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I’m glad there finally seems to be a push to a better standard in North America. I’m really curious how this affects Teslas market share though going forward.

by dagmx 3y ago

I’m glad there finally seems to be a push to a better standard in North America. I’m really curious how this affects Teslas market share though going forward. Their supercharger network is why we continue with them despite countless other issues. It’s their biggest moat as far as I’m concerned. Now I have significantly more options, and my next car will not be a Tesla. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Is the brand name of being effectively the gas station of EVs worth it to them? I assume there’ll be a surcharge , so is it better for them to have the biggest slice of much smaller pies?

rootusrootus 3y ago
> I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Definitely not alone. I'm on my second Tesla, and from what I can see of Tesla's plans for the future, I think it is likely I will not buy another for my next car. I'm very happy that everyone else is jumping on board with NACS.
dahfizz 3y ago
The long term future of Tesla is a battery manufacturer and a charging network. Those are the two things they are good at. The cars themselves are quickly being beaten out by the larger players.
- techdmn 3y ago
  I'm happy to consider a non-Tesla (mostly because I'd really prefer a more traditional gauge cluster and more physical controls), but have struggled to find anything that beats the price for performance of the Model 3 Performance. And yes, I realize I'm a niche buyer.
  - dahfizz 3y ago
    You're right that the model 3 performance is still a convincing product, but cars like the Mustang Mach-E and BMW i4 are coming close. A few years ago there was no good option besides tesla, but in another couple years tesla will have fallen behind the competition
    - vxNsr 3y ago
      BMW in my circles has the reputation as being a brand you buy when you can afford to have a car in the shop most of the time. Most American brands have reputation as just being really poorly built and bad value props. Not sure how either of those two options overcomes that view.
      - w0m 3y ago
        >a brand you buy when you can afford to have a car in the shop most of the time TBF, unless you are in a Niche market (off roading a land rover) - it's generally hard to buy a bad car today. Is a Camry more reliable than a 3 series? Yes. But you're talking 4 9s vs 5 under warranty; being near a good dealership with good service is markedly more important than brand reputation. If my Audi/BMW/Volvo are in the shop for a week every other year and they easily give a loaner to cover, does it really matter? At that point, the cup holder being 5% better placed for convenient access matters more.
        vxNsr 3y ago
        Once you’re out of warranty BMW tend to “implode” like everything breaks at once. But even in warranty dealing with going to the dealership and getting the repair is a huge hassle vs just having a car that stays out of your way. Time is our most valuable asset and giving it up to stupid things like waiting in dealership waiting rooms, regardless of how much free coffee and popcorn they have just isn’t my idea of time well spent.
        w0m 3y ago
        We had a first-year X1. Starter went after ~10,000 miles. Dealership was garbage (hence my comments above), but still towed us home and dropped off a loaner-car for the ~week it took to fix. Annoying, wasted ~hour waiting for toe truck to pick us up; but overall not a horrendous experience (despite piling 3 adults and 2 dogs into toe truck). I had a 2010 Impreza, ~first month or two of ownership - dashboard went nuts and i pulled over. Car got towed to dealership - they found nothing wrong. Lost an evening and no loaner car in the ~48h it took them to determine 'nothing wrong'. Two 'new' cars - vastly better experience with one than the other. Anecdotal of course; but > even in warranty dealing with going to the dealership and getting the repair is a huge You get that with any car - my Tacoma was indestructible and still had multiple recalls I had to drop it off for. You are correct if you're talking driving a car into the ground though - I'd vastly rather have a 10 y/o v6 Taco than an 8 y/o supercharged Dakota.
- MattRix 3y ago
  Not a big fan of Tesla myself, but surely if they figure out self driving that’ll make their cars relevant for the forseeable future? On top of that they seem to be able to make cars cheaper and more quickly than most of the incumbents.
  - afavour 3y ago
    For sure. But that’s an absolutely massive “if”. Almost guaranteed we’ll be transitioning to EVs (I mean, we already are at a small scale) before full self driving is reliable.
  - traceroute66 3y ago
    > they seem to be able to make cars cheaper and more quickly than most of the incumbents And that's exactly what the output of their factories feel like. Cheap and quickly built. ;-) More haste, less speed and all that ...
  - wsatb 3y ago
    The big players are just late to the game, but have been making cars for decades. They will easily overtake Tesla on number of EVs built as they transition. Tesla isn’t good at making cars. And every year my confidence in full self driving goes down. They are good at charging though and will print money doing that.
    - mywittyname 3y ago
      I wouldn't call the established players "late to the game" vis-a-vis self-driving. They've been dumping plenty into research and acquisition and are probably near parity with Telsa. The perception of the larger players as laggards comes from the fact that they aren't as keen to lie consumers and investors. Their leadership doesn't enjoy the same privileges as Musk does.
    - Reason077 3y ago
      The big incumbents (US, EU, Japanese) have high cost bases and may struggle to compete on price with Tesla, as well as emerging Chinese competition. The real "secret sauce" behind Tesla right now is that they've figured out how to produce affordable, desirable EVs at scale while maintaining industry-leading margins.
- traceroute66 3y ago
  > The long term future of Tesla is a battery manufacturer and a charging network. Those are the two things they are good at. Agree 100%. At present, Tesla really feels like a bit of a "Jack of all trades, master of none" job. I'm certainly no Elon fanboi, but I will happily state that there are clearly a number of things they do well (certain core components and the charging network). But the cars themselves as a whole. They feel like what they are. Cheaply built, but sold at a premium price. Tesla would do well if they became the OEM's OEM. You know, a bit like how Dell, HP and everyone else ship servers with Seagate drives. Tesla should become the Seagate and leave the outer shell bit to others.
  - minhazm 3y ago
    > At present, Tesla really feels like a bit of a "Jack of all trades, master of none" job. That's an odd take. Model Y is the best selling vehicle in the world, and the second best selling vehicle in the US after the Ford F-150. It outsells the Corolla, Camry, Rav4, Civic, etc. Look at Mercedes, BMW and Audi sales, they've been plummeting because everyone is buying a Tesla instead. They're also the leading battery storage company and their battery storage business has been growing like crazy. > But the cars themselves as a whole. They feel like what they are. Cheaply built, but sold at a premium price. This has become such a meme that I think anyone who says it has never driven a Tesla for more than a few hours. The interior quality is not on par with Mercedes/BMW and maybe there's a few panel gaps, but every other part of the car is significantly better. The handling, infotainment system, performance, efficiency, autopilot, maintenance, etc. A $50k Model Y competes with $70-80k cars, but has the interior of a $35k car. Most people are more than happy with that trade off and that's why it sells so well.
    - almost_usual 3y ago
      > They're also the leading battery storage company and their battery storage business has been growing like crazy. Do you have a source on this? I assumed Tesla outsourced most of their batteries from CATL, Panasonic, and LG. https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/2023060514-catl-drops-despite-denying-rumor-of-losing-biggest-client-tesla-in-us https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/2023060514-catl-drops-despi... CATL seems to be ahead of everyone. https://thedriven.io/2023/04/21/worlds-largest-battery-maker-announces-major-breakthrough-in-battery-density/amp/ https://thedriven.io/2023/04/21/worlds-largest-battery-maker...
- brianstorms 3y ago
