European BEV Sales 2020 - Tesla down to nr 3 and share down by 10%

[Yev000]

Lots of weird cherry picking in this thread. European market share is pretty meaningless. The only thing that matters is how many cars they sell globally.

Tesla doesent have any issues. It doesent nead ZEV credits to survive. It's building 2 new factories. And its soaking up most of the worlds supply of batteries.

So unless the "competition" can magic up some nickel out of thin air I don't see how anything can "compete" in a meaningfull way.

The article itself "Tesla domination disrupted", please, Tesla sold 500,000 EVs globaly in 2020, VW did 212,000. Nissan did 500,000 for the entire history of the company....

2021 Tesla will sell in excess of 750,000 globally. VW will maybe do another 250,000.

But sure, the Tesla market share in Shropshire will be "disrupted" because one of the local villagers bought a VW instead.

 

[Zakalwe]

The biggest issue for Tesla with all these other Bev Sales isn't the competition for car sales its that the others will be able to stop buying regulatory credits from Tesla which is where Tesla make a big chunk of their money!

having said that with the increase in overall sales of BEV I assumed Tesla sales would continue to climb. surprised it has dropped. They really need the Y or any hatchback TBH

Lets put this in context. They sold $1.9B of regulatory credits according to their recent earnings call. Alongside that, they made ~$9B by making and selling things.
Honda signed up to buy regulatory credits from them in November. More ICE makers will be forced to follow.

As usual, the media puts a spin on it. Tesla get slated for selling credits, but there's never a peep about GM or others having to pay for regulatory credits to allow them to continue to make the devices that are killing thousands of people by polluting the atmosphere and through climate change. How come people are not screaming at the likes of Fiat Chrysler for continuing to pour millions of dollars to allow them to continue to trade in filthy products?

Perspective is important

 

[Yev000]

is this going to be like Apple Vs Android?

When Android came along it quickly swept Apple off the top spot volume wise but Apple was able to carry on selling large numbers of high price devices at high margins and ultimately, while not number one in sales, was and still very successful and is the one making the most money.

Making cars is a bit different to making phones. Product is a lot bigger, requiring more raw materials, more expensive and harder to get right.

I dont see a comprable "smart" car on the market that can compare to a Tesla yet, warts and all. Sure, for a lot of people it's just a thing to go from A to B and anything with 4 wheels and an engine would do. And those people would likely be fine with a Nokia that just makes calls.

Or to put it another way, no matter how much you hate "FSD", if you buy a VW it has zero chance of boing A to B with no input. So even if you belive "FSD" is a long way away, its still a lot closer than any other consumer car on the market.

 

[Zakalwe]

I agree, and think that, right now, there are a proportion of Tesla purchasers who are buying the cars simply because there's nothing else on offer. If you're someone looking to either switch to an EV, or just replace an existing EV with another one, and you want to be able to drive more than a couple of hundred miles from time to time, then a Tesla was really the only option.

Tesla's key differentiation is with the supercharger network, the minimalist design of the Model 3 (that I think will become common to all Tesla models before long) and FSD. There will be some prospective buyers for whom none of those aspects of the cars are high on their priority list. In fact they may well actively put off some buyers.

As a case in point, I really loved the minimalist design of the Model 3 interior. It was one of features that really did swing me to order the car. However, having lived with it for a bit over a year, there is no way I would accept any design where form takes such precedence over function ever again. The very severe functional compromises that have been made to create that minimalist interior are, for me, a step too far.

Supercharging may or may not remain a powerful factor in future, it depends on the rate of development of other charging networks and whether or not the rumoured opening up of superchargers to other cars happens.

FSD seems a long way off, at least for the sort of roads I use most of the time. It may be that FSD starts to work well for roads like motorways before long, though, so for those who do a lot of driving on roads like that it might well become a significant factor. Whether we'll see FSD working adequately well on rural roads, or even in UK urban areas, remains to be seen. It seems probable that we'll see it within the next few years, but I have doubts as to whether cars being sold now will ever have a complete FSD capability. The progress being made by some other manufacturers seems pretty rapid, and, at least as far as UK roads are concerned, close to being as capable as AP.

