EVs Are Selling Well for Everyone Except Tesla
jalopnik.com
jalopnik.com
There is a massive demand for the F-150 Lightning and a very pragmatic part of the US wants rechargable trucks esp. since they're more often than not commuter vehicles. Like, gas for these trucks is expensive. There is a market segment he could totally grab, and all he had to do was make a knock-off Nissan Titan with batteries and then dominate.
The rest of the market is saturated and is now competing on price, and Asia will dominate there. If you can't compete on price then you compete on image, reliability, safety, etc., but their poor QC, combined with Musk's increasingly unhinged behavior, suggests that the brand is of dubious value.
Apparently they are cutting from 3 crews running 2 shifts to 1 crew running 1 shift.
However most people that want a tesla, have a tesla.
But they all look similar, have narrow use cases (commuting on clean roads), have minimal road clearance (except the truck). People (like me) like turn signals, shifters, and temp sensors. I bought a model 3P, the only option was tires not good for under 40F (because of damage to the tires, not traction). No option for anything else, despite it being under 40F that same day a 1.5 hour drive away.
The new model 3P (no Yp yet) made the steering wheel buttons WORSE, they don't click. Pretty much a deal killer for me, especially since they removed the turn signal and shifter stalks.
Model Y is nice, but very low for a SUV at 6.6 inches. Well below what you might need if there's a snow storm.
Rivian R2 and other competition is looking pretty good, last thing I want to think about is the rotational alignment of the wheel so I can hit a moving target of a turn signal, without even a click to let me know I hit it.
I'm plenty pleased with the ergonomics of my 3P, nearly everything either has a button, voice control, or is set rarely enough (like seat heaters) that I leave it on auto. The new 3P is a disaster in comparison and won't even warn me accurately track when it's going to freeze.
Its not happening anytime soon, especially if tesla want to rely solely on visuals inputs without lidar.
Other companies like BMW are doing very well with electric models because they are focused on delivering the same "BMW experience" in electric models.
As far as I can tell the 3 and the Y are decent vehicles but no longer illicit the kind of emotion that excites a purchase. I don't get the cybertruck at all in terms of product/market fit. Seems like an "Edsel moment" to me.
If you mean vehicle development, Tesla does that, continuously. A 2022 model 3 is a different car from a 2018 model 3, as much as a 2024 highland is. You don't need to touch the exterior to improve the car.
We consider cars more fashionable than shoes.
Why must a manufacturer change a great design just to satisfy the subset of customers who have an irrational need for annual novelty?
Surely the sales figures for the 3 and Y speak for themselves.
Tesla is not stagnating. It continues to dominate.
Tesla isn't Porsche, their designs are getting stale.
When it comes to phones, buyers are smart enough to realise that it's what's inside that counts - the processor, screen tech, cameras etc. They understand that iterating these components is more important than iterating the superficial shell they're housed in.
Unfortunately the car market is irrational. Some customers want superficial new shells every year, in order to show off to others that they're wealthy enough to refresh their car.
These kind of customers may not appreciate that since 2012, Tesla has delivered several radical new Model S vehicles, albeit in the same skin. The Model S has been:
* transitioned from a single motor to triple motors (for extra performance and torque vectoring).
* increased its power from 363 hp to 1020 hp, with a breakthrough carbon-wrapped rotor allowing much higher RPM, and improved drivetrain efficiency.
* replaced its 60kWh battery pack with a 100kWh pack, improving range, longevity, power delivery and charging speed.
* made major iterations to the computer, with many new capabilities added in hardware and software.
* improved full self driving to the point where it can navigate city streets with barely any intervention.
* completely revamped the interior. Ventilated seats. Rear screen. Acoustic glass. Improved legroom and headroom. Heat pump for HVAC
---
There are many benefits to customers in Tesla preserving the exterior shell of the vehicle - in particular it means servicing is easier and cheaper, as there is less variation in parts between model years. Accessories from earlier cars are compatible with later cars. There is less needless devaluation of older models.
Other car companies are evolving their tech and their designs, while Tesla is seemingly only doing half of that.
[1] Unless we want to count the iPhone SE, their cheapest budget-oriented phone, but that only proves my point further that new designs are valued more.
