Tesla releases Q1 2024 deliveries: disastrous results
electrek.co
electrek.co
First, my experience 2 years ago was the A/C compressor was so loud that during summer with cooling running at maximum, you couldn’t hold a conversation in the cabin because of the noise. Tesla investigated and eventually said “looks fine to us, there isn’t designed to be any additional noise abatement on the firewall between the front and the passenger space”. We had issues with our Falcon Wing doors, and we eventually sold the vehicle after a year.
Now, our friends Model X, that’s had ~6 non-trivial maintenance problems in six months, including the Falcon Wing doors failing three times, and they’re in the process of trying to get a refund through Lemon Laws.
Other acquaintances who own Teslas also have service issues on their Model X, the Cybertruck looks like an even worse mess, so I concluded over a span of multiple years, quality still isn’t a strong suit of Tesla, thus I’m not shocked to see there’s limited brand loyaly, and with increasingly viable competition, demand is falling?
I now have a Rivian R1S and we are incredibly happy with that vehicle, having put about 6000 miles on it. Mercedes EQS also seems like a reasonable choice in 2024, depending on what you want.
But a better match to culture is likely Jeep Wrangler 4xe. Incredible offroading performance, reasonable towing capacity, large size / in-your-face advertising to some extent. And electrified, so that your daily commute is efficient and environmentally friendly.
Etc. etc. There's a lot of competition these days. People who buy Toyota / Honda are people who care #1 about reliability and simplicity.
But "Tesla Buyers" are more excited about niche features or feeling like their car can do something other cars cannot do (even if they never actually use that feature). And honestly, vehicles like Jeep Wrangler 4xe are best suited for that mindset.
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Or the new Dodge Charger EV. Now that Stellantis is making their EV push, I think Stellantis has better branding for what the stereotypical Tesla Buyer is going for... without the awfulness associated with Elon.
When I finally was able to test drive a standard 2023 Prius, I decided its cargo space was way too small for what I was looking for. When test driving a Rav4 (not Prime) I decided its visibility (for me, maybe this is highly personal) was absolutely terrible compared to the Model Y. Model Y prices were VERY competitive compared to Rav4 Primes anyway, so that's what I went with. I've been very happy with it.
I suppose they are out of fashion right now but honestly that is the form factor that I would be most interested in. I could use it for both home projects but also with the longer body it would have have a fairly decent range so wouldn't be bad for the family road trips. I don't like the idea of having to stop every 2 or 3 hours, 4 would be more ideal.
Honestly, passenger van / road trip vehicle makes the most sense in PHEV form factor out of all other styles IMO.
You should seriously look up the drivetrain of hybrids.
The planetary gearset is a single set of gears that functions as the alternator/generator, the starter/EV motor, the transmission, and the engine driveshaft.
Its not "different" or "new" components. Its a singular design that accomplishes what 3x different parts of the car used to do seperately. There's a reason why Toyota Hybrids are $23k, its a lot cheaper and more efficient to do it this way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofycaXByTc
You needed the starter anyway. When its beefed up to a full-size EV motor that can drive the car, its more powerful and more durable.
You needed the alternator anyway. When its beefed up to a full-sized generator, its more powerful and more durable.
When the ICE engine operates at its ideal RPM (rather than directly connected to the road), it can be made cheaper, more reliable, smaller, more efficiently than when its the only thing moving the car.
Hybrids are superior to ICE, and Prius shows how to do it with more reliability. Now yes, Chrysler is terrible with reliability, but that's nothing to do with Hybrids and everything to do with Chrysler.
Moving an off-road vehicle of over two tons to transport (usually) one person to work seems neither efficient nor environmentally friendly. The vehicle being electric doesn’t change that, as the electricity has to be generated somewhere.
But switching them to a Jeep Wrangler 4xe is much easier. They seem more amendable to that idea, because they want an offroading vehicle so much. I do think its a bit of a "cosplay" situation because they only do offroading one or two times per year, but ... yeah.
Anyway, getting +5 MPG and electrifying the overall drive of a Jeep will save a ton of fuel. If I can't convince them to drive efficiently with a Corolla, I'm still happy to convince them to get a more environmentally friendly decision here.
Do they even have a viable option today? (I’m unaware how the Lexus electrification is going.)
Now, you have the choice of a Mercedes-Benz EQB or EQS, a Rivian R1S (as you chose) or a Kia EV9 with Lucid, Hyundai and VW all with products about to enter the market.
https://pressroom.toyota.com/toyota-motor-north-america-repo...
Those are mostly hybrids, but reportedly, U.S. sales of gas-electric hybrid vehicles surge and electric-vehicle sales cool
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/us-aut...
I'm not gonna get another Tesla, but not because I dislike the brand, rather because one buys so few cars in one's life that it's more interesting to get something else.
