123 / 108 = 14% difference... on top of the fact that Kona is also a smaller vehicle (if you disagree, you've clearly either never been inside a Model 3, been inside a Kona, or both; Kona's rear seat in particular is tiny). Leaf is closer, though still smaller in most internal passenger space measurements. It gets 97 MPGe highway, aka 27% more energy than the Model 3.
I'll repeat: Aerodynamics is done for a reason. It makes a big difference in range, charge times, and cycle life.
(Oh, and a note for the above: The average speed for said "highway" cycle is only about 55mph; the faster you go, the more streamlining matters)
Slightly different meaning here I think. The problem with that shape door is that it both lets rain water in
That's what gutters are for, as you'll find in every single car which has that form of hatch (which are numerous).
and reduces the overall available height considerably.
Which is why tapered vehicles are generally longer.
If you want a "city car" that never goes at highway speeds, but length is a critical factor, then sure, have a truncated rear end. But if you want an EV that's suitable for road trips, you want taper.
Building a cost-effective mass production system is a hundred times more difficult than building a prototype or two and making some sleek marketing videos. Only one startup has succeeded at it in the US since Chrysler in 1925, and that's Tesla. Many have tried. All but one have failed.
To be fair, Model Y isn't in mass production yet either. But it's certainly closer, not simply due to how many people have been working on it for how long, but in particular because it shares 76% of its hardware with the Model 3, which is already in mass production.
Are you saying people are driving their Model X's through there? Because I sincerely doubt it. They are driving their Model X's where it is maintained like everyone else.
Yes, they do, despite your disbelief. Around 50% of all vehicle sales are now electric in Norway. Model X is one of the more popular models.
Your refusal to believe something doesn't make it not real.
The guidance for Q1 was previously "We're not sure if we can turn a profit in Q1". This was not a major revision. It's due to a lot of one-time charges - for example, severance costs, the start of international shipping (which leaves you with more inventory in transit), etc.
The base model cost $38k to produce in December. They've now trimmed 7% of the workforce (plus more when they close the lower-traffic stores and convert the others to galleries, which should roughly halve their SG&A - although that's not a GM issue), They've had another quarter of general margin improvements. Production rates are much faster, which means lower depreciation per vehicle. Raw material costs are down (check out battery grade cobalt oxide, nickel sulfate, and lithium carbonate price trends). Etc, etc. You don't have to take Musk's word in the reporter call (where he repeatedly used past tense when talking about achieving profitability on the $35k car), it's pretty obvious that they have a positive gross margin on it. The question is how high.
Of course, almost nobody will choose the base model, which is being backed up by anecdotal reports from the stores. Even someone who's on a really tight budget would be IMHO hard pressed to not splurge on at least the SR+ for $2k more, to get an extra 20 miles and partial-premium interior. The discounts on the higher-end versions appears to have seriously boosted them as well. There appears to be about a 30-40% take rate on the base autopilot (plus a small take rate on FSD), and that's pure margin. Paint colours are margin, wheel choices, interior options, etc. It's looking like an ASP somewhere around $45k.
More to the point, IMHO, they had to unveil it before they unveiled the Model Y (which Musk stated nearly a year ago would be unveiled around 15 March). Otherwise, they'd have no credibility when discussing the price point for the Model Y. On the other hand, they very much don't want to delay the Model Y, as SUVs/CUVs are more popular in the US than sedans.
All that said: the $35k Model 3's unveiling clearly had been planned well in advance. You don't spontaneously generate new vehicle models, new interiors, new websites, and new government approvals, out of thin air; these things take a long time.
What about Solar City? Did Solar City have a cash pile of billions of dollars and no looming major debt payments?
BTW, I never cared about Solar City (their business model was fundamentally based on the concept of solar panels being expensive, which is sort of an anti-cleantech-advancements play). Not that you care, of course. I do like the solar roof idea a lot, however. But obviously vehicles get first dibs on investment money, since they're higher margin.
