I just earlier this week decided it's probably my next car.

I hate being beholden to anyone for anything. I hate monthly bills of any type if I can avoid them, especially when I have no choice in the matter. I am concerned about the future of the planet, but realize that as one person, I really can't change much.

Having said that, our house uses a bunch of electric in the winter because the third level is electric heat. I was looking into putting a boiler in, running pipes and all that fun stuff. Quite the cost.

And I hate the electric company. I don't have a choice in who delivers my electricity, how it's, generated, or what it costs. And, I have to pay them every month.

To install solar just on the roof of my garage looks like it will allow me to not have to do the boiler, and will make it so the electric company has to pay me each month. Including those, from the estimates I have so far (and people are coming next week to help, and I have people with expertise where I might just do it myself), it appears I can be in the green on a solar panel on the garage within four years.

Solar has come down so far in price, and there are actually tons of breakthroughs happening in it right now. I'll stay on the grid until the batteries come down enough, and then I'll never have to pay the stupid electric company again.

If you live in a sunny place, I'd check into solar, as it has gotten a lot cheaper just in the past year even.

As for the Model 3, my whole hatred of paying for things with little choice... Well, gas falls into that same category for me. Yes, I can decide between Exxon, BP or Shell or whatever, but their prices are all basically the same. After I get solar up and running, $35k for a car with far less moving parts that I don't need to stop at places to buy stuff? I'm in. Saves me a ton of time, and let's me control what I want to.

Finally, I wasn't positive about them because I love car trips. The superchargers are actually perfect. You don't use them in town, because you just use your own house. When on a trip, for every four hours you drive, you need to stop for 40 minutes or so. With a family, that's perfect for us to eat and whatnot.

I like the freedom from being told that I have to do anything by anyone. It's served me very well so far - I don't have a high paying job, yet own pinball machines because I eliminate things I am forced to pay for and have a lot of free cash flow every month. This is the logical next step

(Oh, and I'd be all for a Leaf or a Bolt or whatever other car if they had the Supercharger network set up. The thing about Musk is that he sees the whole picture - both the chicken and the egg - and has figured out how to help create the market of demand because of that. I study a lot of business stuff, and I'm not sure we've ever had an entrepreneur who seems to understand how to create an entire new market from the ground up like this. It's rather incredible.)

Nope, that's before any tax breaks.

If I put 300,000 miles on a car, and the choice is to replace the battery on it for $12,000 and drive it another 300,000, I already know what I would do.

Additionally, even if I drive it an insane amount, we're talking about replacing it ten years after you get it. In my prior gas cars, when I drive them long enough parts start drying up and the price actually seems to go up to keep them going - my prior car, before I got rid of it, needed a part that because it had gone out of production would have cost more than the value of the car, and the other option was to salvage one and hope it didn't have the same problem for half the cost... still nearly the value of the car! In a car like this, assuming it's not rusting and falling apart, ten years later I could replace what is probably the most complex part and potentially use it for another 300k? And by then, it would probably improve the performance of the car?

Sign me up.

Completely serious here, how many regular cars go 300k to 500k? I've driven my cars into the ground, and I know others that have too, and 250k seems to be about it.

Is it really realistic that people are complaining that a Tesla's battery won't work as well at 500k miles? Just seems like a crazy number.

Call it the part most prone to failure outside normal wear and tear if that makes you feel better.

Just for the record, it's DeLorean.

And in many cases, those companies were fought greatly against by the bigger companies to stop them. There is a lot of very interesting and weird information about the DeLorean failure and what happened after they failed.

Tesla I think is different because their goal isn't to move into an existing market, it's to create an entire new market segment and control each piece of that system. In a few years if everything goes right, Tesla will allow you to buy a car, charge it at home with power from your shingles that may be stored in a Tesla battery for your house, drive it on long car rides and "gas up" quickly at Tesla Supercharger. That's incredible.

Allow me to just add this too - thanks to the rapidly declining cost of solar and the rise of the EV, companies like Tesla are giving consumers the ability to control our own energy.

I guess I'm one of the people who bob is now calling a "greenie" because I just signed to put solar on my house in Wisconsin earlier this week, and I've been researching EVs quite a bit lately and am thinking about getting a used Leaf until I can pick up a Tesla in a few years.

And I'll take the greenie label, but for another reason. Once my solar goes live, I won't owe my stupid energy company anything. Rate rise? Okay, I get it myself.

An EV is an extension of this. If I get a Leaf, not just do I not have to pay for gas at gas stations with prices I don't influence, but I also don't have to waste my time at gas stations fueling up. Just get home and plug in.

If I'm not generating enough power, I can add some solar panels and do it all myself.

For me, there is a definite carbon bonus in my move away from fossil fuels, but the reality of the situation is after I add solar (which, by the way, has an 8 year payoff) and get an EV, I will be saving at least $200 / month for energy (gas and electric).

As a lot of other industries have become decentralized, they have flourished. In the not too distant future, I expect the same thing to happen to the energy markets, and when it does it will be a win for everyone.

Here's the thing that I think that the news is missing with Tesla and it's valuation...

Tesla isn't a car company.

I mean, it is, but it is also an energy company and a energy storage company. If the Model 3 is a giant disaster for some reason - and I don't think that it will be - I think if investors remember they are everything else, they could weather that storm just fine. Tesla figuring out how to mount solar panels flush to existing roofs? That's a big win. Solar shingles? Another big win. The PowerWall being able to back up your house for a couple days at a time to make it possible to move completely off grid? Another big win.

They happen to also be a car company.

I feel like calling the people comparing their valuation to that of Ford and GM don't think about the rest of the picture. Tesla is more like if Ford owned Exxon together, but with the ability for each auto owner to drill for oil when they needed it once they get an initial set up.

If the Model 3 hits, the car company part of Tesla I think should be valued much higher... but the rest of what they did should be valued higher already because of how they can control the entire pipeline for someone. If that's the case, the valuation for Tesla has TONS of space to grow.

I think the SuperCharger thing will work itself out to do what Tesla had planned with them, and be there basically just for long distance.

The SuperCharger thing will be a problem only for those who don't have a place they can charge at regularly. I think I mentioned this before, but our family is seriously considering a used Leaf. It has a range of only about 100 miles, but we recently realized that the most anyone in our family goes on an average day is 40-50 miles, still more than enough for the car even if it's battery life goes down.

With that, we don't need to charge it other than plugging it in at home at night.

I think that the average Model 3 user will find the same thing - why spend 30 minutes supercharging when you can just plug in at night at home? And once the car starts catching on, businesses like hotels will realize that a charging port will help get them patrons, and they'll start putting them in. Apartments that have parking will realize that a portion of people will need charging to be able to consider moving in, and will start to build them. Those apartments that put them in will gain in visitors.

Parking spaces will realize they can charge a premium for the chargers and add them. The same story will happen again and again.

At the same time, I expect that adoption will start happening very quickly once people know someone who actually has an EV. The more that I've read about them, the more that the concerns that people have about them just haven't come true. Once that happens more and more, and people start being able to get electricity where ever they go, I think the market is going to very quickly shift.

Since my reply yesterday, I see that Tesla announced they will more than double superchargers in the United States by the end of the year.

Before this year, it was free Supercharging for the life of the car. Paid for by Tesla.

Free for the first ~1000 miles (paid for by Tesla), and then after that it is priced based on the state. Based on the fees in Wisconsin currently, it is $0.10 per minute at or below 60 kW, and $0.20 per minute after that. From what I can tell, it will take about 40 minutes to get to the 60 kW capacity, so it would cost about $4.00 to get it to 60 kW - if your battery is bigger.

From what I understand, a 60 kW Tesla goes about 175 or so miles on that charge.

In comparison, the car that I drive right now gets about 25 MPG. Going 175 miles costs me $16.73 in fuel costs.

It's not a huge price reduction (although I suppose a 75%+ reduction is a pretty huge price reduction), but when you combine that with a lack of oil changes and things like that, rough math that I did shows me today saving ~$1000 per year by switching to an electric vehicle. That price doesn't include things like it theoretically needing less work done to it (I just paid about $2400 in repairs for our two cars... argh) and time, which again for me, not having to ever stop at a gas station again and charging in my garage 90% of the time is worth more than the cash savings to me.

With any luck, I'm going to get some good job news later this week, and after I do, I'm seriously contemplating purchasing a used Leaf (my wife's car, after the bulk of that $2400, is already developing ANOTHER issue, I can get a used Leaf so cheap, it just seems like the right thing to do instead of dumping more into that thing), and then getting a Model 3 in a few years as our road trip car. We'll see, in a few years there will probably be a lot of options, but I do think the Model 3 is where I'll be at.

I can give these numbers with precision, as we bought a used Nissan Leaf recently for a whole host of reasons. The biggest reason, however, was the amount of money I was projecting we would save. Used Leaf cost $7600. And, before the argument, like a friend just had with me, that "proves" that it's a terrible investment, thanks to incentives in many states right now, new Leafs start at $13000 (even Wisconsin has a $10,000 dealer rebate for some reason). In that case, a four year old car that only loses a couple thousand bucks? Not bad.

Additionally, and I haven't run the numbers for this week yet, we save on average a touch above $20 per week on fuel compared to electric costs. Regular weeks, we're over $25 in savings.

That number does not factor in the cost for oil changes, transmission flushes, or a bunch of other stuff we don't have to do for it. At the end of the year, we'll save $1000+ in costs just for the fuel alone. Not to mention time too!

Exactly. My brother-in-law said that our Leaf was like owning a Smartphone that happened to be a car, and it's a great comparison point. You take it home, plug it in, and you're done. It's so much easier than our traditional cars.

Think about how fast Smart Phones caught on. I was a hold out on that, just because I didn't want the cost of buying one, and it was six years from the point when I didn't have it as an option at all to the point that I ended up with my first one. I expect electric cars will work near the same way, and I expect the Model 3 is the first step in that process.

Here's the other side of it too, unlike a lot of those other technologies that you named, electric car adoption will raise the price of everything else with traditional vehicles. Every additional EV on the road impacts gas demand. Gas won't have the ability to drop to a place cheap enough to encourage people to use it over the cost of an EV. Gas would have to be at about 50 cents a gallon before it would be cheaper to drive our gas car than our Leaf. Instead, you have gas stations that are selling less and less gas with other fixed prices, so they start to go away, resulting in less convenience to get gas for drivers. And again, no matter what, getting gas is less convenient than my plugging in at my house at the end of a day, so it has no way to win.

Auto driving cars play a huge role because when they take over, it could very easily be just as cheap to ride in a shared auto car than it would be to pay to drive a gas car (especially when factoring in for insurance and maintenance).

Eventually, there will be a tipping point where gas it going to need to start going up in price a lot to keep up. Once that happens, it's over.

Those that value Tesla high say that Tesla isn't a car company, it's a technology company. Comparing what will happen with traditional automakers or electric car manufacturers from 100+ years ago simply isn't a factor here.

It's only AAA right now, and I can tell you from having AAA as an insurer for many years now, at least in my minimal interactions with them, it always seems like they are winging it. I wouldn't be surprised if they are only insuring like 100 Teslas and have had a slightly higher than average issue rate with them, and used that as the basis.

Not to reply to my own thoughts... But, well...

This got me thinking... Another reason insurance companies of any type might try to stop Tesla's from looking attractive in the market is that if (really, when) autonomous driving tech catches on, what will that do to insurance company profits. If right now, in Beta, when using autonomous driving the car is already 40% safer than a human, what happens in five years or whenever adoption of autonomous vehicles becomes widespread?

If my car driving for me drives down insurance rates greatly, and / or if I don't really need a car because carsharing an autonomous car is so cheap why bother, then what happens to insurance company profits?

Oh, once that goes live, I expect the revolution to be ridiculously fast. It's estimated that the US only actually needs about 25 million cars to handle all the driving if people could auto share.

I went to the beach this last week Sunday. It was crazy busy, it was insane to find parking, and it was very stressful. Imagine instead, the car drops you off, then picks up the next group of people and leaves with them. It would be amazing. I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Auto ownership will crash. Auto insurance will crash. Parking lots won't be needed, or at least much less of them. Jobs fixing card would go down exponentially. It would be quite the revolution. I would hope that it would start us perhaps down two paths:

1) the need to do less work. Yeah, we've all got jobs, but if we can automate a huge chunk of our life and that automation is exponentially cheaper than it was when we did it ourselves, why not? Renewable energy (where once it's up, it just does its thing for a long time without needing people to shovel or transport fuels) and self driving cars will eliminate the need for tens of thousands of jobs, but save everyone tons. If we can turn that into a 30 hour work week or somethint and still end up with the same level of services, man... I know a million people with jobs and kids that would practically kill for that...

2) the ability to do our own thing. After 18 years of running my own side business (retro video game resale), we have finally grown the company to the point that I am going to try to do it basically half time next year and think about going full time in the future. An extra ten hours? I could pursue a lot more of my own stuff.

If we're not crazy about it, sounds like freedom to me.

They do. In fact, the world wants them so much that they are starting delivery of this one six months earlier than originally planned, and have thousands of in house preorders that are expected to be able to "bug test" the cars as production ramps.

I don't know of any other car companies that have 400,000+ preorders for a car that almost no one has sat in or driven, much less seen what the final price is. And for the record, they did that with zero commercials. You obviously heard of them, can you name the most recent mid sized sedan from the majority of the other auto makers? I sure as hell can't. That in itself in incredible.

And for the record, the whole screen in the middle thing, I had to take my old Nissan Sentra for a long drive this past weekend and I realized I check the center console of that thing more often than my speed. It shows the time over there, and I'm constantly curious about how long I've been stuck in the car, and so I check it pretty often. The center mounted model 3 console? If I get one, I'll be used to it in about five minutes.

I don't know what this has to do with anything.

There is a surprising amount of demand out there for electric cars, and it is growing as more people learn about how they actually work. A lot of people think, as some people in this thread do, that an electric car is like a cell phone, and after a year the battery is crap and you have to get rid of it and can't resell it. They point to the resale value of electric cars being so low and say see, there you have it! It's a fad!

Using the Leaf as a quick example, they did have troubles with their first two years (2011-12) and their batteries. They seemed to have fixed this for 2013. As a matter of fact, our 2013 Leaf which we bought used for $7600 has a battery that seems to be a bit of a unicorn - the car has gone 45000 miles so far, and it will have 80+ miles of range on it tomorrow. And that range is legit.

