Tesla's Market Lead Is Now Utterly Dead
Tesla's Market Lead Is Now Utterly Dead
Zeekr's 007 utterly smashes anything Tesla has out of the water.
Once upon a time, Tesla seemed to have a rock-solid plan to dominate the automotive industry. Their 4680 battery was meant to half the cost of their battery packs (the most expensive part of an EV) while enabling faster charging, higher energy densities and longer ranges. Moreover, their FSD self-driving program was set to become the first consumer-available fully autonomous self-driving AI. This two-pronged attack should have enabled them to drastically out-compete and undercut the competition! However, we are now four years down the line, and both the 4680 and FSD are far from what was promised, and Tesla’s production costs, specifications, and performance have been stagnant for years. As such, the door is open for another EV maker to snatch Tesla’s market lead. Well, Zeekr, a sister company to Volvo, has entirely leapfrogged Tesla with their Golden battery and 007 EV. In fact, even if Tesla met its lofty goals, Zeekr would still be ahead. Let me explain.
I have covered the Golden battery before (click here), but in short, it is a remarkable piece of engineering that Zeekr has entirely developed in-house. It is a 75 kWh, 800V LFP battery pack capable of charging at a rate of 500 kW! That actually makes it the fastest-charging battery currently on the market. Now, LFP battery chemistries are typically bulkier and much slower charging than their lithium-ion counterparts, but are significantly cheaper. By utilising a “sandwich construction” similar to the BYD blade battery, 800V architecture and unique anode materials, Zeekr has been able to significantly increase energy density, keep production costs down, and enable it to charge over twice as fast as the packs Tesla uses.
We don’t know the Golden battery’s cost per kWh, but we do know the costs of the first car to use it, the 007. Judging by them, it is likely far south of the $100 per kWh mark, making this battery pack significantly cheaper than the 4680 too.
About this 007 EV. It’s insane. The base RWD trim costs the equivalent of only $29,000 in China, and you get a lot of car for your money. Even this slowest version still does 0–60 mph in 5 seconds. It uses the Golden battery, so it can charge from 10% to 80% in only 10 minutes and 30 seconds, and it has a claimed range of 427 miles (CLTC). Even this bottom-range car comes with Zeekr’s Haohan intelligent driving 2.0 system, which uses two Nvidia Orin X chips and has 33 sensors, including Lidar, radar, ultrasonic sensors and cameras. This system is already being tested in China and is expected to be able to offer buyers door-to-door self-driving in early 2025!
If you spring for the top-range model, which costs the equivalent of $32,000, you get all of the above but a 0–60 time of 2.84 seconds and a slightly reduced range.
Let’s compare this to a Tesla Model Y Long Range, the cheapest Tesla to use Tesla’s home-grown 4680 cells. In China, this car costs the equivalent of $41,000, has the same 0–60 mph time, and has the exact same CLTC range estimation as the base trim 007. But its 78.1 kWh 4680 battery pack only charges from 10% to 80% in 27 minutes, which is over 2.5 times slower than the 007! This Model Y also doesn’t have any Lidar, ultrasonic sensors or radar; instead, it only has 8 cameras to understand the world around it. This limited sensor suite is an ongoing headache for Tesla, as it is making the development of their FSD self-driving program slow and the actual product “unsafe”, according to engineers who actually worked on it. As such, there are still questions about whether FSD will ever reach full automation.
So, would you splash out the extra $11,000 for a car that charges far slower and has inherently limited automated capabilities thanks to a lack of proper hardware?
Presently, this is a choice only Chinese EV buyers have to face, but that won’t be the case for long. Zeekr can easily share its technology and products with Volvo, and Zeekr is looking to sell cars like the 007 in Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas. It doesn’t matter what country you live in; the technology that makes the 007 and its insane specs and price possible is likely coming to your market.
Tesla could have easily done what Zeekr has done here. They were one of the first manufacturers to use LFP cells, and their battery partners have experience with the construction and materials Zeekr has used in its Golden battery. To top that off, Tesla has a close relationship with cutting-edge Lidar companies, who produce some of the cheapest yet highest-grade Lidars ever. Musk had everything he needed to make the Model 3/Y as good as the 007, but from where I am standing, it seems he chose ego and profit instead. He bought out Maxwell, the company developing the dry-coating methods that made the 4680 possible, rather than creating a more appropriate in-house solution. He maximised profits by striping out crucial self-driving sensors, leaving FSD far weaker than it could have been but making the cars cheaper to produce. In short, Tesla has lost their market lead, and they will likely never get it back.
Thanks for reading! Content like this doesn’t happen without your support. So, if you want to see more like this, don’t forget to Subscribe and help get the word out by hitting the share button below.
Sources: BBC, The Driven, Car News China, Autocango, ArenaEV, SCMP, Zeekr, Zeekr, EV Database, Electrek, Will Lockett