Tesla sold only one car in Korea in January | Hacker News Reader

Tesla sold only one car in Korea in January

bloomberg.com

34 pointsjmsflknr51 comments

Anywhere Tesla's are imported via container ship have months with ~0 sales because no ship arrived that month and thousands on other months when they do.

Sounds like you are confusing imports with sales. If you import 1000 Tesla's, they surely won't all sell at the same time? I'd expect them to be spread out across several months until the next shipment comes in to replenish. It would however make sense if the deliveries are late and the market had been waiting for months.

It's not a sale until it's delivered. It's an order before then.

Are you saying that they have no inventory control?

That has been Tesla's model from the beginning right? They don't have dealerships, they don't have inventory, you order your car, the car is made and then delivered.

Correct, there is no huge parking lot in south korea full of thousands of vehicles to smooth out deliveries over multiple quarters.

You don't need that if you have proper inventory control....

Right, they ship cars to delivery centers to match current demand. Most cars do not sit in inventory very long, they are already spoken for by orders.

This is especially true in countries where the cars are delivered by container ship. You can easily make headlines about "Tesla has record sales in <month>" and "Tesla has poor sales in <month>" based on which months the ships arrive and the cars are delivered to customers.

I'm not sure what about this indicates that they don't have inventory control.

That's exactly what I've seen so far. "Record sales of singular <type of car> in March, outsells XYZ competitor". I assumed that was part of their strategy.

This is often due to the bulk deliveries at end of quarter and only really having 1 model "per line" vs other manufacturers splitting their car lines into several variants.

Tesla generally ships cars on a JIT basis and avoids large inventory.

When a ship arrives with imported cars, the majority are likely already spoken for with pending orders and will be delivered within a month.

You "order" your Tesla before it arrives in country, Tesla doesn't have dealerships.

The title says "sold" and an order counts as a sale in my books. Is the title incorrect and should say "delivered"?

Generally car sales are counted at delivery, or when the manufacturer gets paid for the car. A Tesla order is a $250 deposit. They don't get paid for the car until it gets delivered, and the order can be cancelled at any point before that.

Tesla has been fairly consistent on this and as far as I know it matches how most auto companies account for sales. The difference is that some companies count cars sold to dealerships, even if they aren't sold to an end customer yet, but Tesla does not have franchised dealerships.

And it's also how recognition of revenue works for accounting for all companies.

> an order counts as a sale in my books

It doesn't in Tesla's books in how they report sales. A sale is only considered complete, and revenue recognized once the customer takes delivery.

Saying delivered would remove this possible misinterpretation and make the headline non-newsworthy.

Not sure if you are being literal with your numbers, but selling 1000 Teslas in a month in Korea has been achieved multiple times. Go look at the stats.

Korean EV's are comparable if not better than Tesla, so not too surprising.

Seems like less of gamble to get a Kia or Hyundai EV when you consider long term support.

I don't know, there are reports (e.g., 0/) of people being quoted obscene amounts (60k CAD?) for Ioniq 5 battery replacements not under warranty. I've seen costs ranging from 15-20k for Tesla battery replacements. There are definitely mixed reviews of Tesla support, but I'd be pretty concerned (if not more so) with support from both Kia and Hyundai as well.

0/ https://www.ioniqforum.com/threads/60k-to-replace-main-batte...

Battery replacements after the initial warranty period are often uneconomical in the same way engine replacements are uneconomical after the initial warranty period. And in both cases, there are historical accounts of the components lasting well beyond their expected lifetime as well as dying fairly quickly after the warranty runs out.

...Okay? These quotes were when Hyundai decided that the warranty did not cover supposed damage to the batteries. But either way, unwarrantied battery replacement costs of 60k CAD is obscene. On an otherwise new Tesla, a 15-20k (USD) replacement would still be economic but the Ioniq 5 is just going to be "totaled".

Tangential, but I recently realized these car-based forums (Ioniq forum, Kia forums, Ford forums, etc) aren’t run by enthusiasts but rather a single entity, Fora (1).

This is not to say that all communities are synthetic. VWwatercooled as an example has been around forever.

(1) https://fora.com/about/

Oh fair. I just saw credible reports floating around about these unwarrantied repairs and looked for something referencing this. I have not seen any statements from Hyundai refuting the claims. If indeed battery replacements are available at reasonable prices, I'd be happy to know this.

I agree the complaints are genuine. I thought it was an interesting strategy to camp out on a whole bunch of domain names to set up make or model-specific forums that replicate a “community feel”.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. Multiple customers corroborated the extremely high quotes for Hyundai battery replacements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEXieo06ta8

I'm guessing the downvotes are because almost nobody is paying this price. If someone hits you and your battery is damaged, you use the liability insurance of that someone. If you are careless yourself, you use your own collision insurance. If a natural disaster like flood damages the battery you use the comprehensive insurance. That's why people only care about the deductible and the premium of the insurance, not the full cost.

When you buy a non-electric car, do you even reasonably consider the cost of a potential replacement of the entire engine just in case it needs to be replaced? No? Then case settled. This kind of extreme cost is not at all a reasonable criterion for any normal car buyer.

Koreans tend to like their own cars. Hyundai/Kia make up vast majority of car sales in Korea, so it isn't weird that the EV transition remains the same. It isn't a big enough market to go all in on like China; and you can argue that China's EVs are pretty good as well.

