21 ms·

Here's what you're missing... Most of the major automakers: Ford, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, etc do not have viable business models in the near future. They

• oliverx0 7y ago
  Gotcha, I can see that analogy making sense.
• jansan 7y ago
  iPhones did not need a charging network. They did not have any disadvantages besides the high price, which made them even more desirable. But I just do not see average people who live in condos buy an EV anytime soon.
  • NotSammyHagar 7y ago
    it's certainly a little inconvenient but people are already buying evs who live in condos in Seattle and San Francisco and probably other places. Don't forget apartments, they have the same issue
    • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      The higher end apartment buildings are getting chargers here in the Seattle area, while the lower ones are still slow on the uptake. It is just a matter of time now, anyways.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • bdamm 7y ago
    Then you need to look closer. A long range model 3 can go 310 miles and charge quickly at superchargers. Condo dwellers can basically treat this car just like a gas car with fewer fillup options. A lot of people should do the math on the model 3. The math is current car payment + 90% gas payment = new car payment on a model 3. The remaining 10% is what you pay for electricity.
    • sokoloff 7y ago
      Many people's car payment is $0.
      • bdamm 7y ago
        Then the car is a trade-in downpayment. Sure, if you can't afford a $20,000 car then there are very few Tesla options for you.
        • sokoloff 7y ago
          I can afford any production car. I choose not to allocate money that way and I’m far from unique there. We drive 10K miles per year across two drivers. My daily electric (LEAF) costs me $0.05/mi for energy (and I love it). My wife’s SUV costs $0.10/mi for gas and a few pennies for oil (and she loves it). She pays $600/year max for fuel. That covers about a month of Tesla car payment.
          • bdamm 7y ago
            Ah, it doesn't work out in your case because you've already made the transition to electric. We went from two gas guzzlers (one of them was a 40mpg diesel, the other a fairly typical 25mpg) to one model 3 and the financing equation easily works in our case. Obviously not everyone is going to give up a car, and the math doesn't work for everyone. But more people should be doing the math rather than just looking at the sticker price of the teslas.
            • sokoloff 7y ago
              Going from $0.11/mi to $0.05/mi ($0.20/kWh in MA) even at 20K miles per year saves $100/mo. That’s not economically compelling. Driving 1/4 of that (per driver) is even less compelling. I bought an electric because I wanted one (and there was $10K in government cheese in the trunk).
              • bdamm 7y ago
  • SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    > They did not have any disadvantages besides the high price iPhones couldn't run Flash (which powered all of the interactive content on the internet at the time), couldn't send MMS (which was the way everyone shared photos at the time) or run apps (which was how feature phones added functionality at the time). "Why on Earth would anyone want one of those!?" was a pretty common reaction, yet they still sold like hotcakes. In the case of Flash and MMS, the whole mobile internet changed to suit the iPhone. In the case of apps, Steve Jobs finally relented, leading to the single biggest software marketplace in the world.
    • _jal 7y ago
      > "Why on Earth would anyone want one of those!?" That reaction really only came from makers of competing phones. (RIM execs famously refused to believe the battery life was possible, Balmer threw very unconvincing dismissals.) Everyone else was standing in line to buy one.
      • zwischenzug 7y ago
        I think this is hindsight talking. I remember thinking (and hearing): 'Way too expensive' 'I want a tactile keyboard' 'Nice, but I don't need one' and so on.
        • addicted 7y ago
          The only commonwealthidespread complaint was about the lack of 3G and copy/paste. However, the overwhelming response to the iPhone was extremely positive. Even from non Apple sources. RIM didn’t think the iPhone was possible when it was first released. Google instantly changed the direction of their Android project when the iPhone was released.
          • clouddrover 7y ago
            > The only commonwealthidespread complaint Maybe also complaints about bad autocompletion?
  • philipcristiano 7y ago
    Depending on the version of the iPhone, they had disadvantages such as not being able to send MMS. https://www.imore.com/1st-generation-iphone-owners-mms https://www.imore.com/1st-generation-iphone-owners-mms
  • nordsieck 7y ago
    > But I just do not see average people who live in condos buy an EV anytime soon. Depending on where you live, there are sometimes EV charging spots in apartments/condos. To me, this is pretty clearly a supply/demand issue. Today, there aren't enough EV drivers for condos to care, but as the percentage of people who own EVs increases, more places will install chargers. It's the exact same process that resulted in gas stations being everywhere.
    • FireBeyond 7y ago
      And you'll start to see free charging evaporate (or appear in the form of rising rent/HOA fees). Condos can afford to "subsidize" a couple of free spots for a complex, but they're not going to be saying "free electric charging for hundreds of vehicles".