But wait! You bought a $30,000 car that was four years old for $7600! What TERRIBLE resale value! Except that in many states right now (including Wisconsin, which an energy company person pointed out to me actually tonight), you can buy a brand new Nissan Leaf for $13500 after rebates. $7500 tax rebate, $10,000 Energy Company rebate. When you look at it like that, the used Leaf retains a pretty decent amount of it's value...

AND I'll be the first person to tell you, the Leaf is NOT a practical long-range car, and we wouldn't have one if we didn't have a car that we could use for long drives! We had to take our gas cars on trips twice in the last two weeks because they were beyond our range. So, the Leaf is a nice commuter car for a married couple to save some cash with (gas cost saved in five weeks, *including* added electrical cost...$111.33.)

There was a survey just a few weeks ago that said that something like 30% of buyers in the market for a new car were planning to get an electric car next, and it was laughed off by someone from I think AutoTrader who said that they don't see that in their new car searches at all. Well, of course they don't. What realistic options are there?

Tesla is bringing to market a relatively affordable electric vehicle that ticks every box. I've argued before, the Tesla appeal is *all* about the SuperCharger network. I never considered an electric car until I saw that. The new Bolt car has a similar range, but if I'm driving to another state to go ride roller coasters or go to a pinball show, it would take me hours to charge that thing up halfway. No other company has a charging network half as fast as Tesla does, and they made the network so you can go place to place easily. A lot of stock trackers think that because the luxury market is following Tesla's lead and most models are going all electric that they will take over from the Model S because their interiors will be a degree or three nicer, but they don't take into account just how important this network is.

Beyond SuperChargers, the Model 3 is damn fine looking. The range is long enough to cover a decently long day of driving without charging. It has capacity for putting stuff in. People that have rode it says it has comfortable space in it. It has all the hardware needed to make it autonomous. When the day is over, you plug it in like a cell phone and never have to stop at a gas station.

Since we bought our Leaf, I have taken a lot of curious friends and family for rides in it. Almost no one feels they can commit to a Leaf - too short of a range. A lot are seriously interested in a Model 3 (or perhaps another electric car, my uncle was sending me information about the Ioniq EV after I got our Leaf saying he was seriously considering buying one of those next).

Electric vehicles offer some crazy improvements over traditional vehicles, but few companies are poised to get there quickly. Tesla is valued at so much in part because if the demand for the Model 3 isn't fake - and I will be absolutely stunned if it is - Tesla will have a HUGE advantage in that space for years to come.

The same thing happens in the Leaf. I've had about ten people ask to see under the hood because they are certain I must be wrong and it has a gas engine hiding in there. Then, there is this "wait, how often do you do oil changes? What about transmission, that's got to be more? What cooling system maintenance do you need? Where is the exhaust?

And again, the weird thing of Tesla being the only company that gets it comes up, even with this not being a Tesla. The range and charge speeds are asked about, and no one that needs it as a first car can do it. But they say if the range was around double and you could charge it in "less than 30 minutes" they'd be in.

I have about four people actively waiting to hear news of the Model 3 now because they want one. One friend in particular was going to trade in their car in a month or two, and is now planning on keeping it a year or two until he can get one of them.

I'll go as far as to say that our freaking Leaf has made me fall completely out of love with all gas cars in a matter of a few weeks. Today, I was driving my old car (Nissan Sentra) home and until the Leaf, I always thought it was a pretty darn good car, especially because I'm not a guy who is willing to get expensive cars. I forgot my audio cable, so I was listening to a podcast by having my cell phone play it. Volume was all the way up, and I was frustrated to not really be able to hear it as I drove home with the air conditioning on lightly.

My wife and I went in the Leaf on a date tonight. We needed the map app in Google. Exact same phone, volume was less than half and I could clearly hear it.

It's half this, but it's also half that, to quote Walt Disney, "It's kind of fun to do the impossible," and that is what he is doing with this company. I listened to the shareholder meeting yesterday (something I never do although I own a bunch of stock in other companies, but not Tesla...) and was fascinated by what he was hinting about the semi truck. I can't think of one time in my life that I've thought twice about semi trucks, but I had read about the Tesla semi after it's earlier announcement, and even recently a few articles about how it will be impossible to pull off what Tesla is saying for anywhere near a reasonable cost, and no one will want it.

And then Elon says it's not a secret, we developed it with the customers who will be buying it in mind, and now the only thing they are asking is how many can they buy right now.

If he's not lying, and I have no reason to think he is, then late September we are about to see them unveil something that the world says is impossible. And that attracts attention and interest. Hell, I plan on watching the reveal live. Of a freaking semi truck. Because I'm fascinated now to see if they will do the impossible.

It's about what their mission statement is - "to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy." If twenty companies start churning out affordable electric cars, it serves their mission statement. If more companies start manufacturing solar roofs that people want, it serves their mission statement.

The way they are building things out, they are in a position though that I don't see any other auto manufacturer touching them over the next five years. As I mentioned before, they have the completely underappreciated SuperCharger network, that makes their cars (and ONLY their cars) having charging that isn't a huge inconvenience. They have many more miles driven with auto-driving software tested and reported back to them than any other company. They have their own battery manufacturing plant to provide them with their own batteries at cost and don't have to rely on other companies for that.

They are happy to have people come and compete, but with few exceptions (the Workhorse Truck looks amazing, Tesla needs to accelerate their own truck plans... hmmm, I wonder if that is the hint for September?) they are so far ahead of what any of the competition is doing at this moment, it's going to be tough for them to keep up. And if demand grows even relatively significantly, it's going to spell big trouble for those auto manufacturers who haven't started working on tooling up for the change. Ford, in particular, I expect to be in big trouble. Hyundai I expect will become a big player and perhaps challenge Tesla in the upcoming years. VW likes to talk, but has had nothing come of it so far. GM has a couple decent products (Volt and Bolt), but doesn't seem to understand what consumers really want, nor do they seem to want to build either at a decent capacity... and, it seems their sales experience sucks just like Tesla said would happen with "traditional" dealers.

I don't know the S offhand, but the X is 5000 pounds with the right configuration of wheels. The thing I read said they work at about 70% of usual range like that. I assume the S is similar.

Also, the Supercharger thing, just like you did with your car, you can improve your mileage based on how you drive. Since the cars pay attention to what is left of the charge, if he is driving it better than the EPA rating, it'll charge "more miles" because of that.

I believe my Leaf is rated at 3.9 miles per kilowatt hour. It did that the first week we had it, when I was driving it like a dumb ass because the acceleration was fun and then would jam on the brakes. Now, we use the regenerative braking like it should be and I don't *always* chirp the tires, and when we aren't running heat and ac, we get 4.5 kwh, and when we do we get 4.1.

And the stopping all depends on what version you get. The latest rumors are the 3 will have a 50 kwh battery pack standard (which is the 215ish range) and an option for a 75 kwh one, which would theoretically get around 300 (it's not a straight line because it adds more weight).

Having said that, the 3 will have smaller battery packs than it's big brothers, so it should actually charge faster. If you get the 75 kwh 3 (if it's made), a 30 minute charge should give you at least 200 more miles of range.

As for the locations, it seems all Hampton Inns have added EV charging posts, one for a Tesla and one for a different type of EV like our Leaf. Free of you stay there. They don't charge as fast, but you don't need your car to charge at crazy speeds overnight anyway.

Oh, almost forgot:

Depending on what you get the S has a range of 315 miles. Superchargers are being added all over, but you'd have to figure out if it would work for the specific application you have. However, at 70 mph, I feel like stopping after approximately 4 hours of driving for a 30-40 minute break would be just fine, and then I could drive on. I'd need to eat anyway, and as I've gotten a bit older, I like to stop in even if it's a fast food joint and slow down than just drive on always.

Oh, and just because I'm fascinated by this, I ran the numbers on your trip. If gas was $2.29 like I saw it today, you bought $201.88 of it on the trip. If you're getting 4 miles per kwh instead, and assuming you're paying the utility rate of 14 cents per kwh (that's our rate, slightly inflated so this number is high... And it's worth noting that model S and X charge free at Superchargers if you have a referral code which is super easy to get, and free at hotels, so it's likely your trip is actually free... Anyway, the cost with that would be $96.25. You'd need a car that would average close to 65 mpg to be in a similar spot for costs. And the electric car won't need an oil change at the end of the trip.

The electric pick up is supposed to be coming. In the meantime, have you seen the Workhorse plug in hybrid pick up? 77 miles of battery range, and with built in outlets so you can plug in your tools no matter where you're working. It makes so much sense.

That will eventually happen. Tesla wasn't expecting demand to be nearly what it was. Turnaround for a Model S or X is like a week.

I don't know what it tows (considering Tesla's do the job just fine, I figure this will too) but the market for it is fleet trucks where the cost to own will be significantly cheaper and the gas engine will almost never come into use.

Here's an article if you're curious:

https://www.wired.com/2017/05/workhorse-group-w-15-electric-pickup-truck/

Yeah, this is a common misconception I have found. My fridge uses about 1 KWH per day, and is pretty power hungry. Assuming no power loss on my battery from just having it sit around, my Leaf's tiny battery would run my fridge for 24 days.

Okay, LONG post incoming, but I'm fascinated by all this stuff, and it is nice to have a conversation with some other people who appear to be too l)

I think that it's going to be something in between what the article says and your 2043 estimate. You're absolutely right that as humans, we often don't make a choice based on just being cheaper, we also make a choice based on a whole host of other factors that includes, perhaps at the top of it with something functional like a car, perceived convenience. A lot of people pay a bunch more for a SUV for instance to go off roading in that will go off asphalt like twice. Hell, I don't want to give up my gas car until I can afford a Tesla to go on long trips with, even though realistically at most I'm going to take it on at the most two or three long trips a year and could get by cheaper by renting a different car.

But the whole self driving car thing will make things so much more convenient that I do think it's going to take over far quicker than people expect. I play in a volleyball league at the beach near me and went there the past two Sundays. There are a ton of cars, parking is a huge pain and you end up like a mile away. I was thinking about how I would in an instant pay a few bucks to have a car drive me down, drop me off and drive away.

Then I started thinking about how many places I go to that you have to pay for parking at. Baseball stadium, basketball arena, local amusement park... All places I would rather not drive myself to, have no need to keep crap in my car, and would much rather have it pick me up near the location instead of walking a few miles to a place I can park for free, or having to pay more than what a ride would cost to park there (I think the cheapest of the three is $20 to park). I'll GLADLY pay a car $20 to drive me to the baseball stadium, drop me off in the taxi turnaround and then drive away... and then pick me up afterward. Heck, a lot of people I know do the same thing with Uber now, as they have found it's cheaper to use an Uber than to pay for parking.

I expect we'll see quite the change in the next few years. We're at one of those moments that happen often where the auto industry has for the most part decided not to innovate and change because it seems cheaper and safer not to. In a few years, if this continues, I fully expect we'll be discussing if it makes sense to bail out a bunch of the manufacturers (again) because of this. Most companies have no plans or just pay lip service to bringing EVs to the masses, yet the cost to build a comparable gas car to a comparable EV is supposed to be roughly the same as early as next year. The few companies doing a ton of work and research in this area stand to gain a LOT. Tesla has outspent everyone else in research by a huge magnitude and stands to really gain from it (which is only one of many reasons their stock is what is in my estimation). Hyundai and Nissan seem like they are really trying to up their game. Apple and Google may have something up their sleeves. The rest? They only do what they do to get past the emissions rules as best they can. And that may seriously impact how they can respond. Remember, they aren't set up to weather a 20% drop in sales easily. If EVs suddenly catch on - and to me, a TON of signs point to this happening - they're in big trouble.

As for gas cars leaving quicker, if EVs catch on massively, a lot of gas stations are going to end up with far less business. When that happens, they will start to close, making buying gas more difficult. With less gas purchased and a longer way to transport it, at first we'll see prices fall, but that won't overly affect demand because gas would have to become *ridiculously* cheap to compete with the price of running an EV (by my estimates, gas would need to cost about $0.60 per gallon to make running our Hyundai Tucson cheaper than our Leaf). When this happens, I expect the oil industry to start into a death spiral - gas will end up having to get more expensive to pay for the less of it we're using, and the more expensive it becomes the less people will want to use it versus hiring a car that will drive them around and be more convenient anyway.

For the adoption, I expect this will be quicker like what happened with SmartPhones than what happens with cars traditionally. SmartPhones came out, and I was one of the absolute last holdouts on getting one, having held onto my previous phone for about 7 years. When I took it to trade it in, the guys at the phone store were fascinated that I still had it. You couldn't even get a non-smart phone any more.

When it happens - it will happen quicker than I expect people are expecting, and it will dramatically change the way we live. I was thinking about it as I drove down a street the other day and noticed that about 1/4th of the businesses on a couple mile stretch would not be needed. It's going to be a very interesting future.

Once you drive it for a while, you might be surprised by how quickly your opinion changes. Let me put it this way - we got a Leaf (used for $7600, 84 mile range) and my wife and I like it so much more than our SUV and other gas car that my wife was trying to seriously justify taking it on a trip this week that would have e required 5 hours of charging.

I have been saying for years to buy myself a DeLorean, and this summer finally got to the threshold where I could have seriously considered it. Three days with the Leaf (the not cool, not awesome electric car) and I have no intention of ever buying a gas car again.

Oh, and to that person on the previous page doing the usual "fossil fuels are better because I saw this thing the oil industry put out", I can't seem to find it now but there is a map that compares carbon footprints and where I am in Wisconsin, I get something like the equivalent of 70 miles per "gallon" of carbon impact. And, as the grid gets cleaner, my car will emit less emissions.

That hasn't happened with my other cars.

But more than that, first, I can pay to charge my own car by putting solar on the roof... Which I did because Holy hell is that more affordable than paying the electric company for their power. And I sure as hell won't have more emission as I'm generating all that off my roof from the sun.

And second, fine - let's skip the environmental issue altogether. I have been tracking our Leaf very closely and as of today, 12 weeks in, have saved about $250 above what our SUV would have taken in gas. And I have no oil changes, transmission flushes, or much of anything to worry about there. I don't mind skipping the gas station every day, and it turns out the Leaf drives better than any other car we've owned.

Based on the reviews of the Model 3 that are out so far, it drives better than any car even close to it in the same price range. If you're going to get a decent car, I have no idea why you wouldn't check it out (unless you NEED one tomorrow...)

