this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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How is this company still so valuable.
I would buy literally any other electric car than a Tesla.
They have a huge head start. And their battery tech is top notch even if the rest of the vehicle is poorly build.
I'd personally never buy one either, for multiple reasons, but most people don't care/know about the shitty build quality, the shitty ai and the scummy locking features down remotely when you sell the car.
Is the battery tech that good though? Genuinely don’t know.
Seems other manufacturers have a huge head start in every other area of manufacturing cars and even if they still lag behind on battery tech, it won’t be long before they catch up on this one metric, whereas Tesla would have to catch up on every other metric.
It was 5 years ago. Other companies are catching up.
One place they aren't catching up is non-SUV EVs. There are a few, but if you want an EV that isn't an SUV with over 250mi range, and cross Tesla off the list, your options become real thin.
Options were really thin to begin with. Muricans love their huge ugly boxes. The options are getting much better now. With a quick search I found ten sedans shapeable in the states and crossing off Tesla removed three.
But a lot of those sedans have range around 120mi, like the Mini EV or BMW i3. Many of the one's that remain are luxury brands with luxury prices, like the BMW i7 or Porsche Taycan.
I specifically did a search for EVs with over 250 mile range, because that was your qualifier.
I'm sure there are more than 10 sedan models available in the united states, did you look at Mercedes and bmw? They should have a few models.
Kia, Hyundai, BMW, Porsche, Volvo, Mercedes, VW, Polestar, to name a few.
And you don't consider tesla a luxury brand with luxury prices?
Compared to Porsche, or BMWs over an i3 size? No.
Most battery tech is just lithium ion batteries wired in series, like 80 laptop batteries. They regulate the temps so that the batteries don't degrade too fast. Battery tech hasn't changed much in decades, so you will see the same problems on your phone battery on car batteries. So, no, Tesla battery tech isn't special.
I recently heard china is the first to manufacture sodium ion batteries for their consumer EVs. Sodium is supposed to be better, but I forget why.
IIRC, the reason sodium batteries would be better is we have abundant stocks of sodium, whereas the raw materials for most other batteries are limited and require more destructive mining. John Oliver just covered some of this on his show last Sunday. If that tech can be improved, hopefully there won't be any deep sea mining for more raw materials!
Really dubious on the sodium ion batteries. Last I saw there were still issues with the technology, primarily battery life. Unless there were some breakthroughs thay went under the radar.
Sodium ion batteries are actually currently in production, and are in production vehicles by catl and other companies. There is an American and European company also commercializing the technology.
They are offering roughly 3,000 charge-discharge cycles, which is on par with lfp.
Battery technology for electric vehicles is moving super fast right now.
https://electrek.co/2023/12/27/volkswagen-backed-ev-maker-first-sodium-ion-battery-electric-car/
Thanks for providing these details.
I guess Tesla really has nothing going for them now, other than investors want to get their money back and so the MSM isn’t going to portray the truth.
That's not true, Tesla has figured out manufacturing and does so profitably. Unlike any other American based car manufacturer, Tesla is making a profit per unit and they do not rely on legacy ice vehicle sales to prop their balance sheets up.
Pretty much every Tesla has issues with the quality control.
Sodium batteries are cheaper and less volatile I believe but they're also much less energy dense meaning you need a heavier pack to get a similar amount of range (which also reduces range from the extra weight). I think they're better suited for stationary applications like solar banks and other energy storage solutions.
EV batteries are actually significantly different than the batteries in your laptop or phone, and are designed to have minimal degradation over many many years of use. The coolant loops also help to moderate the temperature between cells, which eliminates problems of hot spots and the heat stress that a phone battery will experience.
For instance, my car has over 300 battery cells in it, which results in say a 100 MI Drive will only use each cell draining by about 1/3. The much lower cyclic rate on these cells results in a much longer lifespan, and the battery conditioning using liquid coolant is how they achieve that.
It is. Their cooling / heating system along with the battery is top notch. Others are catching up though.
And yes in terms of fit and build quality most actual car manufacturers are ahead.
Of course you also have Ford an ICE manufacturer that's been building cars for centuries and still manages to produce shit with awful QA and constant recalls.
The battery is sourced from Ganfeng Lithium, CATL, Panasonic, and/or LG Chemical. The majority actually comes from CATL. The world's leading EV battery manufacturer. Various automakers work with them. The cells arrive at the automakers manufacturing and all they do is pack it into a case. The statement they have leading battery tech is disingenuous. No matter which automaker you look at, they're using the same cells from the same sources.
Due to a bunch of political mess with China, both CATL and automakers are trying to get around it. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/catl-talks-with-tesla-global-automakers-us-licensing-wsj-reports-2024-03-25/
Lastly, Tesla isn't ahead. China is. It's why automakers are going to them. Credit where it's due, Tesla did push for EV adoption outside of China. But that's about it.
Hey OP here, thanks for pointing this out to me as I had no clue if the other person was right or not.
I don't think it's as cut and dry as you're saying https://insideevs.com/news/587455/batteries-tesla-using-electric-cars/
Isn't it just a standard Panasonic 18650? And aren't they changing their batteries to a Chinese brand?
Looks like only the S and X still use 18650s. The 3 and Y are using larger 2170 cells and apparently they're also buying from LG not just Panasonic.
Some use the larger cells, but not all. They apparently are a bust and don't offer increased energy density like they had originally claimed.
The lfp cells come from China, and are now being heavily taxed.
There's a big difference between the market capitalization and book value. Tesla's stock is probably way overvalued but I can't say for sure since I don't own any of their stock and haven't looked into their financials.
They have the premier charging network in the United States.
Unfortunately, nothing else comes close and probably won't for a few years... Like 10 years at least. The US is probably a decade behind Europe's electrification at this point, and about 75 years behind it's rail electrification.
I've never even seen a Tesla Supercharger in the same state they build these things in, other than around the plant in Fremont when I worked there. Plenty of non-Tesla ones, though.