Just an update or two

The long term inclination here has been to just edit posts and add Updates/Edits as reality shifts going forward. We're finding that only a few people (excepting those dozen or so new readers every year) are actually reading the updates. That's fair. So for the two dozen or so that read only new posts we'll attempt to summarize all that stuff here.    #a number of separate topics.

Aug.'23: Update to  The Crossing Point, showing how all this is tracking predictions. The short answer, really well, especially on a world-wide perspective. U.S. should hit 10% BEV adoption around the end of 2023. That wasn't 'supposed' to happen until 2026 if you listen to U.S. 'authorities.'

June'23: Connecting on Connectors chronicles the mass move to support the Tesla fast charging connector 'NACS' by most of the EV competitors. Turns out having the lowest cost, most reliable and (by far) the highest number of charging stations counts for something.

Apr.'23: For those of you looking for an inexpensive 'local transportation' EV, there's still the option of getting a 2023 Nissan Leaf S for under $30K. We found seven remaining in WA.
"What? That's not a good deal! A ten year old design (granted it's been updated a lot) with only 150 miles of range and an outdated charging port? " 
Uh, what part of "Local Transportation" did you not understand?
Well hold on, it qualifies for (at least right now) the full Federal Tax Credit, -and- various state rebates. For example if you're low enough income in Oregon (under 400% of the federal poverty line) you might get another $7500 off*, for a total of $15,000 off. Like a new car for $15K.
California residents can get $7K off or even more in some circumstances (having enough income to fully qualify for the federal credit -and- the CA Low Income Voucher, [300% of poverty line] is difficult to pull off but could result in car for $10K or so.) so local tax/income situations are a major variable.  Worth looking into though...
                   *You have to purchase/apply before the end of April. So this is dead.

Jan'23-Probably the most important post here ever:  As Go the Batteries, So Goes the Nation. 
There's also a bit there about the application of Wright's Law to the cumulative price decline. Key parts:  

"Note six months later: LFP cells, in quantities of 50,000 are already down around $70/kWh. That makes some of the arguments below even more compelling. Granted that is FOB in China. Tesla and others are near to making the same come true in the US factories. That sounds like a nifty 22% drop. Cool, huh! But don't forget the U.S. allows a $35 per KWh in tax credits to the manufacturers, so that drop cuts the after tax cost of LFP cells IN HALF. This is going to get really interesting ... especially when they get the cost down around $35 in 2025 or 2026. What happens when the most expensive part of your car or home energy storage system has a net cost of Zero Dollars? Boggles the mind.

Way down at the bottom of that post you'll find an addendum about how the cost of LFP cells are declining over time. Hint: It's over 15% per year.. Translation: That's around $60/KWh by mid-late 2024."

This also impacts The Crossing Point, which also has updates unrelated to the above. Including new graphs of how the EV transition might look. Note that there's not much about this 'zero cost' thing included there because we have little idea how that will play out. The macroeconomic effects of a single microeconomic cost variation. Should be an interesting ride.

Jan'23-Last quarter profit numbers for all the big EV players. These are numbers derived from the reports they filed based on world-wide numbers, not just U.S. specific, and includes the top ten manufacturers that have Pure EV's in their lineup. The EV parts of their business are not separated out here so this chart has a lot of gas cars (and profits) in it.

None of these (except Tesla) would be showing positive numbers if profits from EV's ONLY were shown. 

It's interesting to compare the 'Pure EV' players Tesla, Xpeng and Nio. Quite the different story. Several of whom have pointed out that if they could just sell more cars (at a loss) they'd improve their margins (but still loose money one each one sold?)

All of Ford + GM added together have less net profit than Tesla (who is less than a quarter their combined size).

Here is another view of that dynamic now that the 2022 figures are all in. Note that this one is about gross sales volume in the USA. We expect these trends to continue, especially for those who do a bad job of the EV transition, like Honda, Mazda and Toyota

As per usual, click on an image to blow up full size.

Feb'23-Electrify America, an EV Charging vendor mentioned in 2500 miles for Free? has raised their rates by a bunch (15%?) right in the middle of reports that their charge connectors sometimes short out and weld themselves to the vehicle they're attached to. Call the tow truck, or maybe the fire brigade. Oh, and they, it turns out, have used Microsoft Windows, a famously secure, reliable, lightweight operating system to run their charge stations. Oops! Hacking chargers is a thing? Apparently so. Also in what is sure to be unrelated news much of the top management of the company is being rotated out. Turns out they need the money from the increase to pay for thousands more (functional?) charging stations ... and get one-tenth as many as Tesla in operation.

