Tesla BEV Competition Developments

[wdolson]

So far "world of hurt" has not been caused by a lack of batteries. Nissan built battery factories and had to basically give them away. FCA got in trouble because they failed to design the EVs mandated by EU 95g, But PSA, who acquired FCA, seems to have no problems finding enough extra cells to meet the mandate. VAG almost tripled EV deliveries last year and more than doubled y/y in Q1 this year. How is battery supply crimping their growth?

@RobStark answered most of your points better than I could have. But the Ioniq had trouble upon introduction due to battery shortages.

We are getting close to the tipping point on EVs, but we aren't there yet. The US is up to 2.2% of car sales being EV, but while that's a massive improvement, it's still a tiny share of car sales. And with the average age of a car on the road being 12 years old in the US, that means EVs are still a massively small percentage of all cars on the road and it's going to take decades to retire all the ICE.

When the tipping point happens, consumer demand will flip from predominantly ICE with some demand for EVs to EVs with some demand for ICE. EVs are vastly superior to ICE in many ways, but most consumers are not aware of it yet. I talk to my ICE owning neighbors and most really haven't thought about the differences and don't want to think about them.

But we could see a rush for EVs like the switch from vinyl to CDs. One year it was almost all vinyl with some CDs and the next year the vinyl section of record stores became a back corner with most of the stock being CDs. I was building my music collection when that happened and it went quick. The record companies were able to make the switch quickly because there was no resource bottleneck and you're dealing with something small and easy to produce quickly.

Cars are not as fast to produce and batteries are the bottleneck. The car companies hope that demand will keep pace with their ability to expand battery production, but these things usually have a 100th monkey effect that switches demand virtually overnight.

Some countries like Norway and the Netherlands have put an emphasis on EV sales, but they make of a tiny sliver of the world's car market, which is why they can do that. As pointed out above, a lot of the PHEVs and EVs being sold in Europe today are compliance cars to meet the coming requirements for EVs only in city centers around Europe.

China is a special case, but outside of China Tesla still has most of the market for EVs with any real range. VW is probably in the best position compared to other legacy automakers because the dieselgate lawsuits forced them to electrify faster than other car makers. They are a year to a few years ahead of the competition.

You don't really know what they control. We do know they control battery production and design, "battery" does not equal "cells".


We do know that people who have tested Tesla cells say they behave differently than other Panasonic off the shelf cells. With the work of Jeff Dahn and others on small amounts of proprietary additives causing changes in cell behavior it's quite likely that Tesla does specify "secret sauce" in their cells. (I would assume the CATL LiFePO4 cells are fully developed by CATL but they also aren't the cutting edge of energy density.)

With li-ion battery chemistries tiny changes in composition can make a big difference in characteristics. The industry is beginning to get some idea to predict what changes will do what, but there is still a lot of experimentation in Li-ion cell chemistry research.

 

[RobStark]

All more likely than the claim that a 1K lb difference causes a change of 169 miles of range. Does any EV lose anything close to that much range when carrying 4 250lb passengers? Not remotely credible.

It is extremely unlikely that with or without 1k payload the F-150 hits exactly 300 miles of range in the EPA cycle.

Ford is intentionally going to understate the range. Tesla has done this in the past. Especially on Model 3 long range so it doesn't step on the toes of the least expensive Model S.

Survey after survey shows the biggest disappointment with new BEV owners is when actual range doesn't meet projected range. Regardless of what the projected range is.

It is likely Ford is understating the range so when Lightning owners drive in the real world 99% of the time they hit at least 300 miles with extended battery.

 

[JRP3]

Or the Ford rep was incorrect and/or Marques' estimate of unloaded range was wrong.

Yeah, it is likely Ford Rep whose job it is to inform the press doesn't know what he is talking about. Ford PR wants to misinform the public to raise expectations then have them dashed.

Ford is intentionally going to understate the range.

So you're agreeing with my statement that the Ford rep was wrong, or actually lying. Bottom line, the statements from the rep and Marques could not both be true.

 

[RobStark]

So you're agreeing with my statement that the Ford rep was wrong, or actually lying. Bottom line, the statements from the rep and Marques could not both be true.

With the 1k on board the range at least 300 miles. Or approximately.

And without it is approximately 469.

