LSEV stands for Low Speed Electric Vehicle.

The Chinese market for LSEV's is booming. They are selling millions of units per year which is way outpacing the conventional EV market by a factor of 5:1 with projections to grow to 10 millions units/year by 2020.

In comparison Tesla is the biggest EV manufacturer and they are tentatively aiming for 500k units this year. Chinese LSEV manufacturers have massively out produced the entire global EV market for the past 3 years but they were only selling the vehicles in a couple of regions in China. They already have kilometres of active production lines. The prices for a new LSEV are between $1000 - $10000.

Tesla is wasting a big opportunity and resources chasing the high speed luxury market. Tesla has proven that it's technology can work in a range of use cases and now it is time to start producing the car for the mass market.

The time has come for Tesla to produce a sub $10k LSEV. 

The mass market doesn't need all the bells and whistles. The majority of daily driving is less than 30 km range. Tesla is using 5 times the battery resources for a single unit compared to an LSEV. They claim they are constrained by battery production. In theory they can ramp up production to 2.5 millions units per year with the same quantity of batteries. In other words Tesla can continue to sell 1 unit at $45000 or they can sell upto 10 units at $10000 each. 

By refusing to produce an LSEV Tesla are reneging on the moral contract to enable the transition away from fossil fuels. They are effectively locking up a huge amount of limited battery resources which could be used by 10 families instead of just one.

Here are a few reasons for the moral imperative:

The first is resource constraints. There is simply a limited supply of battery materials and production capacity. Locking it all up in a few hundred thousand vehicles a year is not doing anyone any favours. The same raw materials could be used to produce upto 10 times the volume of LSEVs which means instead of building 500k units a year Tesla could produce 5 million units a year. With the improvements coming down the line thanks to various technology advances that number could be expanded to 10 million units a year.

The second is that if we are going to have a chance at beating global warming and saving ourselves from extinction then we need to make drastic changes to the way we consume our limited energy resources. Long range, high speed and expensive luxury EVs consume a lot of energy. That is energy that could be shared more efficiently with a greater number of people if it was not being locked away in long range vehicles.

The third is that embracing the LSEV segment will send a clear message to the other large manufacturers that LSEVs are an important part of the solution.