Actually, it did. During that period you could purchase one for almost nothing. Used car lots were full of gas guzzlers that couldn't be sold. It just didn't last quite long enough.
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Hard to believe that only Tesla has mass-produced an EV with a range > 100 miles.
- Thread starter MileHighMotoring
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Actually, it did. During that period you could purchase one for almost nothing. Used car lots were full of gas guzzlers that couldn't be sold. It just didn't last quite long enough.
I have a friend who is a Geophysicist in the oil biz in Houston. He claims to be a somewhat liberal Democrat, and he is in some ways. But I've noticed over the years his perceptions are a bit different than people in the rest of the country. It's like he lives in the oil business bubble and only realizes it sometimes. I know Houston is a lot more than the oil business, but it is the world capitol for oil development and I think there are more people in Houston wedded to the oil paradigm than in the rest of the country.
As I said, everyone I've been talking to are from the west coast states where Tesla has the most influence, so saturation of knowledge about them here is not too surprising. I was surprised the study found such high cultural traction for Tesla. I know it's very popular among those who do know about it, but I was surprised it was well enough known to beat out a lot of more established brands.
Hard to believe that only Tesla has mass-produced an EV with a range > 100 mi...
In the USA Tesla has definitely taken a significant chunk of luxury car market share from BMW, AUDI, Mercedes, Lexus, and Porsche.
Yes, Tesla is having a hard time gaining market share in Germany primarily because the Germans love their German car companies and because the Tesla is not a great Autobahn car: +100mph speeds drain the battery pretty fast according to what I've heard. Sure there are lots of Superchargers in Germany and it's a relatively small country but drivers are not used to stopping for half an hour to charge after an hour on the Autobahn.
In the USA Tesla has definitely taken a significant chunk of luxury car market share from BMW, AUDI, Mercedes, Lexus, and Porsche.
AustinPowers
Total Smeghead
Thanks for the perspective. So the "love their own car companies" works both ways. Americans like to buy American, and rightly so. But let's be honest. When it came to cars (pre-Tesla), most American cars where, well, crap. I always wondered why Toyota and the other Japanese car companies had such high market share in the US and why mediocre cars like Camrys and Accords (at least the ones we used to get over here were never a match for European - not just German - competition) sold so well there. Then as I came to the US for the first time and was forced to drive rental Fords, Buicks, Chevys etc. I found out the reason. Anyway, fast forward to today, and finally there is an American car in the Model S that is not only a good American car, but a great American car.
It will take some time over here before people embrace EVs on a broader basis, but when they do, Tesla will definitely have a better time, especially if Model 3 is anything of what it is aiming at. Model S and X are just too large and expensive, but Model 3 could be the game changer we need in order to finally get EVs into the hands of the mainstream drivers.
The American's love affair with American cars started to die in the late 1970s. The only segment where American vehicles still dominate the American market is light trucks. The three major US auto makers have fierce brand loyalty among truck buyers, but the rest of the market has become soft in their loyalty. American car companies always struggled to make smaller cars that people wanted. They made them reluctantly, but until recently, they were horrible cars. When gas prices suddenly spiked in the 1970s, people started looking for smaller cars with better fuel economy. Smaller American cars were terrible, but the new Japanese imports were exactly the right car at the right time.
The US government also forced the Japanese car makers to start building cars in the US which ended up lowering the cost and made them more popular as domestically built cars.
What people want in Germany is somewhat different than in the US. Traffic lanes in the US tend to be somewhat wider than in Europe (though older secondary streets in cities can still be narrow sometimes) and Germany has the Autobahn. There are a few stretches of highway in the US with very high speed limits (85 mph is the highest in a few parts of Texas and 80 in a few other places), but most places the maximum highway speed limit is 65-75. American cars don't need to go that much faster than 90-100 mph.
Europe also has a well developed public transportation network with cities fairly close together. The public ground transportation network between cities in the US is generally poor with buses and some rather slow trains being the only options to driving. Especially in the Western US, most people need to own a car. There are really few viable options. This probably makes the market for cheap cars stronger in the US than in most of Europe. Most of the people who need cars and don't have a lot of money are just shopping for the best basic transportation they can afford. Japanese cars have a reputation for being reliable and the entry level trim models sell relatively well. My SO had a 1996 Outback that is still on the road after a fairly rough life. I know many other people who have kept old Japanese cars going for 20 years or more. For those who are turning up their noses at the Model S for poor creature comforts would probably recoil in horror at the basic features of these "beater" cars, but they get people back and forth to work.
dandelot
Member
An awful lot of manufacturers are pretending you and I will be allowed to buy gasoline
in any amount we want (or can afford) forever. Just saying.
in any amount we want (or can afford) forever. Just saying.
