Tesla cancels Model S and Model X deliveries in Australia and other RHD markets | Hacker News Reader

Tesla cancels Model S and Model X deliveries in Australia and other RHD markets

thedriven.io

62 pointsmvdtnz111 comments

When contemplating whether this is significant or controversial, it's useful to note that while Tesla are choosing to ignore RHD for low volume luxury products, General Motors chose to abandon RHD entirely, globally, across their entire product line, and across all sub-brands.

In the UK, GM's brand was Vauxhall Motors. They sold that to PSA Group which in turn merged into Stellantis.

In Australia, GM's brand was Holden Motors. They didn't even sell it to anyone, they just shut this iconic brand down.

Not sure how it is relevant.

At least in the case of Holden it was specifically because the Australian government decided to stop subsidising the companies operations which was unprofitable otherwise.

And so it was driven from that decision and not a change in strategy from GM.

The market for RHD is really large. Deciding not to target it has massive longterm consequences for any company.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic

Noting it uses LHT and RHT which is inverse to driver side.

I would say that map indicates dropping LHT is not that big of a deal. The only markets of consequence are the British Isles, Japan, Australia/New Zealand, and India

India is large population but if I recall correctly a pretty insular market where it's hard for outside companies to operate as well as fairly low income per capita. And Japan is a big car country, but dominated by their domestic manufacturers

And then there's Indonesia which has 200m people. Though to be fair Indonesia is prioritizing scooters more than cars (as is India).

It's entirely relevant. In the case of Holden, the end of domestic subsidies wasn't a factor in GM's decision to exit RHD. With a historical lens it's obvious that GM's decision to exit RHD occurred prior to the moment when the Australian Government announced the end of manufacturer subsidies.

What it did is change Holden's fate. With subsidies still in place, GM might have been able to find a buyer for Holden as they did Vauxhall. Without subsidies, all they could do is gut and strip the domestic Holden corporation of any remaining cash and assets.

They could still have found a buyer for Holden, without subsidies, for a nominal $1.

Holden were, post-subsidies, little more than a domestic marque for imported GM vehicles, and GM were no longer making RHD vehicles. They were a car company which didn't make any cars and had nothing to import.

The brand assets are all that remains, and they're worth a lot more than $1. Once all of Holden's warranty/consumer law obligations are fully exhausted, it might be of interest to someone like SAIC or Geely who could repeat what was done to famous British marque MG Motor. Perhaps in a decade, a Chinese automaker will try their luck with a Holden Commodore Sandman EV.

> In the UK, GM's brand was Vauxhall Motors. They sold that to PSA Group which in turn merged into Stellantis.

GM mainly sold Opel, Vauxhall just came along for the ride as GM had joined the two at the hip back in the 70s. The reason for the sale is that they didn’t make money out of Opel, and Brexit further put a hole in it (by increasing the cost of importing Opel parts to the UK to build Vauxhalls).

RHD had basically nothing to do with it.

Is GM really trying to operate in markets outside the US anymore, tho? They seem to be effectively out of Europe, certainly.

No more small cars or sedans - just SUV's and US trucks.

The Aussie market is too small to support a bespoke RWD V8 sports sedan as the Australians preferred (Holden Commodore and Falcon) - the govt did not want to support either Ford/GM anymore.

Aussies were already moving away from RWD V8s to eurotrash diesels.

Accepting orders and cancel after over a year is terrible business. Ignore from the beginning is far better.

Maybe it is time to start driving on correct side of the road.

I agree, but I doubt America would ever change to RHD.

I wonder if any of the left-hand side driving countries will make the switch anymore, or is the inertia too great and the benefits too small.

Sweden switched to right-hand side driving on roads in 1967. They had already 2 million vehicles, so that was a major operation. The change was made overnight but professional drivers got a few hours’ headstart to get used to it.

1960s was a bad time for traffic accidents in general, so the transient human cost of the switch was probably lost in the overall poor safety statistics. I wonder what it would look like today. 50% more accidents in the first month? Or more?

It seems that the number of accidents actually dropped for a while after the switch in Sweden but it increased again after people got used to the change. [1]

[1] https://realscandinavia.com/this-day-in-history-swedish-traf...

