Tesla is no longer the largest EV producer | Hacker News Reader

Tesla is no longer the largest EV producer

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57 pointsmetadat160 comments

Tesla is no longer the largest EV producer, if you consider plug-in hybrids EVs. Reminds me of the great idea of German politicians to "save" the "ailing" car industry (while pretending to be doing something positive for the environment) during Covid by heavily subsidizing EVs, where the definition included plug-in hybrids. Which led to a run on large luxury plug-in hybrid SUVs, which probably use more gas than a smaller non-hybrid car, and it's safe to say the plug-in charging functionality is seldom used (although with the increase of fuel prices since Russia invaded Ukraine, maybe some owners will now start searching for the charging cable).

Hybrid seems like a huge shade of gray though, while the two ends on the spectrum are absolute. How efficient a hybrid is would depend on where on the spectrum it lies, whether that suits your usual needs, and how often you have these exceptions. Also, in order to utilize a charging cable you need to have access to a charging station. Not everyone has that, nor a garage. Fuel prices have gone up, but so has electricity prices.

Perfect example of how government intervention has the opposite of the intended effect.

I don't think that is really the case here. It is more greenwashing of the intentional effect to subsidise expensive cars.

SUVs in general should probably either be outright banned or taxed to the point of not being competitive anymore. The immense harm they cause is just laughable, and the benefits are highly dubious.

In the next few years, the majority of new cars (at least, those sold in the EU) will be bloated hybrid SUVs. It's the most cost-efficient way for manufacturers to meet the EU emissions regulations, and apparently will help us transition.

SUVs have become a prime target for activist vandalism recently. Oversized and not linked to any practical work use like other large vehicles.

I would qualify this more. A Chevy Tahoe/Suburban is a much different SUV than a Toyota Corolla Cross, which has a better fuel efficiency rating than my conventional sedan.

The latter is a car in basically every way that matters and would be described as a hatchback if the marketing department didn’t have their way.

I think the best type of tax would be on weight, emissions, and energy usage, the factors that most greatly affect the public (road maintenance, public health, and climate change/resource consumption, respectively).

> The [Toyota Corolla Cross] is a car in basically every way that matters

Are you sure? I don't know specifically about that model, but my understanding is that SUVs - including the smaller hatchback-like "crossover" ones - are technically trucks because of the way they're constructed and thus subject to different safety standards. I'd say that's a way that matters.

To my knowledge they aren't subject to any different safety standards. They aren't non-passenger vehicles unless they meet specific guidelines, most of which a typical family SUV will not qualify under. [1]

Most of the family SUVs and crossovers you see are constructed on unibody platforms shared with cars. The Corolla Cross that I mentioned is built on the same GA-C platform as the regular Corolla and a number of other cars, vans, and SUVs. [2]

There are very few body-on-frame SUVs remaining on the market, which include:

- Chevy Suburban, Tahoe, GMC Yukon, Cadillac Escalade

- Toyota 4Runner, Sequoia, Land Cruiser, Lexus LX, GX

- Ford Expedition, Lincoln Navigator

- Jeep Wrangler

- Mercedes G-Class

These models generally share similarities with their truck counterparts, e.g., a vehicle like the Chevy Suburban shares a platform with GM's full-size pickups. [3]

[1] https://www.motorbiscuit.com/do-suvs-designs-let-them-be-mor...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_New_Global_Architecture

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMT_T1XX_platform

Ah, OK. So that strongly underscores the original point that not all "SUVs" are the same and they should not be treated the same. Thanks!

Most SUVs are rebranded station wagons.

So you're claiming that hybrids are bad, if a) people buy a bigger car than they would otherwise, and b) never plug it in.

Is this true, and does it actually happen in numbers we should care about and why do you think it is true? Did some respected environmental group suggest this was bad for the environment?

Or like a comment lower down, do you believe that every government regulation mysteriously has a perfect 180 degree backfire? Which would be fascinating if true, but seems unlikely.

I looked up Greenpeace's take on this:

Short version, Public Transport > BEV > PHEV > HEV > ICE and various non vehicle things should be kept in mind like designing cities around people not cars, supporting auto workers during the transition, ensuring the wider electric grid is decarbonised, reducing the carbon impact of steel manufacturing and mining are all important goals.

They're keen that HEV get phased out at the same time as ICE (no new sales after 2028 in EU) and warn that PHEVs are being overmarketed but still seem to think they're better than ICE alone, but not as good as EVs.

https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-eastasia-stateless...

I wouldn't be surprised if hybrids were better for the environment than evs.

every comment I see about any ev is more range. but the fact of the matter is, most people don't travel that far most of the time. So if you buy a hybrid with a range of 100 miles electric, with an IC just in case, but that never gets used. thats less embodied energy than building a 400 mile range ev where the extra 300 miles still doesn't get used.

Or in other words we can all construct a scenario that proves the point we want to make.

It's a good argument (although let down by the fact that only 3 PHEVs have an all-electric range greater than 50 miles), but there's a glaring loophole: It saves both embodied energy and transportation energy if you buy a low-range EV without lugging the weight of an inactive ICE around with you for most of your miles, and then rent/borrow/whatever an ICE (or other transport) for your long-distance needs.

I suppose people want solutions that look very much like what they have right now, so 35ish mile range PHEVs are the future!

Hybrids that companies bought with lots of tax deductions were not used as hybrids (gasoline was payed by the company).

Hybrids bought by private people are usually used in EV mode.

The problem is the 10x mismatch between the expected CO2/pollutant emissions and the estimated after usage for company owned PHEVs. They caused a mess in EU.

I'm sorry, what?

You think that if someone puts gasoline in a hybrid car, then it's "not being used as a hybrid"?

