Couple that with some truly dumb design ideas from Elon (no lidar, no physical buttons, indicators as buttons, stupidly high repair bills due to design choices) and some even more stupid personal behaviors from him and he has just cut the legs out of his market.
Well, some of these dumb design ideas are not really from Elon and it is not that other car manufacturer are too much different…
I agree.
The point is how much subsidies they receive. Chinese automakers seems to get way more (up to 30% if not more of the cost) than Tesla. That way it is easy to win on competitors.
BTW, the 30% is not a personal educated guest, it is the estimated figure given by a very trustworthy economic journal which did an investigation and discovered that that some chinese automaker could probably absorb a 30% tariffs without changing the selling price.
The problem is that Chinese EVs builder are heavily subsidized from the state and Tesla not (or not to that amount). Also a Tesla has a tag price that put it in the medium-high range, and it is obvious that the biggest market is for low-medium range priced car.
This is not true. Many of the parts I buy off of Amazon are not only cheaper, but I can get them faster as well.
Only the faster part is true, and only if you use prime, else you can buy from everywhere else and have the same price and delivery time.
Cheapest only if you buy a rip-off, buying some item of a certain brand have the same price on Amazon then the brand shop (if not higher on Amazon sometimes)
They’re right! They shouldn’t be responsible for products sold by third parties. If I go to Walmart and buy something, I shouldn’t be allowed to seek remedy from Amazon.
I don’t disagree but there is a point that should be considered: Amazon probably get a percentage from the sell, so it earn money even from third parties.
Now, I don’t think that Amazon has any responsability about recalling or any other remedy options, but they should at least forced to put a warning on the product page saying that the product is recalled or whatever it is. Even only sending a e-mail to every buyer is good (and Amazon obviously know who buy a product), then it is the buyer that will decide what to do.
I made 3 part because I need some details on what will be the top of the piece, little seams to show the separation of each hex, as well as the thinner walls on the bottom. I did try 2 part molds before, but getting it off the mold was near impossible most of the time. Like this, I can just push the piece off.
Got it. I did’t consider the extraction.
Currently, only the presser has holes for the water, should I add it to the bottom piece, too?
Not if it work well.
The thick walls are to endure the pressure and reduce warping, though maybe they could be thinner? I tested adding some gypsum to the mixture, waiting for one piece to dry further and already figured that I have to remove from the mold before it hardens too much, otherwise it’ll end up stuck (that or I have to properly sand/fill the pieces like bluewing said above)
If they endure the pressure they are ok. I would have done them thicker but just to be sure.
For the gypsym it seems strange, every time that I did something with it I had no problem to remove from the mold, expecially if it was made with some sort of plastic. Probably more than the pieces you need to sand the mold to have smooth surfaces, so that the gypsum does not adhere to it.
Two options in my opinion.
First one is to redesign the mold to have only 2 parts that are 2 semi shells, the way you desing it currently need to have a very strict tolerance in the parts which I don’t think are doable with a 3d printer (also, the wall seems too little thick). With a 2 part mold, you do some holes for the water on what will be the back side of your tile and you should be good.
Another option is to use something different, like white wall gypsum and maybe adding some acrylic color it needed, and somewhat copy the way the real tile are done.
If what you are doing is for model and/or some game, white gypsum is great, I did some nice diorama for aircraft with them. And it is more durable in my opinion.
You are correct on many of those points. But lets look for edge cases - people living in apartments, they can’t charge their cars when there are no garages, so they need to do what normal people do with gas cars - go to the gas station to charge.
That’s a problem, I agree, but you don’t design a new car model around edge cases.
So if you have a 600 miles car and drive 35 miles per day that’s enough to supercharge once per week for 30+ minutes and be good for the rest of the week - good for the battery, good for wait times, good for not pissing off the person buying the car as they don’t have to waste multiple hours per week.
True.
If your point is that it’s inneficient to carry heavy batteries around I would agree, but isn’t it less efficient to use gas, to have 2 cars instead of 1, to have to rent a car, etc. I think it balances out and with new battery technology you’ll see that they’ll start competing more fiercely with range, but there is a sweet spot and I think it’s 600 miles, if the battery drain is not affected by cold/hot weather 360 miles would be a good sweetspot.
