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I gotta give it to them, it's insane how fast they're moving. In less than a decade they've gone from one highly niche electric supercar to a luxury sedan, a l
by a13n 8y ago
I gotta give it to them, it's insane how fast they're moving.
In less than a decade they've gone from one highly niche electric supercar to a luxury sedan, a luxury SUV, a mid-range sedan, and a mid-range SUV.
And in sales they're crushing competition that have been building cars for literally a hundred years.
So excited for the zero-exhaust future.
- jes5199 8y agoin what sense is this an SUV? It looks just like a sedan
- Amygaz 8y agoWell the Kia Niro can apparently be an SUV, even if it is barely bigger than a Corolla. (Niro owner here)
- robterrell 8y agoGot a mini-review for us?
- jorisw 8y agoIt’s a CUV. A compact SUV.
- jtuente 8y agoCUV is crossover utility vehicle.
- magicalhippo 8y agoThis is almost getting as silly as music genres.
- a13n 8y agoIt has 3 rows of seats and seats 7 people.
- crooked-v 8y agoSo... a station wagon?
- kop316 8y ago"So excited for the zero-exhaust future." Is it zero exhaust? Where do you get your energy from? Is it from a caol plant? A nuclear plant? Its more you don't see the exhaust.
- unethical_ban 8y agoNuclear is zero-exhaust. Its waste (more generic term) is a unique and complex, but not impossible, problem to solve. I can only hope we spin up more nuclear.
- tibbon 8y agoDepends where you live and drive. Some states like Vermont get almost all of their energy from renewables. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/24/climate/how-electricity-generation-changed-in-your-state.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/24/climate/how-e...
- volkl48 8y agoIt's worth noting those graphs are about what power is generated in-state, not what power is consumed in-state. In VT's case, they shut down a nuclear plant with no in-state replacement for the power, and now they buy 60% of their power from out of state. A lot of which comes from Hydro-Quebec, so it's often still renewable in their case.
- goshx 8y ago“future” can be zero exhaust.
- kop316 8y agoIt can be, but the grandparent comment seemed to imply that just switching to electric cars will do that, which is disingenuous. It can help, but the power grid needs to be overhauled as well. If electric cars do take over, that will cause a substantial increase of needed power, something I don't know if it can today. Right now the USA hasn't built a nuclear reactor in decades. I would love to see a more distributed power network (I.e. every home has solar and wind power).
- clouddrover 8y ago> And in sales they're crushing competition that have been building cars for literally a hundred years. I don't think that's a realistic assessment of where Tesla is at as a car company. Tesla is still not very good at the actual making of cars. For example, in the last five years Tesla has had more health and safety violations in their factory than the top ten automakers in the US combined: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/03/01/tesla-safety-violations-dwarf-big-us-auto-plants-in-aftermath-of-musks-model-3-push/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/03/01/tesla-sa... Tesla cars have among the worst reliability of any car brand: https://www.consumerreports.org/media-room/press-releases/2018/10/consumer_reports_annual_reliability_survey_tesla_and_other_domestic_brands_take_big_steps_backwards_in_rankings11/ https://www.consumerreports.org/media-room/press-releases/20... https://www.truedelta.com/car-reliability-by-brand https://www.truedelta.com/car-reliability-by-brand Consumer Reports no longer recommends the Model 3 due to its lack of reliability: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/tesla-model-3-loses-cr-recommendation-over-reliability-issues/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf... In 2018, Toyota and Volkswagen each sold over 10 million cars: https://www.autoblog.com/2019/01/11/vw-group-2018-total-sales/ https://www.autoblog.com/2019/01/11/vw-group-2018-total-sale... Whereas Tesla has sold about 550,000 cars in 11 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Sales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.#Sales Volkswagen is starting its push into EVs. They'll be releasing multiple electric models across multiple brands every year from now on. Porsche, Audi, VW, Skoda, and SEAT to start. I'm sure there'll be electric Lamborghinis, Bentleys, and Bugattis eventually (if you're in the market for those): https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-electric-insight/bet-everything-on-electric-inside-volkswagens-radical-strategy-shift-idUSKCN1PV0K4 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-electric-insig... Volkswagen also wants to license its MEB electric car platform to other manufacturers. They already have one licensee: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/05/volkswagen-wants-to-share-its-meb-platform-with-other-companies-starting-with-e-go/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/05/volkswagen-wants-to-sha... I think Tesla's main problems are that they are a small car company with an erratic CEO, inefficient and unreliable manufacturing, and they're about to face a lot of electric car competition from one of the biggest car companies in the world.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
- tootie 8y agoI live near one of the busiest highways in the country and it's just sorta background noise for the neighborhood. I'm not sure people realize not only how much exhaust is spewing out of that road, but also the noise. The volume level of major cities is going to decrease dramatically.
