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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

OK, so far, not much.

Musk is getting stretched rather thin. Space-X seems to be doing OK with Gwynne Shotwell running things. Tesla, which Musk apparently does really run personally, is doing OK, but their side ventures are not. Self-driving is a mess. Solar panels (yes, Tesla has a solar panel business) are not doing well. The Cybertruck is years late. (Maybe next year.[1]) So is the Tesla Model 2, the low-end vehicle.

There's still no low-cost Tesla. The market for high-end cars is somewhat saturated. Tesla's order backlog is now 78 days, much less than usual for Tesla and about typical for the auto industry. Remember, Tesla has to become bigger than Toyota to justify the stock price. It is not possible to do that at Tesla's current price points. There are not enough buyers with that much money.

So Tesla has to compete on price with the Chevy Bolt, the Nissan Leaf, etc. Electric compact sedans are a crowded sector. Solving that problem is Musk's job.

Twitter is a distraction.

[1] https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/tesla-cybertruck-might-fina...

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Disclaimer: Previously worked in Toyota's EV R&D division, opinions my own.

> Remember, Tesla has to become bigger than Toyota to justify the stock price. It is not possible to do that at Tesla's current price points. It is not possible to do that at Tesla's current price points.

Long term Tesla has to create a balance sheet and a narrative that convince people that it's current valuation is justified. Based on my time in R&D I think Tesla might achieve that through lower cost vehicles - they were taking some very bold steps in manufacturing that might be hard for others to catch up to - but could also achieve it through other means.

One thing I was very aware of at my time at Toyota was how many of the nascent supplies of Lithium and Cobalt Tesla was snatching up directly or indirectly. Even if other companies can deliver a lower cost of production it may not matter if they can't supply the batteries. 3-5 years from now those investments might pay off substantially in lower costs for Tesla's rather than other vehicles even if the bets in manufacturing don't work out.

What I want to see is Tesla come up with a sequel which is another hit. I feel like their car styling was comfortably out there when electric cars first came on to the scene but now it's become incredibly safe. Other companies, now they are building specific EVs rather than throwing some batteries in the back of an existing car and calling it an EV, are really starting to play with the concept and are making some great looking cars. Cars like the Ionic 5 and the Honda-E for example are making the Tesla's look old hat.

Well , there’s the Cybertruck…

Not a fan personally. Looks like someone tried to make a truck out of a table napkin.

I was just pointing out that their next design isn't "safe", as you find their current designs.

>Cars like the Ionic 5 and the Honda-E for example are making the Tesla's look old hat.

Both those cars look hideous to me.

I would argue objectively that you are wrong, or at least that a significant percentage of the population disagree with you. The Ionic 5 at the moment has such a long waiting list that people are selling them second hand for more than they actually cost to buy new.

Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that the Tesla aesthetic is due for a refresh. Whether they have to go as unconventional as some other manufacturers have is up for debate but that they need to come up with something new surely isn't.

As long as Tesla doesn't own the Li suppliers or mining rights, it doesn't matter how much Tesla got in the past, because going forward all other EV makers, or battery makers, will get their volumes as well. Prices will spike, in which case past contracts can help to buffer that.

And assuming Tesla has a squezze on Li supplies, laws prevent the use of that control to hurt competitors. Braking these laws carries enough fines in all major markets that they will be adhered to.

> As long as Tesla doesn't own the Li suppliers or mining rights, it doesn't matter how much Tesla got in the past

My understanding is that Tesla is leveraging long-term contractual lock-ins in various shapes. One particular one I heard was that in exchange for fronting some of the up-front cost for the mine Tesla would retain the right to buy X% of the mine's output at a maximum markup of Y% over cost to produce.

This kind of contractual lock-in can achieve the desired goal without using either of the mechanisms you listed.

These types of contracts are not new or innovative.

They're usually used by mining companies to hedge future market variance, and are not exclusive to Tesla either. On top of other companies having these contracts in place as well, mining companies will pay to break these contracts if a high enough bidder comes along or flat out pays them to break it.

With demand pricing spiking for batteries, these lock ins are not very strong.

> These types of contracts are not new or innovative.

Agreed.

> On top of other companies having these contracts in place as well

Yes, but scale is important. My analysis at the time was that Tesla was locking in significantly more material behind contracts than Toyota or other companies.

