preeetty sure nobody pre-ordered it with a disclaimer saying that "oh yeah we'll get around to making it once we can somehow make it for that price". come on.
The schedule was front and centre. Production of LRs was to begin first and follow an S curve starting at in July, peaking in December. Anyone logged into their account could see their particular estimated window for the LR version, which for early US reservation holders was somewhere along this curve. They could also see that if they chose the SR pack, it wouldn't be available until after LR production had peaked, in Q1.
Literally nothing has changed except for how long the LR rampup took. Maybe a slight stretch between LR peak and SR delivery, depending on how you interpret the delivery windows, but nothing meaningful. Yet once or twice a month we're treated to concern trolling about it, from people who have no interest in the Model 3 themselves. Just like we've been enduring this relentless concern trolling about the rampup. But now that the rampup has nearly completed, I guess we have to switch the concern trolling to something else. Tell me, after the SR is delivered, what's going to be the next topic to incessantly concern troll? Air suspension? The tow hitch? The Model Y?
People in the market for a Tesla want an EV that they can use as an actual car (incl. trips without excessive wait times), and which isn't a hair shirt, but rather something that's actually fun to drive.
Every. Bloody. Time. Whenever a Tesla crashes anywhere in the world, it's front page news. I mean, how ridiculous can you get? And while it's not impossible, it appears quite doubtful that AP was on. The driver was driving in a 35mph zone, but their speed "was great enough to leave the roadway, hit a fence, keep going down an embankment and into a pond on the property" AP would have limited his max speed to 40mph. Everyone always blames AP first, and then never comes back and corrects the dozens upon dozens "It must have been AP!" stories after the fact. Yes, AP has been involved in a few high profile crashes. That does not in any way, shape or form justify this breathless coverage of every single Tesla crash.
That's not me, but regardless, for some strange reason my Having A Positive Opinion About Tesla check has been late for several months in a row! Tesla must be bankwupt:(
Some are already close. The electric Hyundai IONIQ is less than $30,000 and if the range improves by 60 miles or so
Ioniq's EPA range is 124 miles. You're asking them to nearly double the Ioniq's range for pocket change.
Ioniq is also produced in very small volumes which Hyundai refuses to increase significantly - a good sign that the vehicle is a "compliance car".
Ioniq is also smaller, and much slower than Model 3.
There is already the 180+ mile range Renault Zoe available in Europe, and the new LEAF has around 170 miles.
Let's all say it together: stop confusing drivecycles. The Leaf's EPA range is 151 miles. The Zoe has no EPA rating, but given that it's WLTP range is only 5% more than the Leaf, expect around 159 miles. They're both slower vehicles (the Zoe *much* slower, even less HP than the Ioniq), but most importantly, they're both terrible at charging (the Ioniq is worse than the Model 3, but nothing compared to these two). Zoe only does "high power" AC charging, which is less common than DC charging, and only up to 43kW, vehicle-limited (Model 3 = up to 117kW from current superchargers, charger-limited - and a new gen of supercharger is coming out late this summer). Leaf is even worse: Nominally it can take up to 50kW, and in practice, at first, lower 40s. But the latest Leaf has been plagued with a problem called #RapidGate (google it). Basically, their lack of pack cooling finally caught up with them; you barely make it any distance on a trip before it throttles you back to half speed. And speaking of the lack of pack cooling, it means that Leafs suffer degradation faster than other EVs. And is it worth mentioning that the Zoe's interior quality is among the worst in modern EVs (arguably only beaten by the e-NV200) and has the least amount of cargo space?
There's a reason that half a million people flocked to the Model 3 and not the "competition", and yes, that's in quotes for a reason.
Wow, who knew that batteries cost the same between all manufacturers, regardless of how much capex they pour into getting production costs down?
And who knew that a 60kWh battery (Bolt) costs the same as a 50kWh battery (Model 3 SR)?
You learn something new every day!
Hint: just from a raw materials perspective alone, Tesla is already running at better than 8:1:1 NCA, aka less than 10% cobalt in the cathode metals, a goal that most manufacturers are working towards in their next gen batteries. But raw materials in turn are just a fraction of the cost of the cells; it's by and large about mass production, to get cell costs closer to raw materials costs (which are only around ~$60/kWh). Remind me, who else built a Gigafactory?
