5 ms·

It's astounding to me how much less appealing Tesla has become as a brand since Musk decide to YOLO his way into Twitter. SpaceX is still so far ahead, no one q

• TheHappyOddish 4y ago
  This view seems pretty disconnected with reality. 1. Most people are not on Twitter and know little about Twitter or its ownership. In fact if you want to refine that down, this applies to most people capable of buying EVs in the world. You are likely in a bubble if you disagree here. 2. There are no alternatives that beat Tesla on price, performance and range. Many win on 2 (and BYD are moving the right way), but I've been hearing this for the 15 years Tesla has made cars for. Nobody seems to be getting close, and this so called "early lead" seems firmly established now. 3. Similar to 1, most Tesla owners know little to nothing about the CEO, just like most Ford owners. This was not true early on - or even 4 years ago - but the ownership has swelled and those early adopters with high knowledge are a much smaller percentage now.
• sebzim4500 4y ago
  Are there metrics in which Tesla sales are dropping? I can't find any by googling, but I also can't find accurate data for the last two quarters. If your evidence for this 'finding out' is purely the prevailing sentiment of HN/reddit/twitter, then I would mostly disregard it.
  • evan_ 4y ago
    I expect sales are trending upwards but maybe not as quickly as they forecast- the price drops kind of speak for themselves imho.
    • redox99 4y ago
      In my opinion they are on track to meet the 1.8M deliveries forecast. The only question is how much margins were hit with the price drops.
  • jml78 4y ago
    Tesla is still selling every vehicle they can produce. They are still supply constrained. They sold more EVs last quarter than their competitors combined all last year.
    • CamperBob2 4y ago
      Why are they cutting prices, then?
      • LammyL 4y ago
        Tesla is in an infinite loop of building efficiencies and lowering manufacturing costs. Elon has said many times that the lower the price of a car, the more market share opens up. Their margins are in the 20-25% range whereas a legacy auto maker is below 13%. There is a lot of room to cut prices and still make money.
        • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
          Well that's confusing, people seem to be claiming different things. One is that they sell cars as fast as y If they continue to 100% sell out, why reduce margins?
          • CamperBob2 4y ago
            [flagged]
          • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
            Hmmm, message got mangled. "Well that's confusing, people seem to be claiming different things. One is that they sell out immediately, the other is that they need to reduce margins to increase the market size. If they continue to 100% sell out, why reduce margins?
          • LammyL 4y ago
            Manufacturing capacity and output are also increasing as they build more Gigafactories and optimize existing ones. The price changes are an optimization to balance sales and production output to avoid shortages or inventory.
  • abraham 4y ago
    > Tesla cuts US prices for fifth time since January https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/07/business/tesla-cuts-prices/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/07/business/tesla-cuts-prices/in... It seems like there is some effect or they probably wound't be cutting prices.
    • LammyL 4y ago
      They are cutting prices because they are cutting manufacturing costs. They are able to obtain the same margin after lowering the prices. The price cuts result in more sales.
    • mardifoufs 4y ago
      That would only be true if production had stagnated, which isn't the case. If they produce twice as many cars as they did last year, cutting prices does not mean that they are selling less due to the twitter takeover.
• jml78 4y ago
  Musk has really hurt the Tesla brand but they are still crushing the competition in the EV space. I keep waiting for one of the legacy brands to compete and they keep screwing it up
  • redeeman 4y ago
    so many says that, but does any tesla owner actually think so?
    • jml78 4y ago
      I am a Tesla owner but I am not a car guy. I wanted an EV that could replace my ICE vehicle. It is changing but right now, I still wouldn’t consider a non-Tesla vehicle, not because of the cars but the charging network. I have the adapter to charge at CCS1 stations(everyone but Tesla) but they are always broken and not maintained. The charging infrastructure network sucks for everyone but Tesla. The best thing that happened for non-Tesla EVs is Tesla committing to install CCS1 magic docks at new supercharger stations. That is great for them and a negative for Tesla owners.
