9 ms·
Tesla says its battery innovations will deliver its goal of a $25,000 car
- new_realist 6y agoTesla was over promising like Nikola from when before it was cool.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- DarmokJalad1701 6y agoNikola has CGI and a truck they rolled down a hill. Tesla has 3 factories on two continents pumping out ~500k cars per year, 1 million+ cars on the road, and two more factories under construction. If you can't see the difference ... I don't know what to tell you. My condolences.
- cma 6y agoRemember the solar shingles at the SolarCity acquisition presentation? Non-functional aspirational mock-ups to squeeze through a deal to bail out family.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wuickvomment 6y agoI worked at solar city for a couple of months last year. The solar shingles are bought from as panels from China, disassembled and then put together anew. I was personally in charge of testing each shingle worked so I know they take solar power and convert it. A lot of the shingles would crack (we had boxes full of junk ones) but overall I think they are manufacturing a real product (even if it’s just a snazzy upgrade of Chinese panels)
- zwily 6y agoAnd Tesla is actually selling those solar shingles today. Good example.
- itsoktocry 6y agoNo they are not. Show us where they sell those slate or terracotta solar tiles they demonstrated. They are sourcing pure black tiles from China, that anyone can buy. That's it.
- DarmokJalad1701 6y agoWhy do you want an older prototype when there is something in production right now with much better specs and pricing? They have obviously iterated on the product and is now on version 3. > They are sourcing pure black tiles from China, that anyone can buy. Wait, there's someone else on the market selling solar roof tiles in the US with a 30 year warranty and rated to survive hits from 1.75" diameter hail and 166 mph winds? This is the first time I am hearing of it! Surely if it is all just bought from an upstream supplier surely someone else can also make bank buying it in bulk and reselling it undercutting Tesla. I would be interested to see a link to this supplier/installer. Thanks.
- cma 6y agoI think he is referring to this, they seem to come from Changzhou, where Tesla has no plant: https://l0dl1j3lc42iebd82042pgl2-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/roof-tile-label-1200x900.jpg https://l0dl1j3lc42iebd82042pgl2-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-... https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/01/29/does-tesla-make-solar-glass-roof-tile-in-its-buffalo-factory-or-in-china/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/01/29/does-tesla-make-solar... Maybe you can't buy them elsewhere in the US because Tesla has an exclusive distributorship deal. That's very different than what was presented during the solar city acquisition, and billion in subsidies for the New York plant... You can also buy the Boring Company's state of the art brick machine invention on Ali Baba. The cyber quad was a Yamaha four wheeler with some steel panels and I believe a motor setup from someone else's electric bike.
- DarmokJalad1701 6y agoYou can literally buy a Solar Roof right now and they are hiring installers around the country. Their solar roof sales tripled in the last quarter compared to the quarter prior to that. I suppose all those home-owners are perfectly happy paying $32k+ for "non-functional aspirational mock-ups".
- cma 6y agoThey had to grow the shingles to near panel size.
- gamblor956 6y agoTesla sold less than 400k cars last year. For comparison, Toyota sold more than 10.4 million cars in 2019. Ford sold more F150s in 2019 than Tesla has sold cars in the past 3 years.
- DarmokJalad1701 6y agoTesla sold ~50k cars in 2015. They sold ~250k cars last year. They are on track to sell 500k this year. See a trend there? And they just laid out concrete plans on how to grow by ~50% annually over the next 10 years. You are on hackernews. Surely you know how compounded growth works. Where do you think all this added market share comes from? Toyota's sales dropped by over 20% this year compared to the same time last year. Ford's global sales dropped over 30% this year and they lost billions of dollars. In the same time period, in the midst of a global pandemic, and having to shut down their main factory for over 8 weeks, Tesla's deliveries grew 20% YoY in the first half of 2020. The Model 3 outsold even the Camry and Accord in California earlier this year. "The horse-breeder laughs at the automobile man because he thinks no one can afford to buy one. Where is the horse breeder today?"
