related tends to earn internet points) but unless you're driving on a track or riding the brake down a mountain you would probably never notice if your brake fluid was 1/3rd water.
Fair point! V6s were never really suitable for transverse layouts, but it did at least give us some wonderful sounding cars from the likes of Alfa Romeo and others.
Having said that, I also own a Tesla Model 3. It's probably a myth that maintenance is much less. Something about the weight distribution (or maybe it's the sheer torque) causes tires to last less than 30k miles. I'm finding this to be true in my own experience. And a set of tires will set us back nearly $1000.
Lots of great reasons to own a Model 3. Significantly reduced maintenance costs probably isn't one of them.
Not only will dealership service centers be impacted, oil change shops will have little work if any as the number of petrol cars wind down, general service shops face the same issue as the numbers decline.
Now there are jobs that will become important similar to how renewable energy solutions ended some jobs and made new. Electricians for business and home needs will increase because of both industries.
To me that sounds crazy. Many synthetic oils are officially approved to 15'000 miles.
Very few oil filters are fine that long. I know Mobil 1 makes one rated for 15k miles, but I'm not aware of any OEM components with near that lifetime.
Hopefully that changes soon, but in the meantime I'll keep changing the oil at the rate my oil filter is rated for.
However, if you actually look at the oil after 10,000 miles it's usually very dark brown despite the high mileage rating so I personally get mine changed more frequently than recommended.
Point is that nobody should be changing their oil ever 3-5k.
There is a reason that some oils are far more expensive than others. Oil change shops have an incentive to make you come back soon, so you will be told there is no need for the more expensive oil. The composition of the oil and the quality of the engine and its parts will of course influence the build up of slug.
1997-1999 GM EV1 Gen 1 & 2 (leased for 1 year at a time with 3 different cars), 2001 Ford Ranger EV, 2003 Toyota Rav4 EV, 2010 Nissan Leaf, 2011 Chevy Volt, and 2017 Chevy Bolt. These vehicles were owned in the household I was living in at some point.
With this being said, I've ridden in a Model 3. It is by far one of the noisiest electric vehicles I've seen.
For anyone curious, the GM EV1 was by far my favorite. Those were years ahead of their time.
This is literally true: they were compliance products that were years beyond GM's (or anyone else’s) ability to make and sell sustainably, which is why GM and other manufacturers lobbbied to neuter the mandate and discontinued and destroyed the vehicles.
I've driven a model 3 performance dual motor, and I thought it was a very good car. Super fast. I don't remember it being noisy. I've driven a few model s's and I thought they were extremely quiet.
Now noise -- I've driven a 2012 Leaf and it was a nice car, which Nissan didn't forget how to make. But it was super noisy in a ridiculous way. Nissan added all kinds of stupid sound effects to the car. Some you can turn off, like the silly startup sounds that remind me of a canon camera. But some sounds like the fake electronic driving sound or the backup beep-beep-beep cannot be disabled. sigh.
I think I have heard they outsourced that to Range Rover. Or the Range Rover Velar (or something like that) has the same baseplate as the iPace. Not sure.
I'm very happy with my Model 3 but what I really want to see is acceptance of electric cars as a viable and sensible option for a lot of drivers, and the infrastructure that comes along with that.
FWIW the Kia Niro EV (and the Hyundai Kona Electric which is based on the same platform) are very serious competitors for the Model 3. Kia and Hyundai seem to have got the EV tech figured out. But alas they can't hardly manufacture any of them. So thats Tesla's other advantage - a whopping huge battery factory.
AFAIK, all the others are going to get their batteries from third party vendors (except maybe Nissan?). That is going to cause a cost for everyone but Tesla.
my understanding is that Panasonic has been losing money so they’ve started scaling back production. which lead to Musk taking shots at them.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/11/18305976/tesla-panasonic-...
That’s the entire profit margin of a profitable car model.
Efficiency is hugely important for profitable and desirable electric vehicles and significantly enhances the environmental advantage as well.
Audi chooses to limit charging thresholds to preserve battery life and your conclusion is that they must have a rapidly degrading battery pack? More likely is they're being ultra-cautious because they don't have their own data in place for how the batteries will respond.
> Turns out making EVs is harder than everyone thought. We were told the traditional automakers would just wade in and obliterate Tesla...
This is all based on the new Model S having a range 80 miles higher than the e-Tron and 50 miles higher than the I-Pace.
