streptomycin-
Yes https://i.imgur.com/ZNv1AyD.jpg
Although BMW is making some nice EVs and they are selling more than they used to, the headline is misleading.
ultrablack22 - Tesla produce a lot of for the EU in China. They have a schedule where for each quarter, months 1, 2 and 3, in Month 1, they produce cars. In Month 2 they sail them over from China. And in Month 3, they arrive and are sold.
BMW managed to overtake Tesla in the first month of Q3, barely. When Tesla really had no cars for sale.
OK, let's assume the title misled me. What do I now believe as a result that is incorrect.
Titles are not summaries. It is expected that readers will read the body of the submission not merely the title. Is the JATO Dynamics report accurate. The title is simply repeating an alleged fact contained in the report. Is it false.
If all a reader ever does is read titles, I am afraid "misled" is an understatement for how disllusioned that reader may become.
People defending Tesla and Musk always come across as try hard.
Titles may not be summaries, but you would be surprised to know how many people form their opinion about the body of an article based solely on the title.
Your statement about people defending Tesla and Musk always coming across as "try hard" is subjective. I could say the same about you, who consistently criticize Tesla and Musk as try hard, but I won't, because I prefer to focus on the facts rather than making generalizations.
I would have posted a similar comment if the submission title was something like "Samsung beats Apple in July sales by 300 devices" while the article revealed that, year-to-date, Apple had actually outsold Samsung by a 3:1 margin and if it wasn’t true. In such a case, I would consider the title to be misleading.
I chose to comment on this specific post because I am familiar with the automotive industry.
It appears that the source cited in the article may be misleading because The data from https://eu-evs.com/bestSellersCharts/ALL/Brands/Bar/Year-by-... does not seem to support the claim made in the title.
In the future, instead of attacking the poster as "try hard," it would be best for everyone to read beyond the title, verify the sources, and engage in constructive discussions.
Announcing BMW sold more EV’s in a single month (and they are using registrations which means actual sales) is interesting on its own. Sure it might just be random fluctuation at this point, but that just means they are neck and neck.
IMO waiting for a full quarter may be more reasonable, but waiting for a full year and it’s old news.
> they are using registrations
> which means actual sales
No, you register a car in order to drive it on public roads in a given country.
Some purchased cars are never registered (track use, private export etc.), or defer the registration (no reason to pay road tax if you're not driving it yet).
Right, the useful number instead of a comparison between cars sold to the European public and cars sold at the location as a matter of the logistical accident that it is the head quarters of the manufacturer.
Registration is useful because it cuts out cars manufactured in Germany but shipped to South Africa. We don’t want to bias these numbers based on each company’s internal logistics. That stuff is more relevant from a jobs perspective than a market perspective.
I didn’t say they were guaranteed to be 1:1, but every registration is an actual sale. The point is the number of sales is going to be grater than or equal to the number of registrations. So this isn’t some gameable metric like number of cars manufactured.
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.
I'm not arguing the thrust of your point here, just noting that there isn't a 1:1 correspondence in case anyone's under that particular misconception.
I agree that registrations is probably the least bad metric, and I doubt BMW is gaming it in this case.
But saying it isn't gameable is a bridge too far. Manufacturers can trivially game it, it's just marginally more expensive to do so than to shift manufacturing numbers between quarters
E.g. BMW used to operate its own car rental, they could manufacture 1k vehicles each month in Q3, then sell them all to themselves in the last month of Q3, and register them at the same time.
They can also do this with any "self dealing" or corporate registrations by simply sitting on inventory and then lowering their prices, consumers would take care of the rest.
The problem with self dealing is they need to pay taxes at registration. So while sure you can inflate the numbers it isn’t just an on paper thing this is treated as a sale and there’s real consequences of that.
As to shifting the quarter something is sold, people aren’t getting a car before registration here. Selling of excess inventory at a discount is still actual sales.
Sure, but now we've shifted from "isn’t gameable" to "gameable for a price", perhaps to inflate the stock price as you make the news for outselling Tesla or something.
And yes, you'd need to deliver the car to consumers. I'm just saying that you can time shift when that happens, if you wanted to inflate the numbers in the short term for whatever reason.
By your metric sales are also “gameable for a price” as long as you are willing to take a big enough loss essentially an unlimited number of people will buy new cars at 1,000$ a pop.
What makes metrics like manufacturing actually “gameable” is you can still sell the cars manufactured with the buzz from manufacturing more X than anyone else. Pump the numbers for 6 months and then cut production and coast until product is sold off. Your out a little time value of money but it doesn’t take much free play to cover that.
Ya, it is kind of weird because the Dealer is actually the OEM's customer. But they measure in sales to the consumer, which is a more useful number because:
1. Dealers will order certain high demand vehicles all day long when they are allowed to do so ("allocations") even though they don't have specific consumers in mind to buy them.
2. When new models become available they will also order a bunch of that new model.
3. They will order some random vehicles to look nice in their showroom or on the lot. Fun example: I recently drove by a Porsche dealership that had a bunch of Macan's lined up out front -- one in each color!
So, sales to the consumer is more useful because it's the only way to measure actual consumer demand. This is also why you sometimes see a model that hasn't been manufactured for several years show up in these new car sales reports... they were sitting on a lot unsold for that long.
You can also find numbers for how many of each model they've manufactured each month, which is useful for different reasons of course, and sometimes they sit on the manufacturer's lot for weeks or months before they're delivered to dealers. We saw this coming out of the pandemic when there weren't enough trains to transport the cars (most cars leave the plant on a train).
I understand when registration is done, but that does not answer the question.
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.
Yes, Tesla's execution has been really terrible. There's some really good tech inside their cars, but the direction of which cars to make, when, and the investments in non-car tech, the over-promising of "Full Self Driving," etc. All huge detractors.
There's also the CEO, who has a huge public profile, deciding to become extremely political, which smart CEOs usually avoid doing because it has little potential to help and lots of potential to hurt.
Especially with Musk's particular choice of which politics he wants to push, which alienate not only customers but also the government political forces. Tesla has massively benefited from subsidies to EVs, but is alienating the political party that has enabled all of that.
If Tesla had been run by a different CEO for the past, say, 3 years, nearly any CEO, I think it would be in a better position.
I really like my Model 3, but I won't be buying it again, and the direction of the Cyber Truck is so repulsive to me that I'm really really against being associated with the brand at all.
It's not really different from the looks you mention.
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.
> personally, my purchase decisions do not include the personality or celebrity of the company (CEO or otherwise).
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.
> Tesla has massively benefited from subsidies to EVs, but is alienating the political party that has enabled all of that.
