Data point: I'm a current Tesla owner who during Q1 was in the market for replacing my remaining gas-powered car with an EV. Looking at the options available, the direction I'm seeing with respect to charging infrastructure, and the character of the company (yes, there's a touchy-feely part to me), I went with a Jaguar I-PACE instead of another Tesla. I feel that directly contributed to at least one lost potential sale for Tesla.
If they wanted to sell me another EV, they'd need to do several things differently. First, give me buttons for the common stuff I do. Stuff I do commonly is A/C, audio on/off, audio volume, suspension height, and driving mode (sport or comfort -- I share the car with a spouse who hates vroom vroom). Second, adopt CCS. I don't want to take a hard dependency on a proprietary charging infrastructure that entirely depends on a single company to keep it on life support. Third, stop lying to me about fully self-driving capabilities. While we're on the subject, sell me the car as it is now, rather than as you speculate you can make the car be in the future through a software update. Fourth, nail the fit-and-finish and the quality of the interior.
For me, Jaguar got almost everything right in what they were shipping in Q1.
Mazda developed their physical controls by blindfolding testers and making sure they could use everything on touch alone.
In comparison, Tesla's approach of putting everything in a single touchscreen is a cost cutting measure being sold as trendy BS. And dangerous to boot.
"putting everything in a single touchscreen is a cost cutting measure being sold as trendy BS" this, I am amazed at number of people (mainly investors) who think this is a _feature_ and something other OEM's envy. Even the damn McKinsey report shows that OEM's have to do this cut about $1800 in costs which will help bring EV's to mainstream in the next decade.
Wow I always felt my Mazda 3 was extremely intuitive to use and in a class of it own in that respect. They really nailed the information architecture and layout of the UI + Commander wheel input.
It’s not a misconception. Have you seen the model 3 interior? Almost zero buttons. And model Y is gonna be built on the same frame as model 3 so we can expect more of the same dangerous idiotic design that lead Tesla to force drivers to take their eyes off the road and look at a screen to do something as simple as turn on the Air Conditioning.
Everyone who’s ever driven a Tesla knows that they are fragile death-and-vomit machines masquerading as strong proud cars.
Source: used to own a model S. Traded it in for a Prius because musk is a false prophet and the car was a piece of shit
Who moved my cheese? It really isn't a huge deal. There is a divide that I notice, older people cling to buttons and younger people are fine getting rid of them. Is it dangerous? Hardly, I just wait till I stop if I need to adjust something that isn't on my steering wheel which is actually pretty rare.
Human brains generally work the same and not having to take your eyes off the road will always be the safest solution, whether using knobs or using your voice to speak commands. Distracted driving is deadly period.
Jaguar, Audi, and BMW are all working on electric cars to compete directly with Tesla. These are large car companies who know how to build millions of cars per year. They have large dealer networks already in place to sell and service their cars.
Competition is going to get a lot tougher for Tesla over the next few years.
The point was more that Tesla has already scaled beyond the level where "these companies know how to build cars" is reasonable spin. Tesla's building plenty of cars, making money doing so, scaling rapidly, and can only be expected to be doing better still by the time those competitors arrive in the market. That's not to say that they won't be highly competetive cars, they might (I for one certainly hope they are). But you don't get to handwave away Tesla's existing success on the basis of production numbers.
Honestly... your argument is a year stale. The window on "Tesla can't scale" closed. They did.
I am not sure that's a fair statement. The other manufacturers (most, but especially in the luxury segments) build higher quality cars with much lower rates of error. Tesla enthusiasts (much like early adopters of things) are forgiving and overlook a lot of imperfections (fit and finish on teslas vary greatly -see Youtube reviews). This has been the primary reason holding me back for purchasing one.
Tesla's existing accomplishments and ability to meet tough goals is admirable, but their first to market advantage is starting to fade away as more companies bring to market competitive cars without the quality issues (however few they might be pumping out for now).
> Honestly... your argument is a year stale. The window on "Tesla can't scale" closed. They did.
They are not building at the scale of the large automakers. To build at the scale of millions of cars per year is significantly more difficult than what Tesla is doing now, and it is not simply a matter of building more of the same factories.
> They are not building at the scale of the large automakers.
No, but they're building at the scale of the small automakers, for whom you don't seem to be predicting imminent death due to their inability to scale.
If Jaguar (which was your example!) isn't about to collapse under the weight of their low-volume inefficient processes, then neither is Tesla.
To wit: you're spinning. Pick a different argument, this one is old.
They have greater capacity to build batteries than any other car manufacturer.
They have a greater propensity to build BEVs than any other car manufacturer, since they are all dependent on dealerships who live and die on income from servicing ICE vehicles.
There is not going to be any rapid change to BEVs from established manufacturers. It will be all talk, no action until the last dealership closes down.
I didn't say they were big, I said they had scaled to a level where they were competing very well in volume with established brands (c.f. the Jaguar example above) and that by extension, this senseless prognostication that "Tesla is going to fail because they can't scale" is stale spin and you guys need to find new arguments. They scaled.
I mean, yeah, they built one big (heh, giga) factory instead of a few smaller ones. Your argument seems to be "OK, fine, they built one big factory, but they for sure can't build another!". And that's silly.
Tesla produced 77,000 vehicles in Q1, worldwide. Let's assume they hit their target of 400,000 vehicles in 2019. They would still need to triple production after that point to reach the top 20 of auto manufacturers in 2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_manufacturers_by_motor...
And is being the top 20 some sort of required metric for being a "valid" car manufacturer? I'm growing increasingly tired of these arguments that because they're so far behind the "established" players that they'll never be successful or worth supporting. A company can be successful and valuable while not being the absolute leader. It's a bit disingenuous to put them down for not making as many cars as conglomerates that have been around for ~100 years...
I'm not putting Tesla down for not making as many cars as century-old conglomerates. They don't even make as many cars as Chinese and Korean manufacturers that were founded in the 1980's. In fact, the century-old conglomerates themselves manufacture fewer cars than Toyota and Volkswagen.
Tata isn't manufacturing it and neither is Jaguar. It's built by Magna in Austria (they build a few expensive models for BMW, Mercedes etc. too, but their yearly capacity is below 200.000 for all their contracts) and most likely too expensive to build in large numbers.
> Competition is going to get a lot tougher for Tesla over the next few years.
People have been saying this since the Gen 1 roadster came out in 2008. Where are these cars from the auto incumbents at? More EV's the better but they are nowhere to be found.
The Bolt reliably sells ~20k units per year which is clearly lower volume than the Model 3, but still a decent clip. Probably 2 or 3 billion in EV sales + whatever the Volt's done?
The Audi is crap (hundreds are already on mobile.de sold by merchants, they buy it from Audi so Audi can report sales > 0). The Jaguar is fun to drive, but has poor range. They're all 7+ years behind Tesla and haven't even learnt the importance of aerodynamics.
Another Tesla owner here. For me everything you say sounds convincing until I look at the Supercharging network. From my perspective every single issue you mention is a valid point; it's just that Tesla's nationwide (in North America) supercharging network is worth 5,000 points. When other manufacturers solve this problem (and Tesla hasn't met their quality standards) those manufacturers will be an option.
You wouldn't happen to be the Matthew D. Green at Johns Hopkins, would you? If so, you blogged about something I did in Android a few years ago. Hint: I designed and implemented eCryptfs and EXT4/F2FS fscrypt. Small world.
Anyway, I expect that Tesla's supercharging network will go the way of Betamax or 25519. Just because you're first and/or you're better doesn't necessarily mean that you win. With the entire automotive industry (minus Tesla) adopting CCS, Tesla clearly has an uphill battle on its hands. But I'll admit that anything can happen, and I'm terrible at predicting the future.
It doesn't seem hard for other manufacturers to come to an industry standard for car charging, and then have that built out. There's only 119 supercharging stations in the US. For the rest of the automotive industry to match that, especially if they all decide to collaborate, would take less than a year to catch up.
Even if everyone started planning tomorrow, you'd be optimistically looking at a couple of years before this hypothetical new charging network began to be useful. That makes your car useless for a large fraction of its lifespan. Whereas Tesla's charging network exists today. (And I would add that I've heard nothing serious about a plan like this being in the works, so it may in fact be several years away if it ever happens.)
CHAdeMO has, IIRC, 4-5× the number of chargers in the US that Tesla has and CCS is probably in the same neighborhood because most are dual or multi standard.
Tesla has the biggest single-provider network, but that doesn't really matter.
I don't need HVDC charging in my local metro area; I have AC charging for that. I do need charging along the highways so I can increase my range and travel to other cities. Looking at the PlugShare map, it seems like many of the chargers along the highways only have a single HVDC charging station. Even if we exclude malfunctions, that can mean multiple hours of wait or else a gamble on driving further and not getting stuck. There's no way I would gamble on making a long trip under those conditions.
I had expected we would debate applied crypto and key management if we ever were to debate. But the subject of EVs will do just fine.
Totally agreed on the road trip issue. I wouldn't want to bet my ability to continue a trip out of Superior, Montana on whether or not that one sketchy charger is accessible and functional when I need it.
By way of reference to an actual event, that's exactly the situation I was faced with when the Superior, Montana Tesla supercharger failed when I tried using it in a heat wave during the summer of 2017.
Well, whether the availability of rapid charging stations makes your car useful would sort of depend on your lifestyle. In my family's case, we haven't supercharged our Model X since we went to see that crazy lunar eclipse in northern Oregon, and we don't expect to ever need to rapidly charge our I-PACE.
That said, Electrify America is a thing and is in active deployment. I visited an EA station 40 miles from my house a couple of times and tried it out. It gives me the full 100kW that my I-PACE can currently take.
> Even if everyone started planning tomorrow, you'd be optimistically looking at a couple of years before this hypothetical new charging network began to be useful.
What if they started planning years ago, and also started deployment years ago? Because both CCS and CHAdeMO chargers are deployed (often as multi-standard chargers), with far greater numbers of stations than Tesla has, already.
I don't see this as being true. When I check Electrify America in my area (DC/Baltimore) it's a desert. Plugshare shows many stations, but when I view details they're primarily 1-2 chargers. These stations are useless for long-distance trips, because in any location that attracts traffic I expect to wait a significant amount of time for other vehicles who reached it before me. The Tesla network typically has stations of 6-10 stalls (or up to 40 or more in a couple of locations), typically placed and sized to match actual long distance travel routes and demand. The stalls are all networked, so I can see availability on the road. While I'm not a Tesla fanboy and would be happy to see this situation change, trying to pretend that other companies have an advantage on Tesla in this area is simply ignoring reality -- at least here in the US.
Looks like it’s just FUD. Appears it came from Wikipedia which clearly states that it was a 2014 figure, but OP conveniently forgot to note that their figure was severely out of date.
>There's only 119 supercharging stations in the US.
That’s an old figure from 2014. Five years ago. The number has already done a couple of doublings since then and is set to double again in the next year or so.
So much ignorance about Tesla here. It is really disappointing.
In my opinion, the Supercharger port (and the junction box) is way more advanced, compact, and cheaper than a CCS port. The Tesla onboard charger is clever enough to sense that it's connected to a DC charger, so they can use the same pins for AC and DC charging.
Otoh, the CCS is a bulky connector + the germans were clever enough to add the PLC protocol as well, to make it even more complex and expensive.
Don't get me wrong, I love standards, and I love, that the EU Model 3 can be charged essentially anywhere, but in my opinion, the Supercharger Type2 connector is better in every aspect, expect for it being proprietary.
It’s not proprietary in the sense that the offer has been made for any car company to use the same connector technology (and even the supercharger network) royalty free. No car companies have taken Tesla up on this offer. The ones that expressed interest wanted Tesla to make needless changes... but part of the deal with Tesla offering the tech is that it has to be done in a way that does not burn extra engineering time for the Tesla team... so the requested changes would not fly.
I don’t know. Probably these were internal communications between the companies. Where I heard about it was Musk summarized the situation in one of his interviews, but I have no idea which one.
Pretty much, as it would require the other party to make their own patents available to Tesla, or at least not use them against them - and Tesla just doesn't have anything like the patent portfolio that other manufacturers have, so they would be getting pretty much all the advantage.
Who is getting then advantage is arguable depending on the specifics. Tesla is trying to give sustainability an advantage. It will not benefit from the gasoline tech patents of a traditional ICE manufacturer. This kind of patent sharing is pretty common and is done to advance the state of the art, not to grab PR.
I tried the Jaguar I-PACE (a friend just purchased one), but the reason it is a no-go for me is the lack of fast charging. I would be effectively stuck in a one-hour radius from my home.
My Model 3 can conveniently do cross-country trips. I really wish Jaguar and Porsche adopted the Tesla charging system (I think Tesla tried to get them to).
