Behind who? They’re the first company with a robust lithium-ion home battery system, and the first with a fully scalable lithium-ion grid battery system. Again, they will have 50% of world lithium cell production. Second place could, at best, match them. In practice, second place will be far behind.
It may not be optimal in terms of profitability but it’s a heck of a lot better than most alternatives, such as having a huge warehouse of shit you can’t sell. All businesses carry some risk, which is often tied to events out of their control. Boeing has a hard time selling planes whenever oil prices spike. Having two uncorrelated product lines that can consume your factory output reduces that risk.
Again, all business are exposed to this kind of risk, and they all have at least some degree of protection. Most of the time, the Chinese designed stuff is just shit, and that’s enough to keep people away. Their manufacturing is fine but their design leaves much to be desired. Tesla has great design and there’s little evidence that the Chinese have the capability to replicate it.
The other thing is that the gigafactory is highly automated. The Chinese advantage is in cheap manpower, and extreme automation levels the playing field.
I’ve expressed an opinion - and linked to it - and you basically call me a Tesla fanboy in spite of what my opinion is. At least I’m debating your mistaken arguments, poor logic, and errant cites.
They were making battery storage systems before Telsa. There’s nothing complex about sticking a battery on your wall. It’s not like there’s a secret to making them. If Tesla can’t meet their demand then someone else will.
it’s not just a loss of profit. It’s a loss of business. It leaves the door open for competition and a battery pack is not rocket science.
no, all businesses are exposed to this kind of risk. Failure to meet demand on a product that is easy to replicate without patent fights is a very bad thing. That’s a function of cash flow and not all businesses are having those problems. Tesla is one of them.
you aren’t seriously arguing that the Chinese don’t know how to automate? Chinese plant using 90% automation. Note the picture in the article. The robot is holding a battery pack.
You still haven’t given a cogent reason why a company that is behind schedule on multiple business fronts will influence American driving. It’s not a logical argument to make.
Given the Leaf’s success in the Model 3 market It is likely to be the most influential car on the market. Now Puzzlegal thinks people bought the Leaf because Tesla makes a great sports car but I’m not seeing the connection. Fancy sports cars didn’t help Brickland or Delorian sales.
At some point you’re just going to have to admit you like Tesla so much that it influences your opinion.
I like Tesla but have no horse in this race. I made my opinion based on the current state of the market and the companies within the market.
As usual, you underestimate the importance of good design. Previous battery systems were stacks of lead-acid batteries. Ugly, takes up a lot of room, maintenance-heavy, and hard to set up. The Powerwall you bolt to the wall and attach some wires. High “wife acceptance factor”.
The first iPhone did absolutely nothing that previous phones didn’t do. In fact, every single aspect of it was worse than the state of the art that you could already get elsewhere. But it had good design, and that was enough.
That’s not what I said. Automation levels the playing field. The Chinese compete best on products that are labor intensive because they have cheap labor. For products that are highly automated, their advantages are erased. You may as well build the plant in the US since the shipping is cheaper and there’s less corruption.
Because everyone else is farther behind. In some cases, to the point that they aren’t even in the running.
You seem to think that the existence of prototype Bolts indicate that GM is ahead. But the reality is that we’ve got one company that has shipped three distinct 200+ mile range electrics, and that company is not GM.
I do like Tesla. I would like to own such a vehicle. I wouldn’t really want to pay for such a vehicle, but let’s leave that aside for now.
My concern for Tesla is twofold: Elon Musk and money.
Musk is brilliant in many ways. He’s also a bit erratic when it comes to actually delivering. Truth be told, his greatest expertise is in software. He’s delivered there in the past repeatedly, and arguably the real best part of Tesla is in the integrated software package. His other ventures, like SpaceX or SolarCity, are a lot less successful. SpaceX is something of an experiment, and one which has had mixed success at best. SolarCity is in huge trouble. Then there’s the Hyperloop, which as I stated in that extremely long thread, is something of a will-believe-when-seen for me.
But this leads into Tesla’s money.
Simply put, the company is burning through it like they just discovered fire. They company needs billions just to survive, and they are probably a couple orders or magnitude away from being profitable. This could, and quite probably will unless they quickly shift direction, bury the company within a few years. The company can’t just be a “minor success” at this point. They’ve become an investment like Amazon - if it’s doesn’t become on the of the world’s most powerful companies by the end of the decade, it’s likely to end up as a complete failure. Unfortunately, history suggests rather strongly that the latter is much more likely. If the technology works, good. But you need a solid financial basis to run a company. Dreams and equity can only take you so far, partly because sooner or later equity runs out (as more than one UNicorn has discovered on Wall Street lately).
The concepts Musk proposes are bold. I like that. But a bold concepts tend to either get cut down and improved on incrementally year after year - or they tend to break down and get discarded altogether. And I’m simply not certain that Tesla really makes sense from that angle. It’s an idea which perhaps is still a bit ahead of its time. It doesn’t mean it’s an impossible dream. It’s not the only path forward, and maybe not even the best one.
