Then it turns out that the primary cost contributor to an EV is the cost of batteries. Automakers being relative nobodies on the lithium market, they are paying retail for it and passing the mark-ups to you, the consumer.
At that point compromises must be made, and the announced vehicles advertise either an unimpressive range or some atrocious price sticker or both. The market compares the $/mile-of-total-tange, at which point Tesla emerges as being fairly competitive on price.
The large company discontinues the vehicle lineup, citing overrun cost issues and market disinterest for EVs save for a few Tesla fanboy diehards.
> The large company discontinues the vehicle lineup, citing overrun cost issues and market disinterest for EVs save for a few Tesla fanboy diehards.
We're at the bottom of the hockey stick here. There is no "discontinued lineup", in 10 years if you don't have a viable EV platform, you are closing your doors. It might be sooner than that.
By the time Ford even starts to see return on their $29B it's likely to be a whole new game. I wouldn't be surprised if they were acquired for the brand name or to assemble someone else's technology. Apple seems to be interested in outsourcing assembly, maybe Ford can get in on that.
> in 10 years if you don't have a viable EV platform, you are closing your doors
I for once hope that the bragging from EU about the H2 infrastructure is not usual hot air. It is really good to see major manufacturers coming up with H2 power plant ideas. In 10 years, I’m looking to drive a fuel cell powered car.
It’s not going to be a popular opinion here but IMO, battery powered cars are a dead end. The range will always be limited by physics. Batteries are manufactured from resources dug out of the ground. It’s really dumb to carry a ton of empty batteries when running low on load, it only contributes to wearing tires faster. 10 ton hauling tractors? Who’s going to build the road infrastructure to support that. The grid has its capacity too. Today? Sure - as an alternative to ICE, an EV makes some people feel better. 10 years from now? I’m not sure.
Only recently (I guess 10 years) have we started seeing serious billions poured into this research. The battery tech is improving so fast we might see some serious breakthroughs in the next 10 years regarding materials used and energy density. It's really too soon to say something isn't possible in this landscape
Electric cars are going to slaughter hydrogen for one simple reason. Once people get used to the convenience of their car getting filled up every night when they are at home, they will never go back.
There may be a parallel H2 network for industrial vehicles of some kinds. But the vast majority of personal use is going to be electric.
You can probably refuel a hydrogen car at home eventually too. The problem with electric cars is that there's not a single thing that fuel cell cars can't replicate.
> You can probably refuel a hydrogen car at home eventually too. The problem with electric cars is that there's not a single thing that fuel cell cars can't replicate.
First. No, we're not going to have home electrolysis. It would be expensive and inefficient.
And that inefficiency is what will make hydro cars also ran. While EVs are heavier, they are less expensive to operate because there is energy loss in every phase of getting power to the wheels. Extracting hydrogen, compressing it, delivering it to the end point, and extracting power from it, each phase is an efficiency loss.
I already have what I need to charge an EV. It will take all night, but I rarely drive more than 300 miles in a day so that's just fine with me. And it's cheaper than hydro will ever be. Particularly if I put up my own solar to charge it.
Why not? A company called Lavo is selling such a thing right now.
You should realize that weight steals from your efficiency. A fuel cell can be less efficiency, but still gets you a similar distance on the same amount of energy.
If you can accept that a fuel cell car can match a battery powered one on efficiency, then it’s conceivable that it can be as cheap to drive too.
> A company called Lavo is selling such a thing right now.
A link would be nice. The only thing I could find is a home battery from Lavo which costs $26,000 and doesn't say anything about being able to compress and deliver hydrogen safely to a car.
> If you can accept that a fuel cell car can match a battery powered one on efficiency,
This is laughable. Here's some numbers direct from your Lavo home hydrogen battery:
> "But the process of generating hydrogen by electrolysis using a proton exchange membrane is only about 80 percent efficient, so you lose 20 percent straight away. And at the other end, you'll lose somewhere around half of what you've got stored in the process of converting the hydrogen back into energy through a fuel cell."
So ever watt of power you put into it you get 40% of the power back in the for of go-juice. That's not even accounting for carting all of the hydrogen around the country to keep fuel stations supplied. Nor does it account for any drain from compressing it to deliver it to a car at home.
By comparison, you lose about 15% efficiency pushing the extra 500 pounds of Tesla around.
> If you can accept that a fuel cell car can match a battery powered one on efficiency
Efficiency isn't even close. Why would I accept what is clearly something which only exists in the imaginary future in your head? It's not even in the ballpark.
There are a lot of potential future applications for this technology, but large scale adoption of hydrogen in personal vehicles is not going to happen.
If you can electrolyze water at home, the compression step is not a hard problem anymore. This is more trolling than a serious counterargument. Alternatively, you can have hydrogen piped to the house instead of home electrolysis.
You should understand that fuel cells will continue to improve in efficiency. 40% today will mean 50% tomorrow, and likely 60% at some point in the future. Losses for transport and compression of hydrogen is a surprisingly small amount. In fact, its more efficient to pipe hydrogen over long distances than to transmit electricity. In additional, you can always reuse the heat in either CHP or thermal energy recapture.
It's also important to realize that the electric grid is not perfectly efficient, nor is charging a battery. You're likely to lose around 30% to these types of losses. This figure is going to get worse once grid energy storage and long-distance power transfer become necessary. Combined with your 15% loss pushing the extra battery weight and it really does start to add up. Worse if you look at cold weather performance. The notion that fuel cells can never match batteries on efficiency is a very short-term worldview.
Yes, compression is a solved problem... one which adds additional inefficiency to an already terribly inefficient technology.
And of course your reply here we is more nonsense that hydrogen is going to continue progressing at miraculous rates while the rest of the world stands still.
Your quasi-religion about this is getting bad.