Making cars will also become just another string to Tesla's bow. They are starting to disrupt the energy market (they completely disrupted the frequency market when the Hornsdale reserve went live) with battery storage, Virtual Power Plants and Autobidder. Musk is also on record saying that they want to be known for "building the machine that builds the machine" and I would guess that lots of people are watching closely at how quickly the plant at Shanghai went live and how fast Berlin and Texas are proceeding.

 

[Zakalwe]

To further the piece on regulatory credits have a read of the piece in the Guardian today:
'Invisible killer': fossil fuels caused 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, research finds
The use of fossil fuels caused 8.7 million deaths in 2018.
I saw another study a while back where the VW cheat device caused about 1200 premature deaths in Europe. They cant bring the ban on new ICE sales in quick enough, to be honest. in the meantime, producers of ICE vehicles should be getting hammered with taxes and regulatory burdens for killing people.

 

[pdk42]

Or to put it another way, no matter how much you hate "FSD", if you buy a VW it has zero chance of boing A to B with no input. So even if you belive "FSD" is a long way away, its still a lot closer than any other consumer car on the market.

I wouldn't be so sure of that. VAG are investing a lot in autonomous driving now and the "Lane Assist" feature on their latest cars is at about the same level as the basic Tesla AP. Other manufacturers are doing better though - both GM and Kia have systems very nearly up to Tesla's FSD.

This article is worth a read - US-focused, but a good overview of what's out there.

Cars with Autopilot in 2021 - AutoPilot Review

 

[Kenners]

To further the piece on regulatory credits have a read of the piece in the Guardian today:
'Invisible killer': fossil fuels caused 8.7m deaths globally in 2018, research finds
The use of fossil fuels caused 8.7 million deaths in 2018.
I saw another study a while back where the VW cheat device caused about 1200 premature deaths in Europe. They cant bring the ban on new ICE sales in quick enough, to be honest. in the meantime, producers of ICE vehicles should be getting hammered with taxes and regulatory burdens for killing people.

It's not just ICE vehicles, its everything we've outsourced to places where low environmental standards lower the cost of production. People want cheap TVs and will bury their head in the sand as to what gets if for them. Remember the suicide nets around Foxcon plants assembling iphones?

 

[Yev000]

I wouldn't be so sure of that. VAG are investing a lot in autonomous driving now and the "Lane Assist" feature on their latest cars is at about the same level as the basic Tesla AP. Other manufacturers are doing better though - both GM and Kia have systems very nearly up to Tesla's FSD.

This article is worth a read - US-focused, but a good overview of what's out there.

Cars with Autopilot in 2021 - AutoPilot Review

My point is, you can't buy a personal Waymo to own and a VW/GM/KIa wont do anything in the cars lifetime. Maybe there will be an FSD-equivalent VW/GM/KIA, but not the one you can buy today.

Openpilot is probably the only thing that might compete, but how many peope will retrofit that? The article you linked is regarding "driver-assist" features, not FSD.

 

[pgkevet]

You can buy an FSD Tesla - it just doesn't work properly.
I can easily see a situation where Mobileye Q5 or whatever gets functionality and is proven and only then suddenly gets offered across a range of cars. Equally the big players aren't going to sit around watching Tesla become the dominant EV maker...while they can sell ICE and hybrids etc and make money they can wait for infrastructure and public opinion to shift and then chuck in some properly made EV's at price ranges to suit average Joe and up to business fleets. Note hyundai (for instance) now have a large stake in Boston Dynamics.
Elon gets away with some nice ideas - minimalist interiors on the promise that Robotaxis will rule and buttons wil be unnecessary but by the time those promises arrive an awful lot of folk will settle for a car you can drive by touch without taking your eyes off the road and paging menus and with cameras that don't fog up, lights that let you see in the dark - useful stuff...
0-60 in miliseconds is a big seller or the fans but average Joe wants a car he can afford to insure..

 

[MP3Mike]

Lots of weird cherry picking in this thread. European market share is pretty meaningless. The only thing that matters is how many cars they sell globally.