Even plug-in hybrids are designed to do both. That's what "hybrid" means. I've never heard of a hybrid where you can just...turn off the hybrid-ness, and make it operate 100% as an ICE vehicle.

So if companies buy hybrids, and run them on the most inefficient settings, they're still getting vastly better gas mileage than if they bought a pure-ICE vehicle instead.

The main point is the ineffective distribution of capital because of the 5x difference between advertised and real gas usage. The same capital would probably be better allocated on only BEV subsidies.

https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/fs-real-world...

I mean, I wouldn't at all object to shifting faster to full-electric vehicles, and getting rid of both full-ICE and hybrids. But it seems to me that this is a bit of a nitpick, given the degree to which fossil fuels are still subsidized (according to [0], it was about $20B/yr in 2019 for the US). I'm having a hard time quickly coming up with numbers as to federal subsidies for hybrid and full-electric vehicles for comparison (best I could find quickly was [1], which indicates about $7.5B allocated for building out EV charging infrastructure).

Personally, I doubt that hybrid vehicle subsidies come anywhere close to that $20B/yr, though I'd be happy to be proven wrong...and even if they are comparable, it still seems like a silly kind of self-sabotage to be calling for cannibalizing hybrid subsidies to give to EVs when fossil fuels are still getting that much.

[0] https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs... [1] https://www.transportation.gov/rural/ev/toolkit/ev-infrastru...

> I've never heard of a hybrid where you can just...turn off the hybrid-ness, and make it operate 100% as an ICE vehicle.

This seems easy to do: never charge the battery, or only charge it from the ICE.

What am I missing?

Hybrids are generally significantly more efficient that ICE cars because it keeps the engine in the "sweet spot", efficiency-wise. If the sweet spot for engine efficiency is more power than you're using, then the extra power goes towards charging the battery. If the sweet spot is less power than you need, it can make up some of the difference with the electric motor using previously stored power.

People talk a lot about plugging them in, or regenerative breaking, but that's overlooking the main way they work, which is in concert with the ICE to make it more efficient. (caveat: I'm not an expert, but own a hybrid and had a long discussion with an engineer friend who had just taken a hybrid powertrain class)

It's a particular scheme of hybrid where the engine is not connected to the wheels but a generator. I don't think any of these are made in Germany, at least in the form of a car. This is popular on heavy trucks and some Japanese micro-cars. Normally a hybrid runs its engine just like a regular car and supplements it with an electric motor when possible.

Even then a hybrid will recuperate energy when braking. The "Earth-saving-mobile" of early 2000s, Toyota Prius did not even allow plug-in charging.

Tesla never was largest EV producer, if you consider hybrids, Toyota was always bigger

Misleading if you consider “EV” as referring to fully battery electric vehicles. BYD was able to surpass in sales for the second quarter purely because their factories were outside Shanghai (which was locked down). Another thing to note is China’s BYD also makes considerably less margin (if at all from their sales, mostly serving the domestic market in China). Clickbait, because most people don’t bucket hybrids as EVs in part because most people simply use them as ICE cars.

Plug-In Hybrids (PHEV) are distinct from hybrids, and usually cost thousands more than the base model hybrid, so I wouldn't expect people to purchase one if they don't use it (I plug in my prius every night and the EV-only range covers all my daily driving, I don't know the last time I bought gasoline, it's been months)

I bought my PHEV to get carpool stickers and use better parking with free charging at work. The stickers expired and I don't work there anymore, but it never made sense to get rid of, so I still drive it, but rarely charge it.

It's way more convenient to pump gas for a few minutes every 600-700 miles than plugging in every 20 miles. Especially since I would prefer not to charge to full; I live on a hill and pick up 1-3 miles of charge on the way out of my neighborhood, I wouldn't want to miss out on that if I filled up.

But your PHEV still needs oil changes and other maintenance, and has all the same failure modes that conventional ICEs have: plugs, coil, belt-driven water pump, the belt itself, timing belt, etc. One of the really nice things about EVs is the reduced maintenance.

Just out of curiosity, how much EV range does the Prius have? I drive 51 KM each way to/from work. So every day I drive 102 KM (about 60 miles), that's about 15 kilowatts-hours and costs $2.50 to recharge at home. If I sign up for day/night rates that will drop, but I don't know by how much.

I can pull into an Autozone parking lot and buy all the parts and tools to replace a water pump.

Tesla's have a completely new set of failure cases that are exponentially more complicated.

I have a Nissan Leaf from 2013 now with 100k km on it, after our old petrol car went to junkyard. All the maintenance that was necessary was new brake pads (once) and a new coupe filter.

*less complicated

Teslas have many faults, but "complicated" is not any way that I would describe it. The drivetrain is extraordinarily straightforward, and is pretty accessible. Today I fly a desk but in the past I was a Ford technician. I wish the vehicles I was working on at the time were are accessible as my Model 3 is. Not to mention how clean the mechanical bits of the cars are, even those with over 100,000 km on them. The underbody moulding and lack of big shaky boxes of fluids vibrating is very apparent on the cleanliness of the drivetrain, at least those that I've seen as the Tesla repair shop once let me in the garage a bit. I'm sure that the gearboxes have fluids in them, but the smooth electric motors don't shake it out past the gaskets.

>The drivetrain is extraordinarily straightforward

Even ignoring the battery (and all the other gizmos an EV is loaded with), the motor controller refutes this point. Efficient, high-powered motor control in a lightweight package is a relatively new solution, and requires a lot of up-to-date electronic and sofwate design techniques. Fault-finding on one of those is no easy feat.

