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VW plans to sell electric Tesla rival for less than $23K: source
- whtswrong 8y agoI think Teslas $35k is unreachable in the foreseeable future. But hey, doesn't hurt to try.
- Jedi72 8y agoWhy weren't they interested in making this ten years ago? Too busy cheating on the emissions tests to care about something actually real like lowering the carbon foorprint of your vehicles. Tesla forced these companies to do this, plain and simple, so if you're going to clap this it should really be Tesla getting the props.
- tomjakubowski 8y agoNissan was producing and selling a mass market electric car eight years ago, when Tesla still only had the Roadster.
- icelancer 8y agoTesla didn't sell mass market cars to jumpstart the industry, because that's not what the market wanted, very obviously. Elon correctly predicted the revolution needed to be an order of magnitude better in all competitive areas, not just slightly better or at par.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rohit2412 8y ago> Elon correctly predicted the revolution needed to be an order of magnitude better in all competitive areas, not just slightly better or at par. I don't think they are an order of magnitude better. Elon currently predicted that a personality cult and lies about futuristic capability sell cars
- icelancer 8y ago> I don't think they are an order of magnitude better. Elon didn't require rohit2412 to think this, fortunately. Just everyone else.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoHeck, there was GM's EV1 from the 90's. But apparently you were not allowed to own the damn thing, but people who leased it loved it. Maintenance wasn't a total mess apparently. Interesting car to look into. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
- rohit2412 8y agoThey cancelled it because it wasn't a profitable program. Not enough people loved it enough to lease it.
- mywittyname 8y agoAt minimum, Tesla took the leap of faith that everyone else was afraid to. I think it's difficult for the board members of traditional car companies to justify serious investment in EVs just 10 years ago. The major auto makers are heavily reliant on their supplier network in order to build cars. And the suppliers can't survive selling parts to just one manufacture, most of them need to sell to at least three automakers to survive. This is how the industry ends up Takata airbags / Bosch fuel pumps in half the cars sold in USDM/EUDM. It's hard to justify paying a supplier to develop technology you know they will license to the competition, but it's also risky to start developing battery tech independently. So most companies just bought what was available on the market. The original founders of Tesla knew this, which is why they licensed Lotus/Toyota parts and focused development on their own batteries and engines.
- Neil44 8y agoTen years ago they were busy making billions producing what the market wanted to buy, as was their duty to the shareholders.
- jacobush 8y agoThat, and cheating.
- rohit2412 8y agoBecause it couldn't be made 10 years ago. Look okay any chart of battery prices, and no, tesla is not responsible for them falling.
- siculars 8y ago“Exploratory talks” “...due to be discussed” Good luck! Hope to drive one soon. But talk to me when they’ve pushed the first one off the line.
- zaroth 8y agoTalk to me when they have a concept at a car show. Heck, talk to me when they have a rendering and a spec sheet!
- 013a 8y agoWe've got renders Notice how they all look like cars from Altered Carbon? And how the specs mention autonomous driving with a retractable steering wheel, augmented reality, and rear-facing front seats? VW will have these out by 2020 for sure. [1] https://www.volkswagen.co.uk/electric-hybrid/id https://www.volkswagen.co.uk/electric-hybrid/id [2] https://www.volkswagen.co.uk/electric-hybrid/concept-cars https://www.volkswagen.co.uk/electric-hybrid/concept-cars
- theOldManTheBoa 8y agoAnd when you take it off the test stand, it runs on diesel and the tears of children.
- walrus01 8y agoI'll believe it when I see it for sale, and not with a waiting list. Something I can actually write a check for and drive it home.
- aetherspawn 8y ago$23k hardly covers the battery, motor and controllers let alone the chassis or anything else, at all. I’d be surprised if this was any good at all. Would have to cut corners everywhere. Source: I design electric trucks.
- hndamien 8y agoI really hope the media holds them to their $23k claim as hard as they hold Tesla to $35k.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- freeflight 8y agoThere are quite a few e-car models in that price range, like Citroën C-Zero or Renault Zoe. Tho I wouldn't really consider those as "Tesla rivals".