      • TheHappyOddish 4y ago
        Amusingly, everywhere else in the world Teslas have CCS charging as do most people, and we all carry type 2 adapters for non CCS charging stations.
  • heresie-dabord 4y ago
    > legacy brands [...] keep screwing it up Mr Musk is not doing his own "legacy" any favours. Maybe he is subverting his own reality-distortion field. But I admit it, you have "nerd-sniped" me. According to this report, global EV sales are about 10% of vehicle sales. (https://insideevs.com/news/651978/world-top-ev-oem-sales-2022q4/ https://insideevs.com/news/651978/world-top-ev-oem-sales-202...) So who is selling all the vehicles in the world? Ford, Toyota, and GM are the leaders. ("Legacy"...) (https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2022-us-vehicle-sales-figures-by-brand/ https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2022-us-vehicle-sales-figures-...) The EV market has grown but it is still small. Tesla has a big piece of a small market. Tesla is leading in this small market, but there is no way that Tesla can put as many cars on the road as some of the "legacy" manufacturers. The company is constrained by capacity, by cost demographic, and by electrical infrastructure. Sales may also be affected by the antics of Elon Musk. As for the "legacy" manufacturers right now, Ford, GM, Toyota, Hyundai, and Kia sell respectable BEVs. GM had the Volt PHEV and then discontinued it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt). By all reports, the car was a winner. "Until December 2018, the Volt/Ampera family of vehicles was the world's all-time bestselling plug-in hybrid vehicle. As of December 2019, the Chevrolet Volt is listed as the all-time top-selling plug-in hybrid in the American market." Then GM made exploding Bolts, unfortunately... We can reasonably say that the hybrid solution is still a good solution for many buyers. So Toyota hasn't been wrong. Also keep some doubt in mind about laws being passed in some large markets that aim to constrain and eventually eliminate sales of ICE vehicles. It's reasonable to be skeptical about the economics of such laws. EU manufacturers are trying (and succeeding) to include some form of ICE in the legal framework of future transportation. It would not surprise a skeptical observer to see them succeed in the end. (https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/eu-proposes-exception-e-fuel-combustion-engines-2035-2023-03-21/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/eu-pro...) Ford now makes few passenger cars. The Mach-E is selling a fraction of Tesla sales but reviews suggest that the Mach-E is a good vehicle. (https://fordauthority.com/2023/02/ford-mustang-mach-e-sales-trail-model-y-beat-id-4-in-2022/ https://fordauthority.com/2023/02/ford-mustang-mach-e-sales-...) (https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a42409121/ford-number-two-in-ev-sales-in-2022-behind-tesla/ https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a42409121/ford-n...) The F150 Lightning was not priced realistically at the outset (perhaps for marketing reasons). It is hard to see people outside the North American market buying many F-150 Lightnings. (https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/17/23514435/ford-electric-f-150-lightning-price-increase https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/17/23514435/ford-electric-f...) Toyota has debuted a BEV and has the depth to gain more of the market. Its BEV is #2 in Norway, for example. Toyota is selling more models and roughly three times more vehicles than Tesla. Its PHEVs have been successful. Toyota can recover in the US BEV market... It might help if Toyota found a name more appealing than "bZ4X" for its first large-battery BEV. Then there was the problem with the wheels not staying on... Oops. (https://jalopnik.com/toyota-only-expects-to-sell-10-000-bz4xs-this-year-1850030534 https://jalopnik.com/toyota-only-expects-to-sell-10-000-bz4x...)
• transcoderx 4y ago
  I view his takeover positively. If I need a car in the future, I would love to make it a Tesla.
