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Comment by gamblor956 | Hacker News Reader

Curious, just a few weeks ago Tesla stans were claiming that it was just capacity that mattered, not kWh/mile. But it seems now that Tesla is no longer the range champion they have to come up with a new metric.

BTW, this is exactly what everyone predicted would happen when the legacy automakers finally moved into the EV space: they would start using their decades of automotive knowledge and bring it to bear on building EVs. And with the exception of Toyota's recent EV crossover bzwhatever, every review notes how much better the legacy automaker's EV under review is compared to a Tesla vehicle.

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I am no Elon fan, but I am a Tesla fan (respect for execution, ambition, and results). By the end of this year, Tesla's Giga 3 Shanghai factory will reach a run rate where that single factory builds 50% of what Mercedes sells annually. If Mercedes had not divested its Tesla investment in 2014, that investment would've been worth more than all of Mercedes more recently. Cadillac has a potential $300k flagship EV (the Celestiq). No one wants a $300k Cadillac EV in volume.

I don't have tremendous faith in the execution nor insight of legacy automakers. I want to believe, as every EV sold is a win, but it ain't looking great and Tesla isn't slowing down.

EDIT: Thanks V__, I misremembered this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/vk11qi/tesla_p... (referring to https://electrek.co/2022/06/24/tesla-prepares-upgrade-gigafa... which sources from Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-23/tesla-sai...) I have corrected my above statement. Facts matter!

EDIT: @gamblor956 I have heard Tesla is going to die since 2009. The broken record is getting old. Scaling is hard, but they have not failed yet. Obsession enables success.

> Shanghai factory will reach a run rate where that single factory builds more vehicles annually than Mercedes does.

Mercedes sells about 2 million non-commercial cars a year [1], a bit more than Tesla has produced since 2009 [2].

[1] https://group.mercedes-benz.com/unternehmen/ueberblick.html [2] https://fortunly.com/statistics/tesla-car-sales-statistics/

The Shanghai factory might have the theoretical capacity to build that many cars by the end of the year but I'm guessing it will have even worse scaling problems than the Fremont factory.

Plus, there's quite a few reasons that the automakers have many smaller factories rather than a few giant ones. Tesla will find out why the hard way (and they've already somewhat experienced those problems already).

> By the end of this year, Tesla's Giga 3 Shanghai factory will reach a run rate where that single factory builds 50% of what Mercedes sells annually.

Unless China locks down the plant due to a COVID outbreak.

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