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I thought that until Tesla wrecked everyone.

by cassac 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
majormajor 4y ago
Tesla was famously close to failing. So on one hand, post-Tesla, there's more public readiness for EVs. On the other hand, there's a huge established EV-native incumbent PLUS far more legacy brand competition in the market. So it's still a really risky playbook.
- cassac 4y ago
  I agree it was risky, and close to failing, but that’s what usually happens with great things. I don’t think any other car company that makes electric cars would say they aren’t playing catch up with Tesla. They seem to perpetually be a few years behind. I was just making my comment based on the parent comment saying it couldn’t be done. It’s done all the time in every segment. Never underestimate the bean counters from ruining the incumbents.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Tesla was close to failing in 2008. After that its 'Musk level' close to failing. Even in 2017 when they were losing billions, they still had lots of option to raise money and their margins were already clearly moving in the right direction.
alexb_ 4y ago
"wrecked"... Tesla didn't even come close to wrecking anybody. They came in as a new competitor, and are still massively overvalued because of investor delusion.
- cassac 4y ago
  They may be over valued but everybody is absolutely playing catch-up and are quite a bit away from their profit margins. What’s even worse for the legacy companies is Tesla is the Kleenex/Coke of electric cars to a lot of young minds.
  - V__ 4y ago
    Tesla makes better software right now. But the profit-margins argument seems to be a misconception [1]. Until Tesla distances itself from Musk, I also don't think the brand will stay 'cool' for that long. [1] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4573601-tesla-gross-margins-not-impressive-as-seem https://seekingalpha.com/article/4573601-tesla-gross-margins...
    - cassac 4y ago
      I don’t think those are fully like to like comparisons though. You have to run those numbers just for electric. Nobody I know would cross shop a Tesla and a Rav 4. They can have their margins on their ICE catalog but they don’t have it on their electric yet even with the dealer network numbers added in.
      - V__ 4y ago
        This we can agree on, but just as an example VW will have those margins within this year and electric sales are about a third of Teslas: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volkswagens-ev-business-profitable-combustion-engines-sooner-than-planned-ceo-2022-05-12/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...
- LanceJones 4y ago
  Toyota engineers just acknowledged that their teardown of a Model Y "revealed a work of art". Toyota. If my 17,000 shares make me delusional, so be it, friend.
  - night862 4y ago
    Heh, the art world is full of weird bs. My favorite piece by Pablo “Tesla” Picasso is this one: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/ran-over-something-now-17k-bill.269628/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/ran-over-something-n... Truly a work of art.
    - jryle70 4y ago
      You could try to be clever, or you could read what they were talking about: https://archive.is/PE0AZ https://archive.is/PE0AZ
      - night862 4y ago
        Ok, he's referring to the product of the giga-press as a work of art. Too bad they didnt print the engineer's rationale, because that article isn't about that. But it is certainly referring to the product of the Giga-press being cast as opposed to being an assembly. A similar advancement happened in the aerospace industry, except this time the press is already for sale from Italy. What I would rather see instead of one engineer gushing about a high-end manufacturing process would be Elon investing in automotive engineers who know where to route critical components and how to design maintainability instead of tanking shares on a social media vanity acquisition. Your investment is safe forever.
  - Corrado 4y ago
    Toyota article here - https://electrek.co/2023/02/28/tesla-model-y-work-of-art-toyota-tearing-down/ https://electrek.co/2023/02/28/tesla-model-y-work-of-art-toy...
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Claiming everybody else is delusional when you are probably no rich from speculating is always a fun claim. The car industry is consolidating. Chrysler is one example, they simply had no chance in hell to have any EV strategy. Now they have at least something thanks to their merger resulting in PSA. More such things will happen in the next 5 years. Go look at how many cars companies like GM used to sell, and how many they are selling now. Tesla is more profitable then GM and Ford combined, something that people would have not believed just a few years ago (not even mention debt, growth and other things). They are not "wrecked" but everybody in the car industry knows that Tesla together with the rise of China auto is gone be a huge hammer to the rest of the industry. But with business like this, it takes years for these things to unfold.
night862 4y ago
I dunno about that, from the top of my head I recall Daewoo to be the last auto make to withdraw from the states at least. Tesla has so far to go to “wreck” anybody who didn’t already pay for “full self-driving”.
basch 4y ago
Wrecked them how? It’s 22Q4 sales numbers are a quarter of GM. They currently rank in 9th place in production. It’s taken them a decade to get a dealer network built. Their repairs timeline sound just as horrifying as their competitors. https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2023-us-auto-sales-figures-by-manufacturer/ https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2023-us-auto-sales-figures-by-...
- cassac 4y ago
  But their owners love them and the kids love them. If you adjust the market to be just for what they do, electric cars and not all cars, they are indeed wrecking them. It was a segment the ICE car manufacturers mostly ignored and now they have profitable competition where it didn’t exist before. Maybe not wrecked but definitely lold.
  - basch 4y ago
    Lightly dented? Like I said, their lead means almost nothing. I don’t know what being loved really has to do with production. It won’t take long for a bunch of companies to have equally loved products, and in 30 years, Tesla’s “lead” will be a footnote. Unless they do, future tense, wreck everybody. It’s a weird response to to my claim that everything but the product matters just as much, if not more. I’m not at all saying Teslas product is or isn’t the best at the moment.
    - cassac 4y ago
      I guess I could agree to disagree? For the market as a whole maybe it is dented. But that quarter panel that got dented is straight wrecked. Nobody likes car dealerships anyway so nobody misses that. The new trend amongst the kids these days is buying cars without even test driving them. My point is that Rivian could easily find a crack that would allow them to be profitable and it wouldn’t even need to be as big as Teslas.
      - basch 4y ago
        Wrecked to me would be ICE car companies declaring bankruptcy and being sold off for parts.
amluto 4y ago
Tesla is really nothing special. It has one massive advantage: the supercharger network. Other than that, it has an excellent powertrain (eminently clonable), a pretty good nav system, a pretty good adaptive cruise control, no CarPlay or Android Auto, and no interior amenities worth mentioning. And they have absolutely terrible parasitic power consumption, a property that every other manufacturer has nailed for decades, because a car with a single lead-acid battery that parasitically discharges like a Tesla would be utterly useless. Tesla would like you to think they make the world’s best batteries, but they really don’t. They do have mindshare, though, and everyone else has been sitting on their butts and failing to compete effectively.
- rconti 4y ago
  Do other EV makers have better parasitic drain? I'm honestly not sure. My Tesla's isn't that bad, but it's not 0. Might be a couple miles a day, which isn't a ton of miles, but it's a lot of energy. It also seems they have a pretty significant efficiency advantage per kWh. Whenever I see EVs compared, the general consensus seems to be Tesla has a lead above everyone else.
- guiltygods 4y ago
  Not just mindshare, ability to crank out volume, captive battery production and vertical integration
  - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
    Ford in 1930s used to have this too and more (except the battery production). See Fordlandia.
rconti 4y ago
It feels to me like the F150 Lightning is closer to a Rivian than, say, an electric BMW is to a Tesla, in terms of tech. If I were shopping for a new pickup, it would be hard to choose between the Ford and the Rivian because Ford has the incumbent automaker advantages while Rivian has the "cool startup" advantages. But in passenger cars, Tesla still has the Supercharger moat, which the Rivian doesn't enjoy.

