[rjusher]

One thing I don't understand is the position of the big car makers(BMW, MB, AUDI) being a passive observer in this field.

Tesla is getting so much, that if any automaker that can deliver a car with half the specs of a model S, and keeping their model's prices as a mass produced car, would deliver a big punch to Tesla, and would greatly move the market forward.

Is it the investment necessary for building a network of charging stations?

I highly doubt it is because Tesla has more money for R&D than any other car maker.

Is getting a Model S, earns you the title of being an early adopter. Because I believe the market already shifted towards this type of vehicles, but I may be polarized, because I already desire an electric car.

[srb-]

I agree. Another crazy thing is that there is a shortage of Tesla-level batteries in the market right NOW. Yet aside from Tesla/Panasonic, no one else is ramping battery production to be able to produce millions of cars a year!

So when Tesla's $35k car becomes a mainstream hit in 2018, I have no doubt big auto will react with compelling competitive vehicles. The problem is they won't have the battery infrastructure in place to sell more than 50,000 units, and it'll take them several years to catch up to Tesla's production volumes!

That or purchase their packs from Tesla.

[city41]

Why do you say the other makers are passive? BMW, Mercedes, Nissan, VW, Ford and Fiat all have fully electric cars. Sure none of them get near the range the Model S does, but they are getting involved in this. A Nissan Leaf offers roughly one third the specs of a Model S, but also at one third the price. Seems like progress to me.

[rsync]

"Why do you say the other makers are passive? BMW, Mercedes, Nissan, VW, Ford and Fiat all have fully electric cars."

BMW has an i3 that is basically an Onion article parody version of an electric car. If you had to draw a comic of an electric car, that's what you'd draw.

They also have an absolutely ridiculous "electric" i8 that has a lawnmower engine shoehorned in it somewhere and you can listen to that fire off every now and then while you drive your luxury car around. And oh, yeah, it goes 0-60 in 4.4 seconds and they actually advertise that fact.

Mercedes also has a lame little clown car (the B-class, or whatever it is) and a bunch of "luxury" models with little chainsaw engines hidden somewhere inside. Good thing they do all that sound dampening since who wants to hear a chuggy little 3 or 4-banger fire up at every stoplight.

It's stupefying. It's flabbergasting. It defies all logic.

And it's not like it's 2002 or something and they're all reacting to the prius ... they've all had 15 fucking years to come up with something, anything that doesn't make them a joke. And they have nothing.

I don't particularly like the styling of the model S, and I really don't like the interior, and I really, really don't like a big styling void in the middle of the dash where that 17" monitor sits, but I put down a deposit and am taking delivery.

It is a spite purchase. I refuse to pay an incumbent one more cent for the privilege of enabling their anachronistic product model.

[TwoBit]

I don't get that part about a styling void, but I agree with the rest.

[dntrkv]

Problem with the Leaf is that a 75 mile range is unusable for most people. A 30 mile commute is pretty common, to and from work and you're almost out. Pick up kids and groceries and you'll probably be stuck on the side of the road somewhere. Forget to charge the car overnight and you're screwed.

If we take the base Model S, which has a 230 mile range, 315hp, and 0-60mph in 5.5 seconds, it goes for $70k minus $10k in tax subsidies. And compare it to the Nissan Leaf SL which has a 84 miles range, 107hp, and 0-60mph in 10.2 seconds, it goes for $35k - $7.5k in tax subsidies.

So it's exactly half the price, for much less then half the car. The Tesla has the highest safety rating out there. It handles really well. You get free charging station access. I mean, it doesn't even make sense to compare the cars. Even when you account for price, you are still getting way more than twice the car when you get the Tesla.

Progress for me would be Nissan offering a car comparable to the Model S for a comparable price.

[city41]

According to Edmunds, the MSRP on the Model S 60 (the base model) is $79,570. The average price paid in my area is $79,570. I don't actually know, but I suspect Tesla does not haggle on price.

The MSRP for the Leaf is $30,585, and average price paid in my area is $25,682.

Edmunds does not account for tax subsidies. I think we can both twiddle the numbers in our favor. So the question is, what are the actual cost of ownership of these cars? I still strongly suspect, the Leaf costs roughly 1/3 of the Tesla and is roughly 1/3 of a car.

