What I don't get about the luxury companies making electric is that their range is crap. Range matters for an electric vehicle, and I would expect a luxury (non sports) car to have better range than a Leaf/Tesla 3/Bolt etc.
Because it's a worse car.<p>The absolute minimum bar to hit for a car that's even roughly the same price (say within 30% or so) is the range of the equivalent Tesla.<p>Bear in mind also, that this car would not give you access to Tesla superchargers. I'm currently on a road trip across Europe and if I had to use only the standard chargers it would have been far more logistically challenging.<p>So to make up for that it should have significantly _more_ range than a Tesla, because otherwise it's an inferior product in practice.<p>That isn't happening, and everything they make without that problem solved is literally a waste of energy. A little Nissan Micra type car can have a 100 mile range and that's fine, it's a city car.<p>A big sedan should be able to drive anywhere - if it can't, it's basically a stocking filler, it's going to be scrapped in 5-10 years.
Strangely absent from the blog post, or the article on which it is based, is the price of the vehicle. It mentions "numerous Tesla Model 3s", but I suspect that this thing costs more than a Model X.<p>The other factor, of course, is infrastructure. What is the availability of Mercedes-compatible chargers, compared to Tesla?<p>Edit: I stand corrected on the price. I don't know about Germany, but pathartl's quoted US price, while quite a bit more than a Model 3, would be less than a Model X.
I cannot imagine the product teams that designed the Audi e-tron or the Mercedes EQC having sat down and said, "Let's build a car to compete with Tesla." What they created did not attempt to meet Tesla's strengths.<p>Tesla understands that the thing that new EV owners really want is to feel secure (read: range and chargers so they're not stranded) and to have their newfangled electric cars feel "futuristic" (read: spartan interior, big touchscreen, autopilot, OTA software updates).<p>Audi, Jaguar, Mercedes, et. al think that new EV owners want the same driving experience they had in their gas cars, only with an electric drivetrain. So they made their cars heavier in their pursuit of making the cars quiet, which they accomplished quite well. They preserved much of the body styling at the expense of drag because they assumed customers would want that brand identity. They targeted the "non power users," in that they held back a significant chunk of the battery from the consumer (~20% for the e-tron) so that consumers in hot climates couldn't wreck the battery by habitually charging all the way to 100% and letting the pack sit like that, which destroys lithium ion battery chemistry.<p>Tesla on the other hand spent their complexity budget for the Model 3 on extracting as much range as possible with as little expense as they could. As a result, the car is significantly lighter, and anyone who owns a Model 3 can attest to the fact that there's a lot of road noise. This is immediately solvable with heavier materials, but Tesla understands that the first batch of Model 3 owners strongly prefer the range over the creature comfort. And that the first batch of Model 3 owners are less likely to wreck their battery packs by habitually letting them sit overcharged for long periods of time. So they can expose the full battery packs to the consumer and get that 20% range boost over competitors who hold that back from the consumer.<p>2020/2021 is starting to get interesting with the Ford Mach E, the Volvo Polestar 2, the LEAF Plus, the second-year Hyundai Kona Electric and Kia Niro Electric, and the updated Bolt, together with the very rapidly expanding Electrify America rapid charging network. Tesla will continue to optimize for range and will likely keep a "stats lead" on the competition, but as range anxiety starts to be alleviated the second generation of EV converts may shift their demands away from range and toward other characteristics of the vehicle such as the interior and road noise isolation. It will be interesting to see where that goes.
I think Mercedes is the wrong manufacturer to try to compete with Tesla. Merc buyers are older folks and flashy people with more money than sense. They don’t care one bit about going green.
Really that highlights another trend I noticed with rivalry and paradigms and "being on the attack". If they have to bill themselves as the foo-Killer they aren't and will almost certainly fail as they don't establish their own niche even, let alone a good reason to choose them.<p>I wonder why it is failing /that/ hard though. Failure to deliver value for their money? SUV + Electric not a good fit for the local market?