> mining companies will pay to break these contracts if a high enough bidder comes along or flat out pays them to break it.

This assumes the contract is written in such a way that Tesla does not have to consent to the contract being broken. My understanding was that Tesla was trying to get into as many contracts as they could without such clauses.

It is illegal to abuse your access to certain things in order to squeeze competitors, if Tesla actually has contracts that would secure enough Lithium to have negative effects on competitors (no idea if that really is the case), abusing this position would expose Tesla to all kinds of legal troubke caused by this anti-competitive behaviour. Lithium supplier might then be legally obliged to supply Tesla's competitors at the same conditions as Tesla if not enough Lithium is availavle to fulfill orders. Working with Li suppliers to starve competitors of Li deliveries would even be worse. Given Musk's, and Tesla's, cavalier attitufe when it comes to rules and regulatuons, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried so.

Source: More compliance trainings I can count and enough real life experience with monopolistic raw material suppliers to know that abusing market position to hirt competitors is a really bad idea.

Any contract between major market suppliers and consumers that do not have a break clause is open to being interpreted by a civil court judge as okay to break without much, if any, penalty.

I don't think that they were have to be new or innovative for Tesla to have a strategic Advantage relative to others with them.

Twitter is also a risk, not just a distraction; now foreign governments can demand access and control in Twitter by holding Tesla revenue hostage (e.g., China's approval or disapproval of Tesla purchase tax exemptions), so he's basically paid a lot of cash to give bad actors additional levers to affect his other businesses.

Also physical assets like a production plant. Which I'm sure would never be threatened with a shut down over miscellaneous health and safety or permit violations.

I don't buy that at all. Twitter has been able to withhold tweets from certain countries (e.g. EU) based on local laws, for many years. They can just keep doing that with China. You can't be held hostage if you just comply with the law and take a bunch of tweets down in China, which every company must do.

> if you just comply with the law and take a bunch of tweets down in China

Note the last qualifier in your statement. "in China". I think the concern is that a potential adversary could influence Musk outside of their jurisdiction too. So "in China" becomes "everywhere". Which means that one day your might find that you're not able to criticize Putin or Xi Jingping or whoever else on Twitter because Musk has a large Tesla presence in that country

Fair, but I doubt that would be in China's interest. For example, we haven't seen China try to do that with Apple Podcasts, Apple News or (less significantly) Apple Music content that might be anti-China. I'm not seeing a track record here.

China will do what it always did before with other companies: try to hack Twitter to get sensitive data, and try to place spies in high places to obtain trade secrets, IP, and technology.

I'm not sure if China even needs to actively do anything in order to create a chilling effect on Musk. Maybe he will just censor things on the platform proactively to appease the relevant authorities/interests. That's of course speculation, but there's precedent for it happening already (see Disney[0])

Honestly though I'm just entertaining the idea. I'm not too worried about Musk's acquisition of Twitter

[0]: https://hir.harvard.edu/rated-c-for-censored-walt-disney-in-...

> Space-X seems to be doing OK with Gwynne Shotwell running things.

Find Gwynne Chatwell for Twitter, and Bob's our uncle!

Sheryl Sandberg?

He should not bring in anyone from existing social media if he wants to change the direction of twitter like he claimed when he bought it.

Bringing in a "Traditional" Social media Exec will just result in repeating the same policies all social media companies have, including the clear political bias all of these companies have

Actually a pretty good idea.

I think Sheryl Sandberg running Twitter would be a great idea. She definitely has a ton of experience, is used to dealing with complicated founders and executing on their vision, the only place that she could move up in her career is to be the CEO of not just a large corporation but something meaningful.

In a way Twitter and Facebook are no longer as directly competitive as they were in the old days when it was just FB and Twitter.

Christopher Poole.

I expect Tesla will still be his "crown jewel". He's already announced he's searching for a Twitter CEO. I doubt it would take him much time out of his day to set a general vision for Twitter.

Jeff Bezos for example owns the Washington Post, but doesn't run it (which will likely be the case with Musk and Twitter in a few months), and it doesn't seem to have detracted from anything while he was still CEO of Amazon.

Finding the right CEO will be the challenge, and I surprisingly haven't heard any speculation on who could get the job.

