Tesla Kool-aide

Holy ^ THIS ^, Batman!

I love reading about the accomplishments of SpaceX, I really think they're doing some fantastic stuff, and I hope they keep at it for a long time.

And I still wish Tesla would just go away.

 

This view is shared by a significant number of people. SpaceX is easy for most all to love because it is not disrupting the establishment. It is growing in a realm largely without competition where other industries/businesses are not diminished by their progress.

Like it or not, Tesla is making technological achievements of similar stature as SpaceX with forging earnestly into the future with ground based vehicles. The "not like it" camps include the deeply entrenched ICE world and its manufacturers, petroleum industry, and all the infrastructure distribution chains therein. Some customers are comfortable where they are and have been and some have some loyalty to their ICE brands.

The BEV future was inevitable and someone had to be the first mover. Many customers would have rather had their favorite ICE manufacturer taken leadership, but alas they did not. Some manufacturers have reluctantly and albeit quite late started to figure it out.

The "like" camp is not largely about loyalty to Tesla. Many of these once owned a Prius and justly praised Toyota for their leadership at the time. In my experience, most Tesla owners welcome more competition to the field.

 

Huh. One of the things I like best about Space X is that they've massively disrupted the status quo of orbital access- it's no longer something that can only be done with a ridiculous cost-plus contract to a defense vendor.

I should clarify that my distaste for Tesla is that they have focused on the fashion end of the auto industry rather than basic transportation. I understand (at least some of) the factors that have pushed them there- it is likely to be a very long time before anyone can profitably produce "ordinary car" BEVs. This isn't Tesla's fault. It might just be too soon for truly mass-market BEVs. On the other hand, I am troubled by how hard they're leaning into the glitzy luxury/fashion end of the market.

I am pro-BEV; but I won't take them $eriously until somebody produces the VW Bug of BEVs: high quality with no fat on it.

 

There was no massive disruption of the establishment - that was the problem, there was little establishment. Who were all the players in that world and how many of us were vested in those players? Orbital access until recently had been an infrequent and sleepy thing waiting for someone to step in to fill the vacuum.

This is much like the world of HD and 4K flat panel TVs. Which of us could afford the first 55" ones. They were tens of thousands of dollars in the beginning? Years later just a small few hundred bucks.

We were definitely not in the market/budget for the first $100k+ BEVs that could get us everywhere we wanted to go in a car. But almost 2 years ago we obtained our $37.5k pre-incentive Model 3 SR+. We are hardly alone in making a purchase in this price range. Many of our neighbors and commuters have other ICE vehicles such as F-150s optioned higher than this.

No one is stopping other players from building lower budget BEVs and they are slowly and increasingly doing so. In fact, Tesla accelerated the timeline for others to get there, and that is something to be celebrated.

 

Tesla started with no manufacturing whatsoever. Their business model of building a small number of expensive cars, then using those proceeds to increase their production capacity has worked well.
Each iteration allows more quantity at a lower cost.

If Tesla built the same number of lower cost cars, they would have less margin. This would result in slower growth.
My personal belief is that adds more competitive pressure to other manufacturers to speed up their own ZEV programs and offerings.

I was quite surprised we weren’t able to replace our Prius with a BEV made by Toyota. I was convinced they would be the ones at the front of the charge.
I also welcome all manufacturers in the BEV marketplace. The more competition the more choices for the consumer and the faster the innovation.

I would love to see more inexpensive options out there. Tesla doesn’t have the manufacture capacity to do this, yet.
Any frustration about that, in my opinion, should be directed at the large manufacturers who do have the manufacturing capacity to do so.

 

I can't blame Tesla for focusing on the most profitable end of a market in its infancy. It's going to take a long time for them to be positioned to sell the kind of car I want to buy.

I recognize @iplug's point, my first electric car is much more likely to be something from another automaker whose development schedule was influenced by Tesla's actions. And that influence is a good thing!

An unaddressed point: Tesla has been in the news for their use of household grade electronics in automotive duty. The particulars aren't terribly important, what bothers me the most is that they're making the car a lot less supportable and sustainable over the long term. Remind me again why we were bothering to switch to electric cars?

These product design choices leave the unshakeable impression that the end results are disposable fashion items that also happen to be electric cars.

It is this conspicuous consumption in the name of sustainability that raises one of my eyebrows above the other.

 

How about all the aerospace companies that lost business to Space-X. Lots of employees involved. (I think back to all the Aeros that graduated with me. I'd wager I had a far more stable career.)

I think more that Space-X doesn't have any direct consumers on the forums.

 

The fractional market cap for commercial business dedicated to aerospace was likely a fraction of 1% compared to the market cap for the worldwide automobile industry, employees as well.

