RE: Tesla Roadster: 'Quickest car in the world'

[anonymous-user]

RobDickinson said:

Eventually.. For now the gigafactory cost is around $5bn.

The whole EV battery market likely worth ~$240bn. ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackperkowski/2017/08... )

VW needs ~40 gigafactories by 2025
https://electrek.co/2017/07/10/vw-gigafacrory-size...

Dyson is investing $2.5bn apparently

Ford investing $4.5bn in 2015..
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en...

plenty of money going into ev and self driving cars..

I know. Which is why I was laughing at the post claiming every single big player had been investing tens if not hundreds of billions... what's your point?

[suffolk009]

Talksteer said:

Once they become self driving shared cars they aren't really cars anymore.

Surely they will still be known as taxis?

Maybe Ubers.

[suffolk009]

All the fantastic cost savings that everyone keeps going on about will never happen.

Nuclear power was heralded at it's genesis as giving us unlimited near-free power. That didn't work out. Now solar generation and battery storage will be widely available for a guarntteed 7c per KwH. Pull the other one.

And every time the government see a new technology succeeding, they tax it. Company cars don't make financial sense any more - even the low tax EVs. Turns out HMRC have already put in place a sliding scale of BiC on EVs. The advantages they offer will be negligable in three or four years time.

There is zero chance that in the medium term (as soon as 5 to 10 years) EVs will be any cheaper to own (or rent) than current ICE cars.

[PorkInsider]

I’m a bit late to the party here but I’m another one who just can’t get excited about electric cars.

My car will, allegedly, do 0-60 in 3.8 (62 in 4.0) which is exactly twice as long as the Tesla.

I’ve never once tried to replicate even my car’s positively pedestrian acceleration claims because it’s just not really that exciting, is it?

There’s a lot more pleasure and entertainment to be had from quick squirts around and between corners: picking the right gear, correcting a bit of oversteer, hearing the engine note. All that stuff.

I just cannot get excited about pointing a car in a direction and then pressing a button (effectively) to make it go there as fast as possible.

If I wanted to do 100mph in 5 seconds, or thereabouts, I’d buy another superbike - it would be a hell of a lot more exciting.

The fact is I still wouldn’t want to nail it to 100mph, though, so I won’t bother.

[WestyCarl]

Just one for you

VW

I work in the Auto Industry and most manufacturers will be releasing a Tesla competitor in the next 18 months. (consider the development phase is approx 3 years most of these projects were started when the Tesla S become a big hit)

[hondansx]

RobDickinson said:

Ferrari has made about 130-140,000 cars total.
Tesla will make about 100,000 this year.

yet one is deemed smoke and mirrors and a scam...

What a strange comparison!

[J4CKO]

suffolk009 said:

All the fantastic cost savings that everyone keeps going on about will never happen.

Nuclear power was heralded at it's genesis as giving us unlimited near-free power. That didn't work out. Now solar generation and battery storage will be widely available for a guarntteed 7c per KwH. Pull the other one.

And every time the government see a new technology succeeding, they tax it. Company cars don't make financial sense any more - even the low tax EVs. Turns out HMRC have already put in place a sliding scale of BiC on EVs. The advantages they offer will be negligable in three or four years time.

There is zero chance that in the medium term (as soon as 5 to 10 years) EVs will be any cheaper to own (or rent) than current ICE cars.

There is a cost to having personal, motorised transport, dont think anyone is expecting massive cost savings on the overall cost, there are loads of benefits for the individual and wider society though.

People will always need to get around, governments and businesses want them to be able to, stifle that too much and the economy stalls.

[Leithen]

A more likely scenario might see an area of a city opt to replace all taxis with an automated driverless car solution. However in it's early incarnations it will be restricted to a small area that has a high number of short trips within it. More importantly the area will have heavily restricted use by cars or buses with drivers.

