Tesla Model S waffling

[Rob]

That's awesome. Someday . . .

[lemming]

Originally Posted by Rob

That's awesome. Someday . . .

my only question about the current Tesla S sedan is if this is parallel to the Palm Treo. when they first came out, they solved a problem none of us knew we had and it was pretty well executed. even if it's the original iPhone....

i cannot help but see a trend that will be repeated. BMW's extensive use of carbon fibre-like material is the reason the i8 is only 3200lbs. so when that same manufacturing base is applied to the 5 series........then how will each of us feel?

a car in the vein of the Tesla that weighs 3500lbs with 400mi range. that's closer to the sweet spot, in my humble opinion. the model S is bespoke beauty, but i can wait for mass produced reduction to practice.

[JST]

Originally Posted by lemming

my only question about the current Tesla S sedan is if this is parallel to the Palm Treo. when they first came out, they solved a problem none of us knew we had and it was pretty well executed. even if it's the original iPhone....

i cannot help but see a trend that will be repeated. BMW's extensive use of carbon fibre-like material is the reason the i8 is only 3200lbs. so when that same manufacturing base is applied to the 5 series........then how will each of us feel?

a car in the vein of the Tesla that weighs 3500lbs with 400mi range. that's closer to the sweet spot, in my humble opinion. the model S is bespoke beauty, but i can wait for mass produced reduction to practice.

No, the reason the i8 is only 3200 lbs is because it has a tiny battery. If you put a 60 or 80kwh battery in the i8, it's going to weigh 2 tons.

[lemming]

Originally Posted by JST

No, the reason the i8 is only 3200 lbs is because it has a tiny battery. If you put a 60 or 80kwh battery in the i8, it's going to weigh 2 tons.

but you're dictating that the only way to achieve range is using 'current' battery technology, which is not a given.

and there is also this presumption that EV is always superior to EV with range extender.

5 years from now, I still think BMW will have the better answer --and it needn't walk down the Tesla path. fuel efficiency is this complex equation of cost of goods, economies of scale, energy costs and engineering execution.

adding a larger battery, sort of the engineering equivalent of a mophie juice pack for an iPhone, is one answer. it's not the final answer.

you've already seen practical elements of people such as me, nate and Zach who are clearly in the Tesla demographic, but we eschew the car because of the hassle of cord-based charging and range. it's not far fetched to see the limits of the system here.

Tesla is burning money setting up infrastructure (supercharging plus gigafactories) for a fleet of 20,000 cars per year. We all laugh at SAAB when their sales numbers were this low but when they first came out, front wheel drive and turbocharging was intriguing.

my counterpoint to the Tesla enthusiasm is that Palm and Blackberry are dead where once they defined a segment as "first in class". let's not mistake that for "best in class".

[JST]

Originally Posted by lemming

but you're dictating that the only way to achieve range is using 'current' battery technology, which is not a given.

As between the company investing billions of dollars in battery manufacturing and the company relying mostly on outside suppliers for battery tech, which do you think it more likely to achieve a breakthrough in cost on the battery front?

and there is also this presumption that EV is always superior to EV with range extender.

5 years from now, I still think BMW will have the better answer --and it needn't walk down the Tesla path. fuel efficiency is this complex equation of cost of goods, economies of scale, energy costs and engineering execution.

adding a larger battery, sort of the engineering equivalent of a mophie juice pack for an iPhone, is one answer. it's not the final answer.

you've already seen practical elements of people such as me, nate and Zach who are clearly in the Tesla demographic, but we eschew the car because of the hassle of cord-based charging and range. it's not far fetched to see the limits of the system here.

On the contrary--I think the PHEV model is the dead end here. The hybrid status of the i8 is a gimmick; Roundel's real-world testing yielded essentially 26 mpg, which is good but not exactly set-the-world-on-fire. The battery is too small and its performance envelope too limited to make it really much more than a piece of eco-jewelry that will be worn by the ultra-rich.

The Volt (and the next Volt) make a much better case for themselves. A realistic electric range backed by an engine that lets you go wherever you need to--what's not to like?

The problem is that, at the end of the day, you're dragging around an entire redundant powertrain EVERY DAY in order to provide power on those few trips where you go outside the range of your battery. That's not efficient, and it also means that rather than being a packaging marvel (like the Model S) the Volt is a packaging nightmare. It needs both an engine AND a good sized battery--worst of both worlds, not the best.

