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TminusTech t1_ja0nv6x wrote

It’s only a matter of time until the EV market becomes more and more competitive. Would be nice for Tesla to not have a disproportionate monopoly over the space and chargers.

Hopefully Congress steps in and addresses the issue of charging standards and artificial eco systems.

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Weesar t1_ja0nwar wrote

Additionally, the consumers benefit from the cost savings. right? Righttttt??????

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ishortit t1_ja0qvpz wrote

“New Chemistry!”

>LFP

ok sure Jan

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Ancient_Persimmon t1_ja0rt9a wrote

LFP chemistry has been evolving pretty quickly, but generally speaking, they charge slower than a Nickel based pack.

One large enough for an F-series should be able to beat the current Lightning's 150kW rate though.

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ThaxReston t1_ja0y57b wrote

Yet still a POS TO AVOID. 🤮🤮🤮🤮

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tyranicalteabagger t1_ja13sp6 wrote

Lifepo4 are great. Long lasting, fast charging/discharging, but energy density leaves something to be desired.

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lebastss t1_ja140xb wrote

Yes, they are operating at a loss and signaling what they want their price point to be. Now they are tooling their car in a more affordable way to make that price point profitable. The manufacturing cost cut follows the price reduction not the other way around. That's how free market drives innovation.

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drysart t1_ja159p5 wrote

I don't know that I'd characterize the entire industry except Tesla coalescing around an open, non-patent-encumbered, superior connector as a "defeat" they need to admit and switch away from.

Tesla's connector falls under Tesla's "you can use it if you promise to never sue us ever, for any reason" patent offering which already makes it kryptonite for literally every other company in the world; but it's also a less capable connector, not capable of safely carrying >500V when we're increasingly seeing vehicles capable of accepting higher voltages.

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Ancient_Persimmon t1_ja1ak1q wrote

Tesla completely opened their connector up last fall when they updated the spec. It can be used with the CCS protocol, so no need to license Tesla's proprietary one and it's rated to 1000V x 1000A.

0

katsbro069 t1_ja1fhbp wrote

Wait they are advancing??? /s

I thought they would use the "child labor" lithium forever. that parrot squawking that was used as a fact by ppl who didn't care about those kids anyway.

Technology, who knew....

Well the logical knew.

Parrots, not so much.

−3

beall49 t1_ja1gqjt wrote

I can’t wait till we can actually get one of those trucks off the lot. The range is kind of shit right now, but I’m sure that’ll improve.

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whyreadthis2035 t1_ja1i7uj wrote

I did. And the initial talk of 40-50k was over 70k in seconds. I wasn’t detailed enough in my response. How is this Ford cost savings going to reflect in my price. I’d really like to replace my 06 F150 and my 06 Sienna with what seemed like literally the perfect vehicle.

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azdood85 t1_ja1kzsh wrote

Yeah but do they spontaneously combust? Or is the fire suppression system an addon subscription service?

−3

ahfoo t1_ja1l70t wrote

Lithium prices which were down 20% over the five month peak last time I checked are now closer to 30% off the highs and heading south fast.

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium

People who paid top dollar for used IC autos in the last few years are going to be regretting it when EV prices collapse and the market is flooded with unwanted ICs.

If you look at that five year lithium carbonate price chart, you notice that the bubble began in 2022. This was when the LiFePO4 patents expired. That meant any manufacturer could make batteries without cobalt and that caused the spike in lithium as that was the next bottleneck. That bubble, though, also led to a massive investment in new lithium production which never was rare to begin with. Now that it's starting to come on-line, we are heading for much lower battery prices. That's good news but it also means there will be follow-on consequences.

If Ford's EV numbers turn out to be accurate or even conservative, what does that mean for oil prices?

0

fluteofski- t1_ja1llma wrote

If I were you, unless you’re using that truck for local work I’d probably look at replacing that sienna with a smaller EV first. Electric trucks still have a ways to go, and the efficiency leaves a lot to be desired. They claim MPGe is 70mpg but depending on your rates it could be closer to like 35mpg.