The reservations told you exactly what you were getting for what price and with a timeline that showed SR not being made until LR was being made in volume. there is nobody with an order who didn't know A) that $35k is for the SR pack, and B) the LR pack was going into production first.
I'm waiting for a SR Model 3. And I don't find this timeline bad in the least. And if you ask over at any of the Tesla forums, you'll find the same thing. SR was never supposed to be an early option. The whole vehicle is behind schedule, so why shouldn't the SR pack be as well? Particularly given that it was - until recently - the battery line holding production back.
Regardless, Beau and I apparently have a very different definition of "long way off". For people who've been waiting for this vehicle, an accelerated schedule (yes, accelerated) of 3-6 months from hitting 5k is a breath of fresh air; I think most people were expecting it to be further in the future than that. Before this, it was looking like SR would come out somewhere in Q1; now it looks like mid Q3 to mid Q4, possibly late Q4. For reference, going from the leaks, Giga is over 5k packs per week and Fremont around 4,2k vehicles per week, with a downtime starting later this week to upgrade Fremont to 5-6k.
Of course, as always people who have no interest in a Model 3 will concern troll this. Spare us.
Musk confirmed just the other night that Model 3 SR will be released 3-6 months after they hit 5k/wk. Which they're just about to do. Giga is reportedly over 5k/wk already. Fremont, just over 4k. Fremont is going down at the end of the month for upgrades to bring them over 5k (with the target of 6k).
They actually moved up the SR delivery timeline recently.
Tesla will make a margin on SR, but it'll - like all cars - be much less than on well optioned out cars. Right now, they need all the money they can get. No duh they're going to deliver the higher-optioned cars first. Furthermore, until recently it was the battery pack supply that was holding them back. Disrupting the already limited line, to add capacity for a lower margin pack, would have been stupid.
All of this storm-in-a-teacup doesn't affect most people anyway. For the vast majority of reservation holders, all major options will be out by the time their number comes up.
1) No, you don't have to plug your car in every night unless you're driving hundreds of miles per day. Most people *choose to*, but that's an entirely different story.
2) (10 hours/yr * 60 minutes/hour) / 365,24 days/year = 1,6 minutes to plug in and unplug? Way too long. Try 10 seconds to plug in and 10 seconds to unplug. 2 hours per year.
3) The average American drives ~13476 miles per year and the average US passenger vehicle is 24,7mpg; that's 546 gallons per year. Let's guess an average tank size of 18 gallon, with the average person filling up at a third of a tank, or 12 gallons per fillup. That's 45 1/2 fillups on average per year. I've timed a "rush" fillup, from "when you leave the road" to "when you get back on it": the shortest possible detour to the station, not out of way on my trip, small tank car, driving fast, stopping fast, zero line, paying at the same time I remove the gas cap, etc. From "off the road" to "back on it" it was 3 minutes. The average fill is probably at least 5 minutes. 4 hours per year.
4) An EV is charged in the comfort of your garage. The gasoline car requires randomly diverting from your daily routine and standing outside in whatever weather on a dirty concrete platform to pump carcinogens.
5)You have to really struggle to strand yourself with a Tesla in a country which has a supercharger network. Your gasoline car doesn't try to keep you from doing something that will get you stranded. It has precisely one safety: the gas light. Which is entirely context insensitive to your location. Teslas know all charger locations in their network, calculate which ones you can reach, calculate if you need to stop at one and warn you, start repeatedly cutting your power to extend your range as you get near the bottom, etc. A gasoline car does none of this. Is it even worth mentioning that you can literally charge at any plug, no matter how remote? Or that you start every day with a full (as full as you choose) charge, so it's essentially impossible to run out in your normal daily life?
We've done polls on the Tesla forums, asking people whether they've ever run out of charge (and if so how often), and comparing that to how much distance they drive - and then comparing that to statistics of how often people run out of gas. The latter is much more common.
