Tesla cuts car prices by up to $5k | Hacker News Reader

Tesla cuts car prices by up to $5k

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88 pointsxoxoy107 comments

Makes sense. Model Y is picking up steam. I doubt they are selling 100% production of the other models (Y is eating a bit into sales of all 3). S and X are both in need of a refresh, they have worse battery tech than both the 3 and Y and missing some of the cool Y features (heat pump, octovalve).

Current wait is 8-12 weeks on a Y, and only a week or two on the rest.

In line for my first Tesla (a y). It has been a very different car buying experience!!

There's a couple areas where Tesla needs help, and the two I've experience so far waiting for my Y is logistics & customer service.

They've had extremely lousy communication so far with the delivery.

I was originally supposed to have the car on Memorial Day, but they called the day before saying it wasn't in WA (where I live) yet. When I called back on Memorial Day and asked where it actually was, they told me it got on a truck that morning. Logistically, if they knew the car wasn't getting on a semi anytime soon, why could I schedule a delivery appointment?

Yesterday, they re-scheduled my delivery (which is supposed to now be tomorrow) from the service center to a direct home delivery without notifying me. Of course, I had to call them to confirm and ask whether they were going to try and fit a semi truck on the narrow city streets where I live or if they were going to drive the car itself to me, but the delivery specialist has no clue.

Hopefully things go as planned tomorrow and there isn't another delay, but the communication so far has been worse than my experience dealing with a regular car dealership.

That being said, I'm looking forward to the Y and there's a reason I'm buying a Tesla instead of something else. I can't complain too much since the timing of the delivery (as long as it isn't delayed too much more...) is fantastic since my existing lease ends in a week, but I'm looking forward to actually driving it and forgetting about this headache.

If Tesla figures out the logistics & customer support (and QC...), they'll be worlds ahead in the buying experience, but for now most other car dealers coddle you much more (with the exception of the negotiation process).

I'm not trying to excuse their poor communication, I think the problem is that they have given the Tesla Stores a lot of autonomy in managing deliveries. That means the mothership is reliant on the Stores for status updates.

That autonomy has benefits for some. In my case, our Model 3 was initially scheduled to be delivered to a Tesla Store an hour from our house. We called to see if we could have it delivered to the location 15 minutes away, they instead offered to deliver it to our home.

The weekend before delivery we received a call from the location 15 minutes away saying they had the car and we could pick it up immediately if we didn't want to wait for them to arrange delivery.

It seems highly dependent on which service center and who is assigned to you. I places two orders early this year and the first one the guy didn’t really respond to my emails at all but the second one was very responsive and proactive.

Regardless they really really need to work on this.

I actually have never received a pro-active contact from a human delivery specialist (so, do I even have anyone assigned to me?), via call, text, or email.

The only call I've actually gotten from them was from the actual service center telling me that the car wasn't there yet.

This morning has been a fun game of phone tag to figure out why the delivery was switched and who can confirm exactly how the car is going to be delivered :) Oddly, each person seems to have some bit of information that the other didn't have, even within the same role.

At one point they had CSRs that would manage you and it was similarly unresponsive.

Having dealt with automotive service centers for 30+ years, it's just something I've come to expect. Some people are proactive, some people are reactive, and some people just don't give a flip.

Good luck! Tesla's are marvels of technology, but the lockdown they have on maintenance and repair -- which includes extremely high costs -- is enough to shy me away until we get a 'right-to-repair' law.

There is hardly any maintenance on them. I had a minor wind noise issue when I first got it that they took care of in a couple hours. Since then, it’s been washer fluid and tires.

The kinds of routine maintenance and repair items you typically don’t want to take your car to a dealer for aren’t much of a thing on a Tesla. Then there are the big ones where you probably do want the dealer working on it. Like if some significant mechanical problem occurs I want Tesla working on it. Not to mention, a lot of the more expensive repairs are going to be covered by warranty or insurance anyway. Sure, they’re expensive, but so is everyone else.

If you bought a new or new-ish Ford and there was a mechanical failure would you want to take it to a Ford shop or a random mechanic? Yes, there’s a significant number of people in the latter group, but they’re going to feel that way no matter what they drive. Most of them probably don’t buy new cars because of it. Many people who buy new cars either don’t care or actually prefer to go to the dealer.

> Not to mention, a lot of the more expensive repairs are going to be covered by warranty or insurance anyway. Sure, they’re expensive, but so is everyone else.