EVs are real. They are here now and don’t need future-magic to be viable and interesting. Hydrogen is essentially magic beans at this point being sold on promises and hot air.
Like everything you said in this conversation, you drastically exaggerate the inefficiencies of fuel cells. In practice, batteries and fuel cells are already close enough that it has ceased to be a major roadblock.
Fuel cells getting more efficient and cheaper is pretty much a default assumption. The only thing that's quasi-religious are the supposedly "pro-environment" people that strongly disagree with the idea of a green technology getting better. It's frankly a cult of batteries, and more than anything they're out of touch with reality.
The problem with EVs is that fuel cells are also real, and already viable and interesting. If EV fans actually paid attention, they'd realize we're heading towards a disruption event and prepare according.
I didn’t have to exaggerate the inefficiencies, the company you pointed me to detailed them quite well. I just pointed out your half-solution required some additional energy input to compress the hydrogen. Unless you are assuming Hydrogen will just magically jump from the home battery to the car?
Fuel cells are real. A viable consumer fuel cell infrastructure with competitive fuel costs? Not so much.
These inefficiencies aren't a big deal, and as I said they'll continue to shrink.
People are also totally unaware of just how much progress is being made. There's a global rush to deploy as much hydrogen infrastructure as possible right now. Too bad some pro-EV people still think it's the year 2015.
I think you are completely wrong, let me make the argument. As a whole, H2 cars are also quite heavy. You literally require everything that is in an EV plus multiple extra subsystems that are incredibly complex and not light by any means. The manufacturing and materials are very both complex and expensive.
You need the fuel cell itself, and that is not just some thin layer, but a whole complex subsystem that requires all kind of system around it. Then you need a very heavy high pressure tank and a high pressure fuel system. Looking at H2 cars and the amount of parts these system adds is illuminating.
Next up, you can make a battery completely structural, meaning the battery actually serves the function that the steel frame used to serve in a car. Integrated like that, the battery weight is almost negative.
Battery technology is improving fast, with both cost going down and energy and power density going up year over year. H2 cars can not compete in the current environment and there are no projection that they ever can.
Pretty much everybody has now given up on H2 cars ever being remotely viable. Some people are still holding on to the hope for H2 in trucking, but some large truck companies have already dropped it, and with Tesla Semi going into mass production, people will realize that H2 trucking has no future as they have realized it with cars.
You also seem to ignore all the negatives of H2. Fuel station that are about 100-1000x more expensive per station, and you need more of them. You can't charge over night at home with energy that is largely already available. Even if EU government funded H2 is successful, that would still not be enough for all of transportation, not even close.
The majority of hydrogen for the foreseeable future will by methane based and when the grid will already be almost totally carbon free, much of hydrogen on the planet will still not be carbon free.
And if you are talking 'in 10 years' you need to also look forward to what batteries will be like in 10 years. In 10 years its possible that we could have lithium sulphur batteries. Such batteries would be incredibly cheap and have crazy high energy density. Battery that cost a few 100$ and fits in a glove box could give multiple 100 miles to a small car. That is just one possible battery tech that might be viable in 10 years.
Last, let me address your point about mining. While of course the extra subsystems for H2 also need materials, a much bigger issue you have ignored. A FCEV is inherently significantly less efficient, this means that even if you are producing all the H2 with solar and win, the total amount of solar and wind required would mean you would need a significant amount more solar and wind. Guess what that requires, significantly more mining, more solar panels covering more nature, more wind turbines everywhere (that people already hate).
I really don't understand people love for these hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
I think Hydrogen fuel cell tech doesn't belong in passenger vehicles; there batteries can do a fine enough job. I believe the future of H2 is in intermodal transport, that is, trucking and (previously diesel) trains.
Why?
Do the math on weight, and you'll quickly see that you can't fit enough batteries in a Semi to give them the range that they need for long haul, while still being able to carry any appreciable amount of goods (There's a 40T limit on the roads in Europe, YMMV).
Together with Green Kerosine for Airplanes, and you've got Carbon-neutral transport: Electric Cars, Hydrogen Trucks and Trains, and (Green) Kerosine Airplanes.
The waste majority of trucking is not actually super long range. So the waste majority trucking can be done perfectly fine even with current generation EV that are starting to come out this year.
There is a small amount of very long range trucking where there 'might' be a competition. However, I believe even that will quickly go electric.
So, even current generation trucks could do 80% of trucking. From there year by year they will be able to do more of the jobs. Hydrogen will lose against Diesel until BEV trucks will be good enough. In 5 years nobody will question if BEV trucks can do everything.
A properly engineered electric Semi is not actually that much heavier then a Diesel truck.
> As a whole, H2 cars are also quite heavy. You literally require everything that is in an EV plus multiple extra subsystems that are incredibly complex and not light by any means.
Toyota Mirai 2 curb weight 1925 kg vs Tesla P100 curb weight 2241 kg. Both have the range of 500 to 507 km. But with a Mirai, given that the infra for filling up would exist, I’d spend 5 minutes filling up instead of 40 at a charging station. My math is okay.
> more wind turbines everywhere (that people already hate)
Yeah, I have dozens of those around. But you know what, more battery cars also need those so it’s not like we will be removing these soon.
And one of these cars is incredibly fast, the other is a not a performance car. I can't find good data on Mirai 2 but I think the S is a considerably bigger car.
At least in comparison between the Mirai and the Model 3, the Model 3 is lighter.
Of course, the reality is that batteries are getting lighter fast.
> Yeah, I have dozens of those around. But you know what, more battery cars also need those so it’s not like we will be removing these soon.
Again, the simply fact is fuel cells are considerably less efficient. Therefore you need more of them.
> I’d spend 5 minutes filling up instead of 40 at a charging station. My math is okay.
