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Tesla's Supercharger Team was recently laid off. We discuss what this means for the company on today's TMC Podcast streaming live at 1PM PDT. You can watch on X or on YouTube where you can participate in the live chat.
How is this ugly?
once you see the car in person it actually looks a lot better (i thought it looked weird before) the rear end is the only thing that still looks "ugly" but surprisingly it is actually pretty cool .
and "speed".... the i3 VERY fast, sign her up for a test drive, dont see how the speed is laughable if she hasn't even driven it... i was impressed, might be as quick as the 60kw Model S.
Al Sherman
It's about THIS car.
^^^This^^^ Looks are subjective for certain. When the Prius came out I knew I was getting one. I thought at the time it was the coolest car on the planet. I also thought it was ugly. The looks grew on me to the point where I thought it was a good looking car. My wife is waiting for a Model X. When we get in her current Highlander Hybrid and the ICE kicks on I cringe. Driving an EV is addictive. As long as they're available I can't ever go back.
Gen 3 has always been the real goal. If Tesla succeeds in keeping the price down and it's anywhere close to the MS in terms of looks and capabilities, it's going to be one of the biggest home runs in the history of cars.
The MS is my daily driver and I try to sell one whenever I can. Lots of people still think all electric is weird. Some still can't process the fact that my car is all electric. I always include the Gen 3 in my "sales pitch." Actually driving an EV is the key. When Gen 3 hits the streets people that can actually consider buying it will drive it. I really think sales will take off like a rocket.
bareyb
Active Member
All EV car makers (with one notable exception) seem to subscribe the notion that what Americans crave are small, odd looking cars with short range batteries.
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jcaspar
Member
The i3 is ridiculously ugly. It does seem that most manufacturers seem to make their hybrids/EVs as ugly as possible with the exception of Ford and the Volt. Seems the i3 being ridiculed by may in the press:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_t..._cheap_ugly_tesla_model_s_with_an_suv_on.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_t..._cheap_ugly_tesla_model_s_with_an_suv_on.html
ChadS
Last tank of gas: March 2009
The Roadster is my daily driver; and the Model S is my wife's daily driver. We don't drive gas cars unless we really, really have to; we almost never have been forced in to that since 2009. The not-yet-delivered CHAdeMO adapter meant we had to drive our son's plug-in Prius a couple of months ago. Once we get that adapter, plus the 2014 Superchargers in, I don't see why we'd ever drive a gas car again. Well, maybe my wife and son would take the Prius if they are driving over a really bad dirt road to a trailhead. But that's because the car is new, not because it's electric.
GOING OFF TOPIC FOR A MINUTE...
Why are other automakers not trying to compete with Tesla? Why are so many plug-ins unattractive?
This was discussed in the BMW i3 thread; but the i3's looks are the automaker's method of versioning (that is, trying to squeeze the most margin out of each customer by somehow directing what they buy). Automakers that are making "conquest" cars (Nissan and BMW have both been very clear that they are looking for new customers with the LEAF and i3) are trying to bring new customers to the brand - people that wouldn't have ordinarily considered Nissan or BMW. That's a common tactic with gas cars; but the key point here is that they know their dealers won't sell EVs when they could sell a lower-effort/higher-spiff gas car instead - so not only must they attract new customers, but at the same time they must not cannibalize their existing gas car sales. So they need to do something that tells their existing customers to stay away. But they can't cripple the car too much, because they want the new customers to be happy so in the future they will buy another car from the brand. The easiest way to do that is with odd styling. This is a common trick used with low-margin vehicles: you'll make the car so you can get the customers that insist on the unique margin-killing feature that the car has (usually low price, high mpg, etc), but you'll make it ugly (or have limited seating or performance or something like that) so most customers will pick a different car with higher margins.
The Mitsubishi i-MiEV kind-of falls in to this camp. But it is a somewhat different case because it was not designed for the US market - its looks are not so odd in Japan (where the same car has long been sold as a gas version - and the electric version was started before it was clear they had to build one for the US). The US dealers demanded it a few years ago when Mitsubishi was on the rocks, the dealers had no cars to sell, and Tesla, GM, Nissan and BMW announced their plug-in programs. They wanted something to sell too, though it's hard to say if they were specifically looking for new customers to the brand because almost any customer would have been a new customer for them at that point. I believe their future plug-ins will be different.
GM of course wants conquest customers too (everybody does); but Volt and ELR are primarily "halo" cars. They are supposed to showcase the automaker's engineering talents, make people feel good about the brand to set them up for a future purchase, and get customers in to the showroom. They hope to sell some of the halo cars (so they can be seen on the street too), but expect to sell at least as many other GM cars to people that just came to the showroom to look. GM has bragged to their dealer network about how well this strategy was working - Cruze sales picked up dramatically once the Volt appeared in showrooms, much faster than Volts were being sold. They seem to be taking this a step further with the ELR; a car with good looks, all the automaker's technology and a higher price tag than even all the tech warrants. This appears to be what BMW will do with the i8.