For the 3, at first I thought it would be weird, and then I realized that I almost never look at my instrument panel on the Leaf and often find myself glancing at the center console for information on my energy use just because I'm curious.

As for the 3 missing the other stuff like the vents, the front dash is supposed to be pulled forward giving you more space, which I'd love. The hidden vents make it seem way cooler to me anyway.

While some people have knocked the Model S for its interior, the fact it is absolutely dominant in its market segment. To me, that means something.

Oh yeah, and I should add... The Leaf may actually save me money in a different way. Since getting it, I've had basically nothing range anxiety, something I figured would happen relatively often. In fact, I drove it 77 miles away for a convention and back and getting near zero didn't phase me at all.

Because of that, I am pretty sure I'm just going to end up with a stock Model 3. I'm not positive I want the premium upgrade (although the roof thing seems cool, the windows are big and I can't imagine it's $5000 cool, the other features are Meh to me), I like black cars a lot - although the dark gray is my favorite, again I dont think it's $1000 my favorite), and the range... I've learned from the Leaf that even at 220 miles, if I drive for three hours, take a 30 minute break, and then drive for two more, that's just peachy by me.

The only reason I'm debating the battery is that when self driving get enabled, then I won't find the stops as refreshing and won't mind just driving.

What a weird, new, exciting thing to consider when getting a car.

To all owners out there now, do I understand Tesla correctly that you get a fast charger (obviously, without your house wiring) standard with it? That's a big bonus to me if so!

But they don't. That's the thing.

I would say the MB car is sort of like a nice case for your flip phone. Sure, it looks nice and all, but...

Once you get the MB, it is what it is. It never changes.

The Tesla, once you get it, it keeps getting better. Tesla engineers figure out a way to do something better, they work on it and suddenly one morning your car has a new skill. Just as a for instance, they have revised the Ludicrous launches for be faster at least once.

A flip phone versus an iPhone is actually a perfect comparison. Once you got the flip phone, it was what it was. Never once before I got a smartphone did my phone get better as I used it. More than once with my smartphones, they have been updated. And I can pick and choose how they operate better.

If you are just looking to sit on a nice chair, or in a nice space, you will guaranteed be happier with something that isn't a Tesla. For the rest of it, a lot of people just find the drive of the electric cars to be significantly better. For me, that's what I care more about.

I wasn't a "EV deciple" at all, simply someone who needed a car and wanted it to be affordable. I was totally agnostic on it.

Drive one for a while and you'll see the difference. An EV doesn't have good performance and technology, it has mindblowingly better performance and technology than everything else.

I'm a convert because the driving experience on our Leaf is better than the driving experience I've ever had on another car, full stop. Admittedly, I don't go for crazy awesome cars, but I've driven others at a higher price point and would have never paid for the difference. For the EV improvement, it's worth it, at least to me.

For your first, I know the car has it, but do you get the NEMA plug that adds about 25 miles per hour? You only get a trickle charger with the Leaf, and while that is good enough for it usually, being able to plug in to the same fast charging outlet would be a bonus.

And yes, we both have fallen in love with the EV experience, no matter who the maker is. There is no way either of us will ever buy an ICE car again, and that has everything to do with much much better everything is.

Sorry for three replies in a row, my phone doesn't let me easily edit things together.

I think most people are realistic about the rebate. If it runs out and is timed right, Tesla could hit the limit in January. Then, it keeps going for the rest of that quarter and the next, meaning it wouldn't decrease until July, at which point it would go to half. It would be half for the rest of the year, and then be two quarters of half that.

I have a hunch the first halving won't matter much, and the second drop will be timed for either a price drop in the car, or an upgrade to it for the same price. They have done this with increments upgrades for the S and X in the past.

I think this car competes at 35k with no rebates with any other car at that level.

I'm a "small minority" right now I think in large part because people haven't had the chance to drive in an electric car, or are unwilling to consider it for some reason. That's the person who I was until we had major issues with both our cars at the same time, were looking for something to go around the city with, and found the Leaf as an option.

I don't actually care what some car guys think, the things that I really enjoy about the Leaf would not be changed in any other gas car period. For me, it comes down to the acceleration model, and the linear-ness of the actual drive. Driving the Leaf feels like I'm riding a relatively slow launched roller coaster, and I know exactly how the car will respond to whatever my next move it. I have never, ever driven in a gas car that has done either of those things.

And, quite frankly, I feel like the interior of a car is a silly thing to spend a ton of money on.

You're terribly wrong here on a number of things...

- The whole "no one would ever buy one" argument is sort of true, but not exactly. The government subsidized their development a bit because they want them to catch on for their environmental perks. Just like the government subsidizes fossil fuel companies and lots of other stupid stuff - hell, my state just announced we are handing out $3bn a year for Foxconn to create some jobs here. The Foxconn "deal" is TWICE as much as *all* of the rebate money Tesla customers will get from their first 200,000 cars sold. Oh, and again - That's Tesla's customers, the Foxconn deal goes directly to that company.
- Tesla isn't selling cars at huge losses. They actually earlier today announced the X would come down by $3,000 on their base model because they are making enough on it to do so. Tesla has multiple times said that their cars make 20-25% margins. I read somewhere a review that said that the Model S is now making something like 50% margins on it... But, what you and it seems most analysts forget is that Tesla isn't just building a car. They are also at the same time building more and more cars, while also building the infrastructure for them all. It would be like Ford making a car that runs on a new type of gas, and then installing gas stations worldwide as they did it. They also are building the largest battery factory in the world for things that aren't just cars. They are making money on the cars - and probably the ONLY automaker that is currently doing it.
- No one gets $7500 off sticker. They get $7500 back in a tax rebate, which is different.

Okay, for the first point - sure! I like the non-drama of never changing the oil, flushing the transmission, or buying gas. That right there should put it up as something that is interesting for people.

As for why they are cheap, it's a few different things, which unless you actually research the car you wouldn't know, and since I know you aren't actually in the market for one, in short...

The first two model years had crap for batteries, and Nissan did a bad job responding to that. Nissan dealerships and used car dealers suck at knowing what they are talking about with them, since they don't come back for service they don't really care. The place where we bought our Leaf, it was rather clear to me I knew way more about the Leaf than they did from some Googling and reading on it. Hard to sell a car when you don't really know what's going on with it. Since people are allowed to draw their own conclusions, they think the batteries on them all must be terrible, and therefore it drops their value. I had one person tell me the battery on one lasts three years like a cell phone - our battery is four years old with almost no degradation so far. Finally, people avoid them because of that government incentive you noted before - the used price seems to drop really fast, but when you take out the incentive, it doesn't seem like much. Right now, thanks to two different incentives you can get a brand new Leaf in my state for $17,500 off the sticker price, or about $13,000 brand new - and it has a longer range. So, when you're comparing a four year old Leaf car for $7600, it means it is only $5,000 less than a new one, and the new one has a bit more range...

To flip this, how many people do you know have ever driven one? The range worries a lot of people, and in truth if we didn't have two other cars right now we wouldn't have got it either. But, it's amazing how much that short range does and how much better it drives than anything else I've driven, like I said before. For me, it's convinced me the base Model 3 would be more than enough range for me even for long-range trips.

Well - right. And if I didn't make this clear above, this is the thing that I think Nissan got terribly wrong with this thing - while 84 miles is MORE than enough to cover almost everyone's day-to-day driving, few people want a car that they feel can *only* cover their day-to-day driving. Thus, the bunch of incentives to move them and lack of knowledge of them by "normal" people. But I can tell you multiple people who have checked it out have told me they are amazed by it and now want one. I know of at least three people with Model 3 orders thanks to how much they liked the Leaf, but needing / wanting to have a car that can do the long range thing. Which again, the margin's on the cars pay for the Supercharging network that no one else has.

And again, I was never saying that it isn't up to personal taste, it most definitely is, and every different car has it's own advantages, but compared to everything else... our old cars absolutely "feel" like dinosaurs compared to the near silent ride the Leaf gives us, and I can't wait to see what a few steps up are when we get a Model 3.

Again, this. This is what I am so fascinated by the other companies apparently not seeing at all.

Chevy talked about how they would come out with the Bolt and it would be the "Tesla killer" because it would come out sooner than the Model 3 and would have as good of a range. And from what I've heard, it's a fine car. Their dealerships don't know how the hell to sell them - you can read stories about them actively steering people away from them - and the fact is without Supercharging, it's a Nissan Leaf with twice the range. Which, as my last post noted, I love our Leaf, but it's also at more than twice the price based on incentives, and... what?

Everyone is sitting there saying that the electric cars will happen when the infrastructure is there, and Tesla is the only one saying fine and just making the infrastructure. The other companies are now starting to scramble to figure out how to make the change.

Some group did a tear down of the Bolt and said that it probably cost Chevy around $40,000 for each they made I believe it was. They projected the Model 3 would need to sell for like $40,000 to break even because of it. Yet Tesla has said that their margin on the car will be 20% right away. That's a $13,000ish advantage on EVERY car made. That's HUGE.

Exactly. I'm particularly fascinated to see the Semi that is getting unveiled next month. They revealed the image of it, and everyone said it was impossible, and on one of the investor calls Musk basically said, "Yeah some people said it is impossible... you should just show up for that event."

If they pull off heavy trucking, and again based on the comments they have said about people lined up to buy them, they will again be doing something everyone else is currently saying is impossible. And that takes a LOT of time to catch up with.

I don't think that Tesla is going to take out even the majority of other companies, but I definitely believe that within the next ten years some big automaker will have gone down hard and no one will be able to believe it. The problem they have is that the technology for those companies hasn't been at the point they can exploit it for profit, so their shareholders don't want to risk jumping into a change and betting wrong. Doing so risks them jumping late, or trying to change.

History is littered with things like that as you mentioned, and I expect it here too. The Model 3 will accelerate a couple other companies to step up and perhaps even advertise their cars. People will actually ride in one or see them around. That will spark more interest and further sales.

At the same time, every car that isn't paying for gas now diminishes returns there too. The news media seemed to do this odd thing when the 3 launched saying that it was "fighting for the 1% of car sales that are electric." But it's not - If it was, it would be fighting for less than half of the current reservations in a year. If they sell all 500,000 in a single year, that would be about 3% alone of the cars made for the year. Add the 1% of current sales, and we're at 4% of car sales for a year...

Moving that number of cars will start to put pressure on gas companies pretty quickly, especially if EVs gain any further sales as other companies start dipping their toes in more seriously - and the new Leaf and the Bolt are both good options, even if I think the Bolt is limited... the Leaf is rumored to have Supercharging capacity so... who knows? In a couple more years, add the Model Y sales to that, as well as the fact that a lot of fleet vehicles will go electric, and I expect we're going to see a peaking of oil demand quicker than most companies anticipate.

In 2016, Shell said that they think that oil demand could peak within 5 to 15 years. They more recently have guessed that it would be in the "late 2020s"... but think about how crazy that is to think of, and what that could mean in the way of a seismic shift.

Oh, and so far, ALL of the fossil fuel predictions have been way late.

You honestly sound like the people who have shorted Tesla stock and have been saying Tesla is doomed for the past five years. Their point has always been that the big automakers don't see any danger in Tesla because if the EV thing catches on, they'll just make a better one and end it.

Now, you've wanted facts, let's take a look:

Chevy made a Tesla Model 3 "killer." It's called the Bolt. It's out right now in most states. The base model gets more than the Model 3's base model range. So, it should be selling like gangbusters and destroying the market for the Model 3, right?

But it's not, because of a whole host of factors. One fact, Chevy probably is losing money on each one sold, so they have little reason to make more than what they need to get their compliance car credits for it. As a matter of fact, Musk tweeted about that a while ago and predicted nearly perfectly how many they would sell.

Secondly, Chevy has to deal with it's dealership network. Which is a huge negative because those people don't understand how to sell an electric car, and don't want to tell you that they will probably never see you for service again once they do. It's easier to sell a car that is a bit cheaper and then service is constantly (and yes, oil changes alone to me is a "constant" service charge) for them than when the service is at high profitability and the vehicles aren't. There is a Tesla ride service called Tesloop, they have a Model S with more than 200,000 miles on it now. Only 6% battery degradation, and the only needed maintenance so far has been new tires - not even batteries thanks to regenerative braking.

Third, the larger the car company, the bigger that a downturn in sales can be. We saw this before when all of the US automakers were suddenly declaring bankruptcy about eight years ago. If Tesla takes a 5% US market position in the next year or two, something that I think is relatively possible, those sales would come from somewhere. Although they have strong cash positions, a 5% sales loss would be a major blow to their bottom lines, and no one knows how to burn cash as good as the auto industry seems to.

Fourth, you keep saying that the battery making isn't a big deal and anyone can do it. I'm about to get mathy, but its interesting if you come along for the ride... GM said they were getting $145 per kwh for their batteries for the Bolt. That doesn't include the making of the battery housing, which I have seen figures for but considering that GM is charging over $15k for their replacement batteries (which is incredible because it puts it at a higher kwh to replace than the Leaf was three years ago), let's assume it's $200ish. 60 kwh at that price would be a $12,000 battery for the Bolt. (And then we add a 20% profit margin to that because that is what traditional automakers like to do, and we come up with Chevy's replacement cost.)

Now, let's assume that Tesla because of their battery factory being in house achieves a 20% further price reduction (they claim it will be 35%). This sounds realistic because they have also said the battery packs for model S all in are under $190. So, at $160 / kwh, their battery would only cost $9,600 for the same thing, a savings of $2400 from Chevy.

Except wait! Because Tesla designed their car better, to get almost the same range, the Tesla only needs a 50 kwh battery (which was recently confirmed, the standard is 50 kwh). So at this point, Tesla is paying $8,000 for the same thing that is costing Chevy $12,000.

Let's pretend that Tesla gets the 35% battery price reduction they claim. Now Tesla's 50 kwh battery pack costs about $6,500, or about *half* of what the GM one costs. Taking that into account, if Tesla sells 500,000 cars like they hope to next year, and if Chevy were to ramp up to produce the same number of Bolts, the difference in battery cost is $2.75bn.

Oh, and LG who supplies the batteries for the Bolt apparently told an auto industry person that their battery packs are more than $100 cheaper than any other ones they supply. Which, if trues, means that there isn't a ton of savings coming for GM or others. And, why should LG care? They can make a bunch of money off this since no one else put their money into EVs.

If we follow Tesla's estimates, and they sell 500,000 the next two years and 1 million cars in 2020, to keep anything resembling cost parity, if GM is to equal cars sold in the EV world, GM will have burned $11bn on the higher price of batteries.

