You don't get to have it both ways. If you want to count all investments, then others are investing much more than Tesla.
Except that they're not. I'm sorry, but you don't get to just make up facts. In Q2 alone Tesla took in $2,8B, spent all of it, and 404M in debt, and did a $1,8B capital raise. In one quarter. Mercedes promising to spend a backloaded 10B over eight years is a pittiance. Period. It's missing a zero.
Who said anything about the US? Your original claim was that Tesla was "the company with both of the top slots on EV sales",
Are you blind? Do I need to repeat it again? Will boldface help? "Tesla has both of the top slots in the US - and is still high ranked in Europe -"
If you're going to be this intellectually dishonest, this conversation ends here. Goodbye.
Yet it is the amount you claimed necessary in your previous post.
Wrong. 10 billion per year would not be a pittiance. Over 8 years is nothing. Especially considering that they're most likely considering it backloaded.
If you disagree, you are more than welcome to argue why at the next shareholder meeting.
Oh, I'm sorry, I was under the impression that this was a conversation about how serious manufacturers are about EVs, not an attempt to convince a given manufacture to take EVs seriously. My bad.
Tesla does not [ycharts.com] pump many billions per year into EVs. Others, however, are.
Wrong on both counts. A) R&D != total investment; and B) others don't.
100% of the money Tesla spends (excepting powerwall/powerpack/solar city, which are at present a vanishingly small percentage of their business) is toward EVs. And at present, that's an order of magnitude more than the (backloaded) amount Mercedes is claiming.
Not true [blogspot.com], unless you are willing to claim that the Nissan Leaf is a Tesla product.
Funny, I didn't know that "The US" is now "The World". Did I miss a war?
I'll repeat what I wrote: Tesla has both of the top slots in the US - and is still high ranked in Europe - despite being in a vastly smaller market segment. A market segment 1 1/2 orders of magnitude smaller than that in which its cheaper competitors are competing in. Which is why reservations for the Model 3 are 1 1/2 orders magnitude larger.
USD 1000 refundable deposits for a product that is strongly hyped and will be in short supply because it is made by a company that does not know anything about mass production and keeps making empty promises. Let's not read too much in that.
1) Model 3 is most definitely Not strongly hyped. Tesla has an active strategy to anti-sell it, because they want to instead convert people to Model S / X sales, which they can get profit on immediately. The Tesla website is packed full of pages trying to convince people to buy an S or X over a 3 - even on the reservation pages for Model 3.
2) Tesla deposits (as with most car deposits) have long strongly tracked with actual sales.
3) Quite to the contrary, Tesla has always fulfilled its promises - with the Roadster, with the S, and with the X. And yes, I don't plan on forgetting the flood of naysayers who - almost exactly as you are doing now - insisted that they're vapourware, will never be delivered, nobody will buy them, Tesla will crash and burn, etc.
Go create a new version of TTAC's "Tesla Deathwatch", why don't you;)
... none of which Tesla is doing. Batteries are made at the Gigafactory (joint venture between Tesla and Panasonic), motors are fully Tesla, and so are the an unusualy high percentage of the parts in the vehicle. Tesla is notable among automakers for having a greater degree of vertical integration than most. Honestly, if I were Panasonic, I'd be expecting to be stabbed in the back at some point over the next few years.
1) "Do you think the future is electric?" 2) "Do you think that going electric requires huge capital investments in tech and production and tends to yield a strong early-comer benefit, rather than being a bandwagon than you can just hop on board with a billion or so dollars at any point in time and still expect to make competitively-priced, profitable vehicles?"
IF 1 AND 2: Tesla bull. IF NOT (1 AND 2): Tesla bear.
Most of its businesses are built around a common core (battery manufacture), which benefits by economies of scale. The larger they scale, the cheaper all their products get, and the more difficult it becomes for their competitors (lacking as great of a degree of scale) to price their products competitively. They also share common engineering between their product lines - the same sort of battery architecture in Teslas goes into Powerwalls goes into Powerpacks. The same sort of inverter technology in Teslas goes into Powerwalls goes into Powerpacks. The specific details vary, but there's a huge degree of commonality.
