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Tesla’s Model 3 Is Becoming One of America’s Best-Selling Sedans
- threeseed 8y ago> It’s an imperfect ranking because Tesla didn’t break out sales by country, and the Model 3 tally included some deliveries to customers in Canada. Seems a bit strange to base an entire article on faulty data.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- analognoise 8y ago...North America?
- alexandros 8y agoFaulty != approximate. for all reasonable estimations of the Canada deliveries number, the title still stands.
- devoply 8y agowhy buy a sedan when you can buy a status symbol for a bit more?
- r00fus 8y agoIt's not just a status. Any electric vehicle of that size/speed/image would cost that much or more. I know, I've looked. The Model3, even LR, is a pretty good deal compared to other EVs.
- rohit2412 8y agoI guess what the comment echoed was that Tesla sell much better because of the status. And the other EVs don't enjoy such futuristic image. I'll add my own point that Tesla's image is very undeserved, it is only kept by the cult of Elon musk and incessant lies about self driving technology.
- kidsnow 8y agoWrong. Even without self-driving technology, people would buy these cars. Several friends specifically deleted the self driving hardware on their Model 3's.
- twblalock 8y agoThey are objectively nice cars. They look nice, they drive nice, they are high performance, and they are usable in daily life. That is plenty of reasons for people to buy them. The only viable electric vehicles at the same price point are the Chevy Bolt and the Nissan Leaf, and if you ever see one of those parked next to a Model 3 you'll notice that the Model 3 is far more attractive.
- dkhenry 8y agoI will add my own anecdote that if anything Tesla is underrated. Not only is the drivetrain in the car worlds ahead of anything else on the road, but the fringe parts of the company like the supercharger network and service organization so far ahead of the legacy automakers that I don't see how they will ever catch up without an organizational split to separate the ICE business from the EV business.
- Latteland 8y agoI have found them to really be fantastic and great to drive. So quiet, advanced electronics like mapping streaming voice recognition, quiet, low center of gravity.
- hamandcheese 8y agoNot to mention it’s actually aesthetically pleasing.
- stephengillie 8y agoThe big fat nose is funny looking, and the interior is barren. It looks like a child's toy.
- WillPostForFood 8y agoIt is very subjective, I think it looks like a car from 10 years in the future.
- stephengillie 8y agoOr a car from the distant past. Trends repeat. It's like how push-button transmissions are coming back into style, or how hybrid cars were invented in the 1920s and again in the 1960s.
- kidsnow 8y agoThat's right, you can't go back to a Toyota Camry any more.
- stephengillie 8y agoTry the Camry Hybrid. You might be surprised.
- rjplatte 8y agoMy Prius is getting long in the tooth. Good replacement?
- stephengillie 8y ago356 ft-lb of torque. And the same MPG (50+) in the 2018+ models. You might not beat a Porsche Cayenne, but you'll give it a hard time.
- rjplatte 8y agoDamn. I enjoy smoking Dodge Neons and older Mustangs light-to-light as it is, but that just sounds fun.
- wharryman 8y agoMy wife and I spent a lot of time deliberating between getting a Prius Prime (plug-in hybrid) and a Model 3. We have an 09 Camry Hybrid. FWIW, our Camry Hybrid is nice, but the battery halves trunk space, and the accel is sloooow compared to a normal Camry (which we owned before that). Fully loaded, the Prime is ~35k, and theoretically has more or at least equivalent features, can travel about 25 miles on EV alone, with smooth switching between EV and ICE modes. However, it feels like they threw all these systems in as feature creep. There's a HUD that's really hard to see or get used to, a lot of your EV info is on top of the middle of the dash in a very cluttered manner, the NAV system / phone system is tough to use - you end up trying to go thru a phone tree to make a simple call, and the phone sync is so bad that the sales guy who tried to demo it with my wife's iphone 8 spent 15 minutes and couldn't get it to work. The same holds true for almost every feature on it - the autopilot was hard to get to engage because there was also the standard cruise control features, and so on. The Model 3 is amazing for its elegant simplicity. The early iPhone metaphor is remarkably apt here - there are things that could be better, it could be cheaper, and little idiosyncrasies like the door handles are there - but in the end it's a night and day difference, like you're getting Something New, and not just next year's model. There's a list of hard factual reasons I could go into that played into the decision, but I'll try to cut the gushing fanboi talk short. In the end we dropped the extra 30k on our Model 3 and are ecstatic with it. I think we'll find there's a lot of early Prius owners, even up to '10 or '13, who have enjoyed their car, bought it partly for green reasons, and when looking for a replacement will choose to bump up to the Model 3.
