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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Or maybe the things will just pile up unsold after a while. There's a glut of electric cars right now. The electric Ford F-150 is more useful yet not selling well.

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F-150 Lightning are not selling well because they are insanely overpriced for what you get. Ford claimed it would start around $35k but the lowest trim I've seen was $80k and they're supposedly selling it at a loss.

CT will likely sell primarily to people who don't want/need a truck but are buying it for novelty and have money to spend.

I think Elon made a mistake with this one (and has even alluded to that). Pursuing CT over the $25k was a bad idea that might set Tesla back some years.

They're a big enough company they should be developing many vehicles at once.

Every other car company sells far more models than the 4 Tesla sells.

Most car companies share models with other companies just re badged. E.g. Toyota 86/subaru brz. Holden astra/opel.

Tbh most car companies actually design and release bugger all. Toyota for example have run basically the same model vehicles for like 20+ years. With each year just modifying the last iteration. They rarely develop more than one vehicle at once from the ground up.

Holden, Vauxhall, and Opel are the same company with different badges depending on the market. Toyota 86 and Subaru BRZ are jointly developed car models.

Volkswagen Group develops a lot of different car models. Sure, they are using the same platforms across subbrands, but the subbrands compete with each other within the VW Group.

Yeah maybe but we're talking about Teslas limited models, not if we can kinda sorta half squint and hand wave and say maybe if Tesla had twice as much it'd round to half as much

Unlike Teslas, Toyotas are generally pretty good cars which tend to run reliably and have parts that fit together properly. So, there's no need for them to completely start from scratch on each new model generation although many of the parts are changed. Currently they offer 16 different vehicles in the US market (more if you count Lexus and foreign markets), 3 of which are shared with other manufacturers. New generations of each are typically launched about every 6 years for the high volume vehicles.

> I think Elon made a mistake with this one (and has even alluded to that). Pursuing CT over the $25k was a bad idea that might set Tesla back some years.

Yeah, it's pretty clear in interviews and such he realizes the CyberTruck will be extremely lucky to break even. Just not a good move.

If Tesla didn't run entirely on hype I suspect they could have just shut the CT program down once realising it was a bad idea. They would lose face if they stopped now, but perhaps they will have learned a lesson and we'll see a more researched and subdued approach to their future offerings.

Musk as Twitter owner doesn’t seem to pay much mind to research and a subdued approach to product development.

The cyber truck was partly, maybe even mostly, a publicity stunt to divert attention away from some of the other troubles tesla was facing at the time. At least according to the book Power Play, although some have said the book isn't very accurate

Unlike other car manufacturers who go through dealerships, Tesla has an up-to-date view on orders and deliveries (from/to actual customers) versus production. They check this weekly and adjust accordingly[1]. I don't see why they would let unsold cars pile up.

[1] I don't have an exact reference, but this was explained in one of the earning calls after they started cutting prices at the start of this year.

In 2023, Tesla will end up with 40% unit growth year over year. Their cars on not "sitting on lots". Yes, there have been price reductions, but their free cash flow clearly illustrates their ability to put crazy pricing pressure (leading to recent capitulation by GM and Ford on their expansion plans) on everyone outside of Chinese EV makers.

More useful but definitely not remotely reasonably priced, and that's with the truck being a semi-loss leader (per some reports).

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