It is. I just pulled up my taxes to double check. They ask about the vehicle you bought, and there is no requirement that you have it in service.

Gas cars put a TON of requirements on their design just based on how their engines work and where things need to be. Electric cars can put the batteries nearly anywhere, and with smaller motor sizing (and ability to add more if they so choose) can design lots of different things. Additionally, electrics are more integrated with their computer systems from their ability to monitor and control things easier.

Finally, two really important points - the first is existing companies (like Ford or Chevy) have a bunch of established departments for design and whatnot, so a new engineer or even a few have to work within that constraint. Start ups don't have that same constraint. The second is because of that, start ups can often attract some of the best and the brightest, because they know they will have more of a chance to really impact the product they are designing. In this case, where the product is seen by many as a critical way to lower emissions and stabilize the planet's temperature, that adds even more excitement and passion for it.

Agree 100% - it should really be inevitable. Sure there will always still be classic ICE cars that people keep. But there will be absolutely no upside to ICE cars once electric cars get better range and faster charging, as well as come down in price a bit more once technology gets cheaper and they are selling more. It's overall such a simpler car - less moving parts, fantastic acceleration, quieter, cheaper to drive, etc. You can throw out the whole environment argument for them - they are simply going to be better, more reliable cars overall. But in the meantime - you have the oil industry that is going to have to undergo one of the greatest changes in the history of the world. It's such a global industry, with entire countries dependent on it - I wouldn't be surprised in the future if the transition from gas cars to electric is actually some sort of age (ie the Stone Age, Iron Age, Electric Age) because it will have such a world-defining impact.

Electric differs from gas in that electric motors have an instance response to input and instant torque. This is why a RWD Tesla is equal to or better in the snow than an AWD Subaru. The traction control algorithms can be so much more advanced because there is very little delay between sensor input, computer reaction, and motor output. For example, if you hit ice a Tesla can respond in what we can only perceive as "instant" because our senses aren't acute enough to recognize a millisecond response by the motor.

You guys need to put down the kool-aid. I know the electric cars work great for some of you but there is lot of ground to cover to take over the entire world automotive/transportation market. There are a lot of different vehicles out there with variety of different applications. Electric just will not work for commercial vehicles, people in rural areas, and those that need to cover a lot of miles every day. Costs will always be a factor as well as well. Few will be able to buy new and doubt there will be much market for old, high mileage electric cars. Right now you can go buy a $5000 used Toyota Corolla or something like that and still drive it for many miles. The idea that battery technology will just get infinitely better and vastly cheaper is not based on any reality. There are major hurdles to getting an electric car to be inexpensive and meet the demands of the majority of drivers. I'm sure plenty of people that watched the moon landing and then the space shuttle launches thought we would all be flying in rockets ships and living on Mars by now. In 50-100 years, who knows but doubt much will change in my lifetime.

As my son likes to say when he brings his report card home - "Prepare to be amazed!"

define commercial.. semi's? covered. Work truck for contractors? Coming (and not just tesla, ford just invested half a billion in rivian)

Rural people also have electricity last time I checked. Charging stations are everywhere.. Hell go watch hoovies garage on youtube, he lives in the middle of rural kansas, owned a used tesla for 6 months before he got bored with how reliable it was

Tesla has what, 250 mile range? latest quick charge is 10-15 minutes? How many miles are we talking?

And even an old corolla is going to need gas and oil changes. You can also buy a used nissan leaf for $5-$7k. The difference in price could easily be justified just in fuel and oil changes alone

Ok now you're comparing space flight to cars? Flying is a little more difficult than innovating a car. Even if we had working "space ships", there's still the very strict FAA regulations you have to comply with (and for the average citizen). I don't know what they were dreaming of back then.

I think you need to get behind the wheel of Tesla for about a week to really understand the difference. It's not like a car but different, it feels like an evolution. I honestly hate driving my wifes 2016 M Class BMW it just feels so antiquated.

