VW Plans A $ 22K Electric Car To Compete With Tesla, Transition From Combustion Engines (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: Volkswagen intends to sell electric cars for less than 20,000 euros ($22,836) and protect German jobs by converting three factories to make Tesla rivals, a source familiar with the plans said... Plans for VW's electric car, known as "MEB entry" and with a production volume of 200,000 vehicles, are due to be discussed at a supervisory board meeting on Nov. 16, the source said... The November 16 strategy meeting will discuss Volkswagen's transformation plan to shift from being Europe's largest maker of combustion engine vehicles into a mass producer of electric cars, another source familiar with the deliberations said.

VW's strategy shift comes as cities start to ban diesel engine vehicles, forcing carmakers to think of new ways to safeguard 600,000 German industrial jobs, of which 436,000 are at car companies and their suppliers.... The shift from combustion engines to electric cars would also cost 14,000 jobs at VW by 2020 as it takes less time to build an electric car than a conventional one and because jobs will shift overseas to battery manufacturers.

Comments

Kudos to VW

[hsmith]

Making a diesel engine run so quiet that can pretend to be an EV!

Re:Kudos to VW

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

They are waiting for a breakthrough technology in cheat devices.

Re:Kudos to VW

[aaarrrgggh]

Only on a dynamometer.

Re:Kudos to VW

[Anonymous Coward]

Making a diesel engine run so quiet that can pretend to be an EV!

Wasn't that the plot of Pixar's Cars 2?

Lol.

[WindBourne]

Yes, VW, Daimler, BMW, GM, Ford, fiat-chrysler, Nissan, etc have spent the last 5-7 years telling us how they would beat Tesla. Now, like cold fusion, it will happen real soon.

Re:Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla's days are numbered.

Re:Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric cars sucks.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nissan is already beating Tesla.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, person who repeats info from 2017 to a news website!

Re:Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, VW, Daimler, BMW, GM, Ford, fiat-chrysler, Nissan, etc have spent the last 5-7 years telling us how they would beat Tesla. Now, like cold fusion, it will happen real soon.

-

You're a clueless fanboy.

Why don't you put every penny you have on Tesla - so we can enjoy seeing you living out of a shopping cart.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't 'news' it was a correction to false implied fact of the state of Nissan's abilities. (not original coward, just someone who hates stupid people thinking they are smart.)

Re:Lol.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

They have invested in computer graphics division to create press releases. Pretty soon they will start thinking about investing in battery technology.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

True, their days are numbered starting at 1 on January 1st and reaching 365 or 366 by December 31st. Similarly, their weeks, months and years are also numbered.

Re:Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't merely a press release, VW is completely realigning their business to move into electric. As are other manufacturers. And once you look past the glamor of being a first-mover and the tiny dedicated fanbase, Tesla has no advantage over more established manufacturers. The competition has been building cars for almost 100 years before Tesla existed, and they're not doing it in tents.

If Tesla has any future at all, it's in making ultra high-end electrics for the wealthy to flaunt their eco-conscience.

Re:Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

likey you english.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello. Do you know what "news" means in English? If you don't speak the language fluently you shouldn't get into semantics.

Re: Lol.

[lazarus]

Ya, I totally agree with you. The word vaporware needs to be used on the endless stream of press releases from mainstream auto manufacturers about their real-soon-now EVs. âoeWeâ(TM)re going to do this too, real soon nowâ was a Microsoft tactic back in the day when they needed time to build a competing product with their slow moving monopolistic behemoth of a company.

Big changes are coming to the auomotive market over the next few years. Not going to be pretty.

Re:Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you just tell us WindBourne that ICE cars were going extinct in only 2-3 years?
https://slashdot.org/comments....
You think Tesla can ramp up production into the millions so quickly? Fanboi idiocy at its finest...

Re:Lol.

[DontBeAMoran]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...

Re:Lol.

[shilly]

This is silly.
These manufacturers are all in different places and there's no point being broad-brush.
Tesla's first-mover advantage is considerable -- their profitability per vehicle is significantly ahead of their competitors.
However, the Leaf and the Zoe mean Nissan-Renault are in a strong position in the mass-market in Europe, and Renault has a new low-cost product for China. If it can gain a toe-hold there, that will make a big difference.
VW and BMW have the ambition, and the e-Golf and i3 are good in their own ways, but it's a looong road forward for them.
Other manufacturers are significantly behind.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL no. Nissan still doesn't have liquid cooled batteries and their batteries still degrade significantly due to thermal stress.

Re: Lol.

[mobby_6kl]

Is it vaporware when BMW has been shipping EVs since 2013? They're pretty niche so far but I see more of them in Europe than Teslas. At this point the EV drivetrain should be pretty straightforward (thanks to Tesla for pushing some development there too) so yeah once mainstream manufacturers get in pop switch over, it wouldn't be very pretty for Tesla since they'd have significant manufacturing, supply chain and quality expertise advantages.

Re:Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to add, up to somewhere last year, there were no competitors to Tesla to offer car that has both: aesthetic look as a car and not as some hallucinating designer mind vomit, and has a decent driving range. Last year Hyundai Ionic and now Kia Rio (or whatever) came. Others fail to satisfy both requirements:
i3 - exagerated "eletric" look
eGolf - limited range
Leaf - limited range and look on the verge of being strange

Zoe is a totally different trend in car market. With Zoe you do not buy battery, you rent it and pay a monthly fee (unless Renault has changed its mind). So it is hard to compare with others.

So while biggest manufacturers are laudly announcing how they will crush Tesla, Tesla is producing and selling cars.

Re:Lol.

[AmiMoJo]

And some of them actually have.

Hyundai has the Kona out, which has better-than-Tesla range and much higher spec at a fraction of the cost. Includes reliable autopilot and better driving aids. Kia is releasing their Niro soon too, which is similar but a bit larger.

Outside of the US Nissan and Renault really pioneered EVs. The widespread charging networks in Europe and Japan are mostly down to demand that they created with the Leaf and Zoe. Tesla is a small player in those markets and the M3 isn't anywhere in sight for them.

In China you have BYD. As well as some very good long range cars, they have a massive business supplying commercial vehicles like busses and trucks. Again, they really pioneered it and something like 80% of new busses in China are pure EV now thanks to them. Whole cities have moved to pure EV public transport.

Don't get me wrong, Tesla make some nice if unreliable cars, but they are not at all affordable or even that big of a deal outside of the United States. And I don't think their Model 3 platform will ever really get down to truly affordable levels, like the $20k range, while Renault are already there with a pretty decent (if small) 40kWh car.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Nissan is already beating Tesla

How?

Re:Lol.

[FudRucker]

those camper karts will come in handy when people lose their house trying to pay for a 22 thousand dollar car, its a shame that cars cost as much as a house almost, theres no way in hell i would buy a new car nowadays, i would have to take a mortgage just to pay for a car that will be worn out by the time its paid for, so i troll craigslist and used car lots for bargains when i go car shopping

Re: Lol.

[c6gunner]

Sorry to hear about your financial problems :(

Re: Lol.

[iggymanz]

You are confused, the big automakers have been doing the proper R&D to make an electric car that will be affordable and profitable. Tesla has failed to do that, has no idea how to do that. So it circles the drain and Musk losing his mind. Tesla pisses away money and has no long term plan to get profitable

Re:Lol.

[serviscope_minor]

Don't get me wrong, Tesla make some nice if unreliable cars, but they are not at all affordable or even that big of a deal outside of the United States.

Someone nearish to where I live (on a road I often walk along) has a model 3. Since I live in London and it's basically an American car it's too big to fit in his driveway. So he does th only reasonably thing and parks it on the road.

Nah! Just kidding, he parks it in the drive and leaves it sticking out across the pavement. Very tempted to carefully key it along the line just where the pavement starts.

Re: Lol.

[lazarus]

Did you check out Audiâ(TM)s big e-tron release? Did you find the actual vehicle as underwhelming as I did? How much money have they poured into that? Formula-e and everything?

The e-golf. The i3. Whatâ(TM)s the range on these? These are not serious competitors to Tesla. Weâ(TM)ll have to see if the Porsche Taycan is a real contender. Iâ(TM)m hopeful, but I am beginning that think that these massive automotive corporate dinosaurs canâ(TM)t do it.

Re:Lol.

[thegarbz]

Yes, VW, Daimler, BMW, GM, Ford, fiat-chrysler, Nissan, etc have spent the last 5-7 years telling us how they would beat Tesla. Now, like cold fusion, it will happen real soon.

To be fair, no they haven't. Hell Daimler's CEO flat out said he sees no future in EVs and is banking on his business existing for many years. In the meantime the Renault-Nissan alliance's efforts for all electric vehicles absolutely dwarfs Tesla in the rest of the world, but Americans don't like small cars and are obsessed with the idea of having to have unlimited miles on a charge so the cars haven't taken off at all in the USA.

All of Tesla's vehicles combined sold less in Europe y-t-d that BMW's i3 shipments. The Model S sales are also lagging behind the VW e-golf, and the Leaf / Zoe absolutely dominate the industry.

Tesla is doing great things in America, but in Europe they are falling short of competing with the token half-arsed attempts from traditional car companies who crap out a handful of poor EV models to keep the politicians off their arses.

Tesla is awesome, but I have no doubt that if the other car companies actually took EVs seriously they would be in trouble, fortunately they have no competition in the USA. None of the top EV models from Europe are available there (except for the Leaf) and being small European cars they aren't desirable to Americans either.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

By selling more electric cars.

Re:Lol.

[AmiMoJo]

Unfortunately due to the price it attracts the kind of arseholes who normally buy a BMW or Audi.

Re:Lol.

[serviscope_minor]

Unfortunately due to the price it attracts the kind of arseholes who normally buy a BMW or Audi.

I love this one about BMW drivers:

http://www.bbspot.com/News/200...

Re:Lol.

[DeBaas]

The Model S sales are also lagging behind the VW e-golf, and the Leaf / Zoe absolutely dominate the industry.

The model S is a car in a size and price range that doesn't sell nearly as well in Europe as the segment that the Golf, Leaf and Zoe are in. It would be interesting to see what happens when the model 3 gets to be widely available in Europe.
In fact if I compare number of model S cars on the road to the larger BMW's and Mercedes's where I live in Europe they do remarkably well, especially for an American built car.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Buyers don't care about liquid cooled batteries. They do care about price, availability and reliability.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

the sales numbers tell a different story.

https://www.google.ro/amp/s/insideevs.com/october-2018-plug-in-electric-vehicle-sales-report-card/amp/

Re:Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably live in the Netherlands, one of the few markets where Tesla is relatively successful, due to tax advantages. It is still dwarfed in sales by the big three luxury brands, though.

The Model 3 may be smaller than the S and the X, but it is still considerably larger than mass-market cars. Moreover, it is a saloon, which has become an impopular body style. The biggest issue however will be that there will be many, probably mostly better, alternatives by the time the Model 3 finally becomes available in numbers outside North America.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

âoeObsessed with big cars and unlimited rangeâ - no shit dumbass we have a bigger country and more stuff to carry. Enjoy your London and stay across the pond

Re:Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

VW does not operate like Elon Musk does. VW has been pouring many Billions into this. Research and development, factories are being retooled right now, new factories are being built, strategic alliances are negotiated, resources are being secured, designs are being finalized, etc.
They may take their time to hit the market, but once they do it will be large scale immediately.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are US market sales only. Many common electric car models aren't even sold over there.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever drive one? We drove one as a good looking for a Subaru - my wife was totally against âoetoy cars.â That toy is sitting in my driveway. The only car I ever drove that was faster off the line was a1970â(TM)s Vette with a blower.

Re: Lol.

[Zorpheus]

I didn't see the vehicles in real yet, but according to this the Audi has a larger range and battery than the Tesla for the same price. You have to pay $16000 more to get that from Tesla.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09...

Re:Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

He'll just go on and on about how American shopping carts are superior to foreign ones, and we should subsidize them more.

Re:Lol.

[drinkypoo]

In China you have BYD. As well as some very good long range cars, they have a massive business supplying commercial vehicles like busses and trucks. Again, they really pioneered it

No, no they did not pioneer it. Blue Bird sold both the first hybrid bus, and the first modern electric bus — both back in the nineties.

Re:Lol.

[angel'o'sphere]

What Americans don't grasp (and that is aimed at true Americans nitpicking about e-vehicles and Elon who is actually from South Africa): in Europe the commute distance is rather short. While there are people that actually need to go to work about 100 miles, and back another 100 miles, they can recharge their vehicle at the workplace. And most people hardly drive more than 10miles to work and 10miles back, if they spent another 5miles on the way home shopping that would already be exaggerating.

With nitpicking I mean: the Tesla has an extraordinary range. It is definitely a nice vehicle. What I don't like is all the electronics and the big "entertainment screen".

Regarding europeans and catch up ... that is a basically a conspiracy theory that is not a conspiracy and not a theory.

European car manufacturers are researching, prototyping and building e-vehicles since the early 1980s. But they never dared to start penetrate the market, invent their own batteries or bunched up together to make a joined battery research group.

Modern e-vehicles would look completely different when they simply would put all their knowhow into one basket (like the Japanese used to do before the Americans destroyed MITI) and build vehicles from that point. Modern e-vehicles at the moment are gasoline cars where the engine is replaced (sometimes the gears, too). In the 1980s and 1990s we had cars with a single engine at every wheel, able to do everything like stabelizing the car, regenerating energy, and anti blocking braking. Now we have standard ICE drives from the gear to the wheel ... with ICE anti blocking braking and lane stabelizing etc.

If you would combine the knowledge you had cars that would be more fun to drive, aka a all wheels drive, would regenerate more energy, would be more stable, would be much lighter and hence consume even less energy.

Re: Lol.

[drinkypoo]

You are confused, the big automakers have been doing the proper R&D to make an electric car that will be affordable and profitable. Tesla has failed to do that, has no idea how to do that.

Except we now know that, just like Munro and Assoc. said, Tesla is bringing in around $10,000 for each nicely-specced Model 3 they sell. Their only problem is volume, and they are addressing it. You have no clue what you're running your suck about.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Zoe you have a choice to buy or lease the battery. If you leased the battery, the second hand value of the car is ridiculously low.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

VW uses a special battery. It needs a small amount of gasoline to recharge. On a positive note this virtually eliminates the need for charging stations.

Re: Lol.

[dfghjk]

Since when is a "nicely-specced Model 3" affordable? What percentage of Teslas are leased rather than purchased? There's a reason no one wants to buy a Tesla, they don't want to get stuck owning a used one. Buyers currently lack confidence in the long term value of electric vehicles and Teslas are expensive.

