Jaguar and Audi SUVs Fail To Dent Tesla's Electric-Car Dominance (bloomberg.com) 215
Tesla has managed to expand its electric-car marketshare, despite two new battery-powered luxury SUVs that have been in U.S. showrooms for the last 10 months: Jaguar's I-Pace and Audi's e-tron. Bloomberg reports: Their starts are the latest indications that legacy automakers aren't assured instant success when they roll out new plug-in models. Tesla's Model S and X have largely held its own against the two crossovers that offer shorter range and less plentiful public charging infrastructure. Jaguar and Audi also lack the cool factor Musk has cultivated for the Tesla brand by taking an aggressive approach to autonomy and using over-the-air software updates to add games and entertainment features. Tesla's Model X and Model S each boast more than 300 miles of range, and the cheaper Model 3 travels 240 miles between charges. Jaguar's $69,500 I-Pace is rated at 234 miles, and Audi's $74,800 e-tron registers 204 miles.
Jaguar's marketing team spent years laying the groundwork to introduce the I-Pace. In 2016, the brand joined Formula E, an open-wheeled, electric-powered race circuit similar to Formula One. Porsche and Mercedes-Benz are also joining Formula E for the 2019-2020 season to help generate buzz for the new all-electric models they have coming out. The circuit makes stops in cities including New York, Hong Kong and London, which the brands are banking on as major markets for plug-in cars. But while Formula E is drawing crowds of urban dwellers and a substantial audience on social media, all that buzz may not necessarily translate into showroom traffic.
Jaguar's marketing team spent years laying the groundwork to introduce the I-Pace. In 2016, the brand joined Formula E, an open-wheeled, electric-powered race circuit similar to Formula One. Porsche and Mercedes-Benz are also joining Formula E for the 2019-2020 season to help generate buzz for the new all-electric models they have coming out. The circuit makes stops in cities including New York, Hong Kong and London, which the brands are banking on as major markets for plug-in cars. But while Formula E is drawing crowds of urban dwellers and a substantial audience on social media, all that buzz may not necessarily translate into showroom traffic.
Branding (Score:2)
There's no ICE cars made by Tesla, you know in advance it's all electric.
Re:Branding (Score:5, Informative)
It's not just branding, it's also the product.
$70k I-Pace: 234 miles of range, 0-60 in 4.5s, peak 260 miles/hr range charging, Lane Keeping Assist.
$47k Model 3: 310 miles of range, 0-60 in 4.4s, peak 1,000 miles/hr range charging, Full Lane Keeping.
You have to really hate Tesla to be willing to buy the iPace.
Re:Branding (Score:4, Informative)
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$81k Model X: 325 miles of range, 0-60 in 3.1s, peak 1,000 miles/hr range charging, Full Lane Keeping. Yada, yada.
$10 more with 30% range increase, much faster off the line, faster, more robust charging network and FSD?
Yeah, I still want the Model X.
Re:Branding (Score:4, Informative)
What is "FSD"? Fixed slip differential? Flame suppression device? Fourteen segment display? Female sexual dysfunction?
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Re:Branding (Score:4, Funny)
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You're confusing Ludicrous and Ludicrous+. And what you describe as "preparing the battery" is simply a setting in a menu (it's been moved into the mode selection vs. the old "Max Battery Power" button). Assuming that the battery wasn't starting out cold, the difference between Ludicrous and Ludicrous+ is usually only like 20kW extra power; it's a much smaller step than the difference between Sport (what you call "Normal") and Ludicrous. Here's an (older) graph plotting the difference in power between the [af9y.com]
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Interior space-wise, I-Pace is between a Model 3 and Model S. Jaguar loves making Model X comparisons (because larger vehicles are more expensive and slower than their smaller, lighter brethren), but it's a really lame marketing ploy to do so.
Re: Branding (Score:2)
but it's a really lame marketing ploy to do so
A lame marketing move from a lame company. When Ford bought them, they discovered that the coachworks in Coventry that had been making the XJS for twenty years had been making them a quarter of an inch longer on one side.
Fitting that they're now owned by Tata. *snicker*
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The actual competitor to the iPace will be the Model Y - Model X is a full-size SUV with optional 3rd row.
In theory, this conversation will be quite different when Model Y starts shipping (after the date on that slips a few times, per standard Tesla procedure)
Re:Branding (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just branding, it's also the product.