Maybe Elon can get conservatives to buy EVs to "own the libs." Godspeed on that, but so far it doesn't seem to be working.
I think tesla has the most features of any EV. They started off with a clean slate and have done quite well. Their EVs have had the best Coefficient of Drag, have had state-of-the-art batteries, and some amazing motors as far as efficiency and/or power.
Unfortunately, they started cheaping out. No dashboard on the model 3 and too many functions on the touchscreen, like defrost.
They've done this sort of thing with every iteration, and now the latest cars have no gearshift lever/stalk (car guesses which direction you want), there are no stalks for turn signal, wipers, flashing headlights, etc.
the newest steering wheel moved many of these functions to touch areas on the wheel itself horn wipers. And the buttons move with the wheel, so you need to take that into account when you aren't going straight. what if you're on a curve and need to access wipers?
The touchscreen is a mess. First, the moving touchscreen is incredibly hard to touch in a moving vehicle and there is nowhere to rest your hand while you attempt it. For example, turning on the defrost or fog lights.
I sort of wish the NHTSA extended the rules requiring a dedicated emergency flasher button to more of these critical functions a good driver needs to access directly.
The FAA and the military take this stuff seriously for aircraft. They investigate accidents, and if a confusing control is the cause, they follow up and make changes. If only the millions of drivers of cars had someone to get their back.
Tesla's QC problem is serious and still affects all EVs made in the US -- the batteries in these EVs have little to do with it.
He could have retired in a blaze of glory a couple of years ago, straight into the pantheon of epic American entrepreneurs.
These were by far not as bad as some people tend to paint them, the problem with the Star Wars prequels IMHO was more that the "old guard" fanbase tends to be quite the whiny bunch.
The sequels are another topic entirely - these were corporate driven projects which isn't a bad sign per se (see the MCU), but unlike the MCU there wasn't a central person like Kevin Feige who actually took care about a cohesive storyline, directors and script writers kept changing, and the SW universe unlike Star Trek or MCU doesn't have a concept of multiple/alternate realities or time travel so a ton of lore went down the drain for nothing.
The fact those movies are terrible is irrelevant.
EDIT: I had heard he was South African. Googled it though: "South African-born American businessman" so I guess he is American now. Thanks.
To Americans, being born to a different nationality doesn't preclude you from being considered a full and true American. First generation immigrants and naturalized citizens tend to be completely accepted as equals by natural born citizens, so long as they are productive and not criminally destructive.
I do understand that this tends to not be the case in many other countries, where even second generation immigrants may not be fully accepted because ethnic identity is so deeply entwined in nationality in most countries.
Without context though my generous assumption is that when they say "Asian driving a Tesla" they mean "Asian-American driving a Tesla" and are lazy rather than racist.
Putting it another way, if Elon Musk was born in South Africa and happened to be black, I doubt he'd so easily be given a pass as an American. Every article would start "South-african born entrepreneur Elon Musk..."
If Elon had decided to just roll over a couple years ago and do everything the media asked him to do (shutdown the Fremont factory during covid, stop "polluting the sky" with starlink, rely on a nice unionized automaker like GM to "lead the EV revolution") Tesla & SpaceX wouldn't exist today.
No, it’s the fascist-friendly sex-mongering racist rhetoric that gets most people.
Even that could be explained the way if it weren’t for his inept business moves with Twitter and ugly cybertruck.
Jobs proved you can be worshipped while being an eccentric asshole if you’re at least competent.
I think that they have saturated the initial EV buyers, mainstream is still afraid of EV and there's more anti-EV propaganda in the media than ever before.
2. Musk is one of few figures whose controversies escape the online world, though. Like the "pedo diver" thing, it was an international story with world attention and he jammed himself in the middle of it.
That said, I'm also not convinced his reputation is the reason for shipments to drop precipitously. But it could absolutely be a contributing factor.
I wonder if the vast majority of potential Tesla customers does though.
The vast majority of the world doesn't exist in the online sphere.
You don't think there's a significant overlap between prospective Tesla buyers and people who are familiar with Musk's hijinks?
If you want to be a loudmouth dick online and intertwine your persona with that of your companies for #traction, it cuts both ways.
Oh, come on. Don't wait another 25 years! /s
I talked to the owner who said that his wife had custom ordered it.
As more car manufacturers start to deliver good EVs, I think you'll start to see more variety in the EVs on the road. For example my next car after the cybertruck could be a Rivian or an electric van, if someone finally decides to make one.
But talking with some of the Tesla owners, many feel embarrassed by Elon. Many say that they will not buy another Tesla or they have some other reasoning to justify their purchase (like Elon has gone crazy but we shouldn't punish the entire company for it etc)
... only works when you're making the best car. There are a lot of very competitive EV alternatives now.
Judging by the fragmented and meandering Highland/Juniper roll-out, none.