Speaking of Tesla chargers ('Supercharger') in the countries where Tesla is allowing other brands of car to use their charging stations they seem to be beating the snot out of their competition. Lower prices, more reliable, faster, hmmm, can't see why. The Tesla app, which you need to start the charge, instead of advertising you potato chips while you charge your VW, is selling you Teslas. Wonder if that will work? The various other players seem very intent on this not happening in North America. Good luck with that.
There is also an Apr'23 edit of 'Motive, Means and Opportunity' about U.S.Fast Charger instillation rates.

Dec'22-And in the saddest news of this update, the 'Leasing Loophole' appears closed**. The post about this, how people who do not qualify for the FedTaxCredit of $7500 can use the Leassor as a stand-in and gain around $7K when 'buying' the car, was BY FAR the most popular post on this site ever.
This still 'works' if you're actually interested in Leasing. However the whole point of the post was that you would buy out the lease almost immediately, and so get the benefit of the tax credit despite having insufficient taxable income to qualify. What basically happened is the high resale values on used cars during the pandemic plus the high demand for used EVs generally -plus- the now available $4K credit for used EVs has convinced the leasing agencies (Tesla, NMAC, GMAC - etc) to rescind the option to buy out the lease. They make more money on the lease-take-back than they would otherwise. Also, somehow they're convinced that this maintains a higher used car price for their wares. In Tesla's case, this appears to be true. Not so obvious for the others. Bummer though, the little guy gets screwed again.

** Note that Hyundai/KIA are bucking that trend as of late'23, some investigation there might pay off.

Connecting on Connectors

                                     last edit Nov.2023

 Things, they are a'change'n, so don't assume you know all this ;-)

Q: Should which charging connector your next EV uses be the key defining element in the 'Which car to buy' decision?   Maybe not, after all our answer to any question is "It Depends."

Still it is one thing you should keep in mind..

About 80% of you, about 90+% of the time will be charging at home. Even if you're in apartment, many of which are starting to provide charging options, mostly under duress from state and local governments.
If you own your home, then you'll just put in whatever home connector your car uses, or get an adapter for the one you have. EasyPeasy. Except of course there's more to it. Why else would we be boring you with all of this.

While our first three EVs all charged directly off of standard home electrical outlets (we've been at this since the '80's) all the more recent cars, 2012 onward, have used the J1772 plug for home charging. We went into this in some detail back in a post from 2013 and we've been using literally that exact same charging cord since. 10 years on.

Standard J1772 EV charging plug.

So yeah, this has been the standard for over a decade now.  It basically acts as a switch with just enough smarts to switch on the power from the 120v or 240v AC outlet (or grid) you have it plugged into when it recognizes there's a car attached. The actual 'charger' part is in the car. This results in relatively slow charging, but ease of connecting to power.

This is why DC Fast Chargers were developed. They bypass the charger built into the car and actually charge the battery directly. CHAdeMO was the first 'standard' mainly in Japan and in the US used primarily on the Nissan Leaf, the first mass market EV here in 2011.
CCS1 then became the US standard, mainly because the other players didn't want to pay the (ridiculous) fees to the Japanese standards organization. Not Invented Here was also a factor, as was the expense of the overly large complicated CHAdeMO connector. CCS2 is one of the standards in Europe and S.America. China (of course) has their own. That said, the CCS connectors are, comparatively, also large heavy and expensive.

In (partially) response to this Tesla developed NACS*, a smaller lighter cheaper more reliable connector:

CCS (in grey) compared with NACS, both capable of 350Kw charging rates.

Obviously a big size disparity. CCS also weighs over twice as much and is considerably more difficult to handle and insert. The cost is also proportional, CCS being about 2X as much. NACS also handles both AC 'home charging' and DC fast charging with the same connector on the car.
CCS was designed to make money for the companies manufacturing it. NACS was designed for reliability, ease of use, and efficient production ... of both ends, partially because the same company was making both ends -and- the fast chargers -and- the cars attached there-to. To add insult to injury the NACS fast charging  infrastructure "Superchargers" costs a third, or less, to install and have been historically much more reliable as we have documented in earlier posts.

So if this NACS thing is so great how come we aren't using it already?
For starters, 'we' are using it already. Just under 75% of the EV's on US roads are Teslas, and Teslas use this connector. As for the remainder, there are several reasons:
Although Tesla agreed pretty much from the beginning to allow other manufacturer's cars access to the Tesla charging network and opened up their patents (free of charge) to allow that, they did want the other companies to help pay for the literally billions of dollars that charging infrastructure system costs, currently 48,000 stalls world wide.  Hey it's only fair, if they (other car sellers) want the benefits they should help with the costs, no?
However, well established (and prideful) car companies are hardly going to bow down to some irritating upstart in that manner. What would they tell their stockholders? Besides, other companies are going to build out chargers, for profit, without the car companies' having to shell out any $$.
There's also the political angle. The Biden Administration and a number of congress critters have an intense dislike of Tesla, in small part due to them being a non-union shop. Until very recently pretty much all the political noise and invitations to meetings - etc. has gone to GM. They make the right noises, even though their execution has been crap. GM is in what? Sixth? Place in the world on EVs if you remove micro-cars that are china-market only.