On most weeks, an EV owner spends zero hours on fuel ups since they plug in at home. They will also save significantly on power since it's much cheaper to distribute power to your home than to drive hydrogen all over the countryside.
A fair enough statement. A bit of an electric divide.
I'll put it a bit differently though. Setting aside environmental concerns, why would you buy a hydrogen car as opposed to a regular old gasoline car?
Charging from home is a substantial benefit of EVs, performance is another. The Mirai is neither a particularly performant car, nor can you charge from home. Why would you switch to a car with a non-existent fuel network? Even once the network exists, why switch?
Obviously, the environmental issues still exist, but right now that is the only reason you'd buy the Mirai instead of many less expensive non H2 options. The Tesla is interesting even without the environmental aspects.
Eventually, you want the ownership experience of the gasoline car without the emissions. So much of the argument against them are short-term only. You have to assume there will be fuel cell cars that are fast and desirable as the technology improves.
> Eventually, you want the ownership experience of the gasoline car without the emissions
No I don't. I abhor getting into the car and realizing I need to stop at the gas station before I can drive to the trail head and ride with my friends. The idea of having a car that is ready to perform at maximum every time I step out the front door has a tremendous appeal. I hate gas stations, they stink, they are a waste of my time, often when I don't have time to spare.
Maybe you want to replicate that experience. I'll pass.
Unless you need to drive beyond the limits of your battery, at which point a gasoline powered vehicle makes more sense. I get the feeling your belief system is a post hoc rationalization since you’re just ignoring a major use case.
If it really bothers you, then you probably be able to refuel your fuel cell car at home at some point in the future. So you can avoid the refueling station altogether with fuel cell cars too.
> Unless you need to drive beyond the limits of your battery, at which point a gasoline powered vehicle makes more sense. I get the feeling your belief system is a post hoc rationalization since you’re just ignoring a major use case.
I have a pretty good handle on my driving. Its been over a year since I've driven more than 300 miles in a day. Even when I was driving 500 miles 20 times a year, that's still only 20 Supercharger stops versus easily twice as many stops for gas that I've made during those same years.
> If it really bothers you, then you probably be able to refuel your fuel cell car at home at some point in the future.
I won't have to bother, by the time those are affordable and efficient enough to make sense, batteries will be a fraction of their current weight. So there will still be no point in some arbitrary extra steps cutting into efficiency.
Your own driving needs are not everyone else's drivers needs. 20 supercharger uses per year means you wasted more time than refueling a gasoline car 40 times a year. Fuel cell cars that can do both would be more convenient than either.
Fuel cells of the future will also be superior to fuel cells of today. That likely includes a dramatic increase in efficiency that will great reduce or eliminate this issue.
You are comparing a hypothetically viable thing to an actual shipping, proven product. Without seeing the hydro network in place, seeing what retail prices are on hydrogen in volume, this is all supposition. While the Mirai is shipping, the fueling network is sparse and incapable of handling more than a few cars. Hundreds of thousands of EVs are out there in use. Fuel Cell cars are largely in prolonged beta while they figure out how to deliver fuel to a car that may never ship in volume.
That's just a big pile of misinformation. A fuel cell is pretty simple device. It's literally a type of battery not much different than a li-ion battery. The "complexity " you speak of is just a series of pumps and filters. Those cost nearly nothing and weigh very little.
A fuel cell cad is likely to eventually cost the same as a Toyota Corolla while also allowing for gasoline-like refueling time and range.
Finally, there's no reason for a fuel cell to be similar as efficient as a battery powered car. As I said, it's technically a type of battery. If your going to talk about batteries of the future, you also have to talk about fuel cells of the future.
And every car maker disagrees with you that it doesn't cost much.
Maybe in some future it can be built as cheap as you say, but not now. So you would really have to compare it to some future EV as well.
Fuel cell have been studied for 60 years, and their efficiency is still not good. Li-Ion has made far more progress in far less time and is still improving significantly year over year. Nobody has announced anything close to that in terms of improvement for fuel cells.
And even if there were such announcements, there is still a long way to go for fuel cells to catch up to current battery tech.
> Its a a series of pumps, filter and tubes, and that is if we don't consider the tank. All of that is IN ADDITION to everything a normal EV also has.
As if battery powered cars have no pumps, filters and tubes... And a tank is literally just a tank, with no complexity inside it. It allows you reduce the amount of batteries you need to carry by nearly 2 orders of magnitude. This is a significant reduction in cost and complexity.
You see a battery in the back, 3 hydrogen tanks, and the fuel cell stack in front. This is in fact quite simple.
> And every car maker disagrees with you that it doesn't cost much.
Most car makers have never even bothered to look seriously at fuel cell cars. The only companies that did think they can make one for the same cost as a Corolla. That should tell you something.
> Maybe in some future it can be built as cheap as you say, but not now. So you would really have to compare it to some future EV as well.
> Fuel cell have been studied for 60 years, and their efficiency is still not good. Li-Ion has made far more progress in far less time and is still improving significantly year over year. Nobody has announced anything close to that in terms of improvement for fuel cells.
> And even if there were such announcements, there is still a long way to go for fuel cells to catch up to current battery tech.
The problem is that you're just stuck in the past. Fuel cells have advanced to the point where they are a disruptive threat to battery electric cars. The notion that batteries have some massive lead is a claim completely at odds with reality. You're going to see cheap, long-ranged fuel cell cars in the coming few years. Due to advances in hydrogen related technology, batteries will lose every single advantage they enjoy, including the ability to refuel at home and cost per mile of driving. That is a big problem that battery powered cars will face.
This so much sounds like all the PR stunt cars that renault put out. You literally have to lease a battery on top of the absurd prices, and you cannot get it changed for free, even when you lease it.
Which makes all their cars basically useless after a year of usage, because the batteries are embedded in their chassis.
