Can BMW Fend Off The Charge of the Tesla Model 3? Part 1

Two years ago a wrote I post suggesting that Tesla and BMW would eventually face off.  That's clearly going to happen with the launch of Tesla's Model 3.

We’ve all seen upcoming products being described with buzzwords like “revolutionary” and “disruptive” that later translate into something much less successful after the public actually gets a chance to experience them. I can remember the hype leading up to the launch of Dean Kamen’s Segway back in 2001 when Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos boldly predicted, “Cities would be built around (it).” 

While the Segway has enjoyed some success, it never really penetrated the market much beyond specialized uses, like transportation for police departments, guided tours, and theme parks. On the other side of the coin we can look at what the evolution of the cellular phone has done for communication, and what the digital camera has done for photography and the film industry. Both products revolutionized their respective industries and left titans in bankruptcy before they even saw it coming. Electric cars have the potential to do the same thing to the auto industry, and we may just be on the precipice of such an event.

For the past few years, many people have wondered which side of history Tesla Motors will be on in ten or twenty years. Will Tesla revolutionize the automobile and lead the charge to electrification, or will they be a forgotten footnote like so many other companies that have tried to do something special and failed? The auto industry is probably the toughest one to penetrate, proven by the fact that the last American automobile manufacturer to succeed was Chrysler Motors, which started in 1924. Since then, every volume auto manufacturer that started in the US has failed, except for Tesla. 

People camped out in lines many hours before the Tesla stores opened for Model 3 reservations on March 31st

It’s worth noting that Tesla has yet to turn a profit, and in fact is losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year. So they haven’t really “made it” just yet, in fact they still have a way to go. However the prospects of that happening just got much better, better than even the most optimistic Tesla analyst had even imagined. One week after opening the reservation process for Telsa’s next offering, the Model 3, Elon Musk and company had received over 325,000 reservations. By the end of the second week, reservations were at about 400,000.

Reservation holders eagerly plunked down a $1,000 (refundable) deposit to be one of the first to own the car Tesla has been talking about since their inception. This is the electric car from Tesla that is supposed to be affordable (under $30,000 after incentives), have a long range (over 200 miles per charge) can recharge quickly (at one of thousands of Supercharger stations) and is also desirable (fun, fast & stylish). Some Tesla stores had people lining up hours before the 10:00 am opening on March 31st, with hundreds of people waiting to reserve a vehicle that they hadn’t yet seen, didn’t know the exact price, or exactly when it would be available. It wasn’t until 8:30 pm that day that Tesla actually revealed the vehicle and since then reservations have continued to come in at an unrelenting pace. 

Tesla has announced the base Model 3 will start at $35,000, and Musk has said he expects the average Model 3 to sell for roughly $42,000 with options. Personally, I expect the average Model 3 sale to be closer to $50,000, because I'm sure most will want Supercharging (likely not included in the base price), plus expensive options like a larger battery, dual motors, and at least a few other optional goodies. Even if we use Elon's prediction of $42,000 per vehicle, if all of the current reservations were to convert into actual deliveries, that would add up to $16,800,000,000 in sales in just about two weeks. Of course that won’t happen, and many reservations for one reason or another won’t convert. Even if only 50% (about what I expect) actually wait it out and order the vehicle, that’s over eight billion dollars in sales in the first couple weeks. The automobile industry has never seen anything like this. It’s more like the hysteria created over the next iPhone than it is about any previous new car offering. 

  

The lines at Short Hills Mall stretched from the Tesla store all the way out into the parking lot!

I arrived at the Mall at Short Hills, in Short Hills, New Jersey at 9:30 am on the day reservations opened and was shocked to see the line stretch across half of the mall, down a corridor and out of the building. I expected a couple dozen people, but there were 200 to 300 there people at that point, a half hour before the reservation process opened up. I met a friend and current Tesla owner Michael Thwaite there, and he had just walked along the line of people waiting, asking them if they currently drive an EV or if they had owned one in the past. The results of his informal survey were that about 90% of the people waiting didn’t currently drive an EV, and the Model 3 will be their first car with a plug. 

