On September 30th, VW, the world’s largest car maker had an almost precedented occurrence … ALL of the top managers/executives in Germany were called in for can only be described as a true “Come to Jesus” moment. The CEO told all in attendance that VW is serious trouble. And I’m not talking about the bogus “diesel-gate” episode. The CEO explained that VW is so far behind Tesla that something has to be dramatically changed for them to survive. Tesla can produce three cars in the time it takes VW/Audi/Porsche to make a single car. And that single inferior car LOSES money for the VW group. Tesla’s cars, being better engineered, are hugely profitable and basically funds the entire Musk empire. The VW boss says he is tearing down the old VW factories and he hopes they can begin building electric cars in 2025! Not in the next few months, but almost half a decade in the future, IF everything goes to plan. One of the world’s top car engineers (Sandy Munro), if not “the” top guy, says that every car company in existence is five to ten years away from any kind of parity with Tesla today. Imagine where Tesla will be in just two years … It’s further proof that many of the car companies we have today, won’t exist in five to ten years. Toyota is frightened, as they literally have nothing to fall back upon, that they are trying everything it can through politics, lawsuits and PR to try to slow down the Tesla juggernaut. I always get amused when I talk about EV’s that some people say “it’ll never catch-on, or they’ll never drive one as it doesn’t meet their needs.” They may have not heard that almost every single car company on the planet has stated that they have set dates of total elimination of internal combustion engines (ICE). That’s a unimaginably huge problem as NO company has ANY infrastructure to support their electric cars … only Tesla started with the stations for their cars before mass production. That means in simple terms, ALL car companies will have to rely on somebody, somewhere to put a few charging stations available to the other brands. Tesla has almost 30,000 charging points exclusive to their cars. With the very probable failure of “Electrify America” as the lawsuit money is almost gone, it means an unmitigated disaster for every other car company. What good is their electric car that you can’t drive more than 50-100 miles from home with?
With literally almost no maintenance, incredibly cheap “electric fuel”, mind boggling performance, cutting-edge tech and the highest safety ratings that any car has ever achieved according to the NTSA, no wonder that the waiting list of several months for a new Tesla is getting longer daily. I’ve had Cadillacs that were “worn-out” and scrap pile worthy after only 70,000 easy miles … the projected lifespan (this is only speculative … that I’m currently aware of, that no Tesla has worn out yet under normal use, since the initial Model S production in 2012) is over 200,000 miles. When the new Tesla 46-80 batteries are in full production, the price for their batteries will plummet. So even when a car with +200,000 miles may need batteries, the replacement will be far, far cheaper than any other company and back on the road quickly as a new battery pack replacement only takes a couple of hours, for another 200,000 miles or even more as the Tesla battery-tech marches double-time forward into the future. Imagine you’re truly an amazing engineer … do you go to Ford/GM/VW or to the company that owns SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, OpenAI, Solar City and is branching into insurance, Tesla-branded stores, mass electric generation/storage, HVAC home systems, robotics and even electric quad-runners? Why work for Toyota or Ford, when they clearly don’t have a clue about what is happening to the car market or how to stop their share slide.
For a bit of fun perspective, Porsche’s car to compete with the $60k Tesla Model 3 performance is a $150,000+ car festooned with so many buttons/switches/panels that it looks like something out of a Mel Brooks’ sci-fi movie. In contrast, the Model 3 is more like a Japanese washitsu … stark, and yet functional. They certainly don’t want to compare the Porsche with the Tesla Plaid Model S as it’s the current world record holder for an unmodified, actual production car at the Nürburgring track in Germany, which is the world’s standard for measuring performance. And, it’s tens of thousands dollars cheaper. Just an FYI, the Plaid+ has been confirmed … yet more bad news for Porsche and Ferrari. There is a car company claiming that their car is faster by about one second (which has yet to produce a single car) for only 1.7 million dollars. This is a car, that the taxes alone for their completely hand-made 1.7 million dollar, two-person “supercar”, will buy the four-door, dog-friendly Tesla sedan. This shows again just how far EVERYONE is behind …
The new electric Mustang, using batteries that Ford has to buy from another company, has been involved in recalls and failed safety tests. The thing has over 60 feet of fluid tubing, four pumps and 37 connection points cobbled together to prevent the electrics from melting. Amazingly, this is considered the 2nd best system as the VW and others are far worse. The Tesla, on the other hand, has less than a third of the length of the Mustang tubes and almost no connectors. Apparently, “Job One” at Ford is seeing how many feet of rubber tubes they can jam into a bad design. Just wait until those 60+ feet of uniquely-shaped tubes and 37 connectors begin to go bad. Can you imagine the cost not just in parts, but in labor! Chevrolet is recalling ALL of its Bolts due to the company making their batteries not being able to stop the Chevy’s from spontaneously bursting into flames. And the Volt is now cancelled too. Chevrolet has no battery manufacturing plants and is hoping that the very company that made the defective batteries, will help them build batteries. This is the best that GM and Ford can do against Tesla, despite the fact that GM started building electric cars 25 years ago and then cancelled the production over the livid protests of the drivers! They decided there was no future for EV’s …
Does this mean we will see Tesla buying VW, Toyota or Ford and GM? Just a few months ago, Tesla became more valuable than Toyota, Volkswagen, Mercedes, and General Motors, plus China-based BYD and NIO brands … combined. They are well on track to be a multi-trillion dollar company and sales are continuing to decline for competitors. … currently, Tesla is worth MORE than ten times the value of GM and almost 16 times the value of Ford. The value of their stock is projected to hit $4000 (approx. four trillion dollars) … should that actually occur, that would mean Tesla is worth more than the top ten car companies … combined. Now, you see why every car company is freaking out? In some countries, such as Norway, more people buy Teslas, than all other EV car companies by huge margins …. And it’s the number one selling car, EV or gas, at almost a third of all sales in September alone. Tesla is also the number one EV seller in Spain and Israel by large margins. The new German plant will open in a few more months, so these numbers will jump in 2022 and simply leave all other companies choking on their dust. This combined with the Texas plant opening in a few weeks will mean Tesla selling about 20% as many cars as VW … that’s between 2 and 2.5 million cars. And, they will have done this with the Model 3 and Y in less than four years, with only four factories. Toyota sells ten million cars a year using over 100 plants and currently, not a single one makes EV’s. And, no other company has even the remotest ability to make the batteries, or amounts required to match the Tesla-produced ones.
As I’ve said repeatedly before, tech waits for no one … someone should have told that to VW and Toyota … reminds of an old favorite band of mine, “Asleep at the Wheel.”
UPDATE 10/25/2021 – The current waiting list for some of the cars has now hit eleven months! Crazily, some are worse … my tri-motor Cybertruck delivery is scheduled for Oct 27th …. 2024!!!! The price for this Cyberbeast is in “flux” … in other words, who knows? We’re considering another Tesla for my wife, and I’m thinking a Plaid Model S may be necessary as a replacement for my Model Performance 3. But the wait for a long-range Model Y is a minimum of TEN months. Yes, that’s a long time … but not as long as waiting for anything else from any other company that’s as good as a 2016 Tesla. Tech and time wait for no one …