We have an ev, but I also still have my 92 1/2 ton truck I use for just truck things. It’s dirt cheap to keep running, but most of our miles are on the smaller electric car which gets a real world equivalent of 100mpg (give or take depending on where you live, cost of gas, cost of electricity.)

On our smaller ev we save around $10k~$15k over the next 100k miles by going electric.

I’m personally really looking forward to what the next generation of trucks will bring in terms of efficiency (aerodynamic focus) which will also help with range.

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Steakosaurus t1_ja1o0cs wrote

LFP struggles with range and cold weather performance. The energy density of the chemistry is very poor compared to high nickel based chemistries, and leads to very heavy and expensive packs to meet range targets (more cells to hit the same energy).

It's primary advantages are in it's comparatively better thermal propagation performance and in cost - although the need for additional cells to meet range and the piss-poor recycling economics (LFP costs more to recycle than it's individual components are worth) eat into this financial advantage.

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karna42 t1_ja1o429 wrote

What about old chemistry....did we abandon it for this new generation hip chemistry.

On a serious note, progress is awesome

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whyreadthis2035 t1_ja1oie5 wrote

Good points. 4 things come into play here. 1) we have a solar roof that overproduces, since we’ve made other energy cuts. So I’ve got a little “free electricity” to use. 2) we’re about 60. As described by the 06 vintage of our current vehicles, we run them into the ground. So our time is now, not next Gen. 3) my wife REALLY REALLY doesn’t want a small vehicle. 4) With the kids out of the house we’d like to go to 1 vehicle. We’ve passed the age where the minivan is the perfect vehicle. Since we still enjoy our yard work, the pickup becomes the perfect vehicle. In truth we rarely push the reported 300 mile range. So yeah.. when they were first reported at 40-60k I wanted to take the risk. Last year the model I liked was 70k. So we’re putting it off, for now.

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fluteofski- t1_ja1ok9r wrote

Well, you by your electricity in United of kilowatt-hours (KWh). 1000w for 1hr is a KWh. In order to compare it to gas costs, you need is miles/kWh. (I’m assuming you’re in the US where you don’t calculate gas as Liters/100km).

The simplest thing you can do is take the range of the car, and divide by the size of the battery… (the EPA range you see here in the US is a good place to start)

So. We have a 1st Gen ioniq, which has a 38.5KWh battery, and it gets 170 miles per charge. So the math goes:

170 / 38.5 = 4.4 miles/kWh. (Which is really good)

(In reality, commuting at lower speeds we usually average 190miles/charge.)

Anyways, now that you have your miles/kWh, you go to your power bill and look at how much you’re paying per kWh. And how much gas costs.

So in our case we pay about $0.28/kWh and gas is $5.00/gallon.

So then you do ($gas) / ($kWh):

$5.00 / $0.28 = 17.8 you can buy 17.8kwh for the same as a gallon)

Next you multiply the kWh you can buy with the miles/kWh.

17.8 x 4.4 = 79 mpg based on epa mileage. And local electricity and gas costs.

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fluteofski- t1_ja1q8jw wrote

Oh yeah. Sounds like you’d be a good candidate for it.

My wife charges for free at work, so we kinda considered it too (charge at work, and backfeed to the house when she gets home). It’s a bummer they’re so damn expensive.

One thing you’ll wanna keep in mind is that if you’re only producing an extra 2kw and you’re charging at 7kw (L2), you’re gonna be pulling 5kw from the power company. So you’ll probably want a charger that you can limit to 2~3kw…. We do that by only using the 1.5kw charger that came with the car and plug it in to the 110v outlet.

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Adventurous_Oil_5805 t1_ja1rgth wrote

That “child labor” comment probably refers to cobalt. The oil industry uses more cobalt than the EV industry, and while the EV industry is working to end child laborers, the oil industry never did. Plus, cobalt comes from copper mines so those mines would exist without battery electric vehicles.