Again, it depend on the target market. In EU it was relatively common to have 2 cars: a small one for the day by day commute (where other options are not available) and other tasks like taking the kids to/from school, small trip to the grocery store and so on, and a bigger one for the long travel.
It is still true outside the big cities, where services maybe are not that near and normally there are very few options for public transportation. And I don’t think that having a small car for the day by day and rent a bigger one for longer trip is really that bad.
Also, consider that often a really big car it not an option in places where street are really narrow to the point you are forced to buy small car (common outside most of the big cities)
I hope the market appreciates this new model, but highly doubt it - most of the other things I suggested in the original post also affect if the buyer would decide to spend their money on the car. I don’t think it’s unrealistic for VW/Audi to make something like this at a competitive price of $120k - same as the starting price for a BMW M5.
I think you are out of price range. I don’t know is US (given the use of dollars), but in EU a 120K car is not a common car, I mean, the big cars like the Renault Espace are in the range of 50/70 k, a 120K car is an entry level luxury car here.
The problem is that the battery degrades, so it’s a good idea to keep it charges to 60-80% so that it last way longer. If you have 600 miles of max range then that means you can easily have 360-480 miles for your driving. This is overkill as well right ? Wrong, if you live in a cold climate it practically gets halved so now you have 180-240 miles of driving.
Fine, but you still fail to look how the car is used. A battery that big also mean more weight (and thus more energy needed) and it can make sense if you use the car almost always for longer trips. For shorter drive it make more sense to have a smaller battery and recharge more often.,
Let’s say it’s summer though, now you want to drive 600 miles to your nearest ocean/sea and want to sightsee along the way.
Here you fail to consider the target market. EU and US are very different geographically. In US a car with bigger batteries can make sense, in EU probably not that much.
VW simply design a car for the market where they want to sell it, which make sense in my opinion.
With a battery that big you might have to charge once and not even fully to have enough confidence driving to places where charging might be limited.
That would be a problem anyway, with limited charging options you could arrive at the sea but then have problem returning home (but this is a problem that is slowly going away)
That’s why smaller batteries make sense only if you use the car for daily commuting, now you need to rent or buy a proper long range gas car or ev car - which now costs you quite a bit more or adds inconvenience. With tesla the problem is almost solved, but they have problematic political views and minimalistic interiors and a max battery of 402 miles. So yeah I think it’s worth it to make a car that costs 3x what VW are pushing, but is useful to everybody.
I don’t know how may miles you need to drive for your daily commute that need to have such big battery but in the supposed target market of the VW even a 180 miles battery can easily cover your weekly commuting.
So yes, you are right that a bigger battery is usefull but it really depend on where you plan to sell your car. Not everywhere you need that kind of mileage daily and you need also to consider other factors like the weight and size of the car.
I don’t get thesr automakers, who is this made for, don’t they see that tesla is killing it with their largr batteries.
It is made for people living in places where you maybe don’t need to drive 50 miles to go to the nearest mall… a car with 600 miles autonomy would be an overkill if you just need to drive about 10/20 miles a day while commuting.
Why can’t they put a 600miles battery
because they are useless for the target market.
If you don’t need to drive that long distance for everything, you don’t need big batteries with all the associate problems (weight, dimension and so on) that in the end don’t give you any real bonus if not the fact that maybe you can recharge it less often.
You don’t copy because you think it is a good idea, you copy because everyone did the same thing. If everyone start putting touch button on cars and you not, you will be seen as old. Even if the idea is stupid, it is the hot new idea of the day. Also putting touch screen is cheaper to build and update since in the end the physical button just send a signal to one of the various ECUs on the car anyway.
Leaving Ferraris aside, it is not that a button as indicators is always a bad idea. What is a stupid idea is to put a touch button without tactile feedback, so you need to look to see if you have pressed it or not.
Well, my Renault has some buttons on the steering wheel and it do not seems too bad to use them while driving, I find very convenient to be able to control something without moving my hands from it (ok, they are not touch button).
A car I drove some months ago had double commands: touch ones and physical buttons. Not bad as choice.