Plenty of other electric cars on the market now too - many of them decent competition.

Alkso Tesla hasn't shipped a truck. Rivian has shipped, Ford has now shipped. If and when the Cybertruck makes it to market, Ford and Rivian will finally see some competition.

Once GM gets on the electric pickup market, it's game over for the wonky Tesla unless they end up selling exclusively to the types who don't actually do truck stuff (the G-Wagon crowd).

GM is already shipping the Hummer. It’s just really expensive so they won’t be a viable competitor for most of the market until the Chevy version arrives.

I own a model S but I think the F-150 is truly the next competitor. Other cars were either niche (Taycan) or not that great (i3, leaf). The bolt really was the second best option. Lucid is great too but they're not to scale yet.

Once the lightnings are easy to acquire at a dealership, I think Tesla will have its work cut out for it. The F150 is the best selling car/anything in the US.

i’m done with dealerships. i wish ford and gm had created clean-sheet, direct-to-consumer sub brands for their electric products. and didn’t gm do something pretty radical when they rolled out saturn in the 80s (separate dealers with non commissioned staff)? they could have at least done that. instead we get markup and sleaze.

Agree with you 101% on the dealer buying experience. Even just doing some shopping/research these days has left a sour taste in my mouth for buying another vehicle that way.

That being said, Ford has announced they're splitting their company into two: One for ICE vehicles, one for all electric. They're not saying much about who'll be handling the selling/distribution of the electric vehicles in the future. And dealer associations are rattling their legal sabers looking for answers.

Also, VW and their announced release of an all new Scout, under it's own brand, has also made little comment if current VW dealerships will carry it or what...

So there seems to be a move by Ford and VW to try (with new brands) the direct sales route with delivery/service centers similar to Tesla. However, that may be a long time coming with all the potential legal battles, etc.

I, however, also wonder if this move by VW/Ford is just to get the dealer associations to spend more lobby money and get direct-to-consumer car sales illegal in many more states, which seems the likely move by Dealers. This, then, would be a feign by the Manufacturers to hurt on particularly strong brand in the EV space.

Yeah, that must be a huge boon to tesla orders. Go on a website, click some buttons, wait, and your car is delivered. People underestimate a low-bs process.

I hate having to wheel and deal. I usually go through craigslist or some other marketplace since I buy used and it's so much better than having to worry about coatings, etchings, addons, and warranties.

Dealerships are headed for trouble.

EVs won't have oil changes, regular brake work, oil leaks, etc. There will be occasional air-conditioner repairs or window problems, but the bread-and-butter service revenue from ICE vehicles will be gone.

Dealerships might not be profitable enough to stay.

The flip side is that you have a choice of business to work with for the rest of the life of the vehicle. There are huge problems with the availability and quality of service for Tesla right now.

If a dealer does bad work or tries to scam you, you can find another one. If Tesla denies your warranty claim you're out to dry.

The base-model F150, if Ford can actually meet demand in any reasonable way, would create a real value-offering that threatens Tesla.

The additional levels of trim on the F150 are decent (esp. extended range) but the base model is amazing value for the price.

Hopefully this puts pressure on Tesla to stop touting the high end BS (like dodgy autopilot) and focus on adequate value for their base models.

It will definitely put price pressure on Tesla. Or so I hope.

The Ford Mach-E seems to be well received.

Yeah, it's a solid car. I wasn't a fan of its suspension, but a lot of people don't seem to care!

The VW ID.4 is very real competition.

A company so run by accountants that they needed to have “left, right and front/rear-toggle” power window button instead of a power window button for all four windows. No thanks

Yeah, I've heard good things about it but haven't been able to see one in Los Angeles yet. Polestar has a nice car too. I've been wanting to drive one.

Tesla always accrued competition pretty fast in whatever domain it explored, its big advantage being brand and battery life.

For my part while I'd like a vehicle with Tesla autonomy, the appalling QA/finish (Teslas still look cheap) and the support policies mean I'll go to an EU or Asian brand when I finally pick an EV (at least if there's anything left by that time that doesn't look like some trashy gamer mouse on wheels).