  I sometimes suspect what's really going on with Tesla is that they want to become the world's manufacturer of EVs of all sorts, utility-scale energy storage systems, and software for EVs including ADAS. Musk has said it: "the factory is the product." I kinda wonder if the real goal is, as the legacy OEMs quake, rattle, flail around begging for government handouts, and start to fail, Tesla knocks on their door and says "hey we can build your cars for you, with your brand on them, using our charging standard, our batteries, and our software. Just sign here."
- starik36 3y ago
  My wife drives a Tesla and I drive newish rental cars on a reasonably frequent basis. So I have a basis for comparison. They are definitely not being beaten by larger players. At least not at this stage. Their software is top notch compared to the mish-mash of home grown and Car Play on other vehicles. And the implementation of AutoSteer (free cut down version of self driving) is far superior to what I've seen in other cars. I can see other automakers catching up in 2-3 years, but that is not the case right now.
  - pkulak 3y ago
    I’ve personally enjoyed auto steer on every car I’ve driven not a Tesla. Some let you keep your hands off the wheel, and none of them phantom break every couple hundred miles, which is the ultimate deal breaker.
    - flutas 3y ago
      > I’ve personally enjoyed auto steer on every car I’ve driven not a Tesla. Some let you keep your hands off the wheel, and none of them phantom break every couple hundred miles, which is the ultimate deal breaker. I'm actually curious what systems you're using. I have very limited experience, I have a M3 and a 21 Corolla with Toyota's version. My M3 has never once just given up on the lanes and stopped steering, but it's a very common occurrence on the Toyota. It just gives up and suddenly you're back to controlling it with no real rhyme or reason to it that I can find.
      - pkulak 3y ago
        Oh, yeah, that doesn’t bother me either. When the lanes get really faint and I have to drive for a bit, that’s fine. I guess it comes down to preference. I see it as assistance. I want a helper who maybe can’t do it all, but never fucks up.
        flutas 3y ago
        I don't mind it happening, after all they are just assistants like you said, it's just the zero warning "I give up" that it seems to have. At least with Tesla's version it attempts to keep going while screaming at you to take over. The Toyota version just gives a small beep and by the time you figure out what the beep was it's given up completely and if you were unprepared (having your hands off the wheel[bad thing to do anyways, but a lot of people do it], only slightly following the road) you may be sliding into an adjacent lane.
- almost_usual 3y ago
  I thought most Tesla batteries were CATL, LG, and Panasonic.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Tesla is working with those companies. But Tesla also has its own batteries, their own battery IP, their own manufacturing lines and so on. They even manufacture some of their own manufacturing equipment. The have factories in Germany and Canada building dedicated battery manufacturing equipment. They have their own battery factory in California, in Texas and in Berlin. Model Y are already being sold with these batteries in it. And Tesla own batteries are very innovative specially in terms of their manufacturing.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  > The cars themselves are quickly being beaten out by the larger players Based on what exactly? Tesla cars are wildly popular in their segments. They have elite efficiency, high margin, they lead in costumer loyalty and costumer satisfaction ratings. Model Y is literally the most sold car in the world. What actual evidence are you basing these claims on? Tesla is making a huge amount of money because of vertical integration, why would they give that up to be a contract manufacturer or sell batteries.
  - adventured 3y ago
    Keep in mind it was extremely common on HN to proclaim Tesla was going to go bankrupt, that the Model S would never be manufactured at any scale, that the Model 3 would fail and would also never be manufactured at great scale. Sure Tesla has plenty of flaws and always have, and yet they remain ahead of the competition in what's going to be a multi-trillion dollar market (EVs) segment. Tesla's primary business problem is that they only have one killer product, the Model 3 (meaning they're too easy to cripple if sales fall out from under that one thing). They massively screwed up on the truck, when they should have just made a normal EV truck with some Tesla touches (Elon's ego on Cybertruck cost them hundreds of billions of dollars in sales over the next decade; it will go down as one of the dumbest business mistakes in recorded history). The truck should have been their key diversification, especially in the huge US market for trucks. The truck segment should have been mainstream and borderline boring, yielding tens of billions of dollars in annual global sales. Instead it's going to be a mocked niche product that trails off rapidly in sales after the initial splash (assuming they actually bring the Cybertruck to market). But if Tesla knew what they were doing, they would have bought a large chunk of Ford while the valuations were at peak mismatch (or all of it, via their hyper overvalued stock; de facto bribe the Ford family with a huge number to take the acquisition offer), electrified Ford's truck lineup in a long-term partnership, and yielded epic scale profit from it for decades to come.
    - jandrese 3y ago
      The Model Y seems to be their real killer product. The Model 3 is a solid #2 for the business.
- adventured 3y ago
  That means they have no future of consequence. Charging networks will be a mediocre low margin business and they'll be hyper plentiful with little to no serious moat. It'll be like owning gas pumps as a convenience store (yielding pennies on the dollar; the money will be in generation there, as it's in oil/gasoline in gas pumps). Batteries are and always will be a horrific business with low margins (just ask eg Panasonic and all the other players what their battery businesses are worth, especially compared to what Tesla has been making from automobiles).
- chris222 3y ago
  And bots/autonomy.
- chaostheory 3y ago
  Tesla also bought solar city a while back
megaman821 3y ago
As a business it seems smarter to grow the pie and increase your revenues even if Tesla's marketshare decreases. Even through the lens of hating Elon Musk and wanting alternatives, most people have no strong feelings at all. Price and availability largely dictates what Tesla will sell. I have not seen any data Elon's antics change sales volumes.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Smart or not, it's definitely Tesla's strategy. They have an explicit goal of 20% of the vehicle market. They don't care what their share of the EV market is, they want 20% of the combined market.
- Retric 3y ago
  Tesla’s gross margins are down quite a bit since the Twitter deal. It’s hard to correlate consumer sentiment with the price drop vs other factors, but gross margins dropped from 27% to 23% which represent a lot of money. How much this impacts the company going forward is hard to say, but my guess is we’re talking 10’s of billions. Which makes it much harder to keep up with the expanding EV market, their super charger network for example needs to dramatically increase capacity just to keep up with the current rate of new Tesla production. Aka 25 year old EV’s will still need a place to recharge.
  - erikstarck 3y ago
    The margins were inflated during the pandemic, though. Musk even called their prices "embarrassingly expensive". https://www.carscoops.com/2022/07/teslas-prices-are-embarrassing-to-elon-musk-as-he-offers-hope-that-they-might-come-down/ https://www.carscoops.com/2022/07/teslas-prices-are-embarras...
    - Retric 3y ago
      Tesla’s gross margins were much higher in 2011 than 2022. But yea, this is why I said it’s hard to separate how much of this was Tesla specific vs industry wide. However, the need to cut prices despite high inflation was unusual in the car industry and suggests a Tesla specific issue.
erikstarck 3y ago