That Ford is leaving out "at least" or "approximately" to set the bar low is lying then yes.

99% of Lightning customers would be very happy with that kind of "lying."

BTW I am done with this topic. It is idiotic. Being a Tesla fan and supporter of its mission doesn not mean hating every other BEV, taking pot shots and creating FUD about every other BEV.

 

[SwTslaGrl]

"Foxconn's EV foray could become a threat to established automakers, in which non-traditional players could use contract assemblers such as Foxconn as a shortcut to competing in the vehicle market."

PTT, Foxconn to make electric vehicles in Thailand

TAIPEI: Taiwan's Foxconn on Monday announced a partnership with state-run energy group PTT Plc to make electric cars in Thailand, adding to a string of such deals by the iPhone assembler as it makes forays into the car market.

www.bangkokpost.com

 

[JRP3]

BTW I am done with this topic. It is idiotic. Being a Tesla fan and supporter of its mission doesn not mean hating every other BEV, taking pot shots and creating FUD about every other BEV.

It also doesn't mean blindly accepting numbers which don't add up. I think the Ford is likely going to be a very good and successful vehicle, doesn't mean I'll just swallow the idea that a 1000lb difference will equate to a 169 mile range change. Valid criticism is not "hating". Your blind defense of misleading numbers is just fanboying.

 

[KJD]

It also doesn't mean blindly accepting numbers which don't add up. I think the Ford is likely going to be a very good and successful vehicle, doesn't mean I'll just swallow the idea that a 1000lb difference will equate to a 169 mile range change. Valid criticism is not "hating". Your blind defense of misleading numbers is just fanboying.

And the real number is probably somewhere in between 300 and 469.

Looking forward to some extended testing on this beast by someone like Tom Moloughney over at Insideevs.

 

[mblakele]

How to be the next Tesla
How to be the next Tesla from The Economist

Decent overview of the competitive landscape, but noticeably omits discussion of battery supply.

 

[wdolson]

I don't think Apple's strategy of using Foxconn to make cars is going to work. All automakers assemble their own cars or rebadge cars made by other automakers for other markets. When car makers farmed out production, final assembly was one of the few things they all kept under their own roof.

Cars have a lot more moving parts than electronic gadgets, and they are vastly more complex mechanically. EVs are simpler than ICE, but they still have a lot more moving parts than an iPhone. Foxconn also has no experience making cars. They would probably be able to make Apples equivalent of the MCU without breaking a sweat, but there is a lot more to making cars than that.

One of Tesla's biggest weaknesses from the beginning has been dinosaur technology (bending metal and making car chassis). It's a deceptively difficult tech to master. Car companies that have been in business for many decades figured that out slowly over many many years. Institutional knowledge, that's the knowledge companies gather and is passed down from employee to employee and there is little or no documentation. People just know how to do it.

In my first job out of college I worked in a lab at Boeing that was run on institutional knowledge. Most of what people knew to do their jobs they learned from the old hands who built the lab 30 years before. There were new managers who tried to get everything written down, but they were only partially successful.

When the 777 started production they started to threaten layoffs. I volunteered to be first because I was sick of the threats. Soon after they came up with a bright idea to reduce staff by offering to add 5 years to a retirement account for anyone over 55 who wanted to retire early. 14,000 people qualified, and the expected about 5,000 to take the offer, but 12,000 did. Everyone over 55 in the lab left in a few months leaving the lab reeling. A few years later I was in talks to come back as a contractor. The manager was excited because I knew a lot of the institutional knowledge that was lost.

That was August of 2001. On 9/11/01 I was watching the news knowing that among other things the contract was not going to happen.

Car companies have lots of institutional knowledge about how to make cars. Tesla is getting to a point where they are getting some of their own. The other start-ups are mostly starting from zero. Tesla got very, very lucky to make it to viability. Apple has a lot of cash to throw at a car, but they would be better off buying a struggling car company and use their institutional knowledge than try to train a computer maker to make cars. Most of the rest of the start ups don't have the money Apple has and are facing a tougher climb.

 

[winfield100]

I don't think Apple's strategy of using Foxconn to make cars is going to work. All automakers assemble their own cars or rebadge cars made by other automakers for other markets. When car makers farmed out production, final assembly was one of the few things they all kept under their own roof.