Well, he's expecting some reciprocity from the next administration for all his help, and Trump has said openly that he will support EVs as a consequence of Elon's strong support.
The further subsidies were not "ignoring achievement" they were subsidies that were shifting to include union labor.
The idea that it has anything to do with Tesla, as opposed to anything else, is a bit weird.
If one or two Republicans like the idea of EV subsidies without union labor, their votes could have shifted everything. But of course, there was universal condemnation of these polices by all Republicans.
What Trump is really saying is that he's for sale.
Trump also told the oil industry he's for sale. He said they should give him $1 billion and that would be a "deal" because he would help them avoid taxation and regulation:
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.
The fun part is, as far as I understand it, the EV tax credit as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, did eventually include Teslas - even though Elon wasn't invited to the initial photo-op announcement party thrown by the White House due to the lack of unionization at Tesla factories.
On the flip side, support for the EV tax credit will probably be phased out if Trump wins according to recent articles I've read.
So then it seems it's not necessarily business logic but more about personal ego, etc.
He's extremely constrained in what he can donate directly to the campaign. Direct donations are limited to something like $4000. These donations are closely monitored.
If you want to spend millions you have to give it to a super PAC. The difference is that the super PAC cannot coordinate directly with the campaign.
That part is not super closely monitored, and the fig leaf of separation is nanometers thick.
Must didn’t announce any kind of contribution to Trump. Various left leaning social media figures ran this misinformation, however, I assume in an attempt to galvanize their side into donating and to continue their unhinged attacks on Musk.
This is just an opinion but Musk, out of some level of autism and/or narcissism, must think those things just don't apply to him. I say that because sometimes the way he acts appears as he thinks he is so smart that he can circumvent typical social/economical/politica etiquette and even evade consequences.
Well, it has actually worked for him. The world makes a lot of exceptions about etiquette for him.
The world also likes to chew up people they once lionized who end up being deeply flawed. He had business making technology, but he has no business being in politics. He is literally the richest person on the planet, and the way that works is you no longer have any problems that anyone can relate to, and you can afford to not listen to literally anything that makes you uncomfortable. He's gone down a very dark path through his choices - choices that serve him and his ego above all. No wonder the only person he has anything in common with anymore is Donald Trump.
> There's also the CEO, who has a huge public profile, deciding to become extremely political, which smart CEOs usually avoid doing because it has little potential to help and lots of potential to hurt.
I don’t know about this. Virtually all CEOs of tech companies bent over backwards to support BLM and many donated tens of millions to those BLM affiliated organizations - many of whom turned out to be grifters. But if anyone takes a public stance supporting an opposing political ideology, suddenly it is a huge controversy for CEOs to be political? Or take something that liberal societies support like free speech - when Musk advocates for a minimalist approach to moderation it suddenly becomes “fascist”?
To me the hyperbolic outrage in response to Musk just seems like a dishonest power struggle, where people on the political left are bent on only allowing their voice and influence in society.
I think people are generally fed up with Musk's tweets, his Tesla marketing and his general lack of empathy. The public might have tolerated him until he got involved in politics and has shown support for Trump.
> when Musk advocates for a minimalist approach to moderation it suddenly becomes “fascist”
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.
Was it not the mission of Tesla to make electrical cars an alternative to cars running on petrol? To me this was achieved. Bmw or Tesla, i do not care about that too much. But we have an alternative. Great!
And politics, well, only for people who do not agree with him it is an issue. But that's normal in politics, is it not?
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.
> 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.
Companies do this all the time though. The trade off is, of course, that you get more support from customers the other side.
> But the guy's principles is "big business is right"... I'm not sure what he wants to achieve.
This is not an accurate representation. For example, the Twitter acquisition followed a period of Twitter (and most other social media) banning a lot of conservative accounts for publishing truthful reporting (New York Post) or actual satire with the disfavored political leaning (Babylon Bee), at which point Musk did a Twitter poll asking the entire site if Twitter adheres to the principle of free speech:
This upset a lot of people (not least the people who liked the preexisting system that tended to ban their political opponents) and they've been characterizing everything he does in a negative light since. So then you'll get a lot of stories about a left-leaning account being suspended with the implication that he's just doing it the other way now, with no investigation into whether the suspension was deserved, or just characterizing the unavoidable false positives and false negatives in moderation as a willful bias etc.
That isn't to say he's a saint, but the impression you'd get from reading a lot of this coverage is that he's the devil.
> What's less common is for CEOs to reverse polarity and publicly declare loyalty to a party in opposition of the products alleged mission.
Take at a look at the list of US states by vehicles per capita or vehicle miles driven per capita. Red states at the top. If you're trying to get people to buy electric cars and stop burning oil, those are the ones you need to convince.
Aside: do you believe that Elon's actions are motivated by the desire to reduce gas emissions in red states, or is this more of a thought experiment? My hot take is that his frustrations with Covid lockdowns in California kicked his animus toward Democratic party politicians into high gear.
> Extra miles don't earn Tesla additional revenue.
They do when they run a charging network.
Also, it's easier to sell an electric car to someone who is going to put a lot of miles on it because of the lower cost per mile, and does more good if the goal is to reduce CO2.
> do you believe that Elon's actions are motivated by the desire to reduce gas emissions in red states, or is this more of a thought experiment?
It's a counterpoint to the notion that progressives who live in cities and ride mass transit are the people the CEO of a car company has to appeal to. Whether the goal is to make more cars electric or just to sell more cars.
> My hot take is that his frustrations with Covid lockdowns in California kicked his animus toward Democratic party politicians into high gear.
That's probably not irrelevant.
The problem with politics right now is that everyone sucks and instead of trying to do better they all just want to tell you that the other side sucks worse, which causes aggressive polarization when most people are only listening to one side's pundits or the other. Everyone is being told that they need to vote against the enemy without ever being told what they're voting for.
People (Musk not excluded) then end up in one bubble or the other and the people in the other bubble are obliged to hate them out of tribal loyalty. Which especially rubs people the wrong way when it's someone who isn't squarely in one tribe or another.
Nobody blinks an eye when a Texas oil billionaire takes the conservative position on some issue.
The poll was reposted by tens of thousands of other people and more than two million people voted. Also, this was before he bought the site or made unfriends with Democrats and his followers skew disproportionately to electric car enthusiasts and Star Trek fans. It's not exactly a poll of Fox News viewers.
You’re not doing a very good job of arguing the poll was anywhere near scientific. And at any rate, he upset a lot of people long before then. Do you not remember the whole “pedo guy” brouhaha? And the “I can take Tesla private for $420/share” bullshit that got his in hot water with the SEC?