The company seems to be running on autopilot (or should I say, full self-driving), where local management is making local decisions out of sync with the rest of the company to try and save another quarter. Which is clearly not working anymore.
He’s made it his mission to insult me on a personal level. One dollar equals one vote so I pay attention where mine go.
I have a Tesla Model 3 right now and it's my favorite car ever, by far, but I also will be unlikely to buy another tesla. It's not the same company as six years ago.
Kia went to quite some work to make it feel like a regular car.
Let me guess, nothing that's part his core believes?
Kind of a confusing statement. Sure the current state doesn't work in the US, which is because it isn't designed to work and there is little to no investment or money spent on public transit. You can know that this is factually true by looking at your state department of highways budgets and examining how funds are allocated.
It does work in other countries, including countries that have parents with children. There is no logistical or cost-based reason it won't or couldn't work in the US. Nothing special about "spread out" - which is another choice we intentionally make or the size of the country. It's also mostly untrue since most of the population in the US lives in urban areas. Suburban areas can just continue to grow as is and become more dense while preserving SFHs.
It's a chicken and egg problem in the end. A government has it easier to just dump funds for 10-20 years onto public transit subsidies (and provide the guarantee to the third parties you mention that any investment they make isn't going to be in vain) than if it convinces and pays off all these third parties to change before there is a viable public transit system.
Retrofitting public transit into a city designed for cars at that same scale is unbelievably expensive before the costs of changing public opinion are factored in.
I say this as someone who dislikes what suburbs have become and would _love_ to see public transit proliferate throughout the US.
In my home state of Ohio and in my home town we are spending a billion dollars to build a new ramp and make some other changes to a highway that was built well after the city was founded to make it “easier” for car traffic. We have the money. We are just choosing to spend it only on car infrastructure.
I do agree about public opinion though. But fortunately attitudes amongst millennials and Gen Z seem to be strongly in favor of better transit and more dense development patterns.
The city named after me was also founded (1836) purposefully on undeveloped land and planned from the beginning to become an urban center and territory capital.
Within 3 decades of when Columbus got going, so I would have to say they both have a downtown layout that was originally designed for horses and horse-powered vehicles to begin with. And to accommodate a lot more horses in the future than there were in the area at the time.
Plus think of the gig workers. I can only imagine one of the blocks where people are waiting for an Uber today, is where early residents were once waiting for a Wells-Fargo coach. Once the Wells-Fargo startup was able to leverage being online 24/7, at your local telegraph office ;)
Streetcars came in the late 1800's and I would expect tracks were laid on what could be considered thoroughfares.
There was probably quite a bit of urban character by then and a good chance it was the rapid transit offered by the march of technology, rather than the mass transit aspect that was most appreciated by the riders. Houston already had horse-powered "buses" before this.
Next thing you know, a few decades later there's Model T's and you can really save tonnes of animal feed while helping the environment (at the time) at the same time. They all shared the roads even if it was not all horses and pedestrians as intended any more.
After years of mass-production, it would be like cars are reproducing faster than horses and taking over the place, car owners would have growing influence. Plus if for some reason older mass-transit hardware were deteriorating at a faster rate than the payer could justify reversing, there would be increasing incentive to eventually throw in the towel and let people drive themselves around.
It could happen ;)
Technology marches on but the mainstream beats the most heavily-trodden path.
Here in Munich, one of the densest cities in Europe, I took the subway alone at age 7. There's nothing preventing US kids from doing the same with a bus, no matter if driven by a human or by some sort of autonomous system - except that US infrastructure at large is completely focused on cars and has zero respect for anyone not in the safety shell of a car, so it will be a challenge for a kid to even get to a bus stop safely.
But that can change, even in the matter of a few years. All it needs is the political will, a bit of funding, and in larger cities to get the homeless and drug addicts in safe housing or, for those incompatible with society for mental health reasons, into institutions.
"We got $200M in federal money for improving transportation. Let's spend $50M on it adding a station to this light rail we built 20 years ago to win federal money _that_ time and spend $150M on adding five miles of express lanes to the interstate."
Perfect example. I lived in Dallas for five years. Denton, a city about 45 miles north of downtown Dallas, operates this "commuter rail" line called the A-Train. This line has existed since 2006.
Denton is one of the biggest college towns in Texas. It has two of the biggest universities in Texas (TWU, UNT).
The A-Train doesn't stop at _either college_.
The A-Train also doesn't stop anywhere near where people actually live unless you live in downtown Denton (few people do). So, to use it, you have to drive (or take the DCTA bus, which, lol, don't) to a station to take this train which terminates...
...about 20 miles from downtown Dallas. You need to connect in Carrollton (a station you _definitely_ have to drive to) to take the Dallas Area Regional Transit train, which has a larger network (that still doesn't bring you anywhere you want to go, at least not directly)
The entire system was set up this way because the A-Train runs along one of the busiest segments of Interstate 35E. It runs up this segment because that's where the pre-existing rail was.