Ford is being very conservative, and apparently (I am guessing, they have not really discussed it) not going after new customers - they don't want to spend money on new products. They are just trying not to lose existing brand faithful to the conquest cars that others are building. (I'm not sure what they call this in the industry. I call it a stop-loss car). So they are doing very cheap conversions to existing cars. The good news is that they are doing multiple plug-in cars (Focus, C-Max, and Fusion - plus they had let Azure do the Transit Connect), and making them technically available everywhere - but just try to buy one in a non-ZEV state like WA where I live; the dealers aren't cooperating. (Not that it matters much; they don't advertise here either, so almost nobody I meet knows they exist). The bad news is that none of their cars, as cheap conversions, will push the envelope and gain a lot of converts. Still, it seems to be working - none of the Fords are selling well on their own, but cumulatively they are doing about as well as Tesla, GM and Nissan.
Even though it's a very different car, I consider the Prius Plug-In to be a stop-loss car too. Toyota knew how many CA drivers bought the Prius just to get carpool-lane access, and they didn't want to lose those buyers to the new electrics. So they did the minimum change possible to the Prius to get carpool lane access (thanks, GM lobbyists, for doing a sneaky end-run around the drivers you were pretending to work with to get that law passed. The really funny thing is that the first model year of the Volt didn't qualify). Prius plug-in drivers certainly aren't getting the electric driving experience that drivers of other brands are getting. It's working too; they are selling quite a few - mostly in CA.
Most other manufacturers (Toyota's RAV4, Honda, Fiat - and GM with the Spark) are just doing "compliance" cars. They have to make them, so they will - but they aren't even trying to make a business out of it. They just see it as one of many necessary costs (which they will try to minimize) to sell their gas cars. They don't want to turn off customers to their brand (and they do have to sell some - which they hope will be conquests), so they'll make them decent. But they will make no more than they have to, and won't sell them anywhere they don't have to, and if they get a chance to stop selling them, or recall them, they will. Like Ford, they are looking to spend as little money as possible, so they do quick conversions of existing gas cars. Automakers don't like to say they are making compliance cars (in fact, they like to deny it), but it's easy to tell who is doing it. Volume is everything in the car biz; if you make a car, you want to sell as many as possible to reduce per-car fixed costs, get better supplier deals, and increase market share which helps with future revenue too. If they, say, limit sales of the car to 4 cities in a ZEV state, then you can be confident it's a compliance car. Also watch for them to point to the low sales caused by their restricted supply later and say "see, nobody wants them". Note that Ford, while technically making their car available everywhere, by not advertising them outside of ZEV states is effectively able to get by with compliance-car-level work (and sales) without really getting called out for doing compliance cars. But they really do make them available so people in non-ZEV states can get them, which is good...so there really is a spectrum here, and no car falls neatly in to any one category.
Tesla is trying to push the whole market, and they don't have to worry about reluctant dealers, and they don't yet have other cars to play the versioning game with (though it will be interesting to see what they do to keep people buying the S/X once gen 3 is out). So their mission is clear: build the best car they can. But even they still don't offer batteries larger than they'll get credits for, even though they have said they can and many here say they'd buy one.
Of course the CARB rules play in to all of this, too. Automakers get 3 credits if they build a car that can go 100 miles on a city test, which translates to about 75 miles on the EPA test - that's why most BEVs get 75-85 miles. They can get a fourth credit...but only if they double the range! And a fifth credit if they triple it. And 7 credits if they demonstrate fast refueling. Tesla has been going after all of these credits, but everybody else stops at a 3-credit car. They are used to selling low-margin commodity gas cars, and are afraid of putting a lot of capital in to an unproven market. (Note that they can get 9 credits for building a hydrogen car; that's why many automakers are trying that, and insisting the government install hydrogen stations). To incent automakers to deliver more range, and to get closer to parity with hydrogen, I'd like to see CARB add an extra credit for delivering 150 miles of city range.
The federal tax credit has an effect too. You can get a $2500 credit for 5kWh of battery. This can grow to $7500 for 16kWh. Beyond that...there's no incentive. So why build cars with more than 16kWh of battery? Some states are thinking of adding their own incentives; I'm encouraging them to START their credit at 16kWh.