Very happy to report that the QA and finish on the Teslas built in Berlin and Shanghai are so much better than the ones in the USA. A whole other level.

I’ve heard that before, which is just kind of sad. It proves they’re capable of it, they just don’t care (at least in the US).

I think the difference is that cars built in a 40 year old factory with 40 year old equipment aren't as high quality as cars built in a new factory.

It will be interesting to see the quality of cars that come out of Austin.

Personally I’m excited for some competition. Tesla appears to have a big battery lead and is innovating with the assembly process. Without competition there’s been no reason to include vehicle 2 home power and cause extra wear on the battery pack, Tesla previously said the cybertruck won’t have V2H, but now that it’s offered with the F150, I hope they reconsider (I’ll probably cancel my CT preorder and get a Lightning if they don’t)

i certainly hope they can build square car that is cheaper than a rounded car :)

I ended up getting so tired of the CYBERTRUCK wait that I cancelled my deposit and ordered a Rivian. No doubt even though the wait is still long for me, I see them on the road regularly now and strongly suspect I’ll have one in hand long before the first CYBERTRUCK delivers to anyone.

what is tesla's competitive advantage going forward? brand cachet?

The Supercharger network is a selling point as well. Much of the US is well covered. The chargers seem more robust than competitor's set-ups (which are often broken when you arrive).

Trying to charge a non-Tesla during a trip can be a bit of a crap-shoot. Will the station be available? Will it be functional? Do I need to create yet another new account on yet another new app to access it?

This won't last. But until the competition makes their charging network better, it's a selling point for many buyers.

> The Supercharger network is a selling point as well. Much of the US is well covered.

How many truck buyers are realistically driving their trucks cross country? The ideal truck EV owner is the ranch owners in Texas who drives to the local TSC, grabs his stuff and then is doing work somewhere on the 10 acres ranch. If it meant never driving to the gas station that's a huge time saver. F-150 is a great fit for that.

The people I know interested in the Tesla cybertruck are tech bros who have enough disposable income that buying a cybertruck is basically a solution in search of a problem. They'll end up using it to tow their boat or go camping.

The same number of buyers that take their ICE trucks cross country? Most truck owners don't need trucks, or need a truck very infrequently, but buy one anyways.

I'd consider a Lightning if my Honda Ridgeline wasn't only a year old. Except I'm not sure it has enough range to actually get me from DC to Canaan Valley and back without a long detour to charge on the way home. Using ABRP, it has 90 minutes of charging and another 30-45 minutes of extra driving to get to a charger. This is over what should be a 6 hour drive (3 each way), so pretty ridiculous.

Compared to a Tesla Model X (standard range), which needs 45 minutes of charging, but no extra distance because there's a Supercharger on the way (using Tesla's maps). The 45 minutes charging is still pretty silly, given an ICE can do the round trip on a single tank, but that's way better than the non-Tesla option.

Does Tesla's patent portfolio serve as a competitive advantage? I don't follow such things, so I don't know.

Regardless of patent portfolio, I think it's a safe bet that Tesla views their (vaporware-ish?) self driving tech as a competitive advantage. Probably why they emphasize it so much and Elon seems absolutely fixated on it.

If I interpret this correctly[0], their patents have no competitive value?

It just feels like we're at an inflection point where Tesla's production will soon be dwarfed by competitors and consumers having the choice of dozens of EVs vs a handful is going to drastically shift the market.

[0] - https://www.tesla.com/legal/additional-resources#patent-pled...

That's just a bog standard mutual license patent clause wrapped up in some silly "open source" phrasing.

> where Tesla's production will soon be dwarfed by competitors

If theycan get enough batteries, that's currently the bottleneck for most manufacturers. Tesla has spent the last decade securing battery supply.

Tesla's supercharger network still seems to me a lot more reliable and easy-to-use than Electrify America (which Ford uses), but EA is building out fast. I'm also a bigger fan of Tesla's cylindrical batteries than Ford's pouch batteries, but time may prove me wrong.