- gamblor956 6y agoYou're not describing compounded growth, you're describing S-curve growth, meaning that they're close to plateauing. Based on numbers out of Europe, it appears that Tesla has already nearly saturated the market of potential upper-class EV buyers, barring the actual introduction of a $25k EV with 500+ miles of range, or substantial upgrades to the interiors of their cars. Toyota's sales dropped by over 20% this year compared to the same time last year. Ford's global sales dropped over 30% this year and they lost billions of dollars. True, as did Tesla's sales (see linked pdf below for % sales reduction for 2020). Notably, Tesla's profits were (again) due to higher regulatory credit sales to other car companies. Indeed, this continues the trend of Tesla recording a profit only in quarters in which it is able to make regulatory credit sales. And while Ford reported a loss on vehicle sales...like Tesla...they similarly reported a Q2 profit due to non-vehicle income (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/30/ford-f-earnings-q2-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/30/ford-f-earnings-q2-2020.html). Tesla's deliveries grew 20% YoY in the first half of 2020. Yes, it's also a common complaint on the Tesla forums that cars built in 2019 weren't deliverable for months due to shoddy work requiring weeks or months of fixes. It's not surprising that deliveries would grow in 2020 as they finally had the time to fix the cars they already built so they could actually deliver them. Notably, their YoY numbers for H12020 for California are down almost 19%. The Model 3 outsold even the Camry and Accord in California earlier this year. This is false. Tesla reported 43,706 new Model 3 registrations in Q1+Q2 2020, while Toyota reported 43,821 new Camry registrations for the same period. (https://www.cncda.org/wp-content/uploads/Cal-Covering-1Q-20-REVISED.pdf https://www.cncda.org/wp-content/uploads/Cal-Covering-1Q-20-..., https://www.cncda.org/wp-content/uploads/Cal-Covering-2Q-20.pdf https://www.cncda.org/wp-content/uploads/Cal-Covering-2Q-20....) The horse-breeder laughs at the automobile man because he thinks no one can afford to buy one. Where is the horse breeder today?" Horse breeders are better off today than they were back then. Horses cost more than cars. And with all due respect, the guy who said that quote knew jack shit about the rarity with which people actually used horses for traveling in the U.S. Most people outside of rural America didn't have space for a horse. Cars took off precisely because they were easier to maintain and store than horses. Indeed, the comparison is somewhat apt but in a different manner than you intended: EVs are the horses in this situation: most people don't have the means to charge EVs at home (or the money to afford the cost of installing a charger), nor do they have the spare time to spend hours charging their EVs, which severely limits the market of people who can buy EVs. For the foreseeable future, regular ICE cars are still far more convenient...as they were against horses more than a century ago.
- itsoktocry 6y ago>If you can't see the difference And Theranos was testing people's blood. Just not with the technology they claimed to have.
- DarmokJalad1701 6y agoSo what is your point? Are you saying that Tesla is outsourcing manufacturing or something? Are you serious? You can literally visit one of their factories and see the cars being made. My Model 3 gets 310 miles on a charge as they "claimed" it has, while no other manufacturer's EV gets even close. It goes 0-60 in under 4 seconds now while it was closer to 4.4 when I bought it. It charges at 250kW as "claimed". The UX on their display is super-smooth compared to clunky screens and buttons/dials on legacy auto's cars. What are these technologies that you say they are claiming to have but do not have?
- mensetmanusman 6y agoI wonder if they will adjust this price for inflation in 3 years. Imagine how disruptive it would be if Tesla actually released something like this to undercut the internal combustion engine competition. Our noise pollution would surely go down...
- zwily 6y agoAt the current inflation rate, there’s not much adjusting necessary...
- muzika 6y agoDepends on where you get the numbers for the current inflation rate.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoCurrently all the inflation is being concentrated in real estate prices. If that starts spilling over into auto (with low interest loans, etc.) or consumer goods, we could see it increase. The Fed just alluded to being okay with inflation above 2% for a few years if the weighted average was below 2% due to years like these.
- mlindner 6y agoNoise pollution wouldn't go down too much. Most highway road noise is actually from tire noise.
- wpdev_63 6y ago"The design offers five times the energy density of the existing cells it uses, as well as six times the power and an overall 16% improvement in range for vehicles in which it’s used." I might be missing something here but if the energy density is '5x' more wouldn't there be a greater increase of range than 16%(barring that the weight doesn't go up significantly)?
- potatochup 6y agoEven if the weight of the cells doesn't change that much, if the new cells aren't as heat tolerant then there might be significantly more weight and space allocated for cooling, meaning you get less cells
- zaroth 6y agoI think that one of the big advantages of tabless batteries is supposed to be that they have a much larger contact area which makes them easier to cool, particularly spirally wound Li-Ion which is going to be hottest near the core. But this is an area of active research and a fairly complex modeling problem, and I’m no expert.
- muzika 6y agoNew cells will heat up less due to lower internal resistance.
