[3dee]

Right now Tesla is outperforming competition on three points:

  * 0-100km/h times
  * Range
  * Charging network

I believe most people don't care about the 0-100 speed. And most people can live with a little less range. So this leaves the network as a selling point. I believe it depends on the country how important this is. For example in the Netherlands you can cross the whole country on one charge. So you don't need a network.

Only recently competition is shifting focus to electric cars and more and more great EVs are being released. For example the new Hyundai Ioniq 5 is a car I personally would prefer over a Tesla.

So Tesla is doing great but I think they are becoming 'just another car brand'.

[LordDragonfang]

In the European market the range advantage might not be a big deal, but it's a major selling point in the American market. Probably the biggest concern I hear from people about going electric-only is range anxiety - the notion that they might need to drive a long distance on a whim and worry they might be "stranded" with no battery, regardless of the actual likelihood of that. With America's generally poor public transit infrastructure and car-as-default culture, it's even a fairly reasonable concern in many cases.

Maybe once the charging network becomes as saturated as gas stations are range can no longer be an issue, but we're nowhere near that point outside of major cities.

[Angostura]

I think even in the European market it may be a factor. It's not uncommon to drive somewhere on summer holidays, I'm in the UK and sometimes drive across France or down to Spain for summer hols - or skiing holidays. It's stupid that this is a consideration when buying a car, I know. But it certainly has a chilling effect when I think about our over-night drives to get to the Alps for a Saturday morning.

[emptyfile]

Why is it stupid? If anything Europeans would be more sensitive to delays in their trip because of charge issues.

If you're going on a weekend getaway then the difference between 4-6 hours of driving and 8-10 is huge.

I live in Croatia and have dark memories of standing in front of gas stations on the highway in the summer and waiting for +30 minutes in the heat to do 3 minutes of gas pumping. I wonder what sort of problems will EV driving tourists be going through in the next few years as they become more popular.

[stkdump]

Because for exceptional peak usage you could also just rent a car, and then optimize your car choice for the day-to-day usage. Driving a smaller battery around takes less energy, so it is cheaper to buy and cheaper to drive.

[iainmerrick]

Buy an electric car for everyday stuff, hire a car for holidays?

[volta83]

That's not really a thing in Europe.

Renting a big nice car for a 1 week holiday (so ~10 days) sets' you back 1000$, which is a bit over the average net monthly income over here. You can rent a small shitty car for much less, but then you might as well just use your own car.

If money is not an issue, renting a car, picking it up, etc. is a bit of a pain. Since money is not an issue, you might as well spend more on a better car that doesn't force you to do this.

Very very few are going to buy a car that forces them to spend one month full of salary to rent a different car for larger trips.

[stkdump]

I don't think your number is accurate, at least not for western europe. Also you have to compare what you save in terms of purchase price (and electricity cost, because you drive a lighter car) with what it costs for renting over the lifetime of the car. The salary level doesn't really factor in directly.

The real reason more people don't do it, is that a car is a status symbol and most people like wasting money on it. Musk knows that and uses it for his PR. And of course still not many people are used to the new cost pattern of electric cars.

[volta83]

You can buy a used VW Golf 4 years old with <50k km for < 10.000 EUR.

You can probably re-sell it 4 years later with 100k km for 6k EUR.

There isn't an electric car that can compete with this today.

You could buy a Tesla 3 for ~30k EUR, and then rent at 500 EUR every 3 months (being extremely cheap), and in those 4 years, just the renting almost matches the entire price of the VW Golf.

For the numbers of the electric car to even make sense long term you'd need cheap ass electricity, which at least in central Europe you only get if you charge at home. The moment you charge outside, gas is almost always cheaper than electricity.

That still leaves insurance, repairs, etc. on the table. Repairing a popular car like a Golf is dirt cheap.

[vincnetas]

Wow. Thats expensive. I just checked and in LT there is a car sharing network, where you use cars on demand, and here one week rent for VW T-Corss is 125€. 379€ for month. +0.2€/km (fuel is included in price)

[volta83]

> In the European market the range advantage might not be a big deal,

It wouldn't be a big deal if charging time was < 5 minutes.

I do occasionally (once per month or two months) go somewhere that's 800km away.