6) I have no clue what you mean by your "wait 15 minutes" comment. If you're talking about overnight charging, it's a lot more than 15 minutes to fill up, but it's entirely irrelevant because it's while you're sleeping. If you're talking about superchargers, if you're not stopping for 15 minutes at regular intervals on long trips, please burn your license right now for the safety of everyone around you.
7) You do not "pay a premium for all this". Model 3 - without subsidy - beats its class competitors (BMW 3-series, Audi A4, Mercedes C350, etc) in almost all stats. Ignoring the energy cost savings, which for US drivers averages about $1k per year, European drivers about $2k a year, and where I am, about $3k per year.
8) You can't figure out why people would want low operating costs, a full "tank" every day, no standing around at gas stations, superb performance, silence, clean operation, the ability to preheat / precool the vehicle on grid power, etc, etc? Try harder.
Right. One should totally ignore a company's response to news about said company. That's surely the proper way to be informed about the topic. A fix for the issue coming out in a couple days? Who needs to know about that? Best we all just plug our ears and collectively chant, "LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!".
Also, my Tesla Paid Troll Check is late in the mail again. Any clue why that might be? Company must be going bankwupt.:(
My humblest apologies for reading about - and conveying information about - a topic that I find interesting. I shall chop off my fingers and never post again due to my insolence of A) staying informed and B) writing on-topic posts.
1) Updates are not "surprises". You you choose when to install them. 2) Why would an OTA update be any less likely to work than one that you took the car into the dealership to get?
There was more information after I went to bed (see above). It's #1 - an ABS calibration issue on the vehicles CR had (which appear to be early model vehicles - which also explains the wind noise and stiff suspension, which were fixed in later build vehicles). Tesla already has a fix ready, and plans to start rolling it out in a few days.
Slashdot Mirror
To repeat: this is being pushed further up the queue, not back, despite how Beau presented it in this Slashdot summary.
And tell me, where do you go to find the opinions of Tesla buyers?
The schedule was front and centre. Production of LRs was to begin first and follow an S curve starting at in July, peaking in December. Anyone logged into their account could see their particular estimated window for the LR version, which for early US reservation holders was somewhere along this curve. They could also see that if they chose the SR pack, it wouldn't be available until after LR production had peaked, in Q1.
Literally nothing has changed except for how long the LR rampup took. Maybe a slight stretch between LR peak and SR delivery, depending on how you interpret the delivery windows, but nothing meaningful. Yet once or twice a month we're treated to concern trolling about it, from people who have no interest in the Model 3 themselves. Just like we've been enduring this relentless concern trolling about the rampup. But now that the rampup has nearly completed, I guess we have to switch the concern trolling to something else. Tell me, after the SR is delivered, what's going to be the next topic to incessantly concern troll? Air suspension? The tow hitch? The Model Y?
Mine too. Doesn't even need to be that intensive.
Heck, just point me to the Corolla that can out-accelerate a 3-series ;)
People in the market for a Tesla want an EV that they can use as an actual car (incl. trips without excessive wait times), and which isn't a hair shirt, but rather something that's actually fun to drive.
Every. Bloody. Time. Whenever a Tesla crashes anywhere in the world, it's front page news. I mean, how ridiculous can you get? And while it's not impossible, it appears quite doubtful that AP was on. The driver was driving in a 35mph zone, but their speed "was great enough to leave the roadway, hit a fence, keep going down an embankment and into a pond on the property" AP would have limited his max speed to 40mph. Everyone always blames AP first, and then never comes back and corrects the dozens upon dozens "It must have been AP!" stories after the fact. Yes, AP has been involved in a few high profile crashes. That does not in any way, shape or form justify this breathless coverage of every single Tesla crash.
That's not me, but regardless, for some strange reason my Having A Positive Opinion About Tesla check has been late for several months in a row! Tesla must be bankwupt :(
Ioniq's EPA range is 124 miles. You're asking them to nearly double the Ioniq's range for pocket change.
Ioniq is also produced in very small volumes which Hyundai refuses to increase significantly - a good sign that the vehicle is a "compliance car".
Ioniq is also smaller, and much slower than Model 3.
