Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Your comment would have been fine with just the middle paragraph.
- Changing volume and airflow through the central touchscreen were much more challenging than the physical knobs and buttons most cars have. I'd even argue they were distracting and dangerous to use while driving. I don't believe this was a learning curve issue. Having to accurately place your finger above a touch screen and repeatedly hit a plus button is an inferior experience to rotating a knob.
- The self-driving ability has a long way to go before it is useful for anything except cruising on the freeway. In two separate instances, the car slowed at a stop sign down to 15mph before blowing through it (which could have been a non-cheap ticket that went on my record if a cop were around), and almost hit another car when two lanes merged into one.
- The supercharging stations charge at a slower rate than advertised, and cost only a little less to use than filling up a car with unleaded gas.
- The door handles are difficult to use. Maybe this is a learning curve issue, but pressing the handle in at the correct position takes more dexterity than simply pulling on a standard handle.
The technology and presentation is impressive, but I felt the driving experience was subpar.
No other cars on the road have drag coefficients as low as the Model 3 (or the Model S, for that matter). From what I've seen, Teslas are the only cars that have the B-pillar flush to the glass, and flush, cavity-less door handles. That plus the perfectly smooth underbody nose to tail is what gives the Teslas better range per battery capacity than other electrics.
The Model S is the fourth lowest at 0.24, tied with the Mercedes S class, behind the Model 3 at 0.23.
But leading the pack are the Mercedes CLA (0.22) and the Volkswagen XL1 (0.19).
But TIL about the CLA.
Note: the CLA was tested at 0.30 drag coefficient by Car and Driver, though.
Car and Driver's numbers for Cd are higher for everyone, it seems (though certainly the CLA was notably higher).
Then again the new A class is quoted at 0.22.
"That's not fair, they were -trying- to make it aerodynamic!" doesn't really fly as an argument.
The Insight looks like a sporty coupe. The XL1 and EV1 look like pills.
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/mercedes-benz-cla-drag-co...
> The only Mercedes-Benz CLA model that actually is the aerodynamic benchmark for current production cars is the CLA 180 BlueEfficiency Edition, a variant of the small “four-door coupe” that will never be available in the US.
> With an official drag coefficient of 0.22, it bests the Tesla Model S by two whole points. On the other hand, a European-spec Mercedes-Benz CLA 250 sports a Cd of 0.28, which is still two points more optimistic than what Car and Driver's aero test concluded.
> Even so, what Don Sherman doesn't properly explain is that the US variant of the CLA 250 – the car they actually tested in the wind tunnel – doesn't sport the same aerodynamic mods as its European counterpart, such as active engine grille shutters, which make a tremendous difference in the car's drag coefficient at high speeds. In other words, the US-spec CLA 250 may very well sport a Cd of 0.30, could it not?
I have seen grille shutters on C-classes in person since then...
Or this from BMW....https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/15/bmws-holoactive-touch-in-c...
Or Ultrahaptics... https://www.ultrahaptics.com/
You should be able to say "car, turn up the air and the music down".
Example...
http://owners.honda.com/vehicles/information/2018/Accord-Sed...
Not sure if you know or not, but want to make this clear - the current Autopilot feature does NOT know how to stop at signs or lights. It really is just really good lane adherence, and even that can be sketchy (hopping lanes into oncoming traffic, sudden hard braking for no reason).
The problem is that people don't understand what an autopilot does. But that's not something that should be argued around, when it wouldn't be a big exercise to name it something else.
But that is different from the average human, who expects the autopilot to automatically pilot the car - including stopping at stop lights and for pedestrians.
I stand corrected on the physical control for volume. There is no physical control for airflow as far as I know.
"Almost everything" feels like a stretch, but you are entitled to your opinion as I am mine.
If you charge at home, overnight, you pay about $0.125/kWh, which extends the operating cost advantage further.
Using your example of 32mpg and $3.64/gallon, 177 miles would cost $20.13.
So roughly 25% cheaper for the supercharger vs gas. Bear in mind filling up gas takes five minutes whereas the supercharger took over two hours.
Good point about charging at home overnight though.
Tangential: I'm always baffled that Americans consider prices like this expensive. In Germany, gas goes for €1.20-€1.50 per liter (which is $5.22-$6.52 per gallon).
In 1.519€/l($6.611/gal) are 0.8678€/l($3.777/gal) taxes[2].
What they see as a expensive price, we only pay to the fiskus alone!
From memory. I don't have a car (or a driver's license, for that matter), but I drive by gas stations sometimes.
> What they see as a expensive price, we only pay to the fiskus alone!