Model X is very popular for towing, and frequently fitted out with a roof rack. No, it's not good for offroading - but neither are most SUVs today. It has by far the largest interior space of any of the EVs today calling themselves "SUVs", and in the mid-to-upper range of the interior space of SUVs in general.
Yes, companies with billions of dollars of cash on hand and expanding much faster than even Amazon did into a market that most people consider to be the future of transportation and energy storage should totally declare bankruptcy. That makes a ton of sense; I don't know why we didn't think of it before!
They're only quoting US figures, even though the vast majority of what Tesla has been producing this quarter is going to China and RHD W. Europe + Scandinavia, with around a dozen RO-RO ships sent so far.
They also of course picked the low estimate for US February figures (InsideEVs), rather than AlphaHat or Edmunds, and then rounded it down.
They also neglected to mention that January and February are strong annual seasonal low months for Tesla in the US, being in the lowest-volume quarter and with respect to the fact that there's generally a quarterly cycle, with the most US sales in the third month of the quarter.
They also forgot to mention that Tesla started the quarter with $3,7 billion dollars in cash.
The woman who drove into the parked fire truck at highway speeds did not die, she had only a broken ankle - which is a remarkable testament to how safe the vehicle is built.
No. That's not level 3. Level 3 is where you don't have to pay attention to it any more.
No. That's Level 4. Level 3 by and large drives on its own, but can require the driver to take over at a moment's notice. Level 4 can encounter situations where it doesn't know how to handle them, but can safely get out of them without driver intervention. Level 5 never encounters situations that it doesn't know how to handle.
You cannot "read a book or watch a movie while it drives" in a Level 3 system. Quote: "Able to detect the environment around them, level 3 vehicles contain the lowest-tier system that is classified as an automated driving system as opposed to a manual system. With this more advanced technology, level 3 vehicles can make informed decisions for themselves such as overtaking slower moving vehicles. However, unlike the higher rated autonomous vehicles, human override is required when the machine is unable to execute the task at hand or the system fails."
EAP is a Level 3 system, and has been since NoA was released. Tesla states that it expects to be to level 4 (not 5) by the end of the year.
No. $35k before gas savings and credits. For a US buyer the MSRP minus credits is at most $31250, and depending on state credits, as little as $26250 (Colorado has the best state credits in the US). Then there's gas savings on top of that.
Given that they've explicitly stated that what's targeted to be released by the end of the year is level 4 (aka, requires a human driver), only to transition to level 5 when regulators approve at a later date, you're asking me to say "Yes, Tesla is going to deliver something that they didn't state they were going to deliver".
Why not just insist that I answer "Yes" to "Tesla is going to deliver Model 3s made of solid gold and reintroduce the Passenger Pigeon by next week"?
It's not known if the person in the first link was on AP. It's at least possible that they were, unlike the latter case. The person in the second case almost certainly wasn't (they were estimated to be driving 70-90 mph on a city street; AP can only be set to 5mph over the speed limit on city streets).
I'd also like to know what car you think can plow through three palm trees in a row and have the occupant be just fine.
As far as I and anyone else I've talked have been able to ascertain, the first case appears to be the first case ever of someone dying in a Model 3. And it took being split in half by a semi to do it. Guess what? For the foreseeable future, people will continue to die in car accidents. What matters is the rate per unit distance driven.
The only thing I'm mad about in the first case is the fact that the US inexplicably does not require side crash guards on semi trailers like we've have in Europe since the 1980s.
Having fun twisting my words? "Internal builds that handle city driving" != "internal builds are ready for mass deployment". Because if they were... they'd already be deployed, and not be merely internal builds. Obviously. That said, at the rate they've been advancing, deployment with in a year? Yeah, I have no issue with that. Especially since customer cars aka, running on older builds are already doing requisite detections in shadow mode.
Experts say Tesla's "full self-driving" feature is really a partial self-driving feature that handles minor driving tasks such as keeping pace with other cars on a highway and still requires diligent human oversight. To most autonomous vehicle experts, "full self-driving" means a car in which a person could safely fall asleep behind the wheel, and the steering wheel and pedals aren't even needed...