They put it down to people driving very cautiously to begin with

Then maybe the take-home message is that countries should switch driving sides every few years just to keep drivers on their toes.

How would the cities handle this?

If it was something they planned for, would signs be reversible, and traffic lights visible from both sides?

Or would they pay people to slowly roll out the reversal, so that which side you should drive on was rather inconsistent?

> How would the cities handle this?

Popular argument might be for the driving direction to be local to the orientation of the sun for the majority of commuters to be able to use canopy to prevent glare. For example, north to south flow in morning (NYC) would be LHD & reverse in afternoon.

After the first few years it would be come too standard.

We'd have to up the ante each time.

How about left side until mid day and right side until midnight.

Year after you have to drive backwards.

Roads will be so safe.

Which, in hindsight, makes perfect sense. Making drivers feel unsafe is a core component of modern traffic calming.

Yes, speed bumps and busses running over the flexible bollards to drive head on at me make me nervous.

Mostly chicanes, narrowing, blind corners, and narrow roads with visibility limitations (e.g. shrubbery).

Wide open roads make people speed up, even unconsciously.

Sweden never had many vehicles with the driver on the right though. Prior to 1967 Swedish drivers sat on the "wrong" side. Some drivers protested the change as they felt uncomfortable sitting close to opposing traffic (no word on why they thought their passengers deserved that).

On every trip, there’s a driver occupying that seat. On only a fraction of trips is there a passenger in the front pax seat. If it’s riskier to sit closer to traffic, arranging it so that’s a smaller percentage of trips is optimizing.

It's been said the better alternative to airbags for traffic safety would be a spear on the steering wheel pointing at the driver. Optimizing for whom?

I have read that some people wanted to keep an eye on the shoulder of the road.

Why? Is that where the interesting stuff happens?

At least it'll be good to not kerb the wheels, or when passing foot traffic on tiny/busy roads.

Apparently Rwanda and Burundi are considering it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic...

They're considering going the other way to left-hand traffic (right hand drive), because all their neighbors except DR Congo do so as well.

Oddly, Samoa went the other way only in 2009, switching to LHT to make it easier to import cars from Australia/NZ and Japan.

An an Australian who's travelled a little I can tell you that in their hearts of hearts people yearn to drive on the right. In no other country do I find myself doing the hallway shuffle more than this one. If we drove on the right that would at least eliminate the conflict between what people want to do and what the rules say we should.

I don't think it will happen anywhere major without buy in from a few countries at once. Australia might swap if Japan ever decides to swap as they currently do supply a large number of our vehicles. Having said that I see a pretty rapid switch over to Chinese cars over the next 10-15 years as they leapfrog Japan in regards to EV powertrains so we might be willing to switch independent of that to gain access to newer models faster.

Australia will 100% not be swapping. There is zero debate about this, there is zero will and there are far more pressing issues to deal with than adding this significant cultural change.

And I have no idea why Japan changing would be the catalyst.

Without Japan the market for those cars might no longer be tenable. Australia and New Zealand buy a lot of Japanese cars.

I don't think Japan will change drive lane in the future, but possibly used car export could be decrease for BEVs. Japan adopts CHAdeMO for fast charging but other countries don't, so it will become harder to export. Also China is becoming very strong BEV manufacturing country. For new cars, after EV transition and steer by wire system become popular, LHD/RHD will become minor difference for car designing.

6 of the 10 top manufacturers of cars in Australia are from Japan. That said I can't imagine Japan doing that, and to be honest it's not uncommon to see LHD cars on Japanese roads (American cars).

Australia doing that would weird, as I think it'd an eight jurisdictions to sign up to it. That said, I can see WA doing it absolutely.

Japan marches to their own drum and very stubborn. They’re never changing imo

Why do people yearn to drive on the right? Hasn't been my experience in the UK and Australia at least

What do you mean? What is the hallway shuffle? I can’t say I’ve ever wanted to drive on the left, as an Aussie, and don’t hear this sentiment even from people who collect LHD cars. I even own an LHD car, so I’m not being dogmatic here. I just can’t see the tangible advantage you allude to.

