Not my argument, mind. The party line, if you will. Seems plausible but the glovebox is an obvious exception. I assume they stuck with the Swedish modern sparse aesthetic to the extreme once they were committed to it.
If your battery is dead is an EV to that point then the document is the glovebox is likely VERY low down on your list of problems.
a zombie stock sounds a lot cooler than it probably is. i don’t know… and i don’t care!
Unless, for example, you keep your small emergency 12v battery charger in the glove box.
(My M.I.L.’s car has been stranded more than once because the 12v battery died even though the main battery still had juice.)
“Zombie stock”?! What was wrong with “Ponzi scheme”?
I am always heartened by noble altruists who have learned how to predict share-price movements, and who choose to sell that information to clients who want to enrich themselves, rather than using that information for their own enrichment.
Is there a track record for “New Constructs” and their ML voodoo? Had anyone heard of them before they told us what we want to hear?
Firstly, company that built mathematical model they don’t understand by putting all their data in a pile of linear algebra and stirring says that investors may be irrational. More news at 11.
Secondly, any company that announces they have a super special investing algorithm is announcing it because it failed to make them rich using option A (make me lots of money using the algorithm) so they are moving on to option B (take money from suckers).
And lastly, you can only judge the value of a company when they move from a flat out growth phase (30-50% YOY) to some form of steady state because you have now idea what it’s earnings per share will be when it taps out it’s addressable market. E.g. if you bought Apple in 2010, for $6 a share with their insane PE ratio at the time of 17!!! your effective PE ratio today would be ~1 because 12 years of 30% growth does amazing things.
But I’m kind of surprised that Meta isn’t on that list as they are both have flat growth, and a shitty PE.
I’m not. If I have to take my eyes off the road to operate something, that’s unsafe.
That said, I’ve never owned a car newer than ten years old, so it’ll be a long while before I have to worry about the current trend to use touchscreens everywhere.
And remember kids, electric cars are designed to save the car industry, not the planet!
Woah woah woah, if they’re doing machine learning it’s non-linear algebra, not linear 
I leased one for three years, and I agree with all of this. However, it’s not trying to be a Model 3. The Model 3 is a more upscale GT, competing with a BMW 3 series, that sort of thing. The Bolt is intended to be the lowest-end-possible long range EV, which I think it achieves very well. It’s still a $20k car that costs $35k, but that’s because EVs are still expensive compared to ICE.
The gap is so narrow now that I can’t see it anymore. Not just EVs, but all cars. I rented a brand new RAV-4 for a road trip and was genuinely surprised that it has essentially every feature Teslas are famous for, short of full “auto” drive (which is dangerous bullshit anyway).
Tesla is also notorious for production problems, and bricking features in second hand cars. Furthermore, will Tesla still exist in 20 years when the car needs a new battery? I don’t think it’s likely they will, but I know GM will. That alone keeps me from looking at any of these startup EVs like Rivian and whatever. Car companies need to still be there to get parts for decades, and I don’t trust any of these little companies will be.
So all told, I think the Bolt is a better package than the Model 3 for all these reasons. Not giving money to Pedo Guy is a nice perk. Sadly I can no longer drive an EV (I now live in a rural area where the range is unworkable) otherwise I’d still have my Bolt. I loved that car.
J. Maynard Keyes, discussing the risks of short-selling, famously said “The market can remain irrational much longer than you can remain solvent.”
And be hailed as geniuses through the magic of survivorship bias.
Is it really? I mean, yes that explains a lot of choices, but it also has a video rearview mirror (that I wasn’t expecting to love, and definitely love), a bunch of lane sensing features (that don’t seem to work), auto-high beam on/off thingie (that works on a lot of roads, but on others id decides you never need high beams), and a dozen or more other features that seem very out of place on a lowest-end car.
Maybe “low end car plus a lot of gadgets”? I mean I absolutely agree the seats are definitely cost reduced.
