I’m not a huge fan of Autoline After Hours, as it’s a bit lightweight at times, and too much distracting chit-chat. But if you can get past a bit of that at the beginning and in some parts here and there, their guest Sandy Munro has some very interesting things to say, about Tesla, China, EVs, US competitiveness, and at the end, a final prognosis of the domestic industry. Hint: it’s not upbeat.
Munro and Company tears cars apart and dissects them to their smallest components, and then does a cost and technology analysis. Munro has been tearing apart Teslas for several years, and initially, he was quite negative about them. But as he’s dug into them deeper and compared them to the EV competition, he’s slowly come around and has become very deeply impressed. And no, Tesla is not a Munro client. This is just Sandy Munro straight talking, which is the only kind he does.
His very extensive travels to China has also left made him highly impressed with the speed they are developing their automotive EV technology, as well as their approach to other business challenges. Numerous Chinese companies bough his reports on the Tesla, as have some European companies and FCA. GM and Ford (his former employer) passed. This guy knows what he’s talking about, unlike the nattering nabobs of negativity and exuberance that make up the endless daily media and social media circus about and around Tesla.
I am deeply frustrated with that circus, as it’s almost impossible to talk about Tesla without being branded a hater or cult member, or a short or long. My feelings very much mirror Munro’s, as in: Tesla has remarkable and class-leading technology and cars that perform better than anyone might once have imagined. And are still well ahead of the competition, including the very latest from Jaguar and Audi, both of which are significantly less efficient, and therefor have lower range. And they’re not standing still.
Much has been made about the imminent “Tesla Killers” coming from Germany, Jaguar. The Audi e-tron crossover ($74,800) finally arrived, almost a year late due to serious software issues (of course nobody carries on about that in the media), and it just got its EPA range rating: 204 miles (328 km); and an efficiency of 74 e-mpg. That’s surprisingly (shocking, actually) low, considering its large 95 kWh battery. The Jaguar I-Pace ($63025), with a 234 mile range, is also an efficiency laggard, with the second worst rating. Meanwhile various versions of the Tesla Model X, a larger SUV, have a 289 to 295 mile range. And the Tesla Model S gets up to 335 miles, and the Model 3 LR, the efficiency champ in its class, has a 325 mile range and the MR version has a rating of 123 e-mpg. Even the cheapest $35,000 Model 3, which is due to go into production imminently, has a 220 mile range.
from insideevs.com
The Audi does allow somewhat faster charging, but that’s a painful trade-off: charging quicker but more often on a long trips? And that’s if one can find one of the very new high speed charger that can actually deliver those potential faster charges. Its very conventional shape and poor aerodynamics (it looks like a conventional IC Audi with a blanked-off grill) and other factors result in a range that’s less than much cheaper EVs like the Bolt (238 miles) and all the new Hyundai/Kia EVs, all of which are in the 230-260 mile range. Even the new Leaf Plus goes 226 miles.
The e-tron’s 0-60 times of 5.5 seconds is also rather modes, slower than even the cheapest Tesla, and significantly slower than the ones in its price range.
So let’s address one more last item on the EV news front, which is old news by now: Tesla Q1 production and deliveries was not as good as they had hoped for or projected, a total of 63k cars delivered and another 10k in transit. They’re still up strongly over Q1 2018, but that was before the Model 3 was in mass production. And sales of the Models S&X were down significantly. The Tesla bears are salivating, once again.
It is what it is. Nobody said it was going to be easy to pioneer EVs. Nobody knows just how quickly the market will develop. Tesla is pioneering, and it’s been a rocky ride from day one and it will likely continue to be a rocky road for some time.
It boils down to what I said to my son back in 2011 or so when the Model S was heading towards production: It’s all a matter of demand, which no one knows how large it will be. Certainly not in 2011, and not yet today. Tesla has the best technology and cars, and that apparently continues to be the case, given the performance of the new Audi and Jaguar. And Tesla’s not standing still: the Model S and X are getting new more efficient motors similar to the Model 3’s, and a major refresh with a new battery pack and interior are heavily rumored to be inevitable before long. I would not be surprised if the Model S gets a new battery pack good for 400 miles of range. That’s only a 19% increase, and having 400 miles will be something big to crow about, especially when the competition can barely break 200 miles.