- Xcelerate 8y agoNot everyone is interested in buying status symbols.
- Latteland 8y agoTry driving one. All gas cars just seem archaic, even my wife's new camera, which has some connected car features doesn't compare. That car has crappy ui, terrible app on phone. The human factors design by Toyota is just kludgey. It drives fine, the engine seems efficient with electric battery driving. But it's not fun to drive.
- Xcelerate 8y agoI’m not disputing it’s a better car. I love Teslas. I’m just saying that if I bought one it wouldn’t be because it had anything to do with “status”.
- Fins 8y agoNot aq big fan of Toyota's design, but is their UX seriously worse than "oh, let's control AC system from a touchscreen" nonsense from Tesla?
- Latteland 8y agoYes, I think Toyota is bad. The S is maybe a little bit better than the 3, but they'll improve the 3. On the S the AC controls are always at the bottom of the screen, touch it at any time and they show up. The tesla isn't perfect, but it's so much more advanced than the competitors. Tesla needs competition so they can get better. Today's model S is the same as the first one I bought in 2012, except for a bit better battery and now AWD is available.
- Fins 8y agoGood thing I don't plan to get a Toyota, then. And at one point they were known for good ergonomics. On the other hand, in my 2011 car (and it wasn't exactly anything new at the time either), adjusting AC does not require looking down at the screen, let alone hunting for a flat and featureless part of a touchscreen, that can move with the next software update. Tesla is a great idea. But IMHO the execution is nowhere near what the price would suggest, and it is advanced in a very SV way, the way Juicero was advanced -- by adding extra tech and complexity to things that have been solved for longer than anyone at Tesla has been alive, and only add to the price with no improvement in UX (or, as with these, with an actual degradation in UX).
- spectrum1234 8y agoWhat does this mean? Trucks or SUV s have status? Never occurred to me. Note: I live in cities.
- tyingq 8y agoThat's noteworthy, but keep in mind the top 3 sellers in the US are pickup trucks, then 4-6 are SUV models. The best selling sedan is at spot 7.
- draw_down 8y agoRight, and they offer an SUV as well. So is that also a best-seller, or...?
- ctdonath 8y agoAnd Tesla is about to enter the pickup market.
- loeg 8y agoThey are? I have heard of the semi trucks but not smaller trucks.
- natchiketa 8y agoMusk has said that it's his 'favorite next product': https://electrek.co/guides/tesla-pickup-truck/ https://electrek.co/guides/tesla-pickup-truck/
- HBlix 8y agoElon Musk says a lot of things, I’ll believe that they have a viable pickup when it’s rolling off the assembly lines. I’m also not sure that the market for pickups will care too much about having an EV. All in all it’s a very different market with a different customer base than luxury sedans.
- gameswithgo 8y agomore torque! highly capable AWD
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- cyrux004 8y agoI am guessing this will die down once they clear all the backlog
- alexandros 8y agoWait times in the US for the existing models are already low enough that there's basically no backlog. (out of the 420k reservations they had at some point, you can think of it as half those reservations being overseas -- not yet tapped, and of the remaining 210k half or likely more of those are for the 35k version. They've already shipped 91k cars, pretty much only to the US and Canada, so the US/Canada backlog for reservations is mostly new reservations. Also, they don't yet offer a leasing option, which is how most people like to buy cars these days. Either the demand will die down REALLY soon, or not at all. Having seen the effect of someone I know test driving a tesla with no intent to buy, and then complaining about how intensely bad "regular" cars have felt for her since then, if anything sales will grow as more cars are distributed and people's immediate family and friends get to experience the car. In other news, 40% of Europeans said in a recent Ipsos Mori survey that their next car will be electric.[1] In other words, I wouldn't hold my breath that this is going to die down any time soon. [disclaimer: I am a big fat tesla fanboy (if it wasn't obvious) and have bought stock in the company, but I hope I am making the case with logic and data and can be convinced otherwise. That said, my phone background image looks like this: https://i.redd.it/lx9635tjoyf01.jpg https://i.redd.it/lx9635tjoyf01.jpg] [1]:https://www.treehugger.com/cars/europe-40-drivers-say-next-car-will-be-electric.html https://www.treehugger.com/cars/europe-40-drivers-say-next-c...
