Not a chance of that. Tesla only makes one thing, so it would be impossible to break it up, and it will never have a monopoly. Daimler shows no signs of being “Frozen in fear”, by the way, and you are leaving out probably in the neighbourhood of 100 manufacturers. They just aren’t in the US for the most part. The American car industry is extremely slow to change or innovate in general. They like to sit on their laurels and roll out minor tweaks pretending that they are rolling out major innovations. Just look at any car produced in the 1970’s if you want to see how they operate. Bankruptcy is very little negative effect on something like Ford or GM, it permits them to recover from bad management only to install more inept management. The drop in gas from Covid will last a while and stifle and motivation to pursue electric more actively. And quite honestly, a lot of people do not want an electric car. Tesla can corner the market on electric for the next 10 years, it’s a tiny fraction of the market overall and will stay that way for a while.
True. I don’t want one.
A lot can change in 10 or 20 years. I could see buying an electric car in that time frame just about as likely as I can see buying a car period. It could go all AI driverless taxis except for old rich people who have horses and collect art and shit
You laugh. People want to be more independent, you say. I may have too before the cloud took over
When electric cars have 1000 mile ranges, or they have easily swappable 500mile battery packs I would be fine having only electric vehicles. As it stands, I’ll keep my beater gas guzzling 4runner and my wife will get an electric car in the next year or so… They make too much sense not to get one if your household has a gas car too.
Very soon it’s going to make too much sense not to go fully electric. When you get the electric car, you will see that you hardly ever have to charge outside the home. Our Leaf only gets 80 miles and in 3 years we’ve never once needed to charge outside the home.
If we had a 300 mile electric car, we would use it for the occasional longer trip and sometimes use a super charger to “fill up”. It only takes about 20 minutes and doing that once every month or two is a lot less time than weekly stops at filthy gas stations.
Check back in after you’ve had the electric for a few months to let us know where your minds at then. Hope get a Tesla.
I think you are hitting the nail on the head about the ICE automakers failing to innovate and only making slow, incremental improvements. I think you’re failing to see the ramifications of that when Tesla is on the seen improving the automobile product by leaps and bounds.
When US automakers have gone bankrupt in the past, they could recover because people still needed to buy cars and all the automakers were making comparable products. Now Tesla makes a superior product. Before, when automakers went bankrupt it was because of mismanagement and they still had buyers when they emerged. Next time, they’ll go bankrupt because people aren’t buying their products anymore.
When I said Daimler above, I was actually thinking GM. My mistake. Whether or not GM is frozen in fear or failing to act for some other reason, the fact is, they are failing to keep up. They did not follow through on the Bolt. They haven’t developed a skateboard platform and they’ve taken no steps to procure the massive amounts of batteries they are going to need to remain competitive.
When the Cybertruck hits the market, the only segment GM will still be competitive in is economy cars - the least profitable segment. But also, that segment that will require the most batteries. When Tesla finally turns their attention to the economy car, they will be the only company in a position to supply the needed batteries. They will offer a product that is safer, faster and cheaper than the Civic, Corolla and Focus. It’ll have a 250 mile range and the owners will have a full charge every morning and will never have to get an oil change, fan belt, air filter or clean an oil spot off their garage floor. In the 3 years I’ve had my Leaf, which is a piece of crap compared to a Tesla, the only maintenance I’ve done is to plug it in, fill the window washer fluid, and swap the winter/summer tires. That’s it.
All electric cars have one major problem in common, range. The only part of the market Ford and GM care about is SUV’s, and pickup trucks. Fiat-Chrysler is a focused on trucks and nostalgia. Who buys trucks? Most are for work. Electric trucks do not cut it. They are not offering anything competetive in the pickup market. The current electric pickups are going to go over like the Honda pickup, a big joke that no one wants. They seriously need to revamp everything about the truck approach to be any threat at all in that market. As someone that has always owned trucks and worked in construction, when I looked at Tesla’s idea I laughed out loud. I doubt it would even function for a weekend warrior who wants to pull a boat or a camper. And electric cars can never take over until you can drive to see family for Thanksgiving in it, no matter which State they live in. Tesla lost out on a big garbage truck contract recently, to an electric truck competitor. Tesla is positioned to be a great battery supplier in the future, but is in great danger of being another early front-runner that becomes the also ran. IBM doesn’t sell PC’s anymore as an example. The cost of the replacement battery is also the big hiccup in the secondary market. How many people are going to feel comfortable buying one of these cars used? I can tell you tat I had a hybrid, and I hated it so much that I wouldn’t have anothe and am uninterested in all current electric offerings. Electric is still way more fringe than it is being treated, and these are very early days.
Range really isn’t a problem. The short range Teslas go over 200 miles and charge quickly. If you make lots of long range trips you can get a model that goes over 300 miles. That’s 4 hours of driving then take 20 minutes to stretch your legs while recharging.
The Tesla Cyber truck beats a comparatively priced F-150 in every way (except range but see above). It has more towing powder, it’s faster, handles better and is safer. It’s simply a better vehicle.
Surprisingly, none of these things matter for work applications. They all have enough towing power, more than you can legally tow for the vehicle class. What matters is funcionality. Where can it go? What is the clearance? How much cargo space? And honestly, the F-150 and comparable 1500 series vehicles from GM and Dodge never enter into consideration for work either. None of them are actually heavy enough to be taken seriously. As far as range, 200 is a serious problem. It’s okay for a typical commute, but in many places it’s nothing. 200 miles is 3 hours of driving on flat ground, much less on steep grades. I could easily spend 45 minutes on mountain roads getting to one jobsite, and then 45 more minutes getting to the next on similar roads, and no where to effectively charge. The charging itself will become an issue. I have zero interest in paying the electric bill for other people charging their car, and many others would be even less inclined. I wouldn’t buy their gas, why would I charge their car? The new Lucid having a 500+ mile range is moving in the right direction. There is a very specific niche willing to buy an electric truck, and none of them currently one a truck from the Big 3. One day, sure. What’s currently in the pipeline? No chance. It’s a car pretending, and anything that ugly has to do more to overcome both the image and the deficiencies. Hybrids make a lot more sense, and they didn’t take over the world.
For 70 grand the Cybertruck will get you 500+ miles. If it gets half that on mountainous roads, that will be more than enough for a work day.
My concern is more for road trips to fairly remote places where there is NO CHANCE of finding an actual charging station… and how well does a charge hold in the cold? I assume there are quick charge power banks that you can charge at home and bring with you? Especially in winter chasing snow i find myself driving through fairly remote places in BC and the western US so the convenience of a gas engine is a nice safety blanket.
What do you do to charge if you are staying at a shitty motel? There is no charging station and im sure as shit not running a cord from my room to the car when its -10F out haha. There has to be a portable energy bank, or something?
Welcome to your Shark Tank appearance. How long to get the working prototype together?
It’s a prejudice that is not easy to overcome. Even if that would work fine, would I as a tradesman take the chance? Not likely. I’ll put my money in something I trust and am familiar with, because nothing is as expensive as down time. Now, if it had, say, solar panels somewhere to passively charge, maybe I’m more interested.
Tesla should make easily changeable batteries that can be swapped in and out. That way you could have commercial battery depots/stations even in areas that don’t support high voltage charging. Just pull in, un latch your battery, put it in the “empty” bin, grab one from the “charged” bin and go on your way. It would be like redfinning a battery for your car.