So, great - GM has $24bn cash on the books. Equaling the amount of EVs that Tesla makes through 2022 (*BEFORE* Porshe plans to make half their line up electric!) would completely burn *all* of GMs cash reserves to compete. It doesn't include any design costs or anything like that.

Before you say, "but wait, they can just make a battery factory!", the stock market is a huge issue here. If they go to their stock holders and say they need to invest $5bn to make a battery factory like Tesla's (which is the estimated cost of the Gigafactory), you'd still have the massive cash burn by GM for two years as the factory is built. Looking at this, absolutely minimally, GM's battery production is minimally a $10.5bn disadvantage *right now*.

Conversely, GM can just say, "Oh hey, we'll just keep manufacturing ICE cars until the market takes off, then use our $10.5bn to shift", they lose out on sales and keep moving further back in production capability. For every 3% that GM loses, that's $1bn per quarter in lost revenues. Right now, a 6% loss in sales (without offsetting cuts, which would be hard to make in such a large company but would represent a non-neglible savings) would make GM burn as much as they make.

So, the billions of dollars thing sounds nice, but if the market contracts by 3% (which it is doing) and if Tesla steals 3% of their sales with their new EVs, GM would quickly start running out of money.

Fifth... this isn't the only potential issue. Tesla has a whole plan for the ride sharing thing and they are the furthest ahead in the self driving car business. Let's say that in 2021, Tesla is able to turn on their ride sharing program, and it's as amazing and disruptive as some believe. Ownership of a car is suddenly significantly more expensive than hailing a Tesla ride sharing program. In fact, it's a similar price to driving your gas car... accounting only for gas. A ton of millennials and the younger generation realize that compared to the price for parking, maintaining, fueling, buying and insuring a large machine that just sits around for 90%+ of it's life, they might as well do this which is also more relaxing to ride in.

It's believed that when this happens, each one self driving car will replace 3-4 "conventional" cars. By then, Tesla will already have 3 million plus cars that could instantly be turned into a taxi service. Let's say that one in three of them become taxis. That creates a HUGE network immediately, and would dramatically and drastically lower the rate of people wanting to buy new cars.

Finally, the SuperCharger network, which all by itself is perhaps the biggest reason why Tesla's are already so much more desirable than the Bolt is. Again, this would take a few years to build, a lot of money to build, and would leave Tesla with a huge advantage for the next few years while it happens. The above math all pretends that the SuperChargers don't really matter, and for the end consumer, they perhaps matter the most.

So... If anyone out there wants to say that Tesla has no advantage and wants to go buy a big short position on it or whatever, go ahead - but be warned that I think that investors understand exactly where Tesla is in their development right now, and just what a massive, massive advantage they actually have.

Tesla has partnered with bigger companies. Toyota had a bunch of stock in them. They just aren't as interested because it means making an expensive change.

The auto industry is fascinating. There was a book I read about twenty years ago called "Comeback" about how the auto industry does well and then sits on their hands thinking that everything will be great forever, until suddenly it's upended by another innovation. None of then feel they need to do what Tesla is doing, and now with Tesla leading the way forward for this technology, why should they team up?

A couple days ago, Volkswagen said that their number one competitor now was Tesla. That's nuts.

As for buying a different car, I'd give you the same advice I've given a number of people recently... If you must get a new car, this may be the best time to lease a car ever. In a couple years, a lot more of what the future will be will be figured out, and I for one wouldn't want to toss a ton of money into owning a traditional gas car at this exact moment.

Oil keeps projecting they are going up forever, although Shell has warned that they expect things to peak in the next "5 to 15 years" (although they recently revised that to be "more than 10 years".) I actually wonder if we've already got there or close to it - they keep revising how much oil is being produced down and down because the prices don't change, and then they say that the reason prices don't change is because they are making so much. So, if demand hasn't peaked, why are we producing less and having gas prices stay the same - that I don't get. (And I'm saying gas prices per barrel, not like a "my local Citgo is always $2.29 or less!" gas prices, although that's true too.)

Anyway, I would personally divest soon if I were in that situation simply because once things have peaked, oil has basically no options to "come back." I mean, I know no one who loves going and buying gas. Do you? Someone who would rather stick $20 or $40 or whatever into the station to drive around for a week than use that money to go out to eat, or buy a video game, or whatever?

When gas prices dropped a lot, people said it would result in a lot more use - but with the exception of car trips, what are you really going to do more of? Oh, hey! Gas is at $2 a gallon! Might as well take the 40 mile route to work instead of the 20 one, I would rather be in my car another 30 minutes! That just doesn't make sense.

The potential of future electric cars makes the problem even worse. The cost of generating electricity is cheap, and that industry faces it's own problems with raising them too much (namely that if they do, using a battery backed up solar array in a few years will be cheaper than they are). Oil companies can't drop the price of gas to compete with the cost of electricity. To do so, according to the meticulous notes I've taken on my Leaf so far because I simply can't believe how much we're saving, to make the car (similar sized) that we were using cost competitive with the Leaf, gas would need to drop by more than 70% from today's prices.

And that *doesn't* include the fact that I don't need to maintain my car with oil changes, nor spend the time driving to gas stations.

Gas *can't* drop that low and still be a commodity that makes any sense to make. And when they drop prices, it won't raise demand. But, raising gas prices will only increase the price disparity between electric cars and gas mobiles.

In the next couple years, before things really accelerate and people understand, owning oil company stock probably won't be terrible. But, we're already starting to see the changes.

Remember Keystone XL? It's that huge pipe that goes from Canada to the US that Obama didn't want, but Trump immediately signed for and it's being made right now (with US steel but maybe not US steel, but that's a whole different deal...)? Except it's NOT being made right now. And not just because of regulatory approval but because the company that proposed doing it doesn't have customers that they expect will want to use it. If you don't believe this, here's a right wing media site (which includes other such articles like, "Green pressure campaign against banks is imperiling our energy infrastructure" discussing how stupid it is for banks to not be funding pipelines) with the story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/keystone-xl-pipeline-may-not-be-built-after-all/article/2630066

So yeah, gas isn't exactly a market I'd be in for. I expect once it starts to be similar to the sudden fall of coal, which lost 90%+ of their market cap value between April 2011 and April 2016.

When you transition to a different fuel that is better and cheaper, it leaves little room for the last market to do much of anything.

Sorry for three posts in a row, different parts of the topic, so I'm replying to different bits and keeping each topic as it's own post.

Right. Anyone could build one car. Hell, I could build one car. But tooling up to build them in bulk it interesting, and Nissan (who just announced they SOLD their battery plant today!) is a fascinating case study. The CEO is fully behind it, but their dealership network is not. In the Milwaukee area, I was told only one place services the Leaf, and since everything is proprietary if it breaks, you can't go to a secondary place.

I randomly asked about the new Leaf when I was there and the people didn't know much. I asked how much range the current model had, and they *weren't sure*. I was instructed to look at the pamphlet.

And this is the automaker who is *behind* their EV, and the best selling non-Tesla EV model. The experience taught me that Musk's "I don't want to use the auto dealer network because they won't get it" approach is exactly on point.

Actually, interestingly here... The next Leaf is rumored to have been pictured with a max of only about 160 miles of range, which is interesting. I'd still compare it to the entry model (pricing wise), but if that's the case, it's a problem. On the flip side, apparently at least in Europe, Nissan is creating a Supercharger network! "... Nissan has reported partnering with French charging infrastructure company DBT to roll out superfast (150 kW) charging stations throughout Europe. Yay! Another contender is joining the race!"

Article: https://cleantechnica.com/2017/07/03/nissan-superfast-charging-plan-new-leaf-seems/

I feel like Nissan gets it, but everything about this still shows how a "traditional" automaker moves at a snail's pace on this sort of transition.

Also, just a note, current Leaf's get over 100 miles per charge. They did up it a year or so ago.

Nope. I have yet to be in one, but I really want to. For me, it's simple - I *love* roller coasters. And I *love* launched roller coasters. The feeling of acceleration is amazing, and nothing has come close for me. So I did the math and realized a Ludicrous Model S would accelerate faster than any roller coaster I've ever rode with the exception of ONE (Top Thrill Dragster, there are a few more that accelerate faster than a Model S, but I haven't yet been on them). And I could have that feeling EVERY time I got on the Freeway?! Legally?!

Yeah, roller coaster acceleration makes me want an EV card too. And the Leaf, with it's "not quite as awesome as nearly any launched coaster I've been on" acceleration makes me love it.

And yes, I accelerate from 0-30 pedal to the metal pretty much every time. And, our car gets better than the EPA rated mileage when I do it.

I couldn't believe the math before we bought the Leaf. We got it because I had just spent about $3,000 to repair our two gas mobiles, and they are both of the age (13 and 10 years old) where we were expecting to need to do more. Of all the repairs, only one - new tires - would have been done on the Leaf. Now, it could be other stuff will break, but I'm positive we won't have a big exhaust issue for instance.

Regardless, we figured we would buy the Leaf and since used Leafs are being exported for overseas sales a lot, their used price has been holding pretty darn steady, so if we drove it for a few months and didn't like it or it wasn't saving money, we'd sell it and recoup most of our cost. I started the math immediately. This is comparing the 2004 Hyundai Tucson that has been sitting as a "hauler" pretty much exclusively to the 2013 Leaf. I have been estimating the Tucson to get 18 mpg from city mileage, which the car was used almost exclusively for. That, according to what I calculated, is also high - it was really getting about 15 mpg. Considering my 2007 Nissan Sentra self-reports it's city mileage at about 18 but the EPA estimate was 29 (HA!), I figure I'd rather take "best case scenario for the gasmobile". I also have estimated our electric rates to be about a cent higher than they are.

We bought the car on 4/29 with 43330 miles on it.

Three months later, on 7/29 we had 46369 miles on it. Every single week in between, I calculated the "mileage" the Leaf got (it calculates it's miles per kwh automatically) and then figured out what the same price would be with the current price of gas, usually $2.19 here (high of $2.29, low was $2.09). Our current savings for gas is $275.48. This number includes 12 days of us not using it at all due to vacations. If nothing changes, over a year, we will have saved $1101.92.

Oh, and since we have driven over 3000 miles, the Tucson would have needed an oil change. Understanding that you can get oil changes cheaper, but for our purposes the cost to get it done when our schedules allow (after 5pm) it's $35ish here, usually a bit more. So, add four oil changes, my yearly savings will be about $1241.92.

This also doesn't include two other things, which are related for me - first, the EV findings came after I decided to stick solar panels on the roof because they will pay themselves back in under 8 years. So, my electricity costs if we extrapolate that out to 30 years are even cheaper. Secondly, thanks to doing some Kill-a-watt-ing about the same time, we found some HUGE energy sucks that we unplugged... and managed to save the same cost as the electricity to run the car *not* including the solar.

There is NO way replacing some old lights with LEDs or unplugging some random stuff we don't use could ever reduce the amount of gas I'd need, nor could I ever drill for, extract, refine and use my own oil. The fact I can more or less do that with my car now thanks to a solar array on the roof? Holy hell is that freeing. If gas prices ever go up again, my old cars are stuck paying whatever someone else says. If (when) we get a Model 3, if electricity rates are going up, I'll just toss up another, smaller solar array.

I can *control* my energy. It's amazingly freeing.

I agree with this, but the problem is that everyone wants their own proprietary network, and that will otherwise be a huge pain and there will be pushback for it. Again, this is where Tesla is just winning all over the place - by doing it first, any other network will need to equal or better Tesla's almost immediately for it to bring similar value, and there is literally no way for anyone else to be able to do that.

You need a third party platform to be developed so that you can have everyone supercharge the same way, affordably, and make it everywhere. My hunch is that in the not too distant future, we'll see a different manufacturer bite the bullet and use Tesla's network for their own cars, and the Tesla network will basically become the standard.

Once again, leaving Tesla ridiculously far ahead of everyone else on the things that matter the most for actual adoption, and why I think the rest of the industry is heading toward a precarious position. I mean, it's pretty clear that 400,000+ pre-orders for a car that no one had driven *should* have been a sign to the market that people do, in fact, want capable electric cars at a decent price, but the majority of automakers took that as a sign to pretend like nothing was changing and no one actually wants that stuff. I read an article yesterday I think on cleantechnica where they talked about how the head of VW recently admitted they had no battery infrastructure, and they didn't know who might make their batteries or what they might be like.

Which, with a four year turn around to build a car if your name isn't Tesla (or DeLorean ), means you have no idea what a critical component to take on who you have claimed is your biggest threat recently? That would be like Ford twenty years ago saying yeah, we are going to build a great car. We don't actually know how to cool the engine, I mean, we could do some different stuff... but it's going to be awesome.

I have a hunch that's Tesla's culture. I read the book on Musk and he got his money from tech stuff. That world works like crazy, feels amazing about what they are doing, and because of that lives what they do. I know game developers who have - willingly and happily - literally lived at their job for two weeks straight during crunch time for a project, working, eating, and sleeping there to get things done. It seems that rubs off on people.

There is this interesting thing where Musk seems like a clone for today of Walt Disney, who was also someone known for being very demanding but rewarding to work for, and whose people did things that seemed impossible and made them look easy. I was actually rather struck by just how similar the two of them are.

Additionally, Tesla is making a product that the people working for it believe will change the world, and they are getting a lot of freedom that they wouldn't otherwise. This allows them to attract the best of the best and who really want to do innovative work. It sounds a hell of a lot more exciting to say that you helped make the "first mass market electric car" versus that you made the 45th Ford pick up truck.

It adds up into highly motivated people who want to create something to change the world, and are going to do everything they can to make that happen.

Yup - our sales experience was similar too. Bought it used from a non Nissan dealership, they had two in stock a newer one and an older one that is the upgraded model. They didn't know *any* of what the upgrades were, which worked out better for me when I decided to buy because we got it FAR under market price.

As for never breaking, our Nissan dealership is right by some other places we go to, so we sometimes park there and get free charging while we get other things, which they offer at most dealerships now. I was there once charging because I had 15 minutes to waste and nothing to do, and one of the service techs walked by and asked me how I liked it. He said that he was going to buy one for his next car because for all of them they had sold over the years, he had never seen one come in for service that wasn't just routine stuff. He said most of the shop agreed that they were great, and a few already owned them.

When the freaking service team is choosing the EV over the other cars... the ones they can just go fix, you sort of feel like something's up.