BRINGING IT BACK ON TOPIC:
The funny thing is that despite their limitations...LEAF and Volt owners absolutely LOVE their cars, and they are definitely their daily drivers too. Once you have a more responsive, smoother, quieter, cheaper, cleaner car...why would you not drive it? People only ask the question because they assume that electric cars are no fun to drive. Yet another reason that test drives are so important.
GOING OFF TOPIC FOR A MINUTE...
Why are other automakers not trying to compete with Tesla? Why are so many plug-ins unattractive?
This was discussed in the BMW i3 thread; but the i3's looks are the automaker's method of versioning (that is, trying to squeeze the most margin out of each customer by somehow directing what they buy). Automakers that are making "conquest" cars (Nissan and BMW have both been very clear that they are looking for new customers with the LEAF and i3) are trying to bring new customers to the brand - people that wouldn't have ordinarily considered Nissan or BMW. That's a common tactic with gas cars; but the key point here is that they know their dealers won't sell EVs when they could sell a lower-effort/higher-spiff gas car instead - so not only must they attract new customers, but at the same time they must not cannibalize their existing gas car sales. So they need to do something that tells their existing customers to stay away. But they can't cripple the car too much, because they want the new customers to be happy so in the future they will buy another car from the brand. The easiest way to do that is with odd styling. This is a common trick used with low-margin vehicles: you'll make the car so you can get the customers that insist on the unique margin-killing feature that the car has (usually low price, high mpg, etc), but you'll make it ugly (or have limited seating or performance or something like that) so most customers will pick a different car with higher margins.
The Mitsubishi i-MiEV kind-of falls in to this camp. But it is a somewhat different case because it was not designed for the US market - its looks are not so odd in Japan (where the same car has long been sold as a gas version - and the electric version was started before it was clear they had to build one for the US). The US dealers demanded it a few years ago when Mitsubishi was on the rocks, the dealers had no cars to sell, and Tesla, GM, Nissan and BMW announced their plug-in programs. They wanted something to sell too, though it's hard to say if they were specifically looking for new customers to the brand because almost any customer would have been a new customer for them at that point. I believe their future plug-ins will be different.
GM of course wants conquest customers too (everybody does); but Volt and ELR are primarily "halo" cars. They are supposed to showcase the automaker's engineering talents, make people feel good about the brand to set them up for a future purchase, and get customers in to the showroom. They hope to sell some of the halo cars (so they can be seen on the street too), but expect to sell at least as many other GM cars to people that just came to the showroom to look. GM has bragged to their dealer network about how well this strategy was working - Cruze sales picked up dramatically once the Volt appeared in showrooms, much faster than Volts were being sold. They seem to be taking this a step further with the ELR; a car with good looks, all the automaker's technology and a higher price tag than even all the tech warrants. This appears to be what BMW will do with the i8.
Ford is being very conservative, and apparently (I am guessing, they have not really discussed it) not going after new customers - they don't want to spend money on new products. They are just trying not to lose existing brand faithful to the conquest cars that others are building. (I'm not sure what they call this in the industry. I call it a stop-loss car). So they are doing very cheap conversions to existing cars. The good news is that they are doing multiple plug-in cars (Focus, C-Max, and Fusion - plus they had let Azure do the Transit Connect), and making them technically available everywhere - but just try to buy one in a non-ZEV state like WA where I live; the dealers aren't cooperating. (Not that it matters much; they don't advertise here either, so almost nobody I meet knows they exist). The bad news is that none of their cars, as cheap conversions, will push the envelope and gain a lot of converts. Still, it seems to be working - none of the Fords are selling well on their own, but cumulatively they are doing about as well as Tesla, GM and Nissan.
Even though it's a very different car, I consider the Prius Plug-In to be a stop-loss car too. Toyota knew how many CA drivers bought the Prius just to get carpool-lane access, and they didn't want to lose those buyers to the new electrics. So they did the minimum change possible to the Prius to get carpool lane access (thanks, GM lobbyists, for doing a sneaky end-run around the drivers you were pretending to work with to get that law passed. The really funny thing is that the first model year of the Volt didn't qualify). Prius plug-in drivers certainly aren't getting the electric driving experience that drivers of other brands are getting. It's working too; they are selling quite a few - mostly in CA.