$70k I-Pace: 234 miles of range, 0-60 in 4.5s, peak 260 miles/hr range charging, Lane Keeping Assist. $47k Model 3: 310 miles of range, 0-60 in 4.4s, peak 1,000 miles/hr range charging, Full Lane Keeping.
You have to really hate Tesla to be willing to buy the iPace.
That's like comparing a cheap Chevy with a Mercedes. The Jaguar (and the Audi) are premium cars, Tesla isn't. They've got dashboards, HUDs, premium leather interiors, high build quality, 360 cameras, air suspension as well as being electric.
The Tesla Model 3 has none of these. No dashboard(!!), no HUD, fake leather interior (plastic), more plastic interior, very poor quality paint jobs (both locations, amount and quality of paint) [insideevs.com], bad panel fits, traditional suspension. It doesn't even have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.
The Model 3 is what you get when you mate some of the best drivetrains/batteries on the market with a low quality "rest of the car" to keep the cost down. Nothing wrong with that, but you can't just compare some numbers with premium cars and go "why would anyone choose anything other than this?".
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Luxury is about more than leather seats (Score:2)
That's like comparing a cheap Chevy with a Mercedes. The Jaguar (and the Audi) are premium cars, Tesla isn't.
Speaking as someone who owns a Chevy and until very recently a Mercedes your assertion that Tesla's aren't luxury cars quite simply isn't true. That's not just my opinion [forbes.com]. There is no meaningful disagreement that Tesla is a luxury brand and even their cheapest cars are priced accordingly. I've driven Tesla's, and I owned a Mercedes SLK and I currently own a Chevy Bolt EV so I've seen the competition first hand. If you think Tesla isn't a luxury brand you are simply moving the goalposts to make "luxury"
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As an owner of a Jaguar Land Rover air suspension, as well as a Model 3, I can tell you that I'd rather have the standard spring / strut suspension of the Model 3. The JLR air suspension WILL have problems, and expensive ones. Ask any owner of a Discovery 3 / LR3 / Discovery 4 / LR4 / Range Rover Sport how much they enjoyed paying thousands of dollars to replace the air compressor that has a near 100% failure rate over 5 years, or the air struts that will all crack and lose air, or the desiccant pod that
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"but at the end of they day cars are used to travel around."
Yeah, and a house is just to keep the rain off your head.
"and which feature is more likely to help you get from point A to B?
- the longer range, and better driver assist?
- the real vs faux leather and the quality of the paint job?"
I'm not a millenial - I can actually drive so I don't need driver assist. And I'd take better quality over slightly longer range any day. I can recharge the battery , I can't swap out the interior.
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Driver assist isn't about not being able to drive. It's about not wanting to deal with the tedium of freeway driving, or stop-and-go traffic.
I love driving on an empty winding road. I love driving on a track. And in those places, I leave the driver assistance stuff turned off. However, I don't love driving in traffic, and I'm perfectly happy to let the car do that for me I find driving hundreds of miles on the freeway to be mind-numbing, so the car can do that one for me too. If you love staring and b
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You have to really hate Tesla to be willing to buy the iPace.
Nah man you're forgetting the other benefits:
Model 3: Car from some unknown startup using some unknown magic technology that garages don't know what to do with.
I-Pace: Car from long standing manufacturer with a well know history of producing reliable and quality automobiles that never need servicing.
In case you read this and said "WTF?" allow me to close this post in a completely clear manner: /sarcasm
I don't know many people stupid enough to buy any Jaguar other than an old classic for restoration.
Re: Branding (Score:5, Funny)
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Being a proper car guy myself, I have to admit is the first time I see the words âoereliableâ and âoeJaguarâ in the same sentence.
Beat me to the post. Yes - As drop dead sexy as the old XKE's were, and the new ones do look good, but my experience with some friends who have had Jags was their joy when they got rid of the unreliable things.
But this is Slashdot, and it's a dead lock that someone will try to tell us that a Trabant is better than a Tesla.
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The I-Pace and E-Tron are both premium SUVs. The cabin and interior are both much better quality as well as better build quality in the body. The kind of people buying these don't care about 0.1s difference in acceleration.
Tesla still has an edge on some of the electronic assist features of the vehicles and other brands are going to have to step up to match this.
