Perhaps - though bear in mind this may be more of a U.S. concern, rather than one the majority of EV buyers share globally. Lower-range EV’s like the Fiat 500e and the Dacia Spring sell quite well in Europe, where intercity public transport is better and higher densities make for shorter trip lengths.
No apology necessary. Just to show that there are no hard feelings, here is an update from the real world, Toyota thinks so highly about the competitiveness of its bZ4X that it is delaying ramping up production from the current 1000/month until 2025.
Toyota is also eliminating the platform upon which the bZ4x is built to be replaced by one with a dedicated EV architecture in order to improve on efficiency. Reuter’s reports that the new platform and its production will be inspired by what Tesla is currently doing.
Imagine that. Who would have thought a few years ago that Toyota would be stealing Tesla’s production strategy.
Now, as Reuters reports, the world’s biggest automaker is looking towards Tesla’s innovations in the field of EV manufacturing, taking inspiration from the American EV maker’s Giga Press casting machines and other production-related processes to lower costs and increase its profit margins. Toyota Already Working On A New EV-Only Platform, Will Take Inspiration From Tesla (insideevs.com)
Toyota delays ramping bZ4X production until 2025 (electrek.co)
2 Likes
It will eventually be mostly about the software. BMW just demonstrated a car with an E-ink exterior that can change color using software. BMW is also introducing My Modes that can change the performance of the car as well as the interior experience, all through software.
The My Modes options will adapt and change, giving the driver a selected user experience while driving. Therefore, rather than just Eco, Comfort, Sport, or Sport+, My Modes feature can change the drive modes, throttle response, steering settings, noises pumped into the cabin, audio and displays. BMW My Modes: You Can Now Change Your Car’s Mood Depending on Driver Mode - autoevolution
BMW unveils car that can change its color using E Ink (venturebeat.com)
Volvo is designing a car for the autonomous future where the interior can be reconfigured as desired. It is basically almost a symmetrical box on wheels with a highly modifiable interior. That is likely to be the look for most cars in the future. A box on wheels with a customizable living space.
Volvo 360c is a radical vision for a driverless tomorrow - CNET
Our kids will read old stuff about how important color, trim and inside accoutrement were to car sales and just shake their heads and laugh.
1 Like
I have visions of the car changing color while the driver is in the store and then not being able to find the car.
1 Like
Why wait? They can read old stuff about how phones were replacing cars as the main locus of people’s individualizing purchases, and shake their heads at how car models are as diverse as ever but nearly every phone has the same form factor.
Visions of the future are often wrong (cue Yogi Berra quote). There will be fancy concept cars and fancy vanity options, like cars that change color. And a decade from now, you still won’t be able to buy them. Volvo’s radical vision for a driverless tomorrow is just a fancier version of Mercedes’ F015 from 2015’s CES, except with lots of your cabin space eaten up by extra cushioning for the few-times-per-year that you might want an airline-style bed to sleep in your car.
Though I do note that the Mercedes and Volvo cars look nothing like each other, inside or out - and neither looks like a box with wheels. Which makes me think that there’ll still be some styling and inside accoutrement even in the Far Far Future!
Both things can be true at the same time. Range anxiety can score the highest on consumer concerns while short range EVs could be the top sellers. So one has to be careful in making market predictions based on surveys vs sales units.
Some made up example numbers:
top concerns: 40% range anxiety, 30% price, 20% interior comfort, 10% cup holder placement
Sales units: 50% short range, 30% std range, 20% long range
Mike
3 Likes
Looks like GM is also ready to drop the old generation of lower efficiency EVs (both in terms of production efficiency and usage efficiency*) and entirely switch over to their new platform of EV … built from the ground up as an EV.
* The Bolt actually isn’t terrible in this regard, but the next generation will be better.
3 Likes
Great for Reuters. Hardly a surprise that a company which is late, late, late to the EV party finds it necessary to design a common platform from which to launch, uh, EVs. They are different than ICE vehicles, right?
For the record, this “genius” move is one only done, well, dozens of times throughout automotive history for that other platform:
For instance:
- Volkswagen Golf, Audi A3, and Skoda Octavia are built on the Volkswagen Group’s MQB platform.
