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Here are Tesla’s biggest announcements from Battery Day: Elon Musk said the company will phase out cobalt and aims for a $25k car
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- Title
- Here are Tesla's biggest announcements from Battery Day
- Authors
- Kim Lyons
- Published
- Sep 23 2020
- Word count
- 653 words
The 25K electric car cannot come fast enough. I don't care how many corners need to be cut (as long as they aren't going to affect safety, of course).
I would love for them to release a version without WiFi and any internal-facing computer. A "dumb" electric car. The auto industry doesn't have a good history with security and a vehicle that can be wirelessly updated doesn't sound good to me.
I have to say I strongly disagree. Getting regular updates is amazing.
I bought my Model 3 almost a year ago. The voice command features were terrible. It had trouble accurately detecting what I was saying and often when it did pick it up correctly, it couldn't really do anything beyond some basic navigation stuff. 6 months later I get an update that made it so I can do almost everything I want in the car with voice commands. Change music sources, change navigation, change wiper settings, change light settings, etc, and it almost never fails to pick up my command. Oh and now it reads texts back to me and you an opt to reply via one click buttons on the steering wheel.
An update a few months ago now adds the side-backwards facing cameras to the rear backup camera when in reverse, which originated as a suggestion on twitter to Elon Musk (which is the worst way ever to get suggestions, but whatever).
An update in October of 2019 included a 5% power boost to cars from software efficiencies and the option to schedule departures so the car starts heating or cooling before you get in.
There are many other improvements that have come out via software updates. Sentry mode, dog mode, major camera visualization improvements have all come from software updates to the vehicles. Here's a list tracking software updates to the cars.
What other vehicles get better after you purchase them?
I'd be fine with all that, but over USB/ethernet only.
I think that's unreasonable in this day and age. The people who would request that would be a tiny minority of the market. A considerable amount of people do not own a desktop or even laptop PC. Living situations are all too varied to make ethernet work. My internet port into my house is on the completely opposite side compared to the garage and would require a cable at least 100 meters long, for example. People in apartments would be even more hosed. Would you get a notification on your phone to connect your car to ethernet to receive an update?
I think it’s more likely we will get a car with no firmware updates available. Right now there are plenty of good hybrids on the market without wireless firmware updates. I just want an all electric car that also lacks them.
With how dependent on software electric cars are, I don't see a good reason a manufacturer would opt for this. A software rewrite 2 year after you purchase your car could make it 10% more efficient, or tailoring how the motors respond to acceleration decreases overall power draw and extends battery life, or a new battery management software increases the life of your battery. These are things that don't really matter to ICE vehicles because they would require hardware changes, but that's not necessarily the case with electric vehicles.
I think the best solution would be to just make the Wi-Fi toggleable. If you don't want it at the moment, you can turn it off for as long as you like. If you want updates, you can turn it back on for a while. It's a simple solution that addresses pretty much everything.
Preferably with a hardware cutoff switch. I'd be much more comfortable if I knew I had a way to completely disable any network traffic to my car.
I can understand that, but Teslas also have a cellular network connection, for navigation, traffic updates, browser access, etc.
After seeing how much better the system of regular updates and being connected is, I don't think there's a good consumer reason for the vast majority to not want and benefit from it. Tesla doesn't even do annual models for their vehicles. They make small adjustments here and there, and anything software related gets pushed to all existing cars instead of being saved for a 2021+ model.
Tesla announces things way early. The factory isn’t even built yet. Even if they gave a date, they often miss them.
Yeah, their stock actually dropped after this announcement because so many analysts doubted its timeline.
Rather than this announcement, it's more that people had sky high expectations for the battery tech in general. Tesla is... certainly highly valued already, and it was on the decline recently anyway. With a P/E ratio of 60 they had to announce the second coming of Jesus in their announcement to keep their valuation.
Some have argued that is $TSLA is a battery company that happens to make cars.
People were expecting literal magic instead of regular engineering magic.
Not sure if you're in the US, but the EV subreddit discussed some very good dealer discounts on Chevy Bolts that took them to around $22k. I'd recommend checking that out if you're interested!
The Renault Zoe is already in the £25k area and there's a few other sub £30k EVs around as well - the VW ID3, Peugeot's e208 and the Hyundai Kona.
I know that Sterling hasn't quite sunk to 1:1 with the US Dollar but you guys tend to pay less tax on things so they're probably ballpark.
There's a weird little Chinese one which is like £7k but I don't think they are selling outside China (yet). The ORA R1 actually has pretty decent reviews.
Allow me to specify that I mean the US market specifically. The only car you mentioned sold in the US is the Kona, and it starts at $37K here.
I'm honestly not really 100% sure that the US auto market is completely healthy. It seems like auto manufacturers are doing everything they can to keep the cost of their cars sky high and they often do it by making them monstrously-sized beasts. If you look at what most manufacturers are offering as electrics, the majority are only selling SUVs.
Nissan basically has the low end of the electric market to itself with their Leaf, and I for one am positive that it's entirely because their competition does not care to challenge them. They have the lowest range on the market (AFIAK), yet they still start at $31600.
These prices are before taxes, it should be noted.
Ugh, all I want is a Tesla quality Electric Vehicle that isn't a Tesla.
Rivian is looking promising, but I haven't looked too closely at them.
The new VW electric vehicles look promising! And Chevy Bolts are pretty nice too. There are lots of options for solid EVs now.
I thought they got rid of the Chevy Bolt? Maybe it was a different one.
Hopefully there will be some good choices in the next 2-5 years.
The Volt was discontinued, which was the hybrid they made.
@stu2b50 is right, the Volt was discontinued a few years ago.
I mentioned in another comment here that Chevy has some amazing deals on Bolts right now. Some people have reported getting them for less than $20k, which blows other EVs out of the water on price.
Interesting. I bought my car brand new in 2016 and don't have a car payment on it, which I'm enjoying, but if I can find a really great deal that might be worth it.