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Leafs and Bolts were sold out (or leased out) almost everywhere they were available before the Model 3 was released. The problem was that they never made enoug

Leafs and Bolts were sold out (or leased out) almost everywhere they were available before the Model 3 was released. The problem was that they never made enough of them because their respective manufacturers didn't believe the market was very large, largely because battery technology when they were first released simply wasn't as good as it is now.

epistasis 6y ago
These awful manufacturers have also actively sandbagged their designs, making them less desirable and less normal, in an attempt to limit their appeal. Car manufacturers are masters of marketing. Their choices in how they market these cars are very intentional.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  They were following the Prius strategy: the (original) Prius models were deliberately designed to be ugly to stand out and make a statement.
- CountSessine 6y ago
  I'm not even sure that it was an attempt to limit their appeal. There's a whole generation of old car executives who still think that anyone who would want an electric car is some sort of hippie-moonbat and you need to make the car look like a plastic sex-toy space capsule to appeal to that moonbat market. And then Tesla comes along with great engineering and a more conservative body design and eats their lunches.
kjksf 6y ago
US sales of Nissan Leaf in 2016 was 14k. In 2019 it was 12k. If Nissan Leaf was sold out in U.S. it's only because Nissan decided not to make enough of them. Or they made exactly the very small amount that people were willing to buy. Bolt was even worse. They did 23k in 2017 and dropped to 16k in 2019. GM dealers were so desperate to get rid of them that at some point they offered up to $10k cash rebate. At that despite the fact that GM admitted they are loosing money on Bolt even when sold at full price. 20k a year in U.S. market of ~10 million cars is a rounding error. Whatever the reason, no one except Tesla was selling EV cars in US at non-laughable numbers. In contrast, Tesla sales went from 50k in 2017 to 195k in 2019.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  Like I said... The problem was that they never made enough of them because they didn't believe the market existed. Note that Tesla is also losing money on the Model 3 (and indeed, all models of Teslas) when using the same accounting practices as other automakers. Tesla only has high margins when using non-standard accounting.
  - cptskippy 6y ago
    Even if they made a million of the Leaf, there was never demand. Now that everyone is point that out to you, you're trying to pivot to saying that Tesla is losing money on their EVs. Even if they are, so what? Tesla's stated goal was to shepherd in the mass adoption of EVs as quickly as possible. They only need to remain in business long enough for every major auto manufacturer to start selling EVs in mass quantities. Once that happens they can just vanish and they'll have won.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      The BS about "shepharding" mass adoption was just marketing speak. It's what Toyota said with the Prius, GM with the Cruise, and Nissan with the Leaf. They all grew their respective markets; the difference is that Tesla was the only one to go all in on EVs and make it their only market (and Tesla owes Toyota, GM, and Nissan, for demonstrating the market for green cars and making them trendy with the wealthy segments of the auto-buying population). Moreover, CA and the EU have far more to do with EV adoption that Tesla, by creating the market incentives for consumers to buy EVs and other green vehicles, and the clean car credits that have singlehandedly kept Tesla afloat the past 5 years while they lose money making cars.
      - cptskippy 6y ago
        Serious question, are you a Tesla Short Seller? You have all sorts of excuses to dismiss Tesla's success in the market. Nissan and GM under produced, Nissan adopted Toyota's Prius ugly car strategy, now that EVs are cool the incumbents will out produce Tesla, Tesla is only successful because of everyone else, Tesla only exists because of government handouts, blah blah blah... You are trying to come up with every angle you can to excuse away the the fact that Tesla has been successful making a product people actually wanted and not a compliance vehicle purposefully made unattractive to ensure only a limited audience would purchase it.
cptskippy 6y ago
> Leafs and Bolts were sold out (or leased out) almost everywhere they were available before the Model 3 was released. That's not true, people were leasing Leafs for tax credits the dumping them as soon as the lease expired. There was a glut of off lease Leafs on the market as early as 2017. I picked up a 2015 Leaf with 15k miles on it for ~$14k off lease in 2017 before the Model 3 went into production. Nissan started manufacturing Leafs in 2010 and it wasn't until fall 2020 that they managed to build their 500,000th. By comparison, the Model 3 went into production in 2017 and they built the 500,000th in March of 2020. Tesla managed to build and sell more EVs in under than 3 years than Nissan did in 10. Either Nissan was stifling production or there was no demand for the product.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  There was intense demand for the Leaf in California. The waiting list was a year long through 2016, and in LA at least there was still a waiting list well into 2017. However, Nissan only ever made a few thousand Leafs a year and only made them available in select markets. By comparison, the Model 3 went into production in 2017 and they built the 500,000th in March of 2020. BMW, VW, Toyota, and Ford have all launched new models in significantly greater numbers over shorter timeframes and with fewer employees than Tesla. The Passat, for example, went from 50,000 cars made/year (at the Chattanooga factory) to 250,000 cars made/year in just over a year, with 1/5 the employees of the Tesla line, minimal rework required...and here's the real kicker: while making an actual profit per car under standard accounting practices (not Tesla's imaginary profit per car that leaves out costs the other automakers include in unit economics).
  - cptskippy 6y ago
    > There was intense demand for the Leaf in California. The waiting list was a year long through 2016, and in LA at least there was still a waiting list well into 2017. No there wasn't. Leaf sales dropped 43% from 2014 to 2015 and were even worse in 2016 for a number of reasons. The first was the Bolt was announced in early 2016 and the Model 3 in mid 2016 [1]. The second reason was the 2016 cost $5000 more than the 2015 because of a larger battery that only gave it 27% greater range (107 miles total)[1]. The third reason was that cosmetically it was unchanged from prior years [1]. The final reason was that there was an influx of cheap Leafs on the market[2]. The only waiting list in 2016 was for receiving your EV Rebate from the state[3]. The waiting list for the original Leaf was only 20,000 compared to the Model 3 which exceeded 300,000. > BMW, VW, Toyota, and Ford have all launched new models in significantly greater numbers over shorter timeframes and with fewer employees than Tesla. Ok? Incumbent car manufacturers who have been building cars for 50+ years can ramp up manufacturing of a new model ICE faster than a company that's just over a decade old that had to build an entirely new factory from the ground up. That should surprise no one. So what about EVs? VW only managed to product around 30k of the ID.3 in 2020, it wants to build 300k in 2021. Ford's new Mach-E is limited to 50k units in 2021. Why? Both are due in large part to production constraints with the battery. The battery problem isn't going to go away and everyone, including Tesla is being throttled by it. [1] https://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/05/facing-bolt-tesla-nissan-ev-leadership/ https://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/05/facing-bolt-tesla-nissan... [2] https://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/16/cheap-used-nissan-leaf-ev/ https://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/16/cheap-used-nissan-leaf-e... [3] https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/sd-fi-vehicle-rebate-20160923-story.html https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/s...

