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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

... as allowed and intended by our government, and using the proceeds to build the factories that allowed them to scale production to the point where the best-selling car in the world can be electric, which otherwise would have taken longer. Having served their purpose, these emissions credits are now going away.

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Doesn't change the fact that those emissions were not saved.

They will be, as the faster scaling of electric car production means more emissions will be saved going forward, and there won't be any more emissions credits offsetting them. And Tesla sold cars in places without emissions credits too. I'm sure there were more than enough of those to offset the rockets with plenty left over.

But Tesla is one of America's roadblocks to scaling EV usage. They cancelled their $25,000 EV plans after the US blocked economic competitors like BYD from entering the US market. The ostensible goal of Tesla is not to reduce emissions through democratized EVs, but to protect their bottom-line and forcibly prevent competition from undermining their profits.

It's not Elon's fault the US put 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs. It's not even Trump's fault. Biden did it! You can't pin that on Elon.

Tesla isn't afraid of Chinese competition. They compete directly with BYD in China and win. Model Y outsells any BYD model. All other US automakers, on the other hand, are terrified. And for good reason.

Meanwhile, Tesla is still making a $25,000 EV. It's just not designed for personal ownership. Tesla is betting on autonomous fleets as the future of cars. But they're still electric. Shared fleets would be way more efficient than personal car ownership, so this is even better for the climate, actually.

And they're doing Semi and Megapack and Superchargers (open to all EVs) too. They're doing their own battery R&D at their own battery factory, their own lithium refining, their own solar cell production. Honestly ridiculous that you would try to paint Tesla as some kind of climate traitor.

> They compete directly with BYD in China and win. Model Y outsells any BYD model.

BYD's sales are split across multiple brands and models. BYD sells more EVs than Tesla. Why is Tesla being outsold by BYD?

BYD is one of the global top ten automakers by sales. Why isn't Tesla in the top ten?

Why isn't Tesla selling 20 million cars per year like they said they would?

Why has the Cybertruck been such a sales flop?

BYD and Geely cars can charge 10 to 70% in 5 minutes on 1.5+ megawatt chargers. Does Tesla offer anything like that capability?

BYD sells several times more different EV models in twice as many countries, yet it only totals 38% more EV units than Tesla (2025). What puts them in the top 10 is their non-EV sales, which Tesla doesn't do at all.

Cybertruck is a flop, no argument there.

The reason Tesla hasn't scaled further is that a few years ago they pivoted in strategy and are no longer heavily pursuing the consumer market with new models for personal ownership. For better or worse they are all in on autonomous fleet vehicles and Optimus. The pivot was probably a few years too early. Many think it'll never work and I'm sure you're among them, but time will tell.

So given that Tesla has pivoted to being a low volume manufacturer, why aren't they offering the same hardware capability as other players?

Porsche's got wireless charging on their cars now. Does Tesla?

Not aggressively pursuing future new consumer models is not the same thing as being a low volume manufacturer. Autonomous fleet vehicles are also not going to be low volume, either.

Low sales makes you a low volume manufacturer.

Any answer on why Tesla is so far behind on the hardware?

Model Y continues to have the highest production volume of any model in the world, and you want to call that low volume manufacturing? I'm done engaging here, have fun.

You didn't engage. You evaded.

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