- bryanlarsen 8y agoUnfortunately tire noise contributes about 50% of the volume.
- frabert 8y agoTire noise has a much different "sonic signature" compared to exhaust noise and ICE noise, it is much closer to "white" noise and has not as much rumble. I'm not saying it's necessarily any better, but maybe it's going to be less annoying.
- i_cant_speel 8y agoMaybe on the highway, but I would imagine that's not the case in major cities where cars are generally moving < 30 MPH.
- GoMonad 8y agoAt highway speeds, the sound of a modern cars (ICE or otherwise) is mostly tire noise. Electric cars are much quieter at slower speeds, when tire noise is minimal.
- mrfusion 8y agoCan we get electric tires then? (Or figure out how to fix tire noise)
- ccozan 8y agoIs not the tires 100%. The asphalt or the road composition and degradation plays a role. We have a small highway section which was newly done (somewhere in Germany). They seemd to use a different composition and construction method, man, this road is soo silent, even at >200km/h.
- glaberficken 8y agoCan someone explain to me how EV's can scale in older urban residential areas (most european cities) where cars are typically parked on the street (i.e. no private parking spaces)? I just can't see how the logistics of charging would work for more than a few EVs per city block...
- aglavine 8y agopublic plugs
- bastawhiz 8y agoI've seen EV charging stations at offices and supermarkets in some pretty "old" places. I could imagine seeing them in more places where you park for a while.
- issa 8y agoA few possible answers and solutions: 1) People who live in urban residential areas in Europe don't typically drive very far on a daily basis. So charging doesn't have to be as common a thing as it is in the US. 2) Charging stations at work places. I don't know the numbers, but I would assume a decent percentage of Europeans who drive to work have a parking lot at their jobsite. 3) Highway rest stops. The "travel plaza" type of rest stop is common in europe and could accommodate intercity travelers. 4) Battery swapping technology may help down the road.
- dariusj18 8y ago5) A charging service (a truck with a big ass battery) that your car or you calls for and uses the car's gps to find and charge it. 6) Your car auto drives itself to the charging station and drives back during off hours. 7) All this is moot, electric and self driving technology will so absolutely revolutionize transportation that these problems will not be applicable.
- HALtheWise 8y agoThere are other places we could imagine setting up chargers too, like at grocery markets or other stores. Because Tesla batteries (and some but not all other EVs) are massively oversized for a typical single day's drive, you probably only need to charge every 1-2 weeks unless you are taking a trip, in which case you use superchargers or such.
- techslave 8y agohow again are they crushing the competition? they sell in a year what toyota manufactures in a day. a long reservation list isn’t an indicator of success, it’s an indicator of demand. and the demand, in relative scale, is low.
- qdog 8y agoThe competition would be specific models, https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/04/tesla-model-3-sales-32-of-all-small-midsize-luxury-car-sales-in-december-usa/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/04/tesla-model-3-sales-32-... Rav4 Hybrid also uses some Tesla tech. While unclear if they will continue to dominate market segments they enter, Tesla has been more successful than I ha d imagined by this point.
- a13n 8y ago> they sell in a year what toyota manufactures in a day You're off by more than an order of magnitude. Tesla sold 250k cars in 2018, and Toyota makes < 25k/day. Not to mention the Tesla number is growing substantially, while the Toyota number is flat.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bryanlarsen 8y agoToyota takes about 2 weeks to do what Tesla does in a year. (10million vs 400,000)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- magicnubs 8y ago> a mid-range sedan, and a mid-range SUV Is there a definition for mid-range vs luxury? I wouldn't consider a sedan that starts at $35K (with an average sale price of $60K), or an SUV that starts at $47K (over 50% higher than the median US worker's gross personal income[0]) mid-range. Both the Mercedes A-class and Audi A3 start at $32.5K even. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...
- andrepd 8y agoI get what you're saying, but 55,000€ is not midrange. It's more expensive than a BMW series 5.