Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet
wsj.com
wsj.com
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.
It seems every option is enumerated as its own physical switch, knob, or lever.
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).
Not compared to gasoline, though.
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 :)
Hey I'm all for Tesla improving the experience, it needs to be done, because the reality is the infrastructure is as important as the vehicle.
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).
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.
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.
Thank you
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Not in my experience. It’s been dreamy.
What was your experience? Or are you just repeating stuff you’ve read on the internet?
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.
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
Yeah, this guy's drinking the Koolaid. I've tried a road trip in a Tesla exactly once. I drive gas on road trips now.
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.
The best part is when not on road trips, just charge at home and never visit a gas station.
And no alternators, starter motors, fuel pumps, carburetors, oil, etc., etc, etc.
Expensive? Not so much when you consider all the extra constant maintenance costs of an ICE car.
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.
Competition is going to get a lot tougher for Tesla over the next few years.
Honestly... your argument is a year stale. The window on "Tesla can't scale" closed. They did.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
(but I understood that deliveries would start only in 2020)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tesla knows some people won't, and they still built the car this way. That is objectively dangerous.
A lot of people don't stop for sending texts so I doubt they will stop to adjust the temperature.
You say “Hardly”, and then discuss a behavior designed to mitigate the fact that exactly the thing you are denying is true.
Amazed how many people keep repeating this misconception.
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
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.
So, I don't get it.
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.
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.
Some of them are for charging at 350KW, current Tesla Supercharger's top out at 150KW, and the next gen targets 250KW..
And the number of chargers in the network matters.
I don't see how you could consider that coverage in any way inadequate.
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.
Tesla has the biggest single-provider network, but that doesn't really matter.
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.
That seems too little for 1400 worldwide. This image says 447 in USA. https://www.theatlas.com/charts/BJak7NcSz
Any source for 119?
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.
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.
Do you mean nationwide (in the United States) or continental (in North America)?
North America isn't a nation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Your points are ridiculous.
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.
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.
The Model 3 has plenty of physical buttons, even not counting the door buttons.
Looking at the numbers, this is a hard no:
https://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/
Q4 2018:
Tesla Crushes Porsche & Jaguar Globally — 4th Quarter Sales Report
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/19/tesla-crushes-porsche-j...
But to each his own, I guess.
And the charging infrastructure is not as closed as you are suggesting, as has been explained here repeatedly.
What does the I-Pace charging network look like right now? Do they have a map of current high speed chargers?
> stop lying to me about fully self-driving capabilities.
This is again hyperbolic and, ironically, dishonest if you understand what Tesla has actually been saying about FSD.
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 would guess that Tesla's trade secrets are equally or a lot more valuable, and perhaps pertain to manufacturing processes, than their patents.
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.
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?
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.
But, the electronics suck.
Some of the most talented chemical, physical materials and electrical engineers work for Musk’s companies.
You can just tell that Tesla’s were not designed with teams in silos. I don’t think car makers are currently capable of that.
Toyota was, at one point. I don't know if they are anymore.
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.
He is good.
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.
Yes, decades and counting of nothing but vaporware and concept cars. Like this article from 2009:
https://www.wired.com/2009/12/audis-electric-e-tron-is-real-...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Both are true.
It's a step toward it, yes.
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.
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.
Not much LTE uploads is my guess.
Tesla has so much more sensor data to guide engineering efforts with.
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.
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.
Not true. In fact Jeep did this. And many of the same people who praised Tesla were saying "OMG, vulnerability vector" when it was Jeep.
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.
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.
Edit: autocorrect
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...
Their last loan, they had to cut by $500 million due to lack of demand: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/elon-musk...
That doesn't seem like a company without turmoil either.
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.inc.com/wanda-thibodeaux/the-inventor-of-lithium...
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.
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.
[0]https://www.autotrader.com/car-shopping/buying-car-how-long-...
https://interestingengineering.com/new-lithium-ion-battery-b...
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 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.
https://insideevs.com/insight-toyota-tesla-partnership-marre...
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15340139/bye-bye-baby-b-m...
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...
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.
It's producing the whole battery unit that's the hard part. Toyota gets their automatic transmissions from another company.
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.
The only thing Tesla has is some form of self driving, and that won't be enough.
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.
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.
That's different from an index fund.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
--
[0] https://www.peoplehr.com/blog/2015/06/26/what-would-you-do-i...
[1] won't be profitable as-is due to much less oil changes, brake pad jobs and all that.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.autoblog.com/2019/04/02/auto-sales-decline-march...
https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/4/2/18292752/ford...
They’re clearly staying in the car market.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Production is down actually from Q4 2018.
http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tesla...
