Elon Musk believes it could be possible to scale production at Tesla and lower their design and technology costs enough to be able to offer a truly mass-market electric vehicle priced as low as $25,000 within three years.
Recently analysts at UBS pulled apart three different electric cars to compare their technology and production costs: a new Tesla Model 3, a 2014 BMW i3 and a 2017 Chevy Bolt.
The engineers hired by UBS to examine a $49,000 2018 Model 3 were crazy about the powertrain. UBS analyst Colin Langan said engineers found Tesla Model 3’s have next generation, military-grade technology that is years ahead of competitors. The costs were higher than expected, and the cars would lose about $5,900 each at Tesla’s original plan to sell an entry model at $35,000. So currently Tesla can breakeven at $41,000.
Elon also wants to improve Tesla production to make two cars or more at once. This would allow production of the crossover Model Y, a Tesla pickup truck, the Semi tractor trailer, and the next generation of the Roadster.
The profit margin on more expensive Model 3 is estimated to be about 18%.
Elon Musk and Tesla are trying to make $35,000 Model 3’s profitable by the end of 2018.
A new Roadster will have almost double the batteries and go zero to 60 in 1.9 seconds
A new Roadster would have a 200 kilowatt-hours packs.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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