As charging infrastructure spreads, the Volt will increasingly be an answer to a question asked by fewer and fewer people. If there is a Supercharger within 100 miles of where I am and where I want to go, why do I need to carry around a gas generator all the time? There isn't now, but there will be...and sooner than you think. Not five years--two years.

Five years ago I thought the Volt was brilliant, but I (and GM) were thinking WAAAYY too small. Make a long-range electric car. Built out the charging infrastructure to go with it, that only your cars can (or would even want) to use. Suddenly, you've got a competitive advantage that really takes a while to overcome.

Tesla is burning money setting up infrastructure (supercharging plus gigafactories) for a fleet of 20,000 cars per year. We all laugh at SAAB when their sales numbers were this low but when they first came out, front wheel drive and turbocharging was intriguing.

my counterpoint to the Tesla enthusiasm is that Palm and Blackberry are dead where once they defined a segment as "first in class". let's not mistake that for "best in class".

Tesla isn't setting all that up for a fleet of 20K cars per year. They're going to build more than 40 this year and double that next, and of course plan to build multiple hundreds of thousands of the mid-sized car when that comes out. Can they do it? But if you are asking me who Tesla's fast-follower is...well, I just don't see anyone moving in that direction. Until someone does, my money stays on Tesla.

[lemming]

Originally Posted by JST

As between the company investing billions of dollars in battery manufacturing and the company relying mostly on outside suppliers for battery tech, which do you think it more likely to achieve a breakthrough in cost on the battery front?



On the contrary--I think the PHEV model is the dead end here. The hybrid status of the i8 is a gimmick; Roundel's real-world testing yielded essentially 26 mpg, which is good but not exactly set-the-world-on-fire. The battery is too small and its performance envelope too limited to make it really much more than a piece of eco-jewelry that will be worn by the ultra-rich.

The Volt (and the next Volt) make a much better case for themselves. A realistic electric range backed by an engine that lets you go wherever you need to--what's not to like?

The problem is that, at the end of the day, you're dragging around an entire redundant powertrain EVERY DAY in order to provide power on those few trips where you go outside the range of your battery. That's not efficient, and it also means that rather than being a packaging marvel (like the Model S) the Volt is a packaging nightmare. It needs both an engine AND a good sized battery--worst of both worlds, not the best.

As charging infrastructure spreads, the Volt will increasingly be an answer to a question asked by fewer and fewer people. If there is a Supercharger within 100 miles of where I am and where I want to go, why do I need to carry around a gas generator all the time? There isn't now, but there will be...and sooner than you think. Not five years--two years.

Five years ago I thought the Volt was brilliant, but I (and GM) were thinking WAAAYY too small. Make a long-range electric car. Built out the charging infrastructure to go with it, that only your cars can (or would even want) to use. Suddenly, you've got a competitive advantage that really takes a while to overcome.


Tesla isn't setting all that up for a fleet of 20K cars per year. They're going to build more than 40 this year and double that next, and of course plan to build multiple hundreds of thousands of the mid-sized car when that comes out. Can they do it? But if you are asking me who Tesla's fast-follower is...well, I just don't see anyone moving in that direction. Until someone does, my money stays on Tesla.

1. battery tech, as you'd imagine, is intensively funded and i'm seeing the results live, which is why i'm not convinced Tesla will find the answer. I think the answer comes from the outfits around here.

2. the engineering principles are: <4000lbs and 400mi range --> execute. as more companies wade into this space, I do believe with a lot of conviction that the answer comes from auto manufacturers. The Supercharger network is, until, fully borne out, still pretty hypothetical to me. it limits the practicality of the car and (to your later point) is barely suitable for 20,000 cars in NYC/CT/MA, so I worry about its ability to span the needs of 40k or 80k cars.


3. who is Tesla's fast follower? I could speculate, what makes it interesting is that it needn't be a bricks and mortar car company. it can be a tech company. but there will be a fast follower when there is selective pressure to do so. i would not call the current environment selective pressure. 20,000 to 100,000 sales a year is a rounding error so it will be awhile. Tesla lives at the interface where they make some money, but probably not enough. so their model needs to find more profitability and i don't see it in this lineup, nor in one where there are more entry level vehicles. historically, the small sales volumes need to be astronomically priced, like Ferrari or Mclaren (this year). the game they are playing right now is really tough sledding.

just thoughts. but it's nice to keep the discussion moving, isn't it?

[Rob]

I think you are discounting the Elon Musk factor and I think that factor is huge.