Tesla has far more problems that just volume, starting with their general incompetence as a car company. Literally any other car company on earth could put them under. The fact that hasn't happened only shows that real car companies don't believe the market is ready. As mainstream brands enter in volume, Tesla will be seen as the joke that it is. Tesla will go under, the time frame is the "only problem" ... "and they are addressing it."

"You have no clue what you're running your suck about."

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nissan sells about 7k Leafs per month in their top four markets, which is well below the 17k Model 3s that Tesla is currently selling _in the US alone_. And that despite the Model 3 being significantly more expensive than the Leaf.

https://insideevs.com/nissan-leaf-sales-europe-august-2018/

Re:Lol.

[WindBourne]

Huh.
Kona

ESTIMATED BASE PRICE: $37,000 Wheelbase: 102.4 in Length: 164.6 in Width: 70.9 in Height: 61.2 in Passenger volume: 93 cu ft Cargo volume: 19 cu ft Curb weight (C/D est): 3715 lb PERFORMANCE (C/D EST) Zero to 60 mph: 7.6 sec Standing ¼-mile: 16.0 sec Top speed: 104 mph EPA FUEL ECONOMY Combined/city/highway: 120/132/108 MPGe EV range: 258 miles

THis speaks more about the MSRP on the Kona based on what they are charging in norway.

Luckily, local media is reporting that in Norway, the 64kWh is going to be 325.900 kr. At today’s exchange rate, that translates to $39,852. But it isn’t that simple.

How does this compare to Model 3? Wheelbase 113.2 in (2,880 mm) Length 184.8 in (4,690 mm) Width 76.1 in (1,930 mm) Height 56.8 in (1,440 mm) Curb weight Standard RWD: 3,552 lb (1,611 kg)[5] Standard Dual-Motor AWD: 3,757 lb (1,704 kg)[5] Mid-Range RWD: 3,686 lb (1,672 kg)[5] Long-Range RWD: 3,814 lb (1,730 kg)[5][6] Long-Range Dual-Motor AWD (including Performance): 4,072 lb (1,847 kg)[5] Electric range 220 mi (350 km) Standard[3] 260 mi (420 km) Mid Range (est. EPA-rated)[4] 310 mi (500 km) Long Range (EPA-rated)[3] Here is info on Model 3's performance

It looks like it can be pushed to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 3.3 seconds and travel a quarter-mile in 11.8 seconds without any mods. ... Last month, Musk said that Tesla Model 3 Performance’s 0-60 mph time could improve to under 3.3 seconds with even better tires.

Of course, at the track, the model 3 is being improved to take on and beat Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, etc.
Of course, the $35,000 Model 3 has yet to show up, but then again the $37-40K Kona is not out either.

As to the other that you list, you have to be kidding. Nissan/Renault started much later than Tesla and has pure junk. Same with BYD.
And as to reliability, MS is great. MX has issues early on with manufacturing, as did M3. All of those have been fixed (though I question it when Musk pushes the lines).

Re: Lol.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Let us assume what you say is true. Legacy car makers come in force, eat Tesla's lunch, and kill it off.

Now what would that do to ICE vehicles. They would be even more dead. That is a good thing.

World is buying some 90 million vehicles a year. Tesla is not going to be the monopoly supplier of 90 million vehicles a year. Lots of legacy car makers will switch to BEV with various degrees of reorganization. Some will die, some new ones will enter the market.

Who will have most pain? Companies with very serious ICE R&D technology, knowhow and production facilities. It is not a coincidence Jaguar is the first serious competitor fighting back. It has no ICE technology. Ford bought Jaguar, dismantled its engine R&D division and sold it to Tata of India. It is currently buying engines from outside, and it has a small engine making line somewhere under Land Rover name, I think. So it has less to lose when ICEs are gone.

Porsche, BMW, Honda all have very proud extremely great ICE technology. It is going to be valued like Blockbuster franchise in a decade. Their loss of valuation of ICE tech could be fatal to a few of such companies.

Re:Lol.

[WindBourne]

It was not the price that attracts those ppl. It is a fact that it was designed to take on and destroy the luxury ICE sedans, and the M3 does it all the way around.
Superior in safety, speed, luxury, track handling, etc.
This is why all of the luxury ICE sedan sales are falling where MS/M3 are sold, and why the resale values of used luxury ICE sedans that once were tops, are plummeting just as fast, while MS (and early indications that M3 are included) resale value are tops.

Re: Lol.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

You have a lower id, and have some decent achievements, 25. So I am not treating you as a troll, but as person who has not been fully informed about this topic. I have treated you with respect. Just read my response and think about it a little, that is all I ask.

Re:Lol.

[WindBourne]

Normally, I do not answer AC, but you are my personal Chinese troll.

When it comes to R&D, VW does not even come CLOSE to what Tesla has been investing.
More importantly, most of legacy R&D's budget continues to go into ICE, and NOT EVs. Tesla is 100% into EVs, which is why Tesla is ahead in EVERYTHING, except for the actual manufacturing. However, M3 is the most automated , and I suspect that MY will put that to shame.

As to VW or any of these car makers, the EVs continue to be pure junk. The reason why is that if they were any good, they would outsell, not only Tesla (which none do), BUT, would actually outsell the ICE POS (slow, expensive to own, etc) that legacy car makers push. And as Tesla says, we should ALL hope that the legacy car makers will go to the EVs, instead of continuing to push ICE.

Re: Lol.

[Zorpheus]

Yes that's all true, and it is very impressive how good Tesla is, though I don't see why it should be their lunch. They are so good, it makes me wonder how they got all that knowledge. It seems they have exclusive access to better batteries (e.g low cobalt content), and slightly better motors.
But the rest of the car design and production should be pretty straight forward for the existing manufacturers.
I think it is not decided yet how much electric cars will replace ICE cars. ICE cars have advantages: high fuel energy per weight, fast refueling, easy transport of the fuel on an existing infrastructure, a lower cost.

Re:Lol.

[q_e_t]

Yes, VW, Daimler, BMW, GM, Ford, fiat-chrysler, Nissan, etc have spent the last 5-7 years telling us how they would beat Tesla. Now, like cold fusion, it will happen real soon.

Several of those currently sell electric cars (and Renault) in the non-luxury market. They haven't been selling massively well in earlier incarnations, but the Nissan and Renault ones are now pretty reasonable (230 mile range), which is where they really become competitive with ICE cars. That's not a direct competitor to Tesla as it's a different market segment. BMW, Audi. etc., I would also see as a threat to Tesla outside the USA, but in the luxury market, as they are highly experienced manufacturers with a large and effective workforce. Tesla is probably pretty secure within the USA, though.

Add Kia, Toyota into the etc in the list. And I am sure there are others that are likely to be working on things, such as Vauxhall/Peugot/Citroen.

Re: Lol.

[q_e_t]

Renault charges a fee per month (I presume given Nissan and Renault's close ties, Nissan is probably the same), based on distance travelled, then replace your batteries when required. You are effectively paying for the battery replacement over time, but it also means that the resale value of the vehicle remains good, as the new owner can continue that payment. It's somewhat in the interest of the vendor to make new batteries cheaper, as then the replacement cost is reduced, and they get to bank the difference, but it's also useful for them to be able to cost-effectively extend the lifetime of the battery too, as then the cost/time is reduced for the vendor, but also it can reduce the monthly charge, which would stimulate sales. When I considered buying a Renault when the range was around 130 miles (which in the end I felt would be too limiting) it was of the order of half the cost of petrol for a similar size of vehicle, although that ratio depends on the fuel price at any given time.

Re: Lol.

[q_e_t]

There's also the Zoe from alliance partner Nissan. The Zoe is sold only in Europe, currently 2.5k/month. So it makes a direct comparison difficult. The Tesla is selling pretty well, though, if you look at market sizes. I couldn't see any obvious figures for total European electric car sales, but in France Zoes are about 60% of the sales, so that suggests total electric car sales in France of about 2k per year (not really very many), but scaling up by population that's about 10k in a Western Europan nation, so that suggests that Tesla is selling better than the Leaf and Renault. 50% of Zoe sales are in France.

I did consider a Zoe a while ago, but the previous version's range of 150 miles was a bit low. The current range of 250 miles would be tempting if I was in the market for a new car, and it had a bit more towing capacity. In a few years, if there's something for a reasonable cost with that sort of range and a decent towing capacity, that's probably what I will get.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, VW and Daimler Benz speny a lot of money developing lithium battery technology 1990s and 2000s.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric cars are brand fucking new. How do we know the full resale values yet? It's not fair to compare because there are tons of ICE resale cars and only a handful of Electric resales. Let's let the market shake out THEN make that statement.

Right now you are comparing apples to windows. Of course Apple laptops have a better resale value, they are seen as a premium and there is only ONE maker of them.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

VW spends more than â13 billion every year on R&D. That is several times Tesla's entire revenue.

Re:Lol.

[shilly]

Zoe can be bought with battery. Although many buy new on a PCP (finance) deal so they can trade in as tech matures. It looks quite nice and has a good range, in my biased view as an owner. I don't care about resale value, as I hand the keys back and get a new one in a month.

Re: Lol.

[Zorpheus]

Oh, and as a German I am more worried about the Chinese manufacturers than about Tesla. China has a lot of storng companies in this sector, making affordable electric cars. Just still not the same standard as Western cars, but this will improve. Also the Chinse are already delivering motors and batteries for German cars. This is gonna cost a lot of German jobs if manufacturers don't beat them somehow. The Chinese with their large market and low cost are hard to beat though, once they have an established production.
The job numbers in the summary are pretty wrong, no idea where they come from. There are 840,000 jobs in the German car industry. 44.8 Million working people in total, of which 8.2 Million are in the industry,

Re: Lol.

[iggymanz]

News for you, when a company brings in less money in a quarter than it spends, it is called being "not profitable".

Tesla is not profitable, they can't make a profit on their cars. They are losing money. Those are facts.

You are the clueless one, you don't understand basic bookkeeping.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was surprised to see a used Tesla Model X in the lot at my local Lexus dealer, after all nobody would ever trade away a Tesla, right?

I was even more surprised to still see it there two months later.

Re:Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

you normally don't answer because even as stupid as you are, you still realise you have no answer to common sense or logic.

Re: Lol.

[WindBourne]

and again, Tesla is outspending VW on EVs. Nearly all of VW's R&D budget goes to ICE.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

That hasn't been true for years. VW spends more on EV R&D than Tesla's annual revenue.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

"What percentage of Teslas are leased rather than purchased?"

None of them are leased. If you want a tesla you need to buy it. 100% of their volume is purchased.

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're arguing with WindBourne, he's immune to facts...

Re: Lol.

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, almost all Teslas in The Netherlands were owned by leasing companies. The only reason to drive a Tesla is the low tax when you have one as a company car.

Wake me when they actually do

[ffkom]

VW has been in the business of announcing future electric cars for many years. And sure, they built successful electric racing cars, like for the Pike's Peak challenge. But an actually sold electric car for the masses - I will believe no sooner than seeing it on offer, with a 22k$ price tag, at the next VW outlet.

Re:Wake me when they actually do

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, remember when VW got fined by the US for the diesel emissions? The US said they could pay the fine by doing electric car research and production. So if you're an American, you've already paid VW to make a car for you.

Re: Wake me when they actually do

[Anonymous Coward]

Thatâ(TM)s simply completely not accurate and totally unfounded straw can stuff you are shouting like a whaleâ(TM)s hole

Re: Wake me when they actually do

[Anonymous Coward]

a company that cranks out 5000+ cars a week and has order lists that extend into infinity smoke and mirrors? quite the deluded guy you are. how about you cut the crap, stop the projective name calling, clean up your room and get treatment for your obvious narcissism. sheesh.

Re: Wake me when they actually do

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they've already been selling the e-Golf for years...

Re: Wake me when they actually do

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like the e-Up that you can already buy today?

Re:Wake me when they actually do

[FaxeTheCat]

I was called by a VW salesperson last year, because my current VW is in the two digits age, and at that time he said that VW will launch electric cars based on their new platform in 2019. As this came from a person in VW who actually sell cars, I assume it is official information. So they have announced them, but they have also announced when they will be launched, so what is the problem?

Also, in addition to the racing car, they sell the reasonably successfull e-UP and e-Golf.

My friends Passat opens its trunk when it rains..

[Anonymous Coward]

He has to go out and place a weight on it to keep it closed if it rains. VAG can not find what is wrong with it. It wont do it if you hose the car down, only when it rains. The less electronics VAG have in their cars the better.

Germans ...

[Anonymous Coward]

...biting off more than they can chew. Of course, they will just say this is complicated and German engineering will make everything work.

More obvious solution

[Brett Buck]

Make gasoline cars instead of diesel smokebombs?

Re:More obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck no. Ban electric cars.

Re: More obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

How would that help to achieve the CO2 targets set by the EU?

Re:More obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Diesel cars are at least as clean as gasoline ones are. The exhaust is often more visible, but that's a matter of particle size, not necessarily amount of emissions. Frequently, diesel cars get significantly better fuel economy than gas cars do, which isn't something I'd associate with dirtier technology.

Re: More obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

You idiot. Diesel cars produce much more NOx, which makes smog, and huge amounts of small particulates ( 2.5 micron), which is the most damaging for every form of life that respires.

Don't spout off to demonstrate how ignorant you are.

Re: More obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

That was true twenty years ago, when diesels did not yet have particulate filters. These days, they produce fewer particulates than petrol engines, often by three or more orders of magnitude.

More power to them!

[FrankSchwab]

If they build a $22,000 car that has 300 miles of range, does 0-60 in 5 seconds, and carries 4 adults comfortably, they'll sell millions of them.

And Tesla will have won.
https://www.tesla.com/blog/sec...

Re:More power to them!

[bob4u2c]

Yes, bring on the EV's. The more companies making EV's mean the more they have to complete with each other and the lower the price will become. That whole supply and demand thing.

So sure, bring it on VW. If the car turns out to be a lemon, well at least it will still bring down the price of other cars.

Re:More power to them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla won't have won. The future was always going to be electric as far as cars go. Either that or compressed air. The goal of Tesla is to make some money by selling electric cars. The improved quantity of the cars on the road is something that they're going for, but having other companies selling cars for substantially less while you go bankrupt is a rather screwed up definition of "winning."

Re:More power to them!

