5 ms·

With the level of outsourcing and specialization that has gone on, most car manufacturers are evidently not really car manufacturers anymore, but actually inter

With the level of outsourcing and specialization that has gone on, most car manufacturers are evidently not really car manufacturers anymore, but actually internal combustion engine manufacturers and assembly line operators. They just pay other companies to make most of the parts for them and keep the engine in house as their "secret sauce", as a technology that can't easily be copied. Likewise, Tesla isn't really an electric car company or even an electric motor company. Electric motors are something everyone's known how to make for a hundred years and they actually get a lot of their generic car bits like their interiors from the same companies who supply traditional car companies. Tesla's actually a battery pack company (this is why the PowerPack and the SolarCity merger makes sense). It's the knowledge and the experience that went into those packs that keeps other companies from easily copying Tesla. The problem Ford and any traditional automaker faces is somehow pivoting from their current secret sauce, which took them decades and billions of dollars to develop, to a new one in a field that's completely unrelated, where almost nothing they already know applies.

mandeepj 9y ago
> Electric motors are something everyone's known how to make for a hundred years We are not talking about toy motors. Before Tesla who knew about making a car motor which can reach 0-60 in 2.27 seconds?
- zb 9y ago
  Electric motors, unlike internal combustion engines, produce very high torque at low/zero RPMs, and therefore can accelerate very quickly. Electrical engineers have known this literally since the 19th Century. Electric motors in industrial applications routinely do things many times more demanding than anything that will ever be required in a car, and have been doing so since the time of Nikola Tesla.
- lithos 9y ago
  The most limiting part is energy storage. Even the other difficult problems like dealing with starting current, construction, heat, and lifetime have been solved many ways for a long time.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Hobbyists have been putting down crazy 0-60 times for years. For example, here's an electric Mustang conversion with a 0-60 time under 2 seconds: https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2015/06/17/electric-mustang-records-1-94-second-0-60-time-builder-sets-200-mph-goal/comment-page-1/ https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2015/06/17/electric-mustang-re... Here's a Datsun 1200 with a 1.8 second 0-60: https://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/worlds-fastest-electric-car-is-a-1972-datsun-can-do-0-60-in-1-8-seconds-1416865/ https://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/worlds-fastest-electric-car... That one was built twenty-three years ago! Tesla's achievement isn't the 0-60 time itself, but rather doing so in a car that 1) is a practical daily driver family car 2) will withstand a couple hundred thousand miles of driving without replacing major components 3) is safe and robust enough to put into the hands of thousands of ordinary consumers and 4) can be manufactured for a cost that is not entirely ludicrous. Which is impressive, but unrelated to the motor. In fact, the rear motor in the P100D is the same as the one in my 85 and essentially the same as the one that was in the original 2012 Model S, and the front motor is just a smaller, less powerful version. The main innovations which enabled this are related to the battery pack, not the motors. Most of that innovation is cutting costs. It's really easy to get a lot of power out of a large battery pack, and Tesla's cheap batteries means they can put large ones in their cars without completely blowing the cost up. They just about maxed this out with the P85D, which did 0-60 in around 3 seconds. At that point they started to be limited by the amount of current that the battery's fuses could handle. They got past that problem by using a "smart" pyrotechnic fuse instead of the traditional melty-metal kind, resulting in "ludicrous mode" on the P85D and P90D. Then the P100D bumps it up a bit more just by virtue of having a larger battery.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    > will withstand a couple hundred thousand miles of driving without replacing major components How many Teslas out there with > 100K miles and how many with > 200K miles?
    - mikeash 9y ago
      Not many, since it's a pretty new car, but more than zero. For example: https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/29/tales-from-a-tesla-model-s-at-200k-miles/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/29/tales-from-a-tesla-model-s...
huon 9y ago
Very dramatic. What we are seeing is shareholders acting like a brainless herd for the same reasons voters have been doing.
dilemma 9y ago
No. Car manufacturers are and have for a long time been known as assemblers. This goes for Ford as well as Tesla. Tesla is not a battery company.
- _da_ 9y ago
  > Tesla is not a battery company. Tesla owns the world's largest battery factory.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
gozur88 9y ago
Electric cars are not a completely unrelated field. The big logistics and sales operations they're using today will largely be unchanged. In fact, I would argue Tesla is unlikely to succeed because of companies like Ford.
- neom 9y ago
  Ford and Tesla have considerably different sized supply chains, and supply chain re-tooling is probably the most difficult part of massive manufacturing volume. I would guess it will take Ford a few years just to regain capabilities, never mind the capacity to ship once that's done.
  - gozur88 9y ago
    I don't see why Ford can't use its existing system to build electric cars.
    - neom 9y ago
      For the same reasons that Walmart can't just be Amazon.com or that John Deere doesn't make a 4 door sedan.
      - gozur88 9y ago
        All you're really saying is Ford can't build an electric car the same way Tesla plans to build electric cars. But electric cars aren't very different from conventional cars - Ford's logistics system is more likely to be an advantage than a disadvantage.
        neom 9y ago
        Is that really all I'm saying? Please read about: Structural inertia, organizational restructuring, core competencies of a business. It's incredibly difficult for a large company to change direction, build new capabilities, and fundamentally switch it's core competency (in this instance from a manufacturing business to a technology business). I presume you've never run a business at scale?
MR4D 9y ago
That last sentence is money. For the first time I heard a car company CEO actually get that Tesla is different. The CEO of Toyota made a comment that what Tesla builds is more akin to the iPhone than a car. And he's right. Tesla builds a computer that happens to use a very large battery, weighs about 4,000 lbs, and has wheels. Nobody else in the business gets this. They think Tesla is just a car company with an electric motor, while completely ignoring the speed at which Tesla is able to roll out improvements. I've said for a while that until the car companies start thinking like a software company, they'll be further and further behind. The difference is (quite literally) a company with a multi-year long effort to roll out a new version versus a company running the automotive equivalent of Scrum.
ddingus 9y ago
Ford needs to electric assist their SUV products. An expedition, for example, is a great rig. I own one, and it's used for a lot of different purposes. I can't really replace it reasonably, and they run well for a very long time. I would consider another with an electric assist option. I collected gas use data for a few months. Mpg could be doubled in that vehicle for a modest weight increase that could likely be significantly offset with a weight reduction in other areas. Hybrid vehicles in the larger weight classes makes a lot of sense. Serms to me Ford would get a ton of expertise and gain relevance while adding a ton of value.

