Tesla Model 3 is the top selling American car in the USA | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Model 3 is the top selling American car in the USA

cleantechnica.com

35 pointsjv2222213 comments

Aren’t the three “foreign” cars ranked above it also made in America?

Yes, but it doesn't mean they're considered American. If you would, according to that logic you'd have to say that the iPhone is a Chinese (Korean/Taiwanese) product.

But yeah it's a bit silly to bring nationalism/politics into a comparison of car sales. The whole comparison is really designed to mislead people who don't know better and don't look any further, to conclude something that isn't really true. Because where various manufacturers produce >10m cars, and multiple American manufacturers did >6m, Tesla averaged about 0.1m last year and will do about 0.25m this year. That's pretty sweet, but not the conclusion most people would have when they read a Tesla car was the top selling American car in the US.

Probably referring to the fact that they are Japanese companies

Where are these numbers coming from? The publication only cites itself as a source.

From a website that has published around 30 pro-Tesla articles in the last week alone[1], which headlines such as:

"Tesla Model 3 Total Cost of Ownership Estimate — Crushing It"

"#1 Highest Grossing Car In USA = Tesla Model 3 … Model Y Will Crush “Tesla Killers” … German Wake-Up Call"

"Tesla Model 3 = Lightning, Model Y = Thunder"

"New BMW 3 Series Too Little, Too Late To Slow Tesla Model 3 Disruption"

"Tesla Model 3 = 4th Best Selling Car In USA (Maybe)"

"#1 Tesla Model S Dominating Large Luxury Car Sales In USA"

"Tesla Crushes Quarterly Delivery Record"

[1] https://cleantechnica.com/?s=tesla

One source http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2018/10/september-2018-ytd-u-s-...

Which mostly has to do with having few models (65% of production is in this one model) and a national sales focus (50% in US), rather than the car selling (or rather, manufacturing) so well.

There's multiple US manufacturers which produce >6m cars a year. Tesla is looking at about 0.25m or so. Interestingly enough Tesla has a higher market cap than Ford.

Still, I can't say it's not impressive. Q3 2018 production is more than 3x what it was in Q1 2018. That's pretty ridiculous (although to be fair, growth was flat in the years prior).

Why are 90% of the cars on that list terrible? After the Telsa you need to read all the way down to number 15 to find something else i'd actually want to drive/admit owning.

Tesla has an effect similar to iPhone, where people spend more to have it than what they used to generally for a car before. Even Tesla leadership was surprised by it (they expected to get to $35k sooner, but also didn't expect to be able to sell so many cars at $50k).

Sounds reasonable, but do you have a source?

Is it because they're all cheap cars? The auto industry is good at price discrimination.

not counting SUVs & trucks

Not many people count trucks as cars though.

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