So your pro fossil fuel talking points are out of date. By a good 5 years now. Why don’t you go to them and see what they want you to say nowadays.

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FALCUNPAWNCH t1_ja1rjd6 wrote

I hope one day us early adopters will get the option to upgrade to a newer higher capacity faster charging battery.

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Thac t1_ja1twx0 wrote

No, Tesla was charging more than the market would bare and people stopped buying them. There was a hot minute there where you could buy a Tesla and have it in a week.

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Black_Moons t1_ja1ux3i wrote

Lifepo4 have amazing life though. Iv got a 15 year old pack still at 50%+ capacity.

I mean, 50% sucks, but most other packs would be refusing to charge by now, or sagging too much to run the load. Means 5 year old 2nd hand trucks might be usable without a new battery if the owner doesn't need more then 75% range.

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Psychological-Top-29 t1_ja1wbsf wrote

Wait, didn't I just read an article about Ford recalling vehicles due to spontaneous combustion of their batteries?

−1

Zorb750 t1_ja1zb3t wrote

This isn't newsworthy. LFP batteries are not uncommon in electric vehicles. It's also interesting that this article only talks about the positive points of those batteries, but skips right over the fact that they are significantly heavier, and that their energy density both by weight and by volume is significantly lower than that of NMC and NCA chemistries

Also, it's not NCM, it's NMC. While we're on that subject, I wasn't aware of that most electric vehicles didn't include Tesla, who does not use NMC. Tesla uses NCA and LFP chemistries.

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Zorb750 t1_ja1zkjg wrote

This is a stupid comment, but in case you have any serious interest in fire safety at all, LFP is definitely the safest and most stable lithium battery chemistry when faced with abuse.

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Zorb750 t1_ja1zqvs wrote

That's my feeling, because this article is garbage. There's nothing special about LFP batteries. They are cheaper, last more charge cycles, can usually sustain higher charge rates at higher states of charge, but are substantially heavier, and have lower energy density both by volume and by weight.

I don't really see this as an improvement except in the low budget sector.

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Bobby_Marks2 t1_ja23qkn wrote

It's all but guaranteed at this point. Tesla should have taken their head start and used it to learn how to make vehicles with all the same capacity for quality that established manufacturers do. Instead, they wasted time disrupting industry for disruption's sake.

Teslas aren't really price-competitive, not when the whole picture is measured. Shoddy manufacturing practices means lots of parts that need to be replaced inside warranty windows. For example, we had a Tesla come in for window tinting at work, and one of the door panels wasn't properly installed - no big deal, we pop those out and in all the time so we can do the customer a favor. Except we couldn't do this one, because when the door panel was installed properly the door wouldn't close.

We work on lots of new and luxury vehicles. Teslas are built shoddy. The Chevy Bolt starts at like $27k if you want an economy EV, the Hyundai Ioniq at $41k if you want middle-of-the-road quality, and the Cadillac Lyriq starts at $58k if you want luxury from a brand that actually understands luxury. Their truck appears like it will be beaten to market by most of the competition, and there's just so many options out there or in the pipe.

What is Tesla's niche? They remind me of where Netflix was a year ago: the first-mover of a guaranteed-to-be-standardized-in-the-future technology, riding high on nothing but the fact that their revenues are high. No forward strategy but to assume everything will continue to be awesome.

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jasoncross00 t1_ja25eob wrote

Maybe I just don't know that much about DeLorean, but this comparison seemed strange to me? They never made even 10,000 DeLoreans, right? They're making 2 million Teslas a year now. They've been the top-selling car of any kind in Norway for a couple years now. Last year the Model Y was the top selling car of any kind in California (second place was the Model 3). They've had almost four straight years of profitable quarters, and are profiting to the tune of over $3B a quarter now.

I mean there are plenty of gripes to have about the company and especially its CEO, but you can't say they're not selling tons of cars and making tons of money.

