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Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

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Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#441
post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.electrifyamerica.com/locate-charger Some of them are for charging at 350KW, current Tesla Supercharger's top out at 150KW, and the next gen targets 250KW..

Real chargers are always better than vaporware chargers though, regardless of promised numbers. And the number of chargers in the network matters.

CHAdeMO has, IIRC, 4-5× the number of chargers in the US that Tesla has and CCS is probably in the same neighborhood because most are dual or multi standard.

Tesla has the biggest single-provider network, but that doesn't really matter.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of Germans don't drive on the Autobahn at such insane speeds, and this certainly isn't an option anywhere else anyway (legally). Such a niche use case really does not matter all that greatly in the scheme of things. I can think of dozens of factors more important to me than "not being able to drive at 200 kph for extended periods of time".

> The vast majority of Germans don't drive on the Autobahn at such insane speeds It's not an insane speed, a new VW Golf can handle 170-180 kph pretty damn well, hell, my 12-year old 1.4l hatchback can do 130-140 kph for hours at a time quite as well, too.

It's insane because it's way too fast (thus potentially dangerous), not because vehicles aren't physically capable of it. The occasional driver roaring down the Autobahn in the left lane at 200 kph is the exception, not the rule.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if everyone started planning tomorrow, you'd be optimistically looking at a couple of years before this hypothetical new charging network began to be useful. That makes your car useless for a large fraction of its lifespan. Whereas Tesla's charging network exists today. (And I would add that I've heard nothing serious about a plan like this being in the works, so it may in fact be several years away if it ever h…

> Even if everyone started planning tomorrow, you'd be optimistically looking at a couple of years before this hypothetical new charging network began to be useful. What if they started planning years ago, and also started deployment years ago? Because both CCS and CHAdeMO chargers are deployed (often as multi-standard chargers), with far greater numbers of stations than Tesla has, already.

I don't see this as being true. When I check Electrify America in my area (DC/Baltimore) it's a desert. Plugshare shows many stations, but when I view details they're primarily 1-2 chargers. These stations are useless for long-distance trips, because in any location that attracts traffic I expect to wait a significant amount of time for other vehicles who reached it before me. The Tesla network typically has stations of 6-10 stalls (or up to 40 or more in a couple of locations), typically placed and sized to match actual long distance travel routes and demand. The stalls are all networked, so I can see availability on the road. While I'm not a Tesla fanboy and would be happy to see this situation change, trying to pretend that other companies have an advantage on Tesla in this area is simply ignoring reality -- at least here in the US.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another Tesla owner here. For me everything you say sounds convincing until I look at the Supercharging network. From my perspective every single issue you mention is a valid point; it's just that Tesla's nationwide (in North America) supercharging network is worth 5,000 points. When other manufacturers solve this problem (and Tesla hasn't met their quality standards) those manufacturers will be an option.

> it's just that Tesla's nationwide (in North America) Do you mean nationwide (in the United States) or continental (in North America)? North America isn't a nation.

Multiple nations. You can check a map for Canadian and Mexican stations as well.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#445
post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real chargers are always better than vaporware chargers though, regardless of promised numbers. And the number of chargers in the network matters.

Here's a screenshot with all the CCS chargers either currently operating or under active construction in the state of Washington: https://imgur.com/a/JEQv9a2 I don't see how you could consider that coverage in any way inadequate.

I don't need HVDC charging in my local metro area; I have AC charging for that. I do need charging along the highways so I can increase my range and travel to other cities. Looking at the PlugShare map, it seems like many of the chargers along the highways only have a single HVDC charging station. Even if we exclude malfunctions, that can mean multiple hours of wait or else a gamble on driving further and not getting stuck. There's no way I would gamble on making a long trip under those conditions.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#446
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Corolla gets double the range on a tank of gas than a Tesla. > If time is such an important factor on a long road trip, you should probably just be flying instead. This is rather tone deaf. Not surprised. A car designed and priced for rich people, attracts rich people. What a luxury it must be for you to afford to fly. Plenty of people make road trips. Growing up all we did was drive, often times 15 hours, for vaca…

> Growing up all we did was drive, often times 15 hours, for vacation. Can't imagine stopping every 3 hours for a half hour to charge. This is laughable as someone who grew up comfortably middle class and made 20+ drives between PA FL. We looked forward to the stops along the way for many reasons: to relax, stretch our legs, and eat the sandwiches we packed; to check out all the cool stuff at South of the Border; cat…

Totally agree.

