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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

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.
    - dahfizz 3y ago
      Tesla also has quite the reputation for cheaply built cars that are outrageously expensive to repair
      - jandrese 3y ago
        The flipside is that you hardly ever have to bring a Tesla into the shop. In the end they are fairly cheap to maintain. https://www.automoblog.net/research/maintenance/tesla-maintenance-cost/ https://www.automoblog.net/research/maintenance/tesla-mainte...
      - vxNsr 3y ago
        Outrageously expensive to repair sure (though which car isn’t these days, my corrolla got into a fender bender and fixing the bumper was north of $1000), but I’m talking about always in the shop due to shoddy construction. Afaik that doesn’t really apply to teslas.
  - w0m 3y ago
    Mach E looks like a Boat in comparison to me (I also dislike the Y), doesn't feel like a direct competitor. I should test drive regardless though.
  - Reason077 3y ago
    > "A few years ago there was no good option besides tesla, but in another couple years tesla will have fallen behind the competition" Much of the competition still struggles with software. Sure you can use Apple CarPlay or whatever for the basics, but as far as the full software suite goes, there isn't yet much that comes close to Tesla's performance, ease-of-use, UX, functionality, hardware integration, automatic over-the-air updates, etc...
    - dahfizz 3y ago
      This is my point. Tesla is good at a small handful of things, and making cars is not one of them. They could sell batteries, charging infra, software, and whatever else to the companies that are competent at building (and fixing!!) cars. They aren't going to remain competitive on the cars themselves
      - Reason077 3y ago
        > "Tesla is good at a small handful of things, and making cars is not one of them." Tesla is manufacturing EVs at much greater volumes than almost anyone else, and doing so very profitably. They also score consistently high on customer satisfaction. Seems like making cars is exactly what Tesla has become very good at in recent years? Sure, Tesla may not make the most luxurious, nor the cheapest cars on the market. But right now they seem to be very successfully hitting a sweet spot in the middle.
      - jdminhbg 3y ago
        I still cannot figure out what Car People mean when they say Tesla is bad at making cars. What are you looking at that normal people don't see? The one thing I agree about is the yoke steering wheel, but that's on a high-end car nobody seems to actually buy.
        xeromal 3y ago
        Everyone loves to complain about panel gaps and that's usually what drives them mad. lol. I've never cared for panel gaps or minimalists interiors though.
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

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.
  - dahfizz 3y ago
    Tesla also has quite the reputation for cheaply built cars that are outrageously expensive to repair
    - jandrese 3y ago
      The flipside is that you hardly ever have to bring a Tesla into the shop. In the end they are fairly cheap to maintain. https://www.automoblog.net/research/maintenance/tesla-maintenance-cost/ https://www.automoblog.net/research/maintenance/tesla-mainte...
    - vxNsr 3y ago
      Outrageously expensive to repair sure (though which car isn’t these days, my corrolla got into a fender bender and fixing the bumper was north of $1000), but I’m talking about always in the shop due to shoddy construction. Afaik that doesn’t really apply to teslas.
- w0m 3y ago
  Mach E looks like a Boat in comparison to me (I also dislike the Y), doesn't feel like a direct competitor. I should test drive regardless though.
- Reason077 3y ago
  > "A few years ago there was no good option besides tesla, but in another couple years tesla will have fallen behind the competition" Much of the competition still struggles with software. Sure you can use Apple CarPlay or whatever for the basics, but as far as the full software suite goes, there isn't yet much that comes close to Tesla's performance, ease-of-use, UX, functionality, hardware integration, automatic over-the-air updates, etc...
  - dahfizz 3y ago
    This is my point. Tesla is good at a small handful of things, and making cars is not one of them. They could sell batteries, charging infra, software, and whatever else to the companies that are competent at building (and fixing!!) cars. They aren't going to remain competitive on the cars themselves
    - Reason077 3y ago
      > "Tesla is good at a small handful of things, and making cars is not one of them." Tesla is manufacturing EVs at much greater volumes than almost anyone else, and doing so very profitably. They also score consistently high on customer satisfaction. Seems like making cars is exactly what Tesla has become very good at in recent years? Sure, Tesla may not make the most luxurious, nor the cheapest cars on the market. But right now they seem to be very successfully hitting a sweet spot in the middle.
    - jdminhbg 3y ago
      I still cannot figure out what Car People mean when they say Tesla is bad at making cars. What are you looking at that normal people don't see? The one thing I agree about is the yoke steering wheel, but that's on a high-end car nobody seems to actually buy.
      - xeromal 3y ago
        Everyone loves to complain about panel gaps and that's usually what drives them mad. lol. I've never cared for panel gaps or minimalists interiors though.

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