[xlsior]

Yes, bring on the EV's. The more companies making EV's mean the more they have to complete with each other and the lower the price will become. That whole supply and demand thing.

...Except it may actually increase the cost, since there's only so much Lithium available to make batteries with. Almost 50% of the global lithium supply is bought up by battery manufacturers already, to handle the current demand. Not a ton of room for growth there.

Re:More power to them!

[whoever57]

More Lithium can be mined. The global supply can be increased.

Cobalt is the element that battery manufacturers worry about.

Re:More power to them!

[DogDude]

And Tesla will have won.

No, everybody on the planet will have won.

Re:More power to them!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I see what you have done. Brilliant. Stuck in a "If " at the start of the sentence. Very true.

Re:More power to them!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Do you know how much money has been spent in prospecting for oil?

Do you know how much money has been spent in prospecting for Lithium ?

Do you think the known lithium reserves are all the lithium there is in the world?

Re:More power to them!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

That was the secret master plan, you idiots, blabbering about it all over the net....

Re:More power to them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lithium is not a rare resource. We're talking about the third most common element in the universe here.

Lithium may get more expensive because pure lithium is annoying to extract, but that's a very different problem.

Re:More power to them!

[Hognoxious]

Almost 50% of the global lithium supply is bought up by battery manufacturers already, to handle the current demand.

I see what you did there.

If there's a limit then it'll be hit soon enough no matter who's making the vehicles.

Re:More power to them!

[geoskd]

I don't think people quite grasp the absurd amount of electricity an electric car uses. Charging an EV requires something crazy like 400V at 35A. Charging a few of them won't be an issue - but if everyone were to switch over to electric vehicles, we'd need to start building more power plants, fast.

Ok, I have heard this stupid rhetoric more than enough. Its time that people stop spouting about shit they do not understand.

I have two electric cars. They are each driven daily as commuter vehicles. Each draws about 5kwh per day, and are charged at night. One uses a 30A 240V charger, the other uses a good old fashioned 15A 110V outlet. Neither requires any more charging than that for the vast majority of driving.

To put that in perspective, a single window air conditioner for a medium sized room uses about 7-10kwh per day during heavy use. My household uses an average of 32kwh per day of which less than 30% goes to the vehicles.

When you realize that the vast majority of EV charging will happen at home, at night, then there is no problem with electricity shortages or infrastructure limitations. Night time electricity usage is sufficiently lower than daytime usage that there is plenty of excess capacity available to handle EV charging, even if 100% of all vehicles sold from today forward were pure electric vehicles. In fact, the amount of electricity saved by switching from incandescent bulbs to LED bulbs, actually offsets around half of the entire increase that would result from a switch to 100% electric ground transportation. Because of that transittion, and the scaling up of solar power, there has actually been a glut of electricity which has been keeping electricity prices artificially low. This artificially low cost was part of the stimulus that drove the sharp increase in the cryptocurrency mining which has absorbed most of the excess electricity capacity.

Re:More power to them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nigga please!

If you want to charge fast, then yes you will need a lot of power, but most people will just plug in when they get home and let their cars charge using off-peak power just like we do.

Peak demand on the grid is hundreds of MWs higher than the overnight load. There is capacity for 100% of cars here to be EVs and charge overnight using standard wall outlets.

I use about 20kWh per day as I have an exceptionally long commute, but the car charges overnight from a 15A outlet (3.6kW max) hardwired to our off-peak meter. We also have electric hot water which is also on a 15A circuit and the grid can easily handle us drawing the 7.2kW plus the rest of the load on our peak meter. The hot water heater is typically finished after a few hours, while the car is usually done within six. If we moved closer to where I work, we'd easily get away with using a standard 10A outlet (2.4kW max)

When the hot water heater needs replacing, we'll be replacing it with a heat pump system, which is 3-4x more energy efficient compared to resistive heating. Thousands of resistive heaters are being replaced each year, which has been lowering off-peak demand by numerous MWs per year.

The grid can more than handle it.

Re:More power to them!

[blindseer]

When you realize that the vast majority of EV charging will happen at home, at night, then there is no problem with electricity shortages or infrastructure limitations. Night time electricity usage is sufficiently lower than daytime usage that there is plenty of excess capacity available to handle EV charging, even if 100% of all vehicles sold from today forward were pure electric vehicles. In fact, the amount of electricity saved by switching from incandescent bulbs to LED bulbs, actually offsets around half of the entire increase that would result from a switch to 100% electric ground transportation. Because of that transittion, and the scaling up of solar power, there has actually been a glut of electricity which has been keeping electricity prices artificially low. This artificially low cost was part of the stimulus that drove the sharp increase in the cryptocurrency mining which has absorbed most of the excess electricity capacity.

The first problem I see here is that the cars will be charged at night... from solar power? I think you missed a step or something.

Let's assume this is true, and perhaps take it a bit further, and assuming future growth in power demands will be gentle, or even flat. That we would not have to build power plants at any greater pace than we do now. The generating capacity might not need to increase but the energy demand still grows. Again, energy vs. power. We might not need more power plants but they will need more fuel. Given that the cars will charge at night, I won't dispute this, and the sun shines in the day, then something needs to offer that delay in energy transfer. This means storage, and lots of it.

Storage takes many forms. One way to store energy is to store it as fuel not burned. If we assume this is existing coal and natural gas plants then maybe we can grow enough solar power to displace daytime coal and natural gas burning. A problem with that is a steam thermal plant needs to stay hot, and therefore burn fuel, if you expect to get energy from it in short order. Using gas turbines allows for a speedy spin up but they are only half as efficient as a steam plant, it burns twice the fuel for the same electrical energy. That's not saving any fuel.

If we store the energy in batteries then that takes away from the batteries needed for the cars. Storage in hydroelectric dams means having enough rivers to dam up. We dammed up all the easy places, it's going to get more expensive real quick.

The only way to meet demand and not be burning a lot of coal and natural gas to make up for the energy demands at night is nuclear power. If you want your electric cars, and not see CO2 emissions rise, then we need more nuclear power.

Re:More power to them!

[shilly]

If you want to charge fast, then yes you will need a lot of power

While true, this isn't the whole picture, which is actually rosier than that. The faster you charge, the less time you're charging, obviously... so even if people charged using three phase 32A (ie 22kW) at home, it's not necessarily an issue, because each person's car will be charging for a relatively shorter amount of time than would be the case for a standard socket. My new Zoe will have a 40kWh battery and thus will charge from 0 to 100% in about 2 hours off a 22kW charger. And of course, most cars won't start at zero or need to go to 100%, and charging can be delayed to go from say midnight to 2am or 2am to 4pm. And in the future, we'll see smart charging, ie the car and the grid can talk to each other to figure out when to charge to smooth out demand.

Re:More power to them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention, the same guy making all sorts of battery plants and electric cars....

Has a company that can launch automated mining equipment into space. And also has *another* company, that specializes in mining (boring) equipment.

Lot of overlap / synergy there, to use an 80s business term. I'm not saying the above is viable, only that if it *is* viable, he's got all the gear, all the combined corporate infrastructure, to do it easier than most.

Re:More power to them!

[Anonymous Coward]

When the hot water heater needs replacing, we'll be replacing it with a heat pump system

Why would you heat hot water?

Re:More power to them!

[Daemonik]

The more interesting question is where exactly are all the people who don't live in houses are going to charge up their EV's. Nobody's suggested building millions of curbside EV chargers so far, not to mention the issues of sheer vandalism to all those chargers electric cables.

Pretty much, unless you have a house, you're not going to get an EV.

Re:More power to them!

[religionofpeas]

A problem with that is a steam thermal plant needs to stay hot, and therefore burn fuel, if you expect to get energy from it in short order. Using gas turbines allows for a speedy spin up but they are only half as efficient as a steam plant, it burns twice the fuel for the same electrical energy. That's not saving any fuel.

Charging at night would help a lot to make the demand curve flatter, allowing more efficient plants that can run at constant power. You could even improve it by adopting a smart grid where price of electricity is adjusted dynamically and allow consumers to pick the best times to charge.

Re:More power to them!

[Uecker]

I like how your arguments over the years get more and more detached from reality because at the end you will always try to come to the desired conclusion that we need nuclear despite the world moving in an entirely different direction. It will be great fun to watch this become even more absurd in the next years ;-)

The fact that EVs are charged in the night is mostly due to the fact that electricity is cheap and not otherwise needed in the night and that this is still the most convenient way as long as there is no charging infrastructure at work places. This is despite the fact hat solar is of course available during the day. Of course, most cars are moved only for a fraction of the time even during the day and in principle it makes a lot of sense to charge EVs also at the day should this be necessary in the future. EVs include their own storage and your argument that we would need additional grid storage to move energy to the night to put them into the storage of the EVs so that it can then be consumed during the day is not very strong. A lot of people will just also charge at day, e.g. at work places if this is happens to be cheaper. This means that the batteries in the EVs and grid storage will not compete in the long run, instead EVs will be charged whenever this makes most sense to balance grid because then electricity will be cheapest. Also the joint market for storage from EV and grid will make storage cheaper and not more expensive as you imply.

Re:More power to them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Even burning coal to meet EV needs releases fewer greenhouse gasses than the same number of vehicles burning gasoline. Power plants can operate near their peak efficiency. A gasoline vehicle can almost never do this and their peak efficiency is much lower than a large fixed structure due to the need to be portable and all that. The best part is: the source of electricity is flexible. The coal plant shuts down and is replaced by nuclear, suddenly the EV is cleaner to operate. Gasoline cars will never burn cleaner than the day they roll off the factory floor unless one spends an absurd amount of money retrofitting the vehicle to a different power train.

Re:More power to them!

[thegarbz]

Ok, I have heard this stupid rhetoric more than enough. Its time that people stop spouting about shit they do not understand.

While I agree the grid itself won't melt down into a puddle to brush it off is equally ignorant. You just said it yourself:

"and are charged at night"
"7-10kwh per day during heavy use"

There are many assumptions made about the use of a grid at the design stage including the relative fluctuation throughout the day and night. What EVs do is add a lot to the peak demand period. We effectively charge the car right as we fire up our kitchen hotplates while running our A/Cs all at the same time. This is something that needs to be accounted for in the design. Better still it's something that we need to balance out with battery banks or other methods of power storage, especially since the sun likely won't be shining when we need it most.

In fact, the amount of electricity saved by switching from incandescent bulbs to LED bulbs, actually offsets around half of the entire increase that would result from a switch to 100% electric ground transportation.

What's an incandescent bulb? You still use those? The ban on incandescent bulbs in many parts of the world coincided with the shutting down of some older powerplants. That success has already happened in many wealthy countries (though I honestly can't speak for America since I have no idea what the state of household lighting is over there).

But since we're talking about a scenario of 100% EVs which you proposed, go to BP's website and download the world energy report. Take the primary energy consumption of oil, divide it by 8 to account for ICE efficiency, halve it since not all oil goes to driving, and then compare the result to the oil equivalent of energy production from the power industry. Yes the world WILL need to dramatically alter the design of its power grid and production systems in your scenario.

Re: More power to them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for that link. I'd heard that was his plan, but never read it. How cool is it he's talking joules in his biz model blog. The white paper link in the blog 404'd

A few notes :

- my high school kid thinks teslas are way cool. He's at other kids houses and he takes selfies sitting in a tesla their garage. He doesn't do that in my prius ;). I've told him we'll reach the "more new EVs sold than ICEs" tipping point in a decade. Tho I think that tipping point, like cord cutting, will be evident well before it actually happens. Tesla sales - even model 3s - right now are still a "rich persons" vee-hickle.

- the west getting off of middle east oil means we can get the f out of the middle east, save for containing islamacism from polluting the west's culture

so if tesla is showing vw that there's a willing, viable market, and vw pivots to all in on electric, then frigging hell yeah!

Re:More power to them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? If you don't live in a house, use mass transit - cars in cities are BAD

Re:More power to them!

[angel'o'sphere]

But there is no limit.
The planet literally is made out of Lithium.

Re:More power to them!

[angel'o'sphere]

The first problem I see here is that the cars will be charged at night... from solar power? I think you missed a step or something.
He did not say that vehicles are charged at night from solar power. Why do you try to frame other people as idiots?

He said: due to solar power, old power plants have excess capacity ... obviously during daytime.

Re:More power to them!

[angel'o'sphere]

Using gas turbines allows for a speedy spin up but they are only half as efficient as a steam plant, it burns twice the fuel for the same electrical energy.
How do you come to that absurd idea?

A gas turbine is more efficient than a steam turbine in a steam powered power plant. The difference however is so minimal it is pointless. Gas turbines are out of fashion: because they are rather small, and super expensive, not because they are inefficient.

Again: why don't you simply stop talking about stuff you have no clue about?

Re:More power to them!

[dfghjk]

I don't see how another company having a successful model means Tesla won since Tesla hasn't done anything to enable it for anyone else. Furthermore, VW selling "millions of them" may very well mean Tesla's demise. Hardly a win.

Also, you assume no competition. It's possible to meet those targets and fail anyway if someone else does it better. Only Tesla takes for granted no competition, the real car companies understand that they need to get it right before they risk their future. Meanwhile, Tesla indulges itself with other people's capital, it's not risking anything and it's not winning.

Lastly, those targets aren't very meaningful. Sure, 4 adults and affordable are important but that performance number is not, and the cited range number is based on what people are accustomed to with current cars. Charging infrastructure doesn't even exist yet. However that evolves will change people's expectations of range. Electric cars in the future are not necessarily defined by how ICE cars work today and different areas of the world need very different things. Europeans don't need 300 mile range.

Re:More power to them!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Why do stupid things like depending on BP website. Think logically.

Most homes own two cars. Their overnight charging rate is around 3 kW for about 3 hours on average per car [*]. It is like running the A/C at full blast for about six hours per night per home. ALL the homes

Do we have a situation where every home, office, retail stores and factory is running their A/Cs full blast for six long continuous hours?

Yes we do. Every summer afternoon, evening peak load is due to precisely that condition. And the grid can take it. There are fluctuations and spot price of electricity goes crazy, but in general the grid can supply that kind of power.

So we do have the capacity to charge ALL the cars of the country, as long as they do it off peak. They already do, naturally, charging at night. Add a little bit of incentive in the form of off peak prices, we can do it. We will have some spare power left to shred all the stupid studies published by BP, too.