The I-Pace is not as efficient as a Tesla so the range is not quite as promised.
As with any electric, Tesla ranges can be below what is promised too, if you drive fast, as you allude to. But the problem is amplified with the I-Pace since the car is not as efficient.
With some margin, a 1 hour radius sounds like about what I would expect from an I-Pace. Whereas with Tesla the radius is effectively unlimited in most of the US for example, due to the density of the network.
Would have to mostly agree here, but it's trading time spent at one place for time spent at another. (Disclosure: I'm a Chevy Volt owner, so I have the option of both EV charging and gasoline, on rare occasion).
I recently saw someone make a valid point (IMHO) that I hadn't given much thought in the past: The time spent a DC chargers is somewhat offset by lack of stops at a gas station. Assuming you stop for gas once a week, and it takes 5 minutes to fill up and go... that's around 4.3 hours you spend at a gas station every year.
On the other hand, you may spend time at a DC charger during long road trips, but you don't have any obligation to stop at a location to recharge during normal commutes, since you simply charge overnight at home.
In other words, you have to stop for gas every X miles in an ICE vehicle, but you may have to stop for a recharge in an EV (usually for long road trips).
Yeah but that's neglecting the time it takes to plug and unplug your car every night/morning. I'd say it takes about 15-30 sec for each action. If you do this once per day to make sure you're topped off, and you drive 30 miles per day, you get about 50 miles of charge per minute of your time.
A typical gas pump fills at 9 gallons per minute, plus 2-3 minutes to pull into the pump, swipe your credit card, etc. If you have a 15 gallon tank and get 30 mpg, that's about 5 minutes for about 450 miles, or about 90 miles per minute of your time.
Tesla should start selling their robot charging snake thing to aleviate this.
If your range is 325 miles (Model 3 LR), charged 90% max you don't have to plug in more than once a week, depending on your commute.
Also, people calculating road trip "stop time" seem to forget that when you leave on a multi-day roadtrip, there's usually a oh-crap-I-haven't-changed-my-oil-in-forever stop, and a "fill up before I get on the road" stop. Both of which are not needed before you take off with an EV. You'll leave on your with a full "tank" without the "lets gas up for the trip" stop, and when you return, you again have a full tank the next day without the "damn I'm empty and have work tomorrow so better fill up again" stop.
Plug-in hybrid is best of both here, assuming you have a charger either at home or work, you will increase time between fueling, and you can go on a road trip without worrying about range.
I don't understand the point of this argument. Yes, in a ICE vehicle you can reach your destination marginally faster (we're talking about an hour on an 11-hour trip up the I-95 corridor, in my experience), but is that actually an important factor? For 99.9% of trips that are within a couple hundred miles of home, travel time is the same. If time is such an important factor on a long road trip, you should probably just be flying instead. I would venture that the number of people that want to drive > 5 hours, and have a requirement to do so "as fast as humanly possible" is pretty small. In that regard, the Model 3 is a BEV that requires practically zero compromises for both day-to-day and long road trip travelling, which is primarily due to the money and effort Tesla has spent on building the SC network. For that reason, I would not consider another EV besides Tesla until other manufacturers (or whoever) puts their money where their mouths are and builds out a fast-charging infrastructure that enables such long-distance travel.
A Corolla gets double the range on a tank of gas than a Tesla.
> If time is such an important factor on a long road trip, you should probably just be flying instead.
This is rather tone deaf. Not surprised. A car designed and priced for rich people, attracts rich people. What a luxury it must be for you to afford to fly. Plenty of people make road trips. Growing up all we did was drive, often times 15 hours, for vacation. Can't imagine stopping every 3 hours for a half hour to charge. That's 2 and a half hours lost out of our vacation. Then you have to make sure there is a place to charge at your actual destination...
Tesla certainly has the best build out, they're the disruptors - of course they're ahead. But the value isn't there yet, for me to switch from ICE. It's really expensive. Servicing is an absolute nightmare. Charging at home isn't always quick enough. The supercharger network is on interstates mainly - that gets you a lot of places, not all places.
You can continually nip at the edges and say "who really drives like that" or "who's really going to those places." That's beside the point - they're excuses. ICE is simply a better product right now. it has none of the downsides, except eco-friendliness. I mean, hell, you can get a solid Corolla for a fourth of the price of a Model 3. It's great on gas, and gas is cheap anyway.
If Tesla figures out its scaling issues and the market adds some competition and the product is there, I'll buy in. Just not ready to yet.
> Growing up all we did was drive, often times 15 hours, for vacation. Can't imagine stopping every 3 hours for a half hour to charge.
This is laughable as someone who grew up comfortably middle class and made 20+ drives between PA <-> FL. We looked forward to the stops along the way for many reasons: to relax, stretch our legs, and eat the sandwiches we packed; to check out all the cool stuff at South of the Border; catch a beautiful view; or — my personal favorite — stop for Kristy Kreme doughnuts before they made their way up north.
I love to drive. And I’ve never taken a road trip — car or motorcycle — where a 30min rest stop wasn’t welcome.
Off topic, but I never realized until a couple years back just how racist South of the Border is as an idea in general. SC isn't even close enough to Mexico for it to make sense... Also, I'm not sure how they stay in business. Every time I've driven by, it's been completely empty.
> Plenty of people make road trips. Growing up all we did was drive, often times 15 hours, for vacation.
Same here. I also grew up taking long road trips with my family, and took plenty of long trips when I had an ICE vehicle, and now take plenty of long trips in my EV, which is my point. It is eminently possible and practical to do road trips in an EV with access to the super charger network. That is the only point I was trying to make. The parent's comment was that road trips are more conveniently done in a gasoline vehicle than in a modern (Tesla) EV. I've driven the Model 3 up and down the east coast twice now (both by myself and with human/canine accompaniment), and do not feel as though I'm sacrificing any convenience when compared to previously doing so in an ICE.
> This is rather tone deaf. Not surprised. A car designed and priced for rich people, attracts rich people.
Ad hominem, not necessary, and not correct. You have no idea or right to assume my financial situation or what I may have or have not sacrificed to purchase a given vehicle. I'm simply relating my personal experience and it appears it does not agree with your preconceived notions about EV ownership.
I do not think it's that outrageous nor tone deaf to say that if minimizing time spent traveling is the most important thing, you will optimize that equation by paying to fly instead of driving. Some people enjoy spending the time on the road with their family, just enjoy driving, or want to (or need to) save money on airfare, and will drive instead of fly.
> But the value isn't there yet, for me to switch from ICE.
And that's fine. I'm not a sales person, and I'm not trying to convince you to buy a Tesla. We obviously have different value propositions and that's fine (such as the relative importance of "eco-friendliness"). I commented because I genuinely hope for a faster national transition to EVs for the sake of our air quality, energy security, and foreign policy. I become bothered when people who have no hands-on experience with EVs bemoan their shortcomings, so as a driver in a very happy EV-only household, I feel the need to help educate people that there are very few sacrifices to be made by switching. I believe that the vast majority of people don't realize that they could switch to an EV today and it would not significantly impact their daily lives, except they would have to plug their car in at night like their phone, and wouldn't have to go to gas stations ever again.
> gas is cheap anyway
To an individual consumer, yes, but as a society (as evidenced by your exact statement), we haven't even begun to account for the externalities of our fossil fuel-based economy, and I hope (perhaps idealistically) that we will soon.
Charging is pretty fast if you run down the battery to say 10 - 20% and then charge only what you need at each supercharger along the way.
Overall it is a bit slower than an ICE car if the ICE car is not taking any breaks, but the other aspects of the car make this a very small price to pay.
Over time as the supercharger network gets faster and with free software updates the gap will narrow as well.
It is dramatically slower than ICE cars dude. Over time ... it will still be dramatically slower.
Teslas are an expensive fragile toy for rich people that can afford to stop for an hour every few hundred miles. But literally who wants to do that ?!?!? Not me
There are right and wrong ways to do charging on a road trip. If you’re such a noob that you’ve only done it once, you very likely may have been doing it wrong. So I wouldn’t give your anecdata much weight.
I would give your anecdata precisely zero weight because it directly contradicts with the hundreds and hundreds of Tesla owners I’ve met and chatted with.
Musk is a false prophet dude, leave his religion, your faith in him will not benefit you but it MIGHT make you die in a car crash.
Spent a lot of time at Superchargers bored as hell because supercharging sucks. Wound up talking to hundreds of other Tesla owners over the course of hundreds of supercharging sessions.
Maybe. It forces me to take 30 minute breaks every 3-3.5 hours, which I have found far more enjoyable than what I did in my gasoline car (drive for 10 hours with only one five minute break).
I quite like stopping at Tesla charging stations. They're generally in shopping areas with food and WiFi, and you can talk to other Tesla owners. It is like a new philosophy of traveling for me :)
This data point has no correlation with the headline. As Tesla has no problem selling Model 3s - the car with absolutely no buttons. The market has spoken and there is overwhelming support for no button car. Deliver reduction is primarily due to Fed tax credit expiry, shipping bottlenecks, and slowing S/X sales since they are very old cars. Also, Tesla making ~70k vehicles in a quarter is a remarkable achievement as they were selling 20k cars a quarter till last year
I think the Jaguar competes price-wise more with the Model S and X then Model 3. Since he/she bought it instead of a Tesla, parent does correspond to headline.
This. As much as I'd like my car to have the shiny, futuristic stuff, I think buttons are essential when doing more common stuff without taking my eyes off the road.
I don't mind hybrid approaches like the newer touchscreen capabilities on new BMW iDrive systems, but having physical buttons that I can feel and interact with without crashing is good UX design. Fwiw, you don't see high performance cars with an all touchscreen interface, because that'll be mental for the drivers under high vibrations.
You’re being fed false information if you think Tesla cars don’t have buttons. There are plenty of buttons and other physical controls even in the Model 3.
You’re being fed false information if you think that those buttons cover all the typical functions people rely on buttons to perform.
The fact is that Tesla cars encourage distracted driving by forcing drivers to avert their eyes from the road and look at an LED screen every time they want to do something as simple as turn on the air conditioning.
Nice try attempting to turn the wording around, but you fell flat, and it's not constructive. The OP thinks there are no buttons at all.
If you're changing the AC that often, AC can be reached and adjusted with muscle memory. No need to look. The controls are at a fixed point on the screen, near the edge, easy to brace a hand there (or not) if desired while using a thumb or finger to make a selection.
Next time have some actual experience with the car before drawing conclusions.
Ironically you drew your own false conclusion about me while telling me not to draw false conclusions: I have tons of experience with the car. I put many thousands of miles on the model S I used to own. I have literally thousands of hours of experience driving a Tesla. And at no point did my “muscle memory” kick in, because muscle memory only works with tactile feedback.
AC absolutely can not be reached and adjusted on a Tesla from muscle memory, even when you have thousands of hours of experience driving the Tesla. Muscle memory simply doesn’t work without tactile feedback and placing a button close to the edge of a screen is not enough feedback for anyone.
I challenge even the most experienced Tesla owner to turn their AC on and off from the screen while driving without looking at the screen, ten times in a row. $100 says their failure rate will be greater than 1/10. And then they’ll have to look at the screen while driving and become — by default — A DISTRACTED DRIVER.
Teslas are death and vomit machines. And this is coming from someone who used to be a True Believer in the Church of Musk like you appear to be.
Death and vomit... classy bro. The 3 is different from the S. And personally I do glance at the screen safely when needed and there is nothing wrong with that.
Actually, there is something wrong with that: taking your eyes off the road while driving is the very definition of a distracted driver.
Death and vomit are two things that Tesla cars create. Who cares about classiness, we’re anonymous screen names on the internet.
Also, you still haven’t addressed or refuted my points regarding physical feedback and muscle memory, or regarding my challenge to any Tesla owner to turn their AC on and off while driving ten times in a row, which literally no one would be able to do.
Someone should sell a tactile dash overlay kit for people like you. I’m half serious... if done well, some silly people would buy it to overcome the perceived problems you think you see.
Maybe it could also make “vroom, vroom” noises for people who feel that the absence of the feedback of engine noise poses a serious danger. I’ve talked to hundreds and hundreds of ICE car drivers and many of them think this is a serious concern.
Oh and block off the rear view mirrors because they might distract from the road ahead... according to your line of thinking.
And it could move the speedometer display down behind the steering wheel where the driver would have to bob their head to see the readout. But at least it would be centered like an old ICE car.
>block off the rear view mirrors because they might distract from the road ahead... according to your line of thinking.
What? Not true. Looking at a rear view mirror is still a form of keeping your eyes on the road and thus is not distracted driving. Looking at an LED screen is, by default, distracted driving.
Renounce ur faith in Elon dude, ur faith will not be rewarded.
I take it you're in favor of the rumored glass keyboards coming out soon in laptops. I'm not.
