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Is the Tesla Model 3 Actually Going To Cost $50,000?
cartechboy writes How low can battery costs go, and how fast? That's the question automakers are dealing with when it comes to the future of electric cars. Tesla is betting big on electric and has already proven many skeptics wrong with its Model S sedan. The company is making even bolder claims with its upcoming Model 3 stating it'll have about 200 miles of range and a base price of $35,000. That's a nice goal, but is it possible. Battery skeptic Menahem Anderman wrote a new report suggesting that the pace of cost reduction for electric car batteries won't be as swift as Tesla's CEO Elon Musk suggests. This leads Anderman to predict the actual price of the upcoming Model 3 will be in the range of $50,000-$80,000.
Or no.
That's a $500 lease payment and basically in line with a BMW 3 Series, not exactly demotic pricing but there's a lot of people shopping for something in that range, particularly after tax creds and discounting gasoline.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Speculation is fine, but do we really need more articles attempting to predict the cost of a car that doesn't yet exist? I might even consider buying one, but before I can take one for a test drive, and see the actual price.
Who should I believe?
Menahem Anderman a self confirmed "battery skeptic"
Elon Musk who runs the company that makes the best and arguably most successful electric car ever produced, and is constantly hitting production targets?
My money is on Elon.
From the article's conclusion: In the most likely scenario, Anderman writes, “the price of the 2017 new model will be in the range of $50-80K.” The 60-kWh version of today's Tesla Model S large luxury sedan starts at $69,900, with an EPA-rated range of 208 miles. Given that the Model 3 will be a smaller car with one-third less range, using a next-generation battery to be produced in bulk at Tesla's planned gigafactory, that seems rather pessimistic.
Your right gas cars are total non-perishable and never wear-out or need replacement parts, and gasoline can be recycled as well.
.
The basic oddity of the Model 3 plan is Tesla's intention to jump all the way from the $80K S down to half of that on the next model. An electric car doesn't really need to be as cheap as $35K, since the S has demonstrated demand for a higher price if the car is good, and since the average price of a new car is already $28,400, and those cars will burn tens of thousands of dollars of gas over their lifetime.
One way or another there is going to be a financial incentive to feel their way down the price point more gradually, although I hope they remain committed to, and are able to pull off, the revolutionary approach.
LiON batteries can be recycled...
The price will be offset by other maintenance/repair costs. You'll win out in the long run.
Traditional gas engine cars need a lot of maintenance. They run very hot. They have a lot of fluids. Lots of rubber bits that wear out. Lots of moving parts that need lubrication. Lots of mess. You also need a lot of electronics to get modern levels of performance and effiency.
Electric motor systems are much more reliable. Less cooling.. Less wasted heat. (Less thermal stress) Simpler transmissions. (Having full torque at zero RPM solves a LOT of problems) Less complicated overall. They're lighter too, so you need less energy all together.
Whatever you will spend on a new battery will be a lot less than what you pay to maintain your gas engine car over it's lifetime. There is already a robust market for rebuilt battery packs and that will baloon in the near future. (Not all cells go bad at the same time. Just replace the bad performing cells and you're good to go)
Tesla Model S is 69k, the model 3 is going to be less expensive and be less "premium" for lack of a better word. If your back of the napkin estimates don't TOP out at 69k then you have no basis in reality. The article sort of points this out and says an 80k price is "pessimistic" I am going to argue that it is psychotic, and invalidates everything else this soothsayer had to say.
That battery will NOT last forever,
And neither does an internal combustion engine, either. Your point?
and when it needs a new one you'd be better off scrapping the entire car and buying a new one.
Citation needed. Seriously.
How good is that for the environment?
Awesome, actually. The battery can be recycled, and there aren't any heavy metals to deal with either.
--
BMO
Scrapping the entire car? No way! The chassis, interior, and motors will still likely be in great shape. Electric motors have a WAY longer lifespan than reciprocating engines. If anything, replacing the battery every 5-10 years or so should be seen as a good thing. The tech will have improved, so your range for the same car will improve accordingly. While the battery may no longer be good for electric car demands, they can still live a long life for grid smoothing or surplus renewable power storage.
Not really. While expensive, There is a reason Mr. Musk think we can hit his price point: By bringing down battery price by building his own largest battery fab in the world.
Tesla can switch a battery pack in minutes. (One of their business plans for the future is franchise stations where one would exchange batteries in minutes, the way one now gets gas). Except for crashes a car like the Tesla S has almost NO wear and tear compared to an internal combustion car. No gearbox, no oil, no injection systems no exhaust systems no cooling systems... The Tesla S's maintenance manual consist of such things as changing your wiper blades once a year etc...
