Elon Musk was speaking yesterday in New Orleans to executives of the Edison Electric Institute’s annual convention. As usual this billionaire Tony Stark persona gave us a glimpse into the future with his remarks. First of all he stated that in 2017 the long awaited Tesla Model III would be released and with a stated range of over 250 miles. The range game is getting heated.
The Chevy Bolt stated range was 200 and the Nissan Leaf is stated at 200 so leave it to the Tesla CEO to raise the bar. This Leap Frogging may continue and like a master poker player Elon may be sending messages to Carlos Ghosn (Nissan CEO) and Mary Barra (GM CEO) and any other automobile CEOs willing to challenge the EV Giants superiority.
Elon has one main reason he can feel confident to boast. He has a Giga Factory! Does Nissan have a Giga Factory, does GM have a Giga factory? I don’t think so. This factory will more than double the worldwide capacity for Lithium Batteries in one building.
Another reason is that he has the 250 mile Tesla Roadster to build upon. Recent innovations in the battery technology has enabled the Roadster to be retrofitted with todays batteries and make the little 2 seater car into a 400+ mile range EV.
Therefore, if I was a betting man, I would say that Tesla will win the range race in the $35k EV car class but Carlos Ghosn is a very competitive man. These two Giants of this industry will be in a war as Tesla owns the Luxury EV market and Nissan Owns the $35k EV car class with the NISSAN Leaf. With this race on and autonomous car versions of each in prototype stage, we are looking at a serious struggle once this EV giant jumps into the $35k EV space.
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Comments
The current Model S will tell
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The current Model S will tell you where it is, it can alert you if driven too fast, it can alert you if a car leaves a geofenced area, it has a reduced performance valet mode. If it comes in a smaller, less expensive package, It's a pretty hard to beat set of features for the parent of a teen driver.
We knew it was going to be
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We knew it was going to be 250+ since it needs to be higher than only 200 for the distance between Superchargers.
I'm hoping he actually makes
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I'm hoping he actually makes it a 300 mile per range EV! Maybe I'm dreaming but since the Roadster is capable of over 400 miles now, I'm sure it is doable! Just the price under $35k is the real tough line to cross!
The real winner will be the
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The real winner will be the maker that can put out an EV at $30,000 that gets 150 "real" miles
The fanboy author of this
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The author of this piece makes the mistake of taking a prediction about a car that won't be in production for at least two more years and comparing it to what is on the road from other automakers today. It assumes Nissan and others are standing still and not working on battery technology. Beyond that, it is possible today to make longer-range batteries; the trade-off is the longer the range, the larger and more expensive the battery. This is a moving target, however, and the cost is coming down. So don't assume that in two years, a LEAF battery will not be competitive with whatever Tesla comes up with for 35K, assuming that is that Tesla actually gets the oft-delayed car into production by 2017. As for the "Gigafactory," big capacity is fine only if Elon can find other automakers to buy his batteries. So far, he hasn't. Which means he may have a huge undercapacity factory out there in the desert. BTW, Nissan does make its own batteries in what they call a "factory." And my guess is, with nearly 250,000 EVs already on the road, they build them for a lot less than Tesla.