I find it hard to believe that the US does not have any taxes on gas whatsoever.
The volume can be controlled by the spinning dials in the steering wheel.
The supercharging stations charge just as they were advertised. When the car is mostly empty, they charge faster, and as the battery is more full they have to slow down the charging rate. This is how they are defined to work.
The door handles are slightly difficult to use.
It's not for everyone, and it's no crime not to like some things about it. But using the autopilot without understanding it's limitations could have lead to death for someone.
"Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars. All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver"
Based on my experience, that sentence is extremely misleading.
I stand corrected on physical controls for volume. No such controls exist for airflow as far as I know.
Regarding supercharging times, both the renter and other sources I've read online cite a full charge (over 300 miles) taking 75 - 80 minutes. I got 59 kWh (about 200 miles at a conversion rate of 3.25 miles/kWh) in 2+ hours of charging.
I'm happy that you were not hurt nor was anyone else. Tesla could be more explicit about this.
I guess it's another thing that you learn from experience, and they do talk about it but it's not obvious but when the car is more full, they charge the batteries at a slower rate, they can only charge them at a rate based on how close they are to full. I know that's confusing, that's just how they work. If you use the trip planner in the car, it will route you through the super chargers and tell you how long to stay at each one and what the likely % of charge will be. I traveled from Seattle to Banff and the superchargers have been placed at a good distance apart so that I never need to charge more than about 75%.
I hope if you ever try another EV that the people renting it to you provide proper instructions so that you can drive it safely.
Appreciate the extra info on supercharging, good to know.
I think the misunderstanding of Autopilot came from a few things:
- The hype you mention around Tesla and some of the language they use.
- My own mistake in conflating self-driving technologies that Google, Uber, Lyft (Cruise), etc. are working on with Tesla's.
- Videos like this posted on Tesla's site two years ago: https://www.tesla.com/videos/full-self-driving-hardware-all-.... Notice the car fully stops at intersections in that video.
I test drove a BMW i3 (via ReachNow). I was piqued by Sandy Munro's tear down of both the i3 and Tesla 3. My first electric car (bigger than a golf cart).
I hated it.
The regenerative breaking felt all wrong. I thought something was wrong with the car, like I had left the brakes on. Worse, I'm used to coasting on the highway. And the i3 requires active acceleration.
My conclusion is that I'll have to relearn how to drive. My transition from ICE to EV will be comparable to moving from manual to automatic transmission.
(Gods, I miss manual transmissions. My left foot still doesn't know what it's supposed to be doing.)
> And it’s doing so at a higher price than other mass-market cars. The most expensive versions of the Model 3 are currently the most popular, with an average selling price approaching $60,000.
It would be very interesting if Tesla's surge in ranking would be caused more by fleeing luxury customers (from brands like the referenced Mercedes) versus gaining new customers.
https://www.statista.com/outlook/1060000/104/luxury-cars/nor...
A small modification.
Were these developers, I'd ask if the $900k developer is 60x better than the $30k administrator.
Were these knives and forks, I could ask YouTube.
The average new car is only $37k and only about 30% of car purchases are new cars.
Which is what you spend on a Kia Stinger, which while isn't an entry-level car, certainly isn't a Euro.
https://www.carsales.com.au/demo/details/Kia-Stinger-2017/OA...
Also, even the average new car price being $37K USD seems high to me, given the preponderance of sub-$20K cars I actually see on the road (Civics and Corollas). I could certainly be out of touch in the opposite direction, but I wonder if that's a mean or median average, and whether it includes vehicles that are typically more expensive like SUVs, minivans, and pickup trucks.
So if the average new car is $37k, how many are in the range of $60k? The luxury segment alone is more than 10% and one of the fastest growing, and generally starts above $40k. And the $37k average isn't far from that, so I'd assume that there are tons of cheap cars pulling the average down, but also that there are probably a lot of very expensive cars pulling the average up. So while $60k for a new car is high, it's not like a crazy 1% super luxury purchase.
I think you might be the one out of touch here...there are a LOT of wealthy people out there buying new cars for whom $60k is a drop in the bucket. For example: the very story that we're all commenting on!
When you see Tesla causing drops to the tune of 15% or even 20% to the sales of premium ICE car brands, and who knows how much more it will be in the next quarters, a hit this big and this sudden can be quite destabilizing to a company with a highly optimized supply chain. Also, these companies haven't delivered something truly new in decades, and to do so now, under the gun, would require not a product revamp, but a culture revamp. Never heard one of those being pulled off.
Innovation is hard, let's ask for government assistance: https://www.reuters.com/article/autoshow-paris-electric-sque...