Driving at 180-200km/h avg speed and refueling once that's a 5 hour trip.

If I have to drive at 120 km/h and charge multiple times I'm looking at > 8h trip or more.

I also drive to some places at 300km distance or so for the weekend, and these places might not have a charger close, and/or harsh conditions (e.g. some small village in the Alps).

I'm a bit skeptic that I can do a round trip to those without charging, and even if I charge, i'm skeptic that at very cold temperatures the battery will hold up well for the last 50-80km part of each way in which there might not be any charging stations (e.g. holding charge for 200km over the weekend or a full week at less than -20 C).

Also, in Europe, a significant chunk of the population rents and lives in apartment buildings, often without parking spots, which means you can't charge an electric car over night. Combine that with few charging stations and waiting at a charging station at 6 am for 1 hour is something people having electric cars actually do talk about. So if your commute is 80km, you probably want 800km of range to only have to charge the car once per week.

Also, charging in the street (there are very very few parking spots outside that do have charging) is extremely expensive (much more than just using gas).

Maybe all these fears are unfounded?

But in a nutshell: battery kilometers at high speed, battery holding at very cold temps for a week, and the ability to cheaply charge at night are what I see people talking the most about, when discussing electric cars.

In pretty much all discussions, diesel cars just sound like the better deal (they are cheap right now).

[andrepd]

Have you stopped to think about the insane infrastructure that goes into supporting car driving? There are millions of gas stations across the planet, that had to be built, then continually supplied. Not to mention the billions (?) of km of asphalt roads. We did all that in the 20th century. What's so impossible about building chargers? I don't get it.

As for driving at 200kph, that's just dangerous (unless you're in a no-speed-limit autobahn, where at least other cars expect you to go fast), not to mention fuel inefficient. By all means, please go ahead and crash your car, that's your risk, I guess. The snag is that you share the road with other users and you can kill them too. So don't be a selfish prick and please drive safely. Either way let's assume most people just want to go at 120kph.

[unwind]

Uh, not to be too much of an Internet nitpicker, but according to [1] there's around 168,000 gas stations in the US. That's a pretty big car-using market right there.

Numbers for China are harder to come by, a quick search yielded [2] which states around 120,000 stations in 2019.

So, extrapolating from those two data points, I still think "millions" is a bit too many-sounding.

1: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/quizzes/answerquiz16.shtml

2: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190226005504/en/Chi...

[volta83]

> We did all that in the 20th century. What's so impossible about building chargers? I don't get it.

I never said its impossible, I said that right now they are not there.

In the 18th century, without proper roads, between the choice of a car with wooden wheels and a horse, I'd have 100% of the time would have bought the horse.

---

> As for driving at 200kph, that's just dangerous

No, it isn't. Driving 120kph in the autobahn is more dangerous than driving 200kph. You are forcing everyone that wants to drive at the recommended speed of 130kph to overtake you with 10 kph speed difference, blocking 2 lanes. Add a truck to the situation to block a 3rd lane, and you have just created a big blockage in the highway, which is what causes most autobahn accidents. This makes _you_ one of the biggest dangers to others on the high way.

> Not to mention fuel inefficient.

It is, however, very time efficient.

If you want to trade fuel efficiency over everything else, walking is better than using a car.

The moment you decide that walking is not "fast enough" you are already making a trade-off between time efficiency and fuel efficiency.

Just because your time is worth less than most people's time and you prefer driving at 120kph, 10kph below the recommended speed, does not mean that most people agree with you. The traffic guidelines actually disagree with you, which is why they recommend at least 130kph.

---

> Either way let's assume most people just want to go at 120kph.

The recommended autobahn speed is 130kph. The slowest lane usually goes at 140-150 kph.

I don't see the point of making an assumption that's clearly incorrect.

> By all means, please go ahead and crash your car, that's your risk, I guess.

If you think that driving at 200kph is dangerous, I have to assume that you never took highway driving classes as part of your driving license, most of which force you to drive at high speed. A consequence of doing this is that your comfort speed goes up with enough training, so when you are actually driving at 160kph or so, you are driving 20% slower than what you are trained to drive, which makes it actually much safer.

