It really makes me think an electric car future is going to happen. This possibility was dismissed all my life (“what about road trips?) but the demand is there.
I recently drove a 2019 Tesla Model 3 from NYC to Montreal via Vermont. Personally, I wouldn't do the route I took in a Tesla (/EV) again. The 'range anxiety' set definitely in during the trip because, when departing NYC, I entered my destination in Vermont and the navigation system showed I'd have 47% battery remaining upon arrival... I ended up arriving with 19% battery and I was in the middle of the nowhere. Due to the prevailing weather conditions (the car kept saying the battery was cold) and it was raining I guess the battery dropped quicker than it should have? I was stressing out because my wife would be late to meeting her client had I went to the nearest supercharger and I didn't know if I would have enough battery to make it to the charger if continued and dropped off to the client, given how fast the battery was dropping. After dropping her off, I had to charge the car a further 3 times at superchargers, adding an extra 1h45m to the whole trip to Montreal. I also charged the car once going from NYC to Brattleboro, which was another 30m, so almost 2h15m in spent charging the car.
YMMV but I think the obvious thing to do for anyone who worries about range is to use an EV for daily and hire the right car for a long trip. I don’t buy a car for my 1% trips, I buy a car for my 99% trips.
When I need a 4x4, I hire. When I go on a weekend away with lots of gear, I get a trailer or larger car. Big family outing, people carrier. Fetch furniture, Uber van. Getting a huge car and using it for shopping or dropping kids off is allowing the rare use case to dictate how you experience the typical use case. Harder to park, fuel, maintain.
Hiring also means I don’t have the “wrong” large car which doesn’t fit the rare holiday where I need more seats or storage.
You've inadvertently made me feel better about purchasing an ICE car last year. I'd been having some regrets that I hadn't worked harder to find an EV (or at least a plug-in hybrid) that met my other requirements.
Since I don't commute to work, and usually take transit or walk for local trips, the bulk of my driving is longer trips. Range anxiety would kill me in an EV.
I do think there are some cases where it makes sense to at least choose the features of a car with some minority-trips in mind. For example, I drive to a snowy, mountainous region 2-3 times a year. I decided to buy an AWD car (sedan, as I dislike driving larger vehicles like SUVs). With the trips I've made since then, the added cost between the AWD and non-AWD versions of my car has already been covered by the savings in not having to rent a vehicle with AWD.
Tangential, but I was also offered an EV when I rented a car last week (after flying across the country), but I had no idea what the charging situation would be at my destination, so I turned it down and got an ICE car. Turned out to be the right call, as there were no charging facilities where I was going.
A cheap and easy way to increase the size of the car you already have is to buy a roof box. Our previous car was a small hatchback and interstate trips with our three kids in the back would have been impossible without the roof box. I only bought a bigger car when my oldest kid was pushing 6 feet and running out of legroom in the back seat of the hatchback.
Sure, but I only used the roof box on occasional long trips when we had lots of luggage (e.g., visiting the grandparents interstate for Christmas). So I might have paid a few tens of dollars extra in fuel, but it was certainly far cheaper than buying a bigger car when we otherwise didn't need the extra space.
The roof rack and Thule box cost maybe $1200 AUD. But the rack was also useful for attaching bicycle carriers.
A larger car is likely going to have worse fuel economy and/or range than a smaller car. If you get the larger car, you take that hit every single time you drive it. If you get the smaller car and a roof box, you take that hit only when you mount the roof box. If that's most of the time, then sure, it probably makes sense to get the larger car. But I don't think that's the GP's use case.
The larger car is likely more expensive to purchase in the first place than the smaller car plus the roof box.
Meh, I'm currently on a cross-island road trip with. Family of four in a >10 year old, manual, brown diesel grandtourer/station wagon. Trunk and roof box fully loaded.
Long range fuel consumption at 5.3L/100kms, as usual at summer conditions.
A plug-in hybrid could be a good choice for probably most people. There are quite a few with an EV range of 30-45 miles (e.g., Prius Prime is 44 miles). In the US the average driver drives 37 miles per day which would be mostly or completely covered by EV mode.
I rented an Ionic PHEV a while back when I was in LA and was surprised how efficient it was! I drove the entire day, from West Hollywood to Santa Monica and then down to LAX and only used about 1 gallon of gas. It blew my mind at how efficient it was.
People are not gonna buy 5 cars or hire cars just for every use case. They want one car that can handle most of their needs. If the range on these vehicles doenst increase we will never see true mass adoption.
But i dont see how a road trip is an outlier. I get that needing a 4x4 is one, but most people go on some form of long trips a few times every year i would think.
This strategy is not working if many people go long trip at the same time. This is happened for a long time in Japan, highway (and train) get jammed about 10 days every year. This is also pain for EV fast charger usage, so govt should encourage people to distribute holidays.
You must have very limited use cases, I tried to do that but ended up with a vehicle that was heavily compromised because half my use cases are at odds with the other half.
I was driving to my office job in an F150, burning enough gas to finance and fuel a new Civic, all while being terrible to drive.
So I did the logical thing, and added a vehicle that was efficient and enjoyable to drive, a motorcycle.
But it's agility made me only further resent the truck during the winter months, so I also added a compact luxury sports sedan.
Worst part was the F150 was both "too much" truck to daily drive, but never enough when I needed to do truck stuff.
Tried to landscape my home with some crushed rock, had to do 9 trips bottomed out because of it's paltry payload. Couldn't tow enough to borrow a friend's skid-steer. Had to buy my bricks a half-pallet at a time, a full pallet bottomed it out before the forklift had even finished putting the full weight on.
