Tesla leads and some of the others slowly follow - some. But it is obvious that nobody else is pushing the tech as much as Tesla.

Most of the legacy automakers are stuck with legacy tech, supply chain, factories. There an article in the WSJ about VW’s $50 Billion investment to compete with Tesla was a failure.

Tesla is combining unique battery architecture with honeycomb design, castings, efficient software controlled motors & batteries, networked SC’s etc.

Where Tesla needs to catch up are actual manufacturing processes, including for batteries.

Agree 100%

I agree with almost everything except the manufacturing. Tesla has eliminated over half the legacy automakers steps for vehicle production.

Electric vehicles are manufactured differently from ICE vehicles (obviously, not the cabin components, doors, hood and trunk). The only thing is the panel gap thing that most people don't tend to bother to check from other automakers.

Most automakers have got panel gaps more or less right which is why it's assumed and not checked so much. Fremont just cannot seem to get this right consistently for whatever reason, and they should be. It detracts from the car. Haven't heard negatives from Shanghai (including export cars) so it's looking positive there. I'm assuming Berlin will be good too. Texas will be interesting...

Don't know but suspect that the presses they are using for panel stamps aren't upto spec, given they're enormous bits of kit on very long lead times theres probably little they can do until a major refresh. In China I highly suspect they've sued different presses and so have at least eased if not solved the issues.

I saw that article and don't consider a legacy car maker switching to EVs failing because they have to catch up on software. Sure they don't have OTA yet but they still have their legacy network of car dealers for the update. And looking at the sales knowing that the first cars only came out in numbers in October they aren't doing so bad. The space to watch will be 2025 when solid state batteries compete against 4680...

Two things:
1. You assume solid state will be on time and cheap in 2025.
2. You assume Tesla will not have progressed their battery tech much by 2025. The 4680 is already fairly close to the fabled solid state battery, and rather cheap too. And it's available now, and will be half price 2 or three years before 2025.

Solid state batteries have been 5 years away for some time, just like Elon's 2 years till FSD. The difference is FSD is now starting to show itself. Solid state is still 5 years away.

Too bad I can't find my crystal ball right now, really annoying.

Since the Quantumscape announcement other solid state announcements have been mushrooming (NIO for 2021 (!), Toyota for 2022, etc...), all very FSD-like as they might concern limited volumes only.

4680 would become available in high volume in 2023 so by that time buyers will have the option to go with Tesla or wait another 2 years to go solid state.

Some will go 4680, some will wait. Now if I just could find this crystal ball back I could give you the exact numbers 😦

When solid state does come out, it will be expensive. The point of the 4680 is to develop a standard easily duplicated, so as to reduce the cost of the battery to as low as possible, thereby making the cars as low a cost as possible. Tesla may not have the fastest charging cars in the future, but they will have the longest range cars at the cheapest price.

Agree that 4680 could be cheaper, not clear on longest range yet. And the latter will not be important for solid state as they can charge quicker. Which then again could have an impact on the price of the car : why would you need more than 500km range if you can fill up in 10minutes. You need to make stops anyway....

It's the same old argument...then why do gas cars need 300-400 miles range in the tank? People like to get to their destination, not stop twice along the way. Also, the rest of the world is not Norway where they have almost (kidding, but they have a lot per capita vs anywhere else) as many fast chargers as gas stations. By far, most countries have maybe 3 or 4 percent of charging stations vs gas stations. It's not as simple as stopping at the corner store for a quick fill up. Remember, gas has been king for 100 years...they have quite the lead over electric. It's going to take a while yet to reach any parity... I'd give it a good 10-15 years minimum to reach 25% of gas.

Jay Leno had a good segment about your mentality. "But what if I want to?!".

It's a hard fact from the highway board that 99% of all car trips in the USA are less than 20 miles from the home. For the 1% of the time that you actually need one, there are fast chargers everywhere. You just automatically assume they're rare. But they aren't.

Well that's a heck of an assumption that "fast chargers are everywhere" not really, unless you live in norway. True, people do take short trips more, so why don't most cars only go 50 miles? There's gas stations everywhere, so why would you need more than a couple gallons?

Yeah, actually fast chargers are everywhere. You just don't pay attention because you have a dinocar.