Physical buttons are key when operating a vehicle IMO. Furthermore, I'd prefer big ass buttons and knobs so that there is as little reason as possible for people to take their eyes off the road.
Oh, sorry. I wasn't aware that Tesla has actually been saying, "We're quickly learning that FSD is orders of magnitude more difficult than we originally thought. If you buy AP2 with the FSD option, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that you'll actually get FSD on your AP2, and you'll never be able to upgrade your car with the hardware we sort of think you'll maybe actually need." I guess I just haven't been paying attention!
Sarcasm noted. Elon and Tesla have in the past admitted mistakes, and you should credit them for that. If their current projections turn out to be off, based on their track record I am confident they will do the right thing. In the meantime whining about imaginary problems in a sarcastic manner doesn’t make you sound very convincing.
I haven't driven a car since I was a teenager, but isn't this desirable for an interface that needs to be operated by sense of touch alone? (So you can keep your eyes on the road.)
If there were only one or two, but I think the Audi has at least 5 or 6 different and seperate ‘interfaces’ on and besides the steering wheel. To me, it seems like an overly complex UX.
It would be easy to, and in a sleek way, integrate those limited requested number of controls all in a small row; I can't see it adding more than a few hundred dollars to the cost of each vehicle either - perhaps making it optional.
In complete agreement about the need for EVs in general to converge around one open royalty-free charging standard.
More on the side of Tesla when it comes to interior minimalism and less buttons. Ideally, voice recognition should control almost everything, and that would be superior for both comfort and safety.
> Ideally, voice recognition should control almost everything, and that would be superior for both comfort and safety.
Why would it? Voice interaction is both slow and distracting compared to operating physical controls with fairly rapidly acquired muscle memory; I would expect voice interaction as the sole mode of control for any feature to reduce safety and utility (which, for many car features outside of basic driving controls, is comfort), and only be an improvement if otherwise there was no practical way to provide the feature.
EDIT: It may be debatable whether this falls in “no practical way”, but I definitely think a need for complex input (such as occurs in navigation) is, if not strictly included in that exception, its own exception.
> Ideally, voice recognition should control almost everything, and that would be superior for both comfort and safety.
Maybe for safety, definitely not for comfort. At least not for me. I hate voice interfaces - the first time I have to repeat myself to turn the volume up a little bit I will be wishing for a knob to turn instead.
Audio can be controlled via the wheels on the steering wheel. Suspension height is remembered and adjusted automatically in accordance with your car's location. There's no vroom vroom to worry about in an EV yet the torque is always instant. A/C is automatic -you probably want it around 72F/21C, just let the car automatically figure out the best way to get to that level.
Model 3 supports CCS - in Europe natively, in the US via an adapter. While I agree about the self-driving goal shifting they're doing, it's still the best driver assist out there and you can simply opt out of buying it.
I think it's more or less generally agreed that Tesla has the best in class battery, charger and perhaps drive train, including motors, technology.
However, they have a single car plant and struggle with production and quality, after sales support and so on.
I wonder, as a thought experiment, if Tesla would be more successful if they become the OEM, providing their technology to the various car manufacturers. Something akin to Intel and computers, so that you can buy a car with Tesla inside.
That will allow Tesla to focus on it's core strength and innovate while leaving the car manufacturing, QA, sales, support and such to traditional car companies.
I don't think so. Tesla is like Apple in a way. They are both the "Brand name" and the "technology" all in one package, and splitting the 2 would lead to each one being significantly less than half their total.
Personally I think what would be best for Tesla (in a vacuum) is if they stopped trying to grow so quickly, and grew much like the other car manufacturers did, over a longer period of time, so that missteps and mistakes are speed bumps rather than mountains to get over.
Sadly I also think they can't afford to slow down, because if they do I really think the other larger car companies will eat their lunch.
I think if they could do one thing to improve their chances, it would be to find a check on Elon. A Gwynne Shotwell for Tesla, basically. Someone who can divert his energy towards reality, and stop him from making impulsive, insane mistakes.
Example: Trying to ramp up the 3 way too fast, and over-automating their production. Those were undoubtedly very expensive missteps, and if I recall, there were a bunch of top-level departures just before the 3's ramp-up. Where those people (rightly) telling Elon that his target was unreachable, or his method inappropriate, and getting fired for it? It sure looks like it...
Is Gwynne Shotwell even the best example? It isn't like SpaceX is really in the best of a financial situation. Information on their financials is limited, as they are a private company, but most information shows they haven't reached a sustainable profit, and many of their ideas of how to reach their valuation (like Satellite internet) have hit snags.
They are capital spending very heavily to advance their tech, so a lack of "profitability" I don't think says any more than it does about Tesla-- they would be fools to pocket their profit instead of turning it around to spend on growth.
The fact that they could fulfill their whole loan that they wanted, and that they lost many important government satellite contracts recently seems to indicate that this is a business that hasn't reached a stage that it isn't out of the woods.
According to certain investors, this is a business worth $30 billion. That's not a company that should be struggling with these things.
United Launch Alliance had similar revenues (right around 2.5 billion) in 2018, but most only value them at $3 billion. This 10x multiple of their most obvious competitor doesn't seem to make sense.
Well, if you don't follow spaceflight / LVs it sure doesn't make much sense. From my PoV (very casual fan of the above) it actually is pretty spot on to value ULA at 1/10th value of SpaceX.
However reasons for that are too long to go into in one comment ... Mainly origin of & current owner structure of ULA, their current LVs cost & future and dynamics of SX launch business.
If we follow your analogy, Apple provides both hardware and software value. In the case of Tesla, IMHO, the value is mostly hardware as in the core technology, not, IMHO, in the car/controls/screen/ that they put around.
Again, as a thought experiment: Would customers not like a Mercedes/BMW/Lexus/Audi/Jag... with Tesla battery/drivetrain/superchargers but in a Mercedes/BMW/Lexus/Audi/Jag... car shell(for lack of a better word).
I think I would love that, especially since (disclaimer: I do not own a Tesla), the Model S and 3 that I've sat in, seem very spartan from a luxury vehicle standpoint.
Moreover, to my other point: this will free Tesla to innovate like crazy on battery, charger, motor and drivetrain technology and perhaps attain a monopolistic lead , while in the car business I the competition is beginning to creep up.
From a traditional car manufacturer's standpoint, this may allow them to stop spending on battery/drivetrain/superchargers/... technology and focus on making the car shell.
The problem is, it depends on what you mean by "shell". I agree that most Tesla vehicles are fairly spartan from an interior standpoint, but I don't see that to be a drawback. I guess I'm not the target market for a "luxury" car, even though I've got a 3, and I'm also on my 2nd BMW. I simply don't care about butt massagers and cooled seats and chilled glove boxes or whatever we're supposed to mean by "luxury".
I want a quiet, comfortable car. It doesn't need the 7000 buttons that come in a new S-Class today.
But I don't want BMW to take a Model S drivetrain, and put their horrible nav system on it, their keyfobs, their UI. Part of what's so great about the Tesla is that I just walk up to it and get in, and it works. They've rethought enough of the car experience that it's hard for me to draw the line at what I'd want BMW to do.
I guess I'd want BMW... seats? and maybe interior finishes/colors? Maybe? A bit more thought into finishing the trunk? But certainly not just a BMW with a tesla battery and motor.
Have you talked to Tesla owners much about this? I think you'll find that they do value the package far beyond the mechanics that move the car.
In particular, I think Tesla may be well positioned in terms of autonomy. Although Waymo and Cruise might have a more robust approach, they are taking their time. I see that Tesla is very serious about bringing the benefits of autonomy to market across all their vehicles.
> In particular, I think Tesla may be well positioned in terms of autonomy. Although Waymo and Cruise might have a more robust approach, they are taking their time.
Waymo has full self-driving in limited public commercial use; there is no way that they can be charscterized as “taking their time” compared to people marketing less than full autonomy now with promises of full autonomy at some unspecified time in the future.
> I see that Tesla is very serious about bringing the benefits of autonomy to market across all their vehicles.
I see that they are serious about selling vehicles today based onpromises of full autonomy tomorrow; it's less obvious they have the combination of seriousness and competence to actually deliver on that promise.
So the Navigate on Autopilot that now will change lanes on its own (without driver input) isn't a step towards full autonomy? There are currently zero other companies that have anything as close in normal vehicles, zero. (Waymo is too niche and only really works in perfect weather like in AZ, so I'm counting them out.)
> 1 step forward on changing lanes automatically, 2 steps backwards on driving into concrete dividers automatically and killing the driver.
People die in cars: true. Telsa features have played a role in human death: also true. However it's overly simplistic to point a finger at a popular (to love and hate) brand. However, human ignorance has also played a role in those deaths. Tesla isn't fully autonomous and they make no claims their cars are today. This isn't the same as making futures claims. So while Tesla features have failed you also turn a blind eye in your statement to the lives saved. Those are less well publicized because they are not as interesting with regard to headlines.
How many lives saved quantifies the risk of loss of life? While I'm not saying with hard data that Tesla has saved more lives than it's killed with features it provides, but if I were to wager a guess my money would be on the lives saved side of the tally.
The path to fully autonomous is a rocky one. There's so many things that will be huge hurdles the closer we get. But, take a step back. Look at the forest instead of a broken branch. We all benefit from these strides and mistakes overall. The media does a great job of removing all considerations of a story's context when it's convenient for a sensational article. Realize there is an ownership of the situation lacking in your argument. People die every day because of bad choices and mistakes of their own volition and those should be given a more equal weighting when armchair quarterbacking these types of positions.
Driver chose to ignore safe operational procedures of heavy machinery and died.
...is much different than...
Tesla car collides with wall, killing driver, while Autopilot engaged.
Disclaimer: I do own a Tesla, and it does not drive like any other car I've drove or ridden in during my lifetime. My Dad says it is like being in a space ship.
No, no, and no. Would I like Mercedes/BMW/Lexus/Audi/Jaguar to have electric vehicles? Yes I absolutely would! But would you have over the air updates, a push towards self driving (even if they're not there yet!), and a very strong push towards sustainable manufacturing if Tesla was just an OHM that sold to those companies? You would not, because they have to cannibalize their own ICE business to fund / push their EVs. The world is better off with Tesla standing alone as a single company, whether or not they succeed.
Not only do ICE car companies not issue OTA software updates, some use the same software for driver assist features for years in a row. I had heard good things about Subaru's EyeSight system and went to check out the 2019s Outback. I was floored to learn that the system is no smarter than it was in 2017, when this version came out.
Are they not learning from the millions of miles their customers have driven in the last two years? One would think that there would be at least some incremental optimizations (either for common cases or edge cases) to make the systems safer.
Some people actually prefer a car whose characteristics stay similar after they buy it. Sometimes these updates are beneficial, like when Tesla improved the braking performance by 20% after getting ragged on by Consumer Reports. But on the other hand I would be pissed if I bought a car that started trying to kill me after an OTA tweaks some weights in a neural net(e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/8a0jfh/autopil...)
I understand the risks of OTA updates, but it should be possible for them to release a 2019 model that has more nuanced algorithms than the 2017 model.
Another data-point is that I literally just went to talk by a researcher from Toyota's self-driving car group and they 1) mentioned some OTA updates they made on their auto-pilot features in the last several months. 2) talked about their data collection efforts from production cars- order of petabytes/day
I don't know much about subaru but other companies are definitely integrating advanced driver assist features/updates. No idea how they compare to Tesla's and in frequency of improvements but this is definitely a thing other companies are working on.
Glad to hear this. I recently test-drove the new RAV4 Hybrid, which just came out. I was unimpressed by their "lane tracing" system, which seemed noticeably worse than the CRV's equivalent.
I would be much more likely to pull the trigger on the Toyota (which gets much better gas mileage, due to the hybrid powertrain) if there was a hope of software updates.
I am hesitant to spend $30,000 on a vehicle whose driver assist features are currently subpar, and will only fall further behind over the lifetime of the vehicle. Makes me just want to lease, despite being generally opposed to leasing.
Even without LTE uploads, they could at least pull data down when vehicles are in for repairs, oil changes, etc. I realize they can't store infinite amounts of data on the vehicle, but they could definitely keep a little data about disengagements or other important events.
Once you become an OEM< you're giving up power and manufacturers will want some ability to dictate what and how things are done. That seems more restrictive than their current model.
As far as Merc/BMW/Lexus/Audi etc... they're all in the electric game now because tesla popularized it and proved the market. If they hadn't done that, its unlikely those brands would be releasing top luxury vehicles with electronic options now/in the near future.