This ignores the timing aspect too. What other major manufacturers might have up to 6 weeks or more lead times for repair parts for current vehicles?

> Many people who buy new cars either don’t care or actually prefer to go to the dealer.

I own a new, high-end car. I'd rather find (an orthogonal issue) and go to a passionate mechanic than a dealership who has lock-in (and of the two issues my vehicle has had, I am fairly certain the dealer service center _caused_ one of them, and then couldn't answer a simple question that anyone with a multimeter could, with the other).

Yeah. Independent mechanics are a mixed bag. Dealerships aren't -- they're all bad.

> but they’re going to feel that way no matter what they drive.

The difference is that a "random mechanic" is an option with most manufacturers. And it's not with Tesla.

But my point is that most people don’t care. Certainly the ones who buy a Tesla don’t.

This is like arguing that the iPhone is a bad phone because it doesn’t have a removable battery. For some, that’s a real issue. It may have been somewhat controversial in the beginning. These days no one cares because it hasn’t turned out to be a major issue for most.

A bunch of manufacturers find ways to get owners back to the dealership. Sure, Tesla has more lock in than most, but try taking any other electric car to an independent mechanic. Or a high end import.

> But my point is that most people don’t care.

Plenty do, they just also want a premium electric car despite the downsides, not because it has none. You just keep oscillating between your point being that "you" don't care, or "most people" don't care.

I think the biggest single disadvantage Tesla has compared to other manufacturers is the service network, either dedicated or partnerships. Even in places where there's no "dealership mafia" like the EU.

Outside of internet discussions where someone needed to convince themselves that everyone shares their point of view I never met a person who said "I don't care how much my personal car costs to repair, how long it takes, or how many hoops I have to jump through to do it". Definitely not after they faced the challenges. Some may afford to absorb the extra costs but this doesn't mean they don't care.

Sure, the service network is a weakness, but it's partially mitigated by the fact that there's far less service for which you need to return to Tesla than there is with other cars. In practice, it's just not a major concern because there's no dealer maintenance schedule. You're not taking it in every few months like with a gas car. You fill the wiper fluid, you get the tires rotated and you change the tires once in a while. You can take it almost anywhere for tires. Brakes aren't an issue because you hardly use them in a Tesla. The rest is mostly warranty type stuff you'd go back to the dealer for anyway and collision repair which sucks no matter what you drive. It's just not really as much of an issue as critics want to make it out to be. I've never had a lower maintenance car in my life. People are on here talking about suspension replacements and other high mileage repairs and most people, particularly the ones who buy a Tesla, won't own the car long enough to be concerned about that.

> there's far less service for which you need

I'm thinking more like fixing even a minor fender bender. Anecdote but I personally know of someone from an Eastern European country who had to ferry the damaged Tesla Model 3 on a platform to a neighboring country to repair it because that was the closest authorized garage. It took months and the insurance premium exploded. You get a simple cracked headlight? There are no aftermarket parts, and even if you have an original one no garage can "legally" install it. Knowing someone in a Tesla authorized service partner I can confirm the practices are... not great. According to the agreement they signed to become an authorized partner and under the threat of withdrawing said authorization, they have quite a few limitations that make for longer wait times and more expensive repairs. They are not allowed to order extra parts for stock (they have to "tie" them to a car in service) and they are not allowed to use aftermarket replacement parts, only consumables. These are real issues and even if recently I was looking for electrics I just wasn't willing to take the chance. I have to consider the plausible worst case when making a purchase decision.

The yearly maintenance for my car just meant a maximum 45 minute visit to the nearest shop to my office that I did in the morning on my way to work.

> high mileage repairs and most people, particularly the ones who buy a Tesla, won't own the car long enough to be concerned about that

That's not good advertisement for a car. You're saying it's great as long as you can get rid of it fast enough? I'd really like to have the option to stick with the car without such caveats. I mean every car's maintenance increases with age and perhaps Teslas today involve the same overall effort and expense except distributed differently over the lifecycle (lower than average for the first few years, through your nose when it gets old). This may be ok for expensive cars like an Model X or an MB S-class, but not for something like a Model 3. And it suggests the very same Tesla owners talk out of both sides of their mouths. On one hand they are just trying to be green, on the other they're changing cars every few years? Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for a justification, just pointing out the dissonance.

There are “random mechanics” popping up that do repairs on all types of evs. There’s quite a few who only deal with Tesla’s.