Downsized the F150 to a Tacoma, anything over 1200lbs and it's more practical to pay for delivery using a proper commercial truck anyways.
In the end I ended up with 3 vehicles, and if I had the means I'd have 4, I'd split the compact luxury sports sedan into a small sports car and a full sized luxury sedan for long highway travels. And this is all before even adding an EV.
tldr: In the motorcycle community they say the correct number of bikes is always 1 more than what you have. I strongly feel that applies to cars/trucks too.
I recently drove my electric vehicle through my town and saw 5 electric vehicles in a row. This is not terribly unusual now. A friend is buying a hybrid rather than a pure ICE not because of environmental concerns but because it drives better in traffic. A number of countries will make sales of new ICE cars illegal in a few years time.
True mass adoption is already here. Not to say that I don't agree that range needs to increase (although it's incredibly rare I'd want to drive more than 250 miles without a 15 minute break). But I don't think the transition to electric will stop or slow or is really in any danger.
I think at this point most EVs are bought for performance or economic reasons rather than environmental reasons. I still haven’t gotten over the acceleration on my i4.
I don't think range is really the issue. If charging stations were as prevalent as gas stations, and charging time was much lower, that'd probably be sufficient for most people.
I got used to this by my second road trip and it’s a nonissue. You control discharge rate Tina large extent. Battery on track to hit 0? Low speed from 74 to 69 and you do just fine and arrive at 12%. Have near 50k miles in road trips and won’t ever buy a Dino bone burner again.
I regularly do a 200 mile mountain pass with a 75MPH limit, and have been explaining all this to my wife regarding our new Tesla.
But I'd have never admitted how much more efficient our old ICE car would have been at 50MPH than the usual 85MPH I preferred (it's 3 lanes wide and empty, so it's not unsafe to go slower, I just didn't want to).
Battery swap is probably not the way. My prediction is charging times will get much faster with better battery tech in the next 5 years. We might be able to get a full charge in under 10 minutes - which starts to match the convenience of a gas fillup.
I don't see manufacturers agreeing on a standardized battery pack size and shape. I also don't see battery swap stations getting built to the density needed, even if only as a supplement to charging stations. Battery swap stations would be significantly more expensive to build and maintain than charging stations.
Regardless, we don't have battery swap, and I don't think any (serious) manufacturers have plans to go that route, so it's a moot point.
What you describe is just a rookie mistake being a new EV driver. Humans learn and adapt very well. You'll get used to it very quickly if you keep driving EVs. You'll learn to do route planning better and those won't be problems.
But why would I want to deal with the hassle of better route planning when I can just drive an ICE car and not worry about it?
Sure, there's a breaking point where gas prices go up crazy high, and there are the environmental concerns, but I don't think it's surprising or even unreasonable that part of the EV push back is "have to relearn how to plan trips".
One other thing that bothers me about this is that the range of a gas car is somewhat independent of weather conditions. An EV losing a chunk of its range (completely messing up your route planning) because it was colder outside than expected... well, that's just not acceptable.
Bingo. You don't have to agree with me but in my opinion anyone who needs a car and can afford an EV but not driving one is morally reprehensible. We needed to reduce our fossil fuel usage twenty years ago. People putting their own convenience above the environment are selfish and short-sighted.
yeah no. wife yelling at the top of her lungs because of low battery. No thank you. Leased and gave up an EV, now will wait until normal-priced ev's are solidly in the 400+ miles range. I have no desire to graduate from your "rookie" to an "ev planning pro" and wait until everyone else around me does that, too.
What is additional range going to help with here? You misjudged your range, almost certainly due to Tesla overestimating remaining range (not taking into account all variables), and your wife yelled at you for it. Having an extra 100mi range will just delay that scenario, not prevent it. It takes about one longer trip to understand how speed/conditions affect range and how that necessitates an earlier departure time. Next time just plan for a quick stop after 100mi or so to give you some extra confidence. Faster charging and more stations will help out though, no doubt.
A co-worker drove to SLC from LA (abut 700 miles) in their Model 3 a few months ago. It took over 24 hours, including charging along the way, and they had to pre-plan their stops to make sure they could make each charger without their battery dying.
I recently drove to a campground in Yellowstone from LA (about 1000 miles) in an ICE SUV in less than 15 hours, including multiple rest/food breaks and traffic delays in the park due to road work. We didn't plan any stops on the way, and only got gas when we stopped for restroom breaks.
Right now, driving an EV means giving up a significant amount of freedom and turns what should be a pleasant road trip into a stress-inducing chore...and that doesn't even take into account the lack of charging options at home for those of us who don't live in single-family dwellings.
> A co-worker drove to SLC from LA (abut 700 miles) in their Model 3 a few months ago. It took over 24 hours,
....how?
HOW!?
I drive a Model 3. I recently drove from Portland, OR to Santa Clara and back 665 miles each way. Each way only took ~12 1/2 hours.
I'm sorry, but either your co-worker is lying, or they're bad at driving, or there's more to the story. Did they think they need to charge to 100% at each charging stop or something?
Portland to Santa Clara is a relatively flat drive. LA to SLC is not, plus a fully-loaded Model 3 in extreme weather (at least, extreme for EVs) and the need to charge multiple times on the way due to charging anxiety related to the lack of chargers en route, the overnight stay in a motel due to the delay related to charging...yeah, it's over 24 hours, easily.
You might want to consider that not everybody is driving themselves; some people have families with them and that changes the calculus of how you approach the drive.