Yeah, the supercharger network is years ahead. I wish EA would do something similar to the tesla chargers where it would automatically bill your account. I love not having to use a CC or scan a fob.

There is plug-in charging that uses your car's VIN. No need to credit card/fob/anything.

https://www.engadget.com/electrify-america-ev-charging-payme...

Perfect. This is one step closer to making EVs even more convenient than gas. Forget your wallet? You can still get a quick charge if necessary.

EA is just one of the CCS networks in the country, there's also EVgo, Chargepoint, probably others.

Point taken. Tesla is soon going to have to make its US network CCS compatible too; their European cars already use CCS connectors because the law there requires it.

It's kind of an unoptimal result because CCS is a big ugly connector while the Tesla connector is small and sleek: Tesla uses the same pins for both AC and DC, while CCS requires separate pins.

Oh well. VHS beats Betamax again.

I think Tesla still has a leg up on range. I looked into buying an F150 but the range is just a bit low for me. The Lightning has a purported EPA range of 320 miles which if you subtract off the top 10% and bottom 10% means it really has 250 miles of usable range at EPA standards which would probably drop it to 150-180 if you're driving it at highway speeds with a load. It's just a bit too low for me if I'm going to take this thing camping or hauling a trailer for a boat.

That said, I think 150-180 miles is plenty of range for people who would just drive this thing to work and back.

Important to note that many tesla models under-perform their EPA estimates when tested in more real world conditions while most other manufacturers tie or outperform them, sometimes substantially [1].

The Mach-E for instance has a -48 mile EPA range compared to an M3LR but only a -4 mile range in the edmund's test.

Same for Taycan, EPA rating of 203, edmunds got 323.

Tesla M3P EPA is 310 but edmunds got only 256.

When you factor in actual expected range and price (especially the federal tax credit) Tesla's range advantage is rapidly disappearing and as far as I'm aware there isn't anything coming down the pipe that will radically change that (4680s maybe, but we haven't seen any of the touted benefits proved out yet).

https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/electric-car-range-and-cons...

I tend to prefer the insideevs 70 mph test, as its closer to a practical test, but yes, the range in the real world is different from the rated range to varying degrees.

Teslas tend to come pretty close to their EPA highway rating when tested on the highway under similar circumstances. But the EPA highway rating isn't the one that gets advertised. :sigh

That makes a lot of sense, most people talking about range don't care about commuting range but care a lot about # of recharges to travel some long distance so it stands to reason that highway numbers are more valuable than a combined metric.

Although for me traveling up and down 95 is so slow that I end up hitting the city number on my hybrid :)

Most Teslas are similar. ~320 miles at best, and closer to 200 in the real world on the highway with reasonable buffers.

320 is a fair mark, but I didn't do the math for real world reasonable buffers for the lightning. That would drop it further to about 130-150 miles.

I'm confused. You said you subtracted off the top 10% and the bottom 10%?

TBH, comparing my Model Y to the Lightning, the only range issue that I see is the charge speeds. The Lightning's 400V CCS system limits it a bit, so charge times would be quite a bit higher on longer trips.

Yeah, you pretty much have to do that with any EV.

You don't want to frequently charge over 90% to preserve the integrity of the battery. Same with the bottom 10%. You don't want to frequently drive the car down to 1%. I think it's not a huge deal if you drive it down to 5% or so, but as an owner of an EV, it gets pretty scary to go below 10% before you charge if you're on a trip. If the wind speed/ temp/etc gets out of control, it can sap your battery before you make it to the next station.

Ignoring 20% of the battery is pretty much the standard on today's EVs.

Isn’t F150 range calculated with 1000 pounds cargo?

I saw some speculation of that, but it isn't clear that its actually true.

Supercharger network, much longer range, significant investment in battery technology that should make their cars comparatively cheaper, FSD when it arrives, fantastic safety scores and cult like brand loyalty. Tesla has a lot going for it atleast for the next 5-10 years.

No union. Supercharger network. Battery factories. Solar cells. AI and software. Much less baggage as a newer company.