> Production in Q4 grew to 86,555 vehicles
http://ir.tesla.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tesla...
> In the first quarter, we produced approximately 77,100 total vehicles
We don't know what timeframe the tweet author is talking about. Did he mean there weren't many Tesla's there last quarter or a long time ago?
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.
It's not a bad sign, they have the best selling EV in the world and expect to be profitable from here on out.
If they they aren't profitable the next 3 quarters then I'd be worried.
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.
Ok, sure. Now what happens to y-o-y growth when q-o-q growth is stagnant?
>we had only delivered half of the entire quarter’s numbers by March 21, ten days before end of quarter
>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?
"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.
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?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxSQuGeoug8
Rapid expansion? I can't think of another car company doing nearly 400% year-on-year sales growth like Tesla has.
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.)
Scaling up cars is really, really hard. It is not software.
"ha ha ha Tesla is so bad at logistics, they suck so much! Look how much better everyone else is!"
Imagine how much better I'd be at literally anything if you gave me a > 100 year head start!
Most of the EU based car manufacturers are even older than GM / Ford.
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.
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.
Civilian production was stopped at the start of the war, but it was definitely being built before the war, as evidenced by many historical sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#1932%E2%80%931938:_...
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".
Well that's why I said U.S. car company...
I should also point out that Musk's reiterated guidance of 500,000 cars this year is absolutely absurd at this point.
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.
https://insideevs.com/teslas-confusing-price-changes-adjustm...
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.
Interesting choice of words, considering that the trucks used as technicals [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_(vehicle)] in actual battle tend to be Toyotas.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Toyota: Founded: August 28, 1937
Ford Founded: June 16, 1903
Tesla Motors: Founded: July 1, 2003
So what's your point exactly?
Before you ask, no I haven't seen those yet. Been to a 5 day African Safari and did not see any Zebras either.
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.
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 suspect quite a few things are vastly over-represented in those cultural bubbles. I'd love to see a Tesla sales map!
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.
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.
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.
I agree that a decent EV for that price is just not practical yet, but cheap ICE cars have no trouble hitting it.
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!
The low end gets very basic, but some people just want cheap transportation and don’t care about features.
If you wait, you'll probably see a special for Nissan Versas just over 10k.
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.
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.
[0] https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/2019-Toyota-Camry-Price-c27940
Tesla gets just as many posts and upvotes when it has actual good news.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tesla -30% (90,700 to 63,000) (deliveries)
Bolt -30% (6212 to 4316) (sold)
Leaf -33% (4029 to 2685) (sold)
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.
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.
There are 3 million EVs on the road today, of which around 2 million reside in China
Q1 2019: 63,000
Q1 2018: 29,980
Q1 2017: 25,000
Q1 2016: 14,820
Q1 2015: 10,045
Q1 2014: 6,457
Q1 2013: 4,900
Q1 2012: 0
Visual chart: https://twitter.com/EcoHeliGuy/status/1113648662054199297
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.
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.
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.
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.
No it's not. The Standard Range Model 3 is $35K up front and $27k with their (ridiculous) estimated savings.
The $35k Tesla is $35k before any rebates or savings are taken into account.
The $35k Tesla has a price after estimated savings of $24,450 in Massachusetts.
$24,450
$6,250 of that savings is in the form of a $3,750 tax credit and a $2,500 check.
So even if you factor in zero fuel cost savings the purchase price after rebates is $28,750.
Stunningly inexpensive for an EV. This is lower TCO than Accord or Camry.
See: https://teslanomics.co/tesla-model-3-fuel-savings-calculator...
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.
There are plenty of higher quality electric vehicles.
The acceleration is one tiny aspect of customer satisfaction.
Tesla has worst in class interiors and reliability. Not having buttons or trays is something only Tesla can get away with.
Is it better for the environment to buy a used car? Or better for the environment to buy a new car?
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.
Perhaps you should have a personal experience with them before going around just repeating what you read somewhere or from your imagination.
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.
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.
Disclaimer: I work at Google.
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.
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.
”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.
[1] - https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-ever-review-of-the-tesla-...
Nobody is mentioning the tax credit either..
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.
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.
Honda Clarity begs to differ.
> 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.
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.
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.
Where I am, 300 miles will get you almost across the country, so it’s a different calculation from yours!
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.
Don’t think of a share price as speculation, think of it as speculating about other people’s speculations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It seems that Power Stations + Millions of Tons of mining for rare earth minerals must make this a mega-polluter?
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.
* 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.
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.
You pay for software all the time?
Those who don't want to be killed or injured when the autopilot steers into a wall or oncoming traffic?