Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet
wsj.com
wsj.com
If they wanted to sell me another EV, they'd need to do several things differently. First, give me buttons for the common stuff I do. Stuff I do commonly is A/C, audio on/off, audio volume, suspension height, and driving mode (sport or comfort -- I share the car with a spouse who hates vroom vroom). Second, adopt CCS. I don't want to take a hard dependency on a proprietary charging infrastructure that entirely depends on a single company to keep it on life support. Third, stop lying to me about fully self-driving capabilities. While we're on the subject, sell me the car as it is now, rather than as you speculate you can make the car be in the future through a software update. Fourth, nail the fit-and-finish and the quality of the interior.
For me, Jaguar got almost everything right in what they were shipping in Q1.
In comparison, Tesla's approach of putting everything in a single touchscreen is a cost cutting measure being sold as trendy BS. And dangerous to boot.
Amazed how many people keep repeating this misconception.
Everyone who’s ever driven a Tesla knows that they are fragile death-and-vomit machines masquerading as strong proud cars.
Source: used to own a model S. Traded it in for a Prius because musk is a false prophet and the car was a piece of shit
Tesla knows some people won't, and they still built the car this way. That is objectively dangerous.
You say “Hardly”, and then discuss a behavior designed to mitigate the fact that exactly the thing you are denying is true.
A lot of people don't stop for sending texts so I doubt they will stop to adjust the temperature.
Competition is going to get a lot tougher for Tesla over the next few years.
(but I understood that deliveries would start only in 2020)
People have been saying this since the Gen 1 roadster came out in 2008. Where are these cars from the auto incumbents at? More EV's the better but they are nowhere to be found.
Anyway, I expect that Tesla's supercharging network will go the way of Betamax or 25519. Just because you're first and/or you're better doesn't necessarily mean that you win. With the entire automotive industry (minus Tesla) adopting CCS, Tesla clearly has an uphill battle on its hands. But I'll admit that anything can happen, and I'm terrible at predicting the future.
That seems too little for 1400 worldwide. This image says 447 in USA. https://www.theatlas.com/charts/BJak7NcSz
Any source for 119?
That’s an old figure from 2014. Five years ago. The number has already done a couple of doublings since then and is set to double again in the next year or so.
So much ignorance about Tesla here. It is really disappointing.
Do you mean nationwide (in the United States) or continental (in North America)?
North America isn't a nation.
Don't get me wrong, I love standards, and I love, that the EU Model 3 can be charged essentially anywhere, but in my opinion, the Supercharger Type2 connector is better in every aspect, expect for it being proprietary.
My Model 3 can conveniently do cross-country trips. I really wish Jaguar and Porsche adopted the Tesla charging system (I think Tesla tried to get them to).
As with any electric, Tesla ranges can be below what is promised too, if you drive fast, as you allude to. But the problem is amplified with the I-Pace since the car is not as efficient.
With some margin, a 1 hour radius sounds like about what I would expect from an I-Pace. Whereas with Tesla the radius is effectively unlimited in most of the US for example, due to the density of the network.
Not compared to gasoline, though.
I recently saw someone make a valid point (IMHO) that I hadn't given much thought in the past: The time spent a DC chargers is somewhat offset by lack of stops at a gas station. Assuming you stop for gas once a week, and it takes 5 minutes to fill up and go... that's around 4.3 hours you spend at a gas station every year.
On the other hand, you may spend time at a DC charger during long road trips, but you don't have any obligation to stop at a location to recharge during normal commutes, since you simply charge overnight at home.
In other words, you have to stop for gas every X miles in an ICE vehicle, but you may have to stop for a recharge in an EV (usually for long road trips).
I don't understand the point of this argument. Yes, in a ICE vehicle you can reach your destination marginally faster (we're talking about an hour on an 11-hour trip up the I-95 corridor, in my experience), but is that actually an important factor? For 99.9% of trips that are within a couple hundred miles of home, travel time is the same. If time is such an important factor on a long road trip, you should probably just be flying instead. I would venture that the number of people that want to drive > 5 hours, and have a requirement to do so "as fast as humanly possible" is pretty small. In that regard, the Model 3 is a BEV that requires practically zero compromises for both day-to-day and long road trip travelling, which is primarily due to the money and effort Tesla has spent on building the SC network. For that reason, I would not consider another EV besides Tesla until other manufacturers (or whoever) puts their money where their mouths are and builds out a fast-charging infrastructure that enables such long-distance travel.
