Elon is the PM from hell. Has some shower thought and starts throwing tickets on everyone's board 45 minutes later.
This is why the Model X has those silly doors.
This is why the Model X has those silly doors.
No, that car is essentially a failure and I'm amazed Tesla hasn't completely cut it from production.
It sold 1,316 units in the US September. They were selling almost 4,000 in September of '18. Even if you wanted to go by year, you're talking about 26,000 sold in the entire US in 2020 (it's best year and I'm ignoring '21 since there was a factory shut down)[1].
It's just not a good vehicle, doesn't sell well, and is utterly unusable if you live anywhere with rain or snow.
[1] https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/tesla-model-x-sales-figures-us...
Also most Tesla customers would buy a Y these days.
I see many X in Norway, which has a lot of rain and snow. What are the issues you mention?
That may not mean what you think - you may be waiting for them to have enough orders for them justify retooling the factory back for a short run.
Its a luxury car, Audi is selling less e-Trons then Tesla is selling Model X in the US. The Model X this year sold almost as many vehicles as Ford Mach-E while costing 2x as much. If you compare the Model X to other cars in that price class the Model X is doing fine.
And of course they did a major revamp completely changing the architecture and have to deliver the car from 1 factory to whole world. The Model S had priority at first and the Model X was only slowly added to production again.
If you think Model X is a failure you don't understand the car industry. A car with that kind of margin is well worth doing even if it peaks at 40-50k a year globally.
> and is utterly unusable if you live anywhere with rain or snow
This is simply inaccurate.
The doors are an interesting example since they always seemed strictly worse than the traditional design, unlike the rest of the car.
I have a Model 3 and the handles DO freeze over, though I normally pre-heat my car (EV FTW) and it normally isn't an issue.
Model X also sells fine in Norway of course.
A touchscreen is objectively worse than traditional physical controls for operations that need to be performed while concentrating on driving.
Teslas are also not known for the quality of their manufacturing, although that's a different kind of design issue.
I know that Tesla has a lot of negative press due to autopilot (and rightly so), but they are still a leader in both self-driving and electric vehicles.
There's also a lot of potential (depending on who you ask) for autopilot, although I think it was a mistake to switch from lidar to pure computer vision. Time will tell.
He's a pretty crazy guy, but I can think of few people/companies who are doing things that could have as big of an impact as Tesla, Starlink, and SpaceX.
I understand how you could have doubts with Tesla, but that how could those feelings not dissolve when seeing those reusable boosters land on their own? How many other organizations could do such a thing?
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-201...
Hasn't this approach been proven successful with the current push towards solar and electric cars?
The article even says:
> The payoff for the public would come in the form of major pollution reductions, but only if solar panels and electric cars break through as viable mass-market products. For now, both remain niche products for mostly well-heeled customers.
Neither of these products are as niche today as they were in 2015 (when the article was written).
But, claiming that SpaceX, Tesla, or Musk personally were uniquely competitive, successful, or disruptive while they had a buffer of 5bn USD in the back pocket is misleading.
I'm sure you can find _plenty_ of examples of people spending billions less effectively, e.g. the city of Boston spending $22 billion on a tunnel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig
I'm not saying he's a genius or unprecedented, just that he is successful, and that his success was not guaranteed.
Looks-wise, it's basically indistinguishable from a Model 3 (which are everywhere), so hardly iconic in any way.
OK let's say it sold $30k, and Tesla made a profit of $100k (more than the car sells for) for each car.
That's still less than 50% of the F150 yearly profit. LOL.
Compare it to other comparable cars in the same segment and it looks pretty damn good.
Lower volume high margin cars are really worth it for companies and Ford wishes it had an EV in that classed that sold have as well. The Model X sells in numbers not unlike Mach E while having double the price.
That's what the parent said. Not "in the EV market segment", not "looks pretty damn good".
I agree it's a silly comparison to make normally, but it's a perfectly apt reply to someone stating something so obviously out-of-touch, like the Model X being the most profitable car in the modern era.
The profit MARGIN of the model x is great tho.
In terms of total profit, the Model Y will be the most profitable car next year, overtaking the F150.
A model 3, the budget/everyman car is $40k, and the Model Y is almost $70k.
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/07/03/tesla-model-3-model-y-m...
However the X and the S have very high margins in all configurations so they bring in an outsized amount of profit given their share of sales.
That said the margins on the Model 3/Y are nothing to snuff at and are superior to any other mass market vehicle.
When compared to cars like the F150 that bring in literally billions of dollars in profit a year?
Are you sure?
Oh, you're going to say you weren't counting trucks ;) Mercedes, BMW, Lexus still blow Tesla out of the water with their lineup.
And yet his companies are some of the most difficult to get a job at. Interesting.
It’s more difficult to get a tech job at FBI/CIA than Google. Does that make the US government a more desirable place to work?
As an aside, top talent definitely does NOT work at Elon’s companies. Top talent knows that “a good company mission” does not pay for rent, mortgage, or daycare.
This is just not true. There's tons of exceptional engineers working at various of Elon's companies. Would you really claim that SpaceX doesn't have world-class engineers?