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That's been obvious to me for about 20 years. Ever since I read the case study in The Innovator's Dilemma explaining that electric cars would take over around

by btilly 8y ago

That's been obvious to me for about 20 years. Ever since I read the case study in The Innovator's Dilemma explaining that electric cars would take over around 2020. If Elon should burn out and crash Tesla, it will still happen. Only instead of being Tesla delivering the death blow, it will be those electric golf carts growing up, turning into full cars, and wiping out traditional automakers. Either way the underlying dynamic is the same. As batteries become good and cheap enough for mass cars, there is an opportunity for upstarts who only do electric to take on gas cars.

romed 8y ago
The case for electric cars taking over by 2020 is looking pretty darn wrong at this point, isn’t it?
- ricardobeat 8y ago
  Is it? In Europe we’re seeing sales shoot up like a rocket. Model 3 deliveries haven’t even started yet. With the Hyundai Kona and Kia Niro the market will grow even more, and in 2020 VW will start flooding the market with EVs.
  - jmisavage 8y ago
    My only concern with VW is whether they'll be able to produce those battery packs as fast as the cars. They're certainly ambitious, they want to make 100k the first year and the plant they're using can make 1,500 a day which sounds insane when you hear Tesla is only making 5,000 a month. [1] https://www.vwvortex.com/news/volkswagen-news/d-electric-hatch-will-get-three-battery-options-report/ https://www.vwvortex.com/news/volkswagen-news/d-electric-hat...
    - greglindahl 8y ago
      Tesla made 80,000 battery packs last quarter, and said that they peaked at 10,000 Model 3 battery packs in one week.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
  Sounds pretty good to me. It's not spot on, but maybe up to 5 years off? For being predicted 20 years ago, it's basically correct. The majority of new vehicles being fully electric will happen pretty soon. The economics of this happening are incredibly compelling, essentially inevitable. I would put this occurring before 2025, but it's hard to say. If the Chinese keep up the heavy push toward electrification, it will probably be sooner. If not, then later.
  - kllrnohj 8y ago
    > The majority of new vehicles being fully electric will happen pretty soon. No? Not even remotely close to true. The Model 3 broke into the best selling sedan list. That's great, but it's not even in the same ballpark as an EV taking the top vehicle sales spot much less EVs being the majority of new vehicles. Just to return to reality here there are more F150s sold in 6 months than Tesla has sold in its lifetime (450k; https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America/US/2018/07/03/18-june-sales.pdf https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America... vs. 300k; https://electrek.co/2018/02/14/tesla-delivered-300000th-vehicle/ https://electrek.co/2018/02/14/tesla-delivered-300000th-vehi...) In the first half of 2018 there were 8.5 million vehicles sold in the US alone. The Model 3's accomplishment of 40k vehicles is a rounding error.
    - bas 8y ago
      Agreed. There is a reason Ford is exiting the sedan market in the US.
    - romed 8y ago
      Right, it's amazing how blind people can be to reality. In Berkeley, the crunchiest of all possible american cities, the electric vehicle fleet is only 2% of cars on the road, and much less than 2% of all the vehicle-miles. Cars last for 20 years and in the last decade the median age of cars on the road has dramatically increased. For half the fleet to turn over you'd basically need for electrics to have 100% market share for many years.
- btilly 8y ago
  I said "around 2020", not "by 2020". His prediction was based on projecting technology curves out and comparing to a set of requirements around acceleration (able to merge onto a highway), range, and cost. Such projections out decades in advance are naturally imprecise. I would have considered it a darned good prediction if the first mass market electric cars had arrived anywhere between 2015 and 2025.
- pound 8y ago
  My next car would be electric. We just decided to wait couple of years to get more brands to choose from (now it's only model3 vs leaf vs bolt (and not sure about i3)) and I think many around us are in the same situation - right now it feels like it's past the very beginning of it being not on a hobbyist scale. So year or two - and that's exactly around 2020
threeseed 8y ago
> there is an opportunity for upstarts who only do electric to take on gas cars. Sure. But the mistake everyone makes is that the drive train technology is not what differentiates a car. It's the brand, the design, quality of interior, availability etc. Those are much harder for upstarts to get right as we've seen with Tesla.
- wmf 8y ago
  And I don't know if Tesla's drive train is that far ahead. Cars like the i-Pace have copied the dual-motor "skateboard" chassis, reasonable range, fast charging, etc. while including all the benefits of established car design/manufacturing.
  - SEJeff 8y ago
    Anecdotally, this teardown report seems to refute your statement a bit: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/tesla-model-3-stuns-german-engineers-wonders/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/tesla-model-3-stuns-ger...
    - threeseed 8y ago
      > was harshly critical of the build quality of the Model 3, calling it nearly as bad as a ’90s era Kia. Also it's obviously much simpler and cleaner to build a car with just a touchscreen as its main interface. But the problem is its a nightmare for driving.
      - SEJeff 8y ago
        Have you ever driven one? I’ve got a Model 3 and find it a bit different but not too bad at all. I love that I can click the camera button and get a huge HD rear camera view. “Its a nightmare for driving” sounds an awful lot like you’ve never seriously driven one. I was leery of the speedometer being in the center and not behind the steering wheel, but it isn’t all that different from diving a Mini, where the speedometer is a giant dial in the center console.
- 8y ago

by btilly 8y ago

romed 8y ago

The case for electric cars taking over by 2020 is looking pretty darn wrong at this point, isn’t it?