Yeah, so are people turned on globally, especially Europe.
This does not tell me anything. Maybe the republicans just have better arguments this time. Or the other way around. And then the losing side after elections may have to grind their teeth for a while. That is the way it is supposed to be.
> the Twitter acquisition followed a period of Twitter (and most other social media) banning a lot of conservative accounts for publishing truthful reporting (New York Post)
The NY Post's Twitter has been banned multiple times, including the most recent one that happened in March 2023, well after Musk's takeover of the company.
> or actual satire with the disfavored political leaning (Babylon Bee)
Yes. Twitter had terms of use. And posting hateful and targeted attacks misgendering people was against their terms. This wasn't some "THEY'RE PERSECUTING ME FOR MUH CONSERVATIVE BELIEFS!". This was just flat out them being unambiguous assholes.
> The NY Post's Twitter has been banned multiple times
They were, in particular, suspended immediately prior to the 2020 election over a story that was substantially accurate.
> Twitter had terms of use.
Everything has terms of use. All of the terms of use are purposely written so that anything the company wants can be construed as a violation.
But also, "misgendering people" is a point of political dispute. "We prohibited the opposition's politics and then banned them for it" is in fact what they're objecting to.
>But also, "misgendering people" is a point of political dispute.
If I ask you to call me Bill and you keep calling me William, you're an asshole. I don't know how misgendering people is any different. Just call people what they want to be called. You don't have to turn this into some ideological battle.
> I don't know how misgendering people is any different.
If your gender is like your name, which you can choose yourself, then it can't be bound to anything you can't change, like your chromosomes or the hormone levels you had during puberty. In other words, it can't map to biological sex. Which, okay, that's kind of the idea, isn't it? Someone wants to have sex male but gender female.
Except that then nobody really cares about gender at all. When you want to have things like women's sports or prospective dating interactions in which people may want to have biological children or anything else where sex differences actually matter, what people want you to declare is not your gender but your sex.
This then becomes the motte and bailey where gender is supposed to be different than sex but somebody who has reason to actually care about sex is then told that they have to accept gender instead or they're a bigot, as if they aren't different. And that is the point of political contention.
You're overcomplicating it. As I said, "You don't have to turn this into some ideological battle." Someone asked the tiniest favor of you, simply refer to them how they want to be referred, and you said no. That goes beyond any ideology.
Calling the man "Muhammad Ali" didn't mean you had to convert to the Nation of Islam. Just call someone what they want to be called. You can do that without any endorsement of the reason behind their request. A "different worldview" doesn't give you permission to be an asshole.
I don't think that's an accurate metaphor, given names are historically pure labels with no external semantic meaning. The direct comparison here is that a man could asked to be named "Karen" and that doesn't to me seem to cause any philosophical conflict. (Some people might not want to do it, but that doesn't mean they have a legitimate reason). (Although there must be some limit here as well, eg "the great and majestic Philip, he who we all aspire to be" surely must be agreed to be unreasonable.)
The difference with pronouns/gender is that they depend on and proclaim external facts. ("She" is used for women and by going by she, I am a woman.) And by asking someone else to say that I am a woman, then really, aren't I forcing someone to change their definition of "woman"/"man"? Why do I have the right to force someone to do that?
Out of curiosity, if someone asked you to use plural pronouns for them, would you? (This is hard to ask in English, because "your" is used for both singular and plural subjects, and "they" has also commonly been used for both singular and plural as well, but imagine) What about pronouns in other languages? Do you really think that in communication, the other speaker shouldn't have any say in any of this?
I don't appreciate comments that suggest that someone you're discussing is an "asshole" for doing something you disagree with and don't think that contributes to the conversation.
What? I hate surnames like 'Bill', 'Chuck' and 'Dick' and wouldn't want them for me, but if some Charles explicitly asked me to call him Chuck, I would call him Chuck, I'm not an asshole.
wrong. it’s not political to disrespect someone’s identity. it’s the same as being racist. it wasn’t ok to support segregation, it’s not ok to support transphobia and banning medical care.
> But also, "misgendering people" is a point of political dispute. "We prohibited the opposition's politics and then banned them for it" is in fact what they're objecting to.
You’re omitting that they had to make targeted attacks to be banned. You could talk in the abstract all day, as so many did, and never have a problem - it was only when they started targeting specific people who didn’t consent to some kind of debate. This is like going into a gay bar, yelling in some dude’s face that homosexuals are going to hell, and then whining about oppression when the bouncer tells you to leave.
he also disowned his daughter and treats her terribly, and generally supports pretty evil right wing personalities like chaya raichik. lots of reasons to dislike the man.
Most of the EV market are people who find his politics disagreeable. He’s not doing his duty to shareholders by driving them away, especially for such pointlessly offensive things which have nothing to do with the business. This is why you almost certainly know nothing about the views of the CEOs of any other car company, and why Musk is almost certain to face lawsuits after the inevitable decline - a meme stock can’t last forever, and the fundamentals don’t support the current valuation at all.
The shareholders literally own the company, so they are the ones who get to decide what gets maximized. Most shareholders decide they want returns to themselves to be maximized. Not all will in every single company at every point in time, but it's likely the case 99.9% of the time.
They have certain claims, but so do customers, suppliers, employees, governments (taxes), bond holders, etc. The claims of shareholders come last, which is why owning stock gets you higher returns (than, e.g., bonds from the company): you're at highest risk of losing money from being last on claims, so you should be rewarded for that higher risk.
Those are opinion pieces and meant to be contrarian. Shareholders by definition own the equity of the company. You're confounding the equity with the enterprise, while also ignoring the meaning of "control".
Having IOUs from the company in the form of future goods or services owed to customers, interest payments owed to debtholders or future taxes owed to the government do not equate to having an actual ownership in the business.
Not quite. Tesla's mission is to do what its voting shareholders want. Usually, shareholders want to maximize their returns, but Tesla's shareholders voted to reduce their returns to overpay Musk for work already done.
Presumably because they believe keeping Musk will increase value long term, so they are still maximizing the value of the future cashflows discounted to the present.
The size of Musk's ownership stake adds another layer to this metric, but at the limit, that really that just means the words "they" in my previous statement can be replaced with "Elon Musk"
No, the reason most voters gave is that the payment was promised, not that it maximized their returns. There are any number of projects that Tesla could spend $50 billion on that would provide a greater return to investors than giving it to Musk. Even giving him a fraction of that would have been enough to retain Musk over giving him nothing, if they really believe Musk's leadership will be positive for future returns.