Charging is pretty fast if you run down the battery to say 10 - 20% and then charge only what you need at each supercharger along the way.
Overall it is a bit slower than an ICE car if the ICE car is not taking any breaks, but the other aspects of the car make this a very small price to pay.
Over time as the supercharger network gets faster and with free software updates the gap will narrow as well.
I quite like stopping at Tesla charging stations. They're generally in shopping areas with food and WiFi, and you can talk to other Tesla owners. It is like a new philosophy of traveling for me :)
Thank you
The Model 3 has plenty of physical buttons, even not counting the door buttons.
I don't mind hybrid approaches like the newer touchscreen capabilities on new BMW iDrive systems, but having physical buttons that I can feel and interact with without crashing is good UX design. Fwiw, you don't see high performance cars with an all touchscreen interface, because that'll be mental for the drivers under high vibrations.
The fact is that Tesla cars encourage distracted driving by forcing drivers to avert their eyes from the road and look at an LED screen every time they want to do something as simple as turn on the air conditioning.
Looking at the numbers, this is a hard no:
https://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/
Q4 2018:
Tesla Crushes Porsche & Jaguar Globally — 4th Quarter Sales Report
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/19/tesla-crushes-porsche-j...
And the charging infrastructure is not as closed as you are suggesting, as has been explained here repeatedly.
What does the I-Pace charging network look like right now? Do they have a map of current high speed chargers?
> stop lying to me about fully self-driving capabilities.
This is again hyperbolic and, ironically, dishonest if you understand what Tesla has actually been saying about FSD.
It seems every option is enumerated as its own physical switch, knob, or lever.
But to each his own, I guess.
More on the side of Tesla when it comes to interior minimalism and less buttons. Ideally, voice recognition should control almost everything, and that would be superior for both comfort and safety.
Why would it? Voice interaction is both slow and distracting compared to operating physical controls with fairly rapidly acquired muscle memory; I would expect voice interaction as the sole mode of control for any feature to reduce safety and utility (which, for many car features outside of basic driving controls, is comfort), and only be an improvement if otherwise there was no practical way to provide the feature.
EDIT: It may be debatable whether this falls in “no practical way”, but I definitely think a need for complex input (such as occurs in navigation) is, if not strictly included in that exception, its own exception.
Maybe for safety, definitely not for comfort. At least not for me. I hate voice interfaces - the first time I have to repeat myself to turn the volume up a little bit I will be wishing for a knob to turn instead.
Model 3 supports CCS - in Europe natively, in the US via an adapter. While I agree about the self-driving goal shifting they're doing, it's still the best driver assist out there and you can simply opt out of buying it.
So, I don't get it.
However, they have a single car plant and struggle with production and quality, after sales support and so on.
I wonder, as a thought experiment, if Tesla would be more successful if they become the OEM, providing their technology to the various car manufacturers. Something akin to Intel and computers, so that you can buy a car with Tesla inside. That will allow Tesla to focus on it's core strength and innovate while leaving the car manufacturing, QA, sales, support and such to traditional car companies.
Personally I think what would be best for Tesla (in a vacuum) is if they stopped trying to grow so quickly, and grew much like the other car manufacturers did, over a longer period of time, so that missteps and mistakes are speed bumps rather than mountains to get over.
Sadly I also think they can't afford to slow down, because if they do I really think the other larger car companies will eat their lunch.
Example: Trying to ramp up the 3 way too fast, and over-automating their production. Those were undoubtedly very expensive missteps, and if I recall, there were a bunch of top-level departures just before the 3's ramp-up. Where those people (rightly) telling Elon that his target was unreachable, or his method inappropriate, and getting fired for it? It sure looks like it...
Their last loan, they had to cut by $500 million due to lack of demand: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/elon-musk...
That doesn't seem like a company without turmoil either.
Again, as a thought experiment: Would customers not like a Mercedes/BMW/Lexus/Audi/Jag... with Tesla battery/drivetrain/superchargers but in a Mercedes/BMW/Lexus/Audi/Jag... car shell(for lack of a better word). I think I would love that, especially since (disclaimer: I do not own a Tesla), the Model S and 3 that I've sat in, seem very spartan from a luxury vehicle standpoint.
