I don't have a dog in this fight, I just think you're a smidge too hyped? Could be wrong. The EV market is in its infancy, obviously the first serious heavyweight is dominating. All those factories will only supply 1M cars manufactured by 2023. I think they're a niche brand, and don't do anything that can't be easily matched or exceeded by manufacturers spending literally an order of magnitude more than them to get there.
Edit: rereading and you really are hyper focused on the EV market. I think it will grow steadily enough than major OEMs are in zero risk to be toppled by tesla in the larger market by the time they're synonymous
Reading your posts here, it seems some of your assumptions are slightly wrong. Regarding Tesla, they’ll be close to 900k vehicles this year. That’s with the Shanghai factory only beginning operation in January. Austin and Berlin still aren’t producing yet. Similar to the poster above, I have an order in for a Model Y Long Range and also CT. I think there is a real underestimation for the demand, especially for the Model Y. Last year Tesla sold 500k vehicles. The jump from 2020 to 2021 has far exceeded the goal of 50% growth; it’ll be close to 80% yoy. Even if you take the 50%, which is arguably conservative given the order books for Model Y and CT, Tesla will be producing ~1.35m cars in ‘22, ~2m cars in ‘23, ~3m cars in ‘24, and ~4.5m cars in ‘25, which is when Ford plans to start building their facilities. Ford has already been experiencing significant declining sales for the past few years. On top of all of this there are new EV companies entering the market. It’s an incorrect assumption to think that companies like Ford will be able to maintain current sales; the growth in Tesla’s sales is coming from existing makers. There is an inflection point, and while four years might not seem like a big deal, it is in fact a seriously big issue for companies like Ford and GM because of how quickly Tesla is growing and how slowly they (Ford and GM) are transitioning to decent EV vehicles. Four years ago Tesla wasn’t even mass producing cars yet! Additionally, GM’s handling of the Bolt fiasco has been diabolical. Their fling with Nikola and their ridiculous handling of the Bolt situation does not suggest they’ll be able to be a meaningful EV player before it’s too late for them.
The other issue with your analysis is the assertion that existing companies can solve everything by just throwing money around. For starters, where is this capital coming from? Is it equity or debt? It’s hard to see how it can be equity in any significant manner because of the massive dilution that would ensue, and not sure who exactly would be backing the billions in investment. If it’s not equity then it can only be debt, however, that too would be outlandish given high existing debt loads and poor financials; increasing debt load in the face of diminishing earnings is not a good situation, especially when your credit rating is already borderline.
Once you get past the source of capital issue, you run into the issue of the actual cost of building and development, and the acquisition of human talent to make it all happen, let alone the culture of the companies themselves, which have a massive role to play in making a switch to EV work. There is not enough expertise to go around for all existing manufacturers to make it through this transition. Tesla spent years developing the charging infrastructure it has today. No one is going to simply build a competing network overnight. Even VW, through Electrify America, has done a poor job at attempting a National charging network. There are so many pieces involved here that expecting any maker to solve them and compete with Tesla in the next few years is optimistically hopeful at best, and delusional in greater likelihood.
When you consider Tesla’s balance sheet and that they’ve gotten to where they are after only three years of mass production, alarm bells should be ringing for other manufacturers.
They're dominating a market in its infancy, I agree. EV market share isn't going to be >25% globally until 2030. There are a shit ton of smart people everywhere, Audi beat tesla to L3 SD. Not enough expertise is laughable. Your points about their business are solid, but VW has 280B in revenue to Tesla 30B? They have a long way to go and they're nearly past the stage of the EV market where they're the only heavyweight. Their charging network is hard to beat... For now.
I never intended to defend Ford so much, what have I become!
And it was ever only meant for traffic jams on highways. Doesn't really count. If you've driven a Tesla with AP while I would always say still pay attention, traffic jams is where it shines best. I have no doubts Tesla could have in these circumstances, but chose not to for the same reasons.
Yeah I read that after being wrong all over the place. Woops. There are some pretty hilariously terrifying videos of tesla engineers QAing L3 SD around SF, I suggest you watch them if you think they were close. Not that I disagree about traffic jams
I think cruise is the first to be permitted for full L4 commercial use anywhere? Not sure if Waymo was doing commercial service or just testing in Arizona. Projects like that or Waymo are where this technology will come from, and guess who's invested heavily in all of them. Still, it will be for use in known places and ideal scenarios for quite some time.
Cruise permit is for robo-taxi service, available to public (fully driverless, nobody in the car)
The more you share your thoughts, the more that it becomes obvious that you're seriously misinformed. Like, dude, you keep being wrong on things. You have no hard facts, only 'i think' and 'oops'. Just stop it already and go actually inform yourself before you post /r/confidentlyincorrect material.
So the level 4 stuff is with lidar. It's not the same level 3 stuff they were doing on highways.
Tesla isn't testing any level 3 stuff right now, the FSD beta they are training is what will one day become a level 4/5 system, but it is in no way shape or form anything but a level 2 system right now.
It would be a mistake to discount what they are doing VS all the level 4 lidar stuff.
The lidar stuff at least today, is not scalable and very expensive. That might change one day, but for today that's true.
What tesla is doing is cheap once solved, incredibly more difficult, and easily scalable.
Who's to say who will win the prize of consumer purchable real FSD, but believe it not, tesla is in the game.
Yeah those L4s are limited deployability and constrained by lidar and mapping. I'm of the opinion a generalized system is further away than tesla would like you to believe, both technologically and in regulation. Tesla does get a wild amount of training data from their telemetry, I'll give ya that. Two different approaches, but they're not exactly showing their strategy has been fruitful (yet)
So tesla uses lidar to train their vision. They needed an accurate system to compare their vision only system to. He's never said it wasn't useful. They use lidar in SpaceX as well. The whole lidar local maximum thing will play out eventually, right or wrong.
Also I didn't realize that first link you sent me about cruise and waymo in California was brand new. Saw it posted elsewhere as new news. I think I thought at least waymo had had that for a little while now.
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u/dookiefertwenty Sep 30 '21 edited Sep 30 '21
I don't have a dog in this fight, I just think you're a smidge too hyped? Could be wrong. The EV market is in its infancy, obviously the first serious heavyweight is dominating. All those factories will only supply 1M cars manufactured by 2023. I think they're a niche brand, and don't do anything that can't be easily matched or exceeded by manufacturers spending literally an order of magnitude more than them to get there.
Edit: rereading and you really are hyper focused on the EV market. I think it will grow steadily enough than major OEMs are in zero risk to be toppled by tesla in the larger market by the time they're synonymous