The thing is the European cars are build for European conditions. Most people either do very short drive around their town/village or 20-50 mile
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The i-Pace does have full lane keeping too.
A better comparison would be with the Model X, because the Model 3 is much smaller and not at all a luxury car. If you want a refined, quiet and comfortable driving experience you don't buy a Model 3.
Against the X the i-Pace is decently competitive. It's better built, quieter and more luxurious. They were doing some really decent deals on it too, so for a while it was cheaper.
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But the point is: Tesla understands that a lot of enhancements are simply software updates, and they treat them as such. New firmware is not offered only on new models, they roll out new features to older models as well when possible, including faster supercharging and battery preconditioning. I d
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Re: Branding (Score:2)
Large or small battery?
I would do fine with the small battery but they donâ(TM)t sell that with the premium options and there seems to be a 1 1/2 year waiting list now. I suspect that the âoepremium âoe option price is just to offset the extra battery cost.
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So we are to look at a marque that is famous for charging more money to leave parts on the shelf as an example? No thanks.
Or a company that does web sites so badly that when I go to their configurator, it just maximizes the window on my 4k display but doesn't actually scale the content, leaving me with huge fields of white empty space, and blocking out anything else I had going on? No thanks.
Including in the base price the windshield, and the air inside the car, and then charging extra for every single th
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For "nobody" being interested in the Model 3 and it being so "ugly", they sure have sold a shit ton of them. Like, outselling all other luxury cars combined on a quarterly basis.
Misunderstanding their market (Score:2, Insightful)
Expecting there to be a market in major crowded cities, where most people eith er live in apartments with shared parking or in terraced houses parking on the street is missing one major factor people consider when making the decision to purchase a plugin EV - do I have somewhere to plug it in. They would be better aiming for slightly smaller cities where people tend to live in suburban detached houses with room for their own garage with access to electricity.
The article misunderstand market (Score:4, Insightful)
The purpose of owning a Jaguar is precisely not to have a car everyone else has. New money buys Tesla, old money buys Jaguar. If that makes no sense to you then you are not old money.
Re: The article misunderstand market (Score:2)
old money buys Jaguar.
Old money gave up on English cars forever ago - even Rolls and Bentley have been German for over twenty years.
Meanwhile, these days, nouveau riche are most likely to reach for... Land Rovers.
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old money buys Jaguar.
Old money gave up on English cars forever ago - even Rolls and Bentley have been German for over twenty years.
Meanwhile, these days, nouveau riche are most likely to reach for... Land Rovers.
Odd chaps, those. One might think they have a real penchant for unreliable transportation.
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The purpose of owning a Jaguar is precisely not to have a car everyone else has.
I thought it was to keep your local service garage open with an endless supply of work. A Jaguar is the kind of car you buy when you have money for a spare car and couldn't give a crap about doing research. Even old money would be wondering WTF you're thinking.
Old money bought Jaguars back when they were British, but not really since the Indians did the impossible and actually reduced the brand's reliability after purchase.
Indian car makers quality (Score:2)
Old money bought Jaguars back when they were British, but not really since the Indians did the impossible and actually reduced the brand's reliability after purchase.
I work in engineering in the auto industry and have had Mahindra and Tata as direct customers. If the poor quality surprises you then you haven't worked closely with these companies. The way they do business almost can't result in good quality.
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The purpose of owning a Jaguar is precisely not to have a car everyone else has. New money buys Tesla, old money buys Jaguar. If that makes no sense to you then you are not old money.
Tesla also makes sense if you're not "money", new or old, just middle class to upper middle class. A Model 3 has a higher sticker price than, say, a Toyota Camry, but about the same TCO. The cost of the battery is essentially a pre-payment of fuel & maintenance because gasoline is significantly more expensive than electricity and internal combustion engines require maintenance while electric motors don't.
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The purpose of owning a Jaguar is precisely not to have a car everyone else has. New money buys Tesla, old money buys Jaguar. If that makes no sense to you then you are not old money.
A combination of conspicuous consumption and reverse reliability, I suppose. A person who perhaps parks their Jag in the dealers garage, so when it isn't being worked on, they can get Jeeves to bring it out when they fancy a bit of a jaunt to see the countryside and those quaint commoners.
Did I get that right?
Although it would seem a faux pas to obtain a lowly Jaguar over one of the proper vehicles befitting the landed gentry.
