Best car of the last 70 years, Tesla

[Joe Ogiba]

The legacy auto companies are dead meat since they are clueless how to make money from selling EVs and their dealer network is going to bankrupt them in the future.

[Onyrlef]

Rode an Uber into DFW the other day, a Tesla,. I thought it was noisy and had a harsh ride.

[radar]

Originally Posted by Onyrlef

Rode an Uber into DFW the other day, a Tesla,. I thought it was noisy and had a harsh ride.

Yah Definitely not a luxury car. A high performance sport car is definitely not a soft ride. And for sure one of the problems with an electric car is you will hear EVERY bit of road noise. This got somewhat better in 2022 model years but it is a thing with EV’s in general. Not right for everyone.

The polestar or the Audi is better if you are looking for a smooth ride.

[Solo_RV_Guy]

Originally Posted by CntryCoachRV

TSLA is up almost $50. In the last 2 weeks, you had a buying opportunity but failed to recognize it!

At the time I wrote that, Telsa stock had taken a 20% drop. My digital crystal ball needs a new antenna to predict what the market will do in subsequent weeks.

[Joe Ogiba]

Update:

[DrivingDan]

I think another interesting transition we’re going through is not just electrification but the shakeup of automotive brand loyalty. For example all Tesla owners came from other brands, and some of them plan on sticking with them. Which may be hard in the long term as Tesla will likely never have the broad portfolio of other automakers. It’s a problem now - their cars are old and looking dated (I’ve seen them on the road for the last decade). But they have a design identity that will be hard to expand on I think. Basically they’ve got the Model-T mindset - sell the same car in different prices. But 100 years of car buying tells us people like variety and change.

For me, we were always Japanese ICE. But when the Chevy Bolt was announced we got one of the first in 2017. Reason being it was the first ‘enough range’ EV’s at a good price (after incentives $30k for fully loaded). And like many EV owners we’re never going back, after five years have had minimal service (tires, a door sensor that wasn’t happy, and a traction battery under warranty which was a gift of an even greater range.) After studying the various OEM’s I decided to stay with GM/Chevy from now on. They’ve got the portfolio, technology and roadmap I like.

But this is the first American car I owned. Likewise, since Japan automotive has really missed the EV boat (none of them expected the transition to happen this soon), their fans will start to look elsewhere when all of their friends are buying EV’s.

Fords managed to cobble together enough EV’s to keep their customers in the game. They don’t have an architecture - they just realized there’s a mile of extra wiring harness in the EV Mustang that isn’t needed, but hey most customers don’t care about the engineering. Personally I wouldn’t get a Ford EV - they’re playing catchup and are making mistakes, but many are loyal to a fault.

Mercedes and luxury European brands don’t have the advantage anymore when a pedestrian EV is as quiet and fast as an ICE luxury vehicle. And plenty of others are looking more enticing - Cadillac, Tesla and more. I’d love a Lyric, or if I won the lottery would get a Celestiq and design my own car.

Basically it’s a toss up to get new customers - while Ford has pushed EV’s out the door as fast as they could, GM is playing the long game to get the bulk of the automotive buying public and so are going at it deliberately. I think Chinese automotive will own Europe - VW can’t seem to get it right, and Japan unfortunately hasn’t even started. To me it seems the main players will be GM (and Ford), China, and the others (Tesla, VW, BMW, … Rivian, etc)

[radar]

Originally Posted by DrivingDan

I think another interesting transition we’re going through is not just electrification but the shakeup of automotive brand loyalty. For example all Tesla owners came from other brands, and some of them plan on sticking with them. Which may be hard in the long term as Tesla will likely never have the broad portfolio of other automakers. It’s a problem now - their cars are old and looking dated (I’ve seen them on the road for the last decade). But they have a design identity that will be hard to expand on I think. Basically they’ve got the Model-T mindset - sell the same car in different prices. But 100 years of car buying tells us people like variety and change.

For me, we were always Japanese ICE. But when the Chevy Bolt was announced we got one of the first in 2017. Reason being it was the first ‘enough range’ EV’s at a good price (after incentives $30k for fully loaded). And like many EV owners we’re never going back, after five years have had minimal service (tires, a door sensor that wasn’t happy, and a traction battery under warranty which was a gift of an even greater range.) After studying the various OEM’s I decided to stay with GM/Chevy from now on. They’ve got the portfolio, technology and roadmap I like.

But this is the first American car I owned. Likewise, since Japan automotive has really missed the EV boat (none of them expected the transition to happen this soon), their fans will start to look elsewhere when all of their friends are buying EV’s.