[*] 12000 miles per car per year. 1000 miles a month. 33 miles a day. Some cars might charge 300 miles but others will charge 2 miles and we are talking about the whole country and ALL the cars. So 33 miles a day per car is a good number. EV gives 4 miles per kWh. We need 8+ kWh per car. Charging at 3 kW rate we have between 2 and 3 hours of charging per car per night. Add a very generous margin and call it, 10 hours per night per household at 3 kW. Easy. We have the grid capacity. We have the generation capacity.

Re:More power to them!

[Anonymous Coward]

When you realize that the vast majority of EV charging will happen at home, at night, then there is no problem with electricity shortages or infrastructure limitations.

Great. Except my home (and many around me) was built in the 1890s in an urban area without garages. I have to part on the street.

How is that going to work?

Re:More power to them!

[Anonymous Coward]

"More Lithium can be mined."

I was told digging stuff from the ground was Evil.

Re:More power to them!

[thegarbz]

Why do stupid things like depending on BP website. Think logically.

Because BP provides one of the most in-depth industry analysis of the world's consumption and production of primary industries and has published a report consistently for 30 years, one which is now the corner-piece of research for the chief economists of many governments and private entities around the world? Please stop frothing at the mouth just because you heard the name of a company you don't like, and ... Think logically.

It is like running the A/C at full blast for about six hours per night per home.

Translation: It's like doing something that very few people do currently.

Do we have a situation where every home, office, retail stores and factory is running their A/Cs full blast for six long continuous hours?

At night? No.

Every summer afternoon, evening peak load is due to precisely that condition.

Indeed. Now in your fantasy scenario are people going to wait for their A/C to stop before going back into the garage to plug their car in? No. That load you say already exists, you've effectively doubled it.

There are fluctuations and spot price of electricity goes crazy, but in general the grid can supply that kind of power.

No. The grid doesn't have much spare capacity in it at all. Most additional power is provided by peaking plants which would be woefully undersized for a doubling of the evening load, and woefully expensive to run for a full night (peaking is just that, not designed to run for most of the night).

 

So we do have the capacity to charge ALL the cars of the country, as long as they do it off peak.

Yes we have the capacity, but we don't have: A design that makes sense to do it (lack of baseload for the increased off-peak demand), nor do we have a scenario where this charging is off peak. Here's an idea, let's get smart and force charging off peak where possible. ... Who could help with this? I'll take the power companies for $100 Jim!

Anyway you don't need to guess about this. Companies are already investing to cope with the electrification of cars and the increased demand on the grid which you claim isn't happening. You should hire yourself out as a high priced consultant to European power companies. I'm sure they'd love to hear from someone why their expensive projects are a waste of time.

Re:More power to them!

[Hognoxious]

Hot water heater = the one that supplies the baths, sinks etc, as distinct from the one that drives the radiators which is normally on a separate, closed, circuit.

Re:More power to them!

[Hognoxious]

You mean apart from the silicon, carbon, oxygen, magnesium, calcium, iron ...

I think you should be taking some.

Re:More power to them!

[Hognoxious]

We're talking about the third most common element in the universe here.

That's nice.

How common is it in the portion of the universe that's reasonably practicable for us to mine in foreseeable timeframes?

It'll have a hidden diesel engine

[future assassin]

hides....

EVs are so cheap to make.

[wolfheart111]

You dont need a big car with the knew batteries.

Re:EVs are so cheap to make.

[Anonymous Coward]

You dont need a big car with the knew batteries.

How would you no that?

'Tesla rivals'

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please stop comparing every new electric car to one random competitor?

Re: 'Tesla rivals'

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla is not competition for the big auto makers. Tesla is just an ego project for a man-child with too much money and time with nothing better to do. A pet project some chuckleheads take seriously for no logical reason. Pure emotion.

Re: 'Tesla rivals'

[Anonymous Coward]

that's why tesla is outselling all the other car manufacturers in class right now. you're gonna be one of the dudes later on that a) always knew Tesla would establish themselves or b) spread hateful vitriol about them where everybody wonders if musk stole your wife to deserve that, am i not right? or are you simply butthurt because your short position evaporated?

Re: 'Tesla rivals'

[geoskd]

that's why tesla is outselling all the other car manufacturers in class right now. you're gonna be one of the dudes later on that a) always knew Tesla would establish themselves or b) spread hateful vitriol about them where everybody wonders if musk stole your wife to deserve that, am i not right? or are you simply butthurt because your short position evaporated?

He's just pissed because he thought of the idea first, and when he asked Tesla for a cut of the action for using his great idea, they told him to stick his request up his tailpipe.

Re: 'Tesla rivals'

[thestuckmud]

Tesla is not competition for the big auto makers. Tesla is just an ego project for a man-child with too much money and time with nothing better to do. A pet project some chuckleheads take seriously for no logical reason. Pure emotion.

I tend to agree with you with regards to competition: Electric is going to be a big part of the future transportation and Tesla will find they are not alone in the performance electric market: Porsche is touting their coming E-Performance cars in a big bold announcement at the front of their web site; Jaguar's I-Pace SUV is on offer. And VW is the by far the biggest carmaking enterprise.

As for Tesla's leader, Elon Musk, I happen to think that promoting electric cars to help us kick the fossil fuel habit is one of the better things a person could offer humanity. So, yeah, there is literally not much that would be better to do.

If you read Slashdot, you should know that smart, technically savvy people oftan have their quirks. It's can be easy to make fun of such people, but they also deserve credit where credit is due.

Re: 'Tesla rivals'

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should look at sales data from independent sources rather than Tesla press releases and fan sites. Tesla's actual market share is well below 1%.

Re: 'Tesla rivals'

[Tom]

As for Tesla's leader, Elon Musk, I happen to think that promoting electric cars to help us kick the fossil fuel habit is one of the better things a person could offer humanity. So, yeah, there is literally not much that would be better to do.

Building an electric cargo ship.

The ocean giants that bring your tech toys from China have a pollution impact that dwarves that of small countries, including all their combustion engine cars. Getting rid of those black fumes would do a lot more than a couple thousand electric cars.

Re: 'Tesla rivals'

[iggymanz]

Tesla is losing money on each and every car sold, Tesla operates at a loss. Businesses that do that die.

Re: 'Tesla rivals'

[Anonymous Coward]

When it comes to ships it's wind-power all the way, baby!

Re: 'Tesla rivals'

[Anonymous Coward]

Are your facts from 2009 or something?
 
Tesla makes profit on each and every company sold, including at least two very high profile tear-downs where the engineers admit they make 25% profit on each one. As of this last quarter they are in the black even with R&D spending.
 
Your wishing and short-selling do not make it reality. Why do you hate Tesla (or Musk) so much? You don't have to love something or someone, or everything they do, to appreciate that they have accomplished some great things and set really good things in motion.

Re: 'Tesla rivals'

[Anonymous Coward]

Enjoy fantasy land! You seem to be having a great time over there.

Good! Hurry up!

[DogDude]

Good! Hurry up! I love my VW's, and I'd love to have an electric VW. Teslas are ugly, overpriced, and the UI is awful.

Re: Good! Hurry up!

[Anonymous Coward]

If I can get an electric car without all the electronics crap, I would do it in a heart beat.

Re: Good! Hurry up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the irony. Unfortunately, that subtle sarcasm is missed on the spectrum Slashdot crowd...

They should be penalising them

[kzwork]

They should be penalising them for misleading the investors (like they did with Musk)

Re: They should be penalising them

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should VW be punished for what Musk did?

It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Rick Schumann]

The end of the internal combustion engine as a staple of ground vehicles is in progress, like it or not, and the age of the ubiquitos electric vehicle is dawning, like it or not. I, for one, think it'll be great; I've worked on ICE-based vehicles, in one form or another, my entire life, and let's face it: after a certain point in time, they became a real pain in the ass to deal with, both in complexity and in cost, even if you do the work yourself. Also, front wheel drive ICE vehicles with a manual trainsmission, replacing a clutch? Step 1: 'remove engine from vehicle'. That kills it for most home mechanics. Automatic transmissions? Over-complicated and expensive, and you can't rebuild one at home. And so on. I've never owned an electric vehicle yet, but I can just imagine how much less messy, complicated, and expensive they'll be to maintain, and with so many fewer moving parts, how little maintenance and repair they'll actually need.

Someone will now inevitably come along and point out how much it'll cost (at current prices) to replace all the battery packs in an EV. To that I say "So what?" As EVs become more and more ubiquitos, and battery technology and manufacturing techniques improve, as well as volume manufactured (and re-manufactured) increase, the price will go down, not up. At-home high-capacity charging stations will be more and more common in public places, and I'd imagine become a standard amenity when new homes are built (if not mandated in some states; California, I'm looking at you when I say that).

You can't even complain that they're slow. There'll be a new age of high-performance in the form of souped-up EVs.

The more big companies that get on board with this, the better.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Rick Schumann]

Gee whiz, what an insightful comment! Please, share more of your timeless wisdom with us!

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The IC Engine is very unsuitable for vehicular use. The only they have going for them is the very short refueling time.

With over night charging, you need to use fast charge only on long distance travel.

Think about the number of days you have driven more than 300 miles in one day. Then ignore the first fill up of that trip, and count only the remaining fill ups. How many times did you do second or third fillup? You will need on the road charging only for those fill ups.

People who have never owned EV dont get it till they really think about it. In an gas car, every joule of energy turning the wheel came from a gas station. In an env 98% of the joules will come from the outlet in your garage. You charge on the road a few times a year.

Already you can get 120 miles of charge in 15 min, or 200 miles in 40 minutes in a Tesla. It is just a matter of time before we get 300 miles in 15 minutes. At that point the last remaining advantage of fueling time of ICE will vanish.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Dorianny]

The maintenance savings on an electric come from routine maintenance like break-pads and oil changes. When it comes to catastrophic failures comparable to a automatic-transmission failure, well we don't really have any data on the long-term reliability of EV's since they have been on the market for less on a decade but most likely you will be wanting to pay for the extended warranty package for as long as they allow you since the very expensive battery-pack will require regular replacement for the life of the vehicle and since your local mechanic will not be an option for any major repairs anyways.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

One word: DRM.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

Think about the number of days you have driven more than 300 miles in one day.

It has been at least one day for every vehicle I have owned, ever; which means it's a good thing I never bought an EV.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[geoskd]

Only a retard would buy an electric car.

Yeah, I have to say that I made a poor decision: I am really getting fed up with not having to do any maintenance on my ten year old electric car. Not having to get oil changes several times a year is killing me, and I absolutely regret not changing the serpentine belt at 100k miles. I worry that the huge bills I can expect for replacing the fuel pump and muffler are going to break my budget next month, and now that the head gasket is leaking oil, I don't think the car will pass inspection either. Most of all, I miss standing next to my car for 10 minutes in -5 degree January weather putting gas in it.

On the plus side, my 20 mile commute every day costs me 50 cents in electricity...

Who's the retard?

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Rick Schumann]

I dunno about you, but I remember when 'trolling' actually meant something. These days, the vast majority of them just sling baseless insults and utter nonsense around, am I right? Seriously, they're not even trying anymore, and they're unfunny to boot. Sad. There used to be an art to it. Now it's about as interesting as a dumpster fire.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[geoskd]

I dunno about you, but I remember when 'trolling' actually meant something. These days, the vast majority of them just sling baseless insults and utter nonsense around, am I right? Seriously, they're not even trying anymore, and they're unfunny to boot. Sad. There used to be an art to it. Now it's about as interesting as a dumpster fire.

I used to think it was just trolling until I actually met one of these guys. They are genuinely stupid; and arrogant to boot. In any given forum, there are plenty of people who don't know the difference, and if you let the stupidity go unchallenged, then it spreads. What starts off as an apparent attempt to troll grows legs and starts walking on its own, and next thing you know you have Alex Jones levels of stupid spreading itself around. The only way to stop it is to kill it in its infancy.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's the retard?

The retard that doesn’t know the difference between a serpentine belt and a timing belt.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[thrich81]

I too have been working on ICE vehicles most of my life, starting with a string of 60's musclecars in the 70's. I enjoyed the simple brute power of nicely tuned big block V8s blocks then, and I appreciate the technical elegance (and drivability) of the computer controlled ICE engines of today. I have pulled the engine in my front wheel drive car to replace the transmission input shaft seal so I can do that. But as I am pondering whether it is worth it to do a computer upgrade tune, including new MAP sensors, to my fun little turbo 4 banger to get another 50 horsepower (that I really don't need) I see a Tesla Model 3 pass me on the road and know that there is nothing practical I can do to my ICE engine which will match that.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[shilly]

It does indeed.

How typical do you think your driving patterns are? 1% of the US population? 90%? 0.1%?

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[shilly]

Um. Battery packs are showing 80% state of health at 100k+ miles. So battery pack replacement might be regular, but is not going to be frequent. McKinsey did a study estimating that an EV might routinely be expected to travel 1m miles(!) before being scrapped, which changes the economics of the market dramatically.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

300 miles in 5 minutes maybe. 15 minutes is still very time consuming.

In most situations, you have to pull off the road, get to the gas/charging station, pull back on. Adding 15+ minutes on top of that, with a mere 300 mile range, makes a big difference in terms of long distance driving. And something one should realise?

Is that 15 minutes per charge, means that during times of heavy charging use... you're waiting 15+ minutes for the guy ahead of you to fill up. Right now, it takes people ~ 1 minute to refuel their car, plus "insert and pay with card" time. Most people take ~ 90 seconds to fuel where I am... turning that into 16+ minutes means that during rush hour, or busy times?

You'll be waiting a hours for a bay to free up.

And high speed charging stations aren't cheap either, so you're not going to see 100s of them in one place.

So you're battling waits and delays in charging time at rush hour, a long wait to charge (15 minutes+). I think certainly that electric will do fine for lots of usage cases, such as "travel shorter distances and charge" kind of thing.

But to give you an idea, I often visit my brother. He lives around 300 miles away, and while electric cars might claim 300miles? Reality (just like gas mileage) is less. And who drives around on "almost out of juice", just hoping to make that last mile. This means that 300mile range is probably 250 miles (to be safe), and if you run the A/C you're maybe down to 200? But anyhow..

Point is, I'll often hop in my car and just drive there. Takes 4 hours at highway speeds, but now that's 4 hours + 20 minutes, PLUS maybe having to wait for a free charging station .. because my gas car can make it with 1/3 of a tank left....

There are a few ways around this though. Especially the "because it takes 15 minutes to charge, when busy charging stations can be overwhelmed easily". One is ... the ability to reserve a fast charge station with a fee. Perhaps done when 5 minutes out. Plus, giving one the ability to see which places on the next 20 mile stretch of road are free.

