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You need a charging network to fix range anxiety, and infrastructure to make batteries at scale. Charging network the major brands don't really have an answer f

You need a charging network to fix range anxiety, and infrastructure to make batteries at scale. Charging network the major brands don't really have an answer for yet. And as for batteries, the major brands are still stuck at the small batch, high end segment of the market, because no one makes enough batteries to tackle the lower ends of the market except Tesla — everyone else just buys their batteries from Asia. BMW is trying to reopen their old, shuttered plants, but still are only aiming to be able to support 20-25% of their cars being electric by 2025, despite claiming that a fraction of that by 2020 constitutes "mass production." [1] That's a long "for now." [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaclyntrop/2018/07/01/bmw-is-gearing-up-to-mass-produce-batteries-in-house-for-2020 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaclyntrop/2018/07/01/bmw-is-ge...

gamblor956 8y ago
BMW sold nearly 600k each of the last few years, so even if "only" a quarter of their sales are EV, that's still almost as many cars as Tesla sells each year. And that's just one competitor out of a dozen, all of whom have significantly more marketing muscle and better supply chain and maintenance networks than Tesla.
- Latteland 8y ago
  bmw should theoretically be able to make good electric vehicles, but jaguar and porsche aren't making evs at scale. The new ipace will be a 20k car, the porsche was about 20k/year, and audi's etron something will not be available except for special order. I think they are being dragged into making evs, but there is a shortage of batteries at least at the current time. Of course these companies can make great cars, but it goes against their expertise in gasoline drive trains, and their dealers will be significantly impacted by less maintenance on evs.
- prostoalex 8y ago
  > and better supply chain Curious how well that will work with shift to electric. Tesla claims that spending so much on Gigafactory will give them the lowest cost per kWh compared to everyone else. Someone like GM might be a big kahuna in the internal combustion world, but as far as buying lithium ion batteries on the open market they will have to line up behind Tesla, Apple, Samsung, home battery companies and those no-name Amazon brands building power banks.
- reissbaker 8y ago
  I agree with what other posters have said in response to this comment, but also: what you're implying is that what BMW will be able sell in 2025 is equivalent to what Tesla already sold in 2018. By 2020 Tesla will already have launched the Model Y, and by 2025 no doubt many other popular lines such as the planned pickup truck, and significantly expanded their battery manufacturing capacity: they're already building new Gigafactories, in seven years who knows how many they'll have. Seven years ago they only sold Roadsters; now their North American sales numbers are on par with the Honda Accord. Aiming to sell in seven years what Tesla sells today isn't going to be enough to catch up. No doubt someone will turn into the Google and Samsung to Tesla's Apple; this isn't a winner-take-all market. But it seems like Tesla's pretty far ahead and still accelerating, so there'll be quite a few Kodaks along the way too. TBH I don't think the biggest danger to Tesla comes from BMW or VW going electric — it's from Alphabet's Waymo and GM's Cruise going self-driving. That's a potentially huge industry shakeup, and is an area where Tesla doesn't necessarily have an advantage... Although considering the amount of data Tesla collects for free from every car (each one has onboard LTE and WiFi — that the customer paid for! — and uses it to collect and upload driving data for Autopilot), they might be able to compete. We'll see. Their big bet here is that they can use their data collection abilities to advance the state of the art in computer vision fast enough that they don't need lidar, which is a controversial opinion; TBH I think it's a no-brainer that eventually it's possible — humans navigate with only two eyes, whereas the cars have eight eyes and a radar, and never get tired, bored, or drunk — but I don't know if they'll get there faster than Waymo and Cruise can build out their proposed fleets. That being said, if Tesla's right, they'll be right in a way that gives them a pretty serious additional moat beyond battery manufacturing capacity: lidar is much more expensive than radar, and Tesla would be the only firm able to operate with that cost advantage since everyone else teched into lidar. Anyway, I don't think BMW (or anyone) will beat Tesla merely by going electric. They might still die, but not from that.
hndamien 8y ago
Don't forget they also need to appease their dealer networks and work out over the air updates when the car is built by thousands of parts contractors.

gamblor956 8y ago

BMW sold nearly 600k each of the last few years, so even if "only" a quarter of their sales are EV, that's still almost as many cars as Tesla sells each year. And that's just one competitor out of a dozen, all of whom have significantly more marketing muscle and better supply chain and maintenance networks than Tesla.

Latteland 8y ago
bmw should theoretically be able to make good electric vehicles, but jaguar and porsche aren't making evs at scale. The new ipace will be a 20k car, the porsche was about 20k/year, and audi's etron something will not be available except for special order. I think they are being dragged into making evs, but there is a shortage of batteries at least at the current time. Of course these companies can make great cars, but it goes against their expertise in gasoline drive trains, and their dealers will be significantly impacted by less maintenance on evs.
prostoalex 8y ago
> and better supply chain Curious how well that will work with shift to electric. Tesla claims that spending so much on Gigafactory will give them the lowest cost per kWh compared to everyone else. Someone like GM might be a big kahuna in the internal combustion world, but as far as buying lithium ion batteries on the open market they will have to line up behind Tesla, Apple, Samsung, home battery companies and those no-name Amazon brands building power banks.
reissbaker 8y ago
I agree with what other posters have said in response to this comment, but also: what you're implying is that what BMW will be able sell in 2025 is equivalent to what Tesla already sold in 2018. By 2020 Tesla will already have launched the Model Y, and by 2025 no doubt many other popular lines such as the planned pickup truck, and significantly expanded their battery manufacturing capacity: they're already building new Gigafactories, in seven years who knows how many they'll have. Seven years ago they only sold Roadsters; now their North American sales numbers are on par with the Honda Accord. Aiming to sell in seven years what Tesla sells today isn't going to be enough to catch up. No doubt someone will turn into the Google and Samsung to Tesla's Apple; this isn't a winner-take-all market. But it seems like Tesla's pretty far ahead and still accelerating, so there'll be quite a few Kodaks along the way too. TBH I don't think the biggest danger to Tesla comes from BMW or VW going electric — it's from Alphabet's Waymo and GM's Cruise going self-driving. That's a potentially huge industry shakeup, and is an area where Tesla doesn't necessarily have an advantage... Although considering the amount of data Tesla collects for free from every car (each one has onboard LTE and WiFi — that the customer paid for! — and uses it to collect and upload driving data for Autopilot), they might be able to compete. We'll see. Their big bet here is that they can use their data collection abilities to advance the state of the art in computer vision fast enough that they don't need lidar, which is a controversial opinion; TBH I think it's a no-brainer that eventually it's possible — humans navigate with only two eyes, whereas the cars have eight eyes and a radar, and never get tired, bored, or drunk — but I don't know if they'll get there faster than Waymo and Cruise can build out their proposed fleets. That being said, if Tesla's right, they'll be right in a way that gives them a pretty serious additional moat beyond battery manufacturing capacity: lidar is much more expensive than radar, and Tesla would be the only firm able to operate with that cost advantage since everyone else teched into lidar. Anyway, I don't think BMW (or anyone) will beat Tesla merely by going electric. They might still die, but not from that.

hndamien 8y ago

Don't forget they also need to appease their dealer networks and work out over the air updates when the car is built by thousands of parts contractors.