Why Startups (and Tesla) Will Struggle with Electric Pick Ups

[Diehard]

Mercedes is making a nice EV SUV. When you go to their website to order it Mercedes then says it will cost you more than their gas guzzler and take up to 3 months to build. They actually are discouraging buyers of EVs. GM has done the same in the past, even taking EVs they leased as a test market and crushing them when most of the leases wanted to buy them and had cash in hand. Never underestimate the power of corporate stupidity.


https://insideevs.com/news/486581/mercedes-convince-eqa-buyers-switch-gas-car/

hindsight is 20/20. It is easy for us to say this now that Tesla has succeeded. Mercedes had to get it’s powertrain for one of the EVs I know about from Tesla. It could not have been that profitable to sell and maintain support for It. GM‘s heart was in the right place. They put a ton of money in R&D but could not sell EV1 at a price that would be profitable for them at the time.

https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/electriccar.htm

ultimately all these companies have to make the case that a move make financial sense. Tesla did not have an ICE operation. It was all or nothing for Tesla. For most EV startups it ended up being nothing. There are millions of jobs that will be displaced if ICE disappeared tomorrow. Making a turn with a aircraft carrier is not as easy as a Kayak. So I wouldn’t be too hard on big automakers.

Just sayin

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[Diehard]

The legacy auto makers are electrifying existing models whereas Tesla is designing new vehicles from the ground up. The innovative technology that it comes up with surpasses everything else out there by a long way. Ford’s so-called tough is anything but. As long as they have been in business you would think that their engineering department would have come out with something a little more innovative like a exoskeleton or thick stainless steel exterior to protect it on the job site. Vertical integration isn’t even on their radar since so many of its parts are outsourced. If something new comes out then you have to wait until the next model year. My current vehicle has been kept out of the dealerships as much as possible. It’s not a fun place to be even with a nice waiting room while you get screwed.

Auto industry is (or at least has been) like Hollywood. They recycle the scripts that has worked before to lower the risk and maximize Profit. Now that the risk of not beating Norway is increasing, things should get interesting.

 

[azjohn]

I could be tempted with a BEV Raptor

 

[Diehard]

I could be tempted with a BEV Raptor

I would not be surprised if they make one. Expensive stuff first is a recipe that has been working.

 

[egandalf]

Maybe if Ford put a charger at every store they operated, but can they do that in a time frame to catch up to Tesla?

Except they don't own or operate those stores. Dealers usually privately owned and operated (franchise or franchise-like). Dealers are more Ford's customers than we are. Having worked with franchise orgs, it's pretty evident where their mindset is when they bring in GOBS of franchise owners and 0 users/customers in major evaluations.

It ultimately will be up to the dealers for whether they want to install EV chargers or not. Ford needs to make it financially attractive for them to do so because the franchise model gives the franchisees SO MUCH political power.

GM shook up the Cadillac dealers with an ultimatum, which is awesome. Ford may have to do the same if they can't make charging a financial boon.

 

[egandalf]

I'm not much of a brand loyalist, but I am pretty deterred by both Ford and GM. I might consider a RAM EV after Sandy Munro's review of all three ICE versions.

I live in a rural community and I would guess that about 50%+ of vehicles on our roads are pickups. I would guess that 9/10 pickups that are broken down on the side of the road or are being towed are GM/Ford.

Every GM vehicle I've rented I've hated. Drivetrain aside, the interior has always felt cheap and uncomfortable to me. These are low-to-mid-market cars, typically, but I have to take that as some indicator considering the Toyotas I've driven in the same class are so much better.

My experiences with Ford vehicles have been better, though I still prefer Toyota driving experiences and comfort. I still doubt their "Built Ford Tough" reliability claims based on what I see in my community.

That's not to mention the planned obsolescence that (apparently) the CT resolves.

I plan to make a 2-hour drive to the nearest Tesla showroom and test drive a M3/MY as soon as the pandemic situation makes it sensible for us to do so. I want to see the interior and feel the driving experience before the CT goes into production.

 

[LoPro]

Ford says they're going to build the largest charging network in the country. Tesla has nearly a thousand charging locations in the US alone. Maybe if Ford put a charger at every store they operated, but can they do that in a time frame to catch up to Tesla?

They don't even have a factory making the chargers. Tesla has what, three?

-Crissa

Just got an email from Tesla yesterday that they’ve hit over 1000 superchargers in 70 locations for the Norwegian population of 5.3 mill for [expletive] sake. Lower per capita than the USA but I bet Ford hasn’t even thought about globally, not to mention an odd corner of the world.

There’s amazingly more to catch up than they might think at first, but I can see them just focusing on the US.

 

[DarinCT]

I agree with many of the points so far

• Ford is deluded "Introduces largest electric vehicle charging network" - Oct. '19
• Their dealership network and supply chain is a liability
• It's popcorn inducing
• They won't be able to sell a lower profit margin vehicle to their boards and shareholders
• The volume of EV truck sales is fundamentally zero and selling a new everything based on that makes no sense to the board (not said before but kind of implied from above)
• They won't cannibalize their truck sales
• Their culture can't adjust fast enough

The other thing that comes up for me is how much slack can Ford/GM actually afford with their customer base versus how much slack do they think they can afford. I'm sure internally they believe that customers loyal to Ford/GM in "the Heartland of America" who do buy a metric crapton of trucks every year will stay loyal to some degree. The question I'm curious about is how long will people actually stay loyal.

