The 1.0l 3cyl shitbox my dad bought for 12k euros new a few years back accelerates 50% faster and tops out at 170kmh so yes sorry but this is just unacceptable at that price, it's borderline unsafe
20k is a lot of money to put in a car for most people in Europe, you can buy a decent used ice car and enough gas for the next 50 years if you exclusively use your car in an urban environment
It fits the niche of people having to commute by car but not on the highway. Considering it's among the best selling models of EVs in France, obviously that niche exists.
100-150 kms range is fine with you? I’m certainly not going to spend 20k for such range. I might accept lower build quality, less acceleration, slow charging, ugly design… but for 20k I expect at least 250-300 kms of real range in 2023.
Because I really don't care about perf or status. If the comfort is good enough I'm fine with that. That's why I said none of the points you made are stuff I would care about.
Considering it's literally the only widely available vehicle in that price range, why would you expect such a thing? The price is so low in big part because it has such characteristics such as low range. Also, the market for it is short range day commute and related trips, for which the range is sufficient.
Electric vehicles will succeed or fail with how they can establish themselves on a second hand market.
I would have the budget for such a price, but I certainly wouldn't want to pay it. For official business there are company cars and I drive perhaps 5000 km per year. I still have a car and I need it to visit some more remote people and for convenience.
Paid 2.5k for it and I have it since a few years. I do have a mechanic, so repairs are cheap, but you can guess about my expectations for buying the next car. Haven't seen EV with attractive prices yet.
It will come. The "problem" with EVs is that they retain their value much longer. Which is factored into their second hand value. Second hand ICE cars are cheap because they start having lots of issues when they get older and the risk of them needing some maintenance that exceeds the purchase price gets higher and higher.
If you buy a ten year old Nissan Leaf for, it will still be quite usable and be desirable enough that people are willing to pay a lot more than 2.5K for it. And if the time comes, you can put a new battery in it for 4-5K or so and drive it for another decade+.
And of course there aren't that many EVs that old around to begin with because the market was relatively new and small ten years ago. Most EVs on the road are probably younger than 3 years or so. They'll be on the road for a long time and might change owner a lot. But it will take some time to trickle down.
Electric cars in general will be the only option. The big countries in the EU are banning selling new petrol cars in 2035. So they'll definitely succeed, there's no option!
Given how many locations depend on having car available and public transport offerings are a joke even in Europe, I am more going into the deadlines being pushed back scenario.
Not everyone is living in Amsterdam, Berlin, London,... city center.
Here in the Swiss countryside public transport is okay, at least to my tastes (I know I criticize sometimes but only first world problems). So if those other countries need a working model, here we are waving at them...
>Electric vehicles will succeed or fail with how they can establish themselves on a second hand market.
They will "succeed" because the government will force us to use them. It's us citizens who will succeed or fail to have freedom to move, depending on how wealthy we are ;)
25k is quite a lot for many average salaried people in Europe, indeed the step bump of price (almost 2x in 10 years) of non-electric cars already put the eu market in a dire position where most people are not able to replace their car anymore and keep using very old cars with very high pollution outputs
But also more then what a good part of the population is willing to afford to pay for a car. Weather hear or in the US a lot of people buy second,third,fourth hand.
And that's a problem I think massively underestimated, a least currently electric cars are kinda badly suited for being resold, especially if they come from companies with pretty bad service/walled garden reputation like Tesla.
Compare what's comparable... a top of the line watch cost 50k+ so cars are all cheap I guess ?
In 1990 you could buy a Golf GTI for 77k french francs, which is 19000 euros today. And that was the best golf money could buy.
Today the absolute base model Golf costs 32k euros. The current GTI starts at 48k. Even the polo starts at 19k+, and that's the shittiest vw you can buy.
The bottom line is back in the day any working person could buy a bas model shitbox, now the low class workers needs a 10 years loan to do the same
Nothings stopping you from buying a 90s beater. For the rest of us the safety features are worth it. I’m betting it costs more to manufacture a safe modern car than a 90s one.
>It turns out that a driver of a car 18 or more years old is 71 percent more likely to die in a bad crash than the driver of a car three years old or newer.
A lot actually, it's not legal to drive them in a lot of city centers
71% more than virtually 0 is not really a problem imho. And still, we could have modern cheap cars with modern crash safety for much less than the computers on wheel they're trying to sell us
The same car model just 10 years ago went for half the price. Same for the fiat Panda (my parents bought it in 2008 for 8k, now the most base model I can find is 19k). In the meantime salaries have not double at all (in some nations they even fell)
This is something that has been on my mind for a long while: are cars super cheap or bikes super expensive?
Looking at how much material it takes to make and how complex it is, I would expect a car to cost ~100 more than a bike, but in reality it's more like ~10 more
Regular bikes are super cheap, but if you buy a top of the line, specialised and low quantity bike you're paying a premium of course.