As a Tesla owner I absolutely want Tesla to sell the whole package. I was a long time BMW owner and hated their joke of an iDrive system. Tesla is a software first company and constantly improves the customer experience. My car today is actually way better than when I bought it. I don’t care about drive train and motor. I mostly care about Tesla’s approach to toward constantly improving the owner’s experience during the lifetime of the car
To elaborate, there are many many automotive suppliers for engines, brake pads, wiper blades, tires, wheels, et cetera, that many current automotive manufacturers utilize to attempt to create their cars. They aren't the major value in the chain. Those products end up getting commoditized quickly. No one buys a car because it comes with AC Delco brake pads.
They cannot afford to slow down because their market cap will fall and (1) they won't be able to get more money, and (2) they won't attract fans and media.
They literally can't afford to slow down because they are carrying a massive amount of debt and the only way to pay it off is to sell an awful lot of cars.
You think thats bad. Tesla is about to have to head to head with all the majors who are now starting to finally harvest about a decade of their own research in the space (prompted by Teslas early success).
Musks ambitions and outbursts strike me as a man who suffers from the top killer of successful entrepreneurs, The skill/talent portability fallacy. It's this idea because you did something similar well, that your ability should port to "things like it." Seems like Tesla is going to extend itself to death.
>It's this idea because you did something similar well, that your ability should port to "things like it."
Except that Elon Musk has:
Completely disrupted online payments
Completely disrupted space travel
Completely disrupted automobiles.
It wouldn't matter if SpaceX and Tesla disappeared at this moment. The history books would still be written about how Tesla and SpaceX were the things that instigated the change.
I don't disagree, but this reminds me SO much of when I bought my first Mac in 2002 (mind you, I was switching from Linux, not from Windows) and all the nay-sayers were claiming stupid stuff like "MAC doesn't have virus problems because who writes viruses for 2% of the market?" My basic attitude was "I'll enjoy what I've got while I have it."
I've only OWNED a Tesla for 6 months, but man it feels like the other manufacturers have been about to release a Tesla killer Real Soon Like Now for a whooole lot of years. I certainly don't think Tesla's lead is insurmountable, but it sure seems like the competition is doing its best to drop the ball.
It's probably going to turn out that the guys who've been building cars for a century can figure out battery technology faster than the battery guys figuring out how to scale auto manufacturing
I'd be skeptical about this. The extreme/rare event is Tesla got hundreds of thousands of people to put a down payment on a car with zero marketing costs. Unfortunately, Solar-city and taking on convertible debt vs. equity have shrunk down their runway. Had they not done the related party transaction and issued equity, I think they could ramp production at a slower rate without the quality issues you hear about. I don't think Elon's episodes have helped his case either the last year. An interesting question though is whether there was anyone else in the world who could have created a car company in the 21st century, and gotten it to as far as he has?
> The extreme/rare event is Tesla got hundreds of thousands of people to put a down payment on a car with zero marketing costs.
According to their SEC filings Tesla spends tens of millions of dollars per quarter on marketing costs. Where does the idea that they spend zero on advertising come from?
Zero is an under statement, but relative to the $4B Ford spends for example, Tesla's $70M advertising costs are tiny. You could also say that about the number of cars Tesla has sold too, but auto companies typically have an incredibly large ad spend.
> Zero is an under statement, but relative to the $4B Ford spends for example, Tesla's $70M advertising costs are tiny. You could also say that about the number of cars Tesla has sold too.
Yeah, from the numbers I can find, Tesla sold around 255,000 cars in 2018, Ford sold around 6 million. While I'm not sure what time period those advertising figures are, per car sold in 2018 they aren't wildly in different leagues; Tesla's are lower, but presumably marketing has diminishing marginal returns.
Germany has a lot of electric and chemical engineering talent - you might have heard of Bosch and BASF. These companies are already involved in the car manufacturing supply chain. "Working in silos" allows engineers to specialize and get in-depth knowledge.
TSLA has a market cap of something like $40B. Seems like the window closed on a determination of "successful" a few years back. Your argument seems to be that it's going to have to compete once the market matures and won't take over the entire industry. And that's... a flaw?
I don't think so. They may have a lead on battery tech etc., but I wouldn't say it's a commanding lead. Given a few other EV options that come close in range, other manufacturers seem likely to keep plugging away on their own tech rather than rely on someone else with marginal & decreasing advantages. On drive train, motors, etc., established manufacturers have decades more comparable experience they can bring to bear on these things.
For me the main question of Tesla is whether or not they can lower the cost fast enough to avoid having big manufacturers gobble up the low end of the market first. Volkswagen's MEB platform, for example, is set to come online with about 150,000 vehicles in 2020, a projected range around 300 miles, and cost in the $21,000 area. Will Tesla's still be nicer? Very likely. Will that matter? Not to people looking to spend under $30,000 for the their next car.
They have an exclusive tech partnership with John B Goodenough (yes that is his real name), who is literally one of the inventors of lithium ion batteries. He's made a few breakthroughs[1] recently wrt max duty cycles, and only Tesla is getting that technology. It means their batteries will last longer than anyone else. It is one of the reasons the Tesla batteries have less nickel and cobalt, which is completely unrivalled and makes the tesla batteries cheaper to manufacturer. There are also patents around several of the chemistry specific things that ensures Tesla will in fact stand alone for some time in these areas. When it comes to battery tech, Tesla handily stands on their own.
> Goodenough and his team aren't quite finished with the new battery. They've only created the glass-based anode. But they're working out kinks with the cathode, and soon they'll be able to make some large-scale cells.
This seems like one of these sentences which you kind of miss on the first read and many years later when you wonder "what happened to that wonder battery?" "Remember the cathode we thought was almost done? Turns out it wasn't."
Until they have produced that thing at scale it is still part of a long list of research products in the battery sector, which may never be available.
But when they do, Tesla will be the first and only company to have it! Think about that for a moment. It makes it harder (read: more expensive) for the competition, when Tesla is already making better batteries (per independent analysts) than all of their competition.
If they do. Not when. And there are any number of other promising areas of battery research that another manufacturer might bring to fruition and would eliminate this competitive advantage. If we're speculating on breakthroughs, that's a sword that cuts both ways.
"Good enough" is, I think, the operative phrase. Most people don't get their cars near to 100,000 miles before buying/leasing a new one. (people average a car per 6 years [0], about 13,000 miles/year[1])
If the cars keep most of their capacity that long, it won't matter all that much to the average consumer that Tesla keeps theirs better. I'm not saying Tesla wouldn't have a place in the market, only that other manufacturers are showing the potential to eat up most of the lower end market before Tesla ever gets there.
This take seems really dismissive of the technological lead Tesla has vs competitors, the difficulty of the engineering work, and seems to assume that Tesla will stay still while competitors move closer.
There are some nice teardowns comparing T's battery system vs. the BMW i3 and Bolt showing the substantial differences/advantages in tech.
I'm not dismissing the tech itself, I'm dismissing it's capabilities relevant to competitors as being insufficient to make those competitors rely on a competing manufacturer for a core component of their car. And also that upcoming competitor vehicles are poised to capture the lower end market before Tesla gets there. Once Tesla gets there they'll have quality associated with their brand to carry them some way, but it may be an uphill battle against competitors who've been entrenched for a few years.
I'm not discounting their chances, I'm just saying it's very, very far from an automatic win for them. Far from a pivot to OEM, I'd be more inclined to bet that one of the big manufacturers that is lagging on EV's acquires them.
> I think it's more or less generally agreed that Tesla has the best in class battery, charger and perhaps drive train, including motors, technology.
Isn't the battery tech, at least in significant part, licensed, non-exclusively, from Panasonic?
> I wonder, as a thought experiment, if Tesla would be more successful if they become the OEM, providing their technology to the various car manufacturers.
Possibly, on an expected value basis, but Tesla is being run on a swing for the fences basis not a maximizing expected value basis.
Or to Apple/Google. While I'm a big fan, I fail to see how they become a dominant player in the industry, especially when most of their much larger competitors have committed to producing similar cars. Transportation as a service seems like it has more room for growth.
Tesla tried this with Toyota on the Rav4 EV, for which Tesla provided battery and drivetrain. Toyota decided Tesla was so hard to work with that it was worth ending all future partnerships. Tesla also provided the full battery and Drivetrain for the Mercedes-Benz B-class EV and Daimler ultimately cancelled the project to bring the technology in-house. I don't think the issue is that Tesla is unwilling to be an OEM, but that their customers are unwilling to out-source development of extremely competitive technologies to a relatively volatile supplier.
The RAV4EV and Mercedes were built as California compliance cars. They’re fantastic vehicles (I own a RAV4EV), and with a bit more range, I’d prefer that over the Model Y. Notice that these were released back in 2012, and almost 7 years later, there isn’t a comparable SUV for less than $75k. Once Toyota produced their required 2600 cars to get sufficient California credits, they ended the program.
I don't disagree that they're great cars (I tried very hard to find and purchase a b class), but the reporting I linked suggests strongly that both Daimler and Toyota intended to continue the partnership past just the CARB complaince models but ultimately changed their minds. This was not a limited partnership that was always ended to end at 2600 models.
Maybe it was intended to last longer. The vehicle pricing was up in the $50k+ range, and I think deep discounting was required to move them. Rumor is that Toyota lost many millions. Cars.com allows you to search for the Rav4EV and B-class rather easily. The RAV4EV is going for around $14k these days. It’s a great commuter car, but doesn’t have the distance to make it a very practical solo vehicle. I supplement mine with a huge Suburban.
Sure. I think we're maybe off-topic from my original point which is just that Tesla has done the OEM thing in the past and for whatever reason it hasn't expanded into a larger set of supply contracts.
And yeah, I ended up with a Ford Focus because I want to actually be able to make it from Oakland to Truckee without having to stop to charge...
It's really hard to spend 15 years telling the world that you are going to put a bunch of other companies completely out of business, and then pivot to becoming a supplier to those companies.
maybe now that would work, but initially tesla wouldn't have succeeded.
They reinvented the electric as a cool, sexy, fast and popular vehicle. Without that I imagine many other manufacturers would never have made the changes they're making now for electrics.
Tesla just buys panasonic batteries (https://electrek.co/2018/07/31/tesla-gigafactory-panasonic-b...). The technology is kinda shit - why distract the driver with a touch screen instead of physical buttons and knobs (those are considered technology too)?.
The only thing Tesla has is some form of self driving, and that won't be enough.
They manufacture cells WITH Panasonic and they have their unique chemistry, as seen in the more durable cells manufactured for Powerwall/Powerpack.
The touchscreen allows for amazing software updates and looks cleaner. The most important functions are on the steering wheel and the - pretty great - voice control available via a press of one of the wheels on the steering wheel.
If I want to invest in Tesla or any other company (another ex: Boeing), I'd ask myself this q: Is this something temporary problem that smart people would easily able to overcome? Or is this something fundamental or structural issue that's gonna be there long-term. I don't see this delivery issue for Tesla dragging on beyond this quarter. Lately, I have seen specifically with Tesla that short-term concerns have been dragging down the stock way too much.
> I don't see this delivery issue for Tesla dragging on beyond this quarter.
My perspective is that these issues will continue.
1. Tesla closed a severe number of their stores. All sales-staff thought they were going to be fired, but then Elon Musk reversed his decision. In effect: Tesla's sale staff has low morale due to boneheaded moves by Tesla leadership.
2. Tesla's future sales strategy is still a big question. Will Tesla push "online only"? If so, all of these salespeople should be looking for a new job, before the next round of layoffs. Tesla has done nothing to satisfy its sales staff. Rumor is that the commissions program was also severely cut during the whole process.
3. Tesla has had dramatic price cuts throughout Q1. We all knew they needed to do this as they lost the Tax Credit, but I think most people hoped that the price cuts would have worked. $2000 off of all vehicles in January, the "release" of the $35k Model 3 (except none have been delivered yet), etc. etc.
4. Tesla changed their sales policies to be far more forgiving to customers in Q1. Customers can return a vehicle as long as its under 1000 miles and before a week is up (allegedly anyway. I dunno how the process works). In any case, the price drops + very forgiving sales policies are trying to court more buyers. But... all of this resulted in 30% fewer sales in the Quarter (compared to last quarter). So Tesla was unable to counteract the drop in demand.
5. The $3750 US Tax Credit runs out in June, and is halved again to only $1375. Other cars, like Honda Clarity, still have the full $7500 tax credit, and are available at $33,000 (under the $35k Model 3, which isn't even being delivered yet). The competition is picking up, and the competition still has all of the tax credits available.
And then I would just shrug my shoulders and buy more index funds. Investing in individual companies, no matter what you think you know, is always unwise compared to index investing.
If anyone would like to know more about this please visit the Bogleheads Wiki [1] and join the forums [2]. I have found this community to be an invaluable resource in pursuing financial independence.
My first foray into US shares was in a managed funds which saw me lose 25% of my net worth and they still took their 1.5% fee for their service.
