This figure makes me wonder how other car manufacturers are able to generate demand. Honda alone sells 1m+ cars per year in the US. For all the news, Tesla will likely make 400k deliveries during entire year around the world.
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.
Honda Clarity begs to differ.
> And then when you do need to drive 200+ miles in a day, which for most people is a handful of days a year, you can use chargers which add 100 miles in 10 minutes.
Not as good as a "charger" (Gas Station) that adds 300 miles in 2 minutes.
If your car always starts each day with 250 miles range, stopping to charge outside of the house is a rare ocurrence. Having a break for 20 minutes rather than 5 minutes after 3 hours of driving, a handful of times each year, isn’t my idea of a dealbreaker.
The big problem as I say is the extent of the network, especially in rural areas. Most of the adoption over the next 5-10 years will likely be in cities and suburbs.
To go pure electric would mean giving up this yearly family tradition for our summer road-trips. We'd have to change the stop to fit the car (ie: find a new spot closer to a supercharger). That's definitely not worth the hassle.
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We stop for 30+ minutes by the way for food and mental breaks while driving. But the LOCATION we stop at could be a national park, a mall, little towns we've grown to love, etc. etc.
A few of those locations DO have superchargers. But the majority of them do NOT. As such, a pure electric car would force us to give up family road-trip traditions.
> I’m talking about EV’s in general, Honda Clarity is another decent example.
Honda Clarity has 47 mile all-electric range, and 300-mile range on the gas generator. It can perpetually exist on gasoline. But typical day trips to and from work can likely be within the all-electric range.
It won't go onto gas-generator mode unless the battery gets low. Something like this vehicle would work for my family.
Where I am, 300 miles will get you almost across the country, so it’s a different calculation from yours!
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.
See: https://teslanomics.co/tesla-model-3-fuel-savings-calculator...
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.
The model 3 is (to within a couple of cm) the same size and class as the Audi A4 and BMW 3-series. And I can assure you that they are very very common cars here.
Likewise, the X is similar to (say) the Audi Q7, the BMW X5, and the Porsche Cayenne, and again, those are pretty common.
So I don't have the beginning of a clue as to why you are laughing. If you are French then you probably live in an affluent neighborhood. I suspect you live in a different country with different car habits.
It still leaves me with a lot of questions about Model X and S, but I think there are more reasonable theories there than a demand cliff.
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-...
In addition someone who typically buys top Mercedes model that uses 15 liters of gasoline per 100 kilometers every 3 years, buys new iPhone every two years, flyes 5 times a year to spend holidays in a beautiful but distant locations simple does not give a crap about climate changes. That is obviously such person is very pro-eco and wants to fight climate changes (verbally) and even donates some anti global warming foundation and advocates strict CO emission regulations (especially in developing countries) but the last thing such person would do is to restrict its own consumption.
There are plenty of higher quality electric vehicles.
The acceleration is one tiny aspect of customer satisfaction.
Tesla has worst in class interiors and reliability. Not having buttons or trays is something only Tesla can get away with.
Is it better for the environment to buy a used car? Or better for the environment to buy a new car?
You need to realize that other people have different priorities than you do. Not everyone cares that their car be as luxury as possible. They just want a good electric vehicle, and there's nothing that beats the Model 3 at that price point -- not in range and not in performance. Yeah, maybe it doesn't have leather seats as nice as the BMW, but most people don't prioritize surface-level luxury above all else, and especially not hardware/car nerds.
Perhaps you should have a personal experience with them before going around just repeating what you read somewhere or from your imagination.
Slow down there.
Not everyone cares about climate change.
The _only_ reason I got a Tesla was for the acceleration and social status. With the Model 3, status has been diluted. Is climate change happening and being accelerated by humans? Yes. Do I care? No. I'm actually selling my P3D and switching to a Porsche 911 because of the Tesla brand dilution.
Disclaimer: I work at Google.
For other people who like speed and performance, Tesla's are the cheapest way to get there.
I generally like Teslas but unfortunately they were not meant to be driven at high speeds for what other people consider as a normal period of time, as can be seen for example in this YT video [1] of a Tesla's battery over-heating after driving at 190-200 kph on the German autobahn. Their 0-to-100 kph times are excellent, though.
It's not an insane speed, a new VW Golf can handle 170-180 kph pretty damn well, hell, my 12-year old 1.4l hatchback can do 130-140 kph for hours at a time quite as well, too.