So what changed?
Two things. Mainly, FORD figured out that there was no way they were going to compete on the charging side of the equation. They got into extensive negotiations with Tesla over this and agreed to adopt the NACS 'standard' on their vehicles going forward, and are paying some undisclosed amounts now and going forward.
In exchange, the second big thing: Tesla is allowing the FORD App access to the servers/api that authenticate the connection and start the actual charging, and handle the billing. This was a big deal because now FORD is in your face on your phone while you're charging. Imagine the advertising revenue! And data (mis)management. 
Well, and 'brand awareness' despite that fact that you're obviously sitting at a Tesla charger ;-)

GM decided they couldn't afFord (see what we did there? ;-) to be left behind and quickly decided to follow suit. It's almost certain many other Dominoes will Fall. The Biden folks are pretty ticked off and are trying to revise the rules to require CCS on charging stations put in with federal support, despite that not being in the original law. This part  is getting interesting. At this point (late 2023) the ONLY manufacturer that sells into the North American market that has NOT signed on to use NACS as their primary charging connector is Stellantis (Fiat, Chrystler, RAM, JEEP).  Even VW is onboard now.

What about existing CCS equipped cars?
Many existing chargers have both NACS and CCS connectors. See Tesla Magic Dock. Also, equipping charge stations with two cords is do-able if you don't want to go the dockable-adapter route. That's how they support CCS + CHAdeMO now.
On the car owner end of it, adapters are available. This example photo is an NACS to J1772 adapter. It's around $50 on Amazon. Tesla makes a (necessarily much more complicated) CHAdeMO to NACS adapter that's a couple hundred dollars. If a 'standards organization' charges a bunch in licensing fees for you to include their very important standard in your product -or- they have an exclusive manufacturing agreement in place it can push costs up rapidly. Having to do complicated electronics/communication protocols adds costs too. Unfortunately CCS-NACS is, comparatively speaking, relatively difficult, so that will mostly be implemented by having the vehicle manufacturers do the heavy lifting -or- putting both types of plugs on each charging station, which is actually starting to happen. The other charging station companies are not -completely- clueless ;-)

*NACS is called the North American Charging Standard. At least recently. It was previously called the Tesla connector. It is registered with many standards bodies. Most of them don't recognize it as an exclusive north American standard. The SAE still recognizes CCS 'a' US standard. NACS is now an SAE standard as well. Some of the complicated bits, mostly surround auto-recognizing the vehicle and automatically starting charging when plugged in, is still under negotiation. This is no surprise since 'who controls the money' is a more fraught conversation than a physical engineering standard.
Do note that in the "negotiations with other car makers" Tesla is allowing them access to only some (around 60%?) of the Supercharger stations out there. Most of the already congested, by existing Tesla drivers, stations will be excluded, which only makes sense as they're protecting their user base.

Its VHS vs. BETA all over again. Except in this case Beta, the better technology with the worse marketing and extraordinarily irritating pitchman (or NACS in this case) has 75% of the electric cars on the road in the US using it's connector at this time. Yes, Tesla really is that dominant. 

We regard this whole thing as a good deal for almost everyone, especially future electric car drivers. 
The best, most reliable and lowest cost technology wins? Despite political and corporate and 'standards body' headwinds?          ...WhoDaThunkIt?

Final notes: We'd hate to be invested in other charging providers right now. EvGo, Electrify America, ChargePoint... Owie! Competing directly against a provider (Tesla) that has 99.7% uptime, compared with a non-Tesla industry average around 75%,  and historical pricing 30-50% lower -and- who is directly integrated into the Ford and GM apps has got to be difficult.
Investment-wise we're unlikely to jump in with FORD or GM either, even though we do think the above changes should reduce the need for massive government bailouts in the future, even though that probably remains the most likely scenario.
That said: Here are the charging station companies that have announced support for NACS:
ABB/ABM, Blink, Chargepoint, EVgo, FLO, Tritium and Wallbox. While Electrify America is currently absent from this list, they don't build any of the chargers, which are supplied by ABB/ABM and Tritium, so they're likely to follow suit. 
Our only concern with this is the conversion of existing charge stations to NACS. The easiest thing from the charger manufacturer's standpoint is to install a NACS cord on existing stations. The most prevalent 'has two cords' type of stations have CHAdeMO on the second one. It seems probable that CHAdeMO will get phased out leafing the ~200,000+ Leaf drivers in North America in an unpleasant position.

