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Comment by edaemon | Hacker News Reader

This article leaves out a lot of information.

> ...none of the major incumbent automakers seems to pose much of a threat to market leader Tesla, which has become nearly synonymous with EVs.

This is only true in the US. In Europe VW and Renault have cut into Tesla's lead, and in some countries VW just overtook Tesla in vehicles sold. In 2020 the Renault Zoe outsold the Tesla Model 3 in Europe.

> But imagine if, instead of investing tens of billions of dollars in producing cars with no way to drive long distances individually, Audi, GM, Ford, and the rest each spent just a billion dollars to build a network of supercharging stations.

They have. BMW, Daimler, Ford, Hyundai, and VW collaborated to build out the IONITY network. VW is also building Electrify America (albeit as a result of Dieselgate). Non-Tesla DCFC stations far outnumber the Tesla Superchargers now.

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Tesla sales in Europe _fell_ YoY between '19 and '20 - at a time when overall EV sales were up 130%+

> in some countries VW just overtook Tesla in vehicles sold

This is 100% caused by the WV ID.3 being delayed. There was a metric fuckton of preorders, which were delayed because of software issues.

After they got the software fixed enough for a release, they "sold" (delivered) a bazillion cars in a few months, boosting them on the top of every chart.

It's a great car, but the software isn't still complete and has obvious bugs, nothing fatal but a bunch of annoyances - they didn't even manage to get OTA updates working.

Well, the ID.3 doesn't always stop when you push the brake pedal. Were multiple accounts of that in the last few weeks. I suppose they'll sort it out eventually.

Nothing fatal ...yet? =)

The software is beta level at best, they HAD to get it out to pump up their 2020 numbers.

"In some markets" lots of things are true.

In practice 28% of global EV sold are Tesla, and very large numbers of the others are tiny city cars or very small cars like the Zoe.

In terms of BEV cars Tesla is the clear global market leader.

> They have. BMW, Daimler, Ford, Hyundai, and VW collaborated to build out the IONITY network.

And they don't want to pay so the network is not that large and doesn't grow very fast and of course its European network.

Electrify America is doing better and as you said, its a punishment for Dieselgate and that why they have capital.

Well, that applies to this article. Tesla left other automakers in the dust "in some markets" -- and by "some" I really mean just one: the US.

Tesla is the leader globally, but the article claims that other automakers aren't even a threat to Tesla, and goes further to argue that the reason they aren't a threat is because they haven't built out charging networks. I don't see how one can reach that conclusion when in the two biggest EV markets, China and Europe, Tesla is no longer the market leader.

I'd also point out that Tesla doesn't have 28% of the global EV market anymore (that was H1 2020). As of October 2020 Tesla comprised 18% of 2020's global market [1]. Still the clear leader, and almost the only contender in the US, but globally other automakers are threatening their lead.

[1]: https://electrek.co/2020/10/30/tesla-tsla-market-share-globa...

>As of October 2020 Tesla comprised 18% of 2020's global market [1]. Still the clear leader, and almost the only contender in the US, but globally other automakers are threatening their lead.

Worth noting that VW owns Audi and Porsche, so according to those statistics, VW made up 12% of the EV sales last year. They’ve been catching up quite a bit.

Just to be completely fair, the statistics you linked includes PHEVs too. So, they counted vehicles like the BMW 530e as well, that could only go 16 miles (26 km) in electric mode only [1], and all big automakers have similar well-selling beasts.

On the other hand, I agree that Tesla is not that far from classic automakers, who are just getting traction. I think a nice thing to follow to predict EV trends in EU is Norway [2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_5_Series_(G30)#530e_iPerfo... [2]: https://bestsellingcarsblog.com/2021/01/norway-full-year-202...

Or you could just look at the best selling EV cars across all of Europe for 2020:

https://i.redd.it/m6z20txyyvd61.jpg

>In practice 28% of global EV sold are Tesla

18%, and share shrank in 2020. Why make stuff up?

I don't count Plug-In Hybrids.

It's worth mentioning that last year Germany launched a thinly-veiled subsidy campaign for their auto makers which offered a substantial rebate for "environmentally friendly" vehicles (ignoring that keeping your existing car - which conforms to the EU emission regulations - for a few more years is overall better for the environment than buying a new one now) which included plug-in hybrids. Which of course artificially inflates the sales in this category, although we can be confident that some (or most?) of these plug-in hybrids will never actually be recharged.

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