Tesla BEV Competition Developments

[SmartElectric]

Trump administration revoked California's ability to set their own clean air regulations

Right, and further to this
Trump Keeps Rollin', Rollin' Back US Auto Emission Standards and Other Critical Regulations - Resilience

In 2019, Ford, BMW, Volkswagen, and Honda negotiated their own agreement with California. By mutual consent, the companies would produce passenger vehicles averaging 51 mpg by 2026 and the state would grant the companies their hoped for flexibility in meeting the target. Trump’s response to the side-deal was to order the Department of Justice to prosecute the companies under antitrust laws.

The threatened suits never came to pass. Now in 2020, it appears as if Volvo has also stepped across the line to join the group of automakers pledging to support the 51 mpg by 2026.

The five auto companies have agreed to the stricter California rule for some very practical reasons. Not these least of the reasons is their recognition that the EU, UK, China, and other Asian nations are much more aggressive in their regulatory responses to climate change. In the US more efficient vehicles are also being demanded by the growing number of consumers and voters who believe that the release of greenhouse gases threatens the health and welfare of current and future generations. Moreover, the industry believes now—as it did in 2009—that a lot can happen in ten years. The political winds in the US will invariably come from a different direction

Companies that do not invest to reduce emissions will be swept aside, selling pickups in the US is not a path for growth.
Ford, GM have vastly reduced their product offerings, entrenched back to US pickups and can see the end game as their global ambitions have been squashed by lack of innovation.
Whereas Tesla is rapidly expanding production to China and now Germany.

The writing is on the wall.

 

[MXLRplus]

Right, and further to this
Trump Keeps Rollin', Rollin' Back US Auto Emission Standards and Other Critical Regulations - Resilience



Companies that do not invest to reduce emissions will be swept aside, selling pickups in the US is not a path for growth.
Ford, GM have vastly reduced their product offerings, entrenched back to US pickups and can see the end game as their global ambitions have been squashed by lack of innovation.
Whereas Tesla is rapidly expanding production to China and now Germany.

The writing is on the wall.

Can you outline the difference between 2020 emission levels and 2025 emission levels? Thanks in advance.

 

[ammulder]

It's hydrogen, but without the tank or filling stations... not clear that it's properly a competitor, but it sounds less sucky than fuel cell vehicles:

Full Page Reload

 

[MC3OZ]

Volkswagen plans to launch a family of affordable electric cars under $22,000 - Electrek

I think VW are serious here, and in spite of all their recent software problems, are further down the track, but more importantly more committed than a lot of other legacy automakers.

We are about to see BEV options all segments, electric bikes, motor bikes, 3 wheeler, city cars, small sedans, regular sedans, crossovers, large sedans, SUVs., Pickups, luxury SUVs, luxury sedans, sports cars, luxury sports cars, trucks and vans.

Not hard to imagine BEV options in all those segments by 2022-2023, many of them are already here..

Disruption from the bottom up is just as important as disruption from the top down.

None of this is a problem for Tesla, on the contrary, it is an opportunity to further grow maker share.

 

[heltok]

Volkswagen plans to launch a family of affordable electric cars under $22,000 - Electrek

I think VW are serious here, and in spite of all their recent software problems, are further down the track, but more importantly more committed than a lot of other legacy automakers.

We are about to see BEV options all segments, electric bikes, motor bikes, 3 wheeler, city cars, small sedans, regular sedans, crossovers, large sedans, SUVs., Pickups, luxury SUVs, luxury sedans, sports cars, luxury sports cars, trucks and vans.

Not hard to imagine BEV options in all those segments by 2022-2023, many of them are already here..

Disruption from the bottom up is just as important as disruption from the top down.

None of this is a problem for Tesla, on the contrary, it is an opportunity to further grow maker share.

It seems that a lot of the competition is trying to enter the electric car market in the segment where Tesla haven’t entered yet. Which makes sense. The problem is though that they are too slow, so by the time they do, Tesla will be there already and their offering looks weak and fails to capture large volume of sales. It seems to me that Tesla intends to start producing Model Y from GigaBerlin in 2021 and if their timeline mirrors the one in Shanghai, I assume phase 2 of the project will follow in 2022. And be phase 2 I mean the eurocentric Model 2 which will be direct competition for VW ID1. So if VW wants to learn how to scale electric by entering a Tesla-free market, they have until 2022, but then they need to release actual demos, not just concepts and ideas yesterday, because in one year Tesla will introduce Model 2 and take all their sales away from them with a car for same price, with twice the range, when better acceleration, with standard autopilot, with better entertainment, with supercharger network.

 

[cucubits]

because in one year Tesla will introduce Model 2

Is this a thing? Can you post the source? Or just daydreaming?

 

[willow_hiller]

Is this a thing? Can you post the source? Or just daydreaming?

"Model 2" is the name some people have given to the little sketch of a small silver hatchback that was released along with Tesla announcing a Chinese design studio: Tesla releases new design drawing, announces design center to build 'Chinese-style' car - Electrek

But to think that they'd go from sketch to production in a year is a sketchy stretch.

 

[MP3Mike]

"Model 2" is the name some people have given to the little sketch of a small silver hatchback that was released along with Tesla announcing a Chinese design studio: Tesla releases new design drawing, announces design center to build 'Chinese-style' car - Electrek

But to think that they'd go from sketch to production in a year is a sketchy stretch.

