And this is the reason to be very skeptical. This formula - invest in other companies, take their black boxes and put them together in a crippled (by absence of organic development and optimization from ground up) system is hopeless. They can't possibly catch up with Tesla using this approach.
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And this is the reason to be very skeptical. This formula - invest in other companies, take their black boxes and put them together in a crippled (by absence of organic development and optimization from ground up) system is hopeless. They can't possibly catch up with Tesla using this approach.
Krugerrand
Meow
Of course you feel they'll succeed otherwise you'd not have posted your first comment on the topic about them being competition for Tesla. They could only be competition if you felt they'd succeed AND that what they come up with is at least as good or better than what Tesla will have come up with that far down the road.
Let me add that Tesla already technically has this 'premapped area, e.g. from airport to city' fully autonomous car - just ask the guy who had the pulmonary aneurism and had the X drive him to the hospital. Ford better pull up their socks and get cracking. In 5 years Tesla's cars are likely to traverse land, sea and air autonomously.
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Did Ford announce that they were no longer going to make gasoline cars? I must have missed that.
racer26
Active Member
Another piece of the Tesla secret sauce that the incumbents are missing -- vertical integration.
The incumbents don't really build cars anymore. They're a glorified systems integrator that grabs a bunch of parts from a bunch of suppliers and assembles a car from them. That's a perfectly fine business model, and can be very profitable -- but it doesn't allow for the kinds of technological advancement that Tesla is doing. You can't be agile and rapidly advance the state of the art when you're dependent on a supplier. Its why Tesla keeps ditching suppliers that can't (or won't) keep up and bringing more and more things in-house.
In short, the incumbents can't compete with Tesla, because they're not even playing the same game.
Krugerrand
Meow
ev-enthusiast
Active Member
Looks like Tesla learned from the non-folding back seats trouble in the Model X, and made folding back seats standard for Model 3.
They could put this autonomous system in an ICE.
THAT would be less than gracious experience, especially driving through hilly terrain...
Krugerrand
Meow
If they built the car around the black box, it could work. Ford would of course be dependent on Google for everything associated with it, forever. If it turned out Google came up with a better (less expensive, more dependable etc...) autonomous system in 5 years than what Tesla will have in that same 5 years.... Do the companies merge then? Or does Ford let Google be its mothership in this regard?
What are the odds of that sequence of events happening? Can Google and Ford create the right kind of partnership? Is Google onto something that Tesla has overlooked? Will there be multiple and differing autonomous systems on the market in that time frame and will all have the same results? Will the cost be the same? There's more than one way to skin a cat, right? Is there more than one way to reach full autonomy such that there's true competition of vehicle products? What then differentiates those products? Does it come down to ICE vs EV at that point?
I believe someone already wrote a bio on Mr. Musk.
It really can't. The problem is too complex to solve without overall system optimization approach from the ground up, with reasonably good results in a reasonable timeframe. Connecting black boxes into a system and then optimizing this system by letting internal teams that designed black boxes duke it out across the different companies will take forever and produce poor results. There is a reason Mobil Eye is not involved in Tesla Auto Pilot development any more...
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Racer, you are entitled to your own opinion not your own facts. EV's have less maintenance? Ask 30,000 Nissan Versa (cheapest new car in America) buyers in 2014 and 30,000 Model S buyers from 2014 if which group had to make more service center visits. How many Hyundai Accents (ASP $13,000) made in 2014 had their motor replaced? Want to compare service visits of a Model X buyer in 2016 vs a Kia Rio buyer in 2016?
EVs have fewer moving parts and less things to fail but that doesn't there are fewer failures. Computers have fewer moving parts than cars. How many computers are usable after 5 years and how many cars are running fine after 10 years with just tires and oil changes? Ask any Model S owner who also owned/owns a Volt which car needed fewer service visits.
