Featured Toyota Announces 2 New EV's

Credits were always part of Tesla's business plan. Speculation, the CARB credits for fuel-cell vehicles distorts the market of credits:

Source: Automakers play high-stakes CARB game to earn zero emissions vehicle credits

"Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."​

Bob Wilson

 

It is such a phony argument. Tesla makes a lot of profit on its cars. It spends its profits, including its CARB credits, on growth, which is what you want with a fast growing company. Amazon does the same thing. That is why their net profit is low, and will always be for the foreseeable future. As their manufacturing improves and they make more margin on each car, they'll just pour the higher profits into their growth and their net profit remains small. You want to know how much real profit they are making? Look at how much money they are spending on factories all over the world.

All large companies get various subsidies and government investments. Heck, the US gave GM a $50 billion dollar bailout, at the end of which the government ended up losing about $11 billion (in contrast, the government profited from its Tesla loans). And they get lots of state subsidies to keep manufacturing in Michigan. Should we deduct these from its yearly earnings report? Only Tesla seems to get this kind of treatment. Maybe we should deduct all the hydrogen subsidies and CARB credits Toyota gets from its earnings.

 

Of course this is a silly way to look at it.
First, if Tesla didn't make the cars they wouldn't qualify for the credits. Basically, they get the credits because other car makers produce cars that are polluting the air without paying for it.
Second, and more important is the fallacy of this type of argument.

Take grocery stores, for example. They are very low margin so you could say they make all their profit from just the potato chip and snacks aisle...so they should ditch all the other products.

The fact is that Tesla is making more and more cars which is allowing them to build more and more factories.
And the marginal cost of building each car is profitable.

Mike

 

Interesting how every thread slowly turns into a discussion about Tesla.

 

With 80% of the USA EV market, I'm not surprised.

 

Tesla sells their cars for more than it cost them to make. So they are making money selling them, and they have higher margins on their cars than other manufacturers. The profit on cars is around $6 billion, likely more.

All the manufacturers game the systems for profit. CAFE credits for Prii lets Toyota sell the FSP pick up trucks without paying fines, or having to buy them from someone else. Not making a polluting ICE car just means Tesla doesn't need their regulatory credits, and can sell them all. Buying them from Tesla is probably cheaper than putting deep, money losing discounts on their less popular, but cleaner, models.

Their success means others' BEVs will be eventually be compared to theirs.
Here it seems they mostly get brought up by those that appear threatened by them for some reason.

 

We should be a little surprised at least. There are already numerous Tesla forums for interested people. Tesla is big in EV space but VW is close behind. It's not involved with hybrids or PHEVs. It's not the biggest battery maker. And it's nowhere near the biggest car maker. Not every conversation needs to steer in its direction.

 

You're right. Tesla was initially brought up because of the claim BEVs weren't profitable. Couldn't use VW as their serious BEV effort just started. The Leaf always has discounts, so its hard to say how it is doing for Nissan. Maybe Renault could have been used to counter claim, but most of us are North Americans, and unfamiliar with how they are doing.

The Tesla talk died down in the first two of pages, but a certain someone felt the need to quote one of those first page posts recently.

 

To be fair, Tesla made its 1 Millionth car last March. About 500,000 in all of 2020, so figure 1.35 Million plus January and February, so around 1.5 Million.
By the end of this year, they will likely hit 2 Million.

 

Nothing but Tesla and Mirai stone casting.

 

VW Group sold 422k PHEVs and EVs last year with little or no help from ID.3 and ID.4. Not sure why you felt it necessary to advertise the range of Tesla vehicles, when it was plainly obvious that's not what we were talking about. (Also, which Tesla has a range of 500 miles?) This is actually what I was eluding to in my earlier post.

 

VW sold 212k plugin vehicles last year.
In 2020, Volkswagen Brand Sold More Than 212,000 Plug-In Electric Cars (insideevs.com)

Ah, sorry, the whole group, which is VW, Audi & Porsche, correct?

 

Plus Skoda.

 

World’s Top 5 EV Automotive Groups Ranked By Sales: Q1-Q4 2020

Between Tesla and VW Group (all the companies vw owns) they sold almost a million plug-ins last year (921,126) which was 29% of the global plug-in market and 34% of the global bev market. Both will grow a lot this year. VW itself sold 212K plug-in vehicles. Both are poised to grow greatly this year.

In 2020, Volkswagen Brand Sold More Than 212,000 Plug-In Electric Cars
EV-Volumes - The Electric Vehicle World Sales Database
The only major market where plug-in sales fell last year was japan. They grew the fastest in the EU thanks mainly to progress by VW group and BMW group cars.

 

Austin, I don't see where that applies to the thread. Even so, it was interesting. The EV-Volumes link had this little gem:

Plug-in sales in Germany increased by 254 % over 2019, 191 % for BEVs and 351 % for PHEVs, witnessing the high representation of German OEM in PHEV variants. PHEVs stood for half of German plug-in vehicles sales; the global average for 2020 was 31 % PHEVs and 69 % BEVs. One out of eight global plug-in sales were in Germany last year.

That and this from the Insidevs.com link
Plug-ins (BEV+PHEVs)

Tesla is of course still on the top, however, its market share is decreasing (from 17% to 16%) as the market expands quicker than Tesla, and the Volkswagen Group surged from #6 to #2, to a level from which it might become #1 soon.


Actually, Volkswagen Group was #1 in the fourth quarter (191,000 VW Group vs 183,000 Tesla).

Tesla is in the lead for BEV, but for plug ins China and VW are looking strong.

 

People were arguing numbers. I was just getting the correct ones out there, and point out the North America is a big market, but china and Europe are bigger and growing faster.

Diversity of manufacturing is good. I am hoping the rapid growth of plug-ins pushes Toyota to fully engage. Its really disapointing that toyota doesn't seem to be able produce only a small quantity of batteries to fulfill demand for the rav4 prime. They should be able to fix this fairly quickly. I really think toyota's strength with the efficient dynamic force engined phev design should be able to grow that market if they get manufacturing up and growth in design beyond the rav4 prime.


tesla in 2020 was still constrained by manufacturing. I hope the new catl battery factory, and tesla's chinese factory allow it to grow fast this year. The austin and berlin factory when completed and help growth in future years. VW was late to the game but is pouring lots of money into it. Since they already have the plants they should be able to grow fast, but they have some design problems that I hope they solve soon. The Nissan/Renault/Mitsubishi group is really disappointing. They were plagued by bad decisions (short range) and corporate scandals from the biggest plug-in Lots of chinese competitors readly to come in if the Japanese and german manufacturers don't do things well soon.