      • Agenttin 7y ago
        You'll probably end up paying to have one installed at a dedicated parking spot and get the power charged to you. It's going to be the equivalent of renting a spot in a carport instead of a standard uncovered parking. Most of the Apartments I've rented have had covered or garage parking available, I've never paid the extra for it, but it's there.
  • agumonkey 7y ago
    It's really unknown at that time. If (IF) a few changes in techniques, materials and manufacturing processes align, with the climate friendly mentality, it's far from impossible that ICE will vanish fast and be replaced by EVs. Of course these are all IFs: - battery chemistry: change in electrolyte, if not solid state - modular wiring (way less expensive cable to make and install) These two are worked on as of now, if they pan out, that's another drop in price and increase in usability. Taking in account that the amount of money flowing into EVs has most probably increase by an order of magnitude (German brands, etc, all are investing). This may very well cause an overall drop in prices in all parts. Commoditization.. Time will tell
  • asdfk-12 7y ago
    Condo associations in my city have been permissive/proactive about this issue, wiring a few parking spots near the building with 220v, and assessing the owner with the cost. Our city has also installed charging stations at public buildings to encourage EV adoption.
  • mwerty 7y ago
    Steve Ballmer points out iphone's "disadvantages": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qycUOENFIBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qycUOENFIBs The bet is that the advantages outweigh the negatives.
    • Dylan16807 7y ago
      I don't understand your air quotes. Being hundreds of dollars more expensive is objectively a disadvantage. "not a very good email machine" sounds right, in comparison to something like a blackberry. And that's it, he only listed those two things. He didn't try to make up fake reasons. Something being better does not mean the disadvantages somehow don't exist.
      • mwerty 7y ago
        Sorry, I should have been clearer. I did not mean to imply that they were fake reasons but they seem way less material in hindsight.
  • c2h5oh 7y ago
    You are right about infrastructure, but I'm not convinced it's going to be a deal breaker for many people living in condos. Even a level 1 charger (1.4kW) can add >50 miles worth of charge overnight (12h) and people living in condos tend to have a shorter commute. And it's going to get better - for example Ontario mandates 20% parking spaces have charger installed and remaining 80% be ready to have one installed since 2018. IIRC the requirement is 200A per parking spot.
  • colordrops 7y ago
    Some startup is going to create a condo/apartment charging network by sharing profits with landlords.
    • Nasrudith 7y ago
      Tesla is already on that sort of - there is a contact page about hosting superchargers but I am uncertain of the precise details.
• agumonkey 7y ago
  plus a tiny factor from the fact that Tesla is just out of the death trap and growing ... always raises the value a bit
• SEJeff 7y ago
  In addition to the very large market opportunity for their stationary storage batteries and solar panels / solar tiles. You can sell those big grid scale megapacks to virtually every government in the world. You can't necessarily sell Tesla cars to every person in most of the third world (or western first world for that matter!).
  • slg 7y ago
    There is also the potential taxi and trucking businesses if they ever nail self driving. These side businesses are what a lot of people are missing in the comments only talking about Tesla's car business. They are diversifying in a way that some other car companies aren't. I'm not 100% sure that the self driving tech will get where it needs to be for this to become viable anytime soon, but the same applies to Uber and they have a market cap near $60 billion largely based off that same upside.
• drummer 7y ago
  Except that flip phones appear to be making a comeback now.
• notJim 7y ago
  This seems really optimistic about the adoption of electric cars. I suspect adoption will be drastically slower than you're imagining, and hybrids as well as gas vehicles will remain relevant for a long time still. Toyota of course has the top-selling hybrid, and introduced a plug-in hybrid version recently. Ford was in the #2 spot and Toyota was again in the #3. Honda takes #5. I think the thesis of these automakers is that they can ride the transition from gas -> hybrid -> plugin hybrid -> electric. I hope you're right, but from what I see, it seems unlikely. Additionally, Nissan has the #4-selling electric car, and Chevy has the #2. I think you are overstating your case.
  • jbms 7y ago
    Automakers don't like gas/electric hybrids as they are more complex to design and manufacture than either gas or electric vehicles. Fuel-cell/electric hybrids are a different value proposition and will keep going. But they'll increasingly drop gas hybrids and jump to full electric, perhaps after the next generation of vehicles.
    • RussianCow 7y ago
      They're going to follow customer demand. If demand for electric cars remains low, they aren't going to abandon the types of cars that are selling really well for them in order to simplify the production process. And there are a lot of reasons to think that demand for electric cars is not going to skyrocket all of a sudden: range anxiety, lack of charging stations, gas prices being fairly low, the time it takes to charge, etc.