I thought that until Tesla wrecked everyone.

by cassac 4y ago

I thought that until Tesla wrecked everyone.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

majormajor 4y ago

Tesla was famously close to failing. So on one hand, post-Tesla, there's more public readiness for EVs. On the other hand, there's a huge established EV-native incumbent PLUS far more legacy brand competition in the market. So it's still a really risky playbook.

cassac 4y ago
I agree it was risky, and close to failing, but that’s what usually happens with great things. I don’t think any other car company that makes electric cars would say they aren’t playing catch up with Tesla. They seem to perpetually be a few years behind. I was just making my comment based on the parent comment saying it couldn’t be done. It’s done all the time in every segment. Never underestimate the bean counters from ruining the incumbents.
panick21_ 4y ago
Tesla was close to failing in 2008. After that its 'Musk level' close to failing. Even in 2017 when they were losing billions, they still had lots of option to raise money and their margins were already clearly moving in the right direction.

alexb_ 4y ago

"wrecked"... Tesla didn't even come close to wrecking anybody. They came in as a new competitor, and are still massively overvalued because of investor delusion.

cassac 4y ago
They may be over valued but everybody is absolutely playing catch-up and are quite a bit away from their profit margins. What’s even worse for the legacy companies is Tesla is the Kleenex/Coke of electric cars to a lot of young minds.
- V__ 4y ago
  Tesla makes better software right now. But the profit-margins argument seems to be a misconception [1]. Until Tesla distances itself from Musk, I also don't think the brand will stay 'cool' for that long. [1] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4573601-tesla-gross-margins-not-impressive-as-seem https://seekingalpha.com/article/4573601-tesla-gross-margins...
  - cassac 4y ago
    I don’t think those are fully like to like comparisons though. You have to run those numbers just for electric. Nobody I know would cross shop a Tesla and a Rav 4. They can have their margins on their ICE catalog but they don’t have it on their electric yet even with the dealer network numbers added in.
    - V__ 4y ago
      This we can agree on, but just as an example VW will have those margins within this year and electric sales are about a third of Teslas: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volkswagens-ev-business-profitable-combustion-engines-sooner-than-planned-ceo-2022-05-12/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...
LanceJones 4y ago
Toyota engineers just acknowledged that their teardown of a Model Y "revealed a work of art". Toyota. If my 17,000 shares make me delusional, so be it, friend.
- night862 4y ago
  Heh, the art world is full of weird bs. My favorite piece by Pablo “Tesla” Picasso is this one: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/ran-over-something-now-17k-bill.269628/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/ran-over-something-n... Truly a work of art.
  - jryle70 4y ago
    You could try to be clever, or you could read what they were talking about: https://archive.is/PE0AZ https://archive.is/PE0AZ
    - night862 4y ago
      Ok, he's referring to the product of the giga-press as a work of art. Too bad they didnt print the engineer's rationale, because that article isn't about that. But it is certainly referring to the product of the Giga-press being cast as opposed to being an assembly. A similar advancement happened in the aerospace industry, except this time the press is already for sale from Italy. What I would rather see instead of one engineer gushing about a high-end manufacturing process would be Elon investing in automotive engineers who know where to route critical components and how to design maintainability instead of tanking shares on a social media vanity acquisition. Your investment is safe forever.
- Corrado 4y ago
  Toyota article here - https://electrek.co/2023/02/28/tesla-model-y-work-of-art-toyota-tearing-down/ https://electrek.co/2023/02/28/tesla-model-y-work-of-art-toy...
panick21_ 4y ago