What I see is that people here and on places like Reddit seem to support expression of political views when it is for their side. They wouldn’t take issue with CEOs supporting leftist social justice issues, for example. But when it is a CEO supporting centrist or right-leaning views, they don’t support it. And not just that, but they go out of their way to manufacture outrage or signal their actions in order to suppress their political opposition, who they feel should not be able to express their views. When you can’t handle your opposition’s ideas being aired, you don’t support democracy. Sure you can make the claim that your money should go where you see fit, but it does also mean that you don’t support a society where ideas can be discussed.
> when it is for their side. They wouldn’t take issue with CEOs supporting leftist social justice issues, for example. But when it is a CEO supporting centrist or right-leaning views, they don’t support it.
I want to push back on something here because I am centrist, even right-leaning in some respects. What Elon Musk has done is not normal. Donald Trump is not normal. He is dangerously unfit for office. The tactics he and Musk have engaged in (such as courting and amplifying extremist groups) have nothing to do with ordinary civil discourse between "conservative" and "liberal" philosophy or policy proposals. And it's a false equivalence to suggest that they do.
Hm. But we want "our" leaders to be controversial and to make points, no? To know where they stand and where they want to go to. I need this clear distinction. Before i did not really have a political home, i saw common-sense disappear, that i used to know. But with these controversial voices i got to know so many interesting people and their voices, it helped me a lot to be positive about the future, which i saw dim in the past.
usually this is because leftist views are inclusionary and supporting diversity and disability, while right wing views are marginalising and hierarchical
I don't really get this. "Love the art, not the artist" is pretty much an essentialism for participating in modern human society. Try taking a moment to trace through everything you consume and see how much of it was originated by very flawed human beings - some monstrously so. This extends in every direction, even all the way out to things like massive scientific discoveries. Nothing's immune, because we're all human.
I'm in the process of buying my 3rd Tesla, because I still don't think there's anything better out there (based on my personal needs). I'm not making any political or moral statements. I'm just buying an excellent vehicle.
i looked at tesla but decided against it after elon’s antics. bought a bmw i4 and wow it feels and drives like a premium vehicle. gets out of the way and does things well. drove my fam’s tesla model 3 (2024) and it felt super cheap and the ui and cameras were pretty bad
This appears to be downvoted, but why? I'd like to see the counterargument that we need to put each executive, author, director, or artist through a purity test before we can appreciate or purchase their work. How about listing a few pure American car CEOs.
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.
Why? Because art and business aren’t the same. “Love the capital, not the capitalist” doesn’t work because unlike artists, capital influences elections. It influences policy and thereby impacts real people’s lives in a real way.
Also unlike artists, the head of a company oversees hundreds or thousands of people. Their whims and actions likewise have direct impact on people’s lives.
It's incredible what's happened in the past year. I know a lot of people that own Teslas. Almost all of them have said they won't buy another one, entirely due to garbage Elon posts on Twitter. A number of them have said they are considering selling their Teslas.
When you run a company whose core customer base is tree huggers, it takes a special kind of crazy to say the kind of stuff he has. Of course he can think what he wants, but no one is forcing him to retweet every spicy meme he comes across.
I'm not convinced that's actually the dominant factor. The market share for EVs is still small enough that there's no real shortage of buyers.
But it turns out that having a hundred years of domain experience building cars actually matters for something. Tesla cars have had a lot of avoidable failures on technical merits.
The case for me was that it was a strong influence, but not the only factor. I cancelled my Model 3 order due to some of Elon's actions and words, but I was already on the fence due to concerns about quality, etc. If it had been a slam dunk purchase, probably would have followed through (there are products I still purchase despite terrible politics of the owner/company)
As far as ICE vehicles go, most mechanics will advise you to lease a BMW / Audi over buying one. After 60k miles, the maintenance costs and electrical gremlins are noticeably frequent.
German EV's are probably better built - fewer electrical issues over a longer duration (I hope), and fewer moving parts to replace.
I think this is a product differentiation / segmentation problem. People who wanted the current Tesla offering are being outnumbered by people who want buttons / information displayed front and center.
See it as an insurance. It's not likely something will break, if you are the unlucky one though, those spare parts aren't cheap. A dealer can distribute that risk over many more cars.
I've never owned one but the folk wisdom I've always heard is to have a good foreign car indie mechanic (or do a lot of your your own work I guess) or just plan on keeping a BMW/Audi/etc. to the end of the warranty period because dealer bills add up fast afterwards.
Even if German cars don't last, when they roll off the assembly line, they don't have panel gaps and loose or missing parts.
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?
We cancelled ours when he tweeted and insinuated there were valid reasons for someone sneaking into the Pelosi house and hitting her husband in the head with a hammer.
It would have been our second Tesla purchase and now we have none. Could not imagine being associated with Elon in any way and certainly not in the car I drive around.
The article is about European sales though. I know some European people are obsessed with American politics as if there was nothing worth discussing that's European, but the number of people who knows and cares about whatever happened at Nancy Pelosi's house, then knows what Elon had to say about that, then deciding it's so egregious that they can't buy a Tesla anymore it's probably single digits.
Which is probably the main point. It's well known that American companies sell a higher proportion of their cars in America than in Europe and vice versa. That a foreign company was ever outselling domestic producers in a region with a large automotive industry is an unusual and generally short-lived phenomenon.
> We cancelled ours when he tweeted and insinuated there were valid reasons for someone sneaking into the Pelosi house and hitting her husband in the head with a hammer
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.
> Musk was careful to acknowledge that the chance that there was more to the story was low (“tiny possibility”).
These days I usually default to reading that sort of comment as saying the things with the tiny chance was likely, and the smaller the stated chance the higher the likelihood.
I think it has more to do with Tesla being the modern EV pioneer. They were the only game it town for a while, and had the best charging network. However, there have been a lot of stories about build quality issues for years.
As the established automaker move into the market and charging is standardized, it would stand to reason that Tesla would suffer, as people see they can get higher build quality from experienced brands. The cool-factor of Tesla also starts to wear off when they are everywhere. Last time I was in a place I needed to Uber a lot, 4 of the 5 riders were in Teslas.
I think you're right, but I'm not so sure it's actually impacting sales to a large degree. For most people a 50k car is a huge investment that won't hinge on whether or not you agree with the CEO's politics.
I think it should be the opposite. If you buy a cheap thing and suddenly start feeling uncomfortable using it in public, you can just buy another cheap thing. With expensive things, you want to play it safe, because replacing it will be expensive if you start having second thoughts.
Step 1 is to stop buying things (or not) because you care how it will make you look to other people who don’t actually care.
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.