I decided I'd rather lose money due to my own decisions and loaded up on AAPL instead which ended up being recouping my losses and then some. I basically limit myself to major tech co's since that's where I see the consolidation of wealth ending up which has proven to be a smart bet so far. As long as I have good convictions about a company I'm happy to invest directly, maybe in retirement when I stop caring enough to follow companies closely I may consider a managed fund with a proven track record to diversify the risk.
Index funds track the market index, and aren't managed like a mutual fund. The fees are massively lower. You're comparing apples to lawnmowers here. They aren't the same thing.
Managed funds are a ripoff, and not index funds. There is nearly infinite data showing that S&P 500 index funds outperform every single investment strategy.
I would be focusing on bonds indexes right now though, that's just me. Good luck with the lifetime win/loss if you keep this up.
I have mostly index funds, but I bought a share of Tesla and a couple of other companies because I want them to succeed. Not because I expect them to. Its amazing what they've accomplished so far, but it's still a rocky road ahead
When you buy a share, you are not contributing to the company. Their shares were sold at IPO and they've already collected all the proceeds from them. You are just gambling.
It does help them a little. If their market cap is higher it's cheaper for them to raise capital. It's also kind of a moral support thing. I bought a second share since I posted that. I am also gambling, but it's like .01% or less of my retirement so I don't think I'm being too risky.
I also bought a model 3. Which actually does help them a little. They need sales more than they need people to buy shares on the secondary market. That's not why I bought it though. I bought it because it was the first BEV with a useful range I could afford.
This advice is almost always right. It's wrong when you're on the precipice of a massive market bubble. Your job is to decide whether or not that is the case right now....
The flip side to this is that they always seem to have some sort of short-term problem going on. One quarter it’s trouble ramping up production, then it’s quality issues, pissing off regulators, inadequate transportation, what have you.
You can see this as “they are good at overcoming problems” or as “there’s always something going wrong.” I tend to see it more as the former but seeing it as the latter may be a sensible explanation for the stock movements.
>[or you can see this as] “there’s always something going wrong.”
Which is literally the truth in any business, in any industry: there is always a major problem, and a plethora of smaller ones to boot. Whether it's the competitors gaining up, the market undergoing a fundamental shift, the economy slowing down or the costs of materials and labor going up, there's always flux. Just as well there is always some waste that could and should be improved upon.
The key difference is that some companies burn through (squander?) capital and resources to paper over the problems - to signal "good health" - while other companies cut close to the wire and allocate the capital and resources to where they will the most effective, dealing with problems when and where they become pressing.
This seems like a view so charitable as to nearly strain credulity.
Firstly, many of Tesla's problems are self-inflicted. How much time and capital was wasted on the alien dreadnought? How much damage has been caused by the constant turnover in management, or the whipsaw changes in price structure and product offerings, or the likely ill-fated decision to double down on computer vision rather than use LIDAR? One mistake we can quantify is the disastrous $2.6 billion related-party acquisition of SolarCity.
And even problems which are not necessarily self-inflicted wounds, like their cashflow problems or quality issues which possibly any upstart time-constrained car manufacturer might face, are not any less problematic for that fact. As an investor it doesn't matter whether quality issues would happen to another electric car startup; they're happening to Tesla. Their competition actually does know how to build cars to spec, and they're coming out with their own electric models. And their stock comes free of childish bickering with the SEC or critically risky solvency status or desperate and deceptive PR stunts like solar roofs or underground tunnels.
>Firstly, many of Tesla's problems are self-inflicted.
Fair enough. There's always the alternative angle of, “Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. “No”, I replied. “I just spent $600,000 training him – why would I want somebody to hire his experience?” [0]
>Their competition actually does know how to build cars to spec
That's the problem: the competitors are trying to "build a car, except with electric drivetrain". This gave us Nissan Leafs and BMW i3s. There's nothing "sexy" (appealing) about those cars. Contrast them with the 2008 Tesla Roadster, and every subsequent model: due to the awe factor, people queue to buy them, in spite of the glaring manufacturing deficiencies. You essentially contrasted potential vis-a-vis actual queues of people with bundles of cash in hand. When was the last time you saw a month-long queue at your local dealership?
Those manufacturers desperately need to un-learn how to build cars, to be able to build their own take on Tesla. Also, at the same time, how to ditch the dealership model[1] that's enshrined both via tight web of interdependences and also via law in multiple states.
>deceptive PR stunts
From cheated emission tests through crashworthiness rating that's always 4 or 5 stars, to "all new and improved" which is still 8+ seconds of 0 to 60, to meaningless MPG ratings, to the lacking security of the netowked cars, and to the over-hyped, non-delivered self-driving, and to the pervasive need to negotiate down car payments presented on misleading sheets, the car industry is built on deceptive PR stunts.
> That's the problem: the competitors are trying to "build a car, except with electric drivetrain".
The problem with Tesla is that they're trying to build an electric drivetrain and then tack on that pesky "rest of the car" on top of it as an afterthought. Everyone knows that Tesla has the best electric drivetrain out there, but they're still struggling to build cars in quantity to within quality standards and service them at scale.
With respect to PR stunts, of course Big Auto is corrupt and deceptive and generally awful. But they're not the ones riding high on a tsunami of feel-good save-the-planet PR. If Tesla wants their good boy points, they need to behave and earn them.
To some extent, that sense you have that 'they always seems to have some sort of short-term problem going on' could be driven by the unnatural level of media coverage Tesla receives. Perhaps my intuition is wrong, but I feel like other companies are also constantly tackling small problems, they just don't receive the wild eyed media coverage over those problems.
Where are you hearing about these short term problems? If it's in social media, anyone reading may want to examine your own media intake and potential biases inherent to any story about publicly traded companies. There are huge interests at stake on both sides of the bull/bear aisle for all these controversial tech companies. Tesla is not alone in receiving very high-level scrutiny, it's merely more of a lightning rod due to the sensational (and ultimately fatuous) behavior/personality of its CEO.
As a car company/hardware company, I'd also argue Tesla is simply in a much tighter, harder to succeed-in industry than the other tech companies, who get ridiculous revenue for doing unethical practices with user data for basically zero marginal cost.
Finally, keep in mind that Tesla is BEV, and there are many, many well-paid opponents of BEV in the USA and elsewhere. Tesla is purposefully disrupting the bottom lines of oil and ICE companies, that is not going to be met with fair coverage in all press outlets.
Long term I'd like to see what sort of an effect using their own Semi's for delivery would bring. Self driving or not having a fully consolidated supply chain you can tune and rollout for your own needs is a lot of leverage. Logistics is hard, but also a known problem that Tesla should have plenty of tools to deal with.
>I don't see this delivery issue for Tesla dragging on beyond this quarter.
The mistake in your analysis is believing this is a delivery issue, not one of demand.
>Lately, I have seen specifically with Tesla that short-term concerns have been dragging down the stock way too much.
Wait, what? This company was at one time bigger than Ford and GM based entirely on future expectations. Yet you think the share price is driven by short-term concerns???
I'm long on $TSLA and agree with the opinion. However, I think critics have the opinion that $TSLA is over-inflated and the corrective action is the marketing coming to terms with the logistical / systematic challenges ahead.
Even worse, I was driving around the other day and saw entire parking lots full of inventory at this weird thing called a dealership, maybe GM and Ford are going under since they have all this inventory sitting there?
shrug, someone made a poor choice when assigned the task of triaging the product returns. Should've used a database or some other sort of private index, this publicity looks bad.
> Tsla was always storing cars at 761 but not this many
Production is up, ergo returns are up.
The count of units returned is useless without normalizing it against the units produced. Of course, even with that it's likely a bad score for Tesla. There have been many public reports of poor quality product leaving the factory because of Tesla's challenges scaling up production. These returns are just the inevitable outcome from those earlier reports.
I mean, that's expected for a growth company. What's unexpected for a "growth" company is a sudden halt in growth.
Why would production drop by roughly 10% and deliveries drop by 30% in one quarter? I think most people were expecting a drop of some kind due to the loss of the $7500 tax credit, but 30% drop is far larger of a drop than almost anyone ever expected.
Note that Tesla also dropped the price of all M3 by $2000. So Tesla also has lower-margins in Q1 2019 than Q4 2018. Lower-margins AND lower-volume is a pretty bad sign.
> Unforeseen logistics issues when delivering to a multitude of countries.
Why did PRODUCTION drop? What happened to US demand? The M3 sold 61,000 Units Q4 2018 in the USA alone. Why would expanding to China + Europe lower both production and deliveries?
Why would Tesla only make 51,000 M3 cars when trying to satisfy China + US + Europe?
Note what Tesla said:
> At the end of the first quarter, approximately 10,600 vehicles were in transit to customers globally.
Okay, so lets say all of those vehicles in transit were delivered in Q1. That means Tesla "would have" delivered 70,000 cars (total, S+X+3), which is still a 20% drop from the 90,000 (S+X+3) delivered in Q4.
US car sales have been down for the first three months of the year [1], not to mention that Ford has got out of the car-market almost all-together in the States and I suspect GM is going to do the same pretty soon, too. All things considered the next few years are going to be pretty challenging for everyone involved in the auto market, from suppliers to manufacturers to dealerships.
Instead, they realized that gas guzzling midrange sedans don’t sell anymore, and killed those off. That lets them focus on smaller and larger vehicles, which is where the demand is.
If dealerships were a good arrangement for manufacturers, dealerships wouldn't have to turn to legislation to ensure their own continued existence. I mean, how much do you think it bugs the shit out of the German auto manufacturers that they spend an unfathomable amount of time and energy making world class cars, only to have their customers have to deal with a car salesman in order to actually buy one.
In the UK, and I think the EU generally, anyone including the manufacturer can sell to the public.
When Daewoo entered the UK market they made a big deal about not having franchise dealerships or commissioned salespeople. After a few years, the Daewoo owned showrooms were replaced with traditional dealerships.
Companies outside of traditional franchises haven’t cropped up selling brand new cars. New car sales happen through dealerships. Online sales, through specialists like jamjar.com, never took off.
None of this says franchised dealerships are perfect nor that they’re the same between the UK and US. However, in a place without restrictions on who sells new cars there has been no significant change in the model.
Thanks for the data point. I guess the model that always comes to mind for me is Apple. At some point they realized that they needed to control as much of the retail portion of the customer relationship as possible in order to successfully sell highly differentiated, but expensive products (Macs). Even their high-profile retail partners (like Best Buy) have Apple designed areas in their showroom. If I were BMW, Mercedes, or Audi, who all sell highly differentiated and expensive products, I would want a similar relationship with my customers.
Also, FWIW, Daewoo is basically a non-entity in the US auto market. I'm not sure how they fared in the UK and EU, but if it's similar, that may be a confounding factor with that particular answer. And, generally, I think the dealership model arose originally because the auto industry is immensely capital intensive before you start talking about having inventory sitting on a lot in every minor city in the world. And the auto industry was more speculative, so the manufacturers were happy to let someone else front the capital for carrying finished inventory. But the auto industry is established and capital is plentiful these days.
I don’t know if I should believe the analysis. I don’t know if the video being presented is representative or being selectively chosen to tell a story.
What "analysis" is necessary? There are threads of people going around the country, taking photographs of parking and car lots filled to the brim with Teslas. How do you explain it? The cars are made-to-order, I'm assured.
Furthermore, I don't understand "can't believe an account that attacks Tesla". What do you believe is more likely:
1. A random person wakes up one day (maybe an Big Oil shill!) and says, 'I think I'm just gonna randomly hate on Tesla, make a bunch of stuff up, and risk my livelihood on the lies'.
2. An investor starts doing due diligence and finds a lot of holes in the Tesla story, then dedicates their online presence to spreading that message.
1 is possible, but I'll bet 2 is far more likely. So many people are going to get a rude awakening if this thing goes down. If I recall correctly, HN loved Theranos too; only after the fraud was revealed did people claim it was obvious.
Have you observed the internet at all? If the internet were a country, hating would be the national sport. Does that mean this particular guy must be a hater? No, of course not. But there are tons of them out there. A twitter account is pretty mild compared to, for example, the guy who makes a hobby out of filing safety complaints with the NHTSA about random Tesla crashes he sees online.
I see no possible comparison to Theranos. HN was skeptical from the start and called out the fraud early. Theranos never had a product. Tesla may have its faults, but there’s no question that they’ve built and sold hundreds of thousands of cars.
> Tesla may have its faults, but there’s no question that they’ve built and sold hundreds of thousands of cars.
Whoever said cars could not be created? That argument ignores the nuance of everything regarding manufacture quality and scale w/computer-vision driven robots, full self-driving, the autonomous taxi Tesla network, etc.
