Tesla Gets Crushed in Germany by EVs from Volkswagen, Renault, and Hyundai Group

edit: in case it sounds accusatory I want to clarify: your statement is totally plausible to me, I just want to learn about where you got the information (and learn more myself)

Not so many people want to spend Tesla money for mediocre build quality.

This surprise is likely due to the power of hype in an echo chamber. Tesla has drastically lost both market share (relative decline) and sales volume (absolute decline) throughout Europe. Norway, which was once paraded around as the Tesla future dominance preview, is now indistinguishable from zero for Tesla sales. The only market where Tesla is still growing volume is China.

Then compact segment is very popular in general and Sedans are not. Teslas are also quite expensive. Even if you remove tarifs they are still on the higher side of what most people would buy.

Electric vehicles are also not rocket science. A company who has been making vehicles for a century will have a substantial leg up once they get some momentum. They’re far more simple as far as the driveline goes than an ICE powered vehicle would be. No transmission. No oil coolant lines. No engineering the engine and trans to work together. No fuel tank, no fuel lines, no injection system, no fuel pumps. The list goes on.

With an electrified powertrain it’s basically just a motor and juice (I’m over simplifying, electric motors and batteries require cooling as well for instance).

These companies are going to eat Tesla for breakfast as soon as they get caught up.

I still wouldn't write off other manufacturers yet, and some companies like Hyundai/Kia invest massive amounts into alternative powertrains.

Tesla is expensive, and the Model 3 screen in the middle is something that puts some people off. I want physical buttons and no distraction, and so does the people around me for what I can gather.

For what I see in Youtube about people who buys Tesla, they seem to complain a lot. One of those I follow settled with a SEAT Mii [https://ev-database.org/car/1191/SEAT-Mii-Electric], which another segment (and way cheaper) and it's not even designed as an EV from the ground up.

For the same, or different reasons, people is pushing traditional brands to sell reasonably priced EVs. I'm particularly waiting for an A segment car, with range extender.

I doubt I will buy a Tesla unless they come up with a car about ~15k that ticks some of the above boxes. I know, I know, I'm way off prices.

It seems in the end price and size are the most important factors in a lot of European countries.

I have a personal anecdote from my dad who bought a Smart EQ. He just wanted a good car for commuting and the Model 3 is too expensive for it.

Price and look-and-feel is putting a massive dent in the side of Tesla, whose primary feature isn't the car but the charging network - which is clearly in an entirely different league than anyone else. But even that might not be worth thirty grand to most people

And some people actually value a dealer network.

Their take was that Tesla is overpriced for erratic quality and generally too flashy. "Toys for attention seekers" was one phrase I recall.

One big factor probably is you just don't need as much range in Europe. Cities are more densely packed so travel distances are shorter and if you really want to go really far there are better options than driving like trains.

Also I think the cars Tesla has put out are probably larger than people want over there. They're putting out large SUVs and regular sized American cars where Europe has traditionally favored more compact cars.

Tesla owns the space for sexy, somewhat self-driving, longest range cars, but they are very expensive.

Alternative manufacturers make great cars many different price-points.

Based on my experience with Tesla and non-Tesla EVs, I would expect market share numbers in 5 years in the US to look more like the German market share numbers. Teslas are like BMWs or Mercedes: they are great cars, but not mass-market.

Source: my wife is German

My perception of Tesla is that it is a dishonest company and has mediocre quality.

I wouldn’t buy a Tesla either if I were in the market and would probably look at a German brand or one of the Volkswagen group or Volvo or something, maybe Toyota.

I'm from Germany (but not in the car industry in any way) and I think the main reason why they have sold so much cars is not because they are competitive, but because they have to. They have to sell the cars to fulfill whole-fleet emissions requirements, otherwise they'd be punished by fines.

So they push the cars into the market at losses, but it's still cheaper for them than paying the fines.

> According to Auto Motor and Sport, at least in the first phase, Volkswagen does not plan to make money on EVs and expects to lose around €3,000 per each I.D. sold

https://insideevs.com/news/346510/volkswagen-id-sold-loss-30...

"Chairman of the Daimler Supervisory Board: No company earns money with electric cars yet" (German)

https://ecomento.de/2020/01/16/daimler-aufsichtsratschef-kei...

> In view of the threat of fines being imposed on the EU for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, it is worthwhile for car manufacturers to sell electric cars at a loss (without covering all costs). Because electric cars reduce the average CO2 emissions of a vehicle fleet, manufacturers can sell many profitable cars with combustion engines with an optimized amount of electricity and still remain below the generally prescribed average of 95 grams of CO2 per kilometer, calculated Prof. Dr. Peter Hoberg from the University of Applied Sciences in Worms. (German)

https://www.elektroauto-news.net/2020/co2-grenzwerte-verlust...

Drives are shorter in distance, and charging opportunities are much more readily available given the density of much of Europe. I would hazard a guess that trains are much more popular for longer-distance trips where flying isn't an option, a big contrast to the USA.

This is why vehicles like the Honda e exist as an "urban car" at a lower price point than Tesla cares to hit. With a max range is only 137 miles, it's not "competitive", but it's priced ~14k GBP less than a Model 3 from what I can tell.

- Teslas are expensive

A Tesla is going to be in the upper-end of the price range for most people, and in fact a lot of the time they were status symbols in the sense of how rare they are.

In fact, I have just checked used cars, got surprised to see 86 Teslas on sale of all kinds in Poland, lots of kilometers driven... and prices that I can buy a plane or helicopter for.