1) They're describing AP/EAP as a level 1-2 system. It's actually a level 3 system with Navigate on Autopilot (e.g. makes lane changes, takes exits, etc).
2) They're describing what's presently available, which is not FSD, as if that's what's being offered as FSD. Which is just ridiculous. What's currently being offered is AP/EAP, not FSD. Heck, they don't even run on the same computer. AP/EAP is HW2, FSD is HW3 (HW2 = GPU, HW3 = custom neural net chip, about 20x faster).
3) What was targeted for the end of this year has been clearly described, both by Musk in interviews, and in the description of the product: that the car can drive in all situations on its own, but you still need a human monitoring it (aka, level 4 autonomy), with an intent to eliminate the driver requirement as soon as is allowed thereafter (level 5 autonomy). The monitoring requirements will remain until regulators are satisfied that its safety record exceeds that of humans. Musk stated that he expects this to require 10 billion or so miles of data.
4) This isn't coming out of the blue. Tesla's internal builds already handle city driving (including Musk himself). You don't have to take their word on it - customer cars are already doing detections required for city-driving in shadow mode (same, but at night here) (These aren't Tesla vids - they're from people hacking the AP system to see what data it's detecting and processing).
You know, it's really easy to attack someone when you render what they say into a straw man. "OMG, Musk is saying that a Level 1 system is FSD!"
I had issues with Tesla selling FSD a year ago, but then again, so did most people, which is why few bought it. Today? Not so much. They've made a lot of progress in the past year. I still think it's going to be a long time before Tesla's safety data is good enough to convince regulators to say, "Yeah, you don't need a human any more" (level 5). But with Navigate on Autopilot, and their clear progress on city driving, I have no issue with them stating that they expect to be level 4 by the end of the year.
Tesla has never made a profit in its entire existence and never will.
Tesla has had positive gross margins for much of the past decade, and has been net profitable - despite reinvesting in an extremely rapid growth rate - for the past half year.
Obviously I have not sat in one as its not available to general public yet
What market are you in? Kona Electric has been out in Europe for quite a while.
Obviously I have not sat in one as its not available to general public yet but all reviewers have given it much better reviews than Model 3 as far as internal space is concerned.
Name one. I've been in in both. It's not even close.
The SUV movement in the US is more about a high driving position
No, a SUV is a large vehicle built on a truck frame. A CUV is a vehicle have a SUV-like form factor, but of any size (large or small) and with unibody construction.
I'm warning you for your own good: if you're waiting for the Kona because you're expecting it to be some "SUV", you're going to be seriously disappointed. This is the back seat.. Here's the size of the vehicle compared to a person. That doesn't mean "don't get the car". As far as non-Tesla EVs go, there's nothing "wrong" with it. But it's not an "SUV". Keep your expectations in check.
(Model 3, by contrast, is much larger inside than most people expect, particularly in the front).
BTW: If you're looking for an EV like the Kona (aka non-Tesla) whose back seat isn't cramped, I'd recommend the Kia Niro. Its front and trunk are pretty similar in size to the Kona, but its rear seat is much larger. Hyundai and Kia have a manufacturing partnership, so their vehicle lines are pretty similar.
CR also rated Model 3 as having the highest owner satisfaction of any car on the market.
As for the "reliability", when CR's methodology was challenged on their Reddit AMA, the CR guy responded, "Appreciate the feedback. Let me see what we can do. Breaking up the stuff that makes you break down on the side of the road is certainly more severe." CR themselves explicitly stated that the drivetrain was reliable; they marked the car down for paint and trim, with no attempt to control for the obvious bias that the more FUD there is against a vehicle, the more intensely buyers will examine their vehicle - and most new vehicles have some paint defects (which is why the first step of applying PPF is paint correction - it's just that most owners never notice it until the detailer points it out).