Yeah I am joking about the yearning as it's obviously not a thing people think or care about. The hallway shuffle happens while walking down a hallway when someone is coming at you so you move to the left to let them pass but they move to their right (your left) and then you do that stupid little dance as you both swap sides at the same time two or three times before you laugh and move past each other. In countries where people drive on the right this happens far less frequently, almost everybody consistently moves to the right and it's not an issue.

As a different Australian, I can tell you I have no inclination, latent or otherwise, to drive on the wrong side of the road -- I'm very happy to continue to walk, ride, and drive on the left-hand side.

If you're suffering hiccups of thought where you need to work out what to do when driving on the left - the hallway shuffle as you call it - this may indicate something more concerning.

(The Romans were right - and we dismiss their legacy at our peril! : )

By my count based on population data from Wikipedia, the left-hand side driving countries have about 2.771 billion people, which is 34.5% of the world's population. That seems big enough to sustain right-hand-drive car production. Most of the left-hand side driving countries are grouped together in clusters or are islands. Suriname and Guyana, and Hong Kong and Macau seem like they might benefit from switching.

More than half of that is India. And high end vehicles such as the Model S are probably very rare there. So although true that it's big enough to sustain right-hand-drive car production, it might not be big enough to sustain high-end car production.

Surely new cars sales volume per year is far more relevant than population to car companies who are making product strategy decisions.

I'd be shocked if a third of new car sales today were RHD. (It was surprisingly hard to google for that data; I gave up after about 10 minutes of searching.)

Most remaining major RHD markets are physical islands (Japan, UK, Australia, most of south-east asia) or cultural islands (Japan, India). So long as enough manufacturers can continue to make most cars with steering wheels on both sides, there's really no pressure. It's a total non-issue.

And once cars are driving themselves, they won't need a steering wheel on either side. Maybe this might take 20 years. Maybe it will take 40 years. But with the rate of progress in ML we're seeing today combined with the fact that the death toll from human drivers is a million people per year, it's a practical inevitability.

(I live in Australia, FWIW.)

It also shouldn't be that big a deal --- Subaru was willing to do a run of vehicles specifically marketed to U.S. Rural Postal Carriers (while ostensibly it was a run of the vehicles they were making for Japan already, it actually required some U.S. specific labeling and emissions equipment and so forth).

> I wonder if any of the left-hand side driving countries will make the switch ... Sweden switched to right-hand side driving on road

You had my head spinning and I thought just at what side my steering wheel is when I stepped out of the car 5 minutes ago...

You got the sides wrong. You meant to say right-hand where you said left hand and left-hand where you said right-hand. Sweden switched FROM RHD to LHD.

Edit: Nevermind, I messed up myself - the steering wheel is on the opposite side of the lane you drive.

I too, got very confused

Sweden shifted to match all their neighbors. I remember when Okinawa switched back to left side driving (wheel on the right) at the end of occupation in 1972.

There’s little reason for any countries to switch either direction these days (more countries drive on the left and more people, mainly due to mainland China, drive on the right). And soon (on the timescale we’re talking about) people won’t be doing the driving at all.

Just a little napkin maths and I'm already into trillions of Pounds to update the UK road network. It's not just signage, many roads are shaped for the direction of travel which would need adaptation.

I'd sooner do without RHD Teslas than put that cost burden on the population.

Sounds like the same in the UK[1]. The S and X aren't big sellers here any more, so not surprising they're focusing on the 3 and Y instead.

[1] https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/tesla-cancels-ri...

Don't forget that the Model S is over 10 years old now, excepting a refresh here and there and sales seem to be slumping year on year for a while now.

The X isn't that old yet but it has a lot more competition now and quite low sales.

I rekon the S is due for replacement anyway in the next few years, maybe with something that replaces both the S and X.

Sad but not entirely surprising: in recent years S and X sales have been a rounding error compared to 3 and Y, and they've got the Cybertruck and the rumored mass market 2 in the pipeline as well.

Cybertruck is mostly a truck for the US market, it won't sell much in the UK. The "model 2" however will definitely sell very well, probably outsell the 3 and Y combined in the UK (as the average car bought in the UK is much lower price than in the US).