Is Tesla really his crown jewel though? I always thought that was SpaceX.

Depends on what we mean by that; SpaceX might be what he takes the most pride in (due to the much longer-term vision, and more "grandiose" nature of space exploration). What I meant was that Tesla is his first priority, which he micromanages the most and spends the most time at.

Twitter I think will be his crown jewel!

A kitchen sink app in which..

- Use Twitter to pay for parking (tired of downloading tons of apps in different cities to do this)

- Musk should find other verticals where ppl have to download multiple apps to do the same thing.. just do it in Twitter

- Make Twitter a public Internet identity system. You want to troll online use your fake account... you want to be serious, comment online using your verified Internet ID that Twitter has verified you in many ways

- Free speech .. cesspool continues and worse via anonymous/fake Twitter accounts. Slightly less when one uses their verified account

I think he could triple his investment with a kitchen sink app!

> - Free speech .. cesspool continues and worse via anonymous/fake Twitter accounts. Slightly less when one uses their verified account

From what I've seen, non-anonymity doesn't do much to reduce the vitriol of online discussion. What it probably has a larger impact on is on potentially persecuted minorities (say, trans people), where non-anonymity makes it easier to threaten them in real life.

Well i dont see a way ever to force everyone to use their verified public Internet identity, but such a system is needed. Especially with deepfakes technology getting more evolved and easier to use.

Hmmm...on a different note...Getting downvoted and would enjoy hearing why if anyone cares to explain. Are you not tired too of downloading tons of apps just to pay for parking?

>"re you not tired too of downloading tons of apps just to pay for parking?"

I am tired of my every sneeze being tracked by the rest of the world. It is dystopia.

P.S. I do not downvote any posts no matter what.

cool and thanks, but that's what Musk has said he wants to do and just sharing some thoughts/ideas around that.

You don't have to use it, but many others who desire a simplest user experience for X will and that's a money maker I believe. A way to reap his investment and then some.

My experience has been tradeoffs.

Real identity has those most vulnerable get more threats, the majority get less.

I would very much prefer that he focuses on SpaceX and Tesla, in this order, seeing as he's more or less custom-built for those jobs, and there aren't that many people like that around.

Running Twitter OTOH? There's an endless supply of "captains of industry" in the Silicon Valley, who would be willing and able to do it.

The Boring Company's latest test tunnel was about 1034 times slower than a snail (their current stated goal).

https://www.reddit.com/r/BoringCompany/comments/xugxdl/comme...

Has the Boring Company really achieved anything that is not a flamethrower (not not a flamethrower?) and a slow EV taxi lane under Las Vegas?

It's achieved distracting voters and politicians from proven mass transit technologies.

How does this compare to other companies that dig tunnels?

Per Musk's original introduction of the snail, it's 14x faster than existing boring machines. So TBC did extremely poorly.

Well , yes, that’s how development and improvement work. You have to start somewhere and Improve from there.

Remember, the first SpaceX launch attempts didn’t make orbit. Did that make them quit because they ‘failed’?

Improvement is the name of musks game

The problem with Musk's solar panel business is that it is more expensive and less effective than normal solar panels. They look nicer than normal panels, but to thrive off of solar you need as much efficiency as possible. Tesla panels don't provide that especially for the cost.

I live in Phoenix and a lot of people have been turned off on solar in general for their home because a lot of the companies are aggressive and shady. Seems like a missed opportunity for Tesla to have stepped in to be a "reliable" solar company simply by pricing competitively and not going out of business a year after installation.

They're aggressive and shady (pun intended?) because of government tax breaks that mess with the natural economics of the market. It's become a cash grab by installers to sign up as many people as they can to move money from state coffers to their bank accounts.

If Tesla could have been reliable in comparison the other solar companies must be pretty bad.

Tesla's solar business was started by purchasing one of the most aggressive and shady outfits in the business. SolarCity was a mess.

That's one reason I did my own build myself. It's a pretty trivial matter for the average high-IQ HNer to spec, design, and build. The "hardest" part is understanding and adhering to the construction codes, and dealing with inspection bullshit.

Check out W&S in Flagstaff (https://www.solar-electric.com/) (no affiliation) for components.

The problem I hear with their solar panel business is customer service. A friend of ours had their panels installed for months but couldn't get Tesla to actually turn them on.