Eh...I just went to ABRP, told it to map me from LA to SLC, assuming 500 kg (1,100 lbs) of extra weight, 0 C temperatures, and some extra range anxiety (Arrive at each charger with at least 30% battery), and it STILL only estimated a total of 12 hours.
> A co-worker drove to SLC from LA (abut 700 miles) in their Model 3 a few months ago. It took over 24 hours, including charging along the way, and they had to pre-plan their stops to make sure they could make each charger without their battery dying
Sorry, your co-worker is likely lying... that would mean something like 14 hours of charging per 9 hours of driving which is very far from reality. Easy way to check: https://abetterrouteplanner.com
No, they were definitely not lying, and its one of the things that turned them from a Tesla enthusiast into someone who won't be getting a Tesla ever again (ongoing issues with AP/FSD being the other).
Assuming infinite fuel/charge, LA to SLC is 9 hours of driving with good traffic, in temperate weather.
In the winter, temperatures along the way can approach or drop below freezing; in the summer most of the drive is 100+ degree temperatures. In both cases, the temperature drastically lowers range before taking AC/heating into account. This has little to no effect on ICE vehicles (except at the start of the drive when the engine is warming up) but has huge effects on EV vehicles; cold can reduce EV range by as much as 40% and the heat reduces range by about 15%. This means that a Model 3's theoretical range would only be about 200-280 miles. This means the car has to be charged at least twice for the trip to Vegas, and 2-3 times for the trip from Vegas to SLC. It turns out the charging situation is great from LA to Vegas (Barstow, Baker, and Primm) but almost non-existent past Vegas (essentially nothing past Vegas until you reach St George, hence the need to plan stops.
If you're lucky and the Supercharger is available when you need it, great.. Not so great when all the spots are taken, and you're either waiting in the cold/heat or relying on the EA station a few miles down having working charging. Unfortunately, EA stations along this route generally don't have supercharging speeds...
While in Yellowstone I encountered a handful of Teslas from Angelenos who said that it took them the better part of 2 days to get there (but otherwise weren't specific about the time, route, charging situation, etc), so it's not an isolated incident.
Long story short: just because you're a techie and can optimize your EV driving doesn't mean everyone else will. Your experience is the exception, not the norm.
I drive an EV (not Tesla) in a part of the country that is cold during the winter, there is no need to explain how it works. You can go into ABRP and change the reference consumption to 50% of the initial value and hopefully understand why no one with any experience will believe it took 24 hours to travel 700 miles on an interstate route with plenty of chargers.
> It turns out the charging situation is great from LA to Vegas (Barstow, Baker, and Primm) but almost non-existent past Vegas (essentially nothing past Vegas until you reach St George...
Both Tesla and EA have chargers 80 miles from Vegas in Mesquite? And something like 14 locations combined between Vegas and SLC?
> ...relying on the EA station a few miles down having working charging. Unfortunately, EA stations along this route generally don't have supercharging speeds...
Every EA station between Vegas and SLC has >= 1 charger at 350 kW, I don't understand what you are saying. Regardless, the charging curve for a Model 3 spends a lot of time <= 150 kW so it doesn't make a ton of difference.
> Long story short: just because you're a techie and can optimize your EV driving doesn't mean everyone else will. Your experience is the exception, not the norm.
This makes sense in parts of the country where fast charging is scarce. The route between LA and SLC is full of chargers, both Tesla and CCS. Tesla handles the routing for you, there is nothing to optimize on this route.
> I recently drove a 2019 Tesla Model 3 from NYC to Montreal via Vermont. Personally, I wouldn't do the route I took in a Tesla (/EV) again. The 'range anxiety' set definitely in during the trip because, when departing NYC, I entered my destination in Vermont and the navigation system showed I'd have 47% battery remaining upon arrival... I ended up arriving with 19% battery and I was in the middle of the nowhere.
I drove from Montréal to New York City in a gasoline powered car late at night, and in the 150+ miles between Plattsburgh and Albany I got range anxiety because I was getting low on gas and couldn't find any gas stations open. Of course this was in the days before smartphones and Google Maps and Gasbuddy etc.
Yeah fair enough, before pay-at-the-pump and proliferation of 24HR gas stations and navigation systems, you definitely had to think about your range more, especially in rural areas. But most gas powered cars have at least 300 miles of range. My truck has 720 miles of range. And if you always fill up at half a tank, you'd be hard pressed to find a path to travel on in the U.S. in 2023 that doesn't hit multiple gas stations with 24 hour pump access.
It's also true that running out of gas doesn't require a tow. You just need roadside assistance to bring 5-10 gallons to get you back on the road in minutes.
Source? Even as an EV owner/enthusiast I find that a little hard to believe.
I find the idea of the portable power fascinating and have watched some YouTube videos on them, but it seems like a very expensive and niche thing so far. I've seen one company on YouTube that showed it off.
I wanted an EV since back when I lived in an apartment, wished there was some sort of big capacitor on wheels I could charge all day from a normal outlet that would then fast charge my car for a few minutes.
Most actual products seem to use batteries and cost thousands, and are for some unique scenario where you somehow can't just public charge. Still find them neat though.
I think they typically just tow you to a charging station, seems a lot easier/faster/cheaper given they already own tow trucks.
In my opinion the only cost effective battery to travel around with would be the one inside an existing EV, I just hope we get beyond household outlet speeds for V2L. Would be neat if a passing EV could rescue at 50kw or something fast.