For it to work, a range of vehicles will be available from single seaters to 8+. Road lanes will disappear. Capacity of the roads will be increased greatly simply by vehicle sizes being tailored to their occupancy. The vehicles will all communicate with each other to allow stopping on either side of the road. With a large enough fleet and several underground stations where the cars are charged, wait times ought to be minimal.

It's all possible now - it just needs whichever city to make the jump. (Hong Kong, Singapore?).

Private ownership of a driverless car will be available, but at an exorbitant cost to be allowed into the system.

[witko999]

Talksteer said:

You seem to be thinking about this like a bus, it isn't.

It isn't Uber or a taxi either because the numbers of available cars are an order of magnitude higher.

Dynamic road pricing and real time scheduling will be the key. You will literally get precisely what you pay for.

The cost will drive behaviour.

First thing to remember is in most towns and cities traffic would be entirely tolerable if only a portion of rides were shared at peak times.

It is only where there is already bus routes with high occupancy and congestion where anything like a minibus or a bus would be needed.

You will pay less if are flexible on time, walk to a main road and book your trip in advance as this will facilitate sharing.

If there is 15 minutes of driving between pick ups then I doubt any system would set that as a sensible route. The whole thing with traffic congestion, is it happens because the same people want to go to the same places.

Nothing you have written here is remotely convincing.

There will be a high element of inconvenience however you spin shared cars. Nobody on my street is going to the same place of work as me, or even close. Therefore if pickups/dropoffs are made on main roads only, I then have to walk to a main road, get picked up and be taken somewhere vaguely towards where I am going. If I'm lucky I'll be dropped off on a main road within walking distance of my destination. If not, I have to jump in another vehicle/s and be driven another leg of the journey until I am sufficiently close to get to my destination.

It sounds a lot like public transport to me with all the same inconveniences.

Even more so when taxes to charge/run electric vehicles are ramped up to match current ICE costs. My ICE vehicles would be very cheap to run if I didn't pay £300+ VED, expensive insurance and 75% tax on fuel.

[8V085]

On the subject of EV's and excitement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3puPhoD2sho

This is pretty sad hahahaha. To quote Michael Bolton "When a maaaaaaan becomes a woooomaaaaaan..."

[wst]

witko999 said:

There will be a high element of inconvenience however you spin shared cars. Nobody on my street is going to the same place of work as me, or even close.

You're getting it arse-about-face.

The service will vary from "ride sharing" where multiple strangers get in a vehicle together (aka an unscheduled bookable small bus), to "autonomous taxi" where "the system" allocates a free car to collect you based on what is nearby when your booking slot comes up. The idea is that you don't have a car sitting on the drive constantly, empty cars would be seeking to maximise "time operational with passengers" and minimise "time without passengers".

[London424]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I did mean in aggregate, rather than an individual company. Bad wording on my part.

Just last year the auto industry R&D spend (in total not on EV), was ~110 billion USD. It's fair to say that a decent chunk of that has gone into EV technology, no? In just 1 year.

Of course it isn't an overnight revolution, but without Tesla coming to the fore, no money would have been spent.

Pretty much all of the major players have now committed to offering electrified versions of their cars in the pretty near future.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-inves...

That's VW. Electric versions of all 300 models by 2020. 72 billion of investment by 2022.

http://fortune.com/2015/12/10/ford-electric-vehicl...

That's Ford. Another 4.5 billion plus 13 new cars by 2020

http://uk.businessinsider.com/transportation-and-l...

Daimler, increasing their R&D budgets to account for Electric.

Have you not been paying attention?

[suffolk009]

J4CKO said:

There is a cost to having personal, motorised transport, dont think anyone is expecting massive cost savings on the overall cost, there are loads of benefits for the individual and wider society though.

People will always need to get around, governments and businesses want them to be able to, stifle that too much and the economy stalls.

I don't disagree with any of that. My point is that people who expect EVs to be less expensive than current cars are simply deluding themselves.

[hyphen]

So this amazing and incredible game changing roadster only available initially in limited numbers...