This would help the wait-to-charge problem.

But really, getting it below 5 minutes would be key.

One last problem? "Organizing".

I don't have to worry about my car being "ready to go", if I have a busy day. And even if people can organize, often things are thrown at them. An email in the morning, a kid that didn't mention a sports practice, etc, etc. These things can add literally a hundred miles of travel in a single day.

Some people have no way to charge at home, because they don't own a home, live in an apartment, and no the landlord that won't fix the radiator isn't going to install $$$ charging stations all over their lot.

Right now, I refuel once a week. If something happens, I'm not upset that I have a 1/4 tank of gas.. I have loads of legs to get stuff done, and drive in/out of a gas station in less than a minute (yes, I can and do). Not 15+ minutes, or more.

That's the real other problem... the "hectic life" problem.

NOTE: Yes, I realise that outside of the 'hectic life' problem, that much of the above usage case is for 'edge cases'.

The majority don't care, I'd say.

But I do.

It would be neat to see how many people fall into what category. A real, legitimate, non-politicized, non-corporatized, honest statistical view of what people need.

Is it 20% in my category? 30% in the "hectic life" category, leaving only 50% to adopt? That's still loads of growth anyhow...

But, what if I'm 1%, and "hectic life" is only 5%? I'm genuinely curious, but if such data comes out?

It's *useless* unless:

- broken down by country (there is NO comparison between European and Canadian/US driving requirements.. None.)
- rural/urban.. which I might add, 'urban US/Canada', is essentially 'rural UK' for example..

Anyhow.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Daemonik]

Let's ask a simple question, that nobody seems to have pointed out really. Where do all the people who don't have a house go to charge their cars overnight? Also who's going to pay for all these charging stations?

If you live in a city where you have to park on the street, well you better hope someone wants to invest in curbside charging stations and wants to deal with the hassle of vandals screwing with the cables.

If you live in an apartment building I guess you'll have to enjoy higher rent to subsidize your early adopter neighbors pressuring the building management to install chargers for them, with an accurate system to track who's charger is being used and it's billing the right apartment's electric. Plus added security to make sure nobody's using your charger while you're not home.

There are still a lot of issues to deal with before we can even begin to talk about EV taking over from ICE vehicles.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

One horrible thing which *really* saddens me with Tesla, is it is literally impossible to become a repair shop to fix their cars. EG, an 'authorized' one.

And getting parts is hard too, even if you are authorized!

I have a friend in Canada, where there are no Tesla maintenance depots for hundreds of kilometers. Who's going to buy a car, when the only place to get it serviced is literally hours and hours away by tow truck. Absurd.

He tried to contact Tesla, thinking "I want to embrace this change" and thinking "Profit!" too. Nope. No help there. Calls when unanswered. Couldn't reach anyone. Emails weren't responded to.

No info on the website (this was a year ago, has this changed?). And then all the stories about "hard to get parts".

So he dropped the idea, and there goes a city with 2+ million people, with NO Tesla repair depot. Yeah, that's great, just great for adoption.

Fix that Tesla, you need to fix that. Seriously.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[religionofpeas]

If you live in a city where you have to park on the street, well you better hope someone wants to invest in curbside charging stations and wants to deal with the hassle of vandals screwing with the cables.

It'll happen. Cities like clean air, and the investments are modest. Vandals screwing with the cables is not a bigger problem than vandals breaking your windows is right now.

At the bottom line, there will be an up-front charge for the investments, but over time, the higher efficiency and simpler design of the EV will save all of us money. And of course, supply of oil is limited, so we don't have a choice, really.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[serviscope_minor]

It has been at least one day for every vehicle I have owned, ever; which means it's a good thing I never bought an EV.

At least one day ever in the entire service life of the vehicle?

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[serviscope_minor]

I used to think it was just trolling until I actually met one of these guys.

Some (many) of them are simply that stupid, arrogant and angry. But there have definitely been trolls in the older, better sense of the word. You have a rather low UID. Perhaps if you were on usenet, you remember this chap, an elegant troll from a more civilised age:

https://groups.google.com/foru...

Egg Troll was IMO a master of the art. Possibly one of the finest trolls on the internet. It's delightful, his posts are very very carefully written to wind up people on both sides of several debates (C vs Java, Linux vs Windows, etc) and despite transparently trolling (his name is a bit of a clue), he still got people to rise to the bait like a shoal of little fishes.

I miss that guy and I miss the dulture where that was trolling.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[DeBaas]

I dunno about you, but I remember when 'trolling' actually meant something. These days, the vast majority of them just sling baseless insults and utter nonsense around, am I right? Seriously, they're not even trying anymore, and they're unfunny to boot. Sad. There used to be an art to it. Now it's about as interesting as a dumpster fire.

We really should not have outsourced it

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[FaxeTheCat]

In Norway (one of the countries with the highest percentage EVs) there are charging stations being built in many places. Gas stations, shopping malls,.. many companies offer charging for employees.

There are still challenges around home charging, but with close to 40% of new cars being EVs (plus waiting lists for most models), people seem to have found solutions.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Yes that is what he means. A few times in the entire service life of his car.

I have Model3 since May. I have saved 10 minutes every week by not going to the gas stations for the daily city driving.

First 1200 mile round trip: Supercharged on the road for about 50 minutes more than gas station breaks. Second supercharge, a 300 mile round trip, 15 minutes just for peace of mind. Third trip recently, outbound no additional time, just 15 minutes supercharge. Return trip, no destination charger where I stayed, so took 30 minutes more than gas. Total extra 105 minutes on road trip vs saving 520 minutes a year on local driving. I leave home with a 240 miles on the battery every day.

Till they own it they dont know they are believing self serving propaganda from vested interests.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

We do have very good data on the reliability of electric power trains.

Diesel -electric locomotives took over the rail roads in USA in 1950. All of them are electric drive trains. There are pure electric trains/trams/street cars with overhead wires. Traction motor reliability is astounding.

It it interesting with the diesel electric locomotive. All the maintenance stops service the diesel engine. 16 cylinder 4800 HP to 6000 HP behemoths. The traction motors hardly get touched. These engines are not your typical automobile engines that strain in first and second gear. They have run always at constant rpm with optimum load balance all the time.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

I think typically most people go on at least one road trip with their vehicle.nn

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

So you are spending more time at finding and being at a place you don't want to be. Wonderful. Try that with kids as they badger you to buy this or that.

Also, I'm assuming your Tesla holds enough luggage for a family of four? Can you attach a luggage carrier?

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Your attitude is typical of people who have very marginal actual experience with EVs. Talk to EV owners you trust. Then you will learn. There are already 200,000 Tesla owners in USA. There would be someone near you. If not go to a supercharger, find a Tesla owner and talk to him/her. They are used to small talk at the superchargers.

A car is the second most expensive thing you buy. You owe it to yourself to make sure the car you buy will not have unexpectedly large depreciation over 5 years.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

My wife won't buy a car. Too difficult to hold a large load of groceries or hold luggage for a family on a road trip. When we bring our cats, our SUV can only hold them so we need a trailer hitch for the luggage rack. I don't want to find the fueling stations, I want there to be one where I need it. Could I work around all this if I really wanted to? Perhaps, but why should I spend more on a vehicle that will clearly be making things more difficult for me?

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

Oh and how many Supercharging stations are there around Wawa, Ontario?

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Jeremi]

It has been at least one day for every vehicle I have owned, ever; which means it's a good thing I never bought an EV.

Because planning to stop somewhere to recharge would have been an absolute disaster for you?

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[drinkypoo]

Automatic transmissions? Over-complicated and expensive, and you can't rebuild one at home.

Yes, you can. You may need some special tools. I've been able to get the book on rebuilding my slush box all two times that I've checked into it. (1992 F250 with E4OD, 1998 A8 Quattro with ZF5HP42A.)

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

Uh yeah it would. My car serves me, I don't serve my car. We recently drive across half of Canada and took the northern Ontario route because we were moving. Gas stations are sparse, but spaced out enough that you don't have to worry about a fill. Set aside the fact that we had four cats, a cooler to eat on the road and enough luggage for a five day trip for four people; there aren't any electric charging stations there. Could I have planned around it? Sure I guess I could have paid $2500 to move my vehicle by train, and another $2000 on airline tickets, split my wife and my trip so that I could put my cats on the plane and my wife could receive them but that would have cost a lot more. Maybe there was another route I could have taken, but that would have required going through the border with pets which is another set of hassles.

Next you're going to say, oh but I'm not the usual case. I'm going to say that doesn't matter. When I buy a vehicle, I buy one that will take me through everything that life could possibly throw at me and I want to drive it into the ground. Cargo space and a stable 4x4 drive train are what I need because I do a lot of highway driving in the winter. When I bought the vehicle, I didn't know I would be moving. You can't imagine the logistics involved when moving with pets even with the ICE. No I didn't want to plan charging stations. If I had an EV I would have been totally screwed, I don't know if the move would have even been possible in the timeline we had.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

Compassion police here:

Just as you'd never use the N-word (hopefully!), or call a transgender person a tyranny, please don't use the r-word. It debases your otherwise intelligent and thoughtful post. Not ok.

I'd guess that you've never spent much time around, or had family members with downs or other disabilities, as you'd never use that r-word in their presence. I've noticed the regular use of the r-word around aspie techies, typically as 'that design is retarded.' we've stamped that out at our startup. The catalyst was when an exec who had a downs kid, joined the company, even though a founder regularly used the term. The founder's use of the word was out of ignorance, not spite or hate.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Oh and how many Supercharging stations are there around Wawa, Ontario?

This is what I mean by "people who are very unfamiliar with EV problems issues and solutions".

You dont need need lots of superchargers where you live. ALL your city driving miles will come out of an outlet in your garage. You need superchargers only on longer road trips. You need one supercharger 250 miles from your home in the direction you are traveling. Then super chargers placed about 60 miles apart. Anyway you will be breaking for restroom breaks and food breaks. There are always restrooms near super chargers. There are always fast food take outs. They EV solution is, to peel off the highway at around 250 miles from home, go to the supercharger. If the food choices are not good enough at the supercharger, you stop along the way and take out food of your choice. Put the car on charge, restroom break, eat the food, typically takes 30 minutes. Teslas typically pick up 150 miles in 30 minutes. You have 200 miles on the battery. Up to this point you have not spent any more time on EV than ICE. But have saved 10 to 15 minutes every week in daily driving. Only on the trips where you drove more than 450 miles on a single day you would spend more time on supercharging compared to refueling gas car.

EV miles are four times cheaper than gas miles,

All this is secondary. You can consider it all and still reject it. That is fine, if you do it with all relevant information and your personal situation and taste. But think of how many other people would make that switch to EV. That many people would not be be willing to buy your trade in gas car. You might end up depreciating your gas SUV by 10 or 15 K more than you anticipated. Be prepared for such a scenario in 7 years.

Even the anti Tesla folks who short Tesla say the competition is going to kill Tesla and TSLA is over valued. When they kill Tesla, they would have already totally destroyed resale value of all gasoline cars and SUVs, Remember that.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[serviscope_minor]

Yes that is what he means. A few times in the entire service life of his car.

Well, that's some mighty fine logic! I mean it would also justify buying a semi. Well, I used it once in the last 15 years to move house. Glad I bought it!

I have Model3 since May. I have saved 10 minutes every week by not going to the gas stations for the daily city driving.

Only 10 minutes? I mean there's the bit filling gas, paying etc. What about actually going to the station in the first place? I guess if it's already on the way...

Till they own it they dont know they are believing self serving propaganda from vested interests.

I don't really get how though. I mean yes, sure if you very regularly drive over 300 miles then sure maybe a Tesla isn't for you. But I don't get the logic of buying a car based on very rare use. You're much better off buying for the common case then renting once in a while. I mean I don't even own a car (common case) and get by renting a van or car as appropriate a few times a year at most. Usually a van.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

I don't LIVE at Wawa, Ontario. That is one place where I would have needed a supercharger desperately, lest get stuck. by the side of the road with my wife, two kids, and four cats. So I ask again.. .how many Supercharger stations are around Wawa Ontario? And no I'm not plugging in at the hotel, because it would be all too easy for someone to come along and unplug it thus stranding my entire family for another day.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

You fail to consider one fact... people cannot tell the future. Anyone who buys an EV today may easily be in a situation where they need an ICE in the future. The chance is just too great. Maybe one day when Wawa has a Supercharger things will be different.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, front wheel drive ICE vehicles with a manual trainsmission, replacing a clutch? Step 1: 'remove engine from vehicle'.

Huh, what?

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I agree with your tag line. You have 2^5 insightful comments and achievement level 24. I still think I can persuade you.

You dont need that many super charging stations. Imagine you have machine that will produce a few drops of gasoline a minute from your gas line. Imagine such a device in every garage. How many gas stations would you need?

In an ICEV every joule comes from gas stations. In BEV universe only 2% of the energy needed to drive comes from super chargers. We need 50 times fewer gas stations. You dont need superchargers as ubiquitos as Wava or Sheetz. There are already 1200 super chargers for the minuscule market share of Teslas. Tesla will build more as it sells more cars. The super charger network is its signature selling point, where it is ahead of competition and it is quite cheap to expand it, if you accept this as a loss leader, a necessary expense to sell cars.

There will never be a network of third party independent chain like gas stations. The revenue stream is minuscule. Every super charging session I had, I paid 3$, 5$ and 7$. I am yet to pay in double digits. Such poor revenue stream and such large cap ex, and so many regulatory hurdles, (Tesla cant sell electricity by kWh, did you know that?) all charge points and electrify america networks are all going to fail.

What will be the total revenue of the charging networks? Gas stations sell 450 billion $ a year. EV is 4 times cheaper. So you are at 112.5 billion revenue potential. Only 2% charge on the road, 98% at home or hotel. Now you are 2.5 billion a year max revenue when you have 100% EV market share. Peanuts, Only a company accepting it as a loss leader will build a network. Tesla. Thought this far ahead.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

You fail to consider one fact... people cannot tell the future. .

Most people cant. But it is the job of some people. Tesla is valued at some 50 billion. As much as Ford and third of Toyota. Toyota 40 million vehicles global sales a year. . Even with Elon's antics and tweets and stuff, the stock never fell below 250$, never below 35 billion dollar valuation.

70% of the TSLA stock is held by mutual funds and institutions. They study the market, trend future, send teams to investigate Tesla. These are not fanbois, these are your regular bean counters. They dont depend on streettalk.com or marketgossip.com or seekingbeta.com or bullsandbears.com or any click bait site. When they send their accountants to review the books or teams to check on reported safety violation, the Tesla investor relations will comply.

