Craiglxviii
Senior Member
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2015
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- 970 Panamera Turbo; W221 S500L AMG Line, C215 CL500, W251 R350L AMG Line, plus several more now gone
Always the optimist me.
But in all seriousness look at Tesla. Musk was initially ridiculed at first and now look how they’re doing. They’ve stolen a march on everyone when it comes to a decent EV (talking actually in production and not currently being developed).
If their EV HGV takes off (UPS alone have placed an order for 125 of them) then they will jump way ahead.
They offered Australia a deal to build the worlds biggest battery (129Mwh) in 100 days or it would be free. That netted Musk and co $50m as they did it in 93.
You don’t see any oil company saying they’ll give oil away for free if they don’t build a refinery in time.
What it’s really shown is how good at marketing Musk is. They’ve developed a luxury EV which is being sold as a competitor to IC cars where range isn’t really a factor. A study of sales patterns shows most Tesla’s are involved in city commutes or other driving patterns with easy rapid charge availability.
They’ve also developed an entry level EV which they have MASSIVE problems with. This was supposed to be their bread and butter... They just can’t build the Model 3 (hitting 10% of target due to chronic parts and line problems) and have very deep plant problems in addition. Tesla Inc has a nett-loss burn rate of $1bn p.a. as of last month’s data. It’s not a viable business in its own right.
In all seriousness, look at Nissan. I know their EVs are boring but they’re the biggest by volume and the furthest ahead by development of the Big 5 in EV. Leaf Gen. 2 launches soon and has already taken 10,000 units in pre- orders just for Europe. That’s incredible when you consider Leaf sells around 20,000 per year currently. Nissan reckon they can shift 60-70k pa of them which puts it into Mini One territory (or Tesla’s entire plant capacity). That’s progress.
In other news, e-Golf is making big strides too. Watch this space.