I'm wanting to know what sort of idiot people who make these arguments believes exists - what sort of congenital moron sees "Subsidies will be expiring in 6 months!" ".... in 5 months!" "... 4 months!" "... 3... 2... 1.... Okay, subsidies just expired!" And then decides "Now sounds like a perfect time to buy an electric car!"
Anyone who had any thoughts at all of buying an electric car purchased it before subsidies expired. Nobody was wavering back and forth while watching a ticking clock, and then made a decision only right after it expired. The only people who are going to be buying in the immediate aftermath are impulse buyers.
Yes, totally a scam. Please short Tesla with your life's savings today and make a fortune;)
Meanwhile, Musk outright stated that they pick aggressive targets because they know at least some supplier will fail to miss deadlines, and they want to have a way to hold them accountable. The Model 3 deadline was significantly moved ahead of the original plan after so many people made reservations. A month behind because of a couple parts in short supply during a rampup is pretty insignificant.
Tesla was late with the Roadster and had a slow rampup. (*Cue the doomsayers!*).... then they ramped up and hit their production target, and everyone who ordered a Roadster got one.
Tesla was late with the Model S and had a somewhat slow rampup. (*Cue the doomsayers!*).... then they ramped up and hit their production target, and everyone who ordered a Model S got one (and continues to).
Tesla was late with the Model X and had a very slow rampup. (*Cue the doomsayers!*).... then they ramped up and hit their production target, and everyone who ordered a Model X got one (and continues to).
Tesla was moved the Model 3 launch date up significantly, and actually launched on time, but at present is one month late with the rampup. (*Cue the doomsayers!*)
This is pretty insignificant, for a number of reasons, and is the reason why TSLA isn't plunging today (as of time of writing, the pre-market has it down less than 2%, and I bet it'll close similar to or higher than it started, because there's a lot of bulls looking to buy on weakness). Mainly, though, everyone already knew this. Anyone who cares, at least. The vin number count has been low this past month. Articles had already discussed first a problem with welds that they had to go back and correct, and then later a problem with grounding bolts that they had to go back and correct. Normal production ramp stuff. The Q3 report mentions a couple parts in limiting supply as well, which again, while news, is normal production ramp stuff. Meanwhile, every other part will continue its rampup while the whips are cracked on that which are in short supply.
With most companies, there's not much public attention on rampup issues on new vehicle architectures; only investors generally care about it. Most companies also don't begin sales until rampup is already well underway. But obviously, Tesla is a different story. Overall, unless there's a serious design flaw or other issue with the parts that are in short supply or their production lines that mean it'll take many months to catch up, there's not much to this. For most people waiting for a Model 3, how many lines Tesla ultimately decides to open matters a lot more than how long it takes them to get the first line running right. Also, they're just making one specific configuration right now (LR, with PUP, without dual motor/air suspension). The rate at which the other configurations mature and their config-specific parts go into production also constrains most customers a lot more than this.
Cobalt is not "100% carcinogenic". First off, "100% carcinogenic" isn't even a meaningful term. Secondly, cobalt is an essential nutrient in small quantities; the "cobal-" in "cobalamin" (aka, vitamin B12) is cobalt. In higher quantities it's poisonous, although not to the extent of normal "toxic" metals like cadmium and lead; in particular, cobalt is mostly inert when not as a dust or soluble salt. And if it's carcinogenic at all, it's at a level that's so low that it's tough to make out among the effects of other metals. Nor is "toxicity" a reason for avoiding cobalt-alloy drill bits (stainless steel is much worse due to its chromium content). Nor have cobalt-alloy drill bits "gone away"; google them, you can get them all over the bloody place.
And you're also wrong about tungsten. It is indeed toxic, but not as much as DU.
In Florida with Irma, 2/3rds of the entire state's power went out. Let alone in the worst hit areas.
And EVs continued working like a dream there, for the reasons mentioned in the article.
Hike into town, find a working gas station with a generator for the pumps
Yeah, good luck with that when you join us in the real world.
