What would you think about a small Generation 4 Tesla EV for $20,000 in about 2020?

[roblab]

How about a Leaf available now??? I just can't imagine finding a Tesla for $20K. It is very hard to get a Model S under $80K.

With 26 months and 60,000 miles on my car, Tesla's formula says my car is worthless:

~ $85,000, less $26,000 and $60,000 deductions.

I don't think I will sell it for a while. I just had the alignment done and some tightening of some body work and it drives like new.

Oh, yeah, and it's chocolate BROWN. You can't get brown any more!

 

[DITB]

Sub 20K car would be nice.

But how about a minivan? Pick-up? Or even a DIY kit for boats. I would really love to have a motor catamaran with two Tesla inboards, separate battery packs for each side (with crossover option). That would be a great outfit, with those batteries doubling as ships main battery banks for air con, cooking, lights etc. Expensive batteries, yes, but think of all the other things on a normal boat you could get rid of. Lots of solar panels, of course, ideally your boat would charge itself sitting in the marina, ready for a weekend trip.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Sub 20K car would be nice. But how about a minivan? Pick-up?

I think the only way you get a sub 20k car would be with a smaller battery. If Tesla is successful with Gen 3, it would be possible only if they're prepared to try and disrupt rental. I think with Autopilot and autonomy rental could become radically improved in a way that would allow short-range BEV to sell in large numbers.

No minivan until Elon no longer has a say in it. They've already suggested a pick-up after Gen 3, and it would sensible to do a cargo van at the same time to cover the globe.

Or even a DIY kit for boats. I would really love to have a motor catamaran with two Tesla inboards, separate battery packs for each side (with crossover option). That would be a great outfit, with those batteries doubling as ships main battery banks for air con, cooking, lights etc. Expensive batteries, yes, but think of all the other things on a normal boat you could get rid of. Lots of solar panels, of course, ideally your boat would charge itself sitting in the marina, ready for a weekend trip.

It has to be good for permanent cruising to be credible.

 

[purplewalt]

Actually, I think a future (Tesla) car that has a base range of 150 mile or so could be viable and highly marketable.
There are some people who just need a city car, or maybe it is a second car, or a kid's college car.
But, I think 2020 might be a bit ambitious, as there are at least two more models that are not even (fully) known.
And I also think an electric pick-up/delivery truck is the next offering after Gen 3.
My view is 2022 or even 2024 might be a bit more realistic.


Before Mercedes decided to start making the C Class it was a way to introduce people to the Mercedes-Benz line.
Since that time, MB has also introduced the Smart car, B Class and A Class (front-wheel drive), so they grew their market by manufacturing more affordable cars, and then they decided to give their performance minded clients something different with the AMG line.

Many years after it introduced its top end line (Lexus), Toyota decided to branch out and did a similar marketing strategy with their Scion line (with customization being the theme).

From the other end of he other spectrum: Honda jumped the gap from just motorcycles and started with very small cars, and they continued to add to their line with Acura.

BMW seems to be all over the map with their offerings, but all under one badge: motorcycles, more affordable cars, performance cars, SUVs, premium cars and now electric cars.

 

[DITB]

I think the only way you get a sub 20k car would be with a smaller battery. If Tesla is successful with Gen 3, it would be possible only if they're prepared to try and disrupt rental. I think with Autopilot and autonomy rental could become radically improved in a way that would allow short-range BEV to sell in large numbers.

No minivan until Elon no longer has a say in it. They've already suggested a pick-up after Gen 3, and it would sensible to do a cargo van at the same time to cover the globe.



It has to be good for permanent cruising to be credible.

I missed that - why no minivan? Not that I am looking for one myself.

