I agree that Musk’s vision was necessary to bring EVs to fruition, and steal a lead on rivals. However many have now caught up and are producing ground-up EV platforms which are being further refined. I see China leading the way, they now have >300 EV manufacturers and many will fail but statistically the fittest and best will thrive.
There have been quite a few examples of Musk acting as an internal disruptor, overruling his engineers on things like AI and Vision and removing key driver aids to save on cost. He is trying to be a visionary, engineer and bean counter all in one, and given his mercurial temperament many are too afraid to challenge him. That does not bode well for Tesla’s future.
Activist investors… pure focus on financial return. Industry veterans… dinosaurs working at legacy carmakers that have done almost absolutely nothing to advance EV technology and utilisation (until forced to by the advent of Tesla), and in many cases have done the direct opposite.
Yes yes, like him, loathe him, I understand it, but I believe he is not just a visionary but a singular talent that pushes things forward innovatively.
The is an incredible amount of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) being put around about EVs.
First EVs were laughed at. Then came the battery fire scares, queues at Superchargers, self-driving accidents etc. etc. The London Times hardly has a day without a Musk/Tesla/EV disaster story.
As Tesla does not advertise, the media feel free to support the car manufacturers who do and kick Tesla/EVs on their behalf.
It has been rumoured that legacy manufactures are deliberately making poor EVs in the hope of killing the EV market completely. Toyota is determined that some sort of super-efficient ICE or hydrogen engine will save their bacon.
Ford US and VW have made a serious attempt at EVs, only to find they are losing 1000s per vehicle increasing their already huge loans. VW is in hock to $0190 billion! Meanwhile Tesla is without debt and actually makes a profit on each car it makes.
Now along comes China, subsidising their EV manufacturers at the rate of 1000s per car.
The car-buying public know somewhere in the next 10 years or sooner, ICE powered cars will be banned. Legacy manufacturers are in deep sh1t and they know it. The dealers will be the first to go and expect massive losses and mergers in the next few years.
I seriously believe we are living through an automotive revolution…
They will still be working on those solid state batteries in ten years.
I saw an interview with the head of CATL. He doesn’t see them hitting the market any time soon. They aren’t out of the lab, yet.
The amount of FUD spewed by mainstream media about Tesla is insane.
But obviously, they don’t advertise, they don’t sponsor trips to 5-star hotels - so what can a journalist lose by copying yesterday’s boilerplate hit-piece from the VAG talking points cheat sheet?
Perhaps we can have an Elon thread so this can be reserved for discussing Tesla cars. I will criticise him for bad decisions that directly impacts the vehicles, but outside of that I couldn’t care less about EM psycho drama.
Depends on what yo mean by “winners”. If you’re talking battery vs hydrogen then for cars battery has won before the race has even started. See this for example.
If you’re simply talking battery technology, that will continue to improve at a pretty decent rate over the next years, whenever you jump in there will be better stuff a couple of years down the line. But it’s not going to be a radical revolution, no redason not to jump now if you need to. Whenever my current 10 year old car dies or becomes uneconomic I will make the jump.
The beauty of EVs is that any improvement in battery tech can be retrofitted, thus ensuring a long life for the chassis, motors and other components. On the other side of the equation there is a growing industry of battery re-cycling centres who can efficiently harvest many of the rare earth metals used in their production (upto 92%), so no EV battery should end up in landfill.
Convert that to 200 CHF/hour around here and it becomes 1’800-2’200 CHF, plus new battery, plus unknown disposal costs of the old one. Quite sure people that love their cars will spend 10k on them to keep them rolling. But, not many people drops 10k on their old cars.
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