Sometimes I think a lot of people fail to grasp the business end of the car industry. Tesla now builds cars faster and their margins are 7-8 times higher than industry average. That's Porsche territory!
And they now have 2 world class factories coming on line. These factories are more advanced than any other car factory in the world.
Profit margins will only increase as sales numbers increase because fixed costs are spread over more cars. And huge savings on vehicle delivery costs!
What does this mean from a business standpoint? One, they are more profitable, but it also offers incredible leverage. They could beat up any competition by lowering MSRP and still be highly profitable.
As far as who has the best EV technology, take a look at Munro's videos. Recent BITOG threads spoke to the multi vehicle platform such as BMW's. Yeah, you can make different cars with different drivetrains, but as an EV they are inferior because they are a compromise. This is manufacturing engineering.
Other car manufacturers just might be in deep yogurt. Interesting times ahead, indeed. The Tesla "fad" is just getting started.
Your thoughts?
Here are my thoughts:
With great fanfare, GM produced the "Voltec" platform, with the idea that they would make EV's, Hybrids, Plug in Hybrids, Sports Cars, Luxury Cars, and everything in between. What actually happened: GM discontinued the Volt, halted production of the Bolt and despite an EV history going back to the 1990's EV-1, GM makes no viable EV's or batteries at the moment, only promises.
BMW started to produce some seriously complex EV's/Hybrids such as the i8 and i3, with bizarre and overly heavy/complex batteries, many of these batteries ended up being scrapped and sold on the secondary market.
Hyundai is making EV's with pouch cell technology that is decades old, hoping that the lower price of admission will offset the expense of guaranteed future problems.
Jaguar just builds the iPace in Austria parts with non Jaguar parts.
Nissan's leaf really shows the way. With ever declining range, and expensive battery replacement options.
The list goes on and on.
Tesla has pushed the battery technology to it's practical limits and that is in their favor. With many years of experience, a constant culture of battery, controller and motor upgrades, a great deal of understanding and so on. Tesla may have uneven body gaps, but they know how to manufacture, package, wire, cool, manage the charge/dischage of an EV battery. It's nice to think others will get it right the first time out. History says otherwise.
There is a reason people go nuts for used Tesla cells, pulled from wrecked cars. They hold up to abuse, have great energy density and are very, very reliable.
