Featured Vietnam's VinFast Preparing to Sell Electric Crossovers in the U.S.

A holdup, for any reason, is definitely a concern. But I'm more concerned about the chip shortage.

We've been burned by the waiting game before, yup, by Tesla for that matter. Due to "inflation" a first day reservation holder of a $60.5k model Y (had she chosen AWD, she picked the $56.5k RWD) went up to $72.99k before Tesla forced us to choose refund of $2500 or pay to play). Her RWD variant was $56.5k on her first day reservation. At least VinFast warns that pricing may not be exact up front. Tesla probably thought why build this RWD long range variant at such a low profit margin, just refund them and continue selling AWD only....

A $200 refundable reservation isn't too much of a risk/gamble. My wife has other options to consider, the Mirai being one...


REVVL V+ 5G ?

 

Dang - what did I see yesterday during Super Bowl commercials? Wasn't it at least 4 EV's?
Too bad they didn't blow as much in chip manufacturing as they do on advertising. Maybe they could have actually had these cars in Nationwide production already.
.

 

Lots of words for deflection there. All he asked was a yes or no - answerable question regarding expensive hydrogen fuel. Perhaps some believe Toyota can give away 5,000 dollar fuel cards forever?
.

 

Uh, it's $15k hydrogen card, plus $17k mark down on XLE or $25k on Limited.

It was $16.81/kg for H2 at the South Pasadena True Zero station a couple weeks ago, or $22.xx/kg at CSULAs H20 hydrolysis station.

At a capacity of 5.6 kg that's a lot of H2...

REVVL V+ 5G ?

 

The original plan was to sell full speed EV versions along side those. Even had specs for them up on their site not too long ago.

If your reservation was with another car company, you'd likely be looking at a 'market adjustment' from the dealer when you went to pick up your car.

Tesla has been regularly changing the price of their cars for some time. But so do the others. They just do it behind the scenes through incentives and deals to the dealers, who are free to add their own adjustments.

The ads are expensive, but wouldn't net enough chips to bother. When the car makers cut back their orders at the start of the pandemic, the chip makers sold to others. Graphic cards became a big buyer, because their demand has skyrocketed with the increase of bit mining. It is actually hard to find the higher end cards now.

Is Toyota going to make a BEV using NiMH?
Are those hydrogen vehicle companies researching ways to make the infrastructure cheaper, or is that still someone else's problem?
We know Toyota is fine with making hydrogen from fossil fuels, but are those countries wanting to just add a middle man to the supply chain for no gain?

 

Not just doubtful. Pretty much impossible.

First off, it takes 2-4 years to build a chip FAB and start processing wafers. The shorter time is only if the site is already chosen and permits ready, etc.

Second, a Super Bowl ad was reportedly about $6.5M per 30 sec ad. A FAB cost several billion, with a B. The car companies don't build FABs anyway.

Third, the semi industry only really builds new state-of-the-art FABs and then as they become old tech (as newer tech comes online) the old FABs make products that are more low end, such as the ones that go into car ECUs, etc. It takes 3-5 process nodes before a FAB becomes "old" which is 5 to 10 years. For example, many car parts are being built with 20nm, 28nm and 40nm. These process nodes were first installed into FABs around 2013, 2011 and 2008. They aren't making a lot of 10 year old FABs any more.

It takes real design time and effort to move an old chip design to a newer process. The chips will be smaller, but may not be any cheaper depending on the relative die size, yields and wafer costs...but you have to requalify the chip and entire assembly for safety and reliability.

State-of-the-art FABs (such as at TSMC) are now at 5nm with 3nm coming this year. These are in your iPhones and cloud servers, etc.
20nm Technology - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited


Mike

 

My own FAB research is currently about 10 years ago, when things like FAB retrofit and sub contracting a smaller OEM's chip runs were not unheard of. And about the time IBM closed/sold off it's FABs.
Some new news concerning one of Big Red's FAB projects for those interested in how the stuff is produced.
China Has Built The World’s Most Expensive Silicon Carbide Fab, But Numbers Don’t Add Up

 

There is at least one guy running a chip fab in his basement.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/man-builds-own-silicon-chip-at-home

he belongs to another forum I belong to and has gotten to 300nm at home.

300nm is more than good enough to run OBDII and engine sensors

The first Pentium was 800nm and yeah his fab isn’t $1b

He is targeting a small geometry Intel 4040 with a stretch goal of the 8088

 

The bold text is likely due to this site’s insistence on retaining copied font size, boldness. If I see that happen personally, i resort to first pasting into a plain text editor, then reselect and copy.

A workaround, that’s admittedly easier on some platforms than others.