Every time I compare European manufacturers to Tesla and Nissan, they are such a bad joke.
Nissan has so much experience with its Leaf models, and they are dirt cheap, repairable and they work. High-end spectrum buyers will buy an all-inclusive Tesla anyways, and they won't care as much about cheap repairability.
Teslas are sadly not made for repairs, so they aren't the right car for me :(
While praising Nissan, you know that they’re basically owned by Renault?
And didn’t Renault start selling cars with batteries, without forcing you to lease them, years ago? Or are there still some markets where they don’t do it?
They pretty much gave up because of consumer choice and environmental bonuses lowering the price gap between diesel and EV. As if someone looking to buy an EV would get a diesel instead? They still offer it for Twizy though. A coworker bought a Twizy at battery rental price with env bonus. What's the point of offering a lease if getting the env bonus requires ownership of the battery? At first I thought the rental thing was a intended to extract more revenue from the customer when in fact it was an incentive to lower the upfront price and get more adoption.
According to the comment section of the second link. VW will dominate the European market. China already has their own low end EV market. That leaves Tesla to dominate in North American and in the high end EV sector of China.
The foolish idea that Tesla will consume all ICE manufacturers is just wishful thinking.
Thanks for sharing. I might have read it wrong but the point is tesla shills in here wont like what you are sharing as well. This place is full of them lol
What are you even talking about. Nissan sales have collapsed, the Leaf went from one of the most sold cars to small program and is being discontinued in many places. Nissan has the Ariya coming out but not much beyond, their announced targets for electrification are embracingly bad compared to basically every other auto-maker.
VWG and Renault are outselling Nissan by 2-3x in terms of BEV. And you don't have to lease the battery. The Renault Zoe is the second most sold EV in Europe.
And I'm not sure what you mean by Tesla are not made to be repaired', that not the case. Tesla doesn't deliver parts as fast as other manufacturers but there is nothing inherent that makes it hard to repair.
Tesla’s are famous for not being repairable by 3rd party shops. You lack documentation, software, getting parts is PITA, and Tesla will happily disable features in your car, if you repaired it in a way they don’t agree with (like disabling supercharging on salvaged cars).
Tesla is just going through the growing pains of ramping production so their repair story is still a work in progress at the moment. They make it work as needed, but it’s not always ideal nor as widely available everywhere as people hope yet. It will get better.
Disabling supercharging for DIY battery fix/hack jobs I assume is done to protect the network so that other cars are not impacted by a potentially incorrect or incomplete repair job.
I believe it’s usually a heathy practice in life to look for the straightforward explanations that don’t assume bad motives in the part of the actor you are looking at. Disabling supercharging is not great in this respect but they have to weigh it against the downside of how it could possibly affect other drivers.
> I believe it’s usually a heathy practice in life to look for the straightforward explanations that don’t assume bad motives in the part of the actor you are looking at.
Do you believe that or were you just attempting to sound virtuous while making a snarky comment?
There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the motives of Tesla and the actions that they take. The actions of a megacorp don't even have to be outright malicious to be threatening to an individual -- it's not that they hate you, it's just that they don't care about you.
>I believe it’s usually a heathy practice in life to look for the straightforward explanations that don’t assume bad motives in the part of the actor you are looking at.
I hope that you balance it with a healthy skepticism of a publicly traded company's justifications for their profits.
Tesla sells heated seats etc and when you buy it, what you get is a software update enabling the existing hardware - it's artificial scarcity done for business reasons, i.e. their add-ons business plan is built around preventing users from controlling their own hardware. This does not bode well for independent repair.
> I hope that you balance it with a healthy skepticism
Sure. And I have personal experience with service that tells me they aren’t so evil at all. I give the personal experience more weight than internet theories from people who don’t know of what they speak. Not referring to you necessarily but in general there are a lot of highly opinionated people here who have never bothered to acquaint themselves with the actual facts, instead relying on internet rumors or opinions from random people like Linus on Youtube, an expert on, of all things, PC hardware.
> Tesla sells heated seats etc and when you buy it, what you get is a software update enabling the existing hardware - it's artificial scarcity
That’s just an uninformed opinion. Tesla already explained why they did this, and the reasons were legitimate.
That's because they have screwed Ghosn over tax fraud. The man had vision and was relentless in making Renault Nissan a top auto company by volume and revenue. The current management lacks his vision and determination. Now VWG has caught up and Nissan was left with the "more expensive Renault" reputation. Just look at the Leaf's interior, it fully resembles a nicer Renault. The lease was a well intended move, however it was not well received by consumers and negated by envirinmental bonuses.
Has anyone noticed that Ford and GM have made commitments to EV just after the change of administration?
Given that the new administration has already committed to moving the Federal fleet to EVs and is going "all in" on full commitment to reducing emissions, this is positioning by the auto manufacturers.
There is also now alignment between the Californian emission standards and the Federal government, which means that there is going to be downward pressure on the auto manufacturers overall emission profile. CAFE standard excluded "trucks" which is why the F150 etc are the "best sellers". If there was a move to include them in the overall emission standards, the move to EV would be substantially accelerated.
Just like Shell and others in the oil/energy markets are realigning, so to are the primary manufacturers of emissions generating technology.
Well, yeah. Any sane large car manufacturer knows that you have to make at least a good line of EVs in the near future, otherwise your company is dead.
By the by, it’s generally believed that Ford poured money into Rivian with the plan to turn their vehicles into electric trucks.
They slipped another year? "During its announcement, Ford also reminded us that the electric version of its cash cow, the F-150, is slated to go into production in mid-2022. Not the 2022 model year, which begins in September of 2021.
Jeep pulled that stunt. 2018: “In addition to the all-new mild hybrid Wrangler, a full plug in electric Jeep Wrangler will be available in 2020”. That slipped to 2022. Worse, "2022 will introduce electric powertrain that will be available exclusively on the Rubicon trim level.", which means paying at least 75% more.