First of all, the mission of Tesla is to transition the world to sustainable energy. If you believe them, that should be enough. But, second of all, this also makes business sense. Everyone will have to use the Tesla app, where they can get targeted offers and become a kind of "Tesla Light" customers. People wonder why Tesla doesn't advertise. Well, with these deals, the need for advertising is a lot less than without them. Also, Tesla is essentially becoming a platform for EVs. How long before some OEM license Tesla software? And, remember that there are over 17000 superchargers in the US alone and the deal with Ford and GM only allows access to 12000 of them in the US and Canada together. To get the full Supercharger experience, you still need a Tesla.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  Basically, the iTunes on Windows strategy.
  - vxNsr 3y ago
    Yup sounds like it. Tesla has always positioned themselves as the apple of cars.
- bluSCALE4 3y ago
  I think they don't use ads because they already get a ton of money with green credits. I recall all the Tesla doomsayer a few years back saying Tesla was going broke then Tesla sold these credits to other companies for millions. If Tesla loses these edges, which will happen if other car companies go 100% green, then we'll see a more hate-able Tesla with ad-ware.
- sagarkamat 3y ago
  Not sure about other OEMs but at least Ford's CEO has clarified Ford customers will be able to use the FordPass app to use the tesla chargers.
- NegativeK 3y ago
  > People wonder why Tesla doesn't advertise. They don't advertise because their word of mouth and media presence is incredibly strong. It's also the same reason I basically had to strong arm the sales center into selling me one of their cars -- the demand is incredibly high.
outlace 3y ago
Tesla Insurance is a kind of small moat. But I think Tesla is really banking on winning the automotive AI race. They currently don't seem to be winning, but that does appear to be their main gamble. If they can be the first to achieve level 4+ self-driving then they would definitely dominate regardless of charging infrastructure.
- garyfirestorm 3y ago
  Level 4? Mercedes already beat them to level 3 https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23572942/mercedes-drive-pilot-level-3-approved-nevada https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23572942/mercedes-drive-p...
  - leetharris 3y ago
    Just like how Samsung beat Apple to face scanning technology. Mercedes version is extremely limited and is only available on $100k+ cars with tons of additional hardware. I have Tesla FSD. It is certainly overpriced, but it has genuinely been getting a lot better in the last year. When I first got it I was disappointed because it was so useless, now I use it probably 70%+ of my drives. IMO Tesla is the closest to a mass-market version of the technology.
    - tnel77 3y ago
      There’s a huge subset of people who just desperately want to “prove” that the popular company is bad. Apple bad, Tesla bad, etc.
      - fomine3 3y ago
        Because fanboys are too verbose for hype
        simondotau 3y ago
        Fanboys sometimes talk about a favoured corporation with rose coloured glasses. Hateboys (or whatever you might call an inverse fanboy) often talk in reductive and/or derogatory terms about both corporations and anyone who defends them. Both groups are occasionally a bit sad and naive, but it's usually only the latter which become corrosive and openly hateful. Unfortunately the bulk of the internet seems incapable of recognising this and all too often gives hateboys a free pass.
maxdo 3y ago
If you thinking about buying an EV between now and 2025 in North America, you need to be a very very big enthusiast of any other brand but not Tesla. You have a non zero risk of your non tesla car turn into a pumpkin few years after a purchase. Basically any non tesla EV sold in North America before 2025 will depend on a proper work of that adapter with a particular network. And I explore lots of them the other direction, they are all ugly and make your experience horrible. Compare to just plug and go grab a coffee, with find a converter, plug it, make sure it work, get to the tesla app, make sure that part works... Your traveling will be a charade of opportunity to charge in a particular network. On the opposite side of it, if you buy a new or a used Tesla made in 2015, it will still charge you 5 years away from now with no issues in basically any network in North America. Not only tesla.
johndhi 3y ago
Pretty sure Tesla's moat is that people think they are cool and other EVs aren't.
- 93po 3y ago
  Or that they have, by far, the best products at given prices.
  - jameshart 3y ago
    JD Power has Rivian, MINI and Kia scoring higher than any Tesla model.[1] Polestar, Ford VW, Audi and Hyundai are in the same ballpark for ratings. Several of those manufacturers have cars in the 30K range, well below the prices Tesla is starting at. That moat seems pretty small these days. [1] https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-electric-vehicle-experience-evx-ownership-study https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-elec...
    - andruby 3y ago
      Do they have electric cars in the 30K range? What’s the battery range for their entry level cars? (I only know Rivian’s pricing by heart, which starts at 75K)
      - jameshart 3y ago
        Most people don’t need Tesla range. The MINI Cooper does 114 miles for under $30K, and Hyundai, Kia and Ford all offer 240 mile + ranges for under $40K. Tesla Model 3 has 270 miles on the base model but you’re paying over $40k for that.
    - 93po 3y ago
      I believe these studies to be problematic for many reasons. The first is because they measure owner satisfaction, but they make zero effort to measure owner expectations. Are the expectations for people buying Teslas much higher than people who buy from other manufacturers? Are they more sophisticated of a buyer and think more deeply about their car? The second issue is they also do things like compare the Rivian R1T to the Model 3, which is half the retail price and less than a quarter of the manufacturing cost (Rivian takes huge losses on their sales). The final issue I'll mention is that JD Power makes almost all of its money from traditional car manufacturers. This is a huge conflict of interest and there is zero legal accountability.
mkozlows 3y ago
The thing about how this is affects Tesla is "compared to what?" Compared to the historic status quo where there were no other chargers, and Tesla had exclusive access to a large-ish proprietary charging network, it looks like Tesla giving up their advantage, and seems bad. But the forward-looking status quo was going to be a gigantic network of CCS chargers that makes Tesla's proprietary network look small, with every other car maker using CCS. In that world, Tesla would have had to switch their cars over to CCS eventually and retrofit their existing chargers to CCS, and people who bought Teslas with the proprietary plug have a terrible UX of needing adapters everywhere. Compared to _that_ status quo, this is a huge win for Tesla (and one that back-foots every other carmaker, which -- if NACS does take off -- need to do their own migration to a new charging port and strand their existing customers with the adapter life, making their earliest adopters angry and frustrated). So yeah, this is a great move for Tesla, and GM and Ford in enabling it are total idiots. (Rivian is just going along with the semi-inevitable at this point.)
- agloe_dreams 3y ago
  Also one other detail: There's a hell of a lot more money in the car 'fuel' industry than the car making business. R&D costs are way lower, you don't need that many employees, and you can always charge these third party automakers more. Tesla is going to make bank off these adopters.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Most EVs charge at home most of the time, so there isn't that much money in the "fuel" industry, they are mostly needed for long distance trips (and so crowd up on holiday weekends), not daily driving.
    - logifail 3y ago
      > Most EVs charge at home most of the time Umm, there's a significant chunk of the world's population who will likely never be able to charge at home, because they live in apartments and park on-street. "EV owners who live in apartment buildings and park on the street will rely heavily on public chargers—in 2021, 42 percent of European EV owners living in cities had no access to home charging points." https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/europes-ev-opportunity-and-the-charging-infrastructure-needed-to-meet-it https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/...
wilg 3y ago