- MBCook 8y agoThe backlog may be down but I’m with the GP that this was probably pent-up demand. I would expect another jump when (if) the fabled $30,000 model comes out. But can they keep up this level of demand for two years? Three years? I’m not so sure. Only time will tell.
- geerlingguy 8y agoI’m guessing there is a large market of people like me. Happy with my current middle of the road sedan, just waiting until it starts having major issues before looking at the next car. After test driving a leaf and model S I’ve decided there’s. I way I go for another non-electric, the driving experience is just so much better without the gas engine lag, transmission, noise, muck, maintenance etc. So I’m a few years the 3 will hopefully be cheaper and on my short list of cars to consider... maybe even used!
- resters 8y agoWith all the negative press directed at Musk it's easy to overlook the fact that he's done an incredible job leading Tesla through highly uncertain waters. Tesla's enemies are everyone from Trump to the incumbent car companies Tesla would have already soundly beaten if they hadn't received a massive bailout. I think based on this that Tesla's stock is still fairly significantly undervalued. I wouldn't buy it for anything other than a 5-10 year time horizon, during which time I think it will become obvious how superior Tesla's approach is to traditional manufacturing approaches. Of course, the enemies will still be able to attack through intellectual property theft, frivolous lawsuits, etc., but Tesla is one of the giants of modern manufacturing and design.
- twblalock 8y ago> Tesla's enemies are everyone from Trump to the incumbent car companies Tesla would have already soundly beaten if they hadn't received a massive bailout. Tesla also would not have survived without government money. And the idea that Tesla would have "soundly beaten" the other car companies is simply not possible to believe. They make and sell far more cars every year than Tesla has made since its founding. Tesla simply does not make enough cars to satisfy mass market demand. Tesla is not able to do this because its manufacturing processes are not mature. If every American wanted to buy a Tesla less than a million of them would be able to, and the rest would have to get their cars from the incumbent car companies. It’s hard to see how Tesla could beat the incumbents in such a scenario. I like Tesla, but come on, be realistic.
- Latteland 8y agoTesla got money from California (effectively) for selling no emissions credits to other car companies. Other companies could have made evs too, they were just against it, except Nissan which also benfitted for this with the leaf. The 7500 tax credits for buying large battery sized evs helped Tesla too, but people got credits for butingbmw i3, Nissan leaf, gm volt gm bolt. It served a purpose which was to help know kick off a new market and it's being deducted to half in 2019 based on sales over 200k cars. Only 2 us car companies didn't go bankrupt in the recession in in 2009, Ford and Tesla. Ford and Tesla both got govt loans to design evs, only Tesla had finished paying theirs back.
- taf2 8y agoAnecdotal but I see more and more tesla’s On the road especially model 3s
- kidsnow 8y agoIn the South Bay part of the Bay Area, they are like 1 out of every 10 cars.
- Gibbon1 8y agoI saw a map two years ago that showed a break down of sales by vehicle type and zip code. Some zip codes in the South Bay EV's were over 10% of sales. Demographically they were higher middle class neighborhoods. That to me sound like something one should take seriously because it shows that robust network effects are in play. A few people buy an EV and have no problem with them, that induces more people to consider them as a valid option.
- jd20 8y agoDriving through Cupertino neighborhoods, I've seen several homes with not one, not two, but three(!) Tesla's in their driveway. When I wash my Model S in the driveway, people walking by will often come up to tell me how much they love their own Tesla's (or wanting to know how I like mine). Never had that happen when I wash my Audi :) The Audi is even the more expensive car.
