Edit for clarity: the "Roman" in "Roman salute" is based on the idea that the ancient Romans did this salute. Historians have indicated there is no evidence to support this idea. The salute was popularized by the Italian Fascists, who also popularized the idea that it hearkened back to the Romans, which based on modern evidence appears to have been a fabricated narrative. Hitler liked it so he adopted it for the Nazis too.
It's a fascist salute, always has been.
Say what one will about Musk, but the salute itself has existed long before Fascism and Nazism. Look up the Bellamy Salute. Much like the swastika and the fasces, the so-called Roman salute does not originate or derive its meaning from the culture or ideology to which it is attributed. The belief that such a salute has always been fascistic, however, is no better than the mythic history concocted for it. Such claims only serve to legitimate the perception that the progenitors and proponents of these ideologies were unique and ingenious. They were not. As with the then-nascent propaganda/advertising industry, they plundered and mangled whatever symbols that could adopt for their own means and purposes.
Do it at work, or in public. In the current context, the meaning, which you would discover if you tried it, is unambiguous. FAFO.
There is good reason to think that the leopards will start eating their faces eventually, but for the moment the leopards are mostly eating the faces they were sent to eat.
It's not like somebody is making a 25k SUV; the average price for a new car is like 40+k. Why leave 15k on the table?
You can't just replace Musk and Tesla starts selling a 25k car.
Can't you?
As a shareholder, I'd welcome a proposal to fire Elon Musk, whether his replacement could produce a 25k car or not. It's clear to me that he has no interest in the success of the brand and will gladly see it fizzle if he has his way.
The payment is literally the last 3 years of profit [1].
[1]: pg 38 -- https://ir.tesla.com/_flysystem/s3/sec/000162828025003063/ts...
That said, Musk has brought nothing to the table that someone else couldn't have, he gets far too much credit. He's just a talker. For example, the Cybertruck apparently had some great design ideas before he overrode the design team
If we only look at the future costs to supporting a consumer vehicle over the long term there could be significant savings by avoiding those costs.
No need to overengineer - design for X km not Y years. No need to engineer for fixing some accidents - maybe cheaper to write off vehicle: removes infrastructure costs and reduces parts inventory. No need to support vehicle after Y years - reduce long term maintenance. Design for fleet refreshes every Y years. Designing vehicle to be written off on accounts (depreciate - no resale): paper gains matter hugely to corporations. Optionality... If robotic hardware is improving rapidly then may be cheaper overall to build new vehicles than upgrade older fleet. Design for recycling. Handover old fleet from US to Mexico - keep using old vehicles in jurisdictions where liability and modern branding is less important.
How many more customers will you get with $25k cars instead of $40k cars?
But to your actual question, the thing that matters is customers * margin. If each car comes with say 15k of overhead then even if you can double your units sold by dropping the price from 40k to 25k you are behind 20% in total profit.
Sure there is: people ain't gonna pay an extra $15k for gits and shiggles. Unless those $40k cars are substantially better than the $25k cars, people are going to try to buy the $25k cars first.
> If each car comes with say 15k of overhead then even if you can double your units sold by dropping the price from 40k to 25k you are behind 20% in total profit.
So aim to sell double and a half, and then you've hit the same profitability as those $40k cars. Every extra sale past that would represent increased profit from the lower price-point.
And this assumes that the extra sales volume (and therefore the production volume to satisfy it) wouldn't translate to reductions in that overhead due to economies of scale. If that doubled volume translates to a 16.67...% reduction in overhead, that'd also be enough to hit the same profitability as those $40k cars. Every extra sale or extra reduction in overhead past that would represent increased profit from the lower price-point.
Not saying people stopped buying them because of Musk, just that it wasn't necessarily his charisma that used to get people to buy them.
What little charisma Elon Musk had in 2019 had no influence on my decision to buy a used Model 3 at the time. If anything, Musk's "charisma" pushed me away from Tesla entirely, but the car's performance and charging network wasn't just better than the competition, it was fantastic, period. Elon or not, the deal I eventually got on a used one was worth it.
Today, 250k miles later? Because of Elon Musk's "charisma", I'm both highly motivated to sell it, but also can't. That's because you're not entirely wrong. Turns out, when a celebrity billionaire starts let his evil show openly, the products he shills start to lose their appeal.
> I'm both highly motivated to sell it, but also can't. I'm sure Musk's antics affect new car sales, but it must be muted for the used market. But 250k is a lot of miles for any vehicle, and electric cars have an early smartphone era problem: each iteration brings much bigger improvements than you'd see in a more mature platform.
Mechanically, the car is solid. Doesn't rattle or squeak. Clear, chip-free windows. No quirks of any kind, really. Pretty remarkable considering the number of miles on it. I have a Toyota van with fewer miles and with the exception of the bullet proof engine, the rest is barely holding itself together. Had a window literally just fall off it recently, as the glue had given up.
I know Musk's antics are impacting my ability to sell my own car - someone recently drew the word "swasticar" (which is pretty clever, I'll admit) in the layer of salt/dirt/grime one gets during the winter on my car. I have to think that had something to do with Elon.
Local used inventory has rapidly grown as well recently. I've been checking weekly for about a year, and today, there are probably 3x as many available on the market than there were a year ago. Obviously there are a lot of variables at play when it comes to used markets, but I doubt I'd be wrong to believe that Elon's behavior has contributed to that.