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I think you’re way oversimplifying the situation. BMW isn’t anything like Microsoft. It’s important to remember that, if you count hybrids, BMW already sells

I think you’re way oversimplifying the situation. BMW isn’t anything like Microsoft. It’s important to remember that, if you count hybrids, BMW already sells more electrified cars than Tesla and the vast majority of them at a more affordable price point than Tesla (the i3 is a pretty good value). BMW sells a ton of cars and has made pretty good progress on the electric front. They’re just not a hype machine like Tesla.

erikpukinskis 9y ago
Hype aside, we can say for certain that Tesla is _trying_ to ramp to five figure weekly production. The evidence we’ve seen is the Gigafactory, and Tesla’s official (legally binding) production plans. I haven’t seen any evidence that BMW or anyone other than perhaps Nissan, is currently trying to ramp production to 10k weekly. It’s not that I don’t think any of these cars are serious about the ramp—surely at least one is. There’s just no evidence any specific one is serious about it, besides vague “we’re serious about it” statements.
- Havoc 9y ago
  >Tesla is _trying_ to ramp to five figure weekly production. For context BMW produces 40k cars a week in total vs the 2k of Tesla. So when BMW says "not profitable enough to scale up for volume production" - they probably know what they're talking about. Sure it's 40k old fashioned petrols, but they seem pretty knowledgeable about scaling.
  - kokx 9y ago
    I think they are both having trouble scaling up different parts of the production line. So far, it seems that Tesla has been focussing quite a lot on getting great at producing batteries, including the logistics for that. Which is what they seem to be good at (given that they produce industrial size battery stations and batteries for home use as well). But they do not have as much experience in managing a mass production line for cars. BMW on the other hand has a lot of experience in mass producing cars, but they do not have as much experience for batteries. The hardest bottleneck for BMW might just be getting the batteries themselves. Tesla has worked hard on that by building their Gigafactory for example.
    - Havoc 9y ago
      I don't quite see lithium battery tech to be a market dominating advantage. Case in point - despite branding Gigafactory is at least in part a Panasonic operation. Don't believe me? See panasonic annual report: https://www.panasonic.com/global/corporate/ir/pdf/panasonic_ar2017_e.pdf https://www.panasonic.com/global/corporate/ir/pdf/panasonic_... Largest lithium battery supplier in the world? Panasonic. https://www.statista.com/statistics/235323/lithium-batteries-top-manufacturers/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/235323/lithium-batteries... BMW doesn't need experience in batteries - they'll buy them from a battery manufacturer. The real difference here is that BMW can afford a wait and see approach for another year or so. Tesla is all-in committed right now & it has to work out asap since they're making huge losses. For each dollar in sales they're incurring 1.3 in costs. Which brings us back full circle to BMW's comment: >"not profitable enough to scale up for volume production"
      - jhall1468 9y ago
        Panasonic owns a small part. There's over 300 Tesla employees at the factory vs ~50 Panasonic, and Tesla owns the building and the land. Panasonic leases part of the building and owns some of the equipment. If BMW is buying from the manufacturer, there's a high chance Tesla will be one of them.
        Havoc 9y ago
        >Panasonic owns a small part. There's over 300 Tesla employees at the factory vs ~50 Panasonic, and Tesla owns the building and the land. That's good info. Thanks
      - mf2hd 9y ago