- Toyota Corolla, Toyota Prius, and Lexus CT are built on the Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA) platform.
- Honda Civic, Honda CR-V, and Acura ILX are built on the Honda Global Compact platform.
- Chevrolet Cruze, Buick Verano, and Opel Astra are built on the General Motors Delta II platform.
- Ford Focus, Ford C-Max, and Volvo V40 are built on the Ford C1 platform.
- BMW 3 Series, BMW 4 Series, and BMW M4 are built on the BMW Cluster Architecture (CLAR) platform.
- Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Mercedes-Benz GLC, and Mercedes-Benz E-Class are built on the Mercedes-Benz Modular Rear Architecture (MRA) platform.
- Mazda 3, Mazda CX-30, and Mazda CX-5 are built on the Mazda SkyActive Platform
ButI get it. Common platforms Sheer genius! Glad Tesla dreamed it up, Wherever did they get this outlandish idea?
Maybe from Chrysler in the 80’s? The K-platform:
Chrysler used a common platform for its K cars, which were introduced in the early 1980s. The K platform was a highly versatile platform that was used for a variety of different vehicles, including the Dodge Aries, Plymouth Reliant, Chrysler LeBaron, and Dodge Caravan.
The K platform was designed to be modular and flexible, allowing for a wide range of vehicles to be built
Or could it have been from the 60s?
The concept of using a common platform for different models was introduced in the 1960s by the British Motor Corporation (BMC), which later became part of the British Leyland Motor Corporation. The BMC developed the “Issigonis platform”, which was a highly flexible platform that could be used for a range of vehicles.
The first car to use the Issigonis platform was the Morris Mini, which was launched in 1959. The Mini was an iconic car that revolutionized the small car market, and it was followed by a range of other models that used the same platform, including the Mini Cooper, the Austin Mini, and the Morris 1100.
Amazing. Genius Elon. Thanks for dragging us all along.
6 Likes
I don’t think it is a matter that Tesla was brilliant for doing this. Rather, how could an established car company blunder so badly by not doing it from the start? I’d even give all the legacy car companies a pass on some of the initial lame compliance cars.
Mike
1 Like
Starting a brand new car platform is time consuming, very expensive, and you have to through all the regulatory things from scratch, like crash testing. That is why you start on an existing platform while you develop the new platform.
4 Likes
It’s not just the common platform. It’s the Gigafactory, the Giga Press, vertical integration. Despite all the claims that batteries will soon be commodities, Toyota is planning to become a major battery manufacturer! Right out of the Tesla playbook, though a bit late.
Toyota engineers tore down the Model Y and came to the realization that they cannot currently make a car that advanced.
Manufacturing breakthroughs like the use of giga casting to eliminate countless parts and brackets, and the structural battery pack that acts as the car’s floor itself were singled out by Toyota engineers.
According to their estimates shared with Automotive News, Tesla’s approach eliminated hundreds of parts and up to 220 pounds (100 kilograms), while increasing battery range and slashing overall costs.
One executive said, “It’s a whole different manufacturing philosophy,” while another added, “We need a new platform designed as a blank-sheet EV." Those are stunning admissions coming from executives of Toyota, a company renowned for its designed-for-manufacturing expertise. Toyota Engineers After Tesla Model Y Teardown: "A Work Of Art"
The Toyota engineers identified four areas where Tesla has a major advantage over Toyota:
…dedicated platform, advanced battery, designated EV production site, and software-defined architecture. Tesla has all four of those, Toyota has none – at least not yet.
Even Toyota now recognizes the significance of software-designed vehicles. Imagine that…
Great point, but there is even more to that. I’ve been invested in Tesla for awhile (it has paid my kid’s Harvard tuition) and so have been doing due diligence for a number of years. What has kept me in the game are articles like this one from the Harvard Business Review. Here’s a relevant excerpt:
On the surface, building a new architecture may seem an easy strategy to imitate, but prior research shows it can be very difficult: It can take time and effort for incumbents because it often requires abandoning old ways of doing things and developing new capabilities. In the words of a senior auto executive I interviewed, “It’s just hard for us because historically we have been great mechanical engineers, not great software engineers. But we need to become software engineers.”