As far as the pollution form the battery pack goes: While older battery technologies were stuffed with heavy metals, That is not the case with Li-Ion batteries. They are remarkably recyclable once used up.
Hajo Monogamy: Belief so strong that millions of people end perfectly good relationships in order to start a new one.
The battery is warrantied for 8 years. What percentage of cars are not scrapped by 9 years old (not zero to be sure, but not a lot I would guess); and that assumes (falsely I would suspect) that there is a mass failure right at 8 years. If the average is even 50% farther (12 years); we are coming into a siginifgant "scrapped anyway" territory.
Heck. At 12-years on a BMW, there are any number of wearbale parts that replacement may exceed car value (tires, brakes (you have to replace the rotors with the pads on a BMW), etc).
That said: Nissan sells a 24kWh battery replacement for their ccar for $5500 (I don't have pricing on the Tesla as none are old enough to need to be baught). I would suspect that, right now, replacements are $20k. Even if not: Tesla is investing billions in bringing down battery costs, so we can expect it to be much lower in 8 years.
Further: all that assumes a new battery. What will the recycled ones cost? I Suspect not a great deal.
Finally: Assuming 15k miles per year; you will have driven 120k miles in 8 years. If you are in, say, a BMW750 (19 combined MPG) you've used a bit more than 6300 gallons which, at current $3.50 is $22,050. That means, in your gas car, you will spend more on the gas than a Tesla owner will on the battery. Assuming you don't drive much. Assuming that battery costs don't go down. Assuming that the batteries die at a mere 120k miles. And, unlike our gasoline, the battery is recycleable.
As a note: If you do replace the battery; the actual replacement itself is simple and requires few tools.
I get your point, but I don't think that's the business model.
It looks to me like Tesla put out the high-dollar "elite" sports car as the first product, in order to generate enough revenue (higher profit margins on each one) to build more of a company aimed at the mass market.
So this isn't about "brand dilution" so much as the company knowing who it wants its customer to be -- and gradually lowering prices on the cars as the technology and profits from previous sales allow it to get there.
Tesla isn't trying to compete with Ferrari, Lamborghini, and the like. It wants to reach a point where it's considered a superior brand competing with brands like Nissan, Toyota, GM, Ford and Chrysler.
"Stanford Team Creates Stable Lithium Anode Using Honeycomb Film" "The linked article suggests that the 200-mile-range, $25,000 electric car is a more realistic concept with batteries made with this technology" http://beta.slashdot.org/story... http://cleantechnica.com/2014/...
Well, there are some original model Prius out there with over 1M kilometers on their less overengineered batteries so I think any speculation about throwing away a Tesla because of a worn battery pack are just a bit pessimistic.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Not unless the car has been damaged.
BMWs have very high resale value. 12 year old BMWs are currently 2002 models. Very few model year 2002 BMWs can be found for under $5000 in _any_ condition.
In fact, if you do a quick search on autotrader.com for model year 2002 BMWs, you'll see that there are 1200 listings with an average asking price of $9700
I happen to be quite familiar with the running costs of old BMWs. The drive train of a BMW will easily last 12 years without substantial work. The exceptions would be the plastic cooling system components, and, on some models, premature VANOS failure. Sadly, on the newer N54 engines the HPFP is a disaster, but that is not the majority of used BMWs, and certainly not MY2002 cars.
Even paying dealer prices, to replace brakes, suspension rubber, tires, cooling system, etc, will not cost you $9000.
The brake rotors and pads are a few hundred dollars per corner, and you could replace them yourself in your own garage with a jack and hand tools.
FWIW, I really like Tesla. I look forward to a time when buying one of their cars makes sense for me.
However, your consideration of the repair costs of a 12 year old BMW is way off. Thus, my response.
Also, Brakes and Tires are functionally identical between a BMW and a Tesla, and, on the Model S, the Tesla replacement parts are probably more expensive (I haven't priced them to be certain), because the Tesla has very large low profile tires and very large brakes, especially compared to the "average" BMW (instead of their X5 trucks with big wheels, or their high performance M models with larger brakes)
So comparing a 12 year old BMW and a 12 year old Tesla, the wear and maintenance parts differences are the Tesla's battery vs. the BMW's conventional drivetrain. The latter requires coolant flushes, oil changes, transmission fluid changes, air filters, etc.
The one maintenance surprise that I learned about when chatting with a Tesla service technician was that on the model S, the A/C refrigerant is serviced regularly, because it is an integral component of the battery cooling system.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
The rest of you driving CO2-emitting cars should be paying a lot more than the tiny fraction of your taxes that goes to EV incentives.
If theres a magic number for tesla, somewhere theyre hoping to get in order to dramatically increase sales of their technological wonderland on wheels, theyre sadly mistaken. Your target demographic in the future does not fucking care.