My point was talking about the masses and not individual people. Fans of these cars will of course make them work and adapt. I know Tesla and other companies will work on solutions for commercial vehicles and other applications. I just see an uphill climb changing an entire industry. One example I can think of is Harley Davidson. They are fixing to sell an electric motorcycle for $30,000. It might be absolutely wonderful and make other bikes seem antique but you can buy a Harley sport bike for less than a third of that cost. Doubt oil changes and fill ups are going to save you more than $20,000. I'm sure there will be some buyers who love electric bikes and will pay the premium. That doesn't mean all bikes will be electric in a few years.

The reality is a major part of owning an EV is tied to ones belief system. If the biggest factor is financial you will always find a better short term deal with an ICE car. I work in a young tech savy industry and I suspect 90% of the people I work with have purchased their last fossil. It may be 5 or more years before their next car purchase but when the time comes only an EV will be considered. That being said this is a demographic that the majority believe as soon as one can afford an EV driving anything else is immoral. I find it very interesting how in this demographic it is now a check box of success.

Not "covered".

Remember, commercial vehicles (Class 7 & 8 ) are more than tractors pulling 45,000 pounds of Tesla cars. A big difference when you have 60,000# of diesel fuel in a petroleum tank trailer. Or, like the I-94 corridor in Michigan allows up to 120,000# with an eight axle trailer. Coils of steel weigh a lot.

Then there are the heavy-haul trailers made by Trail King, Cozad, Talbert and others with stub axles with eight tires per axle so 64 tires. The trailer alone weighs 20 tons. They can haul 200,000# or more. Electric tractors are not yet up to the task.

Someday, maybe.

The Tesla Semi has the spec to pull more than the 80,000 limit for a truck with 18 wheels. So it can easily pull a liquid tanker. Elon also loved to boast that it will tug of war uphill with any tractor in its class. Of course there are always going to be specialized vehicles. The goal is not to end the burning of fossil fuels, the goal is to reduce it to a level the planet can naturally handle.

Does anyone have a model x? If so, how do you like it?

This guy trucks.

I'm on track, somehow, to do 20,000 miles in my Model 3 this year. That's significantly more than most cars do. I've had to charge out in the world four times total for a grand total of about 40 minutes. The thing is, until you start actually tracking your mileage, you don't realize how little you actually do on a daily basis.

Oh, and our Leaf that gets a total of 80 miles of range gets driven an average of 12,000 miles a year too.

I think that both of these will start to change in the future. First, prices will come down. Secondly, the market for old, high mileage electric cars has been climbing. It's weird - when I bought my 2013 Leaf two years ago, I bought it for $7600.

The exact same car in my area now regularly sells for $10,000+. I know because I have known FIVE people who have bought one since I did. One got a screaming deal for $6600 (on a Leaf with a replaced battery pack to boot!). Everyone else paid more than I did for the same car that I got.

The thing is, there is practically nothing that wears on them. With the exception of the battery packs - which keep coming down in price and if / when they wear out, companies will start stepping up to replace them - as a matter of fact, both Nissan and a new third party called Fenix is doing just that with old Leaf packs in the past year or so. Oh, and it turns out you can put more batteries in a Leaf than it originally had, this article from last week talks about it:

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/26/a-2013-nissan-leaf-with-380-miles-of-range/

The program is in it's infancy, but you'll see more of this stuff happening soon.

Sure you can, but that Leaf that I bought for $7600 has already in two years saved me about $2500 in fuel cost reductions (I tracked weekly in the first year and it saved $1256) and that doesn't include any maintenance. It has had one bearing issue in a year. I'll pretend the Corolla only needs oil changes, and that's a wash. In the next month, my Leaf would have a cheaper cost of ownership than the Corolla for as long as I hold onto it, and it will only get better.

If that Corolla *ever* needs service too, the Leaf starts crushing it in cost.

Well, except it is. I can't find it now, but I've read that batteries experienced a 35% cost reduction in 2018 alone. If you read through Wikipedia on their electric vehicle battery page, they have a bunch of info about how in 2010, it was somewhere between $400 and $1700 for a kwh of usable energy.

