Comment by compcoffee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by compcoffee | Hacker News Reader

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>7,000? 10,000? 15,000? It wouldn't be enough to remotely satisfy the demand.

Honest question: where on earth do you get this idea? You actually think there is global demand for ~800,000 vehicles with an ASP of ~$55k USD?

What are you basing this insane demand off of? Tesla won't even report the current backlog numbers. If they were increasing, you don't think they'd be boasting about it?

Where does the unlimited demand come from?

>And when they finally do, in 2-3 years or so, are you going to take a chance on one of the first competitive EVs from VW, Mercedes, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Hyundai, Fiat, Toyota or Mazda or are you just gonna stick with Tesla, which by then comes with even better specs than today?

Wait, you're saying you're not going to trust manufacturers that have been building and servicing millions and millions and millions of cars for, some of them, over 100 years, but instead you will trust Tesla who hasn't even proven they can sustainably build and service the few hundred thousand they've got on the road? Aren't EVs supposed to be simpler than ICEs?

I simply cannot understand this thinking.

Tesla won't even report the current backlog numbers.

They say it right in the OP:

"The remaining net Model 3 reservations count at the end of Q2 still stood at roughly 420,000 even though we have now delivered 28,386 Model 3 vehicles to date."

More than 70M cars are produced worldwide every year. The 3 large German producers, Mercedes, Audi and BMW, are producing around 6M cars, of which many are priced similarly or more expensive than Model 3. That's just to mention some of the larger ones.

There is easily a demand for millions of cars within the upper end of the mid price segment like Model 3, and once the price of batteries goes down just a bit, EVs can reach the lower end of the mid segment.

We are not at the cheap segment yet, but it's just a matter of battery prices going down (through economy of scale; we actually don't need any breakthroughs in technology).

Then factor in charging networks. Right now, I don't have any supercharger near me. Next year I will. In 4-5 years I will have plenty.

As for not trusting the traditional manufacturers, I stopped buying Nokia and Ericsson and never came back, ones Apple marketed the iPhone. Not because they had had bad products or weren't trustworthy anymore. Just because it was obvious they produced the old tech and were behind on the new. People stopped buying horses and carriages when Ford produced his cars. Horses served us well for millennia.

And the hundreds of thousands of Teslas already driving billions of miles on the road are still driving well without the engines and expertise of BMW, right? People trust Tesla's tech now.

> Mercedes, Audi and BMW, are producing around 6M cars, of which many are priced similarly or more expensive than Model 3

~$55k USD would be roughly equivalent to a 5 Series/E Class/A6. Combined, about 300,000 of these cars are sold per year in Europe. So to sell 800,000 Model 3s worldwide you've got to replace every single one of those BMW/Merc/Audi sales, and then some.

Why are you comparing to 5 Series/E Class/A6 ? it's in A4, 3 series, C class price range and size.

$55k isn’t a 3 Series, at least in the UK.

You need to compare highest spec model and US pricing 340i xDrive Premium starts @ 54K in US

Those are just European figures, just 3 brands, and just the existing numbers.

In 2006, the market for smart phones was tiny. A couple of years later, people paid 3 times more for a phone than they ever thought they would.

Yes, $500 for a phone is not the same as $50,000 for a car. But who would have thought that people would readily shed out $599 for a cell phone before Apple made that market? The amount of people able to pay $50,000 for a car is increasing every year due to the economic growth in Asia and elsewhere and Tesla expands the market of people interested in expensive cars in Europe and America beyond the usual motor enthusiasts to people like me.

The palm pilot had been around and popular for 10 years when the iPhone came out, at a 300+ dollar price point.

That and most people don't actually pay anything for their phones, they get them on contract (in the us). As far as I know in Europe, smart phones are less common among poorer communities.

And an iPhone provides more reason utility over a palm pilot than a model three does over a used Toyota that costs 1/5 as much.

I live in the poorest country in Europe (Bulgaria) and virtually everyone below 50 has a smartphone.

The original iPhone was priced at $499 for 4GB, $599 for 8GB.

Tesla has a history of build quality issues that are forgivable by early adopters but still represent significant barriers to wide-scale adoption. I think the incumbent automakers can match what Tesla’s doing before Tesla can develop the manufacturing chops to fully compete.

Remember that before iPhone launched, Apple was already a leader in handheld consumer electronics with the iPod, with a level of operational expertise that more than matched any competitor. Not to mention lots and lots and lots of cash and time to spend on solving the hard problems before they had to launch. All luxuries that Tesla lacks.

The sibling comment from codeulike points out that they clearly stated the very thing you spent so many words questioning (in that time a quick skim of their report would've saved you all that trouble). Have you never heard a story of how a new entrant might be able to do better than the status quo? There's a lot going on here, and these stories are not so simple. Yes, in many ways EVs are simpler. There are stories of Elon Musk micromanaging to a fault, so maybe another CEO would've gotten them producing quicker with fewer issues. However, perhaps that other CEO wouldn't have gone up against the other manufacturers in the first place. I'm not defending either type of car maker, but there are countless stories of new players figuring out how they too can play, and they often find out how to do it better even if they make a lot of mistakes along the way.

edit: "maybe"

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