Fords managed to cobble together enough EV’s to keep their customers in the game. They don’t have an architecture - they just realized there’s a mile of extra wiring harness in the EV Mustang that isn’t needed, but hey most customers don’t care about the engineering. Personally I wouldn’t get a Ford EV - they’re playing catchup and are making mistakes, but many are loyal to a fault.

Mercedes and luxury European brands don’t have the advantage anymore when a pedestrian EV is as quiet and fast as an ICE luxury vehicle. And plenty of others are looking more enticing - Cadillac, Tesla and more. I’d love a Lyric, or if I won the lottery would get a Celestiq and design my own car.

Basically it’s a toss up to get new customers - while Ford has pushed EV’s out the door as fast as they could, GM is playing the long game to get the bulk of the automotive buying public and so are going at it deliberately. I think Chinese automotive will own Europe - VW can’t seem to get it right, and Japan unfortunately hasn’t even started. To me it seems the main players will be GM (and Ford), China, and the others (Tesla, VW, BMW, … Rivian, etc)

Yah. The Japanese thing is just absolutely bizarre. Mazda sold something like 33 of their latest cutting edge EV…that is roughly equivalent to the original 2011 Nissan Leaf. Toyota built an EV for a few months and essentially bought them all back as the wheels were literally falling off them and they couldn’t be charged in cold weather. Crazy.

The Toyota Camry has been the sales king in California for years. Now it’s the Tesla model Y.

And as you pointed out, tesla is now building at a rate of about 5000 EV’s PER DAY, and all of those customers came from other brands.

[DrivingDan]

Originally Posted by radar

Yah. The Japanese thing is just absolutely bizarre. Mazda sold something like 33 of their latest cutting edge EV…that is roughly equivalent to the original 2011 Nissan Leaf. Toyota built an EV for a few months and essentially bought them all back as the wheels were literally falling off them and they couldn’t be charged in cold weather. Crazy.

The Toyota Camry has been the sales king in California for years. Now it’s the Tesla model Y.

Japanese automotive sales have been dropping steadily, GM has surpassed Toyota this last year. I think all the blame rests on Toyoda-san, he’s the head of their industry group and having worked in Japan I can tell you the top dog dictates how often you can breathe. He thinks he’s been unfairly blamed by the media, and while he deserves it, OTOH his position is understandable. Japan has made the best mechanical automobiles ever[1] - with EV’s that advantage disappears. Embracing EV’s is economic suicide for them but if they were smart about it they could survive off brand loyalty - especially considering they were early in the game with the Leaf and Prius. Too late now.

And as you pointed out, tesla is now building at a rate of about 5000 EV’s PER DAY, and all of those customers came from other brands.

Yeah they’ve got the early advantage, and the best charging network by far presently.

[1] We still have a 2001 Toyota van going to our son, $178k miles with no major issues because we took care of it. Of course $178k is easy with an EV so again that mechanical reliability advantage doesn’t matter anymore.

[JoeJunior]

I read last week about GM investing $854M in a new 5.5 liter V-8 engine. And I see Toyota in Huntsville is investing around $200 million in their engine factory and adding another 120 employees. They're obviously not giving up on gas engine vehicles.

Appears that GM and Toyota are walking the fence on EV's. If retail demand and government mandates go EV, they can swing that way. If reality and customer demand go against government mandates, they can swing back to gas/hybrids.

The rest of the auto industry is borrowing heavily (mortgaging their companies) to build new EV factories and battery factories--simply a big gamble. Within 4 hours of me, GM, Ford and Mercedes are spending in excess of $20 billion. Hyundai is spending another $5 billion in Savannah on new EV and battery factories. And that's for batteries where the technology hasn't even been invented or discovered.

Ford's Blue Oval City 40 miles east of Memphis will soon have 11,000 workers on hand--none of which live close by. The logistics of moving the building supplies like cement and gravel to there is simply beyond belief. And this is at a time when the rest of Ford is suffering from supply chain issues, inefficient (too many) engineers and 2022 losses in the $ billions.

I see Lexus going 100% EV's. And Toyota brand is pushing Hybrids because they're so danged dependable, get great fuel mileage and they've got the engineering down pat. So far, Toyota's at well over 1.5 million hybrids in sales with the natural resources that would have only built 350K EV's.

It appears that to sell EV's, dealers must retrain substantially, invest in parts and invest in charging stations. Tiny dealers will have to spend $300K. Big city dealerships will require $ millions in order to sell EV's. Forget buying an EV at $100 over invoice. They've got to make a Return on Equity on their investment. I'd hate to be a dealer chain like AutoNation or Rick Hendricks and have to come up with $100 to $200 million in order to remain in business. Money doesn't come from thin air.