    • jppope 7y ago
      Honda's Tesla killing fuel cell civic has a price tag of $300K+.
  • ZeroGravitas 7y ago
    The number one factor that leads to one future or the other is battery price. With high battery prices the market stays with hybrids longer. With cheap and plentiful batteries it moves faster to full EV. What'll be interesting is if some vendors have access to lots of cheap batteries and so are living in one future while competitors are in the other.
• steve76 7y ago
  Toyota does not have a viable business model? What ???
• slumdev 7y ago
  Only sort of. John Q. Public has no reason to buy an EV. Today's gas prices don't put the same dent in his pocket that $5/gallon* gas did. And there's good reason to believe that $5/gallon gas is probably never coming back. I am for EVs, Tesla, and anything that can keep us from making large portions of Earth unarable and uninhabitable. But most people's car-buying decisions are driven by economic realities, not environmental concern. *$5/gallon US average price - I understand it's frequently this high on the coasts and in large cities, and it's almost always higher in countries with appropriately levied fuel taxes.
  • buttersbrian 7y ago
    Isn't this ignoring other parts of the world? Europe single handidly can drive this market. Also large portions of asia that would love affordable electric vehicles (not ness "cars") for their densely populated cities. Never mind the short range cargo vehicle market throughout the world.
    • hobofan 7y ago
      Europe currently faces a bit of an chicken and egg problem with the EV market. European manufacturers don't produce meaningful EVs which results in no subsidies that would accelerate the market (or those subsidies are also available to hybrids in their lineup which won't be driven in EV mode). In turn they don't have any incentive to move forward with their EV lineup, as most people are loyal to their local manufacturers.
      • ivanhoe 7y ago
        > as most people are loyal to their local manufacturers. This is perhaps true for a few countries making good cars. The rest of EU is more than happy to drive German and French cars (if they can afford it, of course).
      • woodandsteel 7y ago
        The EU has introduced fleet CO2 emission standards that are going to go up every year. As a consequence the European manufacturers are scrambling to design and produce ev's.
• kakwa_ 7y ago
  Well, in truth they most likely have something like a decade or so to adjust which is both not a lot and enough for such organizations to adjust. Sure some manufacturers will go bust and collapse, but other will adapt, and new ones will be created. I'm quite puzzled by Tesla's valuation, such a valuation is betting on it becoming a huge actor in the post IC automobile industry which is not a given. I'm also skeptical about the "Iphone moment", functionally the Iphone was a huge step forward (basically having a small computer in your pocket vs having something just doing phone calls, SMSes and snake), but a Tesla, well, right now, it's still a car which does more or less the same thing as any other car (just slightly better in some aspect, slightly worst in others). It's also not the same market, the Iphone appeared in the booming market of mobile phones which was seeing exponential growth at the time. And also, the gain in functionality and convenience was enough to transform the market from consumers willing to pay at most ~100$ for a flip phone to consumers willing to pay 1000$ for a smartphone with all that entails in term margins and profitability. The car market by contrast, is not seeing such a growth, and it's unlikely consumers will be willing to spend that much more for their car. There are potential market shift possible which could be caused by things like reliable autonomous vehicles, tighter regulations forbidding IC vehicles in some cities, cheaper cars (as EV are mechanically simpler, it's a possibility), but these are somewhat elusive. Tesla valuation is at the very least a huge bet.
  • ajross 7y ago
    > Iphone was a huge step forward (basically having a small computer in your pocket vs having something just doing phone calls, SMSes and snake) The iPhone wasn't the first smartphone. In fact when released it was significantly inferior to existing Symbian and Nokia offering in terms of "objectively useful" stuff like browser behavior, modem bandwidth and third party app support. Obviously it was transformatively better, in ways that the established players didn't understand enough to emulate, but it's not correct to imagine it as a first mover. In fact the Tesla/Apple comparison seems almost perfectly apt to me.
• tpowell 7y ago
  I still like reading the essay [1] from former Vice Chairman and Head of Product Development of General Motors Bob Lutz from time to time: “Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap.” I personally have bought my last internal combustion engine car. I had planned to purchase another vehicle by now, but will wait for the Model 3 (perhaps another?) to mature a bit then go electric. I’m curious how many others out there have changed their calculus, too. I think it’s very analogous to iPhone’s rise, which must account for the stock. [1] https://www.autonews.com/article/20171105/INDUSTRY_REDESIGNED/171109944/bob-lutz-kiss-the-good-times-goodbye https://www.autonews.com/article/20171105/INDUSTRY_REDESIGNE...