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Tesla Compact Hatch Coming?
- Thread starter T3SLAROD
- Start date
Considering that one Tesla (used as a taxi service between LA and Vegas) was up to over 200,000 miles for each pack, and only needed a new battery pack because some cells failed, not because the batteries over all reached end of usable life. This was a vehicle abused with daily hot supercharges, often multiple times a day. I think the 100,000 miles is a lowball number now.
Every time a vehicle accelerates, it uses electricity and some of that is lost as heat, never to be recaptured - so a lighter vehicle has an advantage that it can use less power. People buy the medium range Teslas, presumably because that is sufficient range and what they can afford - so 240 miles nominal range, and about 200 miles usable (90% down to 10%) is acceptable. My real world experience has shown that nominal range is not necessarily what one gets in real world conditions. The number of potential customers goes up dramatically as the price goes down.
However, this industry is just starting, and nobody - not even Tesla - can rest on the assumption "what we are doing is enough". There is a massive market for compact vehicles, minivans, in-town delivery trucks, buses, semi's - you name it. Cede any market segment, and it gives the competition a toe-hold from which to expand, compete and knock out the company with a smaller niche of vehicles on offer. Detroit decided that compact cars was not a market worth fighting for - at first. Look where that got them and Japan...
The only losers I see in this industry are the ones that assume their market is high end luxury vehicles, such as in the $100,000 range. That will always be a small niche.
Every time a vehicle accelerates, it uses electricity and some of that is lost as heat, never to be recaptured - so a lighter vehicle has an advantage that it can use less power. People buy the medium range Teslas, presumably because that is sufficient range and what they can afford - so 240 miles nominal range, and about 200 miles usable (90% down to 10%) is acceptable. My real world experience has shown that nominal range is not necessarily what one gets in real world conditions. The number of potential customers goes up dramatically as the price goes down.
However, this industry is just starting, and nobody - not even Tesla - can rest on the assumption "what we are doing is enough". There is a massive market for compact vehicles, minivans, in-town delivery trucks, buses, semi's - you name it. Cede any market segment, and it gives the competition a toe-hold from which to expand, compete and knock out the company with a smaller niche of vehicles on offer. Detroit decided that compact cars was not a market worth fighting for - at first. Look where that got them and Japan...
The only losers I see in this industry are the ones that assume their market is high end luxury vehicles, such as in the $100,000 range. That will always be a small niche.
I would like a small EV as a second car. I just drove 1600 miles in my M3LR. Best road trip ever.
But I don't need two of these. For my second car I can get by with less metal, smaller battery, smaller tires, higher efficiency
ZenRockGarden
Active Member
Yeah I think there's a huge niche for small short range "city" electric car, and hatchback is a great format (so is convertible)
You want a bigger, longer range thing for certain use cases, but 5 days out of 7 a little sporty hatch is actually the right tool.
roblab
Active Member
The way you get cars to "half of their current price" is by installing half of the current battery. You don't just wave a magic wand and cut the price in half; you install half the battery. I guess in Europe that's not a problem, but I drive 800 miles to my son's house in my S and think nothing of it BECAUSE I HAVE A 400 MILE BATTERY. I guess somewhere down the road Elon will feel that Europe is his dominant market and build tiny cars with half-size batteries, but as of yet it isn't. The half-sized Volkswagen was necessary in Germany but sold in America because it was cheap transportation for college-age drivers. BMW also started out as a cheap small car, and Toyota sold well here at first because it cost about half of any other American-made car. My brother owned one of the first, and it was scary to drive over 80 mph. And you're right. You're not going to see FSD on a cheap car. Thankfully it's not Tesla's goal to sell cheap cars.
Well, Elon did say they wanted to reach $25k for mass market.
Producing at scale *more* than halves the price. Making the first Model 3 probably cost Tesla hundreds of thousands. As scale goes up, costs come down.
I personally believe we still have a lot of undiscovered EV technologies to come. ICE vehicles had a hundred years to get where they are. We're going to find ways to make batteries lighter, more efficient, less expensive, and more recyclable.
Ultimately, I suspect that we'll have electric cars at the low end for less than the low end ICE cars were... BEV is simpler to produce and maintain. And Tesla has reinvented auto manufacturing with the gigapress (or Idra has). $8k small hatchback 120 mile EV here we come!
I’m not sure I would want one, but that doesn’t mean you are not right. You are spot on.
With well written (
) software with the intention of it being able to adapt to the entire fleet, you start to be able to reuse technology without having to change it nearly as much for the individual product. Combine that with minimizing the number of parts (as you said, gigapress) you start being able really bring the cost down on some of the smaller vehicles.Personally, I’d rather have a 2-door coupe / hatchback based on the model 3 platform.
CYBRTRK420
Member
I took the overall proportions from the Peugeot 208-e, one of my favorite compact cars design wise. I guess this allows for a nice frunk
Especially considering that most models sold will be RWD (most likely to stay as cheap as possible + AWD not needed for city cars), you could get a huge frunk...
. Try $44,990.A Tesla Hot Hatchback would be so much fun. Something that would compete with the Civic Type R in performance and price.
Here are some specs that I think would be doable from an engineering standpoint, and would also make a compelling Tesla hatchback:
Curb weight: 3200 lbs.
Range: 300 miles
0-60 MPH Acceleration: 4 seconds
Price Point: $43,000
With it being an EV, it would also have a likely advantage of having more interior space than most other similar cars.
Here are some specs that I think would be doable from an engineering standpoint, and would also make a compelling Tesla hatchback:
Curb weight: 3200 lbs.
Range: 300 miles
0-60 MPH Acceleration: 4 seconds
Price Point: $43,000
With it being an EV, it would also have a likely advantage of having more interior space than most other similar cars.
I think many more buyers could be reached with slimmed-down specs. Less weight, range 250 miles, 0 to 60 mph in 7 seconds, price $30,000 would attract a lot more buyers. In this class of cars, super specs are not as important as in the more expensive cars.
Of course I don't know where the market optimum lies, but I think it is a bit below your proposed specs.
You're probably right. I think that a Tesla hot hatch aimed at competing with the performance model of the Honda Civic Type R would awesome, but a more moderate version would probably sell well, too. The smart thing would probably be to offer two or three variants like they do with the Model 3, Y, S, and X, so a cheaper Standard Range version, and more expensive Performance model.
CYBRTRK420
Member
I also think that these specs would be realistic and incredibly attractive to customers:
Standard Range:
Range: 270mi
V-Max: 112 MPH
0-60: 6.5s
RWD
Price: $27,990
Performance
Range: 320mi
V-Max: 155 MPH
0-60: 4.0s
AWD
Price: $41,990
Maybe a compact hatchback doesn't even need a LR version. Most buyers will be more than happy with a SR RWD version. The people that would pay for AWD could just go for the P version as it is similarly expensive to produce, would simplify production / inventory and the specs wouldn't be too different from a LR AWD model for 2-3k less.
These are the expected price points for a compact hatch.
However, Tesla has technologies to improve and factories to build. They can't be investing (wasting) money on a vehicle that takes a lot of money to design and manufacture but for which customers expect to pay such a low price right now.
Once they've completed the process of economically manufacturing premium performance vehicles such as the Models S3XY and then their CARS, maybe they can move into the lower market tiers. At a minimum, this won't happen until the Austin and Brandenburg gigafactories are fully at speed but they will likely need a couple more gigafactories online as well.
Until then, they should wisely leave this low market for their competition to choke on.
We need a hatch or wagon, Audi is going to knock it out of the park with this one, except for the price tag:
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