 

Pretty sure Space X has some employees as well.

 

I'm not bemoaning market disruption, just saying that it did occur and SpaceX won.

Boeing, Lockhead-Martin, Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney, etc. Even NASA lost.

My post was countering the assertion that SpaceX was more loved because it didn't disrupt.

 

The claim was that SpaceX did not disrupt the establishment. As stated, it developed "in a realm largely without competition where other industries/businesses are not diminished by their progress."

At the time of SpaceX entry, Boeing, Lockhead-Martin, Raytheon, and Pratt & Whitney, did not and still do not get most of their business and profitability from their space divisions nor were more than a minority of their employees allocated there. Most of their business, profitability, and employment was and remains civilian aircraft, military aircraft, and weapons systems.

NASA won big time. SpaceX got them out of the lesser dark ages. NASA is a government agency and in democratic republics such as ours they do not compete with commercial interests. The partnership returned them to glory.


Ask someone now or a few years ago what Boeing, Lockhead-Martin, Raytheon, and Pratt & Whitney do and ask them what Toyota, Tesla, VW, GM, and Ford do. Most would not mention space association on the former.

 

Your posts say otherwise.

The anti-hydrogen views here are because it is still far away from use for personal car use than batteries, while receiving government funds in an effort to get them on the road.

When the Prius first came out, it was expensive for a car of that class, but the cost of the hybrid system has come down with each generation and expansion to other models. The reduction costs for the fuel cell between generations still haven't brought it down to the point in which it is affordable for personal cars. If they were less than the tens of thousands of dollars range, Toyota would be having a huge press conference about it. Instead the new Mirai is getting loaded up with high margin luxury features. A sign of hiding the fuel cell cost.

The design and serviceability aspects is part of that is why I don't want a Tesla. There is some great engineering underneath though. Since the issues are currently limited to older Model S and X, I am willing to give them the benefit of a doubt, and this was just early ignorance of automotive requirements. I'm sure there is an element of tech company culture always pushing the newest thing(but the masses aren't innocent here), but Tesla does improve older cars with the OTA updates, though that has its own concerns in regards to turning things off.

Decreased serviceability is a disturbing trend in many industries, and we've discussed those before. And I recall the idea of just renting car features coming from another luxury brand.

Now, between the tanks and the fuel cell, FCEVs are truly disposable.

 

8,000 as of earlier this year. They are growing the industry and increasing employment. Many of these, highly skilled jobs. Another good thing.

 

Do you have any examples?
I don’t believe I have ever heard of anyone claiming Tesla is using household grade electronics.

Heck, people who write reports on engineering for a career have been impressed with the advanced battery and motors (thinking of Sandy Munroe (sp?)).

I still shed a tear when I wonder what Toyota could do with a BEV in terms off reliability. I wish they would sell one outside of China.

 

Dinner just finished, so no time now, but I have read about it. It didn't say household grade, but into Tesla's required specifications for the Model S LCD screen that is in the news again. The specifications weren't bad, but likely not good enough to hold up the the abuse(vibrations, heat, etc.) that a tablet attached to a car dash sees.

If the issue is just with the older S and X models, then it is probably a mistake of inexperience.

 

It is not just Tesla:



These are just the top four by efficiency, EV models out of ~50 pure EVs listing in the EPA fueleconomy.gov web site. Even the Chevy Bolt sold 8,371 units in the first six month of 2020. I'm pretty sure this exceeds hydrogen fuel cell car sales by nearly an order of magnitude. Sure, the Teslas are over a magnitude more sales. The full list was about 50 models with is about an order of magnitude more models than the fuel cell vendors.

Bob Wilson

 

to bring the thread (hyjacked into yet another hydrogen car post) back onto topic;
I DID find one more Booze / Car photo . . . a Lexus ES 350 with the Trunk turned into a wine cellar.



hopefully the theme won't get hijacked again.
.

 

I've been following stories about the dash displays and the flash storage in the cabin computer.

I can't deny they've done some fantastic engineering along the way to producing these cars. Great things invented, smart practices employed, clever designs and more. But they're so inconsistent!

They could've used a smaller and more durable automotive display, but they selected big and flashy instead. They could have predicted the wear pattern of the flash storage given the logging characteristics of their own software and harmonized it to the product lifecycle, but they wanted to ship it NOW.

They did all the hard work of making a battery electric car and at every turn made design selections in the spirit of SPLURGE! MOAR POWER! Pave the planet!

There's still nothing really wrong with that- it doesn't hit the dissonant note until a Tesla owner uses the resulting car as a virtue-signaling prop instead of a simple degree of ostentatiousness like any other luxury good.