Why Elon Musk is not a genius

[WheezyRider]

This is what is more appropriate for most towns and cities than a £30k Tesla:

Chinese £3,200 budget electric car takes on Tesla

The mini electric vehicle being made by China's biggest carmaker is now outselling Tesla two to one.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[flecc]

The comparison to Tesla doesn't exist, there is no comparison.

But it has competition in this microcar from Switzerland

And the Citroen Ami:

 

[flecc]

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This e-car related Link is of interest to e-bikers because it includes vehicle-to-load (V2L) charging from the car for e-bikes.
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[WheezyRider]

It's not about comparison, it's about fitness for purpose. An expensive, heavy, large and resource hungry Tesla isn't appropriate for the majority of car journeys and our cities don't have space for them.

The European examples are ok, but they are going to cost a lot more than this one from China (Currently about £3k, but likely to be a little higher if imported into the UK).

Obviously, the best solution would be to convince more people to ride ebikes. However, if you have to have a car in an urban environment it makes most sense to have something small, light weight and low cost - and Elon Musk is not thinking along these lines. That is the point I was making.

 

[Suzan]

The comparison to Tesla doesn't exist, there is no comparison.

But it has competition in this microcar from Switzerland

And the Citroen Ami:

View attachment 40955

Rather confrontational?

 

[flecc]

It's not about comparison, it's about fitness for purpose. An expensive, heavy, large and resource hungry Tesla isn't appropriate for the majority of car journeys and our cities don't have space for them.

The European examples are ok, but they are going to cost a lot more than this one from China (Currently about £3k, but likely to be a little higher if imported into the UK).

Obviously, the best solution would be to convince more people to ride ebikes. However, if you have to have a car in an urban environment it makes most sense to have something small, light weight and low cost - and Elon Musk is not thinking along these lines. That is the point I was making.

Rather confrontational?

Agreed about fitness for purpose, but Elon Musk primarily serves his US market where the cars he produces suit their often very long distances and spacious roads and they are also suitable for similar markets elsewhere such as Australia and many European major roads. And his biggest seller now is the Tesla 3 which is the same length as my Nissan Leaf e-car.

I think Musk is a genius for having the foresight and courage for his Tesla venture and his reusable space vehicle that now services the ISS, meaning we don't have to pay the Russians to do it with wasteful single use rockets.

But the other genius of the electric car world is Carlos Ghosn, ex boss of Renault Nissan who had the foresight to risk €4 billion in 1994 on the joint e-car venture that resulted in the very successful Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe e-cars which serve their smaller scale environments well.

In other words, it's "horses for courses" and both Musk and Ghosn did the right thing, just as the Chinese are doing with their e-car designs from the Focus sized BYD down to this microcar. Getting drivers onto e-bikes is a daydream for the future perhaps, the first priority is to stop them using polluting diesel and petrol cars and the market now provides for that.

So I viewed the thread title as being confrontational.
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[Danidl]

It's not about comparison, it's about fitness for purpose. An expensive, heavy, large and resource hungry Tesla isn't appropriate for the majority of car journeys and our cities don't have space for them.

The European examples are ok, but they are going to cost a lot more than this one from China (Currently about £3k, but likely to be a little higher if imported into the UK).

Obviously, the best solution would be to convince more people to ride ebikes. However, if you have to have a car in an urban environment it makes most sense to have something small, light weight and low cost - and Elon Musk is not thinking along these lines. That is the point I was making.

Musk is thinking USA . US cities are designed for big cars. European .. and to certain extent, Asian cities and villages long predate the car and need agile vehicles. It is only the Imperial Cities .. Central Paris, London, Berlin Moscow etc that the Teslas suit. The way I see it, it is like building a new estate. The very big luxury 5 bedroom houses get built first, and then the 3 bedroom semis at the back and eventually they squeeze in the 1 bedroom maisonettes.
I don't see a huge market for these really compact yokes ,in an upwardly mobile affluent audi generation wanting conspicuous consumption.

 

[WheezyRider]

Musk is thinking USA . US cities are designed for big cars. European .. and to certain extent, Asian cities and villages long predate the car and need agile vehicles. It is only the Imperial Cities .. Central Paris, London, Berlin Moscow etc that the Teslas suit. The way I see it, it is like building a new estate. The very big luxury 5 bedroom houses get built first, and then the 3 bedroom semis at the back and eventually they squeeze in the 1 bedroom maisonettes.
I don't see a huge market for these really compact yokes ,in an upwardly mobile affluent audi generation wanting conspicuous consumption.

That's the problem, conspicuous consumption. We can't do it any more. People are going to have to do more with less, we don't have the resources for large numbers of Teslas.

 

[WheezyRider]

Nickel shortage...

Tesla partners with nickel mine amid shortage fears

There are concerns about supplies of nickel which are needed for batteries that power most electric cars.

www.bbc.co.uk