Cars have a lot more moving parts than electronic gadgets, and they are vastly more complex mechanically. EVs are simpler than ICE, but they still have a lot more moving parts than an iPhone. Foxconn also has no experience making cars. They would probably be able to make Apples equivalent of the MCU without breaking a sweat, but there is a lot more to making cars than that.

One of Tesla's biggest weaknesses from the beginning has been dinosaur technology (bending metal and making car chassis). It's a deceptively difficult tech to master. Car companies that have been in business for many decades figured that out slowly over many many years. Institutional knowledge, that's the knowledge companies gather and is passed down from employee to employee and there is little or no documentation. People just know how to do it.

In my first job out of college I worked in a lab at Boeing that was run on institutional knowledge. Most of what people knew to do their jobs they learned from the old hands who built the lab 30 years before. There were new managers who tried to get everything written down, but they were only partially successful.

When the 777 started production they started to threaten layoffs. I volunteered to be first because I was sick of the threats. Soon after they came up with a bright idea to reduce staff by offering to add 5 years to a retirement account for anyone over 55 who wanted to retire early. 14,000 people qualified, and the expected about 5,000 to take the offer, but 12,000 did. Everyone over 55 in the lab left in a few months leaving the lab reeling. A few years later I was in talks to come back as a contractor. The manager was excited because I knew a lot of the institutional knowledge that was lost.

That was August of 2001. On 9/11/01 I was watching the news knowing that among other things the contract was not going to happen.

Car companies have lots of institutional knowledge about how to make cars. Tesla is getting to a point where they are getting some of their own. The other start-ups are mostly starting from zero. Tesla got very, very lucky to make it to viability. Apple has a lot of cash to throw at a car, but they would be better off buying a struggling car company and use their institutional knowledge than try to train a computer maker to make cars. Most of the rest of the start ups don't have the money Apple has and are facing a tougher climb.

So, is this one of those epiphanies?

how to store “institutional knowledge”

constant, rapid iterations, continuously breaking things, so institutional knowledge becomes not what we did last decade, but last week or last month, like what’s happening at SpaceX and such

not like let’s make a new tail fin for next year’s vehicle
let’s try die casting the entire vehicle, or 3D printing the rocket engine

 

[Doggydogworld]

I don't think Apple's strategy of using Foxconn to make cars is going to work. All automakers assemble their own cars or rebadge cars made by other automakers for other markets. When car makers farmed out production, final assembly was one of the few things they all kept under their own roof.

Cars have a lot more moving parts than electronic gadgets, and they are vastly more complex mechanically. EVs are simpler than ICE, but they still have a lot more moving parts than an iPhone. Foxconn also has no experience making cars. They would probably be able to make Apples equivalent of the MCU without breaking a sweat, but there is a lot more to making cars than that.

One of Tesla's biggest weaknesses from the beginning has been dinosaur technology (bending metal and making car chassis). It's a deceptively difficult tech to master. Car companies that have been in business for many decades figured that out slowly over many many years. Institutional knowledge, that's the knowledge companies gather and is passed down from employee to employee and there is little or no documentation. People just know how to do it.

In my first job out of college I worked in a lab at Boeing that was run on institutional knowledge. Most of what people knew to do their jobs they learned from the old hands who built the lab 30 years before. There were new managers who tried to get everything written down, but they were only partially successful.

When the 777 started production they started to threaten layoffs. I volunteered to be first because I was sick of the threats. Soon after they came up with a bright idea to reduce staff by offering to add 5 years to a retirement account for anyone over 55 who wanted to retire early. 14,000 people qualified, and the expected about 5,000 to take the offer, but 12,000 did. Everyone over 55 in the lab left in a few months leaving the lab reeling. A few years later I was in talks to come back as a contractor. The manager was excited because I knew a lot of the institutional knowledge that was lost.

That was August of 2001. On 9/11/01 I was watching the news knowing that among other things the contract was not going to happen.

Car companies have lots of institutional knowledge about how to make cars. Tesla is getting to a point where they are getting some of their own. The other start-ups are mostly starting from zero. Tesla got very, very lucky to make it to viability. Apple has a lot of cash to throw at a car, but they would be better off buying a struggling car company and use their institutional knowledge than try to train a computer maker to make cars. Most of the rest of the start ups don't have the money Apple has and are facing a tougher climb.