According to the AAA, From 2007 to 2011, the number of cars purchased by people aged 18 to 34, fell almost 30%, and according to a study from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, only 44% of teens obtain a drivers license within the first year of becoming eligible and just half, 54% are licensed before turning 18. Speaking as a millenial, let me be frank when I address the clearly shocked and disappointed Baby Boomer parents that find my lack of enthusiasm infuriating.
You're right, i want electric vehicles to staunch global warming and climate change. and I sure do like that cellphone I'm always carrying. However, You're delusional if you think I want a new car . You wrecked the economy, crushed the housing market, and saddled me with student loans that can never be forgiven and that will garnish my wages even after death. until last year, i didnt have a chance in hell of getting health insurance. Most of my friends work more than one job, not many of them earn a programmers salary like me and even if they did theyd be furious to find out most of it (after the universities generous cut) is going to an apartment owned by a capital investment firm that doesnt care about my broken shower. I've never met my landlord but i sure as hell know who my loan officer is. A car represents tax, title, license, maintenance, and fuel money I dont have. It represents parking tickets and accident insurance and a parking space. Not only do i lack the cash to buy this car, but chances are likely i'll never have the credit rating you did.
so drop it low. I dont care. I live downtown and I reverse-commute to the exurbs because the traffic is easier and im not as frightened of minorities as your generation was. I own a bicycle and take the bus if theres inclimate weather. The car is a 2001 crown victoria fleet vehicle I purchased used from the city with a broken door lock switch and a sagging headliner and honestly, i dont care. cars do not exemplify who I am or my success as a person and as more companies become copacetic with telecommuting, they'll only become less relevant to me.
Good people go to bed earlier.
But the entire world's projected number of electric vehicles in 2020 depends on the price of electric cars and their batteries.
I'm also assuming those projected numbers came out the ass of MBAs.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Your right gas cars are total non-perishable and never wear-out or need replacement parts, and gasoline can be recycled as well.
I need to know what an electric car is going to cost me over its projected service life. I need to know the up-front cost of replacing a battery. I do not want to base my purchasing decision on "green" energy subsidies that may disappear after the next election.
What are the two biggest price-determining factors in a market economy? Stupidity and greed.
Fixed.
Also, Brakes and Tires are functionally identical between a BMW and a Tesla, and, on the Model S
Sort of. The tires, yes. The brakes are functionally identical, but should wear much more slowly on the Model S thanks to regenerative braking. How much less depends on driving style, obviously.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The charge/discharge cycles is what wears a battery much more than age (although age also has some effect).
The highest mileage Tesla Model S I've heard about has a bit over 100K miles on it. The owner reports it's on the original battery and has only lost a few percent of range (battery capacity) compared to new.
This year, I went to the annual auto show in Dallas. What a total waste of money and time. The automakers who bothered to attend sent very junior people who didn't know anything. But they looked young and pretty. And that was their main selling point too: pretty. Pretty girls selling pretty cars. One of the few interesting cars there was a Nissan Leaf.
Don't know why they bothered having the show. If the show was an indication of the state of automobiling, I'd say they are out of ideas, and too gutless to try what few ideas they do have. Dealerships trying to stifle competition through legal technicalities makes them look really weak. Car makers need some serious shaking up, and Tesla may be the spark that sets off the forest fire. I hope batteries improve to the point that gasoline powered cars can no longer compete, and the public begins unloading them, rather like the way they unloaded SUVs in 2008 when the price of gas spiked, but more permanent.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
The battery should also last a very long time. I have read the post from one owner who has already racked up over 100,000 miles and still has over 95% of his original battery capacity. Tesla has a battery replacement policy where you can pay up-front to get a new battery after 8 years and get a $1000 rebate each year you wait beyond that.
Instead I decided to take some of that money and buy some stock when it was at $38. I'm kicking myself that I didn't buy more.
The electric motor in my Tesla won't need a lube job for another 10 1/2 years according to the person I spoke with when I had service done. While there is still coolant, many of the issues with ICE vehicles don't apply. The brakes will last much longer since most braking is regenerative. I still need tire rotations and the cabin air filter and the windshield wipers replaced periodically though. I suspect that even the coolant will last a lot longer since a gasoline engine generates far more heat.
A lot of other components should last much longer. There's no transmission, only around a dozen moving parts in the entire drivetrain and few friction points. The AC compressor is electric and completely sealed and there's no flexible hoses. Power steering is electric, not hydraulic which should last a lot longer as well.