> Step 1 is to stop buying things (or not) because you care how it will make you look to other people who don’t actually care
Car OEMs invest millions in branding on the basis of/to promote the opposite of what you're saying: the brand is an expression or an extension of the buyers identity.
Personally, I stopped fighting this particular battle. I've come to the realization that intangibles matter - some of those might be incidental, some pure personal preferences, some result of me being manipulated by marketing.
But separating which is which is not always easy, and I'd rather spend my time on other things. As a result I take "intangibles" as a rational factor in buying decisions even if the intangibles themselves might not necessarily be rational.
Regardless of how true your point is, millions of 20-something year old men exist in the market that haven't yet, or never will, reach your state of capitalism nirvana.
Did you mean to reply to me? I didn't claim it was or wasn't okay, or that I was enlightened. I am merely pointing out that one person's journey to separating themselves from being concerned with vanity and status of their vehicle doesn't remove the large population of people predisposed to behave otherwise.
99% of eligible buyers don’t care one way or another. As big as it may seem to you, the US neoliberal bubble is not really that large. That’s why Tesla sold 1.81M cars last year. It is a formidable number no matter how you look at it.
I think the number of Uber drivers with Teslas makes it seem like less of a status symbol.
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.
It may not be a flex, but having an electric car is still a statement (less than it used to be, but still) that you're a high tech, forward thinking, environmentally conscious person. The problem is that now it's also a statement that you're a Trump supporter.
Those 2 assumptions are at odds with each other. The Trump supporters I know don’t want anything to do with electric cars, and Trump was the one fighting for coal to remain viable, which is the exact opposite of environmentally conscious.
Personally, I have never seen a Tesla and assumed the driver was a Trump supporter. The much bigger stereotype is that the left buys EVs.
I don’t think many people are trading in their Cummings diesel 2500 truck for anything electric. The die hard Trump fans would be on Truth Social, not Twitter. They might like some stuff Elon is doing, but I don’t think they are going to give up their gas engines over him.
There's wanting a Tesla and ignoring Musk, but there's also "should we consider a Tesla?" answered by "No, I don't trust him and anything he's associated with." We didn't look at Tesla when we bought our EV two years ago. There were other reasons than just Musk's personality, but it was a definitely a factor in ignoring the brand.
(Expensive) cars are kind of a symbol of irrational decisions. Plenty of people buy cars they dreamed of even if it will ruin them financially. People buy the car for its look, its brand, freedom they feel. A strong association with an ideology you despise will kinda spoil those positive feelings you have, though.
People are using it as a buying criteria. (I cancelled a Model 3 order and went with a Kia EV6 instead) That said, confirmation bias is a real thing. There are those who are convinced Bed Bath and Beyond went under because they stopped selling My Pillow.
Agree that people may want this to be a bigger factor than it is, or no factor at all, depending on their personal feelings on Musk and his politics.
I would say its hard to argue it is likely some factor in the middle. I'd love to see it studied.
I'll anecdotally add that I've always found Teslas design language pretty ugly, but did pine after the status of owning one briefly. Now I would never buy one for the association with Musk. So there you have it, scientifically there are at least 3 of us, and at most 8 billion of us. Further study is needed.
What kind of evidence do you want? I’m a car buyer and I’ve gone from seeing Tesla as a decent brand to one I will not consider at all, because I don’t want to associate myself with Musk’s behaviour. It’s not a conspiracy - some people just don’t like him, and there are good alternatives.
There are lots of angry people who are trying to summon a ‘reality’ that they want to see, where their political opponent has suffered for sharing their political views. It’s why this story got upvoted on Hacker News at all, despite it being obviously misleading and easy to disprove. HN users are critical readers on many topics, so to me it appears that they stop using those critical thinking skills when they have an emotional investment in a topic. In other words, this is just like any other political topic in America.
These statistics include plug-in hybrid gas cars (PHEV), of which BYD sell a lot, and Tesla do not make at all.
> "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)..."
It matters enormously if you want to meaningfully compare EV production between two manufacturers, yes.
BEVs and PHEVs are not the same thing, and the size of batteries used in each is radically different.
BYD have a company policy of conflating their EV/PHEV numbers (their own made up term “new energy vehicles”) as it makes their “EV” numbers look great in misleading statistics like the one you linked.
Most people are not going to compare gas car production counts to Tesla, given the entire reason Tesla exists is to not produce gas cars. BYD still make gas cars - all PHEVs have a gas engine.
Tesla and BYD having different philosophies doesn't mean we need to adjust to Tesla to look at their numbers. If they're targeting the same job to be done (getting from A to B on an electric charge) they're in the same overall market.
We can subdivide on long range travel, trucks, lightweight mobility, cars with a US plug, or having a plugin architecture or not, but that's not what the article was about, nor what we're looking at here IMHO.
It’s a question of basic statistics; your original link does not compare apples to oranges.
When you measure something to compare, it’s helpful if it is the same.
This trick of conflating PHEV numbers is something most manufacturers don’t do, and BYD have been called out on in the past.
So many key players in EV (Tesla, rivian, lucid…) will never make a gas car - so of course BYD including over half a million gas cars in their “EV” stats makes for an unfair comparison across the industry.
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.
I hear people say this bit then I see those same people go and buy Teslas anyway. The real reason Tesla is suffering is because they've not delivered on innovation, quality, or price in a long time.
>The real reason Tesla is suffering is because they've not delivered on innovation, quality, or price in a long time.
Haha what. Price has dropped, quality increased, their self driving tech recently had a step change in functionality. I don't really think Tesla is suffering but I think most of these narratives are in peoples heads and don't reflect reality.
I’m personally unconvinced. I test drove some current models a few days ago. Some observations:
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.
And a technical sense yes but the only new model they’ve released recently is the cyber truck. Otherwise their sedans and crossovers outwardly appear to be basically the same thing they were selling in 2012. Meanwhile, BMW has a fleet of eight different electric vehicles, with more modern styling, leather, and just the ability to differentiate. Of course, Tesla is well into the black on their models whereas I doubt the BMW will get out of the red anytime soon.
The new Model 3 is new and has lots of interior features not found in competitors' cars of the same price range (ventilated and heated rear seats, screen for rear occupants, ambient lighting, Autopilot as standard, etc).
It’s also missing features that everyone else has (handles for entry/exit, a dashboard instrument cluster, lots of interior storage, support for physical keys, AirPlay / Android Auto, a forward/reverse selector, etc).
True, but it’s a numbers game. If there are 5 electric cars on the market, 2 are Teslas and the others are Nissan Leaf comparables then Tesla will get a lot of sales.