Slashdot Mirror
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=39836&id=40585
Model 3 MPGe: 123
Kona: 108
123 / 108 = 14% difference... on top of the fact that Kona is also a smaller vehicle (if you disagree, you've clearly either never been inside a Model 3, been inside a Kona, or both; Kona's rear seat in particular is tiny). Leaf is closer, though still smaller in most internal passenger space measurements. It gets 97 MPGe highway, aka 27% more energy than the Model 3.
I'll repeat: Aerodynamics is done for a reason. It makes a big difference in range, charge times, and cycle life.
(Oh, and a note for the above: The average speed for said "highway" cycle is only about 55mph; the faster you go, the more streamlining matters)
That's what gutters are for, as you'll find in every single car which has that form of hatch (which are numerous).
Which is why tapered vehicles are generally longer.
If you want a "city car" that never goes at highway speeds, but length is a critical factor, then sure, have a truncated rear end. But if you want an EV that's suitable for road trips, you want taper.
It's not "built" anywhere. Rivian is a startup.
Building a cost-effective mass production system is a hundred times more difficult than building a prototype or two and making some sleek marketing videos. Only one startup has succeeded at it in the US since Chrysler in 1925, and that's Tesla. Many have tried. All but one have failed.
To be fair, Model Y isn't in mass production yet either. But it's certainly closer, not simply due to how many people have been working on it for how long, but in particular because it shares 76% of its hardware with the Model 3, which is already in mass production.
Ditching that would mean about 25% less highway range, 25% longer charge times on road trips, and 80% the battery lifespan. Not worth the tradeoff.
It is a hatchback. Including a power liftgate.
Yes, they do, despite your disbelief. Around 50% of all vehicle sales are now electric in Norway. Model X is one of the more popular models.
Your refusal to believe something doesn't make it not real.
The guidance for Q1 was previously "We're not sure if we can turn a profit in Q1". This was not a major revision. It's due to a lot of one-time charges - for example, severance costs, the start of international shipping (which leaves you with more inventory in transit), etc.
The base model cost $38k to produce in December. They've now trimmed 7% of the workforce (plus more when they close the lower-traffic stores and convert the others to galleries, which should roughly halve their SG&A - although that's not a GM issue), They've had another quarter of general margin improvements. Production rates are much faster, which means lower depreciation per vehicle. Raw material costs are down (check out battery grade cobalt oxide, nickel sulfate, and lithium carbonate price trends). Etc, etc. You don't have to take Musk's word in the reporter call (where he repeatedly used past tense when talking about achieving profitability on the $35k car), it's pretty obvious that they have a positive gross margin on it. The question is how high.
Of course, almost nobody will choose the base model, which is being backed up by anecdotal reports from the stores. Even someone who's on a really tight budget would be IMHO hard pressed to not splurge on at least the SR+ for $2k more, to get an extra 20 miles and partial-premium interior. The discounts on the higher-end versions appears to have seriously boosted them as well. There appears to be about a 30-40% take rate on the base autopilot (plus a small take rate on FSD), and that's pure margin. Paint colours are margin, wheel choices, interior options, etc. It's looking like an ASP somewhere around $45k.
Welcome to Slashdot, where mountainous, arctic Norway is treated as a tropical paradise, if that's what you need to make an argument against Tesla.
More to the point, IMHO, they had to unveil it before they unveiled the Model Y (which Musk stated nearly a year ago would be unveiled around 15 March). Otherwise, they'd have no credibility when discussing the price point for the Model Y. On the other hand, they very much don't want to delay the Model Y, as SUVs/CUVs are more popular in the US than sedans.
All that said: the $35k Model 3's unveiling clearly had been planned well in advance. You don't spontaneously generate new vehicle models, new interiors, new websites, and new government approvals, out of thin air; these things take a long time.
What about Solar City? Did Solar City have a cash pile of billions of dollars and no looming major debt payments?
BTW, I never cared about Solar City (their business model was fundamentally based on the concept of solar panels being expensive, which is sort of an anti-cleantech-advancements play). Not that you care, of course. I do like the solar roof idea a lot, however. But obviously vehicles get first dibs on investment money, since they're higher margin.