If you only were trained to drive at 120 kph, and have never received trained to drive substantially faster than that, you are always driving at 100% of your training / skill level, which means small mistakes have larger consequences than if you have a 20% buffer of error.

So arguably, _you_ should be driving at 100 kph through national roads, instead of driving on the highway until _you_ receive proper training.

[andrepd]

> In the 18th century, without proper roads, between the choice of a car with wooden wheels and a horse, I'd have 100% of the time would have bought the horse.

There were no automobiles in the 18th century.

> No, it isn't. Driving 120kph in the autobahn is more dangerous than driving 200kph.

Yes, it is. Data shows accidents increase with speed, yes, even in autobahns, let alone in highways with speed limit.

Also, you were talking about motorways/highways in general, the overwhelming of which have speed limits, and not about autobahns in particular.

> 130kph has to overtake you with 10kph difference

I used 120 as it's the highway speed limit in most of the world. Replace 120 with 130, the point is driving at the speed limit. You are talking about going 200kph, so I don't see what you're trying to get at here.

> Just because your time is worth less than most people's time and you prefer driving at 120kph, 10kph below the recommended speed, does not mean that most people agree with you. The traffic guidelines actually disagree with you, which is why they recommend at least 130kph.

Ahahaha, what the hell is your problem. I drive the speed limit instead of driving like a maniac because my time is not so valuable as yours?

> The slowest lane usually goes at 140-150 kph. I don't see the point of making an assumption that's clearly incorrect.

Again, simple data falsifies your assertion. Measurements taken put the percentage of people going over 130kph in German highways at between 35% and 60%. So your "slowest lane goes 150" thing is hilariously off the mark.

> If you think that driving at 200kph is dangerous, I have to assume that you never took highway driving classes as part of your driving license

Again with the German exceptionalism? Yes I did drive on the highway to get my license of course. No, I didn't drive nearly twice the speed limit in those lessons.

> training, I'm such a good driver, stick to taking the bus until you git good

Nothing you can say changes the fact that higher speed means more risk of crashes. This is documented, and you are no exception. Everybody thinks they're great drivers so the rules don't apply to them.

---

Finally: in your previous posts you complained that electric cars can't travel at 200kph when the temperature is -20°C. Well if you're such a good driver you should know that it's reckless (and indeed forbidden) to drive at such speeds in such cold weather.

[tonyedgecombe]

You may or may not be exaggerating but if you aren't then you are definitely an outlier. Which kind of sucks for you because it's going to be hard to keep doing this when the rest of the world has moved on.

[volta83]

Outlier in which sense ?

There is a lot of people from southern Europe and northern africa (morroco, algeria, etc.) living in central Europe (France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, etc.). There is a lot of people from East Europe (Poland, Ukraine, Czec republic, Croatia, Turkey) living in Central Europe as well.

How do you think these people travel to visit their families every couple of months ? They do 1000km per way trips with the car.

If you just have to cross Germany, you are not going to be driving there at 100km/h. I do 600-800km ways in Germany a couple of times per year, and do drive 220km/h everywhere where it is allowed and condition are good. Your average speed is never that cause traffic and so on, but over 190km/h average speed is doable if you travel at the right hours which I always do because... you don't want to spend 800km stuck on traffic.

Why not flying? Because while central europe has good airports, wherever they might be flying to might have an airport 3 hours away, requiring them to rent a car, etc. which as mentioned costs one month of net salary.

In Germany, for example, ~50% of the population rents. As a renter, its up to your landlord to retrofit your parking spot with an electric supply for your electric car. That costs money, and if the landlord says no, you can't do this yourself. Is not up to you.

Electric cars are more a "social problem" in europe than a technical one.

[tonyedgecombe]

How do you think these people travel to visit their families every couple of months ? They do 1000km per way trips with the car.

The average annual milage across the whole of the EU is 12,000Km per year, it's even lower in Eastern Europe.

Most people aren't making these sort of trips regularly.

You are an outlier.

[volta83]

> The average annual milage across the whole of the EU is 12,000Km per year, it's even lower in Eastern Europe.

I do these trips every 2 months.

My average mileage is 9,000 - 10,0000km per year.

I don't really know what point you are trying to make with average mileage or where you got that number from.

But average mileage doesn't say anything about the frequency and the length of the trips people do on their cars.