I do agree saturation of seeing Tesla everywhere is real, but you have to stay rational. And rational means mass production vs 10k Ioniqs or whatever.
For most other EVs, it still feels like you're sitting in a car.
The main reason I'd consider something other than a Tesla today:
- What's the maximum range
- How much range do you get for the price
- What's the total cost (there are cheaper cars that look great)
Also, sitting in a Tesla on the road is a lot less special nowadays. It is the most common model. This used to be an argument I heard about why people would pick a Polestar over a Tesla: People would say "Hey, there's a car." and not "Hey, there's a Tesla." -- but nowadays, Teslas are as ubiquitous as cars, and all the new EVs have annoyingly bright beams.
In my opinion, it's the latter, after observing how my parents adapted to driving a Tesla. I was actually concerned it'd be a hard transition, but I only had a couple "support calls" related to the car.
Windshield wipers where “auto” actually works.
Not having the car system (music, AC, etc.) turn off because the driver left the car.
High road noise
Yes, it is stalkless. You get used to this in minutes, and, IME, stalks feel antiquated soon after that.
It drives really well and is a much smoother and quieter ride than our 2020 Model 3 LR without sacrificing performance.
I also drove the 2022 Model S refresh. This car was also very nice, but it feels heavy and, in my opinion, doesn't command the cost they're asking for it (especially when it was, like, $110k for the LR variant). Also, it's headlights are somehow worse than the Model 3.
https://electrek.co/2023/07/27/disapproval-elon-musk-top-rea...
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areddit.com+won%27t+bu...
13% of owners found the experience so bad they are completely unwilling to consider the brand. People who dislike the cars or company but want a sub 45k EV with ~300 miles of range still don’t have a lot of options. Thus most current owners would at least consider buying another Tesla.
Tesla had momentum and they used it to the max. Now the competition has gotten wizer.
I do not subscribe to the interwebs anti-Musk rhetoric, most people do not care if he eats babies for breakfast as long as his cars are affordable, reliable, comfortable and reasonably green.
So before the Musk hate starts as is fashion in the forums these days, competition got better, Tesla are no longer ahead.
That's what I would bet on.
They had momentum and fumbled it with the Cybertruck. They retain a massive sourcing and production expertise advantage, as well as a built-in marketing advantage in their existing customers (and Superchargers).
In the time they fumbled they lost the low-end market to China. They’re currently bleeding the aspirational market to higher-end, more-differentiated brands.
I’m not a car guy. It isn’t clear where they go from here. But they both didn’t use their momentum “to the max,” nor are they out of steam.
I have no idea what they're doing. It looks like the budget Tesla is dead in the water and they're all in on robotaxis? How is that going to work? What's their actual strategy for the near to long-term future?
Sure. When the Cybertruck started diverting resources it wasn’t.
> they're all in on robotaxis?
Current market leader is Mercedes with an SAE Level 3 vehicle [1]. (Tesla markets like it’s Level 5, but it’s technically Level 2, same as my Subaru.)
Waymo is Level 4 [2]. They appear to be at their field’s forefront. If Tesla could sell a Level 4 vehicle, even one that only carries that guarantee on certain routes at certain times of the day in certain weather, it would be a game changer.
[1] https://fortune.com/2024/04/18/mercedes-self-driving-autonom...
[2] https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update 3.5 if you’re picky
That's not a market leader when it just follows the car in front and has significant limitations.
Cannot even change lanes
Works only in traffic jams and heavy traffic
Works only under 40MPH
Works only on specific highways (which need to be mapped?)
Works only in daylight, does not work at night
Does not work in rain
> it just follows the car in front
No, that’s active lane keeping. My Subaru does that.
> Cannot even change lanes
Yes it does [1].
> Works only under 40MPH
If you want to exceed this, you can switch to its Level 2 mode.
FSD is a very advanced Level 2 system. (Probably the most advanced.) But it’s still Level 2 because you are still supposed to closely supervise it.
[1] https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-mercede...
I just recently noticed that Tesla now officially calls it "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" in their manual.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-2CB6080...