We went with a local company and it it took a couple weeks longer to install than estimated and they were turned on immediately after install. The power company has even changed out the meter now, so we're fully installed and done.

How do you turn solar panels on (or off)? I thought they just generate energy whenever light shines on them - if you don't take it out as electricity, they'll just heat up instead. Is that what you meant?

> heat up instead

Given ~20% efficiency I’d guess they heat up by ~20%

>How do you turn solar panels on (or off)?

They probably mean there is an issue with getting approval from city/utility company to connect them to the grid.

Open circuit, they merely generate a small voltage that blocks carrier drift, and thereby, useful current.

There are breakers and disconnects. The more complicated systems can even control what circuits are powered, and when.

I sold my house and I still have the panels showing in my Tesla account as pending install ... except they installed them two years ago. Repeated emails to them and I still have access. Kinda tempted to try hitting the cancel install button to see what happens.

Is it though? I found that when combined with their battery offering, which triggers additional state incentives, their pricing is quite a bit below the competition. I just have cold feet because of rumors of bad/nonexistent customer service.

Ive found the service fine. It took a couple weeks to get someone out when I had an inverter issue, but they auto-scheduled the service

The problems with the solar panel business probably start with it not being Musks to begin with, rather it was his cousins failing business that he bailed out against Teslas better interests.

The cars and panels aren't looking great, but Tesla battery business is good for now though, I think.

The profit margin on cars looks good. If the 3 and Y cost around $35k and $40k to Tesla, they have a lot of room to respond to competitive pressures.

I think Tesla's battery moves are spot on. Investing in extraction, processing, refining, and manufacturing is going to pay off big time in the future.

I think this is the future for Tesla as a business, frankly. They should be a manufacturer of batteries and other EV components.

Tesla is the king of battery manufacturing. Their EV drivetrains are the most efficient on the market today. But their cars kinda suck overall and they are not going to be competitive with the traditional auto makers in the long run. Better to sell batteries & motors to Toyota, and sell power walls & solar to consumers / resellers. That is their core competency.

> Tesla is the king of battery manufacturing

Did you mean Panasonic?

> But their cars kinda suck overall

Do explain how a kinda sucky car, Model Y, became best selling car in Europe in September and is tracking to be best selling car world wide in 2023.

And yes, I do mean "car", not "electric car". Model Y is outselling Peugeot 208, a car half its price.

https://electrek.co/2022/10/28/tesla-model-y-best-selling-ca...

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/teslas...

> Do explain how a kinda sucky car, Model Y, became best selling car in Europe in September and is tracking to be best selling car world wide in 2023.

Because gas is obscenely expensive in Europe, so EVs are in high demand and there are very few "real" EVs available. Especially in the form factor of the Y, which is especially popular these days.

The model 3/Y are over priced, have poor build quality, and are a nightmare to have serviced. But there are no real competitors (yet).

> Solar panels (yes, Tesla has a solar panel business) are not doing well.

Source? Their last earnings show that energy business part has improved this quarter

And while Cybertruck is definitely not releasing this year, Tesla Semi is going into production

I think Starlink is a gamechanger, but I guess that's part of SpaceX?

But what's the size of the market? TAM may be huge, but what's a realistic SOM?

In other words, how many people with hard wired fiber/coax will change to Starlink or will be be useful only for the rural/remote segment.

Yes, there's some international, marine, flight etc. market, but, again, how big is that.

Serious question - is there any real data?

Starlink will never be competitive with wired connectivity. Source: Claude Shannon.

Exactly my point. So, it will always be limited in market size and hence it may be a gamechanger for a subset of the use-cases, such as the ones I mentioned, but not from an financial standpoint.

Don't go too far with that.

Fiber beats starlink by orders of magnitude.

With coax it depends on how it's set up. Plenty of existing lines have worse upload speed than starlink because of frequency allocations that are expensive to change.

Phone wires are very bad at carrying data and are usually much slower than starlink.

"42 million Americans don't have high-speed internet"

That's just in U.S. Starlink is world-wide.

Back of envelope calcs:

$100/month == $1k a year.

1 million * $1k = $1 billion

10 million = $10 billion.

Estimated cost to replace all Starlink satellites every 5 years: $10 billion.

