It isn’t. The Model 3’s starting sticker price is $39,990. $35k is only possible when the weasel-y “including potential savings” is selected, which Tesla’s website does by default.
It’s different because he wants to say he knows a $35k version is available if it makes him feel right; and he will say it is not available if it makes him feel like he’s owning someone.
Nope. You can call and order a SR (not an SR+ which you are referring to) and get it at $35k.
“EV’s are too expensive. Of course, I’m referring to high end Teslas”
"Also, EV’s have not enough range - only 82 miles!. Of course, I’m referring to a Honda Fit "
“EV’s cannot handle rough roads. Of course, I’m referring to an electric Tuk tuk from Indonesia.”
“EV’s are so small! Of course, I’m referring to an electric Smart car”
Is there a name for this kind of logical fallacy?
Cherry pit picking?
We’re over a century too late for that. Early adoption of EVs was around 1895. EVs held the land speed record before 1900 and have been built continuously since, but mostly for specific applications, not as small passenger cars. EVs have always been niche products and will likely remain so until they become mandatory on public roads.
Delivery services and taxis in metro areas are naturals for EVs; they needn’t venture far from rechargers. Homeowners with at-home parking who don’t commute too far are a potent market. But much of the US populace won’t be EV’ers till recharging is common in parking lots at work and in public. Retrofit parking meters with charging outlets; that’s a revenue boost for cities. Long-distance drivers will want non-tedious service; redesign personal EVs so batteries can be quick-swapped from below in an oil-change-shop environment. All this requires standardization across the personal-EV industry.
Personal EVs will proliferate eventually but we’re nowhere near ready for that yet.
That’s ridiculous. No company has been producing electric passenger autos or light trucks (pickups or SUVs) for most of the 20th century.
if you have to call them to get them to admit it even exists, then it doesn’t sound like they’re all that keen on selling any.
There is certainly an In and Out Burger off-menu silliness to it, but there’s a big difference between “does not advertise” and “does not offer for sale.”
I’m sure they don’t want to sell them–they bailed on the basic interior (fabric seats, non-glass roof, etc.), so they’re probably making even less margin than they would like on an already low-margin car. Still, it goes exist (ignoring the destination charge). And it’s a better car than originally promised for those reasons.
They might not even be making them. One of the videos I watched said he bought the base model and what he got was the next one up with possibly computer regulated performance.
If you knew for a fact they weren’t retooling for the cheaper model then just order the base model and get the better interior for free.
It’s no secret that you get the nicer interior with the base model. A software lock on the battery and 0-60 performance is also nothing new for Tesla.
There’s a good chance the battery on the SR will effectively last longer than the SR+. The degradation will be coming off the top, so where the SR+ might degrade from 250 miles to 230 after so many years, that’s still above the 220 rating for the SR.
Also, Tesla has previously unlocked the full battery in disaster areas like hurricanes. Sadly, they haven’t yet unlocked faster 0-60 times so as to get out of dodge that much more quickly :).
What did I post? “EVs held the land speed record before 1900 and have been built continuously since, but mostly for specific applications, not as small passenger cars.” I specifically excluded small passenger cars - other personal vehicles are with them. But electric buses, locomotives, forklift and platform trucks, ambulances, trams, delivery vans, golf carts, milk floats - they’re all EVs. (cite) Many transit systems are heavily electrified. And every diesel-electric hauler is a hybrid.
The limiting factor for small “street” EVs has always been batteries - capacity, weight, cost. An ultimate battery had better be juicy, light, and fairly cheap. Till then, the roads will see pricey electric sedans - still a niche market.
The Model 3 outsells the Hyundai Elantra and VW Jetta. It’s not a niche vehicle, or at least, it’s niche isn’t very niche.
What did you post? How about “Early adoption of EVs was around 1895”? The entire discussion here is not about any sort of electrically-powered vehicle but instead specifically about modern mass-market electric passenger automobiles or light trucks. And as I said, for most of the time from 1895, no one was developing modern mass-market electric passenger automobiles or light trucks. (I’m repeating the phrase modern mass-market electric passenger automobiles or light trucks because you seem unable to understand that when we use EVs in this thread, we’re referring to modern mass-market electric passenger automobiles or light trucks and not golf carts or milk floats.)
