"The biggest single challenge for electric vehicles is affordability." -- Elon Musk
Musk thinks Tesla can produce in "three to four years" an EV which has sufficient range to be broadly practical, which is affordable to a large number of customers.
Which is probably something like a $30,000 vehicle which has a real world range of 200miles or better. Based on the sales numbers of the current crop of 100mile vehicles, which aren't great, I am guessing the range needs to double before the masses really take notice.
But doubling the range of a car like the Leaf will add approx. $10,000 to its price, at current battery costs of approx $500/kWh.
Which is probably something like a $30,000 vehicle which has a real world range of 200miles or better. Based on the sales numbers of the current crop of 100mile vehicles, which aren't great, I am guessing the range needs to double before the masses really take notice.
But doubling the range of a car like the Leaf will add approx. $10,000 to its price, at current battery costs of approx $500/kWh.
So the billion dollar question is, how will Tesla get ~45kWh of batteries for $10,000, leaving them $20,000 for the base vehicle and profit?