Price is never about the material used... an iphone would be $200 if it was the case. Look into economy of scale, how money is made through maintenance/parts/after sale services, &c.
I'm not talking about 10k bikes, but also not supermarket bikes.
I said complexity and materials. An iPhone is extremely complex but it's only so cheap because electronics scale extremely well, probably only software does better.
Logically there should be more bikes than cars so the economy of scale should be in their favor. Bike maintenance isn't cheap either. Cars need to go through much more certification etc.
The more I think about it the less sense it makes. I think there's crazy competition on cars, but not on bikes.
A supermarket bike, not suitable if you're a bit serious and many repair shops will refuse to repair them because it's not worth it. For a decent bike you'd probably paying at least 3-4x more.
>There are twice as many cars than bikes in France from what I can find online, not sure about the rest of the world.
Google tells me worldwide daily production of bikes is 300.000 and cars 100.000. (IMO It would really be sad if it was otherwise)
> You can buy a basic city bike for <250 euros new
Fair point but what I meant in my initial post is even a top of the line Trek Slash doesn't have a quarter of the technology included in the lowest end Fiat Panda. Even the best e-bikes are still quite simple compared to a car.
An electric four door estate makes tonnes of sense in the EU. The estate in the EU is an important car package, it's a family work horse.
> In addition to keeping the cost of R&D and production low, Tesla wants to ensure the compact EV is easy to manufacture.
It's simple and other manufacturers have done it for years. Just use standard parts where possible. Stop designing custom headlights, glass, wheels, etc, etc.
I would also advise to Tesla to build an even lower cost model, perhaps with the following specs:
* 2 seats and some space for shopping/luggage
* Half range (~200 miles or so), shorter charging time
* Lightweight, smaller motors, inverters, etc
* Repairable (keeps the cost down in the second hand market), use off-the-self components where possible
They could call it "Tesla Model # Lite". The market would be people who drive to local towns, etc, and back. If I were them I would sub-contract an existing manufacturer to build it too.
Despite smaller dimensions, the Biro Big [1] (review at [2]) is faster at 60kph and has a longer range at 100km. Unfortunately, it's nearly twice as expensive as the Ami...
Seems like this is going to be a massive new push for the electrification of all cars, I think this could be absolutely massive, considering just quickly tesla is making inroads on all markets. A 25k car is huge for reaching even more customers.
I also wonder if this is targeting the market where BYD is so successful. I imagine most chinese customers would buy a tesla vs a BYD if they had similar pricepoints.
Interestingly in the European markets BYD has entered they seem to be trying to compete in the higher priced market segments. The cheapest car they sell in Sweden costs more than the ID.3 and other cheap EVs and their SUV is priced to closer to BMW than Kia.
I think I am more excited to see how the competition reacts. The world needs more affordable EVs and there's a price point to be found that successfully balances affordability and quality. I cannot imagine only Tesla are chasing this segments because one can only assume it's TAM is huge, and most just in Europe.
Coincidentally, the reviews of the Volvo EX30 just came out. Not quite $25,000 but a lot closer to it than most electric cars. And no compromises, unlike the Dacia Spring or Citroen ec3.
More affordable (and smaller!!!) electric cars would be nice.
However, out of the mouth of mr Musk it sounds more like hot air to distract from their cybertruck, roadster, semi truck, Tesla taxi/autonomous driving, and reliability (TÜV) failures.
And wasn’t the model 3 already supposed to be the affordable Tesla?
https://www.tesla.com/en_eu/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-... says "So, in short, the master plan is: Build sports car. Use that money to build an affordable car. Use that money to build an even more affordable car. While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options."
There's no mention of stopping after a particular model.
I'm sure he has, but are you saying that back then, he did not say he would stop making more affordable cars and more recently has has said he will stop?
I think the real reason to bring it to Berlin is because the Mexico gigafactory is on pause at the moment.
Irrespective of what one may think, Musk has achieved model 3 and model y production in face of criticism.
The model 3 is a very successful car. However, based on what the stated goal of the Model 3 was, it failed. Unless you consider a brief 43 day window when sales where slow as hitting the target.
So, sure they may sell a handful of cars built at this factory at 25k, but more realistically this may be hitting the price point the Model 3 was aiming for.
Car manufacturing is hard and sometimes it takes multiple iteration to get to the initial goal. Tata Nano was a similiar failure. In there case though, the car literally failed in the market at all prices.
It was available online at that price for 43 days February 28, 2019 to April 12, 2019. So, sure they sold a handful of cars at that price point, but only as a face saving measure not actually in bulk.
Todays 39k cough 40k if you don’t want black, is viable due to battery prices falling dramatically over the 6 years since they started selling the car not them actually hitting the stated goal.
The model 3 is still the 7th most sold car in 2022.