Off topic, but I never realized until a couple years back just how racist South of the Border is as an idea in general. SC isn't even close enough to Mexico for it to make sense... Also, I'm not sure how they stay in business. Every time I've driven by, it's been completely empty.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#447
post #357
post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are capital spending very heavily to advance their tech, so a lack of "profitability" I don't think says any more than it does about Tesla-- they would be fools to pocket their profit instead of turning it around to spend on growth.

The fact that they could fulfill their whole loan that they wanted, and that they lost many important government satellite contracts recently seems to indicate that this is a business that hasn't reached a stage that it isn't out of the woods. According to certain investors, this is a business worth $30 billion. That's not a company that should be struggling with these things. United Launch Alliance had similar reven…

Well, if you don't follow spaceflight / LVs it sure doesn't make much sense. From my PoV (very casual fan of the above) it actually is pretty spot on to value ULA at 1/10th value of SpaceX.

However reasons for that are too long to go into in one comment ... Mainly origin of & current owner structure of ULA, their current LVs cost & future and dynamics of SX launch business.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#448
post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Volkswagen was founded May 28, 1937, and they were the fuhrer's favorite. That's still 66 years head start. I bet if I gave you a 66 year head start in virtually anything you could probably do a better job than I will when I start. You've not disproved the underlying meaning of my statement really. I don't see why people are downvoting it as the content is sensible.

Volkswagen was used for war manufacturing pretty much as soon as they started and never manufactured commercial passenger vehicles until years after the war. If you made that point about Daimler or BMW you might have a point, because they actually made cars before being turned into Nazi war manufacturers and bombed into oblivion, but Volkswagen was never anything but a Nazi war manufacturer until the end of the war.…

Ummmmm Hitler ordered the manufacturing of the Bug in April of 1934. This was before WWII.

Civilian production was stopped at the start of the war, but it was definitely being built before the war, as evidenced by many historical sources.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#449
post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, the Supercharger port (and the junction box) is way more advanced, compact, and cheaper than a CCS port. The Tesla onboard charger is clever enough to sense that it's connected to a DC charger, so they can use the same pins for AC and DC charging. Otoh, the CCS is a bulky connector + the germans were clever enough to add the PLC protocol as well, to make it even more complex and expensive. Don't get me…

It’s not proprietary in the sense that the offer has been made for any car company to use the same connector technology (and even the supercharger network) royalty free. No car companies have taken Tesla up on this offer. The ones that expressed interest wanted Tesla to make needless changes... but part of the deal with Tesla offering the tech is that it has to be done in a way that does not burn extra engineering ti…

Where can one read more about which competitors expressen interest and why it fell through?

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#450
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was more that Tesla has already scaled beyond the level where "these companies know how to build cars" is reasonable spin. Tesla's building plenty of cars, making money doing so, scaling rapidly, and can only be expected to be doing better still by the time those competitors arrive in the market. That's not to say that they won't be highly competetive cars, they might (I for one certainly hope they are). Bu…

> Honestly... your argument is a year stale. The window on "Tesla can't scale" closed. They did. They are not building at the scale of the large automakers. To build at the scale of millions of cars per year is significantly more difficult than what Tesla is doing now, and it is not simply a matter of building more of the same factories.

> They are not building at the scale of the large automakers.

No, but they're building at the scale of the small automakers, for whom you don't seem to be predicting imminent death due to their inability to scale.

If Jaguar (which was your example!) isn't about to collapse under the weight of their low-volume inefficient processes, then neither is Tesla.

To wit: you're spinning. Pick a different argument, this one is old.

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