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[deleted] t1_ja2e5rm wrote

So Ford is finally doing more than just pushing paper!

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drysart t1_ja2gts1 wrote

They apparently released a 1000V-capable revision of it back in late November that I wasn't aware of; but the previous connector can indeed only handle 500V.

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Rick429CJ t1_ja2h7ro wrote

Do they catch on fire easier than the current ones

−2

PdSales t1_ja2sgjx wrote

Back in the day my dad used to say "never buy a car in its first model year, there are always unforeseen problems that won't be discovered until it's been in production for at least a year."

I have a feeling that new batteries are the same. Whether it's a new chemistry or a new factory building a new version of a known chemistry, I think I'll treat new model years of a battery the same way my dad treated new model years of cars, and always stand on the sidelines for at least a year.

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Steakosaurus t1_ja2xheh wrote

> Iv got a 15 year old pack still at 50%+ capacity.

That may be a selling point for a small niche of drivers, but telling someone that their vehicle will degrade to roughly half the already low range is going to be a hard sell.

LFP struggles to hit something like 300 miles in very large packs, degrading to ~150 miles in a few years and having further reduced performance when it's cold out is a really hard sell.

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dj_joeev t1_ja30kw6 wrote

How about they build my maverick that I've been waiting a year for.

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Zorb750 t1_ja31gz9 wrote

Whatever, downvote away. I have one. I can see the cross-sectional size of the pins. I feel like the "V3" superchargers, which deliver around 700 amps through this connector, are really the practical limit. My car does not have this, but I can tell you that when interrupted during the highest amperage (about half of the above) parts of charging, the connector is warm. I can't see tripling as feasible.

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Zorb750 t1_ja31pki wrote

Must just be a materials change with the insulation of the wire in it. Looking at mine, I can't see a reason it couldn't handle 1000 V. The size of the pins is what concerns me as far as amperage.

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Zorb750 t1_ja31y0f wrote

Well, this is about them making more money because it's a lot cheaper. The result of the consumer is going to be a heavier vehicle. A heavier electric vehicle means less range Edit: On the other hand, for vehicles it will be used around town, like mail trucks, this will be advantageous despite weight, both because those vehicles do not go very fast, and because they will be subject to more charging cycles.

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baguak4life t1_ja33y5o wrote

I just want an electric vehicle that can tow more than 50 miles

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Lensmaster75 t1_ja34f94 wrote

So are they going to lower the price? They just raised it another $12k

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Beast0045 t1_ja372on wrote

That would be great if they made any ev’s in an volumes at all…. 13k last year and an enormous jump to 24k this year… meanwhile tesla is going to build 2M.

Everyone is just so far behind Tesla now its sad. I do compliment Ford for being quick to realize they are 15 years behind. But they are not doing anything close to peoples claims of how fast the existing car brands could move to ev’s. It’s nothing similar at all. Entirely different supply chains, engineering staff, supply chains, etc etc etc.

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fizzlefist t1_ja3a2av wrote

The only real advantages they have left are not needing to buy through a dealership middle-man, and their charging network. And the latter is a very real differentiator if you plan on going long-distances in your EV.

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TbonerT t1_ja3hbqr wrote

Have you seen the lead times? A week is a short lead time and hasn’t been seen in years. Last year, I went to a Tesla showroom and they had 0 vehicles on display and a Model Y had a lead time of about 8 months. They clearly can’t keep up with demand, so the must not be charging more than the market will bear.

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Gk5321 t1_ja3ic7a wrote

Why is it necessary to be so negative. They’re the first successful new car company in how many decades? They’re also American made (or wherever you happen to live now) - and the most American made car (they have the most parts made here. I know Elon is controversial but they did something amazing and it’s so stupid to keep shitting on them over and over again. They have their own issues but the company is only 20 years old if you can even say that. They literally changed the industry.

