sweter
Member
This was a really boring review I think. Too much talking about menus, too little driving and emotion.
Also, it's not the same Top Gear
See recent review of MX in The Grand Tour for comparison.
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This was a really boring review I think. Too much talking about menus, too little driving and emotion.
Also, it's not the same Top Gear
See recent review of MX in The Grand Tour for comparison.
dc_h
Active Member
Are we sure? Still seem to be cranking out the cars. Wonder if they’ll lag the gigafactory updates and shut down after the battery pack supply is gone? I’d guess about 3-5 days supply.
Found a LOT of Model 3's in a Tesla lot - Pictures inside
ruralectric
Member
I think you said that already : )
I don't know a damn thing about auto manufacturing, but when they shut down maybe they sort of "flush out the pipe" instead of just halting everything and leaving a bunch of unfinished product stuck in the line. Would we really know how long cars sit on the factory lot before shipping to be able to gauge whether the factory's running?
Anyway, thanks oil, mondo and dc for your thoughts. I guess it's gonna be a quiet week. I'm sure looking forward to watching the ramp-up metrics through June. And I'm still wondering if there is anything to Elon's "squeeze in time for flame throwers" comment. That would be nice. I wonder what that could be.
Exactly right, and a great source of confusion for a lot of others.
Not that I haven’t been wrong before, mind you, but there’s a sense of inevitability at this point.
Starting Q1 2019, I think it all becomes rather boring and predictable.
Namely, record revenues quarter after quarter,
margins get very healthy and stay that way,
Refreshed S and new roadster make mission e look like an also ran, an exemplar of what’s to follow across the major players.
Semi, model y, and roadster start to create a steamroller effect (coupled with continued S,X, and 3 growth)
Market share just keeps growing
Upheavals among major manufacturers start to begin in earnest,
As even subpar evs from traditional players start to cannibalize mindshare and eventually sales
Meanwhile Tesla energy also starts to contribute in major way.
Not that these themes are original with me
But from here on out it will just look like a car wreck in slow motion for much of the industry,
in the sense that they can all see it coming but there's nothing anyone can do about it.
While Tesla moves from strength to strength.
Autopilot and transition to level 4/5 may provide the only real drama.
Let’s see how these predictions play out, shall we?
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Elon earlier hinted at high production volumes of the P version after P production ramps up (see post copied below) and has now confirmed that initial dual motors production will be all Performance, with AWD production trailing. This should help boost cash flow in Q3 and Q4 as Tesla continues to ramp production past 5000/wk.
Twitter
Replying to @G_Whitehead5 @DMC_Ryan and 2 others
Yes, AWD P first and then AWD. Production costs are always high when line first gets going, so we have to sell higher price versions first or each car will have very negative margins. As production efficiency rises, we can make lower cost versions & not lose money.
5:37 PM · May 28, 2018
Replying to @G_Whitehead5 @DMC_Ryan and 2 others
Yes, AWD P first and then AWD. Production costs are always high when line first gets going, so we have to sell higher price versions first or each car will have very negative margins. As production efficiency rises, we can make lower cost versions & not lose money.
5:37 PM · May 28, 2018
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I don't know why BNEF is lowballing projections. Total EV production doubles every two years, so they estimate the growth rate dropping massively and then dropping again because magic, I guess?
We are very close to the tipping point: cost parity between EVs and ICE cars. Many professional predictors have a hard time to understand a tipping point. They do linear extrapolation.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
High-value automakers
World's most valuable car brands in billions; rank in top global 100; % value change from 2017
1. Toyota $29.99 (36) +5
2. Mercedes $25.68 (46) +9
3. BMW $25.62 (47) +4
4. Ford $12.74 (96) -2
5. Honda $12.70 (97) +4
6. Nissan $11.43 (*) +1
7. Audi $9.63 (*) +3
8. Tesla $9.42 (*) +60
9. Maruti Suzuki $6.38 (*) --
10. Volkswagen $5.99 (*) --
(*) Did not rank in the top 100 global brands
Source: Kantar Millward Brown
World's most valuable car brands in billions; rank in top global 100; % value change from 2017
1. Toyota $29.99 (36) +5
2. Mercedes $25.68 (46) +9
3. BMW $25.62 (47) +4
4. Ford $12.74 (96) -2
5. Honda $12.70 (97) +4
6. Nissan $11.43 (*) +1
7. Audi $9.63 (*) +3
8. Tesla $9.42 (*) +60
9. Maruti Suzuki $6.38 (*) --
10. Volkswagen $5.99 (*) --
(*) Did not rank in the top 100 global brands
Source: Kantar Millward Brown
I call that the conservative bias in predicting, we humans have evolved to think linearly, oh look the dear runs to the left let the arrow fly the anticipated path, on the other hand, we are not good at handling exponentials. Even if every data points to a coming exponential in your gut we think this can't be true, a dear doesn't speed up exponentially. So as a predictor you almost never get in trouble to be over-conservative, people think you are a straight. down to earth guy, if you predict exponentials people think you are nuts, a wishful thinker, and that first impression sticks even (in hindsight) you are right.
