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Comment by partiallypro | Hacker News Reader

I have been a huge skeptic of Tesla, but when you visit Europe the roads are FULL of Teslas, and in the US the roads are now full of them too. In Europe it's more bizarre because generally those consumers were sticking with European brands. Seeing Fords or Toyotas is very rare there, but Teslas are everywhere. That made me a believer. However, I do think the company is probably overvalued.

I think Elon Musk does a lot of very good things, but I do think he often is stupid, a liar, and at worst a useful idiot. In the end though, SpaceX, Starlink & Tesla have all been net positives for humanity. Jobs and Gates both were/are not great people, but their products and companies have been good for basically everyone, so it's not a new concept.

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Where in Europe, because outside Norway Tesla's don't dominate at all. [1] They had around 15% market share and the last few months that dropped.

Maybe because in Europe you have other auto makers that make electric and non electric versions of the same car so you just assume they aren't EV? The Hyundai Kona is basically the same outside except for the front grille and no exhaust. Unless you know that, you don't really know the difference. I would say (in Portugal) on my daily drives I identify around 6/7 Evs for every Tesla. And as I said, I probably missed some as I can't distinguish them

[1] https://alternative-fuels-observatory.ec.europa.eu/general-i... (oct 2022, first data I found but there is also anual)

It's possible that where you live and visit is full of Teslas, but that might not be a random sample.

But for a while, you had to get a Tesla to get a pure EV. The real question is, as competitors come online, are people likely to purchase another Tesla or try something new?

EV start-ups competing with Tesla are all struggling. It's very likely that Rivian will simply go bankrupt in the next few years. The big automakers are also struggling, largely because their best sellers are bigger vehicles, at least in the US and charging & battery tech just isn't there for those models. Look at the attempt at the EV Hummer, it's a joke.

My sample doesn't have to be random, 10 years ago I could go to a large wealthy city in Europe and only see European cars. Again, that is/was the norm. You would not see Toyotas or Fords, etc. Tesla has been made into an exception. So far the only European brand that even has an EV that can compare with Tesla's is Porche and it's 2x the price. If I'm not mistaken Tesla is now Norway's number one make, which seems like a big deal.

This could change, but I don't see it changing anytime soon given how bad some of the competition is. I was excited about the EV F150 but it too has shown they are still very far behind. Still don't think Telsa should be worth more than every major automaker combined. I'm not arguing anyone should buy their stock.

Huh, I was actually surprised at all the Fords I saw in The Netherlands when I went (2007-8 somewhere in there)

(And no I’m not confusing it for fjords in Norway)

> You would not see Toyotas or Fords, etc. Tesla has been made into an exception.

I'm sorry, but this is just completely false. Both car brands are extremely popular in most parts of Europe, not sure where you've been...

Teslas are also popular, no doubt about it. They have some advantages (for example, the charging network) compared to others, we'll see how long it will last. As opposed to the US, the main EU high-speed charging network competitor (called Ionity) is actually getting close to full coverage in most EU countries (except for Greece, for some reason), and is of similar quality, albeit a bit more expensive.

> I'm sorry, but this is just completely false. Both car brands are extremely popular in most parts of Europe

Extremely popular? I don't think so. 7% of market share is not "extremely popular." I've been in most every country in Europe and barely ever see any Fords, Chevys or Toyotas. Maybe some commercial vehicles for Ford, but rarely a car/SUV/truck. Most every car is a European brand or a sub-brand. Tesla doesn't have much share but is already at around 2%, however Tesla's Model Y was the top selling model in Europe last year. When I go to Europe now it's hard not to spot them because they make up such a significant portion of new car sales there. The most popular Ford (Kuga) was outsold ~6x by the Model Y, the most popular Toyota (Yaris) was outside ~2x by the Model Y. That's pretty significant given Ford and Toyota have been in Europe for a long time. Maybe you're conflating the UK with the rest of Europe, where Ford is more popular, I'm mostly referring to the mainland.

Any reason that Norway’s car brand popularity is a big deal in the larger scheme of things?

It has the highest EV penetration in the world. Nearly every single new car sold is an EV. It's therefore a great indicator about how various EVs will fare on a greater scale, perhaps.

Norway is extremely wealthy. This undoubtedly skews the results by a lot. It's a bit like extrapolating that the next big consumer car-brand is Ferrari based on your trip to Monaco.

Perhaps. The USA EV market outpaces Norway by a pretty large margin, and Tesla leads the US EV market in a similar way to Norway, I guess it depends on what data point is being looked for specifically. Relatively speaking Norway is a pretty tiny market to make large scale indications off of.

USA has nothing on Norway in % of vehicles sold being EVs.

Norway's population is a fraction of USA's, so of course USA will have the raw numbers.

However, Norway's new car BEV % is 80%. The remainder is split between hybrids and pure fossil.

Norway started buying EVs when Tesla was the only game in town. Of course they have a lot of Teslas. It seems like a bad idea to expect that experience to generalize now that there are more options.

Hmm. I saw vastly fewer Teslas in the UK last month than I see in the US.

I drove the length of the country so don't think this was a sampling problem.

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