That's $2 billion a year.

Cost: $2 billion/year. Revenue: $10 billion/year. Profit: $8 billion/year.

Assuming only 25% of Americans currently without high-speed internet will opt for Starlink, not counting world-wide users, not counting commercial applications (boats, planes, gas stations), not counting using Starlink as internet backbone (i.e. alternative to under sea fiber).

Most likely Starlink will be a cash cow (and finance Mars colonization).

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1098368187/42-million-america...

Quick comments:

42M Americans = ~10M households (assuming 4 per household).

Starlink is $110/month and upfront $599, which puts it outside many/most of these remote folks.

10M household is the TAM, so SOM would be just 5-10% of that, about 500K-1M households, or even less.

Regarding the cost of replacement of satellites and their operational costs, I have no clue.

2.5 people per household. So 7.5% of 42 million people would be 1.3M households. The current price is $1.3k a year, so that's $1.7B of service revenue just from the US. And there are more households that are interested even if they have "high speed" service already. So even with those numbers it looks pretty good.

By Musk's own admission, it can never be competitive against the cellular providers - they have the advantage in simple radio/physics terms over satellites.

I have some doubts - 4G/5G access is more and more prevalent throughout the US, and it provides better speeds and lower latency for less cost. T-Mobile's latest "home broadband" router that has an integrated 5G modem is surprisingly fast and affordable now, as one example. Starlink simply can't compete there, ever, seemingly. Cellular coverage grows and grows. Maybe there truly are enough customers cellular will never reach to justify low cost satellite internet? I have no doubts a market exists for expensive satellite internet for those that really need it. I pulled 600mbps over the air the other day on a Verizon 5G connection, just sitting in a store in a small town.

There is absolutely a risk Starlink will be an amazing technical invention, but not one enough people actually need to buy to justify continuing an affordable service. I think even owning a 2nd internet connection outside of your devices could become weird in the future - who wants wifi if the device can just have connectivity embedded from the factory, skipping wifi, routers and broadband connections altogether unless you want them? Smartphones and watches have already ditched the physical sim cards...

The metro/urban bias on HN is rarely more prevalent than when the subject is cars or Internet access.

I live on a wooded lot in a reasonably developed area in Ohio. DSL was brought out to my address in ~2004. Today it is limited to 15Mbps down, 768kbps up. 4G has been available since Verizon rolled it out in the area. I have no idea how long ago that was, maybe ten years ago. Today it's good for 25Mbps/2Mbps on a good day, no carrier on bad. I've had Starlink since Feb of 2021. Around November of last year it had become reliable enough that I could use it as my primary Internet access method. The numbers vary, but I would say my average is 140Mbps down and 25Mbps up.

So in my specific case, Starlink is the best Internet access, hands down. It has the lowest latency, it has the highest raw and average performance, and it is the most reliable. It has been this way for approximately a year. So in circumstances where the customer is anywhere outside of a urban/suburban area, Starlink is incredibly competitive and may in fact be the best option available.

I totally agree with you! But thanks for accusing me of bias anyway.

The only question I ask is, "is there a sustainable market for affordable satellite internet access?". There is no debate it is the best connection for some people right now, but if it is unsustainable that's good for no one in long term. Before Starlink, satellite internet was far more expensive.

Yet to turn a profit, and some big headwinds in way of competitive pressures from other cheaper technologies.

I am also a Starlink customer and live in the middle of nowhere, so... For the little my example is worth as well, I haven't seen anything like as good as those speeds where I am in Washington State, for some time. Over the same period, cellular has appeared in places it wasn't before.

Cellular doesn't need to reach everyone to be big enough to end the dream of affordable satellite access, and the cellular providers fight for the same government money many countries provide to improve connections for the most poorly connected regions. Assuming you are free of trees (a big problem!), Starlink so far only works well at really low density deployments - a huge detractor in many assessments comparing it to cellular deployments, even in remote regions.

Leaked slide deck from company declared optimum deployments is 100 customers per 300km squared, their "100 per 300 rule". Maybe this is better today and gets better with time, but cellular has a lot of radio advantages and a lot of existing infra to expand from. Also doesn't need spaceships.

> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UOI7b5flgAjJrPs2HDa64p_ZABc...

> I totally agree with you! But thanks for accusing me of bias anyway.