The next EV start up appeared: Evelozcity
Ex Opel CEO, Ex BMW i3 "Father", Ex Faraday CFO so quite a nice group assembled in CA to build EVs on a clean sheet.
Quote EX CEO Neumann: " As the CEO from Opel I could not say that the combustion engine has on the long run no future but now I can"
Evelozcity: Deutsche Manager wollen das Elektroauto neu erfinden
Ex Opel CEO, Ex BMW i3 "Father", Ex Faraday CFO so quite a nice group assembled in CA to build EVs on a clean sheet.
Quote EX CEO Neumann: " As the CEO from Opel I could not say that the combustion engine has on the long run no future but now I can"
Evelozcity: Deutsche Manager wollen das Elektroauto neu erfinden
bhtooefr
Active Member
Replying to something in the Market Action thread, as the reply's better off here I'd argue.
Why Toyota's sticking with hydrogen... part of that is in support of national energy policy, as I understand. Japan has some nasty conditions that have encouraged them to push hydrogen - low usable land area for solar (although I'm not so sure it's as low as it seems), a desire to not put wind turbines on all of their mountainous terrain (but offshore wind is a possibility), and a strong anti-nuclear movement in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.
Additionally, much of their population is in high density housing where installing charging is far more of an ordeal, so they expect their electrified vehicles to be able to operate under a gas station model (drive the vehicle to where it will be recharged), to the point where even their PHEVs have CHAdeMO. Of course, with the aggressively planned nature of Japanese housing policy, I suspect that could be remedied very quickly (in a decade or less) if energy policy switched to be in favor of BEVs.
Also, Toyota is traditionally an extremely conservative company - arguably the most conservative of the Japanese automakers. The Prius was itself a massive outlier, basically the result of Toyota executive panic about an early 1990s market share slump, and was a skunkworks project to try to develop new R&D processes for the company as much as develop a product (and for half of that, they weren't even considering a hybrid system for production), and rushed to market in ~4 years. (AFAIK, the hydrogen stuff is actually done by the same team...)
So, it doesn't surprise me that they've failed to capitalize on the technological lead that they got with the Prius - once it succeeded, they returned to their natural state of being conservative, and my 2016 Prius is just a really refined version of a 1998 Prius (with a Li-ion battery instead of NiMH, true). That's why, for example, they're paranoid about batteries still, even though Tesla's shown that durable batteries can be done.
(Of course, the interesting thing is that they're actually in a panic reaction now about their cars being perceived as boring, which is showing in things like their styling (extremely aggressive and love-it-or-hate-it).)
Why Toyota's sticking with hydrogen... part of that is in support of national energy policy, as I understand. Japan has some nasty conditions that have encouraged them to push hydrogen - low usable land area for solar (although I'm not so sure it's as low as it seems), a desire to not put wind turbines on all of their mountainous terrain (but offshore wind is a possibility), and a strong anti-nuclear movement in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.
Additionally, much of their population is in high density housing where installing charging is far more of an ordeal, so they expect their electrified vehicles to be able to operate under a gas station model (drive the vehicle to where it will be recharged), to the point where even their PHEVs have CHAdeMO. Of course, with the aggressively planned nature of Japanese housing policy, I suspect that could be remedied very quickly (in a decade or less) if energy policy switched to be in favor of BEVs.