Heck, I am a lowly developer in my company and I have been asked to meet with people from the mutual funds, once in a while. Future is dark for the ICE. They will transition to BEV, with various degrees of pain and successes.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

Why are we talking about garages? I'm talking about long road trips.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

Well, good luck to them. They have a lot of charging stations to build.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

Besides, I don't care about the number of charging stations at all. Only that there is one exactly where I need it that is free every time.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

I mean 'free' in the sense as 'available for use without a wait'.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Rick Schumann]

Are you somehow thinking that EV charging stations are going to have to be built from the ground up, like they were petroleum fueling stations? I'd hope you've looked around you more than that. EV charging stations can be put anywhere; they can be installed at gas stations, even, without having to rip out the pumps. Places I've worked have them installed in their parking lots. There's three Whole Foods stores in my area, and they have them installed in their parking lot. You can get one installed at your house, if you want faster charging, for a few thousand dollars. Not having to have massive underground tanks for flammable, explosive, highly toxic liquid fuel, all the leak monitoring equipment, pumps, and so on that a gas station requires makes EV charging orders of magnitude cheaper. All you need is the charging post and some cabling to electric power. Any convenience store can install them in their parking lot. I've heard of apartment complexes that install them. As EV acceptance becomes more and more common there will be an incentive to install charging stations everywhere because the convenience of them will mean extra income for the property owner, and require essentially zero maintenance or labor costs (no need for a human attendant). And, again: if you own your own home and have the desire or need you can buy an 'at home' model high-capacity charging station for your garage, and the cost to recharge is paid on your electric bill. Compare that to having barrels of highly flammable gasoline or diesel in your garage. To my eyes there's no comparison, EV charging wins every time.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Rick Schumann]

As battery technology progresses energy density will likely improve, which means more range. As EV charging stations become more common, recharging won't be anywhere near as much a hassle. Also as battery technology improves recharge times will likely improve with it. 50 years from now it might very well take only as long to recharge your EV to 100% as it does now to fill your tank with gasoline.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[geoskd]

Just as you'd never use the N-word (hopefully!), or call a transgender person a tyranny, please don't use the r-word. It debases your otherwise intelligent and thoughtful post. Not ok.

I'd guess that you've never spent much time around, or had family members with downs or other disabilities, as you'd never use that r-word in their presence. I've noticed the regular use of the r-word around aspie techies, typically as 'that design is retarded.' we've stamped that out at our startup. The catalyst was when an exec who had a downs kid, joined the company, even though a founder regularly used the term. The founder's use of the word was out of ignorance, not spite or hate.

I know you are just trying to do the right thing (tm), but you are in fact doing far more harm than good. It is not the use of any particular word that conveys the insult, but the combined context of the entire exchange. The comparison to someone who is mentally retarded was intentional and derogatory. Had it not been, other words would have been chosen. Do not make the mistake of believing that the word itself is the offense, a word alone cannot and does not carry offense, only when used in a particular context. That is why a group of black adults can call each other racial slurs without giving offense, but if a white person uses those same words, the context is added.

In the case of calling someone a retard, the offense itself cannot be conveyed without the context, as the context itself is the implied comparison to a retarded person. Again, it is not the word itself that conveys the meaning, but the implied context, and in this particular case, *any* word that is understood to refer to someone with a learning disability would carry the same level of offense.

At the end of the day, be careful where you take offense. Those that take offense when none was intended, will spend their entire lives being needlessly offended. Those that mistakenly believe that the offense is carried by a word alone, and discount the context, have missed the point altogether. It is this fundamental truth, and the arrogance with which many "enlightened" individuals look down on people who use those words that angers a great many people to the point where they are willing to entirely discount the opinions and positions of people who would argue against the use of a simple word, while attempting to claim the moral high ground.

There is a reason that "political correctness" is considered to be a character flaw by many people.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Rick Schumann]

Imagine this: 100 or so years ago, you had to sit there and wait for a station attendant to hand pump your gasoline. Then you had to hand crank your Model T or Model A engine to get it started. Wow, what a hassle!

Some time before that: horses could only go about 20 miles or so a day before having to rest! Also consider how much time it takes a horse to eat enough hay and oats to fuel itself! And you have to clean up after it, too! Suddenly having to recharge a nice, clean EV doesn't sound so bad, does it?

It'll just get better over time. We're in a transitional period with EVs; they're availble, the infrastructure is being installed, but it's just really getting started. Put your excuses aside and embrace the future. Think of this: 'fuel' costs for an EV will be a fraction of what gasoline costs. That help at all? Also see some of my other comments in this discussion.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Rick Schumann]

Fewer moving parts means fewer things to wear and break.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Rick Schumann]

Consider this: EV charging stations can be installed anywhere. Example: Combination parking meter and EV charging post. Park anywhere in a city, charge your EV while it's there. Apartment complex parking lots. Shopping center parking lots. Convenience store parking lots. Middle-of-nowhere charging stations with a dozen or more charging posts, no 'attendant' required (video security surveillance, like commercial fueling stations today). Anywhere you can get electric power.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Rick Schumann]

How nice for you that you have nothing better to do with your time than take a chance you'll screw up and have to start from scratch again. Not like I haven't been fixing cars and motorcycles my entire life. No thanks. Soon as they have EV light pickups with enough range, I'm there.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Rick Schumann]

I suspect you've never worked on cars much? Front wheel drive vehicles, the entire powertrain is one unit. In some cases it's actually more efficient to just drop the entire subframe, containing the engine, transaxle, front suspension/steering, etc, out from under the rest of the car, then separate the transaxle and do what you need to do, then put it all back. One of the reasons the engines tend to be transverse mounted.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the thoughtful response (and not calling me any names). I'm the *furthest* from an sjw, virtue signaling "thought police" person. "words", clearly matter to people. Look at the domestic terrorist organization ANTIFA and what they did to tucker carksons house, and his family. Tucker Carlson is just spewing "words" (tho I don't think he's ever called anyone a retard). Those "just words" resulted in an assault akin to what the kkk did to blacks. I'd suggest that the person who called you a retard just exposes his base stupidity and lack of ability to Form a cogent thought.

My test of if you'd use a word, is if the person or group that'd take the most offense is part of the discussion. If you'd still use that word, than have at. I really doubt that when you're with a group that has a downs kid, that youd ever, ever, refer to that kid as retarded. Or to someone else in that group. If you pass that test, go ahead, call folks on boards retards all day long. Otherwise you risk being a hypocrite.

"back when I had mod points" I'd have modded this thread down for being off topic.

Back on topic, I sure as f hope vw creates a viable EV.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[shilly]

Oops, mis-read your previous comment as once per *day*!

Still, for the edge case you describe -- once per car -- why not just hire an ICE car for that single day? You could afford the hire charge out of the gas and maintenance savings...that's what we've done in the past. Although, tbh, our new car will do ~180 miles on a charge, so it would only need a single charge half-way through a 300 mile journey, and for us the kids would need a decent break half-way through a journey of that length anyway. Obviously, that requires a charger at the destination. Or at least a socket and a granny cable.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

The GP in Wawa Ontario doesn't have a supercharger in 250 miles in the direction they're going in.

Also, they might not have the garage you are so enthusiastic about. Plus, their winters are brutally cold, unlike Norway, and EVs do suffer there. If you lived in Wawa, you never want to be under 25kWh for survival reasons, and in those temp and icy road conditions, your range in winter is more like 125 miles, which does not get you to the town, much less real city.

Oh, and heating an EV battery outdoors in -30C winters is not really their strong suit.

Another use-case: I drive 450km between my two homes, and no electricity at destination. Until this year, there was just one level 2 charger along the route, with no access when I'm passing by. The infrastructure is simply not enough in many cases.

Then there's the fact that I've got 8 people to transport, and there's no EV for that.

ICE cars meet every market need, EVs will take time to break into all niches. I look forward to it, but it's going to be a while.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

I sympathize.

However, this isn't necessarily a good allocation of resources, even when including the time cost of money.

For that one move, which is rare even for you, you can rent a one-way minivan, and caravan with your other vehicle. It raises the cost of the move, but that's outweighed by the routine savings every other day of ownership of a lower TCO vehicle.

The question of needing ICE is not for a rare one-off trip. But as I said, I sympathize: if the big ICE vehicle trip is regular, even a couple times of year, the favourable EV or smaller ICE vehicle economics begin to deteriorate.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

First 1200 mile round trip: Supercharged on the road for about 50 minutes more than gas station breaks. Second supercharge, a 300 mile round trip, 15 minutes just for peace of mind. Third trip recently, outbound no additional time, just 15 minutes supercharge. Return trip, no destination charger where I stayed, so took 30 minutes more than gas. Total extra 105 minutes on road trip vs saving 520 minutes a year on local driving.

First of all, your writing is atrocious.
Where did you steal the $55k to buy a Tesla Model3?
You come across as a burger flipper at McDonalds.

Tesla Model 3 LR (75 kWh) is a 200 mile range EV.
edmunds.com long term Model 3 June/2018 update(geo blocked outside the US, use your search engine cached page or try archives like this).
edmunds.com long term Model3 had mileage between 29.5 kWh/100miles to 36.8 kWh/100miles.
Model3 LR 75 kWh battery can reliably get 200 miles range, any more you're playing Russian roulette with dead battery.

Your 1200 mile trip in your Model3 required as much as 6 full recharges.
That's an extra 6 hours (360 minutes) at the Superchargers. (120 kW charge rate is bullshit in reality most of the time because there's going to be another guy sharing your charger, so you're down to 60 kW charge rate. Plus you need a full charge, and the Supercharger trickles down after the battery reach half charge).
But wait there's more, Superchargers are not going to be right off the freeway like gas stations, so you're diverting say 6x30=180 minutes just to access a supercharger.
360+180=540 minutes>520 minutes.
In one 1200 mile trip, you wiped out all your 520 minutes saved during the year.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

EV miles are four times cheaper than gas miles

That's total bullshit.
You said you have a Model3.
Tesla charges you $0.26/kWh at the Supercharger.
75 kWh battery cost you $19.50 to charge.
Model3 has a real world range of 200 miles.

Let's say a BMW 3-series 6 cylinder get 25 miles/gallon.
$3.00/gallon.
200 miles=8 gallons=$24
BMW is only 23% more expensive on energy than your Model3.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Because I am trying point out to you how much fewer charging stations we need. There are 115,000 gas stations. You need 2% of that number of charging stations. There are already 1100 charging stations by Tesla alone. It does not even have 0.2% of the share of the vehicles on the road. Long before your gas car gives up its ghost there will be enough.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Please do give me credit. I too have 2^7 insightful and 35 level achievements last time I checked. I understand the difference between free beer and free speech.

Your demand is not unreasonable. Just think it through, "exactly where I need it". What is the size of "where I need it"? One city block? Half a mile? Within 1 mile of any exit on the highway? You are used to gas car way of driving, which is to keep driving, and when it suddenly dawns on you that you are low in fuel you expect to find it within a few minutes/miles.

When I punch a destination in my Tesla, it includes charging stops and the time to charge in its calculations. Even before you start your trip, the Tesla would know where you would need to charge, take you there. It is not all that inconvenient. I accept it might still not be acceptable to *you*. But think how many people would be willing to put up with this "nuisance" when electric miles cost one fourth or gas miles. Once those people leave the ICE market, you think your car can be traded in? Your next car will have sufficient volume to maintain 115K gas stations ticking along? Will have the same mass production advantages?

When you want to buy your car, you use your personal situation and taste. When you want to predict what rest of the country is going to do, you use averages. Cost parity between ICEV and BEV is upon us. Within three years. Gas miles are three to four times more expensive than electric miles. Already TCO is better for many BEV owners. Typical car life is 10 to 15 years. Brand new cars bought in the next three years will see serious erosion of their resale value.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Let me try a different tack.

Gas is selling at $3.20 a gallon everywhere. But there are gas stations about 40 miles apart on highways selling it for 80 cents a gallon. Would you pay attention to which exit you need to take and watch the fuel levels and plan your route taking advantage of these cheap but few and far between gas stations?

In 2020, ICEV and BEV will have price parity. And gas miles are four times more expensive than electric miles.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey 140 Mandak262Jamuna, I can tell you're passionate about EV and your new Tesla Model 3.
I'm sure you are a even more prolific a poster over at model3ownersclub.com, where the real action is.
However I cannot find the username "140 Mandak262Jamuna" over at M3OC.
Perhaps you can share your M3OC username, because the prospective Tesla buyer would greatly benefit from insights from you and other Model 3 owners.
Thanks man.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

When I punch a destination in my Tesla, it includes charging stops and the time to charge in its calculations

so basically your car advertises to you and YOU GO THERE. Talk about a capitalists wet dream and 1984 rolled into one.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

ok then why arent they everywhere right now? i mean, mobile antennas can be placed everywhere but i still get dead spots.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

this is one place convenience wins out every time. I'll happily pay for gas where I am even if it costs $10 more for a fill.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

nope i dont rent if i dont have to, too expensive.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

I mean exactly where i need it, in that i dont even have to cross the street for it.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

And gas miles are four times more expensive than electric miles.

citation?

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

especially since we are talking about cars north of 50K.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Rick Schumann]

Well gee whiz I'm so sorry that everything that should happen doesn't happen OVERNIGHT just to please YOU.
FFS dude these things take TIME. Chill the hell out already and stop complaining so goddamned much.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Yes, you would. How many others would not? Are sure you are even in the majority about ignoring 80 cent gas? This is exactly the deal: There are gas stations selling gas at 80 cents a gallon. But there is always a 30 minute wait. How many people would think it is a fair deal, especially if they can also get the same 80 cents a gallon gas delivered to their garage, but at the rate of two gallons an hour ?

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Within 3 years, Tesla, Leaf and Bolt will be at or below 35K. Only Tesla has supecharger network. Some third party networks are coming up. In three years you can have your pick. Same price gas car or BEV.

It is very much possible, the dealer will offer you 300$ scrap value for your gas trade in seven years from now.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Electric cars go 4 miles per kWh [1]. A kWh sells for 12 cents by the utility. Cost per mile 3 cents. [2]

Gas price 3 $/gal, 25 MPG gives you 12 cents/mile.

Electric miles are four times cheaper than gas miles. QED.