Hmmmm, I think Tesla’s SuperCharger network is still unmatched, although they have claimed they are actually opening it up to non-Teslas in 2023 (will they really? They have a history mostly via Musk of promising things that never come, and promising things that come late…I do think it could make some sense for Tesla to open the charge network though, but at the same time it could make sense for it to remain closed).
The rate at which Teslas DC fast charge is also a fair bit higher then most other EVs (although the Ioniq 5, Kia’s EV6, and the Porsche Tycan can fast charge faster under some limited but realistic circumstances, mostly finding a fast enough charger and in lower temperatures having managed to preheat the battery pack). That can be a big deal to some people, or a big slice of nothing to people that rarely fast charge (or frequently fast charge but at a restaurant where they want a half our to 40 minute break, not a 10 minutes and out).
I give them a fair chance to, and given that 20 years is past the replacement part lifetime mandate you might find that GM or Ford or Toyota is around but doesn’t sell the part you want anymore so they may as well not be around.
I also really don’t think it is a given that GM will be around in 20 years. I mean the US government seems to like bailing them out of trouble, and as long as that stays true they will probable last. I’m not saying Tesla will kill GM, just that GM has it’s very own issues.
Yeah, to be honest I love Rivian’s product, but it is more then the price tag that keeps me away from buying one. Also Rivian isn’t above showing features they will never launch (search for their tank turn you tube video – awesome feature, but unfortunately they have said if it loses traction in that mode it is way to hard for people to deal with and they don’t want people crashing the thing, a sensible reason not to actually release the feature, but they must have known it when they released that video!)
Obviously owning a Bolt I have made a similar judgment, although for me it is far more “yeah the extra stuff on the Model 3 doesn’t seem like I want to spend the money on it” then actually liking the Bolt more, but I absolutely think on something that is as big a bag of choices as a car that what is absolute right for one person is totally wrong for another and lots of people can make completely different choices from each other and all be correct.
Oh no! Sorry you can’t keep driving what you love 
Mine had none of those things. What you are describing does sound like the highest option package, though. I know a lot of that stuff was in there. Mine was a 2018 though, so it’s likely they’ve expanded the basic option package since then.
That stuff is not really high end anymore anyway. I have a base model Honda Ridgeline truck now and it has all that and more. Technology packages in base model cars have exploded in the last few years, I guess because it’s a fairly inexpensive way to compete and the profit margins are high on that stuff. For a couple of $2 cameras and some software, they can add $2k to the car.
True, but honestly I think that network is overrated. In three years of driving my two different EVs (a Leaf and a Bolt) I never used a public charger. Maybe once just to see what it’s like. But the driving patterns for EVs are different (as I’m sure you know!). You charge them at home every night and never while you’re out and about (because it’s too much damn hassle). I charged my Bolt once a week in my garage. For apartment dwellers or road trippers it would be different, but I think EVs are currently a poor choice for both those use cases no matter which one you buy. Even in the middle of Los Angeles (where I had my EVs) I would never own a Tesla without a garage to charge it in. It’s just too hard to find open public chargers. Same for road trips- yes you can do them in a Tesla but it’s a pretty giant pain in the ass, the trip takes way longer, and you can’t take any route you want. I’ve watched enough YouTube videos of people in all different EVs try to do road trips to swear ever attempting it myself.
Aside from the two EVs that I leased, our family never kept a car less than 25 years and never had issues getting parts. I hear what you’re saying though- this is getting worse as people keep cars less and less. It’s also entirely possible a cottage industry will appear to rejuvenate Tesla batteries so I may be overstating this problem. I mean there’s hardly a single part on a Model T that you can’t buy right now because the enthusiast community for them is so large. All aftermarket, not from Ford, of course. If the demand is there, supply will appear.