        I think it's quite the opposite, battery production is the key. The problem is that no one can mass produce batteries for cars at this scale. As of now the projected capacity of the Gigafactory is enough batteries for 500k cars / year. By 2020 it will be 1.5M cars / year. This is more batteries than the whole world produced in 2013. By 2020 Tesla is gonna have a lot of experience how to do this efficiently so the cost will be much lower. They are gonna have a new gigafactory in the EU. Lithium mines can't produce enough lithium at this scale so Tesla already makes deals with them to ramp up the production. BMW makes 2.5 million cars a year. So what's the plan exactly? Just buy the batteries? From whom? When every other large car manufacturer wants to buy batteries and there is not enough on the market the price will go up. Every time I read something like Volkswagen|Mercedes|Audi|whatever plans to sell x ev cars by 2020 I never see any mention about who is going to make the batteries. I think the large car manufacturers are already behind, they should start working on their battery factories right now.
- Animats 9y ago
  Tesla is currently stuck around 800 Model 3 cars per week.[1] They ramped up to that level in late January. Up and down since then. They clearly have some major production line problem, but what it is hasn't come out yet. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/# https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/#
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Compared to their historical stuckness, they’re really not stuck. Model X took like four years to ramp to even 1k/week. Until they miss a major target by a year, there’s really nothing to talk about. They’re doing just fine.
    - Animats 9y ago
      They're about to miss a major target next week. "Musk said Tesla was ready for 1,000 a week at the start of the year and would ramp up to 2,500 a week by the end of March." - Bloomberg. They were at 355 a week at the beginning of 2018 and are at 810 now. Also, assembly lines don't "ramp up" well. Costs are relatively constant regardless of the number produced. Every station on the line has to be manned. An assembly line running at 1/6 speed means a product that costs up to 6x normal to make.
    - giobox 9y ago
      I don't think anyone serious would describe the Model 3 ramp-up as doing just fine. Musk's charisma coupled with the markets perception of Tesla's products as exciting and innovative appears to gives him far more leeway to constantly miss deadlines than would be tolerated at virtually any other automaker. The recent Tesla Roadster announcement was practically an exercise in distraction to divert attention from the Model 3 woes. Comparing their current poor performance to their past even worse performance arguably does not equate to "doing just fine".
sweden 9y ago
I don't think the situation isn't being oversimplified, I think OP's post is a good summary of the whole situation. I also don't think the i3 is good value. If you compare it to a BWM series 1, you can get a better car for a better price. On the other hand, a Tesla Model 3 is perfectably comparable to a BWM series 1. Tesla has been making good electric cars since 2012 and the BMW i3 was very limited in range until last year or so. The range was limited to 100km in a single charge and the car was being sold for more than 40000 euros (at least in Europe) which is very steep for such a crippled car.
- davewritescode 9y ago
  In the US a a couple years ago you were seeing leases for the i3 starting $250/month thanks to tax incentives. There were a couple of municipalities in my area who caught flak for giving public employees BMWs to use on the job but they were quite literally the cheapest option.
- kmonsen 9y ago
  I have an i3, I would say it is more fun to drive even then a fully loaded 3 series but it is compromised and terrible value.
- bobsil1 9y ago
  Model 3 was designed to go head-to-head with 3 Series.
- kokey 9y ago
  I think the reason why a Tesla is comparable to consumers in price/value to a BMW series 1 model are down the Tesla price being brought down through a combination of subsidies and a clever financing structure which isn't really profitable and sustainable long term. It's a deliberate strategy by Tesla to enter the market and reach critical mass to start benefiting from more economies of scale. It will probably only start to turn into a profitable strategy around 2020. BMW is not pursuing such a strategy to try capture market, as they sell about 2 million cars per year and at a profit. Tesla only made 300k cars, ever, at a loss. At some point BMW will grow their portion of electric cars as it becomes viable to do so profitably and hopefully that will be around the time that Tesla is also doing it profitably.