Yet most of their responses so far are on paper - they will start producing electric cars, sometime in the future.
Maybe VW. Maybe. But GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda... I don’t see it. Toyota is still trying to make hydrogen a thing, ferchrissake. Meanwhile Tesla is eating the luxury segment alive.
If — and it’s a big if — Tesla can achieve profitability with the Model 3 and get their crossover SUV into production, they’ll own the world.
If Elon should burn out and crash Tesla, it will still happen. Only instead of being Tesla delivering the death blow, it will be those electric golf carts growing up, turning into full cars, and wiping out traditional automakers.
Either way the underlying dynamic is the same. As batteries become good and cheap enough for mass cars, there is an opportunity for upstarts who only do electric to take on gas cars.
[1] https://www.vwvortex.com/news/volkswagen-news/d-electric-hat...
The majority of new vehicles being fully electric will happen pretty soon. The economics of this happening are incredibly compelling, essentially inevitable. I would put this occurring before 2025, but it's hard to say. If the Chinese keep up the heavy push toward electrification, it will probably be sooner. If not, then later.
No? Not even remotely close to true. The Model 3 broke into the best selling sedan list. That's great, but it's not even in the same ballpark as an EV taking the top vehicle sales spot much less EVs being the majority of new vehicles.
Just to return to reality here there are more F150s sold in 6 months than Tesla has sold in its lifetime (450k; https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America... vs. 300k; https://electrek.co/2018/02/14/tesla-delivered-300000th-vehi...)
In the first half of 2018 there were 8.5 million vehicles sold in the US alone. The Model 3's accomplishment of 40k vehicles is a rounding error.
His prediction was based on projecting technology curves out and comparing to a set of requirements around acceleration (able to merge onto a highway), range, and cost. Such projections out decades in advance are naturally imprecise. I would have considered it a darned good prediction if the first mass market electric cars had arrived anywhere between 2015 and 2025.
Sure. But the mistake everyone makes is that the drive train technology is not what differentiates a car.
It's the brand, the design, quality of interior, availability etc. Those are much harder for upstarts to get right as we've seen with Tesla.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/tesla-model-3-stuns-ger...
Also it's obviously much simpler and cleaner to build a car with just a touchscreen as its main interface. But the problem is its a nightmare for driving.
I was leery of the speedometer being in the center and not behind the steering wheel, but it isn’t all that different from diving a Mini, where the speedometer is a giant dial in the center console.
By the time electric is capable of being used for comparable cars at comparable prices for established lines of cars for established auto companies, they will be up against entrants in electric cars that have lower margins and more experience. When existing car manufacturers try to switch over they will wind up offering an inferior car at a worse price than the upstarts. This is a story that has played out many times in technology, and it never goes well for the established industry giants.
It doesn't matter if the competitors are delivering sports cars or glorified golf carts. What matters is that traditional auto companies with traditional dealer networks will be unable to compete head to head when they become competitive with the mass market.
Everyone knows about Tesla. Go look at https://www.fastcompany.com/40517240/the-biggest-electric-ve... for a company approaching the problem from the low end. There are a dozen more where BYD came from. And other markets where competitors are developing.
There are many niches around the world for electric vehicles. They are filled with companies who are salivating at the juicy pork chop that is the US car market. Technology does not, yet, allow them to compete head to head in Detroit's main product categories. But when they finally can, established automakers won't stand a chance.
Jaguar I-Pace. Mercedes EQC. BMW iX3.
Far superior to Tesla on all the metrics I mentioned before.
How are these even in the same ballpark as the Model S which has been out for 6 years and the Model 3 which has been selling in decent volume for months?
We have very little data about how production models of these vehicles drive/maintenance/etc.
It will be nice to see some competition to Telsa's Model X but none of them really compete with a Model 3 right now (ie, under $50k base).
The point is that the idea that the established car manufacturers can't make a decent electric car is ridiculous. They can. In fact they look significantly better than a Tesla.
Clearly they can make a car "better" than the Tesla (if you're leaving alone drivetrain), but they generally cost more.
That's the rub. Due to battery costs, any manufacturer not having a lock on battery supplies will either have to produce a vehicle that's weak on range/power or will cost more for the same range/power as a Tesla.
That's why plugin hybrids are all that the big manufacturers offer that honestly compete with Tesla's offerings. You need 1/5th the battery for a hybrid as you would a full EV.
Availability will be a huge problem for traditional makers as well, as we have already seen with all their electric cars. Its not clear at all that they can simply massively scale electronic cars. People who say that as soon as VW makes a electric car they can just produce millions is wildly optimistic.