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InvisibleEar t1_ja3mq7e wrote

Yeah I don't know, I'm not an electricity man. But they can't ignore it forever. I'm happy with my used Leaf, but I think between the limited fast charge options and the battery management I wouldn't recommend people but a new one.

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moofunk t1_ja3mswm wrote

As far as we understand from anecdotal reports and scattered news articles, build quality problems are mostly from cars built at the Fremont factory, i.e. all Model S and X, all American Model 3 and most American Model Y.

If you buy a Model 3 made in Shanghai, you may get a better car.

Model Y production is about to start up in Texas, which has a better reputation in manufacturing.

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Maverick0984 t1_ja3mvu3 wrote

I think a lot of people feel it's a sham though. Yes, they pushed EV forward but they also likely won't be here in 10-15 years, gobbled up by a real car company.

They have been overcharging for years to make up for their massive money sinks in failed initiatives.

−1

moofunk t1_ja3ob62 wrote

LiFePO4 batteries are safer, because they don't release oxygen easily.

The oxygen bond to phosphorus is much stronger than in traditional EV batteries with cobalt bound to oxygen, which means they can't burn as easily, they aren't affected by higher temperatures and can't have thermal runaways.

So, the battery can get hot and smokey, but that's mostly it.

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Steakosaurus t1_ja3rr7x wrote

The battery did not degrade to 50% capacity in 15 years, unless it was barely used and babied for the entirety of that time.

Capacity degradation happens over the life of the cell and you can see substantial loss in 3-5 years of normal use.

So when you're starting with a chemistry that's already poor on range, and then reducing that range by 20-30% within the first 5 years of it's life, you can see where customers would be unhappy with the performance.

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Steakosaurus t1_ja3sm26 wrote

Yeah and those are really functions of the energy density of the chemistry.

I would argue that things like overcharge and impact/crush are less of a concern as we move forward, since overcharge has been largely made a nonfactor by more sophisticated charging software and impact is largely addressed with proper pack design, but LFP definitely remains an attractive option from the safety point of view.

Primarily, the relatively good thermal prop performance is what many are interested in. High nickel chemistries have a lot of latent energy and volatile electrolytes that make battery fires aggressive and dangerous. LFP, having far lower latent energy, is much less prone to a runaway reaction - in which the becomes hot enough to self perpetuate an ignition burning through it's electrolyte and active material - which means it's far less likely to propagate to nearby cells and cause a chain reaction that we see as a massive EV car fire.

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Gagarin1961 t1_ja3sr29 wrote

Lol I agree it’s ridiculous, but it’s also ridiculous to assume he even liked Tesla/Musk.

It sounded like idiotic liberal BS to me more than support for Musk. Liberals are the ones constantly trying to make markets seem immoral.

0

drysart t1_ja3vr7w wrote

I had a discussion here on reddit back in September (about two weeks before Tesla announced their new 1000V plug variant) where I went over specifically what limits their plug to 500V, and concluded it was primarily the airgapped distance between their high voltage pins, not the size of the pins themselves.

If you look at the technical specs that they ended up releasing two weeks later where they introduced their new 1000V-capable variant, you'll notice that the most noticeable change between the 500V variant and the 1000V variant (see pages 16 and 21, specifically), is that they've recessed everything relating to the HV connections back into each side of the connection about 5mm; which adds about 10mm to the airgap, which is more than sufficient to safely extinguish a 1000V arc before it can bridge the pins.

Notably, though, the thickness of the pins themselves is unchanged in the 1000V variant. I'm not going to do the math right now but I wonder if that pin gauge is what holds their new connector design back from being >1000V capable because increasing the airgap alone should buy them plenty of safety headroom (but I'll also admit I'm not intimately familiar with the necessary safety margins they'd be aiming for).

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SeaworthinessLeft88 t1_ja3xkkl wrote

I just bought an EV a couple of months ago, and I reached out to Tesla just out of curiosity. They were low on my list for a few reasons, but they were lowering prices and offering deals for the M3. Wait times (if any) are under a month unless you’re trying to buy a model x. Seeing as that’s a $100k car, I can’t imagine it has that many people actually waiting for a model x.