- jchb 8y agoYou might already know this, but you shouldn't really be washing your car on the driveway, especially if you aren't sure whether your drains there are connected to the sewer pipes, rather than the storm drain. A Tesla will give off less oil products but there is still the soap (phosphate) and rubber dust. A car wash treats and recycles the water.
- jd20 8y agoKind of OT, but I agree phosphate pollution's a big problem and there's a lot of measures people can take to wash their cars responsibly. I've switched to just a bucket and low-flow pressure washer, which uses about 30x less water than a garden hose (and even less than my shower head, and unlike my shower, only runs when I pull the trigger). As a result, I have no run-off from the driveway, and what little water does get used is mostly recaptured and used to water plants. Honestly, at this point I think I use more water to shower, and I definitely take far more showers than I wash my cars.
- smaili 8y ago> Tesla’s competitors are feeling it. Sales of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, the best-selling luxury sedan in the U.S., plunged 24 percent last month and are down 28 percent for the year through September. > And it’s doing so at a higher price than other mass-market cars. The most expensive versions of the Model 3 are currently the most popular, with an average selling price approaching $60,000. It would be very interesting if Tesla's surge in ranking would be caused more by fleeing luxury customers (from brands like the referenced Mercedes) versus gaining new customers.
- jvehent 8y agoThere is only a finite number of people willing/able to spend $60k on a recreational vehicle.
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoIt’s not a “recreational vehicle”, and people said the same thing about the Roadster, Model S, and Model X. They’ll still be saying it when Tesla is selling $1000 electric scooters: “Not everyone can afford a thousand dollars for a toy motorcycle!”
- toomuchtodo 8y agoIt's a $7.4 billion dollar market in North America. All cohorts are finite, but that's still a lot of dollars available to capture. https://www.statista.com/outlook/1060000/104/luxury-cars/north-america https://www.statista.com/outlook/1060000/104/luxury-cars/nor...
- Latteland 8y agoPlus Tesla just had a 6 billion dollar quarter selling the more expensive teslas. Wait till they sell the cheap version.
- stephengillie 8y ago> There is only a finite number of people willing/able to spend $1k on a mobile phone. A small modification.
- samfisher83 8y agoSedans in general have cratered. Everyone is back to buying SUVs and Trucks. Its like we are going back to 1999.
- prawn 8y agoThat's my gutfeel too. Seems like a very unfashionable format here in Australia. People buy SUVs, 4WDs (Pajero, Landcruiser), utes (trucks) and hatches. Sedans and "station wagons" are on the out.
- threeseed 8y agoProof of this: http://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-05/sick-of-sedans-u-s-car-sales-seen-falling-to-recession-levels http://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-05/sick-of-sedans...
- partiallypro 8y agoMost people don't buy SUV's, they buy "crossovers" which pack the capacity of an SUV but get way way better gas mileage. As for Trucks, they have improved considerably in gas mileage as well. But the SUV is mostly false, SUVs have bitten the dust, crossovers like Rav4, Outback, etc have taken over. Even in luxury brands, I see tons of BMW, Mercedes and Jaguar crossovers. They look nice.
- bgorman 8y agoI'm pretty sure the Rav4 is considered a SUV. I don't think the Outback is a crossover. Subaru's main crossover seems to be the XV.
- Phrodo_00 8y agoHe might be classifying anything monocoque as a crossover, but I don't think that's the common definition.
- partiallypro 8y agoToyota lists it as a crossover https://www.toyota.com/crossovers/ https://www.toyota.com/crossovers/ KBB lists the Outback, Crosstrek etc as crossovers https://www.kbb.com/subaru/crossovers/ https://www.kbb.com/subaru/crossovers/ When I think SUV, I think Tahoe, Sequoia, Escalade, Suburban, etc. Compact SUVs are SUVs in name only imo. You pretty much never see a traditional SUV on the road anymore.
- GreenPlastic 8y agoThe car is unbelievably good coming from someone who used to drive entry-level luxury sedans. It's light years beyond anything BMW, Infiniti and Lexus have to offer.