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago>I’d be surprised if this was any good at all. Would have to cut corners everywhere. It's "engineering trade offs" when you do it and "cutting corners" when the competition does it.
- aetherspawn 8y agoIt’s one thing to say someone cuts corners but in the world of electric vehicles you really can cut corners. For example, have no precharge system. Don’t monitor the temperature of every battery cell. No manual disconnect for the high voltage battery. Put cab heater on the same coolant circuit as the engine so that if you use the heater the drivetrain efficiency plummets (but not on paper). Use an electric vacuum brake booster so you can leverage cheap components from petrol cars (although every single one I’ve seen has been prone to early failure). Skimp on your front brakes/calipers because you have regen. Completely ignore battery impact protection. Use non automotive components that are only rated to 60C because you can on an EV and not necessarily because you should. Select cheap low voltage components with barely a safety factor on HV bus without considering that IGBTs derate approx. 50% during a solar event.
- danhak 8y agoAt this stage, no automaker will be able to seriously compete with Tesla without securing 50+ GWh / yr. in battery supply. Tesla’s lead in building such capacity is 3.5 years and counting. Bidding for for LG’s scraps is not a viable strategy. VW group has been leading the world in electric vehicle press releases while Tesla has secured control of half the world’s lithium ion battery supply and crushed every “Tesla killer” — Bolt, Volt, Leaf, i3, ELR - and is pulling away from the pack at an ACCELERATING pace. Time to put up or shut up.
- cronix 8y agoAnd that's in an environment where they are mostly prohibited, in the US, from having dealerships. It's quite a feat, actually.
- ummonk 8y agoWait, what? How are they prohibited from having dealerships? If anything, the problem they have run into is that some states require them to have dealerships and sell through them instead of selling directly to the consumer.
- belltaco 8y agoThey probably meant having company owned dealerships.
- cronix 8y agoRight. It's an ancient dumb law that seems pretty unique to this industry going way back. How many other industries are prohibited from having their own stores and selling the products they produce themselves? It's like telling Apple they can't sell their hardware at their own branded stores and must only sell them from 3rd party retailers - at an additional markup so the retailer can make a few bucks too. It's anti-consumer and anti-competitive. If Ford wants to open their own stores to sell their own cars (not "dealer franchises"), why shouldn't they be allowed to?
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- ggregoire 8y agoI have no idea new cars were that expensive in Europe. I mean, salaries there are not like in the US, 40k€/y (net) is already a good salary, even for a developer. So you have to take a 5 years loan to buy a new car? 10 years if you have a low salary?
- BurningFrog 8y agoEuropeans don't have an American standard of living, on average.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoI would consider sane maternal/paternal leave, mandatory vacation, and healthcare to offset a lot of the materialistic wealth they don’t have. It’s really nice to be top 10% in US, but it’s nicer to be 20% to 80% in Western Europe, I would think.
- beerlord 8y agoYou pay for all that. In most countries even the lowest wage-earners have an effective tax rate of 60%, once you consider social security taxes, income taxes, VAT. It encourages tax evasion and byzantine corporate and individual accounting measures to minimise it. When you considering the very low fertility rates of Europe, I would consider this whole system to be unsustainable. The one thing that the rest of the Western world has right though is healthcare - basic services should be available at low cost to every citizen, and basic healthcare should not be a commercial or profit-driven exercise. I think its reasonable though if you want a hyper-expensive cancer treatment or surgery, you have to pay for that as part of private health insurance.
- kojeovo 8y agoIt's really hard to generalize European countries. For example, it's possibly to pay ~20% tax rate in Germany (after tax credits due to Kids) after having gone through free university with free healthcare. And then you have Sweden with 70%
- djrogers 8y agoWith no timeline, no pre-production vehicles to show, no specs, range, or even a rough outline of what one might get for $23k. Oh, and no batteries or factories set up for this yet. In what sense is this even a ‘Tesla rival’, other than the fact that it will be electric? You might as well call a Golf an F-150 competitor.