what_ever 9y ago
I always find at least one completely unrelated comparisons or story in HN threads. I also hate the sorting of comments on HN. Is there a way to change it by hot/top like on Reddit? So often the first comment is completely off-topic/with examples in GP and turns into a thread of few more unrelated comparisons and anecdotes. BMW and Microsoft are in way different situations. State of electric cars right now (mainstream) is nowhere close to state of ebook readers before Kindle.
- thinkloop 9y ago
  It is sorted by top comments, with brand new comments getting top spot temporarily so they are not instantly buried.
  - mattigames 9y ago
    It's a bad system; it promotes upvoting the already top-comment and commenting on it or the initial replies to it; the best way would be to pseudo-randomize posts order but biased towards those with higher score (e.g. so the top-rated-comment sometimes appears second, some rare times third; and some extremely rare times forth [regardless of how old any of those comments are])
    - ianai 9y ago
      I wonder if a two or three column view would be better. Could have a current best and newest sort. Third column could be random.
    - FabHK 9y ago
      An option to hide/expand comment trees might help, as you could easily hide the first comment (and everything that hangs off it) and check out the next ones (without having to manually scan indentation).
    - pathseeker 9y ago
      IIRC people replying to a comment without upvoting it will down-rank it. So OT discussions survive only if they are highly upvoted.
clarky07 9y ago
why are we counting hybrids? I'd really like an all electric car, but right I literally only have 2 options right now because i have a long commute. Tesla or Bolt. Nothing else has long enough range for me to get to work and back with any kind of leeway if I need to run to the store or something after work. It's incredibly frustrating that there aren't more competitors making serious cars that aren't just compliance efforts. 80 miles of range is just silly.
- semi-extrinsic 9y ago
  What's the problem with decent plug-in hybrids? For most people, 50 miles of pure electric range (Chevy Volt, Hyundai Ioniq, Honda Clarity) is more than enough for daily driving, and if you run out of electricity once or twice a month, you just run on petrol.
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    The only problem with hybrids is that everyone's predictions of their popularity appears to be wrong. If you'd like a head-to-head comparison: note that Chevy's Volt has become unpopular as Bolt as become popular.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  Electric cars still suck in the winter. Air resistance, electric heating, and poor cold weather performance of LiIon batteries deplete the usable range. At the very least manufacturers need to provide auxiliary fossil fuel heating systems that aren't a hazard like current kerosene heater hacks. There is also the problem that pure electrics are largely off limits to the rentier population with no access to a plug where they park their car.
  - djrogers 9y ago
    > rentier I don’t think that word means what you think it means... [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rentier https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rentier
djrogers 9y ago
> if you count hybrids With the imminent 48volt revolution in ICE cars, any vehicle can be a hybrid with next to no engineering at all. The leap from electrified to electric is huge, so comparing the two is kinda silly.
- hvidgaard 9y ago
  Going from ICE to Hybrid is not "next to no engineering at all". Not even close. To be a hybrid you take an existing car, put in everything you would in an electric car, except smaller and you have to place alongside the ICE. The gearbox is none trivial to make to incorporate both efficiently. It's simpler to make a fully electric car, than a hybrid, 48v ICE or not.
  - ianai 9y ago
    Anecdote: my rav4 hybrid really impresses upon me how complicated hybrids must be to engineer. It’s tempting to see it as “just two electric motors, a battery pack, and an ICE drive train”. But it’s clearly juggling many factors to figure out the optimal source of each increment of force.