Here's the thing though - Oil isn't like tobacco at all. No one *needs* tobacco. And, no one can perfectly replace tobacco with another experience that is basically identical at a cheaper price. The tobacco industry has contracted, yes, but they can say that the cost to buy has tripled and people still have to pay it.

If gas prices triple to $6 / gallon, it would make running a comparable EV cost about $4500 less in fuel prices *per year*.

If on the flip side, the oil industry says that they will just make gas stay cheap as demand lessens, that will greatly impact their profits. The oil industry has a LOT of costs baked into it based on an ever increasing capacity. If they start contracting, it isn't like people are going to be clamoring to buy used refineries, and if gas stations lose even 1/10th their daily sales, that will start affecting them.

That's the problem that the oil industry is going to run up against. And things like mowers (that use almost no gas as it is) are starting to get replaced by electric versions of the same stuff just because they are better. My brother-in-law bought an electric ride on mower because he did the math and found out the cost would equal out with the ICE ride on in about two and a half years. Hell, I feel stupid for having bought a gas mower last year when nice electric mowers have been on sale at prices less than I paid for that one all summer.

The airline industry currently does need the fuel, but it's not really growing at a huge clip, at least not here.

Currently, you can get a new Leaf with incentives and whatnot under the $14k level.

As for buying a cheap beater, well... yeah, you can. But again, in the scenario above where gas prices start notching up to make up for lost demand, if you're buying a $1000 car with the risk of a bunch of maintenance woes (because let's be real, most $1000 cars aren't in pristine showroom shape - your situation would be crazy unique) *and* you're going to be spending an extra $4500 on it a year in gas prices, the $5000 Leaf (random estimate, this situation won't happen for a few years at least) is going to look a hell of a lot better than the beater.

Yeah, this is a thing... but realistically, I don't see this working well.

Gas stations are what they are because we need to transport and store gas in a specific way for it to be safe. McDonalds have been installing EV chargers at some of their locations. Which would you rather hang out at for 30 minutes, the local gas station with their prepacked foods and hot dogs on rollers, or your local McDonalds?

Okay, perhaps that isn't a great comparison, but you can literally put an EV charger in anywhere. There is a charger at a grocery store within a mile of me, a hotel about two miles from me, and a department store probably 20 miles away. To be clear, this isn't much yet - but if I'm on a cross country trip, and I can stop and charge where it makes sense during my trip, and relax for a few minutes. And usually, you save time by not doing gas.

In actual minutes, if it takes me 4 minutes to refuel at a gas station, with the 3000ish miles we've driven in the EV so far, we would have refueled our other car 16 times, so we would have spend just over an hour doing it. In that amount of time, we once took a longer trip than a 220 mile Tesla Model 3 could have handled when we drove up North. (Using our gasmobile.) I would have needed to charge it probably 15 minutes each time to have made it. (250 miles each direction.) Even assuming we would do 30 just because, we would be equal to the time spent refueling the gas car.

But! We had the kids along, who didn't want to sit for five hours in the car. So on both the way up and back, we stopped to eat and spent about an hour doing it. If we could have plugged in during that time, we wouldn't have spent any additional time for our trip due to charging.

That is what it seems a lot of people don't understand. When my other brother-in-law was talking to me about charging, he said it was just like a mobile cell phone, and that's exactly right. You get home, take ten seconds to plug it in, and then forget about it and it's full tomorrow. Once in a great while you might run the battery down quicker and need to recharge, but you don't need to sit and watch the car charge when you do, you can go get a sandwich or something.

I like sandwiches over watching the gas pump to make sure it actually clicks off.

The whole frenzy over the "it's not the car that was promised because the options cost a lot" thing that a lot of publications have been doing is weird. There is a $35,000 model. That model, as is, is *definitely* comparable to the Bolt where it is. The upgrades they have are expensive, but are pretty major. At no point did Tesla ever say that their $35,000 car would include the same autonomous features as their more expensive cars, but for free... It's quite weird, and I see no issues and am honestly not surprised by the pricing at all.

Here's my current thinking (with the asterisk that I'm not yet sure I'll have the scratch together to be an actual buyer...)

Thanks to the Leaf, we've been really thinking about our range. If we had the base version, as mentioned in the previous post, ONE time I would have needed to charge it so far. And, that one time wouldn't have taken any real additional time because I don't like to drive for 5 hours at a time without a break anyway. Thinking about the last few years, the only times I've driven where charging would have been an inconvenience is I went to a bunch of theme parks with some friends last summer, and a few times on the trip we would have needed to charge. On that trip, our stops were about 15 minutes for gas, and we stopped a big less because the Sentra on the freeway (which we crammed into for gas mileage) isn't completely terrible. I estimate it would have added about 3.5 hours to our trip. The long range model would instead add about 1.5 hours. (Note: the hotels we stayed at often had EV chargers, so I don't count charging at night.)

The ultimate question for me on that now comes down to is it worth $9,000 every other year (at best) to save 3.5 hours?

While the answer for that seems obvious - an additional $9,000 to save 1.75 hours on average a year? - since I kind of expect the Model 3 I get will be our car for at least the next 20 years, it's making me think that it *might* be worth it, but as of right now I am thinking I would do without.

For the $5,000 package, the material upgrade doesn't really do much for me and I tend to like non-power seats more than the power ones. My debate is I have always wanted a car with a sunroof, and that is one hell of a sunroof. The flip side is the windows are supposed to be so big that it sort of negates that, in which case... I probably don't need this and won't get it, although if I don't get the bigger battery I *might* think more about this, although I doubt it.

For color, I *adore* Tesla's midnight grey. If I could have any car, it would be a Model S P100D, midnight grey. Having said that, my second favorite car color is black - and I've only owned black cars for the past 20 years, and for $1000 less, the choice is easy.

For wheels, the smaller rims I think look cool and are supposed to help with mileage. And they are included. Perfect.

For autonomous driving, the $5,000 package I will get at some point, but you can buy it after you purchase the car. I believe it is a bit more expensive then, so this one only depends on if I have the cash handy when I buy. The fully autonomous upgrade for another $3,000 is the same price later and you can do it whenever, so I would wait for that for sure (this is one of the weird things with so many of the "OMG! MODLE 3 SO XPENSIVE!" articles I don't get - there is NO reason to get this at launch unless you want it in your loan amount I suppose.)

So, as of right now, I put more than even money on the car being the...

Completely stock car!

We'll see. If I'm not in a place monetarily to buy one when my number gets called, I figure in a couple years they will start popping up used, and then I'll probably be able to get one with some extra upgrades. And I have NO issues buying a used EV.

I agree. The thing is that people are VERY concerned about the whole range thing, but it's rare you'd ever need it. Like I mentioned before, in the three months since I got the Leaf with it's 84 mile range, I've needed my ICE car a total of three times. Only one of those times would I have needed to charge the 220 mile version of the Tesla to have completed my drives. The 220 mile version will suit nearly everyone relatively comfortably, and if you have the extra money for the bells and whistles, why not?

I will say this though - let's try to check this post in a year. When the tax credit runs out or gets near it, I expect Tesla to drop the price of the Model 3. I'm not saying when the $7500 gets halfed they will drop it exactly $3750, but I wouldn't be surprised if they said, "Oh hey, we have improved margins enough that the base car now starts at $32,000.

The cost saving advantages that Tesla has built in already I think will allow that to happen, and they have done similar things - dropping the price of the Model X recently and making the batteries bigger for a better price a while ago - that makes me think those who can't get them right away aren't going to be completely left out in the cold.

Tesla has said they expect to be making margins of 20-25% on each Model 3 sold. That gives them some buffer for pricing, and as the price of the tech keeps dropping, will give them even more room to dominate.

Recently there has been talk that Tesla is losing their edge because Europe is now investing into their own German Gigafactory for auto batteries set to start production in 2019 that is planned to be almost the same size as the Tesla Gigafactory (34 GW capacity for the German one versus 35 GW capacity for the Tesla one)... Except the Tesla one will be producing their 35 GW of capacity by 2020. Considering Tesla broke ground for the Gigafactory in 2014, it would seem like they could complete this Gigafactory and then decide to build and open another starting in 2020, and do more than double the German capacity for batteries by 2026... two years before the German one is complete.

That's still the part that is blowing my mind. So many people think that these battery factories are just nothing, and the battery for the car is like plugging a AAA battery into your remote, but it seems that Tesla is the ONE group that gets just how important it is to actually design and build things the right way, knowing that critical component from the start.

I'll make one other future guess here. The Model Y will launch at the same $35,000 price point the 3 is. By that point, the Model 3 will start closer to $30,000. My exact guess is it will settle in at $29,500 once the tax credits are gone.

Hey, my phone just decided to serve me this. Talks a lot about what we've been talking about in this thread...

https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21726071-it-had-good-run-end-sight-machine-changed-world-death

I don't know what you are seeing, but both on my phone and computer it lets me read the whole thing, and I'm definitely not a subscriber. Anyone else?

The article is of course an opinion piece. Any projections about future sales are a shot in the dark with no real way to be able to tell. *Every* "sustainable" technology has had major breakthroughs in the past five years. *Next year* EVs in Europe are supposed to be cost comparable to similar ICE cars over the course of ownership. In five years, it's very realistic to think that they could be the same cost as a similar gas car. Once that happens, do you really think that most people will spend the next 18 years *still* picking the ICE car?

EV adoption will come from more people driving in them, seeing them, and knowing how much they reduce things. The reason this will cause an ICE death spiral has already been brought up multiple times in this article. Oil producers will be under increased strain, and as the article correctly pointed out, when that happens why would smart businesses invest tons of money into exploring options for drilling that are difficult to get to? It just won't happen.

It's also why there is going to be major turmoil in the traditional automotive industry. I illustrated using numbers before just how many billions of dollars worth of investment Tesla is ahead *just* because of their battery sales. Tesla intends to sell 1 million EVs by 2020, and that seems extremely realistic so long as they can ramp production. Demand is clearly there. In that article that you linked, "According to BNEF, the world's biggest auto manufacturers are only planning to sell a combined 8 million electric cars per year by 2030."

So, Tesla will have ramped 1/8th of the expected *world's* total electric sales ten years early? If they add the capacity of 1 million more every two years, Tesla alone would be selling 6 million cars by 2030.

As for your statement about rare Earth minerals, were you watching the propaganda video against EVs from the Koch brothers? They seriously have just been releasing these - which to me also means things are catching on faster than they want! - and they are laughably wrong.

Yes, some of the mining of the current lithium supply isn't in the most politically stable areas, but isn't the exact same thing true of oil production? On top of that, you just need to mine the lithium once. And when you are done with it, it can be recycled and I'm positive it will be.

Rare earth metals? If those run out, Tesla would be just fine considering they don't use them in their cars at all. They use an AC induction motor, so they just need copper to make it work. Perhaps ironically, the cars that might be in trouble because of this are the *gas* cars, although I don't think they are running out anyway. If they did, the AC induction is preferred for "performance" electric cars don't use them. DC - which use those rare earth metals - are what the majority if not all hybrids use. It would make the cost of building a hybrid more.

Agreed here. The trends all assume gas will continue to cost $2ish / gallon and average resale values for ICE cars. If EV adoption causes relatively major drops in demand - and the relatively conservative estimates are more than 100,000 barrels less consumed *a day* - it flips how oil companies can make money. As I outlined in an earlier post, oil companies have the huge issue that they can't lower their price and keep making the same amount of money because their margin is already low. They can raise their price, but if they do that they make owning an EV look even more attractive.

There was a quote that I wish I wrote down I saw recently, which is that everyone overestimates what we can do as a society in a year, but underestimates what can be done in ten.

If we look at other technologies that got adopted quickly, this holds true. Ten years ago no one had a smart phone, today everyone does. Ten years before that, almost no one had a cell phone! I was the first of my friends to get a cell phone in 2000. It was after high school, and I got it because I commuted a long way to a job with a not-so-great car. My friends all thought it was funny and weird. Ten years later, I didn't know anyone that didn't have a cell phone.

The Apple II (using that as it was the first model they made for regular consumers) was introduced in 1977. The first computer revolution, even with pretty limited capabilities took over fast. Ten years later in 1987, the Macintosh was introduced with it's GUI. Within 10 years, you couldn't buy new computers that took line entry.

This is one of those trends that the new version is clearly better than the old in 99% of the cases, and that will change the dynamic quickly. Manufacturing capacity is the only thing that will cause it to be slower. The other day, Musk guessed that if they weren't production constrained, they could sell 700,000 Model 3s a year. By changing it up to other models - Model Y, pickup truck, van, etc - I'm certain they could sell a ton more right now. I think in 10 years, the production constraints will be solved.

This doesn't even consider how self-driving will change things. Once that starts working, I figure we'll own one car for long trips, or perhaps no cars and just rent one for long trips. I fully expect my 2 year old will never need a drivers license. I think my 7 year old may be at the last point where people do need one.

The problem will be how much tougher it will be to use ICE cars after demand has waned. Unlike the EVs we've been discussing, if you don't have gas around you, how will you use it.

I mean, let's say you have an old car that took leaded gas. Many needed that to not damage the engines. Today, you can still buy it in just a few places (there is a gas station in my town that amazingly has one pump for it), or you add it to your gas, but the majority of those cars got converted or aren't being used because it was a pain.

If EVs take over, and falling sales close even 75 percent of gas stations, it will be less and less easy to use your gas car compared to electric. When that happens, I think the turnover will happen out of necessity quite quickly.

EVs are already in most circumstances easier to use than gas. It's only long trips or where you don't have destination charging (including your home) that it's more difficult. There is no way to make ICE cars compete on that, and as EVs inevitably get better at long range applications, and as EVs drop the demand for gas stations, it is another spiral that will continue to speed Ev adoption.

Hey pezpunk (or any other Tesla owner), how does your Model S do on the freeway? I'm starting to change my mind to my future 3 to one with the larger battery because our Leaf likes to lose miles on the freeway much faster than on streets. If the Teslas lose about the same percentage (about 10-12 percent from what I have calculated), the larger battery is probably a bigger plus for me.

Right, but by how much does this affect things. I've heard, for instance the Leaf is far more impacted by cold weather than Teslas are.

Anyone can write articles for Seeking Alpha. I set myself up to be a contributor to them a while ago because I used to work for an industry that whenever articles are written about them, the authors don't actually know what they are looking at and draw completely wacky conclusions that have nothing to do with the industry. The industry I know is quite small, but it's fascinating how often the "experts" on there have no idea what they are talking about.