Moreover, to my other point: this will free Tesla to innovate like crazy on battery, charger, motor and drivetrain technology and perhaps attain a monopolistic lead , while in the car business I the competition is beginning to creep up. From a traditional car manufacturer's standpoint, this may allow them to stop spending on battery/drivetrain/superchargers/... technology and focus on making the car shell.
I want a quiet, comfortable car. It doesn't need the 7000 buttons that come in a new S-Class today.
But I don't want BMW to take a Model S drivetrain, and put their horrible nav system on it, their keyfobs, their UI. Part of what's so great about the Tesla is that I just walk up to it and get in, and it works. They've rethought enough of the car experience that it's hard for me to draw the line at what I'd want BMW to do.
I guess I'd want BMW... seats? and maybe interior finishes/colors? Maybe? A bit more thought into finishing the trunk? But certainly not just a BMW with a tesla battery and motor.
In particular, I think Tesla may be well positioned in terms of autonomy. Although Waymo and Cruise might have a more robust approach, they are taking their time. I see that Tesla is very serious about bringing the benefits of autonomy to market across all their vehicles.
No, no, and no. Would I like Mercedes/BMW/Lexus/Audi/Jaguar to have electric vehicles? Yes I absolutely would! But would you have over the air updates, a push towards self driving (even if they're not there yet!), and a very strong push towards sustainable manufacturing if Tesla was just an OHM that sold to those companies? You would not, because they have to cannibalize their own ICE business to fund / push their EVs. The world is better off with Tesla standing alone as a single company, whether or not they succeed.
As far as Merc/BMW/Lexus/Audi etc... they're all in the electric game now because tesla popularized it and proved the market. If they hadn't done that, its unlikely those brands would be releasing top luxury vehicles with electronic options now/in the near future.
Edit: autocorrect
Musks ambitions and outbursts strike me as a man who suffers from the top killer of successful entrepreneurs, The skill/talent portability fallacy. It's this idea because you did something similar well, that your ability should port to "things like it." Seems like Tesla is going to extend itself to death.
Except that Elon Musk has:
Completely disrupted online payments
Completely disrupted space travel
Completely disrupted automobiles.
It wouldn't matter if SpaceX and Tesla disappeared at this moment. The history books would still be written about how Tesla and SpaceX were the things that instigated the change.
I've only OWNED a Tesla for 6 months, but man it feels like the other manufacturers have been about to release a Tesla killer Real Soon Like Now for a whooole lot of years. I certainly don't think Tesla's lead is insurmountable, but it sure seems like the competition is doing its best to drop the ball.
Yes, decades and counting of nothing but vaporware and concept cars. Like this article from 2009:
https://www.wired.com/2009/12/audis-electric-e-tron-is-real-...
But, the electronics suck.
Some of the most talented chemical, physical materials and electrical engineers work for Musk’s companies.
You can just tell that Tesla’s were not designed with teams in silos. I don’t think car makers are currently capable of that.
For me the main question of Tesla is whether or not they can lower the cost fast enough to avoid having big manufacturers gobble up the low end of the market first. Volkswagen's MEB platform, for example, is set to come online with about 150,000 vehicles in 2020, a projected range around 300 miles, and cost in the $21,000 area. Will Tesla's still be nicer? Very likely. Will that matter? Not to people looking to spend under $30,000 for the their next car.
[1] https://www.inc.com/wanda-thibodeaux/the-inventor-of-lithium...
This seems like one of these sentences which you kind of miss on the first read and many years later when you wonder "what happened to that wonder battery?" "Remember the cathode we thought was almost done? Turns out it wasn't." Until they have produced that thing at scale it is still part of a long list of research products in the battery sector, which may never be available.
If the cars keep most of their capacity that long, it won't matter all that much to the average consumer that Tesla keeps theirs better. I'm not saying Tesla wouldn't have a place in the market, only that other manufacturers are showing the potential to eat up most of the lower end market before Tesla ever gets there.
[0]https://www.autotrader.com/car-shopping/buying-car-how-long-...
https://interestingengineering.com/new-lithium-ion-battery-b...
There are some nice teardowns comparing T's battery system vs. the BMW i3 and Bolt showing the substantial differences/advantages in tech.
I'm not discounting their chances, I'm just saying it's very, very far from an automatic win for them. Far from a pivot to OEM, I'd be more inclined to bet that one of the big manufacturers that is lagging on EV's acquires them.
Isn't the battery tech, at least in significant part, licensed, non-exclusively, from Panasonic?