Market share isn't a good metric for a company that started out with 100% market share and therefore has nowhere to go but down. I think Tesla will continue to be successful selling cars and grow the number of cars they sell at a high rate. Also, it sounds like this move is a really good incentive from a product perspective. If there really are a significant of people who only chose Tesla because of Superchargers, then they'll be forced to fix those problems. Though, personally, I really like my Model Y and someone would have to come up with a WAY superior car to get me to switch. I certainly wouldn't want to go back to one of these legacy car company's cars with their poor software, bad UX, and ugly and overwrought design aesthetic. Also, a lot of their competition is still on paper. Rivian is probably the nicest option for a non-Tesla EV right now.
- Robotbeat 3y ago
  Tesla did not have 100% market share. Nissan Leaf came out before the Model S. (And if you want to count the Roadster, you should count the EV1, etc.) But I think the point is that electric cars will take over the whole market, and so if Tesla’s US market share falls to like 20-30% from the current 60% or whatever it is but that market is 10-30 times larger, that’s a huge win.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    Yes, in theory the GM's EV-1 beat them to market by a lot. But in real terms Tesla had the EV market cornered for years. The only real competition was the Leaf and Bolt, and even those were low volume vehicles. It remains to be seen if the legacy automakers can successfully ramp production this year. They have made a lot of promises, but actual deliveries are still lagging.
- 015a 3y ago
  I legit believe that many people in these threads haven't learned that the Model Y is the best selling vehicle in North America during 2023-Q1 [1]. Not just best selling EV, or best selling crossover; best selling vehicle. It outsold the Corrola, at half the price. This is not a situation of "oh Tesla will continue to do well, they'll sell cars" or "what's their moat? they're finished": They are #1. Dozens of competitors have hit the market over the past five years. They are outselling all of them, at substantially higher price points (fed tax credit has something to do with it versus gas cars for Q1 here, but it impacts all EVs reasonably equally). If there's something on the horizon which will change that, I need that explained to me because I'm not seeing it. That Fords and GMs will also get supercharging? Anyone who says "the supercharger network significantly influences purchases toward Tesla" doesn't own an EV; armchair commentators. To some small degree; sure. But the biggest influence, bar none, is: "My friend has one." That's it. Few spend significant time driving a Mach-E and think "everything about this screams I need it". But that is a not a-typical experience for Tesla vehicles, because so much about it is so far ahead of traditional cars, and even modern competing EVs. So much about it is also pretty far behind, like quality control. But that doesn't come through when you're driving a friend's perfectly functional car. And it certainly hasn't hurt Tesla up to this point. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/26/23738581/tesla-model-y-ev-record-world-bestselling-car-electric https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/26/23738581/tesla-model-y-ev...
Pet_Ant 3y ago
> a better standard in North America Is a global standard not better for everyone in the long run?
- occamrazor 3y ago
  It doesn’t really matter. Nobody brings their car overseas, and the costs for having different chargers in Europe and NA are negligible.
  - WaitWaitWha 3y ago
    Nobody? I shipped my car several times back and forth between USA, Europe, and Australia because the rental cost would have been more than the shipping cost. RoRo shipping my car cost round trip $1,600 last year USA/Europe plus $300 insurance rider. Three month rental, plus rental insurance versus rider on my insurance? Rental would be approximately $3,100 car and about another $1,800 for insurance. I am nobody.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      There's no registration headaches about the car not meeting the differing safety/emissions regulations in the different markets? It seems like its a massive hassle for people to even bring kei cars from JP to US, I routinely hear about how expensive it is to import cars across markets.
- jmgao 3y ago
  There isn't a global standard anyway, CCS1 (North America) and CCS2 (Europe) are physically incompatible.
throwaway894345 3y ago
I mean, the range/$ seems to be a pretty good moat. Last I checked, the only cars with a decent amount of range per dollar were at the very low end (Chevy Bolt) and had very little range (200 miles vs 300 miles for Tesla M3).
huijzer 3y ago
Out of curiosity, what do you dislike about your Tesla?
yumraj 3y ago
> It’s their biggest moat as far as I’m concerned. It’s their biggest moat IFF it’s limited to Tesla’s and their charging stations. If every car adopts their charging port/socket and every charging station (Tesla and non-Tesla) supports Tesla’s port/socket then the most diminishes and ultimately disappears.
sangnoir 3y ago
> I assume there’ll be a surcharge , so is it better for them to have the biggest slice of much smaller pies? Tesla will be getting billions of Federal dollars[1] for their network. IIRC, the law doesn't explicitly state that the network has to be CCS, only that it has to be "interoperable". If the government insists on CCS as a precondition, I predict Tesla taking them to court (and likely winning). As an outsider, it appears American manufacturers (NACS) are trying to squeeze out foreign manufactures (CCS) from Federal dollars for charging networks. I will change my mind if Hyundai, VW, Mercedes or BMW sign up for NACS. 1. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-says-tesla-chargers-available-federal-dollars-long-they-include-ccs-2023-06-09/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-says-tesla-char...
KoftaBob 3y ago
> Is the brand name of being effectively the gas station of EVs worth it to them? Yes, because it's becoming more and more clear that Tesla's future potential is way more in their role as an energy company than as a carmaker. - Global charging network for cars + trucks => Tesla as an energy distributor - Residential + utility scale solar + utility scale battery storage => Tesla as a maker of energy production infrastructure - Tesla smart grid software => Tesla as a global electric utility In other words, they're working towards becoming the clean energy combination of ExxonMobil + General Electric + Your local power company. The cars are an important business that happen to also incubate and drive forward all the other technologies I mentioned.
outworlder 3y ago
> I’m glad there finally seems to be a push to a better standard in North America. "Better standard"? It may be more widely available, the plug is a bit smaller, but it's not objectively 'better'. It does not support 800V, something CCS does even today.
samstave 3y ago
#1 ; MAKE ALL PLUGINS A STANDARD. FULL FN STOP #2 ; PROVIDE A RECEIPT OF WHERE THAT POWER CAME FROM. FULL FN STOP Where is that energy produced, what are the inputs? How much FN fuel was consumed to deliver that energy to the energy-plant which fed the port to which my e-car hooked up to, WHO TH HECK IS CALCULATING THIS DATA?
- Marsymars 3y ago
  > #2 ; PROVIDE A RECEIPT OF WHERE THAT POWER CAME FROM. FULL FN STOP This isn’t really possible other than in a probabilistic sense, you can’t keep track of where particular electrons are in the grid.
  - samstave 3y ago
    You know whats really funny:' In 2004 I was designing the data center for LucasFilm's CTO... CTO And he asked me why I couldnt provide power-to-the-desktop via FIBER In a really high profile mtg... All I could do was look around the room from side-to-side....
  - samstave 3y ago
    The pixies on the wires get all mixed up in the big pipes, its not like the wires from the car just go straight to a single power plant.
- vel0city 3y ago
  > Where is that energy produced, what are the inputs? You'd pretty much just have to look up the averages for the grid in your area. The pixies on the wires get all mixed up in the big pipes, its not like the wires from the car just go straight to a single power plant. > WHO TH HECK IS CALCULATING THIS DATA? In the US, the EIA along with local state agencies and grid operators. https://www.eia.gov/ https://www.eia.gov/
  - samstave 3y ago
    >>"The pixies on the wires get all mixed up in the big pipes, its not like the wires from the car just go straight to a single power plant. I love this phrase more than you can imagine. WHERE THE HECK ARE ALL THESE ELECTRONS COMING FROM?????!!!!!
hinkley 3y ago
They could sell charge circuitry and battery packs to the big three. They’ve been wanting to sell batteries to people for ages. Given how much of the cost of a car they are, maybe that’s a reasonably profitable market.