It is, yes, but mostly because they said “screw you” to the industry standards on chargers. It’s also coming out now that Superchargers are damaging the batteries at an accelerated rate so they are nerfing them more and more in software. Apple had the same problem at a micro scale with AirPods. Turns out ramming electrons into the battery at theoretical maximum rates is real real bad for them. 
So now AirPods charge slower and have an 80% cap on fast charging.
Unless you store some emergency gear there.
Thanks. Interesting reading.
Aside from the stuff about natural language machine learning something something; isn’t the whole theory of markets that they do(and are supposed to) weed out underperforming investments and allocate capital in better directions?
I realize that everything they teach you about econ in undergrad is a mixture of simplified lies and deeply cynical or ideological lies; but this seems like a particularly blatant instance of “Oh god! An economic entity might do exactly what its proponents claim it does!”.
Not quite as irksome as the people who insist on complaining that it’s too hard to hire and wages are too high; those need a slap from the supply and demand hand; but still.
About a year ago my wife’s dog (he was a family dog, but he was my wife’s soul dog, and while he liked me well enough he clearly had way more feelings for her) needed an emergency eye doctor visit, and our normal one was at a convention along with actually most dog eye doctors, but our doc made some calls and referred us to UC Davis. Which was about 200 miles from where I was living at the time. So I go get his traveling things and put them in the Ford Connect, but this being COVID times nobody had actually driven it anywhere and it’s better was deader then a doornail. So I swapped over to the Bolt (which would have been my absolute first choice if the drive had been under about 120 miles, which as you can guess is exactly how the Ford’s battery went flat).
So I drove 190 miles to UC Davis, Jake got seen (and kept his vision). I had to charge on the way home. The only fast chargers available to me where no where near any food places that were still open (one was in a WalMart parking lot, but since it was like one am, WalMart was closed and the fast food place housed within was also closed). So we aren’t getting a story about “hey I had to charge my car for half an hour, but it took me that long to eat so it was like free charging time!”. Fortunately this is also not a story about how I was forced to eat at a WalMart McDonalds.
There were like 8 or so chargers. Three were out of order. Number four didn’t want to read my card (and the three that were out of order were apparently all card reader issues – seems to happen to Electrify America a lot, but not to ChargePoint). Number five would take my card, and charge, but it unlatched every few minutes. After a few tries there I went to number six which worked fine.
Tesla SuperChargers are absolutely not that flakey. I don’t honestly know if Electrify America is really that flakey or not in general, but they absolutely were in that instance.
I have DC fast charged a few more times, but honestly they were all along the lines of “the pessimistic range guess thinks I won’t get home, the other two guesses say I will, but you know, I can stop here for like five minutes and be absolutely sure”, and/or “wow the state of California really installed a free fast charger just ~20 miles from my house and 2 miles from Dicky’s BBQ? I have to check that out!” (for the record it worked, and maybe the total power would have been disappointing to a non-Bolt owner, but it maxes out the Bolt’s charge rate!)
I know two people with Teslas with very different options. One kept his track car and his VW SUV-thing when he bought his Tesla because they both served purposes the Tesla didn’t. He also sold the track car a year later because he just didn’t like driving it anymore (low performance compared to the Tesla, granted it was an S), and likewise the VW he got rid of because it “felt broken” after driving the Tesla. That was early days for the Tesla so he actually did things like (when visiting his brother in law) charge at his brother in law’s on the dryer plug. He was overjoyed when the Gilroy supercharger went in.
My Dad has a model 3 and he takes it on multiday drives as opposed to their SUV. I think it is a lot easier now because so many places have “destination chargers” now.
Both find road trips super easy.
I have never actually run into anyone with a Tesla that said they hate long trips in 'em.
…but as per my previous message, nobody who decides that is too much of a pain is wrong as long as they realize that (valid!) choice may not be shared by everyone.
