Exact same thing happened me about 8 weeks back
Not a new idea, but kinda makes sense at a taxi rank
Agreed, I certainly wouldn’t call Fisker’s early attempt to build and deliver the Karma to be a scam. They actually delivered a product, but were probably underfunded, early to the market (and the product quality was v poor).
this is the man who designed the bmw z8 and the Aston Martin DB9
It might also have something to do with Henrik Fisker being a bit of a scam artist and the first company to bear the name Fisker going down in flames years ago
Why would you call him a scam artist? Fisker has clearly learnt lessons and hence have outsourced their production of the Ocean SUV to third party manufacturer Manga Styer. Smart move from a quality point of view considering Manga's plant is Austria they currently build Jaguar iPace & e-Pace, BMW 5 series & Z4, Toyota GR Supra & Merc G-Class.
I like what Fisker are doing, but it is still too early to tell if they will be successful. Still very low production numbers, however they did report to increase production from 180 cars to 300 cars per in Q4. The question will be though if they are successful in building a brand, how do you scale production up.
Yeah it's got a very "work in progress" look to it
They only took the site down yesterday, so they're probably not done
Particularly since all the dates are in German. I'm all for internationalisation, but my morning brain can barely understand English 😂
My own view is that the cybertruck will be a US only (relatively) niche model.
tesla saying nothing as usual, but there’s almost no chance it’ll be homologised for EU roads, the Chinese don’t drive monster trucks, and the rest of the world would have to pay a fortune to import it.
wrapping them will be very popular, given that the whole car is a fingerprint and scratch magnet.
id also predict that they’ll depreciate like a rock because the bodywork will look very raggy once a few years old.
That looks like one of those stock CSS themes that used to be popular around 2012.
Veering off topic for a moment, one of my favourite EV news sites, Electrive, seems to have undergone a bit of a remodelling
I hope I'm looking at the unfinished product because I absolutely hate the new look 😂
And Tesla only produce 2 cars at the moment (plus 2 in very small numbers that are not much more than halo cars at this stage)
I think the issue with the Roadster is that nobody is working on it, or at least not enough people to get it to production.
It's never going to be high volume and will be expensive as hell. So it isn't like you need to focus hard on design for manufacturing or meet tight cost targets
There just seems to always be a bigger priority, and something like the Model Y or Semi is going to make way more money for Tesla in the long run, so it doesn't make sense to invest the resources in the Roadster
Absolutely true, it's relatively simple to make a car that looks cool and can drive around a bit.
It takes a lot more to take that design to something with realistic specs, can be manufactured cheaply and is safe and reliable
And once you have that done it needs to go through a whole bunch of safety and compliance testing until it's ready for market
And once THAT is done, you need to build the thing and get it to customers
This was the very painful process Tesla went through, and probably the last time Musk was likeable because he seemed to be genuinely invested in the production ramp, often pulling all nighters in the factory
It kept him off Twitter as well which was probably a plus 😂
in 2017 they rolled a working concept off a semi and even did ride-alongs afterwards
Musk has said it himself making prototypes is easy, but putting them into production is extremely hard…
Fisker is fairly niche though, the TVR Griffith is another.
a large manufacturer has never taken deposits this size for a car and delivered nothing.
Tesla knew when they took a non refundable deposit that they were years away from delivery, albeit probably not THIS long 💤💤.
in 2017 they rolled a working concept off a semi and even did ride-alongs afterwards.
Stating the obvious, but building cars is hard.
tesla talk a great game, but take the same amount of time as everyone else to deliver models - years.
there’s a great recent book written by the Irish guy David Twohig who worked all across the industry including delivering the Qashqai for Nissan, called Inside the Machine. He goes into great detail on the many commercial trade-offs involved in a car for years before announcement, and also feedback to suppliers about improved tolerances as manufacturing goes ahead.
you always hear stories about not buying the new model in the first months after launch while they iron things out - this is exactly what happens
Bit of an interesting discussion here between Kyle from Our of Spec and Chris from Battery Life about the "new" ID.3
If you skip to around 28 mins, they get into a bit of a chat about VW as a company, and German brands in general
Their basic complaint is how they're so slow to change anything that it takes years to cycle through the smallest updates. It's likely the updated ID.3 began development in 2020 and has taken this long to bring to market, and doesn't have the updated motor or infotainment (which seems a massive improvement overall)
The question is, why not wait 6 months and get the same updates as the ID.4? And the answer unfortunately seems to be that if they waited, they'd lose something like a year or more because they'd have to reset the whole release process
One interesting point was the ID.7 designers wanted to change more but it was blocked because it would take "too long" to develop (we're talking about changing the buttons on the steering wheel btw)
This is really something that's going to kill the German brands in particular. There seems to be a group of people in VW who really want to change things up and bring the cars to their full potential, but are being held back by a totally risk averse management system
While I do like a safety first approach when it comes to development of a car, and I'm not a huge fan of brands like Tesla constantly needing to reinvent everything (no indicator stalks 🙄), VW are taking it to the opposite extreme and are far too conservative in their responsiveness to issues
Didn't Fisker get busted for doing exactly that?