by dagmx 3y ago

rootusrootus 3y ago

> I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Definitely not alone. I'm on my second Tesla, and from what I can see of Tesla's plans for the future, I think it is likely I will not buy another for my next car. I'm very happy that everyone else is jumping on board with NACS.

dahfizz 3y ago

The long term future of Tesla is a battery manufacturer and a charging network. Those are the two things they are good at. The cars themselves are quickly being beaten out by the larger players.

techdmn 3y ago
I'm happy to consider a non-Tesla (mostly because I'd really prefer a more traditional gauge cluster and more physical controls), but have struggled to find anything that beats the price for performance of the Model 3 Performance. And yes, I realize I'm a niche buyer.
- dahfizz 3y ago
  You're right that the model 3 performance is still a convincing product, but cars like the Mustang Mach-E and BMW i4 are coming close. A few years ago there was no good option besides tesla, but in another couple years tesla will have fallen behind the competition
  - vxNsr 3y ago
    BMW in my circles has the reputation as being a brand you buy when you can afford to have a car in the shop most of the time. Most American brands have reputation as just being really poorly built and bad value props. Not sure how either of those two options overcomes that view.
    - w0m 3y ago
      >a brand you buy when you can afford to have a car in the shop most of the time TBF, unless you are in a Niche market (off roading a land rover) - it's generally hard to buy a bad car today. Is a Camry more reliable than a 3 series? Yes. But you're talking 4 9s vs 5 under warranty; being near a good dealership with good service is markedly more important than brand reputation. If my Audi/BMW/Volvo are in the shop for a week every other year and they easily give a loaner to cover, does it really matter? At that point, the cup holder being 5% better placed for convenient access matters more.
      - vxNsr 3y ago
        Once you’re out of warranty BMW tend to “implode” like everything breaks at once. But even in warranty dealing with going to the dealership and getting the repair is a huge hassle vs just having a car that stays out of your way. Time is our most valuable asset and giving it up to stupid things like waiting in dealership waiting rooms, regardless of how much free coffee and popcorn they have just isn’t my idea of time well spent.
        w0m 3y ago
        We had a first-year X1. Starter went after ~10,000 miles. Dealership was garbage (hence my comments above), but still towed us home and dropped off a loaner-car for the ~week it took to fix. Annoying, wasted ~hour waiting for toe truck to pick us up; but overall not a horrendous experience (despite piling 3 adults and 2 dogs into toe truck). I had a 2010 Impreza, ~first month or two of ownership - dashboard went nuts and i pulled over. Car got towed to dealership - they found nothing wrong. Lost an evening and no loaner car in the ~48h it took them to determine 'nothing wrong'. Two 'new' cars - vastly better experience with one than the other. Anecdotal of course; but > even in warranty dealing with going to the dealership and getting the repair is a huge You get that with any car - my Tacoma was indestructible and still had multiple recalls I had to drop it off for. You are correct if you're talking driving a car into the ground though - I'd vastly rather have a 10 y/o v6 Taco than an 8 y/o supercharged Dakota.
MattRix 3y ago
Not a big fan of Tesla myself, but surely if they figure out self driving that’ll make their cars relevant for the forseeable future? On top of that they seem to be able to make cars cheaper and more quickly than most of the incumbents.
- afavour 3y ago
  For sure. But that’s an absolutely massive “if”. Almost guaranteed we’ll be transitioning to EVs (I mean, we already are at a small scale) before full self driving is reliable.
- traceroute66 3y ago
  > they seem to be able to make cars cheaper and more quickly than most of the incumbents And that's exactly what the output of their factories feel like. Cheap and quickly built. ;-) More haste, less speed and all that ...
- wsatb 3y ago
  The big players are just late to the game, but have been making cars for decades. They will easily overtake Tesla on number of EVs built as they transition. Tesla isn’t good at making cars. And every year my confidence in full self driving goes down. They are good at charging though and will print money doing that.
  - mywittyname 3y ago
    I wouldn't call the established players "late to the game" vis-a-vis self-driving. They've been dumping plenty into research and acquisition and are probably near parity with Telsa. The perception of the larger players as laggards comes from the fact that they aren't as keen to lie consumers and investors. Their leadership doesn't enjoy the same privileges as Musk does.
  - Reason077 3y ago
    The big incumbents (US, EU, Japanese) have high cost bases and may struggle to compete on price with Tesla, as well as emerging Chinese competition. The real "secret sauce" behind Tesla right now is that they've figured out how to produce affordable, desirable EVs at scale while maintaining industry-leading margins.
traceroute66 3y ago
> The long term future of Tesla is a battery manufacturer and a charging network. Those are the two things they are good at. Agree 100%. At present, Tesla really feels like a bit of a "Jack of all trades, master of none" job. I'm certainly no Elon fanboi, but I will happily state that there are clearly a number of things they do well (certain core components and the charging network). But the cars themselves as a whole. They feel like what they are. Cheaply built, but sold at a premium price. Tesla would do well if they became the OEM's OEM. You know, a bit like how Dell, HP and everyone else ship servers with Seagate drives. Tesla should become the Seagate and leave the outer shell bit to others.
- minhazm 3y ago
  > At present, Tesla really feels like a bit of a "Jack of all trades, master of none" job. That's an odd take. Model Y is the best selling vehicle in the world, and the second best selling vehicle in the US after the Ford F-150. It outsells the Corolla, Camry, Rav4, Civic, etc. Look at Mercedes, BMW and Audi sales, they've been plummeting because everyone is buying a Tesla instead. They're also the leading battery storage company and their battery storage business has been growing like crazy. > But the cars themselves as a whole. They feel like what they are. Cheaply built, but sold at a premium price. This has become such a meme that I think anyone who says it has never driven a Tesla for more than a few hours. The interior quality is not on par with Mercedes/BMW and maybe there's a few panel gaps, but every other part of the car is significantly better. The handling, infotainment system, performance, efficiency, autopilot, maintenance, etc. A $50k Model Y competes with $70-80k cars, but has the interior of a $35k car. Most people are more than happy with that trade off and that's why it sells so well.
  - almost_usual 3y ago
    > They're also the leading battery storage company and their battery storage business has been growing like crazy. Do you have a source on this? I assumed Tesla outsourced most of their batteries from CATL, Panasonic, and LG. https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/2023060514-catl-drops-despite-denying-rumor-of-losing-biggest-client-tesla-in-us https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/2023060514-catl-drops-despi... CATL seems to be ahead of everyone. https://thedriven.io/2023/04/21/worlds-largest-battery-maker-announces-major-breakthrough-in-battery-density/amp/ https://thedriven.io/2023/04/21/worlds-largest-battery-maker...
brianstorms 3y ago
I sometimes suspect what's really going on with Tesla is that they want to become the world's manufacturer of EVs of all sorts, utility-scale energy storage systems, and software for EVs including ADAS. Musk has said it: "the factory is the product." I kinda wonder if the real goal is, as the legacy OEMs quake, rattle, flail around begging for government handouts, and start to fail, Tesla knocks on their door and says "hey we can build your cars for you, with your brand on them, using our charging standard, our batteries, and our software. Just sign here."
starik36 3y ago
My wife drives a Tesla and I drive newish rental cars on a reasonably frequent basis. So I have a basis for comparison. They are definitely not being beaten by larger players. At least not at this stage. Their software is top notch compared to the mish-mash of home grown and Car Play on other vehicles. And the implementation of AutoSteer (free cut down version of self driving) is far superior to what I've seen in other cars. I can see other automakers catching up in 2-3 years, but that is not the case right now.
- pkulak 3y ago
  I’ve personally enjoyed auto steer on every car I’ve driven not a Tesla. Some let you keep your hands off the wheel, and none of them phantom break every couple hundred miles, which is the ultimate deal breaker.
  - flutas 3y ago
    > I’ve personally enjoyed auto steer on every car I’ve driven not a Tesla. Some let you keep your hands off the wheel, and none of them phantom break every couple hundred miles, which is the ultimate deal breaker. I'm actually curious what systems you're using. I have very limited experience, I have a M3 and a 21 Corolla with Toyota's version. My M3 has never once just given up on the lanes and stopped steering, but it's a very common occurrence on the Toyota. It just gives up and suddenly you're back to controlling it with no real rhyme or reason to it that I can find.
    - pkulak 3y ago
      Oh, yeah, that doesn’t bother me either. When the lanes get really faint and I have to drive for a bit, that’s fine. I guess it comes down to preference. I see it as assistance. I want a helper who maybe can’t do it all, but never fucks up.
      - flutas 3y ago
        I don't mind it happening, after all they are just assistants like you said, it's just the zero warning "I give up" that it seems to have. At least with Tesla's version it attempts to keep going while screaming at you to take over. The Toyota version just gives a small beep and by the time you figure out what the beep was it's given up completely and if you were unprepared (having your hands off the wheel[bad thing to do anyways, but a lot of people do it], only slightly following the road) you may be sliding into an adjacent lane.
almost_usual 3y ago
I thought most Tesla batteries were CATL, LG, and Panasonic.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Tesla is working with those companies. But Tesla also has its own batteries, their own battery IP, their own manufacturing lines and so on. They even manufacture some of their own manufacturing equipment. The have factories in Germany and Canada building dedicated battery manufacturing equipment. They have their own battery factory in California, in Texas and in Berlin. Model Y are already being sold with these batteries in it. And Tesla own batteries are very innovative specially in terms of their manufacturing.
panick21_ 3y ago
> The cars themselves are quickly being beaten out by the larger players Based on what exactly? Tesla cars are wildly popular in their segments. They have elite efficiency, high margin, they lead in costumer loyalty and costumer satisfaction ratings. Model Y is literally the most sold car in the world. What actual evidence are you basing these claims on? Tesla is making a huge amount of money because of vertical integration, why would they give that up to be a contract manufacturer or sell batteries.
- adventured 3y ago
  Keep in mind it was extremely common on HN to proclaim Tesla was going to go bankrupt, that the Model S would never be manufactured at any scale, that the Model 3 would fail and would also never be manufactured at great scale. Sure Tesla has plenty of flaws and always have, and yet they remain ahead of the competition in what's going to be a multi-trillion dollar market (EVs) segment. Tesla's primary business problem is that they only have one killer product, the Model 3 (meaning they're too easy to cripple if sales fall out from under that one thing). They massively screwed up on the truck, when they should have just made a normal EV truck with some Tesla touches (Elon's ego on Cybertruck cost them hundreds of billions of dollars in sales over the next decade; it will go down as one of the dumbest business mistakes in recorded history). The truck should have been their key diversification, especially in the huge US market for trucks. The truck segment should have been mainstream and borderline boring, yielding tens of billions of dollars in annual global sales. Instead it's going to be a mocked niche product that trails off rapidly in sales after the initial splash (assuming they actually bring the Cybertruck to market). But if Tesla knew what they were doing, they would have bought a large chunk of Ford while the valuations were at peak mismatch (or all of it, via their hyper overvalued stock; de facto bribe the Ford family with a huge number to take the acquisition offer), electrified Ford's truck lineup in a long-term partnership, and yielded epic scale profit from it for decades to come.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    The Model Y seems to be their real killer product. The Model 3 is a solid #2 for the business.
adventured 3y ago
That means they have no future of consequence. Charging networks will be a mediocre low margin business and they'll be hyper plentiful with little to no serious moat. It'll be like owning gas pumps as a convenience store (yielding pennies on the dollar; the money will be in generation there, as it's in oil/gasoline in gas pumps). Batteries are and always will be a horrific business with low margins (just ask eg Panasonic and all the other players what their battery businesses are worth, especially compared to what Tesla has been making from automobiles).
chris222 3y ago
And bots/autonomy.
chaostheory 3y ago
Tesla also bought solar city a while back