It also depends how you define "complicated". If you mean, "dependent on the cutting-edge of mass-manufacturing capability of almost all forms of currently produced technology", then EVs are necessarily absurdly complicated.

It would be possible to source and manufacture (and fuel!) an ICE (of somewhat comparable quality to what most people require) domestically in many countries.

Obviously this is not possible for an EV (even China has to import some of the stuff needed to make one).

For me, my daily transportation being dependent on such a complex global system is not acceptable. The current "component shortage" makes my point. How can something that is "extrodinarily straightforward" currently have a lead time stretching into the years (depending on model and country)?

I'm not saying personal ownership of an ICE is the solution, btw.

My 2014 Prius plug-in can do about 7 miles on battery, the quoted range is 12 I believe? I get one way to work on that but it's great for just popping out to the supermarket and back.

> But your PHEV still needs oil changes and other maintenance, and has all the same failure modes that conventional ICEs have: plugs, coil, belt-driven water pump, the belt itself, timing belt, etc. One of the really nice things about EVs is the reduced maintenance.

They're used much less, what kills cars are cold starts and short commutes/city driving. The average driver drives something like 40km per day, which is doable in full electric mode with a lot of plug in hybrid and won't strain the IC engine.

Full electric in the city and gas on the highway is what we should have strived for since the 2000s, best energy efficiency, less pollution/noise where people live (better for health), least amount of maintenance, least amount of change needed, no grid problem, no need to completely reshape the entire infrastructure, &c.

Full electric is nice but carrying a 1 tonne battery everywhere when most people could do with 100kg is an aberration. Most people, especially in Europe, don't need more than 100km range with the exception of occasional vacation trips.

  > Full electric is nice but carrying a 1 tonne battery everywhere when most people could do with 100kg is an aberration.

Though I agree with this, I do like having the extra range available if something comes up - and that does happen about once a month. And the Model 3 regens really well. I touch the brake pedal less than once per week, and half the time I realize that I didn't even need to.

Nobody was really concerned about carrying 40 liters of petrol when 10 liters would have met their daily needs.

> Nobody was really concerned about carrying 40 liters of petrol when 10 liters would have met their daily needs.`

The thing is you can fill only 10L if you want and gain the weight. An empty battery weights the same as a full one, and they're heavy as fuck to begin with.

In any major city in Europe I can rent a gas car for 60 euros a day, for this once a month event this is more than fine.

It depends if you think in term of personal comfort or in term of global optimisation/pollution. Everyone would love top have a v10 maybach, but the world would be a better place with 200km range e fiat 500.

Replacing the 1.4B ICE vehicles we have on this planet with tesla like cars is far from optimal if people use 10% of the range/perf

Maybe it's changed, but in the Netherlands PHEVS were mostly bought because of lower taxation when driving them as a company car. Because the companies paid gas, people used them as regular cars and ended up polluting more due to the weight of the batteries.

We've had some changes in the taxation scheme though, so this may no longer be relevant.

Sometimes the purchaser is not the user. I've seen plug-in Prius bought with grant money... and never plugged in.

PHEVs are pointless. All the disadvantages of an ICE vehicle with no benefit over a regular hybrid; they get worse gas mileage, the added cost (~4000-5000 dollars) is probably never paid back by the first owner in electricity vs gas, and they have less cargo room.

Just a heads up, gasoline can go bad on you https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/how-long-can-ga...

"Considerably less margin" isn't a bad thing, when the competition heats up it's far easier for a producer that is lean and mean from the start than for a company used to fat margins.

Or maybe it's the high margin that is a good thing?

When competition comes and both Tesla and BYD have to lower the prices, which one will be better off?

The one with slightly lower margins?

Or the one that is now unprofitable?

I think the implication was that competition has already come and BYD sells a roughly similar car (in terms of range and size) at a cheaper price, because they are willing to accept a lower margin than Tesla. Tesla might have to lower prices just to match BYD.

Or they're subjected to far-less-stringent standards and most likely propped up with illegal subsidies. So... yeah.

We can safely assume that all companies are maximizing their margins. Ockham's Razor.

BYD isn't "willing to accept lower margin". They just can't price their cars higher or lower the cost of production.

Given Tesla's months-long waiting list for new orders and recent price hikes, they don't seem affected by competition from BYD.

If you look at revenue, in Q3 2018 Tesla and BYD were neck-to-neck with ~17.5 billion.

By Q4 2021 Tesla pulled ahead by over 50% ($53 billion vs. $30 billion).

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4486902-tesla-vs-byd-ev-sto...

So far in Tesla vs. BYD, Tesla is pulling ahead.

And don't get me wrong: BYD is doing very well in EV market, much better than Toyota or Honda, but they're not a threat to Tesla.

As Jeff Brzos put it: Your margin is my opportunity.

"the company was able to avoid the lockdown-spurred factory closures"

But the "article" conspicuously fails to say HOW.

This whole thing is as bullshit as the hype over Android's "market share" being higher than iOS's. Sure, when you're troweling out third-world junk to undiscerning customers, you can "dominate."

What exactly is "bullshit" about the fact that there are way more Androids out there than iPhones? And how is (say) a Samsung any more "third-world junk" than an iPhone assembled in India or Brazil?

I didn't say Samsung was third-world junk.

And what's bullshit about it is that the OS has no significance to a huge number of those users. If you're in the far east slapping together phones as cheaply as possible, you have only one OS choice: Android. Hence the "huge market share." But what is that share actually worth? People buying commodity phones are unlikely to be big spenders on apps or other high-profit add-ons that make the iPhone such a huge profit center for Apple.

> people don’t bucket hybrids as EVs in part because most people simply use them as ICE cars

This would warrant a "[Citation needed]", if I had any idea what source would even be acceptable to settle such a question as what portion of the system PHEV owners use their vehicle the most for.

