Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

You get a better Model Y today for $50k than the Model S I bought in 2018 for $90k. These batteries will outlast the chassis. There is no material battery waste stream for recycling because the batteries last so much longer than expected. Auto consumers will ride the battery and EV learning curve where the price continues to decline and the power train improves over time.

(Have supercharged my model s almost exclusively over 5 years and 110k miles and still only have 8% degradation, 100kw pack, n=1)

View on HN

> These batteries will outlast the chassis

That's not saying much

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/new-images-and-video-conf...

Meh, they’ll figure it out like they always do. Engineering and manufacturing is hard. They’ve got $20B cash equivalents on hand and an $800B market cap, with a 2M unit/year run rate. I bought my S when I was concerned about their ongoing viability, but no longer concerned. The brand has strong enough legs, they’ll survive almost anything now. I’ve been hearing the rumors of Tesla’s death since the first roadster.

Nobody's talking about Tesla's death (they're the most heavily subsidized US company today outside of military contractors/weapons manufacturers). But Tesla specifically has consistently ranked as one the least reliable brands of any automobile manufacturers. Even if you only look at EV manufacturers

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-placed-bottom-consumer-repor...

Doesn’t matter what they’re ranked, they sell every car built at margins higher than any competing automaker. All that matters is the balance sheet, opinions can be ignored unless materially impacting volume.

“This one weird trick.”

Yes, because

> They're the most heavily subsidized US company today outside of military contractors/weapons manufacturers

Without the American taxpayer doing more than their fair share to keep them solvent, they’d be selling at 30-40% more.

And they’re not selling. It’s why Musk started offering 84-month financing; to try and convince people to come buy them.

Global auto market is 80 million units a year. Tesla will be able to sell into a market somewhere, even if a market softens. They also sell $20B-$25B/year of stationary storage, and are sold out for the next 2 years.

Subsides are good if you believe in climate change. The top 40% (by income) of Americans pay federal income tax, they can afford to provide EV subsides. If you don’t believe in climate change, there is no value in a conversation.

There’s no reason to think that’s a permanent state of affairs though. Stellantis claims to have better margins than Tesla.

Tesla sells a large portion of vehicles in China where the margins are tiny compared to those in the US market. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/stella....

FWIW this person has been driving that car for 5 months now without any issues. Supposedly Tesla's engineering department looked at the details and said the cracks are not a problem. I'm not a licensed engineer that specializes in chassis design nor metallurgy so I can't assess that claim.

Tesla's customer service org still needs improvement. If I were the service manager and assuming engineering really signed off on the structure being OK as-is... I'd just have one of our welders patch up the cracks. Even if it doesn't affect the structure it would give the customer peace of mind.

If you think these kinds of issues are unique to Tesla prepare to be surprised. Traditional dealers deal with this crap on half the new cars they receive. When I bought an Infiniti a few years ago it came with a couple of flaws from the factory (lest you think the Japanese manufacturers are better) - the dealer issued me a "we owe" sheet with a promise to repair the issues which they did once parts arrived.

The lauded BMW sold me an M3 with defective journal bearings that grenaded the engine at 20k miles. At least a missing brake reservoir cap can be easily replaced! The replacement block alone was billed to BMW at $14k excluding other parts and labor. That same M3 ate its differential bearings not long after. The service tech's explanation to me was that "Hans must have come into work hung over that day".

My point is: if you go looking for problems you will find them. With every make and model. You can't point to one person's possible problem and say "ah-ha! That car maker produces garbage!"

> lest you think the Japanese manufacturers are better

They are

That has not matched my personal experience so I'm going to say you are wrong.

In the end both of us are just posting personal experiences and opinions here, not data.

Apologies for prior terse response, I wasn't talking about a personal experience, just the almost-goes-without-saying truism that japanese brands are the most reliable and have dominated pretty much every car reliability rating since the 70s. You used a single anecdote to make a very broad claim so the burden of proof is on you to back that claim up.

The data is really easy to find. Here's two examples of CR results:

2011: https://www.nydailynews.com/autos/japanese-cars-reliable-sur...

2021: https://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2021/11/japanese-makers-dom...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com