How come it hasn't sold out? Just took a look at the site and both the founders and the normal $50k deposit one available. I would have expected a cutting edge ICE car from McLaren, Ferrari etc to have more buyers than supply. Indeed ice hypercars get sold for a million without even a prototype shown to the buyers.

The amount of publicity Tesla have got for the roadster is unreal, but still can't sell 1000?

Edited by hyphen on Tuesday 21st November 11:38

Edited by hyphen on Tuesday 21st November 11:39

[Ares]

Talksteer said:

Tony427 said:

So, whats going to happen to those 32 million ICE cars . All of which represent a financial investment, however paltry, from some one or some organisation ? How can EV's displace 32 million cars when even with subsidies they are only selling 200k pa.

Its going to take years, and years and years, and then some more years. I'm not even 60 and I doubt I will ever see the day that ICE died.

Cheers,

Tony

Did you see smart phones coming?

I'll keep banging the same drum, firstly we won't need 32 million cars to replace the current fleet more like 4-5 million.

I expect that the phase in will be like contactless cards, it will happen in city centres first with people selling off or not replacing cars, plenty of cars will be maintained as they have sentimental value. Cars will migrate to areas where car sharing is more difficult.

Also don't forget other countries, the cars from rich countries will go into shipping containers and live their days out in countries with poor grids roads.

Electric cars have gone from useless, to a curiousity, to actually being better in many ways than IC cars in a ten year period.

In the next few years they will be available from multiple manufacturers and by the early 2020's they will have a lower cost of ownership than an IC car. Once they become self driving shared cars they aren't really cars anymore.

Electric cars are currently in the pre model Ford T stage, cars were better in many ways than horses at that point in time but still more expensive and unfamiliar. Once they do have a lower cost of ownership than an average IC car they will take off rapidly. See my previous example, the Model T killed off horses in ten years.

We can see the direction of travel and if history tells us one thing it's that technology shifts happen in S curves.

Already seeing it. The number of 17yrs taking driving lessons has plummeted. When I was 17 I couldn't wait. Millennials and Get-K are nothing like as bothered by car ownership, or driving themselves. Often see it as weird. Why spend £500/mth on a car, when you can get an Uber everywhere?

That could be the biggest threat to new ICE car sales - the lack of demand for cars, not just ICEs.

[Ares]

RobDickinson said:

Theres already a system in Paris doing car sharing and it works well.

Uber run it everywhere they operate properly.

Works great.

[boxerTen]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

The 812 Superfast's order book is full, and not just for this year, and its not a limited edition, and will certainly sell several thousand. The difference is Ferrari doesn't expect full price up-front, just a deposit, and one has confidence Ferrari will exist in 3 years whereas that is not at all clear with Tesla given its cash burn rate.

[Ares]

boxerTen said:

The 812 Superfast's order book is full, and not just for this year, and its not a limited edition, and will certainly sell several thousand. The difference is Ferrari doesn't expect full price up-front, just a deposit, and one has confidence Ferrari will exist in 3 years whereas that is not at all clear with Tesla given its cash burn rate.

Tesla only want the full amount up front for the founders edition.

And there have been times when Ferrari's future wasn't certain

[unpc]

Ares said:

boxerTen said:

The 812 Superfast's order book is full, and not just for this year, and its not a limited edition, and will certainly sell several thousand. The difference is Ferrari doesn't expect full price up-front, just a deposit, and one has confidence Ferrari will exist in 3 years whereas that is not at all clear with Tesla given its cash burn rate.

Tesla only want the full amount up front for the founders edition.

And there have been times when Ferrari's future wasn't certain

AFAIK no one knew anything about this car until they revealed it the other day. Hardly makes it a surprise that it hasn't sold out yet it's been what, 3 days?

[anonymous-user]

Ares said:

RobDickinson said:

Theres already a system in Paris doing car sharing and it works well.

Uber run it everywhere they operate properly.

Works great.

Given that car sharing has been around for 20 years and has had a negligible impact on car ownership, what makes you think it's going to make a difference in the foreseeable future? Uber is fine until you need to do the school run with a couple of kids.