- browsercoin 8y agodon't worry. give them time, they'll figure it out. they've been building cars for a long time, far longer than Tesla.
- prostoalex 8y ago> they've been building cars for a long time, far longer than Tesla. In 2007 same could be said about Nokia vs Apple.
- browsercoin 8y agocar manufacturing is far more advanced and difficult than a smartphone which you can carry on your hand.
- cronix 8y agoSure, but the only real main similarities are they both have bodies, tires, windows, seats and a steering wheel. Just about everything else is completely different and needs to be "invented." The hard stuff.
- kojeovo 8y agoThe car part is the easy part. The alternative 'fuel' part on the other hand..
- leesec 8y agoWell, Tesla has been building electric vehicles infinitely longer than them, so
- martythemaniak 8y agoThe e-Golf costs $30k and goes 125 miles and they're going to sell a 220 mile range Tesla rival for $23k? It's great that they want to make more EVs, but don't expect any car company to have anything like that for at least another car generation (4 years?). Or they'll ship something with 125 miles and call it a Tesla rival.
- tbarkow 8y agoYou can buy a VW e-golf since at least 2015. It's a great car, but by no means a Tesla competitor. It retails for close to $30k, I got mine for under $20k after the federal rebate. IIRC, VW only really got into the electric car game as a condition of their emissions cheating settlement. FWIW.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoGM and Ford made EVs in the 90's to satisfy California. It didn't do them much good on the technology front.
- samfisher83 8y agoGM made an electric car. People liked it. For whatever reason GM decided to stop selling them and crushed all the cars. Mainly because the laws changed saying they didn't have to lower emissions.Also gas was super cheap. There is a great doc called who killed the electic car.
- browsercoin 8y agoI really don't think Tesla is going to make it out of this one. It's facing it's worst nightmare which is luxury car makers as well as mainstream manufacturers jumping both feet. They have been building vehicles far far longer and have the experience. Without Musk, I just don't see how Tesla is going to make it out of this one.
- leesec 8y agoMake it out of what? A competitor several years down the road? What are you talking about, and why do you think Musk isn't apart of Tesla? Seriously stop spreading this nonsense.
- foota 8y agoHow stupid am I for reading the title and thinking they were trying to sell a company for 23k?
- plink 8y agoI will be convinced VW are serious about this only if they intend to conceal a NOx generator somewhere in the chassis.
- cmrdporcupine 8y agoI'm no Tesla fanboy (more a fan of GM electrics) but I'm skeptical for many of the reasons others have listed but especially battery supply, and the history of VW/Audi group's handling of EVs. I'm sure they can make a Tesla rival that sells for $23k. But I fully expect you won't actually be able to buy one unless you live in California or some other place that legislates it. That's their history with the eGolf, which is not a bad car -- but they sold less than 500 of them last year in Canada and it wasn't because of demand.
- Certhas 8y agoBattery supply is going to explode in the next years. But either way, this is not like the eGolf situation of old. It's not an isolated experimental vehicle sold in small numbers. They built an entire platform for building many different models of electric cars. People mistake VW trying to squeeze as much as they can out of combustion engines for VW ignoring the future. Tesla forced their hand and has a real headstart. But consider this. While Tesla was figuring out how to build a single car at scale, VW has spent the last ten years figuring out how to build dozens of models from SUV to city car from a joint technological platform [1]. And they have spent the last three years developing a version of that platform for electric vehicles [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MQB_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MQB_platform [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MEB_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MEB_platform
- growlist 8y ago> VW has spent the last ten years figuring out how to build dozens of models ..whilst also managing to squeeze in figuring out how to cheat emissions tests! What a company.
- ovi256 8y agoThat's so easy it's done in embedded programming university classes. All VW did was turn on the 'cheat emissions' flag in the ECU supplied by Bosch. Don't get me wrong, it's still cheating.
