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Comment by drcross | Hacker News Reader

When you have a several month wait list for your product, legions of devoted potential customers, if you're head and shoulders above any of your competitors, you're able to get away with things like this.

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> if you're head and shoulders above any of your competitors, you're able to get away with things like this.

The hubris of Tesla is still believing this to be the case. I personally cancelled my cybertruck order from lack of interest. better competition exists in 2022 that wasn’t the case years ago.

Tesla's are outselling every other manufacturer (ICE or otherwise) in many countries for the last quarter and they are still severely supply constrained; your personal antidotal data point doesn't serve much purpose in the broader context.

Tesla's own reporting out of China from Friday is that they weren't able to sell all the cars they made...

“In Q3, we began transitioning to a more even regional mix of vehicle builds each week, which led to an increase in cars in transit at the end of the quarter. These cars have been ordered and will be delivered to customers upon arrival at their destination” - [0]

In other words, they said all of the cars had been ordered, although many were in transition at the end of the quarter.

What is your source of what Tesla said in China?

[0] - https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-vehicle-production-...

I mean isn’t that the same thing for traditional dealerships? They order the cars and they’re waiting to be sold. A good amount of Teslas end up rejected for whatever reason and show up on the existing inventory page. You can often find new cars in socal with delivery that week. I got my model s that way.

I'm pretty sure you can't stuff your supply chain like that.. Sunbeam got caught once doing that so I'm pretty sure it's a major no no. If it's ordered then it's ordered by someone. Not by a dealer etc? Plus Tesla have no dealers except themselves? so at most it'd be bunch of rejects?

https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/33-7976.htm

Tesla reached a mere 1.5% share of new cars in August 2022 in Germany. They are far away from "outselling" all the others.

Germany car marked is skewed towards Germany carmakers. Apart from obvious reasons, car leases through employers are only for German cars.

I've yet to be in a country were sales are not skewed toward local cars. Sweden lots more Volvos than anything else (and definitely Teslas), France, lots more Citroen and Peugeot than anywhere else, Australia: Holden and Ford, US: lots of cars that drive nowhere else (GM, Chevy...).

Regarding outselling most other car manufacturers: this seems to be the Tesla realitity distortion, it is likely true for electric cars but for all cars VW delivered ~5 M cars in 2021 vs Teslas 900k

Australia has no local car manufacturers and hasn't for some time. Toyota is by far the biggest car seller , followed by Mazda and Hyundai.

https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/vfacts-australias-2021...

Tesla seem to have sold 12,094 locally last year, putting them at 18th on that list.

https://www.carsguide.com.au/ev/advice/how-many-teslas-are-t...

Australia with its long drives if you leave a city and lack of infrastructure doesn't suit electric cars at the moment. Will change eventually, but likely lagging the rest of the world.

> Australia has no local car manufacturers and hasn't for some time. Toyota is by far the biggest car seller , followed by Mazda and Hyundai.

I know Toyota closed it's Melbourne plant in 2017 (Holden and Ford had stopped manufacturing even earlier IIRC). I would argue though that Ford and Holden (which I just read ceased operating in 2020) are still perceived as Australian car manufacturers by most. They definitely had some cars specifically for the OZ market.

> VW delivered ~5 M cars in 2021 vs Teslas 900k

Maybe shifting of goal posts, but this is an impressive achievement for a manufacturer who ramped up production only couple of years ago.

While there is a preference for VW group in the corporate leasing market, theybare far from the only ones. Your first argument doesn't make any sense whatsoever so.

"Car leases trough employers are only for German cars" - that is not true, as a German company you can lease whatever car you want for your employees. They are predominantly German cars for the obvious reasons. :)

What countries?

One of the weird things about Tesla is that, in general, supply side constraints are widely regarded as a flashing warning light that a firm can’t execute. Yet Tesla is just given an “I’m sure they’ll work it out.”

Being supply constrained during a period of rapid growth is the opposite of a warning light.

They build new factories and pump out more and more cars each year. People are still scrambling to buy their product.

Let's look at EVs in Europe:

https://eu-evs.com/marketShare/ALL/Groups/Line/All-time-by-Y...

Tesla was the number 1 EV maker in 2019, but so far in 2022 Tesla is number 3.

Other manufacturers own many brands and release many models under each brand. The Tesla Model Y is the best selling EV in Norway this year:

https://elbilstatistikk.no/

But the best selling EV manufacturer in Norway is Volkswagen. Volkswagen has four EVs in Norway's top 10 sellers: VW ID.4, Skoda Enyaq, Audi Q4 e-tron, and the Audi e-tron.

The VW ID.4, Skoda Enyaq, and the Audi Q4 e-tron are different versions of the same car. Rather than selling just one model Volkswagen's approach gives you the choice of more options.

Add in ICE vehicles and it's not even close. Volkswagen sells 10 million per year globally across all of its brands (VW, SEAT, Cupra, Skoda, Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Ducati, Scania, MAN, etc.).

The fact that you wanted one of those ped killing tanks is unbelievable to me

Especially if your customers don’t give a shit about the safety of others.

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