Venture capitalist extraordinaire Tim Draper says Tesla has the resources to beat the Detroit Three. Detroit already has lost the electric war, Draper says, and it should pick a different battle to win. Like making flying cars.
Said Draper in an interview with the Detroit Free Press:
“Don’t live in your reality distortion field here in Detroit. Create a flying car. Create something different because you’ve lost the electric-car battle. See if you can win another.”
Draper’s venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson was an early investor into Tesla. Draper was one of the first to drive a Tesla.
The Freep isn’t ready to concede electric defeat and to recommend flying cars. Says the paper:
“Electric cars and partially electric vehicles haven’t yet achieved early sales projections. General Motors’ Chevrolet Volt hit a record month in August, but the company has offered discounted leases to juice sales and the vehicle will miss its original production targets for 2012. Still, GM has sold about 13,500 Volts so far this year, making it the most-popular vehicle with a large lithium-ion battery pack.”
we need to make cars that fly off the lot, not necessarily airborne.
Mark my words… unless FUSION POWER becomes a reality, we will never have flying cars. the best we’ll get is “driving airplanes” and you can be 100% sure that only the top 1% will ever use them.
If I live another 50 years, I’m sure I’ll never see a “flying car”
Once the energy density of batteries passes that of gasoline or kerosene, perhaps even doubles it.. then you will see flying cars.. 4 ducted fans at each corner driven by electric motors.. and the whole thing made of very advanced light materials that we have no idea how to build today. It takes 50W to hover a 1lb airplane/helicopter.. so a 100kWh battery pack could hover a 2000lb car for one hour (think of a VTOL plane that weighs about 750lbs for two people), less power is required for forward flight. Guidance and control will be automatic and by advanced AI systems.. and God forbid you shut it off and fly it yourself!
The police and ambulances will get first choice of the best flight corridors, obviously.
It has to be light otherwise it will be too loud, even with electric propulsion.
I must have missed Tesla’s press release about the launch of a $20K plug in hybrid weignhing less than 3009 lb with a 100 mile electric range. Another words a half price Volt with three times the electric range.
It seems worth noting that at this point, Tesla probably has more reservations this year than the Volt has sales. (A few months ago they had 12k).
Pretty credible considering the price difference between the cars.
Tesla says they can break even on 20k cars per year sales, which means they are quite a bit closer to break even than GM is with the Volt.
D
Break even including R&D costs or break even on a quarterly basis moving forward after R&D was already acccounted for during their years of losses?
Two different things. GM is already more than ‘breaking even’ the way Tesla says they are going to ‘break even’
Perhaps Reuters should look into this further.
The Leaf had lots of reservations too. Many more than the Volt, but now the Leaf is selling in such small numbers it is ridiculous.
Reservations are likely to get cancelled.
This is an ugly battle to see who will lose the most money on electric cars, GM or Tesla. Will the venture capitalists walk if Tesla burns through cash or will GM go bankrupt first?
Nissan is way ahead of GM on that having invested $5 billion on its EV (Leaf) program compared to the $1.2B GM spent developing the Voltec system.
Toyota (and/or the Japanese govt.) spent $10B on the Prius.
And GM has about $30B in cash on hand and is on track to make a few billion more this year, so I don’t think they are going to go bankrupt anytime soon (I’m sure you’re disappointed in that).
Nope, I look at GM like one of my drunken uncles. When something important needs to get done, critical decision needs made made, or just the rest of the day finished; they’re out behind the building cannon-balling cheap wine.
Meet George Jetson…
Ugh, not this flying car crap again. There’s a reason why it’s a terrible idea who’s time has never come.
It’s pretty simple…..most people aren’t pilots. A good chunk of people can’t drive properly on a 2D surface. How does anyone expect them to drive in 3D? Small accidents are a whole lot different in the air. So is running out of gas. or failed mechanicals. You have any of these on the ground it’s usually not a big deal. We don’t need cars falling out of the sky.
“most people aren’t pilots.”