The two year Leaf ePlus report:

 The Nissan Leaf S ePlus 62KWh EV is two years old this week. (edit 2024: year 3 added)

Hows it going?      Really good!

Edit: Mid-2024: End of the saga and financial/buying analysis added way down at the bottom of the post:

If you've been following the posts, it's been doing day-to-day travel plus weekend outings and car trips to (almost) the Canadian border  and the Mexican border. Other than a couple hiccups with non-functional public chargers along the way (documented in those posts) there's been absolutely no problems. Pretty good for the little car that 'couldn't (according to a number of 'EV Experts' out there.) Yes it's not a Tesla, but for half the money, it's more than half as good ;-)
Edit 2024: Now that a used Tesla is very close to the same price as an equivalent used Leaf, it's hard to recommend the Leaf unless you have found a nice earlier one for cheap ($6-7K) as a local-only commuter.

Stats: 30,892 miles total. (edit 2024: 44962 at the end of lease)

Problems, Service Visits, Repairs, Broken stuff: None.

Public charge stops: 28, totaling ~1000KWh and around $100 (see posts, we cheat!)

Home charges ~185 for about 7500KWh. Roughly 3.7 Miles/KWh average.

At our home electric rate of 9.2 cents/KWh this represents a bill of $690. Yes this does not include the $28/mo. 'connection fee' which we would be paying regardless, it just reflects the additional power purchase rate. Electricity/fuel costs:  over-all total of roughly $800 or 2.5 cents/mile.

Not much else to say. At reasonable speeds. ie: Not trying to go 75MPH all the time (it's amazing how much more efficient it is at 68) it still goes 220 miles plus on a full charge. Longest was around 240 mi.  under nearly ideal conditions (summer, 65 mph, no serious headwinds) with 15 to go to 'empty' even then. Shortest under non ideal (near freezing, blowing, pouring rain, heater, defrost, freeway speeds, mountain passes) was about 160 miles. If there's any battery degradation we can't see it yet.

In honor of it's two year birthday it went over the coast range passes to the Oregon Coast Aquarium and back. 200 miles, 54 deg.F intermittent showers and the guess-o-meter showed 40 miles range remaining at the end.
Photos therefrom:

Hey, folks complain there's not enough pictures. Here ya go. ;-)

OK, here's the update and 'end analysis' on the third Leaf. As expected it's not a bad story, just not as awesome (free driving is rare ;-) as the first two. See Driving 50K Miles for Free.
As stated, the Oregon Rebate covered most of the $3K down payment, including the fees, licensing - etc. Total remaining plus the $229/mo. over 36 months and 45K miles plus end-of-lease fees came to -just- barely under $10K.
...or just at 22 cents/mile. Once insurance and electricity and two tires ($186, yes they were awful tires, but that's the Grand Total for our maintenance expenses) are added we're still under 28 cents/mile. Compared with national averages (50-60 cents/mi.) this is still a pretty good number.
The alternative was to buy it out ($18.2K) but with used prices having node-dived for all used cars, and especially EV's post-Covid it was effectively only worth around $14K as a private party sale.
This, plus the opportunity to evaluate wether a car is worth keeping, is the whole point of leasing a vehicle IMHO. The car was doing great. Battery degradation was reasonable (6-8% at a guess) and CCS to CHaDeMo charging adapters are finally available, granted at $600+. But even with a clunky adapter you're still charging slowly, and as you'll see elsewhere on this blog a one-year-newer Tesla Model 3 is $15K. It's a no brainer. Nissan Finance can have it back.
Just as a side note to Nissan: If they had put a CCS fast charging port on it and dropped the buy-out by a couple thousand, we'd have thought really hard about keeping it. Neither of those happened and we didn't.

If you can pick up even the shorter range 2018-2022 Nissan Leaf used for under $10K (which qualifies for partial Federal, and in some cases State rebates/credits, so say $6-7K all in) we still regard them as an absolutely great local/commuter car.   They really have worked the bugs out and the batteries seem to be holding up well on the late 2013 and later models. From our experience we wouldn't recommend going earlier than 2018 unless you're really strapped for cash.

Rumors: a lifetime of battery life rumors.

OK, stupid title, but you're here aren't you?  ;-)
This is a short update on the history and expectations regarding the life expectancy of EV Batteries. Since they're expensive to replace you REALLY want good news on this front. Also, arguments about "How much more materials are needed to make an EV" have been debunked.