One of the largest markets for the Model X is Norway. Is your weather worse than Norway's?
I'm everywhere.
I'm everyone.
I'm you yourself.
The matrix is real.
Where in the warranty does it say that? Under "Warranty limitations", "Towing the vehicle" is an exclusion, but not "Towing with the vehicle".
Model X is very popular for towing, and frequently fitted out with a roof rack. No, it's not good for offroading - but neither are most SUVs today. It has by far the largest interior space of any of the EVs today calling themselves "SUVs", and in the mid-to-upper range of the interior space of SUVs in general.
Yes, companies with billions of dollars of cash on hand and expanding much faster than even Amazon did into a market that most people consider to be the future of transportation and energy storage should totally declare bankruptcy. That makes a ton of sense; I don't know why we didn't think of it before!
They're only quoting US figures, even though the vast majority of what Tesla has been producing this quarter is going to China and RHD W. Europe + Scandinavia, with around a dozen RO-RO ships sent so far.
They also of course picked the low estimate for US February figures (InsideEVs), rather than AlphaHat or Edmunds, and then rounded it down.
They also neglected to mention that January and February are strong annual seasonal low months for Tesla in the US, being in the lowest-volume quarter and with respect to the fact that there's generally a quarterly cycle, with the most US sales in the third month of the quarter.
They also forgot to mention that Tesla started the quarter with $3,7 billion dollars in cash.
But apart from that... DOOOOOOOOM!!!!!
The woman who drove into the parked fire truck at highway speeds did not die, she had only a broken ankle - which is a remarkable testament to how safe the vehicle is built.
No. That's Level 4. Level 3 by and large drives on its own, but can require the driver to take over at a moment's notice. Level 4 can encounter situations where it doesn't know how to handle them, but can safely get out of them without driver intervention. Level 5 never encounters situations that it doesn't know how to handle.
You cannot "read a book or watch a movie while it drives" in a Level 3 system. Quote: "Able to detect the environment around them, level 3 vehicles contain the lowest-tier system that is classified as an automated driving system as opposed to a manual system. With this more advanced technology, level 3 vehicles can make informed decisions for themselves such as overtaking slower moving vehicles. However, unlike the higher rated autonomous vehicles, human override is required when the machine is unable to execute the task at hand or the system fails."
EAP is a Level 3 system, and has been since NoA was released. Tesla states that it expects to be to level 4 (not 5) by the end of the year.
No. $35k before gas savings and credits. For a US buyer the MSRP minus credits is at most $31250, and depending on state credits, as little as $26250 (Colorado has the best state credits in the US). Then there's gas savings on top of that.
See for yourself. "LOL".
All of you people who've been shouting for the past year, "Tesla will never release a $35k MSRP Model 3!", take a lesson in humility from this.
How many times are you going to ask me to say "Yes" to something Tesla never promised? And furthermore, I love how you've switched to this from "Tesla will never deliver a $35k Model 3" ;)
Given that they've explicitly stated that what's targeted to be released by the end of the year is level 4 (aka, requires a human driver), only to transition to level 5 when regulators approve at a later date, you're asking me to say "Yes, Tesla is going to deliver something that they didn't state they were going to deliver".
Why not just insist that I answer "Yes" to "Tesla is going to deliver Model 3s made of solid gold and reintroduce the Passenger Pigeon by next week"?
It's not known if the person in the first link was on AP. It's at least possible that they were, unlike the latter case. The person in the second case almost certainly wasn't (they were estimated to be driving 70-90 mph on a city street; AP can only be set to 5mph over the speed limit on city streets).
I'd also like to know what car you think can plow through three palm trees in a row and have the occupant be just fine.
As far as I and anyone else I've talked have been able to ascertain, the first case appears to be the first case ever of someone dying in a Model 3. And it took being split in half by a semi to do it. Guess what? For the foreseeable future, people will continue to die in car accidents. What matters is the rate per unit distance driven.