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Gk5321 t1_ja41anx wrote

I think a lot of people on Reddit push that narrative. In real life people have no clue about musk and just automatically think Tesla when they hear EV. Even when they see an add for Ford or Chevy EVs they think Tesla.

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Thac t1_ja42plq wrote

The only thing clear is your lack of reading comprehension. The fact that you could get one inside a week and not 6 months to a year indicates they priced themselves out and had to lower their price.

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Zorb750 t1_ja43z20 wrote

Well, the size of the pins is never going to have anything to do with voltage. Voltage ratings are always a function of insulation, whether that is in the form of an air gap, some sort of dielectric material like wire insulation, even the dielectric properties of the material the connect your body is made of.

I'm going to read over this. Remember that there are plenty of very thin conductors that carry high voltages. The pin size only needs to be able to handle the amperage, as well as having reasonable properties against wear. In fact, one of the reasons that higher voltages are often used in a DC circuit, is to allow more power capacity with a given size of conductor. Look at Qualcomm with quickcharge 2 and 3. Your normal USB cable is good for roughly 2 amps, maybe a little bit more, so you can't increase the amperage beyond that, but you can drive up the voltage and just use a buck converter in the phone. That's also why those phones get so hot when they are charging.

1

Maverick0984 t1_ja472kt wrote

Maybe? I have never really mentioned quantity or what it is in the marketplace today. My comment is about the long term. They are not built to last. Teslas in general were a status symbol and they aren't anymore. The luster has wore off and people see them for what they are, now that other options exist.

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xXWickedSmatXx t1_ja4d6cx wrote

This sounds like a press release to counter the 150mile range with a light load in the bed.

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TbonerT t1_ja4o9ot wrote

You don’t even know which direction you’re pointed. You contradicted yourself and called me stupid for pointing it out instead of clarifying or admitting you were wrong.

1

whyreadthis2035 t1_ja4uss8 wrote

My issue is with Musk and with how EXTREMELY overvalued Tesla is. Once the big auto makers go all in, Tesla is fine. Musk himself spends too much time disrupting the economy. And now he’s sold out and taken his marbles to Texas. It isn’t a good thing. It’s not a successful car company. It’s a successful tech company. I’m ready for a mature ford product. Ford KNOWS how to make a pickup truck. The only thing that has been throttling their investment is that they don’t have Tesla’s inflated market cap. I could go on. We could share a beer and find common ground. I’ve had a solar roof since before it was cool. We need EVs mass produced for everyone. Ford is going too high on the F150 price right now. But, that will correct itself once the big auto makers are convinced fossil fuels don’t rule congress.

0

Specialist-Document3 t1_ja5uq6u wrote

I want this to be true, but I don't think it is. Tesla's margins are really high compared to legacy Auto makers. I honestly wish Elon would disappear in a puff of smoke, but I have not seen anything that seems to indicate that the company is actually going to start losing money soon. Even if they never roll out fsd release (aka not beta). Unless he sucks money out of the car business and into the robot business? But I don't think that's currently happening at a level to kill the entire company.

I do agree however that legacies will catch up. I think Ford's ev looking like a regular truck is a stroke of genius that will actually propel the masses towards EVs rather than only targeting nerdy demographics. Rivian looks great too. So do the Audi e Tron variants and the latest Nissan leaf and ariya. The list goes on. I think the legacies will catch up on mass production of EVs, but new platforms and new assembly lines are expensive and Tesla does have 10 years of amortizing those costs. I don't think Tesla's going to disappear when they have strong price gouging capabilities and strong price undercutting capabilities.

1

Zorb750 t1_ja60jt9 wrote

This is actually pretty interesting. I read over your couple of pages you sent me.