megaman821 3y ago

As a business it seems smarter to grow the pie and increase your revenues even if Tesla's marketshare decreases. Even through the lens of hating Elon Musk and wanting alternatives, most people have no strong feelings at all. Price and availability largely dictates what Tesla will sell. I have not seen any data Elon's antics change sales volumes.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Smart or not, it's definitely Tesla's strategy. They have an explicit goal of 20% of the vehicle market. They don't care what their share of the EV market is, they want 20% of the combined market.
Retric 3y ago
Tesla’s gross margins are down quite a bit since the Twitter deal. It’s hard to correlate consumer sentiment with the price drop vs other factors, but gross margins dropped from 27% to 23% which represent a lot of money. How much this impacts the company going forward is hard to say, but my guess is we’re talking 10’s of billions. Which makes it much harder to keep up with the expanding EV market, their super charger network for example needs to dramatically increase capacity just to keep up with the current rate of new Tesla production. Aka 25 year old EV’s will still need a place to recharge.
- erikstarck 3y ago
  The margins were inflated during the pandemic, though. Musk even called their prices "embarrassingly expensive". https://www.carscoops.com/2022/07/teslas-prices-are-embarrassing-to-elon-musk-as-he-offers-hope-that-they-might-come-down/ https://www.carscoops.com/2022/07/teslas-prices-are-embarras...
  - Retric 3y ago
    Tesla’s gross margins were much higher in 2011 than 2022. But yea, this is why I said it’s hard to separate how much of this was Tesla specific vs industry wide. However, the need to cut prices despite high inflation was unusual in the car industry and suggests a Tesla specific issue.

erikstarck 3y ago

First of all, the mission of Tesla is to transition the world to sustainable energy. If you believe them, that should be enough. But, second of all, this also makes business sense. Everyone will have to use the Tesla app, where they can get targeted offers and become a kind of "Tesla Light" customers. People wonder why Tesla doesn't advertise. Well, with these deals, the need for advertising is a lot less than without them. Also, Tesla is essentially becoming a platform for EVs. How long before some OEM license Tesla software? And, remember that there are over 17000 superchargers in the US alone and the deal with Ford and GM only allows access to 12000 of them in the US and Canada together. To get the full Supercharger experience, you still need a Tesla.

