gnochi

Knowing Elon's fans, maybe 3% of people will cancel their orders (shortening the line for new orders; the cars will still sell).

Everyone else is getting batteries from "not Panasonic". Tesla's control systems are in-house and we're nowhere near capacity on circuit boards, etc. Globally we're also nowhere near capacity in motor supplying, so I'm not too worried - the price of batteries is a bit more of a concern, but it's still not too bad.

That's how I see it; there will be a sports car market forever to go with grey point-a-to-point-b pods (and maybe a few other markets besides... you heard nothing from me).

Conveniently, those are the main things we battery systems engineers are focusing on

Lorenfb

Most likely an order of magnitude more once reservation holders realize that a Model 3 won't
be delivered for less than $45K, and at that price Tesla loses money.

That's basically the extent of Tesla's vertical integration (motor & battery electronics),
i.e. surely you don't imply that Tesla designs & manufactures all the ECUs used in the vehicle
(ABS, suspensions, locking units, seat modules, etc.). GM is highly integrated with Delphi & Delco,
but still uses multiple outside sources. Delco can even produce semiconductors which Delphi
can use for their ECUs. Even Apple until recently became more vertically integrated
with their purchase of a wafer fab facility.

Yes, Tesla with the help of Mobileye and now Nvidia for AI contributed to the AP system,
but must rely on Nvidia for their processors. Tesla has nowhere near the design resources
as Nvidia needed for AP1/AP2. Even for batteries, Panasonic must 'hold' Tesla's hand
even now at the Giga plant.

Tesla has nowhere near the required financial wherewithal now to become highly
integrated, i.e. their cash flow is negative and they're near being credit limited.

The Tesla hyperbole never ends!

Lorenfb

Remember, Porsche is part of VW/Audi and benefits from their economies of scale and
part sources, e.g. ECUs, body parts, which is NOT the case for Tesla. The reliability of automotive
systems for the last 10 years far exceeds that of the prior 10 years, which Porsche has
and will benefit from with the Mission E product. Ask a Tesla Model X owner how reliable he/she
considers it.

daveo4porsche

My X is very reliable. But the early ones were not as with all things tesla they get their act together after making about 30,000 of them.

daveo4porsche

Also battery degradation seems more fear than fact - other than leafs the BEVs with thermally controlled batteries are showing no major problems even after 7 years (Tesla roadsters and 5 year old 200,000 mile S’s) - what ever there is, is manageable and the rough schedule and cost to fix/replace is in line with major ICE component age relayed failures like transmissions/engines...

The leaf on the other hand sucks - but root cause there is lack of active thermal management.

Does anyone have actual data that is showing an actual problem for BEVs other than leafs?

gnochi

Fair. I'm not a fan of how they did the M3 pack - 4 huge modules?? I can almost guarantee the "bottlenecks" are due to parts being well outside of acceptable tolerances, because large injection molded pieces can't be held to the +/- 0.25mm that is just about required for a battery system.

True, that's the extent of their vertical integration, but there's plenty of capacity left in these other suppliers, and there are a lot of them with a lot of expertise in their fields. An OEM doesn't need to, and I don't think should, design every facet of every component. Pick a few areas to focus competence and expand as time goes on.

Regarding the Gigafactory, it turns out making batteries isn't trivial. Who knew!

The Tesla hyperbole is the main reason I don't own any of their stock. Don't get me wrong, I think they're doing a lot of things right, but hype based on a guy who spends all of a couple hours a week thinking about the company seems very silly to me.

The Volkswagen AG - Porsche AG merger was one of the smartest things the companies ever did. The Mission E doesn't benefit for a lot of the "core" technologies - basically everything in the HV system is different from the VW standard platform, given the different use case - but all of the things you don't really think about - seats, cup holders, buttons, sun visor hardware, self-piercing rivets, bushings, etc. - all have their nicely massively scaled production with near-identical parts consumed across Porsche, VW, Audi, Bugatti, Bentley, Lamborghini, and slightly less frequently across Ducati, Scania, and Skoda.

As far as reliability goes, Tesla does a great job with the drivetrain - not perfect, but best-in-class for what's available right now. It's everything else, and the 3 Fs of form, fit, and finish, that are pretty terrible - especially for the price - and cause the vast majority of issues.