Nobody can predict the EV market. If Tesla struggles or falters, it will be because of that and not because of its technology or products. And on that Sandy Munro and I agree 100%. As well as his final words about the domestic auto industry. If need be, skip to 1:27:00 to hear his one word answer.
I think a lot of the Model 3 intenders that haven’t purchased yet are now waiting for the Model Y. Everybody is crowing that sedans are dead and nobody wants them (not exactly true, more like demand is soft and some makers don’t make a product competitive on its own merits besides a deeply discounted price), but anyway it feeds into the narrative that without a taller shape, you’re dead in the water. Hence the Y and people waiting. However, if that’s wrong and the Y falters, well, then I don’t know.
Audi and Jaguar are picking up the sales that aren’t waiting for the Y and don’t want to spend or don’t like the looks of the X, either way it’s doubtful that it’s the only car in the garage and 200 miles range is “good enough” once most people sit down and really think about it. Hyundai has a good product but can’t/won’t compete in the Audi/Jag/Tesla space. Maybe the Kona Electric should have been rebodied and marketed as a Genesis instead at a slightly higher price.
I’m impressed by the Hyundai/Kia EV offerings, and I’m glad they’re offering them at mainstream EV prices. They’ll reap benefits in establishing themselves as the volume EV players that everyone’s looking for. Tesla’s entering that space with Model 3, and Chevy could be with the Bolt but isn’t pushing up the volumes.
Yeah the over 200mi ranges are just a red herring and just aren’t necessary for all but a small minority of drivers many of whom still have an ICE vehicle. It just unnecessarily drives up the cost with zero benefit for the average user.
I for example am an outlier in the number of miles I drive, both in a year and on some days. During the winter a 80-100 miles 5 or 6 days a week is not uncommon for me. During the summer yeah I’ve done some ~200+ mi days just going about my normal business. But that is one or two times per year at most and involves working with 2 clients simultaneously, one where I live and one where I deal in second/retirement homes and hot properties that must be viewed right now.
Yeah the over 200mi ranges are just a red herring and just aren’t necessary for all but a small minority of drivers many of whom still have an ICE vehicle. It just unnecessarily drives up the cost with zero benefit for the average user.
I’d hardly call it a red herring. Range anxiety is a very well know factor in inhibiting EV sales with prospective buyers. And this limited range is not the result of a smaller or lighter battery, as it has 95 kWh, which is about as big as they get. The limited range is the result of poor efficiency, due to various factors.
We like to go visit our son in Portland, which is 110 miles away. With the Audi, that would not be feasible. With a Tesla, no problem. Folks don’t just drive their daily routines, they also use their cars for other trips, like skiing, recreation, family, etc..
I wish that chart above showed the capacity of each battery or also showed a range vs capacity graphic, i.e. efficiency.
The Audi does indeed appear to be very inefficient for some reason that isn’t immediately obvious to me, but as you said, different people have different use cases. If your son moved 60 miles north you’d probably still visit him just as frequently but now a Tesla would be just as useless. Or if he moved 25 miles closer you could be in the Audi every day 🙂 I visit my mother, she’s seventy miles away in Golden so it would work for me but an e-Golf wouldn’t (but again, I have different cars too at this time, another generation or two of each model and I’d guess that (range) would be a non-issue. I wonder if with different software the Audi could be made more efficient. Hacker Alert! 🙂
There is no “perfect” range, but obviously the more the better, or to be more accurate, the more efficient the better as there is no real point in paying for or lugging around the extra weight of a battery that will be used a couple of times a year. Then again, here we go and open up the pickup truck argument again…i.e. what’s really needed and by whom, but just like in that one different solutions work for different people and they will either buy or not buy as something works for them. We are all used to finding 300-400 miles range in our gasoline cars as fairly acceptable, or better phrased, very common, I suppose that’s the holy grail for electrics too as long as the extra capacity can be provided at minimal weight (i.e. needs to be efficient) and extra cost (ditto), just like one can buy a larger fuel tank on a full size pickup (at what I consider to be a ridiculously inflated cost.) There’s probably an objective way to rate what is the best pickup (on paper) but the others still sell, the same way there’s more than one factor to electric cars, not just range.
here’s one that ranks them by efficiency (watts used per mile). the e-tron is dead last, with the I-Pace just ahead of it.