- abledon 8y agoTesla Model 3 is just the new iphone. Everyone wants the new thing. new Iphone model, new computer model, its not exciting anymore. The THING everyone wants now in our consumer society is the Tesla Model 3. It is a cultural icon to own right now.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- xltk 8y agoI personally wouldn't purchase a Model 3. I rented the long range version for a round-trip trip from San Francisco to Sacramento (about 90 miles/2 hours each way). The main things that stood out: - Changing volume and airflow through the central touchscreen were much more challenging than the physical knobs and buttons most cars have. I'd even argue they were distracting and dangerous to use while driving. I don't believe this was a learning curve issue. Having to accurately place your finger above a touch screen and repeatedly hit a plus button is an inferior experience to rotating a knob. - The self-driving ability has a long way to go before it is useful for anything except cruising on the freeway. In two separate instances, the car slowed at a stop sign down to 15mph before blowing through it (which could have been a non-cheap ticket that went on my record if a cop were around), and almost hit another car when two lanes merged into one. - The supercharging stations charge at a slower rate than advertised, and cost only a little less to use than filling up a car with unleaded gas. - The door handles are difficult to use. Maybe this is a learning curve issue, but pressing the handle in at the correct position takes more dexterity than simply pulling on a standard handle. The technology and presentation is impressive, but I felt the driving experience was subpar.
- CarVac 8y agoThe door handles are probably a deliberate choice to get the drag down as low as possible, without the expense of motorized handles like the S or motorized doors like the X. No other cars on the road have drag coefficients as low as the Model 3 (or the Model S, for that matter). From what I've seen, Teslas are the only cars that have the B-pillar flush to the glass, and flush, cavity-less door handles. That plus the perfectly smooth underbody nose to tail is what gives the Teslas better range per battery capacity than other electrics.
- FireBeyond 8y ago> No other cars on the road have drag coefficients as low as the Model 3 (or the Model S, for that matter). The Model S is the fourth lowest at 0.24, tied with the Mercedes S class, behind the Model 3 at 0.23. But leading the pack are the Mercedes CLA (0.22) and the Volkswagen XL1 (0.19).
- acconrad 8y agoI cannot for the life of me rationalize spending so much on a car. The $35,000 just doesn't make sense in New England, so I need to add in AWD. Then I need to add in the autopilot because isn't that the point of owning a Tesla so you don't have to drive your car someday? Now, with government incentives, this car is $50k. Couldn't you grab a Rav4 Hybrid with Comma AI and basically have an electric car with AWD for $30k less?
- freerobby 8y ago> I cannot for the life of me rationalize spending so much on a car. The $35,000 just doesn't make sense in New England, so I need to add in AWD. Then I need to add in the autopilot because isn't that the point of owning a Tesla so you don't have to drive your car someday? Now, with government incentives, this car is $50k. Nah, that's only if you're throwing in LR and a Premium Interior. $35k + $6k for AWD + $5k for AP = $46k. That's before any incentives or gas savings. And you're also getting an ADAS that outperforms Comma, a huge and growing Supercharger network, and all the OTA updates and hardware utilization to come. Skip Enhanced Autopilot software and you're only $5k over the average new car price (before incentives!). Tesla has built a profitable EV in a market that treats EVs as loss leaders. The market's about to learn a hard lesson. [1]https://mediaroom.kbb.com/2018-02-01-Average-New-Car-Prices-Rise-Nearly-4-Percent-For-January-2018-On-Shifting-Sales-Mix-According-To-Kelley-Blue-Book https://mediaroom.kbb.com/2018-02-01-Average-New-Car-Prices-...
- acconrad 8y agoWhere are you seeing that? I'm designing the Model 3 right now and with AWD and autopilot it comes to $63k before incentives and $53k after... https://3.tesla.com/model3/design#autopilot https://3.tesla.com/model3/design#autopilot
- freerobby 8y agoOP is referencing the $35k/standard range model, which is expected to ship in 3-6 months. I can't figure out a way to direct link you, but look in the top right of the page at https://3.tesla.com/model3/design/<YOUR https://3.tesla.com/model3/design/<YOUR RN# HERE>#battery
- dang 8y agoPersonal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again. We've had to warn you about this before. Your comment would have been fine with just the middle paragraph.
- illumin8 8y agoSorry, I guess I can't edit the comment after it's been flagged or moderated, or I'd edit out all but the middle paragraph.