This segment is 8 miles.
That rail network goes ALL THE WAY UP TO KANSAS AND ALL THE WAY DOWN TO GALVESTON.
So, to summarize, two of the biggest cities in Texas have a commuter rail that connects them, on a relatively super small segment of rail that was already laid down, but takes passengers to stations where they will need a car to complete their trip.
Oh, and the A-Train only has, like, six stations, operates every 30 minutes between 0600 and 2200 on weekdays and every hour on Saturday, and is closed on Sunday because Texas.
The crazy part about this is that DESPITE ALL OF THIS, this is _still_ better than the *zero* rail service we have in Houston (the biggest and most populated city in Texas).
_This_ is why public transit is an incredibly hard problem to solve here. It will take billions and billions of dollars to _just_ develop DART, Houston's METRO and Austin's Capital into anything closely resembling a real public transit network. Most folks will just vote for a new stadium or more lanes to get stuck in.
(The kicker? I just learned that a section of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas network that the A-Train rides on in Houston was scrapped in 1998 to become...part of Katy Freeway, the 12+ lane monstrosity that absolutely completely fills up every rush hour like clockwork.)
I’m sure you’ll appreciate the direct nature in which I communicated this, even if you disagree with it.
Your communication style is not direct enough for me I'm afraid, clearly you feel quite a bit more passionate about this than you let on. People must say what you permit, and never stray from the approved narratives, or else. Be careful to not mention that in job interviews.
Me either, but in this context what would that have to do with Elon Musk or Tesla? Are you suggesting that other automobile manufacturers or their CEOs try to dictate what other people say?
I'm trying to understand this in the context of musk's behavior, did you mean "I'm also a big fan of saying that I'm a big fan of not dictating what other people should say"? Or "I'm also a big fan of dictating what other people say"? I think either of those would make more sense in this context.
When it comes to Tesla technology... it's actually really good.
And that's before all the bad decisions in the direction of the product over the past six years. Musk's made a great product far worse by being so involved and making boldly bad decisions left and right.
What? Tesla's controls are ass. They're infotainment responsiveness is great, but the turn signal steering wheel buttons, windshield wipers, drive mode select, etc... are all absolutely horrible.
It's literally the reason we passed on the Model 3 & S when shopping for an EV. The extra 20-60 miles of range wasn't worth it to put up with that nonsense.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_eu/GUID-A5F2B9D...
This. I really like Tesla as a brand, but Musk should really stop over-promising and under-delivering.
Their technology is really good, but far away from the promises of their CEO.
Speak all you want about Tesla’s efficiency, but it’s hardly a meaningful USP against the absolute bad taste left in one’s mouth after hypeman Elon yet again under-delivers.
You probably know this, but FYI it’s per kilowatt-hour.
Anecdote: my Model S Plaid’s efficiency over 23,000 miles is 305 Watt-hours per mile.
I'm looking to buy a Hyundai later this year.
Drug addict? You mean his ketamine for depression?
And when you buy a car are you "representing" the CEO's views?
What are the CEO of Hyundai's personal beliefs? Do you even know?
I think that's the point?
Unlike Musk, the CEO of Hyundai doesn't go out of their way to make sure I'm aware of their opinions. I don't even know the name of Hyundai's CEO, and we bought an Ioniq 5 last year. One might argue such a dichotomy is one of the reasons we didn't buy a Tesla (well, that and the crap build quality).
I think it is still overpriced and can drop further, but it has lost its shine. They will make less money from offering, and it would probably tank the stock. And there is no sign they need the money.
Compare this to Toyota, who sold 11 million cars last year (~20x Tesla), is worth $385 billion.
It is still grossly over valued.
Weren’t there also disclosure documents a couple of years ago when they were trying to license autopilot that said they believed internally they were at level 2 as opposed to 4/5? (I might be remembering this part wrong)
If robo-taxis were ready with the kind of economics outlined by Musk it would be financially irresponsible to actually sell the cars to others instead of just building a massive Tesla fleet and pivoting towards transportation services.
Tesla's still selling their cars? If so, then they're not robo-taxis.
Edit: The other option for Tesla would be selling the cars for a high enough premium to offset the lost taxi revenue. The fact that Tesla seems to be in a price war with other EV makers is not a promising sign for robo-taxis.
Not even their Supervised Full Self Driving does that
The smart people left years ago and started working at Lucid and elsewhere. All the people who had talent got sick of Musk's shit, saw the company stagnating, and left for functional, non-toxic workplaces.
Tesla has spent the last ~5 years resting on its laurels, aside from (eventually) producing a pavement-queen meme vehicle that breaks down on even the simplest off-roading tests and gets stuck on beaches. Oh, and slightly tweaking the Model 3's looks, I guess that's...something.