So these weren’t hardened EV supporters; the vast majority of people there were new to electric cars, and still they were willing to wait for hours on line for a car they won’t actually get for roughly two years. So does it mean that Tesla has made it? Certainly not, they still have a lot of work in front of them. They still need to get their battery factory, the Gigafactory in Nevada open and churning out millions of battery cells. They still need to retool their Nummi plant in Fremont, California for the high production Model 3 line and then scale up like they never have before. 

A recent picture of Tesla's Gigafactory under construction outside Reno, Nevada. Photo credit: Above Reno

Many industry insiders will still say they won’t be able to do it, that this will be the challenge that Tesla cannot meet and if they fail to produce a high quality vehicle in large volume it will be their undoing. The funny thing about that is I’ve been hearing this for five years now. I’ve talked with executives from just about every major OEM, and as recent as only a few years ago nobody even gave Tesla a chance. They laughed at the Supercharger network and how Tesla would need to spend hundreds of millions to build and maintain it. Tesla now has over 3,600 Supercharger stations worldwide and expects to have over 7,000 by the end of 2017. This network is unrivaled in the industry. Every other automobile manufacturer is either hoping EV infrastructure matures, or is just mildly getting involved by subsidizing regional infrastructure projects.  However, they aren't willing to commit to own or manage the stations as Tesla does to ensure that the stations are strategically located and operational when customers need them.

The Supercharger network is only one example of something the industry has been saying Tesla can’t do. Another example is the direct sales model. While Tesla has had difficulty in some states because of archaic dealer franchise laws, they are still selling their cars throughout most of the US without issue. This is something many thought wouldn’t be possible. Then there are the sales of the Model S, Tesla’s first volume offering which has been available for a little over three years now. Many people were doubtful it could compete with the large luxury sedans it would be priced against, cars like the Mercedes S Class, the BMW 7-Series, Audi A7 and the Lexus LS. After all, these vehicles have had decades to build a following of brand loyal enthusiasts. How many people would be willing to plunk down $80,000 to $130,000 for a car from a new manufacturer with no company history, dealerships or in many cases service centers within driving distance?

Well, the Model S hasn’t just been competitive in this class, it is dominating it. Comparing 2014 and 2015 US sales in this class, Tesla had a 51% increase from 16,689 vehicles to 25,202. During that same period, sales for every single competitor in this segment were down, while the total for the entire segment remained about the same. The Model S didn’t necessarily bring new buyers to the segment; instead it took sales from the established competition already there.

Every single vehicle in the segment experienced an abrupt sales decline in 2015 while Model S sales increased by 51%

So what does this mean? First, don’t bet against Tesla. Tesla has been beating the odds all along. Despite being told they can’t do it, they just keep plugging along (pun intended), winning awards and accolades, extending their proprietary network of high-speed chargers and building a fervently loyal following. Musk has repeatedly said the Model 3 will compete head on with the BMW 3-Series. The 3-Series has been the benchmark for the entry level, premium sport sedan market for decades. It’s the king of the hill in that segment and BMW’s bread & butter. BMW sells about 100,000 of them per year in the US - and it's the only car in the class to eclipse the 100k mark per year, domestically.  Now think back to the 400,000 Model 3 reservations Tesla accepted in two weeks. Even if half of those reservations cancel, the Model 3 will not only outsell the benchmark of its class it its first year, but it will likely sell more than double its closest competitor in the segment. That's provided Tesla can scale up to meet demand of course, and while it's unlikely that they will have the capacity to make 200,000 Model 3s in the first year, they will be severely cutting into the sales of competing cars in this segment. 