Let's all say it together: stop confusing drivecycles. The Leaf's EPA range is 151 miles. The Zoe has no EPA rating, but given that it's WLTP range is only 5% more than the Leaf, expect around 159 miles. They're both slower vehicles (the Zoe *much* slower, even less HP than the Ioniq), but most importantly, they're both terrible at charging (the Ioniq is worse than the Model 3, but nothing compared to these two). Zoe only does "high power" AC charging, which is less common than DC charging, and only up to 43kW, vehicle-limited (Model 3 = up to 117kW from current superchargers, charger-limited - and a new gen of supercharger is coming out late this summer). Leaf is even worse: Nominally it can take up to 50kW, and in practice, at first, lower 40s. But the latest Leaf has been plagued with a problem called #RapidGate (google it). Basically, their lack of pack cooling finally caught up with them; you barely make it any distance on a trip before it throttles you back to half speed. And speaking of the lack of pack cooling, it means that Leafs suffer degradation faster than other EVs. And is it worth mentioning that the Zoe's interior quality is among the worst in modern EVs (arguably only beaten by the e-NV200) and has the least amount of cargo space?
There's a reason that half a million people flocked to the Model 3 and not the "competition", and yes, that's in quotes for a reason.
Wow, who knew that batteries cost the same between all manufacturers, regardless of how much capex they pour into getting production costs down?
And who knew that a 60kWh battery (Bolt) costs the same as a 50kWh battery (Model 3 SR)?
You learn something new every day!
Hint: just from a raw materials perspective alone, Tesla is already running at better than 8:1:1 NCA, aka less than 10% cobalt in the cathode metals, a goal that most manufacturers are working towards in their next gen batteries. But raw materials in turn are just a fraction of the cost of the cells; it's by and large about mass production, to get cell costs closer to raw materials costs (which are only around ~$60/kWh). Remind me, who else built a Gigafactory?
Yeah, the timing on RHD sucks, I feel bad for you. Q3 next year, right? Bottom of the priority list :(
The reservations told you exactly what you were getting for what price and with a timeline that showed SR not being made until LR was being made in volume. there is nobody with an order who didn't know A) that $35k is for the SR pack, and B) the LR pack was going into production first.
I'm waiting for a SR Model 3. And I don't find this timeline bad in the least. And if you ask over at any of the Tesla forums, you'll find the same thing. SR was never supposed to be an early option. The whole vehicle is behind schedule, so why shouldn't the SR pack be as well? Particularly given that it was - until recently - the battery line holding production back.
Regardless, Beau and I apparently have a very different definition of "long way off". For people who've been waiting for this vehicle, an accelerated schedule (yes, accelerated) of 3-6 months from hitting 5k is a breath of fresh air; I think most people were expecting it to be further in the future than that. Before this, it was looking like SR would come out somewhere in Q1; now it looks like mid Q3 to mid Q4, possibly late Q4. For reference, going from the leaks, Giga is over 5k packs per week and Fremont around 4,2k vehicles per week, with a downtime starting later this week to upgrade Fremont to 5-6k.
Of course, as always people who have no interest in a Model 3 will concern troll this. Spare us.
I'd call an hour drive a short road trip. Certainly not an everyday drive.
I assume you saw the followup, but in case you didn't: it turned out to be ABS calibration. They'll be rolling out a fix in a couple days.
Or are you talking about electric heat assist rather than block heaters?
You're still heating a big block of metal.
Musk confirmed just the other night that Model 3 SR will be released 3-6 months after they hit 5k/wk. Which they're just about to do. Giga is reportedly over 5k/wk already. Fremont, just over 4k. Fremont is going down at the end of the month for upgrades to bring them over 5k (with the target of 6k).
They actually moved up the SR delivery timeline recently.
Tesla will make a margin on SR, but it'll - like all cars - be much less than on well optioned out cars. Right now, they need all the money they can get. No duh they're going to deliver the higher-optioned cars first. Furthermore, until recently it was the battery pack supply that was holding them back. Disrupting the already limited line, to add capacity for a lower margin pack, would have been stupid.