mandeepj 9y ago

> Electric motors are something everyone's known how to make for a hundred years We are not talking about toy motors. Before Tesla who knew about making a car motor which can reach 0-60 in 2.27 seconds?

zb 9y ago
Electric motors, unlike internal combustion engines, produce very high torque at low/zero RPMs, and therefore can accelerate very quickly. Electrical engineers have known this literally since the 19th Century. Electric motors in industrial applications routinely do things many times more demanding than anything that will ever be required in a car, and have been doing so since the time of Nikola Tesla.
lithos 9y ago
The most limiting part is energy storage. Even the other difficult problems like dealing with starting current, construction, heat, and lifetime have been solved many ways for a long time.
mikeash 9y ago
Hobbyists have been putting down crazy 0-60 times for years. For example, here's an electric Mustang conversion with a 0-60 time under 2 seconds: https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2015/06/17/electric-mustang-records-1-94-second-0-60-time-builder-sets-200-mph-goal/comment-page-1/ https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2015/06/17/electric-mustang-re... Here's a Datsun 1200 with a 1.8 second 0-60: https://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/worlds-fastest-electric-car-is-a-1972-datsun-can-do-0-60-in-1-8-seconds-1416865/ https://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/worlds-fastest-electric-car... That one was built twenty-three years ago! Tesla's achievement isn't the 0-60 time itself, but rather doing so in a car that 1) is a practical daily driver family car 2) will withstand a couple hundred thousand miles of driving without replacing major components 3) is safe and robust enough to put into the hands of thousands of ordinary consumers and 4) can be manufactured for a cost that is not entirely ludicrous. Which is impressive, but unrelated to the motor. In fact, the rear motor in the P100D is the same as the one in my 85 and essentially the same as the one that was in the original 2012 Model S, and the front motor is just a smaller, less powerful version. The main innovations which enabled this are related to the battery pack, not the motors. Most of that innovation is cutting costs. It's really easy to get a lot of power out of a large battery pack, and Tesla's cheap batteries means they can put large ones in their cars without completely blowing the cost up. They just about maxed this out with the P85D, which did 0-60 in around 3 seconds. At that point they started to be limited by the amount of current that the battery's fuses could handle. They got past that problem by using a "smart" pyrotechnic fuse instead of the traditional melty-metal kind, resulting in "ludicrous mode" on the P85D and P90D. Then the P100D bumps it up a bit more just by virtue of having a larger battery.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > will withstand a couple hundred thousand miles of driving without replacing major components How many Teslas out there with > 100K miles and how many with > 200K miles?
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Not many, since it's a pretty new car, but more than zero. For example: https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/29/tales-from-a-tesla-model-s-at-200k-miles/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/29/tales-from-a-tesla-model-s...