Companies guard their battery prices very carefully. GM in 2015 stated they expected battery costs of $145 by 2016. According to a Bloomberg (from Wikipedia): "According to a study published in February 2016 by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), battery prices fell 65% since 2010, and 35% just in 2015, reaching US$350 per kWh. The study concludes that battery costs are on a trajectory to make electric vehicles without government subsidies as affordable as internal combustion engine cars in most countries by 2022."

Tesla has alluded to achieving $100 per kWh already.

This means that my Leaf's 24 kWh battery pack (mine is a 2013, but they started production in 2010) would have cost *minimally* $9600 in 2010, which was also over 38% of the cost of the entire car. Today, if Tesla's numbers are to be believed, that same battery pack would cost $2400, a 75% reduction in the main cost of the car. Even if it only has gone through the 65% price reduction that Bloomberg found in 2016, we're talking about Nissan shedding $6000+ off the price to produce the car in six years.

It's also worth pointing out that the 2019 Leaf uses the *exact same* form factor as my Leaf does and fits 40 kWh of power into it, a 66% increase.

So, in 10 years we have reduced the price of batteries minimally by 65%, and we have increased the density of the power they store by 66%.

There are *no* components on an ICE car that have that sort of price reduction in the past 10 years, much less the thing that costs the most for the car.

Milwaukee native (Harley HQ is in town!), I indirectly know someone who helped design the electric Harley bike, and here's the thing...

The $10,000 sport bike you're referencing would be a used model. Their new models run between $20-$30k. The new electric bike will compete with those, and it is a higher end bike for now.

But here's the other thing that should be known - Harley's sales have *cratered* lately. Here, I'll take it straight from the mouth of Harley themselves:

"Harley-Davidson international retail motorcycle sales for the full-year finished slightly ahead of 2017. U.S. retail sales fell 10.2 percent behind ongoing declines in the U.S. motorcycle industry. Worldwide retail sales decreased 6.1 percent in 2018."

Harley is not exactly in great shape with their ICE equivalents. The belief that seems to be out there is that younger buyers aren't interested in getting a bike to work on it in the garage and do their own oil changes and whatnot. And a 10% decline last year followed an 8.5% decline in 2017, and a 3.9% decline in 2016.

Maybe an EV bike isn't what Harley riders want. But doing nothing sure isn't working for them.

We had one, but traded it for an S. I loved it. My wife really liked it, but hated that everytime she drove it people wanted to stop and talk to her about it, especially if she opened the falcon-wing doors. It didn't handle as well as the S, but I liked all the features on it like the auto closing door when you stepped on the brake. But it was her car so we traded. And I love the S, just not quite as much as the X. Anything else in particular you wanted to know?

I also had an X and traded it for an S. I don’t miss it. The falcon doors were just too “hey look at me” for my wife and I. But it was a great car.

"
So, in 10 years we have reduced the price of batteries minimally by 65%, and we have increased the density of the power they store by 66%.

There are *no* components on an ICE car that have that sort of price reduction in the past 10 years, much less the thing that costs the most for the car.
".

Light Emitting Diodes
Stability Control Systems
Touch Screen Control/Infotainment Systems

Percentage wise, sure.

I mean the multiple thousands of dollars of price reduction that batteries alone have had. And all of those things that you named would also have the same price reductions as components on an electric car.

I addressed your *no* components on an ICE car statement. I see that you have changed the rules.

I know a lot has changed in the past 10 years but I don't see progression as linear. Just because cost of batteries drop a certain amount in a few years doesn't mean they will drop same every year until they cost $1. I looked up used Leaf prices and you guys are right. Some can be found pretty dang cheap with what seems to be low miles. I'm guessing a lot of that has to do with popularity. I looked up used Tesla prices and much different story. Very expensive.

One example of electric power progress is the TT zero race at the Isle of Man TT.

The first race for the electric bikes was held in 2010 where the winner’s average speed was 96 mph. Last year the winner averaged 122 mph. There has been a steady increase in speed every year.

The top petrol bikes are in the 13x mph range over 6 laps.

It will be interesting to see how long it will be until they start doing multiple laps on the e-bikes.