Most people I know don't have a car. The ones that do have a car commute to work via public transportation or bike. They only use the car on the weekends, or holidays.

[3dee]

This is exactly the reason why I still have doubts about EVs (for now).

While hydrogen cars are less efficient I still think it will be a better option for the near future.

In a city like Stuttgart people have to park in double rows. Unless they can fully charge their EV in < 5 minutes those cars will never convert from combustion engines to a battery car. Hydrogen will solve this much faster than batteries.

[Corrado]

> I believe most people don't care about the 0-100 speed.

You say that, but almost every single person I've given a ride to in my Model Y has come away from the acceleration portion of the trip amazed and wanting more. Older men, young kids, soccer moms, teenage girls, all get that breathy expression when you effortlessly pass someone on the expressway. And this is a Model Y, one of the slowest Tesla's on the market. A Model S P100D would have them cursing under their breath and pulling out their wallet; I know it did for me.

[vincnetas]

I don't like this direction of development. I would like to see cars in future used for transportation and not racing. There is no place for racing on public roads especially in cities. So acceleration should be irrelevant.

It's like building bigger and bigger cars than other ones on the road to "be more safe" but at the end everyone is driving around in tanks (except other traffic participants like pedestrians and bicyclists). Same with "i'm faster than you"...

[natch]

It’s not for racing. It’s a safety feature that can get you out of a tight spot to avoid a collision. It’s also enjoyable.

Once we get rid of human drivers in all cars then the first part won’t be needed anymore. When that day comes, we will be safer but we will miss the fun acceleration of these days.

[vincnetas]

People usually forget that they can also use breakes to get out of tight spot, which is usually safer, and by the way it has even greater acceleration (negative though). By the way high power and high acceleration usually takes you to that tight spot. Isn't?

[natch]

Sometimes it’s the high power (way higher than acceleration as you correctly point out) of other people’s braking that gets you into a tight spot.

In any case in some situations it’s good to have the flexibility of both options, not just the braking option.

[tjoff]

Not care is perhaps a bit strong. But pay the price? Most opt out of that.

[benhurmarcel]

I'm sure it's great in the beginning. But is it €60k great?

[johnyzee]

People feel that way the first time they feel the acceleration of any electric car, even a Nissan Leaf.

[DennisP]

I've ridden in a Leaf and didn't notice anything remarkable. A Tesla was entirely different.

[audunw]

They are perceived to be very far ahead on vehicle assist and self-driving. I can't say if they actually are technologically speaking, but I think the perception they have will give them a significant benefit for years ahead.

A part of that is the frequent software updates, and even options of updating the hardware. It makes customers feel like their car could get full self-driving eventually, even if it doesn't ship with it now. Maybe it'll never happen, but the effect on sales is real.

I would also prefer Ioniq 5 or Kia EV6. But if I cared about self-driving I would probably get a Tesla. And as the other commented pointed out, their software is generally way better than the competition, and that's really what's making me think twice about getting VW or Skoda, even though I like their new EVs otherwise. I will also make sure to go through reviews on the software and updates of Hyundai and Kias new cars before I buy them. I'm happy with my current Kia Soul EV even though it doesn't get OTA updates. They did upgrade to support CarPlay, which I was really happy with, but that's it. That's fine for a car with such simple software. But for a car with more advanced features like the ones coming out now, it's just not.

[3dee]

Is this really the case? Maybe in the US, but here in the Netherlands people are not very positive about Tesla's self-driving capabilities. The main reason is that Teslas don't understand Dutch roads. Another is the list of broken promises made by Elon. But of course this can change in the future.

[_0w8t]

I rented Model-3 in Norway. Self-driving just did work not on curved mountain roads unless one is prepared to tolerate constant jerks to left and right. So I quickly turned that off.

But I was impressed by how well the car could stick to the car in-front and keep the safe distance under all conditions including heavy rain at night. This is a mayor safety feature.

[3dee]

Yes, but ACC does work well in a lot of cars.

[dannyw]

My Hyunadi's driver assist (adaptive cruise control, active lane keeping) is comparable if not more reliable feeling than Tesla's autopilot.