I was ready to buy one of those. My existing Jeep Wrangler is coming up on 15 years. But no. They're pushing "mild hybrids" this year, which will be obsolete before they are fully debugged.
Well their competition has slipped too, Musk said they would be "Lucky" if the Cybertruck starts shipping in 2021 and doesn't expect it to ship in volume until 2022. Assuming they both stay on schedule from here, that means Ford is likely only 6 months behind Tesla. Rivian is still scheduled for July of this year.
What are your favorite battery related stocks? Lithium mining companies? I've been reading on solid state batteries to find some new trends, but it seems they are using same composition as lithium ion technology.
ALB and SQM are two of the big boys. Can't say either is my favorite but I am long an upside butterfly on ALB. Not a fan of SQM because of nepotism and bribery at the top. Seems like a really underdeveloped sector. I don't think people realize how earth-shatteringly huge lithium is about to be.
I don't think people realize how earth-shatteringly huge lithium is about to be.
I've previously heard the lithium story.
I've also read that it doesn't take all that much lithium to build a EV battery. If it were that precious then they would be recycling the lithium from old batteries, but they aren't. And there are tons of new lithium supply just around the corner.
I don't really know any of that for sure. Just a feeling I get from keeping not-so-close tabs on the industry.
Nickel is a lot more of a limiting factor than Lithium. This is straight from the horses mouth (Elon). See the recent news about Indonesia. Elon is always a step or two ahead.
The patterns only going to become more pronounced from here on out. My guess is that we’re going to See a electric bulbs style phase out of gasoline engines announced over the next two years.
If I’m Ford or GM I’m gonna try and get my hands on some of that sweet sweet tesla speculation cash in the form of a buy out as quickly as possible. Solves the technology platform problems too. If VW couldn’t handle it, why do you think GM or Ford could?
The chances that Tesla will buy out a legacy auto company are zero. It makes no sense. They are all saddled with crushing debt loads, dealer networks, and stranded assets. None of them have anything Tesla needs to become the largest car manufacturer in history by 2030.
There are so many more issues. They have lots of plants that Tesla doesn't need or want. Even worse, you can't close down those plants because of unions and politics. Tesla doesn't want unions in general.
Battery being the limiting factor means that having more ability to produce cars is basically useless.
The fact that "Tesla doesn't want unions in general" is a sad anti-pattern.
Unions are the way that labor negotiates with capital on an equal basis.
The fact that the US has a badly flawed labor market where things that shouldn't be tied to employment (eg healthcare, pensions/retirement) are still tied to employment, is a bug, not a feature.
Tesla will not be able to avoid "unions" if they manufacture in Europe. Neither will they be able to avoid standard employer contributions in the form of taxation and employment benefits, like minimum paid vacation and sick leave, etc.
Almost all of the debt is in GM Financial which is a subsidiary. If GM Financial debt goes bad GM can just shutter the company. Also the debt is from leases, people right now during the pandemic are prioritizing paying their leases over the home loans and rent.
People make the argument that this is not a bad thing because these loans are backed.
In my opinion this is crazy. With EV at an inflection point, the value of used ICE cars will totally collapse and newly produced ICE cars will lose massive amounts of value as well.
The whole structure of how GM does business will make no sense in the future.
Why anybody would invest in a GM when there are amazing plays in the battery industry that is growing 50-100% every year is beyond me.
If there is a cash takeout, the IV will go down. If there is a share component to a hypothetical acquisition, the IV will potentially increase. However, I'm not sure how likely that is. Just be aware that your Vega p&l could be negative, so extremely long dated calls with a lot of Vega may need a big gap between a cash takeout price and spot in order to be profitable.
Yeah I’m sure Tesla is just chomping at the bit to take on a debt portfolio backed by ICE vehicle loans and leases. The assets underlying all that debt are going to have a drastic revaluation as electric takes over. I would bet on a GM bankruptcy within 5 years.
I simply don't agree. What the old companies have are billions of man hours of experience and engineering. Tesla has cool new tech, but keeps falling apart on things Ford or GM solved 40 years ago.
I'm not saying one or the other is better, but it's not like buying some dead useless company.
GM and Ford have billions of man hours assembling cars... and a super-tight battery supply chain they share with every other car maker scrambling to secure battery supplies right now. They can assemble the fuck out of those car parts, but in the end they are cranking out expensive cars with crappy range because they have no reliable battery source.
Tesla has spent the past 15 years getting their battery supply chain squared away. You think GM and Ford are going to pull that out of their ass tomorrow?
It depends on whether the battery sourcing and assembly is a harder problem than car assembly.
The reason, may be, why Tesla had a lot of issues is that they are blazing a new trail. Now that it's been shown that batteries are viable to make at scale, the capital will be available, and it's just sourcing mines and raw materials. I fail to believe Tesla can monopolize the world entire supply.
Capital is there. But that capacity isn't going to come online over-night. "Just sourcing mines"... the capacity for raw materials doesn't exist. New mines have to be dug. That means acquiring property with materials, permitting, sourcing equipment to dig the mines, digging the material, building refining equipment, building factories to package the batteries. All of this takes time to bring online.
I'm not saying capacity will never exist, but for the next 5-10 years, auto manufacturers are going to be fighting for as much lithium and battery raw materials as they can get their hands on. Tesla has a handle on this, Ford doesn't.
How many years is it going to take for that capacity to come online while Ford/ GM/ etc bleed market share?
Bleed market share to who? Tesla? Tesla has a 3 model line up, with announcements of a truck and a prime mover.
There are battery manufacturers ramping up besides the Tesla/Panasonic alliance, including companies like BYD that Warren Buffet invested in back in 2008.