• mardifoufs 4y ago
  Not buying a car because of twitter antics is something only the terminally online would do to be honest. Tesla car sales prove exactly that, they are basically doubling their production every year. And this is coming from someone who has 0 interest in buying one and has never bought into the Musk hype. But even the biggest Musk detractors have had a lot of trouble just leaving Twitter for good, so the average joe is completely unconcerned by his antics. The only reason why I could see Tesla losing its "cachet" is that they are now so common that I almost seem to see more of them (here in Quebec) than Honda Civics. But maybe that's more of a regional thing.
  • inpdx 4y ago
    I absolutely would never support him in any way based on how he's treated Twitter employees. Call it what you want, I'm quite sure I'm not an outlier.
    • TheHappyOddish 4y ago
      I'm extremely confident you are an outlier. Most people buying cars don't know the car company CEOs name, much less their management record.
    • jbm 4y ago
      Just wait until you find out how restaurants treat their employees. Or how grocery stores do. Or farms for that matter. The plight of well paid IT employees is not at the top of the list of reasonable concerns.
    • redox99 4y ago
      It's interesting that there's a lot of people that will not buy a Tesla because of Elon Musk's politics/twitter/whatever, but at the same time they have no problem buying a VW, after Dieselgate (not saying that's your case).
• HopenHeyHi 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • MBCook 4y ago
    There is plenty of history in the tech industry to show that valuations are not terribly meaningful. Theranos?
    • HopenHeyHi 4y ago
      There is plenty of history in the tech industry to show that valuations are not terribly meaningful. Theranos? OP claims Tesla brand has suffered greatly due to Musk "behaving badly". Implicit that everybody in the universe must agree with him what is good and bad behavior and his anecdotal personal subjective opinion is worth anything. Meanwhile back in reality these things are tracked. The Tesla brand is presently the #1 car brand in the world and has done nothing but swing upwards in recent years. The literal opposite of the fiction peddled. This makes such claims look petty to the point of derangement. What next, an invitation to stick little pins into a Musk voodoo doll? Your contribution: herp derp Theranos. You didn't even read what you are responding to which has zilch to do with market caps and valuations. Just copy paste "I hate Musk and am blinded by inept rage" in all these threads and be done with it.
      • llamaLord 4y ago
        BuT eLOn SAiD mEan ThINgs oN tWittEr!!!!!!! I really do wonder how much of the animosity towards him these days is just driven by Tall-Poppy Syndrome within the tech industry.
        • HopenHeyHi 4y ago
          [flagged]
• MBCook 4y ago
  This was bound to happen either way. I saw a great video on YouTube a while ago. I can’t remember who made it. It analyzed Tesla’s history and forecasted they were in big trouble. The thesis was basically they wasted every lead they had. They could have gotten the X out the door faster and cheaper without the gull-wing doors, something probably no one cared enough about to base their buying decisions on. The 3 could have been out faster if Musk didn’t keep trying to fully automate production from day one, something no one had accomplished, and flush a ton of money in the process. They could have been further on the semi if they had focused on it. They could have had a truck on the market for years by now (when Ford and Chevy now do) if they weren’t trying to do something so out there. Trucks are the number one category of vehicles in the US and they chose to blow ignore that market. They’ve had tons of time to get better at quality. They may have the best charging network but but the standard everyone else uses is being built fast, so that advantage is shrinking. The visual designs of the cars have never really changed when other automakers change them every few years. Service complaints are still a big problem. And all that time and money (and bad PR) on “full self driving” that is still is nowhere close to the original promise. But that seems to be almost the number one focus. It basically gave a very strong case for poor management. Tesla has done a ton, no question. EVs wouldn’t be as big today as they are without the huge push from Tesla. But Tesla could have been so much further ahead if they had chosen to be. I think the Twitter drama is just highlighting his management style and making people take a more realistic look at things, removing a lot of benefit of the doubt he was given before.
  • transcoderx 4y ago
    Pity the maker of the video didn't start their own car company to smash the competition with their superior as strategic talent.
• andrewinardeer 4y ago
  Tesla's software is light years ahead of other EVs and ICEs.