We've gone on at length about the various EV battery chemistries, expected life trade-offs and how to Care for certain types to maximize their chronological and cycle life. This isn't just theoretical, as our 2012 Mitsubishi iMiev turned 50K miles and 10 years old in the last few months.  It started out with 70 miles of 'around town' (ie: non-highway miles) range when new and it still does around 60, a loss of 15% or so. It recently did 48 miles on the freeway and returned with at least a little range left. 
Obviously a single datapoint like this isn't all that useful, nor is the fact that this single model had under 5% of the units experience battery failure during the ten years they've been out in the wild.
However it does point out that even battery chemistries from 10-12 years ago can have a relatively long and useful life and, we're now on the 4th upgrade/revision of EV cell types, with the latest (LFP) expected to last beyond 250,000 miles and 20 years.

As usual, click for bigger image

We removed the 'Official Battery Recalls' from the first graph since it skewed the remaining data all out of shape. Left it in the other one because it's important to see what a single production error on a single type of LG Battery cells (used, obviously, by Chevy and Hyundai) can have on the replacement rates. The above includes both in warranty and out.

Unpacking this a bit: Absent recalls and the higher failure rate in the 2011 Leaf, NOBODY has failure rates above 4% and the average is just below 1% by unit volume.  (the 2011 Leaf was the very first EV battery on the road with a total of about 10,000 units produced of which under 1000 have failed. Four times as many produced in 2012 and they obviously learned a thing or 2x)

As you might imagine, the longer a vehicle has been on the road the more likely failure is. Data from 2011-2015 is almost entirely Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model S and Mitsubishi iMiev since they were the only EVs available in volume during that time. If you remove those years, to more accurately compare with later models, the Model S and Leaf cumulative failure rates drop well below 2%.

There is no reason to assume the Model Y that's only been out for two years will continue to post awesome numbers, but given Tesla's history, there's no reason to assume it will get worse.

Don't forget that the lowest battery warranty we've seen is 8 years, 100K miles. That means that over 90% of the total EV's out there are still under warranty. The manufacturers are Really Keen to not be replacing batteries under warranty. Sure the numbers might get a bit worse after ten years on the road, but how many of you actually keep a car for say, 12 years? And should you happen to be buying a used one you have a bunch of years of real world failure history to look at. Also recall that the expected/projected cell life has been improving by over 10% per year, so our projection is a failure rate below 1% for a ten year life going forward. 

Whence Tesla?

Since sitting through the whole four hours of "Tesla Investor Day" ...and since y'all being intelligent humans with better things to do, you night benefit from -not- having to sit through that.  ;-)

The first takeaway, (that some folks will like ;-) is that Elon talked less than 20% of the time.

It was pretty obvious that there were people with mostly full control of the various sections of the company. Especially Drew Baglino and Tom Zhu.

The team seems to be less that 50% white males, although female participation, while up, is still not impressive.

There was much less of Elon being Elon, that happens more on Twitter.

Second is the absolutely massive scale of the vision. They're thinking hard about the many PetaWatts of total energy use in the world and how to drive ALL of that to sustainable/usable/reusable.

One key thought is that an efficient electrically driven future requires only half as much total energy due to fossil fuels being SO inefficient. This crew is all about generation, transport and efficient use of energy. Home heating, transportation, manufacturing - etc. They expect total earth resource extraction to actually go down during all this.

Here's an overview, the first 15:min are the the real guts of the whole 'big picture'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIQ20RvhUhg

This was exciting stuff, at least for me. There's almost no part of the global

energy use and supply chain that this doesn't touch, and 'touch' really hard. ;-)
Good overview here too.  Full 'MasterPlan' PDF HERE  Environmental Impact Report HERE 

Third was on the Car/Transportation front. They're using the data they gather from literally billions of miles driven in Teslas to improve the driving experience -and- redesign the cars so they're protecting you from what actually happens during thousands of actual crashes to produce better outcomes than just paying attention to what the various government agencys might require. This should cause the 'safest cars on the road' to become even safer. And since they update the software in the cars on a monthly basis, you don't have to get a new car to benefit.

There was a sub-topic on car-self-driving and how having that available will help aging populations remain mobile and also how then your car can be off transporting other people when you're not using it. And of course how big a deal that could be, reducing the overall cost of your car, -and- requiring fewer cars on the road.

Another major topic was materials sciences and supply chains.

There are major issues with the world wide supply and (dirty) mining of Nickel and Cobalt.

