Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

Electric cars?

Would you buy an electric car?

  • Already own one

    Votes: 10 5.1%

  • Yes - would definitely buy

    Votes: 43 21.9%

  • Yes - preferred over petrol car if price/power/convenience similar

    Votes: 78 39.8%

  • Maybe - preference for neither, only concerned with costs etc

    Votes: 37 18.9%

  • No - prefer petrol car even if electric car has same price, power and convenience

    Votes: 24 12.2%

  • No - would never buy one

    Votes: 14 7.1%
  • Total voters
    196
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Value Collector said:
Check this out, the guy in the drivers seat is only there for legal reasons, he doesn't touch any controls, and the car drives him from home to work.

This level of autopilot isn't unlocked yet, but its coming, regulations just need to catch up.

But Teslas will currently autopilot down freeways etc with the current autopilot pack.

Click to expand...


What if the map is outdated? Would it auto-pilot off a cliff?

Or a parking sign state can't park at x to y hours. Can it read and detect that?

Or the nearest car park charges $20 per hour while a few blocks down charges mate's rate?

If these issues are solved, I still don't see large adoption of such cars though. I mean, Taxi services would be so cheap and widely available that most people would just rent/hire them instead of buying a Tesla or a smart car for their daily travel to work.

It would more likely reduced the number of car ownership rather than increasing it I reckon.
 
sptrawler said:
Elon is starting to sound a bit like a CEO, of a struggling company, long on promises and short on outcomes.

https://www.drive.com.au/motor-news....html?trackLink=SMH0?trackLink=SMH0?ffref=smh

the worrying part of the article is this:
But Tesla’s primary focus for now is boosting production of its Model 3, which had over 500,000 pre-orders yet delivered just 220 models last quarter. It comes on the back of Tesla’s biggest ever quarterly loss announcement but it plans to ramp up production of the small sedan to 5000 units per month by March next year.
I will be suprised, if Tesla aren't overtaken by mainstream manufacturers, who can supply the product.
Even if they ramp up production to 5,000 per month, it is still a long time to wait for a car.
It will be a shame if he disappears, without full filling the promise, but he has done a lot for the electrification of the auto industry.
Click to expand...

He's a bit like that guy that founded Netscape, remember Netscape?

It was a far superior web browser than Microsoft's IE, but IE was free and comes with all its Windows OS, even the cracked ones :D... I remember hating IE because it's clunky but soon enough got used to the freebies. Within a year or two, IE became pretty good and Netscape kinda disappear.

That same guy founded a total of 3 companies worth, at one time or other, over $1Billion.

He was smart, of course. But he wasn't an IT or tech genius. Just a savvy manager and salesman who bring together talented geniuses to work on a bigbang idea... packaged and sale it to investors... made a big name for himself and buy a couple of $100M yachts and things.

The thing I don't like about Musk, and this might not be his fault, more of the media's attribution of him... is that he's made out to be some sort of tech genius. Not just IT tech, but rocket-science, electrical engineer, car designer/manufacturer etc. etc.

I mean, his Tesla battery pack for Adelaide are all made by Panasonic. He practically just put a badge on it. That's like Dell computers or Nike shoes when he started out.

It's not a bad thing, and it does take smarts to pull it off. So credit for that. But it's not really genius at work you know. Not the Nicola Tesla or Thomas Edison kind of genius... just your typical modern-day CEO marketing manager. I mean, that's not even on the level of Bill Gates, and Gates is no technologist, not by a long shot. Gates is very good at taking bits and pieces from others, put it together and flog it off as his own.

That's car-wrecker kind of smarts, not Henry Ford or Alfred S Sloan kind of ingenuity.
 
sptrawler said:
I will be suprised, if Tesla aren't overtaken by mainstream manufacturers, who can supply the product.
Click to expand...

As with anything, no matter how good some alternative is the product you'll actually buy is one that's available.

Lots of things like that over the years where some technically superior idea lost out because the competition actually had a product available for immediate delivery to consumers.

It will be a shame if he disappears, without full filling the promise, but he has done a lot for the electrification of the auto industry.
Click to expand...

The automotive industry sure needed a shakeup and thankfully he's managed to go at least some way to achieving that.

If certain manufacturers had their way we'd still have cars using 18 litres / 100 km (that was in fact the average for new cars in the US a generation ago), with a 12 month warranty which needed a service every 5,000 km at most, a new exhaust every 2 or 3 years and an engine rebuild after 160,000 km. The Japanese shook the industry up with quality and put a stop to that sort of nonsense and now the likes of Tesla are doing it with the means of making it move.

Interesting times certainly.
 
luutzu said:
What if the map is outdated? Would it auto-pilot off a cliff?

Or a parking sign state can't park at x to y hours. Can it read and detect that?

