The worst part is they’re nowhere near: the effective strength of Tesla is that they built a large and reliable network of fast chargers. I don’t know how non-Tesla charging is in the US, but in Europe it’s still a complete mess of half-assed crap, meaning if you don’t have a Tesla you either simply can’t make trips beyond a single-charge round-trips, or you have to plan the trip for days in advance poring over maps and fallback chargers like it’s the 60s and you have to account for 50% odds of needing to rebuild the engine on the roadside.
Not “green book” bad, but absolutely “get close to hurling from the stress and triple travel time because you had to hypermile to reach the charger then it was worse than a home socket”.
It seems like many routes (not all though) along interstates have enough Electrify America fast chargers that the mere existence is adequate. However, the charging experience is very buggy and unreliable. Cars randomly refuse to charge, charge much slower than they should, etc. And it's not rare, it's likely that this will happen multiple times on a trip, from what I've seen. The videos posted were with the Mach-E and ID.4, so very recent cars.
However, I think as long as these cars sell (and the F-150 lightning does too), this will all get better very quickly. Most of it looks like it should be fixable with software updates, and these companies are all doing OTA updates now.
Indeed that seems to be very common around here hence my mentioning fallback chargers: you can’t currently rely on a specific charger working, so you must plan for an alternative or two at every charging stop.
What I think a lot of people are starting to realize is that the road trip angle is small. It needs to work, but it doesn't make or break the experience. In both cases I found that I did 99% of my charging at home, and so the experience has been the same.
The third-party networks are also collectively growing at a rate much faster than Tesla is growing the supercharger network. At some point in the foreseeable future it will be a disadvantage that you can only DC fast charge a Tesla at a proprietary supercharger.
Tesla is still 100% proprietary in the US.
You’re overestimating how many people make road trips > 200 miles.
Most Americans never leave their hometown, with an even higher percentage who never left their state.
For the middle class family who drives to visit grandma once a year in a different state, they’ll just use their ICE car.
This can't possibly be right. Maybe they never move away, but never leave a radius of 200 miles from their home town? Do you have a cite for that?
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lealane/2019/05/02/percentage-o...
Not to mention there are many states you might not get out of in 200 miles. 200 miles from the Californian coast is still Cali unless you’re at the northern or southern edges.
The idea that the Cybertruck who has 100ks of reservations and beats the F-150 on pretty much every technical metric will not sell well is just nonsense.
> actually use as a truck
So people who 'actually use' a truck don't want to drive long distance or transport a lot of cargo? Or charge fast if they do want to go long distances?
People who want to go off-road don't want significant better clearing.
People who have expensive tools or carry a lot of luggage don't want to make sure its not stolen?
What's your objective measure other then the look of the Cybertruck are you applying here.
What is your objective basis for believing I have said anything about the appearance of cybertruck? My comment talks about availability of spare parts and third party repair. Tesla vehicles are notoriously poor in these regards. You seem to have read quite a lot that I did not write (Tesla fanboys seem to do this a lot.)
So you mentioned actual argument, repair parts availability. So you mention one thing and the declare the CB to be DOA. You must release how incredibly dumb that is right? How would you react if a Tesla fan said 'Cybertruck is faster to 60mph therefore the F-150 is DOA'. Its just disingenuous analysis purely driven by, I don't know, I assume you have some sort of dislike for Tesla.
Tesla service is a actually a great experience for many people. The mobile service is amazing for anything that isn't a full crash. The Cybertruck design makes many typical repairs unnecessary. There are just fewer things that can break overall.
In terms of battery and EV motor Tesla has 1000x more experience and have known high reliability and Ford just had to recall their last EV and had to delay another EV for 8 months.
The truck market is 2.5 million in the US alone. EV trucks have significant advantages (including life cycle cost) and they will be production limited for years. To believe that in that environment the Cybertruck is DOA is just incredibly dumb.
This is a theme in your posts. You assume that everyone critical of Tesla's choices must be a hater. Just because you see Tesla as some sort of personal reflection doesn't mean the rest of us do.
I'm not saying F-150 will not sell, I'm saying the people in this thread who use the unveil of the F-150 to shit on Tesla and the CB don't know what they are talking about.
People who go off-road absolutely want better clearance; it's one of the most popular aftermarket modifications made to off-road vehicles. On that front, the Cybertruck has relatively poor experience for a truck (but would for right in with a Subaru wagon).
Unlike Tesla, Ford designed the Lightning with the actual input of the people who would use it, and it shows in all the small features that the Cybertruck is missing.
And Tesla is building a factory that is equally designed to build that many trucks and the vertically integrate it with a huge battery factory likely even cathode manufacturing and lithium hydroxide production.
The last Ford CEO (not that long ago) still believed Ford didn't even need a battery partnership. And the new CEO has been scrambling like crazy to get a partnership and they want to build a plant but that is still quite far away.
> Unlike Tesla, Ford designed the Lightning with the actual input of the people who would use it
And you know that how?
> People who go off-road absolutely want better clearance; it's one of the most popular aftermarket modifications made to off-road vehicles. On that front, the Cybertruck has relatively poor experience for a truck (but would for right in with a Subaru wagon).
And that modification costs fair amount of money I would bet. The fact is the experience you get for the money is better. And comparing it to a Subaru wagon just tells me you are not actually serious, you just a hater.