> I wonder, as a thought experiment, if Tesla would be more successful if they become the OEM, providing their technology to the various car manufacturers.
Possibly, on an expected value basis, but Tesla is being run on a swing for the fences basis not a maximizing expected value basis.
It's producing the whole battery unit that's the hard part. Toyota gets their automatic transmissions from another company.
Or to Apple/Google. While I'm a big fan, I fail to see how they become a dominant player in the industry, especially when most of their much larger competitors have committed to producing similar cars. Transportation as a service seems like it has more room for growth.
https://insideevs.com/insight-toyota-tesla-partnership-marre...
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15340139/bye-bye-baby-b-m...
I would guess that Tesla's trade secrets are equally or a lot more valuable, and perhaps pertain to manufacturing processes, than their patents.
They reinvented the electric as a cool, sexy, fast and popular vehicle. Without that I imagine many other manufacturers would never have made the changes they're making now for electrics.
The only thing Tesla has is some form of self driving, and that won't be enough.
The touchscreen allows for amazing software updates and looks cleaner. The most important functions are on the steering wheel and the - pretty great - voice control available via a press of one of the wheels on the steering wheel.
My perspective is that these issues will continue.
1. Tesla closed a severe number of their stores. All sales-staff thought they were going to be fired, but then Elon Musk reversed his decision. In effect: Tesla's sale staff has low morale due to boneheaded moves by Tesla leadership.
2. Tesla's future sales strategy is still a big question. Will Tesla push "online only"? If so, all of these salespeople should be looking for a new job, before the next round of layoffs. Tesla has done nothing to satisfy its sales staff. Rumor is that the commissions program was also severely cut during the whole process.
3. Tesla has had dramatic price cuts throughout Q1. We all knew they needed to do this as they lost the Tax Credit, but I think most people hoped that the price cuts would have worked. $2000 off of all vehicles in January, the "release" of the $35k Model 3 (except none have been delivered yet), etc. etc.
4. Tesla changed their sales policies to be far more forgiving to customers in Q1. Customers can return a vehicle as long as its under 1000 miles and before a week is up (allegedly anyway. I dunno how the process works). In any case, the price drops + very forgiving sales policies are trying to court more buyers. But... all of this resulted in 30% fewer sales in the Quarter (compared to last quarter). So Tesla was unable to counteract the drop in demand.
5. The $3750 US Tax Credit runs out in June, and is halved again to only $1375. Other cars, like Honda Clarity, still have the full $7500 tax credit, and are available at $33,000 (under the $35k Model 3, which isn't even being delivered yet). The competition is picking up, and the competition still has all of the tax credits available.
I decided I'd rather lose money due to my own decisions and loaded up on AAPL instead which ended up being recouping my losses and then some. I basically limit myself to major tech co's since that's where I see the consolidation of wealth ending up which has proven to be a smart bet so far. As long as I have good convictions about a company I'm happy to invest directly, maybe in retirement when I stop caring enough to follow companies closely I may consider a managed fund with a proven track record to diversify the risk.
I would be focusing on bonds indexes right now though, that's just me. Good luck with the lifetime win/loss if you keep this up.
That's different from an index fund.
You can see this as “they are good at overcoming problems” or as “there’s always something going wrong.” I tend to see it more as the former but seeing it as the latter may be a sensible explanation for the stock movements.
Which is literally the truth in any business, in any industry: there is always a major problem, and a plethora of smaller ones to boot. Whether it's the competitors gaining up, the market undergoing a fundamental shift, the economy slowing down or the costs of materials and labor going up, there's always flux. Just as well there is always some waste that could and should be improved upon.
The key difference is that some companies burn through (squander?) capital and resources to paper over the problems - to signal "good health" - while other companies cut close to the wire and allocate the capital and resources to where they will the most effective, dealing with problems when and where they become pressing.
Firstly, many of Tesla's problems are self-inflicted. How much time and capital was wasted on the alien dreadnought? How much damage has been caused by the constant turnover in management, or the whipsaw changes in price structure and product offerings, or the likely ill-fated decision to double down on computer vision rather than use LIDAR? One mistake we can quantify is the disastrous $2.6 billion related-party acquisition of SolarCity.
And even problems which are not necessarily self-inflicted wounds, like their cashflow problems or quality issues which possibly any upstart time-constrained car manufacturer might face, are not any less problematic for that fact. As an investor it doesn't matter whether quality issues would happen to another electric car startup; they're happening to Tesla. Their competition actually does know how to build cars to spec, and they're coming out with their own electric models. And their stock comes free of childish bickering with the SEC or critically risky solvency status or desperate and deceptive PR stunts like solar roofs or underground tunnels.