You can spin this any way you want, but range is going to be a key factor in the marketing and acceptability of EVs. It’s both a genuine factor in owning an EV, as well as a perceptual one. Sure, some folks will be ok with a 200 mile range, but keep in mind, nobody ever wants to get even remotely close to running out of range on the road. Right? Talk about anxiety.
When you have 300-400 miles of range, you’re still above 50% when the Audi is threatening to die on you. Think about it. How close to the end of your EVs range would you be willing to go?
This why they call it range anxiety. The actual range is misleading. Nobody want;s to get within 25% or better of that. You cannot use the max range as a comfortable target for your trips, unless you’ve got a trailer with a generator in it along. 🙂
And no, there’s no way to hack the Audi to become more efficient.
Fascinating chart, thanks. And the figures are in watt-hours per mile, which is way more useful than the EPA’s peculiar e-mpg units.
There are certainly some differences in the efficiencies of lithium-ion batteries, motors and the electronics with its software, but not enough to account for all the mileage differences IMO.
If we could plot drag area (frontal area times drag coefficient) alongside these mileage figures I think we’d see a rough correlation. The Jaguar, Audi and Tesla Model X at the bottom of the chart are all crossover SUVs, presumably with more drag area than the lower sedans.
And yes, in my EV experience range certainly matters. I’ve never come close to empty, rarely less that 50% even. But that’s partly because I’m always keeping an eye on that battery gauge, and because I can easily charge it every night. With 80 miles range on mine, I’m not taking any trips. I’d like to see a round trip to Seattle, that’s 175 miles each way.
74 e-mpg is incredibly bad! I’ve never noticed any of the modern EVs getting less than 100 e-mpg efficiency. What a waste.
Speaking of the Munro folks, yesterday the Oregon EV Assoc. Twitter feed sent me to a rather good video on Jalopnik, where they visited Munro and got hands-on with total teardowns of the Tesla Model 3, Chevy Bolt and BMW i3. Most enlightening insights into the battery packs, especially cooling, the motors, electronics packaging and overall platform design. Now I really understand why Tesla uses all those little cylindrical cells. This video is less then 20 minutes long, I recommend it.
It is the equivalent of the 1960s space race, culminating in the 1969 moon landing. The US had a goal, and an enemy, and directed all of the energy it could in winning. China seems to be doing that same game, but with EVs rather than rocketry (but in fairness, they even seem to be working on that as well!). In this case, the early USA success with Tesla (and a bit to GM) may well be overshadowed by the long term success of China’s domestic EV market, much like the USSR’s early success with Sputnik. Their early win shaped our resolve to win at all costs.
The USA and rest of the world would be wise to come to a simple agreement on one form of charger and creation of infrastructure for charging rather than allowing each company to dictate a separate version of charging plug and station. While the different versions will eventually sort themselves out due to competition and acceptance, there is needless time and money being wasted on what should be one common standard industry-wide. China, being more authoritarian, will simply choose one sooner than later if they have not already done so. Make no mistake, China will choose the domestic over the imported every time, regardless, so the competition for superiority and survival will be far more difficult for the west.
You raise a good point about the four different standards of plugs and sockets for DC fast charging. CCS is the standard in Europe and North America except for Tesla, who has their own Supercharger connectors. Japanese vendors use CHAdeMO and China has something called GB/T.
In principle this should be no more of a problem than the different plugs and sockets in buildings across the world, but there is some movement towards CCS. Tesla has just come out with a CCS adapter for their cars in Europe. I see about 600 CCS stations in North America on the PlugShare map. The new Nissan Leaf is still CHAdeMO, but it appears Kia is shifting from CHAdeMO to CCS.
Autoline After Hours was much more interesting when Peter De Lorenzo was there (six or so years ago) to offset John McElroy’s Chamber of Commerce approach to the industry.
Very interesting podcast- It was worth watching just for Sandy Munro’s brief anecdotes about Dr. Deming.
Also, I’ve never seen an After Hours episode with Peter De Lorenzo, but I dd stop reading “Autoextremist” because of Peter’s Detroit-Centric viewpoint. His bias may differ from McElroy’s, but it’s still bias.