Tesla Roadster 2 will be released the same day as Half Life 3 😂
Incredibly, the semi and roadster announcement event was 2017. It literally hasn’t been seen since.
normally when a major car manufacturer announces a preproduction concept car, they either say ‘we’re thinking about building it’, but have no order book, or else say ‘we’re taking orders’ and do just that.
I can’t think of any main manufacturer who took a deposit and then just simply didn’t ever build anything, nor ever really give any hints about when if ever they might deliver something.
the Mercedes AMG One is a great example. They took deposits, dug themselves a massive technical hole, added a few years to delivery dates, and worked hard to deliver what was ordered.
Marques Brownlee said recently that there has been no direct contact to deposit-holders from tesla about the roadster since deposits were paid, which isn’t a surprise of course, but still.
Was it really 6.5 years, was only announced in late 2019.
I don't have a reservation but I'm wondering if one wants to get their money back would tesla refuse? Imagine if they would have got shares of 50k value 6.5 years ago.
I’ve driven an Id.4 and for me it feels more like our q5 than the id.3 to drive in terms of driving dynamics. That’s not a good thing.
Had a good look at the new one and I wouldn’t think it’s in same class at all.
They do. It's called an MG5 😂
(Also far better value for money than a new ID.3 is now)
Tbh with the height of the ID.3, an estate is basically just an ID.4. They're basically the same size, just ID.4 is longer and slightly taller
Something like an ID.2 with a bit booty would be more of a traditional estate
And I agree, it's just hard to see how they can justify the price they're at
If they could do an Id.3 estate with a tow bar I’d be delighted. Although I don’t think we would pay the asking price of a new Id.3 with the spec of ours now.
Yeah I agree, they're effectively pricing themselves out of the crossover market unless they cut prices on the ID.4
The 2024 model does look like a big improvement and fixes a lot of the annoyances, but I still just can't justify the cost of upgrading. I'd prefer to just pay off the loan and get one second hand in a few years
The entry level market is where the next major push is going to be, we're already seeing it with the growing popularity of the MG4 and similar
The ID.2 concept looks great in it's current form, I just hope they can get it to market at the price they're aiming for
I think the other critical thing about it is that it looks like a VW, which will sit well with their fans
It’ll be critical for them to get the ID2 onto driveways before Tesla do a model 2, assuming tesla can announce/tool/deliver it in the coming years.
as an aside, I read earlier that they’ve been holding all the $50k deposits (interest free loans) for the Roadster for 6.5years as of today.
Following on from yesterday's story, I guess the best defence is a good offence? 🤔
Q4 E-Tron production will be started in Brussels, and ID.3 production started in Wolfsburg. I think this is parallel production to Zwickau rather than fully moving the models to different factories
While the timing seems strange, it's all part of planning that's been going on for years
And while you might wonder why VW aren't freezing the plans, I think it kind of makes sense. It's a lot worse to miss a market opportunity because you were lacking production capacity, and I believe all the factories other than Zwickau and Dresden (which is tiny anyway) can continue producing ICE cars in the meantime (yay 😒)
It's generally easy enough to throttle production in factories and wait for demand to pick up as long as you can keep enough money coming in to keep the lights on
So it looks like VW is in it for the long haul on electrification
Honda are bringing back a fold up motorbike as an electric version
Looks cool and I like how it folds up very neatly
I do wonder what happens when you drive it on anything other than perfectly manicured CGI streets. How does the thing perform when there's a load of wet leaves jammed into the body
There's also a case of the competition, there's plenty of electric fold up bikes or scooters available nowadays, most of which don't require a moped license (this probably would)
Of course, you still need more park and ride facilities that people can use on their commute into cities
Or an even better idea, heavily promote working from home so people don't need to commute. Literally fixes 90% of traffic problems instantly. Maybe they could turn all those ugly offices in Dublin into apartments as well to fix the housing crisis (not that it would)
Apologies that was a typo - I mean 3500! Defo won’t be registering this year but maybe having the order placed this year would be enough?
Maybe if you're buying a taxi😉