Just like I honestly can't locate the closest gas station to my house because it's been three years since I've needed one.

Electric cars aren't like a ICE car. You don't run run run run all week until it's empty and then fill it up. You run around for the day and plug it in when you come home. When you wake up, the battery is full and you repeat the process. Its actually far better than having to go to a gas station all the time. It's like if your dinomobile could magically regenerate 10 gallons of gas every night as you sleep.

I actually have a model 3, and one of the first things I did in the first month of ownership was take a 2500 mile road trip with my family from denver Colorado to San Antonio Texas with a few diversion stops along the way. So no, there aren't fast chargers everywhere... especially in the expanse of Texas, as I found out first-hand! Without my long range battery, I'd have been screwed! So on a road trip like that, please tell me how I just "plug in" without access to an uncommon 220v plug? Oh, and I have every adapter known including the chademo one from Tesla (to date I've used it once because there's no fast chargers to use it on).

Really? Because plugshare says the biggest distance between fast chargers on that route is a 200 mile stretch in NW Texas. Were you having issues locating a charger? Do you not know about Plugshare? There's 52 fast chargers along the 900mi route from Denver to San Antonio.

So either you're lying or inept.

So you drive 400 miles without stopping ? I agree the lack of fast chargers is currently still a showstopper for EV adoption but it doesn't make sense in overinvesting in those if there is much faster charging on the horizon, i.e. solid state. In other words, most EV models today are not made for long distance travel (I have a Zoë as second -shared- car) but even if there would be 'fast' chargers in every gas station it wouldn't make any difference. For day to day mobility it's a dream of course, there have been weeks/months I haven't been near a gas station.

Having the ability to travel 300-400 miles is what gives us freedom. I took a road trip a few weeks after I got my model 3 long range. I went 2500 miles, no problem.

Today I left home at 5AM and traveled 718km. I stopped many times. 4 times at rivers (nothing but a dirt road and a bridge at each river), once at a mine security point (no power there), one stop at an open cast pit (no power there) and two stops at waste rock dumps (no power there). Then 12 hours after leaving home, I'm exhausted, and so thankful I can get another 750km range in 5 minutes so I can relax at my accommodation, rather than sitting for an hour to fill a BEV to 100% at a supercharger. Tomorrow I travel 630ish km home. Real world case of needing decent range. (I could charge my BEV tonight at the accommodation if one existed with 718km range). Not everyone travels short distances and on major highways. This is why ICE cars rarely have 200 miles range. The technology could keep up with practical demands.

Around 300 mile range is super common for gas powered cars though...

That's why Tesla put Superchargers at some hotels and why you need a solid state battery : 10min. to fully recharge.

2025 is far away and a lot of time to develop new solution. 18650, 4680, solid state, are just a steps of innovation. But to bring steps into market is the big difference.

Sure. But look at the sales in Q4/2020 and VW is not doing bad with just one (new) EV model. ID.4 was just announced at a cheaper price than MY in China and in the EU it will compete with MY based not just on software but more on more mundane things like interior and servicing. The game ain't over yet, it's just begun...

This very article demonstrates the game is over.

If you truly understand technology then FSD Beta and Battery Investor Day prove Tesla has already won. The rest of it is just to be played out.

I.e. Where is VW with respect to developing a world class neural net inference chip? Fastest supercomputer in the world for neural net training? Cell to structure capabilities? Battery cell CapEx only 1/3 of the current best and cell cost less than half of the current world’s best ?

VW is only now competing very poorly against Tesla’s last generation vehicles and they’re trying harder than every other legacy OEM.

On top of attracting the top engineers in the U.S. and soon China and Germany, Tesla has far more cost advantages than those, so I seriously fail to see how any legacy auto can compete.

I don't see much evidence that Tesla has the fastest AI hardware. Google and Nvidia both have experience crafting multiple generations of chips to accelerate AI, and have both posted very impressive MLPerf benchmarks. Musk said last November that the first version of Dojo was a year away. In the meantime, VW can buy Nvidia to run AI training, or they can use Google's cloud infrastructure the way Cruise Automation does. Not that I really expect them to, it seems much more likely that they'll purchase autonomous driving from Waymo or one of their competitors.

