The Electric Car & Energy Storage Revolution — 1 Company Stands Out

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By Christopher Arcus, Automotive X Prize Competitor, Design Engineer, Dedicated CleanTechnica Reader

Tesla Model S P85D Makes These Ladies Giddy (VIDEO)Tesla competitors are scrambling to get an electric vehicle in the market to compete in the luxury/sport segment. None have succeeded so far overall. Musk is an overachiever. He’s not perfect, but he is every bit as obsessively driven and a pioneering visionary as Steve Jobs. It shows. Nobody has a luxury or performance electric vehicle that competes across sales volume, price, and performance. There is no answer to a Tesla Model S P85D, even among ICE vehicles. There is no other 5-passenger luxury sedan for that price with that acceleration.

It’s in a class with supercar coupes and near race cars in six figures. In luxury EVs, BMW has tried. Cadillac has failed. Mercedes has no equivalent. Nissan has not yet introduced a luxury EV, and many manufacturers have plans, but no offering yet. And Toyota… Don’t even go there. Its reaction is to go into denial.

Tesla Model S P85D Reaction VideosIndustry reaction is slow. 

Nissan and BMW have the most realistic response. BMW even tried to compete by offering the i8. It’s a sporty car more like the Roadster, and really not the same as a Tesla Model S luxury/performance sedan, but its a legitimate offering.

 So far, there are really no competitors to the Model S. An EREV is not going to make it as a competitor to a real luxury EV as good as Tesla. Cadillac found that out the hard way with the ELR.

 People are not just buying Tesla because it’s an EV. They are buying because it’s a great car. 

Its going to be hard for all competitors — EV-only companies as well as conventional auto companies — to compete. Tesla has opened up the patents and said, “Here is how you do it.”

Ghosn deserves credit and reward, too. There will be others. Few are as bold as Musk, though.

Why can’t others compete even with the patents? Because it’s not about one technology or a product. It’s about vision and knowing how to integrate all the elements of an EV. 

Elon Musk had the vision to open a Gigafactory. The list of “me, toos” is long. So far, only a few have put their money where their mouth is. No other company has made battery production on the scale of the Gigafactory — in fact, the world as a whole hardly has.

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Now that the PowerWall has shown the demand, a lot of other companies will be rethinking storage, but they are already behind the curve. Tesla has lined up the volume and has the best battery tech today. 

That’s what believing in change does for you. It’s what made Jobs famous.

And it’s happening again with the PowerWall. $800 million in one week. That’s big.

And it will continue.

Video Shows Tesla Model X Testing Autopilot SoftwareThe Model X may make similar waves in the luxury SUV domain. The Model S has not pinched all the high-end luxury sedan market competitors just yet, because volume is low. And the Model S consumer is really a different category, attracting a younger, more tech-savvy crowd. But as the S increases in volume, it will drive competitors to make offerings to compete. BMW is the closest right now, but others could come in.

The Model X will make more impact than the Model S, because luxury SUV popularity is growing, and Model X rollout will be much faster and bigger than Model S. Tesla already has a track record for quality and performance.

The interesting question is the Model 3. There is still room for competitors in that arena and the majors could compete better there, because volume and cost are where they have experience. Where some conventional companies lose is that the have not had much EV volume experience, Nissan excepted. BMW is going to have a chance.

Chevy Bolt EV battery lifespanIt’s all about the batteries. GM is making noises about the Bolt, saying there are commercial issues. That sounds like profit is an issue even though they are pegging the price a $37,500. They don’t plan to make more than 30,000 EVs by 2017. Tesla plans to make 100,000… but who knows, Tesla may have that problem, too.

Interestingly, Musk has recently had to think about how he may have underestimated the size of the battery and EV market. That’s an amazing development. I can see the headlines now. Musk underestimates size of storage and EV market. Its okay, so did everyone else. Tesla shareholders breathe a sigh of relief.
One of the most visionary storage and EV industry leaders failed to see the magnitude of demand for change. It takes time for that to really sink in. Words like disruptive technology and energy revolution come to mind, but fail. Right now it’s hard to comprehend how Tesla could boldly propose and start building a factory producing more lithium batteries than the entire world production and then in a single week outstrip the production from that factory before it even opens with $800 million of potential revenue.

Here’s a closing, summary statement from another CleanTechnica reader, RobS:

“Solar has gone through the process where initially its immense expense could only be justified on satellites and spacecraft, then in remote off-grid scenarios with huge fuel transport costs to run generators, then in specific on-grid areas with particularly high tariffs, until now with grid parity essentially everywhere. Now, with battery storage undergoing exactly the same economic journey where we are just reaching the point where expensive on-grid areas justify the cost, people dismiss it as not ready for the prime time, with no sense of the historical context or technological and cost trajectories.”


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