Well your first line was "By Musk's own admission, it can never be competitive against the cellular providers" and then the rebuttal was based around a strong example of it beating cellular providers inside their coverage range.

You can understand the confusion.

Not really? How are you going to be competitive with the cellular companies by selling something to what reflects a very small percentage of their customer base?

> How are you going to be competitive with the cellular companies by selling something to what reflects a very small percentage of their customer base?

By only needing 5000 "towers".

Your point isn't clear to me. As I see it, there is significantly less money to be made.

Significantly less money to be made, and even more significantly less cost per square mile of coverage. Especially when a lot of that coverage range for towers can't do tens of megabits per second.

So, it can be competitive.

If you want to make facetious arguments, starlink only needs up to “42,000 satellites, thousands of launches to install and ultimately maintain, plus a fleet of space ships”… I’m being charitable and not mentioning that each of those potential 42,000 needs replacing on a 5 year cycle - they don’t just go up there and stay there forever.

5000 or whatever towers ain’t insurmountable - the USA already has a huge percentage of the population covered today - and has nice benefit of being an already profitable business to be in, and construction can be done by anyone with hands, tools and a vehicle. The tower probably even lasts longer than 5 years.

> starlink only needs up to “42,000 satellites

Emphasis on up to. They only have 3000 right now and it already works. If they go above 5000 it's because they think they will make more money that way, not because they need more than 5000.

> 5000 or whatever towers ain’t insurmountable

The US has hundreds of thousands of towers, and that number gets a lot bigger with 5G.

And while that covers "a huge percentage of the population", not all of that is fast, and reaching the rest of the population gets harder and harder.

> replacing on a 5 year cycle

> The tower probably even lasts longer than 5 years.

Let's say a cell tower lasts 20 years, which is a bit longer than two cell technology generations. So that means starlink needs to launch about a thousand satellites per year to maintain their network over the whole planet. And cell providers need to rebuild 20 thousand cell sites per year just in the US, more if they try to cover everyone.

Starlink can launch that many satellites with about $300M. Let's round way up to $500M a year to keep satellites and base stations running.

Each year cell companies are pulling in hundreds of billions and putting tens of billions into towers, just in the US.

I was excited about it also, until I looked into it deeper. It is internet service of last resort. I would default to Hughesnet or skyblue first if I didn't have access to DSL, fiber or cable.

This has me intrigued, why? Hughesnet has ludicrously low data caps.

(Asking as someone that fits your description. DSL is offered where I live, at 3mbps. :( Cable/fiber are offered if I want to shell a quarter million to help them build their infrastructure... so no.)

Tell me you’ve never been stuck with hughesnet without telling me.

It is atrocious, and millions of people will jump ship the second they can

I agree. But going with Starlink is like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Very spotty service that is more brittle than existing services.

From my experience it’s only spotty in densely populated areas that are oversubscribed.

I’ve used it in Canada and Australia and it’s flawless

Yeah actually I think this is a very important point. A lot of people are either super worried or super excited about what Musk will do with Twitter, but both of those positions share the assumption that he'll be successful in whatever he's trying to do but I'm not so sure that's warranted. As you point out, he fails sometimes, and honestly the way he talks about Twitter doesn't really impress upon me the intuition that he'll be successful (this whole X thing sounds ill-conceived to me at this point.)

I don’t think many people are cross-shopping Teslas with Bolts or Leafs. The difference in performance and technology is big enough to put them in a different vehicle class. Most of the people I know who are buying Teslas are coming from Audi and BMW, and never would have considered buying a Chevy.

That's basically the point. Tesla can't sell to those people, because they have no product for them currently.

But they sell everything they produce with good margins. Cheaper vehicles can be introduced when needed, it’s not necessary to announce them too early and it could even reduce the sales of existing more expensive cars.

Tesla sells every car they produce before they build them, and there are multi-month waiting lists. They don't need to go downmarket. If they build many more of the cars they already sell, they will make a lot more money.

But that's the point. Tesla's market cap is over $700bn.

That's more than twice that of all of Porsche, VW (which owns Audi), Mercedes, BMW, Ferrari and Volvo put together.

Without selling down into the mass-market and out-competing Chevy in that segment, that price premium cannot be justified.

