RobStark
Well-Known Member
I agree. Lariat and Platinum can absorb much of the increasing cost. The Lightning Pro can not.
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Tesla BEV Competition Developments
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I agree. Lariat and Platinum can absorb much of the increasing cost. The Lightning Pro can not.
And I wonder if we'll ever really know who's decision it was to not push for a 'from the ground up' truck chassis from the beginning. I fear that singular decision may have done Ford in. Time will tell, but if CT ramps up fast next year it is simply game over (and yes they'll continue to sell trucks for years, I hope, but crazy less amounts each year until it is just the utility/commercial/specialized offerings)
Indeed it's old. They launched it in 2017.
I don't know that Plug&Charge it's really much better for scalability,. , but it's more flexible because (I believe) it doesn't depend on having an account with the charging network.
Autocharge depends on having an account with the charging network, and that account having saved the vehicle's ID.
So the first time you charge, you have to start it manually.
After that you can choose whether to have AutoCharge enabled.
The good thing is that it's simple to implement. It only need the car to have a unique identifier.
If concerned about security, you can have AutoCharge normally disabled, and enable it only when you're traveling.
RobStark
Well-Known Member
The ground up BEV Ford truck is coming in 2025. And will sell alongside Lightning.
Ford thinks there is a large contingent of buyers that want (most of) the advantages of BEV but insist on traditional styling that will be buying trucks for at least a decade.
I think there will be more cross shopping between Lightning and Silverado EV than between Lightning and Cybertruck.
Novel new construction, novel new manufacturing and fast ramp up usually don't go hand in hand. Initial capacity is said to be 300k CT per year. With land adjacent available to double that.
Market for North American full size trucks is ~3M. Once cost per mile plummet and there is no massive emissions it is expected to grow significantly. There are some folks that like the utility of a full size truck but can't stomach burning so much liquid fuel.
Edit
Back when Hey-sus was a baby and the Model 3 had a base price of $38k Elon said the base price for a single motor 250 mile range CT would be $40k.
Today the base price of Model 3 is $47k and a relative bargain since prices of the rest of Tesla's lineup have gone up recently .
I don't think Tesla will sell a base CT for $7k less than a base Model 3. We are looking at $50k or more for a base CT. If Tesla did demand for Model 3 would implode. Model Y would be hurt too.
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JRP3
Hyperactive Member
I doubt CT will ramp up fast next year plus I suspect there are many people who simply can't deal with the radical styling.
Key metric will be when does the CT ramp exceed that of the Lightning and Rivian variants. Any guesses?
I'll say Q4 2023 CT ramp will be >1000/week
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
I've long given up trying to predict Tesla production ramps. Other than to expect them to be later than planned 
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
I don't think demand constraint will be any issue for CT whatsoever, there's WAY more people who'd buy one than Tesla can possibly produce for years yet.
THAT said- Given what a never-yet-explained cluster the ramp of the S/X refresh has been when it's not even THAT radically different to build, while the CT IS very different and Elon has remarked on how difficult it is to do (and do affordably) multiple times- I would certainly expect the ramp to potentially be pretty slow.
We don't yet have Tesla's updated post-2019 pricing either. Rumors a few months ago (or last year?) that they were only going to start with quad and dual motor versions. But I highly doubt the dual motor version will cost customers $50k as shown at the unveiling.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
They'll sell as many as they can make regardless of price though.
This has been true of every good (or even reasonably decent) EV anybody has made in basically ever.
Hell, the Hummer EV which is insanely overpriced (and hilariously overweight) still has a backlog and they just hiked the price on it too!
Doggydogworld
Active Member
Ground up is overrated, especially when it comes to body on frame trucks. It's different with unibody, but pickup buyers have traditionally rejected unibody.
Once you go above 30k consumer vehicles are basically costumes. Some love the CyberTruck costume, some hate it. Ford will be fine.
I don't think Tesla will sell a base CT, period. At least not for many years. We're 2.5 years into Model Y without a base version. And 40k CT was always an Elon price. Even before inflation I never expected more than a few token sales below 50k.
As it is I expect 2023 CTs will be 79.9k dual motor and 99.9k quad.
I see statements like this often and it's funny...you think they could sell as many as they make if they priced it at $300k? Price matters eventually.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
So does not making silly slippery slope arguments that intentionally miss the point.
navguy12
Active Member
Back in the late 70s, a buddy of mine said that, “if it’s only about transportation, we would all be driving around in wooden powered Peoples machines“.
Now that I comprehend this post in its entirety, I see what you mean, I think.
