Electric cars

almillar

Storage could, if savings are passed on, allow cheaper charging for BEV owners.

... and maybe even all electric customers.

Since you've previously denied their showroom range even exists...

To be fair, VW's own dealers do a very good job of this. My friend had to beg for her eGolf and found it difficult to get through to them why she didn't want a GTE.

Despite potentially lower build cost, even approaching ICE, I still expect EVs to be priced at an iPhone-like premium until the equivalent of Android arrives. In other words, we need disruptive new entrants.

That's a fair description of Tesla, who have so far, at least, given premium car manufacturers a bit to worry about. And that little word potentially is key - the battery is still an expensive part of the car. The manufacturers are still trying to make the cars go further, so they're adding range, over reducing cost. I'm sure Renault could make their 22kWh Zoe much cheaper, but customers want to buy the 40kWh one for the range.

NigeWick

buglawton wrote: »

In other words, we need disruptive new entrants.

Tesla is the disruptive new entrant because they make nothing but BEVs. VW have stated that they want to be a big player in the BEV market and that they will sell battery electric vehicles at Golf Diesel prices this year. I suspect as competition increases and technology advances, prices will come down.

zeupater

NigeWick wrote: »

Tesla is the disruptive new entrant because they make nothing but BEVs. VW have stated that they want to be a big player in the BEV market and that they will sell battery electric vehicles at Golf Diesel prices this year. I suspect as competition increases and technology advances, prices will come down.

Hi

It's not only that they only make EVs though ... the major disruption is that whilst the majority of the automotive sector has been content to maintain the comfortable position of incremental technology tweaks & sweating existing assets to maintain margins, Tesla have built state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, developed a range of vehicles & established lean supply chains to leverage margins which should surpass their competitors for quite some time.

Moreover, whilst the majority of the automotive sector has yet to take the investment pain of risk & lost opportunity whilst refreshing their own technologies and creating dedicated EV product lines which normally creates a bathtub curve effect on margins, Tesla have already taken the investment & learning stage hit and climbed out the other side .... their main component of disruption isn't really their product range, it's the realisation that they've already done the hard work that almost everyone else has yet to get around to and it's been done by integrating build efficiencies that almost all competitors cannot achieve without the disruption of rebuilding or relocating their own production facilities.

Even more worrying to legacy manufacturers scrambling to move their own platforms over to EVs, the technology experience lead that Tesla will have will allow them to start to seriously reduce prices just as others need to recover their own massive investment through inflating list prices on new models .... there's likely very serious conversations happening in a number of boardrooms to a monthly timetable where senior executives mull through how they've allowed the normally safe position of relative inaction to create so much business risk ... that's disruption!

HTH
Z

AdrianC

zeupater wrote: »

Tesla have built state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities

That's going well...

zeupater

AdrianC wrote: »

That's going well...

Hi

What they have is doing well enough to be profitable even though the naysayers said that they couldn't be when based on what legacy manufacturers could achieve in their own production facilities .... moreover, gigafactory 1 isn't even fully fitted-out yet and has plenty of planned expansion before it reaches it's conceptual size ... https://electrek.co/2019/02/07/tesla-casting-lines-gigafactory-model-y-production/ ... and a technology cut & paste to an overseas production facility (gigafactory 3) has already cut turf!

That's the level of disruption that a relative newcomer is causing at the moment, just as many legacy manufacturers are looking around to find excuses as to why sales of particular platforms are beginning to struggle!

Yup, despite your normal rhetoric concerning EVs & Tesla, I'd tend to agree with what you say about Tesla's manufacturing model & facilities and their expansion plan ... 'That's going well'! ....

HTH
Z

AdrianC

zeupater wrote: »

What they have is doing well enough to be profitable even though the naysayers said that they couldn't be when based on what legacy manufacturers could achieve in their own production facilities ....

Well, they're still only putting out Model 3 at half the oft-stated target rate - and have been flatlined there since last summer. (Oh, and the "legacy manufacturers" were consistently putting out more cars from that same factory decades ago.)

Are the temporary production line tents still in the carpark?

Still, when supply is heavily constrained, it's easy to use price to restrict demand.

Martyn1981

AdrianC wrote: »

Well, they're still only putting out Model 3 at half the oft-stated target rate - and have been flatlined there since last summer. (Oh, and the "legacy manufacturers" were consistently putting out more cars from that same factory decades ago.)

Are the temporary production line tents still in the carpark?

Still, when supply is heavily constrained, it's easy to use price to restrict demand.

Only you would criticise the company producing the most BEV's in the world, for not producing enough ...... whilst failing to criticise VW for producing far, far less.

I smell a hypocrite.

AdrianC

I'm not criticising Tesla for their volume. Quite the opposite - I'm simply pointing out that they are still failing to meet the volume they promised, consistently and repeatedly, especially when "state of the art" manufacturing is being waved as one of their industry disruptors. I'm sure there's a lot of "legacy" manufacturers who'd be quite glad not to have that level of disruption on their pretty-much-equally automated lines.


Is a simple statement of fact a "criticism"? I s'pose it depends on your point of view...

BTW, I don't see Mitsubishi in that market share list - small, but non-zero, sure, so I guess they're part of the "other" - but I wonder what the combined share of the Renault/Nissan/Mitsubishi conglomerate comes to? Even without Mitsu, Renault/Nissan are at the same 14% as Tesla, but where does the rounding leave the precise figures?

NigeWick

zeupater wrote: »

Z

You've pointed out things I hadn't thought of. Thanks for that.

I presume those legacy manufacturers may not have yet realised that much of their servicing and parts businesses will be going down the pan too.

UK could do with a new manufacturer using Tesla's patented ideas to start making good BEVs here, using latest technology techniques to keep costs and therefore prices down.

Martyn1981

Clearly you are criticising Tesla, because 'that's what you do'. What's fun to see is how you desperately spin, duck, dive and dodge, to avoid holding other companies to equal account.

As to whether Nissan and Renault added together could match Tesla in 2018 H1, I don't know, but I'm sure if you add enough giant legacy companies together, they will match Tesla's even larger H2 production numbers ...... if that's what you now need to do, to keep on knocking (and FUD'ing).

In the US, Tesla account for a majority share of all BEV's, and the increase in EV's last year, was almost entirely as a result of TM3's. A similar boost to European EV numbers is expected this year, thanks to Tesla.

Given that this is an EV thread, and the market is being driven (forced) forward by Tesla, it's interesting to see you maintain your (now multi-year) campaign against both.

Anyway's, I'm still sitting and waiting for you to turn your seemingly endless EV wrath upon VW, since on any basis, and using your criteria for negativity, they are 'far worse' than Tesla, so I expect, in the name of fairness, not 10's, but 100's of attack posts from you now.