 

And die size isn't everything, for instance exoscale. To each their own. Phone or DataCenter.

I can only imagine the political upheaval on the Island and around the world if / when Taiwan is converted to a communist state. I think the culture shock would be unprecedented to the locals not to mention the other players with interests, like AU and JP

 

No need to do that. I did the above within the reply box of this site.

 

Kandi only gets better

Kandi: How This China-Based NASDAQ-Listed Company Used Fake Sales, EV Hype to Nab $160 Million From U.S. Investors – Hindenburg Research

 

Another couple tricks that work is if you hold down "Ctrl" and "Shift" and "V" and it will paste without formatting. Alternatively you can right click and most operating systems have a "paste without formatting" option.

 

Dealer market adjustment is hit or miss. Our family has ordered 4:

'04 Toyota Sienna XLE Limited AWD. Markup was on an add on hood bug shield but otherwise MSRP.

'08 BMW 335xi (E90) MSRP

'10 Cadillac CTS-V I got quotes around and this dealer sold below MSRP. Had we decided on a BMW M5 highly likely there would have been a markup I confess.

'13 Smart fortwo through COSTCO Auto I got sizable discount below MSRP.

Three words, just three words, added next to the price (or around it) when Tesla initially listed a LR RWD Y with 7 seat and FSD, and I WOULD HAVE NO BEEF with them:. "subject to change". It's not my fault they didn't add that, nor "subject to actual production".

The advice we received back towards the end of 2020 when I noticed AWD rising in price (about $1k) and brought my wife in to consider getting the AWD instead:. "Keep your reservation you got a great price" ("and since you aren't in a rush"). Should have warned us to make a choice or we'd be taking a chance no?...

REVVL V+ 5G ?

 

at least yer not bitter

.

 

Irony?!?!

You realize this is a site for fans of a Japanese car company, right?

I'm old enough to remember when only junk copies of US made goods came from Japan......then Korea.....THEN China......

As for "millions" dead, most "estimates" are closer to about a million to million and a half combining military and civilian losses.....and those estimates seem a little on the high side....but then......people who WIN wars get to tell the story.


....even if nobody learns from it.....

 

None of those were a plug in with high demand and limited supply because of batteries. The Rav4 Prime was getting slapped with market adjustments before the general car shortage.

Tesla was modulating prices on their cars before Model Y reservations were open. As I said before, other car companies do the same for controlling inventory. They just don't lower the MSRP(Tesla has lowered prices in the past) when the price drops. Instead the buyer has to haggle it out of the dealer.

Since not everyone follows general Tesla news, it would be nice if they made this more prominent. On the other hand, Tesla is more up front about these things than some dealers.

Depends on what the agreement you got when putting in the the reservation said. Here are the pre-order and reservation agreements for the Cybertruck and Model 3. They both contain language to the effect that the final price is subject to change.
https://www.tesla.com/order/download-order-agreement?redirect=no&country=US&model_code=mp
https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/model_3_reservation_agreement.pdf

When you go through the site, there is a link to a purchase agreement in small print when you get to the part of entering card info to pay the reservation fee. It states the price is locked.
https://www.tesla.com/order/download-order-agreement?redirect=no&country=US&model_code=my

So maybe the Tesla employee you spoke to was right; it was before Tesla officially cancelled the RWD Model Y. Tesla isn't treating those with RWD reservations fairly in terms of pricing; they'd have to pay the current price of FSD instead of the lower one when they put the reservation in originally. I've already discounted Tesla as a choice, but this goes on the list why. Another new one is that the reservation fee no longer applies towards the car's final price.

 

If they weren't going to honor the original AWD pricing for those who picked RWD initially, I didn't expect them to keep the original FSD pricing either. BUT it would have been nice if they did. We asked and the salesman went to supposedly ask his manager, (with low confidence he would be able to). Called us back with a "sorry"...

Yeah I'm kind of sore at Tesla for that. Even though the two extra seats were CRAMPED, my wife and my mother would have fit back there and my wife was comfortable with the overall size...

VinFast did give fair warning, pricing may change. Also that they can cancel the reservation at any time, my assumption being if they end up not selling the model we picked, (haha we have both models), or if they just don't sell in the US after all. She loves to travel and that 7 night stay for 4 was a really big deal. It will be interesting to see pricing on their battery lease, and how my wife feels about that. Smart/Mercedes had such a lease contract that they sold with electric smart fortwos. That turned out to be a real mess....

REVVL V+ 5G ?

 

I was very interested in working for Tesla on their pack swap machine when they had the machine in operation. I wouldn't have been working for them very long it that was the only thing I could do for them.