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I take Elon at face value when he recently said “We kind of dug our own grave with the Cybertruck”
by popularonion 3y ago
I take Elon at face value when he recently said “We kind of dug our own grave with the Cybertruck”
- iamcreasy 3y agoIt does not sound as ominous if you also include the next line he said. "We kind of dug our own grave with the Cybertruck. It is going to require immense work to reach volume production and be cash flow positive at a price that people can afford. It will take a year to 18 months before it is a significant cash flow contributor."
- peebeebee 3y agoThey should have just put everything on Tesla model 2. In Belgium everyone is excited for a 5000 EUR tax cut for EV vehicles below 40000 EUR. Lots of people interested in buying Model 3 and Model Y now. But 35000 EUR is still too much for the general public. If they could’ve released a model 2 for 25000-30000 EUR instead of the Cybertruck, it would have dominated the EV market.
- rapsey 3y agoTesla's are absolutely everywhere in my corner of Europe, which is by all metrics poorer than Belgium. Tesla is already dominating.
- rvnx 3y agoIsn't it at least because it is not possible to purchase BYD in your country yet ?
- rapsey 3y agohttps://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/best-selling-cars-europe-2023 https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/best-selling-car...
- speedgoose 3y agoIt’s very much possible to buy a BYD in Norway, yet they don’t sell well. I don’t know why BYD doesn’t try harder. Maybe too small market to bother investing a lot, so they rather import a few cars at too high prices to check the Norway box. https://elbilstatistikk.no/ https://elbilstatistikk.no/
- _njyk 3y agoNorway is (I believe?) the flagship country for Tesla, so it may be more difficult to pierce. I remember EV's penetration is super high there. Very cool link to see the imports! I was questioning availability of the cars, because I think this is the key issue for BYD. I wouldn't want to buy a car where you cannot get support. In Estonia for example, Tesla's are not very popular for that reason, because for a long time, you couldn't even buy them from the official website (so you had to go through gray imports and drive to Finland for the routine maintenance), it's somewhat better now. But BYD is simply unreasonably difficult to purchase, and if you do, then just doing a routine maintenance (or if you have an accident) sounds much more difficult than Tesla. Once they solve that distribution problem (and don't get under political sanctions), I think they can be really great cars.
- coliveira 3y ago> Once they solve that distribution problem (and don't get under political sanctions That's the problem, I believe BYD will be sanctioned to hell in Europe (not to mention USA). They will, however, easily dominate on BRICS and other places outside rich western countries.
- magicalhippo 3y agoWhen we were looking for our next EV last summer, the BYDs all had some weird design elements that killed the vibe for us one way or another. We ended up with a Renault Megane e-Tech[1], very pleased with it so far. Our garage was built for 1970s cars and can't fit the new monsters, so choice was limited. [1]: https://www.renault.co.uk/electric-vehicles/megane-electric.html https://www.renault.co.uk/electric-vehicles/megane-electric....
- saiya-jin 3y agoNever grokked real market for it - all the toyota hilux owners? These type of cars are basically not used in Europe, you can sometimes see it on farms but almost never on the roads and general population simply doesn't buy them, they are not the best choice since they drive poorly and have high running costs, and also way too big for our roads and parkings. Also, legendary hilux has solid reliability in brutal conditions (thats why every isis in desert has them, ideally with some gun or rockets mounted in the back). No way some early 1st generation of much more expensive electric car will match that. You want to have that safety of lugging around additional fuel tank or two in jerrycans and refuel in a minute, instead of doing additional mental gymnastic re chargers. So a bad civilian car, and farmers are very price sensitive so not a great choice for them (now).
- cduzz 3y agoTesla has a history of making low volume prototypes that they sell to weird early adopters and then making high volume cars. The prototypes validate the designs without as much potential for a crushing warranty bill if a technology bet isn't great. For instance, tesla went through several varieties of battery chemistry in the early days of the S before landing on the setup they ended up sticking with for the model 100 and later models. The CT is a similar low volume prototype of the maxwell technology dry cell battery stuff, 48 volt and "drive by wire" architecture that is 100% novel. They're really better off just selling it to a smaller number of people until they get the bugs worked out. The stainless steel stuff is cute but not the hard part of the CT.
- ephemeral-life 3y agoI think it was an attenpt at the luxury SUV market. A lot of rich people drive huge SUV's, the cybertruck can kinda be a quirkie suv. The hilux type workhorse trucks will never be replaced by anything electric (atleast on the global scale, america might have a chance with the f150 lightning)
- senectus1 3y agogiven the reviews its getting, it may not ever reach that goal. having said that, the lessons they learnt and technology they developed while building that white whale are massively valuable. The gigapress alone is damned impressive.