The only thing I'm mad about in the first case is the fact that the US inexplicably does not require side crash guards on semi trailers like we've have in Europe since the 1980s.
Having fun twisting my words? "Internal builds that handle city driving" != "internal builds are ready for mass deployment". Because if they were... they'd already be deployed, and not be merely internal builds. Obviously. That said, at the rate they've been advancing, deployment with in a year? Yeah, I have no issue with that. Especially since customer cars aka, running on older builds are already doing requisite detections in shadow mode.
You disagree. Feel free to.
The silly part is this:
1) They're describing AP/EAP as a level 1-2 system. It's actually a level 3 system with Navigate on Autopilot (e.g. makes lane changes, takes exits, etc).
2) They're describing what's presently available, which is not FSD, as if that's what's being offered as FSD. Which is just ridiculous. What's currently being offered is AP/EAP, not FSD. Heck, they don't even run on the same computer. AP/EAP is HW2, FSD is HW3 (HW2 = GPU, HW3 = custom neural net chip, about 20x faster).
3) What was targeted for the end of this year has been clearly described, both by Musk in interviews, and in the description of the product: that the car can drive in all situations on its own, but you still need a human monitoring it (aka, level 4 autonomy), with an intent to eliminate the driver requirement as soon as is allowed thereafter (level 5 autonomy). The monitoring requirements will remain until regulators are satisfied that its safety record exceeds that of humans. Musk stated that he expects this to require 10 billion or so miles of data.
4) This isn't coming out of the blue. Tesla's internal builds already handle city driving (including Musk himself). You don't have to take their word on it - customer cars are already doing detections required for city-driving in shadow mode (same, but at night here) (These aren't Tesla vids - they're from people hacking the AP system to see what data it's detecting and processing).
You know, it's really easy to attack someone when you render what they say into a straw man. "OMG, Musk is saying that a Level 1 system is FSD!"
I had issues with Tesla selling FSD a year ago, but then again, so did most people, which is why few bought it. Today? Not so much. They've made a lot of progress in the past year. I still think it's going to be a long time before Tesla's safety data is good enough to convince regulators to say, "Yeah, you don't need a human any more" (level 5). But with Navigate on Autopilot, and their clear progress on city driving, I have no issue with them stating that they expect to be level 4 by the end of the year.
Tesla has had positive gross margins for much of the past decade, and has been net profitable - despite reinvesting in an extremely rapid growth rate - for the past half year.
What market are you in? Kona Electric has been out in Europe for quite a while.
Name one. I've been in in both. It's not even close.
No, a SUV is a large vehicle built on a truck frame. A CUV is a vehicle have a SUV-like form factor, but of any size (large or small) and with unibody construction.
I'm warning you for your own good: if you're waiting for the Kona because you're expecting it to be some "SUV", you're going to be seriously disappointed. This is the back seat.. Here's the size of the vehicle compared to a person. That doesn't mean "don't get the car". As far as non-Tesla EVs go, there's nothing "wrong" with it. But it's not an "SUV". Keep your expectations in check.
(Model 3, by contrast, is much larger inside than most people expect, particularly in the front).
BTW: If you're looking for an EV like the Kona (aka non-Tesla) whose back seat isn't cramped, I'd recommend the Kia Niro. Its front and trunk are pretty similar in size to the Kona, but its rear seat is much larger. Hyundai and Kia have a manufacturing partnership, so their vehicle lines are pretty similar.
CR also rated Model 3 as having the highest owner satisfaction of any car on the market.
As for the "reliability", when CR's methodology was challenged on their Reddit AMA, the CR guy responded, "Appreciate the feedback. Let me see what we can do. Breaking up the stuff that makes you break down on the side of the road is certainly more severe." CR themselves explicitly stated that the drivetrain was reliable; they marked the car down for paint and trim, with no attempt to control for the obvious bias that the more FUD there is against a vehicle, the more intensely buyers will examine their vehicle - and most new vehicles have some paint defects (which is why the first step of applying PPF is paint correction - it's just that most owners never notice it until the detailer points it out).