Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Let’s Talk About Tesla “Killers!””.
Hey what is up guys, mkbhd here? Okay, so tesla competition, tesla killers? What’S the deal? It’S the end of 2018 right now and this week a fancy new startup revealed their electric truck and electric suv called rivien. The suv is a seven passenger called the r1s and the pickup truck, which seems to be the flagship vehicle. Is the rivien r1t? Now i’m not a pickup truck person by any means, but i am an electric car person and the specs and the things that they were promising for this as an electric vehicle were actually pretty promising, they say: it’ll have a huge 180 kilowatt hour battery, bigger than Anything on the market right now, it’ll have a 400 mile range. It has four motors one at each wheel, which will give it close to 800 horsepower and take it from zero to 60 in three seconds, which is fast for any car, but especially for a pickup truck, not that you’d race. That thing, but hey, that’s the benefit of electric the top speed of 125 miles an hour fine, and then it can tow up to 11 000 pounds and go up or down a 45 degree incline, and it has a really advanced suspension and torque vectoring.
And all this stuff, so as an electric truck, it’s pretty damn cool, if i say so myself and then obviously, since it’s the shape of a pickup truck but minus an engine and a transmission and all that there are a ton of space savings and they use That pretty well there’s a huge front trunk, which is awesome for storage space. There’S covered storage in the back, there’s a full spare there’s a flat bed and then there’s also a gear tunnel through the middle behind the back seats that can fit large items or backpacks or whatever. You want. There’S a lot more storage in there and then beyond that they just kind of tried to make it a cool pickup truck the design is a mixed bag for me, i’m not as attracted to the front and the headlight area, but i do like the back end.
I think that’s cool, but the giant daytime running led headlights in the front. They have a purpose. They are also the charging indicator. It’S a look, a pretty solid interior with some huge screens which might get weird if it gets dirty if you’re getting rugged with this.
But i don’t mind it: i like less buttons, there are wall outlets in the bed, a built-in air compressor, a bed that folds all the way down cool and it’s all coming. They say in the second half of 2020, starting at 69 000. nice.
So i asked zach, you know him as jrig everything who is a pickup truck guy, what he thought of this thing. These are his thoughts, so i’m a truck guy trucks can go more places and accomplish more than cars can and, while i’m a huge fan of my toyota tacoma, it’s hard to ignore when an electric truck like the rivian comes along promising to be quicker, more powerful And carry more those features might be too good to be true, but either way i have my pre-order in and i’m excited to see what happens. Okay, so this seems like the most promising electric vehicle that isn’t a tesla.
So is this the tesla killer no see the thing is tesla as an electric car company, even with as much as you read about them in the news and their problems, with ramping up production, with all that they are so so so far ahead at making an Electric car a compelling product that people actually want to buy, so here’s here’s a couple names for you: faraday future, lucid air. These are both the names of promising new companies with impressive and compelling electric cars. I’Ve done videos with both of them. As i looked for something to compare to tesla now, they’re uh, they’re kind of both not doing so hot and they’re, both definitely not selling their cars. Yet so my gut when this new company rivien comes along, can you blame me? It’S kind of the same now to be fair. They’Ve existed for a couple years now behind closed doors in a sort of a stealth mode, and they see themselves as different.
They have a factory space already that they’re in the process of setting up and they have a couple offices already. It looks like they have a couple design prototypes and some driving prototypes and they have this whole snazzy, startup, california, changing the world video. It’S actually really well made, but i’ll link it below. If you want to watch it, but you can’t just skip all the history and all the money that tesla’s put in to get to where they are in the electric car space.
So here’s the deal with tesla competitors. I figured i’d, put all my thoughts in one place to make a great electric car. You need a couple things. You need a design, a good design. You need a good price, then you’ll need great specs and you’ll need what i’ll call convenience and these pillars are sort of what you need to compete and they’re harder than you might think, design specs price and convenience something you’ve seen the startups do really well. Is this flashy sexy design? They do that really? Well, they don’t have any 100 year history of design heritage. They have to respect they’re just kind of an open book. They don’t have anything holding them back. They can go, futuristic sexy sporty whatever. I love that and then they can promise really high-end range and performance and specs on paper, because they’re really optimistic startups, so hell yeah, we’re gon na try to do zero to sixty in three seconds and four hundred miles of range on a 180 kilowatt hour battery. For sure we can do that by 2020 totally and they can even promise to nail the price like i’ve. Seen a couple come out, especially recently where the price tag comes out and people turn their heads like.