That was very informative. Thanks for linking it.
Paul, I appreciate your perspective on the subject. I don’t follow it on car sites; I do get investor analysis from talking heads on CNBC every morning and the love/hate entertainment type reporting on Elon also on the network (I lean to the latter). So, thanks for doing this for us so I don’t need to.
I do not think the issue of range can be overstated. It is a bigger issue than Jim driving 70 miles to and from Golden or Paul driving 110 miles to and from Portland.
In the mountain west a range of 200 or 250 miles is absolutely unacceptable. Add the effect of periodic extreme cold on battery efficiency and an electric vehicle is really unusable for those situated like me.
Multiple times a year I do long drives. This includes Cheyenne to Bozeman, Cheyenne to Milwaukee, Phoenix to Cheyenne. Even a one day round trip Phoenix to Tucson or Cheyenne to Colorado Springs and back can not be done with one of these limited range vehicles. An ICE car can do the PHX-TUS roundtrip easily.
For those who are urban drivers somewhere not in the mountain west those EVs may be fine. I see them as not fit for the assignment. This range issue is terribly important and leaves me a skeptic on the whole business.
EVs are obviously not well suited for certain tasks or geographic areas. The far reaches of the West being one of them. EVs are best in urban settings, for their zero emissions and city driving gives them a disproportionate efficiency advantage.
There’s no real reason to be a skeptic on EVs because they’re not for you. I see this all the time. EVs are not for everyone, especially in the shorter term, and that’s ok.
I’ll 2nd that on the Intermountain West is its own Vehicle Ecosystem.
Everyone who’s not Tesla will be at a major disadvantage on charging network coverage. Kinda like Verizon and AT&T vs Sprint or T-Mobile 15yrs ago.
In another 10-15 yrs as the charging infrastructure builds out I think it will be less of an issue. Even today you can get an adapter and charge a Tesla on the 30A hookups at RV parks.
Now if you have a small(ish) engine like the i3 as a hedge it becomes viable. The GM 1/2 ton PU/Tahoe/’Burban with a upsized Volt drivetrain would be ideal.
Paul, as an EV owner, I much appreciate your level-headed writing and discussion on EVs in general, and Tesla in particular.
You also nailed it on what will sink or float Tesla: demand. When one dares to step outside the insanely exasperating, non-stop FUDnado that surrounds the company, demand is the reliable yardstick. Being a Model 3 owner myself I can attest to the wonderful technology I daily enjoy, and that build quality isn’t nearly as egregious as the FUDnado forces would like it to be. The car is a sheer delight to own and drive; the latest power boost OTA upgrade is real; the improvements – at least to the tech – keep happening. Tesla does have other crucial items to improve upon; namely communication and customer service. Both can affect demand.
As for the car itself, I still find myself amazed that the car I took delivery over six months ago wasn’t as advanced as the very same car I drive now. And at no cost to me, at least to date. As for the other EV contenders being fielded right now; indeed they may be butter knives in a sword fight. I truly would, however, like automakers outside of Tesla to step up their EV game; we really need viable EV choices all across the board.
Bloomberg has a great article on the subject of Germany shifting the industry away from ICE to EV and the pain and disruption it will cause. One of the more interesting facts is that the internals of an EV are basically commodities, usually sourced from suppliers, rather than in-house designed units. With no more need of an engine, or transmission, the differentiations on cars will no longer be the drivetrain, but stylistic design and execution. It is like what we saw with PCs many years back. It was painful to think of the many different standards offered, with the IBM version running Windows slowly but surely ending up the default (and winner), with Apple’s Mac being the outlier’s “cool” choice. I think Tesla is trying to be Apple in this case. They don’t want interoperability, they want their own ecosystem separate from whatever becomes the default. They rightly believe that people will pay more for their product based on a perceived sense of being better.
Once we get to the default, we will see product so similar in actual function and ability that it comes down to whose name you want on the car, not what it does. Style will determine the higher priced ones, and we will probably see no-name brands suddenly becoming viable options for choices. I don’t think anyone in 1998 would have thought that they may be using an ASUS laptop from China, but that is one of the more popular brands in use.
Cars are just becoming a commodity at this point. It’s a shame, but it is what it is.