Should it matter? You can analyze this disparate piece of evidence independently of the agenda. In fact, you might even say that by putting the cards on the table, at least this source is transparent about which stance of the topic it is taking, giving you opportunity to take care when evaluating single pieces of evidence.. this is possibly better than sources which purport to be fair and balanced and go to greater lengths to obfuscate ways they are tacitly pushing an agenda.
I don’t agree with the concept of forming a high-level conclusion about the general nature of a source of information, and then using that to argue that you should not separately carefully analyze disparate pieces of content from that source.
If you have the time to make ad hoc Hacker News comments in the weeds about the credibility of a link from a comment from a niche post, then you obviously have enough time to evaluate disparate pieces of evidence instead of trying to discredit them by applying blanket heuristic judgements based on seeming one-sidedness from a glance.
Nobody is saying you need so much spare time to rigorously analyze every source. That would be a disingenuous false dilemma. Instead, just apply slightly more effort than your stated dismissive heuristic.
Who’s trying to discredit them? I just asked if their claims can be believed. I thought “can I trust this random Twitter account” would be a completely standard question, attacked on the basis of “duh, of course you can’t, why would you even ask?” rather than because how dare I impugn the reputation of poor whatshisface instead of spending a couple of hours combing through the evidence for myself.
If Tesla loses consumer confidence would be a shame. Interesting balance between maintaining existing product vs building new products. I am waiting until Tesla is more reliable before purchasing
The very next sentences give some context to the above quote:
>This caused a large number of vehicle deliveries to shift to the second quarter. At the end of the first quarter, approximately 10,600 vehicles were in transit to customers globally.
I'll be the first to admit I know fuck all about the financial stuff and how this normally works, but that seems like a reasonable explanation for the lower numbers. Especially since the 10k cars "in transit" is like 1/6th their total deliveries that quarter.
I'd be curious to see hard numbers on how many of those deliveries were shifted to Q2, but i'm guessing we won't get that info until after Q2 is done?
Absolutely, Tesla will be motivated to sell this inventory that can no longer be described as new vehicles. They can easily repair the reported problems and describe them as "re-certified" and you can probably get a significant discount (10%?).
Apparently, they have 10,000 cars in transit to customers right now as part of their international roll-out. Still came in worse than the worst analyst estimates. US deliveries of the M3 also tanked in January and February after a record December. March saw an uptick, but it's still far below the December number. But this has likely to do with the end of the subsidies.
The analyist with the best track record (and it isn't even close) is @coverdrive12 on twitter and he called 65,000 optimistic yesterday. This big miss doesn't come as a surprise to anybody who has followed those who track the VINs, shipping data, and activity at the Tesla stores.
I should also point out that Musk's reiterated guidance of 500,000 cars this year is absolutely absurd at this point.
The reiterated guidance was for 360,000 - 400,000 cars.
Tesla still doesn't want to sell $35K 3's, they've still got huge delays on those. And of course there's soft demand for $55K 3's, $85K S's and $100K X's in a market that includes $35K 3's. It's the mix of $35K 3's they sell that indicates demand while they're production constrained, and that number is still essentially zero, so I'm still confident they can sell as many 3's as they can build this year.
The question is how many of those cars will be the $35K 3, and if they can make any profit on a mix that includes a large number of $35K 3's.
With regards to the 35k TM3, the SR+ is such a superior deal that its a wonder they can make money on it. However for those in the market for any car, if less an five percent difference is make or break you are already in the wrong price range.
What is interesting that the Bolt, Soul, Niro, and Kona, are all priced the same or higher than a SR with models exceeding even the SR+. I think Tesla should have just taken the PR hit and dropped the SR for the SR+.
Still Tesla's problem may actually be an industry problem, as in EV enthusiasm is not near as high as many claim it to be and the market will quickly saturate for the lower end, as in 50k and below.
Tesla appears to have huge logistical issues in Europe and else where. From the mess with the delivery of Rich's [1] Model X or one German Youtubers[2] Model 3. Here is a video of Tesla's pilling up in a mall parking garage [3]
At this rate the company will not exist very long even if they make the best car. Why is Tesla so incompetent when it comes to logistics when others do not have these issues? Who is in charge?
But how do you not plan for that? It's not that people are waiting for non existing cars. They are waiting for cars that have been produced and are sitting in lots and ship yards.
While scaling up is hard, it's not like the expertise to scale up doesn't exist. The auto industry is pretty established, and I'm sure that there are companies and/or consultants that could help Tesla out.
Sure, but the article is about a new American car company, and we are discussing problems with production ramp. People often use GM or Ford for comparison, and I'm pointing out the silliness.
Most of the EU based car manufacturers are even older than GM / Ford.
By volume, the largest EU car manufacturer is Volkswagen, which barely existed before WWII. The other German manufacturers also had to start from scratch.
Volkswagen was founded May 28, 1937, and they were the fuhrer's favorite. That's still 66 years head start. I bet if I gave you a 66 year head start in virtually anything you could probably do a better job than I will when I start.
You've not disproved the underlying meaning of my statement really. I don't see why people are downvoting it as the content is sensible.
Volkswagen was used for war manufacturing pretty much as soon as they started and never manufactured commercial passenger vehicles until years after the war.
If you made that point about Daimler or BMW you might have a point, because they actually made cars before being turned into Nazi war manufacturers and bombed into oblivion, but Volkswagen was never anything but a Nazi war manufacturer until the end of the war.
> You've not disproved the underlying meaning of my statement really.
What, that learning how to manufacture large numbers of automobiles is a lost art from the 19th century? The underlying meaning of your statement is absolute garbage because there's half a dozen East Asian companies that figured it out since 1960, some of them even since the mid-1980's.
> The construction of the new factory started in May 1938 in the new town of "Stadt des KdF-Wagens" (modern-day Wolfsburg), which had been purpose-built for the factory workers.[15] This factory had only produced a handful of cars by the time war started in 1939. None were actually delivered to any holder of the completed saving stamp books, though one Type 1 Cabriolet was presented to Hitler on 20 April 1944 (his 55th birthday).[15]
Most Americans didn't own cars until a few years after the Second World War. So that's maybe 70 years ago, but let's give the car companies some credit because they already scaled up to produce war materiel about a decade previous. Volkswagen, though, started from 12,000 cars per year in 1946, which is remarkable in itself.
Between 1949 and 1969, Toyota scaled from tens of thousands to millions of cars produced per year. That's 50 years ago.
Kia manufactured 26 cars in 1986 and millions of cars per year today. That's 33 years ago.
Tesla isn't doing something that hasn't been done in over a century, unless you're willing to pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist and you're willing to round up "less than 80 years" to "more than 100 years".
Because you're willing to pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist? There's no other point to qualifying it like that--manufacturing and logistics techniques from Japan or Korea or Germany or China still work when applied to the United States.
While these bad experiences reflect poorly on Tesla and shouldn't happen, I don't think they are normal.
It seems like most people are not waiting very long in Europe and have a smooth delivery experience. Norwegian YouTuber Bjorn Nyland ordered a performance Model 3 and got it in 8 days.
(The cars stored in the parking lot you linked to are clearly used inventory: probably trade-ins. Not new Model 3s.)
Well, they can only make so many cars. If 10000 are in transit, then that's 10000 they can't book as sold. It is interesting though that they can't count these as sales, as many companies do many things with deferring sales, I would think if they are in transit, they are (sold). If they are sending 10k cars there without them actually being sold, that would be something else entirely. Perhaps general acceptable accounting rules don't allow for booking sales before delivery, but I'd find that crazy to be the case.
"We count a produced but undelivered vehicle to be in transit if the related customer has placed an order or paid the full purchase price for such vehicle."
It sounds like it is count as sold, but not delivered. Production was 77100 which leaves about 3500 cars as both unsold and undelivered.
That is only about half a week of production, but at the same time it implies softness in overall demand compared to the past.
These kind of posts are good publicity right? I don't see any other car company we follow so closely on the market. Tesla is the only name I can see come up again and again here, and guess what, most people on HN are the actual population that is buying teslas.
I'm not so sure about that. You may think Elon Musk is a genius or mega charismatic guy.
I see a lot of value on what Musk is trying to achieve, but I think he would have way more credibility if he just stopped overpromising and under delivering.
I'm starting to believe people post more and more about Tesla because of that.
The only way to achieve as much as he does is by setting goals that you don't really know you can meet. If you only set goals you know you can meet, you won't be ambitious enough to be Elon Musk.
It is basically the most controversial stock on Wall Street. There are either people who think this is going to one day be a $1 trillion company or believe this company is quickly going bankrupt. It is one of the greatest Rorschach tests I've ever seen.
Other car companies aren't VC-funded California-based startups run by maverick tech billionaires who want to go to the moon. And I can't imagine anyone on here is either unaware of Tesla and its selling points or more likely to buy one after reading a story about Tesla having delivery issues.
Tesla gets just as many posts and upvotes when it has actual good news.
> most people on HN are the actual population that is buying teslas
You overestimate how many people here are willing to shell out those amounts of money for vehicle, and how practical it actually is. Yes, it is a future and whatnot and a lot of cool tech.
But for say 20k euro I can have 5 year old BMW 3-er wagon. Yes, not new car, but I get 95% of the car for 1/3-1/4 of the cost. Much better fun to drive (I care much more about handling/cornering than 0-60 numbers), much more practical. I can travel 1500km in a single push with 5-10 minute breaks just to refill/stretch - done it quite a few times, not the main use by any means, but car unable to do this reasonably is at the end useless to me.
I might be outlier, but even in uber-rich place like Switzerland, Tesla is a rare sight. They are much common where government aggressively subsidizes specifically this type of vehicle.
I think you're underestimating how much people are willing to spend on an EV, especially a Tesla. I work in Boulder, and Teslas are literally every where. When the Model 3 deliveries started happening, our parking lot at work was invaded with the navy blue models.
EVs have become quite commonplace all over the Front Range of CO, even in the less rich places. Teslas, Bolts, Volts, etrons, and Electric Fords are really common here. I don't think this is exclusive to this area, as I was just in LA, and they're everywhere there too.
Whether it's the urge to help reduce carbon emissions, or have the newest coolest thing, people are willing to shell out those amounts for a vehicle, regardless of how practical it is.
Yeah, but these are all a certain cultural bubble where they are vastly over-represented.
EV's were 2.1% of new-car sales last year in the US. That's nearly doubling the 1.2% share from last year, and that is great growth.
But that still means 98% of new cars last year weren't. And with the average car on the road being ~12 years old, EV's are still practically a rounding error in the actual vehicle fleet.
I live in the Boise, Idaho area. Far from a "coastal elite" location. They are also surprisingly everywhere here, where everyone love their pickup trucks.
Just the other day, I say a Model S as soon as I exited our subdivision. Saw 5 Model X's and another 6 Model S's. So no, not really.
I live in Detroit and buy a vehicle that's produced at Jefferson and Connor, five miles from where I live. I feel good about that.
The 3.6L V6 / and ZF eight speed transmission are battle tested - we're five years into the current Grand Cherokee iteration, they've mostly worked out the issues. The volume of TSBs (technical service bulletins - http://wk2jeeps.com/wk2_tsb.htm) are way lower vs. the launch model year.
I haven't had any quality issues, although it's early. I would never buy the first (and maybe even second) model year for any OEM, but especially FCA - that part I would agree with. Wait until year three.
> You’re being sarcastic, right? What is the signal you’re trying to send by admitting to choosing one of the most unreliable car brands on the market?
Your statement is pretty closed minded.
What if they just like the car enough they're willing to put up with the unreliability? That's like suggesting people who buy new cars are all idiots because the depreciation is much worse.
Different people are allowed to have different priorities and tastes.
What is the signal you’re trying to send by admitting to choosing one of the most unreliable car brands on the market?
People in glass cars shouldn't throw stones...
Have you seen the Tesla reliability reports? (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/10/24/tesla-...) They're even worse than Jeep's reliability reports, and Jeep's excuse is that they make cars for off-roading and other extreme activities that place heavier demands on the car's parts and frame. Tesla makes...road cars.
> most people on HN are the actual population that is buying teslas.
Is that really true?
I can't speak for everyone on HN obviously but I don't make enough to spend that much on a car. If I were willing to spend that much there are other cars I'd much rather get personally but that's besides the point.
Also given the relative infancy of EVs compared to gasoline powered cars now I would expect the pace of advances to be much better which fares poorly for depreciation.
I used to think that the big car companies weren't able to bring a competitive EV to market because they were bigger than Tesla and bogged down in layers of management.
Now I'm wondering if Tesla was just over marketed and overly ambitious entering the market and if these later entry EVs from main stream car companies in the next few years will be just as good at a fraction of the price.