[1] Tesla Model 3: Range= 310 miles, Battery= 75 kWh; Efficiency 4.1 miles/kWh Source

[2] Price by state. From 10 cents / kWh in Lousiana to 30 cents / kWh in Hawaii. Cutting off outliers, 10th most expensive 16 cents, 10th least expensive 11 cents Source

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

fluffernutter, you are a level 24 achiever, with 2^6 level 5 insightful comments.

You lose nothing by admitting, BEV would be very attractive to lots of other people. Mark of a great person is changing one's conclusions when contrary evidence is presented.

Richard Dawkins mentions an anecdote. An old professor never accepted the ESS (evolutionarily stable strategies) and was big proponent of some thing else, like group selection theory. After 20 years of picking faults with ESS, in one seminar he announced, "I have been wrong. The evidence is conclusive. ESS is correct. My preferred theory is wrong". The students stood up and clapped till they were red in their hands.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

It doesn't made sense to buy a car that only works with that maker's "network". All gas stations work with all cars, that is the way it should stay for EVs.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

There are basically three groups of people:
A) People who only need a car and never in their lives need to drive more than 300 miles,
B) People who will buy one of these because they don't see a need right now, and then will have to spend more money down the road because the EV doesn't meet their needs for some reason or another, and
C) People like me who already know they will be in group B

I am worried about the people in groups B and C. I don't see any point in talking about the people in group A.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[fluffernutter]

The thing about capitalism, is that companies will be trying to make the LEAST NUMBER of charging spots possible. You may be willing to bet that they will be interested in putting a station where you need one every time, but I'm not holding my breath.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you don't actually own a Tesla Model 3 do you?
Who the fuck calculates electricity cost based solely on the consumption charges?
Is your utility company giving you lifetime free pass on delivery charges? Like Pacific Gas & Electric(PG&E) will maintain power lines, transformers, power plants for you for free for life?
Your 13 cents per kWh typically doubles when you add in what your utility charges for delivery...maybe that's why Tesla charges you 26 cents per kWh at the Superchargers.

BTW 140Mandak262Jamuna, you're not posting at model3ownersclub.com apparently.
Why are you spamming slashdot.com with your fake EV ownership, when you are completely missing in action over at M3OC?
Seems a little suspicious.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[JThundley]

I agree, trolling is a art.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[drinkypoo]

That is everything in life. All things are trade offs. Doing the job a pickup was meant to do is the hardest job for an ev.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Think it through. Electric miles are four times cheaper than gas miles. Only 2% of the electric miles will be bought away from home, 98% will be bought from the utility.

Revenue potential of supercharging network is, 200 times less than the revenue of gas stations. Does it sink in? 200 times less, when ALL the cars are electric. Right now EVs are less than 1%. So current total revenue of charging networks is 20,000 times less than the gas stations. Gas stations sell 500 million dollars a year of gasoline. The charging networks are collecting about 25,000$ a year for the whole country. Anecdotally I have never paid more than 9 dollars for any charging session.

With economics like this, independent charging networks will not take off. Without independent charging networks no one will buy electric cars. This is the last wall protecting the gas companies.

Tesla thought this far ahead. They knew six years ago, without a money losing charging network, the EVs will forever be compromised vehicles. That is why they built a network. Tesla is compatible with industry standard plugs too. So when Electrify America or whatever takes off, Tesla can plug in to that too.

Re:It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Whorhay]

I don't know about your kids but mine always take longer to go use the restroom than it takes me to fill up the gas tank, take a leak, buy some snacks and a lotto ticket. Charging an EV a few times a year at a super charger would not increase my travel times appreciably.

The luggage question is very subjective. If I'm doing all the packing then I could probably pack enough for a week long vacation for a family of four into a couple large duffels, which would fit in most any trunk. If my wife is packing then I wouldn't be surprised to see the roof rack on a minivan getting used as well as every cubic inch inside the vehicle. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything. All that said The model S and 3 both have more storage space than traditional cars of their size because they have a frunk as well as a trunk. I don't see why a luggage rack couldn't be added, and a tow hitch is also possible, though of course mileage will suffer somewhat. Although you could recycle a good battery pack from a wrecked Tesla and use it to build a trailer with storage as well as mileage extending batteries.

Re: It's happening, whether you like it or not

[Anonymous Coward]

Think it through. Electric miles are four times cheaper than gas miles.

Excuse me my friend, who did you accept this kool-aid from?
The 4x cheaper scam has been debunked, even in this thread.
Some lying sac of shit (username: 140Mandak262Jamuna) is spreading nonsense such as you need to divided your monthly electric bill by half, and that's what's really coming out of your wallet, as if your utility company don't bill you for delivering your electricity.
I suggest you do not accept anymore kool-aid from scumbag Musk cocksuckers like 140Mandak262Jamuna.
You're welcome.

Ludicrous mode?

[RogueWarrior65]

But will it have a lächerlich mode?

Re:Ludicrous mode?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Definitely it will have a cheat mode.

Re: Ludicrous mode?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they will claim it will accelerate very fast and then it does so only a limited number of times, just like a Tesla.

Re:Good! Hurry up!

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's one weak point of VW cars, it's the electronics.
I wouldn't trust a VW electric car further than I could push it.

Want the Dubai quad-hover-cycle

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, I have a death wish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
My last words will be, "Hey, check this out!"

yet somehow they will still fail emissions tests

[Anonymous Coward]

practically guarantee they will somehow fail emissions tests, or it'll be another scam like last time.
never buying VW ever again, ripoff scum.

They should out Elon Elon himself.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

It is lame to announce 22K Battery car in 2020. Come on, you need to out do Elon.

Announce a 15K car in 2025 that runs on Atmospheric Engine, that gets free energy using the magnetic monopole and tapping into the zero point energy and the critical ingredient for the project, the red mercury has been secured. Then you are talking.

Er, what? no one would take such an announcement seriously?

Well, what makes you think they think other announcements and promises from that diesel cheat device innovator seriously?

Re:They should out Elon Elon himself.

[mobby_6kl]

They should absolutely take $1000 preorders for a $15K car that will ship in 2020 but then deliver a $40k car in 2025 instead. Like Tesla.

Re:They should out Elon Elon himself.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Very clearly Tesla has more credibility with the people. They lined up to pay the deposit. 80% of them are patiently waiting. Can any legacy car maker boast such faithful customer base? The valuation of TSLA stock is based on that.

Re:They should out Elon Elon himself.

[dfghjk]

"Can any legacy car maker boast such faithful customer base?"

Yes, without a doubt, and legacy car makers accomplish that by shipping and supporting more product than Tesla ever has. What history of repeat buyers does Tesla have?

Tesla is too new to have a "faithful customer base", what they have is mindshare among early adopters in only a small part of the market. That means nothing once the market moves past early adoption.

If you're going to talk about a "faithful customer base" you need to talk about real customer bases and real brand loyalty, not measurables that suit your point of view and that have nothing to do with actual cars.

Re:They should out Elon Elon himself.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Tesla is too new to have a "faithful customer base",

What? Tesla has been shipping cars since 2012. There are tons and tons of two Tesla households. That does not count as repeat buyers? So many of the people who lined up to reserve model 3 are S and X owners. Surveys show 85% of Tesla owners are planning to buy a Tesla again. Tesla has the highest owner satisfaction ratings. Despite the parts shortage and lengthening service appoint times, it is still loved by every owner.

You test drive a model 3 performance. You wont go back to a gas car.

Re:They should out Elon Elon himself.

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Tesla has been shipping cars since 2012. There are tons and tons of two Tesla households. That does not count as repeat buyers?

You also claimed a few weeks ago Moore' Law for batteries, is a 7 year half life. Energy density doubles and price halves every seven years for battery packs.
So why are the 2019 Tesla Model S having the exact same range as the 2012 Model S?
Shouldn't the 2019 Tesla Model S have doubled the range of the 7 year previous 2012 Model S?

The author is a short seller of Tesla

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally implausible article. Possibly to depress Tesla stock so author makes a killing? Didn't he practically admit it in the article? Oh wait...no one reads those.

They already have one for 22k

[Gabest]

It's called VW E-up, and it is everywhere, because it is one of those rent-able cars you can pick up and leave anywhere.

Re:Good! Hurry up!

[cowdung]

Its everything really.. my first new car was a VW.. in 5 months I had 5 problems. Including all the oil pouring out of the engine one day.. Very poor quality cars in my opinion.

Who Cares

[WindowsStar]

After their lies about their cars performance for years and making people think they were much better than they were, who's to say they will not do the same with the electric car? Install software to fake readings and make their car seem the best. No once a cheater always a cheater.

Re: Who Cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, I will never buy anything from Tesla because of their horsepower scam.

Re:Fool me once...

[Anonymous Coward]

https://youtu.be/8Ux3DKxxFoM?t=56

Fool me once . . . shame on . . . you

You fool me once, you aren't gonna fool me again.

Applying gaming expertise to batteries!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a lot of room in the electric car market for someone with many more years experience gaming quality and performance metrics!

Re:Good! Hurry up!

[religionofpeas]

Sounds like you need a firmware update that disables the low oil warning.

not difficult

[slashmydots]

Literally anything could compete with Tesla right now. Their incredibly important invention is an overpriced, un-repairable, and their company is based on lies to get more investor money. Don't even get me started on the hyperloop aka the disastrous crash generator. You could put an upgraded battery pack in a Barbie jeep for kids and compete with Tesla. Once a company that isn't all flash and no substance mixed with rip-off prices takes electric cars seriously and can price them appropriately and build them economically, it's all over for those douchebags at Tesla.

Re:not difficult

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Makes you why they have done so? Doesn't it?

You bring up a very good point. If it is as easy as they have told you, why haven't they done it?

Re: not difficult

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they only build cars that people buy in sufficient numbers. It may sound crazy, but established car makers actually try to sell their products at a profit, so they can keep on existing. Therefore, they did not focus on longe-range EVs until EU fleet average CO2 targets and the associated penalties made long-range EVs an economically viable product.

Re: Good! Hurry up!

[Anonymous Coward]

VW's current electric cars seem to be just as reliable as their ICE cars.

plans

[Tom]

are due to be discussed at a supervisory board meeting

That is all you need to know.

They have plans. They don't have a prototype yet, nor a factory setup, nor a delivery schedule nor final pricing or performance numbers. Any or all of those can still change dramatically.

We will see what happens when you can actually buy this car. Until then there is nothing to see.

Re:plans

[JaredOfEuropa]

Good. Maybe they have time to read this advice before they start designing:
Dear automakers: when we shop around for an EV, we are looking for a conveyance, not for a d*mn lifestyle statement that virtue-signals our greenness. We want a normal looking car, not someone's idea of "the future of urban transportation", and we certainly don't need all those hideous light blue accents on the exterior. Why do you think Tesla has done so well?

Re: plans

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you also refuse to have a pension scheme because you do not believe retirement age until it happens?

Re:plans

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

And the plans are so likely to be rejected by the supervisory board, they want to do a press release and hope to create enough buzz and PR to get some reluctant concessions from the board.

For every Tesla-Killer they have on the drawing board, there are several Tesla-Killer-Killers on the supervisory board.

Re:plans

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear automakers: ... We want a normal looking car, not someone's idea of "the future of urban transportation"

VW have already produced the e-Golf which is just that - it looks exactly like the fossil-fuelled Golf and feels similar to drive, and many reviewers have commented favourably on this.

Most newer EVs on the market also look like normal cars.

Re: plans

[Tom]

Aging is a scientifically established fact with an overwhelming amount of evidence.

The same cannot be said for car manufacturers plans to come out with a competitive electic care real-soon-now(TM).

Re: Learn to READ (not same mechanics)... apk

[c6gunner]

You actually expect this lunatic to be consistent / rational?

Not sure how successful VW will be...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's going to be really hard for VW to rig the emissions data in the ECU software for a car like this.

give me a battery

[AndyKron]

Not news. Wishful thinking like all those stupid "miracle battery" posts

Just trust me

[Anonymous Coward]

This promise from the same company which promised "clean diesel"!

Re: My friends Passat opens its trunk when it rain

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it have a sunroof?
Also, drainage problems related to said sunroof?
He's got an electrical short between the switch in the door and the computer. Probably around the driver side kick panel.

Re:Good! Hurry up!

[drinkypoo]

Its everything really.. my first new car was a VW.. in 5 months I had 5 problems. Including all the oil pouring out of the engine one day.. Very poor quality cars in my opinion.

In addition their support is shit. VAG is dropping parts for their vehicles left and right. I literally cannot buy the differential bushings for my '98 A8 Quattro. Apparently they didn't use them on any other models in spite of having about ten brands' worth of parts to choose from and now they aren't making any more. Fuck VW sideways. I'm going back to Subaru or Nissan with my next car.

The real question is

[Anonymous Coward]

Will folks, who are in the market - or in the waiting list - for a tesla, wait around for a $22k vw? I doubt that folks on the waiting list would wait around based upon a press release.

I'm not yet on the tesla waiting list, or in the market for a new ev car. But when I am, I'd definitely like to test drive an ev vw if I can pay $10 to $20 k less than a tesla.

Full disclosure : old guy, prius model 3 owner with 150k miles on it. Replaced brakes once. Always run in Eco mode, pissing off ICE powered owners behind me. So I don't need the bling of tesla or ludicrous mode. I am looking at bmws and audits and Mercedes now with the thought "oh, ICE powered cars, how quaint."

Sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

Just scanning though the comments here, Holy shit there's a lot of assholes on this forum.

prospecting for oil

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know how much money has been spent in prospecting for oil?

Does that include the Pentagon's budget?

Who in Germany needs 300 miles of range?

[Fencepost]

Germany has been doing a huge push to renewables, which mostly means electricity generated from solar and wind. If they can continue to increase that electricity generation and power cars directly with it, it's a net win in several ways.

Also, despite its population Germany isn't even the largest country in the EU by a huge margin. It's also REALLY SMALL by comparison to what people in the US consider the size of a country. In terms of size, it's about halfway between Montana and New Mexico, but it also has a well-developed high-speed rail system running at up to 300kph so you can likely go from one end of the country to the other in just a few hours even including possible train changes. Even a lot of very small areas have train service multiple times a day.

Re:Who in Germany needs 300 miles of range?