Also, it is far easier to reach stuff than in an ICE car. Most things are easily accessible by removing the plastic frunk liner or removing a panel under the front of the car. The entire drivetrain is also easily removable as a unit. Similarly the battery can be easily removed. The car is far simpler to work on.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
This is no more Troll than the original post.
Brakes are different in the Tesla than in BMW. In the case of Tesla there is a lot of regenerative braking so the brakes should last a lot longer. Tires on the other hand... I have the performance version of the Tesla model S with the 21" rims. When I got my car there was no price difference between the 19 and 21" rims. Anyway, I managed to get a bit over 15K miles on the original tires. The negative camber Tesla uses tends to be a bit hard on the rear tires, plus I tend to accelerate rather hard.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
That's why the factory (which will be owned more by Panasonic than Tesla) plans on selling batteries to every industry that uses them, not just electric cars.
The entire car is built of aluminum so it should last a long time (and can be easily recycled into beer cans or new cars at low energy cost).
Li batteries can also be recycled... wait for it... into new Li batteries.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
84MPG, only $6800 -- that's not a typo.
http://www.eliomotors.com/
Yes, it's an enclosed motorcycle, but it drives like a car. You will not need a helmet in almost all states. It will solve more problems than the Tesla will, which is a just a Green toy for Rich people. This is an actual vehicle for you and me, regular people that earn less than 6 figures a year.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
My 2012 Leaf cost $15,600 used, with 8,000 miles as a rental. It looks and runs like brand new, and I don't have to recoup the difference between the purchase price and that of a similar gasoline car.
Gasoline alone used to cost $240 per month in our old car. The payment on the Leaf is $245. Electricity is about $50. Based on our acual usage, I pay about $ .07 USD per mile.
Except that these cars ARE CO2-emitting cars, unless you have arranged to get the power for your charger from renewable sources (difficult and expensive in most parts of the country). Here in Texas, these actually become a combination of coal, natural gas and nuclear burning cars.
I addessed this issue in this post. Short answer: even if the electricity is produced by coal, the large efficiency of electric motors, thermal power plants, and the electricity transmission system will ensure less emissions caused by an electric car than from a gasoline powered car. And my calculations didn't even take into account the emissions from processing oil into gasoline, which are especially high if the source is from tar sands. My calculations are referenced and I believe them to be reasonable.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Nuclear still exists. People seem to forget.
I'd be happy to chip in my fair share of road tax. At 18 cents a gallon and about 10k miles a year driving, that works out to about $60 per year I ought to be paying towards road maintenance if you compare my Leaf to a 30 mpg econobox. Just don't try and stick a GPS tracker on my car like Oregon keeps thinking is a good idea. Make it part of my registration fees or something similarly simple.
A new Leaf battery will set you back $5500, not $15-45k. That price may drop further in the future.
Tesla's have bigger batteries and go through a lot stress per mile than a Leaf (less percentage discharge for the same number of miles driven), so they are likely to last several times longer than the ~100-150k miles you can expect out of a Leaf's battery.
Tesla uses 18650-size cells, specifically because they are the most common Li-Ion form factor in the world. If Tesla is planning on producing a different-sized cell at the gigafactory, please provide a link.
Making amonia, hydrogen, methane from high temp nuclear, amazing possibilities, is 550C hot enough ? The ruskies already have at least one commercial reactor in operation capable of producing 550C stream.
Yeah, those pesky illogical wind turbine credits are killing all baseload generation in the USA. If only they would reformulate those credits as a percentage of the actual electricity revenues of wind generators, we could restore a minimum level of economic rationality to the market.
But... I did read a lot on the MSR front. Those reactors promise much simpler architecture. They could cost less than 1/3rd per MW than LWRs even at the 250-500MWe scale, their economics would be totally different, actually competitive with wind even with today's crazy credits, plus MSRs load follow without control rods or boron injections. Huge negative temperature coefficient, so if demand goes up, more heat is extracted from the primary loop, temps go down, reactivity goes up, demand goes down, less heat is extracted from the primary loop, temps go up, reactivity goes down. Was demonstrated ad nauseum in the 60s @ ORNL MSR demonstrator, they could control the reactor power by just changing airflow over the heat exchanger (demonstrator had just a heat exchanger dumping heat on the air).
I also took this online class:
https://www.coursera.org/cours...
All of those active safety systems on LWR reactors, none are needed. MSRs need no computer based realtime control computers, even human operators aren't critical, its walk away safe.
It sounds too good to be true, but so far the only bad thing that was said about it was alleged corrosion problems, which was denied by the few retired ORNL techs that worked on the project 40 years ago.
The pesky problem is the NRC. Everytime I read something factual about the NRC, it just shows they are the biggest monkey wrench trying to kill nuclear power in the USA. And the radical greens call the NRC in bed with the nuclear industry.