And quality of the interior is one of the easier things to improve.
I think range, acceleration, mobile phone integration and digital features, 'autopilot' are far more important.
The world is full of upstarts being crushed by large incumbents.
And don't remember we still have Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Amazon etc all still doing very well.
And really if you think about it that shouldn't be surprising. The big car companies today don't need a miracle at all. They are in a pretty good spot. They know how to do all the really hard stuff about building a car (the actual manufacturing & quality control stuff - the things Tesla is really bad at and struggling hard to figure out). They just need to do the easy part of putting in an EV powertrain. And they are already used to dealing with multiple powertrains for the same car, even.
Tesla took the risk to prove it out, but there's no reason to believe the big companies will be unable to change course on this. It's not at all like the pre-iPhone vs. post-iPhone where the entire UX interaction across the entire platform changed. This is all things considered a pretty small part of the car that's changed, and in pretty straightforward ways.
$80k model x, est range 237 miles.
Tesla may have better battery tech at the end of the day, but it's very obviously not so far ahead. We're talking 10-20% differences at comparable price points even if Audi comes in under estimates.
And critically it's highly likely the Audi will have the build & interior quality of an $80k car, unlike the model x. Time will tell if people will ignore luxury to get a better 0-60 or not. Some certainly will, but most historically don't.
Tesla has a cost and experience advantage on batteries and electric powertrains. It becomes clear when you compare the stats of these competitors and realize they require 90kwh and 95kwh batteries to achieve the same range as a 75 kwh Model X.
That's not to mention the elephant in the room, which is fast charging. Tesla's supercharger network is leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else.
I'm hopeful Tesla will face some good competition from traditional automakers, but it's silly to act as if they've already been beat.
The Model S has a currently unique powertrain, but that's basically the only thing it has. Do you really think that can continue to be sufficient to move vehicles when competitors have a powertrain that's 80% the same as Tesla's, but an interior & build quality that's 10x Tesla's?
The real engineering advantage tesla has is their proven battery heating and cooling technology - none of the other companies have that, and the recent cars have adopted some of tesla's ideas about heating and cooling but they don't have experience.
Finally, don't forget that there's a world wide shortage of electric car batteries. that's why tesla had to build the irritatingly named giga factory, because without it they couldn't build a lot of evs. and other companies can't either, without new battery production coming online.
Audi announced they wouldn't keep the audi ev at dealers, it's special order. I don't know if this is because dealers didn't want it or they didn't want to train them or what. gm dealers are said to not be enthusiastic about the bolt.
And outside of Tesla there is not much, there is no electric car Android, specially outside of China.
Speaking personally, my wife and I are new customers. This is the first time that we've spent over $30k on a car.
Between rebates, the cost of gas, and reductions in maintenance costs, we think that we save somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 on the lifetime cost of ownership over the life of this car versus an ICE car. It is still a luxury, but between features like the driving assist, crash safety ratings, acceleration and so on, we are happy to spend it.
Based on data for other models from other drivers, we have reason to believe that, barring accidents, the battery could realistically last us 500k miles. But we have set it to never charge over 80% of capacity to maximize that limit.
New Tesla owner here, hadn't heard that!
Will you not charge above 80% even on trips?
We do 80%, but are willing to raise it for trips.
The reason why it matters is that charging lithium ion batteries to 100% lowers their lifespan. Since we don't need the range normally, we leave it at 80%.
I wouldn't say that they're less likely to break, but rather there's just fewer parts to potentially break. Your point is still completely valid of course.
A "thought experiment" is when you set the stage to explain something using fundamental physics.
There are hundreds of thousands of one-gear cars on the road. There is data.
A thought experiment needs to explain something using fundamental physics? What about a math or logic related thought experiment?
Why would I have to include maybe or might in a thought experiment?
I'm down with math and logic, as well as physics. But the problem here appears to be that you left out a word, so your audience is mystified.
Product A has 100 parts. Each part has a 10 percent chance of breaking over the products lifetime.
Product B has 25 parts. Each has a 10 percent chance of breaking over the product’s lifetime.
Which product is more likely to break more often?
ICE cars can't do that because their engines work best in a fairly narrow range of RPMs. But electric has no such limit.
The kind of component matters. Altho in the long, long term we can expect software bugs to trend to 0.
There is still a lot that can go wrong on the body, notably the infamous door handles, but the power train is just much, much simpler. Notably, no oil changes, no gas, and due to regenerative braking, the physical brakes last a lot longer. Longer-term, while there is a coolant change required, there is no timing belt replacement, no spark plugs, no catalytic converter / muffler, etc.
