Finally, Elon Musk said something nice about Ford 😅

[dbsb3233]

It doesn’t take a genius to see that EV expansion will have many fathers. Ford, VW Group, Kia and it’s group, Mercedes, BMW, NIO, BYD, GM, Stellantis can and are players in this race.

Eventually, Toyota and Honda will decide that they want to be serious about EVs and they’ll do their thing.

Yep. EVs are still just automobiles, made by automakers. It's a new drivetrain and fuel source for most of them, and that comes with a period of development and growing pains. But most of the car is still just a car, and they've been building them forever.

I always found the "legacy automakers will die off" talk rather silly. A few will fade as Tesla displaces one or two, but otherwise it'll just be the same automakers selling a mix of BEVs, PHEVs, and ICE (which will still be around for a long time yet).

Tesla makes good, competitive vehicles too, but they suffer from lack of variety. Consumers want variety. Tesla's production efficiency model relies on making a bazillion of just a few models. They'll saturate demand for those few before long.

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[AhardFSU]

Yep. EVs are still just automobiles, made by automakers. It's a new drivetrain and fuel source for most of them, and that comes with a period of development and growing pains. But most of the car is still just a car, and they've been building them forever.

I always found the "legacy automakers will die off" talk rather silly. A few will fade as Tesla displaces one or two, but otherwise it'll just be the same automakers selling a mix of BEVs, PHEVs, and ICE (which will still be around for a long time yet).

Tesla makes good, competitive vehicles too, but they suffer from lack of variety. Consumers want variety. Tesla's production efficiency model relies on making a bazillion of just a few models. They'll saturate demand for those few before long.

Agreed. I hope the non-Telsa automobile makers pay close attention to Tesla’s efficiency in producing a lot of EVs. One the one hand Telsa is good at producing tons of EVs, on the other hand their production process after all of these years still leaves a lot to be desired on the fit and finish side of ledger. That’s the side that the non-Telsa EVs makers should not emulate. DO Not Emulate!

 

[Mirak]

It… annoys me how tribal people are, and it’s getting worse. Musk is now a “lunatic” sheesh.

Our Mach Es would not exist without Tesla. Entrepreneurs like Musk are a good thing. NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE POLITICAL. YOU DON’T HAVE TO AGREE WITH MUSK’S POLITICS. (And by the way, the dude is left wing on most issues… sorry he took away your birdie plaything.) Good lord.

 

[AhardFSU]

It… annoys me how tribal people are, and it’s getting worse. Musk is now a “lunatic” sheesh.

Our Mach Es would not exist without Tesla. Entrepreneurs like Musk are a good thing. NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE POLITICAL. YOU DON’T HAVE TO AGREE WITH MUSK’S POLITICS. (And by the way, the dude is left wing on most issues… sorry he took away your birdie plaything.) Good lord.

The point of the thread was that Elon said Lucid will not survive and he complimented Ford, which it seemed like the OP thought that meant something. Elon says a lot of um……interesting things….shall we say.

No one knows if Lucid will or will not survive and Ford and Telsa aren’t the only players in EVs, which is the point some of us were trying to make. Elon should wait and see before making proclamations about Lucid and Rivian’s survival. Again, he needs to focus on BYD and NIO. And yes he definitely gets props for kicking of the start of EV acceptance. But others have taken the ball and run with it adding their own spin and doing somethings better.

 

[MellowJohnny]

Rivian may end up as an Amazon van supplier at worst.

Why is everybody forgetting about VW group? Not a fan of their EVs (except Taycans lol) but they built second or third most in the world.

I think because most of us on this forum have a North American-centric view of the EV market, because this is where we (most of us) live. I was stunned at how many compact EVs I saw in Paris two years ago, and how many EVs in general I saw in Iceland last month. There are brands like Peugeot, Renault, Skoda (OK, still VW on that one) that we don't ever see over here. Plus the Chinese brands...

Accounting to this site VW is 3rd globally:

https://www.ev-volumes.com/country/total-world-plug-in-vehicle-volumes/

 

[MellowJohnny]

I like the way Rivian looks, kinda quirky, but I hear they're having problems with ramping up. Also they are price way too high to succeed. They don't exude luxury, but they're priced like that. Not many buyers for 80K+ cars.