Meanwhile, find any home or business with power from any source - somewhere that maintained their grid connection, somewhere with a natural gas generator, somewhere with solar, whatever - and you can charge. Not like you generally need to. Unlike gas, which has terrible efficiency when driving in the sort of low speed / stop-start conditions of disaster aftermath, EV ranges become much longer at low speeds, surpassing gasoline. And can "idle" with the AC on for 1/2 to 1 order of magnitude longer.
The article presents peoples' real-world experience with EVs in real-world disasters. Including one that was the greatest electrical system disaster in US history. You're free to disbelieve it if you want.
I do give GM credit for one thing, they've certainly been putting more of an effort forth than a lot of their competitors, even if not as much as an actual electric car company like Tesla.
EV conversions are generally lousy. In an EV, batteries should be down low, making up the floor, not crammed into wherever you could find space by removing the ICE and/or giving up trunk space / seat space / etc. The motor should be inline with the wheels, not in in some old ICE space and connected by an unnecessary linkage. The shape of the front should be dictated by aerodynamics and safety alone, not by the constraints of a nonexistent ICE. Etc, etc, etc.
EVs should be designed, from the start, as EVs. You get a worse car when you make it as a conversion. Worse handling, worse range, worse performance, just worse. When you see a company selling a conversion EV, it should scream at you, "I Do Not Believe EVs Are The Future; Otherwise I Would Be Investing In A Proper EV Platform".
...which is why it is only a small part of the € 10 billion [businessinsider.com] Daimler is investing in electric cars over the next eight years.
10 billion over 8 years = a pittiance.
Renault-Nissan may be the market leader, but they are not dominating the market.
I was very obviously talking about Tesla. The only company pumping many billions per year into EVs, and the company with both of the top slots on EV sales despite being priced out of the vast majority of EV consumers' budgets, in a normally tiny market segment, where they're even beating their ICE competition.
The US may be diferent (cars in general are comically cheap over there and American car buyers have very different wishes), but in general, Tesla is only succesful in markets where expensive EVs are taxed favourably and even in those countries Renault-Nissan and VW often sell more electric cars than Tesla.
False. The US incentive - being a fixed value - is more favourable to low-end EVs, versus countries where incentives are percentage based (such as VAT deductions).
And to reiterate: Tesla has both of the top slots in the US - and is still high ranked in Europe - despite being in a vastly smaller market segment. A market segment 1 1/2 orders of magnitude smaller than that in which its cheaper competitors are competing in. Which is why reservations for the Model 3 are 1 1/2 orders magnitude larger.
To put a bit of a point on it: Mercedes-Benz recently garnered a lot of positive press for an announcement that they're planning to invest $1B (over the course of an unspecified number of years) in electrifying a vehicle plant to make BEVs. That's great! An order of magnitude less than they actually need in order to stay competitive with Tesla's investments, but hey, good for them!
So far, there's one company actually pouring in the huge amounts of money to bring EV production to economic scales (and dominating each market class that they enter, even crushing their ICE competition in sales)... and then there's a bunch of others trying to catch up to where said company was years ago. Yeah, different companies try to have selling points in different regards - GM, for example, by having a moderate range on a BMW-priced (but econobox-styled) vehicle. But when your total sales are 1 1/2 orders of magnitude less than the year and a half line to get a different vehicle in the same price range, well, the market has spoken. And neither GM, nor anyone else, has put forward the capital needed to be able to present and market a vehicle to pose a real threat.
Here's a graph that I think is really telling. The size of the market for vehicles with an average selling price of nearly six figures is vastly smaller than that for vehicles with an average sale price in the ~$35-40k range - and the tax credits on the latter far more meaningful to their buyers. Yet both the Model S and Model X still outsell the Bolt and Leaf in the US.
Certainly said one company is. So far among the others it's just the usual talk and auto show showpieces. Funds invested in actually changing their business models lag far behind the huge sums actually required to do so.
"Major Automakers Pretend To Be Interested In Electric Vehicles At Auto Show" - totally haven't seen that one many times per year for the past decade. Auto shows are a giant displaycase for A) concept cars that will never see the light of day, B) vehicles that will be made only in the minimum number needed to be compliance cars, and C) vehicles that will be produced (also in small numbers) in a radically different form (for the worse) than actually presented.