For Tesla, all the "bears" are people claiming they are just a car company, and they are losing money as a car company, and anyone can make a car with a battery that is desirable perfectly easy. They skip the Gigafactory and they skip the Supercharger network. Those two things are their biggest competitive advantages, and so many bears think that neither matters. They don't understand the business plan, nor how they could be different than a traditional auto maker.

And I think their ceiling is much higher than where they are right now. The other day, I was driving with my kids and father to an event. I was driving my old gas car, and my dad, knowing my car is old, asked what I was going to do when it died now that I really liked the electric car. I told him I would probably replace it with a Tesla.

"What's a Tesla? Is that made by Nissan?"

Yes, there is a "cult" of Tesla. But there is also a lot of people who know nothing about them yet and could very well be an eager market. Short Tesla at your own risk, and only if you believe that they are just a traditional car company.

There was an article about this recently where someone (maybe AAA) decided to do the weird task of estimating how much an EV will depreciate over five years, and it was something like $29,000.

Which is really weird, because the only EVs other than Teslas, which they said they didn't use to make their estimates, that are five years old are Leafs. Which had an MSRP around $28,000 when they came out, so apparently people are paying you to take them now. Their estimate, apparently, is that the Bolt or 3 will be worth $7-8k in five years. I don't see it.

On top of this, they don't take into account the rebates at all. You could buy a Leaf in Wisconsin until I think last week with a $17,500 discount, if you could find one. That made new ones about $13k.

So no crap, your $30k car is going to depreciate quickly if you start with a $13k coupon you don't include. Include that, and it's very little each year it actually depreciates.

Anyone who looks and doesn't understand why resale takes a hit doesn't remember any tax credits they received, or bought in a state with few of them and didn't realize that the others will affect their resale value.

I noticed from Twitter today that Tesla announced something absolutely huge that I think is going to be key the next few years but was really overlooked...

Tesla is rolling out new urban superchargers with a new design to fit in urban destinations and charge your car quickly at multiple destinations.

This seems simple, and unimportant but the Model 3 is supposed to target the middle class and the urban, but if you are like a ton of people living downtown, how do you charge? My sister has an apartment downtown. She would love an EV, but she wouldn't have night charging.

If she got a Tesla and two destinations a week had charging, she'd be set.

For anyone that has a non Tesla EV, you may know what a big pain city charging can be, and how expensive at the rare places you find. This could really spur urban adoption, and make them more realistic for everyone.

Other auto makers will sit back and hope someone else builds a charging station for their cars.

Even if this was true - it's not any more - I say... Who cares? I mean, it would be nice to not fry ourselves off the planet but hey, maybe science is wrong and that isn't a problem.

In that case, it just turns out it's far cheaper to run an EV.

We've had our Leaf for four months and one week. I compare it to the epa rating my wife's car got for our fuel savings, and this includes our charging costs (even though I threw up some solar panels too because of how affordable they are!)

Through that time, we have driven it 4500 miles. We have saved $430.33 over gas prices for the car it replaced. It has needed no maintenance whatsoever. Our operating costs for the year will be about $500 based on what we've done so far. If gas stays around $2.50 a gallon, our last car would have taken $2000ish in gas.

I also get a huge kick out of the fact my wife drives it for work, and they pay her milage. She doesn't claim that much, but an average two week milage claim covers our electricity cost for the entire month. Since getting it, it averages about 3.5 cents per mile in costs. That means we get a "rebate" of 50 cents per claimed mile. The $500 cost above is equal to 1000 work miles, which she will easily cover. So it's like we drive it for free.

So, whatever, global warming is a hoax or whatever. I'm just down with saving a whole bunch of money.

Oh, I know. It's just that far too many electric car arguments start with something like," eight now, the only reason to buy an electric car is the environment", which is laughable at best.

I am quite concerned about the future for my kids, and their kids. I didn't get the Leaf or solar panels to change that, it's laughable to think one person could fix a problem so huge.

I got them because they are insanely affordable.

That is why I have hope for the future. Once more normal people start finding out the facts, the change will happen.

Okay, I'll bite and break this down a bit.

I'm going to pull your quotes out to easier respond to them...

- Electric cars offer no clear fuel cost savings relative to efficient internal combustion engine (ICE) options.

Sure, if you take a Prius and you compare that to a Model X, this is probably correct... But the Model X is vastly larger of a car.

If I got 60 mpg, it would make the Leaf, save only $75 / year in fuel costs. That forgets some things though.

1) There should be no other maintenance on the Leaf. The Hybrid would need oil changes and whatnot.

2) This assumes gas doesn't go up. If it does, it changes the equation. Electricity costs are more stable.

3) I can generate electric car "fuel" off my roof. The installed costs this year over a 30 year life span worked out to be about 25% the cost of buying "retail" electricity. If we count it that way, the Ev still saves me about $400 a year.

4) Ev tech and solar tech are improving.

5) Gas costs a lot more in Europe. The US is a bug car market, but not the only one. Evs in Europe are about equal in ownership today compared to similar ICE counterparts, and that math will only continue to get better as companies actually start taking this whole thing seriously.

- CO2 and tailpipe emission benefits are also insignificant relative to efficient ICEs.

Again, if we have a 60 mpg car, this is accurate. Today. But the grid is changing rapidly. Zero carbon generation sources are an expanding part of the grid and their percentage each year grows. Even if we assume the new ev will only last ten years, I guarantee that ten years from now the power charging it will be generated cleaner than it is today.

Not so the ICE car.

On top of that, due to a few difficulties in measuring this type of power supply, the actual amount being supplied currently is often vastly underestimated. If we account for those factors, evs are currently probably even cleaner than estimated.

- Attractive car-free lifestyle options will reduce demand for city driving patterns that are best suited to electric cars.

Here's the problem with these type of arguments... For years people have been saying we should use cars less and less, and they are correct. But we haven't figured out on a large basis how to get rid of them. So, assuming that in the future some people will need cars no matter what, we might as well make those cars from a source that isn't burning carbon.

If there is a compelling argument how we could all ditch our cars in the next five years and just walk, I'm all for it. I don't know what that is.

- Autonomous driving technology could benefit the ICE more than it benefits pure electric drive.

This is just silly. The article says that ice cars will benefit more because traffic patterns will make them more efficient and less prone to breakage, but the reason Evs are the test bed for it is because so much less can break on them. Chevy just announced that they are going to mass produce an autonomous Bolt. Why wouldn't they start with something else?

Finally, you didn't mention this, but the article uses the oil industries "everything is awesome" scenario where daily demand for oil for all sectors has risen significantly by 2040. Why in the world would this happen?

If cars are doubling their mpg mileage, we'd need the same amount of fuel to drive twice as many miles. I don't think any predictions have us doubling worldwide ice car ownership in 23 years, much less increasing it.

Add to that a ton of countries are banning ICE sales by 2040. So far, it's the UK, France and India, but China is quite publicly planning to do the same. So where does all this oil go? Americans are going to drive crappier cars like ten times further?

The oil industry likes to say that plastic will save them, we need oil to make it and we're going to need a ton more of it in the future, right?

Kenya just banned single use plastic. India has a ban on plastic bags. More and more places are doing the same, and companies are making new options quickly.

https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/amp/articles/2017-09-10/the-plastic-fantasy-that-is-propping-up-the-oil-market

The oil market is in heaps of trouble and they don't know what to do about it, so they pretend it isn't a problem. I referenced it before, but I think it was Shell said that they expected worldwide oil demand to peak and recede in the next ten years, which I think sounds far more plausible than people continuing to blindly use more and more for the next 30 years.

I agree you should know all sides, but simplicity is not the way to look at this sort of thing.

Right, and unlike the other things that you're discussing, there is a clear benefit for the Tesla with the 75 kwh battery locked at 60 kwh.

Your car charges faster, and has much, much less of a chance of the battery degrading to the point that it would affect your range at all.

I actually don't think this is the entitlement generation. The younger generation tends to understand that they get what they pay for. It happens all the time with things like video games today - you buy the game, and then have to pay extra for more content if you want it. The younger generation gets it.

The older generation likes to crow about how "back in my day, this sort of thing didn't happen," which is true to an extent, but no one should compare the latest Halo or Uncharted installation to a top tier NES game in the way of content. There are lots of other examples to this - You don't buy one song on iTunes and expect the whole album because "back in my day, you couldn't buy one song, you had to buy the album!"

Adding consumer choice should not be seen as a negative, and is totally all about what the younger generation is about.

Pezpunk just explained very well why they are doing it, but no - it isn't just software dumbing it down. The cars were made with 75kwh batteries in them, but sold as 60kwh models, with 60kwh prices. Tesla then sold those owners, if they so chose, use of the additional 15kwh on their battery pack.

In the hurricane, Tesla extended the batteries to their 75kwh max at no cost to help people evacuate.

Did you get that one from Tesla? I may have been eyeing up that exact one. Alas, I have no money right now. Need to sell some pins!

Also, I shared this in another thread, by chance I got to ride in a P100D and I am still completely amazed by it. I've never felt acceleration like that, and I'm a coaster guy who has been on tons of launched rides. None are as intense.

After my ride I excitedly texted my wife. Her response was, "You put us on the Model 3 list already, right?" ?

In other news, driving the Leaf tonight and accelerating like I usually do across intersections (aka, fast, but just up to the speed limit), I apparently really pissed off some Ice driver who was trying to beat me off the line or something. I hadn't even noticed until they flew around me when I topped out at 35ish, because what is a Kermit the Frog mobile doing beating his bad ass car?

I agree with this. I've been toying with getting an S instead of a 3 a bit, although at the moment I don't have money for either, and the fact that even if I get a slower 3, the size feels more "sporty" to me I think will end up with it being the winner.

Having said that if you're looking sporty, find a Roadster

It might look that way, but I can tell you it doesn't *feel* that way, at all. I can take turns in the Leaf stupid fast because of the low center of gravity, and it honestly feels amazing to do. I'm sure from the outside of the car, it leans a bit on the suspension, but the low center of gravity makes it incredibly "sticky". I get to drive it in ways I would never drive a gas car, even though by definition, it's as far from a "Sporty" looking car as it gets.

I don't have a car with autopilot of any type (yet ), but I my brief thoughts are buy this now, and when autopilot becomes a thing, use cars with autopilot as taxis. I see little to no benefit once we get to full autonomy to owning a car with autopilot when I could get literally the exact same experience for far less in a car I don't own. It's expected that the cost to use them like taxis will be less than the cost to own a traditional car, so it won't be much different. Until then, you get to fly around in an incredible car.

Having said that, I'm 100% ready for autopilot to come and will gladly ride around in those cars the moment they arrive.

The back windshield being as big as it is makes it so it can't be a hatch. The early prototypes had the truck opening lower, but then it didn't open as much, and people complained so they moved it. I agree it looks kind of funny, but it works.

The interior is designed to be minimalist, and I for one love that. The center console, theoretically, is there to be your infotainment center when the car is hopefully driving itself. The dash is also supposed to be pushed up to give you more space. I haven't yet watched this video, but from the others I have seen, I really like it for a whole variety of reasons.

Also, while the center console for speed and stuff has been questioned, I find myself looking at the center console of our Leaf (which is smaller and mounted lower) regularly to see things about our energy usage and stuff just for fun. I think it would take me about five minutes to get used to this, even without it being in the traditional spot.

Well, if you weren't watching the semi reveal, the future of goods transportation just changed.

And those that want a fun sportscar? 3 years, and then... holy. crap.

While this was amazing, the Roadster reveal was equally insane.

0-60 under 2 seconds, quarter mile in under 10 seconds, 600+ mile range... $200,000 base price?!? Porsche and Ferrari have to be absolutely terrified right now. It's going to be faster than cars with price tags of over $1 million.

I have no idea, but it's struck me today how that new Roadster can't have a standard battery pack in it at its size. They had said before that the Model 3 can only fit about a 75 kwh battery (which it's apparently slightly larger), but the new Roadster looks smaller or at the largest equal to the 3, and it fits a 200 kwh battery?

And the truck, if it can go 500 miles, that's probably around a 500kwh battery. Recharging 400 miles in 30 minutes is an 800kwh charger.

So there must be some sort of sorcery going on here. I love it.

I also love how so many people said the truck was impossible. Yet there it is. Heck, I found an article about it today that basically said that Tesla must be flat out lying about the specs because that's impossible and no one believes it.

I do. I think some breakthrough has happened.

Now, let's get the Model 3s rolling out, and see where this future takes us.

In other related news, Norway's sovereign wealth fund is going to divest in all oil stocks. And they aren't doing it because of the environment, just the economics.

Crazy.

Yeah, and that's what I tend to think. China, India, and multiple European countries are planning on eliminating gas car sales in the next 15-25 years. The price of running electric right now, with little competition and little investment so far, is already far cheaper than running gas.

In the history of transportation, the unveil of the Tesla Semi I think may have actually been the biggest turning point so far. Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world to sustainable energy, and that's why they unveiled it now, two years before it's on sale - because they just put *everyone* else on notice that they either innovate or they will quickly find themselves out of the market.

Musk pointed out last night that the Semi will be cheaper to operate than a diesel semi by 20% in poor conditions. He then noted that with the convoy technology, they will be cheaper to operate than trains.

Why did he say this? I'm of the belief that he did so to get other truck companies to feel that they need to change over sooner than later, and to encourage the development of fully electric trains which would completely beat the Tesla semi... if they do it. If not, they deserve whatever comes of them.

Look, the people who spend money on this stuff are going to look at the bottom line. If the new truck is cheaper, they are going to use it. I read an article today that suggested that in 2019, the projection is that the demand for electric trucks would be something like 5000 trucks, and that would swell to something like 40,000 trucks in 2025. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was something like that.

If 5000 trucks come off the line in 2019, and those trucks prove to be everything they are said to be, why wouldn't ALL trucks that are new in 2025 be electric? To me, it makes little sense. If you want electric, you'll need to buy one. If you want diesel, there will be companies retiring their diesel line ups way early thanks to the economics of operating the other truck, so you can get one of those.

The home market will take a lot longer to fully shift, but I expect this particular transition to be insanely fast. Plaid, even.

Norway as a country has oil deposits that are in many ways similar to the Saudi nations. I'm partially Norwegian, and I actually know my relations in Norway. One of whom was a high up at an oil company over there. Norway has been transitioning rapidly away from oil.