- p0la 6y agoThey meant energy storage capacity instead of density. The energy density is only 16% higher. The new cells are 46mmx80mm vs 21x700 for the previous model.
- kgc 6y ago700 should be 70 shouldn't it?
- dayaz36 6y agoTesla just made ICE cars obsolete. How is this not on the front page of HN? It's even trending on twitter. It's very strange this isn't on the front of HN.
- NicoJuicy 6y agoIt's only a 16% range improvement in 3 years. Nice claims currently, but we'll see which ones are correct/feasible.
- dayaz36 6y agoWho's paying you to downplay what was actually announced? 1)56% reduction in cost (which blows way past the $100/kwh holy grail for EV to sub $40). This by itself is insane and most people in the industry thought it wont happen for at least another decade. This puts the last nail in the coffin for the future of ICE cars. 2) 54% increase in range. The new Model S will have minimum 520mi of range and much more actually when they start production. Range anxiety gone out the window. 3) New manufacturing tech along with vertical integration will allow Tesla to scale 55x their current rate of production and become the world's largest auto manufacturer by many multiples. Tesla will not only produce their own battery cells but they're even getting into mining!! Along with many other things announced in 3+ hour technical video. But yea 16% density improvement is the only takeaway from this... Edit: I like how you're editing your original comment after I've already replied without any mention of it. Please practice honest forum etiquette.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dang 6y ago> Who's paying you to downplay what was actually announced? Insinuations of shillage are not allowed here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules. That means also: please avoid the flamewar style in general.
- 6y ago
- justapassenger 6y agoSame as Model 3 was suppose to be $35k car?
- omgwtfbyobbq 6y agoUnless they discontinued it recently, you can still get a $35k 3 off menu. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1127490_the-35k-tesla-model-3-still-exists-off-menu https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1127490_the-35k-tesla-m...
- justapassenger 6y agoModel 3 was hyped as $35k car, with an additional $7.5k tax credit on top of that for early adopters. In reality it's $45-50k car. What they do offer for $35k is purely to tick the box (and also when it finally arrived tax breaks were long gone for Tesla). If history repeats itself this new model will be first true $35k Tesla.
- imtringued 6y agoI've had the same thought. Why not actually release a $35k Tesla that isn't a dark pattern?
- jgalt212 6y agobecause it would an explicit acknowledgement of Tesla's/Elon's credibility problems. Only move forward is the order of the day.
- epistasis 6y agoEven though this is a dark pattern, when compared to dealing with a traditional auto dealer, it's surprisingly straightforward. Which is not to excuse the dark pattern in any way. But we often give the status quo way too much of a pass, just because it's the status quo.
- petejames 6y ago
- petejames 6y agoCurrently EVs are < 1% of cars. What Tesla showed today was a path to increase that significantly with the cost per kWh reduced by 56% and 7x improvement in factory production footprint. This is 12-18 months away. World changing stuff.
- mlindner 6y agoYep exactly. A lot of people are missing the forest for the trees right now it's rather amazing.
- baybal2 6y agoNo big revelations. They tell they can make cells with conventional cathodes even bigger. The problem with cylindrical cells is that they are very sensitive to mechanical shrinkage, and expansion, and this puts an upper limit on their size.
- tigershark 6y agoNo, it’s a huge revelation. Their tabless batteries allow them to fix all these problem and give them a quite sensible reduction in $/KW and a good increase in range. Combined with the other innovations that they introduced they have achieved half the cost/KW. Please explain me how this is not a big revelation.
- baybal2 6y agoTechnology wise it is not something entirely new. Just in their particular case, it worked very well for the cost, ... if we are to believe them. Even if the entire battery will got to 50% of its current cost, Teslas will still be quite expensive cars, which have many expensive things other than the battery: Aluminum body for example.
- itsoktocry 6y ago>Their tabless batteries allow them to fix all these problem and give them a quite sensible reduction in $/KW and a good increase in range. Ah, yes. Tesla always has something "around the corner" that will fix all their problems. >Please explain me how this is not a big revelation Just because Musk says something in a presentation doesn't mean it exists. Full-self-driving is also a "big revelation".
- zpeti 6y agoThe reason this is amazing is that they are starting to plateau in their reduction of cost per kwh, but with these changes they might be able to push through the plateau and redefine the cost of batteries. A 50% reduction in cost per kwh at this stage is probably a much much more difficult problem than tesla has ever solved. There are always diminishing returns on investment and if they can break that trend by rethinking everything from the ground up that's amazing. The reason everyone is so quiet is because relative to the last 10 years this doesn't sound impressive. But when you consider all the low hanging fruits have been picked, I think it is really impressive. Elon said on the call, as companies get bigger they usually innovate slower. It is amazing that Tesla is trying to not do this.
