The hardware production is the race. I don't like BYD, but they've taken full advantage of Tesla's unwillingness to deliver on a truly economic vehicle. Until Tesla takes that crown, the entire AI discussion isn't really even on the table.

The entire US auto industry is unwilling to deliver on a truly economic vehicle. The "more crap per car" mindset is resulting in huge parking lots full of overpriced unsold cars. The "electric car is a premium product" mindset is obsolete, but continues to show up in US auto pricing.

Amusingly, the Ford Transit commercial van is cheaper in electric than in gas-powered. But on the consumer product side, there's still a big price premium for electric, and you usually have to get an excessive 'trim level'.

Stellantis screwed up so badly that sales dropped about 40% and the CEO was fired, after collecting the biggest bonus in automotive history for "cutting costs". Betting on "mild hybrids" and extra post-sale fees was a disaster.

Nobody in US automotive is investing in solid state batteries the way BYD and CATL are. There's technical risk, but if those things work, IC cars are over. 9 minute charge and a few hundred miles of range.

> Nobody in US automotive is investing in solid state batteries the way BYD and CATL are. There's technical risk, but if those things work, IC cars are over. 9 minute charge and a few hundred miles of range.

This, even if you embargo the new tech, if the new tech is a lot better, it will create a more broad economic disadvantage in not adopting it.

There's a tipping point coming. Once 9 minute charging works, charging stations work like gas stations, not parking lots. Nobody stays long. It makes sense for legacy gas stations to rip out the fuel pumps and tanks, and put in fast chargers.

Gas stations have a lot of infrastructure for catching oil run off, they could put in superchargers, but it would be a horrible use of land. The superchargers can literally go anywhere with power access since EVs don't leak anything other than possibly some coolant. If gas stations become obsolete, they will be subject to rehabilitation before they used for charging.

It's about as bad as the replacement of single-walled tanks with double-walled was. Easier, because the double-walled tanks probably aren't leaking. When you see a gas station with a little fenced-off area and a tiny building with warning signs, that's usually because there was a leaky tank there and the slow cleanup process is underway.

Gas stations are all about location.

There will probably be a business in doing a turnkey conversion. Prepare to bring in heavy power, shut down gas station, remove pumps, remove tanks, clean up and repair convenience store, put in chargers on the islands, replace signage, power up.

What I find baffling is that Volkswagen has absolutely nothing to offer in the low price segment. We were lucky to get an eUp! when the price was reasonable, but after they stopped production there is a glaring hole in their portfolio, and of course the Chinese will try to fill that

I suspect the engineers at traditional automakers HATE electric vehicles and this is likely causing massive delays. The vast vast majority of those engineers and other technical folks have careers which are are utterly dependent on ICE development and support.

This sort of transformative shift rarely happens from within. At least not easily.

As an engineer who used to work in the car industry I do not think the engineers hate electric cars. Also, they are not the ones making the decisions.

Volkswagen basically bet the farm on electric vehicles. They were late to the party, but went all in, so you cannot blame them for trying to block EVs. I rather suspect that making cheap EVs is just extremely difficult if you intend to make a profit. I bet they lost a good sum of money on every eUp! they produced (here in Germany you could get them for 15,000€ at the right time, which is a steal), so they decided to quit producing it, which IMO is a real shame, because it is such a cool car for inner city commuting.

Probably not the engineers, but the suits. Switching over from ICE is an enormous business problem because it's not just about manufacturing, but the whole after market ecosystem. EVs require less maintenance, but dealerships make most of their money on replacement parts. Getting rid of some uppity ICE engineers (in so far as they're not retiring) is the least of your problems as an ICE automaker.

Thank goodness all of our hype, investment and subsidies went to one man that doesn't even intend to create human jobs or sell cars to anyone the rich and supremely insecure. Sure was worth the entire free market going gaga for this tasty nothingburger, yesiree.

I mean, that doesn't really excuse VW's failure.

Can you be more specific on the use cases that comprise that? E.g. is it driverless company fleets, enabling elderly to drive, making it possible to e.g. sleep while driving, being fancy etc?

It's possible that self driving can be 'added on' using something like Comma:

https://x.com/comma_ai/status/1795596189544722695

I'm not sure self-driving is that important in most of the markets BYD will expand into: Mexico, Central and South America, Asia, and where allowed in Europe.

I don't think Tesla or any other manufacturers have anything to worry about in the US, Canada, and some EU countries since it will be impossible for BYD to sell cars into those markets profitably.

We don't need self driving cars for the transport revolution but self driving busses, trains and maybe trucks.

User experience always wins.

The best user experience is:

    You tap a button on your phone
    Immediately a car arrives
    You enter it
    It drives you directly to your destination
    You exit

That won't be the user experience. There is a limited amount of space on the road and functionally unlimited demand. Demand will level off at a point where either "Immediately a car arrives" turns to "After a barely tolerable wait your car arrives" and "It drives you directly to your destination" turns to "It sits in traffic for a barely tolerable amount of time". Either that limits demand or price limits demand in which case the vast majority of people will be priced out in order to keep roads empty enough for your best user experience.

Let's think it through.

If both are available to you, then no matter how crowded the roads will be, a car that drives you directly from A to B will be the better UX than a bus that drives you from somewhere near A to somewhere near B via C, D, E and F.

So the car could only be the worse experience if it is hard to get one (Because all the cars near you are occupied by other people) while a bus is easy to get into (Because there is one near you and you still fit in).

The vast majority of worldwide rides will continue to be done in individual cars. The extremely crowded situation that would make a bus the better experience is extremely rare. Most rides worldwide are definitely not done in that kind of environment. And the removal of parking spaces and the better routing self-driving cars allow will move even those environments more towards the individual car.

Or, as is the case in most cities around the world busses, trains and cycle routes are faster modes of transport because they have dedicated routes that aren't subject to congestion in the same way roads are. Walking 5 minutes to the bus stop beats getting stuck in 45 minutes of congestion in the car.

Unless car arrives in 3 hours because it is morning peak and everyone wants to get to job.

If you do not make a lot of money somewhere (Google ads, Tesla high valuation), it is very hard to have enough money to do the self-driving stuff. So production is important, because if you sell a lot of cars, you have cash flow for R&D.

You expect Tesla to run out of money before they start making money from self driving software?

yes.