If GM cared about selling the Bolt, they'd put any sort of real effort into advertising it. If GM cared about selling the Bolt, they'd be trying to ensure that you can actually drive places with it, with reasonable charge times and a complete network with multiple, well-monitored and maintained chargers at each well-spaced stop. If GM cared about selling the Bolt, they'd be putting as much effort into it in non-ZEV states as they do in ZEV states. If GM cared about selling the Bolt, they wouldn't make it as a BMW-priced car with a Fischer-Price interior.
Etc, etc, etc.
Perhaps there's some people with GM who thought that all you need to make an EV succeed is a semi-decent range figure at a midrange price. Sorry, but as with all vehicle purchases, there's many different aspects, and you can't just ignore half of them.
(To be fair to GM, the Model 3 has taken a lot of wind out of their sales. Having half a million people on a waiting list for a different vehicle means taking the vast majority of that half million out of your potential sales pool)
As written elsewhere: Puerto Rico was heavily damaged; it wasn't mowed to the ground. There still exist power plants and transmission lines (and more coming online - slowly - every day). What matters is stretching what you do have as far as you can.
Yes, there is. Puerto Rico was heavily damaged, but every last structure in the country was not leveled to the ground. And there's more coming back online - slowly - every day.
What is needed is to make the infrastructure that does exist stretch further. This is what batteries do.
That being said, if they were distributed *fully charged* to relief centers,
That's just not realistic. The amount of mass just doesn't justify the energy capacity for such a role. The thing you're describing is called a generator.
1) They recharge every day, providing day/night load shifting, both for power plants and transmission lines (aka, preventing daytime brownouts when demand exceeds capacity).
2) Loadshifting benefits every major source of power, not just solar (and, as mentioned, it benefits transmission lines as well)
3) They're about the size of a breaker box, but 125kg. Any competent electrician can wire one. They're all-in-one systems with the inverter included. You do not "disconnect them to charge", they're not designed to "carry" power around.
4) They're warrantied for 10 years. And they don't just die when the warranty expires. Nor are they "hazardous environmental waste"; it's lithium ion, not nickel-cadmium or lead-acid. The contents therein, particularly the cobalt in the cathodes, are high demand feedstocks.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that they're not. I'm sorry, but you don't get to just make up facts. In Q2 alone Tesla took in $2,8B, spent all of it, and 404M in debt, and did a $1,8B capital raise. In one quarter. Mercedes promising to spend a backloaded 10B over eight years is a pittiance. Period. It's missing a zero.
Are you blind? Do I need to repeat it again? Will boldface help? "Tesla has both of the top slots in the US - and is still high ranked in Europe -"
If you're going to be this intellectually dishonest, this conversation ends here. Goodbye.
Wrong. 10 billion per year would not be a pittiance. Over 8 years is nothing. Especially considering that they're most likely considering it backloaded.
Oh, I'm sorry, I was under the impression that this was a conversation about how serious manufacturers are about EVs, not an attempt to convince a given manufacture to take EVs seriously. My bad.
Wrong on both counts. A) R&D != total investment; and B) others don't.
100% of the money Tesla spends (excepting powerwall/powerpack/solar city, which are at present a vanishingly small percentage of their business) is toward EVs. And at present, that's an order of magnitude more than the (backloaded) amount Mercedes is claiming.
Funny, I didn't know that "The US" is now "The World". Did I miss a war?
I'll repeat what I wrote: Tesla has both of the top slots in the US - and is still high ranked in Europe - despite being in a vastly smaller market segment. A market segment 1 1/2 orders of magnitude smaller than that in which its cheaper competitors are competing in. Which is why reservations for the Model 3 are 1 1/2 orders magnitude larger.
1) Model 3 is most definitely Not strongly hyped. Tesla has an active strategy to anti-sell it, because they want to instead convert people to Model S / X sales, which they can get profit on immediately. The Tesla website is packed full of pages trying to convince people to buy an S or X over a 3 - even on the reservation pages for Model 3.