All of the auto industry (or more likely, the overall "mobility" industry as MaaS starts to make inroads) is on a 5-10 year hockey stick.
VW is a market leader for EVs in Europe. I would like to know what VW couldn't handle because it's not obvious from your comment. You left a lot of ambiguity.
I think you are more right than wrong in your prediction, but “over the next two years” seems so incredibly optimistic that I’m inclined to call it naïveté instead.
Unless I’m mistaken, that law is for new cars being sold, not existing cars, which just means that they need to have transitioned by then. Obviously it can’t be left to the last minute, but it also doesn’t have to be the next two years (at least for those specific legal issues).
Within 4 years, Tesla is going to be selling EVs for $25k. The Cybertruck is 18-24 months out. Rivian is going to be launching their electric truck in the next 18 months as well. That puts Ford's front line vehicle squarely in the headlights.
If Ford can't mass produce EVs at a reasonable price in the next 2 years, things are going get increasingly ugly for them. Not end of line in 2 years, but it's just going to get harder to catch up as Tesla and the rest ramp up manufacturing capacity and capture the market.
The big problem for Ford/ GM/ Dodge, and all the rest of the latecomers is sourcing batteries. Tesla has spent most of the past 10 years building up capacity and looking in supply while the rest of the auto-makers need to outsource supply in an increasingly competitive market.
> Within 4 years, Tesla is going to be selling EVs for $25k.
GM is selling EVs for $25k right now. The Chevy Bolt probably is the best EV for the money in the world today.
The Renault Zoe and the VW ID.3 are not too far off that price and are strong sellers in Europe. A smaller battery version of the ID.3 is coming out this year.
GM is ... selling the Bolt for $36k with a $10k subsidy. They are not selling a $25k car. The fact that they can still collect the subsidy is a sign of how bad they've done in this market.
I'm not sure why the Bolt isn't more popular for the money. Well aside from the fact that it's ugly.
Hmm, I hadn't realized they were out of government subs. That explains why they are discounting them so deeply. My local dealer has them down to $29k which is tempting, but it would be hard to drop that kind of cash on a car I think is ugly (I know appearance is subjective so YMMV). For the price, dropping a few grand extra to get the spunkier Model 3 with the Supercharger network seems like a no-brainer.
Tesla only announced an interest in a low end car at their "Mega super battery event". Even there it was without a timeline. My 4 years was a WAG. Prior to that, the Model 3 was their budget car.
I've been a car guy since my teens, and have nearly everyone around me be some sort of mechanic but I've wondered a couple things about why electric vehicles will have mass appeal.
Most electric vehicles seem to have their value based in the battery pack, but these batteries packs have a life span of 10~ years, right? Do these vehicles have zero value after ten years (assuming the batteries are bad then), high mileage or not?
I managed to save thousands of dollars in high school/university just driving a beater and fixing it as stuff broke, but an electric vehicle isn't something that can be casually repaired right? Even if in 20-30 years when parts are cheap and plentiful, you need to be a skilled engineer (or at least highly trained) to do these repairs right?
When the world is swapped to electric vehicles, can our grid handle that? and if so, why wouldn't our local governments be increasing our electric bills? I cannot see how it would be cheaper than gas, sure some charging stations are free now because it niche, but it wont be in the future.
I'm not against electric vehicles, but I just see this hurting low-income people.
It’s unclear what happens to the batteries after such a long period. The first modern EVs are still only 5-6 years old. That said the battery degradation on EVs with active thermal management looks pretty good. It’s plausible that batteries in the future will last the entire lifespan of the vehicle: at least 200k miles.
The most common repairs on an EV can be done at your regular mechanic. The only thing that will probably require going to the dealership will be main battery work. But here’s the thing, EVs have so many fewer moving parts that they’re far less likely to have severe mechanical breakdowns. All of the data to date shows that the expected cost of maintenance over the life of a typical car will be drastically less for EVs.
The grid will be adapted as people electrify. It won’t happen overnight. I’m not worried about the price of electricity. The cost of renewables has fallen by 90% in the last decade and will continue to decrease in the next decade. Fossil fuels for cars and light trucks will not be economic by the middle of this decade period. That’s without heavy subsidies or taxes.
Electric vehicles will help lower income people because their total cost of ownership is significantly less than ICE vehicles. While they’re more expensive today, by the time electrification goes mainstream there will be a wide range of used electric cars for people to buy at all price points. Also, in the near term no one is saying you have to get rid of all gas cars. Most families could get by with one gas car and one electric.
I feel like with the reliability and durability of EV's the used market will not have remarkably low prices compared to gas cars. Low income families will still go with gas as they will get cheaper as well.
There's a big generational tech advantage, so we're seeing big depreciation on older EVS. I expect that trend to continue for at least a few more years. The 2017 Chevy Bolt for example will end up probably costing less than $10k here in two more years. That's pretty cheap.
You also have to keep in mind that the economies of scale for EVS are just ramping up. They're more expensive now brand new but it won't be long at all before they're priced competitively against gas cars at the dealer.
Also, a carbon tax will happen sooner or later. That will push people from all income levels towards electric vehicles.
Yes, once EVs have matured they will keep their value after adjusting for subsidies (there are lots of stupid articles that don't understand why a used EV with 0 miles goes for 5k less than a new one). However, this should make financing a car more predictable.
It's better to own something that costs X amount per month than to get a steal and have unbudgeted surprise expenses if you are poor. Exploitation happens when someone is unable to make an informed decision because of information asymmetry.
I'm not an expert but there is data for your question. They don't have 0 value. Tesla's usually still have above 90% capacity at 250,000 km [0]. That's still a usable car. Further tesla has stated old car batteries are still useful for grid electricity.
> but an electric vehicle isn't something that can be casually repaired right
There is aftermarket batteries to put life back in a Nissan leaf.