As an amusing aside, one of my former battery systems teammates was formerly at Tesla, and after the Model X was released told us about the weekly updates meetings in his team, which included a segment called "This Week, in Falcon Wing Doors" during that development cycle.

Drifting

Agree that’s where things are going. I love my GT3, but it’s my weekend/fun/track car. I have a Tesla model 3 on order for everything else.

Have another ICE car as a daily beater for now, really wondering how long the delay will be next year before I see my model 3.

Depending how the Mission E performs and what it costs, I’d certainly consider switching to that as my daily driver in 2020 or so.

Lorenfb

Ask Porsche if they could have ever won Le Mans in this century with the 919,
if their race design team received consulting from Tesla's Model X engineering.

gnochi

We model life either assuming the average consumer is less than inclined towards due care (to put it politely) or by following EPA drive cycles. In both cases we tend to end up with a conservative estimate to engineer around. There are also chemistry- and temperature-dependent regimes in which fast charging is an absolute no-go without severe immediate capacity degradation (below 20C, below ~5%SOC). As long as you avoid those, and the person driving actually cares about things like life (or the system controller encourages "cell-safe" mode driving), you'll tend to see better life than advertised. With the OTA updates, Tesla is also able to quickly adjust algorithms based on very-recently-updated lab tests, which more traditional OEMs are less well positioned to implement.

Another big assumption we in the industry make is that the battery is always discharged to minimum and charged to maximum for a given cycle. FYI, you probably shouldn't do that regularly - hovering around 70% SOC brings considerable lifetime advantages.

The Leaf pretty nicely illustrated to OEMs that active thermal management is necessary, which is awesome because I get the approval to implement a thermal management system without even needing to ask. Of course, I need to engineer every last penny out of it, but suppliers are pretty used to that ball game these days so "material cost plus processing cost plus a squidge" ends up being somewhat reasonable.

It turns out that the highest RMS current you'll ever see for more than a couple minutes in any EV, outside of a couple edge cases that I've literally never seen in any field data, is during fast charging. This means that the cooling system I need to engineer every penny out of also has really well defined power dissipation requirements, which makes it even easier to develop. I'm not going to say the design is an afterthought - it's literally central to the design of every module I've seen - but it's definitely negligible in time spent relative to, say, the plastic bits that hold the cells in place.

Lorenfb

Nissan make a marketing decision on whether to utilize TM. How many would they
have sold with a major range reduction, e.g. 20% - (84 to 67), using TM? Besides, the Leaf's
chemistry is less volatile than Tesla's and Tesla's battery is generating more internal heat
(MS's weight) than for the Leaf, i.e. they both have the same internal resistance,
where battery heating is; Power = I^2 x R). Given that and Tesla's higher charging currents,
that additionally requires TM. And then you have the added cost factor of TM for the Leaf.
Yes, many factors are involved.

caf

Was going to bring up the fact that battery degradation has been pretty minimal in Teslas with their thermal management systems; even the earliest Tesla owners are reporting pretty small losses at 100K of driving. But you guys beat me to it...

Interesting article with Porsche's CFO talking about the difficulties they face in catching up with EVs (and it's Tesla, no doubt, that they are primarily talking about). Make no mistake, this is a very big, very serious undertaking, even for Porsche:

"Porsche admits EV investment to take on Tesla is an “enormous burden”"

https://www.teslarati.com/porsche-mi...le-investment/

I, for one, hope that the Mission E turns out well and that Porsche can make the quantum leap to electric tech.

daveo4porsche

I’m looking forward to trading in my model S for a mission E - but for now the S is way better than a panamera.

daveo4porsche

The Chevy Bolt is a pretty good BEV in the Model 3 car class and can be had quite a bit cheaper than a Model 3, and can actually be had. Lease are butt cheap and 3 years will get you to just about the right place where more BEVs are coming to market.

It’s also quite peppy and an all around decent car.

ace37

Are the competitive lease prices in the segment largely the result of government subsidies?

Lorenfb

The "fun" of owning a BEV (from an EV website):

Luckily, I haven't yet experienced that situation, but wouldn't want to be on the I5
needing to use a SC near the Grapevine or Harris Ranch on a holiday weekend.
Some are totally inconsiderate "needing that last electron" from the SC.