Your cars have completely stagnant styling, terrible reliability (matched with even worse parts availability!), the worst interiors in their class, the worst build quality, and they're no longer kings in anything - not efficiency, range, performance, or charging speed.
Your company was at the forefront of removing physical switches and moving to screen-based and capacitive-touch controls, both reviled by the public and coming under increasing scrutiny by regulators.
Your cars have the highest crash rate of any automaker.
Tesla's "autopilot" has been surpassed by several manufacturers whose systems don't randomly slam on the brakes (or, for that matter, into the backs of police cruisers.)
Here's a 2008 blog post about V2G: https://www.tesla.com/blog/smarter-charging ...and sixteen years later your cars still can't do it. Hyundais and Kias can...
Your cars are still stuck on 400V (sorry, "480") architecture while years ago other companies went to 800v. VW/Audi/Porsche, Hyundai/Kia, GM, and Lucid are all on 800v. And while "V4" stations have been deployed, they're all still 400v 'under the hood'. 800v CCS has been slow to roll out, but it's actually been
If you're all so smart, why are your cars on fire sale and still selling like dogshit?
If you're all so smart, why are your cars on fire sale and still
selling like dogshit?
What I love as a "defense" from Tesla fans is when they comment that "they're not the worst for reliability, in fact they're middle to above average"...
... when compared with ICEs which are far more complex. "EVs are far simpler than ICEs, and there's far less that can go wrong with them"... if so, being in the middle of the pack with a bunch of ICEs isn't the flex it seems.
To me this looks more like "unsurprising". Tesla has some additional business lines which might eventually prove quite valuable, but in the short to medium term it is mostly a car company. The whole car industry is dealing with the results of higher interest rates. It would be much more surprising if Tesla somehow turned out to be immune to that.
Disastrous may be going too far unless it portends further drops going forward.
But disastrous may also be the right word because Tesla’s valuation is based entirely on massive growth. So even if this means Tesla will start growing fairly normally as opposed to rapidly, that’s bad for Tesla stock.
It comes as no surprises that the rest of your comment either looks for positives or places the blame on conditions affecting the auto industry at large.
Can Tesla do no wrong?
Tesla has confirmed what most it's not a tech company, but an auto manufacturer. And if it's repeated, the stock will never recover.
Before I purchased I thought I'd need to pay for a L2 charger and hire an electrician to install a 240v circuit in the driveway. Turned it that I just needed a short 10ga extension cord from an existing 120v receptacle.
Our household have a second ICE for longer trips.
I live in a house though, not an apartment.
I've done a couple longer trips where the battery goes to 20%. It took a few nights of charging to get it back to 100%. Which was totally fine because our daily use is less than 15 miles per day.
When I was ready to buy, I knew more about EV's than the person who sold me the vehicle. The amount of false information I got from the salesperson was worrisome. Even the amount of sales tax he quoted on the first offer was wrong.
Even with a $7,500 discount, there's still a wide gap between the value of the ten-year old gas car in the driveway and the cost of a brand new EV. Not going to a gas station is just not that beneficial to most.
Early adopters are going to early adopt, and people in high income brackets who own multiple vehicles can readily afford to have an ICE vehicle and an EV, but there are finite numbers of these folks out there to sell to. I reckon only recently EVs have gotten good and cheap enough to seriously replace ICE vehicles in the mass market.
Personally, I've got zero incentive to replace our fully functional ICE vehicle with any vehicle (EV or otherwise) until its "pretty darn reliable" service life ends - which I would place at least another 5 years in the future - at which point EVs will have closed even more of the gaps.
It's an interesting point. Still anecdotal, but our family ended up doing the first part of your sentence - that is, we abandoned our existing gas car. However, it was certainly not a lot more money - in fact part of the equation was that it was slightly cheaper to get the EV, exactly because it was not a super luxurious super long range $100k vehicle. There turned out to be a bonus benefit of 1 year of free charging at EVgo chargers, which we didn't count on but is nice.
Our main reason for this was that the gas car we replaced was requiring a lot of repairs and we were hoping to minimize the time we spend at repair shops. Hopefully the EV will require even less time than an IC vehicle due to no fluid changes.
One other unexpected change we encountered is that due to charging at home, we spend less total time fueling up the car, i.e. no more gas station visits. The time we occasionally use the free EVGO charger is at a department store so it's a side effect of going shopping instead of a single-purpose refueling trip.
At least that is how I rationalize potential EV ownership.
That's a big assumption. Based on the data I see here:
https://www.nyserda.ny.gov/All-Programs/Drive-Clean-Rebate-F...
... there are fewer than 10 total DC fast charging connection serving the entire of Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx.
A huge part of EV ownership is the minimal thought put into keep track of how full the car is. You drive, you come home, you plug in, you drive later, etc. No worries at all, no effort.