> can our grid handle that?
Not in the few hours of peak though there are charges that understand the time of day costs and will only charge in certain times when the grid is cheaper.
Some electric vehicles such as the Nissan leaf also have V2G which will help the grid in times of need.
> cannot see how it would be cheaper than gas
It already is.
> I just see this hurting low-income people.
You are right it will as people transition off gas it will no longer have economies of scale so the price of gas will rise.
That's my point though, it currently is. There's no massive load, its not the majority. If the world switches, cities will be needing to do massive power overhauls and use more resources. This will be translated into electricity rates/taxes increasing. Will it be translated to the rate of gasoline? Who knows.
I feel like batteries are right there, and this tesla push for electric cars is giving battery research a new life and we might see batteries be a huge upgrade from gas but I don't think it's entirely there. If it is an upgrade, it's marginal.
All things considered, I keep my car budget around $1k and that's been working fantastic for me. That budget if ever possible, won't be viable for many many many years.
>If the world switches, cities will be needing to do massive power overhauls and use more resources. This will be translated into electricity rates/taxes increasing.
From what I've heard, it'll need to increase by about 5%.
I don't have numbers, but increasing the grid by 5% doesn't sound catastrophically impossible. Not compared to shipping truckloads of fresh petrol to every town on the planet on a weekly basis, at least.
I think that the price of gas would go down. You'd still need refineries for jet fuel, heating oil, etc -- other parts of the distillate -- and existing wells don't really need that much attention to keep producing. But maybe there would be taxes imposed.
EV batteries degrade over time, they generally don't just die. There are some batteries which have 300,000 miles on them. Not sure how they degrade over time without as much driving.
Right now, replacing a Tesla battery pack is $16,000. That puts a pretty hard bottom on the resale value of old cars.
It's really hard to say what the market will look like for older EVs. Battery prices come down every year so it feels like in 10 years the $16k battery pack will be a lot less expensive. You might be able to pick up an older Tesla with a run down battery that has really shitty range.
It's hard to say, for the moment cheap used EVs are mostly LEAFs. Used Teslas, even older ones tend to be pricey.
EV batteries don't instantly die. After ten years, it'll probably be down 10-20% of its original capacity, which is still drivable but might not work for everyone's commute. In that case, the battery can be potentially refurbished or repurposed for energy storage.
Cars, not just electric ones, have gotten more complex and have software that may need special equipment to diagnose. EVs are simpler and more robust in a number of ways, and might eventually be cheaper to maintain than gas cars once there's enough of them on the road.
I've swapped engines before and it's usually a weekend job costing around $1000-1500 and you essential bring your mileage back down to 0 (assuming you rebuilt the engine before installing).
I could see dropping the battery pack and getting it repaired be a comparable option in the future.
They won't have zero value after 10 years. But depending on how much the battery wears out, and how much tech and costs advance during that time it could make sense to put in a replacement battery with better than OEM performance. This happens to an extent now with hybrid vehicles, you can get an upgraded battery pack for about $2k all in. An OEM battery is $2500 plus labor. Tesla retail price for a replacement battery is $16k right now, aftermarket for EV would be less. Even factoring in the full OEM price for maintenance, once you account for all of the other maintenance and fuel cost an EV is price competitive overall.
> I managed to save thousands of dollars in high school/university just driving a beater and fixing it as stuff broke, but an electric vehicle isn't something that can be casually repaired right? Even if in 20-30 years when parts are cheap and plentiful, you need to be a skilled engineer (or at least highly trained) to do these repairs right?
People will train themselves. In the world of science fiction, ordinary people fix spaceships and other futuristic vehicles all the time. The same thing will happen (will have to happen) in reality if we're going to have a futuristic society.
Not optimistic; people can't even fix the software on their computer, which doesn't require taking things apart, special tools or getting your hands dirty.
Most of the parts on an electric car are the same as an ICE car, except that there's a lot less in the drivetrain. So the suspension is the same, the trim and things like lights etc.
What's different is basically the battery pack, which is "unrepairable" without disassembly and the electric motors and regenerative braking.
There's a lot less to fix on an EV. Which is going to put dealerships out of business, because that's their purpose.
Right to repair has gained some traction in the automotive space in the past decade and Massachusetts has extended its law to include vehicle data standards. This is important because manufacturers generally don't like to make several variants of the same basic systems, so an individual state can have a nationwide impact.
Fixing a beater DIY style might work for the small number of people that have the tools and patience to learn all the quirks of it (maybe with the exception of things like changing oil and other small things that EVs won't have for the most part)
Yes, batteries will need to be recycled if we want a sustainable solution
Not sure how EVs will age and how things will work in the end. It wouldn't be surprised to have shorter range ones with refurb batteries
Replacing a Prius battery costs around $2k and usually happens around 200k miles. If you replace the individual cells that have gone bad, it can cost far less.
That far into the future cars will most likely be autonomous. there isn't really any point to speculating that far out, who knows what could happen. Look at 2020....
I wish auto manufacturers focused on extending EV range then FSD. the buzz so much but nobody is bothered about bringing extended range to masses. People who want entry level ev can't sit for 40 minutes every week at a supercharger.
I leased a 2020 Leaf last year due to the killer deals. I went with the S-Plus for the extra range. Now driving it around for a few months, I’d rather go with the lower range model because: 1- cost, 2-I’ve found that 99% of my driving falls within 75 miles, and 3-charging infrastructure is improving quickly.
If you’re going to do long distance road trips or drive for Uber or something then you should probably buy a Hybrid. Otherwise, 150 miles feels pretty good to me, 250 is almost overkill.
I really love the F-150 and it's size, but I don't need all the power it comes with and would love it to be a little more fuel efficient. I realize the coming hybrid model is going to be a fortune more than the non hybrid, but I am curious how expensive an all-electric model will be.
