"Tesla has a real shot at being successful" is definitely true. "Tesla is unquestionably already a success" is not.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/19/musk-targeting-coast-to-co...
Would you say this promise has been fulfilled?
Other solutions rely on geo-fenced known areas, LIDAR sensors (which will never understand the whole picture e.g. coloured traffic lights), and non-generalised AI. What Tesla is shooting for is much more ambitious, and much more likely to succeed in my opinion.
Why be pedantic about forward-looking announcements, rather than celebrating the incredible things Tesla AI has acheived so far (and continues to acheive)? The cars can now navigate competently through city streets. That was sci-fi just a few years ago.
Also, it's not being pedantic when you point out that someone is over 5 years behind what they promised...
That they were arguably the main reason why every other carmaker is transitioning to electric cars is subjectively (to me) a far greater success. The transition is past the point of no return even if Tesla were to disappear tomorrow,
Then we can objectively compare it to the closest Tesla model to it.
That is if that car is even being manufactured at any scale at all...
I see you went to my profile to find something to say to me, but nothing to expand on your opinion so we can objectively compare better cars as you suggested originally.
And yes that's why I put that quote in my profile, people will go after the person when they don't want to defend their statements, like you did.
> A lot of cars released in the last 2 years have similar or better stats. reply
Please provide an example of one of the cars you are talking about.
Zeekr, a Chinese brand goes 621 miles, or 1,000 kilometers, on a single charge. More than the models that now lead the U.S. market in battery range: the Lucid Air, with 520 miles, and the Tesla Model S, with 405 miles.
It does have the objectively worst built cars at every price point they sell.
However, I strongly doubt they will succeed going forward. They are in the midst of a wave of competition from Porsche, Mercedes, GM, Ford, VW, Kia, etc; across all segments of the market. They have failed to deliver on self-driving, and have a 0% chance of success moving forward (as admitted by pulling their lidar sensors out). They still aren't particularly good at fit/finish/quality of their cars.
And finally, Tesla (imo) desperately needs a ceo who thinks about little more than threading the needle on the narrow success path moving forward. Instead, they have someone busy breaking Twitter.
So, is Tesla objectively successful? I'd say no, because I don't think it's clear they will be a live company in 10 years. I think a huge amount of their success came from being the only company that sold a non-shitty electric car, and now that competitive umbrella is gone, they're likely to fail.