The Cybertruck is unlikely to be sold in any market outside of North America, let alone in a RHD market. In the unlikely even that Tesla ever brings this marque to another continent it will almost certainly be a physically smaller revision.

The Cybertruck is unlikely to be sold in any market.

I'll gladly take a 1000 USD bet on that

Eh, I doubt that they wouldn't release it at some point, but I do expect some poor sales, except from Telsa fan. There is already good EV truck in the market and aside from a weird design, it doesn't seem that the cybertruck bring anything more to the table.

Tesla has an extensive Cybertruck production line nearing full readiness in their massive factory in Austin, Texas. It is obviously a real product because the alternative hypothesis is beyond implausible.

Yeah, they definitely won't miss this launch date like the last 3. It will definitely launch in the year of desktop linux.

According to TSLAQ consensus, Tesla will never release the Model 3.

I'd be surprised if the angular design complied with regulations related to pedestrian safety in countries such as the UK, where AFAIK you can't have rigid hood ornaments or bull bars.

As for size, larger vehicles/SUVs are fairly popular in the UK, probably in part due to the deteriorating state of the roads (potholes, speed bumps)...

Much like the roads, APCs will catch on as the country itself deteriorates. Cybertruck will do great in South Africa for example.

I don't see the land of rolling blackouts taking up electric vehicles as the country deteriorates more.

You're probably right, but if you've got enough solar panels on your house, you could potentially be even more self-reliant than if you were beholden to a liquid fuel supply chain.

They could install giant pink safety rubber nubs for the uk market.

Sure, but it's one more radically different platform consuming Tesla's engineering and production resources as a whole.

This isn't unusual. There are plenty of vehicles which don't rely on sales outside of North America in order to justify their engineering costs. Indeed, the same story is true across the world, with the Japanese domestic market littered with "radically different" products which are exclusively designed for the domestic market.

Cybertruck was pulled from sale in Australia. [1]

And the head of the car safety organisation strongly implied it wouldn't be street legal. [2]

[1] https://www.drive.com.au/news/tesla-cybertruck-pulled-from-s...

[2] https://thedriven.io/2019/11/27/tesla-cybertruck-may-be-unsa...

A person looks at photos of a pre-production vehicle which has not been homologated to the Australian domestic market and expresses their opinion about it. I mean it's a great bit of content for the publisher but the proof will be in the testing, not in a person's intuition. The head of an objective testing body should know better than this.

And while I agree that the Cybertruck doesn't seem like a safe vehicle at first glance, Tesla's track record on passive/active safety should be enough to stave off any premature jumping to conclusions prior to the release of real test data.

Also this quote was quite odd: “We’ve got a concern that Tesla is very interested in the occupants of the vehicle, but it can’t ignore the other road users as well.” This is a hideously disingenuous comment for the head of ANCAP to be making about a manufacturer that makes one of the safest cars on Australian roads. They seriously have "a concern" about the maker of vehicles which score extremely highly overall, and which matched or exceeded an equivalent Volvo EV in every category[0][1]?

[0] https://www.ancap.com.au/safety-ratings/tesla/model-y/726c22

[1] https://www.ancap.com.au/safety-ratings/volvo/c40-recharge/f...

As an anecdotal observation - the model S is pretty rare in the UK, but I see plenty of model Xs around. I'd love to see the actual sales numbers.

I see a lot more S than X in the UK. Maybe it's regional.

Why should they stop delivering? Just sell the LHD version. I am currently on holiday in the UK with my LHD Model S. It is not a problem to drive it here. Back home in Norway I drove a RHD drive Volvo 245 Estate for twelve years without any problem at all.

Because it is fine for a bit, but long term having a LHD vehicle in a RHD country (and vice-versa) is annoying and causes issues. I speak from experience having moved to a LHD country from a RHD country with a RHD vehicle.

They’re unsellable because you probably can’t register them.

For example, you can’t in the state of Victoria: https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/-/media/files/documents/safe...

Except all infrastructure is designed for it? Getting a ticket at the entry of a parking garage is a royal pain if you're on the wrong side of the car.

Also: safety!