All of this storm-in-a-teacup doesn't affect most people anyway. For the vast majority of reservation holders, all major options will be out by the time their number comes up.
1) No, you don't have to plug your car in every night unless you're driving hundreds of miles per day. Most people *choose to*, but that's an entirely different story.
2) (10 hours/yr * 60 minutes/hour) / 365,24 days/year = 1,6 minutes to plug in and unplug? Way too long. Try 10 seconds to plug in and 10 seconds to unplug. 2 hours per year.
3) The average American drives ~13476 miles per year and the average US passenger vehicle is 24,7mpg; that's 546 gallons per year. Let's guess an average tank size of 18 gallon, with the average person filling up at a third of a tank, or 12 gallons per fillup. That's 45 1/2 fillups on average per year. I've timed a "rush" fillup, from "when you leave the road" to "when you get back on it": the shortest possible detour to the station, not out of way on my trip, small tank car, driving fast, stopping fast, zero line, paying at the same time I remove the gas cap, etc. From "off the road" to "back on it" it was 3 minutes. The average fill is probably at least 5 minutes. 4 hours per year.
4) An EV is charged in the comfort of your garage. The gasoline car requires randomly diverting from your daily routine and standing outside in whatever weather on a dirty concrete platform to pump carcinogens.
5)You have to really struggle to strand yourself with a Tesla in a country which has a supercharger network. Your gasoline car doesn't try to keep you from doing something that will get you stranded. It has precisely one safety: the gas light. Which is entirely context insensitive to your location. Teslas know all charger locations in their network, calculate which ones you can reach, calculate if you need to stop at one and warn you, start repeatedly cutting your power to extend your range as you get near the bottom, etc. A gasoline car does none of this. Is it even worth mentioning that you can literally charge at any plug, no matter how remote? Or that you start every day with a full (as full as you choose) charge, so it's essentially impossible to run out in your normal daily life?
We've done polls on the Tesla forums, asking people whether they've ever run out of charge (and if so how often), and comparing that to how much distance they drive - and then comparing that to statistics of how often people run out of gas. The latter is much more common.
6) I have no clue what you mean by your "wait 15 minutes" comment. If you're talking about overnight charging, it's a lot more than 15 minutes to fill up, but it's entirely irrelevant because it's while you're sleeping. If you're talking about superchargers, if you're not stopping for 15 minutes at regular intervals on long trips, please burn your license right now for the safety of everyone around you.
7) You do not "pay a premium for all this". Model 3 - without subsidy - beats its class competitors (BMW 3-series, Audi A4, Mercedes C350, etc) in almost all stats. Ignoring the energy cost savings, which for US drivers averages about $1k per year, European drivers about $2k a year, and where I am, about $3k per year.
8) You can't figure out why people would want low operating costs, a full "tank" every day, no standing around at gas stations, superb performance, silence, clean operation, the ability to preheat / precool the vehicle on grid power, etc, etc? Try harder.
Claims, meet facts.
No specification of what was meant by "turn things on/off", despite a very specific request to drop the vaguery. Fail.
Name an operation, or you're just concern trolling.
Right. One should totally ignore a company's response to news about said company. That's surely the proper way to be informed about the topic. A fix for the issue coming out in a couple days? Who needs to know about that? Best we all just plug our ears and collectively chant, "LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!".
Also, my Tesla Paid Troll Check is late in the mail again. Any clue why that might be? Company must be going bankwupt. :(
They serve the utility they're designed for: non-road-trip transportation.
When used, they do so very cheaply.
My humblest apologies for reading about - and conveying information about - a topic that I find interesting. I shall chop off my fingers and never post again due to my insolence of A) staying informed and B) writing on-topic posts.
1) Updates are not "surprises". You you choose when to install them.
2) Why would an OTA update be any less likely to work than one that you took the car into the dealership to get?
There was more information after I went to bed (see above). It's #1 - an ABS calibration issue on the vehicles CR had (which appear to be early model vehicles - which also explains the wind noise and stiff suspension, which were fixed in later build vehicles). Tesla already has a fix ready, and plans to start rolling it out in a few days.