[phik]

It's pretty common to take road tips on holiday say from central Germany, down to Switzerland or over the Alps into Italy etc. You won't need it day to day, but it's not uncommon. Also, the train system is good, but it's pretty expensive and you will have to spend a lot of time transferring if you want to leave the main line cities and get to a village (and there are a LOT of villages). You also have to deal with train delays fairly often (not as common as terrible US train service) bad enough that I often book a seat on multiple trains in case I get in too late to make my original transfer. You can get flex tickets, but those usually double the price. With a car, you also have to deal with construction and accidents etc, but you have the power to adjust routes, or stop at a hotel and start again the next day.

c6gunner = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See c6gunner from a FAIR CHALLENGE his big mouth bit off more than it could chew on https://linux.slashdot.org/com...

That's where you CHILDISHLY "IMPERSONATE" me AND TWIST OTHERS /.ers WORDS who praise/like/use MY WORK (not your non-existentware).

I merely challenged you to show YOU DID BETTER THAN I & you can't AFTER you tried insulting me - you can't show you did a damn thing, lol!

* EAT YOUR WORDS & RUN, Forrest: RUN!!!

APK

P.S.=> ... & you KNOW it, you clearly UNSKILLED menial... apk

Re: c6gunner = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Your software is just crap - written in crayon, fictional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine as a punchline to a joke by mmell February 17, 2017

Your premise that hostfiles are a good way to deal with advertising and malvertising is fucking insane - by JazzLad April 20, 2016

his hosts "program" is actually a broken batch file by xenotransplant August 10 2015

his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to be a laughingstock while consuming excessive amounts of alcohol by alexgieg September 25 2015

I like your tinfoil hat by Karmashock September 09 2015

that APK nut, I can't get him to stop talking about his piece of shit file by rogoshen1 Tuesday March 03, 2015

I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

APK

P.S.=> When YOU do better than THAT by our /. registered peers, then talk (from behind your FAKE NAME for your FAKE LIE of a "so-called" WASTED life) - ok? apk

No, only nowadays everyone is called a "troll"!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nowadays, "troll" is used to mean "person, who says somebody that disagrees with the groupthink, and says it in a way that triggers us feeble snowflakes, instead of with a p.c.-approved doubleplus-positive sleazbag vocabulary".

I hope you're right (helps me out)... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Afaik Spectre/Meltdown can be executed against you REMOTELY (not just locally like portsmash which hosts block malware using it by blocking sources of downloads of such malware).

* NOW - IF you're RIGHT? Then hosts blocks ALL FORMS of Intel CPU weaknesses!

(... I could be wrong here (for once), not that it matters... why? See below, lol!)

APK

P.S.=> See subject: I actually HOPE you're right, lol - as it works out in MY FAVOR that way... apk

Learn to READ (not same mechanics)... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject & what I quote from ElReg here https://it.slashdot.org/commen... & hosts block download sources of the malicious executables doing "portsmash"... it's THAT simple.

I suspect you don't understand how speculative execution works, just like you don't seem to know much else about computers" by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10, 2018 @09:22PM (#57623922)

REPOST (vs. bogus abused downmod on last time I posted this): I don't see you BACKUP YOUR STATEMENT when I asked you to either here (which works out GREAT for me IF you are right - you don't seem convinced of YOUR OWN WORDS yourself) https://tech.slashdot.org/comm...

APK

P.S.=> I HOPE YOU'RE RIGHT - WORKS OUT GREAT FOR ME! THEN I CAN ACTUALLY SAY HOSTS STOP ALL FORMS OF INTEL CPU SECURITY ISSUES (as you IMPERSONATORS of me ARE saying) in speculative execution (spectre/meltdown NOT just portsmash which I am SURE hosts can stop sources of)... apk

Just like you have now? You start it... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: You start it - I just FINISH it & you + "your kind" (UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous STALKERS) w/ it by using CONCRETE verifiable UNDENIABLE facts you & yours CANNOT prove wrong, lol!

(You make MY job VERY easy: ESPECIALLY "ZIP" https://developers.slashdot.or... & ZIP has a registered 'lusr' account ADMITTING he HIDES from me DOWNMOD BOMBING my posts https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... (weak as always from him))

* You only expose the fact you're WEAK "WeeZilz" (lol) that can't prove me wrong hahahaha - thank you!

APK

P.S.=> Keep it up - you're only making ME look GREAT & you + those like you ("not-men" weezils) like the shit you are... apk

I WON the 'war' - you defeat yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: ZIP you care & you shot your hole off unable to back it up lol https://developers.slashdot.or...

* You START it? I finish it & YOU along w/ it due to your own stupidity & inability to backup your bluster, blowhard.

LOL - best part?

YOU ADMIT YOU HAVE A registered 'lusr' account & yet you HIDE from me by AC posts + DOWNMOD BOMB my posts that blow you away (see 1st link above, lol) https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

APK

P.S.=> I must THANK-you for being SO stupid & making me look GOOD + yourself like the BLOWHARD BULLSHIT ARTIST you are (all talk, no substance)... apk

IMPERSONATING me AGAIN? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: I pity c6gunner caught impersonating me (his name's the submitter signing "APK") https://linux.slashdot.org/com...

* He tried to INSULT me & so I made him a COMPLETELY FAIR CHALLENGE he couldn't meet or beat by showing me he's done better work in the past prior to his impersonating me there.

(You shouldn't throw stones when you live in a glass house boys - especially vs. me: RIGHT, ZIP? https://developers.slashdot.or... )

APK

P.S.=> Hosts stop portsmash (by blocking download sources of its mailcious exes doing it) https://it.slashdot.org/commen... not Spectre/Meltdown AFAIK - & YOU FAIL THIS PORTFILTERING TEST liar https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... (my program won't allow that error) so cut your lies as you IMPERSONATE me you pitiful loser... apk

you lie always

[Anonymous Coward]

Show the slightest evidence.
People here are so gullible.

you usually just lie and run away

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla is 100% into EVs, which is why Tesla is ahead in EVERYTHING, except for the actual manufacturing

Tesla is ahead in everything, except actually making cars...

Do people like you actually read what you are typing, or is it too hard with Musks balls in your face?

Why the constant lies?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why all of the luxury ICE sedan sales are falling where MS/M3 are sold
LOL no.

Re: Why the constant lies?

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't actually true. It also wouldn't make any sense, since Teslas and luxury cars aren't exactly competing products. Almost nobody cross-shops between a luxury car and an exceptionally poorly built bare-bones electric car.

ORIGINAL POST of /.ers liking my work

[Anonymous Coward]

Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017

Your premise that hostfiles are a good way to deal with advertising and malvertising is quite valid - by JazzLad April 20, 2016

his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015

his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015

I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015

that APK guy, I use his host file by rogoshen1 Tuesday March 03, 2015

I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

* SEE SUBJECT: & the above shows the ORIGINAL post you ALTERED like the LOSER you are...

APK

P.S.=> Let's see YOU do better, impersonator (c6gunner's name is on this post signing "APK") https://linux.slashdot.org/com... ... apk

Kona a "higher spec"?? LOL

[brunes69]

The idea that the Kona is a "higher spec" than a Model 3 is laughable. Higher spec in what sense?

Re: Kona a "higher spec"?? LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

In the sense that it doesn't have the interior of a 1970s car from the Eastern Bloc.

Re:Kona a "higher spec"?? LOL

[AmiMoJo]

In that for â10k less you get longer range, more tech including Autopilot, stuff like heated/ventilated seats, Android Auto, a proper utility mode, more cargo space, auto-dip mirrors, all sorts of stuff.

The only area where the Model 3 has a better spec is 0-60 times. Beyond that you can pay tens of thousands more to get more range and extras, but then it's not really comparable to a car that costs only half as much.

Re:Kona a "higher spec"?? LOL

[brunes69]

Dude, you need to understand what you're talking about before you post such nonsense.

First of all, Kona does not have anything close to Autopilot. They have the ability to have BASIC lane keeping assist and adaptive cruise. This is not "Autopilot" which includes full self driving from on ramp to off ramp and features like Summon today, and full 100% self-driving in the future (all Model 3s are Level 5 capable vehicles). TLDR; Kona has Level 2 self driving which is extremely basic. Tesla Model 3 has Level 4 and all owners will get Level 5 via a software upgrade.

Second, the Model 3 *DOES* have heated and vented seats front AND rear. The Tesla infotainment system is light-years beyond Android Auto.

Do your research. The idea that the Kona is more advanced than the Model 3 is farcical. They're not even in the same class - the Model 3 competes with the BMW 3 Series and the Audi A4, not Hyundai.

There is a reason the Model 3 is the #1 selling car in the US right now and it is not just because it's an EV, its simply because it's more advanced than most competitors.

Re:Kona a "higher spec"?? LOL

[AmiMoJo]

Kona has AP, it's lane following is better than Tesla's. The Niro is a step above that, with Highway Mode that allows you to take your hands off the wheel for extended periods of time like Tesla used to. The Kona can already read road signs, including variable speed limits.

Tesla's level 5 is already said it need a hardware upgrade and even Musk doesn't think it will be available until 2020, from an original projection of 2017. They don't even sell it any more.

The Model 3 does not have level 4. Level 4 is FSD on limited roads, which requires that the driver can take a nap while it works. Tesla require you to keep your hands applying torque to the wheel the whole time.

While you are correct that the M3 does offer headed/cooled seats, they bump the price difference up even further. As for the entertainment system it's a question of preference but Tesla uses Google services for mapping anyway and more importantly you are stuck with whatever they provide, where as Android Auto gives you a choice of apps.

Other ways in which the Kona exceeds the M3 is range (again this is assuming they ever release the $35k model, otherwise the price gap for the same range is even bigger), cross traffic sensors, HUD, speed limiter, one pedal driving, auto dip side mirrors, cornering lights, auto defog, keyless entry, utility mode (camper mode only operates AC), a flat entry boot area, wireless charging... Does the M3 have a heated wheel option these days?

Re:Kona a "higher spec"?? LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, Kona does not have anything close to Autopilot. They have the ability to have BASIC lane keeping assist and adaptive cruise.

So they have a system similar to Autopilot but without the hype and the danger and with proper testing.

(all Model 3s are Level 5 capable vehicles).

Well, except for some of the sensors required for proper level 5 autonomy and the software, which is probably never coming.

Tesla Model 3 has Level 4 and all owners will get Level 5 via a software upgrade

Tesla Autopilot is a level 2 system and if you believe Tesla will ever actually release a level 5 software update for their current models, you might as well believe in the tooth fairy.

the Model 3 competes with the BMW 3 Series and the Audi A4

Please take a test drive in each. The Model S is already well below Hyundai level in terms of interior quality, but the Model 3 is even worse.

There is a reason the Model 3 is the #1 selling car in the US right now

It isn't, by a long shot.

Interesting thread trashed by u

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is my first comment on this thread. APK likes to randomly accuse people of impersonating him. But I've never posted as anyone other than ZIP. I always sign my posts, and the above unsigned post is not me.

Try again APK, you huge fucking failure. My REAL name is right below. I've always been truthful on /. and your extreme stupidity has been your own undoing.

ZIP

Re:Interesting thread trashed by u

[Anonymous Coward]

ZIP tell us why you twice minusmod hid APK exposing you for the trash you are here https://news.slashdot.org/comm... ? Ashamed? You should be.

ZIP you = "FORREST chump" w/ proof

[Anonymous Coward]

Prove this: "I'm a much better programmer than APK, as has been proven." - by Anonymous Coward ZIP on Monday October 08, 2018 @11:27PM (#57449082)

FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

You're a BETTER programmer than I, quoted saying so above?

WHERE'S PROOF OF WORK YOU DO EVEN /.ers LIKE & USE?

It's NOT!

* I have DOZENS of /.ers saying they like & use my work - praising it & it's good effects on more speed, security, reliability & anonymity PLUS 100,000++ users of it worldwide - DO YOU??

HELL NO!

You also LIED trying to "take credit" for a SOLUTION to C++ string buffer overflow issues I SOLVED WAY BEFORE YOU https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... proof's right there scumbag punk you are.

I also shot you to pieces on your github LIE @ the root of all that too (yes that's you too scumbag) https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

LIAR ZIP says he has no account "I don't have an account, so I don't have mod points" https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

Yet LIAR ZIP says he downmods my posts (IMPOSSIBLE MINUS AN ACCOUNT on /.): "I down-modded a few of your post on other threads" - by Anonymous Coward "ZIP" on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:31AM (#57461058) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

ZIP HIDES THIS DOWNMODDING IT TWICE as it EXPOSES his bullshit https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

APK

P.S.=> CodeSigning you "praise" (I don't for GOOD REASONS & I use something better) can & HAS been STOLEN & ABUSED https://www.helpnetsecurity.co... MY METHOD CAN'T BE (upmodded +2 INTERESTING in CODING FOR DEFCON no less) https://it.slashdot.org/commen... ... apk

Re:ZIP you = "FORREST chump" w/ proof

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! a +2 mod on a post from 2005. Surely the highlight of your life.

ZIP

P.S. => it's scary how little you know about security.

ZIP CLASSIC "Greatest Hits" (lol, not)... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See how STUPID "ZIP" (Zach I. Patterson) CHIMP is (taking credit for what I solved before him) https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... (he needs to LEARN TO READ)!

I even SHOW ways to do it YOURSELF https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... (he couldn't).

Delphi/FreePascal/ObjectPascal HAS no issue w/ null-term'd string bufferoverflows - C does, C++ can UNLESS you do what I said 1st loser.

"I'm a much better programmer than APK" - by Anonymous Coward ZIP on Monday October 08, 2018 @11:27PM (#57449082) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... yet nothing to show in programs. I can from registered /.ers liking/using/praising my work (& 100k users worldwide too). He can't.

LIAR ZIP says he has no account "I don't have an account, so I don't have mod points" https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

Yet LIAR ZIP says he downmods my posts (IMPOSSIBLE MINUS AN ACCOUNT on /.): "I down-modded a few of your post on other threads" - by Anonymous Coward "ZIP" on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:31AM (#57461058) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

Tell us about CODE SIGNING (which has been STOLEN & ABUSED) https://www.helpnetsecurity.co... MY METHOD CAN'T BE (upmodded +2 INTERESTING in CODING FOR DEFCON no less) https://it.slashdot.org/commen...

APK

P.S.=> Classic & HILARIOUS how STUPID you are CHIMPANZEE (descended from them obviously) - this makes my ALL-TIME FAVORITE for you dimwit - & every time you pull your BULLSHIT? Out this comes, lol... apk

Usual WindBourne lies

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/03/luxury-car-owners-trade-up-for-us-pickups-as-ford-gm-dominate-market.html
This is why. No need for you to lie about Tesla's rounding error of a market.

They buy pickups instead because tariffs and Americans don't give two shits about the environment.