As a car company/hardware company, I'd also argue Tesla is simply in a much tighter, harder to succeed-in industry than the other tech companies, who get ridiculous revenue for doing unethical practices with user data for basically zero marginal cost.
Finally, keep in mind that Tesla is BEV, and there are many, many well-paid opponents of BEV in the USA and elsewhere. Tesla is purposefully disrupting the bottom lines of oil and ICE companies, that is not going to be met with fair coverage in all press outlets.
The mistake in your analysis is believing this is a delivery issue, not one of demand.
>Lately, I have seen specifically with Tesla that short-term concerns have been dragging down the stock way too much.
Wait, what? This company was at one time bigger than Ford and GM based entirely on future expectations. Yet you think the share price is driven by short-term concerns???
> Tsla was always storing cars at 761 but not this many
Production is up, ergo returns are up.
The count of units returned is useless without normalizing it against the units produced. Of course, even with that it's likely a bad score for Tesla. There have been many public reports of poor quality product leaving the factory because of Tesla's challenges scaling up production. These returns are just the inevitable outcome from those earlier reports.
[1] https://www.autoblog.com/2019/04/02/auto-sales-decline-march...
https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/4/2/18292752/ford...
They’re clearly staying in the car market.
Instead, they realized that gas guzzling midrange sedans don’t sell anymore, and killed those off. That lets them focus on smaller and larger vehicles, which is where the demand is.
I don’t agree with the concept of forming a high-level conclusion about the general nature of a source of information, and then using that to argue that you should not separately carefully analyze disparate pieces of content from that source.
>we had only delivered half of the entire quarter’s numbers by March 21, ten days before end of quarter
>This caused a large number of vehicle deliveries to shift to the second quarter. At the end of the first quarter, approximately 10,600 vehicles were in transit to customers globally.
I'll be the first to admit I know fuck all about the financial stuff and how this normally works, but that seems like a reasonable explanation for the lower numbers. Especially since the 10k cars "in transit" is like 1/6th their total deliveries that quarter.
I'd be curious to see hard numbers on how many of those deliveries were shifted to Q2, but i'm guessing we won't get that info until after Q2 is done?
I should also point out that Musk's reiterated guidance of 500,000 cars this year is absolutely absurd at this point.
Tesla still doesn't want to sell $35K 3's, they've still got huge delays on those. And of course there's soft demand for $55K 3's, $85K S's and $100K X's in a market that includes $35K 3's. It's the mix of $35K 3's they sell that indicates demand while they're production constrained, and that number is still essentially zero, so I'm still confident they can sell as many 3's as they can build this year.
The question is how many of those cars will be the $35K 3, and if they can make any profit on a mix that includes a large number of $35K 3's.
With regards to the 35k TM3, the SR+ is such a superior deal that its a wonder they can make money on it. However for those in the market for any car, if less an five percent difference is make or break you are already in the wrong price range.
What is interesting that the Bolt, Soul, Niro, and Kona, are all priced the same or higher than a SR with models exceeding even the SR+. I think Tesla should have just taken the PR hit and dropped the SR for the SR+.
Still Tesla's problem may actually be an industry problem, as in EV enthusiasm is not near as high as many claim it to be and the market will quickly saturate for the lower end, as in 50k and below.
At this rate the company will not exist very long even if they make the best car. Why is Tesla so incompetent when it comes to logistics when others do not have these issues? Who is in charge?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxSQuGeoug8
Rapid expansion? I can't think of another car company doing nearly 400% year-on-year sales growth like Tesla has.
"We count a produced but undelivered vehicle to be in transit if the related customer has placed an order or paid the full purchase price for such vehicle."
It sounds like it is count as sold, but not delivered. Production was 77100 which leaves about 3500 cars as both unsold and undelivered.
That is only about half a week of production, but at the same time it implies softness in overall demand compared to the past.
I see a lot of value on what Musk is trying to achieve, but I think he would have way more credibility if he just stopped overpromising and under delivering.
I'm starting to believe people post more and more about Tesla because of that.
Tesla gets just as many posts and upvotes when it has actual good news.
You overestimate how many people here are willing to shell out those amounts of money for vehicle, and how practical it actually is. Yes, it is a future and whatnot and a lot of cool tech.