>The kinds of routine maintenance and repair items you typically don’t want to take your car to a dealer for aren’t much of a thing on a Tesla.

They're still cars. Give it 10yr and you'll still need all the same suspension and steering related service that every other car needs. Nobody wants to pay a dealer to do something trivial like CV boots or wheel bearings.

True, but I won’t own the car in 10 years so I don’t care. I’m not discounting your point or anyone else’s on merit. What I’m getting at is that it’s a minority position and most people don’t care. How many 10 year old cars do you see out on the road? Yeah, they’re out there, but most of them are a lot newer than that. Most buyers just don’t keep a car long enough for any of this to matter and the ones that do care have 100 other options.

> How many 10 year old cars do you see out on the road? Yeah, they’re out there, but most of them are a lot newer than that

This must be a regional thing. I would guess the majority of vehicleS on the road in Arkansas are more than 10 years old. My daily driver is a 2000 (built in 1999). Granted, it’s a Jeep Wrangler, so that’s probably not representative of the overall market... but my wife’s vehicle is a 2015 Kia Sorento and still looks and feels “new”.

Out of curiosity, how much do you drive your Tesla? I don’t commute every day but my Jeep has ~180k on it. The Kia has ~120k. We’re starting to consider upgrading the Kia, but unless we find a crazy deal it would surprise me if we kept it another five years and 100k+ miles.

I drive the Tesla 50-120 miles a day depending on what I’m doing that day. I mostly got it for the autopilot and then loved everything else after the fact. Whatever flaws autopilot has, it’s life changing if you have to spend a lot of time on the highway.

P.S. An old Wrangler definitely isn’t representative. Hell, the old ones are even better. My wife has a newer one and we will probably keep it forever. Great vehicles.

> Yeah, they’re out there, but most of them are a lot newer than that.

What do you think happens to a car when you're done with it? In the USA, the average passenger vehicle age in 2019 was 11.8 years: https://www.bts.gov/content/average-age-automobiles-and-truc...

It ends up on a used lot, at an auction, shipped overseas or in a junk yard depending on how long I drove it and what kind of shape it’s in. But I don’t care. The next owner isn’t my problem and I’m not going to give it a second thought. The fact is I’m not going to keep a Tesla long enough that the warranty expires and I can trade it or sell it for reasonable value in order to get a new one so the ability to get it repaired by a third party is irrelevant to me. What I’m arguing is that this is true for most Tesla buyers and Tesla doesn’t have to cater to buyers who demand right to repair because there are 100 other options in that space.

Tesla cares at least somewhat about what happens out of warranty because producing junk that costs an arm and a leg to keep running beyond the warranty is not how you build the kind of reputation that lets you move downmarket which has been Tesla's stated goal since the beginning.

That's their problem, not mine. My concern as an owner is whether I could reasonably sell or trade the car for a new one after I drive it 3-6 years and that's been satisfied. The point where it's difficult to unload a used Tesla is when I question whether it's worthwhile to buy a new one. As long as you can buy one, take it somewhere to get it repaired, expect reasonable resale value and then easily sell or trade it in, that checks the important boxes for most buyers. Tesla has achieved that. Is there room for improvement? Sure. Is it turning off a few potential buyers? Maybe, but not enough of them that it hasn't become a mainstream car.

The average American car is 11.8 years old.

https://www.autoblog.com/2019/06/27/record-average-age-cars-...

Other than oil changes, what maintenance does the Tesla not have?

Even ICE cars these days have very little maintenance. Oil changes every 7000-10000 miles is about the only thing, and that cost is not very high.

> which includes extremely high costs

Yes that's a Tesla exclusive...

I took my Leaf in for a recall repair and they quoted about $800 to replace all fluids and filters. They wanted $120 to swap out the $9 cabin filter from under the dash that took me all of 20 minutes to do. They encouraged me to spend another $600 to replace a door handle because of an engineering defect that was purely cosmetic and easily fixed with a dab of hot glue.

You are absolutely right, but it's also not as bad as it was before. You can now buy "unrestricted" parts. Before, you couldn't even buy an air filter.

Thanks to legislation, not to Tesla's magnanimous nature. Several states (notably, MA) had to wave increasingly large sticks at Tesla to get any traction there.

You couldn't even buy a screw from their online ordering system. "Price: Not listed". "Order: Contact Tesla" (who would then say "not available to you".