For EV cars, there's this perverse ICE thinking that EV cars cannibalize sales from other EV cars. Are there any Ford/GM execs that are that dumb? Probably. That will lead to taking it slow because they think the "EV truck market" is small.

To be clear, Ford/GM don't have anything to actually worry about for now. If Tesla sells all 1.5M CyberTruck by mid-2023, that's the roughly equivalent to all the Ford F-Series sold in the same time. US Truck sales are about 3M trucks / year. Ford has a 40 year run of F-Series success. Tesla has no active plant, no proven product, no sales (though I have my money ready) and even if they get 100% sales, that doesn't mean a sustained 90K/month(1.08M/year) truck sales. In other words, there is some logic behind Ford/GM dragging their feet.

Of course, we believe Ford/GM/Chevy will get run over by the CT and for good reason. (Pun intended). GET SOME!

 

[Diehard]

I agree with many of the points so far

• Ford is deluded "Introduces largest electric vehicle charging network" - Oct. '19
• Their dealership network and supply chain is a liability
• It's popcorn inducing
• They won't be able to sell a lower profit margin vehicle to their boards and shareholders
• The volume of EV truck sales is fundamentally zero and selling a new everything based on that makes no sense to the board (not said before but kind of implied from above)
• They won't cannibalize their truck sales
• Their culture can't adjust fast enough

The other thing that comes up for me is how much slack can Ford/GM actually afford with their customer base versus how much slack do they think they can afford. I'm sure internally they believe that customers loyal to Ford/GM in "the Heartland of America" who do buy a metric crapton of trucks every year will stay loyal to some degree. The question I'm curious about is how long will people actually stay loyal.

For EV cars, there's this perverse ICE thinking that EV cars cannibalize sales from other EV cars. Are there any Ford/GM execs that are that dumb? Probably. That will lead to taking it slow because they think the "EV truck market" is small.

To be clear, Ford/GM don't have anything to actually worry about for now. If Tesla sells all 1.5M CyberTruck by mid-2023, that's the roughly equivalent to all the Ford F-Series sold in the same time. US Truck sales are about 3M trucks / year. Ford has a 40 year run of F-Series success. Tesla has no active plant, no proven product, no sales (though I have my money ready) and even if they get 100% sales, that doesn't mean a sustained 90K/month(1.08M/year) truck sales. In other words, there is some logic behind Ford/GM dragging their feet.

Of course, we believe Ford/GM/Chevy will get run over by the CT and for good reason. (Pun intended). GET SOME!

Great points. I think the issue here is if big three believe Tesla can deliver on CT. They already see reservation numbers we see. If they do believe, then the question is if their designers tell them they can match the value or not. If they don’t believe they can, they may cut their losses short and try to sell the last ICE trucks they can and focus on other markets (efforts like BrightDrop). I still think they will still show some effort to electrify their trucks but I am not sure if they will bet the house on it even if it is their bread and butter now.

 

[Diehard]

Nothing new or mind blowing here. Just another view on the topic. In short, she is saying anyone making EV for any reason is a good thing:

 

[azjohn]

Ford/GM have a while before they really need to start worrying, EVs are under 3% of all global car sales. Perhaps by 2025 EVs might have 30-40%, by 2030 the big boys better be on board which I assume they will be

 

[DarinCT]

Nothing new or mind blowing here. Just another view on the topic. In short, she is saying anyone making EV for any reason is a good thing:

Very good points and timely to this conversation. I like the way she turned the mirror on the community.

 

[Crissa]

Nothing new or mind blowing here. Just another view on the topic. In short, she is saying anyone making EV for any reason is a good thing:

It is, but promised r&d spending is already too late. They need to be actually churning these cars and chargers out... but they aren't.

They have time to transfer over, but the bar is rising quickly. Will they make it?

In two years, Tesla is going to have a capacity of like 1.5 million cars in the US alone. Yeah, they can't supply all the cars - the US consumed 15 million a year - but they won't be seeing any constraints to their growth. And that's the pressure the big three will be feeling... their profit margins will shrink, quickly, as their excess production starts showing.

-Crissa

 

[Diehard]

It is, but promised r&d spending is already too late. They need to be actually churning these cars and chargers out... but they aren't.

They have time to transfer over, but the bar is rising quickly. Will they make it?
-Crissa

True. I wonder if GM or others have considered to skip the R&D part; they may think if you can’t beat them, Join them. Elon has give some indication that he may be starting a bit of burn out and he has been thinking about getting a life at some point. He has tried to sell Tesla before. I wonder if GM or another company approached him to do a merger, he would consider it.

I think more than battery, the fight over smart people may get vicious too. A merger will make it unnecessary to steal them.

 

[cheeseandcraigerz]

I have a feeling that TSLA knows they can't convert your typical Ford pickup buyer. If you look at the difference visually between the F150 and CT, it's pretty clear they're not going for that market. I have a lot of friends who have pickups and they hate the way the CT looks. I on the other hand have never been interested in a pickup truck in my life. But here I am.

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