As far as safety margins, I'm not sure. I know that the highest I have ever seen on mine was in the low 400 volt range, but I also know the newer Model S has a 500 volt configuration, and the model 3 is approximately 350 volts. I know that they wouldn't run the connector right up to its tolerance, or I think even within 25% of it. That with the model 3 is part of what really surprises me, though. I'm not sure how they are pulling that off, if maybe the model 3 connector is slightly different of the car end. I have looked at mine in detail obviously, but it's old now. I'm still somewhat impressed every time I see much over 100kw (seen low 120s), at over 300 amps at 400 volts. I don't use the supercharger often, though.

1

homogenousmoss t1_ja6d8nt wrote

I have two Tesla and my wife has no idea who Musk is. Its just a car brand to her and she works in a garage. Its like I have no idea who the CEO of any car company is except Tesla and its only because of reddit that I know who he is.

0

DonkeyFuel t1_ja7n917 wrote

LFP has pros and cons as laid out with this article. Will be interesting to see if consumers react and or understand the differences between battery types/chemistry as the industry marches forward with electrification.

1

Beast0045 t1_ja8ozmj wrote

Yea that us market only fyi… those numbers so you are off by a cool 1M cars..

I will hold my ground that going from ICE to EV isnt just “building cars”. Completely different.

Sandy Munro is the person to listen to and does these analyses for a job. Tesla is way in the lead and they make more money per car, build better cars. Good luck on where ever you get your info. Because if its not Sandy you are smoking something.

1

KickBassColonyDrop t1_ja9wxua wrote

Uh, no. Tesla priced down significantly because the IRS started playing musical chairs with qualification for the IRA tax credit across various models. Tesla just summarily slashed prices so just about every model qualified for the credit. In doing so, it forced the rest of the industry to squander all of their margins heavily in order to stay competitive with Tesla's pricing power.

Tesla sells every single car it makes, and since it doesn't use the dealership model, there's no fuzziness between cars made and sold to dealers vs cars sold by dealers to customers. Further, Tesla's demand is considerable despite the significant increases in price.

However, it can be agreed, based on words made by Elon and Zach Kirkhorn that their vehicle prices have been on the higher side for too long and that's been painful to the larger market capture potential.

1

KickBassColonyDrop t1_ja9yo50 wrote

It also bears mentioning that Sandy Munro and his company pointed out that the lightning was using over a mile of cabling to the point of ridiculous excess. Which made the vehicle way more expensive to manufacture. This question then came up during the most recent Ford investment call and Jim Farley himself was flabbergasted that his own company was doing this, and that he'd direct more actively to ensure this doesn't happen in the future.

I surmise that this reduction in cost with Ford is him taking that more active approach and asking wtf is going on to engineers and project managers that they're wasting that much capital on their trucks. Tesla I believe currenty uses around 150-200m of wiring and are trying to reduce that down to <100m. If Ford can simplify their wiring harnesses, figure out a super bottle or heat pump solution like Tesla, vastly reduce the wiring usage per truck, and move to Gigacasting rather than body on frame with their trucks. The COGS should drop considerably and their margins will improve.

All of these are growing pains. However, Farley has the right mindset and is beginning to understand how Elon leads at Tesla and has begun to emulate that mindset. It's not an easy task, but Farley has already gone on record that they won't catch Tesla, but they will fight with all their might to become 2nd place in the EV market.

Once their Blue Oval Gigafactory in Kentucky comes online and they can start scaling that out along with similar advancements as Tesla with the aforementioned changes above, I expect that their growth curve will explode with a strong probability of reaching the 500k run rate around 2025.

I'm hopeful for Ford under Farley's changes and willingness to be honest about his company's weaknesses and how to correct them. It also helps immensely that Ford managed to capture one of Tesla's Supercharger Network VPs a while back to help establish the entire energy and charging infra ecosystem for the company; from sourcing batteries and setting up the material science division to handle battery chemistry to eventually what might lead to the development of a brand specific supercharger network just for their F-150 and like BEV products.