No, I’m not underestimating anything. Tesla hit the ground running and they have backorders for the powerwall. but as stated before, it’s not complicated to make batteries. At all. You act like there are no other battery companies on the planet. Panasonic is focusing their system on the Euro market. This is a well financed battery company.
The Iphone had a much better interface than anything else. It was easily replicated so time mattered to their sales. They couldn’t afford to be a year behind on a product with a 2 year life cycle. There’s a reason they keep coming out with newer models.
If this were true we would be flooding China with our products. They can build and buy their own robots made by … cheap labor.
See Panasonic cite above
$70,000 gets you 200 mile cars. What bit of rocket science do you think it takes to add more batteries to a design? It’s now down to cost efficiency. Virtually every other manufacturer on the planet has more money ,resources and experience in building economy cars on a budget. Not luxury cars where you can jack up the price, economy cars.
I’ve cited Tesla’s money problems and their diversion of funds away from the gigafactor into their current models. The gigafactory is necessary to the Model 3’s cost efficiency.
I never said they’d face zero competition. But as with Tesla Motors, they’re the first with a nicely-designed product. And so far no evidence that the competition is preventing them from selling as many packs as they can manufacture.
I find it interesting that you cite the Panasonic product as competition. You know Tesla’s main partner in the Gigafactory? It’s Panasonic. Even if they somehow steal all of Tesla’s market share in the storage market, Tesla will still be able to move their share of the factory output. Whatever cells that were going to Tesla now go to Panasonic.
It should be noted that Panasonic is an established, respected Japanese tech company, not some rinky-dink Chinese player. That they’re entering the market is not evidence that building well-designed systems is not complicated.
I should add that Tesla has always been adamant that they desire competition, and in fact would consider themselves a failure had they remained the only player. The goal is to spur the transition to alternative energy, not to become a monopoly in that area. That competitors appear shortly after Tesla’s various announcements is evidence that they are slowly succeeding in their strategic goals.
Uh, not everything is easily automated. Only some things. The US still exports $84B worth of goods to China per year, so obviously they aren’t capable of replicating everything we do more cheaply.
Tesla uses KUKA robots made in Germany with expensive labor. So far, the Chinese haven’t replicated their quality.
You keep using the word “nicely-designed product”. It’s a battery pack.
Industrial batteries are likely going to be Tesla’s main business. I don’t know why you think it odd they sought out Panasonic as a partner. They bring a lot of experience in the field.
I’m sorry, did you think China was the only other country in the world? There’s South Korea, India, Taiwan, All of Europe…
nothing you said addresses their financial problems.
our number one export is soybeans. we ship about $26 billion in crops and raw materials. Other than aircraft we don’t have much of an industrial market in China. Or the US for that matter.
Tesla uses KUKA robots made in Germany with expensive labor. So far, the Chinese haven’t replicated their quality.
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cite? Your bias against the Chinese is noted and filed under 1954.
So to summarize your position, Tesla makes “nicely designed battery packs”. and they’re supper awesome German robots do a better job of stuffing batteries in a box and can’t be produced by other companies because… “German engineering in the house ya”. Their backlog is an asset because it’s awesome to be loved and production delays are not an opportunity for other countries to step in because the nicely designed battery can’t be replicated by Chinese or (pick a country) robots.
It’s a pack with a built-in inverter, charge controller, liquid cooling system, and multi-pack interface. It’s not a bunch of cells in a box.
Any company that ships cells in a box is definitely not getting it and won’t be a legitimate competitor of Tesla. Or Panasonic for that matter.
I suppose it’s worth pointing out that Boeing couldn’t figure out how to put a few cells in a box without them catching on fire, so even that may be harder than it looks.
You make the most bizarre inferences from what I write. A partnership with Panasonic is the most logical thing in the world. My point is that they barely count as a competitor, since they both get their cells from the same place–a factory which they own together.
If anything, the success of Panasonic’s packs would be an outright benefit to Tesla. It means they’re more likely to go in for a second Gigfactory, which will drive cell prices down even further. There is a huge latent demand for storage that is price contingent.
Perhaps one day, Wall Street will stop shoving billions of dollars in Tesla’s face, and make it difficult for them to actually sustain their current burn rate. That day has not yet happened.
wow, You’ve got me convinced. An inverter you say. That sounds complicated. A country with nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles would find that a challenge.
uh huh. You’re comparing a minor component in a $200 million dollar airplane to… A battery back (with new and improved Tesla brand inverter ™).
You do understand that Tesla is using Panasonic batteries don’t you?
Let me get this straight. You think Panasonic’s successes with power packs using their own batteries is a benefit to Tesla. That’s an interesting business plan.
If that were true they wouldn’t be behind on their cars, power packs, and factories.