Exactly, look at the global BEV sales numbers someone put together here: Tesla BEV Competition Developments

Tesla sold almost twice as many BEVs as the #2 manufacturer. (499,779 vs. VWs 238,176)

That gap will just get wider as Giga Berlin and Giga Texas start producing vehicles. (And Giga Shanghai finishes ramping the Model Y production.)

 

[Uncle Paul]

I do not believe Elon thinks of legacy automakers switching over to EV's as competition, but that they are assisting him in his goal to electrify personal transportation.

Tesla understands it is not capable of building all the EVs the World will need. They need help from all the other big guys to churn out enough EVs to supply the World Wide demand for cleaner transportation.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

Frankly I never want FSD, doesn't interest me in the slightest, I enjoy driving far too much to hand that over to any automated system, plus our roads, especially around here, don't lend themselves easily to autonomous driving. I can see specific use cases for FSD that will transform transport in some areas, with personal car ownership diminishing as a consequence, perhaps, but can't help feeling that it will be a fair time before it works on the sort of typical single track lanes we have, plus it's really hard to see what advantage FSD would be for such a use case.

My next car will be an EV that meets my needs, but most importantly allows me to easily control it in the way I want, ideally with the option to turn off those "driver assist" features that I don't need or want at any particular time. In around 50 years of car ownership I can't recall ever having had to consider ease of access to essential controls as something that needs very careful scrutiny before purchase, I've always just assumed that things like wiper and headlight controls would be both relatively easy to access and work reliably. A bit over 14 months of Model 3 ownership has taught me that, in the past, I've taken far too much for granted.

Hopefully some of the other manufacturers will take heed of some of the really great features that Tesla have introduced, perhaps remove some of the somewhat flaky stuff, and do as the Japanese manufacturers have been doing for decades, copying ideas from others and making them more reliable and easy to use. VW already seem to be going up a steep learning curve with the introduction of the ID.3, and I bet other manufacturers are both watching what VW are doing, as well as looking at a great deal of what other EV owners, including us, have to say about the good and less good features of their cars. It has to be really quick and easy for manufacturers to get rapid feedback on their products, and those of others, with the widespread use of social media, like this forum. Let's hope we all get cars that better meet our needs, as a consequence.

 

[Zakalwe]

Things change. In 100 years time people will look on folk who drive their own vehicles with the same regard as this

 

[Zakalwe]

Frankly I never want FSD, doesn't interest me in the slightest, I enjoy driving far too much to hand that over to any automated system, plus our roads, especially around here, don't lend themselves easily to autonomous driving.

I fear that you are probably in a minority. Pre-lockdown do some motorway miles and you'll see that for a huge swathe of people, driving doesn't seem to make it into the top 10 most important thinks to think about. And thats for those actually in control!

 

[SpareHeadOne]

I fear that you are probably in a minority. Pre-lockdown do some motorway miles and you'll see that for a huge swathe of people, driving doesn't seem to make it into the top 10 most important thinks to think about. And thats for those actually in control!

Yes, but the problem is that those people wouldn't buy a car with FSD because "I like being in control".

 

[justinhow]

My next car will be an EV that meets my needs, but most importantly allows me to easily control it in the way I want, ideally with the option to turn off those "driver assist" features that I don't need or want at any particular time. In around 50 years of car ownership I can't recall ever having had to consider ease of access to essential controls as something that needs very careful scrutiny before purchase, I've always just assumed that things like wiper and headlight controls would be both relatively easy to access and work reliably. A bit over 14 months of Model 3 ownership has taught me that, in the past, I've taken far too much for granted.