> Koreans tend to like their own cars

You end up paying a 15-20% tax on a foreign car versus domestic in Korea, and domestic cars have a tax rebate in Korea.

This is why a foreign mid-model car like Tesla or Lexus or Mercedes is a status symbol there.

Curious, why don't we reciprocate the tax on Korean cars? The US government isn't known for being very understanding on these things even for allies? Or are Kia/Hyundai mostly making cars for the USA outside of Korea?

> Or are Kia/Hyundai mostly making cars for the USA outside of Korea?

This. Alabama for Hyundai and Georgia for Kia

If they normally sell more than a thousand a month in South Korea, then 'only one car in January' sounds like a supply constraint. As I recall, they had a slow month in Australia for that reason.

There's no supply constraints for Tesla right now.

The article doesn't say anything about supply being the issue.

The supply constraint is shipping, not production.

Are you sure the constraint is shipping?

That industry is very volatile but I had the impression the boom was 2020 and 2021 when everybody went on a buying spree but governments forgot quite a lot of people need to get out of the house in order to make this work. Also the infrastructure is not elastic to that point.

Now my impression was of "excess capacity" and rates going to the ground because the spree is over and inflation is the hangover.

Probably it's a bit of everything, including people realizing EVs are far from being a panacea and the math doesn't add up for their finances. The type of people who usually are or follow the early adopters already have an EV, the rest of the market seems to not be that convinced. ( for many valid reasons )

A ship holds ~6,000 cars. So until Tesla is selling > 6,000 per month, they're going to get less than one ship per month.

In most months yes, in January no, they sold 0 cars January last year also, the government publishes incentives in Feb for the year, so everyone waits for that before buying

Or maybe the article meant North Korea? Then it would be surprising news for completely different reasons. But the Bloomberg title doesn't really match, does it.

“Carmakers are facing a slowdown in enthusiasm for EVs in South Korea as higher interest rates and inflation prompt consumers to rein in spending, while concerns about battery fires and a dearth of fast chargers are also damping demand.”

I think this is also the concern of buyers worldwide.

Tesla sold 1022 vehicles in Korea in December 2023. The slowdown in January is because of uncertainty in government incentives. Nothing interesting behind this metric.

This is FUD that intentionally leaves out context to create a false narrative. Tesla sold the same no cars last January also, in addition to shipments depending on arrival of container ships and be driven by quarterly timing, the government publishes incentive information for the year in February

You can see the number of sales in the first month of every quarter over the years here:

https://twitter.com/piloly/status/1742807601425870994

Anecdotal, but I was at a Korean school in the States this past weekend and I have never seen a higher concentration of Teslas than I saw in the parking lot. And there were significantly more Teslas than Kia or Hyundais. So at least in this particular parking lot of this particular school, Koreans/Korean-Americans, seemed to really like Teslas.

Do they have supercharger network there? If not then KIA EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq are better than model 3 and Y and I'd imagine there are some sort of domestic incentives involved

https://www.tesla.com/en_US/findus/list/superchargers/South%...

Yes, they have but the coverage is not as great as the US outside the capital metro.

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Having ridden in all four I agree, the finish on the Kia and Hyundai cars are miles ahead (hehe) of the Teslas. And they’re likely built in South Korea instead of China, which is great for their industry and frankly national security.

If you watch the docuseries on netflix, the youngest head designer of GM (think Jony Ive for cars) complained that many Detroit Eng's were lured away to KIA - and thats why Kia went from wackenhut style DUMG tunnel vehicles to how great they look today...

Kis stole (out paid) GMs offerings - as they wanted an appeal to younger market (recall the chipmunk/hamster commercials, etc)...

Kia has a lot of american designers. And younger designers grew up on video games and such, that they want to make good looking cars.

Have you seen any cars (mass market, not luxury boxes) from the 70s 80s 90s... hideous POS's - BUT they did have several advantages, less plastic and no remote power off by The Man.

EDIT to @throwaway5959 - Im in agreement. I think the Kias look fn dope.

You can’t steal people, just like you can’t “poach” them. There’s nothing wrong with paying people more and delivering a better product.

If their sales are very low, it would make no financial sense for Tesla to build out a supercharger network, at least not all over the country, and people would have trouble getting service for what would be an obscure foreign car in the local market. So I'm sure that Korean customers would prefer to buy a KIA or Hyundai, even without considering factors like loyalty to domestic producers.

Does Korea have a EV charging standard? If not, the super charger network would be even more important than in Europe/China.

Korea standardized on CCS1 (US plugs). Not sure what's happening now with the US ditching CCS1 but it might stay CCS1 over there.

It seems that Tesla is still using NACS in Korea:, from https://news.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20231123000609

> Once a user presses the connector button on the charger, it allows access to an adapter called “Magic Dock,” which can be plugged into Tesla’s North American Charging Standard or NACS port. The Magic Dock makes Tesla’s NACS ports compatible with Hyundai and Kia vehicles, and others that use the Combined Charging System or CCS in Korea.

Then it sort of makes sense that not having lots of superchargers would be bad for Tesla, since they need to use an adapter with other charging infra if Kia/Hyundai need to use an adapter with theirs.

No paywall: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/tesla-sold-only-one-car-in-korea...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com