Really the modern era of mass-market electric passenger automobiles or light trucks might be said to start with the Tesla Roadster of 2008, or perhaps the General Motors EV of the late 1990s. Not some 1895 electric passenger automobile.
Tesla’s crazy runup to $490/share means they have a market cap higher than any of the Big 3. In fact, higher than any two of them combined. High sales in Europe and a successful opening of their China factory are big components here. So even Lutz recognizes that something is going on.
He still manages to say a bunch of blatantly wrong stuff, though, even while (backhandedly) complimenting Musk. He talks about a $33k base model (Tesla never said that–it was always $35k). Then he says it’s really a $55-60k car (maybe in average price, but you can still buy the $35k model, and if you don’t like off-menu stuff, it’s still a $40k car). He says it’s positioned against BMW and Mercedes, which is fine except that the top Model 3 trade-in is a Prius, and #3-5 are the Accord, Civic, and Leaf. The 3-series is #2 but Mercedes doesn’t show up at all. Then he says that it’s priced at $30k over their original number (Lutz can’t even stay consistent here; is it $63k or is it $55-60k?).
But whatever. Baby steps. Maybe Lutz will eventually figure out that all the other stuff was either necessary or inevitable, too.
I wonder how much of many of the existing car companies’ resistance to electrical is just general cheapness around the R&D budget. A billion or two now to develop a strong electric car programs really hurts the bottom line, but not having a competitive electric car in 5 or 10 years is some other guy’s problem. Just standard disruption of incumbent players, and nothing that hasn’t been seen before in personal computers (several times), mobile phones, cameras, etc.
So you get things like Lutz, or Toyota recently saying hybrids are the future, because they have to defend their position, even if it is only based on maximizing the next quarter, and not any true strategic vision.
Certainly true regarding the charging network. There’s no secret sauce in the Tesla Superchargers; it was just a matter of investing in them. They had to build out the network before there were many cars on the road. For Tesla there was no real chicken-and-egg problem; the entire basis of the company was to sell EVs. If that failed, then Tesla fails as a whole. But for the incumbents, that wasn’t true. If you don’t accept EVs as inevitable, then you aren’t going to be motivated to build a network that might never be used.
And so here we are, where Electrify America is far behind the Supercharger network, and the only reason it exists at all is because VW was forced into it. Any one of the members could have thrown down a couple $B in the past 10 years to build a real competitive network, but that didn’t happen. And even today they can barely get their shit together.
yes and Uber is “worth” $57 billion even though they do nothing but incinerate cash and have no clear path to ever making a profit.
The Trump impeachment brought to light a recording relevant to this thread. Some guy–with the ear of the president, mind you–says this:
Amazing. Every word of what he said was wrong. The recording was from 2018, in the middle of Tesla’s difficult Model 3 ramp, but nevertheless:
- Tesla was never close to broke, let alone “100%”
- They had been producing Model Ss and Xs just fine for years, so a flat “they can’t produce them” is absurd even for the time. And in retrospect, we know that they can produce Model 3s just fine too.
- The other auto companies have most certainly not caught up to them. Most of them still don’t have a long-range EV.
- Teslas were never subsizided at $25,000, even adding up the most optimistic Fed+state rebates
- No one forgot that they need to be charged
- [about a phone] No phone uses as much juice as a refrigerator
- Wind+solar was generating more than 3.5% of US energy in 2018.
- It would not take 50 years to grow to 5%, even if that were true. The growth rate of renewables is enormous.
- You don’t *have *to have gas+coal. New coal isn’t being built at all. And it’s moronic to lump nuclear in with fossil fuels.
It’s pretty amazing how one can pack so much bullshit into a handful of sentences. And very reminiscent of some family members of mine. Most of the time I hardly know where to start…