Most PHEV prioritize battery and switch to combustion only when battery is depleted, so in short everyday trips, the ICE might never engage for instance. My personal experience in the EU was these cars mostly running at low speed in urban settings in electric mode (noise is different so you can tell)

I’d agree with you. If there’s gas in it, then I don’t consider it an EV.

Also, Tesla is in the process of roughly doubling their capacity with their new factories. Texas and Berlin only came online fairly recently. The plan with all four of the Tesla production sites is to get to 500K vehicles per site per year. That's 2M vehicles per year, up from around 1M last year. Originally the plan was to get the monthly production rate there end of this calendar year.

I think there will be a bit of back and forth between Tesla, Byd, and Volkswagen in the next few years. I don't think there are many more contenders for the #1 postion in terms of volume. Volkswagen seems to believe they can overtake Tesla in a few years and they are certainly investing heavily in their production capacity.

More interesting is who will have the guts to start targeting the low end market in Europe and the US. There's no technical need for cars to cost more than 10-15K in the low end price range. Existing manufacturers are happy to lurk at the high end with fat product margins.

However, there are a few cars well below 10K in the Chinese market already and it sure must be tempting to sell those with a fat margin in Europe. Even with a 5K markup they'd still be way cheaper than anything else in the market. The main cost driver is the size of the batteries. Light cars can get a lot more miles out of a relatively small battery. And of course battery prices continue to drop as well.

A small reasonable car could sell much higher volumes than the current batch of ridiculously oversized SUVs that people seem to spend many tens of thousands on. IMHO that would create some challenges for legacy manufacturers that are currently very dependent on selling cheap crappy ICE cars to cost conscious consumers. A cheap EV with large fuel and maintenance savings is basically going to kill that market in no time. Some people are predicting 2028 as a key year where a lot of the demand for that will start dipping to problematic ranges. By that time a lot of new factories will be producing batteries and cars.

The people are different and their taste is different. One must really love Tesla’s design language. For me it’s weird with single big display in the middle and I picked competing Kia EV6 model just because of that.

Tesla is/was a status symbol without competition for long time and logically it will need to adapt to the new reality. There are Mercedes EQS and EQE now. Well made luxury cars from old luxury brand with known history. There are many many new brands coming with electric vehicles in all segments and Tesla will have hard times for sure.

They still have the best software. That’s why I think the new Apple Car Play is such a big deal. If everyone uses their phones OS on their car, Teslas advantage goes away.

I’d rather the car has no software at all past simple audio connection myself. My current set up is a BT connection to my iOS device and it is absolutely spot on for reliability and I have full voice and tactile controls for everything.

And that audio connection better be fully airgapped from every other wire in the car.

The radio used to be that way. Just power essentially.

I wonder, if Tesla can bootstrap, why not an EV company on the extreme low end.

Exactly. The current phone "integration" into cars is bullshit, akin to the $100 AM radio rip-off of the '70s.

All we've needed in cars for the last 15 years is a goddamned WELL in the dashboard to put our phones in. Have swappable plastic inserts for different phone models, and integrate a power supply and (for non-Apple victims) an audio line.

"Problem" solved.

Except for the profit, when you upgrade to the premium system.

bingo

What do you do for things like maps though?

Apple Maps

You said you just have a Bluetooth audio connection - so you’re just listening to the readout of the directions? That doesn’t sound like a great experience.

The phone has a screen and sits on the dash. I don't use BT audio for directions, only for calls and Apple Music.

> The phone has a screen and sits on the dash.

It doesn’t take a leap of imagination to understand why a proper large screen, integration into the instrument cluster, and the HUD if you have one, is safer and easier to use than a tiny phone hanging off your dash.

You’re also for example missing out on your car's ability to do dead reckoning when there is a poor GPS signal.

Depends how badly designed your car is. Mine sits just to the top left of the steering wheel.

The phone does dead reckoning as well. It has accelerometers and a compass built in.

> I’d rather the car has no software

I'm not sure I want to rely on a buggy iOS/CarPlay/AppleCar UI. Ok for media, but the way Apple is pitching this, it would be the operating system of the whole car's UI including showing things like oil pressure and tachometer.

To clarify I don't want CarPlay or iOS in the car. I want the car to have its own platform which is not connected to the non-essential functions and my iOS device can do that in isolation. The only real functions that are required for integration are audio controls and BT has already solved that.

They have pretty software that is shit.

I don't own a Tesla, but whenever I ride with friends the center console shows an overhead type view of the other cars around. The cars randomly blink in and out, indicating it doesn't know if the other car really exists or not.

A cars UI has has exactly one function: provide accurate and actionable information to the driver. You should never need to second guess the information you are receiving.

Pretty much every company that tries to capture the environment around it uses a probabilistic model that takes in the raw sensor data and makes predictions about things in the surroundings. The random blinking you see on the Tesla screen is essentially saying that Tesla's model prediction confidence is borderline and changing from instance to instance. Is that great? No, but they can't do much using just vision data. What's the alternative? Show the cars even when your model is not confident anymore just for user experience reasons and give false sense of confidence? That's not ideal either.

Imo I don't know any other consumer car company that shows anything like that on their cars infotainment console. Companies like Waymo and Cruise do a much better job at capturing surroundings but they are in a different market where it makes sense to spend a ton of money on each car to add many LiDARs and significant compute in the car.

> I don't know any other consumer car company that shows anything like that on their cars infotainment console.

You seem to be on to something here...

> What's the alternative?