EDIT: to clarify, I'm not comparing the price of EVs, but the price of a Tesla vs the price of a traditional gas-powered car. If I was only willing to buy an EV, then yes Tesla looks like a great deal.
I mean no luxury brand sells a car for $17.5k. I'm sure the entire world would go bananas if the Model 3 were priced at that...
Chevy has the Bolt out now at the same price as the SR+ Model 3, and it's absurd how bad the Bolt looks in comparison. The range is the same, but the exterior, performance, and charging capabilities are dramatically inferior to Model 3.
The only other competition debuting in the near future is the Nissan Leaf Plus, which costs more than the Model 3 SR, and has all the issues of the Bolt on top of the fact that its battery isn't even actively cooled, which is terrifying for battery longevity.
I think the correct comparison would be Average Selling Price (ASP), which for a Model 3 is nearly $60k USD. So I think when someone suggests a 50% price reduction, they are saying they'd love to buy a Tesla that is real-world, no tax credits necessary, breaking the $30k barrier.
The most expensive Toyota Camry barely tops $30k[0], and the vast majority sells for less. So ultimately, mainstream electric cars will have to compete in this space (and probably without tax credits, unfortunately.)
I only have one anecdote - my co-worker bought a Model 3, and it was over $60k. That's a luxury! I'm a reasonably well-paid software guy, but I've never spent more than $29k on a car. Currently I drive a hatchback that I bought nearly new for under $20k. So I'm stuck looking at the Nissan Leaf as my option for an electric car, and it would probably work if I kicked my wife out of the garage and installed a charger there. But I'm hesitant to go from a Mazda 3 to a Leaf.
I'm not sure why i'm jumping into this thread, but 50% cheaper!? You want a brand new electric car for $17.5k USD?
Even the cheapest ICE cars sold in the US have trouble hitting that number... That just seems like a completely unreasonably high bar to hold EVs to at this point since things like batteries are so much more expensive than an ICE engine.
That's fair I guess, I did a cursory search and saw things from Toyota and Nissan in the $16-18k range, and I didn't really search more.
But I was also expecting to compare MSRP, but I now realize that it's not really a good comparison since Teslas are bought less like cars (with haggling and discounts) and more like a new phone (you pay the price they set). Still, I'm floored that ICE cars are that cheap!
Kia and Hyundai have some decent EV offerings now that would compete with the Model 3, but they can't get the batteries made due to supply issues so they're only selling small amounts of them. e.g. Kia e-Niro got 'car of the year' in What Car magazine but they've only got 900 for the whole of the UK this year. So one thing Tesla has done right is build a huge battery factory.
Everybody knew this was coming: one month of deliveries on the boat to Europe, the availability of the 3 outside of North America affecting demand for the S & X outside of North America, and news of the Y Osborne'ing the X. The numbers for S/X are worse than expected, but I'm sure it's within the bounds of Tesla's planning scenarios.
Well, yeah, parts of it were expected. The part about accelerating the shipping of cars to China because of soft demand was a little out of the blue, though.
Plus delivery overhang after the 4th quarter. Some people surely must have accelerated their order to right before Christmas to take advantage of an additional $3750 tax credit.
They had an order backlog, and they filled it. Now, like the rest of automotive, they're sales-limited. All the big US auto companies have been able to make more than they can sell since 1956. (In the spring of 1956, supply caught up with pent-up WWII demand. Then came the era of chrome.)
Tesla is in a business where many customers just want to pay their money and drive away with a car. Not "preorder" and wait for months. If they get it right, you'll order on line and the car will show up in a few days. The loaner should show up the day you order.
if you're in the market for a new car what makes you think being able to get one immediately is a priority?
a car is one of the largest investments an average person will make. i love that i'm not going to be hustled by a car salesman (the archetype of the sleazy conman) and can make decisions independently when buying a tesla.
honestly a few months seems really reasonable given the time spent making the decision?
> honestly a few months seems really reasonable given the time spent making the decision?
If your current car is not usable you don't have a few months. This does not just apply to people who drive beater cars -- your nice, well-maintained car could get totaled in an accident tomorrow and you'll need to get a new car.
Obviously it is not good to be car shopping in those circumstances but sometimes you don't have a choice. You could buy or lease a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt this afternoon, or you could wait several months for a Tesla.
Honestly, most people don't buy cars that way. They buy a new one when their current car has entirely reached end of life. Either they get into an accident that totals the car, or something breaks that fixing it would be financially not worth it. Most people don't have the luxury of waiting years for a new car.
> if you're in the market for a new car what makes you think being able to get one immediately is a priority?
Because I'm not buying a car for fun, I'm buying one because my old beater is giving up the ghost.
> a car is one of the largest investments an average person will make.
A car is not an investment. It's an expense.
> i love that i'm not going to be hustled by a car salesman (the archetype of the sleazy conman) and can make decisions independently when buying a tesla.
The last time I bought a (used) car, I walked into a dealership, told the salesman what model I wanted, and asked him to show me his inventory. I looked at some cars, test-drove one, he told me to make an offer, I did, and paid cash.
I had to deal with exactly zero upsell pressure, all of five minutes of haggling, and to say 'no' twice to an offer to finance.
Be upfront about what you want, that you're ready to buy if you like what you see, and don't take any bullshit. Your dealership experience will be much better for it.
Car Salesmen like a fast-and-efficient customer. The faster they deal with you, the faster they can move to a different customer. Come in efficient, and you'll be treated fine.
What vkou did can easily be done with either a used car or a new car -- go to a dealership, see the inventory, test drive the car, buy it and go home with it all in the same day.
In fact, it is easier to do this with new cars because the dealers are more likely to have a car with your preferred combination of option packages in stock.
You do realize that they were subsidized a lot. If you got in early and combined it with some other subsidies the 100k model S cost about 20k. Now that the subsidy is largely gone i'd be surprised if the sales stay that high. You see the same with the Mitsubishi Outlander: sales dropped to nearly zero after the hybrid subsidy was taken away.
What do you think is fair p/e? High share price is reflective as to the eAse that Tesla has raised capital. The trend is still very positive on increased revenue. Would be interested to know % of Tesla spend that didn’t go towards current prodcucts.
Didn’t realize how agressive expansion was. Tesla seems like it has not exceeded its ability to repay debt but is taking increasing risks despite making electric car market viable.
Building a semi prototype I guess is different than buying supercapacitator company for limitless recharge (prius style super capacitor battery to augment lithium ion power source) and building factories to actually build thousands of vehicles and now their batteries (Panasonic might lose monopoly)
Integrated battery manufacture alongside vehicles/power users could be next step towards decreased costs.
It does often seem that any news report about TSLA "soaring" or "plummeting" turns out to really just be a small'ish osscilation. At this point I tend to take most of these with a grain of salt.
The media tends to overstate how much a single story moves a stock. Not limited to Tesla, and I would say 10% is actually one of the larger movements than is typically associated with a single story within a day.
Now we just need another (completely irrelevant) Elon pot scandal, and I can finally buy some TSLA on the cheap!
(Kinda wish I thought to do that last time.)
1. A federal defense contractor, that is blatantly breaking a federal law.
2. Is firing people for doing the same thing that he himself is doing.
It's the poster child for privilege, in the old nobility 'the law doesn't apply to me' sense of the word. You should be outraged about that... That is, if you believe in the rule of law.
As a Tesla Model S owner I'm not at all surprised that the sales of the S and X are down. They are pushing the Model 3 hard, so hard that they dropped the reasonably priced S and X models from their lineup.
There is a huge price gap between the 3 and the S now and the differences between the cars is so slight that it doesn't make sense to buy an S today. Even worse the S and X haven't had their interior update yet so they look old compared to the 3.
This figure makes me wonder how other car manufacturers are able to generate demand. Honda alone sells 1m+ cars per year in the US. For all the news, Tesla will likely make 400k deliveries during entire year around the world.
I don't know what your Honda experience has been, but for a very competitive price you can buy an insanely reliable car that you will probably become bored with before you need to replace (so long as you change the oil regularly)
Meh. To me cars are an unpleasant necessity. I dislike driving, I'm constantly either bored or stressed, or both. Driving in Bay Area is even more unpleasant than less dense places. To park it, I either pay what would be rent on a studio elsewhere or drive around a half an hour a night looking for a spot at which I may come back to a busted window.
So when buying a car, I look for cheap and reliable, less likely to be victimized, definitely used (why pay for a smell?), with enough space to move the crap that requires the vehicle in the first place.
Point being, this is one reason those Hondas sell. I could buy a Tesla, but the idea of dumping a bunch of money on something I don't enjoy is about as attractive to me as buying a designer platinum drain snake.
Honda makes gas cars which can be filled up in 5 minutes from tens of thousands of gas stations across the US. It is not Tesla vs Honda it is electric vs ICE.
You can’t charge a Honda at home, and that with a 200+ mile range covers the vast majority of usage. And then when you do need to drive 200+ miles in a day, which for most people is a handful of days a year, you can use chargers which add 100 miles in 10 minutes. The extent of the charging network is really the only major issue left. It depends on your use case, for an urban, suburban setting or as a second car it’s more convenient, not less.
I have Tesla and use Superchargers. It’s 7.00 for 100 miles and it takes 30 minutes not 10 and they are usually full so I have to wait. We use our gas car for road trips and skiing. The supercharger wait times up to mammoth are 2+ hours.
Think it’s 130 miles in 10 minutes at maximum for the long range model 3 with the v3 charger. It's a 10 minutes break every 2 hours, not an issue for most people. The big remaining issue is the availability of charging points.
> And then when you do need to drive 200+ miles in a day, which for most people is a handful of days a year, you can use chargers which add 100 miles in 10 minutes.
Not as good as a "charger" (Gas Station) that adds 300 miles in 2 minutes.
I’m talking about EV’s in general, Honda Clarity is another decent example.
If your car always starts each day with 250 miles range, stopping to charge outside of the house is a rare ocurrence. Having a break for 20 minutes rather than 5 minutes after 3 hours of driving, a handful of times each year, isn’t my idea of a dealbreaker.
The big problem as I say is the extent of the network, especially in rural areas. Most of the adoption over the next 5-10 years will likely be in cities and suburbs.
Depends. My family always stops at a particular location in Virginia whenever we travel south (or back north) on vacations. Its literally a family tradition. There's no Supercharger close by, but plenty of gas stations.
To go pure electric would mean giving up this yearly family tradition for our summer road-trips. We'd have to change the stop to fit the car (ie: find a new spot closer to a supercharger). That's definitely not worth the hassle.
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We stop for 30+ minutes by the way for food and mental breaks while driving. But the LOCATION we stop at could be a national park, a mall, little towns we've grown to love, etc. etc.
A few of those locations DO have superchargers. But the majority of them do NOT. As such, a pure electric car would force us to give up family road-trip traditions.
> I’m talking about EV’s in general, Honda Clarity is another decent example.
Honda Clarity has 47 mile all-electric range, and 300-mile range on the gas generator. It can perpetually exist on gasoline. But typical day trips to and from work can likely be within the all-electric range.
It won't go onto gas-generator mode unless the battery gets low. Something like this vehicle would work for my family.
Yeah, I see your point, this is I suppose about what is called the destination charger network. This is a last mile situation with a lot of capital needed to build out a full network, which will make it more difficult for Tesla when competing with open standard charging networks. In Europe it looks a lot better, because the model 3 can use any CCS charger. I think we’ll end up with a few percentage points of all parking spots having 10-50kW chargers, especially for places where people tend to stop off on journeys. It’s starting to happen, but is a long way off what’s needed. It will be a lot easier in some places than others because of geography and population density. In some places plug in hybrids will undoubtedly be an important part of the market for a long time.
Where I am, 300 miles will get you almost across the country, so it’s a different calculation from yours!
This is a big part of it.
Tesla marketed their new lowend "$35K" Model 3 option but even that's them covering up the real price is $45k up front. Depending on where you live, you may get $5k back in tax credits the next year and then they throw on a $5k gas savings estimate bullshit which is ridiculous.
It isn't until you click the see details button in their order system that you see the true price.
That's $45k somebody has to take a loan for and pay a higher monthly payment for than the supposed "$35k after savings!". The savings are complete and utter lie. After you pay interest on that $10k extra you borrowed you lose.
If you buy the car outright in cash, sure, you'll see a savings. But that percentage of the population able to afford such a purchase is small and dwindling.
Please show where you came up with the $45K price. On https://www.tesla.com/model3/design, a black RWD standard range Model 3 with no options is exactly $35,000 (or "$26,950 after savings").
Honda is well known by non car/tech people. My grandparents would buy a Honda because it has a reputation that Tesla doesn't have at this point.
After a few years of people seeing them around, and them appearing in reliability surveys etc, that may change.
Although with their dealership/internet only sales plan up in the air at the moment, that still may not make a difference, because I still can't see my grandparents buying a car off the internet.