Happy to say that time will tell on all your points...and for the record I think the opposite.
Above $30k, cars are still utility, functional and mainstream. When you get into the >$70k range I start to agree. Regardless, once Robotaxi's are in service it simply won't matter as you'll be paying less than a urban bus ride/mile to get where you are going.
Base CTs will be Robotaxi's eventually, but they will most likely come last. And it depends on solving FSD so there's that.
Just like the Model Y, once the chip issue and battery constraints are gone, I believe CT will ramp to way over 1M/yr.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Other than dent resistance it seems like a poor vehicle choice for a taxi.
Again, I feel the opposite, durability is a key metric for a taxi, as is ease of maintenance.
With electricity costs so low, I think that is much lower in priority versus a Y or 3.
Basically what they had behind the Iron Curtain. As soon as the Soviet empire fell apart, most of those old cars were abandoned in favor of better cars from somewhere else.
But in developed countries, the segment for basic transportation with no thought to the look is in the company car market (non-executive). For trucks, companies buy fleets of pickups pretty close to the base model available from the Big 3. For cars it's usually a basic sedan or probably basic CUV today.
Back when I was in high school and college I spent a lot of time at my sister's in Bakersfield, CA. You saw a lot of Chevy Impalas and Ford Crown Victorias around town. My sister got assigned one from time to time when she was on call to run out to oil wells being drilled (she's a petroleum Geologist). When she had a company car she was asked on several occasions (which company?) without any questions about whether she worked for an oil company. That was a given.
When I needed a car I ended up buying a cheap Impala that had been a company car.
If robo-taxies ever happen. FSD without a driver could end up being one of those things like fusion power and flying cars, always just around the corner. FSD has been that sort of promise for several years now.
I think regulators will never approve FSD without a driver always watching and able to take over because the software will never be able to handle every edge condition. Commercial airliners have been mostly flying themselves for decades. When I was at Boeing in the late 1980s there was a joke that the next generation flight deck had one pilot and a dog. The pilot's job was to feed the dog and the dog's job was to bite the pilot if they touched anything.
Flying a commercial airliner today is a pretty boring job. 99% of the time it involves watching the computer fly the plane. Driving with FSD may turn into that and get no further. Without the ability to eliminate the driver robo-taxis are a never going to become a big thing.
As for the CT, I think it might be the AMD Pacer of trucks. The Pacer had amazingly high sales at first and AMC couldn't make enough the first year. Sales started dropping after that and it was discontinued only a couple of years later. There are still enthusiasts today keeping the last remaining cars running, but it turned out to have a niche following. Some people really loved it, but that was a limited market. Once that market was saturated, they had trouble selling more of them.
Sandy Munro has said he does not see the CT competing with the Big 3's truck market, where he sees a squeeze is with Jeep. He thinks the CT will be a compelling alternative to Jeep's line up. Rivian is already in that space with a truck that is more conventional looking.
Personally I find the CT pretty ugly. i wish Tesla had done something more aimed at the conventional truck market. If they had done that, the CT would be a big seller. The Ford F150 Lightning will probably sell as many as Ford can make because even if end consumers think it's not macho enough, fleet buyers, who buy at least 50% of trucks, go on cost of ownership as the #1 criteria and any truck that is cheaper to keep is going to the top of the list. The F150 Lightning also has another thing that fleet buyers are looking for: compatibility with all the utility beds made for full sized pick ups. The fact you can pull off (or order without) the standard bed and drop any utility bed made for an F150 on there is a big selling point for corporate and government sales.
Once work people get used to using an electric truck at work, they will want one for themselves and will likely go for a Ford too. Tesla's only sales point for the CT over other brands of truck is the supercharger network. With Tesla's poor service center capacities and squirrelly CEO, corporate buyers will likely pass on Tesla even if they are priced competitively and they don't need a custom bed. Brand loyalty within the truck market is very strong and a company needs a very compelling truck to win people over to a new brand.
Sandy Munro has said that the bulk of reservations of the CT are people who never owned a truck before. He expects a lot of them are going to be dismayed at how big the thing is and the used market might get flooded with lightly used CTs after a year or so.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Drivetrain durability yes, resistance to minor dings which don't impact operation, not so much. Operating costs including efficiency are probably the ultimate metric and the CT is too large to be as efficient especially in stop and go city driving compared to much smaller and cheaper EV's. So it costs more to purchase, will use more electricity per mile, will be harder to park and maneuver, and the bed would be wasted space most of the time. If they do a smaller vehicle with the SS exterior that would make more sense.
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