I think it doesn't make sense to build a cheaper EV and it's unlikely to happen in the next 10 years. Maybe second hand Model 3 and Y can address that market. Tesla will need a lot of batteries for S3XY, roadster, truck, Semi, bus, and energy storage.
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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
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I think it doesn't make sense to build a cheaper EV and it's unlikely to happen in the next 10 years. Maybe second hand Model 3 and Y can address that market. Tesla will need a lot of batteries for S3XY, roadster, truck, Semi, bus, and energy storage.
I just hope the different directions in the Telsa Twitter team are taking don't devolve into this:
JusRelax
Active Member
Saw it, was gonna repost it, but you beat me to it.
Maybe we should take a poll to see how many people truly believe Elon when he says this. I'm a pretty big elon fan... but even I have a hard time believing this. I wonder what % of the tmc audience believe this statement haha.
Pras
Member
I saw this. I mean people now give Elon 0 marks for his forecasting abilities, and perhaps -5 for repeating the same old mistake of being over optimistic.
Technically once local street NOA comes this is not impossible. Just connect to chargers manually but most of the miles are on highways anyway.
am I the only one (in the bulls) that does not like this at all?
I'm actually all for uber bullish Elon at this point. Stock is already in the gutter, might as well make the next 2-3 quarters as enjoyable as possible
There's plenty of reasons for cheaper EVs. Plenty of people can't afford a $35k car, even used (especially if they're just going to end up in the Tesla Network instead of being sold), and also don't have public transportation as a viable option (either lack it entirely for their needs, or it's poorly implemented, or ... etc), and even if the Tesla Network takes off, it's not necessarily going to be affordable enough for a daily commute for those who can't afford it.
That doesn't necessarily mean Tesla needs to be the one building BEVs in the <$30k range, but if nobody else gets around to it... someone needs to. Even if TCO (assuming 1 million miles is achievable goal, or even half that, it should) favored a $35k BEV over a $25k ICEV, a good portion of those who can only afford the $25k (or perhaps even only afford $15k) + years of gas car can't get the financing for the $35k even if the TCO would be lower.
I suppose an alternative, assuming TCO (and thus monthly payments over the long run) would work out, would be for a financing company to come along that is less concerned with profits and more about getting more people into BEVs. If you could operate such a thing as a minimally profitable (but not losing money in the long term, clearly - unless it's being subsidized by wealthy benefactors and/or governments) operation, even accounting for risks... Perhaps if we assume Tesla's safety features are going to reduce accident rates significantly to the point of the only major "loss" issue would be people failing their payments (hopefully outright theft would be minimal since the vehicles location is constantly tracked), then you could simply repo the car, and either add it to the Network to make money on it to cover it's costs or sell and finance it again used (at a possibly slightly reduced rate, or perhaps not if the original rate was bare minimum) to someone new. If the goal isn't to make money but to put more and more people into BEVs and save the planet, then offering very attractive financing for very long terms to reduce the monthly payments could go a long way to expanding the addressable market. Even if this was structured like a lease for a few years at a time, if we assume the value of the vehicle is 1 million miles and at least 10 years, that's a long time you can keep extending the lease and/or leasing it to someone else. Of course you may need to start replacing bits of the interior at some point, but a refurbishment every 5-6 years or so might still work out fine.
Such an operation (lowering the barrier to entry for those without great credit and/or lots of cash on hand) would certainly let Tesla sell 3's and Y's until the cows come home and further the mission beyond what they can otherwise (even with regular loan/financing programs), the only problem then would be keeping up with the demand ...
Of course also having a lower end car that is cheaper to make would help even more, reaching even more buyers. If the $35k Model 3 is making good margins at scale, imagine what price you could achieve if all you did was actually build it with the originally intended cheaper interior, sound system, roll the clock forward a couple of years (for lower costs on many things, hopefully), and maybe even shrink the overall dimensions (additional costs for new stamping forms and so on with lots of vehicle specific parts, but at a certain scale perhaps is worth the cost versus just a cost-reduced Model 3/Y)... (assumes large enough scale that the savings of less variants is outweighed by the cheaper parts of those variants)
Carl Raymond
Active Member
I’m not sure. On the one hand, yes, we’ve heard this many times before. On the other, Navigate on Autopilot with lane change confirmation off is pretty amazing(well, the current version has a new bug that renders it almost unusable for some people, but going off my experience on 2019.8.5) right now. And I’ve seen a few newer videos from EAP people playing with advanced summon, now at normal speeds, that are pretty impressive. And their red light detection seems to be working fairly well as well.
I don’t think they’ll be able to handle complicated urban environments or anything, but just all freeways with stops for charging is actually kinda seeming within reach. The pieces aren’t connected yet(and each piece needs general accuracy improvement), but they do seem to be there.
I totally believe this coast to coast drive can happen this year. I basically can do it today. I could start from an LA parking lot that's close to highway, go all the way to NY and then drive a little bit on local road, park. With HW3 and a few SW updates, I think this is possible. However I don't think this is level 4 or level 5 FSD. This is just an important milestone. People's perception might change after this.
Dan Detweiler
Active Member
Wow, ok then. Disagree king for today I guess. Well, I guess I was due. Have a great evening everyone.
Dan
JusRelax
Active Member
straight up bs
when he originally announced it he was clear that they could do it without gaming, he specifically said any route. he was laughably wrong and instead of admitting he was wrong about AP progress has proceeded to say "oh yeah we could've done it but we didn't want to game it" which isn't the same thing. when he announced it he specifically said AP would be good enough to do any cross country interstate route.
elon has still not honestly answered what were the unexpected challenges that lead to AP advancing slower than he thought then.
adiggs
Well-Known Member
Sort of how the early Model 3 market was actually satisfied by used Model S's.
And today, the early Model Y market can be satisfied by used Model X's, though admittedly there aren't a lot of those available.
Except if they're all turning into appreciating robo-taxis, nobody in the lower market segment can afford the used higher market segment vehicleSort of how the early Model 3 market was actually satisfied by used Model S's.
And today, the early Model Y market can be satisfied by used Model X's, though admittedly there aren't a lot of those available.
That was a time when business considerations dominated Republican leaders' thinking.
Do you not know the answer? They lost MobileEye, requiring them to basically re-write that software from scratch and then had a guy who seemed to be utterly incompetent(at least for that task) leading their AP software group for almost a year. Once he was fired and Karpathy brought in, things got back on track, starting with firmware 2018.10.4. In ~1 year we’ve gone from kinda ok lane keeping to basically full autonomy(with human supervision) on the freeway.
Pras
Member
Note that by that time, we should be on the new FSD computer and the NN should be more powerful and exhaustive. So NOA will be better.
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