1

KickBassColonyDrop t1_ja9zmef wrote

Tesla has a disproportionate monopoly because the legacy market was dismissive and neglectful, believing that BEVs had no future and the cost of transition was too exorbitant relative to shareholder interests.

Tesla on multiple investor and earnings calls admitted that they banked on the legacies taking Tesla seriously with each new advancement that they made, and acting like woken dragons to drive Tesla out of the business.

Time and again, competition never came. But now, Tesla is basically the 747 on the runway about to open up full throttle on all 4 engines and all the legacies are at the gate looking through the window in fear as to what it means if that plane takes off.

The IRA's purpose is to bail these companies out, but similar to how AWS dominates the world, I expect that Tesla will own ~50-60% of the total market share out to 2040. First movers advantage is like dumping NOS into your car's tank. You're gonna pull some serious Gs, but if nobody takes you seriously, you'll pull so far ahead that even if you slip up, the probability that you won't pull first is unlikely.

Lastly, Tesla spend the last 10 years building out their supercharger network because they recognized the importance of that network to the entire BEV platform ecosystem. It's not that they have a monopoly here. It's just that, their superchargers are vastly more capable and reliable than any other.

https://youtu.be/K1RoJCT7v-Q

^ this dude and his gf went to four separate locations with Superchargers and v2 chargers. They were all broken. This is a market problem. Calling Tesla a monopoly over supercharging because their network isn't a price of garbage is a bad call imo.

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Maverick0984 t1_jaa1abh wrote

>Are you implying that Tesla isn't a real car company?

Yes, that is precisely what I am implying. Musk himself has said they are a tech company first, car company second. Trying to get that crazy valuation.

We're seeing that fail now, hence the crashing valuation.

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Thac t1_jaa9bum wrote

Yeah no. I was on the market for an BEV for 6 months. People were canceling their Tesla orders left and right due to Elons twitter bullshit. Due to the high price no new orders were coming in. You could have had a M3 in a week if you wanted during this time period. Tesla has no plans to slash prices until their market share started dropping. If the federal tax credit mattered at all they would have only selectively cut prices, instead of across the board like they have.

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KickBassColonyDrop t1_jaabrmc wrote

Elon's "Twitter" bullshit had a microcosmic impact on Tesla's sales.

> Tesla has no plans to slash prices until their market share started dropping.

There is zero logical sense to give up margin in business when you don't need to. Especially when you dominate in the market at scale, and your top "competitor", Ford produced 1/30th the amount of EVs you made for the fiscal year.

> If the federal tax credit mattered at all they would have only selectively cut prices, instead of across the board like they have.

No, they cut prices across the board because they didn't want to play bullshit games with the IRS with random qualifications on how to get access to the tax credit. When NTSB and NHTSA both qualified the 5-seater Model Y as an SUV, but the IRS didn't and then qualified the 7-seater as one, Tesla opted to summarily slash costs at the loss of around 10% margin so that all their models would qualify for the $7500 tax credit. In addition to this, when this was done, their Model Y inventory stock pile overnight disappeared.

The data on this doesn't lie, no matter what creative gymnastics you're trying to posit on the failure of the brand. Further, Elon's "Twitter bullshit" is limited to places like here and Twitter.

The market largely does not give a fuck about Elon or who he is. This is especially true with the latest Superbowl again. When, Tesla had not a single commercial they made for it and all the other players made EV announcements and subsequently Tesla orders and Google search interest spiked.

NoA markets may be significant to some, but they don't qualify nor quantify the entire world market, and people outside of the US, largely dgaf what Elon does on Twitter. Finally, when you're about to drop 40-60k on a luxury brand, if you put a CEO shitposting on Twitter above the material value of the vehicle, it's utility, and long term impact to your day to day activities, you're insane.

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KickBassColonyDrop t1_jaad9uj wrote

Stock value and a company's execution are two separate things. Trying to claim they're the same thing is peak clown show.

The execution profile of Tesla is rock solid. But, suuuuure, it's all tumbling down according to you.

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