Prime vs Volt Fuel Economy

If based purely on battery costs, Toyota could only match around half on any price reductions on the Volt. With the tax credit still effect for them, Toyota might hold off on a price cut also. It sounds like the Prime already has some tight margins.

 

Well, on a proportional basis, I meant... If Chevy is really losing $9K on the Bolt, I wonder how much wiggle room, if at all, they may have on the Volt.... I'd rather them release a "1/2" Volt with around 30 Miles of EV range to compete with the Prius Prime on price, not much people have the need for 53 EV Miles on a daily basis.

 

Not in my case.

I'm installing PV for about 90 cents a watt after tax credit, good for about 50 kWh lifetime.
That works out to about 0.45 cents a mile on electric.

Try finding gasoline at 20 cents a gallon prepaid in the US, guaranteed for the next 30 years or so.

 

With the Volt on its second generation and having a much smaller battery, I think GM has more wiggle room in regards to it. A Cruze with comparable features is around $11k less than the Volt. I think half that difference covers the battery pack. Leaving the less to cover the hybrid system, which GM has reduce the cost of in the gen2.

The Volt base MSRP is $3300 lower than the Bolt. The Bolt doesn't have the ICE to pay for, but its battery pack is over 3 times the capacity of the Volt's, and that is the money sink on a BEV. It was leaked that GM got a really low per kWh price for the cells from LG, but 60kWh is still a lot of battery to pay for.

There was a rumor leading up to the gen2 Volt's release of there being two battery size choices. Perhaps that is planned for the mid-cycle refresh, and GM is closer to losing the credits. I'd just be happy to here about another plain hybrid from them though.

 

Tesla is losing more than $19,000 on each model S sold Is Tesla Losing Money Each Time It Sells a Car? (TSLA) | Investopedia

I wonder what's going to happen to the electric car and solar power industries if president elect Trump kills tax credits/subsidies. Let's hope he doesn't.

 

Tesla has healthy margins on their current cars. That $19k figure likely includes the company's capital spending for the Gigafactory and expanding the Supercharger network.

 

Not to mention the Fremont factory capital expansion and let's not forget the purchase of SolarCity.


Unsupervised!

 

Extremely misleading.
If taken at face value, that would indicate the more cars Tesla sells the more money it looses.
I was so sick of people using misleading statements like this about the Prius. It is disheartening to see people on the Prius forum make the same type of arguments against other automakers.

 

Tesla has only ever made a profit in two quarters. I wonder how they can stay in business without government subsidies and when investors stop buying their stock.

 

Ultimately the reason for more EV miles (and paying extra) is the power and quality of the EV drive experience. Chelsea Sexton always used to say the eco-argument was weak (not sure her today argument). Prime is better than the older PiP in this regard, as you get more power and more miles. Total cruise range of Prime is impressive.

 

It is extremely easy.
They grow more slowly.
They are bringing in lots of money. If they slowed down building stores, service centers, doubling the world's production of Li batteries, etc they would end up with a positive balance sheet more often.

As is though, no one else has really joined their mission "whole hog".
Until they do, Tesla will keep trying to speed up the adoption of sustainable cars.