[thebruce87m]

The legacy manufacturers are having a competition to see who can become the next Nokia.

The infotainment system, charging network and charging experience of a Tesla are still far ahead of the competition but I can’t tell why. There is literally a playbook to follow and they are all failing at it.

[CharlieDigital]

My non-expert guesses:

- Investing capital for new manufacturing lines, retraining employees, hiring new employees, etc. means reduced profits and reduced short term returns for shareholders. The top level execs probably feel like their heads would be on the chopping block if investor returns were to be reduced in the short term for accelerating long term growth.

- A lot of entrenched mid-level and senior executives are simply protecting their turf. Similar to how Nadella completely turned around the mindset at Microsoft once Ballmer was ousted, I'd guess there are a lot of executives with fat paychecks that don't want to see their little empires diminished.

- Holding taxpayers hostage for government subsidies (to be fair, many electric startups did get the benefit). BMWs "threat" about reliance on the Chinese supply chain feels like a kind of strawman to get more subsidies.

[MrHamburger]

Or general mass market is not interested in BEVs specifically, but in a cheap vehicle which can get them from point A to point B. And BEVs at the moment are anything but cheap + add there negative adventures with charging infrastructure if you can't charge at home (50% of people in EU can't) and owning a BEV is suddenly more of a niche thing for rich people than mass market opportunity.

[thebruce87m]

> And BEVs at the moment are anything but cheap

Fascinating to see the comments on EV threads where they are claimed to be expensive, but also that the second hand values are really low. Surely buying a second hand one solves the absolute “expensive” bit?

Even then I’d question the “more expensive than ICE” claims for new models. In the UK the average cost of a new vehicle is £40k: https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/opinion/363624/average-new-car...

A model 3 is £40k

I am not rich. You can count me in the 50% of people who can charge at home, which saves me £100/month in fuel.

[MrHamburger]

New VW Golf floats around 30k EUR, which is still 10k EUR cheaper than Tesla Model 3 and you still have 10k for fuel - that's with your difference is 8 years of driving.

However 50% of people in EU does not have home charging (i.e. living in apartments) therefore they won't see your savings but they will see the wasted time on public chargers.

[thebruce87m]

> New VW Golf floats around 30k EUR, which is still 10k EUR cheaper than Tesla Model 3 and you still have 10k for fuel - that's with your difference is 8 years of driving.

OK? I chose an average to avoid cherry picking, so I don’t see the value of you cherry picking a cheaper car, it’s just going to be a race to the bottom.

> However 50% of people in EU does not have home charging (i.e. living in apartments) therefore they won't see your savings but they will see the wasted time on public chargers.

It’s very situation dependent. If people can charge at work, while shopping or during natural stops on long journeys and so on. For some it might take longer until infrastructure catches up, but we are digging up roads to put fibre everywhere and I refuse to believe we can’t give every space in a block of flats what essentially amounts to a 3-pin plug (or 2 in the EU).

I had to charge publicly on Friday during a long journey - I’d estimate it took around 30 seconds total extra* time and most of that was the credit card clearing. The car charged as we ate and had more than enough when we’d finished. Still faster than fuelling an ICE since we would have had to do an additional stop.

*It wasn’t even really extra since my wife was inside ordering anyway.

[MrHamburger]

> Me: Or general mass market is not interested in BEVs specifically, but in a cheap vehicle which can get them from point A to point B.

> You: so I don’t see the value of you cherry picking a cheaper car, it’s just going to be a race to the bottom

That's how mass market works. People will always want cheap stuff. Not expensive. Not average. Cheap. Pretending that Model 3 is cheap compared to cheap ICE is delusional.

The whole problem with BEV infrastructure is that it currently makes no economical sense. Otherwise responsible people would be taking care for maintenance and expansion without governmental handouts.

[cogman10]

> Investing capital for new manufacturing lines, retraining employees, hiring new employees, etc.

Which is really silly because these new lines are relatively cheap to setup. EVs are easier to manufacturer than ICE vehicles with fewer parts and inspection points needed.

That is why so many small time EV manufactures were capable of spawning out of nowhere.

[Neil44]

They're producing what people want to buy. Used EV prices are in freefall. I'm not saying that's a good thing it's just the way it is.

[thebruce87m]

> in freefall

Can you quantify this? Most times when people say things like this they are just repeating headlines of articles. The articles themselves will loosely be based on some truth, but are mostly just EV hit pieces. It would be good to see similar ICE models compared %age wise. “Freefall” sounds dramatic, but if it’s an extra 5% depreciation from the expected 50% over 3 years I think it’s a bit of an exaggeration, especially if fuel savings would fill the gap.

[CharlieDigital]

I'd argue that any numbers supporting this are likely significantly skewed by Tesla's recent and dramatic price cuts significantly pulling down the used car prices for EVs as a whole.