Or the nearest car park charges $20 per hour while a few blocks down charges mate's rate?

If these issues are solved, I still don't see large adoption of such cars though. I mean, Taxi services would be so cheap and widely available that most people would just rent/hire them instead of buying a Tesla or a smart car for their daily travel to work.

It would more likely reduced the number of car ownership rather than increasing it I reckon.
Click to expand...
Tesla cars use swarm learning, so as things change the cars adapt to the changing situation and pass the knowledge on to the rest of the cars.

Tesla would love having the a large chunk of a future car pooling network, yes with a large adoption there would be less cars, but the cars that do exist would be doing more miles and therefore replacement cycles would be shorter.
 
sptrawler said:
Elon is starting to sound a bit like a CEO, of a struggling company, long on promises and short on outcomes.

https://www.drive.com.au/motor-news....html?trackLink=SMH0?trackLink=SMH0?ffref=smh

the worrying part of the article is this:
But Tesla’s primary focus for now is boosting production of its Model 3, which had over 500,000 pre-orders yet delivered just 220 models last quarter. It comes on the back of Tesla’s biggest ever quarterly loss announcement but it plans to ramp up production of the small sedan to 5000 units per month by March next year.
I will be suprised, if Tesla aren't overtaken by mainstream manufacturers, who can supply the product.
Even if they ramp up production to 5,000 per month, it is still a long time to wait for a car.
It will be a shame if he disappears, without full filling the promise, but he has done a lot for the electrification of the auto industry.
Click to expand...

They are ramping up to 20,000 cars per month by mid 2018, you can’t go from 0 cars per month to 20,000 cars per month in a week when you are building you factory from scratch.

Also you can’t expect to be reporting profits in every quarter when you are building and ramping up 2 factories
 
Remote control People moving Drones.
That's the future of transport.
Not on the ground.
 
tech/a said:
Remote control People moving Drones.
That's the future of transport.
Not on the ground.
Click to expand...

Not in my lifetime, robotic and drone technology is no where near practical applications. Imagine the accidents...self driving cars yes. Look how long that’s taking to roll out. The big car manufacturers are still clever lobbyists....that’s about it.
 
Don't know Can
They reckon Boeing can fly the Dreamliner manually.
The yanks attack anything they don't want walking or driving with Drones.

Want to see something REALLY SCARY!!

 
tech/a said:
Don't know Can


Want to see something REALLY SCARY!!

Click to expand...


That is actually a movie clip and whilst it may not be far away from possibility it is still along way away from becoming reality. Just like bitcoin, just like drone hover craft, just like driver less cars. The thing you keep forgetting is that we've not become any better at ledgslating innovation and yet we've become better at innovation....there's a gap there. In some cases this is a good thing....
 
The other thing worth mentioning is that I work with roughly 100 robots daily and I still see major gaps in perfecting them for manufacturing let alone critical applications in daily use.

We can't get electric vehicles in Australia at a reasonable price, the big manufacturers lag in electric vehicle production, so at the end of the day it's the military that will benefit from the innovation because they truly embrace it as an edge....
 
CanOz said:
Not in my lifetime, robotic and drone technology is no where near practical applications. Imagine the accidents...self driving cars yes. Look how long that’s taking to roll out. The big car manufacturers are still clever lobbyists....that’s about it.
Click to expand...

Google Dubai airport drone taxi

They have already tested a protype.

Expect to have it up and running in next 5 years and expect 25% of Dubai transport to be done this way within 12 years.
 
Value Collector said:
They are ramping up to 20,000 cars per month by mid 2018, you can’t go from 0 cars per month to 20,000 cars per month in a week when you are building you factory from scratch.

Also you can’t expect to be reporting profits in every quarter when you are building and ramping up 2 factories
Click to expand...

Doesn't sound like 20,000 per month, by mid 2018, according to this report.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/inno...ise-with-crucial-model-3-20180104-h0djl6.html

The guy is under the pump, but a lot of it is self induced, the press should be more forgiving.
 
SirRumpole said:
Electric cars are breaking our roads ?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-...ralia-roads-reform-road-user-charging/9235564
Click to expand...
In that article:

The Federal Government is looking at ways to more closely link how people use the roads with what they pay.

Mr Fletcher will soon announce the terms of reference of the formal review into this concept, known as "road pricing" or "road user charging", and similar trials for trucks are earmarked for 2018.

The ultimate solution might link how much drivers pay to their car's GPS tracker. Instead of a rough fuel-based taxation method, the result would be accurate to the metre: the further you drive, the more tax you pay.

n a trial in the US state of Oregon, all drivers were charged one-and-a-half US cents per mile — no matter how fuel efficient their car was.

....

Bugger it. I'm going to sell my car. Go on the dole. No need to drive.
 
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