I like VW offerings, I think they will do well.

I drove my friend's Q4 eTron yesterday and liked it quite a lot. Solid.

 

[Hammered]

Yep. EVs are still just automobiles, made by automakers. It's a new drivetrain and fuel source for most of them, and that comes with a period of development and growing pains. But most of the car is still just a car, and they've been building them forever.

Not exactly. It takes half as many employees to make a BEV than it does an ICE. People forget just how many components and systems there are with ICE. Losing trans / engine / drivetrain significantly reduces the parts count.

I've got an 8yr warranty on my F150, but the MME's battery warranty being what it is makes an extended warranty on it pretty much moot.

 

[dbsb3233]

Not exactly. It takes half as many employees to make a BEV than it does an ICE. People forget just how many components and systems there are with ICE. Losing trans / engine / drivetrain significantly reduces the parts count.

I've got an 8yr warranty on my F150, but the MME's battery warranty being what it is makes an extended warranty on it pretty much moot.

That actually reinforces the point I was making even more, about it not being as difficult for a legacy manufacturer to build EVs as the legacy critics claim.

 

[nvabill]

It… annoys me how tribal people are, and it’s getting worse. Musk is now a “lunatic” sheesh.

Our Mach Es would not exist without Tesla. Entrepreneurs like Musk are a good thing. NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE POLITICAL. YOU DON’T HAVE TO AGREE WITH MUSK’S POLITICS. (And by the way, the dude is left wing on most issues… sorry he took away your birdie plaything.) Good lord.

This is one thing I have never figured out on this forum, how so many seem to feel a need to down Tesla and Elon Musk so much. For a man who did so much to bring about acceptance of the electric car this is the last place I would expect so much hatred toward him. Maybe these folks are just jealous and envious of his accomplishments.

 

[dbsb3233]

Rivian may end up as an Amazon van supplier at worst.

Why is everybody forgetting about VW group? Not a fan of their EVs (except Taycans lol) but they built second or third most in the world.

VW will clearly remain one of the big players too. Personally, my complaint with them is giving ID.4's free unlimited charging at EA for 3 years. It's making ID.4's charging hogs at EA stations by creating the wrong incentives for the wrong behavior.

I have no doubt that some ID.4 owners are charging more at EA because it's totally free to them when they would otherwise be charging on L2 at home. Which is worse in numerous ways, including for the grid and for other drivers that actually *need* EA on road trips.

 

[Hammered]

I've got more charging than I could ever use from EA and EVGO. 9 in 10 times I've used DCFC it was free (outside of my free).

The infrastructure is still crap though. Musk has been a double edged sword for EVs. He's created competition, but failed miserably in usability of the vehicle. He's created working charging infrastructure, but took an apple approach to it. He's dumbed down and crippled driver inputs to the vehicle ala single center screen only in most of his vehicles. That's a bad way to go about it. In-fact, I'd support legislation to remove climate and other non-media and mapping functions of the vehicle out of the vehicle's display / touch screen. I'd also legislate in HUD as mandatory, just like backup cameras.

For instance in my F150, there's a physical camera button and pressing it instantly brings up the camera system, even if sync hasn't booted yet. Same for climate. Without looking I can move to the climate control and adjust it. No crap touch screen involved.

I'm not interested in voice control. I can adjust it, or seats, or anything else before someone can even begin to get out a voice command -- never mind getting such a system to actually do what you want with it. That type of thing won't happen until AI language models are implemented. Anyone that's used the chatGPT demo will instantly be spoiled by the plain language capability (and continuity of conversation). Ie: you'd be able to say 'cool it off in here' and it'd do something, if it was inadequate you could say 'cooler' and it'd abide. You just spoke to it about temp settings, and like a human it'd understand that you saying cooler refers to the previous command and you're asking for it to adjust accordingly.

 

[voxel]

I've got more charging than I could ever use from EA and EVGO. 9 in 10 times I've used DCFC it was free (outside of my free).

The infrastructure is still crap though. Musk has been a double edged sword for EVs. He's created competition, but failed miserably in usability of the vehicle. He's created working charging infrastructure, but took an apple approach to it. He's dumbed down and crippled driver inputs to the vehicle ala single center screen only in most of his vehicles. That's a bad way to go about it. In-fact, I'd support legislation to remove climate and other non-media and mapping functions of the vehicle out of the vehicle's display / touch screen. I'd also legislate in HUD as mandatory, just like backup cameras.