The batteries themselves have seemed to hold up relatively well, but in the 10+ year range, that is indeed a concern, as they represent a large fraction of the value of the car. But prices are dropping, and maybe a cheaper and better battery pack can be retrofitted when the time comes?
Current Tesla Model S fleet data is showing substantial longevity (80% initial storage capacity retained) well past 10 years/500k+ miles [1] [2]. This can be credited to their thermal management system and an advanced battery management system.
[1] https://electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla-battery-degradation-dat...
[2] https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/16/tesla-battery-packs-live...
I agree that they will likely still be serviceable, though.
* Fanbelts
* Flywheels
* Transmissions
* Oil Changes
* Brakes / Brake pads (regenerative breaking makes them last a lot longer)
* Transmissions
* Spark Plugs and wires
When there are less moving parts, there is less chance of them breaking. It really is as simple as that.
It's such a tremendously long list. And all the items above are something I've dealt with on a vehicle at some point in my life.
My wife wanted a new car (I'm stubborn and don't drive ;-) ) because the old one was getting pretty expensive to maintain. I crunched the numbers and we ended up buying a recent used Leaf. I live in Japan and Nissan has this deal where you pay about $30 a month and get unlimited recharges at public charging stations (essentially all Nissan and Mitsubishi dealerships, highway rest stops, major hotels, etc). I pay about 30 cents per KWh, so this is a pretty good deal. We should save enough money on various thing that the cost of the new car is negligible. We don't actually pick up the new car until November (lots of weird paper work in Japan and we're out of town for a few weeks as well), so possible I'll be singing a different tune in a few months, but I was really surprised at how the numbers worked out on paper.
[1] https://avt.inl.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf
Right now an EV costs 20-30 grand more than a like-for-like ICE car, before the rebate (that is about to run out for Tesla). It's also too early to be planning on running the EV for half a million miles just to make it pay for itself in reduced fuel costs.
Half the country has power costs below 12 cents per KWH. Even without cherrypicking, the math is solidly in favor of EVs. If you can't afford a Tesla, the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Bolt are affordable alternatives, before considering state and utility incentives (which can be substantial).
https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2018/7/16/tesloops-tesla-model-...
My s is 3.5 years old, had one visit to fix something and has had 0 maintenance. No gasoline (electricity is about 1/4 the price of buying gas per range, which is why they rate it at around 100 mpg), no fuel filter, no oil changes, no air filter, no anything. It's wasn't 0 because they did all the maintenance under some prepaid thing either.
Where do you think all the tesla costs come from? Compare to say a 50k bmw or a 75k+ porsche?
As for maintenance... well, Tesla doesn't exactly have a great reputation there. Lots of people with multiple motor swaps, random problems with everything from door handles to the doors themselves, etc. I don't think I would take the bet that it's actually cheaper to maintain than a German car, and that's saying something :-).
I'm glad you've had a good experience so far, and I hope that becomes the norm.
I thought you were comparing it to an equivalent 'luxury car' with similar specs like a porsche or bmw. I'd compare an AWD M3 (priced at 63k) with an AWD bmw, priced at about 45k, both plus tax. Before Jan 1 you get a 7500 tax credit; after that you get half the tax credit, 3750 back. So that puts it at about 55k for ease of math. Now you want to get back 10k. Those cars are really really expensive for maintenance, that might get you the money back right there. But your fuel price will be about 1/4 the cost or even greater discount than the gas car. You'll never have an oil change, muffler, etc.
All that Tesla maintenance should be free, and they give you a loaner when they are broken. I got a tesla loaner when my car had it's problem that took a few days to fix. There have been some cars with problems. All things made by humans can break.
You'll be able to trade in the tesla for a decent amount of money but it doesn't make it free. As an example, my S is 3.5 years old and I was just offered half the original price as a trade in towards a model 3 - I decided not to do it because my car is working just fine. This was by far the most expensive car I've ever bought, more than double my previous cars. It's not about saving money, it's just so much fun to drive and there's no more fun tech toy I've ever seen. I can use it to go skiing (roof rack), taken multi-thousand mile trips. And you can do all that with a Toyota prius - that wouldn't be awd like my car so dodgy in the snow, but I could have bought a cheap awd drive. I never thought I'd spend more than 30 or 40k for a car, but my old car was 10 years old and I couldn't resist Tesla once I drove it.