If the Model 3 does to this segment what the Model S did to the competitors in its segment, the shock waves will be felt through the entire industry.  Who's to say Tesla won't do it again in the other segments? The Model 3 looks to be a formidable competitor so the only answer is for the competition to also step it up. The established OEMs must bring exciting, long range and affordable electric vehicles to market or they risk being the next Polaroid or Kodak. No, they aren't too big to fail, and yes, it can happen. It's impossible for the premium brand automakers to disregard Tesla any more; to do so would be corporate suicide. In fact, last week Daimler held their annual shareholders meeting in Berlin, and no less than four times they were asked by concerned shareholders why they didn't have an answer for Tesla.

However, before we crown Tesla the new champion of the auto industry, we need to realize the other OEMs haven't exactly been sitting on their hands for the past half a decade. They have all, to some degree or another, been working on electric vehicle programs, and they all have the resources to get up to speed quickly. BMW is probably positioned better than any other premium brand, as they have poured billions into the sub brand BMW i, which already has the BMW i3 & BMW i8. But as good as the i3 is today, it won't be good enough to compete head to head with the Model 3 in 2018 unless BMW were to triple the current range and also reduce the current cost, neither of which is likely to happen.

An artist's rendering of the rumored BMW i5

So is BMW the walking dead without an answer for the Model 3? No, not even close, but they do have a lot of work to do. Now that Musk has showed his hand they know where they need to be in 2 to 3 years. In part two of this post I'll lay out my plan for BMW, which will ensure they aren't left behind and wondering, "How'd that happen?" I'll discuss my recommendations for BMW's entire plug in strategy, from the next generation i3 to the iPerformance PHEV line. However the real weapon will be the rumored (upcoming) i5. If BMW has any chance of retaining many the customers who plan to turn in their 3-Series for the Model 3 when it's available, the i5 will be what keeps them from defecting to Tesla, and in part two I'll design the car they need to bring to market sometime in 2018 to keep them relevant in this segment.

Now realize in the time it took you to read this article Tesla has likely accepted about 100 more Model 3 reservations. Sometimes I wonder if the legacy OEMs really understand what's happening here.

First Public CCS DC Fast Charger in New Jersey Getting Action

This CCS DC Quick Charge station is located on my property at 148 Valley Road, Montclair, NJ

Back in August I posted an article that announced the opening of the first DC fast charger in the East Coast Express Charging Corridor. That station was installed in Hartford, Connecticut. The Express Charging Corridor when completed will connect Washington, DC to Boston, Massachusetts with CCS DC fast chargers, located no more than 50 miles apart, and is being funded by a joint venture between BMW, Volkswagen and ChargePoint.

About three weeks after the station in Hartford was installed, I installed one on my property in Montclair, NJ. It was the first public CCS station in the state that wasn't installed on BMW property. BMW has had a few CCS fast chargers at their North American headquarters for a few years now, as they have been testing CCS since 2012, when they were using a modified BMW ActiveE with CCS capability as a test mule for the then yet-to-be-released i3.

So far the DCQC station is getting plenty of use from i3 owners

CCS fast charge infrastructure had a slow start, frustrating many i3 owners. It was difficult to watch the Asian standard CHAdeMO stations and Tesla Superchargers continue to proliferate, while CCS stations were as rare as White Rhinos. However the pace of CCS deployment has really picked up, and with the East and West Coast Express Charging Corridors beginning to take shape, it's starting to look like CCS is finally getting some traction.

The station I installed is the smaller of the two that will be used in these corridors. I have the 24kW, CCS only DC fast charger but there is another unit that will also be deployed on many of the direct highway locations. That unit is a dual head, CCS and CHAdeMO station and is capable of delivering up to 50kW. Because of the location on my property (not situated on a highway), and the primary tenant is a restaurant where people typically spend an hour or more, the 24kW unit made more sense, and it costs a LOT less. The lower power draw will also help me to avoid or minimize demand charges from my electric provider.

The eGolf owners were very pleased when they realized the DCQC in my lot was close to the route they planned to take to Massachusetts. They only had to drive a few miles off of their route to stop by and Quick Charge

I installed the station a little over two months ago and it's definitely getting use. I've had at least a couple dozen different i3 owners stop by and use it, and I recently had an eGolf owner who was driving from Delaware to Massachusetts stop by to charge up. I was talking to them about the trip and how long it would take to stop and charge at level 2 stations and how happy there were when they saw my DCQC station pop up on the Plugshare map.