That last part is a huge deal. No meaningful debt and very positive cash flow will give them some meaningful advantages.

Exactly. With over 20% margin, Tesla can afford to cut prices a lot if they ever need to, whereas most other manufacturers are probably barely breaking even on their electric vehicles.

All valid points - I still think there is something brewing behind the scenes of Ford with their Model E division, some financial engineering to spin it off and shed pension liabilities or whatever.

I think it is brand and their charging network.

However the amount of these trucks ford can produce is very small. Their head start for launch is pretty meaningless.

> Their head start for launch is pretty meaningless.

You're comparing something that exists to something that doesn't yet exist, and you have no information on future volume, then calling the first thing "meaningless." I don't understand that at all.

Your point is entirely predicated on Tesla producing Cybertruck in such large volumes that it dwarfs Ford's F-150 Lightning, but you have no factual basis for that claim.

The drama here for all of this is that we're seeing the century of R&D invested into making cars compressed into a decade for replicating that work for electric vehicles.

They're comparable, but not identical, so domain knowledge for one doesn't always translate into the other. Witness the Bolt / LG Chem battery fiasco.

So yes, Ford is the first (or second? third?) over the line to make engineering samples available to the public. They also have their ICE platforms to fall back on if they don't execute perfectly. Plenty of time no worries.

Tesla (and rivian?) are in the deep end without any option but to figure out how to swim / mass produce their product, so they've got incentive to execute.

There are plenty of companies that got their product to market only to be destroyed by warranty burdens. It is instructive that the bolt was first to market (vs the model 3).

So the story hasn't been told yet, but certainly tesla's not in a position of strength here.

I wouldn't say that he has no factual basis. Ford is aiming for a run rate of 5k/week by the middle of next year.

We know that this was considered the minimal benchmark for the Model 3 and that their targets for CT are higher.

Its a guess about future state, so surely not certain, but noone has this "won" by getting ~50k units done over the next 12 months.

> We know that this was considered the minimal benchmark for the Model 3

You say that as though, oh no problem Tesla will have that minimal benchmark immediately. But in reality, it wasn't until 2 years after they started delivering the model 3 that they hit that "minimal benchmark" for it.

Well, sort of... first deliveries were in Q3 2017. By Q3 2018 they were failing to hit 5k, but that still meant 4k/week. Just ~6 months after that, they were at 5,500 per week.

If they failed like that again, they'd still catch up pretty quickly. I have doubts, though. Cybertruck doesn't seem to be getting the same attention and drive behind its launch that the 3 did.

> the amount of these trucks ford can produce is very small. Their head start for launch is pretty meaningless.

Far from it. One, they're pre-selling (note: selling, not taking deposits for). Two, they're making 150,000 a year and plan to make 600,000 in 2023 [1], the latter representing about 5% of the American light truck market [2] and about 50% of the total number of vehicles Tesla builds in a year [3].

[1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1134628_ford-f-150-ligh...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/199981/us-car-and-truck-...

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/715421/tesla-quarterly-v...

"It's aiming to make 600,000 EV's per year by the end of 2023" means that they plan on making 600,000 EV's per year in 2024.

And that's the measure that matters. A truck isn't available unless you can buy it, and given the number of pre-orders that both Cybertruck and F-150 have, unless you already have a reservation you won't be able to buy either truck until annual production reaches the 500,000/yr mark or so. And it looks like both Tesla and Ford will reach that rate at about the same time, so the race is on. Hopefully Ford has secured enough batteries to reach that level, because that's likely going to be the limiting factor.

You have misunderstood the goals in the green car reports article (or maybe they did). They aren't at 150k a year now, they hope to be at that run rate by mid-2023.

The F-150 is the best selling vehicle in the United States.

They almost quadrupled output from 40,000 to 150,000 because of demand.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/25/ford-f-150-lightning-ele...

Getting US consumers to want EV’s in large numbers is the real problem. Sounds like Ford is getting people excited. I’m sure they’ll be ready to double output as needed.

Deliver first, deliver often. Figure the rest out later. Startup playbook.