> Getting a ticket at the entry of a parking garage is a royal pain

Not in Norway any more, pretty much all of them use number plate recognition.

> Not in Norway any more, pretty much all of them use number plate recognition.

Also on the way in? In Austria you still need to request a ticket on the way in, but it uses number place recognition on the way out. But also you need to pay with the ticket or on the pole on the way out with contactless, which again would be on the wrong side.

Yes on the way in and on the way out. They mostly give three hours free parking so if you are there for less than that you don't have to do anything. If you exceed that you go to a ticket machine, type in your registration number and pay for the extra time before you leave. In fact my favourite one will just send you the bill in the post if you forget, but they will charge small admin fee for that (not a fine). If you remember when you get home you can pay online.

Meh, I drove a LHD car in the UK for 5 years and it really wasn't an issue at all. In car parks you just unclip your seatbelt and reach out, unless you drive some monster truck it's really not a big deal(and I used to park in a multistorey carpark every day so had the routine well practiced).

I'm not saying this is something for everyone, but it's definitely not a deal-breaker.

Also, safety? In what sense? Because of overtaking? It's really not a huge deal - you just don't overtake unless you're absolutely sure you can see what you're doing. Same as in an RHD car.

Parking garages in general are a nightmare in the UK. Last time I was over there I joked that you designed them for horses, because even a smallish rental SUV felt like a F-350 in there

I had a colleague running a rhd Mazda Miata in an lhd country. He would just use some waste pickup tool/pliers to extend his arm and present his parking card at the garage entry or to pay the highway tolls with his credit card.

It is more annoying when you are following a slow truck on a small road and you would like to be able to overtake but can't see it easily. But most people these days aren't comfortable enough to overtake and are willing to wait indefinitely. It seems like shifting down a floor the accelerator pedal is a lost art and it doesn't help that with hybrid cars all cars become automatic. Having driven my mother in law honda automatic SUV, I could just wait a few seconds before the auto gearbox actually decide to shift down.

So not super practical but no big deal either.

I'd assume there are regulations in place that prevent that (outside of small-scale imports, collection cars etc). Otherwise lots of manufacturers would just sell LHD everywhere to make everything much simpler for them.

Nope. There is no such rule, at least not in the UK. There are several manufacturers of exotic cars that only sell LHD versions here because RHD version isn't worth developing. For example Polestar 1 can only be ordered as LHD in the UK, or perhaps more famously, the Bugatti Chiron.

It's only a question of whether your clients want your car so much that they will put up with having the steering wheel on the "wrong" side. Volkswagen can't just start selling an LHD golf here simply because your regular buyer wouldn't buy one, not because the regulations forbid it.

I think UK has different rules because it is physically close to LHD markets, and motorists frequently travel to/from them with their vehicles.

Whereas, in Australia, LHD vehicles are only street legal if they are either (a) historic (> 25 or 30 years old, depending on the state), or (b) you can demonstrate a genuine business need for some kind of highly specialised vehicle which is available only in LHD. There is far less demand for allowing LHD vehicles than in the UK, so the authorities can get away with being more stringent.

Well yes, that makes sense - I know some people who spend a lot of time per year in France/Spain and they actually have UK-registered LHD vehicles because it's more convenient that way.

Either way, about Australia - I came across this article about the Chiron and indeed, it sounds like Bugatti cannot sell it there because it wouldn't be compliant with the rules(but some people have imported them anyway as "special interest vehicles").

https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-advice/bugatti-chiron-price....

About the Bugatti Chiron, per my understanding of Australian law - you can legally import a brand-new one-but you can’t legally drive it on public roads. Well, put it away for 25-30 years, then suddenly it becomes old enough to be street legal. You can drive it on a private road (which legally means a road closed to the public). You can drive it on a racetrack. You can move it around on the back of a truck. You can even get a short-term permit to drive it on the public roads, but only to move it to a new permanent storage location, or to take it to the mechanics. If you are wealthy enough to afford one, you are wealthy enough to deal with all these complexities of owning one in Australia.