Yeah, but the batteries in specific are not in general made by car companies. You may be able to get a replacement window motor for a 2018 Bolt in 2043, but when you want a battery replacement for the 2018 Bolt it isn’t GM that made the thing, or any other typical auto parts company (i.e. AC Delco). It is LG Chem. Will they have a replacement for a battery that has been obsolete for decades?
I doubt anyone will have a battery part repacment, not one that acts like the battery management system expects.
If you can replace the entire battery management system though, I’m guessing 2043 will have a replacement that costs less, holds more kWh and weighs less.
I think a lot of people do keep cars for a long time still, but they aren’t the people that bought them new. The second or sometimes third owners that keep cars until they really can’t be repaired anymore.
Maybe, there is pretty good reason to believe that earlier Tesla batteries will last around a half million miles and more recent ones out to a million. It is more likely that you need a cottage industry to fix up the seats, the window motors, and various cosmetic issues then to make the batterie last longer. At least if true.
I don’t know how much of that applies to other battery packs though, like GM’s battery management system only has some of the tools Tesla’s uses to keep the batteries happy (the Bolt has some control over coming on aper pack level, and no way to temporarily stop charging or discharging individual packs). I don’;t know if that is the big deal over a million miles, or if it is battery chemistry.
Yeah, but I think when they first started the SAE charger standards didn’t cover DC Charging, and more over nobody used them. There was no particular reason to believe that anyone would use them either, lots of things get standardized but don’t get used (case in point there were charge standards prior to J1772, I think the EV1 used a SAE standard). I also think when the Model S came out the J1772 didn’t support any way to pass billing info (or even the VIN) from the EV to the EVSE so you couldn’t do a “Plug in and charge, no external credit card machine you need to swipe, no RFID on the charger to verify with, just plug it in!” type deal.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Elon is a dick, and a lot of poor company culture at Tesla can probably be laid at his feet, but I also think deciding not to use a standard that doesn’t really do the job (especially one that isn’t widely adopted) is a good idea, not a bad one. If J1772-CCS and the car auth stuff had all existed at the time, sure it wouldn’t have been quite as good as what Tesla came up with, but it would have been fine. Plus it would have made it easier to Tesla to sell charging service to other EVs if they want to (as it is if they really do want to in the USA they will need non-Tesla customers to have an adaptor, or to add a CCS tail to all the existing chargers!)
I think you may have that backwards- the average age of cars in the US is at an all-time high, reaching 12.1 years in 2021:
It’s not just from supply chain issues over the last couple of years, either. This has been a steady upward trend. A big part of this is that build quality is way better than it once was. Back in the bad ol’ days of the 1970s and 1980s most new cars wouldn’t be expected to last more than 100,000 miles, or often less. But my economy car from Honda has almost 300,000 miles on the odometer, which isn’t even that unusual.
Now I am reminded of an earlier Natural-Language Nostradamus, the Web Bot Project, which promised to pump the entire contents of the Interlattice through “Asymmetric Linguistic Trend Analysis (ALTA)” to predict future global trends. Including but not limited to stockmarket movements.
Suffice to say that the dudes marketing this service and selling their ALTA predictive reports were much better at predicting events after they happened.
Yah, I’ll give you that for sure. The “is there a charger available” status on their app is apparently reliable also, which none of the third party services are. Most public charging networks are as you describe- pretty much a shitshow.
I did this once in the Leaf, but only when I had to go to the dealership for something. The Nissan dealers were the only places that had the CHAdeMO fast charging standard. 
Even in Los Angeles, you only ever find the level 2 chargers that take a couple of hours. I didn’t even get the DC Fast option for my Bolt because I never found any chargers for it. I put a Bosch level 2 charger (240V, 50 amps) in my house and it worked great though. Full charge in about 90 mins.
That’s interesting! Anecdotally it seemed the opposite- that everyone leases for three years now and moves on. Doesn’t seem like people work on or maintain cars like they used to, but that’s just my biased impression. If the data says otherwise, that’s good. We should be using things as long as possible to amortize the carbon that went in to building them!