And the new CEO has been scrambling like crazy to get a partnership and they want to build a plant but that is still quite far away.
Ford's EV truck facility is already complete and is in pre-production trials to iron out kinks in the manufacturing lines. It is scheduled to begin mass production by the end of the summer. And unlike Tesla, Ford hits its timelines.
And you know that how?
I'm part of the crowd of people who would use it. And I talk to people, online and off, in the hiking, trail running, mountain biking, and aquatics, and off-roading communities. The interest in the Lightning in these groups is huge. People even cancelled their orders for Subarus when the Lightning dropped. In contrast, the Cybertruck is viewed as a joke: a truck that can't be used for hauling, can't be used for work, and can't be used for any outdoor activities; in short, a truck that can't be used as a truck unless you think a truck just sits in a driveway or a parking spot.
And that modification costs fair amount of money I would bet. The fact is the experience you get for the money is better. And comparing it to a Subaru wagon just tells me you are not actually serious, you just a hater.
No, lifting a car is generally less than $1000.
The fact is the experience you get for the money is better.
A Tesla interior is about the same quality as a 90's era KIA. Or in other words, it's the worst in the industry at almost any price level. And yes, I have ridden in every model of Tesla, including the original hand-made Tesla Roadsters.
And comparing it to a Subaru wagon just tells me you are not actually serious, you just a hater.
You're right, I was being very unfair to Subaru. Their wagons (the Outback and Crosstrek) have superior off-road capabilities compared to the Model Y or the expected capabilities of the Cybertruck. And the Subarus have nicer interiors. And better range. And better warranties. And are easier to get repaired. And are way cheaper.
So did Tesla for 15 years and in that time they build a huge amount of knowledge and worked together with Panasonic on improving their cells. They learned a huge amount, hired many experts, bought a number of technology companies and are bringing things to production that literally nobody else has managed yet. They actually did the hard work of bringing university ideas into mass production.
Your claim that Tesla simply can not achieve the lower prices is your assumption that is based on nothing. Not having to pay for the profit of the cell maker alone is a huge part of the cost.
Ford has to buy on the very contested open market because their former CEO failed to set up a partnership. So in fact its very likely that they pay some of the highest amount by any of the major car manufactures. And of course so far they are a tiny part of the market while Tesla is by far the market leader.
Tesla simply buys far, far higher volume then Ford and will continue to do so.
> Moreover, by not competing with the battery makers, Ford can always choose the best battery available when it comes time to sign new contracts, and isn't stuck with whatever technology their CEO is promoting on Twitter.
Tesla is continuing to buy lots of cells from battery makers and they will continue to increase that. Tesla is the largest costumers of 2 of the 3 largest battery makers in the world.
The idea that Ford who has tiny volume will somehow get better prices then Tesla is nonsense. Tesla also has long term supply contracts for the raw materials that they locked in years ago while Ford is fully exposed to the raising market in raw materials.
> I'm part of the crowd of people who would use it. And I talk to people, online and off, in the hiking, trail running, mountain biking, and aquatics, and off-roading communities. The interest in the Lightning in these groups is huge. People even cancelled their orders for Subarus when the Lightning dropped. In contrast, the Cybertruck is viewed as a joke: a truck that can't be used for hauling, can't be used for work, and can't be used for any outdoor activities; in short, a truck that can't be used as a truck unless you think a truck just sits in a driveway or a parking spot.
So here is my problem with your argument. You simply say thing, based on literally wrong facts. Tesla Cybertruck has significantly better performance for hauling, loading and range at the same price. And a far, far higher top level specs. If you seriously want to haul something long distance the top range CB is far beyond anything the F-150 can do.
Its absolutely simply wrong to claim the CB can be used for outdoor activities or work. Like, this is just an opinion that you have that you have absolutely no factual bases for.
Talking to people who are not equally not informed and have formed their opinion on pictures and maybe a few confused news articles is simply not a valid source of information.
Just stop
They could make lots of profits if they weren't growing 30-50% a year reinvesting massively, paying massive bonus to Musk that he only gets based on massive growth.
They have 18+ billion of cash on balance and could easily raise much more if they needed too.
They have upper tier operational margin and extremely good per unit margin.
> EVs are commodities.
EV are only 2% of global vehicle sales and Tesla is clearly the leader and is growing very fast still.
Go actually read about the limited availability of lithium, nickel and chemical processing. Not that there is not enough in the ground but scaling the supply chain to 100% EV will be massively challenging and that is before you even get into cell manufacturing.
> their profit is entirely due to credits?
I really don't understand why people are so utterly obsessed with this one part of Tesla income stream. Their margin are all clearly still fine and their growth is amazing even if you subtract profits.
Sure in the last couple quarter if you assume no credits at all then Tesla would just be an amazing growth company that doesn't make a profit but it wouldn't actually fundamentally change the bull case for Tesla all that much.
Tesla is by a huge margin the dominate EV player in US, EU and China by revenue generated while they have good margin (other car makers don't break out their margin for their EV business btw) and there is no evidence what so ever that their growth will stop, there is actually a huge amount of evidence that the opposite is the case.
I know some people don't like Tesla, that fine but people who still treat Tesla like this tiny startup that is just about to go bust unless they deliver on some feature X is simply not the case.