For the umpteenth time in this thread the people thinking that BEV's won't get cheaper than ICE cars in the next 5 to 10 years are deluding themselves.

They are tipping towards becoming cheaper already, as there is less assembly cost (less complicated, almost no moving parts) and as mentioned a million times the really expensive bits are falling in price at rate they will be less expensive to build than an a complicated engine with a bunch of failure prone fuel saving technologies.

I don't know why some people just can't understand that...

Whether it takes 5, 10 or 15 years ICE cars are dead; they will be kept around as relics, but like smartphone adoption once the price tips over there will be an avalanche of adoption as new car buyers opt for BEV's.

Because some of the people on this thread are scientists and engineers. You can show them various Theorems and even hyperbolic functions and they accept them. However, tell them a bench has wet paint and they have to touch it to be sure.

im an engineer that also works for a company that makes small engines. ask me what a pain it is to test our product when engine rpm varies so much.. when product is audited and carbs have to be adjusted individually because every engine is different. how much we love having to buy carbon credits, or having to use expensive catalytic exhausts for anything sold in California. the second batteries become cheap enough there is going to be a huge shift for our product to go from gas to electric.. we already sell electric but nowhere on the scale of gas... yet

I thought that Tesla didn't have dealerships. Theres an old Saturn building that got Tesla signage the other day just up the street from me. It's not open yet, but would this just be a service center?

I had a feeling the falcon wing doors would be frequent topic of conversation. Our son would probably feel like he’s exiting a space ship when he gets dropped off at school.

Whichever Tesla we get will have grocery store/soccer mom duty as well as short road trips across TX.

We have never ridden in a Tesla, just sat in an S, 3 and X at the Austin store.

I’ve been thinking about using Turo and renting someone’s Tesla for a day to see how we like it.

Unlike Other car companies, Tesla sells its car directly, however they do have sales centers. Dealerships aren’t owned by the car manufacturer.

It’s crazy that Tesla is getting hit with a 25% tariff on its new autopilot computer. The chips are made in Austin Texas but it’s assembled in Shanghai. Apparently Shanghai was the only place that could do the assembly in the time required. Tesla is the highest percentage American made automobile, what ever happened to American brand loyalty. Why do you guys attack your own companies? Elon is Canadian maybe it’s time to move that factory to a place less politically hostile.

If Elon has a U.S. security clearance (Space X) he would have to give up any allegiance to any foreign nation.

But, I’m sure that doesn’t impact where Tesla decides to build a factory; however, I don’t think Canada is the answer for assembling custom hardware on the cheap.

I’m not thinking of assembling hardware. Just curious how long they will keep production in a country that is hostile to their success. Especially considering they are already building a new factory elsewhere.

Aspects of the US have certainly been hostile, but they also have a lot of fans and have experienced success here as well. Doesn’t hurt to be in CA where the some of the best software developers in the world are.

Canada itself (along with others in the EU) have also been hostile to Tesla in regards to trying to eliminate them from accessing aspects of tax credits. Just a rough environment for them, but they are trying to change a lot and go against the interest of many influential industries/companies.

That's one argument. Another might be that the USA has provided crazy tax credits to Tesla, that it hasn't offered to other manufacturers.

Right now Telsa buyers get a tax credit essentially lowering the final cost of the car.

Tesla also gets transferrable tax credits that it sells to other businesses from states because they built factories in Nevada.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2016/07/08/tesla-and-cash-for-credits-the-world-of-transferable-tax-credits/#1318f88465b9

Telsa also sells Zero Emission Vehicle credits. States like CA require manufacturers to buy these credits to offset their sales of non-ZEV cars.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/09/01/teslas-lucrative-zev-credits-may-not-be-sustainable/#404d78696ed5

Tesla also has received a $750 million factory from New York State.
https://buffalonews.com/2018/08/01/for-tesla-the-clock-is-ticking-to-bring-jobs-to-buffalo/

Tesla may be the most subsidized private company in the history of modern US capitalism. I think given that Tesla does not operate any Canadian factories and contributes only sales of Tesla vehicles, why would Canada offer Tesla tax credits? They'd be sponsoring competition to brands that operate factories and provide jobs in Canada
https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/auto-auto.nsf/eng/am00767.html

Canada has tried to exclude Tesla buyers from EV rebates but that is because of our more socialist views regarding division of wealth. The tax break on EV is meant to allow lower income people the chance to get into an EV. It was not meant as a hand out or tax break for the wealthy. Tesla quickly got around it and they qualify for the rebate. Canada is pretty keen to work with an automobile makers and keep those jobs in Ontario.