Another major benefit of Honda and Toyota is that I can use any service shop I want. They usually always have the necessary parts, and I can shop around to get the best price. With a BMW, Audi or a pricier high-end brand, the service costs are a lot higher. With Tesla, I don't even know if you can get them serviced outside an official Tesla center. That's a no-go for me.
Model 3 isn't back ordered. When I was ordering mine last week everything showed a 2-week delivery date(mid-range, long range, performance). After ordering I picked mine up two days later. Later after reading the Tesla forums, I could have called up Tesla and got a discount on the car if they had it sitting in inventory since they are trying to move inventory.
Ok, but doesn’t that just mean they’re not backlogged on the middle and high trims? They only just released the low end model, I can’t really see how those orders could have been fulfilled. Although it seems to be up for debate whether they’re able to make the low end model without a loss.
They started delivery of the Model 3 in Europe in February. But Tesla's cars are quite a bit too bulky for many European countries, where Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe dominate sales.
The model 3 is (to within a couple of cm) the same size and class as the Audi A4 and BMW 3-series. And I can assure you that they are very very common cars here.
Likewise, the X is similar to (say) the Audi Q7, the BMW X5, and the Porsche Cayenne, and again, those are pretty common.
The most common size in France (where I'm originally from) is the B-segment: Renault Clio, Citroën C3, etc. So 4.1~4.2 meters in length and 1.7~1.8 meters in width. Model 3 is much longer: 4.7 meter in length and quite a bit larger at 1.9~2 meter in width. Don't get me wrong, BMW 3-series or Audi A4 are not rare in France, but it's not the mass market.
So I don't have the beginning of a clue as to why you are laughing. If you are French then you probably live in an affluent neighborhood. I suspect you live in a different country with different car habits.
Just wanted to confirm what you are saying, that is that the standard-ish car size in Europe is represented by the models you mentioned: the Clio, the Citroen C3, I'll add the VW Polo, Skoda Fabia or Seat Ibiza, cars like Audi A4 or BMW Series 3 are seen as large-ish.
is there any evidence they still have a backlog?? Seems like the only backlog left is countries they just began delivering to or haven't started deliveries there yet..no one knows how big that backlog is
In Ontario Canada there are real wait times that are over a month for long range and AWD options for Model 3, even though the website falsely proclaims delivery within two weeks. I would define a wait time over a month (and counting) a backlog.
Thanks for that. I appreciate the additional data-point, as most of what I was seeing before was that there was pointing towards a possible inventory buildup in North America. If even the high end trims are actually in shorter supply than indicated, then maybe demand isn't so soft after all.
It still leaves me with a lot of questions about Model X and S, but I think there are more reasonable theories there than a demand cliff.
I’m just working from previous articles which said that a large percentage of their orders were at the lower price point, which has only opened up recently.
Tesla's market is extremely niche. Luxury car to an uneducated car buyer.
Car enthusiasts won't get a Tesla because Tesla's ARE inferior to the competition at that price point.
You don't buy a Tesla because you want your car to work for 2 years without breaking, you buy a Tesla to show friends.
I know luxury Ford products sold 20k/yr, and those were some seriously high end SUVs. Same price point.
I cannot see how Teala is sustainable.
Edit, the reliability problems aren't unique to Tesla, any new car has them. I don't understand why people straight lie about it not having reliability issues.
Everything about this comment is wrong. Car enthusiasts love Tesla. Check out the WSJ review of the Tesla Model 3 Performance [1];
”This thing is magnificent, a little rainbow-farting space ship, so obviously representative of the next step in the history of autos.”
Tesla’s are also very reliable, despite what CR would have you believe. Owner satisfaction is higher for Tesla than any other car, even Porsche 911 and Corvettes. CR admits that owners would not be satisfied with unreliable cars, and then ding TM3 for touchscreen glitches.
Actually, my touchscreen did freeze several times last year under the original firmware. There was an issue where the internet radio streaming would stall if LTE dropped out just as you were skipping a track. They fixed it at the end of last year and the screen hasn’t stalled even once since that OTA update.
My TM3 literally just got 5% faster due to an OTA update this week, because Tesla decided they had too much margin in their motor design.
Finally, the TCO of a RWD standard range Model 3 is lower than a Honda Accord. These cars have a bad reputation for being expensive. My friends ask me how I could possibly afford a car that will ultimately cost less than a $35k ICE vehicle.
Teslas are superior, not inferior. It's simple physics, BEV means higher acceleration, lower center of gravity, better cabin volume, quieter, and most importantly: you don't contribute nearly as much to destroying the climate or causing asthma and emphysema in children. How do you counter these basic BEV advantages? Are you in favor of releasing emissions for thousands of years?
You are right. The problem is that it is not perception of luxury car buyer. First of all Tesla does not have luxury car design, interior does not look as flashy as the one from competition.
In addition someone who typically buys top Mercedes model that uses 15 liters of gasoline per 100 kilometers every 3 years, buys new iPhone every two years, flyes 5 times a year to spend holidays in a beautiful but distant locations simple does not give a crap about climate changes. That is obviously such person is very pro-eco and wants to fight climate changes (verbally) and even donates some anti global warming foundation and advocates strict CO emission regulations (especially in developing countries) but the last thing such person would do is to restrict its own consumption.
none of that makes a car superior. true that performance matters, but only up to a point, then it's interior space and organization, build quality, comfort, accessibility and why not boot space.
Just to let you know, you've now called anyone who disagrees with your opinion "uneducated" multiple times. This really rubs me the wrong way.
You need to realize that other people have different priorities than you do. Not everyone cares that their car be as luxury as possible. They just want a good electric vehicle, and there's nothing that beats the Model 3 at that price point -- not in range and not in performance. Yeah, maybe it doesn't have leather seats as nice as the BMW, but most people don't prioritize surface-level luxury above all else, and especially not hardware/car nerds.
FWIW i've owned 3 BMWs and a 2018 Mercedes and I much prefer the seats -- both from a comfort and materials perspective -- in my Model 3 (2nd gen seats).
> you don't contribute nearly as much to destroying the climate or causing asthma and emphysema in children.
Slow down there.
Not everyone cares about climate change.
The _only_ reason I got a Tesla was for the acceleration and social status. With the Model 3, status has been diluted. Is climate change happening and being accelerated by humans? Yes. Do I care? No. I'm actually selling my P3D and switching to a Porsche 911 because of the Tesla brand dilution.
> For other people who like speed and performance, Tesla's are the cheapest way to get there.
I generally like Teslas but unfortunately they were not meant to be driven at high speeds for what other people consider as a normal period of time, as can be seen for example in this YT video [1] of a Tesla's battery over-heating after driving at 190-200 kph on the German autobahn. Their 0-to-100 kph times are excellent, though.
The vast majority of Germans don't drive on the Autobahn at such insane speeds, and this certainly isn't an option anywhere else anyway (legally). Such a niche use case really does not matter all that greatly in the scheme of things. I can think of dozens of factors more important to me than "not being able to drive at 200 kph for extended periods of time".
> The vast majority of Germans don't drive on the Autobahn at such insane speeds
It's not an insane speed, a new VW Golf can handle 170-180 kph pretty damn well, hell, my 12-year old 1.4l hatchback can do 130-140 kph for hours at a time quite as well, too.
It's insane because it's way too fast (thus potentially dangerous), not because vehicles aren't physically capable of it. The occasional driver roaring down the Autobahn in the left lane at 200 kph is the exception, not the rule.
Tesla had to pay back a $920 Million loan this past quarter, and these numbers suggest that Tesla probably lost money in Q1 (30% fewer deliveries).
So you're looking at a company that just lost, $1+ Billion in one quarter. Tesla had $3 Billion in cash about half-a-year ago, but that's a LOT of its warchest that just evaporated.
Tesla seems to have screwed itself over: the Model Y hype may be destroying the Model 3 demand. The Model 3 is a sedan, and sedans are selling very, very poorly in the USA (across the board: Ford and GM have eradicated their sedan lines). Tesla should have worked on and released the Y first into the lucrative SUV market... but I guess no one can blame them for failing to have a crystal ball.
The drop in demand is very worrying for sure. Tesla is supposed to be a growth company, and a 30% drop in deliveries is anything but growth.
It's not a good time to buy a stock. The market is pure speculation, which is why you have this phenomena of twitter assholes (TSLAQ) being sure that every bit of bad news is sign that the company is about to go bankrupt, and all of their stock shorts are suddenly going to make them the next Gordon Gekko. Couple that with the fact that Tesla is a really volatile company, none of my money would go there.
On the other hand, a company with zero self-driving cars in the hands of consumers is supposedly being values in capital raises at $75 billion, while VW is about to pour $50 billion into their EV efforts. Tesla is way ahead of them in adopted augmented driving, battery chemistry (which is theirs, not Panasonics) and electric drivetrains.
In terms of cars, absolutely. The Model 3 SR+ is awesome. I have a MR and love it.
I'll say this as one who has traded a fair amount of TSLA, starting shortly after IPO. I've done well enough with it to have purchased several of their cars (we do not own one, however). I also sold most of what we had a few months back via call options, save 50 shares.
With my resume out of the way: if you have to ask on Hacker News whether or not to buy TSLA, then don't. A lot of what drives that price up or down is drama, not financials or technical charting. If you like to buy your stocks based on what the Kardashians are up to this week, maybe pick up 100 shares. But seriously, just stay the hell away. You want to roll dice right now, go buy BA.
Except Elon Musk has been prone to make tweets like "$420 Funding Secured", which would ruin your short-call position if it happened at the wrong time.
The best move is to not play. There are literally thousands of other companies in the public market that are actually run by decent people. Musk clearly wants to "burn the shorts" and is willing to go to war with anyone who takes the bear bet.
That's fine, just don't play the game at all. Buy and sell stocks from a more reputable company.
There are _way_ more factors than that. Not the least of which being "do you believe Tesla is the company that is able to deliver those effectively?". All signs currently point to "No".
You can totally believe that, and have no faith in Tesla itself. On the high end side I don't see how they will counter the like of Audi, Jaguar, Porsche and Polestar, which come with actually well made cars, a service network that works and actual prestige. On the low end Korean and Chinese brands should slash prices...
> Tesla Inc. said new-vehicle deliveries in the first quarter fell 31% from the previous three months
Wait a second, so this isn't a year-over-year number? Don't shipments of basically everything fluctuate seasonally? Is this even a meaningful metric?
Alas, the paywall prevents me from knowing. But in general "people buy 31% more high end cars around the holidays" doesn't seem like a clearly incorrect hypothesis.
As the cost of solar + wind + static storage drop, the more renewable energy sources are used to power factories. The more renewable source used to power factories, the greater the impact on the vehicle. In this, Tesla leads the way.
It is helpful that the author quantified some of the issues, however there are many factors involved:
* Does the authors CO2 estimates for battery production actually include "mining" or just "assembly"? From reading it, it seems to just include assembly of final components into a battery.
* Moving tons of rare-earth minerals from Point A to Point B for battery production requires yet more CO2 output.
* Wind + Solar still requires massive batteries somewhere, which still requires massive mining operations.
Further, with $40 shale oil now a reality, its getting harder to make the economic case.
Those who really care about the environment, know that reuse and recycling are the best approaches. So, you could buy a 15-yr old Toyota or Hyundai, since that carbon footprint already exist. You shouldn't be needlessly creating more deadly CO2.
Further, in terms of energy density: solar, wind, coal, natural gas all pack far less joules per gram than petroleum.
These are inconvenient truths that unfortunately conflict with the slick marketing messages of your luxury golf cart salesman.
Where does this rare earth trope comes from? Tesla batteries uses lithium, nickel and cobalt which aren't rare earth, and Tesla Motors don't use rare earth magnets either...
It feels wrong that they charge for autopilot when it's just software--they should give it away for free. This really affects how I feel about buying a Tesla when it's in the cart. I wonder if sales would go up if they just gave it away for free, and if the economics still work out.
Sure, it just feels wrong in this case. Who wants a Tesla without autopilot? If they're trying to sell as many as possible, give the software away for free.
If they wanted to sell me another EV, they'd need to do several things differently. First, give me buttons for the common stuff I do. Stuff I do commonly is A/C, audio on/off, audio volume, suspension height, and driving mode (sport or comfort -- I share the car with a spouse who hates vroom vroom). Second, adopt CCS. I don't want to take a hard dependency on a proprietary charging infrastructure that entirely depends on a single company to keep it on life support. Third, stop lying to me about fully self-driving capabilities. While we're on the subject, sell me the car as it is now, rather than as you speculate you can make the car be in the future through a software update. Fourth, nail the fit-and-finish and the quality of the interior.
For me, Jaguar got almost everything right in what they were shipping in Q1.