erikpukinskis 9y ago

Hype aside, we can say for certain that Tesla is _trying_ to ramp to five figure weekly production. The evidence we’ve seen is the Gigafactory, and Tesla’s official (legally binding) production plans. I haven’t seen any evidence that BMW or anyone other than perhaps Nissan, is currently trying to ramp production to 10k weekly. It’s not that I don’t think any of these cars are serious about the ramp—surely at least one is. There’s just no evidence any specific one is serious about it, besides vague “we’re serious about it” statements.

Havoc 9y ago
>Tesla is _trying_ to ramp to five figure weekly production. For context BMW produces 40k cars a week in total vs the 2k of Tesla. So when BMW says "not profitable enough to scale up for volume production" - they probably know what they're talking about. Sure it's 40k old fashioned petrols, but they seem pretty knowledgeable about scaling.
- kokx 9y ago
  I think they are both having trouble scaling up different parts of the production line. So far, it seems that Tesla has been focussing quite a lot on getting great at producing batteries, including the logistics for that. Which is what they seem to be good at (given that they produce industrial size battery stations and batteries for home use as well). But they do not have as much experience in managing a mass production line for cars. BMW on the other hand has a lot of experience in mass producing cars, but they do not have as much experience for batteries. The hardest bottleneck for BMW might just be getting the batteries themselves. Tesla has worked hard on that by building their Gigafactory for example.
  - Havoc 9y ago
    I don't quite see lithium battery tech to be a market dominating advantage. Case in point - despite branding Gigafactory is at least in part a Panasonic operation. Don't believe me? See panasonic annual report: https://www.panasonic.com/global/corporate/ir/pdf/panasonic_ar2017_e.pdf https://www.panasonic.com/global/corporate/ir/pdf/panasonic_... Largest lithium battery supplier in the world? Panasonic. https://www.statista.com/statistics/235323/lithium-batteries-top-manufacturers/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/235323/lithium-batteries... BMW doesn't need experience in batteries - they'll buy them from a battery manufacturer. The real difference here is that BMW can afford a wait and see approach for another year or so. Tesla is all-in committed right now & it has to work out asap since they're making huge losses. For each dollar in sales they're incurring 1.3 in costs. Which brings us back full circle to BMW's comment: >"not profitable enough to scale up for volume production"
    - jhall1468 9y ago
      Panasonic owns a small part. There's over 300 Tesla employees at the factory vs ~50 Panasonic, and Tesla owns the building and the land. Panasonic leases part of the building and owns some of the equipment. If BMW is buying from the manufacturer, there's a high chance Tesla will be one of them.
      - Havoc 9y ago
        >Panasonic owns a small part. There's over 300 Tesla employees at the factory vs ~50 Panasonic, and Tesla owns the building and the land. That's good info. Thanks
    - mf2hd 9y ago
      I think it's quite the opposite, battery production is the key. The problem is that no one can mass produce batteries for cars at this scale. As of now the projected capacity of the Gigafactory is enough batteries for 500k cars / year. By 2020 it will be 1.5M cars / year. This is more batteries than the whole world produced in 2013. By 2020 Tesla is gonna have a lot of experience how to do this efficiently so the cost will be much lower. They are gonna have a new gigafactory in the EU. Lithium mines can't produce enough lithium at this scale so Tesla already makes deals with them to ramp up the production. BMW makes 2.5 million cars a year. So what's the plan exactly? Just buy the batteries? From whom? When every other large car manufacturer wants to buy batteries and there is not enough on the market the price will go up. Every time I read something like Volkswagen|Mercedes|Audi|whatever plans to sell x ev cars by 2020 I never see any mention about who is going to make the batteries. I think the large car manufacturers are already behind, they should start working on their battery factories right now.
Animats 9y ago
Tesla is currently stuck around 800 Model 3 cars per week.[1] They ramped up to that level in late January. Up and down since then. They clearly have some major production line problem, but what it is hasn't come out yet. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/# https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/#
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Compared to their historical stuckness, they’re really not stuck. Model X took like four years to ramp to even 1k/week. Until they miss a major target by a year, there’s really nothing to talk about. They’re doing just fine.
  - Animats 9y ago
    They're about to miss a major target next week. "Musk said Tesla was ready for 1,000 a week at the start of the year and would ramp up to 2,500 a week by the end of March." - Bloomberg. They were at 355 a week at the beginning of 2018 and are at 810 now. Also, assembly lines don't "ramp up" well. Costs are relatively constant regardless of the number produced. Every station on the line has to be manned. An assembly line running at 1/6 speed means a product that costs up to 6x normal to make.
  - giobox 9y ago
    I don't think anyone serious would describe the Model 3 ramp-up as doing just fine. Musk's charisma coupled with the markets perception of Tesla's products as exciting and innovative appears to gives him far more leeway to constantly miss deadlines than would be tolerated at virtually any other automaker. The recent Tesla Roadster announcement was practically an exercise in distraction to divert attention from the Model 3 woes. Comparing their current poor performance to their past even worse performance arguably does not equate to "doing just fine".

sweden 9y ago

I don't think the situation isn't being oversimplified, I think OP's post is a good summary of the whole situation. I also don't think the i3 is good value. If you compare it to a BWM series 1, you can get a better car for a better price. On the other hand, a Tesla Model 3 is perfectably comparable to a BWM series 1. Tesla has been making good electric cars since 2012 and the BMW i3 was very limited in range until last year or so. The range was limited to 100km in a single charge and the car was being sold for more than 40000 euros (at least in Europe) which is very steep for such a crippled car.