Claiming everybody else is delusional when you are probably no rich from speculating is always a fun claim. The car industry is consolidating. Chrysler is one example, they simply had no chance in hell to have any EV strategy. Now they have at least something thanks to their merger resulting in PSA. More such things will happen in the next 5 years. Go look at how many cars companies like GM used to sell, and how many they are selling now. Tesla is more profitable then GM and Ford combined, something that people would have not believed just a few years ago (not even mention debt, growth and other things). They are not "wrecked" but everybody in the car industry knows that Tesla together with the rise of China auto is gone be a huge hammer to the rest of the industry. But with business like this, it takes years for these things to unfold.

night862 4y ago

I dunno about that, from the top of my head I recall Daewoo to be the last auto make to withdraw from the states at least. Tesla has so far to go to “wreck” anybody who didn’t already pay for “full self-driving”.

basch 4y ago

Wrecked them how? It’s 22Q4 sales numbers are a quarter of GM. They currently rank in 9th place in production. It’s taken them a decade to get a dealer network built. Their repairs timeline sound just as horrifying as their competitors. https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2023-us-auto-sales-figures-by-manufacturer/ https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2023-us-auto-sales-figures-by-...

cassac 4y ago
But their owners love them and the kids love them. If you adjust the market to be just for what they do, electric cars and not all cars, they are indeed wrecking them. It was a segment the ICE car manufacturers mostly ignored and now they have profitable competition where it didn’t exist before. Maybe not wrecked but definitely lold.
- basch 4y ago
  Lightly dented? Like I said, their lead means almost nothing. I don’t know what being loved really has to do with production. It won’t take long for a bunch of companies to have equally loved products, and in 30 years, Tesla’s “lead” will be a footnote. Unless they do, future tense, wreck everybody. It’s a weird response to to my claim that everything but the product matters just as much, if not more. I’m not at all saying Teslas product is or isn’t the best at the moment.
  - cassac 4y ago
    I guess I could agree to disagree? For the market as a whole maybe it is dented. But that quarter panel that got dented is straight wrecked. Nobody likes car dealerships anyway so nobody misses that. The new trend amongst the kids these days is buying cars without even test driving them. My point is that Rivian could easily find a crack that would allow them to be profitable and it wouldn’t even need to be as big as Teslas.
    - basch 4y ago
      Wrecked to me would be ICE car companies declaring bankruptcy and being sold off for parts.

amluto 4y ago

Tesla is really nothing special. It has one massive advantage: the supercharger network. Other than that, it has an excellent powertrain (eminently clonable), a pretty good nav system, a pretty good adaptive cruise control, no CarPlay or Android Auto, and no interior amenities worth mentioning. And they have absolutely terrible parasitic power consumption, a property that every other manufacturer has nailed for decades, because a car with a single lead-acid battery that parasitically discharges like a Tesla would be utterly useless. Tesla would like you to think they make the world’s best batteries, but they really don’t. They do have mindshare, though, and everyone else has been sitting on their butts and failing to compete effectively.

rconti 4y ago
Do other EV makers have better parasitic drain? I'm honestly not sure. My Tesla's isn't that bad, but it's not 0. Might be a couple miles a day, which isn't a ton of miles, but it's a lot of energy. It also seems they have a pretty significant efficiency advantage per kWh. Whenever I see EVs compared, the general consensus seems to be Tesla has a lead above everyone else.
guiltygods 4y ago
Not just mindshare, ability to crank out volume, captive battery production and vertical integration
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  Ford in 1930s used to have this too and more (except the battery production). See Fordlandia.

rconti 4y ago

It feels to me like the F150 Lightning is closer to a Rivian than, say, an electric BMW is to a Tesla, in terms of tech. If I were shopping for a new pickup, it would be hard to choose between the Ford and the Rivian because Ford has the incumbent automaker advantages while Rivian has the "cool startup" advantages. But in passenger cars, Tesla still has the Supercharger moat, which the Rivian doesn't enjoy.