What Tesla brought to the game was insane performance for Electic cars, _and_ OTA updates for maps and software. And _just as importantly_ they actually update the software in meaningful ways.
Kia have none of these things.
Your statement is very similar to "Apple could slap their logo on any Chromebook and sell it for 2K!".
> What Tesla brought to the game was insane performance for Electic cars
I used to race electric cars in college. It was no secret even then that electric motors had insane performance. With a proportional throttle you had to learn early on to go easy or you would smoke your tires. Almost any electric car will smoke a ICE car, the first lap. Even the humble Nissan LEAF is under 6secs.
What Tesla really brought was capacity (we were still lead acid and NiMH at the time) and the Supercharger network. The battery tech and network are their largest asset. The cars themselves are pretty underwhelming design-wise.
First in line, I used to habitually accelerate from stoplights at full throttle, in my Leaf. This resulted in ICE vehicles screaming past me, after they finally detonated enough fossil fuel to catch up. I realized I was inflicting permanent psychological harm and bought an i3 from Manheim using borrowed dealer credentials and slapped a skull decal on the back window. It is known and accepted that BMWs with skulls are fast. Nobody cares.
Why are all their competitors so far behind in efficiency (Wh/mile or your preferred units), then?
Porsche Taycan is rated somewhere in the high 400s for Wh/mile while the Model S is rated under 300 Wh/mile. The Nissan Leaf is also about 300 Wh/mile with nowhere near the performance of the Model 3 which comes in at 250 Wh/mile.
Either Tesla has a substantial technology advantage or all of their competitors are just incredibly bad.
>Why are all their competitors so far behind in efficiency (Wh/mile or your preferred units), then?
The competition is behind, but not "so far behind".
A quick Google and you'll be able to find real world testing of these EVs, and as far as I can tell it's known that Tesla exaggerates the range of their cars, in some cases drastically.
That's not to say Tesla's tech isn't great (it is). But there are tradeoffs. The Taycan is ahead of the Model S in a few ways, too.
A single data point, but my Model X (2018 75D) has averaged 326 Wh/mile over the last 2.5 years, vs a rated efficiency of 315 Wh/mile. It was at 321 before covid lockdowns started, which shifted my driving habits toward more less-efficient car trips.
Based on that I have a hard time believing that Tesla substantially exaggerates range. I reckon my single data point is probably worth at least as much as autocar.co.uk's single data point based on a couple orders of magnitude less driving.
Also a single data point, but my Leaf averages a bit more than 4 miles per kWh, or slightly less than 250 Wh per mile. I'm not trying to make a claim that the Leaf is better--it depends greatly on the sort of driving that you are doing, but I don't buy that the Tesla has a significant advantage either.
>What Tesla brought to the game was insane performance for Electic cars
Their software is cool, not sure they pioneered anything in "maps".
But as far as performance, I'm not sure that's true. Electric cars by their nature are fast. People have been putting electric setups in drag cars for a long time and getting ridiculously fast quarter mile times. There are entire racing leagues based around electric drive trains. From what I've read, the Porsche Taycan has better performance than any Tesla.
I think pwagland is referring to when Tesla launched their first car.
In the 1990s there were some CARB-motivated EVs that might do 100 miles and 70mph. Not exactly performance to write home about, and they had all been discontinued (and mostly destroyed) by 2008 when Tesla started selling the Roadster.
Essentially all you could get were golf carts, mobility scooters, and the G-Wiz.
So the idea that "electric cars by their nature are fast" was very much not in evidence at that time. The Tesla Roadster, with 200+ miles of range and a 125mph top speed, was one of the first demonstrations that an electric car didn't have to mean compromising on performance.
Heck I've even seen GM put their logo on the Nissan Van.
Also "simply not True" is you being incorrect. OTA always existed, it's just EXTREMELY expensive to send OTA. Tesla only has a few vehicles so it's cheap compared to Ford. And they take today's Stockholders money to pay for those updates.
Why are OTA updates so expensive? The price isn't prohibitive in other fields. I don't see how adding more cars would make that process more expensive, as if anything I'd expect a lot of the cost to come from QA and with more cars that cost gets spread out better.
I'd hazard life critical systems requiring a greater degree of assurance that the software update actually arrived at it's destination. Maintaining connectivity to a great number of network end nodes is not a trivial endeavor, even before you get into them being able to move around.
But who am I kidding. Someone probably just pays pays for a SIM to embed in an ECU with remote wake-up to phone home and grab an update, and the cost comes from all the telco networks that need to be contracted with to forward the traffic back home.
Tesla at least managed to release an infotainment system with a user experience you'd expect from modern smartphones, something many other car manufacturers still struggle with to this day (the navigation UI lagging is a standard example, even though we've had the processing power to make these smooth for over a decade).
Infotainment doesn't matter if it has no features. Where is android auto or apple carplay? Where is a HUD or true 360 camera? High trim Avalon's have all of this, and so does a PHEV rav4 primes which is cheaper and has far more utility then a tesla. Tesla is not actually ahead of anyone one else except in electric power train, "self driving", and battery tech. They're losing the self driving advantages every day to the other manufacturers. Tesla won't be on top forever unless they fix these problems.
And who can forget about it's famously bad build quality? Theyre lucky that electric doesn't have many of the issues that ICE cars do because tesla build quality is terrible and they get away with it due to the simple power train...
Couldn’t agree more. I’ve played with Tesla infotainment and I’d much much rather my CarPlay system and physical climate controls. I do want an EV and love the drivetrain of the Tesla’s but that’s the only part of them at all that seems to be better than any other modern premium car.
You're asserting that it's extremely buggy yet offer no evidence other than to Google it. When you Google "bmw infotainment issues", "gm infotainment issues", and "ford infotainment issues" you receive the same pages of results.
GM is currently facing a class action suit for the infotainment system in 2019-2020 vehicles. Ford settled a class action lawsuit for its MyTouch Infotainment system and Consumer Reports failed to recommend the new F-150 due to the Sync3 Infotainment system. Subaru also has a settled class action suit for its infotainment system. BMW iDrive is pretty much universally reviled.
The Tesla Infotainment system, warts and all, is considered one of if not the best.
Not to say Tesla doesn't have these issues, they probably do. Thing is if you go on Google and type "X issues" you will almost always find what you're looking for.
The researchers hacked several different other car manufacturers too. Tesla was the only one to react by releasing a security fix, the others simply threatened to sue.
> Tesla could put their logo on a Kia and it would sell to this demographic.
If it had
- fully electric propulsion
- a large charging station network
- cool styling
- an actually usable infotainment system
- OTA updates for everything
- knowledge you're funding R&D for new, more affordable battery systems
... maybe.
I didn't list advanced cruise control because many car makers have it. You could attribute the feeling of contributing to society's progress and the good feeling of buying from a company that actually cares about EVs to marketing if you're cynical (I wouldn't).
What Tesla brought to the game was insane performance for Electic cars, _and_ OTA updates for maps and software. And _just as importantly_ they actually update the software in meaningful ways.
Kia have none of these things.
Your statement is very similar to "Apple could slap their logo on any Chromebook and sell it for 2K!".