Oil will still be needed for a time, but there is no upside for it. As usage falls, stations aren't set up to sell 10% less of it. Which will lead to gas stations going out of business, and if half the gas stations go out of business, it's going to get more annoying to run a gas vehicle, which will push more conversions. And, as I think I pointed out before on here, gas has NO ability to compete on cost. You can't make gas cheap enough for it to beat electricity, and you can do things like solar that make electricity even cheaper.

Things are moving quickly. I mean, heck - I LOVE this article. Five months ago, Carneige Mellon University researchers found that a semi would be limited to a 300 mile range, cost a fortune and offer limited capacities.

https://www.wired.com/2017/06/elon-musk-tesla-semi-truck-battery/

If really smart people are THAT far off on what is possible just a few months ago, imagine how far gas companies who don't directly study it are off in their estimates?

Oh man, what a great point I didn't even think about.

A lot of companies like to "go green" because it's a good marketing tool, although the truth behind it usually that it also makes financial sense to do so. Now, going green gets you a sexy bullet of a truck and you can note that you're running on sunshine. And yeah, a grocery store delivering food with a truck running on sunshine? That seems like one HELL of a marketing opportunity.

I honestly fail to see what those cars will bring to the table now, beyond the name. And yeah, I get that the name is a big deal, but if you're paying six or seven figures MORE than another car, you want that car to really be everything, and if the significantly cheaper Tesla can beat it off the line and kill it in the quarter mile, what's the point there?

At first, I thought they missed an opportunity to charge a lot more for the Roadster. I think even at half a million, it will sell really well. But, they just made it so that they can sell 25,000+ Roadsters a year I think by pricing it like they did. It's not exactly what I would call affordable, but I feel like if I was insane or going through a midlife crisis, I could get one with the money I make in a few years. I have exactly zero chance of ever buying a $1 million plus car.

I think that they will, but I also think it's critical that we don't sit there waiting for the next great tech forever. I remember maybe 20 years ago a teacher telling me that they had figured out how to make cars run with hydrogen cars, and in the next 10 or so years, we'd change all cars over to that because it would be so much better. Yet, we're still waiting for it.

Part of Musk's genius is he looked at Tesla and said this tech is ready for the big time right now. There is a saying about how you'll never reach perfect, but that shouldn't stop you from doing something better. The Tesla batteries as they are right now (as well as the Leaf and so on) are the best we have right now. And most of us that have driven electric agree that it's better than gas. So why wait?

True, but...

The first one, maybe people would still use kerosine for stuff, but all of it could be replaced with electric technology.

The second one, yes, but places are starting to push back against single use plastic, and we already have materials that can be used to replace them that biodegrade and don't need oil to create. The oil industry feels like this will be their big growth area. I don't foresee the future of plastic growing tons, and if anything I see us finding other things to use for it - especially if oil becomes more expensive, driving up plastics prices.

The third one yes, and I don't know if this could be replaced, but I bet it could be.

The fourth one, yes, although the less internal combustion engines running, the less you need it for.

The fifth one, yes, but are there other options for this? I honestly don't know the answer, so this one may be the hardest one to change, but I don't know much about that. But roar bitumen I don't think is the savior of the oil industry...

Yup, sounds about right. Be aware, 2011 / 2012 Leaf's have battery packs that are legit crap. It's the reason we sought out a 2013 one. Our battery gets 84 miles per charge yet, while the 2011 / 2012 ones are supposed to degrade quickly. Additionally, because of a lawsuit about those early ones, in some cars Nissan refuses to replace the batteries because they weren't part of the settlement, and Nissan is apparently short sighted and dumb. 2013+ they do whatever with.

I did a lot of research on the car before I test drove one, and then we ended up getting it incredibly fast. In the six months of ownership so far, it has saved us about $650 in fuel prices (I have a chart that I'm keeping, this includes cost to charge with electric, estimated high on electric and whatever is local for gas). We've also gone a bit over 7,000 miles with absolutely no maintenance. And man, the not going to gas station thing is amazing.

Sadly, destination charging needs to become more of a thing at least around here, and this is where Tesla really is far ahead. With the exception of the free ones - and not even all of the free ones - the Leaf charging stations right now are a huge pain in the ass. You have to pull up, read a little LCD screen and then usually use your phone to set things up. When you can get the station to sense your car, you plug it in and it charges you automatically (like from what I understand the Model 3 does), it's freaking perfect.

And yeah, there is this fascinating worry about charging ports from the media, and oh hey, you can't do electric cars yet because the infrastructure will take years to build up.

We have probably charged the Leaf ten times not at home total. About half that is because the Nissan dealership is next door to the place my wife gets her hair cut and it's free, so why not. The others, I sought out a charger once because we had trickle charging at home and I wanted it charged up more. Three times were to see what it was like. And twice was on a longer trip that I did (with destination charging, so no additional time lost!). I've figured that if we had our Model 3 right now, either of them, I would have needed to SuperCharge once if it was the lower range model, and none if it was the higher other than at home. (NOT even destination).

I understand that this isn't completely normal, and I charted out how much charging I expect I would need based on trips this past year, and it was about a half dozen if we had the low range one, and twice if we had the high range one. At those rates, they actually only need like 1000 SuperChargers to service everyone who has a Tesla now and who has ordered a Model 3.

This doesn't work for those who can't charge at home at all, but if / when this becomes more of a thing, expect that apartments and places like that will quickly add charging stations because it will either be a new profit center, or something they need to make up for it. If everyone has destination chargers, the SuperCharger network is probably decent for a while. I think the free SuperCharging has made it seem like they need more, and people completely overestimate just how many more that is.

I mostly agree with you, but I would put the absurdly ambitious leadership at the top. And I don't just mean Musk, but the fact that they are pushing out in every direction is what gives them their advantage.

A LOT of people have said they dangled the Semi and Roadster because they want to distract from the Model 3 issues, and I don't think it's that at all. Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy (or something close to that, amazing that it is the only mission statement of any company, including my own, I know by heart because it's so simple), and they unveiled now because the Semi puts ALL trucking companies on notice that this is a thing that works, and change now or die. And the Roadster is there to do exactly what Musk said - it's to show in the way of performance that EVs can do everything better and cheaper (for what it is) than anything else. Yes, they get some cash infusion, but a $50 million dollar "loan" from Roadster investors is a drop in the bucket to what they are spending. Hell, they put *trains* on notice to change or die. It gets everyone else moving in that direction, and should make any company looking at purchasing Semi's in the next couple years pause and think if they should do it or not.

It is constantly fascinating to me that all the bears say that Tesla can get stomped any time another company decides to go all in for electric vehicles, but the fact that people are still claiming the Semi is fake numbers because it's too good proves that there is a lot more to engineering these things than meets the eye.

I legit nearly had a head-on collision on a 40 mph 6 lane highway today with some moron that was driving - at fast speeds - backward down the road about 8am. Bring on the self driving cars.

There are a lot of reasons I'm excited about them, but in short, yeah, we're going to have a whole lot less cars. I think it will also be the thing that helps poor people not get swept up in the change over.

I expect that the EV change is going to happen FAR quicker than anyone expects, but if it does and in ten years, there are almost no gas cars left (that's not *quite* my timeline, but it's not far off), the people most impacted are going to be the poor people. There aren't that many "beater" EVs that I expect will be super cheap in 10 years.

But, if it costs $0.35 per mile, which is a number that I saw broken down a couple years ago that expected you could make a lot of money at those rates (the article had expected $0.25 per mile could be profit, so a 10 mile ride could be a $2.50 profit), that rate is far less than a single mile of owning your own car costs right now. So, if gas stations start closing and gas starts getting more expensive because there just aren't many cars left, while that cost shoots up, you can call your own car to you for a couple bucks. It will allow everyone to benefit from the change.

And it will stop old people who shouldn't be driving from coming at me at 40mph.

I don't think it will be then. In short...

I expect them to burn for the next two quarters, take one quarter off to show they can make money, and then restart the burn for the Semi and Y, which will both be tooling up at nearly the same time. That cash burn will go on for another year, while I expect they'll unveil a pickup, and probably one more thing. They'll do the same one quarter of profit, followed by another year of cash burn.

It will be late 2020 or early 2021 when I see them consistently making a profit. They need to finish the SuperCharger build out so that isn't an issue anywhere, strategically place MegaChargers for the Semis, and those are HUGE investments with a long payoff time. (With the additional money they tack onto a Supercharger, each Supercharger *maybe* makes like $20 a day. Meaning if they cost $10,000 apiece, more than a year to pay off... and most of them right now are charging cars that don't pay at all for the cost, meaning they need more than 250,000 3's out there to break even before they start paying off, so that investment is a WAYS off.

But once they do, watch out world.

Sometime within the last week or two, my reservation was changed from April-June to May to July. I only reserved this year too, although I'm leaning toward the full option package and have that temporarily selected.

There is a lot of this work going on. It's quite the race. Tesla has said they will use their cars for a Tesla Network, and they have the most real world driving information, but Autopilot 2 seems behind now. Waymo is testing in VERY limited areas, and Uber just announced they were buying something like 24,000 Volvo autos for their fleet a day or two ago. It's going to be interesting.

No, mine wasn't. I logged in on the 2nd and around the 8th or so to check, and I was surprised to find my "guess-o-meter" to still have the same timeline as I originally got. Logged into today, and it got pushed a month.

I think that the Model 3 production is mostly in good shape, and once the battery thing is cleared up they'll start rolling off the lines really quickly. I think they purposely made it out to be worse than it is, to try to temper expectations a bit, but based on the fact that they didn't move actual delivery by much, I think they think that once this gets cleared up, they will be cranking them out quickly.

The email came in for me at 7:52pm the same night. I checked almost immediately, and it hadn't changed. It has since slid.

Having said that, to me, I feel really far ahead. I reserved in April, and expected to be fall of next year at the absolute earliest when I did. If I get the car in the summer, I'll feel like I skipped the line.

Without getting political, the Senate version which has more chance of passing as is preserves it.

If they completely gut it, while of course extending more tax cuts to fossil fuels, I don't think it will kill EVs at all. It will just give the rest of the world and specifically China a huge leg up on the future.

There have been numerous reports that due to the hard pivot back to fossil fuels, China and India will both have larger economies than the US within the next 15 years.

Having said that, it won't change much for me. Heck, my 3 might not have the credit by the time I get it anyway, and that didn't make me hesitant to put down money on one. I honestly think it will affect people that aren't Tesla a lot more, as they are nearing the end anyway.

Finally, if it doesnt die, expect a ton of misreporting on it anyway, as people really don't understand how it works.

My brother in law bought one after realizing the difference in cost would pay for itself within two years of using it for his property. I really regret it seems battery push mowers seem to have come into their own one year after I bought mine.

Oh, and for the tax credit, if it goes away, I'll reconsider the battery in my 3. Right now, the deliver estimator says I could get a long range before the credit runs out. If that doesn't happen, I may save myself that money as I really would rarely need that much charge.

If the credit goes away, the new Leaf will suffer somewhat, the Bolt will suffer somewhat, but I think the people it will really affect are the Fords and Hondas out there that only have made crappy compliance cars so far. Tesla isn't losing money on each car sold, GM has stated they will be making money soon, Nissan has said they already are too. Companies that haven't made EVs will be severely hurt.

I don't actually care if they survive the transistion or not. I get its a bad thing in the economy if we lose them, but that's capitalism.

There is a lot of fascinating stuff with the whole change, but...

Once companies start informing people of why electric cars are better, I think the shift will be even quicker than people who think it will be fast realize. We're going to get hit with a bunch of options that I truly believe that a bunch of people will discover are better at about the same time, and then used gas counterparts will become cheaper, eroding the value of purchasing a new gas car because nice gas cars are cheap, and the resale market on gas cars will become more questionable than that of electric cars.

The big key is dealer networks HAVE to change, both for the dealer who will make a lot less from service and the customer who needs to be informed of exactly what an electric vehicle can do.

The most surprising thing for me about owning the Leaf has been that when I talk with people about it, I am careful to say that I love it, but the application of it is rather limited due to the range of the car. The majority of people are actually shocked that it can go 84 miles before charging it, and they say to me that it's better than they expected.

For a number of years, there have been various surveys coming out that said that a certain percentage of people were considering an electric vehicle for their next car, and then they have someone from CarFax or whatever talking about how they can't be right because no where near that many people look for them. I think that is almost entirely due to there not being much in the way of options out there. If there were 50 options, and those options were competitively priced, I think you'd see huge market penetration very quickly.

We're used to plugging in our cell phones. Plugging in a car that you never have to do anything else for is incredibly appealing. But the options have been really limited, and those that there are either had issues or misconceptions - the Leaf had early major battery issues that Nissan handled really poorly, and the car is known for having a terrible resale value... but people NEVER explain that the resale value is driven by major rebates and incentives, as well as the early issues. Model S and X are super expensive and not options for the majority of the world. But you hit that number, and I think things are going to go faster than people project. A lot faster.

And to spur it on, even if the US loses the $7500 tax rebate, which who knows if it will or not (and if it does, I think it just really screws those companies who haven't sold many EVs and were expecting to be able to charge higher prices because of that), China is going to requite automakers to sell at least 10 percent of their fleet in China as EVs by 2019. They wanted to start next year, but Germany complained on behalf of Volkswagon that it was too fast and they couldn't do it, but they are set to go the following year. They intend to increase that number each year. So if you want to sell in China, you better have electric.

I hope to come across this post ten years from now. I honestly expect that by then, new models will be almost exclusively fully electric, and we'll be talking about what to do with all the gas stations, parts stores and so on that aren't needed in the same numbers as today.

To an extent, I think you're right - but there are environmental factors that come into play with the buried tanks that don't.

But I think that's a perfect example. I've been a teacher recently (not this year by choice ), and the students would ask me what my cell phone was like when I was a kid. I told them I didn't have one, and I was the first of my friends to get one... when I was 18 (1999). Kids are absolutely shocked by that because it seems like cell phones are something that just existed forever, but realistically mass cell phones are about 18 years old.

I fully expect the shift to electric to be completely over by 2035. There will be a few gas cars still around, but it won't be easy to use them because the infrastructure will be mostly gone.

Yes, but you could still sell 14 F150s for every Prius, they would just happen to be electric.

Electric actually makes a ton of sense for a work truck. You'll probably need at least a 150 kwh battery on board, but since trucks already cost a bunch, I don't think that'll be a huge problem.