[sokoloff]

I bought a LEAF SL in Dec for $31K and change before $10K in credits. That was less than a third the cost of a Model S after rebates, IIRC.

On the downside, range is closer to 75 miles in the winter (driving normally for MA, meaning fairly fast) and a pretty regular 90-95 miles in the summer.

Overall, I love it. It's no Tesla and is not a economic winner over a good used car, but it's a damned good car and I think it's one of the most economic of the new cars, even with MA insane cost of electricity.

[adevine]

Saying "twice the car/half the car", like they're pints and quarts, doesn't really make sense, though.

The Nissan Leaf is intended to be a city (or at least "close in suburb") car. With my 10 mile/20 minute commute, in a city with horrible public transportation, makes the Leaf ideal. Especially since I can afford a Leaf, a Model S not so much.

[seanflyon]

With the exception of the Leaf, all those fully electric cars seem more like tests or prototypes than serious attempts to win the market. Nissan is anything but passive when it comes to fully electric cars, but all the other major car makers are being, in my opinion, overly cautious.

[vectorjohn]

I just got a Fiat 500e, it is a bad ass car, and definitely doesn't feel like a test or prototype. It gets more like 85 miles (it better, it's much smaller than a Leaf), and works for almost all the transportation I need. I haven't bothered to set up a high voltage charger or anything, and I've been amazed by the convenience of it.

I agree though, they should really be pushing these electric cars. They're awesome. They're a pleasure to drive. I hate going back to gas, just shifting and the low torque are noticeable and now annoying. Maybe they just suck at advertising (doubtful) or they have other motives.

[durkie]

Hah, the Fiat 500e is the one that the Chrysler CEO explicitly said "I hope you don't buy it"[1]

[1] http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1092315_chrysler-ceo-und...

[city41]

The VW e-Golf and BMW i3 are no less cars than the Leaf is. The e-Golf in particular competes directly with the Leaf, offering similar features and price. The i3 is pretty pricy, but it is a BMW after all.

[seanflyon]

I agree with you about the e-Golf. I had previously seen numbers like this: http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/ that make the e-golf look like they were converting a few hundred cars to electric drivetrains as a test, but I didn't realize that the car was selling in meaningful numbers in Europe. I would love to know if they are making a profit on them or plan to in the near future. You might be right about the i3 as well, but everything about it screams "concept car" in my mind. I also consider the Volt to be a serious attempt to win the market, but it's not a fully electric vehicle.

[csours]

The biggest issue at the moment is the limited range with battery only.

Even after a large network of charging stations is created, the user experience for long trips is not ideal - up to 1/4 of driving time may be spent charging.

The ownership paradigm may change at some point, but at the moment people like the idea of using their own car to go around town as well as going on vacation / see the parents / etc across the state or nation.

- Disclaimer - I work for GM

[rjusher]

You are completely right, even though I would like to own a car for my daily use, and a big car for trips and etc, is not feasible, for me at least, so I have to buy the best of both worlds.

I disagree with the 1/4 of the time charging, with a solution like the Tesla's battery swap, it would be far less(I could be completely wrong in this).

[tashoecraft]

Tesla may axe the battery swap: http://fortune.com/2015/06/10/teslas-battery-swap-is-dead/

[ohsnap]

Really hard for big companies to change. They have built a loyal brand around big gasoline engines. In fact the sound of the engine is so important to them that BMW pumps fake 'vroom' sounds into the i8 so it sounds like a v8. I'm not kidding.

[bravo22]

The batteries in a Tesla aren't very green and sadly they are quite large. Big automakers think in volumes of millions of cars, Tesla delivers about 25K (EDIT: looks like 40K projected for this year[1]) cars a year.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/05/12/tes...

[rjusher]

What do you mean with not very green, I do know they carry chemicals inside, but the not very green part is the manufacturing or the battery itself.

But Tesla is also working in a big battery factory, and I read this plant is very green.

But how is the batteries less green than cars producing contamination. (The batteries could be worst, that's is something I haven't even considered)¿?