Oh really tesla killer, lucid air, which i made a video with was gon na start. Their thousand horsepower electric limo at fifty nine thousand dollars and riven of course, is coming out now saying. They’Re gon na have their four motor 180 kilowatt hour battery pickup, starting at 69 000.. But what these startups all lack is the biggest pillar convenience, because convenience encompasses a couple things: it’s mass production, autonomous driving and a charging network for me to conveniently switch to this new car. They need to be making it and selling it in mass again rivian.
They say they have a factory and they’re going to start setting it up, but we’ve all seen how hard a factory is to set up and autonomous driving is clearly a massive convenience and we’ve seen tesla’s been working on that constantly. They just recently passed a billion miles driven by teslas with autopilot on that is a lot of data to learn from and to get better at it where everyone else, relatively speaking, is just starting out. That’S software! You have to be a whole software company.
On top of a car company to make this part good and then i think the biggest drawback, especially of this off-road vehicle, that people are going to want to go adventure and drive places that don’t have chargers is a charging network. Tesla supercharging network isn’t even necessary for most people most of the time. If you have a charger in a garage, you just charge up every night to 100, but on the off chance you do go for a road trip or you do go on an adventure having a public charging network wherever you’re going and a fast public charging network Is super important and tesla’s built one out like no other for real? Nothing is even close and they’re, adding to it every month, faraday future, lucid air and now rivien, don’t use tesla’s supercharging network now to be clear. They can tesla’s made it pretty clear that they want people to actually do that, but they choose not to and for some reason no one’s taking them up on that.
So with all this convenience missing and obviously with tesla’s reputation already in the electric car space being pretty good uh, it makes it tough to see one of these new startups seem like a big competition to tesla, at least for now. So that brings us to the big dogs, the toyotas, the bmws ford, mercedes, jaguar audi, all these major older car companies with legacy. Maybe that’s where the tesla killer will come from major car companies. They have massive manufacturing plants already they have the staff to dedicate to making good electric cars they can hire to get good.
At software they have the economies of scale to be competitive, with price they’re, even already pretty great at car design and fit and finish. That’S one of the big advantages you have to being a hundred year old company. Is you get pretty good at tight tolerances and making good comfortable, looking and feeling cars inside and out now i’ll excuse some of the first few attempts at electric cars that i’ve seen? I really think they got to stop thinking about electric as this whole new aesthetic. They have to challenge themselves with.
That’S not really cutting it, but some of them are clearly starting to get it. So that’s encouraging, but you know what these huge companies don’t seem to have ambition. They don’t seem to want it that bad and you can see it in the specs and their promises. Like the number of car announcements. I see that say they’re going to come out in two to three years that have a roughly 200 mile max range is that’s just ridiculous like not only is that not enough now that’s way way too little in 2020., there’s a great video by ben from the Teslanomics channel i’ll link it below that like button where he goes into much more detail on that point, but it’s really good. You should watch it and then, on top of all of that they still don’t have the supercharging network. They still don’t have the billion miles of autonomous driving data to learn from they still don’t have the reputation that tesla has and when it comes to shopping for electric cars, so tesla killers, i’m still waiting. I do think this rivien truck is probably the most promising and complete competitor next to jaguar’s i-pace, but they’re, also more on the horizon from porsche and audi, which are looking very promising that i’m rooting for.
I think tesla needs as much competition as possible, because competition makes us all better off. It makes the products better, and that gives us as consumers a better selection, a more diverse choice of all these electric cars and trucks and suvs. But by the looks of things, we’re still a little ways away from that there is no tesla killer, but we don’t need one there’s plenty of room in the market for competition and that’s what works thanks for watching talk to you guys, the next one peace .