I was in the automotive industry for 24 years. To me, it looks like a great time for any dealer over 50 years old to hang it up, sell out and go to the house.

[propchef]

Originally Posted by DrivingDan

I think another interesting transition we’re going through is not just electrification but the shakeup of automotive brand loyalty. For example all Tesla owners came from other brands, and some of them plan on sticking with them. Which may be hard in the long term as Tesla will likely never have the broad portfolio of other automakers. It’s a problem now - their cars are old and looking dated (I’ve seen them on the road for the last decade). But they have a design identity that will be hard to expand on I think. Basically they’ve got the Model-T mindset - sell the same car in different prices. But 100 years of car buying tells us people like variety and change.

For me, we were always Japanese ICE. But when the Chevy Bolt was announced we got one of the first in 2017. Reason being it was the first ‘enough range’ EV’s at a good price (after incentives $30k for fully loaded). And like many EV owners we’re never going back, after five years have had minimal service (tires, a door sensor that wasn’t happy, and a traction battery under warranty which was a gift of an even greater range.) After studying the various OEM’s I decided to stay with GM/Chevy from now on. They’ve got the portfolio, technology and roadmap I like.

But this is the first American car I owned. Likewise, since Japan automotive has really missed the EV boat (none of them expected the transition to happen this soon), their fans will start to look elsewhere when all of their friends are buying EV’s.

Fords managed to cobble together enough EV’s to keep their customers in the game. They don’t have an architecture - they just realized there’s a mile of extra wiring harness in the EV Mustang that isn’t needed, but hey most customers don’t care about the engineering. Personally I wouldn’t get a Ford EV - they’re playing catchup and are making mistakes, but many are loyal to a fault.

Mercedes and luxury European brands don’t have the advantage anymore when a pedestrian EV is as quiet and fast as an ICE luxury vehicle. And plenty of others are looking more enticing - Cadillac, Tesla and more. I’d love a Lyric, or if I won the lottery would get a Celestiq and design my own car.

Basically it’s a toss up to get new customers - while Ford has pushed EV’s out the door as fast as they could, GM is playing the long game to get the bulk of the automotive buying public and so are going at it deliberately. I think Chinese automotive will own Europe - VW can’t seem to get it right, and Japan unfortunately hasn’t even started. To me it seems the main players will be GM (and Ford), China, and the others (Tesla, VW, BMW, … Rivian, etc)

BMW just announced their mid-cycle updates for the X5 G05 SUV models. It includes a brand new ICE/mild hybrid V8 twin-scroll turbo engine for the X5M and the newly designated X5 60i (replacing the 50i). The X7 will be getting some more hybrid updates but nothing about full EV status for either. BMW has the iX for that (I hate the interior on these!)

BMW and Merc have always done a million variations on a theme when introducing new models so it will be interesting to see where it all settles out in a few years.

BTW, the new BMW M3 Touring is hideous. Wonder how long it will be before we see a 100% ev M version. Will they pipe in engine noise?

[Joe Ogiba]

[radar]

Lol . Sometimes life just comes back to bite you in the a$$. .

[DrivingDan]

Originally Posted by JoeJunior

I read last week about GM investing $854M in a new 5.5 liter V-8 engine. And I see Toyota in Huntsville is investing around $200 million in their engine factory and adding another 120 employees. They're obviously not giving up on gas engine vehicles.

Yeah it’s the bread and butter paying for the new EV investment. Pretty standard, I worked in the cash cow part of a corporation which paid for a different high capital cost startup part. Once that got big and profitable they spun us off as the old boring stuff (actually it was great as we now were under our own control )

I was in the automotive industry for 24 years. To me, it looks like a great time for any dealer over 50 years old to hang it up, sell out and go to the house.

Yeah I don’t know how dealers will survive long term, GM and Ford have unveiled an online price model of buying.

As for converting to EV’s I think it’s a done deal now. The only consumer resistance is to change, a common occurrence is once they drive an EV people fall in love, whether for the no maintenance no gas station, quiet ride or performance torque and power. For various reasons ultimately having to do with quality of life regulators have set deadlines, and the OEM’s either have no choice (they’re losing market while EV OEMs keep gaining) or they have embraced it (because ultimately it’s more profitable). Heck Jay Leno said it, we’ll all be driving electric because they’re better - he likes fast cars and that means electric. His daily is a Tesla.

[Winterbagoal]

Latest Winnebago eRV2 prototype - it's a Ford Transit based EV - estimated range ~ 100 miles. However, it will let you boondock for up to 7 days.