GP meant that they avoid range anxiety by filling up (to 100%) when half the tank is remaining. That way if they get into a situation where they can't find a gas station nearby, they still have a half tank remaining to burn to find one.
Sure, you've effectively halved your normal-case range, but a refill of an ICE car is much less of a hit to your trip time than a recharge of an EV, and your best-case range (if you really need it) still remains the same.
That dismissal held some water until we hit a point where batteries were cheap enough, high capacity enough, and there were enough chargers. We’re still just at the beginning. In 10 years it’ll all be much better
The overwhelming majority of car trips are possible in even the budget EVs.
Road trips are a problem, but charging infrastructure will eventually handle it. During the cross over period you could rent an ICE car.
I don't think 1 road trip a year is enough to sway most people off the idea of an EV if they want one. It's only going to sway those who are already skeptical.
We’ve known for a while now that it was going to happen, right? And that all those countries that are committed to phasing out ICE cars by 2035 are being way too conservative. Isn’t it estimated that within a year or two, you’re going to have to pay a premium just to purchase an ICE car? And that premium is just going to keep growing as battery costs continue to shrink.
God I hope it's not that soon. There's like nowhere to charge an electric car near me.
They really need to work on charging infrastructure before they convince me to buy an electric car.
And the cost still needs to come way, way down. It seems like every electric car that has any decent range is a luxury car. I don't want a luxury car, I just want a super basic cheap car to get me from point a to point b.
The cost is a big issue for me still. I get it, but I paid $15k for a car 10 years ago - small hatchback that's been more than enough for my needs. The only options I have for EVs are either 2-3x the size (Rivian, F150, Model X) or 4-5x the cost (Tesla, Lucid, Polestar), or both. I barely drive a hundred miles in a week, and often less, but having range to do a 2-3 hour road trip is a big bonus.
You can't even get a quality EV with a shorter range though for less than 50-70k. I'm not even sure I've spent that much on my car over the last decade, including gas, insurance, repairs, and initial cost. Makes it hard to justify the upgrade.
GM is ending production of the Bolt later this year. They lost money on every one they sold. GM CEO recently said they won’t be able to make sub-40k EVs until the end of this decade “maybe longer”. GM is really struggling with the transition to EVs. Ford is struggling too but at least has a plan…
Sadly it's not anticipated to return to Australia;
One reason it's shame we'll never see the Bolt on Australian roads is because it actually stemmed from an electric vehicle concept designed here by GM’s Australian design centre and went into production in 2017.
Now, of course, with GM all-but out of Australia – apart from its ties to the shrunken GMSV outfit here – it's less likely than ever we'll ever see the Bolt models here.
Yea, there was a brief experiment with smaller stuff 5ish years ago, but that seems to have dried up hard and left us with 2-ton trucks and SUVs or high end luxury sedans being the only options in the US for EVs.
Seems like there may be 500evs coming back next year, so may look into that.
Yea, one of the current ironies is that the folks most able to use/charge an environmentally friendly car are the people living in environmentally unfriendly single-family homes. I've yet to see an apartment complex with more than 2-3 charging points for a building of hundreds of units, and plenty of older condo/apartment housing stock can't even easily retrofit chargers into the lot without spending tens of thousands of dollars on it, assuming your local power system supports it.
Having to drive five to ten miles and wait for most of an hour to charge is just a bad experience.
As number of electric cars increase converting parking lots to charging stations will increase as well. Though I think currently just like we have incentives for cars we need incentives for businesses to install chargers specially for chargers with solar backend to speed up the change as more chargers are built more people will move to electric as it gets more convenient.
China this year reached $10k car with BYD introducing its $10k cars with sodium ion batteries, these are not like previous cheap cars which were practically golf carts. With the prices of batteries and solar electricity falling 10%-12% a year on avg I think electric cars are going to take over a lot faster than people are expecting. Main reason being cost ice cars are almost 3 times as expensive to run today as an electric car already. It will be 5-8 times in 5-8 years.
I have friends who own EVs without access to home charging who charge at the grocery store once a week while shopping. The car is done charging before they’re done shopping for groceries.
The trick is to distribute chargers everywhere, because your car is going to be parked somewhere long enough to charge unless you’re a taxi or some other high utilization use case. Most will charge at home and or work, but some cannot.
This. It's weird that EV owners do virtue signaling from their house and commute by car everyday, while condo people can't afford EV and don't commute by car. Slow EV charger at condo parking is what every govt should invest, instead of huge subsidy for vehicle.
I have no way to charge at home though, being in an apartment. I don't plan to change that any time soon. I am certainly not changing where I live just for my car when a gas car works fine.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who can't feasibly charge at home, like people who have to park on the street, or who rent their home and don't have access to anything but a 120V 15A outlet, assuming they have access to an outlet at all where they park their car.
Hmm, tell that to the millions of people living in the UK in terraced/town houses where the only charging option is to drag a cable over the public footpath to the road side....if they manage to get a parking space directly outside their home.
Most people don’t understand this. They are so used to going to gas stations that they think they will have to regularly go to charging stations. All that time wasted refueling simply goes away as your car gets “fueled up” while you sleep.
Do you have charging where you live? (Private garage or parking spot?) All you really need is charging where you live, and charging along highways. I have literally never gone to any of the chargers within 30 miles of my house.
Hardest part is for apartment buildings. No big incentive to install chargers for public use.
No, There is no charging anywhere "near" my home. I park in an uncovered open apartment parking lot.
Same thing for at work.
And checking the charging maps shows very few options anywhere near me and the few places that do only have a couple plugs. Would be annoying to find it's in use by the time I get there so I would have to wait for them and then me.
