About Tesla's threat to German automakers. Any opinion welcome The Sun is Setting on Germany As a long time automotive writer, I feel gobsmacked. The electric car revolution is happening and yet I don't see long time automakers in Europe reacting to it with much alacrity. Oh, Mercedes is sending over the all electric EQS but they postponed an all electric van, the EQC. Porsche has the Taycan. BMW has the i3, iX and i4, and . VW has the ID.4. Audi has the e-Tron in two models. the e-tron S and e-tron sportback. But I recently looked at some You Tube documentaries that show the production capacity of German automakers. And they came up short. Oh at first the Germans thought no problem, we can outproduce this little upstart firm, what is it--Tesla? But the production capacity of that one plant Tesla is completing in Germany is better than all 14 BMW factories combined. And these European companies are sometimes trying to take designs engineered for internal combustion and switch them over to electric whereas Teslas are designed to be electric from scratch. Battery selection is key. Somehow Tesla has lighter batteries. I saw one comparison between top of the line Mercedes vs, the Tesla S and the Mercedes was 1,000 lbs. heavier. The Mercedes range between re-charges compared to a Tesla was woeful, where if you buy the Long Range version you can get a Tesla that goes 412 miles before needing a re-charge. And that was a 2020 model. Tesla comes up with improvements and sends them to you electronically so they might have better range now. And yet these are the vaunted German companies who we were taught over the last 50 years are such engineering geniuses. They are starting late getting to the gate to compete with Tesla. When I see predictions like "We will have that by 2028" I think that's already too late a target date to have something competitive with Tesla. Who knows what Tesla will have on the market by 2028? Ten years ago they had one factory. Now they have five. In the old days (before being "converted" by the facts) I could say "well what are you worried about--in the US only 2% of all new cars sold are electric."Now I realize that attitude was a mistake, lulling myself into complacency. Because now I am checking auto sales in other countries and all over the world Teslas are the best selling electric cars and in some small countries the best selling cars overall including ICE cars. And this was with cars that are too expensive for the average man, If the long awaited Tesla 2 comes it at $25,000 it will really put pressure on the other German automakers. It's already rumored VW makes only $1000 profit on an ID.4 so if they have to cut the price more to meet the future Tesla 2 threat, they'll be building them at a loss. You can only do that so long. I'll admit--advance drawings of the Tesla 2 don't look exciting--the same no-mouth styling, sort of a Toyota Yaris two door coupe without a grille. The smaller the car the harder it is to make it stylish. But maybe--and it's hard for me to say because I always believed styling was a major reason to like a car--styling doesn't matter to today's car buyers as much as it used to. Maybe Tesla buyers are the new generation, more interested in what the electronics package is on the screen than what the car looks like. The old days of Detroit where Harley Earl increased a car's appeal by making the fins higher or lower or laying on more chrome are over. Today's buyers want to know about connectivity to the net. Tesla's big advantage over "Legacy" automakers (used to be nice to be an automaker with a legacy, now it means you're weighed down by outmoded ways of thinking) is that they think big, use huge presses that make whole body sections with one whack so they can make a Tesla in 20 hours where VW needs 30 hours to make an I.D.4. I don't have that much sympathy for VW, they own Bugatti and Lambo, two "toys" they could sell off and devote that money to making electric cars that are competitive with Tesla. They also own Porsche but at least Porsche is making progress with a hit in the Taycan They also own Bentley but you could argue it's more important for Bentley to go electric ASAP than VW because luxury buyers in that brand aren't buying for the engine. With those glittery toy companies they wanted to have their cake and eat it too, but you can't meet the challenge of fighting Tesla if you're working on 200 mph cars for the super rich. Correct me if I'm wrong but that argument "electric cars are only 2% of the market " doesn't mean anything because the only thing holding back Tesla sales is 1.) price 2.) production capacity. Once they can lower the price and not have customers wait six months for a car they'll sell millions of cars. So we're all watching a slow mption knock down drag-out fight. It's not only Tesla against Detroit, but Tesla against Germany. And the bitter joke for the Germans is that Tesla is only a side hustle for our boy Elon. His day job is making rockets at Space-X....
