BMW Overtakes Tesla in European EV Sales for First Time

Are the numbers what the makers sell to the dealers but have yet been sold to a buyer, or are they legit sells to buyers? I can see where the makers pad their numbers by using what was sold to the dealers to have on the lots as they've technically sold the car, but it's a misleading number. Same game as storage makers using powers of 10 vs powers of 2 in their capacity claims.

It’s possible there is some underlying bias here, but there’s no reason to assume it favors one company over the other enough to offset a 300 car difference in a single month especially as the total numbers just aren’t that high.

What strong support? I recall that Elon publicly announced he was going to do a massive contribution to Trump's campaign fund, and then he announced like two days later that he wasn't going to do it.

Source?

Recent news says otherwise.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-would-conside...

His word is worth nothing.

50% is a big chunk of your target market to piss off

Excluding a part of the population for no practical reason at all is bad business. But when the politics becomes extremist, that share becomes huge, and it becomes disastrous business.

Some people are motivated enough to lose business for their principles. But the guy's principles is "big business is right"... I'm not sure what he wants to achieve.

That second part is at risk, and if Elon's decision making power has been better reduced, they'd probably be really far ahead of where they are now.

Yes exactly in politics and not in business, in particular if you are the CEO.

There has been nothing minimalist in Musk's moderation, he's been banning people on twitter all along. His whole free speech thing turned out to apply only to speech he likes and ban the rest.

Consumers are free to make choices based on anything they want: but whining in public about how some tweets affect your opinion on a car is not the same thing as privately making choices. This subject was opened for discussion and it remains open.

Looks is not an objective measure. You buy a nice looking car because its look evokes positive feelings in you. But other things can evoke positive feelings by association. The brand itself, marketing campaign, corporate image. For many, these (usually carefully cultivated) associations are overshadowed by a loud, controversial, partisan CEO who doesn't evoke positive feelings.

It used to be that Tesla cars evoked for me feelings of progress, sort of futurism (although I never really digged its rather bland design), eco-friendliness. Nowadays I see a Tesla and feel a low-key disgust.

This is a normal hacker news commenter position, but not a normal consumer position.

One of the first things you learn in a freshman year marketing course is the fact that consumers in general make spending decisions on feeling, not on raw data. It's the reason commercials you see on television are all about vibes, and not remotely about the raw performance numbers. See also: Apple never wastes its time droning on about the specs of their devices in their commercials.

This is why the public persona of Tesla's CEO has a material impact on the company's sales, and why it's hurting the company. I'd argue that Musk has outright disdain for his customers and considers them 'woke,' and is enthusiastically running the company into the ground out of pure spite.

> their self driving tech recently had a step change in functionality

Can you please expound on this? What does this mean in more concrete terms?

1. They have cut costs (or adjusted style?) in highly dubious ways. The forward/reverse selector is gone in most new models, replaced by a swipe zone on the touchscreen that is only present some of the time. The 3 and Y require looking far from the road to see whether you’re signaling left or right — coupled with the turn signal stalk not physically staying in place when signaling, there is no good way to tell the current state of the car.

2. Self driving has taken a step change, IMO into the uncanny valley. A couple years ago, FSD was bad and could maybe go a block or two between failures. Now it can go multiple miles before it screws up dramatically. This seems quite dangerous — it’s hard to be ready to rescue the car when you don’t expect it to mess up.

My overall impression was that (a) new Teslas felt like video games, not cars and (b) the older models, circa 2020, with new software seem genuinely superior to current models.

I have an old Tesla that I like quite a lot. Even notwithstanding Elon’s behavior, I do not want a new Tesla.

P.S. has anyone seriously contemplated the way that water drains from the Cybertruck hood? If they copy that design to other models, I can only imagine they will have huge upcoming warranty/rework/lemon law costs.

Has it though? Look at what a mess the Cybertruck is. Price is nearly double what was originally promised, quality is the lowest of any vehicle on the US market.

> "The company’s (BYD) success is driven by a dual strategy of producing both fully electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs)..."

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/byd-ma...

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/byd-ma...

You won't see that story on HN unlike the Q4 2023 news which was on HN several times because only bad news about Tesla gets upvoted here and on Reddit. And the propaganda works, because as you can see people start believing in falsehoods.

BYD pure electric sales were down 43% and you say they're growing very very fast? What?

On Reddit a comment like this with a counterpoint and source can get you permabanned from large subreddits like /r/news because it goes against the agenda. Recently it happened to people posting SpaceX responses.