As for BMW having the answer . . . 26 mpg is quite a bit worse than a Prius around town. The prius doesn't have range limitations, plug in requirements and so on. Seems like a net fail so far. If BMW does have the answer, or some other larger car company does, it will still be b/c of Tesla. I love what they are doing. If I could afford one for the limited driving I do, I would get one, charge it at the office and never, ever pay a cent for transportation again (except may for road trips to Tahoe - I doubt they will build super chargers in the middle of the desert beside two lane highways where there are no people anytime soon).

[JST]

Like Lusk, Wyoming? I wouldn't count out the possibility of a supercharger in the middle of nowhere, especially if it's on the way from somewhere to Tahoe.
http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger/lusk

Lemming makes some great points, but at the end of the day I haven't seen anyone adopting the Tesla business model--or anything close to it. BMW's i division is interesting, but it is following the same "electric cars are city cars" formula that everyone else has followed. It hasn't worked for anyone else--I don't think it will work for BMW.

The i8 is a tech demonstrator halo car. As fun as those can be, there's no reason to buy one over a base 911 unless you live 2 miles from work and want to drive like your grandmother on your commute.

It just astonishes me how people overlook the importance of the supercharger net. And by "people," I mean not just lemming but everyone in the auto industry.

As I've said before, GM has been farting around for years trying to come up with something that gives them a recurring revenue stream from the customer. OnStar and services like it are a bad joke compared to OWNING THE FUEL INFRASTRUCTURE. Jesus, that's huge. Huge. And while Tesla is giving it away for free now, there's no reason they have to keep doing so for future products. And even if they *do* keep giving it away for free, think about what a huge advantage that is. "Hey, you can buy this BMW i5 and charge at home or you can buy our car and charge everywhere, fast, for free."

Your arbitrary engineering benchmarks are just that. The Model S doesn't need to weigh 4000 lbs. it would be nice if it did, but it already drives as well as anything on the market it's size, so who cares if it's a bit on the heavy side.

400 miles would be nice, too, but again, how many people really need that? Would I pay an extra 10 grand for a 400 mile battery? No. I don't need it. And as the Superchargers get built out, I will need it even less.

[Rob]

You might be right about the supercharger, but . . . the Lusk super charger is where a couple of highways meet and it appears to be a town with actual people in it. The majority of the towns in the middle of Nevada are on the way to abandonment with a few exceptions. But who knows? Travel from Vegas to Reno might be enough to support one. If the battery factory goes to Reno, then I am certain that corridor would be built out.

[lemming]

Originally Posted by JST

Like Lusk, Wyoming? I wouldn't count out the possibility of a supercharger in the middle of nowhere, especially if it's on the way from somewhere to Tahoe.

http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger/lusk



Lemming makes some great points, but at the end of the day I haven't seen anyone adopting the Tesla business model--or anything close to it. BMW's i division is interesting, but it is following the same "electric cars are city cars" formula that everyone else has followed. It hasn't worked for anyone else--I don't think it will work for BMW.



The i8 is a tech demonstrator halo car. As fun as those can be, there's no reason to buy one over a base 911 unless you live 2 miles from work and want to drive like your grandmother on your commute.



It just astonishes me how people overlook the importance of the supercharger net. And by "people," I mean not just lemming but everyone in the auto industry.



As I've said before, GM has been farting around for years trying to come up with something that gives them a recurring revenue stream from the customer. OnStar and services like it are a bad joke compared to OWNING THE FUEL INFRASTRUCTURE. Jesus, that's huge. Huge. And while Tesla is giving it away for free now, there's no reason they have to keep doing so for future products. And even if they *do* keep giving it away for free, think about what a huge advantage that is. "Hey, you can buy this BMW i5 and charge at home or you can buy our car and charge everywhere, fast, for free."



Your arbitrary engineering benchmarks are just that. The Model S doesn't need to weigh 4000 lbs. it would be nice if it did, but it already drives as well as anything on the market it's size, so who cares if it's a bit on the heavy side.



400 miles would be nice, too, but again, how many people really need that? Would I pay an extra 10 grand for a 400 mile battery? No. I don't need it. And as the Superchargers get built out, I will need it even less.

The only thing that we will materially disagree upon is if you buy the argument that the Tesla is saving money. Everything else, including the uniqueness and out of the box thinking, I can see.

But when a car in its base configuration costs 12k per year to lease, it's a bizarro 1%-er la la land and I find it to be really pretentious.

If it was about saving money, you would own a volt for 31k or lease for 209 a month and you're right, based on 90% of Americans' commute, you would never use gas.

This isn't about Eco anything. Sorry.