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I dont think they can continue to grow at that rate and preserve their gross margin. The high end part of the market isnt large enough to sustain 20m cars a year. To give you an idea, for scale, the two largest producers made 10m each in 2019 roughly respectively - and those two are VW and Toyota. I cannot see in any way for Tesla to displace that many units and maintain their margins at the level they have them.

The big three domestic manufacturers largely shed their pension liabilities to the UAW when they last went (or nearly went in the case of Ford) bankrupt in 2008.

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I heard the same arguments when Apple had a hit with the iPhone. The high end of the market is saturated, and soon the competition would bring down the prices. But the price of the iPhone continued to go up. It never stopped going up. Because it continued to offer more and more value.

People already see some value in Teslas self-driving technology. And that value will continue to go up for a long time.

>> People already see some value in Teslas self-driving technology. And that value will continue to go up for a long time. Up to the point where you tell your car "Hey, go get me a pizza".

You are aware that real self driving(L5) is not possible without some AI breakthroughs, right? All the promises you see from Elon are just pure BS. Your tesla has issues seeing a big truck straight in front of the driver lane so you can forget the "Hey, go get me a pizza" command.

I can't really see many reasons to buy a Tesla except its propulsion technology (i.e. big batteries). I doubt that's enough to compare it with the iPhone which was really more about software than hardware. Tesla software/user experience is not significantly better than a dumb car with carplay or just an ipad fixed on board. The only way for Tesla to win more market share is for the competition to ignore/defy the wanna be EV consumers.

> Tesla software/user experience is not significantly better than a dumb car with carplay or just an ipad fixed on boar

That's only part of it. It also includes the prestige and social cache. Once upon a time, apple was the same. Me, i don't care, but all the fancy ppl around me, the multi generational wealthy and boomers, can't get enough Teslas. That desire for luxury may wax like apple... or the coming recession may sponch it.

> Tesla software/user experience is not significantly better than a dumb car with carplay or just an ipad fixed on boar

I'd say it's much worse. Putting all the controls including a/c on the tablet is an extremely bad idea.

"Prestige" in regards to Tesla appears to be regional at best. Nobody I know (including myself) even considers Tesla at its price range due to competition (Mercedes, Audi, Porsche) completely outclassing it in terms of design and features, which is an important factor here in Europe. Tesla largely appears to be a footnote when it comes to EV choices in this part of the world.

Tesla still has an "early adopter" and tech aura(IMHO). I wouldn't say it's seen as luxury in Europe. I believe they sell well in Europe because they have the best batteries/range and little competition. I believe once (if) Mercedes and the other brands ramp up production on their electric cars Tesla will have a very hard time competing. They have to deliver either better tech or better value(price). They cannot compete on "luxury" or brand. Tesla itself markets as a tech company (to investors and everyone else). It sells the first move advantage(i.e. battery tech, economy of scale)

There are several differences. 1) Apple has massive platform benefits. phoneOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS devices all work really well together. If you buy into 1 part of the ecosystem, the incremental value of switching another device to an Apple device is really high. 2) The high end in cars and phones are 2 orders of magnitude different. Spending a few hundred dollars more to buy into the high end for a smartphone is a stretch many consumers can make. Spending a few tens of thousands of dollars more to buy into the car high end is not a stretch many consumers can make. Heck, you could buy a new high end smartphone with the amount you pay every 2 months for a shitty car. 3) Apple's devices are the best in class in nearly every measure, especially build quality. Tesla is still far behind its competitors in build quality.

This is not an argument against Tesla. It's an argument cautioning against comparing Tesla to Apple. Heck, it's an argument cautioning comparing any company today or in the history of companies to Apple.

> I heard the same arguments when Apple had a hit with the iPhone. The high end of the market is saturated, and soon the competition would bring down the prices. But the price of the iPhone continued to go up. It never stopped going up. Because it continued to offer more and more value.

The most expensive iPhone kept getting more expensive but for almost it's entire history there has been a <$450 iPhone despite inflation and the overall rising average purchase price of a smartphone.

Apple doesn't compete in the ultra-budget space but pretty much from the get-go Apple has been competing on price and value with older models, the 5c, the SE line, the XR, etc.

For reference, iPhone 1 released at $715 2022 dollars compared to the $400 SE available now.

https://www.gsmarena.com/charts_show_the_evolution_of_iphone...

You can squeeze to afford a 900 dollar phone. You can't squeeze someone from a 30,000 dollar car to a 90,000 dollar one, the math doesn't work.

Problem is, Apple's competition is ... not so good. Doesn't go for Tesla vs other car manufacturers.

Huge difference between $500 extra and $20,000 extra. Most working people can sacrifice and afford the 500. Most literally have no way of affording a Tesla.

>and maintain their margins at the level they have them.

Tesla's margins shrunk quite a bit last earnings report, so I agree. Selling high-end cars in a niche market is easier than selling 20 million cars annually (which no one has ever done before).

I'm skeptical that anyone can make 20m cars a year. It also doesnt surprise me that Teslas margins have shrank, I think the price of their vehicles is rendered somewhat inelastic because of the preorder-purchase contract system they use. The vehicle price is more or less fixed at the time of order based on my understanding, and while they can retroactively increase prices, it will likely result in abandonment of the order.

> I'm skeptical that anyone can make 20m cars a year.

There's just over 30m seconds in a year, that's a car every second and a half. That seems like it would take a lot of assembly lines to pull off ignoring other constraints.

On the other hand, at 184.8″ for a model 3, that's like a stream of them bumper to bumper leaving a single assembly line at 6.65 Mph for the entire year. Viewed in that light, maybe it doesn't take that many assembly lines to reach a speed at which this would be achievable, ignoring other very important constraints. (Or maybe I made a mistake in my math.)

The level of market displacement is pretty huge - its not clear to me that its possible for that to happen. The market for vehicles is pretty inelastic, like, you cant grow your way there in an organic way.

I agree, I was trying to examine how plausible it was from a very simplistic model, which is why I said "ignoring other very important constraints". It sounded implausible on the face of it, as it might require cars to be leaving the assembly line at freeway speeds, but it wasn't quite that bad in reality. There are plenty of other things which make it very unlikely/implausible though, such as market demand, as you note.

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