Musk now says it's 'pointless' to build a $25,000 Tesla for human drivers | Hacker News Reader

Musk now says it's 'pointless' to build a $25,000 Tesla for human drivers

reuters.com

The full self-driving tech and corresponding regulations / legal approvals are not there yet at scale and not likely to be in place for at least a decade (or more).

It's likely the real reason is because Telsa will lose the $25k EV market to Chinese EVs:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/03/cars/china-tesla-byd-competit...

Edit: the article also confirms this:

'Seth Goldstein, a Morningstar Research Services analyst, said he believes these less-expensive vehicles will be built on current Tesla platforms and priced in the mid-$30,000s.

"It was my understanding that the original plan was to make the more-affordable vehicle on a new platform," he told Reuters. "I think Tesla realized they were late to making an affordable vehicle versus their Chinese-EV peers … So, they changed their strategy rather than make a large investment to produce a new vehicle."'

"lose the market" is I think, a rather "Intel everywhere" take on what market share means. He would not "own" it the way he owns Tesla's current segments, true. But in the long term he won't own Tesla's market share, because in the long term the other car manufacturers who do make onshore and won't be behind sanctions will compete.

This is like "Ford won't make a VW beetle competitor because .." battles of the 60s. Did it mean Ford lost the small car market? No. it shared it.

If our model is there is porche so we don't need any other sports cars, we're pretty close to a planned economy model no? Why are we making saloon cars if a truck can do it all? Why do we have SUV if a tractor and trailer can carry more people &c &c.

I do not expect to see headlines saying "Ford, GM, BMW and Renault have closed their factories because they can't compete, and why bother trying"

It is exactly like the article states:

'Tesla dropped its plans for a human-driven $25,000 car. [Musk] said in an Oct. 23 earnings call that building the affordable EV would be "pointless" unless the car was fully autonomous.'

'His latest remarks came in response to an investor asking: "When can we expect Tesla to give us the $25,000 non-robotaxi regular car model?" Musk responded: "We're not making a non-robo," before he was interrupted by another Tesla executive. Musk later added: "Basically, I think having a regular $25K model is pointless. It would be silly."'

Tesla is choosing to not compete in the human-driven $25K EV market. If they choose not to compete in that price point, other car makers will fill the market at that price point.

Tesla will continue to compete at higher price points, so they are not closing any factories, but it will be interesting to see what EVs dominate the low-cost market.

Translation: Musk admits Tesla can't build a $25K car.

This, or cannot AND doesn't want to. The man works in advertising, if this was about magic slimming butter the FDA would have stripped his licence and drummed him out of the butter factory. It just amazes me that shareholders can be sucked into a shell game of future expectations because 'leader is genius' and not wake up to find he did a rug-pull AND IT HAS NO CONSEQUENCES.

If I were to put myself in Elon's head, my objective would be to leverage the wealth from Tesla (he holds 13% of outstanding shares), propped up by investor enthusiasm, to accomplish my goals for as long as possible before the market realizes the goals are aspirational. Tesla is on autopilot (hah), leaving Elon to do Elon Things.

That is not to say Tesla isn't going to continue to do well in vehicles and energy storage, just that there is no point in the org striving harder to scale faster when Elon can do the equivalent of "rest and vest." Why work hard when you can distort reality and achieve the same wealth game outcome?

I am trying to imagine Andrew Carnegie saying "I have found a way to make steel for 2c per tonne, without coal, and it will be as strong as unobtanium" and the entire western shareholder class of the time sending them his money and then he says "ha ha sorry I can't so fuck you" and .. goes on being US steel and nobody gives a fuck.

We call that lying.

You're not wrong. Based on all available evidence, it unfortunately looks like you can get away with a whole bunch of lying without consequences in the current simulation.

So we did call him a Robber Baron. Maybe Musk (Bezos..) is just re-enacting the gilded age?

the consequences are you loose your money if you invest in stupid

well, friend, just finish publishing to https://github.com/teslamotors/roadster (re: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38383099 et al) and we'll do it ourselves then

china blames west. west blames china.

And battery-cars powered by coal-oil generated electricity is stupid.

It's a fortunate thing, then, that the share of electricity generated by fossil fuels continues its steady decline - down to 59% across the US at this point.

>And battery-cars powered by coal-oil generated electricity is stupid.

I disagree: the hybrid I drive uses petroleum to recharge a battery [much smaller than 100%EV] and get me over 50mpg (city).

Further, I'd argue that the inefficiencies of pure petroleum drivetrains is stupid.

Cars can run on water.

https://yandex.com/search/?text=water+fueled+combustion+engi...

> And battery-cars powered by coal-oil generated electricity is stupid.

Any particular reason you are talking about coal oil? I don’t see any mention in the article and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_oil

Also, why is it stupid? Just like any power source, if the total carbon emissions are lower then it’s worth it.

Even in countries that use coal for power there is still a benefit

> In general, EVs cut carbon emissions significantly, even if they mainly run on coal- or gas-fired electricity, as the chart below shows. In coal-heavy Poland, an EV would cut lifecycle emissions by two-fifths, Carbon Brief analysis shows, rising to two-thirds in the UK and four-fifths in Norway.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-21-misleading-myths-ab...

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