If you don't have that convenience, you're always going to have a bug nagging you "should I go charge?" and it'll wear at you.
Street parking with chargers on light poles, load balancing so they don't pop the circuit? Win. Chargers saturating common area parking that bills you for power you draw? Making people go charge their car at some central location for 45 minutes once or twice a week? Total fiasco.
I get by fine on a 20a/16a 240v (nema 6-20 plug) in the relatively mild new england winters and can drive my car just like a normal car 98% of the time.
In multifamily buildings, such as my 85-unit condo, there isn’t any at-home charging. At best, there is one shared charger for the community to use.
This sucks for several reasons: 1. You have to remember to move your car when it’s done charging, 2. The HOA is stuck paying the bill for all the electricity, and 3. As more and more people get electric cars, shared chargers don’t scale.
The most common Homeowner Association (HOA) objections to adding more charging: 1. It costs too much, and 2. Nobody wants this.
HOAs are generally risk-averse and don’t want to spend money on discretionary things like EV charging. This means that the only way for residents to conveniently own an electric car is to pay out of pocket (sometimes up to $20k) to install a single charger, which usually also requires the HOA to approve on a case-by-case basis.
Instead of all these one-off installs, letselectrify.org combines everyone that wants a charger into one campaign and lets them split the cost of installation, which ends up being much cheaper.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/byd-ma...
YoY BYD is up 13%.
TSLA sales are down sequentially but more relevantly also YoY.
> 431,000 deliveries would still be a small growth year-over-ear[sic]
The rest of chinas EV market is in Freefall (plant closures) and much of their output is of a quality level you would expect from china.
At those prices I'm not sure how they aren't selling more cars. For the amount of range and functionality you get, that kind of deal blows the competition out of the water; no other EV I'm aware of comes close. (That said, I have no idea if they still made much of a profit off that car or if they were just desperate to clear out space.)
The above mentioned Elon Factor?
I guess it's possible that maybe it's just taken this long to catch up with him though.
My two cents are that it's more important to support the company that's building the best EVs, and the positive impact Tesla has on the world is way bigger than whatever negative effects Elon's tweets are having, but I can definitely relate to folks' discomfort. I wish we had the old Elon back.
I cannot imagine paying $40K for a car, and I'm sure there are millions like me. You may be optimistic on what you think the average person can afford.
https://caredge.com/guides/new-car-price-trends-in-2024
The average new car purchaser may not be the average person, also the average include trucks with tend to be super super expensive.
Funny how things change.
My first new car was a truck, for the very reason that pick-up trucks were generally much cheaper than cars because they were mostly empty space and didn't have so many creature comforts.
Now, trucks are like rolling vacation spas. When my wife's car was side-swiped, the insurance company gave her a huge new truck as a loaner. It had more electronics, more comfortable seating, and more luxury appointments than our living room.
My main point is that if prices have come down a lot, yet Tesla is now selling fewer cars than before, then it seems like there must be other factors in play besides price.
I'm still a bit surprised how many people, even professionals in the lending space, hold this view that "interest rates must fall!"
We're still relatively low for federal interest rate[0]. Near zero interest rates are not sustainable long term and have lead to a tremendous asset bubble we're still just figuring out the consequences of.
It's a bit frightening that the only solution most companies have to improving their future out look boils down to "wait for rates to drop".
I suspect even if rates do drop again, it will be only for a brief while before it becomes clear that "print free money!" is not a long term viable economic strategy.
With higher rates than before (and more competition), the price is too high, no matter how you shake it.
Because it's mostly high earning white collar professionals or anyone with at least $100k in liquid assets who benefit from an interest rate drop.
If rates drop significantly, then house sale prices skyrocket again because you can take out larger loans with a smaller down payment, and you can leverage yourself to acquire multiple properties. Same with car sales, and any other luxury good.
Securing wage increases takes time, worker organizing, etc. credit affordability is as easy as Chair Powell holding a press conference.
https://www.marketplace.org/2023/02/08/americans-use-of-cred...
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g19/current/default....
My house is still likely to go for more than I paid for it in 2018, even after adjusting for inflation. It should be obvious that housing cannot sustainably rise at above-inflation rates indefinitely.
My prediction is that rates stay the same or even are raised if inflation continues to run hot while unemployment is down.
Meanwhile you've got things like the Ioniq 5 that have fun styling, way better interiors, and don't really cost that much more. They're still selling a lot fewer in total numbers than Tesla, but Ioniq 5 + EV6 is around 53,000 vehicles in 2023. Given the shape of the EV landscape and EV sales in general, that's probably a lot of lost sales from Tesla specifically. BMW also started showing up, and they're responsible for another 47,000 sales in 2023.
