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It's still not a premium car.
Premium is defined by price, not your desired feature set.
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> I find this to be a major milestone in the transition to BEV. This is an achievement. While I agree it would be great if we had 0 emission vehicles, today EV in US or Germany run largely of coal , hence battery production is anything but green... Thus I still don’t see the point of what’s called « Transition ». Climate change is real , but at the moment without nuclear fusion I fail to see how this is going to chan…
Even if all your electricity comes from burning fossil fuels switching to EVs should be an emissions win. Your fossil fuel burning electrical generation facility can be equipped with things to capture emissions. So can a fossil fuel burning car, but the car needs to be small, mobile, and light weight and that limits how much you can capture emissions. The electrical generation facility doesn't have those constraints.
The other big win is time: if I buy a conventionally-fueled car now I'm locking in its use of fossil fuels for 15+ years unless there's a major improvement in biofuels whereas if I buy an EV in many states I can at any time switch to 100% renewable electric charging. A non-trivial percentage of EV owners will consider that option over the life of the vehicle and that opens the possibility of policy makers making a substantial change without needing to coordinate with millions of people: bring wind, solr, geothermal, nuclear, etc. capacity online and you have a guaranteed day one reduction in the CO2 generated for transportation.
"Model 3 was the best-selling premium sedan in the world, outselling long-time industry leaders such as the 3 Series and E Class. This demonstrates that an electric vehicle can be a category leader and outsell its gas-powered counterparts." I find this to be a major milestone in the transition to BEV. This is an achievement.
The model 3 really isn't a premium sedan. It's more like a mid range Skoda than an Audi, with a cheap plastic interior and pretty bad build quality. They sell very well because it's cheap and in many countries you get a great tax deal on them making it even cheaper. Which I'm really happy for because EVs help against climate change. But I'm also very happy I cancelled my pre-order and don't have to drive a model 3.
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What’s amazing is that just 5 years ago, it seemed like a distant goal. People were skeptical of Tesla in 2015 (rightfully so). Almost went bankrupt in 2017. They dug themselves out of there despite of Elon’s PR shenanigans. Pretty amazing I think! Now about that stock price, I’m not so sure. It’s like next 20 years are baked into $735/share price now.
The inflated stock price is easy to explain: intangibles are part of the balance sheet. In my guesstimation, Tesla will be making electric cars with a range to dollar ratio that can’t possibly be matched by incumbents for the foreseeable future. VW and the rest are more capable of producing a refined car, but (again, my opinion) Tesla’s EV advantage is similar to the big three’s various inertial advantages that they…
Tesla Y is for sure faster and the better drive. It's also like 10-15k more expensive and that's not even before VW's rebates. The interior was weird -- tiny headrests, tiny mirrors, and really poor back visibility. A giant screen in middle and nothing else wasn't particularly great, and I don't have CarPlay (I know Tesla has a lot of functionality in their system, but I'd personally rather drive it all from my phone to have a more continuous experience in car and out of car). On that screen was a 'video game'-ified representation of what Autopilot was seeing... not only distracting, but kept being wrong while I was stopped at a red light staring at it as it missed the cars in front of me and kept rapidly alternating what direction the incoming lane was going to turn. And that's driving the car? Scary!
I don't care about being faster, the ID.4 is plenty fast. I also don't really care about 250mi versus 350mi range or whatever right now.. all are inconvenient for a super long trip. I just recently drove from SF to near Canada... that was a very long multi-day drive and I would for sure not want to have multiple 35m+ stops in addition to the long drive. Until the technology gets WAYYY better I'll just rent ICE cars for a very long drive. Until then 250mi is plenty to get around the Bay Area knowing I can just plugin at home overnight to recharge.
VW has build a Electrify America charging network from a 2B settlement for their diesel emissions standards. If they're smart they'll capitalize on this and win much more in the long run by becoming Exxon AND a car company... their network isn't exclusive to their cars.
With everyone coming online in the next couple years, Tesla is going to have very real competition. I don't think the areas that they're better at are quite as make/break for car decision making as they claim to be. Elon Musk himself certainly doesn't help as a very divisive figure (and was part of the reason I didn't want a Tesla).