Why is sheer bigness something to love about it? They literally don’t fit in many people’s garages anymore, they are so big. Honestly, can you help me understand?
It makes it enjoyable to drive for whatever reason, there's something that makes me feel good and powerful when I drive it (note that my girlfriend tells me I drive like a grandma). It's a comfortable car to drive, and it's pretty dependable in the long term (so I've heard, never owned one long time personally). Also it's a super useful car for carrying things around, helping friends move, etc.
I honestly don't know why someone hasn't done a diesel-electric[1] truck yet with a moderate size battery.
You'd have more torque than is possible, could ditch the transmission/transfer case/etc and it would allow you to build out a platform to understand the motor/electrification side of things with reasonable energy density until the battery curve catches up with high duty cycle usage.
I mean locomotives moved to that powertrain decades ago(which is why the VFDs in current EVs are so fantastic) so it seems like a reasonable way to approach things.
This is a terrible argument. Of any car most people don't buy the base version. People wont buy the base version of an F-150 either.
And just because Tesla once didn't offer a car with the price they said doesn't mean its some inherent law of nature. Tesla now is a very different company compared to 2017 when they built their first mass manufactured car.
Fact is that Electric F-150 will not be able to compete with the Cybertruck on specs. Tesla will bring its now batteries and new packs and will reach range and performance that F-150 can't match.
Look. I’m not the person who brought up the 35k Model 3. I was pointing out that the absolute base car and base trim is a silly metric.
They don’t have to compete with the base model. They can compete with the volume model. If they match it on specs and features it’s competitive.
Tesla marketing has a habit of being very ambitious so we’ll see if the range and performance are better in the real-world. They certainly have the technology and battery advantage.
Can you cite any car company that makes the cheapest version of a product available before the more expensive one? It makes good business sense to start with the more profitable model I’m not sure why you bring this up as if it is bad.
Sure, but it wasn’t available at launch and now it doesn’t exist.
I don’t have much faith in the 40k Cybertruck being widely or readily available based on that. It’s not really a dig at Tesla. Ford makes an F-150 that costs less than $30k, but most sold outside of fleets are higher trims and packed with options.
Electric cars - I get it... but who would in their right mind let their Ford drive itself?! Why is the self-driving a thing mostly in America? Don't people here enjoy driving? If they don't, why not focus on the more economical and environmentally-friendly mass transit instead? In Europe, people get a car and get behind the wheel, because they enjoy the experience, not because it gets them in the most efficient way from point A to point B. Or maybe in the last 20+ years I've been living in the States things have changed back in Europe?
Average trip length is about ~12km[1] (we are talking about Europe so no weird units, sorry not sorry) and 22mn. That's about 33kmh, less than most speed limits within the cities.
What it means is that most car trips are short and slow.
I consider myself as someone who likes to drive. But I don't own a car because most of my trips (done on my bicycle) are done in the city where I know I'm more efficient on my bike than if I was driving. So to me, self-driving cars are of little to no interest because when I drive, it's for trips longer than 100km and at an average speed around 100kmh, and I want to take the wheel and have manual gears.
But when I talk to people that drives daily, they mostly agree on the fact that they hate driving, because their trips are short and slow. But they hate even more "the people", so they dont want to use mass transit.
And for them, self-driving is appealing because it means they can still travel in their private bubble, but instead of having to be concentrated on what surronds them to avoid crash or having issues with the law, they can do whatever they want : sleeping, watching Netflix...
I'm sure hiring a taxi will have the same benefits and it will end up being cheaper and even more convenient when you consider all the costs and hassles, which including parking in these short trip situations, insurance, rapid depreciation, maintenance, etc. The issue with mass transit is always the last mile, but foldable lightweight e-scooters and mini e-bikes can solve it.
EVs make sense but at this point self driving cars are fantasy vaporware. Executives should be tired of embarrassing themselves in public with grand pronouncements of “just 6 more months!” by this point.
I’m old enough to remember 2016 when FSD was still 6 months away. Waymo was started 12 years ago and still can only operate in a small geomapped area with expensive hardware. Tesla’s offering would still kill you if you let it drive start to finish with no intervention. Still not sure how they get away with calling it Full Self Driving when it requires driver supervision.
Yandex had demonstrated their self-driving car technology in Las Vegas with just a safety engineer in the front passenger seat (NVO Mode) providing demonstration rides of its self-driving car on the public streets of Las Vegas starting from the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino during CES 2019.
I may be wrong but the reason why I guess it remains vaporware to the masses might have something to do with the regulatory and bureaucratic red tapes that ensures it continues to stay a vaporware.
That video was released on March 28, 2012. Nine years ago in 48 days.
You'd think if it was just a little regulatory red tape a multi-billion dollar corporation or two (or three) would have figured it out in nine years. Maybe its more than just a few rules changes that's keeping truly full self driving carson some very select routes.
I'm guessing that's Cruise Automation. They talked about driverless cars in specific neighborhoods, but I haven't anything formally happening on that front. So they're either still using drivers or it's geofenced.
Can I hop in one of those geo-fenced cars and have it drive me to Las Vegas? How about staying in state lines, can it drive me to Sacramento? Monterrey? Santa Cruz?
Then it turns out that the primary cost contributor to an EV is the cost of batteries. Automakers being relative nobodies on the lithium market, they are paying retail for it and passing the mark-ups to you, the consumer.
At that point compromises must be made, and the announced vehicles advertise either an unimpressive range or some atrocious price sticker or both. The market compares the $/mile-of-total-tange, at which point Tesla emerges as being fairly competitive on price.
The large company discontinues the vehicle lineup, citing overrun cost issues and market disinterest for EVs save for a few Tesla fanboy diehards.