- Tesla has ridiculously low build quality

This goes hand in hand with the price, except the build quality is worse than low-end of the price range. Things that I've seen people in the USA somehow accept (parking cameras failing on newly bought car, involving voodoo rituals for resets) would lead to the car getting returned and with request for full refund. Better not to mention the tone of any "user's review" that would follow.

- There's no bonus in the form of build-out supercharger network

While there are superchargers in Europe, as far as I know the network is quite sparse in comparison with USA, electricity is not necessarily cheap, and many (something that all BEVs deal with) there are issues with charging your car if you live in a city.

- shorter-distance BEV are more acceptable, especially as "city car"

This is big, because it means that smaller cars with smaller batteries (and let's be honest, the "secret sauce" of Tesla is their battery supply chain) are not as much of a problem as in USA. Combined with with (lack of) availability of charging stations, this meant that a lot of earlier BEV purchases went towards "fleet buy", at least locally in Poland. As an organization, it was much easier to arrange charging in parking space etc.

Such fleet buys, some with "rent-a-car" setup where you can pickup a car a bit like you'd pickup an electric scooter, helped "prepare the land".

- Tesla cars were made for USA roads

A bit of beaten horse, but there's noticeable difference in how wide the roads are, parking space availability, etc.

While modern USA sedans and so on aren't gigantic like old full frame cars, American cars are still noticeably bigger. US brands selling in Europe tend to sell models adapted for Europe.

- Servicing.

Even in USA servicing Tesla cars is full of horror stories. While in the western Europe there's less focus on smaller car service companies, the availability and cost of parts are probably just as noticeable.

- The big Tesla sales were subsidized

I remember how last year everyone on HN was crowing about Tesla being most popular new car brand in, if I recall correctly, Netherlands.

Barely anyone noticed the part where the BEV purchases were driven by ending of package of tax rebates and subsidies for buying a new BEV car, which ended because the BEV market was "coming together". And Tesla simply had brand recognition for electric car and availability.

(and last, but definitely not least) - Volkswagen et al had been making slow and steady progress towards BEV offensive

Meanwhile, European (and not only) car manufacturers were slowly ramping up capability on BEV front, with 2019 marking huge marketing campaign from Volkswagen bringing, excuse me, "BEV to the masses". We're talking huge manufacturing capacity that turns like a supertanker, but it can probably outproduce Tesla ten times over, switching tracks to BEV as a whole.

And that shift in manufacturing is slowly starting to hit general population. Electric cars are moving away from curios, slowly shifting to mainstream.

Normally you can fairly compare quarterly numbers, but COVID-19 prevented Tesla from shipping to Europe for Q2. I expect a big spike in September as Tesla's Q3 boats arrive. I doubt it'll be enough to catch up, but the comparison will be much more fair then.

Of course a bunch of EV compacts entering the market is gonna detract market share from the big EVs because all the "I'll only buy a compact" people just entered the market and cast their lot in with the compact.

Tesla might be losing market share but EVs are very much a "rising tide lifts all ships" situation as they slowly replace more and more ICE vehicles so that's not necessarily indicative of anything. This is very far from a zero sum game.

What you point out is correct if Tesla is a luxury brand. But there is talks how Tesla will become bigger than Toyota or whatnot, which is something that a purely luxury brand cannot do.

The thing is that a normal person simply cannot afford a Tesla. But they can afford an EV third of the price.

In Finland average gross salary is ~3500€/month which is maybe 2500€/month net. That comes as 30000€ per year net of actual usable money. Renault Zoe costs around 30000€ here brand new. So someone with average salary can reasonably have a used Zoe.

Brand new Model S is something like 90000€ here. Only someone in top 2% or so can afford these cars. It’s purely a luxury product.

Tesla might remain popular with wealthy but it simply cannot take over the mass market due to costs.

Going to a dealer? Nope. Supporting emissions cheaters? Nope. Supporting automakers who had to be dragged to develop EVs by Tesla? Nope!

Different strokes, the market will sort it out. As long as Tesla does well in large markets like the US and China [1], they’ll be fine. Europe isn’t exactly a car centric society.

[1] https://electrek.co/2020/08/11/tesla-dominates-electric-car-... (Tesla still dominates electric car sales in China, over 11,000 deliveries in July)

EDIT: @bzb4 https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/study-americans-fee...

> One clear takeaway: people are fed up with the old-school experience of buying and selling a car at a dealership. 87% of American adults dislike something about the process of purchasing a vehicle at a traditional car dealership.

> More than three in five Americans (61%) feel like they're taken advantage of at least some of the time when shopping at a car dealership.

> Over half of Americans (54%) would love the ability to buy or sell a car without ever leaving home.

> Two in five (42%) would be comfortable purchasing a car online without a test drive if certain assurances (like a money-back guarantee) were in place.

They do seem to have some edge over the traditional player but I will stick to not driving for sake of safety.

Automobile economics are full of externalized costs. Prominent among these are CO2 and particulate pollution. Once you factor these externalities in, one can argue that ICE automobiles are artificially cheaper even after these costs are internalized somewhat by fuel taxes.

However for leasing they have become the cheaper choice.

Private owners often for more affordable cars such as BWM i3.

Hopefully it was a one-off thing and their recent update [2] will prevent future problems. But still, I won’t be buying one until a couple years have passed with no more incidents like this.

1: https://www.carandbike.com/news/hyundai-kona-electric-explod...

2: https://insideevs.com/news/428159/hyundai-updates-battery-mo...

Also, not all of them have to match Tesla on either range/performance. If they can get 90% of the performance at say 70% of the price, it is a good buy. Auto market has always been competitive on price.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10Uh_GSkShwPPlrE5mOJc...