The m3 is a much lower price point than the S. If you really wanted to try a tesla, I'd encourage considering a used S with a 4 year warranty from tesla included. See tesla.com or the third party listing site is better, ev-cpo.com. Since electric cars don't break down like regular cars, it's generally considered okay to drive them up to 100k miles. But you have to check out any used car even if you buy from tesla in person to make sure it is in proper shape. The cars come with an 8 year unlimited mileage for the drive train, increased over the original ones that had like an 8 year 100k mileage drivetrain warranty.
Scuttlebutt I've heard is a lot of Lux brands haven't kept up with increasing quality expectations over the last 40 years. People expect their cars to go 120-150k miles without major problems and these cars often aren't living up to that.
wouldn't surprise me at all if merc sales people like that their customers come back to chat every year or so.
I mention this because I'm skeptical to attribute that drop to Tesla alone. I don't know about the high end (S class, etc), but the new C class is capable of tanking its own sales unassisted.
This is a killer feature for me and I will look for it in my next car.
It also has this eco game thing, where you earn “points” when you drive efficiently, and it penalizes you for driving inefficiently (hard acceleration, braking instead of coasting, inconsistent speed). This “game” has transformed the way I drive, it should be in every car.
I will say that I’ve had two warranty repairs (one very serious - the alternator pulley exploded on the highway) and the car is only at 36,000km. Kinda happy it’s a lease!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill-holder
Many cars have or have had it.
If it also earns a driver "points" for not impeding other traffic while driving efficiently, and penalizes a driver for blocking other vehicles that want to pass, when the driver could safely move to a space in a non-passing lane, then it might be welcomed by many drivers.
IMHO, the main reason that Prius drivers have a reputation for driving selfishly while hypermiling is that Toyota put the current MPG in big numbers on the default display screen, and many Prius drivers got into the habit of optimising their driving for a lager MPG number, to the exclusion of being aware of other traffic on the road.
There will surely people who will hold on to ICE but if you can buy a produce that has electric drive train and competes on all metric its is incredibly unlikely that it would not find a market.
Specially if it has features that ICE don't have, like the ability to attach power tools.
Like landing first stages, apparently. Crazy guy.
I'm sure at some point he'll deliver a pickup truck, and it will probably be quite popular. But until he actually starts delivering it, it's kind of pointless to plan around.
KBB lists the Outback, Crosstrek etc as crossovers https://www.kbb.com/subaru/crossovers/
When I think SUV, I think Tahoe, Sequoia, Escalade, Suburban, etc. Compact SUVs are SUVs in name only imo. You pretty much never see a traditional SUV on the road anymore.
For example the 1999 Subaru Legacy is 22 city / 29 highway.
A 2019 Subaru Outback has 25 city / 32 highway, 2019 Forester 26 city / 33 highway. Their brand new and huge three row Subaru Ascent is 21 city / 27 highway, just 1 MpG less.
Granted not all SUVs are this fuel efficient, but they're definitely better than they were in the 1990s. Most of the vehicles with legitimately bad fuel efficiency like the Nissan Xterra (16 city / 22 highway) got discontinued.
That to me sound like something one should take seriously because it shows that robust network effects are in play. A few people buy an EV and have no problem with them, that induces more people to consider them as a valid option.
When I wash my Model S in the driveway, people walking by will often come up to tell me how much they love their own Tesla's (or wanting to know how I like mine). Never had that happen when I wash my Audi :) The Audi is even the more expensive car.
I'm in an apartment complex, and there's 2 downstairs, and I walk past 2 houses with them in the driveway on our ~1.5km walk to my kids favourite park. They are in fancy houses over towards Windsor/St Kilda end, of course, but they're here.
You'll also see a couple on Chapel St on any given day walking down it, and plenty around St Kilda (there's a house with an S and X off Fitzroy St where the kebab shop is but I'm not sure what that road is called, and an X always outside a pub near there).
I'm not exaggerating to say I see a few every time I go out. Whether that's just because of the area, I'm not sure. I only moved here (to VIC) a year ago so still learning what the local demographics are. I mostly stay around the Prahran/Windsor/St Kilda/Albert Park areas day to day.
I'm legitimately surprised how common they are here considering the price and charging issues. There's a few Tesla charges around though, and Chadstone has a Tesla dealership now too.
Get back to me when you're seeing them en masse in Frankston, Campbellfield or any other working class suburb.
I have no idea what you're on about with it being one of the wealthier suburbs either. It's not on any list I can find online. As I said, I moved here recently, and still learning demographics, but it seems like a pretty average inner city suburb. If you head over to St Kilda proper, then sure, there's some crazy houses there, but there's also housing commission and junkies and students and backpackers everywhere too.
And wealth is generally based on average house price which is $1.5 million in Prahran i.e. towards the very expensive end across Australia.
