WTH with people putting one person in the pedestal? (HIDEO Kojima, Elon Musk, etc)

I don’t think they are trying to be bought out. The nature of the electric car is not cheap. The aim for the luxury market had to be the strategy to keep margins high. It’s very difficult to have a low cost electric car and be able to compete against civic and corolla. The fuel consumption of those vehicles is tough to beat from a cost standpoint.
 
Electric motors aren't expensive, cost of chassis, brakes and suspension much the same as an ICE, I expect. It's just the batteries making them so much more expensive at present.

However, prices have been tumbling over the past decade so it really should only be a short amount of time before electric cars become a lot more economical than ICEs. Some useful figures and comment in this link:

https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/12/20191204-bnef.html#comments
 
Mariner said:
Electric motors aren't expensive, cost of chassis, brakes and suspension much the same as an ICE, I expect. It's just the batteries making them so much more expensive at present.

However, prices have been tumbling over the past decade so it really should only be a short amount of time before electric cars become a lot more economical than ICEs. Some useful figures and comment in this link:

https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/12/20191204-bnef.html#comments
Click to expand...
agreed on the battery. But isn't lithium a scarce resource? There must be some studies being done on whether we can fulfill demand.
 
iroboto said:
But isn't lithium a scarce resource?
Click to expand...

Lithium's fine. It's more a problem of supply. There needs to be a growth in mining it and recycling. It's relatively easy to do both.

Other elements, like cobalt, are rarer and more problematic. Seems to involve being horrible to people in poorer countries.

For its part, Tesla use less rare metals than other battery chemistries.
 
There is a lot and I mean A LOT of Lithium in the oceans. And elsewhere, for that matter. Plans are afoot/research is underway to use MOFs to extract lithium and other useful elements from seawater (Uranium, anyone?) efficiently. Of course, it is much easier to get lithium from the brines currently used. There's no scarcity like with some elements. It's just making it cost-effective. And you don't really need all that much lithium in Li-ion batteries.

Also, sodium, aluminium and magnesium can be used for batteries instead of lithium, though research into these is much less advanced. Lithium will be the go-to choice for some years.
 
Moreover aren't Panasonic ramping down their involvement, maybe pulling out altogether? (I forget the details)
 
The model s and x cells were made in Panasonic factories. Other people can get the same cells. The joint venture part is just Tesla giving them money to expand production. Model s cells are produced in the gigafactory to save on shipping costs. Panasonic has a joint venture with Toyota, gm has one with LG. Show me evidence that Tesla is doing materials science research and I will change my mind but all the information simply says that Tesla chooses to have a high energy instead of power cell. That is a tradeoff you make based on the size of the pack. That is why people want used volt packs for project cars they are more power dense than Tesla packs.

Panasonic doesn't want to build them on China so Tesla has other companies they will "partner" with there.
 
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zed said:
Who can afford them?
the market cap numbers are all over the place depending on the date, but the only company that prolly could is Toyota (or maybe a german one if they team up), most places seem to agree it has the highest market cap of the USA car companies

current numbers, I just looked up

tesla Mkt cap64.60B
gm Mkt cap50.94B
uber Mkt cap48.60B :mrgreen:
ford Mkt cap36.72B
Click to expand...
Tesla just overtook VW & became the worlds second most valuable car company $100 billion
But like I mentioned elsewhere marketcap is not really a good indication of a companies true value
 
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