Several of them are targeting Tesla owners with discounts, ads at superchargers, etc... The companies clearly think they are competing with Tesla, especially since they don't want to compete with themselves (ICE models).
As for doing their own thing, most have a battery shortage and are confined to small cars with relatively small battery packs for now until more batteries are available (none of whom are vertically integrating production).
The number of Nissan Leafs sold so far are close to twice the number of Tesla model Ss sold.
Tesla has sold 1.6x the number of Model 3's in the past 2 years than Nissan has sold Leaf's... ever.
Sources (US):
* 136K Leafs: http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/nissan/nissan-leaf...
* 223K Model 3s: http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/tesla/tesla-model-...
So Nissan beat Tesla with a model not only in time to market but also with it's superior price, which resulted so far in selling twice as many cars as Tesla's direct competitors to the Nissan Leaf.
> It is not a Tesla killer
Nothing will ever be if the goalpost is kept moving like that.
The Nissan Leaf and Leaf Plus doesn't come into consideration for me because of its pitiful range, the ChADeMO connector and lack of active cooling for the battery pack.
>> Tesla Model S
Not comparable cars.
Not comparable, but look at the post that was the origin of that response, it was only about "electric cars" in general.
Meanwhile a hatchback and a lift back are hardly not competing in the same market segment.
For example it was recently reported that the Jaguar I-pace requires that you drive 17 MPH with the climate control off to achieve the manufacture specified range per charge. [0] They have 6 months worth of unsold inventory sitting on dealer lots in the US.
Tesla's strength is in getting market share from buyers who first and foremost want a great car. Everyone else is targeting suckers willing to make decisions contrary to their economic interest to show they care about the environment.
[0] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/08/13/jaguar-i-pace-sales-hav...
This.
I never understood why car manufacturers all make such weird wacky electric cars. When the Model S came out it was such a relief that finally there was a _normal_ looking electric car.
What I want is an electric 5-series, not the wacky i3. Don't change the appearance, just the drive train.
It turns out there's a very good reason to do that: these early models appeal to early adopters. The range kinda sucked. And yet I was happy to be an early adopter because of my nerdiness—and the financial incentives made it hard to refuse. But it definitely required planing insofar as range was concerned. At the same time, knowing that I'm putting up with these inconveniences for benefit of having some new early tech that few others have... that was worth it to me. It was also worth it to some of my friends but definitely not to most of them, who wanted first and foremost a car that didn't come with a peculiar usage pattern.
Now the 2019 Nissan Leaf has twice the range as those older models, it looks "normal", doesn't require much forethought in terms of destination distances, and is marketed to a broader audience. At the same time, the tax incentives have almost all disappeared (the $5k Georgia one is gone) and that is the normal course of action because these cars don't carry the inconvenience that they used to.
Other makers are trying to make cars to compete with Tesla, without competing with their own non-electric cars.
Currently, it is probably impossible to achieve a good profit margin on a mass-market electric car. Battery costs are too high this early in the manufacturing process. Tesla is willing to operate at the bare edge of fiscal viability while they scale… maybe even below viability. Other makers would have to take a gigantic drop in profit to compete with that.
Tesla operates at no profit, but not because they couldn't with the hardware, but rather because they still need to scale. The old manufacturers wouldn't even need to do much of that.
Let’s get some more variety.
Other automakers have to play by more sane financial rules.
Whereas Tesla does indeed have some systemic financial issues.
In other words Amazon could have been "profitable" on a GAAP accounting basis fairly early on, but Tesla would struggle to do that.
There are more people wanting to buy Tesla's than they can currently produce[1].
Telsa needs to spend more money to increase production. They make money on each car sold and they can sell a lot more than they currently do. Tesla being in the red in order to increase production is the same scenario that Amazon was in.
[0] https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/07/26/tesla-management-t...
[1] https://electrek.co/2018/07/03/tesla-model-3-long-backlog-re...
Tesla annual net income, in millions:
Year 1: -$78
Year 2: -$82
Year 3: -$56
Year 4: -$154
Year 5: -$254
Year 6: -$396
Year 7: -$74
Year 8: -$294
Year 9: -$889
Year 10: -$675
Year 11: -$1,961
Year 12: -$976
Q1+Q2 Year 13: -$1110
Amazon annual net income, in millions (rounded):
Year 1: $0
Year 2: -$100
Year 3: -$700
Year 4: -$1400
Year 5: -$600
Year 6: -$100
Year 7: $0
Year 8: $600
Year 9: $400
Year 10: $200
Year 11: $500
Year 12: $600
Year 13: $900
I don’t think that’s something that could be said about Amazon.
BMW electric Mini is due to go on the market in spring 2020 - they’re manufacturing them now in Oxford. I guess that counts as a 'real electric car'. Whether it’s a great one remains to be seen.
Range is not as great as the 3 (150 vs 210 miles IIRC?) but it’s a smaller car, so doesn’t have as much room for batteries as the 3 or S do.
That’s why I compared the Mini with the range of the ordinary Model 3 & not the LR version. The price difference between the stock models is wide enough already - it seems completely unreasonable to compare a £25k electric vehicle with a £45k one!
Normal European city driving then.
The Model 3 is basically an upscale take on a page out of the FCA playbook. It's a straight line rocket with a middle of the road interior crowned by a massive touchscreen.
Don't get me wrong, there's definitively something to be said for that but Tesla does not make good all around vehicles.
Tesla make vehicles that excel at a few things and are mediocre in most other regards. If they were great all around vehicles upper class suburbanites would be buying them as general daily drivers instead of task specific cars (commuting in this case), a market segment currently filled by the station wagon/crossover/small suv spectrum. For reasons that are outside the scope of this comment, I think Tesla is wise to build sedans for upscale buyers rather than enter the crossover and compact car free-for all.