Also, the average cost of a unit (which most people live in here, by a factor of around 6:1 depending on source) is $490k, which is quite cheap for inner Melbourne. I rent a 2br here for $500pw, which was among the cheapest I could find in inner Melbourne. You quoted the average HOUSE cost, in an inner city suburb where houses cost a fortune due to being rarer and more popular among wealthy people. All of which is irrelevant, but if we're nitpicking over data in a casual comment about what I've seen, then we might as well be honest. It's not a "rich" area.
Context matters in both of the above. Of course anecdotal data is biased by the person's situation, location, etc. That's why it's anecdotal. It doesn't mean it's not still relevant.
In the context of sharing our personal anecdotal observations of a very expensive electric car made in niche numbers in another country, with zero local presence other than some "dealerships" (store front in a mall with some customer service staff), I thought it was still quite interesting that I regularly see them, that's all.
Seems a bit strange to base an entire article on faulty data.
Either the demand will die down REALLY soon, or not at all. Having seen the effect of someone I know test driving a tesla with no intent to buy, and then complaining about how intensely bad "regular" cars have felt for her since then, if anything sales will grow as more cars are distributed and people's immediate family and friends get to experience the car. In other news, 40% of Europeans said in a recent Ipsos Mori survey that their next car will be electric.[1]
In other words, I wouldn't hold my breath that this is going to die down any time soon.
[disclaimer: I am a big fat tesla fanboy (if it wasn't obvious) and have bought stock in the company, but I hope I am making the case with logic and data and can be convinced otherwise. That said, my phone background image looks like this: https://i.redd.it/lx9635tjoyf01.jpg]
[1]:https://www.treehugger.com/cars/europe-40-drivers-say-next-c...
But can they keep up this level of demand for two years? Three years? I’m not so sure.
Only time will tell.
After test driving a leaf and model S I’ve decided there’s. I way I go for another non-electric, the driving experience is just so much better without the gas engine lag, transmission, noise, muck, maintenance etc.
So I’m a few years the 3 will hopefully be cheaper and on my short list of cars to consider... maybe even used!
Couldn't you grab a Rav4 Hybrid with Comma AI and basically have an electric car with AWD for $30k less?
Nah, that's only if you're throwing in LR and a Premium Interior.
$35k + $6k for AWD + $5k for AP = $46k.
That's before any incentives or gas savings. And you're also getting an ADAS that outperforms Comma, a huge and growing Supercharger network, and all the OTA updates and hardware utilization to come. Skip Enhanced Autopilot software and you're only $5k over the average new car price (before incentives!).
Tesla has built a profitable EV in a market that treats EVs as loss leaders. The market's about to learn a hard lesson.
[1]https://mediaroom.kbb.com/2018-02-01-Average-New-Car-Prices-...
I know, I've looked. The Model3, even LR, is a pretty good deal compared to other EVs.
I'll add my own point that Tesla's image is very undeserved, it is only kept by the cult of Elon musk and incessant lies about self driving technology.
The only viable electric vehicles at the same price point are the Chevy Bolt and the Nissan Leaf, and if you ever see one of those parked next to a Model 3 you'll notice that the Model 3 is far more attractive.
If you've tried a Model 3 for a day and you still hold the same opinion you presented here, I concede my point - but I really think you have to experience it to know why there is a lot of hype around the car. The hype is justified, surprisingly so.
The .2 seconds faster to 60 that it goes than my existing car is not worth the tradeoff off of the horrendous steering and lack of road feedback.
You might not beat a Porsche Cayenne, but you'll give it a hard time.
Fully loaded, the Prime is ~35k, and theoretically has more or at least equivalent features, can travel about 25 miles on EV alone, with smooth switching between EV and ICE modes. However, it feels like they threw all these systems in as feature creep. There's a HUD that's really hard to see or get used to, a lot of your EV info is on top of the middle of the dash in a very cluttered manner, the NAV system / phone system is tough to use - you end up trying to go thru a phone tree to make a simple call, and the phone sync is so bad that the sales guy who tried to demo it with my wife's iphone 8 spent 15 minutes and couldn't get it to work. The same holds true for almost every feature on it - the autopilot was hard to get to engage because there was also the standard cruise control features, and so on.
The Model 3 is amazing for its elegant simplicity. The early iPhone metaphor is remarkably apt here - there are things that could be better, it could be cheaper, and little idiosyncrasies like the door handles are there - but in the end it's a night and day difference, like you're getting Something New, and not just next year's model.
There's a list of hard factual reasons I could go into that played into the decision, but I'll try to cut the gushing fanboi talk short. In the end we dropped the extra 30k on our Model 3 and are ecstatic with it.
