When you drive an ICE vehicle, you see your cost of gas directly and it's obvious what poor mileage does to your gas bill.
When you drive an EV, that's often absorbed into your electric bill. It's invisible until you start making roadtrips.
Maybe a better way to express this would be a cost to operate estimate. For example: 15,000 miles/ year at $0.35/ kWh this car will cost $850/ year to run. It would be inaccurate specifically, but would give a rough idea of how much it costs to drive one car versus another.
When I listed the reasons why Wh/mile matters so much, I didn't even mention the cost of the electricity! Because even an inefficient EV has a low cost to fuel compared to ICE. And if ICE drivers don't care whether they buy a 20 mpg or 35 mpg vehicle, they sure aren't going to care about how much more it costs to charge and inefficient EV vs. an efficient one. My whole point was that Wh/mile matters so much more than just the cost to fuel even if most consumers don't understand that because it shows up on how competitively the car can be priced and how it drives.
Currently, the cost savings of not needing a big battery (or the value of having a longer range) is not going to the consumer, but to Tesla in the form of juicy margins. And that will be true as long as Tesla is production constrained. Then Tesla will lower prices a little and still be production constrained. And so on. That's why I say Tesla is production constrained as far as the eye can see. This is the "pricing power" advantage Tesla has that I have been hammering home for over a year now and it's only partially due to their Wh/mile efficiency advantage. When other makers catch up to their Wh/mile efficiency (assuming they do), Tesla will still have a pricing power advantage due to corporate efficiency and manufacturing efficiency.
I believe the eMPG EPA window sticker number is based upon the cost to charge vs. the cost to buy a gallon of fuel. In the US, the window sticker will also tell you how much it costs to fuel a given vehicle for a year, based on nationwide averages but the cost of the electricity is just the tip of the iceberg as pointed out above.
In any case, Tesla has recently addressed the fact that electricity cost is often absorbed into your home electric bill and is largely invisible. If you look under "Charge Stats" of your Tesla App. it has been updated to show you how much you charged in the last month, how much it cost you based on average electric rates in your area (user customizable), how much you charged at Superchargers (and how much it cost you), and how much you charged at other locations and how much it cost you (also user customizable). It then totals these costs for the last month period and compares it to how much you would have spent on fuel (based on average rates in your area) if you drove a comparable ICE vehicle.
IMO, there is no compelling reason or reasons to think "the competition" can "catch up" to Tesla (and that's true even if they started making cars with comparable Wh/mile efficiency numbers). Efficiency can only be improved only a little more beyond the current state of the art, but the same cannot be said for cost to produce. Legacy can learn to copy Tesla's electrical engineering, their BMS effectiveness and even start making their cars more aerodynamic. This is relatively easy compared to copying Tesla's corporate efficiency and their manufacturing efficiency and these things are what will drive Tesla's success as an automaker for many years to come. Their current advantage in Wh/mi efficiency is a shorter-term benefit that is driving margins higher by increasing their pricing power advantage.
Most of Wall Street still doesn't understand this. The good news for TSLA investors is that Wall Street will learn what we already know incrementally, each time Tesla reports quarterly numbers. Because that's all Wall Street really understands, money.
The fact that TSLA didn't appreciate after last quarters blow-out numbers has to be attributed to the overall market mood and perhaps some strategic positioning of big money players and MM's who don't have Tesla's best interests in mind. Volatility will remain high as these players continue to drive TSLA too high, followed by too low. Because they like profits which is just another way to say they like volatility.