If there are 80 different models on the market and Tesla makes 5 models… that’s a tiny percentage of the choice that consumers have to pick from.
Huh? The model 3 didn't come out until 2017 and the model Y came out in 2020. That's literally just four years ago - not 2012.
I own a 2019 model 3 and will be replacing it with a 2024. In those 5 years, it's accumulated a bunch of improvements. I don't exactly have a changelog to work with, but here's what I can think of off the top of my head:
- more powerful rear motor, 10% faster 0-60, breaking 10s quarter mile
- track mode v3
- heat pump
- matrix headlights
- adaptive suspension w/ frequency response suspension dampers
- ryzen media control unit
- triple pane glass
- heated steering wheel
- sport seating
- ventilated seats
- usb-c ports
- rear entertainment system
- HW4
- updated wheels/tires
- exterior styling updates (front bumper, non-chrome handles, etc...)
- interior styling updates (LED lighting, carbon fiber dash, etc...)
Oh, and there's also the fact that I'm only paying 70% of what I did the first time around (inflation adjusted).
I’m mostly referring to the design language. The newest Model 3 refresh looks a lot like the previous Model 3, which looks a lot like a shorter Model S. Then look at the visual difference between Lexus, BMW, Mercedes, Mazda. Tesla has improved their vehicles a lot, but they’re all still Teslas and some people prefer more X, or more Y.
With that “triple pane glass” (which I’m pretty sure is laminated glass, not insulated glass), keep in mind a little design issue common to every Tesla ever made: the complete lack of any non-electrical way to open a door from outside. If there’s an electrical failure and someone needs rescuing from the car at all quickly, one needs to break a window. If all the window glass is laminated, this is not so easy.
There are stories of people getting out of a Tesla to help their kids out, closing the driver door before opening the back door, and having the electrical system die before opening the rear door. Whoops!
- after ignoring the persistent warning you had days in advance that the 12v is dying
- you lose power in the exact few seconds between
- first securing every vehicle door
- and then proceeding to open any other door
- and there's another passenger inside
- and they are also incapable of operating a door
then you will have to either jump your 12v or otherwise somehow unlock your door. The odds are diminishingly small given all of those factors, but wait there's also more:
- You don't have all the accidental 12v drains that happen in other vehicles (lights, accessories, etc... accidentally left running)
- The 12v is constantly replenished from the main battery, rather than a more unreliable alternator
So, I suppose there's this and then there are also the odds that your passenger is immediately struck by lightning as they exit the vehicle. At least in the former unlikely scenario, emergency responders can help you out with relative ease and little harm.
I'm not a "car person", so forgive me if this is wildly off, but it always seemed like Tesla was going for the market segment of "not super rich, but wealthy enough to afford luxury"... That is, it's been positioned as a 'luxury' brand. Dropping prices doesn't seem like it would be productive in that context. (Quality improvements, as you mentioned, certainly will, tho.)
> 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?
The step-change is real, and a lot of people don't know that Tesla now has the best self-driving ability out of all the competition. But that's only true on 4th gen hardware, and unfortunately that represents a minority of the vehicles sold to date.
Mercedes is taking legal liability for their L3 system. That's better than Tesla
GM's supercruise allows safe hands free driving as a L2 system. That's better than Tesla
Waymo is operating a true L4 system in multiple markets. That's better than Tesla.
Tesla has a better than average L2 system in autopilot. They have a downright dangerous L2 system in FSD that through its very design encourages unsafe driving habits. It lulls drivers into a false sense of security, but FSD can still hand control to the driver at the very last moment when they are unprepared to safely operate a vehicle.
Research has shown the L2 systems that border on L3 capability are dangerous, which is why all of the competition is staying well clear of that design and yet Tesla is forging ahead. There are times when going against the grain is a path to innovation, like Tesla using thousands of small cells to deliver viable BEVs. Or SpaceX using fast iteration on cheap reusable rockets. This isn't one of those cases as research has shown this pathway is not just non-viable, it's a safety risks to the public. There is a reason everyone else is working on L3 and L4 and developing it under carefully controlled testing conditions and methodologies. Tesla just slaps 'beta' on it and sends 4000 lbs of steel out hoping it doesn't run anyone over. When SpaceX rockets blow up during testing no one gets hurt. That is not true of FSD development.
I love my Tesla, but FSD is dangerous and the marketing was well into scam territory. There is a reason NHTSA and the FTC both have gotten involved.
In my very recent test drive, it (a) flashed a message that it couldn’t tell whether I was looking at the road because I was wearing sunglasses and would continue operating anyway and (b) very nearly caused a collision due to an inappropriate maneuver in an intersection.
For an optimal driver-assisted recovery in the latter incident, I needed to have been paying rather close attention to the navigation, the lane lines, and surrounding vehicles, starting before the incident, and I needed to take a rather fast and considered action. It was dicey. But this would have been a complete nonissue if I were _actually driving the car_, because that’s how humans work. The middle ground of not driving but being ready to override instantly is simply not how humans work.
Actual studies have shown autopilot and fsd are at best average on safety. Given it spends an outsized amount of time limited access roads it's actually worse than manual driving for safety.
I imagine they have distilled the 12.5 model to fit on the hw3. I will wait to see how it compares, with Tesla sometimes the results are honestly hilarious, "move fast and break things" but on a nearly 2 ton vehicle.
This seems in direct contrast to reality. The long-range RWD model 3 (360mi of range) is available for $35K (after federal tax credit). That's more bang-for-the-buck than I've seen for any car in my lifetime. I'm not aware of any class competitor that's even mildly close.
With the current reputation, who wants to work for them? Of course some might support it, but it must seriously limit candidates. Not a surprise they don't deliver. Of course one can always ask, what was first, chicken or egg...
If I’m a CEO I’m not going to be trying to impress the same crowd that hates the very thing that my most valuable company is built on. It’s basically unhinged and I think I’d probably step down if ever came down from my twitter high long enough to take a look around at the burning room. I am by no means a “make money at all costs” person but this had become a huge violation of the fiduciary duty of the CEO
I was a really long term shareholder in Tesla. Like back when the Oatmeal made that famous Tesla comic strip.
When he started calling people pedophiles on the internet and when I saw the board whose fiduciary duty is to keep the CEO in check do nothing, I exited my entire position.
It is an absolute failure of the board that no one questions his dumb decisions of pandering to the right to save some taxes, when the main customers are on the left.
Personally, I decided to not to buy a Tesla because of how he over hyped self driving and then tried to weasel out by calling the system ‘full self driving’ when it’s clearly not. It doesn’t mean the cars are actually crap, but the company just came off as hella sketchy. Like how they didn’t care about panel gaps or similar issues because people were buying cars sight unseen, just gives this cheap vibe without actually hitting that price point.