I think we'll find there's a lot of early Prius owners, even up to '10 or '13, who have enjoyed their car, bought it partly for green reasons, and when looking for a replacement will choose to bump up to the Model 3.
Performance has consistently increased. My 2016 will beat a 2017 Altima up a steep hill. I test drove both up a hill that's between the Toyota and Nissan dealerships. Hybrid torque is noticable.
No HUD, and sadly no self-parking. The infotainment system feels a little simple and aged, but everything works. No Android Auto or iDrive(?) but Bluetooth works well. Only adaptive cruise, no normal cruise (or I forgot where is that button), and the follow distance is on a button on the steering wheel - so you can cycle between 160 ft, 130 ft, & 100 ft whenever you want.
It's like a 2007 Lexus, with fresh batteries and engine. The dash has 2 actual dials, and a programmable phone-sized screen. Climate controls are just 2 dials and a few buttons. The steering wheel is almost a video game controller - it has 2 D-pads and other buttons to control most things - audio controls, phone controls, menus, adaptive cruise, etc. And most of these have another control that the passenger can use too.
Grabbing the door handle, with the key in your pocket, unlocks the door - every Tesla is more complicated to enter.
On the other hand, in my 2011 car (and it wasn't exactly anything new at the time either), adjusting AC does not require looking down at the screen, let alone hunting for a flat and featureless part of a touchscreen, that can move with the next software update.
Tesla is a great idea. But IMHO the execution is nowhere near what the price would suggest, and it is advanced in a very SV way, the way Juicero was advanced -- by adding extra tech and complexity to things that have been solved for longer than anyone at Tesla has been alive, and only add to the price with no improvement in UX (or, as with these, with an actual degradation in UX).
If I am recalling it correctly, ergonomics started as something to pay attention to when airplanes suddenly started crashing -- apparently a shape of some control has been changed, and pilots, using muscle memory, would do a wrong thing.
Putting more reprogrammable buttons is better than nothing, I guess, but in the end it is trying to fix, with more technology, self-inflicted problems caused by using more advanced technology than was warranted in the first place.
And judging from the number of comments I see on HN about Teslas lacking physical volume control, discoverability of the interface leaves much to be desired.
Tesla's enemies are everyone from Trump to the incumbent car companies Tesla would have already soundly beaten if they hadn't received a massive bailout.
I think based on this that Tesla's stock is still fairly significantly undervalued. I wouldn't buy it for anything other than a 5-10 year time horizon, during which time I think it will become obvious how superior Tesla's approach is to traditional manufacturing approaches.
Of course, the enemies will still be able to attack through intellectual property theft, frivolous lawsuits, etc., but Tesla is one of the giants of modern manufacturing and design.
Tesla also would not have survived without government money.
And the idea that Tesla would have "soundly beaten" the other car companies is simply not possible to believe. They make and sell far more cars every year than Tesla has made since its founding. Tesla simply does not make enough cars to satisfy mass market demand. Tesla is not able to do this because its manufacturing processes are not mature.
If every American wanted to buy a Tesla less than a million of them would be able to, and the rest would have to get their cars from the incumbent car companies. It’s hard to see how Tesla could beat the incumbents in such a scenario.
I like Tesla, but come on, be realistic.
Only 2 us car companies didn't go bankrupt in the recession in in 2009, Ford and Tesla. Ford and Tesla both got govt loans to design evs, only Tesla had finished paying theirs back.
Maybe its more meritorious to accept and repay a government loan than to be bailed out, but from the point of view of the taxpayer (and the free market) Tesla and GM both owe their survival to taxpayer money.
Private investors did not want to invest in outdated infrastructure and overburdened pension programs, which is why the government bailout was "needed" in the first place.
But if bankruptcy had been allowed to proceed, the best bits would have gone to the highest bidder, and Musk was well positioned to become the highest bidder.
Tesla also would not have survived without
government money.
other car companies ... make and sell far
more cars every year than Tesla has made
since its founding.
1. Hyundai Accents in 2017
2. All Smartcars in any of recent years
3. Subaru Imprezas (excluding WRX/STI) in 2016
4. All Jaguars in recent years
5. Infiniti G-35s in 2013
6. Lexus ES in 2015
To have better sales than Tesla Model 3, you basically have to be a Nissan Sentra, Toyota Prius, Honda Civic, Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Toyota Corolla, or some other extremely well-known line of cars from a reputable brand.
[1]https://insideevs.com/tesla-model-3-sales-epic-august/ [2]http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/hyundai/hyundai-ac...