- cwhiz 6y ago2-3 years away in Musk-time so likely 5-6 years away in actual time. It’s pretty neat to see what the plans are but overall this is a big letdown. I was hoping some fundamental breakthrough in battery tech or just generally something other than “bigger economy of scale.”
- johnsimer 6y agoWould you not classify the tabless battery as a fundamental breakthrough? That is not just economies of scale
- cwhiz 6y agoI guess? It's more of a battery manufacturing breakthrough than a battery tech breakthrough. I'm not trying to rag on Tesla. It is quite a breakthrough that will help achieve better manufacturing throughput, it just did not live up to the hype that Elon generated. I was hoping that Tesla had a breakthrough in regard to some new exotic battery type.
- Hypx 6y agohttps://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/18/elon-musk-tesla-could-produce-a-25000-car-in-3-years--.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/18/elon-musk-tesla-could-produc... This is not a new claim. Take it with a grain of salt.
- lgrebe 6y agoThe time line fits - in around 3 years would be 2020 as the article was published in 2018. only now they laid out how they plan to achieve this. granted in "elon time" correcting to 2023 now (a plus of another 2 years given "around 3 years = in exactly 3 years as per cnbc article of 2018)
- mlindner 6y agoNo but it's got real evidence backing it up. They have a manufacturing facility producing new batteries with revolutionary new tech.
- gandalfian 6y agoFor context $25,000 now in Europe buys a basic Volkswagen/Seat/Skoda city car that does about 150 miles to a battery charge. Though not a Tesla for good and bad.
- henrikschroder 6y agoA Volkswagen ID.3 costs 25% less than the cheapest Model 3, and has a little bit more range on the WLTP cycle. You can't get the new e-up! yet, but it'll be half the price of the cheapest Model 3, with half the range. You can get a Polestar 2 for as much as a Long Range Model 3, you'll only get 80% of the range of the Tesla, but you'll get an actual, good-looking, car. Or you can get an Audi e-tron or Mercedes EQC for a bit more than a Model Y. They have less range and performance, but smoke the Model Y completely on everything else. There's plenty of competition for Tesla in Europe, and their sales numbers also reflect that, they got 9% of the new BEV sales in Norway in August, for example. Yes, Tesla is the world leader when it comes to extracting range and performance out of their battery packs, but their competition is better at everything else, and different consumers like different things.
- jillesvangurp 6y agoIf you look at the Chinese market, basically the likes of Tesla and VW are an extremely lucrative but relatively small part of a market that is simply huge with an average sales price well below the cheapest cars in the EU or US. The US and much of the EU is simply not covering the low end of the market at all that exists in China and other developing markets. There are Chinese and Indian car manufacturers in the process of ramping up production of EVs that cost in the order of as little as 5000$. These replace similarly priced petrol cars that were never even on the market in the EU and the US. They're not going to be breaking any records in terms of range, premium features, etc. But they'll be affordable for the masses in developing economies. Basically it's cheap manufacturing and mass production of outdated but proven technology. Selling a 5000$ car in the EU or US is not a thing. It's not a technical problem but a problem of that market not making sense when you can also sell a 25K, 50K or 75K model to the same person and when you are essentially supply limited. Creating that market would erode the high end of the market. And this is where manufacturers earn their profits. This problem does not exist in developing markets where that high end is comparatively small because of the income distribution being different. Simply put there's a huge amount of people for whom 5K is about the maximum they are going to be able to spend on a car. Most of those people are not in the EU or the US. Hence the volume production of cheap EVs for that segment is happening in markets where these people do exist in large numbers. Even the differences between the EU and the US are kind of striking here. The US does not like small cars. The EU does not like big cars. There are a lot of cars on the market in the EU that are not even for sale in the US. And vice versa. There are dominant car brands in the EU that have 0 sales in the US. So, Tesla saying that they will go as low as 25K is basically a function of their growth plans in the US. They've nailed the high end of the market and are profitable there. They are now about to enter the middle segment of the market. They are literally ramping up production and new factories as fast as they can. Every kwh of battery they produce they can sell. So, dropping the price point of products only happens when the market for higher priced cars gets to the saturation point. There's no need for them to go any lower than that before that.