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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

> Tesla has achieved enormous results in ramping up its Model 3 production faster than almost any new model car in history.

That defies my gut feel, so I checked on carsalesbase to confirm/refute.

Nearly any new car model that I look at far outsells the Model 3 during new model ramp up...

http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/tesla/tesla-model-...

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Which models did you look at? I don't remember a lot of models that are new to the market recently. I checked the Mazda CX-3 and the Nissan Leaf, and the Model 3 does appear to have crushed both of those based on first year numbers.

I tried to find "truly new" models (rather than generation refreshes or name changes). The first five I thought of were the Lexus RX SUV, the Fiat 500, the Mini Cooper, the 1965 Mustang, the 2015 Mustang (a ground-up re-platform, not a restyling effort).

It would be possible to argue that Tesla outproduced the Mini Cooper (depending on how exactly you shade the first year of production).

The others handily beat them, with the 1965 Mustang crushing Tesla...

Which year Lexus RX are you referring to? The Lexus RX SUV has been around a long time, and was originally based on a car platform which I believe was the Toyota Camry / Lexus ES platform.

The RX was released in 98 but was really a rebadged Toyota Harrier and came out a year prior in JDM.

You could argue the '65 Stang was a cheap Falcon. So they had everything in place, just changed up the bodywork.

Is the Model 3 just a cheaper Model S by the same argument?

(It's a genuine question. Yes, the Mustang was based in part on the prior Falcon platform. Wouldn't Tesla sensibly base the 3 in part on the S in the same way Ford continued to sell the Falcon alongside the Mustang? If Tesla is sharing literally nothing across models, that seems like a non-sensical way to run a car company to me.)

They're sharing what they can obviously, but the platform will be different. There are a lot of cars that are like 90% similar, especially sedans and crossovers sharing the same platform. To that extent, the Model X apparently used the Model S platform as its starting point (but no idea if it's still shared). The Model 3 however is a mid-sized sedan compared to S's full-size, so the sharing would mostly be limited to tech and components, but not platform.

It's a lot harder to quantify "ramp-up" for these models too, because they almost never have a bare starting point. E.g. CX-3 is (IIRC) based on the Mazda2 platform, so do you include the preceding Mazda2 ramp-up in the number?

Still it's the pro-Tesla person that's making the claim; the onus is on them to provide the numbers or if it's not a fair comparison, to avoid it (or clarify it).

I guess that is fair, but according to this carsalesbase.com site, it isn't even remotely close. Tesla has built/sold more Model 3s in its first year of production than anything else I can find...by a lot. They built/sold more in the past few months than entire years for all of the other models I have checked.

That's why I asked what models the other person looked at because so far all of the information I can see from the site that they linked confirms the "pro-Tesla" person's statements.

Ford sold ~559,500 1965 Mustangs in a much smaller overall market.

Chevy sold over 200K Corvairs each of the three first years of launch.

First 12 months deliveries of Tesla Model 3 were a little over 26K. First 15 months deliveries (which is more apples-to-apples with other company "first year" launches) were a little over 80K.

It's not even close, IMO... Do you see the figures differently?

Those are high numbers, wow, and Tesla hardly started producing them in mass until mid year 2018. They could get to 50k a calendar year if Q3 holds. Just for estimation purposes let's use that. It's hard to believe they'd do as well as one of the best selling cars of all time, but they are in a different segment too. Tesla is selling cars that are more expensive than average, maybe a more fair comparison is the bmw 3 series, audi 3 or 4 series type cars. At least Tesla is doing pretty well at the current moment, but they are not doing as well as Mustang or Corvair - some of the best selling cars of all time.

Tesla has been limited by production of batteries and cars, now they have scaled those a lot. But they aren't the fastest of history, that seems clear. Unless they suddenly sell 125k cars a quarter they won't catch Mustang.

I specifically searched the comments for "history" because another line in the article triggered my spidey sense:

> It still has hundreds of thousands of $1,000 pre-orders for the Tesla Model 3 (more than any car in history).

Um, yeah, Tesla IS having a hard time getting balanced coverage, and people writing articles where they specifically look for things Tesla does that nobody else TRIES to do is part of the problem.

I'm one of the very few people in the world who has put money down on a Model 3 and another car, and I still wouldn't count for the competition of "more than any other car in history" because:

* My "deposit" on my previous car was $500, not $1000, so I'm sure this author would find a way to discount that and say it's "not the same".

* My "deposit" on my previous car wasn't even solicited by the dealership; in fact, they didn't WANT to take my money, they just kept promising my spot in line was solid, which I wasn't all that happy about. Ultimately my $500 deposit was them photocopying my credit card so no money actually changed hands.

The author describes himself as a cleantech and blockchain reporter [1].

[1] https://medium.com/@michaelbarnard_46445

> blockchain reporter

I wonder if the general public has as negative a connotation of blockchain reporter as I assume most HN readers do.[1]

1: Even if you're bullish on blockchains, I don't think it's a stretch to say that blockchains reporters are not unfamiliar with overhyping news.

He's also delighted to have been "mentioned in four books"

I've firmly started believing in the phrase Bitcoin not Blockchain and dismissing anyone who thinks we should be storing database data in a blockchain.

Its 2018, we found its expensive and slow to use blockchain, don't store stuff that doesnt need to be trustless.

Can you provide a specific example? I looked through several different cars and can't tell what you are referring to. It depends on what year you look at and when the refresh happened. There are cars that outsell tesla, (like the very popular and reliable econobox basics from Toyota and Honda). But Tesla is outselling on actual model year sales most other cars with the model 3. If you exclude the top 3 or 4 cars in the us (honda/toyota civic, corolla, accord camry), tesla appears to be outselling all the rest, and I don't see bumps like Tesla's if you go outside the top 4. Maybe you were looking at trucks? Trucks sell an amazing number, but Tesla isn't in that segment, & I think it's reasonable to compare just to sedans.

> Nearly any new car model that I look at far outsells the Model 3 during new model ramp up...

The article is apparently referring to rate of change rather than absolute numbers.

Their numbers also compare favorably to other EVs, e.g. the numbers for the Model 3 from last month are about the same as the annual numbers for the Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt.

Yeah, I'd imagine a new Rav4 or CR-V model goes from 0 to 10,000 a week pretty damn fast and with little to no fanfare.

That isn't a "new" model with all of the uncertainty that goes along with it though. Rav4 and CR-V have established reputations, entrenched supply chains, etc... A better comparison would be brand new models, not refreshed old models.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18223847

Toyota sells 1/2 million Camrys a year. For Model 3 to reach that level, Tesla will have to produce 10,000 a week.

The stated goal of tesla is to make 10k of them a week, instead of the current 4-5k. I worry that will be too many, there can't be that much demand can there? At least there's a lot of demand at the moment.

How dare you fact-check an article? ;)

It didn't match my "gut feel" either, but I'm having a hard time finding a good case of a faster rampup in that data. I don't think a minor refresh would count.

Can you cite an example?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18223847 and

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18223341

Interestingly, none of those pointed to the datasource that I was responding to.

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