epistasis 6y ago

These awful manufacturers have also actively sandbagged their designs, making them less desirable and less normal, in an attempt to limit their appeal. Car manufacturers are masters of marketing. Their choices in how they market these cars are very intentional.

gamblor956 6y ago
They were following the Prius strategy: the (original) Prius models were deliberately designed to be ugly to stand out and make a statement.
CountSessine 6y ago
I'm not even sure that it was an attempt to limit their appeal. There's a whole generation of old car executives who still think that anyone who would want an electric car is some sort of hippie-moonbat and you need to make the car look like a plastic sex-toy space capsule to appeal to that moonbat market. And then Tesla comes along with great engineering and a more conservative body design and eats their lunches.

kjksf 6y ago

US sales of Nissan Leaf in 2016 was 14k. In 2019 it was 12k. If Nissan Leaf was sold out in U.S. it's only because Nissan decided not to make enough of them. Or they made exactly the very small amount that people were willing to buy. Bolt was even worse. They did 23k in 2017 and dropped to 16k in 2019. GM dealers were so desperate to get rid of them that at some point they offered up to $10k cash rebate. At that despite the fact that GM admitted they are loosing money on Bolt even when sold at full price. 20k a year in U.S. market of ~10 million cars is a rounding error. Whatever the reason, no one except Tesla was selling EV cars in US at non-laughable numbers. In contrast, Tesla sales went from 50k in 2017 to 195k in 2019.

