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Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

Tesla is the cause of the current record sales of EVs in Norway, per TFA;

> In 2018, Norway’s fully electric car sales rose to a record 31.2 percent market share from 20.8 percent in 2017, far ahead of any other nation, and buyers had to wait as producers struggled to keep up with demand.

> The surge of electric cars to a 58.4 percent market share in March came as Tesla ramped up delivery of its mid-sized Model 3...

30% -> 60% is no small feat, and is due to the Model 3 availability, and the more widely accessible price point of TM3.

IMO the Leaf is a compromise car you choose in order to get an EV, whereas the TM3 is a better car in almost every way than anything else on the market, which also happens to be EV.

Although many of its advantages are made possible by being EV, they are not inherent advantages of being EV. That is to say, being EV is necessary but not sufficient to built a car with the myriad advances of the TM3.

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Tesla performs this stunt constantly. What they do is they don't deliver any cars for months at a time, whether because they can't or choose not to I don't know. Then they dump all the backorders on some small nation all at once and put out a press release about how they are the best-selling car in that place because they recognized a year of sales in a single month.

March was crazy - over 5,000 TM3s registered.

Versus 705 TM3 registrations in May, 424 so far in June.

YTD is ~8,000 TM3 vs 3,700 Leaf.

Yes that's true, I should have said that they begin delivering cars after a long time of booking orders. Look at the number of Tesla Model 3s that were registered in various countries prior to March 2019.

The most interesting thing to watch will be how sales progress over the first full year of deliveries in each market.

Obviously the first quarter will be a rush of deliveries in each market as the backlog clears. Then there will be a trough where everyone who was an early adopter has got theirs and the late majority starts to consider all these TM3s they see scooting around.

How quickly Tesla recovers from the trough and how high the long term market share will go is absolutely the Billion dollar question.

Reportedly strong demand this quarter in North America points to the TM3 potentially having broad appeal beyond the EV zealots, but it’s very much too early to tell.

If you know the answer to this question, it’s the difference between TSLA at $10 and TSLA at $500. I have my own opinion, and I put some money on it. But I’m a TM3 owner, I absolutely adore the machine, and I think it’s 5 years ahead of any competition and is going to absolutely clean up as people realize it’s sensational to drive, it doesn’t actually cost $80k (can’t tell you how many people I’ve talk to that think that) and in particular the long term TCO is actually downright economical.

Total TM3 registrations for 2019 is 7973, which is exactly GPs point. There was a big rush of deliveries in March.

For May, the Volkswagen e-Golf outsold the TM3 by 25%.

Which is playing the same Beta game. Would it be fair to just go by the YTD then?

Why would YTD be any fairer? By not being able to deliver, Tesla caused a massive backlog that they fulfill this year. Had they been able to deliver in December 2018, YTD would look much worse.

There is no perfect comparison and there never will be. Having said that, YTD would at least smooth out the month to month fluctuations caused by Tesla's supply and shipment schedule.

Arguably a reasonable approach might be to throw away the month that Tesla had its highest deliveries but still use the sum of all other months.

There’s a ton of options to make the stats better comparable. What I primarily wanted to point out is that an arbitrary cutoff point skews the stats. For any cutoff point you choose to make your point I can pick another. An interesting comparison would be the 2nd,3rd,4th month of sales of the 2019 leaf vs the model 3. But the leaf isn’t shipping to Europe yet afaics.

But total is ~8k model 3 VS 54k leaf. People wanting a leaf could already buy one, while model 3 customers could only preorder. So these stats over a short timeframe only tell us that newer models sell better and that delivery of preorders skews the stats massively.

Now you’re comparing total lifetime sales numbers for a model car that just started shipping in a market this February with a model that’s been shipping since, what, 2010?

Of course there’s nothing stopping Nissan from introducing a new upgraded Leaf in 2019. Maybe they did?

> Of course there’s nothing stopping Nissan from introducing a new upgraded Leaf in 2019. Maybe they did?

Yes they did. And it starts shipping to european customers this summer as per <1>. So you’re comparing preorder shipment numbers for tesla model 3 with previous gen leafs when a model refresh is coming and the new model can actually already be preordered. And the leaf still is not far behind in May.

<1> https://europe.nissannews.com/en-GB/releases/release-90b1ce8...

Could it also be a simple result of the cars coming in a giant ship all at once? I'm not sure how many cars fit in one of those ships, but I'd guess quite a few..

Meh, these monthly fluctuations are dominated by noise, especially when expressed as "percentage of total sales". You get both the variation in EV sales and in ICE sales influencing.

Look at the trends in the absolute numbers over time:

https://elbilstatistikk.no/

Great link, thanks! Do they have monthly stats for each car in a single table? Can’t find it in mobile.

Is there a YTD Total EV vs Total ICE?

It looks like total yearly sales for all types in Norway is ~150k/year. 6 months into the year, electric is at ~33k total. However you look at it, this is a tiny market.

I’d be generally cautious with month-to-month stats. Tesla has many preorders and only started really fulfilling the european ones in March. So hey could easily have gamed the stats by shifting many February sales to March.

>IMO the Leaf is a compromise car you choose in order to get an EV, whereas the TM3 is a better car in almost every way than anything else on the market,

This is definitely your opinion.

Experts agree that Tesla is a low quality luxury vehicle.

Fans love it, but this is a known phenomenon with Jeep owners too. Jeep owners will forgive problems where other users would not.

Ah, yes, experts.

Yes, experts who have driven many cars, from many manufacturers at many price points over many years. Or you can go with the anonymous HackerNews account.

Substitute “experts” with “anyone who has sat in a high end Audi, BMW or Mercedes”

Teslas are fun to drive but awful to sit in.

I've been siting in one for the past 18 months and 16,000 miles. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that you're completely wrong here!

Did you compare it to a similarly priced BMW or Mercedes?

I’ve spent a plenty of time in all of them, the Tesla interior feels more like a Toyota than the German manufacturers.

It is outselling every other luxury car on the market right now, so if by “fans” you mean “car buyers” then I guess I agree?

The WSJ review I read last year on the TM3 does not consider it “low quality”. I believe their words were “rainbow farting unicorn”.

For a more recent example, the TM3 beat out the M3 in, of all places, Top Gear.

Polarizing, to be sure. “Low quality” is, erm, highly opinionated. I would say it’s strictly better than my previous car (an Infinit) in every conceivable way. And yet, there are some people who say the panel gaps are a millimeter too wide.

My wife’s GL450 does ride smoother, and it certainly is cozy (heated, ventilated, and massager seats?!) but then again, at 40k miles and a few months out of warranty I’m bringing her car to the shop tomorrow because the air suspension is indicating a “Malfunction”. Any guess on how much that’s going to run? Probably the GL450 is simply not a car you can reasonably own outside of warranty.

I do have a bit of a similar concern about if the TM3 could fail in some unexpected and highly expensive fashion, as it’s a brand new platform, but only time will tell and so far it’s been flawless. The expensive parts also have excellent warranty coverage.

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