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> 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
by 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.
- Apocryphon 8y agoThe two values you're comparing differ by 60x.
- stephengillie 8y agoIs a car 60x more useful than a phone? (Honest question, and probably varies by user. Though most cars last longer than most phones.)
- Apocryphon 8y agoWell, the point is that it’s 60x more expensive.
- stephengillie 8y agoThe question is - does the price match the utility - does the 60x cost device provide 60x utility? Were these developers, I'd ask if the $900k developer is 60x better than the $30k administrator. Were these knives and forks, I could ask YouTube.
- colordrops 8y agoIt's $50k
- GreenPlastic 8y agoThere are also a great number of people who have never spent more than $35k on a car who are buying a M3.
- King-Aaron 8y ago$60k is not a lot of money to spend on a car in this day and age.
- davidcbc 8y agoThis is an absurdly out of touch comment. The vast majority of cars sold in the US aren't even close to $60k. The average new car is only $37k and only about 30% of car purchases are new cars.
- FireBeyond 8y agoAgreed. $60K is well into Mercedes E class, BMW 5 class, Audi S class territory. "Not that much" for the average US carbuyer, not so much.
- King-Aaron 8y agoYou've just listed a group of $100,000+ AUD cars there. Just as a point of interest.
- FireBeyond 8y agoRight, exactly - but yet to listen to the grandparent comment, "that's hardly much money to spend on a car these days".
- King-Aaron 8y agoTo highlight where I'm coming from, $37k USD is around $52K AUD, which then if you consider onroad and dealership costs, lands you in the ballpark of $60k AUD. Which is what you spend on a Kia Stinger, which while isn't an entry-level car, certainly isn't a Euro. https://www.carsales.com.au/demo/details/Kia-Stinger-2017/OAG-AD-16129345/?Cr=1 https://www.carsales.com.au/demo/details/Kia-Stinger-2017/OA...
- 8y ago
- joenathanone 8y agoThere is only a finite number of people.
- alexandros 8y agoI would like to go on the record as saying that the big car companies of today, short of a miracle, are on track to meet the big mobile phone companies of the pre-iPhone era. Remember when Blackberry, Nokia, Motorola, Alcatel, Sony seemed unassailable?
- Apocryphon 8y agoI would dispute that, in that big car companies have much deeper pockets, and thus have been readily spending on new tech, e.g. the big automaker acquisition of Cruise, Maven, Chariot. They seem more responsive to the changing nature of the industry.
- alexandros 8y agoAcquisitions are all well and good, but unfortunately, when an asteroid hits you, all the umbrellas in the world won't help. Tesla has been attacking the hard problems (like battery cost) for close to a decade while most others kept busy making fun of them. When you see Tesla causing drops to the tune of 15% or even 20% to the sales of premium ICE car brands, and who knows how much more it will be in the next quarters, a hit this big and this sudden can be quite destabilizing to a company with a highly optimized supply chain. Also, these companies haven't delivered something truly new in decades, and to do so now, under the gun, would require not a product revamp, but a culture revamp. Never heard one of those being pulled off. Innovation is hard, let's ask for government assistance: https://www.reuters.com/article/autoshow-paris-electric-squeeze/rpt-update-1-electric-cars-cast-growing-shadow-on-profits-idUSL8N1WI0VK https://www.reuters.com/article/autoshow-paris-electric-sque...
- tomp 8y ago> They seem more responsive to the changing nature of the industry. Yet most of their responses so far are on paper - they will start producing electric cars, sometime in the future.
- revscat 8y agoI don’t think the big automakers — especially the Americans and Japanese — can switch gears, as it were. The reasons for this are discussed elsewhere in this thread, but thus far the EV models produced by the legacy manufacturers have been underadvertised, token vehicles. They are not shifting resources away from their current exclusive focus on ICEs, and there is no sign they ever will. Sure, they’ll do a press release. Or something like the Bolt that is lived by owners but forgotten by GM itself, who happily continues on basically the same as yesterday. They can’t change. Maybe VW. Maybe. But GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda... I don’t see it. Toyota is still trying to make hydrogen a thing, ferchrissake. Meanwhile Tesla is eating the luxury segment alive. If — and it’s a big if — Tesla can achieve profitability with the Model 3 and get their crossover SUV into production, they’ll own the world.
- btilly 8y agoYou'd have to survey their customers. Speaking personally, my wife and I are new customers. This is the first time that we've spent over $30k on a car. Between rebates, the cost of gas, and reductions in maintenance costs, we think that we save somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 on the lifetime cost of ownership over the life of this car versus an ICE car. It is still a luxury, but between features like the driving assist, crash safety ratings, acceleration and so on, we are happy to spend it. Based on data for other models from other drivers, we have reason to believe that, barring accidents, the battery could realistically last us 500k miles. But we have set it to never charge over 80% of capacity to maximize that limit.
- haberman 8y ago> But we have set it to never charge over 80% of capacity to maximize that limit. New Tesla owner here, hadn't heard that! Will you not charge above 80% even on trips?
- btilly 8y agoThe factory default is that you only charge to 90%, and they advise you to only go to 100% for trips. We do 80%, but are willing to raise it for trips. The reason why it matters is that charging lithium ion batteries to 100% lowers their lifespan. Since we don't need the range normally, we leave it at 80%.
- greglindahl 8y agoYou might consider reading the manual! It does discuss the issue.
- mrfusion 8y agoI’m not convinced on the lower maintenance costs. Can you speak to that a bit? It seems like there’s still a lot that can go wrong and you’re stuck paying whatever tesla wants to charge you to fix it.
- webkike 8y ago
- Gibbon1 8y ago> Tesla's surge in ranking would be caused more by fleeing luxury customers Scuttlebutt I've heard is a lot of Lux brands haven't kept up with increasing quality expectations over the last 40 years. People expect their cars to go 120-150k miles without major problems and these cars often aren't living up to that.
- cagenut 8y agoI've seen lots of enterprise saas vendors leave simple things broken in their product for years and years because they like the fact that it spurs the customer to "reach out and engage in further discussion". wouldn't surprise me at all if merc sales people like that their customers come back to chat every year or so.
- GreenPlastic 8y agoSaw several people at work picking up this weekend. In a company of 200 there are now over 20 in the lot and this isn't the Bay Area.
- RickS 8y agoI've been driving the C class cars through CarToGo, their rideshare-as-marketing operation. They are horrid. Clunky, with seats that could never pass as leather, gaudy plastic bits everywhere, and needlessly complex interfaces. Not to mention their touch screens, which... ugh. They are like a poor person's idea of what a rich person's car might look like. Flash and trim and affectation with no underlying reason whatsoever. I mention this because I'm skeptical to attribute that drop to Tesla alone. I don't know about the high end (S class, etc), but the new C class is capable of tanking its own sales unassisted.
- jbob2000 8y agoI actually really like my 2016 C-class. It has a “hold” feature where, if you are at a stop light, you can give the brake pedal an extra push to “hold” the brakes and you can then take your foot off the brake pedal to rest, while the car keeps the brakes on. Then, when you start to accelerate, it automatically releases the brake and you go, just as if you swapped from the brake pedal to accelerator. You can also do this on a hill! This is a killer feature for me and I will look for it in my next car. It also has this eco game thing, where you earn “points” when you drive efficiently, and it penalizes you for driving inefficiently (hard acceleration, braking instead of coasting, inconsistent speed). This “game” has transformed the way I drive, it should be in every car. I will say that I’ve had two warranty repairs (one very serious - the alternator pulley exploded on the highway) and the car is only at 36,000km. Kinda happy it’s a lease!