Right, because we don’t have flying cars.
I agree with you. Most people have trouble just driving the cars the have now(Toyota drivers i’m looking at you).
While there are good reasons to make a “flying car”*: those that have the money have a lot of money and there isn’t enough difference between a a phaeton and a bently. Fly away from the country club and it won’t matter what sticker is on the other guys car.
Won’t happen in the US. If cars are a regulatory nightmare, you don’t want to know what the FAA has in store for plane manufacturing.
* flying car == negligible take off and landing. A vehicle should travel through air or on the ground, doing both tends to be pretty stupid.
He’s just upset because he now knows he’ll never see a return on his investment.
You want a flying car? You can have one! For only $18,500!
http://www.aviationclassifieds.com/advertise-34640-1-0-1959+Cessna+150
Suppose Detroit lost out on electric cars. Flying cars won’t be the next thing.
What about electric trucks? Not necessarily 1/2-ton pickups (does a pickup with 1900+ lb load capacity still qualify as a “half” ton?), but medium/large trucks or commercial vehicles. GM might have a leg up given that the Volt’s technology is already in the ballpark, but won’t heavy trucks be a much more natural environment for a diesel/electric serial hybrid? A smaller version of a locomotive?
“making it the most-popular vehicle with a large lithium-ion battery pack.”
Only in US i guess. Worldwide, Nissan and even Mitsubishi are ahead of GM.
I would run out and impulse buy a tesla model S today if I could afford one. I don’t have the same emotional response about anything that the big 3 are putting out, and that’s the problem.
I’m pretty certain we’ll never see a Jetsons world, not in my lifetime anyway.Flying cars will never work for the masses. People have enough of a problem dealing with only choosing right or left to add in up and down.
Flying, the actual physical control of many aircraft isn’t that hard, unless you’re talking rotary wing (aka helicopter). The biggest problem that most people I’ve instructed have is with “situational awareness”. Being able to think ahead of where the airplane is, where it’s going and what to do next. And also what happens if Plan A doesn’t work out.
Most people can’t think and don’t see beyond a car length in front of them. Almost no one is focused on the task at hand while driving, so putting things in the air is out of the question. Unless the autopilot is so good it can do everything, but even autopilots fail.
Finally, airplanes are required to be maintained to a certain degree of airworthiness. Many folks have hard enough time remembering (or choosing to) change their oil, keep their tires inflated and in good shape,etc.
So, your average drivers apathy to driving and their vehicle will keep the skies friendly: no flying cars!
He’s wrong, and sort of wrong.
They could catch up in electrics and they are completely the wrong sorts of organizations to make flying cars. I think he didn’t literally mean flying cars, but that doesn’t matter.
Electric cars are more commodity than gasoline ones. Let someone else sell you the tech bits and off you go.
Paradigm shifts are very rarely born at companies whose main skill set is managing a relationship between labor, investors, and government. Just doesn’t happen that way. Those companies buy companies that have a tech. But our domestics can’t really do that well right now. Maybe in a few years.
No new thing favors the domestics more than self driving cars. Partner with Google and others, rather than trying to do it alone. Detroit can make competitive appliances when reasonable safety and comfort and price points. License the robotic bits. Figure out why a buyer will want one robotic car over another and get ahead on doing that the best.
+1
The problem with Draper’s claim is that the Tesla models are about double the price of the Volt and that Tesla models can’t do the drive from say, Indianapolis to NYC in one drive w/o being plugged-in on the way.
Seems like Draper is advising the big3 like as if they were startups in his portfolio. Venture backed startups need to do something different and big, not plod along competing for low to moderate margin business in tough, cost driven competition with similar others. But the latter is exactly what large, established organizations need to do. The just have to do it more like Toyota did with the Prius than like GM has done with the Volt so far.
What the hell is this guy smoking? Or maybe I should ask what the folks at freep are smoking that they should take Draper’s comment seriously.
Start making flying cars..hmmmm….Me thinks that Draper has been sniffing too many exhaust fumes…