… the future is autonomous and it would be pointless to make a $25,000 car with a steering wheel.
Tesla Won’t Make A $25,000 Car That Isn’t A Robotaxi
Also in his position as a Czar in the new Administration, I see a streamlined and speedy NHTSA approval for Full Self Driving – warts and all.
intercst
He will need special protection from liability. That must be the payoff for the hit Tesla will take when the “EV mandate” is replaced by EV sanctions.
Steve
So will the others
Gm will eat his lunch in 2025.
He has poisoned the well every chance he gets.
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Will they [GM] require another govt bailout BEFORE dinner?
Telsa and GM require government subsidies based on offsetting other polluters.
Why did you think Tesla was above it all?
Because Musk is the guru of a cult? What I am wondering is what payoff is Musk getting to support someone who promises to cut the mandate/subsidy pins out from under Tesla?
Steve
Because there are always exceptions…
Pete
Tesla RECEIVES payments to offset other company’s polluter vehicles.
GM SENDS some of those payments because their vehicles on average are excess polluters!
He plays both positions on everything.
If she had said, the factory buildout going on right now which needs to continue will keep a lot of deflationary pressure on prices…she’d have shown she will do more for the economy than he will.
We are talking EVs and GM getting further into selling them.
GM will get it off their taxes. Plus cash back.
Musk has said without the EV subsidy Tesla will be even more competitive against the EVs from legacy car makers, which is probably true, for now, though one wonders how big the market is for $46k small SUVs and $44k small sedans.
The Honda Civic hybrid is very attractive. $34k for the hatchback, 50mpg, made in Indiana.
The Chevy Equinox EV looks nice, but made in Mexico might be an issue pretty soon.
From last month:
Now American built and in a state where you don’t want to lose votes.
The Model 3 sells at least as well as the Civic in the USA.
Given that mean COGs/vehicle for Tesla is reported to be $35K I suspect the Model 3 could be made price competitive with the Civic hybrid even without the subsidy and still be profitable.
It pains me to say this but I think the US legacy automakers will soon become just niche players. IMO, they will be limited to big utility vehicles in the US market. Tesla, BYD, and now Hyundai are simply too far ahead technologically when it comes to electrification and the requisite software. Hyundai may have found the formula for how an ICE automaker can succeed in an electrified car market. They are collaborating with other Korean battery makers to develop BEV technology.
Hyundai is working with domestic companies to develop ultra-high-capacity LFP batteries. A Hyundai Motor Group official confirmed last fall that the company was working with domestic battery makers like LG Energy Solution, Samsung SDI, and SK On. Hyundai to develop industry-leading 300Wh/kg LFP EV batteries
US and European automakers can’t do this because of a lack of US and European battery makers. In this new mercantilist economic era, nations are going to become increasingly protective of their home-grown technologies.
It appears that BEV manufacturing is very different than ICE manufacturing. ICE factories have to be completely refitted to make BEVs, and this will become increasingly true if novel processes like gigapressing and unboxed manufacturing are successful. All those ICE factories owned by legacy automakers are not an advantage as the market electrifies. To the contrary, they are an economic albatross.
In which metric? I see that GM has sold around 70k YTD after Q3 but says they are on track to do 200k this year. I am guessing they will fail.
Ford CEO Farley has already said that is his ambition: exit the two row SUV market, because there is too much competition for him to raise prices, to fluff up profit margin, leaving Ford with nothing but huge, three row, SUVs, and huge trucks, the segments where there is the least competition.
Ford reported their quarterly a few days ago. Margin on light ICE vehicles, sold to consumers, which still includes a lot of two row Escape and Bronco Sport SUVs, was only 6%. The big commercial pickup segment gave them an 11% margin. The Oakville, Ontario plant, that used to make the two row Edge SUV, formerly destined to be an EV plant, is now being retooled to make huge “Super Duty” pickups for the commercial market. As suggested before, I suspect the luminaries at several legacy automakers embraced EVs, only because of the margins that Tesla was booking, as management’s objective these days is not a “fair” margin, but to escalate margin continuously higher, and they saw EVs as the way to do that.
32k units in the last quarter. 2024 is not 2025.
GM is now second in the US for EV sales.
That surprises me because I thought the number 4 model was the Mach-E, and surprisingly the number 5 model was the Honda Prologue (which is a GM derivative at least). I will say I like the GM EV offerings (I drive an Acura ZDX, which is Ultium based and a Lyric twin). But if true I’m quite glad for GM.
Ford’s EV sales are up 45% year-to-date, with 67,689 EVs sold through September 2024. This is second only to Tesla in the U.S. market
Close second and both will put in strong challenges against Tesla.
GM by year end will have a line up of 10 vehicles on offer.
Those are rookie numbers. But I will be watching them
The problem is that they cannot make EVs profitably. They lose money on every car they sell.