Contract assembly isn't rare. Valmet, which came out of Saab, built all Porsche Boxters and Caymans for many years. They also built some cars for Opel, Chrysler, Fisker (ha), Lada (!!) and still build some smaller Mercedes models. Magna Steyr builds the Jaguar i-Pace, which is electric and the E-Pace, which is not, lol. They also manufacture cars for BMW and Mercedes plus others in the past.

 

[Tiger]

Contract assembly isn't rare. Valmet, which came out of Saab, built all Porsche Boxters and Caymans for many years. They also built some cars for Opel, Chrysler, Fisker (ha), Lada (!!) and still build some smaller Mercedes models. Magna Steyr builds the Jaguar i-Pace, which is electric and the E-Pace, which is not, lol. They also manufacture cars for BMW and Mercedes plus others in the past.

They probably have, that, institutional knowledge, pal, at Valmet Automotive.

 

[Doggydogworld]

Useful range comparisons are popping up again. The gold standard is a side-by-side test from 100-0% in realistic conditions, but this is expensive and time consuming so most end up testing different cars on different days (e.g. Bjorn) or only drive a relatively short distance like 60-100 miles then "extrapolate" to get range.

A group in Norway does it right, testing 100-0% every six months to get a winter and "summer" range. They drive at the speed limit, which is pretty low in Norway, and benign summer temps mean almost every car in their recent 20 car test exceeded the official WLTP rating. The three which missed only fell a few percent short. Article text is in Norwegian, but the tables are easy to understand without translation.

Model 3 LR went the farthest, Mach E RWD was second and ID3 Pro S third. Hyundai Kona was the most efficient, followed by Model 3 SR and 3 LR/Fiat 500. The BMW iX3 exceeded WLTP by a whopping 23%, several others by 10% or so. The article has tables with lots of other data. Note that list prices in some cases are inflated early versions (e.g. ID.3 First), only apply in Norway and don't reflect discounts which can be significant.

The video for this five car test in Australia is pretty long, but you can jump to the results section at the end. Once again Model 3 LR went the farthest. Higher speeds and hotter temps mean only the Kona hit its WLTP rating, everyone else was 10-27% below. My only quibble is they calculate efficiency as tested range / "usable battery" instead of measuring the actual kWhs needed to recharge the car back to 100%. (I'm not sure how the Norwegians calculate efficiency, btw, I used Google Translate but didn't see an explanation).

The other important metric for distance travel is charging speed and taper profile, which these tests don't cover. Bjorn's 1000 km test shows Tesla also does pretty well in that department. The Audi e-tron GT' recently took the 1000 km crown, though, despite showing 20% less range than the 3 LR in the Norwegian test above. Audi's fast charging more than offset the lower range. We'll soon see if Ioniq 5 can match that feat.

These measured ranges only apply to the specific conditions on test day, but the relative results should hold across most conditions (wind, speed, etc.). The Kona, for example, had 11% less range than the 3 LR in the Australian test and 18% less in the more benign Norwegian test. The exception is cold weather, where heat pumps generally cause less range degradation than resistance heating. As such it's possible for one car to get longer range than another in summer, only to see the results flip-flop in winter.

 

[mark95476]

Magna also builds the BMW Z4 / Toyota Supra.

Contract assembly isn't rare. Valmet, which came out of Saab, built all Porsche Boxters and Caymans for many years. They also built some cars for Opel, Chrysler, Fisker (ha), Lada (!!) and still build some smaller Mercedes models. Magna Steyr builds the Jaguar i-Pace, which is electric and the E-Pace, which is not, lol. They also manufacture cars for BMW and Mercedes plus others in the past.

 

[mark95476]

Tesla gave Jeff Dahn and team another $3M. A sign that Tesla is very happy with his team's work on Li-ion cells. They've locked him up for another 5 years until 2026. Unfortunately, we only see a very small portion of their R&D.