Is a car company not allowed to raise prices? Like what standard are you holding tesla to? If they can sell a tesla for $42k, why sell it for $35k? Because Elon said so in 2015? That's ridiculous, its just not how markets or companies work. And they DID sell it for $35,000, for a while. So Elon didn't even lie.
Absolutely ridiculous the mental gymnastics some people will go to to hate the guy. Insane.
I mean, the model Y is the 4th best selling model in the world, the model 3 is 7th (in 2022).
Yes I'm sure they are under producing, just to have a waiting list...
I mean come on, you are arguing in such bad faith its insane. This is 20 year old car company that's producing the 4th best selling car int he world. It's insane. But sure, Elon is a liar and purposefully under produces... sigh.
I was making fun because the fact that they have a waiting list doesn't matter at all, it's just an indication that Tesla can't keep up with demand. Anyway, I don't think that Tesla sucks. Even if I did like Elon I would still have made the same joke.
No, he is a liar because he is known to have lied in many of his "predictions". The fact is that those were not predictions, those were lies aimed at pumping up the stock price of his company, massively overpromising things that he likely fully knew were unachievable.
I don't even hate the guy by the way. It's difficult to read balanced takes on him since he is such a polarizing figure, especially after he bought Twitter, and that got a lot of people's knickers in a bunch.
But let's call a liar when we see one, shall we? It is healthier than being a sycophant for asshole billionaires.
> No, he is a liar because he is known to have lied in many of his "predictions".
Ok, so please provide the exact time you consider it a "lie" and not a "prediction"
> The fact is that those were not predictions, those were lies aimed at pumping up the stock price of his company,
He's won every single lawsuit about this so far, but feel free to sue him if you think this is what he did.
With the level of scrutiny tesla is under, and the level of shortselling going on previously, if there was any of this going on there would have been massive class action lawsuits.
You are repeating anti Elon talking points, without actual facts. But feel free to source the exact things you mention.
Getting predictions wrong are not lies. Especially for an extremely ambitious entrepreneur in very tough markets. If it were, 99% of silicon valley would be in jail, or fired, or whatever.
Why would I? I was never invested in any companies he is involved in. His lies never damaged my investments.
I also don't buy any products made by his companies. You see, I take great care in not falling for grifters.
And I have little interest in getting into a back and forth with someone white knighting for Elon. As I said, I don't even hate the guy, and let's be frank, you are not willing to let go any of your positions anyway. All his lies are well documented and easy to look up, but you will just hand wave them away, so let's cut this short.
> 99% of silicon valley would be in jail
Agreed. But rich assholes tend to get the powers that be on their side.
The (now deleted) comment poking fun at the German minimum wage is especially funny if you consider how anti-union Tesla is and that the German industrial union IG Metall only last month managed to get into Tesla, despite the management's best efforts.
The minimum wage in Germany is €12/h (Oct 2022), compared to $7.25/h in the US (2009). When introduced in 2015 the German minimum wage was €8.50/h. If it had only ever been adjusted for inflation, it would have been at €10.05/h at the start of 2023. By contrast, if the US minimum wage had been adjusted for inflation following its last adjustment in 2009, it would have been at $10.40/h by now. Remember that anything less than correcting for inflation represents an income reduction as it means a loss of spending power.
For additional context: in German law, minimum wage is tied to a representative index of union wages (the Tariflohnindex, tracked by the federal office of statistics). Despite an overall decline in membership (mostly due to the "liberalization" of the job market, i.e. the creation of temp work agencies whose "contractors" can not join unions - though these may still benefit from union wages negotiated in the companies they are stationed at, and the heavy regulation around unions effectively prohibiting micro-unions like in the US or coordinated "solidarity" strikes) this index provides a good "temperature gauge" for wage developments. In other words: when union wages (in aggregate) go up, minimum wage goes up. When they stagnate, minimum wage stagnates.
This is different from welfare (formerly Hartz IV, now Bürgergeld, which previously was supposed to be a form of federal UBI) which is intended to track inflation as it is only meant to cover a standard of "needs" (which in turn are supposed to be individualized by taking into account various factors like number of people in the household).
In other words: welfare exists to provide a social safety net to cover a person's needs, federal minimum wage exists to provide a baseline for wages to ensure employees are paid a non-exploitative wage for their labor if they're unable to join a union that would help them negotiate a better wage and there is no union available to them.
So minimum wage is really more of a "fallback union wage", typically benefitting direct hires in low prestige jobs like cleaning. Note that a better equivalent of American company-specific unions is the construct of a Betriebsrat, a form of works council, which the employees of any company with at least 5 "regular employees" are eligible to form and grants special protections to its elected officials (the number of which is also specified by law). Neither has anything to do with worker ownership, i.e. cooperatives, or employee share schemes (more common in the US).