I’d like to point out that the original iPod was not much more than a nicely designed package holding a small disk drive that had been developed and produced by some other company. Apple put a nice package around it and supplied convenient software, and suddenly the mp3-player market took off.
Apple didn’t invent the mp3 player, nor the hard drive. They just made it tidy and cute and easy to use.
And yes, fitting an inverter to your battery pack is a nuisance. I intended to set up my c-max with one, to let it provide emergency power the house, but there wasn’t an off-the-shelf solution, and I didn’t get around to doing the research to figure out what exactly i needed.
Also, the DeLorean was a cool car, but it wasn’t a car that made people re-evaluate what they wanted in a car. At the end of the day, it was just a cool car with cool doors. Minivan-style sliding doors proved more useful than gull-wing doors (and attempted to solve the same problem.) Or maybe the rear hatch of minivans was sort of inspired by the gull-wing doors, I don’t know the history.
The Tesla, in contrast, is a cool car that makes people think, “huh, maybe an electric car would be something I would want.” That was a revolutionary thought in an age of total ICE dominance, when “electric car” meant “gold cart”. I don’t think the Model 3 is going to revolutionize anything. I think it will end up being too little too late. (I’d be glad to be proved wrong.) But I think the Model S has been revolutionary, and is a major reason the Volts and Leafs of the world are selling as well as they are.
You’re absolutely correct. The issue is that an easily duplicated product CANNOT languish on the market. When Apple introduces a new product they hit the market hard on day one. That’s where their sales are. Cell phones are a rapidly changing market and the sales curve starts out high and goes down quickly. Back-orders are fine if it’s a week but a year means rival phones take away sales.
An inverter isn’t anything special unless it does your laundry or balances your check book. It’s just an inverter. Like Apple, Tesla has identified a niche market ripe for the picking and made a yuppie appliance people like. They’re using Panasonic batteries to build it. As we speak Panasonic has identified the market and is moving faster than Tesla into areas not exploited by Tesla. This is where the power of resources comes into play. larger companies can design, market, and distribute their products faster.
If Tesla has back-orders that would be great if they’re selling something that can’t be reproduced because of patents or the ability to make it faster/cheaper. If not, they spent their resources doing the marketing for other companies. If they don’t fully exploit potential sales then others will. Being first to market is great if you have the product to sell.
Tesla is the Apple of EV products. Style is very important in consumer sales right now. Their power wall is as much a work of art as it is useful. It’s a very good product and it’s priced competitively. But storage systems are not just a personal consumer product. The industrial market is rapidly growing and that customer could give a shit how pretty the product is. Panasonic is in this market as well as others. My city tore down it’s power plant years ago and is drawing power from a much larger plant down the road. That’s the trend. In place of it’s power plant is a series of peak-use generators and those are backed up by a battery system which acts as a frequency regulator. It’s not a Tesla storage system. It’s AES.
Do you understand now why I’m focusing on money? Tesla is underfunded and it’s hurting their market(s) which are time sensitive. Musk is a dreamer and has done phenomenally making his dreams a reality. But he’s making mistakes that will cost him dearly. He HAS to make money going forward and that is not his focus. He’s operating under the premise of “if you design it they will come” instead of “if you build it they will come”. He HAS to produce time sensitive products on time.
Yes, because you have ignored the question in the op (will Tesla model 3 revolutionize…?) And are more interested in the question “will Tesla become one of the major auto makers in the US?”, or something like that.
It doesn’t have to be successful too change the landscape. It doesn’t even need to survive as a corporate entity.
Yes, that could be true but it’s not true now. The question is will the Model 3 be the car to do it. Since it doesn’t exist and won’t be the only car in it’s class to hit the market then logically the first cars on the market will be the ones to change our driving habits. I’d say Nissan has a nice edge right now because of the Leaf.
We already had this discussion with the Volt. There was a line of posters insisting it was going somewhere and that it met the public’s needs. My position was that it wouldn’t and I gave my reasons for it.
I’m not saying the Model 3 WON’T be the car people remember 50 years from now. I AM saying it matters who is first to get a car to market. It also matters if people have enough faith in a company to be there for them when they need service. So it matters greatly if they stay in business.
Magiver - you are aware that the Bolt is sort of a compact car, and the Model 3 is supposedly more of a mid-size/crossover type deal?
I think that makes a difference. To use a more extreme example: if Honda sold a 300 mile EV that is a subcompact, and Toyota sells a 300 mile EV that is a full size car, and they are the same price, Toyota has a winner on its hands, even if the Honda comes out first.
Christ, what I would give for one Magiver post that wasn’t dripping with snark…
So are you saying that the Bolt is the same size as a BMW 3 series? It sure doesn’t look that way from the pictures. Because from what I can gather, the Model 3 is expected to be bigger than the Bolt.
You can’t possibly be kidding about snark. You get what you give.
again, I stated the obvious. The Model 3 is suppose to compete with the BMW 3 series. cited it and everything. Where are you getting the Bolt from that?