There's also a difference in brand positioning. If I know nothing except the car one drives, driving a Tesla, BMW, Audi or Mercedes conjures up different stereotypes in my mind. Which manufacturer wpuld you associate with the following: a Senior VP at Goldman, a petrolhead who does occasional track days, a Bitcoin millionaire, a suburban mom, a FAANG L5 SWE in the SF Bay?

Actually it is you who is insinuating something, incorrectly. You’re suggesting that Musk said the attack was justified. He didn’t. He retweeted an article that suggested a connection between the attacker and Paul Pelosi, and Musk added, “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.” Musk was careful to acknowledge that the chance that there was more to the story was low (“tiny possibility”). He also later deleted his own tweet within a few hours of it being posted.

I don’t see a problem with people speculating about what may have happened. We know what happens when speculation is not allowed - you get situations like the lab leak theory being incorrectly suppressed until it is too late to investigate WIV or hold the CCP accountable. As for why people speculated anything in the Pelosi situation at all: the official recording of the police interaction in this incident has Paul Pelosi telling police that David was a “friend”. This caused people to search for reasons this friend would be visiting the home at odd hours.

I don’t have a Tesla, but if someone is going to judge me based on the assumed political views of the CEO of the car brand I happen to drive… they need to get a life.

Does the company make a good car? That’s the only thing that actually matters.

A Model 3 or Y isn’t a flex. They start around $30k, which isn’t exactly luxury pricing. Making cars people can afford is a good thing, but once that happens, it stops being a status symbol.

In regard to Musk, I'll avoid anything he is related to. He doesn't treat others with respect, but he demands it for himself. He's egotistical, highly emotional, and impulsive. He's successful only because he inherited wealth and was able to parlay that into greater wealth.

https://apnews.com/article/china-byd-auto-seagull-auto-ev-ca...

Why they’re not pumping out $25k 250 mile range city cars for millenials and gen z is a mystery to me.

BMW platforms now are both for ICE and EV, but "Neue klasse" that will start to arrive soon is a from-scratch, new, electric only platform. That will really make the cars more spacious. The sportiest platform is supposedly architected for 1350 hp, so it will be interesting to see if BMW will take up the lap time fight with Porsche. That would be interesting.

1) That batteries would remain really expensive. Lithium batteries have been falling in price for a long time and EV demand was only going to drive new innovations and economies of scale, so even at the time that seemed like a poor bet. BMW wasn't entirely wrong since battery prices stayed quite high during the model lifespan, but it didn't really matter because bet 1) lead to bet 2) 2) Carbon Fibre construction. BMW bet that EVs would need to be light to extract range from small batteries, so they made a CFRP monocoque and made a wager they could find ways to manufacture CFRP at scale more cheaply. They were pretty wrong (though it has led to an explosion of carbon fibre trim options on M models that is nearly pure profit)

i3 had such a small battery, but it still had the huge EV cost penalty that made early EVs very niche. That proved pretty fatal, though the few that got one did tend to really like them.

That double failure scared BMW pretty badly and they retreated to shared platforms, so every EV they sell can't take advantage of the packaging benefits being an EV allows. There are huge spaces for engines up front that is nearly all wasted.

Despite that deficiency BMW has invested a ton into their EV powertrains, so they actually have some of the best efficiency out there.

I am also upset that Smart failed at turning their ForTwo into an affordable EV.

Two great small cars that are gone.

Nevertheless, I appreciate the effort. And the i4 looks (and drives) sweet.

Batteries in the floor make a good amount of sense if done right.

1. Just the battery for a -hybrid- (1.1kWh) can weigh at least half as much as a 3 cylinder engine. putting it either under the front or in the trunk is an issue, as now you have to have a more reinforced firewall or reinforced whatever to keep the battery from being an additional force in an impact.

2. Lower center of gravity is always a good thing.

> And the weight, of course.

3. Weight is interesting because we start to see some of the fun 'delta-V' issues. As an example look at the GMC Hummer EV, the F-150 Lightning, and the Cybertruck. You can see that as the weight goes up the amount of battery to increase range also goes waaayyyy up.

I’m fairly sure that if you take Volkswagen AG as one vendor (which you probably should, because it is one), they outsell Tesla (they have about six brands producing electric cars, mostly rebrands of the VW id.3/4.)

Explicitly allow and encourage racists on his social media platform?

He also annoyed me as a Brit recently retweeting some stuff that civil was inevitable in the UK because we'd let a lot of muslims in. Not that I think you shouldn't be able to criticize islam but it's very far from the reality here and there's no need to amplify a lot of bunk from people who have probably never been to the UK.