Most other manufacturers (Toyota's RAV4, Honda, Fiat - and GM with the Spark) are just doing "compliance" cars. They have to make them, so they will - but they aren't even trying to make a business out of it. They just see it as one of many necessary costs (which they will try to minimize) to sell their gas cars. They don't want to turn off customers to their brand (and they do have to sell some - which they hope will be conquests), so they'll make them decent. But they will make no more than they have to, and won't sell them anywhere they don't have to, and if they get a chance to stop selling them, or recall them, they will. Like Ford, they are looking to spend as little money as possible, so they do quick conversions of existing gas cars. Automakers don't like to say they are making compliance cars (in fact, they like to deny it), but it's easy to tell who is doing it. Volume is everything in the car biz; if you make a car, you want to sell as many as possible to reduce per-car fixed costs, get better supplier deals, and increase market share which helps with future revenue too. If they, say, limit sales of the car to 4 cities in a ZEV state, then you can be confident it's a compliance car. Also watch for them to point to the low sales caused by their restricted supply later and say "see, nobody wants them". Note that Ford, while technically making their car available everywhere, by not advertising them outside of ZEV states is effectively able to get by with compliance-car-level work (and sales) without really getting called out for doing compliance cars. But they really do make them available so people in non-ZEV states can get them, which is good...so there really is a spectrum here, and no car falls neatly in to any one category.
Tesla is trying to push the whole market, and they don't have to worry about reluctant dealers, and they don't yet have other cars to play the versioning game with (though it will be interesting to see what they do to keep people buying the S/X once gen 3 is out). So their mission is clear: build the best car they can. But even they still don't offer batteries larger than they'll get credits for, even though they have said they can and many here say they'd buy one.
Of course the CARB rules play in to all of this, too. Automakers get 3 credits if they build a car that can go 100 miles on a city test, which translates to about 75 miles on the EPA test - that's why most BEVs get 75-85 miles. They can get a fourth credit...but only if they double the range! And a fifth credit if they triple it. And 7 credits if they demonstrate fast refueling. Tesla has been going after all of these credits, but everybody else stops at a 3-credit car. They are used to selling low-margin commodity gas cars, and are afraid of putting a lot of capital in to an unproven market. (Note that they can get 9 credits for building a hydrogen car; that's why many automakers are trying that, and insisting the government install hydrogen stations). To incent automakers to deliver more range, and to get closer to parity with hydrogen, I'd like to see CARB add an extra credit for delivering 150 miles of city range.
The federal tax credit has an effect too. You can get a $2500 credit for 5kWh of battery. This can grow to $7500 for 16kWh. Beyond that...there's no incentive. So why build cars with more than 16kWh of battery? Some states are thinking of adding their own incentives; I'm encouraging them to START their credit at 16kWh.
BRINGING IT BACK ON TOPIC:
The funny thing is that despite their limitations...LEAF and Volt owners absolutely LOVE their cars, and they are definitely their daily drivers too. Once you have a more responsive, smoother, quieter, cheaper, cleaner car...why would you not drive it? People only ask the question because they assume that electric cars are no fun to drive. Yet another reason that test drives are so important.
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Great write up Chad. Uninformed car analysts (but I repeat myself) like to say that Tesla has to worry about "when the big car makers start to compete directly with Tesla". I keep telling people that won't happen until it is too late for the big car makers, and you've nailed the reasons why that is.
Time to wrap this poll up. Here are the results for the Model S question, and for kicks, I also asked the same question in a Nissan Leaf forum. The answers are effectively identical (within margin of error), which is interesting of itself.
Time to wrap this poll up. Here are the results for the Model S question, and for kicks, I also asked the same question in a Nissan Leaf forum. The answers are effectively identical (within margin of error), which is interesting of itself.
I don't see why people assume the EV isn't the daily driver.
The EVs that are currently around are perfectly suited to commuting and running errands. EVs are cheap to operate and perfectly functional within range. The thing they can't do yet is the rare events, the five hundred mile trip when there isn't a fast charging station, the power outage that lasts for days. These cases can be covered in the future, if every home has a large stationary battery pack, as fast charging stations become more common and more effective, gas vehicles will become even less useful.
The EVs that are currently around are perfectly suited to commuting and running errands. EVs are cheap to operate and perfectly functional within range. The thing they can't do yet is the rare events, the five hundred mile trip when there isn't a fast charging station, the power outage that lasts for days. These cases can be covered in the future, if every home has a large stationary battery pack, as fast charging stations become more common and more effective, gas vehicles will become even less useful.
I think this is at least v3 of this discussion, and if you haven't already I think you should turn this into a blog post or somesuch and link to it in the future. Great capture of the state of affairs.
If you are getting five hundred miles on a charge, you must be going downhill. Otherwise you would need to use a fast charging station, for example the supercharger. And you may note that superchargers only work for some Model Ss, and not all EVs.
Yes, if you have the money to buy an 85kwh S, you can do the long trips. If not, EVs are still somewhat limited in range.
I meant I was doing 500+ mile trips, not that I was getting 500 miles on a charge. As there are no fast chargers of any kind on my most common route, I just charge at RV parks (NEMA 14-50). It's not a big deal. I stop three times, so there are 3 sections of 150 miles and one that's 210 miles. Never even come close to running out.
