My point was not regarding other companies competing range wise but competition with Tesla. They have shown they don’t want lower price cars to compete with higher price ones so if you want 400 miles, here is a model S. If 350 is fine, here is a model 3.
Those Chinese ranges are with the exact same battery specs we have. 2170. They aren’t producing any cars worldwide with 4680 so they aren’t just going to drop them into a car and sell for the same price. If anything, they will do what they did with LFP, lower range and they will ask people if they are willing to take delivery at the same price for slightly lower range but instant delivery. They WILL NOT deliver 400+ mile range 4680 MY to people with current reservations at the same price. They are a publicly traded company and that would be irresponsible to investors to not get a return on their huge investment into this new battery tech. They will charge for it. You may have the option of going to the front of the line for $7k more to get the extra 70 miles of range but it won’t be free. And thats if it doesn’t go into CT or Semi first until they have mass production down before it trickles into MY. I also think it would go into MS/X first since those are much higher margin and still on much older battery tech (18650). The benefits there of higher range and lower weight on performance and handling along with lower volume production makes much more sense for rolling out new battery tech. I put the 4680 batteries in MY Elon quote right there with the CT in 2020/2021/2022 and Roadster 2 in 2020/2021/2022/2023 in terms of reliability and whether it happens or not.
By waiting til now, you get a new tech 12v battery and new MCU so I am good with those.
Unless something happens with Manchin, BBB is likely dead. Or will have tons of things stripped from it. Not holding out much hope for EV tax credit at this point. Maybe in a couple years when more manufacturers have hit their cap but the disparity between Tesla and everyone else will be greater with a new Tesla rebate and people have shown that they don’t care about the discount.