100% of Teslas batteries used both of those in 2020. It's at around 50% now, it's expected that only about 10-20% of their total battery production will use ANY cobalt or nickel in another three years. A similar thing is going on with the Rare Earth minerals that go into electric motors/magnets. They have redesigned the motors to require NO rare-earths going forward. Similar things came up again and again, they have an issue, they design around it, they get it going as fast as possible, and almost always at lower cost. Computer chips, sensors, actuators, wiring - etc.

They are turning those thought processes toward Lithium and Graphite refining, expecting new facilities to be up and running in ten months from ground-breaking. Similar thought processes are being applied to actually designing and building factories. They are seeing the recent stuff go from bare ground to initial production in ten months. Well, except in California and Germany.

The latest/newest will be in Monterey Mexico,

      Edit Apr.'23: There's an addedum ** at the bottom about car production scaling and costs as this impacts the 'once and future $25K Tesla (built there in Mexico).

There was a big section about the whole electrical grid and (basically) redesigning how the whole thing operates. Yep, thinking big.

We edited the graph a bit, it wasn't exponential enough given (now, Apr.'23)
projected MegaPack factories in China and Europe

As a BTW in this there were mentions of how they expect the Tesla Energy business to be considerably bigger than the car business and a mention of how the automation business (robots) would also be bigger than the car biz. If their car business is expacted to deliver 20 Million cars/year by the end of the decade, then those other businesses must become truely gigantic. 

Another thing that came up repeatedly is how pretty much all of these things have advanced in the last ten years and how almost all of it has been on (and will continue) an exponential growth curve.

They did NOT announce the next generation of car platform(s), which many people had expected,  just the roadmap in that direction. As a result the stock took a hit, an awesome example of short term thinking. The next-gen car is expected to be what the Monterey Mexico plant churns out first.

One thing that we might add that didn't get touched on much is the expertise they've generated (via SpaceX) to create Methane from electricity, CO2 and Water.

This could completely turn the airline industry to carbon-neutral in a decade. Batteries power short haul flights, Methane powers the long haul. [Methane generates CO2 when burned, but it's exactly the same amount as you removed from the environment during it's creation.] ...just a cool little (not part of the presentation) thing along the way...

One last bit is that Tesla is blowing the competition out of the water on is fast charging infrastructure: 45,000 stalls currently active, 99.9% uptime. Recent US & State govt. supplied figures show that a Tesla Supercharger fast charging station costs around $40K each to put in. The competition averaged OVER three times that. Some over 4X.
When the EV driver uses the Tesla app to find and schedule and pay for charging, which also figures out in realtime what the demand at various stations is going to be and routes you to an available stall. It may suggest stoping at a different charger location that is along the trip you have already planned if you're going to be facing a wait. Then you'll pay 50-80% as much as the competitors per KWh delivered to your car. And since they're rapidly adding (50% in Europe already) the ability for ALL EVs to use Tesla chargers and the Tesla app, this usage should grow rapidly. Along the way they'll be exposed to the reliability and conveinience of the stations while looking at Tesla advertising on the app.
In locations where electricity is expensive they've started to put in Tesla Megapack (giant grid-tied batteries) to reduce the cost to the driver. The battery and associated 'AutoBidder' software buys energy during the parts of the day where the rates are cheapest and sells that energy back to both the EV drivers. and back to the grid during high demand (and high price) periods.

We'll leave you with photos that go some way to explaining how a team of four plus a crane operator can install 16 Tesla Supercharger stations on a prepared site IN ONE DAY. This by comparison with 4-6 weeks for their competitors.

** Here is a graphic about how costs go down over time as production and materials processes improve. An application of Wright's Law, which shows that for every cumulative doubling of unit production, Tesla's processes have yielded a 15% reduction in manufacturing costs. This doesn't seem like much but remember it's a cumulative (exponential) gain. This example uses known results from Tesla Model 3 production. While those numbers are impressive, each new generation of factory production processes has yielded an additional 20% improvement on top of this 'base-line'. So the question of "Will Tesla be able to make the fabled $25K third generation car in the new factory in Mexico?" comes up 'Yes' using just the extrapolation of current trends, ie: no great technological breakthroughs required.
So will there be a $25K (in 2021 dollars) Tesla introduced in 2025?    Maybe not. 

Remember that the earliest production from a new facility on a new generation of car skews toward the higher price 'optioned' version of the vehicle, until some of the factory costs are amortized and the volume ramp improves efficiencies, which takes a year or so given examples in Austin and Germany. The 20% improvement in processes noted above exactly matches with a $20K per unit Mfg.cost and would yield a price around $28K. Could easily happen, after the ramp is complete, Don't forget that $28K=(a 2021  '$25K' + Inflation at 3%/yr.)
Also see the Post About Battery Costs, as by then battery pack costs for U.S. deliveries could have dropped in half, or better! Seems like that should improve the odds.