bobthepanda 3y ago
Basically, the iTunes on Windows strategy.
- vxNsr 3y ago
  Yup sounds like it. Tesla has always positioned themselves as the apple of cars.
bluSCALE4 3y ago
I think they don't use ads because they already get a ton of money with green credits. I recall all the Tesla doomsayer a few years back saying Tesla was going broke then Tesla sold these credits to other companies for millions. If Tesla loses these edges, which will happen if other car companies go 100% green, then we'll see a more hate-able Tesla with ad-ware.
sagarkamat 3y ago
Not sure about other OEMs but at least Ford's CEO has clarified Ford customers will be able to use the FordPass app to use the tesla chargers.
NegativeK 3y ago
> People wonder why Tesla doesn't advertise. They don't advertise because their word of mouth and media presence is incredibly strong. It's also the same reason I basically had to strong arm the sales center into selling me one of their cars -- the demand is incredibly high.

outlace 3y ago

Tesla Insurance is a kind of small moat. But I think Tesla is really banking on winning the automotive AI race. They currently don't seem to be winning, but that does appear to be their main gamble. If they can be the first to achieve level 4+ self-driving then they would definitely dominate regardless of charging infrastructure.

garyfirestorm 3y ago
Level 4? Mercedes already beat them to level 3 https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23572942/mercedes-drive-pilot-level-3-approved-nevada https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23572942/mercedes-drive-p...
- leetharris 3y ago
  Just like how Samsung beat Apple to face scanning technology. Mercedes version is extremely limited and is only available on $100k+ cars with tons of additional hardware. I have Tesla FSD. It is certainly overpriced, but it has genuinely been getting a lot better in the last year. When I first got it I was disappointed because it was so useless, now I use it probably 70%+ of my drives. IMO Tesla is the closest to a mass-market version of the technology.
  - tnel77 3y ago
    There’s a huge subset of people who just desperately want to “prove” that the popular company is bad. Apple bad, Tesla bad, etc.
    - fomine3 3y ago
      Because fanboys are too verbose for hype
      - simondotau 3y ago
        Fanboys sometimes talk about a favoured corporation with rose coloured glasses. Hateboys (or whatever you might call an inverse fanboy) often talk in reductive and/or derogatory terms about both corporations and anyone who defends them. Both groups are occasionally a bit sad and naive, but it's usually only the latter which become corrosive and openly hateful. Unfortunately the bulk of the internet seems incapable of recognising this and all too often gives hateboys a free pass.

maxdo 3y ago

If you thinking about buying an EV between now and 2025 in North America, you need to be a very very big enthusiast of any other brand but not Tesla. You have a non zero risk of your non tesla car turn into a pumpkin few years after a purchase. Basically any non tesla EV sold in North America before 2025 will depend on a proper work of that adapter with a particular network. And I explore lots of them the other direction, they are all ugly and make your experience horrible. Compare to just plug and go grab a coffee, with find a converter, plug it, make sure it work, get to the tesla app, make sure that part works... Your traveling will be a charade of opportunity to charge in a particular network. On the opposite side of it, if you buy a new or a used Tesla made in 2015, it will still charge you 5 years away from now with no issues in basically any network in North America. Not only tesla.

johndhi 3y ago

Pretty sure Tesla's moat is that people think they are cool and other EVs aren't.

93po 3y ago
Or that they have, by far, the best products at given prices.
- jameshart 3y ago
  JD Power has Rivian, MINI and Kia scoring higher than any Tesla model.[1] Polestar, Ford VW, Audi and Hyundai are in the same ballpark for ratings. Several of those manufacturers have cars in the 30K range, well below the prices Tesla is starting at. That moat seems pretty small these days. [1] https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-electric-vehicle-experience-evx-ownership-study https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-elec...
  - andruby 3y ago
    Do they have electric cars in the 30K range? What’s the battery range for their entry level cars? (I only know Rivian’s pricing by heart, which starts at 75K)
    - jameshart 3y ago
      Most people don’t need Tesla range. The MINI Cooper does 114 miles for under $30K, and Hyundai, Kia and Ford all offer 240 mile + ranges for under $40K. Tesla Model 3 has 270 miles on the base model but you’re paying over $40k for that.
  - 93po 3y ago
    I believe these studies to be problematic for many reasons. The first is because they measure owner satisfaction, but they make zero effort to measure owner expectations. Are the expectations for people buying Teslas much higher than people who buy from other manufacturers? Are they more sophisticated of a buyer and think more deeply about their car? The second issue is they also do things like compare the Rivian R1T to the Model 3, which is half the retail price and less than a quarter of the manufacturing cost (Rivian takes huge losses on their sales). The final issue I'll mention is that JD Power makes almost all of its money from traditional car manufacturers. This is a huge conflict of interest and there is zero legal accountability.

mkozlows 3y ago

The thing about how this is affects Tesla is "compared to what?" Compared to the historic status quo where there were no other chargers, and Tesla had exclusive access to a large-ish proprietary charging network, it looks like Tesla giving up their advantage, and seems bad. But the forward-looking status quo was going to be a gigantic network of CCS chargers that makes Tesla's proprietary network look small, with every other car maker using CCS. In that world, Tesla would have had to switch their cars over to CCS eventually and retrofit their existing chargers to CCS, and people who bought Teslas with the proprietary plug have a terrible UX of needing adapters everywhere. Compared to _that_ status quo, this is a huge win for Tesla (and one that back-foots every other carmaker, which -- if NACS does take off -- need to do their own migration to a new charging port and strand their existing customers with the adapter life, making their earliest adopters angry and frustrated). So yeah, this is a great move for Tesla, and GM and Ford in enabling it are total idiots. (Rivian is just going along with the semi-inevitable at this point.)

agloe_dreams 3y ago
Also one other detail: There's a hell of a lot more money in the car 'fuel' industry than the car making business. R&D costs are way lower, you don't need that many employees, and you can always charge these third party automakers more. Tesla is going to make bank off these adopters.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Most EVs charge at home most of the time, so there isn't that much money in the "fuel" industry, they are mostly needed for long distance trips (and so crowd up on holiday weekends), not daily driving.
  - logifail 3y ago
    > Most EVs charge at home most of the time Umm, there's a significant chunk of the world's population who will likely never be able to charge at home, because they live in apartments and park on-street. "EV owners who live in apartment buildings and park on the street will rely heavily on public chargers—in 2021, 42 percent of European EV owners living in cities had no access to home charging points." https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/europes-ev-opportunity-and-the-charging-infrastructure-needed-to-meet-it https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/...

wilg 3y ago

Market share isn't a good metric for a company that started out with 100% market share and therefore has nowhere to go but down. I think Tesla will continue to be successful selling cars and grow the number of cars they sell at a high rate. Also, it sounds like this move is a really good incentive from a product perspective. If there really are a significant of people who only chose Tesla because of Superchargers, then they'll be forced to fix those problems. Though, personally, I really like my Model Y and someone would have to come up with a WAY superior car to get me to switch. I certainly wouldn't want to go back to one of these legacy car company's cars with their poor software, bad UX, and ugly and overwrought design aesthetic. Also, a lot of their competition is still on paper. Rivian is probably the nicest option for a non-Tesla EV right now.