With so much lower cost manufacturing in Mexico and Canada why does it seem like your trying to make it hard on the few American companies that stay.

Who is making it hard for Tesla? Tesla received state and federal tax credits larger than I think any other company has. 1.5 billion dollars in EV tax credits from the federal government's tax program alone.

I get that its hard to manufacture in the USA (which is why I have lots of respect for Stern for keeping the jobs here, and Spooky, for starting up in a very difficult business). But I don't think you can say Tesla hasn't had every advantage here in the USA. They've been around since 2003, been public since 2010, and posted two quarters of profit in that time. That profit during those quarters was lower than the subsidies the company received through purchase tax rebates and ZEV tax credits sold to other businesses during those quarters. I don't think its 'making it hard' for Tesla to point out that despite record subsidies they still aren't profitable. And it's fair IMHO to question whether a luxury car brand is the right place to spend those subsidized dollars. I want to see US businesses succeed but not if they're never going to be profitable on their own.

I mean, its probably way off topic but I'm not against subsidies in general. I am a fan of local initiatives which attempt to foster small business creation through grants (think: people who want to open restaurants or auto repair places in their local neighborhood but lack the capital to outfit a commercial kitchen in a rented space or the money to install a car lift). But IMHO Tesla has taken enough public subsidy. I think its fair to say if you haven't made money in 15 years of being in business you probably aren't ever going to make money.

When your hitting American companies with 25% tariffs on American products that doesn't seem helpful. The whole subsidies things is a whole other debate and I honestly don't know what to believe. One side says Tesla gets all the subsidies and the other side says oil and big auto have been getting monster subsidies for 50 years. I honestly don't know what the actual truth is and I don't have enough information to form an opinion one way or the other. I didn't think about it that deeply I was just surprised to see the US Government hit an American company with trade war tariffs and deny them an exception. Its probably way to political though and this not the place to talk about it.

Subsidies or not, I was able to take a short drive with Goatdan the other night in his Model 3, and I was beyond impressed. The power, the technology, the ride, it all adds up. It made every other car I have been in seem somewhat primitive. It really was a cool experience. I could see myself easily owning one of these as a fun daily driver. It would be super hard for me to not want to see if I could accelerate around country road corner at 100mph every single time....

While I'm generally very against subsidies (we're the state that gave Foxconn $4 billion to do... something? No one knows anymore. Meanwhile, my small business taxes go up...), the majority of them - like ZEV and EV tax credits - are how I like things to be applied. For whatever reason, the government decided there would be a positive to supporting EV development. In turn, they created a program to allow auto companies the ability to claim tax credits. Tesla is so far ahead that they have been the ones claiming the most of them. If the other companies spent, they wouldn't need to do this.

Fiat just closed a deal where they are going to give Tesla a TON of money in the next couple years (somewhere between $500 million and $2 billion) for them to meet European carbon rules with their cars. Fiat could have made vehicles that took advantage of the regulation they knew was coming to do it. They didn't. Instead, they will be sending their competitor a ton of money in the next few years, while having to invest extra money making their cars complaint.

If Wisconsin had opted to give anyone who made an LCD screen in our state $10 / screen they made, I would have had a lot less of an issue with the giant subsidy we gave them, as if I wanted to suddenly make LCD screens I could get the same tax credit. That wasn't how that worked, so it's seeming more and more like we gave Foxconn a ton of money to put their names on a bunch of empty buildings.

Now, that isn't to say Tesla hasn't gotten subsidies from local governments for their factories - they have, and I don't love that either - but the ZEV / EV tax credit part of it I have no issues with.