And, for the record, GM, Ford, Stellantis, VW, Toyota and Honda are not keeping up and show no signs of closing the gap. The 36% Gross Margin (and about 20% net margin) shown as a consistent expectation below is no where near matched by any of these. In fact you can pretty much assume ZERO net margin for all of these other companies (excepting possibly VW) throughout 2025. 
 

GM = raw Gross Margin, Model3. Note: Mid 2021, early 2023, mid-late 2025

>> Edit: Oops, our bad. The price for a Model3 has already fallen to $37.5K in 2023, so the gross margin above  cannot realistically be assumed to stay at 36%. We're guessing just below 30%, and yes this would push the net margins just below 20%. Still WAY better than anyone else. >>
Hmmm, a couple bits of feedback would tend to indicate that some folks aren't getting the point immediately above. Yes, this graphic is about Model3. It's also about the raw cost of components plus labor, not the cost of development or investment in new factories, thus the 36% above becomes 20% after the accountants get through with it. The point is: having that number stay the same as the selling price of the car marches downward.
No, it's not directly about the 'Model2' or whatever the next-gen Tesla is called.
The next-gen Model2 factory in Mexico should go on line in late 2024 and be ramped-up during 2025.
If they're even close to the new factory being 20% more efficient and the materials going into a slightly smaller vehicle plus manufacturing improvements resulting in 25% or more reduced costs, then a vehicle cost 20% or better lower than the Model3 example above is almost certainly within reach. Add in the battery cost reductions and the end result should meet or exceed the $25K 'low cost Tesla' goal, WHILE MAINTAINING the 30%+ Gross Margin that Tesla has been 'doing' for years. 
Since there is no competition that's maintaining even single digit Gross Margins, the competition will simply have NO ROOM to fight that price war. Heck they are unlikely to be able to make a profit at $35K, to say nothing of $25K. This will almost certainly result in various bits of Government Intervention to 'Level the Playing Field' ...also known as taxing the heck out of Tesla or simply not letting them in. How the U.S. is going to handle Tesla killing large portions of uncompetitive automakers like Ford and GM will be interesting. Our guess is that Tesla will 'magically' become ineligible for the U.S. car rebates and/or $35/KWh battery subsidy at some point.

 

Is $20K off your Tesla enough? EVs4Cheap take 4

Q: Is Elon a jackass?
A: Duh!  Yes, absolutely.        Couple things about that though:
      Elon has almost no day to day impact on the production or pricing of Tesla Cars. Other people actually handle that, just as SpaceX is actually run by Gwen Shotwell. 
      "But he's so awful now, I just can't buy a car from that!"
We hear you, but if you REALLY think that matters, then you are also not buying a Volvo, Toyota, Honda, Chevy, Jaguar, GMC, Scion, Acura, Nissan, Renault, Mazda, LandRover, Chrysler, Lexus, Fiat, Dodge or Jeep. 
Why?
Because the heads' of those organizations are similar level assholes, they're just more quiet about it.
Now if what you really mean is: "I just can't be SEEN buying anything from him right now." then you're too shallow and steeped in hypocrisy for us to bother with. Please go away.
Rivan, Lucid and Ford all seem to be headed by nice folks, but I'd hold off on all three of those for about two years to see if they get their act together. The first two still have significant chance of going under and Ford has a lot to prove about the reliability of their EV's. People also think this must mean Tesla is headed for bankruptcy due to the big discounts. Not true but we'll handle that below* (Hint, they could make NO money on cars this year and STILL have positive cashflow)

<< Update to the update below, Late.'23:    Production materials changes in (and all the cars going to Canada now being sourced from China) the Tesla Model 3 have resulted in all those being sold in the USA qualifying for the full federal rebate in Fall'23, but that ends Jan.1st. Incentives on 'current in stock' vehicles had resulted in Model 3 prices around $30-31K for current inventory after rebate. Rumor is, the existing stock is being blown out in preparation for the updated Model 3 'refresh' coming out in next year. The Oregon rebates are on hold until Spring '24, assuming it gets funded at all. Had both rebates been in place, at the same time, We'd have jumped on it. $24K was too low to pass up. Alas it was not to be... ;-(
<< Update Apr.'23:     The lower priced Model 3 has LFP batteries that are not made in the U.S.  As a result the tax break drops in half to $3750 as of Apr.17th on that model. The IRS/EPA will update this info after a 'comment' period ending this summer. The Oregon $2500 rebate may still apply (see below).
The Model Y with U.S. made batteries does still (Fed) qualify. There is also another price drop bringing the lower priced variants below Oregon $50K requirements. There's even news of a RWD 'Canada only' variant that's the equivalent of $46K so it's possible that version could be available (and produced in) the U.S. Given various state (or Province) incentives this could result in an effective total cost around $30K in Oregon, California and possibly Quebec if your income just happens to fall in the right ranges.
However: The Oregon rebate is running out of money at the end of April. It's not clear if that is going to be reinstated temporarily in Jan'24 or if purchases between now and then qualify. Oregon has turned into a crap-shoot for lower income buyers.
Also of note. The IRS has decided to go along with the EPA and NHTSA and just about everyone else, as a result the classification of the ModelY and Ford MachE has changed and the rebate now applies to all models under $80K. Doesn't change the Oregon ($50K) number alas.       
End Updates.>>