- jasonwen 8y agoElon Musk won. This was his ultimate plan, to move automakers from fossil fuels. They all made fun of them, execs from traditional automakers, but here they are. We have a lot to thank him for.
- millzlane 8y agohttps://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
- ams6110 8y agoMostly agree. That was his stated purpose, and he's made tremendous progress. He showed the industry and the market that a pure EV could be practical and something you're not embarrassed to be seen in. Not sure I'd say he's won. EVs are still unsuitable for many purposes (I still would not buy one, though I feel less strongly about it now than I did a couple of years ago).
- cr0sh 8y ago> EVs are still unsuitable for many purposes One purpose where EVs are unsuitable - at least for now, and perhaps for a very long time - if off-road driving. First off, the battery technology isn't quite there yet; everything else technology-wise works and exists, and frankly would be damn awesome in a 4wd vehicle (the torque and the ease of controlling it, for one example). But the battery is the biggest stumbling block. For a 4wd off-road vehicle to be electric, the range would have to be able to be north of 300 miles (with all the weight and such a fully-stocked off-road vehicle needs - the frame, the tires, lift equipment, recovery gear, armor, etc - all of that before the weight of the batteries adds up to quite an amount). For an ordinary automobile, we're pretty much there (or close enough). But the battery weighs quite a lot, and isn't nearly as energy dense as fossil fuels. For instance, on the Model 3, the battery is roughly 1/4 of the total weight of the vehicle, and gets you about 300 miles. But for something like a Jeep Wrangler JK (which weighs approximately the same) the weight of fuel is only 1/27 of the total weight of the vehicle, though it gets you about the same range of 300 miles. Now you might say they seem pretty similar, but that's for roughly a stock configuration. With the JK, I have about 6-7 times the "breathing room" of adding extra stuff to it (bigger tires, skid plates, recovery gear, etc) before I hit the same 1/4 of the weight level of the Model 3. While my mileage will suffer, it probably won't suffer as much as if I did the same to an electric version of the vehicle. An electric JK has been built - conversion kits are available: https://www.emvcon.com/ https://www.emvcon.com/ ...and the vehicle performs admirably. While it has proven capable for this, there were a couple of caveats: 1. IIRC - the vehicle was trailered in and out of the area; it didn't drive there, run the trail, then drive home. 2. It had to be charged at a base camp; I am not sure what that entailed. Those are big things - not everyone trailers their off-road vehicle; I would imagine that many drive to a trail, do the trail, then drive home. Most carry extra fuel (at least they do if they know what's good for 'em). They don't carry that fuel in a tank on a trailer, nor do they generally set up a "fueling staging area" in order to get home or finish the trail. They carry the fuel with them. You can't do that with an electric 4wd vehicle - at least not easily. You'd have to either (somehow) carry an extra battery pack (on a trailer or something), or you'd have to carry it with another vehicle, or stage it somehow, or something of that nature. Or you'd have to have a generator setup (and brought in the same way). Forget solar panels; you couldn't set up an array large enough to charge the vehicle in any reasonable time span. These and other reasons (such as the cost - electric conversions are not cheap, and that's on top of an already expensive vehicle) will likely keep me out of the offering for a long while. For a certain segment of the population (those with a lot of money to play with, mainly) - they are available, although they are more a curiosity than a practical system - but that's just my opinion. For other uses, though - in fact, most typical uses - I think electric vehicles are ready for the mass market and practical for most use cases. I'd personally love to be able to get something like a small electric pickup for a daily driver to go to work, and the occasional need I sometimes have to haul things from a home improvement store or the like. Basically, I'd love to see a return of the Ford Ranger EV they once sold, but with today's LiPo tech and not the old and heavy lead-acid they used in the past...
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoA commuter box is not a rival to a Tesla performance vehicle. That's a linkbait title. And even as other ecar source come online and fill out the ecosystem, Tesla can still win by 'selling ammunition' e.g. batteries.
- Svoka 8y agoAll I seen from VW so far is hybrids and empty promises. Tesla is already selling fully electric cars and may be we'll get another model until VW actually ship something.