As an owner of a Model 3, I will say that it isn't just a really great car, it's the best car I've ever owned or driven. There are SO MANY different elements of the car-owning experience Tesla redesigned to make dramatically better for the user, not to mention the incredible performance of the car.
This is likely due to pent up demand, but it does show that Tesla's absolute domination of the US market hasn't played out in Europe.
If you're interested in widespread EV adoption, this is probably ideal. It's concerning to me that Tesla may have so much mind share that even genuine competitors once they arrive will struggle to sell enough to be profitable.
In which case, the steady state will be legacy auto makers doing the bare minimum as required under emissions legislation. In the EU that's probably ok, but not in the US.
Norway 2019 sales for reference:
Model 3: 10976 VW Golf: 6533 Leaf: 5441 BMW i3: 3671 E-Tron: 3114 I-Pace: 2372 IONIQ: 2168 Zoe: 1775 Model X: 1344 Model S: 969
Now, add to that the model 3 outselling the Model S by a factor of 11 to 1 this year, that is amazing.
But it's more than a little disingenuous to compare cars from different segments.
Most Tesla fans only count positive things for the 3 though, and so consider the i-Pace and the model 3 direct competition.
The I-Pace has 8% less length, 8% less height, and 12% less weight than the Model X 90D. The widths are comparable.
The I-Pace has 9% more width, 9% more height, and 15% more weight than the Model 3 Range AWD. The lengths are comparable.
I would say this puts the I-Pace half way between the Model X and the Model 3 in terms of size. In terms of class, I'd say the I-Pace is closer to the Model X, both being luxury crossover SUVs.
More broadly, Jaguar is a historically British company, and Britain's roads and parking spaces are narrower than those in the US, so the truck and full-size SUV classes are much less popular.
Edit: that’s a bit too glib. I’m sure it’ll do just fine as a niche product for a certain group of buyers, which is what Jaguar is all about. It’s just not really competing with Tesla, which is trying hard to go after the mass market.
EDIT- Forgot about Honda and the Korean car makers too.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/28/tesla-model-3-1-best-se...
That's certainly not a drop in the bucket, and I think it's a stretch to call it niche as well. Will be interesting to see how 2019 as a whole turns out; with this ASP, they would dominate by revenue if their delivery numbers were anywhere close to the competition.
Nokia used to sell way more phones than anyone else too.
Your comment might also be why the model 3 is selling like hot-cakes at the moment. The model 3 is also very efficient compared to the i-pace and charges faster. One sentiment that might be true regarding what you value in your car is that the model 3 is a better EV and the i-pace is a better car.
As for size, I recently got to compare my model x to my cousins i-pace and the internal size difference is quite substantial. The i-pace is however a very fun car to drive and it doesn't require that you go full 17" screen and strip the physical buttons. Some people value that too.
I'm not sure those are the strongest examples, as you can defend most of them (maybe not the BMW i3) as perfectly legitimate cars in the current market and maybe more than Tesla's counterparts:
* The S and 3 are almost retro in how much they resemble a traditional sedan, and supposedly that's not what Americans want in the current marketplace. (Enough so that both Ford and GM saw boosts on the stock market for abandoning the entire class of vehicles [admittedly, to imports and the S and 3].)
* The X looks like "soccer mom" minivan more than SUV, and I've seen Americans look down their nose at it as "uncool", very cool falcon doors aside.
Meanwhile:
* VW ID.3 looks like a modern reinvention of the classic VW Golf, a tried and true decades-spanning form factor. The VW Golf itself being something of the grand-papa of the modern hatchback trend and influencing almost everything else on the market (the Prius, the Tesla Model Y, everyone owes at least a little something to the Golf).
* The Hyundai Kona is in a class of SUV that is very popular in American and abroad. (Look at uglier ICE relatives like the Nissan Cube and the Honda Element, both of which have been relatively high sellers, despite their boxy, not-quite-a-full-SUV thing.)
* The Renault Zoe is in a somewhat common form factor space for European cars. Compare the Mini and the SMART.
* Chevy's Bolt is trying to be a normal "cross-over", and that's again where GM and Ford are almost entirely focused outside of trucks.
* Early versions of the Nissan Leaf were hatchbacks of a Prius (or Tesla Model Y) sort, and recent versions look like tradition sedans.
All of that is of course my opinion, but claiming that the existing car companies are doing their own thing and Tesla is somehow the only one doing "proper" cars seems to be the inverse of reality: Tesla is doing their own thing, and everybody else is trying to do what they think the market will best support (and it is not traditional looking sedans).
(Plus, the VW ID family is already gearing up to eat the rest of VW's lineup as they drop the diesel lineup like its hot. BMW is doing the same. We're about to the tipping point where EVs are beyond early adopter-focused, one-off models, and manufacturers are about to hit every form factor with an EV or two.)
It presupposes that Tesla has chosen to target the right market segments with the right type of products, and all you have to do to win is make better versions of those products.
I'm not saying that Tesla hasn't chosen correctly. Maybe their product lineup is optimal or maybe it isn't. I'm just saying that your criticism of the article is based on this assumption.
People do cross comparisons and generally prefer the Model 3 for a variety of reasons. And it's cheaper.
Unfortunately Elon is set on robotic Uber being the cheaper option.
1) It's only about the US.
2) Tesla's big seller is the Model 3 which isn't a competitor for the Audi e-tron and I-Pace. And given the size difference probably isn't a competitor for the Model X either.
3) No one is claiming to be a Tesla killer since no one really has direct 3, X, S, Y competitors. The existing car companies are all off doing their own thing e.g. VW ID.3 (hatchback), Hyundai Kona (mini-SUV), Renault Zoe / Chevy Bolt / Nissan Leaf / BMW i3 (small-car) etc.