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🙄 Tesla won't be the main competitor. VW is already set to overtake Tesla as the largest electric car maker in 2024. Others will soon surpass them too. Tesla had first-starter advantage but it's quickly being eaten up by vehicle manufacturers who have been in the automobile market for decades and have the ability to scale far better.

Largely the reason people went with Tesla for so long was because it was pretty much the only option. Now there are numerous options and we're seeing their market share quickly falling.

Tesla still uses low-quality materials in their vehicles (stuff you wouldn't find in a $50k vehicle much less a $100k vehicle), the build quality is complete crap you'd never see even in the cheapest of vehicles, and the paint is worse than any other auto maker out there.
I have a conspiracy theory that the automotive people wanted Tesla to put out the first all-electric vehicles to see how us, the common people, would take to it and if it was successful then everyone else would take to it
 
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$99,999 price tag (plus tax). And then Apple wonders why only CEOs are buying it.
 
Honestly can't imagine Apple ever actually entering the car market. Cars are low margin compared to Apple. Ford pulls 10%, Telsa close to 20%… but Apple routinely pulls 40%+ gross margin.
They’ll make it up with in-appcar purchases.
 
There are five levels of autonomous driving.

Lvl 1: None at all
Lvl 2: Must keep hands on wheel while car handles speed while keeping track of other cars
Lvl 3: No hands on wheel and auto-lane changes
Lvl 4: Mostly auto-driving, able to go to pre-planned destinations
Lvl 5: Full autonomous with any destination, unplanned

Most self-driving cars are on Lvl 2 right now. Lvl 5 is a pipe dream right now and anything above lvl 2 is still not street legal, except for testing purposes.

Lvl 2 works pretty well, since I have one of those. It’ll slow down and speed up according to traffic in the lane ahead of me without me ever touching the pedals, but it’ll give me a sharp warning if it doesn’t detect steering wheel movement within 15 seconds. I use it all the time, especially on long trips. Most people are too scared to even use lvl 2, so car companies have a long way to go to convince people it’s safe.

Lvl 3 exists on some cars in testing phases, mostly on high-end cars.

If Apple intends to sell a car by 2026, it’ll have to support a minimum of lvl 2 since most states still probably won’t allow anything above that by then. If they keep it to lvl 4 or 5 for upwards of $100,000, then Apple’s looking at a niche within a niche. Good luck ever being profitable on this venture. To be competitive, they’ll have to go with lvl 2 and 3 while pricing it around $60-70,000.
 
I have a conspiracy theory that the automotive people wanted Tesla to put out the first all-electric vehicles to see how us, the common people, would take to it and if it was successful then everyone else would take to it
GM had an EV in 96 with its EV1 and after that Toyota made a Rav4 EV. Neither caught on, but I would say that Tesla is responsible for popularizing EVs in the US.
 
Apple is aiming to launch an Apple-branded consumer-oriented vehicle by 2026, and its goal is to hit a price point under $100,000 to make the car appeal to a wider range of customers, reports Bloomberg.
"It is a curious fact, and makes life very interesting, that, generally speaking, none of us have any expectation that things are going to happen till the very moment when they do happen."

Seeing is believing!
 
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$100,000+ will put it out of reach for many people. Nice try Apple, but I believe this will be a miss! If Apple were in the $40,000 to $60,000 range they would likely sell a lot of these cars.
People aren't going to throw out $100k like that. It'll be leased or loaned ...
 
Everyone saying 100k is priced too high…Apple always relies on early adopters to shoulder the initial price of getting started…within five years of launch they’ll have something at least at the 50k price.
 
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Meh, electric cars are a small part of the market and will remain that way for awhile due to our crap electrical infrastructure and lack of chargers where a good portion of society lives, an apartment. And I don't mean put four chargers and call it a day, you need dozens at least for a decent sized apartment community.

Electric cars are already more significant than hybrids or diesels and are rapidly approaching the point where they overtake gas powered cars - already 1 in 6 cars sold in October 2022 were electric.

In September 2022, the world's top selling vehicles (electrics in bold) were:

1. Tesla Model Y (113K sales)
2. Toyota Corolla (93K)
3. Toyota RAV4 (72K)
4. Tesla Model 3 (69K)
5. Ford F-Series (61K)*
6. Toyota Camry (54K)
7. Honda CRV (49K)
8. Chevy Silverado (48K)
9. BYD Song (46K)
10. RAM Pick Up (45K)

* Ford just started selling an electric version, the Lightning. Monthly sales so far are 2500. They also have an electric Mustang, the Mach-E, which accounts for 2/3s of all Mustang sales.

Regarding electrical infrastructure, we're good on the cars front. There's no shortage there.

Electric Semi Trucks may be another matter. Tesla just started deliveries of the Tesla Semi last week. They have a new charger stall for them that provides over 1 MW of power. Having a truck stop with a few dozen Tesla Semis all charging at the same time might be iffy. But Tesla builds the infrastructure as well as the vehicles, so they'll make sure they deploy charging stalls at the right rate to support the vehicles they're building.
 
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