Even their service manuals. Make an appointment, in MA. Pay a fee. Go to a specified location, weeks later. Go into a room with paper and pencil, no cameras, phones, or computers allowed. Be given a time limit.

You can get them online...

https://service.teslamotors.com/

It’s just expensive

That wasn't always the case. That was his point.

> the lockdown they have on maintenance and repair

This is not endemic to Telsa, or even to the auto industry. It's in $800K tractors as well.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-03-05/farmers-f...

Tesla's much worse about it than other car manufacturers. Not sure how industrial equipment is relevant here (not sold to consumers).

many farms are small businesses, and thus are closer to a B2C relationship than B2B.

But aside from equivalency, I posit that the general expectation of buying something is that you should be able to do what you lawfully want with it.

I would just settle for a full pipeline of replacement parts!

If you expect reliability and quality, you also find the ownership experience to be different. I have owned three.

Please elaborate

One X was a lemon and spent months in the shop. The second X was better but still needs a warranty repair every few months. The 3 is better still but has had six or seven service visits.

Anecdotally, my father has had an early (2018) 3 for the last 2 years and hasn't had any issues. The only service done so far has been recall work for the frunk latch (I guess he doesn't use it much and didn't notice the defect that the recall was supposed to fix).

The reliability stats disagree with OP. So I wouldn’t read too much into his single data point.

Especially wrt the 3. The X def had some issues around the falcon wings etc.

Even Elon has said they may have gone too far with the X, and that it was their faberge egg. I would love to have an X purely for the "cool" features like the automatic & falcon doors, but there's just so many failure points (and, of course, the cost).

Yah for sure.

Which is sad because I really want a car the size of the X. But at like 55-65k. Basically a Y+. I don’t need falcon wings nor rocket speed.

The Y isn't even coming out in Europe for another year. That's probably good because it's the only viable Tesla for me and I'll probably have the budget for it next year.

The Model S came out in 2012. Surely it's time for a full redesign, or at least a refresh with their existing battery tech etc..

> Current wait is 8-12 weeks on a Y, and only a week or two on the rest.

Here in Europe it's August for all of S/3/X.

You are waiting for Berlin to go up right? Or is that next year?

S/3/X come from the US (partly assembled/finished in the Netherlands AFAIK).

Tesla is going to get a huge amount of free publicity today. First from the SpaceX manned launch today who are going to be driven to the pad in a Model X and then later this evening from Jay Leno's Cybertruck test drive episode.

That's a very expensive way to get free publicity.

All of Elon's companies give free publicity to one another. They all somehow manage to keep in the active news cycle.

There was an announcement last week about the Boring Company in Vegas that mentioned Tesla's would be used as people movers.

There was an announcement last week about the Boring Company in Vegas that mentioned Tesla's would be used as people movers.

This has always been part of the plan for the Boring peoplemover in Vegas...

Yes AND every article that I read about completion of the tunnel unnecessarily brought up the fact that they'd be using the EVs as people movers. Because to my point, any news coming out of one Musk company usually has cross marketing for another.

In Europe the based model 3 is still €47k. So about $50k. And that's the starting price :(

That's an almost 33% higher price than the US version.

Advertised prices in the US do not include any taxes, whereas in Europe they have to account for VAT.

The average rate of VAT in Europe is around 21% - it represents the bulk of the difference in price. The rest you can put down to currency hedging, import duty, and transport to ship the cars from the US.

I think it's because of

- 10% tax/duty on imported cars from the USA to the EU (1)

- shipping costs from USA to EU

- price are with VAT included in EU (all consumer products), so around 20%

When the cars are made in Berlin (mid/late 2021 if Tesla is to be believed) price will probably go down by a significant amount for EU buyers.

And there will be more non Tesla BEV models in the next few years, another factor for Tesla to lower prices.

Peugeot e-208 seems to have a nice success, and Volkswagen will soon have lots of BEV models.

(1) https://www.carfax.eu/article/customs-clearance-and-import-t...

Disclaimer: I own a Tesla Model 3 SR+ since last september, in France.

VAT accounts for the bulk of the difference here.

Would VAT apply to cars coming out of their German Gigafactory?

VAT is on everything. So yes.

But it won't have the 10% import duty coming from the US, on top of VAT. And lower transport costs, since they're not being hauled from the US to the EU.

Yes. VAT applies to all sales, it's not an import tax.

Much more information here.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-prices/tesla-cuts-p...