A Tesla Model Y Long Range All Wheel Drive**  that fetched $66K a month ago is now WAY lower, probably under $50K and then there's rebates - etc. 

Similarly a Tesla Model 3 Rear Wheel Drive, at least with state incentives here has dropped to below $35K. (edit: sorry, expired.)

Model Y, base wheels, interior and color, under $50K incl. fees - etc.

Yowza! That's some spicy discounts!

What the heck is going on? Is Tesla having a going-out-of-business sale?*
Nope. There's more than one thing going on, but you won't find the complexity in the business press headlines. Couple things to note:
These are nearly the same prices as the equivalent base model Tesla's were going for 2-2 1/2 years ago, but this is with federal tax rebates. The nominal selling price is still well above what they were selling for before. Tesla dropped the price on the 'regular' Model Y 'SUV' by enough so it qualifies, even with one option added (paint color -or- wheels -or- tow hitch) for the federal tax rebate. The Model 3 sedan already met the federal dollar limits for the credit and so got a much smaller discount, but now it slides under the number required ($50K) for many state rebates. At least here.
Elon and the higher-ups at Tesla all seem to seriously believe that we're headed for a significant recession. They are, as usual, being proactive. This probably isn't a major reason, but almost certainly part of it.

But wait, there's another complexity in the mix: Does this only go through March?

As noted in the previous post (EV's for cheap Take 3) there are significant disparities between the positions taken by the various federal agencies as to how to administer the economic mess contained within the enabling legislation. And yes, it's a giant hairball of compromises and wording targeted at getting votes rather than producing easy to administer results. The IRS, EPA, Treasury and Commerce Depts. have kicked the can down the road to 'March sometime' as to rule making regarding what qualifies. Do the above Teslas (and Chevy Bolt EUV) qualify right now? apparently Yes. Will they qualify after March? Uncertain. Plan accordingly.

*No Tesla is not going bankrupt. Well unless Ford and GM and all the others are going bankrupt as well. Tesla had a nearly 30% profit margin on their car business overall. This drops it to just below 20%. Ford, GM and Toyota make 3-4% on their car businesses and 0% (at best) on their EV's. Tesla actually still makes more in raw profits than the next five competitors combined. Even after this discount. As stated earlier they could make Zero Dollars on their car business and still be profitable because their energy business has such large margins (approaching 50%) granted they might have to cut back slightly on their expansion plans (if the zero dollars thing was real) but with even 15%+ margin, which seems highly likely, their plans should go forward just fine. Don't forget that the Tesla Semi is -just- reaching volume production, the Tesla Megapack is -just- reaching volume production and the Tesla pickup should reach volume production this year. Nobody else has a plan that's anywhere near this robust. Tesla is also sitting on more cash than the next several players combined. Again, enough to fund operations for much of the year.

** We had to stick a little caveat in here. The Tesla Long Range AWD Model Y was almost sold out through February to begin with. The Tesla Y 'Standard Range' has been almost unavailable in the U.S. 
Combine all of this and the uncertainty surrounding 'What Happens After March?' and you should make sure your Tesla Model Y order is something you can cancel if the delivery date gets pushed out and you might lose the tax credit. Assuming that's important to you, and if not, why are you reading this blog?
They do seem to Model 3's in stock, but just about everything has Autopilot and thus a higher price. Surely that's just coincidence. 

"So does this mean you're giving up your Leaf and getting one of these?"
No. A new Bolt EUV is still just over half what a Model 3 now goes for and well below half a Model Y.
The Leaf still has 16 mo. on it's lease, so there's time.
The next rig really needs to have a tow hitch, which requires a Model Y, still too expensive for us.
Leasing a Tesla is still not nearly as good a deal as Leafs have been and Bolts are becoming (YMMV) and since that is a requirement to qualify for the rebate, in our tax bracket, that issue would have to be resolved.
Insurance on Teslas is still prohibitively expensive for us.