Some appreciation of Tesla from Dan Neil (Wall Street Journal) car guy

[JimVandegriff]

How Tesla Leaves its Rivals Playing Catch Up - WSJ
Has a nice blue X pic and some interesting thoughts on the future of automotive engineering.

 

[electracity]

His criticism of German car companies seems valid, but both Nissan and Toyota are most likely ready to compete directly with the model 3 if needed.

Neil seems to think the i3 is a great car. I don't get that opinion.

 

[trialcritic]

To be honest, a company like Toyota will have no problem building a rival. They have the infrastructure and the innovation. The big reason they may not build one is that they do not feel that there are sufficient number of potential customers. Tesla should not be too arrogant. The one place where Tesla is ahead of the curve is in superchargers. I did not like what Elon Musk said about Apple. A company like Apple can crush Tesla if they wish, they do not wish to waste money doing so.

 

[TexasEV]

To be honest, a company like Toyota will have no problem building a rival. They have the infrastructure and the innovation. The big reason they may not build one is that they do not feel that there are sufficient number of potential customers. Tesla should not be too arrogant. The one place where Tesla is ahead of the curve is in superchargers. I did not like what Elon Musk said about Apple. A company like Apple can crush Tesla if they wish, they do not wish to waste money doing so.

No, they don't want there to be sufficient number of potential customers because that would kill their ICE business and dealers. They have too much invested in ICE and their hybrid variant to want EVs to ever be successful.

 

[kort677]

His criticism of German car companies seems valid, but both Nissan and Toyota are most likely ready to compete directly with the model 3 if needed.

Neil seems to think the i3 is a great car. I don't get that opinion.

Toyota has abandoned EVs in favor of fuel (fool) cell technology, Nissan is stymied by bad battery techonology

 

[renim]

Toyota has abandoned EVs in favor of fuel (fool) cell technology, Nissan is stymied by bad battery techonology

Toyota is fully committed to fool cell. To Toyota its a zero sum game, and its personal.

Nissan is not stymied by bad battery technology but a core competency of making money at the low end of the market, and losing money at the high end of the market. (Ie the opposite of a Mercedes)
The LEAF represents the middle of Nissan's global competency (V platform) but is a very $/value conscious market to be in.

If Infiniti made the Model S, it would be a failure (if only due to dealers cost of fixes to the Model S, ie fire kit, engine swaps etc). If Tesla made the LEAF, it would be a failure (range etc)

LEAF gen 2 and Tesla model 3 will be much closer, but still not overlap in price (and probably range). both complement the other, neither alone would've been sufficient to enable CARB to hold the line.

 

[electracity]

No, they don't want there to be sufficient number of potential customers because that would kill their ICE business and dealers. They have too much invested in ICE and their hybrid variant to want EVs to ever be successful.

Toyota is playing out Prius as far as they can. In many ways hybrids do currently make more sense than EV. But you can be sure they are doing full EV development, and have a strategy that considers the likely contingencies.

Nissan went too cheap with their first batteries. But all major auto manufacturers likely now understand the importance of battery knowledge.

 

[jdb]

What car reviewer other than Dan Neil is intelligent enough to use a word like "asymptote"? Best in the business without question. Thanks Dan.

 

[Zythryn]

His criticism of German car companies seems valid, but both Nissan and Toyota are most likely ready to compete directly with the model 3 if needed.

Neil seems to think the i3 is a great car. I don't get that opinion.

I think the i3 is an awesome car. Second best EV available right now.
Any of the auto manufacturers could compete with Tesla right now. They have larger budgets, larger R&D departments, more manufacturing capacity.
They also could have squashed Tesla like a bug in 2008-2012 by building a 200+ mile BEV before Tesla did.

Their window to kill Tesla has closed, although they could still slow its growth.

The question isn't what can they do, but what are they willing to do?

Toyota is running away from anything that plugs in almost as fast as they can.
GM and Nissan seem to have the corporate desire. GM has to get their dealers on the same page though.

 

[Local host]

I always thought that Toyota was chasing hydrogen because of the attraction of selling a fuel to customers in addition to the car. Far more money to be made if you need to spend hundreds a month on hydrogen then a few dollars on electricity. Add in a complex ice engine and you can continue your maintenance and repair revenue streams as well.

Electric is just to simple, reliable and cheap to operate that existing car manufacturers want to avoid it.

 

[brianman]

Wasn't there some discussion in "one of the other threads" regarding how the competition "must" be fudging the horsepower numbers because (something like) "they can't possibly discharge the battery at that C rate"?

Doesn't this seem to suggest otherwise?

But then the Mission E resorts to jiggery-pokery. The car’s 800 Volt system allows superfast charging: 80% capacity in 15 minutes, which pencils out to 250 miles of range.

If it can charge faster than a 2015 P85D and P90D, couldn't it also discharge faster?

(Yes, I'm aware that this is talking about Porsche whereas I think the other thread was talking about Mercedes.)

 

[Sigma4Life]

I think the i3 is an awesome car. Second best EV available right now.
Any of the auto manufacturers could compete with Tesla right now. They have larger budgets, larger R&D departments, more manufacturing capacity.
They also could have squashed Tesla like a bug in 2008-2012 by building a 200+ mile BEV before Tesla did.

Their window to kill Tesla has closed, although they could still slow its growth.

The question isn't what can they do, but what are they willing to do?

Toyota is running away from anything that plugs in almost as fast as they can.
GM and Nissan seem to have the corporate desire. GM has to get their dealers on the same page though.

To compete with Tesla requires car companies to going fully EV. It's going to be very difficult to sell equally priced ICE cars on the same car lot as an EV as good as the Model S. Car companies will essentially have to admit to their customers that their shiny new EV is better than their ICE vehicles. When they do that they kill their ICE sells for all cars with a similar price point.

Now they run into a serious conundrum because they have now justified purchasing an EV to their ICE customers. At this point smart customers will cross shop other EV options (Tesla). That's where Tesla has the huge supercharger advantage.

If the ICE companies EV drives high demand Tesla still wins because now that car company will need LOTS of batteries, which I suspect a large portion of them will come from that little factory in Nevada.

 

[sandpiper]

Electric is just to simple, reliable and cheap to operate that existing car manufacturers want to avoid it.

Yep... once the appropriate batteries and motor/inverters have been commoditised, then the construction of a vehicle becomes a much simpler exercise. And the barrier to entry into the auto industry drops dramatically, potentially allowing a lot of new, smaller volume manufacturers to enter the market. Having to design/build a massively complex ICE drive train kept the riffraff out for many years.