gamblor956 6y ago
Like I said... The problem was that they never made enough of them because they didn't believe the market existed. Note that Tesla is also losing money on the Model 3 (and indeed, all models of Teslas) when using the same accounting practices as other automakers. Tesla only has high margins when using non-standard accounting.
- cptskippy 6y ago
  Even if they made a million of the Leaf, there was never demand. Now that everyone is point that out to you, you're trying to pivot to saying that Tesla is losing money on their EVs. Even if they are, so what? Tesla's stated goal was to shepherd in the mass adoption of EVs as quickly as possible. They only need to remain in business long enough for every major auto manufacturer to start selling EVs in mass quantities. Once that happens they can just vanish and they'll have won.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    The BS about "shepharding" mass adoption was just marketing speak. It's what Toyota said with the Prius, GM with the Cruise, and Nissan with the Leaf. They all grew their respective markets; the difference is that Tesla was the only one to go all in on EVs and make it their only market (and Tesla owes Toyota, GM, and Nissan, for demonstrating the market for green cars and making them trendy with the wealthy segments of the auto-buying population). Moreover, CA and the EU have far more to do with EV adoption that Tesla, by creating the market incentives for consumers to buy EVs and other green vehicles, and the clean car credits that have singlehandedly kept Tesla afloat the past 5 years while they lose money making cars.
    - cptskippy 6y ago
      Serious question, are you a Tesla Short Seller? You have all sorts of excuses to dismiss Tesla's success in the market. Nissan and GM under produced, Nissan adopted Toyota's Prius ugly car strategy, now that EVs are cool the incumbents will out produce Tesla, Tesla is only successful because of everyone else, Tesla only exists because of government handouts, blah blah blah... You are trying to come up with every angle you can to excuse away the the fact that Tesla has been successful making a product people actually wanted and not a compliance vehicle purposefully made unattractive to ensure only a limited audience would purchase it.

cptskippy 6y ago

> Leafs and Bolts were sold out (or leased out) almost everywhere they were available before the Model 3 was released. That's not true, people were leasing Leafs for tax credits the dumping them as soon as the lease expired. There was a glut of off lease Leafs on the market as early as 2017. I picked up a 2015 Leaf with 15k miles on it for ~$14k off lease in 2017 before the Model 3 went into production. Nissan started manufacturing Leafs in 2010 and it wasn't until fall 2020 that they managed to build their 500,000th. By comparison, the Model 3 went into production in 2017 and they built the 500,000th in March of 2020. Tesla managed to build and sell more EVs in under than 3 years than Nissan did in 10. Either Nissan was stifling production or there was no demand for the product.

gamblor956 6y ago
There was intense demand for the Leaf in California. The waiting list was a year long through 2016, and in LA at least there was still a waiting list well into 2017. However, Nissan only ever made a few thousand Leafs a year and only made them available in select markets. By comparison, the Model 3 went into production in 2017 and they built the 500,000th in March of 2020. BMW, VW, Toyota, and Ford have all launched new models in significantly greater numbers over shorter timeframes and with fewer employees than Tesla. The Passat, for example, went from 50,000 cars made/year (at the Chattanooga factory) to 250,000 cars made/year in just over a year, with 1/5 the employees of the Tesla line, minimal rework required...and here's the real kicker: while making an actual profit per car under standard accounting practices (not Tesla's imaginary profit per car that leaves out costs the other automakers include in unit economics).
- cptskippy 6y ago
  > There was intense demand for the Leaf in California. The waiting list was a year long through 2016, and in LA at least there was still a waiting list well into 2017. No there wasn't. Leaf sales dropped 43% from 2014 to 2015 and were even worse in 2016 for a number of reasons. The first was the Bolt was announced in early 2016 and the Model 3 in mid 2016 [1]. The second reason was the 2016 cost $5000 more than the 2015 because of a larger battery that only gave it 27% greater range (107 miles total)[1]. The third reason was that cosmetically it was unchanged from prior years [1]. The final reason was that there was an influx of cheap Leafs on the market[2]. The only waiting list in 2016 was for receiving your EV Rebate from the state[3]. The waiting list for the original Leaf was only 20,000 compared to the Model 3 which exceeded 300,000. > BMW, VW, Toyota, and Ford have all launched new models in significantly greater numbers over shorter timeframes and with fewer employees than Tesla. Ok? Incumbent car manufacturers who have been building cars for 50+ years can ramp up manufacturing of a new model ICE faster than a company that's just over a decade old that had to build an entirely new factory from the ground up. That should surprise no one. So what about EVs? VW only managed to product around 30k of the ID.3 in 2020, it wants to build 300k in 2021. Ford's new Mach-E is limited to 50k units in 2021. Why? Both are due in large part to production constraints with the battery. The battery problem isn't going to go away and everyone, including Tesla is being throttled by it. [1] https://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/05/facing-bolt-tesla-nissan-ev-leadership/ https://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/05/facing-bolt-tesla-nissan... [2] https://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/16/cheap-used-nissan-leaf-ev/ https://www.autoblog.com/2016/02/16/cheap-used-nissan-leaf-e... [3] https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/sd-fi-vehicle-rebate-20160923-story.html https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/s...