GM doesn't build a Gigafactory because to them making their own batteries is the same as owning their own rubber plantations or tire manufacturing plants. 100% of their cars need tires/rubber but only about 0.5% of their cars need lithium batteries. Tesla obviously has a different approach to battery production. A Model 3 is make or break for them (S and X do not have the volumes necessary to be net profitable). The Bolt will contribute 0.4% of GM Global sales in the best case scenario and will contribute 0.0% to their net profit. Model 3 will contribute 60 to 70% of Tesla global sales and about 50% of their net profit. Now you know GM doesn't really care as much as they should. You also assume the Model 3 will be cheaper than the Bolt for the same range when neither Chevy nor Tesla has released price, specs and option packages? It may well be but don't forget Tesla has to make a 20% gross profit on the Model 3 but Chevy can sell the Bolt for $20K under cost. One Bolt=4 ZEV credits=$20,000 value. Every 250 Bolts sold will allow them to sell 10,000 high profit SUVs (2.5 ZEV requirement in 2018).
How does a Bolt compete against the Sonic? It is larger, faster, full EV (more people care about this than you can imagine), the first 200+ mile EV under $40K to name a few. OTOH How does a Model S 60 compete against a Taurus SHO? The Taurus SHO is faster, loaded to the hilt, better looking (subjective) and $20,000 cheaper. Not everyone is buying a car to impress other people, make them look important or trying to compensate for their shortcomings. I am already reading online comments that the Model 3 will get you laid but the Bolt wont. People who think only a car can get them laid are people who don't IMO. If looks matter, 90% of the cars would have never been sold. Mazda always made/makes the best looking, best performing cars in their respective segments. Everyone who follows the auto industry knows this. 99% of the population does not care and Mazda's sales numbers prove this.
Why doesn't anyone compete with Tesla even after 4 years? Tesla is showing them why they shouldn't 4 times a year, every time they report earnings. The other automakers may not see what you see and you can't blame them for that. You may think they are wrong and will pay for it dearly, but they are entitled to their own beliefs similar to Tesla naysayers. They are also free to not see what you see. Take the current presidential campaign as an example. One candidate is seen as honest, intelligent, straight shooter, tells it as it is, strong, and tough by his/her followers and they really believe it too. The opposite camp sees the same person as dishonest, dumb, weak and unstable and they really believe this too. So how come different people have completely different opinions about the same individual? Each group really believes they have the correct opinion and the other group is wrong. The same applies to Tesla. Half the group sees a disaster when they read the earnings release while the other half sees puppies and rainbows. Both groups think they are correct and the others are wrong.
MitchJi
Trying to learn kindness, patience & forgiveness
The Tesla GF. It remains to be seen if anyone else can build a Gigafactory that's competitive on product cost and product performance with Tesla's Gigafactory.
Isn't that exactly what they are planning to do?They could put this autonomous system in an ICE.
I watched the video and they didn't mention EV's.
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Hogfighter
Professional Lurker
I'm not sure which part of this post is most incorrect.
1) Using an early Model S or X as an example for comparing reliability with any other car is simply cherry-picking.
2) GM would MOST CERTAINLY own the rubber plantations if rubber was their most expensive part of the car.
3) The Bolt is a $40,000 Chevy. It won't succeed the same way the Cadillac EV was $70,000....for a Cadillac. People buy the S because it's a better car than the competition for the same price.
4) You're right. No one should compete with Tesla because they lose money. Just like Sears shouldn't have competed with Amazon because Amazon lost money for years.
CALGARYARSENAL
Member
They can't take TSLA down. As long as the Fedheads don't shock, we should be good to go.....
FredTMC
Model S VIN #4925
Yeah...
1). there's very few shares to short
2). longs aren't selling
3). Institutions are accumulating
Therefore, we get "Teflon TSLA". Refuses to drop
SunCatcher
Member
I see the writing on the wall. Upwards of 400,000 reservations, with a thousand dollars down. I can't
imagine that Ford, and the other legacy automakers can't see this. Tesla is building a paradigm eating monster, capable of massive disruption of a century old model. The capital required to build this beast is massive. But the value is there. Rome was not built in a day. The automobile and transport industries are holding onto their greasy empires, unwilling to be their own disruptors. Their token attempt to throw the consumer dogs a bone here and there is really a joke. They will only get real when the factory mansions they have built crumble to the ground because of obsolescence. It's much harder to rebuild an old house than it is to build a new one.