It’s not that uncommon for people to quietly boycott companies. My mother refuses to get Starlink because of Musk.
I've boycotted AT&T for over 25 years, after AT&T charged me for the phone calls made after I had reported my phone stolen. I was young and stupid, so I paid, but I never gave them my business again.
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.
This can be seen in data. Compare the car sales of Netherlands vs Denmark, two countries next to each other with similar living conditions, one of them occupied during the war, the other not. Guess which one of them don't have any German cars in the top sales list. Even today. Though I don't believe todays generation would hold a grudge, now it's likely more brand loyalty momentum that sticks.
There's no practical way to live in the modern world without indirectly benefiting from forced labor. Some of the cobalt required for EV batteries is mined by forced labor in the Congo, and there was a recent controversy around BMW and VW importing vehicles to the USA with parts made from forced labor of Uyghur prisoners in China. Even in the US, virtually all license plates are created by prisoners who earn 8-16 cents an hour.
My original point was to the "Elon schadenfreude" crowd cheering for BMW and swearing off Tesla because they don't agree with the founder's actions. Seems like selective outrage to me.
Honestly, I dislike Musk since the 'submarine to save kids' story, but in Europe, at least outside big cities, Tesla owners aren't associated with Musk, so his politics or likeability aren't a factor on purchase choices. Musk himself wasn't really a factor for 95% of people before anyway, I think only americanized Europeans cared about him.
I just think Tesla can't find footing in the real low-end EV market because of BYD + Renault and associates (that market is small atm so it isn't an issue), never got in the high-end EV market so it has to compete with historic automaker in a market they have a lot of experience in.
> I think only americanized Europeans cared about him.
I mean, it depends where you live, but Naughty Old Mr Car has stuck his oar in on, at least, Irish, British and French politics, and has also said many extremely stupid things about Ukraine. He’s getting harder to ignore in Europe.
Second-hand Tesla Model 3s are ready affordable in NL, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to buy a Tesla because of all the stink attached to, well, everything.
This pains me because the Model 3/S is a decent sedan and one of - if not the most - efficient cars on the market.
Add me to the list. There are enough great choices with more becoming available each month that there’s no reason to paint his fence. The minute I can take possession of an R2 and sell my model Y I’m done with Tesla forever. It’s also a real shame because it’s the best car I’ve ever owned - but that in no way outweighs my desire to not be a rolling advertisement for Elon.
What I find funny is that Teslas high profile investors repeatedly and completely dismiss this effect as being insignificant, but anecdotally I do think it’s a large portion of Tesla’s owners.
It’s also not like he has traded one customer base for another. The conservatives he’s trying to cozy up to seem just as anti-EV as ever.
I had a first version of Model S and I loved it. Since then every model made has been rushed out and it shows. I moved to the Porsche electric as my next electric.
Tesla still way ahead in yearly sales and other EV's are suffering tremendously from large incentives to clear their inventories. Model Y remains on track to be the best selling car in the world two years in a row, while being roughly double the cost of the next best selling car.
This isn’t remotely true unless your golf carts are equipped with climate control, comfortable seats, entertainment systems, etc. and have ranges measured in the hundreds of miles. They’re selling well internationally because they’re a good deal and countries which don’t have domestic car manufacturers to protect aren’t trying to keep them out. The U.S. has tariffs because Detroit has been chasing the luxury market and isn’t prepared to compete on price.
They’ve been in the BEV market for a bit. Not long after the first Tesla Model S was released, BMW released the i3. That one’s since been discontinued but they have at least 8 other BMW i models on the market.
The i3 was such a great city car, well ahead of its time. Such a shame that they have apparently abandoned the EV design ethos embodied in that car (and that car alone) in favour of bloated luxo-barges. Tell me that your EV strategy is about brand greenwashing without telling me it’s about brand greenwashing.
They seem to be really focused on chasing the Boomer demographic. I’m a happy former customer (twice over) but wouldn’t consider anything in their EV range - which means I wouldn’t consider buying a BMW again at all unless there’s some sort of radical strategic change.
i3 was a fascinating car and remains one of the best used cars currently available, but it had 2 bets that BMW lost badly.
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.
BMW has not abandoned it. i3 was a cool cheap car, with a carbon fiber cell. It was ugly as hell, but cool tech.
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.
Many (not all, obviously) boomers will never buy an EV because of identity politics in the midwestern United States. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is true elsewhere as well.
Why they’re not pumping out $25k 250 mile range city cars for millenials and gen z is a mystery to me.
In Europe the Dacia Spring is available for under €20k on the road, and it is a proper car similar to others in the compact range - not a toy like the Citroen Ami (that thing doesn't even have heating). However it's really the only car like that available in Europe, and Dacia isn't exactly known for it's reliability (sorry Romania).
Plus at that price point they are not competing with other compacts - which aren't that popular anyway - but with a 2-4 year old used car. One of my collegues just bought a 4 year old Toyota Avensis for the same price. Which one do you think will last longer?
The same reason why the industry pushed away from the sedan and onto larger SUVs: profit margins. The Chevy Bolt was very close to what you described and was cancelled (brought back, but cancelling it was a momentum killer)
In most of Europe, at least, the “producing lots of CO2 is good, actually” thing popular on the US right is just not a significant factor in mainstream politics. In practice, looked at globally, it’s mostly only a thing in big fossil fuel producers; the stats on global warming denial in particular are very stark, with the US and Australia _way_ out ahead of the rest of the developed world.
I would rather take panel gaps and paint chips than faulty battery or motors. Most sources would agree that small cosmetic defects aside, Tesla has the quite good drivetrain and battery reliability.
In Germany, TÜV (Mandatory inspections in Germany), placed Tesla Model 3 for 111th in reliability, just behind Dacia Logan which was in the second last place, when the first mandatory inspections in 2023 started.
You can find many sources about this, here one example:
It really depends on the model. When a company produces 2 million cars a year and has a shitload of models in their lineup, some are going to be problematic.
For gasoline engine, for example, the B48 engine is highly reliable [1]
I'm one of those "oddballs" who'll never ever buy a new car because to me buying a new car is deciding to be a guinea pig. I buy cars that are 3 to 5 years old, once it's known if the model is a reliable one or not.
Take, say, a used 4-series "Gran Coupé" with the B48 engine. It's a complete bargain, ultra-reliable and one heck of a sweet ride. I drive higher-end stuff but we picked that for my wife two years ago and it's really a good car.