But for say 20k euro I can have 5 year old BMW 3-er wagon. Yes, not new car, but I get 95% of the car for 1/3-1/4 of the cost. Much better fun to drive (I care much more about handling/cornering than 0-60 numbers), much more practical. I can travel 1500km in a single push with 5-10 minute breaks just to refill/stretch - done it quite a few times, not the main use by any means, but car unable to do this reasonably is at the end useless to me.
I might be outlier, but even in uber-rich place like Switzerland, Tesla is a rare sight. They are much common where government aggressively subsidizes specifically this type of vehicle.
EVs have become quite commonplace all over the Front Range of CO, even in the less rich places. Teslas, Bolts, Volts, etrons, and Electric Fords are really common here. I don't think this is exclusive to this area, as I was just in LA, and they're everywhere there too.
Whether it's the urge to help reduce carbon emissions, or have the newest coolest thing, people are willing to shell out those amounts for a vehicle, regardless of how practical it is.
EV's were 2.1% of new-car sales last year in the US. That's nearly doubling the 1.2% share from last year, and that is great growth.
But that still means 98% of new cars last year weren't. And with the average car on the road being ~12 years old, EV's are still practically a rounding error in the actual vehicle fleet.
The 3.6L V6 / and ZF eight speed transmission are battle tested - we're five years into the current Grand Cherokee iteration, they've mostly worked out the issues. The volume of TSBs (technical service bulletins - http://wk2jeeps.com/wk2_tsb.htm) are way lower vs. the launch model year.
I haven't had any quality issues, although it's early. I would never buy the first (and maybe even second) model year for any OEM, but especially FCA - that part I would agree with. Wait until year three.
Your statement is pretty closed minded.
What if they just like the car enough they're willing to put up with the unreliability? That's like suggesting people who buy new cars are all idiots because the depreciation is much worse.
Different people are allowed to have different priorities and tastes.
People in glass cars shouldn't throw stones...
Have you seen the Tesla reliability reports? (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/10/24/tesla-...) They're even worse than Jeep's reliability reports, and Jeep's excuse is that they make cars for off-roading and other extreme activities that place heavier demands on the car's parts and frame. Tesla makes...road cars.
Is that really true?
I can't speak for everyone on HN obviously but I don't make enough to spend that much on a car. If I were willing to spend that much there are other cars I'd much rather get personally but that's besides the point.
Also given the relative infancy of EVs compared to gasoline powered cars now I would expect the pace of advances to be much better which fares poorly for depreciation.
I used to think that the big car companies weren't able to bring a competitive EV to market because they were bigger than Tesla and bogged down in layers of management.
Now I'm wondering if Tesla was just over marketed and overly ambitious entering the market and if these later entry EVs from main stream car companies in the next few years will be just as good at a fraction of the price.
EDIT: to clarify, I'm not comparing the price of EVs, but the price of a Tesla vs the price of a traditional gas-powered car. If I was only willing to buy an EV, then yes Tesla looks like a great deal.
Chevy has the Bolt out now at the same price as the SR+ Model 3, and it's absurd how bad the Bolt looks in comparison. The range is the same, but the exterior, performance, and charging capabilities are dramatically inferior to Model 3.
The only other competition debuting in the near future is the Nissan Leaf Plus, which costs more than the Model 3 SR, and has all the issues of the Bolt on top of the fact that its battery isn't even actively cooled, which is terrifying for battery longevity.
The most expensive Toyota Camry barely tops $30k[0], and the vast majority sells for less. So ultimately, mainstream electric cars will have to compete in this space (and probably without tax credits, unfortunately.)
I only have one anecdote - my co-worker bought a Model 3, and it was over $60k. That's a luxury! I'm a reasonably well-paid software guy, but I've never spent more than $29k on a car. Currently I drive a hatchback that I bought nearly new for under $20k. So I'm stuck looking at the Nissan Leaf as my option for an electric car, and it would probably work if I kicked my wife out of the garage and installed a charger there. But I'm hesitant to go from a Mazda 3 to a Leaf.
[0] https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/2019-Toyota-Camry-Price-c27940
Even the cheapest ICE cars sold in the US have trouble hitting that number... That just seems like a completely unreasonably high bar to hold EVs to at this point since things like batteries are so much more expensive than an ICE engine.
I agree that a decent EV for that price is just not practical yet, but cheap ICE cars have no trouble hitting it.