Can we update the url?

What all media (except Reuters...) failed to report: free Supercharging seems to be gone for S/X.

Personally, I’d rather have $5k taken off the purchase price. I got 7500 free supercharger miles with mine and most of them are going to expire. I go on some road trips and use super chargers, but most of the time you’re charging at home. You’d have to do a hell of a lot of supercharging to spend $5000 on it. Frankly, if you can’t charge at home you probably shouldn’t buy the car.

I think someone did the math and you would need to supercharge 100k mikes to pay 5k. The cash is a better deal for almost all.

It's a convenience and mental thing. I am more likely to go on long tours/holidays with my S knowing it's free (and bragging about it), so the calculation doesn't really work out.

Supercharging just costs a few dollars, and is way cheaper than buying gas. You can still brag about it.

I live in a country where people brag about their 1200 Km per tank diesel cars and where diesel is very competitively priced, so free SC still makes a big difference.

This has always been their stated plan, to pass on cost savings to customers as they get more efficient and profitable. They did some similar cuts last year. Nice to see it continuing.

They also raise prices from time to time, it's not all cuts.

Right, depends on various factors obviously.

If this is the stated plan then I really do not understand why the stock behaves like this was the next Apple (i.e., a company with massive margins).

Because Tesla makes the best electric cars and as they reach economies of scale total cost of ownership will dominate fossil fuel cars. They need to lower prices now because Teslas are still relatively expensive compared to, say, a Toyota; but in the long run they won't need to lower prices further than a certain point. Plus Musk sees angles that few others do and a platform of mobile sensors operating around the planet is inherently comercializable.

a platform of mobile sensors operating around the planet

That is seriously creepy. Is there any way, as a Tesla owner, to prevent one's vehicle from being used like this?

It’s opt in.

You're assuming that people are expecting a monetary return on their investment. I suspect a lot of Tesla investors are expecting a return in the form of reduced problems due to climate change.

Such investors tend to hold, they don't sell just because the stock hits a certain price. This reduces the actual float, making shares harder to buy. This could be an issue if Tesla were to be added to the S&P 50O in Q2 or Q3, forcing big players to get hold of the stock at market price. Let's see.

Generally the S&P only adds companies that are profitable (at the time they are added to the index), in addition to several other criteria. (https://qz.com/1587963/how-the-sp-500-is-built-and-who-decid...)

It seems pretty obvious that the previous prices were inflated to capture the federal and other subsidies. It's clear those aren't coming back, so they are adjusting to the actual market forces.

Besides the economic slowdown I suspect some of this is also the Model Y is eating into sales of the other 3 and this price adjustment is mostly to differentiate them a bit more.

People keep talking about batteries getting cheaper, how likely is it that this largely reflects changes in the cost to Tesla to produce these vehicles? On the flip side how likely is it that this is cutting substantially into Tesla's profit margin?

They're trying to boost sales with price cuts:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-prices/tesla-cuts-p...

All car manufacturers have seen sales decline due to the coronavirus pandemic.

No doubt, I'm not asking about causality here, just wondering how their project margins are going to be affected.

pricing rarely has anything to do with cost to produce, especially for goods are aren’t perceived as commodities

Tesla have claimed before that it does.

> “When we launched Model X 75D, it had a low gross margin. As we’ve achieved efficiencies, we are able to lower the price and pass along more value to our customers,” Tesla said in a statement. (2017)

In this case, selling excess inventory/capacity seems a more likely reason, perhaps also the introduction of new Model S/X variants/features.

Like how the V8 Mustang is a 10k premium over the turbo four, there's absolutely not a 10k difference in production costs.

Check out the top Porsche 911 vs the bottom. There is a six figure difference!

Free supercharging is not on the X or S now. That is a significant change.

Supercharging Max/ Payment Type200 kW max; Pay Per Use

I think that's a good thing. Less people charging exclusively at the superchargers due to it being free - less queues. Also they use a lot of the Supercharger money they get to build more Superchargers.

If they gave me the 0% financing option like the other auto makers are doing, I’d buy a Tesla today.

I hope Musk is still cool once Tesla is a monopoly. Companies have a tendency to turn on their users/customers once they get giant.

Tesla has gone from being the number 1 BEV manufacturer in Europe to now being number 3. Soon Hyundai will also overtake them in Europe and Tesla will fall back to 4th:

https://www.schmidtmatthias.de/post/april-2020-european-elec...