Just show the navigation stuff. The driver should be able to see other cars with their eyes. The car clearly isn't good enough at spotting them itself, so why further distract the driver by trying to guess?

> The cars randomly blink in and out, indicating it doesn't know if the other car really exists or not.

The wild flickering of lines, obstacles, humans and cars in perfect clear daylight conditions is absolutely flabbergasting to me and erodes any trust I have into self driving capabilities. It's outright scary.

You are probably talking about autopilot, not FSD beta which is entirely different stack.

Cars that are running basic autopilot show basic autopilot visualizations.

Tesla dropped the ball going from niche bespoke vehicles to mass production. Big “senior engineer from Chernobyl” as they disregarded a lot of common automotive knowledge and opted for consumer grade components.

Can you be more specific? I've been driving mine for almost 5 years now and it's better in almost every way to every other care I've ever owned.

For example this [0] They used non-automotive grade LCD, which due to heat in summer will go into yellow discoloration or LCD will start leaking adhesive or will just die.

[0] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...

Let's put things into perspective.

Toyota just recalled their first EV, bz4x because, I kid you not, the wheels where falling off.

I guess Toyota couldn't find automotive grade hub bolts.

https://mashable.com/article/toyota-recall-bz4x#:~:text=The%....

And it's not like it's an isolated thing. Cars from all car makers are being recalled for things way worse than LCD discoloration.

The difference is how much press coverage even small Tesla things get compared to much more serious issues in other cars.

Like Mach E which was recalled for potentially shutting down the drive train, another recall for roof not being properly bonded to the car and another for loose bolts.

GM's Bolt had every single car recalled for a batter defect that could (and did) lead to explosion.

Jaguar i-pace was recalled for "The front passenger seat frame may be missing fasteners, resulting in a seat frame with insufficient strength."

Id.4: "An unreliable battery connection may cause a stall, increasing the risk of a crash."

I'll take a yellowing lcd vs. wheels falling off.

One thing is mistake in process - i.e. Toyota or ID4 problems. Other thing is deliberate use of low grade, but cheaper parts, which can't long term survive in given environment. So your "perspective" makes no sense, only mudding waters.

What are these tests really trying to prove though?

90+ degrees C (194 F) for 408 hours is their "lowest" intensity test. That's 17 days of continuous solar radiation for 24 hours per day, which is hardly a consumer grade test.

The EV6 looks stunning. Tesla design feels very old and boring now. Gotta be like 6 years since they updated the design right?

I'm still looking forward to see Tesla pull off its first face lift followed by its first model update. There are still things legacy manufacturers do routinely that Tesla never did so far.

Model S and Model X had a giant refresh of everything but the exterior.

Tesla updates the cars on an ongoing basis, which is a much faster rate of innovation than a yearly refresh done by legacy car makers.

Most of the changes are to the guts of the car, hence invisible.

But they also do changes to exterior and interior, like removing chrome, changing center console etc.

Those are not in-your-face changes but they're there.

They are not changing the exterior probably because it's a good business sense to not change change a product that sells faster than you can make it.

Once they have "we could make more cars than we're selling" problem, they can go back to design studio.

Both Model 3 and Model Y are best selling cars with 1 year wait list for new orders.

Changing the design would be a very stupid thing to do.

Don't fix what ain't broke.

Unlike other car makers with yearly cadence of changes, Tesla iterates on the guts of the car on an ongoing basis.

Model 3 / Y got front casting with giant casting machines.

Then back casting.

Then structural battery pack.

Ongoing work on improving the batteries etc.

I wouldn't call software updates the "guts of the car". Also, Covid and the war in Ukraine made sure that everyone has long lead times for new cars. Funny how that was a negative point for legacy manufacturers ("see, they can't even manage their chip supply") while it is somehow a plus for Tesla ("those cars are so in demand, Tesla can't even manufacture enough", as if not being able production to meet demand is a good thing for a hardware company...).

Funny how that was a negative point for legacy manufacturers

Well, Tesla didn't have a massive drop in sales, due to chip shortages, or a changed business model.

When I used to buy cars, I'd swing by the dealership, find one I liked, and haggle + drive away same day.

Drove by a few dealers last month. They have massive lots, which used to have 100s of cars, now bare.

I've driven my car 2 years longer than normal. That's 2 years lost profit for some car maker.

So yeah, it makes them look bad.

None of the things I've listed (giga casting, structural battery pack) are software.

Tesla is growing production 50%+ year-over-year. Despite pandemic, chip shortages and war.

If you don't think that is balls to the walls execution then please list all the other manufacturing companies that did better than that in last 3 years.

Evan Apple, widely regarded as logistics genius, recently had a month long wait for all models of mac book pro.

In contrast, GM went from 10 million cars in 2016 to 6.3 in 2021

https://www.statista.com/statistics/225326/amount-of-cars-so....

Pretty much every legacy car maker had declining sales in the last couple quarters.

So yeah, I do think that comparatively Tesla is doing much better.

And here I thought the article is about a car company that tripled production within one year.

Tastes differ. The EV6 looks like a smashed crossover to me. Really not a fan of the wagon/crossover look.

Tesla design isn't so much about looking good as about looking distinctive. People have to be able to tell that it's a Tesla before they even see the logo. It's a characteristic of fashion/vanity brands in all markets. As another example, a lot of fashionable clothes or shoes are actually - and often deliberately - quite unappealing by any standards much outside the fashion industry (including "influencers") itself.

I tried out the Kia and Hyundai EV platform and found the infotainment incredibly bad. The Kia in particular is a case study in UX anti patterns. Toggles for switching the same capacitive buttons between different functions is almost a caricature of good UX in a car.

The Hyundai was better, but still everything was capacitive and unintuitive.

