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Comment by gchokov | Hacker News Reader

It is not surprising to me at all. Tesla are bad at servicing their cars in Europe. Model 3 and X are FULL OF ISSUES. Embarrassing issues, solved decades ago by brands like VW. I myself live in Europe, liked a Tesla, went to see it and compared it to my 10 year old German car. Decided to stick with a German car in the end.

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Yes what I have heard about how Tesla operates does not make me 100% optimistic about their cars.

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

Conversely, we live with the minor fit and finish and service issues with our Teslas because we prefer it to legacy automaker offerings (and, of course, the Germans are going to defend BMW and VW to the bitter end like Wirecard minus the accounting fraud because it’s a significant amount of their economy).

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.

Naah. BMW is (almost) a lost cause. They stuck to the "EVs will never be more than a niche market" even while the Moloch of "German Auto" VW started to invest heavily (around 2016 2017) and now has some nice offers in all price ranges.

Of course their hand was forced by Dieselgate but nobody will care in 20 years.

Tesla can't compete on established legacy automaker because they don't sell enough cars to compete. They sell more carbon credit than cars. They will soon run out of money for research and development if they can't supply the market with cars.

Tesla was (just) profitable last quarter if they sold no carbon credits. Perhaps worth a look at more recent financials?

6 billion in cars, 428 million in carbon credits last quarter.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/23/teslas-sale-of-environmental...

I read their last financial statement. My only interest on them is how they and other company do financial engineering.

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

Seems like things 0.1% of buyers care about. Really, not buying the car you want to avoid talking to a dealer? Is that some kind of social phobia?

Some people hate negotiating. Services like CarWow seek to skip this step and are hugely popular.

So I’d say it’s a fair point.

You must be be among the few that that have had a positive experience with the dealer monopoly.

Nobody likes buying from a car dealer. But people also don't buy a new car every week like they buy hamburgers. So the 'purchasing experience' is way less important than the day-to-day driving experience they'll enjoy for years by getting the car they want, rather than the car that's easier to buy.

This is true, but we still deserve better dealer experiences

How are dealers in Europe a monopoly?

That’s the key. In Europe most dealerships are brand dealers. They sell and service one or two manufacturers at most, and have a brand to uphold. That is not the case in much of the world: dealers are independent, and sell whatever they want at the price they want without a single fuck given to your feelings since you won’t be coming back in a decade and they will most likely go out of business by then.

The buying experience can be incredibly painful, especially if you go to a dealer know for better prices (there is no such a thing with Tesla).

They aren't.

However, a car dealer in most of Europe is not the only place you can get a car, as used market is pretty big, and car dealers tend to go all in for one brand or one group and stuck around for about as long as you care about official service offerings.

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