ricardobeat 8y ago
Is it? In Europe we’re seeing sales shoot up like a rocket. Model 3 deliveries haven’t even started yet. With the Hyundai Kona and Kia Niro the market will grow even more, and in 2020 VW will start flooding the market with EVs.
- jmisavage 8y ago
  My only concern with VW is whether they'll be able to produce those battery packs as fast as the cars. They're certainly ambitious, they want to make 100k the first year and the plant they're using can make 1,500 a day which sounds insane when you hear Tesla is only making 5,000 a month. [1] https://www.vwvortex.com/news/volkswagen-news/d-electric-hatch-will-get-three-battery-options-report/ https://www.vwvortex.com/news/volkswagen-news/d-electric-hat...
  - greglindahl 8y ago
    Tesla made 80,000 battery packs last quarter, and said that they peaked at 10,000 Model 3 battery packs in one week.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
Sounds pretty good to me. It's not spot on, but maybe up to 5 years off? For being predicted 20 years ago, it's basically correct. The majority of new vehicles being fully electric will happen pretty soon. The economics of this happening are incredibly compelling, essentially inevitable. I would put this occurring before 2025, but it's hard to say. If the Chinese keep up the heavy push toward electrification, it will probably be sooner. If not, then later.
- kllrnohj 8y ago
  > The majority of new vehicles being fully electric will happen pretty soon. No? Not even remotely close to true. The Model 3 broke into the best selling sedan list. That's great, but it's not even in the same ballpark as an EV taking the top vehicle sales spot much less EVs being the majority of new vehicles. Just to return to reality here there are more F150s sold in 6 months than Tesla has sold in its lifetime (450k; https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America/US/2018/07/03/18-june-sales.pdf https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America... vs. 300k; https://electrek.co/2018/02/14/tesla-delivered-300000th-vehicle/ https://electrek.co/2018/02/14/tesla-delivered-300000th-vehi...) In the first half of 2018 there were 8.5 million vehicles sold in the US alone. The Model 3's accomplishment of 40k vehicles is a rounding error.
  - bas 8y ago
    Agreed. There is a reason Ford is exiting the sedan market in the US.
  - romed 8y ago
    Right, it's amazing how blind people can be to reality. In Berkeley, the crunchiest of all possible american cities, the electric vehicle fleet is only 2% of cars on the road, and much less than 2% of all the vehicle-miles. Cars last for 20 years and in the last decade the median age of cars on the road has dramatically increased. For half the fleet to turn over you'd basically need for electrics to have 100% market share for many years.
btilly 8y ago
I said "around 2020", not "by 2020". His prediction was based on projecting technology curves out and comparing to a set of requirements around acceleration (able to merge onto a highway), range, and cost. Such projections out decades in advance are naturally imprecise. I would have considered it a darned good prediction if the first mass market electric cars had arrived anywhere between 2015 and 2025.
pound 8y ago
My next car would be electric. We just decided to wait couple of years to get more brands to choose from (now it's only model3 vs leaf vs bolt (and not sure about i3)) and I think many around us are in the same situation - right now it feels like it's past the very beginning of it being not on a hobbyist scale. So year or two - and that's exactly around 2020

threeseed 8y ago

> there is an opportunity for upstarts who only do electric to take on gas cars. Sure. But the mistake everyone makes is that the drive train technology is not what differentiates a car. It's the brand, the design, quality of interior, availability etc. Those are much harder for upstarts to get right as we've seen with Tesla.

wmf 8y ago
And I don't know if Tesla's drive train is that far ahead. Cars like the i-Pace have copied the dual-motor "skateboard" chassis, reasonable range, fast charging, etc. while including all the benefits of established car design/manufacturing.
- SEJeff 8y ago
  Anecdotally, this teardown report seems to refute your statement a bit: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/tesla-model-3-stuns-german-engineers-wonders/ https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/tesla-model-3-stuns-ger...
  - threeseed 8y ago
    > was harshly critical of the build quality of the Model 3, calling it nearly as bad as a ’90s era Kia. Also it's obviously much simpler and cleaner to build a car with just a touchscreen as its main interface. But the problem is its a nightmare for driving.
    - SEJeff 8y ago
      Have you ever driven one? I’ve got a Model 3 and find it a bit different but not too bad at all. I love that I can click the camera button and get a huge HD rear camera view. “Its a nightmare for driving” sounds an awful lot like you’ve never seriously driven one. I was leery of the speedometer being in the center and not behind the steering wheel, but it isn’t all that different from diving a Mini, where the speedometer is a giant dial in the center console.
8y ago