Lessons from Tesla’s Approach to Innovation
That last quote is critical. BEVs have to be designed by software engineers to be competitive. I’ve spoken to colleagues in the School of Engineering and they pretty much all agree. It is best to first design a BEV as a computer with a big battery, and then figure out where to put the wheels.
2 Likes
Ha! The alternative is to press a button on your key fob and the car turns bright emergency orange to make it easy to find.
Ah. That illuminates some of your comments on these subjects.
We’re about to get something of a test of this thesis, I think.
This year - or perhaps next - Tesla’s going to have to start breaking through some serious milestones with the Model Y. They’ve got two new factories that are in full ramp up, and in the near term they’re going to be producing nearly entirely Y’s. Those volumes will push Model Y production to become the highest-produced (and therefore best-selling) single car in the world right now (past the ~1.1 million Corollas that Toyota will sell), and past the best selling car in the world in a single year ever (past the ~1.5 million Corollas that Toyota sold back before the pandemic). To sell 1.8 million cars this year, they’ll need to sell about 1.3 million Model Y’s. To have their expected growth next year, they’ll have to sell closer to 1.6-1.8 million.
No one’s ever sold that many of a single car - one model with one design - before. Ever.
The test is whether Tesla will have to seriously reduce prices on the Model Y (even further, that is) in order to move all that metal. If consumers regard a BEV as a computer with a huge battery, then the “container” that computer and battery come in won’t much matter. No need to vary the shape or features or style of the container very much to meet different consumer needs or preferences.
But historically, consumers have had varied tastes and needs and…well, style preferences. Not everyone wants to drive the same car, and not everyone wants to drive the type of car that engineers think is the best way to design a car. By letting their range of offerings get really narrow (and a bit, well, aged), Tesla’s bet the growth curve on having a very limited set of models be able to cover a large range of consumers. We’ll see how that works out, now that consumers can satisfy any demand for variety that might have gone unmet in the early days of EV adoption.
3 Likes
Enter Mercedes, who I think has a better approach to getting to FSD than Tesla. On stretches of the autobahn the cars are FSD. As that gets better the stretches of road where FSD is used will expand. JMOG…just my obvious guess…
Yes, Toyota is among the last out of the gate for EVs; Japanese industrial policy has been, to this point, encouraging hydrogen as a future technology.
That said, I find this idea of building a battery factory not surprising at all , What’s the most expensive and critical part of an ICE car? The engine, obviously, Know who makes engines for Toyota? Toyota Industries.
Know who makes the engines for Honda ICE cars? Honda Power Equipment Manufacturing.
Know who makes the engines for Ford? Ford. Know who makes them for GM? Romulus Propulsion, a division of GM, Nissan? Nissan. Chrysler? Chrysler. Volkswagen? Volkswagen,
What would you say is the most expensive and important part of EV vehicles? The battery. It would seem that manufacturers as a natural course of business would want to own this important link in their production chain, wouldn’t it?
Why would it be at all surprising that they didn’t start out building battery factories until they were sure this was more than a temporary fad or a small, unimportant segment like two-seat coupes? Who remembers Wankel Engines? Tailfins? Giant hood ornaments? Trends come and go, this one is real, and that’s why everyone is - some belatedly - piling in, Tesla looks well positioned, to be sure, but I’m sure others will be as well, possibly soon,
I continue to be amazed by those who find genius in Musk’s every move; some are just natural progressions of industry,
2 Likes
I don’t see how this is a test of the “BEV is a computer concept”. Why hold Tesla to a standard of not reducing prices when computers go on sale all the time? And as for these sales numbers you are requiring for the Model Y, you seem to be conflating two different different objectives. You are focusing on the sale numbers that you think are needed to maintain Tesla’s growth. That’s different than what is needed to demonstrate that consumers care more about a vehicle’s performance than they do about cosmetic changes to the exterior style.