For instance in my F150, there's a physical camera button and pressing it instantly brings up the camera system, even if sync hasn't booted yet. Same for climate. Without looking I can move to the climate control and adjust it. No crap touch screen involved.

I'm not interested in voice control. I can adjust it, or seats, or anything else before someone can even begin to get out a voice command -- never mind getting such a system to actually do what you want with it. That type of thing won't happen until AI language models are implemented. Anyone that's used the chatGPT demo will instantly be spoiled by the plain language capability (and continuity of conversation). Ie: you'd be able to say 'cool it off in here' and it'd do something, if it was inadequate you could say 'cooler' and it'd abide. You just spoke to it about temp settings, and like a human it'd understand that you saying cooler refers to the previous command and you're asking for it to adjust accordingly.

Navigation and media searching is vastly faster with voice - when it works. Siri + CarPlay continues to be a joke for me. I asked it to navigate me to my RC flying field after an autocross event. Well the field is associated with various contacts but those contacts don't have addresses. Siri could not find an address.

HUD meh. Had it two cars. Don't need it and often doesn't work with polarized glasses.

I think 360 cameras should be required though. OTOH Dashboards can be very distracting like the one on the RAV4 Prime which was a flood of information that caused me to look at it all the time. I found when I owned a Model Y I was actually distracted LESS without a dashboard and I rarely checked my speed anyhow because most Teslas are "fast enough" and you just need to focus and follow traffic.

There are plenty of CHOICES in this market. I rarely DC charge... so even though I know EA is a complete broken mess and so is CCS charging (in Florida)... I'm happy with my Mach-E over the Model Y. I use an ICE SUV for longer road trips and tell people to do the same. In fact, I met an ID.4 owner in Daytona at an EA location that shared the same opinion without me expressing it. She saw my Mach-E and commented how frustrating EVs were to live with.

 

[Hammered]

Navigation and media searching is vastly faster with voice - when it works. Siri + CarPlay continues to be a joke for me. I asked it to navigate me to my RC flying field after an autocross event. Well the field is associated with various contacts but those contacts don't have addresses. Siri could not find an address.

HUD meh. Had it two cars. Don't need it and often doesn't work with polarized glasses.

I think 360 cameras should be required though. OTOH Dashboards can be very distracting like the one on the RAV4 Prime which was a flood of information that caused me to look at it all the time. I found when I owned a Model Y I was actually distracted LESS without a dashboard and I rarely checked my speed anyhow because most Teslas are "fast enough" and you just need to focus and follow traffic.

There are plenty of CHOICES in this market. I rarely DC charge... so even though I know EA is a complete broken mess and so is CCS charging (in Florida)... I'm happy with my Mach-E over the Model Y. I use an ICE SUV for longer road trips and tell people to do the same. In fact, I met an ID.4 owner in Daytona at an EA location that shared the same opinion without me expressing it. She saw my Mach-E and commented how frustrating EVs were to live with.

I too chose the MME over the Y. No frontal / direct ahead display was instant deal breaker. None too thrilled w/ everything in the screen. Android auto sounds vastly superior to apple car play. My issue with voice isn't the google system behind it -- it's actually fully functional and it's backed up by their AI. Push and hold voice button and ask it anything and it responds as it should. My comment re: voice was the vehicle's, aka ford's. It should be intuitive / smart as described in my post above. You should be able to hit the button and plainly speak, even use slang, and it should interpret it, ie: "it's hot in here" or "cool it off" vs some direct factory speak you'd need to memorize.

I'm guessing when android car or whatever they're calling the new OS for sync that's based on android, backed up by AI voice processing, such features will be brought forward. ChatGPT for instance, if you haven't used it, you should give it a whirl. It's funny in that it will turn you down when you ask for directions into how to break into a home, but if you phrase it in a manner where it's to write you a script for dialogue as to what a burglar may say, it will provide one with all the needed info to scope out a place and look for easy entry points.

As for polarized glasses, well, I don't use them nor do pilots. It's a simple adjustment.

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