Tesla’s margins are much higher and they also have no debt

>Tesla’s margins are much higher

But they're not.

On a trailing four quarter basis; BMW has more revenue than Tesla ($135bn vs $67bn), better operating margin than Tesla (18.6% vs 16.2%) and therefore also higher earnings ($25bn vs $11bn).

... and Tesla does have debt; in fact, it just for the first time got upgraded from junk to investment grade this month.

I did. I was coming from a Toyota Corolla and wanted an electric car. Never considered a BMW or Audi, which didn't have electric options available at the time. Tesla won on range and comfort--I'm a big guy and the Leaf and Bolt were both a bit cramped.

Tesla has actually released stats on what cars their buyers trade in [1]. Most of them are not premium brands. Toyota is the largest single brand.

The anecdote about the people you know who are buying Teslas may be more reflective of who you know than who is buying Teslas.

[1] https://insideevs.com/news/504078/what-cars-tesla-buyers-tra...

That article is misleading because it doesn't break down the Tesla purchases by model or even price range. Obviously most of them are model 3s. The model 3 is not a luxury car by any stretch and many model S and X owners will say the same about those models. Still, the people coming from the common luxury brands are not typically buying the "cheap" model 3.

I was responding to a claim about people buying Teslas in general. I responded with statistics about people buying Teslas in general. It is absurd for you to come in saying the data is misleading because it's not broken out in a way that nobody else was talking about until you just brought it up.

Serious question, don’t they all cost about the same amount of money? 35-45k? I understand not comparing an individual 18k Chevy sedan to a 35k BMW sports car. But with regard to price, most EVs seem to be in the same ballpark.

The cheapest Tesla has a $47k MSRP now, but most people add on several thousand dollars in options even on that one.

The Leaf and Bolt both have starting MSRPs around $28k, and most probably sell in the mid-$30k range, so there is a significant price difference.

That really depends on where you are. I'd say that Tesla is the cheap kind of car that "everyone" have, at least in Norway. Polestar 2 has gotten quite popular too. A BMW i4 M50 with equipment is around ~1.5x the price of a Model 3 Performance.

I would definetly put BMW and Tesla in a different class, with Tesla being the budget option.

Wasn’t the Model 3 the “low cost” one? Is there supposed to be a cheaper one?

Cars are so confusing these days - $40k USD just seems like the average price now.

My neighborhood has so many Tesla roofs I was actually surprised by your comment - but that’s fascinating! I thought they would be doing much better.

The base model 3 starts at 48,490. They were supposed to have a $35K version. I think they sold one to a guy once at that price with bike tires and folding chairs as seats.

Proud owner of the most inexpensive Tesla ever sold. Black 2019 Model 3, $36,500, less $3750 tax credit. Only took 3 years order to delivery.

That is almost the same delivery time as a free east German Lada

> They were supposed to have a $35K version.

They had a $35k version, it was just off menu as recently as early 2020[0]. But it was discontinued around November of 2020[1].

[0]: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1127490_the-35k-tesla-m...

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/16/21569524/tesla-model-3-3...

the thing was the robotaxi would of payed of the car in a year so i bought it, now i will never touch Tesla

Just an industry example...

Ford’s average transaction price (ATP) edged 4% higher to $54,008, according to Cox Automotive calculations. By comparison, Ford’s ATP was about $40,000 in Q3 2017.

he scammed me ... years ago he said to buy a Telsa because next year they would make you 30,000$ a year being a robotaxi... i fell for it.. no idea what he was doing say these things

>"Twitter is a distraction."

Or it could be used as a huge influence platform. Guys like Elon might feel that they got to own it. Fishing out my old tinfoil hat ...

still no golden goose the "robotaxi" he promised was coming out years ago and told people to buy the Tesla now since they would be updated with this feature... i got scammed, should of known a car making me 30,000$ a year was to good to be true.

BEVs sold by GM through 2022 Q3...

36 Lyriqs 782 Hummers 22,012 Bolts

For comparison Tesla sold around 32,000 Model S in 2014

they have been supply constrained, just like very other manufacturer for almost every model, EV or otherwise.

Further, the future market for affordable EVs is better represented by affordable ICE sales, as that is what they will be replacing.

Don’t forget the Roadster! Or whatever the really fast one is called.

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