First of all, consumers are used to rapid changes (churn?) in automotive design, every few years there is a major reworking of nameplates like the Toyota Corolla, Chevy Silverado, and such. Tesla hasn’t been keeping up.
Sales though is about emotions as much as anything else and the way people feel about Musk makes a difference. My take is Musk was always a bit of a punk who appealed more to some people (tech bros) than other people (women) and that tendency to rub some people the wrong way was always there but he went through a phase where it intensified. It was not so important to ‘please everybody’ when they were selling just a few cars but when you become a big brand like GM or the NFL you can’t win by driving anyone away.
I don’t know what he was thinking but from the viewpoint of making and selling cars the pivot to “conservatism” was not a good idea. For one thing liberals are a lot more interested in buying EVs and recently conservatives have been polarized against them. If “coal rollers” in Texas were going to flock to Tesla because Musk was mocking “woke” people on Twitter and leaving California that would be one thing but it isn’t.
My son’s views are relatively conservative compared to mine but he’s much more negative on Tesla and Musk than I am and his reasons cover everything from an antipathy to connected cars, touchscreens and cars becoming an extension of phones like the Apple Watch to questions of character.
It doesn’t help that like all the ex-China manufacturers, Tesla is ignoring the mainstream market and instead fixating on the profitable but limited luxury market.
Not the only factor, to be sure, but the off-putting icing on an otherwise average cake. If Tesla were the only decent EV in town, I might hold my nose through Musk’s behaviour and buy one. They aren’t, though, so I don’t have to.
The other major factors in my decision are the very public QA issues, safety issues, and questionable design decisions (eg. all-touchscreen controls, dangerous “full self-driving” fallacy) that, combined, leave me thinking “yeah, maybe I’d rather buy from a somewhat more boring company with a longer history of _making safely-working cars_”
I don’t kid myself that the heads of most car companies are necessarily decent human beings who align with me ethically or politically, but all other things being increasingly equal, why would I opt for the one run by a childish unstable egomaniac who stands in loud, public opposition to most of what I believe in?
If you look closely at any big corporation management, they are all egomaniacs. Just not childish enough to publicize that fact.
EVs aren’t very popular with the average right wingers.
Reminds me how certain movie directors blame the right wingers for their movie flopping, when the real reason is their movie just sucks mega balls period. Just own your failures and stop looking for right wing straw men everywhere as scapegoats.
Money talks in the free market and consumers vote with their wallets so if you make products that are top quality and great value, they'll buy them regardless of your political orientation.
Go look at the Invesco QQQ ETF on Morningstar and they're the only loss in the top 10. Also why you diversify your investments and don't go all in on TSLA. Ride it, dump it.
This is a crap article. Comparing the second derivative of cars in the road is classic statistical cheating.
I'm also yet to see another EV with comparable range, price and performance in my market. The Polestar is close. Plenty hit 2/3.
This might be not be a pickup in interest in EVs, but a factory fire sale as they adjust to demand shifts. My 2c.
I do reject surveillance capitalism so I prefer a crappy surveillant Chinese with buggier crapware but less services and even NO OTA than a western one who reach the point of selling insurance "depending on how you drive".
If our automakers want to understand that we are better at software than the rest of the world but people do want to own and control not being puppets enslaved by services things can change, otherwise they have choose to commit suicide bringing us, the west, with them.
Clicking through to the source—or at least the part that’s not paywalled—it’s not clear how great that 69% increase is. It’s described as the result of heavy incentives to clear excess inventory.
This is such dodgy reframing that I feel compelled to fix it: "EV sales are up 14%. Manufacturers other than Tesla made up the bulk of that".
Suppose Tesla had 99% market share at the start of the period. Sales of the entire market growing by 14% could be explained by 13.44% growth for Telsa's share and 69% growth for the other 1% market share.
without knowing the absolute values, the headline is fairly meaningless
> New Tesla registrations fell 17 percent in April, marking three consecutive months in the red. Tesla’s share of the U.S. EV segment dropped to 46.3 percent in April from 63.8 percent a year earlier, S&P Global Mobility said.
Tesla's growth in sales isn't just lower than everybody else's. It's negative. They're selling less than they used to while also losing market share and while their competitors have plenty of sales growth.