And then at the high end it looks like the Model X + S sold 17,027 total, which yeah. At that price point those vehicles are just one-trick ponies. They go fast, and that's about it. Meanwhile you've got Lucid Air, Porsche Taycan, Audio e-Tron GT, etc... Taycan + eTron GT sales in the US add up to around 10,000. Lucid only had 6,000 delivers in 2023, but it also only offers a Model S competitor atm.
at least as long as he's involved.
Tesla still has some advance in terms of autopilot (in the US), but for all other things, it's an electric car with a great software but a rather low-quality hardware finish if to compare with other brands like Mercedes.
It's worse than that. Nvidia has a moat (deployed software and the open source software ecosystem) that buys them at least a few years, even if a well-resourced hardware peer appeared out of thin air tomorrow. Tesla has nothing like this. The cost of switching away from them is negligible, and they have half a dozen extremely well-resourced competitors.
It’s not great when your customers are embarrassed to be seen driving the car you made.
Prior to Elon taking the mask off I was really excited about the idea of getting a Tesla, and I'm squarely in what I imagine must be the main target demographic.
I wonder if people would care as much if he was a quiet Republican?
They used to be very different. Today, not so much.
And come close to substituting in a number of cases that might still lead to a bit of rapid adoption.
More ideal as an incremental acquisition for many of those who already possess the mainstream merchandise. Not so much desirability for those that would have to choose one or the other. So that's a smaller subset of the niche.
Then there are those who find the novel solution is superior for their particular needs, an even smaller subset, but more enthusiastic.
Seems like the behavior would be to fly off the shelf until the subsets of the mainstream have been saturated, then plateau at the rate that the mainstream becomes amenable to replacement.
At the smallest of scale, like with handcrafted items, it can occasionally be easy to do well financially as long as you can sell all you can make. This can happen when they're "flying off the shelf" so there can be relentless pressure to just make more, and the pressure can seem unending when there is a multi-year timeline for any scale-up activities.
If the market matures at a less-giga-than-anticipated level, and you end up in the process of building more than you can sell on an ongoing basis, you have reversed the financial opportunity that was supposed to accrue by building more to begin with.
One day when you wake up and can no longer sell all you can make for some reason, it's a whole different ball game.
If I were a Tesla stockholder I would be very disappointed in Tesla not breaking down sales like every other car manufacturer does.
It's starting to look increasingly boneheaded to spend time and money on the Cybertruck instead of a new lower-cost SUV (the Model Y isn't really a SUV in my book). Their platform is starting to feel dated compared to the competition. I'm sure some stuff from the Cybertruck platform will trickle down to the next like steer-by-wire and 800 V (which they are catching up on), but since I don't build cars, I don't know how amenable that platform is to build normal cars on.
[1] https://insideevs.com/news/700533/tesla-model-3-rwd-long-ran...
As of Q3 2022, Tesla’s profit margins stand out significantly compared to its competitors:
Gross profit per car: $15,653 Net profit per car: $9,574
In comparison, other major automakers have lower profit margins:
General Motors (GM): Gross profit per car of $3,818 and net profit per car of $2,150.
Toyota: Gross profit per car of $3,925 and net profit per car of $1,197.
Volkswagen (VW): Gross profit per car of $6,034 and net profit per car of $973.
Hyundai: Gross profit per car of $5,362 and net profit per car of $927.
Net profit is what remains after all expenses, like operating costs, taxes, and interest, are deducted from the gross profit.
Most of those companies do compete with Tesla, but the price range of a Tesla ($40k to $90k for most models) lines up much more closely with Audi and BMW than any of those companies. I'd imagine that those companies would have higher gross margins if they didn't sell any cheap models or trims levels.
https://companiesmarketcap.com/automakers/automakers-ranked-...
Let's wait 3 weeks and find out what Tesla margins are in Q1 2024.
We can also see the promotion of a free trial for self-driving as a response to this too: Hoping some people bite after trying it out. Whether that happens, or we just see more videos of failed self-driving is another story.
Either way, Tesla hasn't done much to improve their normal models in 2 years. The cybertruck is barely in production, and it's hard to see it as having massive demand. Elon's cultural alignment with people that at the same time are being told that electric vehicles will be bad for America is probably not great for sales on either side of the cultural divide. Add high interest rates, and it's unsurprising to see trouble. But does anyone have enough shares to try to force Tesla to make significant changes in diection? Unlikely.
Tesla in Norway is all JIT sales. Cars are ordered and come straight from the docks to the customer. I did not expect Tesla showrooms in the us to carry stock.
Maybe walkin purchases are more common across the pond
But they don't really have an SUV, which is by far the most popular form factor. The Model Y is closest but it's still a bit car-ish.
Interest rates are up.
Their chairman is going through a very public ...episode.
They'll definitely overcome the headwinds: they still have superfans despite the Musk antics; they have lower leverage than GM/F [0]; there's a lot of regulatory pressure coming down the pipes over the next 10-30 years to phase out ICE engines.
