Truly impressive. I wonder if the Model 3 will also be fitted out with all the sensors and cameras. If yes, I'll definitely get one.
As a German citizen, it really bugs me that Volkswagen is incapable of this kind of innovation. I don't see their roadmap play out like they plan it, because Tesla might beat them to market hard. I fear German regulation will jump in (again) to help them against Tesla.
Currently, the German government gives out electric vehicle subsidies (~5k per car), but it is limited cars less expensive than 60k. At the moment there is very low demand for this subsidy, because everyone who goes EV wants to go Tesla.
>As a German citizen, it really bugs me that Volkswagen is incapable of this kind of innovation.
What innovation? Autonomous vehicles? Volkswagen is working with Stanford researchers and Mobileye (you know, the people who helped build Tesla Autopilot):
I mean, sure, if you don't leave the front page of HackerNews, you'd think that Tesla is literally inventing this stuff in real-time. But believe it or not there are lots of smart people and companies working on autonomous vehicles. They just don't market as well or as often as Tesla. And in some cases, yes, they're behind.
I really like Nissan Leaf and I love the fact that Nissan is out there as a competitor. But the reason anyone buys Nissan Leaf is that it is for sale already and that the price is only $29,000.
Otherwise it's inferior to Tesla model 3 in almost any aspect (not to mention the larger Teslas):
- only 107 mile range vs. 215 miles
- no super chargers or own network, relies on third party generic chargers
- less trunk space
- less acceleration
- no battery swap
- no regular software upgrades over the internet
- no self driving capabilities
- no flat screen controls
When Tesla model 3 is out, selling at $35,000, Nissan will have to make serious upgrades to remain a viable alternative.
1. Comparing the range of an actual 'currently being produced' vehicle to the stated range of a vehicle that's not yet in production is disingenuous in my book. Expect the leaf (v2?) to have at least 25% more range by the time the Model 3 is being produced.
2. While 'more acceleration' sound nice in theory, using all this power is usually pretty bad for your range.
3. While the battery swap sounds nice, in practice battery degradation hasn't been that bad according to many EV owners I talked to. Will it actually be necessary? If you're thinking about swapping the battery for a quick 'charge' I'm not sure that's going to be available for the Model 3 (and even if available, what the costs for doing so will be.).
4. Some might like the flat screen, I'm personally not a very big fan. Plain old fashioned knobs and buttons are really easy to work with.
I agree with the rest of your list but I'm pretty sure EV sales (especially for the near future, say the next ten years) are not a zero-sum game. Plenty of Leafs, Bolts, Souls, and Model 3s will be sold regardless of the fact that the Model3 may be 'better' based on your definition.
Disclaimer: I drive a Kia Soul EV with 'only' ~100 miles real-world range.
The problem is that most of the established car companies are not thinking in the future. They become accommodate with the amount of cash they have on the hand, and they do not pursue innovation.
Currently, Tesla is the only one who is delivering practical innovation and success!
True. But they add the hardware only if you pay for it up front.
Tesla has the hardware in every car it sells, and will be mining super useful data with all these sensors, and tweaking it's software (machine learning based on real use cases for a year) before it puts it out to the public! The scale of data mining that can be done with Tesla's approach is near impossible with other cars (if they continue to sell the cars with and without the sensory hardware)
How hard do you think adding sensors to vehicles is to accomplish if the big players decide it's valuable? This is commodity hardware. And if/when they do, they will be gathering far more data that Tesla, by virtue of the massive number of vehicles on the road.
Again, Tesla may very well do it better than anyone else, but it's a bit early to talk like they've won anything here.
Daimler-Benz demonstrated autonomous driving with little human intervention over long distances in the mid 90s [1]. Other German car companies had similar programs. So they are certainly capable of doing it, not sure why they did not push it to the market. Too expensive? No demand? Too hard to tackle the last couple of percent of required human intervention?
Every TSLA will have the hardware fitted and on. Only if owner wants to use the feature, she pays upfront, or a little more if activating the feature later.
Other than being able to charge a premium for activating later why install it on all the cars? Tesla is basically using data from sensors that'd be in a Fully Autonomous Vehicle, driven by a human for at least a year. Thats a lot of free valuable data being collected for the cost of just the hardware installation!
Instead of doing all the testing and tweaking once car is street legal for test runs as an autonomous car, Tesla benefits from putting every single piece of hardware needed for its future as early as possible, just to mine this data gold.
As a German citizen, it really bugs me that Volkswagen is incapable of this kind of innovation. I don't see their roadmap play out like they plan it, because Tesla might beat them to market hard. I fear German regulation will jump in (again) to help them against Tesla.
Currently, the German government gives out electric vehicle subsidies (~5k per car), but it is limited cars less expensive than 60k. At the moment there is very low demand for this subsidy, because everyone who goes EV wants to go Tesla.