Canuck
Well-Known Member
True but Tesla is making gains recently and once more and more Germans see this vehicle, it will pick up mass like rolling a snowball down a hill:
http://www.welt.de/motor/news/article140059503/Tesla-in-Deutschland.html
Here are some facts from the article:
- 211 Model S sold in march(new record)
- more than the BMW 7 series(170) and the Porsche Panamera (153)
- 70% are dual motor awd
- 1500 sold since august 2013
- tesla is working on a leasing company for business customers
AustinPowers
Total Smeghead
The 7 series of course is facing a model release change in the very near future, and sales in such a context a usually always very low. But nevertheless.
The most important point is the last one. Because in Germany, the majority of sales in the upper middle class of cars and higher up are fleet sales, Tesla really needs to crack that market to become successful. Private sales of say the Audi A6/A7, Merc E-class or BMW 5-series (which are "large volume" models in fleet sales) are the minority, as will be private sales of Model S until attractive company leasing options are available.
The only hindrance I can still see is that many companies are sceptical about BEVs as viable everyday long range Autobahn-able replacements for the currently dominating Diesel station wagons.
Hi. In the wiki section we have THIS wiki for Model S sales in Europe in 2015. I recently created the following graph for that wiki. It shows Model S sales breakdown in Europe in 2015. Germany is doing fine at #4.
By the way, somebody asked a question about Model S outselling other brands. Elon talked about this in the latest shareholder meeting. Watch from 19:55 HERE.
By the way, somebody asked a question about Model S outselling other brands. Elon talked about this in the latest shareholder meeting. Watch from 19:55 HERE.
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Electricfan
Active Member
Sorry I didn't see your question earlier. I think somebody already responded that $4/gal did hurt Hummer/guzzler sales, which I agree with. To "Kill" the guzzlers, I think it has to be a combination of price and future expectations. If people think gas prices will always roller coaster, its going to be hard to kill the guzzler. But to speculate an answer to your question I will say $6/gallon will kill Hummer, Escalade, and other guzzlers permanently. But I didn't specify how long that price has to stay there. Its longer than 6 months, less than 6 years! I would take a wild-ass guess at it and say if gas hits $6/gallon for 2.5 years, there will be no more guzzlers on the market new. You'll be able to buy used ones forever, but a used Escalade at that point would be worth about the amount you could get for the scrap metal its made of. Could we ever get so lucky as to have this happen? No. As I said my tin-foil hat is gone, and I believe the powers that be, whoever and wherever they are, will never let gas go much higher than $4/gallon, and will never let it stay there for long.
Here's a question for you: if gas prices rose to $5/gallon and stayed there for 2 years (say 2016 - 2018) and showed no sign of decline, what would the resale value of a 2011 Volt be that cost $45k new and has an all-electric range of 30 miles?
Unless the laws change (which they could), gas guzzlers are going to be killed by the ever tighter fuel economy standards that are ratcheting up every year.
Hummer was killed off in the GM bankruptcy, but they still make the Escalade. If gas prices went up and stayed up, I would think there would be a niche market for someone to buy up luxury SUVs cheap and convert them to EVs. You could get a pretty big batter pack in an Escalade and still have room for people and cargo.
It sounds good, but in practice those modifications never work all that well. At least the people who modify their cars in a big way almost never keep them for all that long after the modification is done. The problem is that you have an older car that's not to factory specs.
Yes, but the global economic downturn and GM bankruptcy was triggered partly by high gas prices, and more importantly GM tried to sell Hummer, but nobody wanted it. I think it's pretty safe to say that it was killed by high gas prices.
A lot of the EV conversions have been done by people who were amateurs for the most part, but there are a lot of aftermarket car modification pros out there. If there was a consistent supply of cheap chassis and enough demand, it might work. On the other hand, in a few years people might just wish SUVs had never existed. The millennials tend to prefer more economic cars than their parents drove. Many millennials don't want to drive at all. I think I read somewhere that a large percentage of millennials didn't get their driver's license until they were in their 20s. For Boomers and Xers (in the US at least) that was a right of passage at age 16.
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