2) Tesla deposits (as with most car deposits) have long strongly tracked with actual sales.
3) Quite to the contrary, Tesla has always fulfilled its promises - with the Roadster, with the S, and with the X. And yes, I don't plan on forgetting the flood of naysayers who - almost exactly as you are doing now - insisted that they're vapourware, will never be delivered, nobody will buy them, Tesla will crash and burn, etc.
Go create a new version of TTAC's "Tesla Deathwatch", why don't you ;)
... none of which Tesla is doing. Batteries are made at the Gigafactory (joint venture between Tesla and Panasonic), motors are fully Tesla, and so are the an unusualy high percentage of the parts in the vehicle. Tesla is notable among automakers for having a greater degree of vertical integration than most. Honestly, if I were Panasonic, I'd be expecting to be stabbed in the back at some point over the next few years.
It really comes down to two questions:
1) "Do you think the future is electric?"
2) "Do you think that going electric requires huge capital investments in tech and production and tends to yield a strong early-comer benefit, rather than being a bandwagon than you can just hop on board with a billion or so dollars at any point in time and still expect to make competitively-priced, profitable vehicles?"
IF 1 AND 2: Tesla bull.
IF NOT (1 AND 2): Tesla bear.
Most of its businesses are built around a common core (battery manufacture), which benefits by economies of scale. The larger they scale, the cheaper all their products get, and the more difficult it becomes for their competitors (lacking as great of a degree of scale) to price their products competitively. They also share common engineering between their product lines - the same sort of battery architecture in Teslas goes into Powerwalls goes into Powerpacks. The same sort of inverter technology in Teslas goes into Powerwalls goes into Powerpacks. The specific details vary, but there's a huge degree of commonality.
I'm wanting to know what sort of idiot people who make these arguments believes exists - what sort of congenital moron sees "Subsidies will be expiring in 6 months!" ".... in 5 months!" "... 4 months!" "... 3... 2... 1.... Okay, subsidies just expired!" And then decides "Now sounds like a perfect time to buy an electric car!"
Anyone who had any thoughts at all of buying an electric car purchased it before subsidies expired. Nobody was wavering back and forth while watching a ticking clock, and then made a decision only right after it expired. The only people who are going to be buying in the immediate aftermath are impulse buyers.
Yes, totally a scam. Please short Tesla with your life's savings today and make a fortune ;)
Meanwhile, Musk outright stated that they pick aggressive targets because they know at least some supplier will fail to miss deadlines, and they want to have a way to hold them accountable. The Model 3 deadline was significantly moved ahead of the original plan after so many people made reservations. A month behind because of a couple parts in short supply during a rampup is pretty insignificant.
Except half a million waiting for a car with a 1 1/2 year waiting list - except for that, there's clearly no demand.
(Cue the "lots of people cancelled all at once" myth in 3, 2, 1....)
Marked funny, but so, so true.
In what world do you live in?
Tesla was late with the Roadster and had a slow rampup. (*Cue the doomsayers!*) .... then they ramped up and hit their production target, and everyone who ordered a Roadster got one.
Tesla was late with the Model S and had a somewhat slow rampup. (*Cue the doomsayers!*) .... then they ramped up and hit their production target, and everyone who ordered a Model S got one (and continues to).
Tesla was late with the Model X and had a very slow rampup. (*Cue the doomsayers!*) .... then they ramped up and hit their production target, and everyone who ordered a Model X got one (and continues to).
Tesla was moved the Model 3 launch date up significantly, and actually launched on time, but at present is one month late with the rampup. (*Cue the doomsayers!*)
This is pretty insignificant, for a number of reasons, and is the reason why TSLA isn't plunging today (as of time of writing, the pre-market has it down less than 2%, and I bet it'll close similar to or higher than it started, because there's a lot of bulls looking to buy on weakness). Mainly, though, everyone already knew this. Anyone who cares, at least. The vin number count has been low this past month. Articles had already discussed first a problem with welds that they had to go back and correct, and then later a problem with grounding bolts that they had to go back and correct. Normal production ramp stuff. The Q3 report mentions a couple parts in limiting supply as well, which again, while news, is normal production ramp stuff. Meanwhile, every other part will continue its rampup while the whips are cracked on that which are in short supply.