I don't see any way to frame this positively.
But it was approved a while ago, except for some reason Delaware went against precedent and disallowed it so they moved to Texas where it was re-approved.
Board competence is super precedented. Normally the courts defer to business judgement to an obnoxious degree, but if the Board isn’t independent it can no longer be assured to be serving its fiduciary duty. (To investors majority and minority.)
Given that re-approval happened at similar levels of shareholders support, that judgement seems incorrect.
And yes, it is unprecedented as in "there's no similar ruling in Delaware history".
And I stress "similar", not the "board competence" idea you made up.
As you yourself noted, the precedent in Delaware is that judges stay away from second guessing boards or shareholders and this seems like an activist ruling, not something based on past Delaware rulings.
That second bit of analysis never kicks in if Musk isn’t a “controlling shareholder.” Put another way, the ruling wouldn’t have been legal if the Board were deemed competent.
The Court found “Musk was the paradigmatic ‘Superstar CEO,’ who held some of the most influential corporate positions (CEO, Chair, and founder), enjoyed thick ties with the directors tasked with negotiating on behalf of Tesla, and dominated the process that led to board approval of his compensation plan,” thereby concluding “Musk controlled Tesla” [1].
This means the Court no longer defers to the company, but must decide if “the compensation plan was entirely fair.”
> it is unprecedented as in "there's no similar ruling in Delaware history"
What are you quoting?
In any case, you’re correct: the entire fairness doctrine has only needed to be applied by Delaware thrice before, in the 1980s [2] and then 2022 [3]. The novelty remains in Tesla’s closely-construed Board.
[1] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2024/02/01/tesla-musk-case-p...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberger_v._UOP,_Inc.
[3] https://www.huschblackwell.com/newsandinsights/entire-fairne...
Because showing that was so trivial that it barely needed to be done. People working directly for Musk asserted they had no financial ties to him or any of his companies. The board fucked up within the first few lines of legal boilerplate of the agreement.
The remainder was trying to find out if anything within the agreement wasn't tainted by the boards fuckery.
“Put simply, neither the Compensation Committee nor the Board acted in the best interests of the Company when negotiating Musk’s compensation plan. In fact, there is barely any evidence of negotiations at all. Rather than negotiate against Musk with the mindset of a third party, the Compensation Committee worked alongside him, almost as an advisory body.”
“The Board never asked the $55.8 billion question: Was the plan even necessary for Tesla to retain Musk and achieve its goals?”
“The incredible size of the biggest compensation plan ever—an unfathomable sum—seems to have been calibrated to help Musk achieve what he believed would make “a good future for humanity” [related to Musk’s goal of colonizing Mars]. [T]hat had no relation to Tesla’s goals with the compensation plan.”
> As you yourself noted, the precedent in Delaware is that judges stay away from second guessing boards or shareholders and this seems like an activist ruling, not something based on past Delaware rulings.
Revisiting and potentially invalidating decisions regarding compensation is like an entire standalone unit in business associations/corporate law classes. There are flow charts with forks named after precedential cases.
At the same time a move to Texas was approved by shareholder vote, but it had nothing to do with approval of pay package.
Plus, moving to Texas would not void the Delaware ruling.
According to https://www.drive.com.au/news/tesla-model-y-worlds-best-sell...
I think the car advice journalism is hopelessly polarised and political, like everything else. Sad.
Not sure why you’re coming to such a weird conclusion from two sets of facts that are mutually compatible.
Tesla makes the best-selling EVs. We don’t have sales numbers for Q1, but they’re probably in line with 2023. The news is that while most of 2023 involved reporting on how EV sales were flagging, on review, we find EV sales are growing fine, it’s Tesla’s that are stable. That means they’ll continue to be a top seller. But less top than before.
My point that there are some very pro-Tesla articles as well as many quite negative ones.
You and others have misinterpreted my post. Maybe I should have elaborated.
It doesn't seem political or polarised to report on the top selling EV with the latest available data. Are you suggesting Drive wouldn't have if it were another brand selling the most?
The number of sales of a _specific model_ of car is rarely a useful comparison point, because, in most cases, any given model of car has a bunch of sister models for market segmentation purposes anyway.