[bravo22]

The carbon footprint of producing the battery, even not considering the chemicals, is very large. So much so that you'd have to drive it on many years from a full-renewable source for you to break even with a regular car[1]. Tesla, sadly, maximizes the battery in their cars.

My read is that their main goal is selling batteries and everything from opening their "patents" (i.e. their custom connectors/battery pack) to the home wall-pack is designed to do that.

[1] http://www.environment.ucla.edu/media/files/BatteryElectricV... (page 7 with relevant graph) Also http://www.enveurope.com/content/pdf/2190-4715-24-14.pdf (page 10/11)

[vvanders]

That doesn't really match up with the next page(8), it shows BEV beating traditional cars in both graph and quote:

"Our base case results suggest that a BEV uses the least amount of energy of all the vehicle types analyzed in this study, followed by a hybrid and a CV. The results of the CV lifecycle analysis show that by far the greatest source of energy intensity is the use phase, at 95% of the lifecycle energy. This is due to the amounts of energy required to extract and process the gasoline and the energy intensity of the gasoline itself."

[cloudwalking]

What about the carbon footprint of producing gasoline? You're missing half of the equation.

[bravo22]

The linked report compares BEVs with ICE and Hybrid. Hybrid beats both because of the smaller battery.

BEVs have a very large upfront footprint due to the battery that needs to be paid off overtime by driving from a renewable source. However in US only 14% of energy comes from renewable sources, so it'll be a very long pay off.

Hybrids are the best way to go until we make significant strides in batteries (20-30 years off?). You rely on your charged battery for most of your trips, and the highly optimized gas engine kicks in when you need the extra range/juice.

[seanflyon]

You just completely ignored the question you replied to.

[wbeckler]

The bestselling minivan only sells 110K units in a given year. That's not millions.

[toast0]

Not sure if these are correct figures, but http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2015/01/usa-minivan-sales-figur... says the Chrysler Town & Country sold 138k, and the Dodge Caravan sold 134k, this appears to be US only data; and these two vehicles are really the same vehicle with different trim, so that's about 10 times the number of Tesla vehicles.

[bravo22]

In the US, and Minivans aren't the most popular type of cars. Here is just BMW sales in 2014:

http://www.bmwgroup.com/e/0_0_www_bmwgroup_com/investor_rela...

[Randuin]

In what country is it the most popular type?

[bravo22]

Minivans are most popular is North America. The data cited is for US sales but my original argument was worldwide sales.

[CydeWeys]

Isn't it an overstatement that the batteries aren't green? Yes, there are environmental impacts from the production, but still a lot less than the environmental impacts of all the oil that would otherwise be produced and burnt to fuel the car over its lifetime, no?

[Merad]

But, isn't the lifetime of the battery pack significantly lower than the (presumed) lifetime of the actual car? If your Model S stays on the road 20 years but requires 3-4 battery replacements, that's several big hits against its environmental friendliness.

[digikata]

The lifetime of the battery will likely be much longer than it's life in the car - if the plans for 'second life' re-use as static energy storage devices come to pass.

[CydeWeys]

The lifetimes of battery packs have been greatly underestimated by detractors for quite some time. Hybrids have been on the US market since 1999, and battery life has never been a serious issue. The new batteries are far higher quality than the old ones anyway.

3-4 battery replacements over 20 years isn't anything close to what a Model S will require. Do you have a source for those figures?

[rybosome]

That's my understanding, but it's important to keep this in mind when touting the merits of battery tech. Of course, the battery production and charging process can become drastically more green (and will do so once the Gigafactory is operational), so even this is somewhat of a moot point.

[bravo22]

Please see my other response in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9905275

[chambo622]

Try ~55k this year

[bravo22]

Maybe that is sold? Per this [1] article from May their delivery per quarter is about 10K units, so about 40K/yr.

I'll update my reply.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/05/12/tes...

[eatmyshorts]

According to Tesla's own statements, they are planning to deliver 55k this year, and their Q2 deliveries of 11,507 puts them on track (by their own estimates). I would assume some of those deliveries will be for the Model X, which is supposed to start shipping in Q3. Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-sets-a-new-record-for-c...