With most companies, there's not much public attention on rampup issues on new vehicle architectures; only investors generally care about it. Most companies also don't begin sales until rampup is already well underway. But obviously, Tesla is a different story. Overall, unless there's a serious design flaw or other issue with the parts that are in short supply or their production lines that mean it'll take many months to catch up, there's not much to this. For most people waiting for a Model 3, how many lines Tesla ultimately decides to open matters a lot more than how long it takes them to get the first line running right. Also, they're just making one specific configuration right now (LR, with PUP, without dual motor/air suspension). The rate at which the other configurations mature and their config-specific parts go into production also constrains most customers a lot more than this.
Cobalt is not "100% carcinogenic". First off, "100% carcinogenic" isn't even a meaningful term. Secondly, cobalt is an essential nutrient in small quantities; the "cobal-" in "cobalamin" (aka, vitamin B12) is cobalt. In higher quantities it's poisonous, although not to the extent of normal "toxic" metals like cadmium and lead; in particular, cobalt is mostly inert when not as a dust or soluble salt. And if it's carcinogenic at all, it's at a level that's so low that it's tough to make out among the effects of other metals. Nor is "toxicity" a reason for avoiding cobalt-alloy drill bits (stainless steel is much worse due to its chromium content). Nor have cobalt-alloy drill bits "gone away"; google them, you can get them all over the bloody place.
And you're also wrong about tungsten. It is indeed toxic, but not as much as DU.
80% destroyed = 20% remaining. Meaning having buffer to loadshift their usage seriously helps that 20%.
Also, FYI, "80% was destroyed" != "80 is currently destroyed"
In Florida with Irma, 2/3rds of the entire state's power went out. Let alone in the worst hit areas.
And EVs continued working like a dream there, for the reasons mentioned in the article.
Yeah, good luck with that when you join us in the real world.
Meanwhile, find any home or business with power from any source - somewhere that maintained their grid connection, somewhere with a natural gas generator, somewhere with solar, whatever - and you can charge. Not like you generally need to. Unlike gas, which has terrible efficiency when driving in the sort of low speed / stop-start conditions of disaster aftermath, EV ranges become much longer at low speeds, surpassing gasoline. And can "idle" with the AC on for 1/2 to 1 order of magnitude longer.
The article presents peoples' real-world experience with EVs in real-world disasters. Including one that was the greatest electrical system disaster in US history. You're free to disbelieve it if you want.
I do give GM credit for one thing, they've certainly been putting more of an effort forth than a lot of their competitors, even if not as much as an actual electric car company like Tesla.
EV conversions are generally lousy. In an EV, batteries should be down low, making up the floor, not crammed into wherever you could find space by removing the ICE and/or giving up trunk space / seat space / etc. The motor should be inline with the wheels, not in in some old ICE space and connected by an unnecessary linkage. The shape of the front should be dictated by aerodynamics and safety alone, not by the constraints of a nonexistent ICE. Etc, etc, etc.
EVs should be designed, from the start, as EVs. You get a worse car when you make it as a conversion. Worse handling, worse range, worse performance, just worse. When you see a company selling a conversion EV, it should scream at you, "I Do Not Believe EVs Are The Future; Otherwise I Would Be Investing In A Proper EV Platform".
1) Companies generally don't like paying competing companies.
2) It's only incentive to sell just enough to meet compliance specs
10 billion over 8 years = a pittiance.
I was very obviously talking about Tesla. The only company pumping many billions per year into EVs, and the company with both of the top slots on EV sales despite being priced out of the vast majority of EV consumers' budgets, in a normally tiny market segment, where they're even beating their ICE competition.
False. The US incentive - being a fixed value - is more favourable to low-end EVs, versus countries where incentives are percentage based (such as VAT deductions).
And to reiterate: Tesla has both of the top slots in the US - and is still high ranked in Europe - despite being in a vastly smaller market segment. A market segment 1 1/2 orders of magnitude smaller than that in which its cheaper competitors are competing in. Which is why reservations for the Model 3 are 1 1/2 orders magnitude larger.
