Being cocky and funny without delivering great results is simply embarrassing.
I think Mercedes and other automakers have a good chance to bypass Tesla now since Elno is captivated by his Twitter acquisition.
I’ve been disappointed in Elon for some time and feel society may have already taken him for all of his good ideas.
So I’d bet the opposite. This is a chance for Tesla to recover and match the established auto makers. And the only chance they’ll get.
This is both pre-sale, where you have to build a lean, mean, fast pipeline from vendors to assembly, and post-sales, where you have to have service infrastructure that spans continents, if not the world.
Tesla so far shows very little signs of being able to do either. And just like Whitley failed and ended up being bought by Mumbai, my personal bet (caveat lector!) is that Tesla-the-brand might survive, but Tesla-the-car-manufacturer would end up a subsidiary of a Chinese car manufacturer, who has the car manufacturing chops, but can't build a brand.
Seems pretty major to me.
But people absolutely will not buy Tesla's because of Elon.
Brands work hard to avoid negative sentiment for a reason.
The worst thing about it isn't the panel gaps or reliability (haven't had any problems). The worst part is Elon Musk and his fans. Shortly after getting the car three and a half years ago, I was leaving an outdoor party and a man who was a Musk superfan was doing that waving of arms of worship that you sometimes see fans do at metal conferences, and it was just embarrassing. Previously the same man had been gushing about full self driving, and I said there was no chance it would be delivered on time, if ever, and he professed his undying trust in Musk.
Combined with Musk's recent anti-Ukraine efforts, his hyper-partisan paranoia thay he's trying to push on Twitter, his hate for trans people, his hate for biological science exhibited throughout the pandemic and even today in his "jokes" about prosecuting Fauci, Musk is waging cultural war against every single aspect of my identity.
I hate Musk so so so much, and I know he had almost nothing to do with the creation of the car I like, but it still pains me everytime I get in it to know that I helped such a despicable person make a ton of money. Never again will I buy a Tesla, especially since there are now competitors. I'm sure I would hate all the rest of the auto execs almost as much if I knew as much about them as I know about Musk, but the nice thing is that I dont know a damn thing about Stellaris's CEO, from their name to their former partners. And there's a lot of value to that, as a customer.
Maybe Musk is just trying to win over conservatives and jackasses to but Teslas, but I doubt it. I think he's just a dangerous fool.
OTOH, people (at least online) like to talk out both sides of their mouth re" Tesla, saying on one hand "Musk isn't an engineer, didn't found the company, doesn't add anything to Tesla, etc etc" and then also "i'll never buy a tesla because of Musk".. like, if those are both the case then what about every other company and CEO? eBay's CEO collaborated to harass a random couple who posted critical articles, do they not use eBay? Adidas made untold billions from collabs with Kanye, do they boycott Adidas? CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart agreed to pay $13bn in a settlement over the opioid epidemic -- literally killing people! -- do they shop at CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, or buy prescriptions from the companies that supply the opioids? Unethical Apple manufacturing practices... etc etc etc.
The point here, which is not 'whataboutism', is that there is seemingly no generalizable principle at play here, that for some reason Musk is a bridge too far in comparison with other companies that arguably do much, much more harm.
Whereas Musk is actually serving as a front man, greedily taking credit in a way that I never even saw Steve Jobs take credit for the work of others.
Musk's actions are also a very personal attack against my loved ones, in a way far more personal than drug stores selling opioids is. It's personal insults, and actions that are supporting the displacement of millions of family members's countrymen, deaths of more than a hundred thousand, and so many children's lives scarred. Pretty hard to compare Musk's actions to what Walgreens management did for the opiod crisis. Personal insults also go a really long ways towards negative polarization, whereas merely distributing prescribed drugs makes it a lot harder to fault drug stores.
Don't discount the impact of the opioid crisis with more than a million dead (https://www.npr.org/2021/12/30/1069062738/more-than-a-millio...) -- those pharmacies did the math and decided double-digit billions was cheaper than a trial -- but I do see what you mean about the personal connection. What I'm wrapping my head around is I don't see anyone (not that that means they don't exist) saying their cousin died from opioid overdose so they're never shopping at CVS again, you know? The venn diagram of people who own an iphone and people who think sweatshops are evil is basically a circle, but Musk tweets something moronic about Fauci and everyone loses their shit.
But I purchased my Model 3 in 2021 because, after cross-shopping many car models and trying to optimize for the characteristics and features I wanted, it was the best thing at its price-point. And even now, even after the Twitter debacle, I still enjoy driving it every day. I couldn’t care less about the man who made the car; the product won on its merits.
However Tesla makes about $9000 in profit per car. If that is cut in half it still beats Toyota’s $1200 by a wide margin.
When people make claims like this its just really fucking baffling. Like, are you so blinded by hate that you are unable to look up basic stastics?
Tesla is growing like gangbusters. In 2023 they will very sell pretty close to the same amount of as BMW, a company that has existed for 100 years.
They are overtaking more and more car companies all the time. They are in range of companies like Geely for example.
In fact, partly because of Tesla car companies have been merging. And these large mega companies are using sales volume.
Tesla is already making more profit then those companies, while also growing faster.
Like seriously, what about making record profits, fast growth and overtaking more and more large car companies in volume says 'incapable of stepping up to be a major car manufacturer'.
> is that it's not about the machine, but about the infrastructure.
> This is both pre-sale, where you have to build a lean, mean, fast pipeline from vendors to assembly, and post-sales, where you have to have service infrastructure that spans continents, if not the world.
You are joking right? Tesla has invested more in infrastructure then the other car makers. The super charger network. They have their own huge direct-to-consumer sales team. They have distribution centers all over the world that they own. They have vertically integrated their service and this for a long time was losing money, but as they grow is increasingly gone make money.
In addition to that they have built huge, vertically integrated factory parks that are bigger then almost everything anybody else is building. Go to Austin and see for yourself.
Tesla is investing in its own battery materials production and making its own battery in the same factory where they are making the cars. Literally nobody else has anything like that.
You statement is literally the opposite of correct. Tesla has exactly done what you suggest, a huge global investment in infrastructure.
> Tesla so far shows very little signs of being able to do either.
I'm sorry but are blind? Have you not look at Tesla numbers and statistics since 2014?
Because what you are saying is straight up delusional. Its not even open for interpretation.
Tesla made profit of 3 billion $ in Q3. That is while growing the amount of Super charger, amount of Service centers, amount of distribution centers, scaling two gigantic factory projects, investing in its own battery production and investing in self driving (including its own data centers).
> subsidiary of a Chinese car manufacturer
The largest manufactures in China are Geely and SAIC.
Tesla will produce more vehicles then Geely by next year and Tesla is already making far more money then Geely. SAIC is still a little bigger then that but Tesla is already beating them in terms of profit.
Are you simply not looking at these numbers?
In the EV market, they #1 and #3 for most cars sold per model. What better results would you expect?