Is it feasible to have charging installed at your home or office? To reiterate what GP said, I basically never charge anywhere except at home (currently in a private carport that I got a charger installed at, previously in an apartment building with a single shared charger for ~50 spots, 4-5 EVs).
Sounds like you live in the middle of nowhere. I live in what people consider the middle of no where and there are a number of Tesla charging stations near me.
The charging infrastructure can improve literally overnight.
Around me there were very few places until McDonald's suddenly decided to have a charger at every drive-thru, and now I have as many chargers as McDonalds' around me.
The charging infrastructure will take years to improve. "Literally overnight" is a laughable exaggeration. Pretty sure even McDonald's can't install EV chargers at each drive-thru "literally overnight".
But they do. Commercial locations like malls already have power available, so it's not a large-scale infrastructure project, but a matter of digging a cable and hooking up a box.
Did a long road trip in a Kia EV6. (Houston to San Diego and back) Stops weren't always super convenient, but it wasn't that long ago that trip wasn't even possible.
Electric cars have a lot more problems than range.
Toxicity and pollution of producing the battery is an immediate one. And the fact it's junk in 5-6 years, obsoleting often the entire car (or requiring an extremely expensive replacement).
The fact BEV are much heavier and are wearing down the roads much faster.
And while ICE are of higher risk of a fire, an ICE fire seems like child's play compared to a BEV fire. This thing is impossible to put out and turns everything around to fine (and very toxic) dust (including, again, the road below).
The first major evacuation event that hits a primarily electric-vehicle city is going to sorely test that idea. Batteries need to hold about 3-4x the charge that they currently do to make that plausible without endangering thousands.
EVs are probably in a better position than most ICE vehicles in that situation.
You won't consume fuel while at a dead stop in the traffic jams. You'll have peak efficiency when moving at low speeds in the traffic jams. You'll already be charged up at home, while everyone else will be waiting in line at gas stations to fill up. Some people won't even be able to get gas, because the stations will run out in the rush.
Vehicles travel for hundreds of miles in the event of a major storm. Some places may be up to 6 weeks without power upon returning. So you drive your battery powered car back home, and now it's dead, and you have no way to recharge it. Guess what you're going to be relying on to get basic essentials given that FEMA vehicles are NOT coming to you to deliver food? Someone else's ICE.
So when it's 100 degrees and 90 percent humidity outside and your neighbors with the ICE vehicles have gone to the gas stations for refills to both their vehicles AND their generators so that they can run a portable AC unit, you're utterly out of luck with your electric paperweight. I suppose you have a shot if you still have working solar panels, but in the situations I mentioned... LOL. Even if the winds don't shred them, the debris will.
I don't follow. EVs will fare much better in a city or regional evacuation.
EVs should be more efficient when driving at low speed than an ICE car, and the regenerative braking in stop-and-go traffic will help reclaim some wasted energy.
EV's don't expend power running the motor when stopped in traffic. Most ICE cars out there do not auto shut off their engines when idling (it's fairly recent that many newer cars have that feature), and even those that do need to turn the engine back on after a few minutes in order to run the car's electronics.
For the people who can charge at home (admittedly, there are many who cannot), their cars will likely already be fully charged when the evacuation order comes down. And we already know what happens with ICE cars when there's excessive demand for fuel: hours-long waits at the pump, and gas stations that run out entirely.
When hurricans etc are about hit an area, Tesla sends out an update to over-ride charge limits and fully charge the cars pre-emptively, sends notifications and alerts on the app, and makes super charging on the route free.
The first few things you mention are great, but giving away fuel for free (whether it's gasoline or electricity) is an unsustainable marketing stunt, and won't last.
Let's see Tesla's growth rate when they're closer to Toyota's size. And speaking of meaningless numbers, who cares about market cap? How does revenue compare? Toyota is about 3x, I think?
They're literally responding to someone commenting about stock price
Tesla sales growth currently seems limited by their ability to produce, so that's fairly bullish
Market cap isn't meaningless, though. Neither is debt. Market cap should be a function of assets, so presumably if Toyota had as little debt as Tesla it would be ~480b market cap.
Why is Tesla higher? It has a better story (not saying I buy it, but at least I can explain it!):
At one point, Tesla was worth more than: Toyota, Volkwagen Group, Hyundai/Kia, General Motors, Ford, Nissan, Honda, Fiat Chrysler, Renault, Suzuki, Daimler, BMW, Mazda and Mitsubishi combined. (Plus several Chinese manufacturers: SAID, Geely, Changan, Dongfeng).
I'd love anyone to justify that with a straight face.
Well no.. They don't have better self driving prospects. Tesla claimed in 2016 that the driver was only in the seat for regulatory reasons. We're now in 2023 and Tesla is still only level 2, nowhere near autonomous driving.
> Let's see Tesla's growth rate when they're closer to Toyota's size.
Not sure what point your trying to make, though. Smaller, faster-growing companies usually do trade at a premium over their larger, slower-growing counterparts. That's just... kinda how the stock market works?
You can certainly object to the magnitude of the difference between the two companies' PE ratios, but otherwise nothing seems weird here.
P/E tells most of what you need to value a company that is stable in size. Tesla could grow earnings 10x and it would still have a higher P/E with the same valuation. It's way out of line unless you believe they are going to own half the world market for cars one day. I suppose if SpaceX can obtain 90 percent of the launch market, why not Tesla?
Toyota and Tesla don’t just manufacture and sell cars they have a more complicated business model. Tesla’s EV charging network for example should clearly be part of their valuation and is unrelated to Toyota’s business strategy.