The danger to Tesla's ability to dominate the EV market isn't these two models, the danger is a swamp of competition. Just VW is planning to launch 50 different models by 2025 on its modular electric platform, from multiple brands and in every price point from $30k to $100k. I'd expect Tesla to still be the largest selling model within its particular niches, but its one crossover will be nipped at the heels by 20 different crossovers from competitors, all serving different use cases and price points, and the same for SUVs. It won't even launch a small city hatchback, where VW alone will have 5-10 different models.
Although I’m not even sure this should be characterised as a threat, Tesla was never going to maintain a total dominance in electric cars and that’s not required for it to become a significant and profitable manufacturer.
The question really is at what level of scale and profitability Tesla is happy to end up. The I-Pace is actually doing well for Jaguar, because Jaguar is a niche producer, it's currently providing 10% of global Jaguar sales. I'd expect Tesla to settle in as something around BMW, luxury price points, decent profit margins, solid but not massive sales numbers. The model 3 has ended up solidly within that price bracket.
Well, its clearly inefficient, whether it degredes rapidly or not was just a guess. My argument is that building EVs is harder than Teslas critics have admitted. If Audi don't know the degreadation state for their own battery then that kindof backs that up. The e-Tron is a nice enough car but it was trailed as being a Tesla killer and its clearly not that.
> This is all based on the new Model S having a range 80 miles higher than the e-Tron and 50 miles higher than the I-Pace
My argument is not really about range, its about range for a given battery size - i.e. efficiency. Batteries are heavy and expensive - thats why building an affordable long range EV is such a challenge. If your EV is inefficient, it will be heavier and more expensive than it needs to be.
Even if the e-Tron used 100% of its battery it would still only get 230 miles of range. Still below the base Model S, which - probably - has something like a 70/80 kWH battery - smaller, lighter and cheaper.
I like the look of the i-Pace but it seems to be smaller on the inside than it should be. It supposed to be an SUV and just 500lbs lighter than the enormous Model X but its got just a slightly bigger boot than the Nissan Leaf (17 cubic feet vs 15.3). Presumably, thats because its full of big heavy battery.
> I'd expect Tesla to settle in as something around BMW, luxury price points, decent profit margins, solid but not massive sales numbers. The model 3 has ended up solidly within that price bracket.
Yeah you might be right, I am disappointed that they abandoned the $35k target for the Model 3.
I mean, that would be a weird reason to limit it, but every other reason is weird too. 12% degradation over 100k miles would be pretty high. They've started with 12% degradation from the factory by design in order to avoid it!
I can't think of a good reason for this, tbh.
[1]"Fiat Chrysler taps Tesla to avoid EU emission fine" https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fiat-chrysler-taps-tesla-t...
[2] "Reducing CO2 emissions from passenger cars" https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/cars_...
Musk was talking about existing packs lasting 400,000 miles and working on new ones that will do 1 million. You can't get those sort of life spans if you use the full cycle - think how long your phone battery lasts.
edit: there are recommendations for Tesla daily use that say go to 90% most of the time. But still a bit different to putting 12% completely out of reach like Audi have done.
As is par for the course, their PR news will come hot and heavy: Cars go further! Our entire business model is now robot taxis! None of it matters if you can't sell your product at a profit.
To be fair to your point, the "Autonomy Day" presentation implied a willingness to renege on the promises about other quarters as well.
The Model S is closer to 4600-4900 lbs. The Niro EV is about 3800 lbs.
The base Model X probably has a 70/80 kWH battery - smaller, lighter and cheaper then the one in the e-Tron, and its supposed to be getting a 250 mile EPA rating.
As an owner, I use this feature occasionally. Once in a while I'm setting off on a trip where initial charge range really matters for some reason.
Try doing that with a Tesla.
Tesla is struggling just as much as the other automotive companies. They just don't show it.
- service providers are allowed to lie on how much a service contract will actually cost, adding/changing extra fees that were never mentioned
- Boeing of the MAX fame was allowed to self certify
One could extrapolate from there...
Meanwhile the base Model S, for $4k more, has 285 miles of EPA range, and charges faster when below 50%, although not as fast as the e-Tron when above 50%.
The smaller Kia Niro EV (if you can get one, they aren't making many because they can't source the batteries) squeezes 258 miles of range from a 65 kWH battery. Much better, but terribly production constrained. It won What Car of the Year in the UK but they can only deliver 900 to the UK for the whole of 2019. Not sure what the global Kia production rate is, but presumably far far less than Tesla which has sustained 4000+ Model 3's per week since last October (although not yet delivering to the RHD countries like the UK, alas)
Turns out making EVs is harder than everyone thought. We were told the traditional automakers would just wade in and obliterate Tesla, who were just putting 'wheels on batteries'. That hasn't happened.