Tesla donates $3.1M of $6M grant to Jeff Dahn's Dalhousie University battery team

A team of battery researchers at Canada’s Dalhousie University are the recipients of a $6 million grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). The NSERC will give the team, headed by Dr. Jeff Dahn, $2.9 million in funding. Tesla, who has worked very closely with...

www.teslarati.com

With li-ion battery chemistries tiny changes in composition can make a big difference in characteristics. The industry is beginning to get some idea to predict what changes will do what, but there is still a lot of experimentation in Li-ion cell chemistry research.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Useful range comparisons are popping up again. The gold standard is a side-by-side test from 100-0% in realistic conditions, but this is expensive and time consuming so most end up testing different cars on different days (e.g. Bjorn) or only drive a relatively short distance like 60-100 miles then "extrapolate" to get range.

A group in Norway does it right, testing 100-0% every six months to get a winter and "summer" range. They drive at the speed limit, which is pretty low in Norway, and benign summer temps mean almost every car in their recent 20 car test exceeded the official WLTP rating. The three which missed only fell a few percent short. Article text is in Norwegian, but the tables are easy to understand without translation.

Model 3 LR went the farthest, Mach E RWD was second and ID3 Pro S third. Hyundai Kona was the most efficient, followed by Model 3 SR and 3 LR/Fiat 500. The BMW iX3 exceeded WLTP by a whopping 23%, several others by 10% or so. The article has tables with lots of other data. Note that list prices in some cases are inflated early versions (e.g. ID.3 First), only apply in Norway and don't reflect discounts which can be significant.

If that's the group in Norway Bjørn Nyland was going to participate in, he's talked about a flaw in their approach: they drive a route that is hilly so a car's quoted range can be significantly affected by luck of cresting one of the more significant hills.

 

[wdolson]

Contract assembly isn't rare. Valmet, which came out of Saab, built all Porsche Boxters and Caymans for many years. They also built some cars for Opel, Chrysler, Fisker (ha), Lada (!!) and still build some smaller Mercedes models. Magna Steyr builds the Jaguar i-Pace, which is electric and the E-Pace, which is not, lol. They also manufacture cars for BMW and Mercedes plus others in the past.

Magna Steyr was a military vehicle maker in WW II. Valmet automotive has been in the automotive business since 1968. In both cases those companies are mostly contracted with companies that have a lot of experience making cars. In the case of Apple you have a company with lots of experience making computers contracted by a company with lots of experience designing computers trying to make a car.

 

[RobStark]

Ford production of Mustang Mach-E exceeds gas models

The automaker has passed a milestone in its conversion to electric vehicles.

www.autonews.com

“Mach-E has been much stronger than we expected, so we’ve totally run out of stock,” Farley told reporters at the introduction of the electric F-150 Lightning pickup May 19. “Mach-E is going global as we speak, but in the U.S.,” the wait for a Mach-E “is months.”

You make a compelling BEV and it is automatically backordered. Imagine that.

 

[mongo]

Ford production of Mustang Mach-E exceeds gas models

The automaker has passed a milestone in its conversion to electric vehicles.

www.autonews.com

Not so hard when you are comparing against a model that had zero production last month...

The global computer-chip shortage hobbling the auto industry played a role in the Mach-E surpassing the traditional Mustang. Farley said the company is prioritizing its newest models, such as the Mach-E and the Bronco SUV, as it distributes its scarce supply of semiconductor modules. Ford’s Flat Rock, Mich., factory built no gas Mustangs last month, according to the production data.

For reference, 2020 Mustang production was 61,090.

 

[heltok]

How to be the next Tesla
How to be the next Tesla from The Economist

Decent overview of the competitive landscape, but noticeably omits discussion of battery supply.

Paywall so didn’t read. But I think a lot of people look and Tesla and think ”wow so easy, just make electric cars and BOOM huge market cap!!!”. They fail to understand how hard it was for Tesla to do what they did and how good Tesla had to be in order to make it. Nikola is not Tesla. VW is not Tesla. Toyota is not Tesla. They cannot just decide to make EV and suddenly get 500B market cap, it’s not that easy. Tesla has attracted a team of elite engineers, organized them to work much more efficiently than other teams, made them work more hours than other teams, had a clear and brilliant long term strategy, had access to huge amount of capital and still they almost failed. And this was without having Tesla as competition... GLHF for newcomers! Maybe with support of the Chinese government it is possible, but for everyone else it would be a decade of all kinds of hell.