Perhaps I’m the odd one out but I haven’t had any issues in 20 years of BMW ownership across two continents. Never had to do anything except routine service and consumables. One 3-series diesel in Europe made it to 220k miles before I sold it, and it’s likely got another 10 years of daily driving in it.
You're not the odd one out. BMWs cars generally have less faults that most other brands, but as with all brands, the number of faults varies greatly based on the model.
You might not notice them because they look like regular BMW. For example, you wouldn't know i4 is electric just by looks. But I'd recommend anyone who is thinking of buying a Tesla to give BMW EV a test drive, you might end up getting it (like I did).
They're easy to spot, at least for recent sedans & suv, they're the ones with a front grille looking like beaver teeth and the grille look more solid vs traditional vent (which make sense since there's no combustion engine that needs cold air intake to cool down)
> Maybe I’m in a bubble, but I didn’t even notice BMW had EVs
I'd say you've indeed been living in a serious bubble. The European Commission decided, years ago, that by 2035 (which is around the corner), not a single new car could be sold in the EU if it wasn't 100% electric. Not even hybrid.
Since that decision they backtracked a little bit but meanwhile all the german automanufacturers started freaking out and started, in a hurry, to come up with EVs.
It's not just BMW. Porsche, Mercedes, Audi/VW: they all produce EVs now.
At least down here, there are few options that are not electric to some extent. Every brand has at least 2-3 fully electric cars, and the rest of the lineup is hybrid. Suzuki has Jimny that is not (yet?) hybrid, and maybe BMW and Mercedes have some non-electric (to any extent) options, due to the sheer size of their roster.
Are you in America? I think their market penetration there is still extremely low.
Most of BMW’s electric cars (with the exception of the notably weird-looking i3) are also pretty subtle; you wouldn’t really know they were electric unless you looked closely. In particular, they’ve kept some approximation of their trademark grille.
Unlike other brands, their EVs don't look much different than their ICE cars (though their earliest attempts, like the i3, were definitely nothing like what they sold). I'm pretty sure this is intentional; they're trying to replicate the BMW experience, and make it less about the drivetrain.
The most popular BMW EV is probably the i4, which has that incredibly loud and ugly 4-series grille shape with a flat, plasticky-looking material. They're very noticeable! In a bad way.
While BMW does have some models that are blatantly electric like the i3, most of their electric cars look pretty much just like the regular gasoline ones. I think it's a clever move that taps into their existing market dynamic.
> Don't they pack the batteries in the floor, making the car necessarily higher? Isn't this the biggest difference?
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.
> most of their electric cars look pretty much just like the regular gasoline ones
Right, they have disguised the electric ones as phenomenally ugly late-stage German cars, so you can't really tell they are electric without getting closer than you'd really like. From a safe distance it just looks like any other BMW with grill cancer.
How much of this is driven by lumpy delivery? Tesla used to do this all the time: book thousands of orders, send them all over on a boat at once, then announce that they were the top-selling car in Swagistan (for that month, and no longer time scale). Is it the same story for BMW?
Tesla produce a lot of for the EU in China. They have a schedule where for each quarter, months 1, 2 and 3, in Month 1, they produce cars. In Month 2 they sail them over from China. And in Month 3, they arrive and are sold.
BMW managed to overtake Tesla in the first month of Q3, barely. When Tesla really had no cars for sale.
We've never known how poplar Tesla is vs electric cars. For a long time they were the only option outside of a few individual models (Leaf, i3, Volt). They were easily the most well known.
We're at the point where Tesla will stop being a near default choice as people realize they have other options. So we'll start to find out what their popularity really is.
The US has also been distorted by the charging network issue, but as more and more manufacturers get access to the Tesla network in the next few years that will cease to be an advantage too.
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.)
I’m sorry, is there really that much people buying brand new cars ? I feel so poor when I see those prices and I’m not (for a European). The prices of new cars shock me. I even feel like people criticize the price of an iPhone or AVP because it’s too expensive but with cars … the price of a paint is the price of the iPhone (metaphorically, options are really expensive) and nobody debate any of that ?
This is going to happen eventually. There are many reasons why Tesla is going to hit a ceiling.
Tesla build quality is terrible. Their service department is overbooked, under staffed, expensive, and not set up for success. Environmental people won't want to support Elon, and right wing people who like him won't want to buy an electric car.
It's only a matter of time before established players eat Tesla's lunch.
Tesla has a market cap twice what Toyota does. They have a P/E ratio over 60, vs about 7 for Toyota. Clearly the market thinks Tesla's future is not as a car company, because compared to literally every other car manufacturer they are wildly overvalued.
My personal opinion is that TSLA has only one direction to go for a while. Down. Nothing about the business supports the market optimism. Not that I'm going to run out and short the stock, mind you, that old adage about how long the market can stay irrational seems very on point in this case.
I’d suggest that Tesla is high rather than BMW being low. It’s the only way for a normal person who is a Musk fan to buy into any part of his empire, so you have demand from people who are Musk fans and express that fandom by buying stocks.
In this particular case, it's worth the reminder that BMW's founder (Günther Quandt) was a strong financial supporter of the Nazi party, and his children (Herbert and Harald Quandt) enslaved tens of thousands of people in BMW factories before the collapse of Nazi Germany. I'm not trying to tell anyone to boycott BMW or Mercedes - just trying to add some historical context for those who instantly react to Tesla news with "Elon is bad".
lived in germany for 8 years. the living heiress to a biscuit company fortune is still a nazi sympathiser today. nobody cares about the bmw founder who is dead. every company in germany had ties to the NSDAP, let’s focus on real nazis and antisemites and racists (elon) not dead ones.
Genuinely curious here and not trying to start a debate or sound rhetorical (I just don't keep up with the news that much) - what did Elon do that was racist?
Not that much as far as I can tell. He's against DEI and uncontrolled immigration across the US Mexico border.
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.
YTD Tesla is way ahead - https://imgur.com/56eG7CN Actual Numbers - BMW registration for the month of July 2024 were up by 300~ cars.
Original Source - https://www.jato.com/resources/media-and-press-releases/bmw-... Quoting this comment -
streptomycin- Yes https://i.imgur.com/ZNv1AyD.jpg Although BMW is making some nice EVs and they are selling more than they used to, the headline is misleading.
ultrablack22 - Tesla produce a lot of for the EU in China. They have a schedule where for each quarter, months 1, 2 and 3, in Month 1, they produce cars. In Month 2 they sail them over from China. And in Month 3, they arrive and are sold.
BMW managed to overtake Tesla in the first month of Q3, barely. When Tesla really had no cars for sale.