I think that has already been demonstrated with the Model 3, which has improved quite a bit since 2017 while still looking much the same on the outside. Car and Drive estimated 198,200 units sold in the US in 2022. That’s 30K more than the Honda Accord and within 25K of the Toyota Corolla, both much cheaper cars. Carfigures.com estimated U.S. Model 3 sales at a much higher 240,266 for 2022, which would be by far the most sold in a year since its introduction in 2017. Not bad for an “old” looking car.
Being able to increase sales after 5 years with the same external styling seems like a pretty successful result for what you call a test of the BEV as computer meme.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39628015/best-selling-cars-2022/
1 Like
Did you honestly believe Musk was doing the right thing when he was spending billions building his Nevada battery gigafactory in 2017? I would be surprised as most Tesla-doubters thought he was nuts at the time.
Sometimes genius is doing something five years earlier that only now seems obvious to those with more average IQ.
I don’t think I really explained that part of my post.
I was really noodling around with the fact that the passenger vehicle market, historically, has been very very fragmented. For example, the Corolla is the best-selling car in the world. But it “only” sold about 1.1 million units last year. Why not more? Why not 1.7 million - or 2 million? Not only is that only a tiny fraction of the overall car market, but it’s actually only a modest portion of the small sedan vehicle segment (which is about 7 million units).
That’s very different than what we see in other, more concentrated markets - like cell phones, for example. The Corolla is obviously an excellent car for its type. Yet even the “best” (?) small sedan can only capture a modest slice of the market. No matter how awesome a car is, there’s only so many people who want that specific car, with that specific design and that specific layout, etc. Consumer preferences for vehicles are so diverse and fragmented that you don’t have much market concentration.
Tesla’s current production goals (“we’re going to grow production at ~40% no matter what it does to our margins”) would test the boundaries of that. No vehicle’s ever sold close to two million units. If they were able to do that without cratering their margins (not just a “sale” from time to time), it would be an indicator that perhaps consumer preferences for EV’s were different than ICE’s. That they would de-prioritize their preference for variety in design, and instead treat the cars as a little more “fungible” as you’ve described in other posts.
I mean, this is what should happen under your view of EV’s homogenizing the market a bit. If EV’s mean that there will be fewer models, then there should be higher sales volumes within each model. Fewer models to spread the sales around = more sales per model. We should start to see the sales volume within various models start to swell, as consumers start buying those “computers on wheels” that don’t need a dozen different models to deliver different driving experiences. Tesla’s the leading/bleeding edge of this - they’ve got far fewer models than you would normally see in a sizable auto manufacturer.
The Model 3 never came close to testing those boundaries. Global sales peaked in 2021 at about half a million units. Volumes were a bit lower last year, and probably won’t exceed ~500K this year either. That’s still great, but not unheard of. So it doesn’t really offer much insight into whether the consumer market for passenger vehicle is perhaps different for EV’s than ICE’s.
1 Like
Yes. If you’re going to build an EV and only an EV, then batteries are a crucial component - even more so when nobody else is building them at scale. As investors (in this case Panasonic) were willing to front the cost, why wouldn’t he?
If your business for 100 years has been internal combustion engines, perhaps you would not be so anxious to build one until you are sure it would pay off.
Hmmm. I don’t remember it that way, so I asked AI to take me back to that point and aggregate the reaction:
Tesla and Panasonic's announcement in 2014 that they would build a massive battery factory in Nevada called the Gigafactory was met with a lot of excitement and interest from the public and the media. The Gigafactory was seen as a critical component in Tesla's plan to become a major player in the renewable energy market and to reduce the cost of electric vehicles by producing batteries at scale.
When the Gigafactory began production in 2017, there was a lot of coverage and interest in the media, and the response was generally positive. The factory was seen as a significant step forward in the production of clean energy technology and was seen as an important development for the future of electric vehicles.
However, there were also some concerns about the environmental impact of the factory, given its massive size and the amount of resources required to build and operate it. There were also questions about the financial viability of the project and whether Tesla would be able to achieve the economies of scale it was aiming for.
Overall, though, the response to the announcement of the Gigafactory and its subsequent opening was generally positive and seen as a significant step forward for the renewable energy industry.
1 Like