Comment by auiya | Hacker News Reader

Comment by auiya | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

In the US, what sells the most (sadly) are pickup trucks and SUVs. The numbers aren't even close. The big automakers here know this, and have tailored their product lines accordingly. Ford is basically kept afloat singularly by F-series pickup sales, and have cancelled many sedans entirely. They have an entire range of different sized trucks and SUVs for every market segment. Same with Chevrolet. Now pan over to Tesla. Tesla has one single SUV offering, and sales of that SUV are dismal. They just teased a pickup truck release with their 'cybertruck' product, but the design was purposely off-putting, and it only served to make a mockery of the market segment. So with one SUV that doesn't sell, and a parody of what is currently the highest selling platform in the US, I'm not sure why anyone speculates Tesla is in a place of upward trajectory. I don't buy the argument that other car companies can't/won't pivot to counter either. Porsche reverse engineered one of their Model S vehicles, admitted it was quite well-constructed, and then countered with the Taycan (by all reviews a better car) a mere 3-4 years later. I'm glad a company like Tesla exists to force the market to the EV concept, but most people will buy an EV when they know it's supported by a long established and trusted automaker like Toyota, Ford, Chevy, or Honda. Tesla then exists as a proof-of-concept model for the bigger players to follow, not as a displacement.

It should also be noted, many motor companies are also investing quite a bit of money into alternative fuels like synthetic petrol and hydrogen, and don't want to rely on an energy source which is primarily derived from conflict zones. They aren't 100% sold yet that the EV platform is indeed the way forward.

People have been saying this for years. However, none of the other players have built a compelling product with widespread appeal or adoption. The E-Tron? iPace? Taycan? All have been more or less dead on arrival from an adoption and sales standpoint.

Honda announced recently that they will be focusing on hybrid technology, not full electric. Toyota is backing their Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology. GM has the Bolt, a single full-electric offering. The Model 3 doesn't really have any meaningful competition at the moment IMO. Tesla has forced the industry to change and from where I'm standing no competing product has managed to holistically match the value proposition Tesla brings.

"As it turns out, through October 2019, Audi has sold about 17,500 e-Trons globally, compared to about 21,600 for the Tesla."[1]

"With clients able to register their interest, Porsche has collected almost as many pre-orders as they plan to produce electric vehicles. The Handelsblatt quotes Porsches HR Director Andreas Haffner on the status of registrations to order the manufacturer’s first electric model. Says Haffner: 'There are 30,000 orders for the Taycan.'"[2]

Right, clearly all DOA. The model 3 has no competition because the major auto manufacturers are moving away from the sedan platform entirely to SUVs and trucks. It fills a small market niche, but one that's quickly slowing as a percentage of total vehicle sales.

> However, none of the other players have built a compelling product with widespread appeal or adoption

Neither has Tesla if we're honest.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2019/11/29/audi-w...

[2] https://www.electrive.com/2019/07/29/porsche-reveals-number-...

> The E-Tron? iPace? Taycan? All have been more or less dead on arrival from an adoption and sales standpoint.

These are expensive luxury cars. They're never going to see high volume.

Jaguar sells about 76,000 cars a year in total across all of their models. Porsche expects to sell about 20,000 Taycans a year. Both the Audi e-tron and the Jaguar I-Pace outsell the Model X and the Model S in Europe:

https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2019/12/europe-november-2019.h...

If you want volume then have a look at Volkswagen ID.3 sales at the end of this year in Europe. It may well end up being the top selling EV in Europe even though it'll only be on sale for half the year at best.

To the degree that some major motor companies are still investing in hydrogen for passenger vehicles, Tesla might actually be undervalued. Hydrogen makes no sense for cars. Zero sense whatsoever when we have decent BEVs.

Synthetic petrol makes more sense technically than hydrogen but has all the non-climate drawbacks of fossil fuels and is twice as expensive (with extremely low round-trip efficiency compared to a true electric car... like maybe a factor of 5 to 10 worse?) as regular fossil fuels.

Taycan is not a better vehicle "by all reviews," but it is a decent vehicle, the only electric car by a non-startup manufacturer other than Tesla that is compelling. Its very low efficiency strongly limits its mass market uptake (low range, expensive charge, slow charge even with the 800V, expensive battery, etc) vs Tesla's vehicles, although might be okay for high margin vehicles.

> Its very low efficiency strongly limits its mass market uptake

The Taycan is an expensive sports car. It will never have mass market uptake regardless of its efficiency.

The Macan is Porsche's best selling model because it's the cheapest Porsche you can buy and it's a compact SUV which is a popular body style.

> expensive charge, slow charge even with the 800V

The Taycan comes with three years of free charging on some charging networks. In any case, charging costs are the least of your worries relative to the cost of the car.

The Taycan achieves 80% state of charge in 22.5 minutes. That's hardly slow.

Hey, Taycan isn't a terrible vehicle. I like the direction Porsche is going; almost all other conventional car makers completely don't understand EV (but Porsche does).

But it ain't a whooping for the Model S, particularly when it is refreshed this year. And the low powertrain efficiency is part of the reason it's no Tesla killer.

The Taycan out accelerates, out manoeuvres, and out performs the Model S on track. You don't need to believe me on that, just see the results:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/30467/watch-a-porsche-taycan-t...

The Taycan has a two speed gearbox to help with both phases of acceleration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uum9nffLasQ

The Taycan is a performance sports car and the Model S isn't. The Taycan is doing what it is built to do. What do you think the Taycan is built to do?

They used an old version of the Model S, the P100D, not the current Performance version which is available today. Not a like-for-like test. (And if you want to compare not-yet-available versions with a similar price, you really should be comparing to the trimotor Model S.)

And yeah, Model S is a more practical car than the Taycan yet still holds its own (in spite of Porsche's complex gearing system due to Tesla's electric powertrain advantage).

I'm glad a worthy challenger to the Model S has finally been produced. Tesla is having to up their game to stay ahead, which is good. Competition between these two will push electric cars far ahead of fossil cars even at the highest levels of performance.

Ugh, please. The results are right in front of you. Don't cling to these articles of faith that they somehow didn't use the "true" or the "proper" Tesla.

Porsche planned to build 30k to 50k Taycans. It is a market test by Porsche, not a real competitor to the model S.

That's roughly four times the number of 911's they sell every year, and they're all back ordered. Sounds like a successful test to me. How many Tesla Model S's are sold each year?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com