Fast charge infrastructure is monumentally important for the mass adoption of plug in cars. Tesla knew the success of the Model S, and probably even the entire company, would hinge on how quickly they could cover large swaths of the US and other key markets with Supercharger access. They have been installing them at an incredible rate, and have installed more than 500 worldwide in under 3 years.

Nissan has also done their fair share with regards to DC fast charge infrastructure and has subsidized much of the costs of hundreds of CHAdeMO installations. Personally, I'm hoping Volkswagen steps up and commits to installing even more infrastructure than the current plan in light of the current dieselgate scandal. Making a commitment to assisting the proliferation of cleaner electric cars would be a good first step in restoring public confidence at this point.

We are getting there. EV charging infrastructure, both level 2 and DC fast charge, is still really in its infancy, but we're definitely making progress in some areas of the country (mainly the coasts). I remember back to 2009 when I was driving my MINI-E and there wasn't a public charging station within a thousand miles of me. In fact, the closest one may have even been 3,000 miles away in California.  Now there are tens of thousands of them in the US. I can only imagine how things will look in another five or six years.

The Plugshare map on the left shows only CCS DC Fast charge stations on the East Coast. Just a year ago at this time there were none in this view. Within a couple of months, there will be dozens more of them as the Express Charging Corridor locations are finished. The large gap south of my restaurant (the blue dot) will hopefully be closed by year's end. The pace of CCS deployment is definitely picking up, and I believe will only continue to accelerate from here on.

VW: Das-eption and the path to Redemption

Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned on Wednesday.

While this blog's primary focus is the BMW i3, I occasionally sprinkle in some featured EV products and discuss topics not necessarily i3-centric, but are instead just general electric vehicle information. In light of the recent revelations that Volkswagen has been deliberately cheating on emissions testing for many years now, I wrote the following article for Green Car Reports.

So far, no other automaker has been caught as VW has - with proof that they purposely installed a "defeat device" on the vehicles so the cars would curb their emissions only during actual emission testing. However it's fair game to speculate if other OEMs may also be exposed as cheaters now that the EPA knows what they have to look for, and how to expose it. It will certainly be interesting to watch this all unfold.

In any event, Volkswagen is going to face huge fines for intentionally violating Federal emission standards and I wanted to offer my thoughts on how I believe some of that money should be used. If we don't use at least a portion of that money to help reverse the damage done by these heavily polluting "clean diesels", I believe we will have missed a great opportunity to improve the quality of air we all breathe.

 How VW Can Atone For Diesel Deception: Electric-Car Advocate's Thoughts

The full impact of Volkswagen's diesel-emission cheating scandal has yet to be realized, but what it has apparently already admitted to doing could result in the largest civil fine ever levied by the Federal government on an automaker. And that's just the beginning.

Besides paying civil penalties, and coping with a spate of criminal actions, and class-action lawsuits, and investigations by multiple levels of government, VW also needs to deal with the 482,000 cars it sold--plus more in limbo at dealers--that clearly do not comply with emission laws.

In real-world use, these vehicles emit 10 to 35 times the allowable legal limit of certain pollutants, so they're not just slightly out of compliance. They will need to be modified to comply, or VW will have to buy them back. And if owners don't like the modified cars, they'll likely have to buy those cars back too.
After all that, VW has to figure out how to regain the trust of the public.

There are lots of aspects to this debacle, and all will undoubtedly be discussed ad nauseam over the coming weeks. But the aspect I find most interesting is how Volkswagen can best right the wrongs it has done. How does paying fines, settling lawsuits, and bringing highly-polluting vehicles into compliance really undo the damage done? It doesn't. All it does is punish Volkswagen. And I believe the public deserves more.