Jaguar (Score:3, Insightful)
The purpose of owning a Jaguar is precisely not to have a car everyone else has. New money buys Tesla, old money buys Jaguar. If that makes no sense to you then you are not old money.
Even old money seldom buys Jaguars. That's the reason they are owned by Tata Motors. They don't sell a lot of vehicles because nobody wants them. Buying one isn't a statement about being different. It's a statement that you don't know what a good car is. They have nice styling but shit quality and unremarkable performance compared to the competition. Jaguar reportedly sold approximately 16,000 vehicles in December 2018. Tesla sold 25,000 or so Model 3s the same month - that doesn't even count the Mod
JAGUAR? Old money? (Score:3)
Perhaps in a trailer park, but anywhere else Jags (XK collectibles etc excepted) are hardly old money vehicles. They aren't rare either, just another brand coasting on past image. Even in their day old money bought Bentley.
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Still cheaper to fuel (Score:2)
Also, streetside charging fees can be twice as high as it costs to charge from your own charger.
Well given that fueling my ICE vehicle costs about 3-4X as much as my EV for the same number of miles I would still be coming out ahead.
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Spoken like someone who has never sat in a Tesla.
Nobody who has ever been in one would say anything about it not driving "fun". Yes, it's an efficient EV. Yes, even the non-performance model 3 can out-accelerate most sports cars. Yes, it even handles as good or better because of the extremely low center of gravity (as long as it has tires that were not fitted at the factory).
Just because it has driver assistance doesn't mean you have to use it. I can find an open winding road and have fun just the same
Musk has built a better ecosystem (Score:2, Interesting)
At this point Tesla has a pretty large advantage with the expansive supercharger network.
Sure there are other charging stations around, but have you looked at them? They usually offer very limited charging ability. The knowledge that you can generally find a supercharger in any major (U.S.) city if you really need some range quickly is a huge plus.
Also I question the initial choices of those other car makers. SUV's are more of a road trip car and again, without the large supercharger network they are go
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Good points, except self driving.
I'm a Tesla owner and fanboi, and it's really not clear to me that Tesla is ahead of any of the other autonomous players. Winning the EV game requires being first - or partnering with whoever is first.
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it's really not clear to me that Tesla is ahead of any of the other autonomous players
That depends on whether you think the self driving problem is algorithm based or data based. If its algorithm based, ie: maybe the current neural network designs are wrong for this problem and we need some other breakthrough, then pretty much anyone could be ahead in this game.
If its data based, and we have all the algos that we need to solve this problem, then Tesla is ahead by a lot or soon will be. Every Tesla going on the road has a full sensor suite and has the technology to do autopilot. In addition,
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Can Tesla keep Supercharging stations to themselves? I don't know whether antitrust regulation might force them to open them up to all. Musk's cryptic comment "This is not a walled garden." in response to a question about opening up supercharging stations to others, as well as their open patent policy, suggest that he's not inclined to try hard to keep these stations closed to other manufacturer's cars.
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Re:Musk has built a better ecosystem (Score:5, Informative)
Tesla has repeatedly offered for other manufacturers to use the Supercharging network - they simply need to add a Supercharger port and work out an autopayment option with Tesla. So far, there have been no bites - even in Europe where Tesla recently switched to CCS. Given that with the Model 3 launch Supercharger pricing was set so as to fund its own expansion, I imagine there's a lot of manufacturers hesitant to help fund the further expansion of Tesla's charging network dominance.
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EV startup Bollinger wants to use Tesla’s Supercharger network [electrek.co]
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At this point Tesla has a pretty large advantage with the expansive supercharger network.
Sure there are other charging stations around, but have you looked at them? They usually offer very limited charging ability.
This is one of the biggest factors, and the barrier gets set higher every week. To compete with the Supercharger network you need...
- Lots of good locations, fortunately a competing network can just look at the Tesla locations to figure that out.
- Lots of chargers at those locations. 1-3 chargers isn't going to cut it these days, double figures or don't bother.
- Fast chargers. Get me back on the road in the time it takes to grab lunch.
- Reliable. Fix them fast when they break, and make sure you load t
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One thing I like about Teslas is they are "flexible" in terms of the electricity they can take in. You can charge at a Supercharger. You can charge at a regular EV parking spot. You can use a standard 110V 15A outlet (slow, but literally everywhere). Or 220V 30/50A outlets.