To put a bit of a point on it: Mercedes-Benz recently garnered a lot of positive press for an announcement that they're planning to invest $1B (over the course of an unspecified number of years) in electrifying a vehicle plant to make BEVs. That's great! An order of magnitude less than they actually need in order to stay competitive with Tesla's investments, but hey, good for them!
So far, there's one company actually pouring in the huge amounts of money to bring EV production to economic scales (and dominating each market class that they enter, even crushing their ICE competition in sales)... and then there's a bunch of others trying to catch up to where said company was years ago. Yeah, different companies try to have selling points in different regards - GM, for example, by having a moderate range on a BMW-priced (but econobox-styled) vehicle. But when your total sales are 1 1/2 orders of magnitude less than the year and a half line to get a different vehicle in the same price range, well, the market has spoken. And neither GM, nor anyone else, has put forward the capital needed to be able to present and market a vehicle to pose a real threat.
Here's a graph that I think is really telling. The size of the market for vehicles with an average selling price of nearly six figures is vastly smaller than that for vehicles with an average sale price in the ~$35-40k range - and the tax credits on the latter far more meaningful to their buyers. Yet both the Model S and Model X still outsell the Bolt and Leaf in the US.
Meanwhile, here's how emergencies actually play out for EV owners.
Yes, they would have, so as not to have to buy credits from Tesla in order to sell cars in ZEV states.
Certainly said one company is. So far among the others it's just the usual talk and auto show showpieces. Funds invested in actually changing their business models lag far behind the huge sums actually required to do so.
"Major Automakers Pretend To Be Interested In Electric Vehicles At Auto Show" - totally haven't seen that one many times per year for the past decade. Auto shows are a giant displaycase for A) concept cars that will never see the light of day, B) vehicles that will be made only in the minimum number needed to be compliance cars, and C) vehicles that will be produced (also in small numbers) in a radically different form (for the worse) than actually presented.
If GM cared about selling the Bolt, they'd put any sort of real effort into advertising it.
If GM cared about selling the Bolt, they'd be trying to ensure that you can actually drive places with it, with reasonable charge times and a complete network with multiple, well-monitored and maintained chargers at each well-spaced stop.
If GM cared about selling the Bolt, they'd be putting as much effort into it in non-ZEV states as they do in ZEV states.
If GM cared about selling the Bolt, they wouldn't make it as a BMW-priced car with a Fischer-Price interior.
Etc, etc, etc.
Perhaps there's some people with GM who thought that all you need to make an EV succeed is a semi-decent range figure at a midrange price. Sorry, but as with all vehicle purchases, there's many different aspects, and you can't just ignore half of them.
(To be fair to GM, the Model 3 has taken a lot of wind out of their sales. Having half a million people on a waiting list for a different vehicle means taking the vast majority of that half million out of your potential sales pool)
As written elsewhere: Puerto Rico was heavily damaged; it wasn't mowed to the ground. There still exist power plants and transmission lines (and more coming online - slowly - every day). What matters is stretching what you do have as far as you can.
Yes, there is. Puerto Rico was heavily damaged, but every last structure in the country was not leveled to the ground. And there's more coming back online - slowly - every day.
What is needed is to make the infrastructure that does exist stretch further. This is what batteries do.
That's just not realistic. The amount of mass just doesn't justify the energy capacity for such a role. The thing you're describing is called a generator.
1) They recharge every day, providing day/night load shifting, both for power plants and transmission lines (aka, preventing daytime brownouts when demand exceeds capacity).
2) Loadshifting benefits every major source of power, not just solar (and, as mentioned, it benefits transmission lines as well)
3) They're about the size of a breaker box, but 125kg. Any competent electrician can wire one. They're all-in-one systems with the inverter included. You do not "disconnect them to charge", they're not designed to "carry" power around.
4) They're warrantied for 10 years. And they don't just die when the warranty expires. Nor are they "hazardous environmental waste"; it's lithium ion, not nickel-cadmium or lead-acid. The contents therein, particularly the cobalt in the cathodes, are high demand feedstocks.