Make no mistake: If VW is guilty as charged, it absolutely deserves to be punished--and severely.

It turns out they aren't as clean as we were told - not nearly, actually.

But I hope the Justice Department also considers what can be done to offset the damage to air quality created by the offending so-called "clean diesels." And I hope VW, separately, does the same. We've seen penalty estimates as high as $18 billion dollars (the maximum allowed of $37,500 per vehicle for intentionally violating the Clean Air Act. I doubt the actual penalty will be anywhere close to that, but it will likely be in the billions. I think it's not unreasonable to expect the fine to be somewhere around $2.5 billion, or about $5,000 per non-compliant vehicle sold.

Why not use a portion of that civil fine to invest in a nationwide DC Fast Charge network for electric vehicles?

If just half of a $2.5 billion fine were dedicated to this purpose, we could blanket the majority of Interstate highways and major high-traffic corridors with DC fast chargers that would make switching from gasoline and diesel cars to zero-emission electric vehicles a much easier decision for many buyers. Here's why I believe that is what should be done. Helping to advance the proliferation of cleaner electric vehicles would, over time, more than reverse the emissions damage that has been done, and further improve the quality of air we breathe, instead of just punishing the offender. And shouldn't that really be the goal here?

A second thought: As well as using the fine to build out a national DC fast-charging network, how about Volkswagen getting out in front of this crisis itself and telling us how it will do its part to help clean the air it polluted?

BMW, Volkswagen and ChargePoint teamed up to create "Express Charging Corridors" on the East and West coasts. While it's a good start, much more fast charge infrastructure is needed to allow the average electric car of today to be a viable choice for long distance driving.

Rather than just declaring that it will be a leader in electric mobility, as the company has done before, show us the proof that it's serious about how it plans to expand its zero-emission vehicle offerings? VW Group could combine that with a generous investment in public charging infrastructure, on a much greater scale than last December's partnership with BMW and ChargePoint to install approximately 100 DC fast chargers.

That program in just now starting to get under way, but it's really only the beginning of what's needed. VW should commit to expanding it to 400 or 500 stations, including high-volume corridors not only on the East and West coasts but across the country--essentially following the Tesla Supercharger road map.

Tesla North American Supercharger map.

Yet another idea to consider: Give the owners of the affected vehicles the option to replace their car with a new electric Volkswagen e-Golf. Some current Volkswagen TDI diesel owners have said they now feel guilty for having driven their diesel for the past few years, with a main reason for their purchase having been both fuel economy and because it was a "clean" diesel.

Offering those owners the option to return the polluting car for a much cleaner Volkswagen could demonstrate that VW understands and is concerned with its customers' desire to drive clean cars. Many owners won't take advantage of such an offer--diesel partisans can be just as committed to their technology as electric-car advocates--but the offer would send a powerful signal about the company's intent. I believe these are the sort of things Volkswagen must consider if it wants to convince the public it is serious about making proper restitution for this egregious deception.

How about offering eGolfs to the customers that don't want their dirty diesel anymore?

There are plenty of ways to make some good come out of this shameful episode. No matter how you slice it, it will be very painful for Volkswagen AG. How well or poorly the company manages this crisis will  have a lingering effect for years to come, even decades.

It appears VW intentionally deceived both the American consumer and the U.S. government, and put public health at risk, by knowingly planning and executing a fraud. To me, and I think to many others, that's much worse than a carmaker trying to delay or prevent a vehicle recall.

But Americans are forgiving people, and sin followed by redemption is a part of our national myth. As long as we believe the offender is genuinely remorseful for what it did, and is taking steps to prove it hase learned from the offense, recovery is possible--perhaps even lauded and held up as a shining example of redemption.

Now that we've found out the real truth in German engineering, the ball has moved into VW's court to decide on what it can do to begin to offset the damage it has done to itself, its customers, and the environment.
Let's hope Volkswagen is smart enough to make the right decisions.

*Edit: BMW released a statement regarding the recent discussion of diesel engines and emission compliance. You can read it HERE.