The Tesla big screen and UX is also bad, but I certainly wouldn’t put the Kia or Hyundai infotainment on a pedestal as a job well done. I am personally waiting to see what Honda or Toyota release.

A bigger issue (to me) is that EVs are just too expensive. You won’t save money unless you’re comparing an EV to a luxury car. If you’re comparison shopping an EV6 against a CRV you’ll never get the numbers to work. And if you’re in the market for a luxury car would you rather have a Kia or a Tesla??

> EVs are just too expensive

Per https://insideevs.com/news/586195/tesla-model3-rwd-tco-toyot... 5-year Total Cost of Ownership of Model 3 SR is about the same as Toyota Camry for an average 10k miles / year driver.

And that was probably calculated with the old gas prices.

And if you get the new usage based insurance from Tesla (available in 8 US states) then you might additionally save on insurance (see e.g. https://twitter.com/jd_average/status/1543083099701010434 saving $1.6k for 2 cars compared to Geico).

Lmao yeah I'm sure inside EVs dot com is unbiased

Tell me, did they find the same if you buy a ten year old Tesla vs a ten year old Camry? My dad bought a 1992 Miata in 2005 for $2500 and then drove it for fifteen years.

Has anyone even heard of someone buying a used Tesla?

Has anyone even heard of someone buying a used Tesla?

Yes! Only 2 years old though, so not a good data point.

Lots of dumbassery, had to get approval from Telsa or the warranty would be void.

Well, this [1] guy did buy a 8 year old one.

[1] https://people.com/human-interest/tesla-owner-blows-up-his-c...

> Lmao yeah I'm sure inside EVs dot com is unbiased

Tell us what did they got wrong. Gas is more expensive than electricity. The more you drive, the more you save. At some point you the amount you save will equal the difference in price.

> Has anyone even heard of someone buying a used Tesla?

Plenty of people buy used Teslas and you can too: https://www.tesla.com/inventory/used/mx?arrangeby=plh&zip=33...

It's hard to buy 10 year old Tesla because their oldest cars are 2012 Model S, then 2015 Model X and then 2017 Model 3 and 2020 Model Y.

But some people do sell them and some people buy them.

As it happens Tesla's retain their value better than most cars which is another factor that helps in Total Cost of Ownership.

> Gas is more expensive than electricity.

This is heavily dependent on where you charge. California has the highest gas prices in the US but gas is still cheaper than charging at a public charging station in California.

It doesn't make sense for most people who realistically can't drop on a Tesla.

My car, all the maintenance, the insurance and all the fuel I can put in my car over its entire lifespan even at current fuel prices is cheaper than the lowest entry cost for a Tesla.

My car cost £5k for reference with 20k miles on the clock and does 66mpg.

I can afford a Tesla. I just think it's a waste of money.

assuming you're in the UK, which car would that be ?

Citroen C3

There's no need to rely on fuzzy math from Tesla or Inside EVs. Those comparisons are comically inept.

The base Model 3 now costs $48,490 whereas the Toyota Camry starts at $25,845. The absolute most expensive Toyota Camry trim is the XSE V6 with a sticker price of $36,270.

Edmunds estimates the 5 year total cost of ownership for that Toyota Camry at... $45,211. The cash cost to own that Camry is $45,211 + $36,270 for a total cash cost of $81,481.

Edmunds doesn't have an estimate for a 2022 Model 3, but their 5 year total cost of ownership for a 2020 Model 3 is... $53,660. $48,490 + $53,660 is $102,150.

This is the most absurd and generous (to Tesla) comparison I could possibly make and the Model 3 is 25% more expensive. It's two year old Model 3 compared to the most expensive Camry you can buy.

If I compare base model to base model it just gets comically out of hand. The 5 year total cash cost for a base model Camry is $25,845 + $31,413 for a total cost of $57,258. The Model 3 is 78% more expensive over five years.

You have to really seriously gamify the numbers to come out ahead on any EV. Things such as absurd vehicle comparisons, extending the length well beyond the length that people actually keep their car, discounting or ignoring deprecation, assuming absurd and unrealistic increases in gas, etc.

Wait, what? Doesn't the total cost of ownership already include the initial purchase price? Why do you add sticker prices to TCOs in your comment?

Technically it's depreciation rather than purchase price that counts toward TCO, but that's part of what "total" means. Also, using depreciation rather than purchase price would probably favor the Camry even more.

I mostly have calls while driving, so infotainment is rather secondary gadget for me. Software will be ironed out in coming months. The car is still too new. I think even parking brake was failing and recent software update fixed it.

I wouldn’t buy any current Tesla as luxury car. EQS is my favorite or BMW iX as cheaper alternative. Or 2008 Tesla Roadster :-) I know couple very wealthy individuals driving that ancient car as a statement.

Edit: about being too expensive. I doubt it. With current petrol prices in Germany my monthly saving on petrol alone will pay for electric vehicle. I forecast seeing liter for 2,5€ in winter here.

2.5€ is already the price on some Austrian highways…

I think even parking brake was failing and recent software update fixed it.

Good grief. I don't care what car company, but if anything should be 100% manual, a simple cable system, it's this.

Computer controlled emergency brake! Insanity!! But sure, manufacturers save a few dollers per car.

Computer goes nuts, can't steer, or accelerator stuck, yeah, sure, same borked code will probably stop the emergency brake from engaging.

This. Is. Insane.

You have no idea how bad it is. I have worked with automobile programming and the pressure from management to put hardware safety feutures in software instead is high.

The "ignition key" doesn't do anything nowadays.

Just you wait until the brake pedals or steering wheel get electronic only.

> And if you’re in the market for a luxury car would you rather have a Kia or a Tesla??