davewritescode 9y ago
In the US a a couple years ago you were seeing leases for the i3 starting $250/month thanks to tax incentives. There were a couple of municipalities in my area who caught flak for giving public employees BMWs to use on the job but they were quite literally the cheapest option.
kmonsen 9y ago
I have an i3, I would say it is more fun to drive even then a fully loaded 3 series but it is compromised and terrible value.
bobsil1 9y ago
Model 3 was designed to go head-to-head with 3 Series.
kokey 9y ago
I think the reason why a Tesla is comparable to consumers in price/value to a BMW series 1 model are down the Tesla price being brought down through a combination of subsidies and a clever financing structure which isn't really profitable and sustainable long term. It's a deliberate strategy by Tesla to enter the market and reach critical mass to start benefiting from more economies of scale. It will probably only start to turn into a profitable strategy around 2020. BMW is not pursuing such a strategy to try capture market, as they sell about 2 million cars per year and at a profit. Tesla only made 300k cars, ever, at a loss. At some point BMW will grow their portion of electric cars as it becomes viable to do so profitably and hopefully that will be around the time that Tesla is also doing it profitably.

what_ever 9y ago

I always find at least one completely unrelated comparisons or story in HN threads. I also hate the sorting of comments on HN. Is there a way to change it by hot/top like on Reddit? So often the first comment is completely off-topic/with examples in GP and turns into a thread of few more unrelated comparisons and anecdotes. BMW and Microsoft are in way different situations. State of electric cars right now (mainstream) is nowhere close to state of ebook readers before Kindle.

thinkloop 9y ago
It is sorted by top comments, with brand new comments getting top spot temporarily so they are not instantly buried.
- mattigames 9y ago
  It's a bad system; it promotes upvoting the already top-comment and commenting on it or the initial replies to it; the best way would be to pseudo-randomize posts order but biased towards those with higher score (e.g. so the top-rated-comment sometimes appears second, some rare times third; and some extremely rare times forth [regardless of how old any of those comments are])
  - ianai 9y ago
    I wonder if a two or three column view would be better. Could have a current best and newest sort. Third column could be random.
  - FabHK 9y ago
    An option to hide/expand comment trees might help, as you could easily hide the first comment (and everything that hangs off it) and check out the next ones (without having to manually scan indentation).
  - pathseeker 9y ago
    IIRC people replying to a comment without upvoting it will down-rank it. So OT discussions survive only if they are highly upvoted.

clarky07 9y ago

why are we counting hybrids? I'd really like an all electric car, but right I literally only have 2 options right now because i have a long commute. Tesla or Bolt. Nothing else has long enough range for me to get to work and back with any kind of leeway if I need to run to the store or something after work. It's incredibly frustrating that there aren't more competitors making serious cars that aren't just compliance efforts. 80 miles of range is just silly.

semi-extrinsic 9y ago
What's the problem with decent plug-in hybrids? For most people, 50 miles of pure electric range (Chevy Volt, Hyundai Ioniq, Honda Clarity) is more than enough for daily driving, and if you run out of electricity once or twice a month, you just run on petrol.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  The only problem with hybrids is that everyone's predictions of their popularity appears to be wrong. If you'd like a head-to-head comparison: note that Chevy's Volt has become unpopular as Bolt as become popular.
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
Electric cars still suck in the winter. Air resistance, electric heating, and poor cold weather performance of LiIon batteries deplete the usable range. At the very least manufacturers need to provide auxiliary fossil fuel heating systems that aren't a hazard like current kerosene heater hacks. There is also the problem that pure electrics are largely off limits to the rentier population with no access to a plug where they park their car.
- djrogers 9y ago
  > rentier I don’t think that word means what you think it means... [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rentier https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rentier

djrogers 9y ago

> if you count hybrids With the imminent 48volt revolution in ICE cars, any vehicle can be a hybrid with next to no engineering at all. The leap from electrified to electric is huge, so comparing the two is kinda silly.

hvidgaard 9y ago
Going from ICE to Hybrid is not "next to no engineering at all". Not even close. To be a hybrid you take an existing car, put in everything you would in an electric car, except smaller and you have to place alongside the ICE. The gearbox is none trivial to make to incorporate both efficiently. It's simpler to make a fully electric car, than a hybrid, 48v ICE or not.
- ianai 9y ago
  Anecdote: my rav4 hybrid really impresses upon me how complicated hybrids must be to engineer. It’s tempting to see it as “just two electric motors, a battery pack, and an ICE drive train”. But it’s clearly juggling many factors to figure out the optimal source of each increment of force.