Tesla is in a business where many customers just want to pay their money and drive away with a car. Not "preorder" and wait for months. If they get it right, you'll order on line and the car will show up in a few days. The loaner should show up the day you order.
a car is one of the largest investments an average person will make. i love that i'm not going to be hustled by a car salesman (the archetype of the sleazy conman) and can make decisions independently when buying a tesla.
honestly a few months seems really reasonable given the time spent making the decision?
If your current car is not usable you don't have a few months. This does not just apply to people who drive beater cars -- your nice, well-maintained car could get totaled in an accident tomorrow and you'll need to get a new car.
Obviously it is not good to be car shopping in those circumstances but sometimes you don't have a choice. You could buy or lease a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt this afternoon, or you could wait several months for a Tesla.
Because I'm not buying a car for fun, I'm buying one because my old beater is giving up the ghost.
> a car is one of the largest investments an average person will make.
A car is not an investment. It's an expense.
> i love that i'm not going to be hustled by a car salesman (the archetype of the sleazy conman) and can make decisions independently when buying a tesla.
The last time I bought a (used) car, I walked into a dealership, told the salesman what model I wanted, and asked him to show me his inventory. I looked at some cars, test-drove one, he told me to make an offer, I did, and paid cash.
I had to deal with exactly zero upsell pressure, all of five minutes of haggling, and to say 'no' twice to an offer to finance.
Be upfront about what you want, that you're ready to buy if you like what you see, and don't take any bullshit. Your dealership experience will be much better for it.
Car Salesmen like a fast-and-efficient customer. The faster they deal with you, the faster they can move to a different customer. Come in efficient, and you'll be treated fine.
Didn’t realize how agressive expansion was. Tesla seems like it has not exceeded its ability to repay debt but is taking increasing risks despite making electric car market viable.
Building a semi prototype I guess is different than buying supercapacitator company for limitless recharge (prius style super capacitor battery to augment lithium ion power source) and building factories to actually build thousands of vehicles and now their batteries (Panasonic might lose monopoly)
Integrated battery manufacture alongside vehicles/power users could be next step towards decreased costs.
Tesla -30% (90,700 to 63,000) (deliveries)
Bolt -30% (6212 to 4316) (sold)
Leaf -33% (4029 to 2685) (sold)
1. A federal defense contractor, that is blatantly breaking a federal law.
2. Is firing people for doing the same thing that he himself is doing.
It's the poster child for privilege, in the old nobility 'the law doesn't apply to me' sense of the word. You should be outraged about that... That is, if you believe in the rule of law.
There is a huge price gap between the 3 and the S now and the differences between the cars is so slight that it doesn't make sense to buy an S today. Even worse the S and X haven't had their interior update yet so they look old compared to the 3.
There are 3 million EVs on the road today, of which around 2 million reside in China
Q1 2019: 63,000
Q1 2018: 29,980
Q1 2017: 25,000
Q1 2016: 14,820
Q1 2015: 10,045
Q1 2014: 6,457
Q1 2013: 4,900
Q1 2012: 0
Visual chart: https://twitter.com/EcoHeliGuy/status/1113648662054199297
Nobody is mentioning the tax credit either..
So when buying a car, I look for cheap and reliable, less likely to be victimized, definitely used (why pay for a smell?), with enough space to move the crap that requires the vehicle in the first place.
Point being, this is one reason those Hondas sell. I could buy a Tesla, but the idea of dumping a bunch of money on something I don't enjoy is about as attractive to me as buying a designer platinum drain snake.
That's $45k somebody has to take a loan for and pay a higher monthly payment for than the supposed "$35k after savings!". The savings are complete and utter lie. After you pay interest on that $10k extra you borrowed you lose.
If you buy the car outright in cash, sure, you'll see a savings. But that percentage of the population able to afford such a purchase is small and dwindling.
No it's not. The Standard Range Model 3 is $35K up front and $27k with their (ridiculous) estimated savings.
The $35k Tesla is $35k before any rebates or savings are taken into account.
The $35k Tesla has a price after estimated savings of $24,450 in Massachusetts.
$24,450
$6,250 of that savings is in the form of a $3,750 tax credit and a $2,500 check.
So even if you factor in zero fuel cost savings the purchase price after rebates is $28,750.
Stunningly inexpensive for an EV. This is lower TCO than Accord or Camry.