"Why doesn't anyone compete with Tesla even after 4 years?" Because that would require them to unravel themselves.
racer26
Active Member
You just asked a question and answered it yourself. EVs as a vehicle design, do not need the same level of service and maintenance that an ICEV does. That's an incontrovertible fact. Whether or not Tesla vehicles require the least maintenance is irrelevant. EV's don't need regular oil changes, don't utilize friction brakes nearly as much as their ICEV brethren, don't have complicated geartrains which require lubrication. Thousands of computers are still running decades after their production -- the American nuclear missile arsenal still runs on computers that utilize 8 inch floppy disks which were produced in the 1960s. Do you even realize how many computers are in a modern ICEV? Since the dealership business model requires the service/maintenance end of things to be bottom-line profitable, EVs pose a problem for that.
I'm with you here. That is the view they're taking.
Not really, Tesla isn't making the batteries -- Panasonic is. They're just assembling them into vehicle packs.
Yes.
No. S and X have some of the highest Gross Margins in the industry. If Tesla were to stop growing and pouring an average of $43k per car back into growth, they would be very profitable.
Which is why Bolt will never change the world like Model 3 will.
If not more.
Both have released base price, and some specs. Model 3 starts at $35,000 before incentives. Bolt starts at $37,500 before incentives. Both will have 200+ mi range, and be all electric. Bolt will run 0-60 in under 7, and 3 will do it in under 6 in base trim.
Tesla is also getting ZEV credits it can sell for every Model 3 they build.
It competes with a Sonic, because its the same vehicle. Sonic and Bolt are both similarly sized vehicles, in a similar form factor, built on the same platform.
Arbitrary choice of vehicle to compare with, I would have gone with something more like BMW 740i or something, but lets roll with it.
I assume by faster, you mean to say that a Taurus SHO runs 0-60 in 5.1, while an S60 does it in 5.8.
Loaded to the hilt? Taurus SHO is a Dad car from a non-luxury brand. Model S is a luxury car.
$20,000 cheaper I'll give you, but the Taurus SHO is also a land yacht that gets ~18mpg. Take both cars a typical lifespan of 200,000 mi, and you will have needed 11,111gal of fuel in the Taurus, If we assume a typical cost of $2.50/gal, that's $27,777 in fuel. The Model S60, would need approximately 60000kWh of electricity. Typical overnight rates of $0.08/kWh is only $4,800, making the TCO of the Model S some $3-4k cheaper.
Well, yes, in the same way that a Porsche Cayman will get you laid but a Honda Civic won't.
I agree looks aren't everything, but looks ARE a demand lever the incumbents have been using to artificially deflate demand for efficient vehicles since the 90s, so that they could lobby CARB to reduce the requirements.
Really? Seems to me Tesla is consistently showing some of the highest margins in the industry. They're simply spending more than they are taking in, in order to accelerate their own growth. That's not the same thing as losing money on every car sold.
I disagree with much of your post but think the gist of the highlighted language above is spot on. It is similar to the point Andrea James made about how different groups of people filter information about Tesla and come to the exact opposite conclusions.
What is interesting about this to me is that the same information is available to everyone so it is not really an information gap, but a dramatic contrast in the way people are processing the same information.
A major difference between political beliefs and beliefs about Tesla's business model is that 5-10 years from now Clinton and Trump supporters could still be having the same argument and many will likely hold the same opinions. But in the case of Tesla and the traditional automakers, customers will decide. As you say, you can have your own opinion, but you can't have your own facts.
My money is on the company offering a product 400,000 people were willing to preorder without ever having seen in person or driven. While at this point the stock price is depressed (IMO) as a result of the way many people are processing information about Tesla and the probability of it executing on its plans, once Tesla is profitably selling large volumes of vehicles the market's "voting machine" will eventually give way to its "weighing machine," which will be good news for TSLA.
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"
MonroeSS said: ↑
Not everyone is buying a car to impress other people, make them look important or trying to compensate for their shortcomings. I am already reading online comments that the Model 3 will get you laid but the Bolt wont."
What's wrong with getting laid? Is it suddenly not fashionable?
MonroeSS said: ↑
Not everyone is buying a car to impress other people, make them look important or trying to compensate for their shortcomings. I am already reading online comments that the Model 3 will get you laid but the Bolt wont."
What's wrong with getting laid? Is it suddenly not fashionable?
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