Add on engine kit for boats, would be really awesome, and yes, permanent cruising would be possible with plenty solar panels and some kind of generator as a back-up for those who want extended range. On a cat, you need a lot less power to propel it, and if fuel tanks are swapped for batteries, range could be plentiful. Cost of subsystems, like cooling and so on, for engines - as well as maintenance - means you can buy a lot of batteries for the money saved on things you wouldn't need on an electric power cat. My sailling cat has two 40 HP engines, and 200 USG of diesel. Each engine ways almost 500 pounds, and then add those subsystems, and the weight of the diesel. Take all that weight out, replace with the smaller electric engines and for the rest, just add batteries and possibly a generator as backup.

Don't worry about all this, just make it available and there will be plenty of buyers!

 

[SmartElectric]

They already have a toe in that water with the Smart EV. If Daimler was smart, they would be more actively promoting "power by Tesla." With the current TSLA buzz, it might sell faster. Yes, it is only an urban microcar, but perhaps it will give us some clues to demand.

The Smart Fortwo Electric Drive has effectively been "sold out" for a while now in Canada after an August 2014 lease deal ($100/mo). There is not a problem with selling this little car, there is a restriction in the numbers produced. A similar story in the USA.

Demand is high, supply is low. Pretty much the same for most electric cars right now...

Daimler doesn't need to get any more "smart" about their electric car offerings, they just need to make more of them!

And by the way, drove a Tesla last week and blogged about my experience.
Smart Electric Drive: Test driving a Tesla Model S in a snow storm

- - - Updated - - -

The smart ED (electric drive) is much too expensive in my opinion. Here in Germany it costs 19 k€ if you lease the battery(65 € per month), or 24k€ with the battery. 20,000 US $ would be more like it, considering the small range it has.
Room for improvement there.

Agreed that the unsubsidized price could be improved. Although in Ontario Canada, I drove away for $19K due to our electric car incentive program. Loving my Smart ED after 1 year and many thousands of fun km!

But realize that just because something is smaller, does not make it "cheaper". The Smart ED has a fully conditioned battery (both heated and cooled) with a good NMC chemistry that is rated for 3000+ cycles to 80%. Daimler themselves have admitted that producing the battery in house has resulted in very good performance and cycle life, but they didn't find anyone else to partner with, so were effectively stuck competing against LG and other global battery companies that offer lower prices due to larger scale.

The next generation Smart ED will use battery cells produced by a company like LG that has scaled up to meet demand/price objectives.

- - - Updated - - -

Not everyone needs a five-passenger automobile that weighs 25 to 30 times more than the average driver, and that is as wide as the average driver measures in length. At least not all the time. Single occupancy of a car is most frequent during rush hour, which causes gridlock.

Precisely why my family loves our Smart ED. My wife and son took the Smart ED to the mall today instead of the Mercedes GLK parked right beside it. When you are going a small distance, and need something that is fun to drive and easy to park, the Smart ED is the right tool for that job.

 

[voyager]

Daimler tends to hang on to its Smart division, even gave it a new lease of life with the Car2Go program. Reality is that Smart was hemorrhaging money like no Mercedes before. The previous ForTwo reduced the loss to a mere $1000 per car.

 

[Red Sage]

If you stop by the Mazda website, you'll see that among the nine vehicles they offer in the USA:

• 1 of 9 costs under $15,000
• 3 of 9 are priced below $20,000
• 7 of 9 start at less than $25,000
• 9 of 9 sticker for below $30,000

For the sake of comparison, neither Honda nor Dodge offer new cars that cost less than $15,000 any more. I expect that by 2017 that other manufacturers would have abandoned that MSRP level as well. Before long it will be rare that any new vehicle is offered for less than $20,000 MSRP at all. Please note that 'independent franchised dealerships' are under no obligation whatsoever to honor MSRP, that they order the cars with whatever options packages they decide upon, and that it may not be possible to actually purchase a bare bones minimum baseline version of these cars anywhere at all.

I chose Mazda for this example because two of their cars were recently picked for the Car and Driver 10 Best list, and both were designed at the direction of Franz von Holzhausen, who is currently at Tesla Motors. The Tesla Model S 60 also received that distinction this year. So I certainly believe it is possible for Tesla Motors to produce a very affordable car some day.