IMO people are heavily discounting Toyota’s stock compared to their car/total sales for two reasons. Most critically their 200+ Billion dollars of debt, but also the significant sign of mismanagement from their useless investment in Hydrogen.
Hydrogen aircraft/heavy equipment could have real utility, but it’s simply not compelling for passenger vehicles. High capital and operating costs + low energy density + low efficiency all for faster fueling times.
People making along trips want to charge quickly and are willing to pay ~3x the retail cost of electricity to do so. So it can be quite profitable right now.
Longer term I expect charging to become a low margin commodity business, but other networks have had serious reliability issues so people may be willing to pay a premium simply to know everything will work when they get there.
PS: Even longer term I expect in road charging to become a thing on major highways, but that’s easily 20+ years away.
This is delusional. Hydrogen is a fundamentally superior technology compared to BEVs. Tesla is the facing the next big crisis when the limitations of battery reveal itself. Batteries are simply not a sustainable technology. It is Tesla that is being disruption by innovation, not Toyota.
Also I feel there are 2 other significant variables in play. Software is often an oligopoly type market. Self driving is likely to rewrite car manufacturers to those that solve this well and those that don't. Tesla for right or wrong has been viewed as one of the best bets here.
Elon factor. He's been a significant factor in quite a number of significant companies created. That seems an attractive bet he will do good things vs anyone else.
I think most have realized by now that self-driving is not a serious possibility anytime soon for anything other than a nice option to upsell the car by some small margin.
And Tesla FSD is not even best-in-class between car manufacturers (Mercedes is, with actual approved and shipped commercial L3), not to mention the entire self-driving market (where Waymo is way ahead).
>Elon factor. He's been a significant factor in quite a number of significant companies created. That seems an attractive bet he will do good things vs anyone else.
I'm pretty skeptical on all things Elon these days.
> Tesla for right or wrong has been viewed as one of the best bets here.
Really? From what I've read and seen, Tesla's self-driving is starting to feel like the butt of most jokes in the space. And Musk's absurd insistence that cameras are the only sensors anyone needs isn't doing their technology any favors.
> Elon factor.
I think Musk might be running out of steam. The Twitter fiasco shows how unstable and unfocused he is; the whole thing could collapse like a house of cards at any time. I had extreme respect for him 7 years or so ago, but that has eroded over time, and now I see him as a delusional, abusive asshole who happened to have the charisma (a nice way of putting "talent for emotional manipulation") to help build some successful businesses. (And it still remains to be seen if Tesla and SpaceX will continue to be successful in the long term.)
> GM has a P/E ration of less than 6. Are they distressed? If not, isn't that absurdly cheap?
Reminds me of amazon vs everyone or nflx vs blockbuster. The 'market' seems to think tsla is just going to keep growing and gobble up much of the auto market share. Both amazon and nflx had absurd PEs for a long time. Eventually their grew into it.
6 P/E looks enticing as long as you think the 'E' is going to maintain itself over the long term. Do you think GM is going to maintain their earnings?
Exactly! TBH, I made a few bucks on F back when their PE was similarly low. Their EV strategy made sense and their current product line was in demand too. It seemed like an easy and relatively safe bet, and it worked out.
GM is a more difficult case. Their current efforts around Ultium haven't gone so well so far, and their ICE product line isn't even that much better. I think they will do well, but they have a lot of work to do.
The car market is switching quickly to EVs, GM has not shown that they can produce them, they recently discontinued their Chevy Bolt. They keep promising wonders in 3-5 years, but the years are ticking by. You don't want to be stuck trying to sell ICE cars in 10 years... Their only bright spot is Cruise, which has a shot at making a lot of money. Right now they're burning billions though, which means that at any sight of trouble, GM might cut their losses there, or try to sell it.
The only people I know wanting a Chevy already own chevys. Of course, most of the people that I know that own chevys would be happy with something else too.
The market cap tells you what you need to know. Is there a way in which Tesla can grow the total vehicle market, expand alone into adjacent protected, high value markets, or reasonably exceed Toyota’s market share? If not, they’re over valued.
They are still valued on $300k per car future numbers from when they were supposed to be renting cars with AI drivers in 2020, and the exuberance and “playing with house money” crowd has just kept the music going.
It is a more complete number to use. Unfortunately, debt (and equivalents, and even cash depending on its location) aren’t always or even often a simple addition or subtraction.
Hah, if only Toyota... At one point, Tesla was worth more than: Toyota, Volkwagen Group, Hyundai/Kia, General Motors, Ford, Nissan, Honda, Fiat Chrysler, Renault, Suzuki, Daimler, BMW, Mazda and Mitsubishi combined. (Plus several Chinese manufacturers: SAID, Geely, Changan, Dongfeng).
If Tesla were a car company. However, Tesla is also a fuel-station company. You could just as easily value it against BP or Shell to get better market cap representation.
It’s the attempt to fulfill the story they’ve been selling since the beginning, which is exactly the EV-company-but-with-sticky-SaaS-revenue you’d expect from SV.
A problem when you try to span those markets is you lose access to support from other major companies because you open up too many competitive fronts.
A further problem is when you try to reproduce a model (oil companies) that is dependent on finding and securing resources when almost everyone has a sufficient and unending oil-well-equivalent permanently incident on their roof.
What sort of a mega pack business does Toyota have? What are the long term prospects for their Robot? What tech is Toyota going to sell to other car companies to make money?