Tesla may eventually take the lead in autonomous driving, but they're not there today. Of course they do make the best electric vehicles. But I'll cheer on every competitor. The world needs lots of EV manufacturers if we're going to rapidly transition from ICE to electric transportation.

My Leaf has over the air updates. Crazy.

OTA updates are not hard to implement, the reason they don't is they're worried about the liability.

GM is a global leader in lost form casting. If they decide to use it beyond ICE drivetrains, this could become a very interesting space to watch.

gm is a global loser, bakrupt once.

I never owned a GM car, for good reasons, but never underestimate their electronics chops. Occasionally we see glimmers.

Not with Ultium. They were bragging about the needlessly complex modules, which as this very article demonstrates aren’t even needed.

The problem with GM and probably every other legacy automotive company is that so many departments and suppliers just focus on their own fiefdom. E.g. at GM the module group was busy working on their unnecessary part, the cell group didn’t know any better. It never occurred to the structure group to coordinate with the module or pack groups to tell them their entire departments were unnecessary...

Modules are necessary for the GM ultium though, because they are not using cylinder cells with a metal casing. So GM needs to put their pouch-style cells into a support structure, making modules a requirement.

Modules are also advantageous due to the flexibility GM has designed into them for different kinds of vehicles. The cells are universal.

That’s odd, Sandy Munro when he was explaining Tesla battery day, demonstrated that Tesla was playing catch-up with European manufacturers who had already used pouch batteries in a structural battery support structure.

That is odd, because every Munro video I have watched where he mentions batteries, he is super clear that Tesla is way ahead on batteries compared to any other automaker. What automaker did you have this fantasy about?

I call B.S. Pouch cells have to be glued into a rigid frame before being assembled into a pack, and that makes the cooling system GM uses in the Volt and Bolt battery packs pretty complex, with many potential points of leaking.

Tesla's pack design, while using more cells, is simpler and the cooling system has far fewer points of potential failure. That one reason why Tesla's pack-level costs are lower than GM's.

Sandy Munro when he was explaining Tesla battery day, demonstrated that Tesla was playing catch-up with European manufacturers...

I think you misinterpreted what Sandy said pretty completely. Sandy did point out that it's very difficult to remove individual cells from the Model 3 battery pack, but Tesla doesn't replace individual cells. Tesla designs its packs to isolate an occasional individual failed cell, so cell replacement is rarely attempted and almost never necessary. (Exception: Gen I Roadsters, which used a very different pack architecture.)

Do you have a source for where Sandy mentions this? It must be a video I missed and I am interested to see his other thoughts on this subject.

I don't know what one it was but he talked about the model 3 pack resonating at the same frequency as the body anyway so they should have just made the pack structural and saved some weight like most cars with pouch cells do. Even Musk has said they should have got rid of modules and made the top of the pack the floor

If you don't have a source, I am unable to verify.. For all I know, you could have just said

I don't know what one but he talked about how he wanted to dismantle a statue and turn it into a helicopter

He very well could have, I don't have any evidence on hand to dispute it, but I also have no evidence he said it.

The Bolt was the same. Before Tesla.

Tesla Model S production start: 2012

Chevy Bolt production start: 2016

Tell us again, dude, how you have "done my research". For some reason, we keep forgetting. 🙄

It is worse, if one department tries to work with another the other department will think they are trying to steal ideas/IP (which they might be) and reject their advances anyway.

I work for a computer store where we had to service GM computers, and one of our biggest headache was the way each GM department wanted to shift blame around instead of helping us solve their problems. They did not work together.

What a pity

and sooo much is outsourced

That's BS. The modular nature of GM's batteries are containers for the cells but they also facilitate almost any chassis GM wants to build. They can stack the cells vertically or horizontally. Or a double layer in the module. GM has 3 global chassis and 5 drive trains ready for production. Flexibility and integration is their goal.

Yes GM’s is trading efficiency , which effects the owner, for design flexibility which effects themselves. It remains it be seen if owners actually want longer range per dollar or if they want 5 varieties of car.

False equivalency. There's no zero sum game between the two factors you give. The Ultium battery guarantees less weight and more juice at less cost. How about 5 kinds of car and all have longer range and cheaper prices?

But you highlight my point. Tesla has to juggle and being out one car at a time. and the Model Y is basically a higher Model 3. From a form perspective I don't want either.