After a few years of people seeing them around, and them appearing in reliability surveys etc, that may change.
Although with their dealership/internet only sales plan up in the air at the moment, that still may not make a difference, because I still can't see my grandparents buying a car off the internet.
Car enthusiasts won't get a Tesla because Tesla's ARE inferior to the competition at that price point.
You don't buy a Tesla because you want your car to work for 2 years without breaking, you buy a Tesla to show friends.
I know luxury Ford products sold 20k/yr, and those were some seriously high end SUVs. Same price point.
I cannot see how Teala is sustainable.
Edit, the reliability problems aren't unique to Tesla, any new car has them. I don't understand why people straight lie about it not having reliability issues.
”This thing is magnificent, a little rainbow-farting space ship, so obviously representative of the next step in the history of autos.”
Tesla’s are also very reliable, despite what CR would have you believe. Owner satisfaction is higher for Tesla than any other car, even Porsche 911 and Corvettes. CR admits that owners would not be satisfied with unreliable cars, and then ding TM3 for touchscreen glitches.
Actually, my touchscreen did freeze several times last year under the original firmware. There was an issue where the internet radio streaming would stall if LTE dropped out just as you were skipping a track. They fixed it at the end of last year and the screen hasn’t stalled even once since that OTA update.
My TM3 literally just got 5% faster due to an OTA update this week, because Tesla decided they had too much margin in their motor design.
Finally, the TCO of a RWD standard range Model 3 is lower than a Honda Accord. These cars have a bad reputation for being expensive. My friends ask me how I could possibly afford a car that will ultimately cost less than a $35k ICE vehicle.
[1] - https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-ever-review-of-the-tesla-...
So you're looking at a company that just lost, $1+ Billion in one quarter. Tesla had $3 Billion in cash about half-a-year ago, but that's a LOT of its warchest that just evaporated.
Tesla seems to have screwed itself over: the Model Y hype may be destroying the Model 3 demand. The Model 3 is a sedan, and sedans are selling very, very poorly in the USA (across the board: Ford and GM have eradicated their sedan lines). Tesla should have worked on and released the Y first into the lucrative SUV market... but I guess no one can blame them for failing to have a crystal ball.
The drop in demand is very worrying for sure. Tesla is supposed to be a growth company, and a 30% drop in deliveries is anything but growth.
Don’t think of a share price as speculation, think of it as speculating about other people’s speculations.
On the other hand, a company with zero self-driving cars in the hands of consumers is supposedly being values in capital raises at $75 billion, while VW is about to pour $50 billion into their EV efforts. Tesla is way ahead of them in adopted augmented driving, battery chemistry (which is theirs, not Panasonics) and electric drivetrains.
In terms of cars, absolutely. The Model 3 SR+ is awesome. I have a MR and love it.
With my resume out of the way: if you have to ask on Hacker News whether or not to buy TSLA, then don't. A lot of what drives that price up or down is drama, not financials or technical charting. If you like to buy your stocks based on what the Kardashians are up to this week, maybe pick up 100 shares. But seriously, just stay the hell away. You want to roll dice right now, go buy BA.
The best move is to not play. There are literally thousands of other companies in the public market that are actually run by decent people. Musk clearly wants to "burn the shorts" and is willing to go to war with anyone who takes the bear bet.
That's fine, just don't play the game at all. Buy and sell stocks from a more reputable company.
Wait a second, so this isn't a year-over-year number? Don't shipments of basically everything fluctuate seasonally? Is this even a meaningful metric?
Alas, the paywall prevents me from knowing. But in general "people buy 31% more high end cars around the holidays" doesn't seem like a clearly incorrect hypothesis.
It seems that Power Stations + Millions of Tons of mining for rare earth minerals must make this a mega-polluter?
As the cost of solar + wind + static storage drop, the more renewable energy sources are used to power factories. The more renewable source used to power factories, the greater the impact on the vehicle. In this, Tesla leads the way.
* Does the authors CO2 estimates for battery production actually include "mining" or just "assembly"? From reading it, it seems to just include assembly of final components into a battery.
* Moving tons of rare-earth minerals from Point A to Point B for battery production requires yet more CO2 output.
* Wind + Solar still requires massive batteries somewhere, which still requires massive mining operations.
Further, with $40 shale oil now a reality, its getting harder to make the economic case.
You pay for software all the time?
Those who don't want to be killed or injured when the autopilot steers into a wall or oncoming traffic?