Robotbeat 3y ago
Tesla did not have 100% market share. Nissan Leaf came out before the Model S. (And if you want to count the Roadster, you should count the EV1, etc.) But I think the point is that electric cars will take over the whole market, and so if Tesla’s US market share falls to like 20-30% from the current 60% or whatever it is but that market is 10-30 times larger, that’s a huge win.
- jandrese 3y ago
  Yes, in theory the GM's EV-1 beat them to market by a lot. But in real terms Tesla had the EV market cornered for years. The only real competition was the Leaf and Bolt, and even those were low volume vehicles. It remains to be seen if the legacy automakers can successfully ramp production this year. They have made a lot of promises, but actual deliveries are still lagging.
015a 3y ago
I legit believe that many people in these threads haven't learned that the Model Y is the best selling vehicle in North America during 2023-Q1 [1]. Not just best selling EV, or best selling crossover; best selling vehicle. It outsold the Corrola, at half the price. This is not a situation of "oh Tesla will continue to do well, they'll sell cars" or "what's their moat? they're finished": They are #1. Dozens of competitors have hit the market over the past five years. They are outselling all of them, at substantially higher price points (fed tax credit has something to do with it versus gas cars for Q1 here, but it impacts all EVs reasonably equally). If there's something on the horizon which will change that, I need that explained to me because I'm not seeing it. That Fords and GMs will also get supercharging? Anyone who says "the supercharger network significantly influences purchases toward Tesla" doesn't own an EV; armchair commentators. To some small degree; sure. But the biggest influence, bar none, is: "My friend has one." That's it. Few spend significant time driving a Mach-E and think "everything about this screams I need it". But that is a not a-typical experience for Tesla vehicles, because so much about it is so far ahead of traditional cars, and even modern competing EVs. So much about it is also pretty far behind, like quality control. But that doesn't come through when you're driving a friend's perfectly functional car. And it certainly hasn't hurt Tesla up to this point. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/26/23738581/tesla-model-y-ev-record-world-bestselling-car-electric https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/26/23738581/tesla-model-y-ev...

Pet_Ant 3y ago

> a better standard in North America Is a global standard not better for everyone in the long run?

occamrazor 3y ago
It doesn’t really matter. Nobody brings their car overseas, and the costs for having different chargers in Europe and NA are negligible.
- WaitWaitWha 3y ago
  Nobody? I shipped my car several times back and forth between USA, Europe, and Australia because the rental cost would have been more than the shipping cost. RoRo shipping my car cost round trip $1,600 last year USA/Europe plus $300 insurance rider. Three month rental, plus rental insurance versus rider on my insurance? Rental would be approximately $3,100 car and about another $1,800 for insurance. I am nobody.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    There's no registration headaches about the car not meeting the differing safety/emissions regulations in the different markets? It seems like its a massive hassle for people to even bring kei cars from JP to US, I routinely hear about how expensive it is to import cars across markets.
jmgao 3y ago
There isn't a global standard anyway, CCS1 (North America) and CCS2 (Europe) are physically incompatible.

throwaway894345 3y ago

I mean, the range/$ seems to be a pretty good moat. Last I checked, the only cars with a decent amount of range per dollar were at the very low end (Chevy Bolt) and had very little range (200 miles vs 300 miles for Tesla M3).

huijzer 3y ago

Out of curiosity, what do you dislike about your Tesla?

yumraj 3y ago

> It’s their biggest moat as far as I’m concerned. It’s their biggest moat IFF it’s limited to Tesla’s and their charging stations. If every car adopts their charging port/socket and every charging station (Tesla and non-Tesla) supports Tesla’s port/socket then the most diminishes and ultimately disappears.

sangnoir 3y ago

> I assume there’ll be a surcharge , so is it better for them to have the biggest slice of much smaller pies? Tesla will be getting billions of Federal dollars[1] for their network. IIRC, the law doesn't explicitly state that the network has to be CCS, only that it has to be "interoperable". If the government insists on CCS as a precondition, I predict Tesla taking them to court (and likely winning). As an outsider, it appears American manufacturers (NACS) are trying to squeeze out foreign manufactures (CCS) from Federal dollars for charging networks. I will change my mind if Hyundai, VW, Mercedes or BMW sign up for NACS. 1. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-says-tesla-chargers-available-federal-dollars-long-they-include-ccs-2023-06-09/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-says-tesla-char...

KoftaBob 3y ago

> Is the brand name of being effectively the gas station of EVs worth it to them? Yes, because it's becoming more and more clear that Tesla's future potential is way more in their role as an energy company than as a carmaker. - Global charging network for cars + trucks => Tesla as an energy distributor - Residential + utility scale solar + utility scale battery storage => Tesla as a maker of energy production infrastructure - Tesla smart grid software => Tesla as a global electric utility In other words, they're working towards becoming the clean energy combination of ExxonMobil + General Electric + Your local power company. The cars are an important business that happen to also incubate and drive forward all the other technologies I mentioned.

outworlder 3y ago

> I’m glad there finally seems to be a push to a better standard in North America. "Better standard"? It may be more widely available, the plug is a bit smaller, but it's not objectively 'better'. It does not support 800V, something CCS does even today.

samstave 3y ago

#1 ; MAKE ALL PLUGINS A STANDARD. FULL FN STOP #2 ; PROVIDE A RECEIPT OF WHERE THAT POWER CAME FROM. FULL FN STOP Where is that energy produced, what are the inputs? How much FN fuel was consumed to deliver that energy to the energy-plant which fed the port to which my e-car hooked up to, WHO TH HECK IS CALCULATING THIS DATA?

Marsymars 3y ago
> #2 ; PROVIDE A RECEIPT OF WHERE THAT POWER CAME FROM. FULL FN STOP This isn’t really possible other than in a probabilistic sense, you can’t keep track of where particular electrons are in the grid.
- samstave 3y ago
  You know whats really funny:' In 2004 I was designing the data center for LucasFilm's CTO... CTO And he asked me why I couldnt provide power-to-the-desktop via FIBER In a really high profile mtg... All I could do was look around the room from side-to-side....
- samstave 3y ago
  The pixies on the wires get all mixed up in the big pipes, its not like the wires from the car just go straight to a single power plant.
vel0city 3y ago
> Where is that energy produced, what are the inputs? You'd pretty much just have to look up the averages for the grid in your area. The pixies on the wires get all mixed up in the big pipes, its not like the wires from the car just go straight to a single power plant. > WHO TH HECK IS CALCULATING THIS DATA? In the US, the EIA along with local state agencies and grid operators. https://www.eia.gov/ https://www.eia.gov/
- samstave 3y ago
  >>"The pixies on the wires get all mixed up in the big pipes, its not like the wires from the car just go straight to a single power plant. I love this phrase more than you can imagine. WHERE THE HECK ARE ALL THESE ELECTRONS COMING FROM?????!!!!!

hinkley 3y ago

They could sell charge circuitry and battery packs to the big three. They’ve been wanting to sell batteries to people for ages. Given how much of the cost of a car they are, maybe that’s a reasonably profitable market.