4 ms·

>7,000? 10,000? 15,000? It wouldn't be enough to remotely satisfy the demand. Honest question: where on earth do you get this idea? You actually think there

>7,000? 10,000? 15,000? It wouldn't be enough to remotely satisfy the demand. Honest question: where on earth do you get this idea? You actually think there is global demand for ~800,000 vehicles with an ASP of ~$55k USD? What are you basing this insane demand off of? Tesla won't even report the current backlog numbers. If they were increasing, you don't think they'd be boasting about it? Where does the unlimited demand come from? >And when they finally do, in 2-3 years or so, are you going to take a chance on one of the first competitive EVs from VW, Mercedes, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Hyundai, Fiat, Toyota or Mazda or are you just gonna stick with Tesla, which by then comes with even better specs than today? Wait, you're saying you're not going to trust manufacturers that have been building and servicing millions and millions and millions of cars for, some of them, over 100 years, but instead you will trust Tesla who hasn't even proven they can sustainably build and service the few hundred thousand they've got on the road? Aren't EVs supposed to be simpler than ICEs? I simply cannot understand this thinking.

codeulike 8y ago
Tesla won't even report the current backlog numbers. They say it right in the OP: "The remaining net Model 3 reservations count at the end of Q2 still stood at roughly 420,000 even though we have now delivered 28,386 Model 3 vehicles to date."
stephenhuey 8y ago
The sibling comment from codeulike points out that they clearly stated the very thing you spent so many words questioning (in that time a quick skim of their report would've saved you all that trouble). Have you never heard a story of how a new entrant might be able to do better than the status quo? There's a lot going on here, and these stories are not so simple. Yes, in many ways EVs are simpler. There are stories of Elon Musk micromanaging to a fault, so maybe another CEO would've gotten them producing quicker with fewer issues. However, perhaps that other CEO wouldn't have gone up against the other manufacturers in the first place. I'm not defending either type of car maker, but there are countless stories of new players figuring out how they too can play, and they often find out how to do it better even if they make a lot of mistakes along the way. edit: "maybe"
flexie 8y ago
More than 70M cars are produced worldwide every year. The 3 large German producers, Mercedes, Audi and BMW, are producing around 6M cars, of which many are priced similarly or more expensive than Model 3. That's just to mention some of the larger ones. There is easily a demand for millions of cars within the upper end of the mid price segment like Model 3, and once the price of batteries goes down just a bit, EVs can reach the lower end of the mid segment. We are not at the cheap segment yet, but it's just a matter of battery prices going down (through economy of scale; we actually don't need any breakthroughs in technology). Then factor in charging networks. Right now, I don't have any supercharger near me. Next year I will. In 4-5 years I will have plenty. As for not trusting the traditional manufacturers, I stopped buying Nokia and Ericsson and never came back, ones Apple marketed the iPhone. Not because they had had bad products or weren't trustworthy anymore. Just because it was obvious they produced the old tech and were behind on the new. People stopped buying horses and carriages when Ford produced his cars. Horses served us well for millennia. And the hundreds of thousands of Teslas already driving billions of miles on the road are still driving well without the engines and expertise of BMW, right? People trust Tesla's tech now.
- cjrp 8y ago
  > Mercedes, Audi and BMW, are producing around 6M cars, of which many are priced similarly or more expensive than Model 3 ~$55k USD would be roughly equivalent to a 5 Series/E Class/A6. Combined, about 300,000 of these cars are sold per year in Europe. So to sell 800,000 Model 3s worldwide you've got to replace every single one of those BMW/Merc/Audi sales, and then some.
  - flexie 8y ago
    Those are just European figures, just 3 brands, and just the existing numbers. In 2006, the market for smart phones was tiny. A couple of years later, people paid 3 times more for a phone than they ever thought they would. Yes, $500 for a phone is not the same as $50,000 for a car. But who would have thought that people would readily shed out $599 for a cell phone before Apple made that market? The amount of people able to pay $50,000 for a car is increasing every year due to the economic growth in Asia and elsewhere and Tesla expands the market of people interested in expensive cars in Europe and America beyond the usual motor enthusiasts to people like me.

codeulike 8y ago

Tesla won't even report the current backlog numbers. They say it right in the OP: "The remaining net Model 3 reservations count at the end of Q2 still stood at roughly 420,000 even though we have now delivered 28,386 Model 3 vehicles to date."

stephenhuey 8y ago

The sibling comment from codeulike points out that they clearly stated the very thing you spent so many words questioning (in that time a quick skim of their report would've saved you all that trouble). Have you never heard a story of how a new entrant might be able to do better than the status quo? There's a lot going on here, and these stories are not so simple. Yes, in many ways EVs are simpler. There are stories of Elon Musk micromanaging to a fault, so maybe another CEO would've gotten them producing quicker with fewer issues. However, perhaps that other CEO wouldn't have gone up against the other manufacturers in the first place. I'm not defending either type of car maker, but there are countless stories of new players figuring out how they too can play, and they often find out how to do it better even if they make a lot of mistakes along the way. edit: "maybe"

flexie 8y ago

More than 70M cars are produced worldwide every year. The 3 large German producers, Mercedes, Audi and BMW, are producing around 6M cars, of which many are priced similarly or more expensive than Model 3. That's just to mention some of the larger ones. There is easily a demand for millions of cars within the upper end of the mid price segment like Model 3, and once the price of batteries goes down just a bit, EVs can reach the lower end of the mid segment. We are not at the cheap segment yet, but it's just a matter of battery prices going down (through economy of scale; we actually don't need any breakthroughs in technology). Then factor in charging networks. Right now, I don't have any supercharger near me. Next year I will. In 4-5 years I will have plenty. As for not trusting the traditional manufacturers, I stopped buying Nokia and Ericsson and never came back, ones Apple marketed the iPhone. Not because they had had bad products or weren't trustworthy anymore. Just because it was obvious they produced the old tech and were behind on the new. People stopped buying horses and carriages when Ford produced his cars. Horses served us well for millennia. And the hundreds of thousands of Teslas already driving billions of miles on the road are still driving well without the engines and expertise of BMW, right? People trust Tesla's tech now.

cjrp 8y ago
> Mercedes, Audi and BMW, are producing around 6M cars, of which many are priced similarly or more expensive than Model 3 ~$55k USD would be roughly equivalent to a 5 Series/E Class/A6. Combined, about 300,000 of these cars are sold per year in Europe. So to sell 800,000 Model 3s worldwide you've got to replace every single one of those BMW/Merc/Audi sales, and then some.
- flexie 8y ago
  Those are just European figures, just 3 brands, and just the existing numbers. In 2006, the market for smart phones was tiny. A couple of years later, people paid 3 times more for a phone than they ever thought they would. Yes, $500 for a phone is not the same as $50,000 for a car. But who would have thought that people would readily shed out $599 for a cell phone before Apple made that market? The amount of people able to pay $50,000 for a car is increasing every year due to the economic growth in Asia and elsewhere and Tesla expands the market of people interested in expensive cars in Europe and America beyond the usual motor enthusiasts to people like me.