The $7500 rebate thing they give buyers I think is set up really poorly - in many ways, it incentivizes companies to move slower because they know it'll be there - but again, at least everyone can take advantage of it.

Glad to do it! Maybe I forgot that coin door at my house for a reason

And yeah, like I think I told you, I have trouble not accelerating at top speeds off every red light

I love Tesla, but seeing these 2 videos yesterday has me doubting them a little (more so rich rebuilds than a clock display, but still)

The idea that a programmer isn't aware that solid state drives have a finite write cycle sounds fishy to me. It's also dumb to be writing that data to the linux kernel instead of an external drive that can be easily replaced. Also Tesla requiring to replace entire MPU's instead of just a board (and charge $2200-$5,000) seems wasteful. He does also bring up a good point, if you can't service a used tesla, it has virtually no value.. and therefore the car becomes costlier to insure because a tesla deemed not driveable has almost no value, so the insurance companies can't recover their loss.

Rich Rebuilds loves to be all angst to Tesla and create hype for his channel. I enjoyed his early stuff but his shtick grew tiresome for me. Clearly an SE made a mistake and was writing to the flash memory more than they should. This is far from unusual, I've seen this kinda of thing myself many times with software. I'm sure they can easily fix it, Tesla has never been a shining example of coding practice. They are clearly pushing the limit and there bug acceptance is pretty high. It painfully obvious to anyone that has owned one of their cars that there software is nowhere near mature. Its one thing to hack into software and criticize it, its an entirely different thing to actually create it.

Also Tesla is no different than every other technology company. Apple, Google, Microsoft... none of them ever want anyone to touch their hardware or software. It's just the nature of capitalism.

watching that screen hit the card over and over and not even being attached, I can only imagine how hard it's hit during use. I would assume every programmer has the common knowledge that memory cards have about 100,000 cycles before they go bad. If you're hitting the same sectors that often it doesn't take a genius to realize you'll hit that mark pretty quick (say 4 years). The fact that the chip is hard soldered makes it even worse. That chip should only be written to at the factory, and then every time an update comes along. Any data collecting should be done on a separate drive. But I'm also not a car designer, maybe it needs to be hard wired to ensure it's always safely connected. Maybe an SD card could shake loose during driving and cause issues. I just think it should be more serviceable.

Truth: https://electrek.co/2019/05/09/fossil-fuel-subsidies-trillions/

I just think you need to take this stuff with a grain of salt. Rich Rebuilds like a year ago was taking apart a his Tesla with a butter knife. Now because he has a youtube channel people consider him some kind of expert and the Robin Hood of Tesla for the common man. He is entertainment and good humor but just watch how it turned out when the tried to put a Tesla battery in a Disney car and you can see how much expertise they bring to the table. This is also a very good example of why Tesla does not want amateurs messing around with their cars. Yes it looks like they uncovered a bug, all software has bugs and I'm sure Tesla will address it.

agreed.. however that guest he had on looks somewhat knowledgable of whats going on. just something for current model 3 owners to be aware of. if someday their car suddenly doesnt want to boot, and telsa service says you need a new $2k mpu, you know why. my hope is that tesla makes their cars as reliable as possible while allowing consumers access to diagnostics. if the cars are truly as lego blocks as some describe, and consumers can actually potentially service things themself, there will be a huge used aftermarket, which will only help them retain resale value.

Well with Tesla finally acquiring Maxwell there will be dramatic cost reductions in battery tech. This is huge news! It's funny how this news is hardly reported by anyone . Found one good synopsis of this acquisition .

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2019/05/21/morgan-stanley-sets-tesla-worst-case-price-ten-dollars/39501961/

This insane volatility is why Musk was correct in trying to take Tesla off the public market IMO. He should have been more subtle about it, but that's not Elon, is it?

It'll be private after the inevitable bankruptcy.

He didn't try to take it private. He tried to fix the share price ... somewhat successfully in the few hours it took before it came out that he'd lied about everything.

Funding Secured...... LLLLMFAO!

My odds for Apple eventually getting control of Tesla is at about 50% right now. The lower the price of the stock goes the higher that percentage will climb.