[froh]

the tesla advanced driver assistance software seems to be fairly top of the line too in terms of outperforming the competition. There isn't much missing in the Wikipedia "ADAS" list of feature examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_driver-assistance_sys...

[parski]

Charging network got me to buy a Tesla over an IONIQ 5 a few weeks ago. I used to drive a Kia e-Niro and we'd use Plugshare to find odd fast chargers at fast food restaurants or gas stations and pray they weren't occupied when we got there or else we'd hop a few minutes to the next one. It can get super frustrating if you're out of luck. Maybe next car if the network is good enough.

[Fronzie]

The efficiency (miles per kWh) of Tesla's is still quite ahead of the competition. This allows for relatively smaller/cheaper batteries.

[xorfish]

This doesn't seem to be true. Hyundai Kona Electric 64kWh gets 3.6 Miles per kWh and the Kia e-Niro 64kWh gets 3.5 Miles per kWh in real world tests.

They are more efficient and have more range than any of Teslas offerings:

https://www.whatcar.com/news/what-car-real-range-which-elect...

[makomk]

I get the definite impression that Tesla are engineering their cars to perform well in the test - their cars seem to consistently underperform the official range estimates in actual real-world testing in a way that others don't.

[Consultant32452]

Tesla is a status symbol. As long as they maintain that status they will be fine. Stats don’t matter that much with regards to being a status symbol.

[erikstarck]

You forgot:

* Software

[Corrado]

I think the software component is truly underestimated. It's been said that Tesla is really a software company that happens to build cars, and I can believe it. I'm not sure that VW, GM, or Ford will ever be able to compete on the software front, they just don't have it in their DNA.

I kinda view it like Silicon Valley; there's nothing intrinsic about the specific place on the map that makes it a great place to develop software. But other places just can't seem to replicate it. I've heard talk of Silicon Alley in NYC but it doesn't seem to compare. I'm not sure it's possible to recreate SV somewhere else, just like I'm not sure it's possible to recreate Tesla inside GM.

[erikstarck]

There is a really good example of this in the Q1 report. The chip shortage that has hit a lot of car manufacturers also hit Tesla, but they quickly changed hardware and developed new firmware. Only a software savvy company can do that.

[oblio]

Diminishing returns come much faster and harder for software in cars. Software not being the main focus of a car.

Especially now with Android Auto/Apple CarPlay.

[audunw]

> Diminishing returns come much faster and harder for software in cars. Software not being the main focus of a car.

That used to be true. With self-driving technology I'm not sure that's true anymore. Tesla has even offered hardware updates to improve self-driving of older models. I haven't heard of anyone else doing that yet.

> Especially now with Android Auto/Apple CarPlay.

Eh. That's just infotainement, and cars can still provide significant value without using that. When driving a Tesla I don't miss CarPlay, and I rarely use it in my Kia even though it's better than the built-in infotainment stuff. Mostly just for navigation if I know it's a complex route. But again, I never miss CarPlay for navigation in Tesla cars because the built-in system is very good and always up-to-date through OTA.

[oblio]

> That used to be true. With self-driving technology I'm not sure that's true anymore. Tesla has even offered hardware updates to improve self-driving of older models. I haven't heard of anyone else doing that yet.

Nobody has self-driving tech in production. What they do have is a combo of adaptive cruise control, lane keeping assist, lane changing assist and park assist.

Full self-driving tech is still at the basic research stage, just like cold fusion reactors. It could be out in 5 years, it could be out in 40. Nobody's going to "OTA" that.

[andrepd]

Excuse me, what "self-driving" is that? For all of Musk's grand promises of "self-driving in 6 months time, just you see", nothing has ever happened. Why people take anything that conman says at face value is beyond me.

[agent008t]

Do you really want software auto-updates with potentially breaking changes in your car though?

Chances are, you will end up with the iPhone situation, where a 10-year-old phone is now essentially a brick - the software 'updates' just made things slower on the older hardware, if they support the older hardware at all. Do you really want that in your car?

For comparison, you can get a 20-year old car today that would work today as well as on the day it was made - mechanical controls still respond instantly, radio still works.

And then suddenly you find that the Teslas are a lot more expensive than they seem, because the depreciation will be more severe. Not only that, but I would question their green credentials if the cars are forced to become obsolete after N years.