huon 9y ago

Very dramatic. What we are seeing is shareholders acting like a brainless herd for the same reasons voters have been doing.

dilemma 9y ago

No. Car manufacturers are and have for a long time been known as assemblers. This goes for Ford as well as Tesla. Tesla is not a battery company.

_da_ 9y ago
> Tesla is not a battery company. Tesla owns the world's largest battery factory.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

gozur88 9y ago

Electric cars are not a completely unrelated field. The big logistics and sales operations they're using today will largely be unchanged. In fact, I would argue Tesla is unlikely to succeed because of companies like Ford.

neom 9y ago
Ford and Tesla have considerably different sized supply chains, and supply chain re-tooling is probably the most difficult part of massive manufacturing volume. I would guess it will take Ford a few years just to regain capabilities, never mind the capacity to ship once that's done.
- gozur88 9y ago
  I don't see why Ford can't use its existing system to build electric cars.
  - neom 9y ago
    For the same reasons that Walmart can't just be Amazon.com or that John Deere doesn't make a 4 door sedan.
    - gozur88 9y ago
      All you're really saying is Ford can't build an electric car the same way Tesla plans to build electric cars. But electric cars aren't very different from conventional cars - Ford's logistics system is more likely to be an advantage than a disadvantage.
      - neom 9y ago
        Is that really all I'm saying? Please read about: Structural inertia, organizational restructuring, core competencies of a business. It's incredibly difficult for a large company to change direction, build new capabilities, and fundamentally switch it's core competency (in this instance from a manufacturing business to a technology business). I presume you've never run a business at scale?

MR4D 9y ago

That last sentence is money. For the first time I heard a car company CEO actually get that Tesla is different. The CEO of Toyota made a comment that what Tesla builds is more akin to the iPhone than a car. And he's right. Tesla builds a computer that happens to use a very large battery, weighs about 4,000 lbs, and has wheels. Nobody else in the business gets this. They think Tesla is just a car company with an electric motor, while completely ignoring the speed at which Tesla is able to roll out improvements. I've said for a while that until the car companies start thinking like a software company, they'll be further and further behind. The difference is (quite literally) a company with a multi-year long effort to roll out a new version versus a company running the automotive equivalent of Scrum.

ddingus 9y ago

Ford needs to electric assist their SUV products. An expedition, for example, is a great rig. I own one, and it's used for a lot of different purposes. I can't really replace it reasonably, and they run well for a very long time. I would consider another with an electric assist option. I collected gas use data for a few months. Mpg could be doubled in that vehicle for a modest weight increase that could likely be significantly offset with a weight reduction in other areas. Hybrid vehicles in the larger weight classes makes a lot of sense. Serms to me Ford would get a ton of expertise and gain relevance while adding a ton of value.