If you take all that in, get rid of the 15A option (because it's everywhere and distorts the charging map), you can charge a Tesla at a lot of places. In fact, there are unconventional places you can charge them - think where else has 30/
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The benefit is being able to charge where no one bothered to put up a charger specifically for EVs. Maybe not in Europe, but in the US lots of people in rural areas have 50A outlets at home, for running welders and the like, and virtually every house has a 30A outlet for a clothes dryer.
I suspect that this matters less in Europe, because most of Europe has much higher population density than the US, and where there are more people there are more who might install an EV charger. But in the US, once you g
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Thing is, sales of the Model X and S have dropped off a cliff as well. There are affordable long range EVs now and anyone buying for the lifetime cost savings will get one of those. The shine has come off the X as well, given all the problems it has. There is a guy in Norway whose 4 year old one only just got the doors fixed, which have been janky from new.
Audi and Jaguar came to the market late and the vehicles aren't that great. The Audi has the absolutely worst efficiency of any EV on the market, it's ri
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They certainly were cannibalized by the Model 3*** starting in Q1, but they've been rising back since then. Looks like in July there was at least around breakeven, possibly a net gain, YoY for Model S in Europe (a couple hundred lower YoY in the US). Model X trends are fairly similar.
Q1 was a pretty terrible convergence of factors for S and X. It's always a seasonal low quarter, for the whole auto market. Model 3 deliveries started in
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We are definitely a few years away from that yet. The current best value ones are the Zoe and MG eZS. The MG is around £21k and will get you 160-180 miles.
Having said that, EVs are already very affordable for many families. Say one person needs to commute to work or take the kids to school etc. A used Leaf will easily cover that sort of thing.
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If you are waiting for a car that is exactly like an ICE you will be waiting a long time, and screwing yourself out of a better car in the process.
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At this point Tesla has a pretty large advantage with the expansive supercharger network.
Sure there are other charging stations around, but have you looked at them? They usually offer very limited charging ability.
You amaze me. Regardless of whether you shill for Tesla or shit on them you seem to be able to do both with an incredible amount of ignorance. Charging stations in the I-Pace's target market (Europe) are absolutely everywhere. 15000 charging stations in the Netherlands alone. Only 4 superchargers though. Ionity will beat that with 350kW chargers by the end of the year, and they are just one of many companies in the charging market.
If you want to drive long distances in Europe you don't need to rely on Tesla
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Tesla also has Western Europe and China covered pretty well:
https://www.tesla.com/supercha... [tesla.com]
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On what planet is MINI a performance brand? Sure the original Mini Cooper was something of a rallying success in the 1960's but beyond that nobody would consider it a performance brand.
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Since BMW bought it. It's supposed to be the "hip, youthful brand" of BMW though, not really performance IMO.
Kind of like Scion used to be for Toyota.
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The knowledge that you can generally find a supercharger in any major (U.S.) city if you really need some range quickly is a huge plus.
The value of the Supercharger network isn't the chargers in major cities, it's the chargers between cities. All along every major interstate, there are enough Superchargers that you can drive long distances without concern.
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You mean being limited to 155mph? Mercedes will remove the limiters if you ask nicely. I was browsing craigslist and found a nice 2010 S65 for only $35,000. The sticker price was over $200,000! Tempting but there are no good roads to really enjoy a car like that where I live. Who doesn't want a 600hp turbo V12?
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They're talking about requiring speed limiters in 2022 or so. If the driver exceeds the limit, it would first sound an alarm, then provide a visual warning, and finally limit engine power. It's also required that the driver can disable the speed limiter, although it'll probably be like required vehicle stability control on Australian cars where you have to disable it each time you turn the car on. It won't make cars all drive the same at all. You should know better than to believe the crap AHuxley spout
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Perhaps he means the 250km/h speed limit that most European cars have... The ones that can hit 250km/h in the first place, of course.
I do not personally find it to be a huge burden to have to stay below 250km/h, but obviously AHuxley feels different.
But but but (Score:4, Funny)
I continue to be positively instructed at this site and others that Elon Musk is totally delusional and a con man and Telsa will be out of business in 3 months tops.
This news is obviously fake.