Tesla build quality[1] has nothing in common with luxury. Lucid is trying to fill the "luxury EV" gap.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgjVvetGPak

Doesn't really seem to matter to people in the luxury segment. If luxury buyers cared about quality Land Rover would have gone out of business ages ago. It's as much a status symbol as it is an actual luxury purchase.

> A bigger issue (to me) is that EVs are just too expensive. You won’t save money unless you’re comparing an EV to a luxury car.

Certainly in terms of raw price, but a lot of companies in the UK are doing effectively a company car scheme so you pay for the car pre-tax (saving about 20-45% depending on your tax rate). That same saving doesn't apply to ICE vehicles (gets eaten up by benefit in kind tax).

>Well made luxury cars from old luxury brand with known history.

I laugh whenever I hear someone talking about Tesla, etc, "disrupting" the "legacy auto industry". The "legacy auto industry" (and I'm mostly talking about the German manufacturers) are going to be just fine. After all, they are the backbone of one of the dominant EU member states. Do you really think they are going to be caught by surprise by the mandated transition to EVs?

The article doesn’t support its own headline. BYD sold 323k EVs while Tesla sold 564k for the first 6 months of the year.

So called plug-in hybrids that represent the other half of BYD’s sales are just gas powered cars with a very small battery similar to a Prius. To call them EV’s is fake news.

The Prius isn't a plug-in hybrid and the NiMH battery can only go a few kilometers. The Prius Prime (aka. Prius Plug-in Hybrid) is a plug-in hybrid with a Li-ion battery that can go 40 kilometers.

Yeah, exactly, not an ev. 40k is so little it wouldn’t even cover the average daily driving distance in the US

It was always going to be easier for [your favorite traditional car company] to figure out non-internal combustion drive trains than it was going to be for Tesla to catch up on 100 years of how to build really good cars.

The smart move from the beginning for everyone except Elon was to become a drivetrain OEM.

Edit: removed the reference to a specific car brand because people got hung up on it.

GM's been trying to figure out the non-ICE drivetrains for three decades. They have a tradition of one step forward, three steps back. I'm confident that GM will take another step forward. I'm also fairly certain they'll take as many steps back as well.

My Bolt is awesome. I don't know how they would significantly improve it.

Unfortunately it's a lease. Due to the upcoming glut of used cars, I'll probably switch to a used hybrid when the lease runs out. I'll miss the Bolt and the full EV drivetrain though.

Is it the version GM recommends parking outside because it could spontaneously combust? That seems like an area they could improve on.

that was their battery supplier who screwed up

Formerly, thanks to a screw up by LG.

Chevy replaced my 2019 Bolt's battery a couple months ago without charge. New models don't have the problem. The overall incidence of fires was extremely limited and never worried me though.

Pinning all the blame on LG maybe over simplifying the problem. Bad cells are inevitable, GM doesn’t have a good system for isolating bad cells in the bolt hence why you see catastrophic failure when manufacturing faults happen.

https://www.autoweek.com/news/a38252667/battery-experts-expl...

The Bolt is not available where I live. I'd love to hear your impression of it.

My biggest complaint is that the torque is too much for the tires, so it is way too easy to spin rubber when you want to make a quick move into traffic. Other than that, I find I like their implementation of 'one pedal' driving and use it exclusively. I can often get to where I'm going without touching the brake pedal. Range is fine for my Bay Area driving(<120 miles per trip). Some folks complain about slower fast-charging speeds but that doesn't bother me because I mostly use L1/L2. The seats could be more comfortable, but I hear that is fixed on newer models. The entertainment system gave me a few issues for a while but it seems to be working fine lately.

Great to know. I also almost exclusively use one-pedal driving (Model 3). That simple change makes driving so much less stressful, however, I'm afraid of loosing the "jump on the brakes" muscle memory if an emergency does crop up.

plus one for Bolt being a really great car, GM nailed it (if you can tolerate a small car)

I see no mention of GM in the article. It talks about Chinese automaker BYD.

I find the implication here that GM makes good cars amusing.

You picked a strange company to make that point.

GM sold 7k "plug in" cars in Q2 2022. That's compared with ~250k pure EV by Tesla. It's 1.2% of GM's total sales.

Their overall sales are declining for the past 5 years.

That doesn't look like a company that has figure out how to make EV at scale.

The supposedly "smart move" isn't reflected in GM's EV sales or their profit margins.

Don't read too much in to it, I just picked a random car company that had been around for a long time.

You don't have much point either way.

Of the top 10 ICE car makers, only VW is a serious EV player. And they are still loosing to Tesla and BYD and in China they're loosing to china-only EV brands like NIO or XPeng or SAIC.

Other than that there is almost an inverse correlation with how big the ICE business is vs. how big the EV business is.

Toyota and Honda are doing the worst, with almost no EV sales.

Stellantis and GM are also doing extremely poorly.

Ford, with 50k / year, is also nothing to write home about.

Of legacy, it's the smaller players like Hyundai / Kia / Audi / Porsche / Renault / Jaguar that did move into EVs earlier than other ICE companies.

Judging by what they've done so far (as opposed to what their PR teams say about the future), the legacy auto has not yet figure out how to make and sell EVs at volume.

Ford has more pre-orders for the F150 Lightning than Tesla shipped cars last year. Almost 80% of the reservations are from first time EV buyers, so people who theoretically could have bought a Tesla but didn't want one.

In 5 years, I doubt Tesla will be in the top 10.

and yet Tesla PE is still sky high even during a bear market. Their stock value cannot be justified unless you believe they will continue to dominate EV market, they will have auto driving cars replacing uber , they will have Tesla bots in every office ,home and factory, their ai software will dominate the market.