Here in Redmond, where buying a Tesla seems to be a rite of passage for Microsoft employees, I will often see three Teslas at an intersection (and maybe one behind me). The things are everywhere. If you've got a dead cat, careful you don't hit a Tesla when you swing it around.
And I've seen a total of one Cybertruck. Either not that many have been made and shipped, or no one is buying. People do love trucks, and they even love electric ones because I seen Rivians all the time (and a few Lightnings). But I've only seen the one lonely, butt-ugly Cybertruck.
Oofda. I'm sorry you had to experience that.
1. there is essentially no market for pick-up trucks outside the US.
2. the market for pick-up trucks inside the US is dominated by suburban American dads. They love trucks because they can imagine pulling up to a job site in one. We all know, even the suburban dads, that if you pull up to a job site in a Cybertruck, the guys working there are going to laugh at you. Look into your heart. You know this to be true. That's the kiss of death. (That and the fact the panel gaps are like two inches.)
I'm a Model Y owner and I still would not get a Cybertruck. If its too big for the Y I'll rent a Uhaul if its worth it, or borrow my friend's truck.
It would be a nice upgrade for my occasional camping trip to have the outlets and truck bed space for all the gear. so far the Model Y fits everything. give me a minivan-like vehicle though...
You’ve obviously never been to a war-torn country. The mid-sized Toyota/Nissan pickup with a machine gun mounted in the bed is the most popular vehicle by far.
[0] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-3-highland-us-...
[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/teslas...
I'm not convinced that electric cars are going to be mainstream, apart at the high end, for a few decades.
No. Tesla sales are dropping. This is worse than "leveling off".
EDIT: Tesla hasn't had sales this low in a quarter since 2022.
Except for the $20,000 battery in each of these Tesla vehicles.
That battery pack is basically the cost of a Chevy TRAX. And the battery is that expensive because its a complicated mess of chemicals: Lithium, Nickle, Cobalt... with complex battery-management systems (op-amps, transistors, MOSFETs) that can handle 800V and 250+ Amps of current, in a load-balanced way in both power and charging directions... designed for longetivity and safety.
Come on, its not actually that simple. The 15-gears that make up the Toyota Prius Power Split Device (serving as Transmission, Generator, and Starter) is obviously simpler in both chemical composition, sourcing (only uses Steel), and assembly.
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And building a 13kW-hr battery pack at 200lbs with a fraction of the power, and smaller electric motors at 110 hp out of cheap magnets (instead of Tesla's rare-earth magnets pushing 600+ horsepower or whatever) is also more environmentally friendly.
A lot of the problems with Tesla vehicles are self-imposed. They aim at absurdly high horsepower for not really much benefit to the typical everyday driver.
I suspect Tesla has wiggle room to discount this batch of vehicles to get them out the door quickly, the rebate will be built into the price of the vehicles this year so i'm curious how much that will reflect in the price drop.
Now Tesla has to fight and sway those who are looking to purchase their next vehicle.
It doesn’t help that Elon is playing politics and driving a large crowd away from Tesla brand. Also there are many repair horror stories. So the brand seems tainted.
What’s fascinating is that they have this transfer for FSD, but not EAP.
Anyone from Tesla sales reading this, reach out to me and you may have a customer :)
Eg: Someone I know struggles with turn signals. We have a few roundabouts here and it can be a bit confusing on tighter turns when the buttons are upside down.
- Tesla's charging network is opening up. I think this used to be the single biggest selling point.
- Tesla's repairability is not great, neither are the insurance rates.
- The 4680's have not exactly changed the world... might have made things cheaper for Tesla but that is about it.
- Some folks might think that Teslas aversion to buttons has reached peak dumb. Latest model 3 has even ditched the turn signals and drive-selector stalks...
- Requiring FSD demos prior to sales? GTFO.
- Musk is officially more of a liability than an asset.
- World wide supply issues (Red Sea) - TSLA specific issues (Strikes, Pay Dispute) - Overall demand for EVs - to this factor, any good benchmarks out there to establish demand?
In addition Ford, Lucid and Fisker are also scaling back and not selling EV's as well.
I think this points to a falling EV market.
GM's total sales were down 1.5%
Aside from all of that, Musk's views on his expectations from employees alone would have been enough to turn me off from ever purchasing one of those cars.
Make a safety and family oriented cool van and I'll buy one
Pretty much nobody cares if it's self driving
A lot of this stuff is blatant cost-cutting with a fig leaf of "it's futuristic".
it will take time though
in ten years there will be vastly more EVs than today
ICE is still on the way out
toyota was right and that’s why i got their hybrid vehicle instead of an EV
The $7,500 rebate sort of tweaked with the value system in my head and got my to purchase my model Y. also with not dealing with dealerships was a huge +