The article mentions exception for businesses which have a business need for a vehicle that is only available as LHD - I'm sure an argument can be made that exotic car rental company can only get an LHD Chiron because no RHD version is made, ergo, it should be legal to register for business use. I'd love to know how this was actually done.

I doubt that would work. The bureaucrats who approve the applications would realise it was politically sensitive, and ask their politician bosses, who would say “no”. Australian culture tends to look down on special perks for super-rich people, to a greater extent than British or American culture does (“tall poppy syndrome” maybe), and if what you are talking about happened, the media and opposition politicians would make a lot of noise about it. You’d be more likely to get away with it with an exotic car that was less obscenely expensive.

Some kind of special vehicle for mining/construction/etc, that’s practical, no matter how expensive it may be, nobody is going to view it as a rich person’s toy, so no political gain from condemning its approval.

LHD vehicle is totally allowed here in Japan, minor of people prefer it because it feels like a imported car (especially exotic or US car lovers). Though most buyers prefer RHD (and LHD is deal breaker) because it's reasonable and sane.

The Autocar article [0] says they are going to sell the LHD model in the UK

[0]: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/tesla-cancels-ri...

How many do you think they would sell? Compared to the confusion of customers reaching the UK website and still finding LHD vehicles.

agreed, they could also teach local shops how to mod and switch the vehicle around.

If Tesla are true to their original vision, this is a good move.

The low volume, high margin cars that were their original "get the idea on the ground and in a few peoples hands but not to the point where we'll trip over ourselves if we need to do a recall" business model got them to the point where they could suffer for a while during the Model 3 production issues but they weathered that storm and are now expanding their gigafactories globally.

The electrified future means replacing a lot of passenger vehicles with electric alternatives and the low volume S and X are simply too expensive for most people and goes against the electrification goal.

The problem with "low volume, high margin" for Tesla is that this might have worked when they were the only ones on the market but their cars are not high end enough now that every brand has EVs.

Depends on how you define high end. Everyone else is struggling on the software side - VW just had a bloodbath in that department.

Really, the raison d'être of the Model S and Model X was twofold. One: to prove that electric cars are not the poor cousin of the combustion car. They can be just as good and in some ways superior. Two: to make enough cash for Tesla to afford the third step in Tesla's Secret Master Plan (which Musk wrote in 2006).

Both these reasons are now defunct. The EV no longer has anything to prove, and Tesla now has a much better source of cash in the 3/Y. I suppose the S/X still have residual relevance as a halo product for the Tesla brand, but they don't need them to be in every market to serve that function.

Pretty sure they only just started taking orders again in Australia for the S and X!

Still, the 3 and the Y sell like hot cakes!

I wonder if it is possible to retrofit a LHD to an RHD?

Sure, but why? Is there a benefit? I know many people who buy cheap RHD cars to convert to LHD. Especially for luxury brands.

This works for the case of a car designed for LHD and RHD with junkyard LHD parts available, if there RHD version happens to be cheap enough. Unlikely to work in the other direction, especially for a car that has no RHD parts available.

Very, very difficult if the vehicle frame and engine bay hasn't been designed for that - stuff like cutouts for the steering wheel and pedals are difficult to retrofit.

I’m not sure on the S and X. I have a LHD 3. The cutouts are clearly there under the passenger side dash. But you would need to replace a lot of parts: steering column, pedals, wiring harness, dash.

From what I understand the S is quite convoluted under the frunk than the 3/Y . So building a RHD S is a lot more laborous than a 3/Y.

And if the vehicle isn’t made in a LHD variant then you’d have to make a dash from scratch, which maybe isn’t legal or at least is a liability if airbags are involved. The only similar thing I recall is this[1] way of “importing” an Australian Holden ute to America. It wouldn’t be worth it if you could legally just import the RHD version and would be impossible in the case of a Tesla where there wouldn’t be a local car made on the same platform.

Australia basically prohibits any kind of LHD on the road, even rare classic imports. As a result there is a small industry that will convert your import to RHD for you - pricetag is ~100kUSD per car.

multi-sku is super expensive. Australia and the UK will have to come up with their own home grown EVs.

Or buy EVs from one of the many manufacturers already offering them in RHD configuration, such as BMW, VW, Ford, Nissan etc.

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