Praise be to Elon, spender of Paypal proceeds, bringer of 13 year old boy dreams.
6 years after Roadster development began. Model S was their Gen 2.
EPA rating is one measure. Porsche wanted to build a track car, the fancy new Model S had to be towed off the track.
Porsche also has many other successful models stuffing their war chest with cash. Tesla is all in on 1 platform, 1 product they are selling (with smaller margins than the 2 legacy high-margin products they are selling fewer and fewer of) and a fistful of concepts that you can give them a deposit for.
All this competition is good for consumers. Weāll see how Tesla fares with it ā sales in Europe and Asia have been down with increased EV competition.
I donāt know how any of this challenges the statement that Porsche is a decade behind Tesla in EV technology. Taycan gets half the range of a Model S today because it is track focused? If so, does it provide double the performance of a P100D? If Porsche is so flush with cash how come their r&d is not light years ahead of almost-bankrupt penniless Tesla in EV hardware/software? Isnāt a 6-year old car manufacturer a start-up in the world of car manufacturing where average age is mass market brands is probably around 50 years? GM started to build the EV1 in 1996 so they had 20+ years of development behind the Bolt? How did that car turn out?
I am very curious as to what it is that Tesla is doing (or not doing) that is responsible for these performance differences. Is their motor technology that much better? Is their battery management technology that much better? Are they prioritizing different things that make them perform better under certain conditions and worse in others that arenāt property captured in this comparison?
Did I say they werenāt? Their v1 is much closer to Teslaās v2, took less time, undoubtedly cost less in R&D, and better serves their target customer (who isnāt price sensitive). Technology is an economic multiplier that doesnāt only benefit the first-mover.
Your mixing points but the answer is the amount of (other peopleās money) Tesla has burner on R&D over the years.
Tesla is almost 14 not 6, they had 6 years between the Roadster and Model S. I never said the EV platform was trash, but (time will tell) I suspect they overspent on it and over diversified their entire business instead of looking at other opportunities to scale (one for instance is their erstwhile partnerships with MB and Toyota to license platform tech).
Now you are out where the busses donāt run. Have you seen Who Killer the Electric Car? GM shelved their R&D. Most of the Bolt tech is side/derivative of the Voltec platform R&D.
Bolt v1 got better range than most Model S ever built (and many whose batteries have been software limited since).
Itās interesting that epa has drastically different ranges for the two cars while wltp had almost identical. It will be interesting to see real world tests to see how they actually compare.
Their tech lead canāt be ādemolishedā by bad business decisions. That IP exists and Musk burning through cash wonāt destroy it. Now, their ability to use that advantage in the production of automobiles could be adversely affected.
Although I think you are too harsh on Tesla I also have little faith in their ability to survive long term as an independent concern. If I had to guess Iād say the next recession results in Tesla running out of cash. Gas is already cheap and economic contractions usually result in demand for gas, and therefore gas prices, dropping. Cheap gas and decreased consumer spending isnāt a recipe for selling expensive electric cars.
Telsa has too much valuable IP and battery production capacity to go bankrupt but if they run out of cash it will be interesting to see how the market values their industry leading EV tech.
Iāve seen plenty of first movers with tech advantage be overtaken. Plenty. And none of them did this.
IP not destroyed, just given away.
I am a cold drop of rational water in a burning hot sun of irrational exuberance. They have been innovators and disrupters, but changing both the natural laws of business and trying to do too much/too fast with too little time/money can destroy anyone. That doesnāt even account for externals: who would have ever thought with all the good and bad GM did for decades that the credit markets freezing would bring them (and GE and others) to their knees?
While being the cold drop of rational water, you fail to separate the business from the technology/product. It sounds like you spend plenty of time going through their financial statements but you donāt have the time/patience to watch a Sandy Munro deep-dive video or read reviews (professional or consumer) on Teslaās cars. No one is arguing that Tesla is run optimally by Elon and his team but you donāt seem to understand or choose not to concede the value of their technology lead and competitive advantage (what other car company has vertical integration in their EV manufacturing?).
I have provided a numerical comparison of what Tesla was capable of achieving in terms of performance, range, and efficiency in 2012 and what Porsche is able to do today to make a point about their technology lead and your reply was āEPA rating is only one measureā and implied that Porscheās significantly inferior efficiency was due to their track oriented design. Do you see how that might be coming off a little too much on Tesla hate side?
Again no one is fighting you on Teslaās poor management but you seem to consistently underestimate/dismiss any positive Tesla comment or data point. Do you honestly believe Model 3 is outselling every other car in its segment (not EVs but compact luxury sport sedans such as BMW 3, Merc C, Audi A4 etc) because of Tesla fanboys and Elon worshipers? Or could it be that the product is so good that it is genuinely winning customers regardless of environmental concerns or tax breaks etc. And if so, could the product save the company? I am sure you have read business cases where one product turned a company aroundā¦
I donāt think anybody is buying a taycan for its ev range. 200 miles is plenty for that type of car. I saw it in person and itās truly beautiful. Iāve never felt that way about any of the jelly bean teslas.
Regarding tesla theyāre selling tons of model 3s right now and hardly any model s or x. Car and Driver has a model 3 in its long term fleet right now and the sticker was almost 60k on that car. They remarked the interior looks and feels cheap. I couldnāt agree more. Itās also noisier and rides worse than itās premium competition. How does an electric car make more noise driving down the highway than a 6 cylinder bmw/Mercedes?
At the end of the day there are only so many people who want or can afford a 50/60k car. And despite tesla outselling both BMW and Mercedes combined in that segment, they STILL burn through cash at remarkable rates and have shoddy build quality.
Finally, worldwide most electric car sales are not arms length transactions. They are heavily subsidized or govt mandates. Those subsidies wonāt last foreverā¦
Like somebody else said, I donāt see a way tesla survives the next recession. I hope they do though.
The problem here is that youāre making the assumption that Tesla and Porsche have the same requirements set in these two cars. While you may be correct that Tesla is more efficient, etc, the data points that youāre showing there are limited and only conclusively say that the Tesla is better in those tests.
Lets look back at the diesel gate fiasco from a few years ago. Car manufacturers are very good at tweaking their vehicles to perform quite well in specific tests that arenāt representative of the overall performance. The Tesla and the taycan have vastly different epa ratings for range but nearly identical wltp ratings. I suspect that the taycan is likely designed in such a way where itās peak efficiency is not anywhere near the conditions depicted in the EPA test and the Tesla is probably designed to have a peak efficiency closer to those conditions. That doesnāt make one overall more efficient, it just says that those limited tests are an insufficient metric for measuring overall performance.
I am guessing you never owned an EV before? You achieve 200 miles when outside temperature is optimal so the battery pack doesnāt need cooling or heating, no need to cool or heat the cabin or there is no headwind or rain/snow creating drag. Plus the manufacturers will tell you not to charge the car to 100% on a daily basis and not let it drop below 20% to maintain the longevity of the battery pack. So that 200 miles you started with ends up being almost half of that number on a winter commute with some precipitation at which point range anxiety becomes a real issue.
Fair point but there was no WLTP when the original Model S came out so EPA rating is the only measurement that has existed long enough to make the comparison between 2012 and today possible.
No, but there is now, and when the taycan and the model s get the same rating now, but very different epa ratings, there is obviously more going on here.