... And that's the key reason that I think the electric revolution is going to take over fast. Autonomy is a few years away, and once that happens, it'll be cheaper to not own cars. Running gas card will go up in price thanks to less places to get them repaired and stuff like that, and it will push people without the financial resources to rent autonomous cars for taxi rides cheaper than taking their own car anywhere.

And, after having a wrong way driver barely down the (divided) highway toward me the other day, and seeing a big collision yesterday right in front of me from a car blowing a red light, I'm not so concerned about my own driving, but I'd rather these morons can't drive, and if the car is as safe as me, I'd trust it over them.

I just test drove a Bolt for the heck of it.

It feels smaller than the Leaf and oddly to me a lot louder. It wasn't bad, but with the exception of the range, it didn't seem much different than our Leaf. It didn't help that roads are slick and cold, so I could tell it had more power, but mostly just used it to spin the tires...

But wow, the dealership network is going to be a big problem for anyone other than Tesla to overcome. I pretended to not know anything about it, and they couldn't tell me much at all. No idea how fast it charges, where to charge it, if the charger was a standard or not, benefits of it over a regular car, it it needed any maintenance or not... It was... Enlightening in a fascinating way.

I could go on with a bunch of points where they just didn't know things that you should know about a product that you're selling, but... Yeesh.

It shows my why Tesla has the valuation they do. The dealer network is going to be a tough thing to overcome.

To be completely fair, they just called me a little while ago and answered the maintenance questions after doing some research, which on one hand is really cool, but on the other it just seems like with an electric car, that's a huge selling point, and you should probably have some idea of what it is.

The Leaf is in a uniquely terrible situation, and in some ways it sucks it was the first mainstream EV.

First, the earliest Leafs (model years 2011-12) had a known battery issue where the battery would degrade a lot quickly. In 2015, Nissan stated they fixed the problem by making a new cell chemistry, but it appears they actually fixed it in 2013 and just didn't tell people. Our 2013 car has 50,000+ miles and still shows that it can go 84 miles at full charge, although it has just recently shown that it's capacity is slightly less than 100%.

The battery problem is not great, but Nissan compounded that by having people sue in a class action lawsuit over it. Those who opted in were given longer warranties if certain criteria was met for battery degradation where Nissan would replace the battery. Those who opted out of three lawsuit, Nissan has been absolutely terrible and *refuses to service their batteries at all*. Since you don't know who opted in and out, it's completely possible to purchase a 2012 Nissan, have its battery degrade and for it to turn into a big paperweight.

This, as it should have, absolutely killed the secondary market for them, as it should have. People are less aware of the newer versions not having that issue, and so resale prices tend to stay super low. It's how I got my 2013 for $7600.

Thanks to this, Nissan was also offering insane discounts through utilities and things like that for the Leaf. If we would have bought ours new last year, it would have cost me about $13,500 after the $7500 tax credit (which is apparently preserved in the tax bill) and a $10,000 utility rebate check. When you look at it like that, the secondary market is actually pretty darn good, losing only about $1500 a year in value, or roughly the same amount the Leaf saves me over a comparable car in fuel savings.

As for dealerships, it is absolutely not necessary to have them. The whole song and dance to buy a car is stupid and annoying, and it benefits no one. Service dealerships want you to have a car that needs service so they can provide it. What works best for them may not work best for you. To build brand loyalty, you'd usually want to give a customer exactly what they want and do it better than they expect. Dealerships don't have that incentive. They dance around the price because they want to sell through car for as much as they can above what they pay for it, and then they hope it breaks sometimes so you get it serviced.

As for reliability, I stop at the local Nissan dealership once in a great while to kill time and get free electricity. Bonus that I get free popcorn, soda and donuts when I do. It's like a coffee shop with free gas and food.

Anyway, a few months ago I had stopped and was charging and one of their service employees was walking by. He asked if I bought it there, I sheepishly said no, and he said no problem, what did you pay. I told him, and his response was that it's the best deal in cars.

His exact quote was something to the extent of, "I've been working in service here for the past four years, and I've never seen one come in with a problem, other than to upgrade the computer (more on this in a sec). It's definitely going to be my next car." This dealership by the way is the only place that services Leafs in the city, and there is a pretty decent number around here.

I asked him since he worked repairing other cars if he was worried about the change. He said that it was going to happen one way or another, and he might as well get the car he never needs to worry about.

Before the auto consultant jumps in and says see, the computer doesn't work!, I upgraded the computer to be able to communicate with the car with my phone. Older Leafs had computers that used a cell network that doesn't exist any more. There was no reason to upgrade it for the car itself.

I would much rather have the car break down maybe once a year and have even a couple day wait for service than it to break down and me need to service it multiple times a year like I do my gas cars. My Sentra which is still in service right now has had two oil changes and one trip to the mechanic for a minor issue (cost me $20) since we got the Leaf. We have driven the Leaf about 10,000 miles, the Sentra has gone about 5,000.

The Sentra has cost me about twice as much to operate. To me, that says it all.

I'm not sure what you mean.

The Nissan tech told me that the Leaf is by far the most reliable car he has seen. Not my Leaf, all of them. As far as I understand, there is one Nissan dealership in Milwaukee that deals with Leafs. There is ONE guy that services them there. That I know, because they told me they had to check his schedule specifically. So if you meant I'm comparing ICE cars to the best selling EV worldwide, then sure.

If you're comparing it to my Sentra, I mean, I feel like 6 months and a $20 repair is pretty good. But yes, I'm totally going to lump having oil changes and transmission flushes in with repair costs on my cars, as they are a real cost and a pain in the ass to do. The Leaf has none of that.

I saw a fascinating recent look at Amazon, circa 2001. There were some people that were bullish and saying this is the future. Some company, I think it was Sears, was laughing at the fact that they would ever compete with them, because it was an online business and they could just step in and crush them whenever they felt the moment was right. Pundits were saying that Amazon needed to sell every book that every bookstore in America sold and yet they would STILL be losing money, and that throwing any money at them as an investment was stupid. And they kept talking about how Amazon was one of the most shorted stocks.

I feel like Tesla's supposed cash crunch is the exact same thing. The Amazon naysayers only saw them as a bookstore and thought they could never be anything else. The believers expected it to be more.

Tesla naysayers like to point to one thing and say see, they make this car and they don't make any money! It's over!

Tesla isn't creating a car though, they are making a whole ecosystem. Seeing up that ecosystem is expensive, but they realize it's better to do it now than later.

Yes, that's it!

At 11:00ish: "The company says it's investing for the future, skeptics say it would have to sell every book sold in the world today to justify it's stock price."

Then, right after that is when they say that the market cap is worth more than Sears by 20%, and the host is like, "How can that be right?!"

The investor explains hey, it's about what else they have.

Seems really, really familiar with these Tesla arguments. Amazon made an entire ecosystem. If you just valued them on selling books, it was insane. But that wasn't their goal.

Tesla's goal isn't to get one car to sell for a profit.

I figure this is somewhere in the Tesla menus too, but in our Leaf there is a menu that shows you just how much each part of the system is using. Headlights shouldn't use anything you can notice, they are probably something like 20w. It's fascinating to me regen wasn't working for you. It works for us in the cold, although I don't know exactly how good.

And honestly, this is really good information to have. The Leaf, with it's non thermal managed battery, loses about 10-20% of it's abilities in the freezing cold we've had up here in Wisconsin. Add another 10-15% for the heating system, and we were getting almost exactly 2/3rds of our charge during 0 degree weather. It still leaves us within range, but it's a bit more frustrating since the car doesn't have a ton of range to begin with.

I also noticed when it is zero degrees out and you try gunning it, for the first couple times until the battery warms up it is a bit slower. I figured that out when I was at a stop light and accelerated full and realized the gas SUV next to me almost kept up. A few stops later, I had my power back.

In other news, the local Nissan dealership called me yesterday because my Leaf hadn't been serviced there for a while to offer me a free oil change.

Interesting! Now, I know nothing about actually driving Teslas (yet), so I'm curious...

Doesn't the thermal management of the batteries always keep them at a certain temperature for this sort of purpose? Or am I mistaken about what that does. I know the Leaf has none of that, and also was happy to allow me to regen in below zero temperature recently. The only time it doesn't do the regen thing is when it is full and we roll down the hill we live on to the the stop signs, which always gives me a bit of a surprise. A couple blocks away, and regen kicks in.

I'm heading to Cali in a couple weeks, hoping to run into a Model 3 in person when I'm there! Does anyone know, I was hoping to drive by the design studios on my way back to the airport, is there anything to see there?

It didn't even strike me until I was typing my above response! They called because they had some new vehicle they wanted me to test drive, and they said they wanted to offer me a free oil change. He asked if we still had the Nissan, and I said we have a Leaf and Sentra, and he said that they only had the record of the Leaf, and it didn't apply to the Sentra because it was too old.

I asked if they had a new Leaf to test drive and told them that without long distance infrastructure, I wasn't really interested in it but would give it a test drive and he said no, but offered me some other stuff to which I told him I'll never buy another gas car again, which was apparently flabbergasting to him.

And yeah, as I posted the above, it struck me. He called to offer me an oil change on the Leaf.

I've been arguing this for a while. With home charging taking care of damn near all the charging you actually need, you DO NOT need a million charging stations like the public seems to think. You just need enough here and there.

Tesla basically has a full network already done. They just need to expand it now, but they don't need tons more.

Some destination chargers would be nice and is where things are moving so people that don't have charging capacity in their apartment or whatever can charge when they are getting groceries. Especially with the cold snap, the Leaf would be impossible in a situation without charging at home (and honestly, fast charging has been more important than I expected in the winter as we wouldn't be able to use it most nights otherwise), but a bit of a longer range and there would be no issues...

The flip side of this is you get instant heat in the electric car. My old Sentra takes fifteen minutes in zero degree temperatures to warm up. The Leaf is there immediately.

Any of you current owners know, do Teslas have resistance heating? The Leaf has an air pump, which is pretty awesome at heating.

VolunteerPin, for your particular situation, it may be worse because of the city driving actually. The Leaf loses a decent amount the faster we go with it to overcome air resistance, and I've been disappointed by how quickly it's range drops on the freeway in summer...

... But in winter, since the heating system is taking up a certain amount, the range stays almost exactly what the range states on the freeway, while slower local driving burns more heat power and drops the same or even a bit quicker.

Since I'm hyper number based, the Leaf dropped by an average of 35.7% of its range when it was crazy cold out. We do tend to drive it in not sport mode more often than sport mode, but depending on habits I could see it being worse or better in any battery car in the winter. Unlike the Teslas, with no thermal management, I can't account for my loss at all and make it less. Turning off the heat saves almost exactly half that, but then... Brrrrrrr.

Of all the above companies, Fisker is the only one with a claimed release date. They are also super low on money to create their cars and are looking to pump anything they can to try to get more backing. Unless they get absolutely *massive* investment, I can't see them leading the way on this.

Tesla will switch if it becomes viable, but the price and capacity of lithium-ion continues to fall rapidly. I expect we have a long way further to go before we hit a bottom on them, or before the tech is even mature.

Almost forgot! Next week I'll be in Los Angeles and am hoping to be able to drop by the Tesla dealership at Century City to check out the Model 3 in person so I can confirm it's for me. Can anyone who has been there in the past tell me how easy is parking and how far is it to get to the actual Tesla store? I have stupid limited time while I'm there, and I'm trying to figure out if I can fit it in and exactly how to do so...

Dang in. I have stupid limited time in LA, and I really want to sit in it. I was thinking Sunday at about 2:45 is when I'd get there, that's probably an even worse time and I'm supposed to show up somewhere else an hour later that is a 15 or so minute drive away... Hmmmmmm....

I heard there are some new owners that have received their invites now! I hope so!

Good to know. I'm thinking I might call Sunday before I get there and ask how long the line is, explain I'm from far away and my sitting in it can literally be fifteen seconds. I get if they can't do anything, but here's hoping.

Replying to myself, called yesterday to ask how it worked, found out you only get a minute with the car so my 15 seconds thing isn't a short stop like I had been hoping that may be able to sneak in... and yesterday the line was an hour. I think I'll be stopping out today, but we'll see. It's kind of crazy to be willing to spend an hour waiting in line to sit in a car, especially when I have no time and it might set me back on other things, but... knowing me, I'll be in line for an hour today

This is sort of silly. The biggest people who love EV tend to love EV because of the whole host of reasons that we believe they are better. I never gave a darn about my previous cars, but was constantly annoyed by how they required constant maintenance (sometimes regular, and sometimes "surprise"), how much time I spent figuring out when and how to maintain them within my life, and how much they cost to operate.

I got the Leaf because it was affordable. It's also the best affordable driving experience I've ever had, I love the acceleration, I feel safer in it because of the control, the range has not been an issue, and I've saved over $1000 from it this year in fuel costs alone.

For maintenance? I once had to buy it wiener fluid because it ran out. I've had to take my regular car in like three times in the meantime.

If you can get me a gas car that is as convenient and that refills itself safely at my house, I'd go back. Until then, I hate the extra time I have to spend.

And nearly everyone who has rode in our Leaf and has heard that stuff agrees. There is a large demand out there that hasn't been met yet by auto manufacturers.

To me, it is all about convenience and cost. I value my time a lot. Going to the gas station or God forbid getting an oil change feels like it is so annoying now.

And if I know people, the now aspect of them is what will win out.

The biggest car guy I know was absolutely drooling over the Roadster 2 specs. To me, that says it all.

Thanks! It worked like a charm. My flight landed 40 minutes early (Southwest for the win), I got my rental car that feels even more like a lawn mower than my daily driver, and made it there by the time I was supposed to pick up my car. 30 minutes later, I checked it out.

It's better internally than I expected by a large margin. It feels like the Model S that I've rode in. I found out it can use the same charger as I have at home already with an included adapter.

The trunk is HUGE, far bigger than my Sentra or anything else I've had, while maintaining the same basic size.

And it fits me super comfortably.

Wow. I expected to like it a lot, and usually I build my expectations up to something that can't be met. This exceeded my impossibly high expectations. I can't wait.

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Darn you phone / Aaron for finding the phone's error!

They actually made it very clear it only nerds windshield wiper fluid.

And I'm totally keeping that fat finger phone correction in there.

On my way back to the airport, slept in Hawthorne. I woke up to see multiple Model 3s in front of the hotel, so I decided to check how close SpaceX was. Visited the campus and wow, Model 3s everywhere.

Managed to snap a photo. This was right after a line of three of them at once went into their parking structure.

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