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1) "The electric meter box was also on fire" - electrical fire in the garage. They happen.
2) The "explosions" were airbags, and you can see the exact same explosions in any burning car [youtube.com]. The car was in EAP, not FSD (FSD is not available in Russia). EAP will not change lanes for you except in side collision alert. The tow truck was not clearly visible sticking out into the lane due to the car it was preparing to tow. The surveillance video [youtube.com] clearly shows that automatic emergency braking engaged as the tow
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Modern cars have multiple airbags for front and multiple airbags for side impacts. Not all the air bags are triggered in different types of crashes. I imagine you could have a crash that would trigger every single bag, but it would be a doozy.
Why don't they compete with Tesla for range? (Score:3)
Only one reason I can think of - they don't want to cannibalize their gas car range, because they really don't want to sell electric cars. They still have too much capital tied up in building gas engines.
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Most of it is about designing it right to begin with. Compare the e-Tron with the Model X. The curb weight is only about 5% more than the Model X 100D, and has 95% of its battery capacity. You would expect, then, to get about 90.5% of its range. Instead, it gets 205 miles, compared with 325 miles on the 2019 Tesla. So between the motor efficiency, the inverter efficiency, and the wind-tunnel efficiency, they're only getting about 70% as much range per kWh as Tesla's cars, at least according to the EPA
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My neighbor recently sold off his Tesla X, because for his use-case, the range wasn't quite sufficient (for a typical drive of his, he had to put in one charging stop more than his wife driving a Model S).
A car dealer he knows borrowed him an e-Tron for a weekend, to get his input on how it compares to the Tesla. Result: while build quality is certainly in a different class, the Audi lost on pretty much every other discipline. He owned quite a few Audis before, including RS6 and R8, so he's in no way biased
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Re:Why don't they compete with Tesla for range? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. Nobody by this point thinks electric vehicles are not the future. They've invested heavily because the writing is on the wall.
They don't care what they sell. They only care that what they sell sells and sells at a profit.
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Only one reason I can think of - they don't want to cannibalize their gas car range, because they really don't want to sell electric cars. They still have too much capital tied up in building gas engines.
Why can't the explanation simply be that JLR is completely incompetent? I mean it's not like their gas cars are competing with other manufacturers very well.
You are missing something thought, Tesla has a lovely battery partnership that gives them some great economies on that front. VW are looking at something similar by building a factory to produce their own batteries. But right now, every traditional manufacturer is buying batteries on the open market and that puts them at a major cost and technology disa
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Because the world isn't producing batteries fast enough, so if they make bigger packs it makes it harder to get volume.
250 miles or more is generally enough anyway, except for a tiny number of extreme users. It's 4-5 hours on the road, at which point most people want to take a break anyway. The returns on larger packs are quickly diminishing.
10 months? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Audi e-tron went on sale in the US in April, so why is this report saying that it has been on showroom floors for 10 months?
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The Audi is just a crap car. Incredibly inefficient and badly designed, e.g. the location of the charging port.
The Jaguar is a decent but they screwed up the pricing. Early on they were offering insane deals on leasing and finance, so now everyone is just waiting for those to come back.
Tesla will keep winning (Score:4, Insightful)
Passenger vehicles are now on an extremely steep innovation slope. Therefore, dominance in that market will now not be determined by corporate size or marketing. It is now all about the rate of innovation. Particularly innovation in fundamental technologies such as battery chemistry, self-driving, motor design and drive and charge electronics.
Tesla is running the innovation race much faster than the competition, so look for them to pull even further ahead in the future.
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"Tesla is running the innovation race much faster than the competition, so look for them to pull even further ahead in the future."!
Tesla is burning billions innovating - all the others have to do is wait then copy for much less money. In business the first out the door rarely wins the race. Ask the guy who invented the smart phone with a touch screen - it wasn't Steve Jobs and Apple.
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If you want a very expensive saloon car that does 0-60 in 2.5 secs no. But then you also have to put up with piss poor build quality, lousy interior materials, a ho-hum body design and a "dashboard" only a web developer could love.
Fools (Score:2)
Jaguar and Audi is run by idiots. The major selling point of Tesla is the camera and sensor based active safety features.