> We believe that a vision-only system is ultimately all that is needed for full autonomy. Our AI-based software architecture has been increasingly reliant on cameras, to the point where radar is becoming unnecessary earlier than expected. As a result, our FSD team is fully focused on evolving to a vision-based autonomous system and we are nearly ready to switch the US market to Tesla Vision. This is a huge gamble IM…
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What’s amazing is that just 5 years ago, it seemed like a distant goal. People were skeptical of Tesla in 2015 (rightfully so). Almost went bankrupt in 2017. They dug themselves out of there despite of Elon’s PR shenanigans. Pretty amazing I think! Now about that stock price, I’m not so sure. It’s like next 20 years are baked into $735/share price now.
The inflated stock price is easy to explain: intangibles are part of the balance sheet. In my guesstimation, Tesla will be making electric cars with a range to dollar ratio that can’t possibly be matched by incumbents for the foreseeable future. VW and the rest are more capable of producing a refined car, but (again, my opinion) Tesla’s EV advantage is similar to the big three’s various inertial advantages that they…
"Model 3 was the best-selling premium sedan in the world, outselling long-time industry leaders such as the 3 Series and E Class. This demonstrates that an electric vehicle can be a category leader and outsell its gas-powered counterparts." I find this to be a major milestone in the transition to BEV. This is an achievement.
I'm surprised by how micro-managey Tesla is with their Model 3/Y prices. Most manufacturers release a static MSRP for that model year. However, Tesla the past year was dropping prices $500-$1,000 periodically. And then as of last month, has raised prices $500-$1,000 twice.
In the beginning Tesla's selling point was that they were not a dealer, you go to the showroom and there is no pressure because everyone pays the same price.
Except with their pricing monkey business, you're replicating the same high-pressure "buy now before the price goes up"... for everyone.
Aren't they over the hump? Can they get away from gym-membership stuff?
Combine that with the variability of other nonsense - when will I get my car/truck? surprise! square steering wheel! etc...
A true premium experience should treat people better, and ONLY inflict positive drama.
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The model 3 really isn't a premium sedan. It's more like a mid range Skoda than an Audi, with a cheap plastic interior and pretty bad build quality. They sell very well because it's cheap and in many countries you get a great tax deal on them making it even cheaper. Which I'm really happy for because EVs help against climate change. But I'm also very happy I cancelled my pre-order and don't have to drive a model 3.
So tell us what one should drive instead of a model 3?
My point is that a model 3 isn't really a luxury car, it's an entry model and has the build quality and options that go with that.
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> flat revenue for 3 years ??? 2018 - $21.5B 2019 - $24.5B 2020 - $31.5B 2021 (annualized) - probably $35-$40 B
That’s pretty flat compared to the share valuation.
Also, revenue doesn't capture the whole story. Share price indicates something about longer run growth potential and margin development.
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There are a ton of viable and productive energy production methods that at least start to address climate change between where we're at now and "nuclear fusion". Fission may have plenty of issues, but lets not pretend that the entire world is "fusion or bust".
> Fission may have plenty of issues, but lets not pretend that the entire world is "fusion or bust". Unfortunately , that’s no how it’s work. Yes fission is great ! France runs on Fission it works greats. Problem ? In 2015 at the current rate of consumption 130 years of uranium left on earth ! Sadly for us International Nuclear association estimated that if most country shifted to Nuclear that uranium would shift fro…
First of all, this is nonsense. The same old peak-blabla nonsense.
Second of all, thorium can be used in current reactors. Third, thorium is practically unlimited.
Existing nuclear 'waste' and nuclear bombs contain huge amounts of potential energy as well.
With newer reactors these limits can be further broken by moving from terrible utilization to much higher utilization. And lets not ignore that modern CO2 turbines can improve efficiency by a further 20% at least.
There is absolutely no limit to fission in any theoretical or practical sense.
Its arguably renewable as volcanoes transport new thorium to the surface.