I would agree that I think the Tesla Model 3 is far too minimalist for many many drivers out there. Plenty of people struggle with just operating a smart TV effectively and will just reject the complexity, perceived or otherwise, of a Tesla. Even the ID3 is getting criticism for having to few controls. I can see them stepping out of the car when the salesperson starts wading through the UI to do fairly basic functions. I think too many Tesla people, who generally are pretty tech savvy and very enthusiastic about their cars, lose touch with how the average person thinks about such minimal/pure designs and also such a major departure for every car they previously owned.
People have even tried the minimalist design with remote controls (Amazon Fire TV and NVIDIA Shield TV are two that come to mind) and have had to add buttons back after many complaints.
Of course time may prove me wrong.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

Things change. In 100 years time people will look on folk who drive their own vehicles with the same regard as this

Perhaps, perhaps not. I can remember working on my uncle's farm as a boy, and at the time he regularly used his "self-driving vehicle" to go to the pub and back. The ability of that vehicle to get him home, after he'd had a skinful, along with my aunt's sentimentality, was the only reason he still kept a pony and sulky (plus a bit of trotting racing in summer, perhaps . . .).

The point is that FSD personal cars are pretty pointless, as FSD makes personal car ownership pretty much redundant. Once people are no longer attracted by the idea of having to own a vehicle to get anywhere they want, and once they've got used to the idea of not considering driving to be something to do for enjoyment, then why would anyone want to own something that spends most of it's life parked and doing nothing?

FSD and personal cars isn't even close to being the personal transport endgame, IMHO. The obvious initial target for FSD is probably urban transport, where autonomous ride sharing vehicles could take the place of some mass public transport, driver operated taxi services and some car ownership. Another target might be goods transport and delivery, both long and short range, for anything that doesn't actually need a driver. Once autonomous vehicles have a stronghold in those areas, then I suspect that personal car ownership will gradually start to fade away.

 

[Zakalwe]

Perhaps, perhaps not. I can remember working on my uncle's farm as a boy, and at the time he regularly used his "self-driving vehicle" to go to the pub and back. The ability of that vehicle to get him home, after he'd had a skinful, along with my aunt's sentimentality, was the only reason he still kept a pony and sulky (plus a bit of trotting racing in summer, perhaps . . .).

The point is that FSD personal cars are pretty pointless, as FSD makes personal car ownership pretty much redundant. Once people are no longer attracted by the idea of having to own a vehicle to get anywhere they want, and once they've got used to the idea of not considering driving to be something to do for enjoyment, then why would anyone want to own something that spends most of it's life parked and doing nothing?

FSD and personal cars isn't even close to being the personal transport endgame, IMHO. The obvious initial target for FSD is probably urban transport, where autonomous ride sharing vehicles could take the place of some mass public transport, driver operated taxi services and some car ownership. Another target might be goods transport and delivery, both long and short range, for anything that doesn't actually need a driver. Once autonomous vehicles have a stronghold in those areas, then I suspect that personal car ownership will gradually start to fade away.

It already is fading away. PCP and monthly leases means that most new cars aren't "owned" by the main user. It's not a massive jump from leasing a car for 3 years, to leasing a car for a month to leasing a car for a single ride. This is what Musk and others are betting the house on.

We tend to think of car ownership and gaining a driving licence as a "rite of passage" but it is really a very modern invention. Just as the days of buying an LP or CD is slipping into the past as streaming takes over, I can see the same happening with car ownership. Pay a monthly subscription, chose how many trips you want included per month and the type of vehicle available and job jobbed.

 

[Yev000]

Yes, but the problem is that those people wouldn't buy a car with FSD because "I like being in control".

Give it enough time and that would be the same as asking to buy a car without seatbelts. They still cut them off in Russia to stop the nag....

 

[Adopado]

It already is fading away. PCP and monthly leases means that most new cars aren't "owned" by the main user. It's not a massive jump from leasing a car for 3 years, to leasing a car for a month to leasing a car for a single ride. This is what Musk and others are betting the house on.

We tend to think of car ownership and gaining a driving licence as a "rite of passage" but it is really a very modern invention. Just as the days of buying an LP or CD is slipping into the past as streaming takes over, I can see the same happening with car ownership. Pay a monthly subscription, chose how many trips you want included per month and the type of vehicle available and job jobbed.

Yes, there's been change even before the push for EVs. It is no longer the case that almost every teenager desperately wants to pass their driving test as soon as they can. I can't remember any of my friends and associates who were still non-drivers by the time they were in their very early 20s, and most of us had a license at 17.