Why is Toyota investing in hydrogen when it makes no sense? What is Toyota going to do about it's massive debt.
These are some of the reasons Tesla is valued at what it is and Toyota is what IT is. Toyota has nothing exciting on the horizon that is going to dramatically change things for them.
Not to mention they make a pittance per car compared to Tesla.
Others discussed hydrogen. Frankly it seems to me to be a bad bet by Toyota. I assume they have better information than I do, but they also may have been prevented from a reasonable position on battery vs hydrogen by some internal politics or other dynamics.
The robot:
Tesla seems to have approximately reproduced the state of Japanese robotics in 2000 (Honda Asimo) using technology that has seriously advanced in twenty years. I am not qualified to say what the future value of that is, or why battery packs are a competitive advantage to something that never leaves the home.
Tech to sell to other car companies:
Humans run the other car companies. What will they do if they recognize a competitive threat with a technology advantage? Will they say “great, let’s buy that from our competitor since they’re clearly superior”? Or are they more likely to say something like “let’s figure out a way to neutralize or eliminate this advantage” and then go about doing it (even as a collective)?
Tesla hired Toyota execs to build their manufacturing line. There is little chance that Toyota could not, if it could get out of its own way, do what Telsa is doing from a manufacturing and technology perspective. This to me suggests that others will, even if Toyota culturally cannot make it happen.
The profit per vehicle available is primarily indicative of competition. Toyota is a mature company in a mature segment with a lot of competition. Tesla is entitled to those numbers as long as they can maintain them and stave off competition. Some people think they will be able to do that for a long time. I’m not one of them.
Tesla’s barrier in justifying their market cap is not only the other car companies, of whom there are roughly a dozen with similar revenue or higher. In the process of capturing the value they are talking about, their competition becomes major portions of the structure of global markets in the energy and transportation sectors, at least.
Hydrogen is a fundamentally superior technology to batteries. It is Tesla that will eventually have to move on to fuel cell cars, not Toyota doing the other way around.
Hydrogen is a fundamental superior technology compared to batteries. If anything, Toyota is decades ahead of Tesla. Everything Tesla is aiming to do is just a pale imitation of what Toyota is already achieving.
And yet I've seen at most a handful of hydrogen-powered cars since they've been available commercially, and I've only once seen a refueling station for them.
Superior technology -- assuming it is; I have no idea -- often doesn't win.
Because PE is a key indicator for evaluating how much a company is worth, but then this dates from the days when investors were looking for sustainable growth and dividends not stock buybacks.
Toyota hasn't released a good BEV yet (bz4x's battery and drivetrain are a decade behind the state of the art), and poured a ton of money into hydrogen which isn't happening for passenger cars.
I suspect the stock is priced with the possibility that Toyota is reacting to EVs the way Nokia and Blackberry to the iPhone.
Tesla fanboys need to stop being so short-sighted. All innovation in cars will not stop at the BEV. There will be a next technology leap beyond the BEV. And if you think honestly about what that is, it will be hydrogen cars. Simply because they are EVs without the limitations of the li-ion battery.
As a result, people need to think carefully about what comes next. If anything, BEVs represent a transitional technology. You can think of them as being what Reddit is right now. Sure, it disrupted what came before (i.e. Digg), but it is not the end-result of that particular business sector. And if that is the case, then it is likely that Tesla, not Toyota, that faces the biggest challenge in the future.
Sorry to break it to you, hydrogen or e-fuels definitely have a place in the future for fertilizer, seasonal storage and maritime shipping. For personal vehicles BEVs won nearly 10 years ago.
See the "Hydrogen ladder" for further, more eloquent, information.
• Hydrogen's end-to-end efficiency is low (losses in electrolysis + transport + fuel cell), so running costs are inherently a couple times higher than BEV's. This alone IMHO kills chances of mass adoption, as people will simply not want to pay more.
• EV charging stations are already common, unlike hydrogen fuel stations that barely exist anywhere. Charging stations are easier and cheaper to install and maintain (no need to deliver fuel or deal with moving parts for high pressure or cryogenic storage), so this is likely to stay in BEV's favor.
• You can't refill the high-pressure hydrogen just by plugging into your home outlet. For people who can charge BEV at home it is a huge convenience.
• The range of the Toyota Mirai is barely higher than long-range BEVs'. It doesn't even solve BEVs' main shortcoming, despite compromising a lot of space for hydrogen tanks!
• High-end BEVs can already recharge to 80% under 20 minutes, and don't require you to be near the car while charging (so you can get a coffee/toilet break at the same time). All of this trouble and cost to shave it down to a 5 minute refill, which you have to spend attending to the pump, is just not worth all of the fuel costs, wasted car space, and rollout of a new fuel pipeline.
Hydrogen may find uses in aviation, or long-distance trucks, maybe heavy machinery, but it's a poor fit for passenger cars and has already lost.
Wow market cap! What a great measurement...of what a bunch of gamblers on a secondary market say a company is worth is all its shares could magically be sold without affecting the sale price.
You are right, I apologize. My quick googling gave me the wrong PE for Tesla. The correct PE is about 77. I didn’t notice because during the euphoria phase it was insanely over 1000 so 261 seemed plausible.
I think someday reality will set in and Tesla stock will plummet, but I would be crazy to short it. I guarantee Tesla fans can stay irrational way longer than I can stay solvent.
I think regardless Tesla is positioned to have a lot of value. Granted I don’t know a whole lot about it so let me know if I’m wrong but it seems like even if their cars fizzle out eventually they are still building the majority of electric car infrastructure. If more and more companies cut deals with Tesla to use their stations they may end up being some majority of the countries “gas stations”. If I were investing in them it’d be as an energy company instead of a car company.