Whether this will be handled by a Generation IIIa, IIIb, IIIc, or IV series of vehicles is probably only known by the executives at Tesla Motors.

I get the impression from Elon Musk that he believes that a Tesla Model ☰ at ~$35,000 would be sufficiently 'affordable' due to relative savings from maintenance and fuel costs, total ownership over five, eight, or ten years. Today's average sale price of a new vehicle is over $31,000 and may well increase by 2017. Unlike other companies, you can literally order the standard issue version of any Tesla Motors vehicle, or get as many options as you like.

Tesla Motors has a lot of priorities that they are not willing to concede when it comes to electric cars. Performance, range, reliability, beauty, utility, and safety are chief among these. I doubt that Elon would allow Tesla engineers and designers to give up on any of those aspects for any products they offer to the public. Because of that lack of compromise, it becomes much harder to have lower up-front prices.

This is why the Gigafactory is so very, very important. The expense of battery cells is the single biggest obstacle to electric vehicles being on par with ICE on pricing. Every other aspect of building an electric car is either less expensive or equivalent to an ICE. Should Tesla Motors be able to reduce their own costs to $100 per kWh on batteries, they could offer a 60 kWh vehicle for under $25,000.

 

[MarkR]

As a stockholder, I can't fathom putting the time and money necessary into building a car to sell for under $20k. Such a car wouldn't have the range, would have the technology and wouldn't have the quality to make it a Tesla. It will be challenging enuf to get the Model 3 under $40k!

 

[Red Sage]

The less expensive a car, the harder it is to build it profitably. The traditional automobile industry is built upon the notion that when it comes to high volume low pricepoint cars, the profit is made largely on 'the back end'. Until 2008, a lot of that was made through financing, as the cars themselves were not profitable on their own. The lion's share of profit has been with replacement parts to be sold over a car's lifetime. Another revenue stream is maintenance, repair, and service costs.

I get the impression that Tesla Motors only reluctantly offers certain services, and only because people have been trained to expect them when buying through 'independent franchised dealerships'. I think that Tesla wants to retrain customers to spend their money to buy cars, rather than ancillary services. Tesla would prefer not to handle trade-ins, because they don't want to operate a used car lot full of ICE vehicles. Tesla would prefer not to finance cars, but knows that it may at least soften the transition to electric transport for certain customers. The added revenue of an Extended Service Agreement is certainly welcome, but Tesla will be be more satisfied with customers becoming so accustomed to electric vehicles being rock solid reliable that they are confident they will never need any form of extended warranty and won't buy them as often anymore. Tesla services cars as needed, but as often as possible under warranty, as they do not want their service department to be a profit center.

Those decisions will ultimately make for a better consumer experience, but will not allow for a guaranteed, or at least dependable, 'back end' profit. So it becomes even harder to build inexpensive vehicles without the expectation or intent of 'making it up' on the back side. Tesla would prefer to make their money on the sale of the car and then never see it again, as the owner has a trouble free relationship with the vehicle from that point forward.

One must keep an eye on volume when setting price levels. If you are building 35,000 of something, they will cost you less individually than building only 3,500 of them. 350,000 cost less each than 35,000. And 3,500,000 don't cost you as much as 350,000.

Economies of scale work. That is how a less expensive electric car from Tesla Motors will be profitable long before traditional automobile manufacturers will be able to manage the feat. They will be too busy trying to fit electric cars into the same schemes they have used before, running the numbers, wondering while they don't work... Why Tesla will simply do it. At ~$83 per kWh Tesla will be able to release a capable electric car at $20,000. At ~$62 per kWh Tesla could release a decent electric car at $15,000. Traditional automobile manufacturers wouldn't be able to match Tesla at 1/10th those costs to build, because they are looking at the issue from the wrong end of the telescope.