Especially when the design center hasn't been built or staffed yet.

 

[heltok]

"Model 2" is the name some people have given to the little sketch of a small silver hatchback that was released along with Tesla announcing a Chinese design studio: Tesla releases new design drawing, announces design center to build 'Chinese-style' car - Electrek

But to think that they'd go from sketch to production in a year is a sketchy stretch.

I said they will introduce it in 2021 and it will go into production in 2022. You think this is too pessimistic? Model Y was introduced March 2019...

 

[willow_hiller]

I said they will introduce it in 2021 and it will go into production in 2022. You think this is too pessimistic? Model Y was introduced March 2019...

The number 1 rule with Tesla is probably "expect the unexpected," but March 2019 was when the prototype Model Y was revealed. There were silhouettes of it revealed as early as 2017: Tesla Model Y - Wikipedia

So maybe total time from concept to production was 3 years. But the sketch shared of the "Model 2" was an example, it wasn't even a concept.

 

[heltok]

The number 1 rule with Tesla is probably "expect the unexpected," but March 2019 was when the prototype Model Y was revealed. There were silhouettes of it revealed as early as 2017: Tesla Model Y - Wikipedia

So maybe total time from concept to production was 3 years. But the sketch shared of the "Model 2" was an example, it wasn't even a concept.

He said in 3 years, 2 years ago, 4:50 here

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

A "Model 2" is a no-brainer, but it first needs the European factory in place so that all the core markets can make it.

 

[MP3Mike]

Audi has some interesting charging infrastructure:

Take a look at Audi's crazy container electric car charging system with batteries - Electrek

The most interesting part of it is that it uses 4,500 second life li-ion battery cells from the e-Tron. That sounds like a lot, but if it is really referring to cells that would be from just over 10 e-Tron battery packs. So with cars what just over a year old they already have plenty of failed packs to use to other purposes.

 

[MC3OZ]

Volvo bucks the industry, will sell LIDAR-equipped self-driving cars to customers by 2022

“We are saying that for a particular stretch of highway, we are aiming for an unsupervised experience,” Henrik Green, Volvo’s chief technology officer, told The Verge. “Our view is that by isolating the domain to particular sets of highways, which we can control and verify, we believe that’s the safe entry into autonomous technology and autonomous experience for users.”

Some these new Volvos might not even be EVs, the article is not particularly clear on that point.

SPA2 will also underpin the automaker’s upcoming electric vehicles, the Polestar 3 SUV and the XC40 Recharge.

 

[wdolson]

Audi has some interesting charging infrastructure:

Take a look at Audi's crazy container electric car charging system with batteries - Electrek

The most interesting part of it is that it uses 4,500 second life li-ion battery cells from the e-Tron. That sounds like a lot, but if it is really referring to cells that would be from just over 10 e-Tron battery packs. So with cars what just over a year old they already have plenty of failed packs to use to other purposes.

If they have that many failed battery packs they are doing something wrong.

 

[WarpedOne]

Second-life does not mean the their first-life was as intended ... those packs may have failed initial quality tests and were discarded before reaching assembly line.
Audi probably already paid for them and was left with heaps of bad packs. Re-purposing them for a different use case with different requirements seems natural.

 

[Saghost]

Audi has some interesting charging infrastructure:

Take a look at Audi's crazy container electric car charging system with batteries - Electrek

The most interesting part of it is that it uses 4,500 second life li-ion battery cells from the e-Tron. That sounds like a lot, but if it is really referring to cells that would be from just over 10 e-Tron battery packs. So with cars what just over a year old they already have plenty of failed packs to use to other purposes.

None of the numbers in the actual quote add up. It explicitly says four battery packs, but they have the capacity of ten new packs. The four packs offer a combined 700 kW of charge power - to three stations that each offer 150 kW charging (450 kW total...)

Unless their charging system is ~65% efficient in just the DC-DC side (and in addition to that being absurd in modern design, I don’t see any evidence of being ready to dump 200+ kW of continuous heat in the trailer design,) no two of those numbers make sense together.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

If they have that many failed battery packs they are doing something wrong.

It doesn't say failed, they're used. Might just be used packs from testing or test vehicles.

 

[willow_hiller]

New patent out today: Tesla Gained Another Battery Cell Patent: Cell With A Tabless Electrode

Seems like a small cost-saving advancement:

"More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a cell with at least one electrode that is tabless, and therefore may be used to form an energy storage device with reduced ohmic resistance and reduced cost."

 

[wdolson]

Second-life does not mean the their first-life was as intended ... those packs may have failed initial quality tests and were discarded before reaching assembly line.
Audi probably already paid for them and was left with heaps of bad packs. Re-purposing them for a different use case with different requirements seems natural.

It doesn't say failed, they're used. Might just be used packs from testing or test vehicles.

If the plan is to make one or two of these, they probably do have used packs sitting around from the test program. If they plan for this to be a production item, they are doing something wrong if many packs are failing QA or they have a lot of packs failing in the field coming back and being swapped out. Either way if they have enough used and/or rejected batteries to make more than a few of these, they are doing something wrong.