Tesla is just building big transformers and ways to plug cars into them, though. They're not building power plants; they still have to buy their "fuel" from third parties. To me, that makes this aspect of their business much less compelling.
It’s funny that people have been coming out of the woodwork finally, realizing Teslas worth the valuation because of the charging station partnerships they’ve done recently. Those are actually meaningless and will contribute a very very tiny percentage of profits into the future. The reason Teslas valuation is so high is because people value it as an AI company which may dominate Robo taxis and humanoid robots in the future
Why do you say that? It seems like it’s going to be really hard to build a network of fast charging stations for EVs and Tesla has a big head start it seems like.
All that means is that you don't believe your own story.
People said this all the time about Tesla a few year ago. But the stock value back then is easly justified by what they have achieved since.
So the reality is that 'Tesla fans' were not irrational, but they were simply correct. And the people who endlessly repeat the 'market can stay irrational longer then you can sty solvent line' were simply wrong.
Its also an absurd fantasy that Tesla stock is only carried by irrational Musk fan boys. When in reality is mostly large institutional investors who do the same financial analysis on Tesla as anything else they buy.
Good work; you successfully managed to time the market. I'm sure there were many, many others who didn't make out so well.
Now redo the calculation a bunch of times to account for all the other possible times you could have both opened and closed that short position, and see how many other times you would have turned a profit. Probably not in many of them.
You got lucky. Contrary to some popular belief, lucky timing is not a generally-applicable investing strategy.
Not even. Musk had a company which had plans for an online bank (can you imagine?) but it wasn't working out so well. So his company merged with one that was in the process of creating PayPal (trademarked, prototype in place)...
Musk was the largest shareholder of the combined companies, so he was made CEO...
And promptly spent four months complaining that the working prototype needed to be thrown away, because it was written in Java on Solaris, and he didn't understand it, and he wanted it rewritten in Classic ASP on Windows.
Four months, because at that point, the board, lead by Peter Thiel had had enough of it and removed him as CEO.
definitely not the smartest at the heights of marie curie nor stephem hawking
but smart and rich enough to be worth more than all of us in this thread
shorters are literally betting against the guy that spearheaded reusable rockets in space, i'm not saying all his decisions and perspectives are agreeable, but seriously what do you all think is your leverage against the guy?
Another smart guy that is almost as rich is short tesla ie Bill Gates I don't know or care about who is right and who is wrong just saying your investment should not be purely based on Musk name. Personally I think Tesla might win the car race but as prices for electricity, batteries and pc chips keep going down. I am not so sure about self driving cars being worth that much as it will be race to the bottom in terms of price and cost.
Cheaper electricity is coming that is the bigger change than most people realise not electric cars. So far majority of electricity has been produced using fossil fuels a finite resource where as solar is practically an infinite resource price for harvesting it as well as storing it keeps dropping.
That is phenomenal. Exponential growth of anything at this scale is unheard of. That too when Toyota is struggling to deliver Hybrid vehicles in my area (> 2y wait time).
Any automaker is eligible for those subsides if they sell EVs (with a bonus based on US content). Their lack of will or ability to deliver is all that holds them back. Sell EVs if you want government support. I am unwilling to argue the merit of EV subsidies, that conversation has no value.
It’s amazing because Tesla built an EV that is wildly in demand roughly around the price of the average new car accounting for subsides. The Model Y was the best selling car globally last quarter, beating out Toyota.
Tesla makes their Chinese EVs in China and sources most of its supplies there. Almost all other foreign car companies in China are 51-49 join ventures (with 51 being the Chinese partner's controlling share) so they are also eligible for those subsidies.
I don’t get Why the hate and easy one liners like this, when Tesla refunded the only gov lease they got with interests while all legacy are digging their deficit further, the rest is equal grounds for all manufacturer to compete.
American should be proud and supportive for any local company actually dedicated to quit fossil fuels or anything about not relying on another country.
I imagine it's much like any other manufacturer with an over-the-top fanbase. The constant gushing and cheerleading creates opposition out of thin air. I'm not sure there has ever been a set of fans as dedicated as Tesla ones, to be honest. Hell, they still accuse anyone who dares to disagree with being short on TSLA.
The post they were responding to said “not relying on another country” so pointing out Tesla’s reliance on China is a contrary argument. In fact the supply chain for EVs is even more complex than that. China has a huge hyper-financed chokehold on many processing steps but the raw materials come from across the globe. On the other hand, ICE vehicles have a relatively simple supply chain so it’s a big weakness that EVs currently have and well worth pointing out.
> On the other hand, ICE vehicles have a relatively simple supply chain
Relatively simple == simpler, but I would point out it's brittle because just-in-time hyperoptimisations sucked it dry of spare capacity. Stocks of EMS microchips held up production.
Most of a car outside of ICE/EV differences are the same inputs, same supply chain. Tesla's stamped bodyparts require metal billets the same way normal auto car body panel stampers do.
Inside of ICE/EV differences Tesla runs flow processes to make batteries close to site. The input supply chain for batteries is pretty simple. I am not sure I would say the supply chain behind a fuel injection system is as simple, it has mechanical and electromechanical and electronic parts in profusion. Lots of points of brittleness.
The government has rules about air quality. Companies that can't match those rules have to pay other companies that do match those rules money. Its not money from the government.
If other companies are to dumb and incompetent to make their cars follow emissions regulation, then that's their own fault.