 

[SmartElectric]

Daimler tends to hang on to its Smart division, even gave it a new lease of life with the Car2Go program. Reality is that Smart was hemorrhaging money like no Mercedes before. The previous ForTwo reduced the loss to a mere $1000 per car.

This completely discounts attracting new people (like me and my wife) to the parent brand.
We bought a Mercedes GLK350 after my wife saw one close up in the dealership when I was reserving my Smart ED!

 

[voyager]

This completely discounts attracting new people (like me and my wife) to the parent brand.
We bought a Mercedes GLK350 after my wife saw one close up in the dealership when I was reserving my Smart ED!

I understand. One might actually appreciate the fact that Daimler decided to continue the Smart ForTwo, where for instance Toyota decided to discontinue the IQ. There might come an alternative: the Yamaha Motiv-e, designed and engineered by McLaren F1 designer Gordon Murray.

 

[Gerasimental]

Taking into account that China is already Tesla's 2nd largest market, and China's vastly different usage pattern (almost exclusively urban), market priorities (small size being a huge selling point in busy cities) and socio-economic distribution (swathes of population moving into the middle class with cars being one of the highest priority status symbols) I think a smaller-than-genIII makes good sense as the next model.
I'm talking somewhere between compact and micro (like the IQ, fortwo etc) so it would sell in the US and Europe as well. Pickups may be very attractive for the US market, but I think that Tesla would be better off making a car it can sell worldwide before considering market specific cars.

In addition, I feel that a pickup will run into more 'cultural' resistance in that pickup buyers care a lot about proven reliability and will on average be more conservative than buyers of a small sub-compact car. Delaying a pickup by a few more years allows public perception of electric cars to shift further in Tesla's favour allowing it to launch it into a potentially more receptive market. I don't see interest in a pickup on the TMC forum as remotely representative of the overall view of the pickup 'community' towards a Tesla pickup.

 

[voyager]

I agree, Gerasimental. And why not use the opportunity to break the typical small city car mold, and come with a... well, "Smart ForThree"? One that is safer, more comfortable, and more fun to drive than the Smart car. Lightweight build and ultra low drag require less batteries.

 

[Gerasimental]

voyager, I would argue that such vehicle would be more suitable to follow a more conventional sub-compact car, at a stage where Tesla can develop cars for specific markets. So it could look something like:

genIV: sub-compact, 4 wheel, 120mile, $30k - selling worldwide.
genV: diversified model range.
US: mid-range pick-up that our US friends here will be able to describe more closely
Asia: 'ForThree' style vehicle. Narrow, super city friendly, $15k, 80mile. Premium feel and super high-tech will be key here. Must still be highly desirable.
Europe: unclear if the European market could fit another car without going down the BMW route and making dozens of ridiculous 'crossovers'. A €35k Model 3 coupé and/or convertible would probably sell extremely well in Europe (imagine the freedom of design in a convertible with the rigidity given by the battery packs and the space for the roof to fold into!!), but there is speculation that those are already in the pipeline.

 

[voyager]

Well, Tesla always wants to do things differently. Don't forget that there is already way too much of the same thing, especially in 'small hatchback country'. If a car's basic concept is sound, why not implement? Best to address some other personal mobility-related issues as well... I guess that Toyota's i-Road comes close to the vehicle I suggested, but then more motor scooter than automobile.

 

[ShogoWM]

Couple of month ago, Tesla announced “Tesla Model 3 coming soon for average consumer.” I had a question, Tesla Model 3 is how much weight? I know, Tesla Model S’s weight is 2,108 kg. Tesla Model S made by aluminium, however it is too heavy against common cars. Tesla Model 3 is low price model, my opinion Tesla can’t use aluminium to Model 3. How do you think about Model 3? Is it too heavy car? Anyway, I’m really looking forward to seeing Model 3. Model 3 will change gasoline car market and be game-changer. I’ll buy Model 3 with Auto-Pilot system.

 

[voyager]

ShogoWM, this is the Model 4 discussion.