Different in other markets (Score:5, Informative)
Different markets have different results. In Norway - the world's most developed EV market - the Jaguar I-Pace sells more than the Model S and Model X combined [elbilstatistikk.no] The Audi E-tron sells even more. Both the I-Pace and the E-tron are even on the top 10 list of all car models so far this year [ofv.no].
The Tesla Model 3 is the best selling car of all, but the introduction of it alongside the i-Pace and E-Tron caused the sales of Model X and Model 3 to plummet. If you want the Tesla features, a Model 3 is a lot cheaper. And the I-Pace and E-Tron are actual premium cars in build quality, materials and features unlike the S and X.
One big factor that differs in Norway from the US: Norway has a very good EV charging infrastructure. While the Tesla super chargers are still nice, there are other fast chargers almost everywhere - some of them fast enough that Tesla owners prefer charging there rather than at the SCs.
something doesn't gel with the summary (Score:2)
I know the reason (Score:2)
They suck!
They are slower, less range, less acceleration and more expensive.
Want to buy an "Audi turd"? (Score:2)
In French, "étron" (same as we would pronounce e-tron) means "turd". Do you see anybody buying an "Audi turd"? I can't believe their marketing department did not change the name of the series for the french speaking markets.
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That's not a common word at all. It was used 400 years ago, when Arabic horses were still all the rage in transportation and had the best acceleration.
EV sales are mandated (Score:3)
If a manufacturer fails to hit the target percentage, they must buy credits from a company which exceeded their quota. That's usually Tesla, although Nissan, Honda, Fiat, and GM have had excess credits in previous years. Failure to obtain enough credits results in fines, and eventually being banned from selling cars in California. And since nearly a dozen states automatically adopt CARB's guidelines, the manufacturer would be banned from selling cars to about a third of the U.S. population. No automaker wants to be cut off from a third of the U.S. market, so they are all rolling out EVs to comply with the ZEV mandate. If they can't sell enough EVs, they simply run sales and incentives (lower the price) until they move enough of them. Effectively, ICE vehicle sales end up subsidizing EV sales. This also means the number of EVs sold each year isn't being determined by market demand, it's being determined by the ZEV mandate.
So Jaguar and Audi's EVs weren't intended to displace Tesla. They just need to sell enough of them to meet the ZEV mandate (percentage of their total vehicle sales), and relieve them from having to buy ZEV credits from another company. In previous years, only vehicles sold in California counted. But starting 2019 vehicles sold in all CARB states will count. As Jaguar only sold about 30,000 vehicles nationwide last year, and Audi sold a bit over 200,000 vehicles, they probably only need to sell a few thousand EVs to meet their quota. (Audi's sales might be combined with VW and Porsche, since they're the same company. Meaning sales of VW and Porsche EVs will also count toward their quota.)
Formula E is missing a huge R&D opportunity (Score:2)
A huge opportunity for the manufacturers here would be to develop a fast way to interchange battery packs. If they could make it practical for formula E the potential for consumers could be enormous. If a crew of mechanics could change a battery pack in a minute in a pit sto
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"By my most recent understanding when a formula E car runs out of battery power (which is expected in a race), the driver changes cars and hops into the next car from the team. This is not exactly practical to the average consumer."
Well, it's a good thing the average consumer isn't racing in formula e, isn't it?
Doing battery swaps is easy. Convincing customers that they want to do swaps is harder. Designing a car which is designed for swaps but where that doesn't cost you anything is impossible. Unless cons
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Electric cars simply cannot ever compete with a vehicle that has an internal combustion engine on performance. There will always be a trade off in range, acceleration/braking, and other measures.
EVs accelerate faster and have huge torque advantage vs. ICE.
This is because a battery cannot hold near as much energy as a hydrocarbon fuel.
So? 200-300 miles per full charge is fine for all except long tail. The real issues are not so much weight and density as they are cost, long term reliability and ability to take a road trip without spending half the time waiting for your car to recharge.
This market for electric cars exists only because there were some politicians that thought electric cars would be a good idea and wrote some laws favoring their production. There will be a point that this government favoritism will end and electric cars will fade away.
Governments are not simply favoring EV... they will soon begin actively outlawing new sales of ICE. Bans that will apply to two billion people over the next 10 to 20 years.
Electric cars are a solution in search of a problem. Once we recognize the actual problems then this solution will disappear from the market.
EV sales worldwide ar
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You are 100% correct about the energy density of gasoline compared to batteries.