So don't worry about Tesla becoming a monopoly. It's not a practical reality.

Tesla was amazing and unparalleled from about 2012 to 2018. In the U.S., since the Kona/Niro EVs, I-PACE, e-tron, and Taycan have shipped along with the Electrify America rapid charging network, Tesla no longer has a corner on the EV market. A fully-decked-out Model S costs the same as a base Porsche Taycan 4S. I'd challenge anyone to test drive both cars configured at the ~$115k price point and then come back and tell me you wouldn't chose the Porsche.

Cheapest Taycan I could find was $145k. 192 mile range. I'll take the Model S that is faster and nearly double the range at this point.

> Cheapest Taycan I could find was $145k.

If you use the online configuration utility and select Taycan 4S, you will find you can purchase one for $114,340: https://imgur.com/X3KAfBd

> 192 mile range.

Since the first Taycan deliveries happened back in January, it's a well-known fact that the EPA's range is completely bogus: https://electrek.co/2020/02/10/porsche-taycan-tesla-model-s-...

When driving 75mph on a road trip, you can expect to get 209 miles out of a Taycan and 222 miles from a 2020 Tesla Model S Performance. Given that the Taycan charges at 270kW, that means you will complete a road trip significantly faster in a Taycan than you will in a Model S: https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a30894056/porsche-tayca...

The Taycan is a true luxury performance car. You're not buying it for the range or nominal maximum speed, you're buying it for the creature comforts...and the ability to go 95% as fast as the (current versions of the) Model S for 100x longer, or even faster with the creature comforts removed for racing.

To be clear, Taycan has a gearbox and a higher maximum speed. I think the word the poster you're responding to meant was "quicker." Regardless, the 2020 Tesla Model S Performance is neither quicker nor faster than the 2020 Porsche Taycan Turbo S: https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images...

Or maybe Tesla couldn't ship car to Europe for delivery in April -- contrary to the VW group, whose sales are mostly local stock and who don't have to ship the cars across the Atlantic.

Also, Tesla delivers most its cars in Europe in the first month of the quarter. So comparing VW and Tesla over two periods with only partial quarter sales makes very little sense. Matthias Schmidt has known this for years, for some reason, he still prefer not to tell his audience about such a huge bias in the data. Weird.

They're car companies selling cars. Volkswagen is the world's biggest car company. It's no surprise that they're becoming the biggest EV company as well. I really wouldn't worry about it.

> I really wouldn't worry about it.

You should worry about battery production capacity. VW has been having issues and won't be able to build EV in volume for some time unless they start manufacturing them. Being the world's biggest ICE company does not help with securing battery supplies, especially when your #1 competitor keeps increasing its global lead.

Tesla has far more purchase power than VW for batteries (NB: needing them for cars and stationary storage makes you a better partner too). They have more control over their supply chain, they have big contracts with all cell manufacturers (Pana CATL, LG, Samsung...), they run their own factories, they're integrating cell and car production in all new factories, they develop their own chemistry and will soon reveal a roadmap to achieve 1-2TWh of cell production... per year (source: https://youtu.be/SG-59Os2H5o?t=2279)

Good intro on how Tesla could do that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtV9a5MW_X0

Panasonic and LG also make batteries for VW...

Note that Samsung does not make batteries for Tesla's vhicles, only its stationary products like the powerwall. This is the same for LG outside of the Chinese market.

Additionally, Tesla's battery factory is actually Panasonic's battery factory. Panasonic is the primary partner in that joint venture.

Tesla still has the same dependence on external parties as VW, they were just first to the ball and have contractual priority on production capacity existing or planned at the time the contracts were signed.

> especially when your #1 competitor keeps increasing its global lead

Volkswagen's #1 competitor is Toyota.

So combined Volkswagen, Audi, ŠKODA, SEAT and Porsche have outsold Tesla? Doesn't really sound like an achievement, except if you're in charge of mergers and acquisitions.

They're all the same company. Volkswagen owns 12 automotive brands:

https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/brands-and-models.html

And Volkswagen will soon be making further investments in Chinese brands:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-investment-chi...

They are now, but they weren't originally, they bought their first place. I doubt the general public knows.

I really don't know what you're talking about. Volkswagen is a big car company and they invest in their car business. There is nothing surprising about that.

After the "get back to work" fiasco Musk is dead to me

You can always hop brands once someone gets too big and turns evil.

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