You forgot, they will solar-roof every house, solve traffic, replace public transport, and provide transportation in Space and on Mars.

They might actually deliver on the space thing.

As far as I know there is a single Tesla car in space and it's not usable. I won't hold my breath for a second one.

Rapidly reusable rockets? Because that was their mantra for the last ~10 years and no progress has been made so far (that I know of). They haven't done anything so far that has fundamentally changed the space game.

Their stock value is somehow correlated with bitcoin, that suggest the same people are investing in both for similar reasons.

The Tesla stock price is based off of the cult-of-personality followers of the CEO and his promises that FSD, Cybertruck and Tesla Semi are _just around the corner_

The latter two are just a matter of mass production, intentionally delayed in favor of other priorities. FSD is certainly possible, and good headway is being made on it. When it’ll be as good as a human however is an unresolved matter setting aside the hype and speculation.

Nothing is ever just a matter of mass production. Scaling brings its own, massive problems, some of which Tesla experienced with the relatively simple Model 3.

You're right, scaling is another topic. If you can produce 5 prototypes you can produce 500 of them. Making that happen at scale in a timely manner requires introduction of automation, assembly lines, humans, checks and so forth. However, I argue beyond being laborious it's not any sort of impossibility as compared to something like FSD.

"A matter of mass production" is like saying step 1 draw a circle, step 2 draw the rest of the owl.

The factory is the hard part of car design.

The Cybertruck only recently had the design finished ..

People have been saying that for years, but their growth and margins continue to be incredible year after year.

And it seems like other manufacturers, even if they make good EVs, won't be able to scale their battery production quick enough. Meanwhile Tesla is quite ahead in this department.

Both statements can be true at once. Tesla can have incredible growth and margins for many years and still be overvalued at its current price. (I personally believe both are true: Tesla obviously does have a lot of potential to grow from where they are now, but their stock price implies a level of dominance which seems unrealistic).

I don't own or plan to buy any TSLA at current prices because I think too it might be a bit overvalued. But I disagree with the people that just look at the PE and think that it's an order of magnitude overvalued.

Tesla stock is like crypto. People are HODL and will sink with the ship to the bottom but the "captain" will bail long before then if he doesn't already have one foot on the pier...

If you just look at their cost advantage, their war chest, and construction plans, you can pretty much extrapolate that they will be a major car manufacturer by the end of the decade with volume sales ranging well over 10M vehicles unless something happens. They seem to be well capable of creating more production capacity. They seem to have no demand problem. So, there are lots of good reasons to assume they might be growing quite a lot in the next years.

Their expressed goal is actually closer to 20M vehicles long term. That would be on top of their plans in the energy sector (batteries, virtual power plants, etc.). And on top to eventually have a cheap, driver less car on the road. That last one is a bit of a controversial goal and you may have some reservations about whether they can or cannot do that. But if you are an investor you might reasonably lean one way or another and buy accordingly.

If you look just at their current size and assume they cannot possibly do more and grow, then yes, you'd be right to be skeptical. If on the other hand you look at what they did with quarter on quarter growth (until the current one), and extrapolate that some years in the future you might start wondering where that might end up and you might see a path to Tesla becoming quite big indeed.

The reason the share price is high is obviously that there are a lot of share holders that believe that Tesla is well on their way executing the necessary steps to reach all of their ambitious goals. They seem to have a head start on other manufacturers both in volume production and cost savings. That won't last forever. But at the scale of Tesla's ambition, having a lot of control over their suppliers and R&D related to that is a smart strategy if you plan to grow aggressively and something that most of their competitors are still figuring out. Maybe some of them will and maybe some of them will have to sell products at a loss for some time to come just to keep up.

IMHO, the biggest threat for Tesla are not European or US companies but Chinese manufacturers. The market is plenty big enough for the both of them though. It will be interesting which of the ICE car manufacturers survive this decade.

Tsla is no longer the largest, by quite a bit:

> BYD sold 638,157 electric or plug-in hybrid passenger vehicles in the first six months of 2022

Though about half of BYDs cars are full battery, and the other half are hybrids.

So Tesla is still the largest by ‘quite a bit’ then.

BYD plug-in hybrid barely have a battery [0] They run on gas mainly

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Tang

This was always going to happen once the big boys stepped in

Except BYD is not the "Big Boy".

They sold 730k cars in 2021.

While respectable, it's less that Tesla's 900k and clearly not in the VW / Toyota league.

If anything, it's BYD and Tesla that are chasing the big boys while the big boys, with the exception of VW, still seem to be half asleep when it comes to EVs.

While this claim is a bit dubious (at present), as Tesla had lockdown-related problems, and BYD vehicles are just as likely to be plug-in hybrids as full EVs, the trend looks like, by the end of the year, Volkswagen will likely sell more EVs than Tesla.

Edit: typo

Strange it's not measuring sales.

325% YoY increase in sales. I wondered how - a quick google of "byd forced labor" brings up plenty of articles regarding allegations of Uyghur forced labour including a public letter to the CEO of BYD from the UN Office of Human Rights.[1]

[1] https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublic...

Tesla is the blackberry of EVs.

They're eventually going to have their lunch eaten by the Apple of EVs.

Apple will never become the Apple of EVs.

During ongoing Chinese lockdowns and a global chip shortage where local manufacturing is favoured, this isn't a surprise. I also wouldn't be surprised if this was somewhat malicious, allowing competitors to steal IP and build up their local competitors.

There is yet not a good answer to preventing global IP theft. With Western laws, the only thing we have successfully done is prevent localized IP theft, whilst foreign Countries continue to benefit from directly stealing it.

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