Also, Toyota is traditionally an extremely conservative company - arguably the most conservative of the Japanese automakers. The Prius was itself a massive outlier, basically the result of Toyota executive panic about an early 1990s market share slump, and was a skunkworks project to try to develop new R&D processes for the company as much as develop a product (and for half of that, they weren't even considering a hybrid system for production), and rushed to market in ~4 years. (AFAIK, the hydrogen stuff is actually done by the same team...)
So, it doesn't surprise me that they've failed to capitalize on the technological lead that they got with the Prius - once it succeeded, they returned to their natural state of being conservative, and my 2016 Prius is just a really refined version of a 1998 Prius (with a Li-ion battery instead of NiMH, true). That's why, for example, they're paranoid about batteries still, even though Tesla's shown that durable batteries can be done.
(Of course, the interesting thing is that they're actually in a panic reaction now about their cars being perceived as boring, which is showing in things like their styling (extremely aggressive and love-it-or-hate-it).)
^^
They're in panic over being perceived as boring? Isn't it a *bit* late for that..
They're in panic over being perceived as boring? Isn't it a *bit* late for that..
bhtooefr
Active Member
It's more that the boring perception started causing them to lose sales, really. (Granted, they've clearly been trying to fight it for a while - the whole Scion brand in the US comes to mind, even though that brand mostly backfired (the xB, the most iconic Scion, was ridiculously popular with old people).)
But, this is also why they've done things like their joint project with Subaru for the Toyota 86 (formerly Scion FR-S in the US) and Subaru BRZ, and their joint project with BMW for the next-gen Supra and what'll most likely be the next-gen BMW Z4, to try to get enthusiasts to come back. And, the radical styling changes, more use of independent rear suspension and better chassis tuning, and things like the European-market Yaris GRMN, are attempts to make their "normal" products more appealing to enthusiasts.
Of course, I don't really see anyone saying "OMG I WANT THAT" in response to anything other than the FR-S/BRZ (which is now an older product) and Toyota's truck products (well, OK, I've seen that reaction to the Lexus LC on some car enthusiast forums, but that's a different brand, playing in a completely different market), so I don't think it's actually working in the US market. There's certainly some "OK, that looks good", but no fanaticism like there is for, say (to bring things back to Tesla), the Model 3. Nobody's going to wait in line for the new Corolla Hatch/Auris, or the new RAV4, and nobody waited in line for the new Camry.
But, this is also why they've done things like their joint project with Subaru for the Toyota 86 (formerly Scion FR-S in the US) and Subaru BRZ, and their joint project with BMW for the next-gen Supra and what'll most likely be the next-gen BMW Z4, to try to get enthusiasts to come back. And, the radical styling changes, more use of independent rear suspension and better chassis tuning, and things like the European-market Yaris GRMN, are attempts to make their "normal" products more appealing to enthusiasts.
Of course, I don't really see anyone saying "OMG I WANT THAT" in response to anything other than the FR-S/BRZ (which is now an older product) and Toyota's truck products (well, OK, I've seen that reaction to the Lexus LC on some car enthusiast forums, but that's a different brand, playing in a completely different market), so I don't think it's actually working in the US market. There's certainly some "OK, that looks good", but no fanaticism like there is for, say (to bring things back to Tesla), the Model 3. Nobody's going to wait in line for the new Corolla Hatch/Auris, or the new RAV4, and nobody waited in line for the new Camry.
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ValueAnalyst
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Hi all! We're building the #TeslaKillerCemetery on Twitter, which you can visit from time to time to hold candlelight vigils.
Please feel free to help us build it by using the hashtag for past/future FUD articles that use the term Tesla Killer nonchalantly for clicks.
It's time to accelerate the world's transition to anti-FUD.
Please feel free to help us build it by using the hashtag for past/future FUD articles that use the term Tesla Killer nonchalantly for clicks.
It's time to accelerate the world's transition to anti-FUD.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
Toyota has a demographics problem of major proportions. They have to shed one generation and latch onto another. The Scion attempt did not work. The are trying to appeal to people not happy with their parents or the status quo. The conforming counter-culturalists.
They are blind or agnostic to energy use shifts and treat that as a legislative issue.
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Krugerrand
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