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Not surprised. As I wrote yesterday, the videos of the robots performing household tasks look much smoother than the actual walking robots seen live. Tesla is

Not surprised. As I wrote yesterday, the videos of the robots performing household tasks look much smoother than the actual walking robots seen live. Tesla is not doing well as a car company. Tesla needs a good, low-cost car. Something that can compete with the BYD Seal, which reviews indicate is a good low-priced electric car. BYD is taking over the world of electric cars outside the US.[1] Only tariffs keep them from taking over the US market. They have many new models at good prices. BYD even has a pickup truck now. Tesla also is not doing too well in batteries. Despite "Battery Day" and other hype, Tesla failed at making cells themselves.[2] They buy cells from Panasonic and CATL, mostly. Panasonic has some plants co-located with Tesla, but they're Panasonic technology. Plus Tesla still has trouble with parts and service. The company is twenty years old now. They should have that figured out. Tesla did fix its production volume problems. But "according to its own figures, the electric automaker produced 46,561 more vehicles than it delivered to customers during the first quarter of 2024. Where are all these cars going? Parking lots at its factories, malls and airports."[3] Tesla launched the electric car industry. But they've blown their lead. This is what happens when the CEO's attention is elsewhere. Will someone please get Musk into drug rehab? He used to be good at this stuff. [1] https://www.byd.com/us/news-list https://www.byd.com/us/news-list [2] https://electrek.co/2024/07/17/elon-musk-might-give-up-tesla-4680-battery-cell-end-of-the-year/ https://electrek.co/2024/07/17/elon-musk-might-give-up-tesla... [3] https://jalopnik.com/tesla-is-running-out-of-room-to-store-unsold-cars-1851473377 https://jalopnik.com/tesla-is-running-out-of-room-to-store-u...

worstspotgain 2y ago
[flagged]
FireBeyond 2y ago
> Plus Tesla still has trouble with parts and service. The company is twenty years old now. They should have that figured out. I think there's more nuance to this. It seems much more that, to Elon, every part sitting on a shelf for parts availability, repair and service is a part that's not on the production line going on a vehicle to increase the almighty quarterly numbers. Tesla -could- solve this tomorrow, but the Boss Man doesn't care. He has your money, and he wants to sell you another one, not repair yours.
- TheAlchemist 2y ago
  The reason he's doing it is that ... it costs a lot of money to provide adequate service for the millions of cars they sold. It's much cheaper to just not do it.
  - nothercastle 2y ago
    Service is a profit center idk why you wouldn’t focus on Selling parts and labor at 200-300% markup vs 10% car margins
    - bravetraveler 2y ago
      Agreed. They've done the hard part, make and sell cars. Ride the gravy train. Money printer: someone at a service desk + small logistics problems. It's usually most optimal to stop fucking around. Gadget stores don't keep us nerds around for our winning personalities, everyone benefits from service.
    - trog 2y ago
      I have heard so much about how electric cars are close to zero maintenance. I suspect they want to ride that wave as long as possible to further that perception.
      - nothercastle 2y ago
        That might be true but tire rotations and cabin air filter replacements are still high profit. I think it might be more that a large percentage of electric car repairs are for items covered under warranty so until there is a sizable used fleet outside of warranty they want to minimize claims by making it hard to do.
- Animats 2y ago
  Customer service is so not Silicon Valley. It's surprising that Waymo is doing OK in a service business. All those cars have to be stored, recharged, and cleaned. Somewhere there's probably someone that didn't come from Google in charge of that.
worstspotgain 2y ago
As far as false dichotomies go, "Tesla or BYD" is about as bad as it gets. On the whole, the world is a little worse off if you buy either. Might as well buy a gasoline car then. If you're on the fence, consider giving the other US/EU/Japanese automakers a couple years to catch up. They know the future is 100% EVs. They're steering enormous ships with large investments and many stakeholders.
- presentation 2y ago
  Is it bad to buy BYD because you don’t like China?
  - worstspotgain 2y ago
    The political rationale is well known, so I'll add the economic one. The world economy has globalized around the principle of Comparative Advantage [1]. It means every country specializes on what it's relatively better at. It also means that your country can be in for a world of trouble if your comparative advantage changes. In turn, it means that a large adversary can attack you by turning the tables on your advantage. Automobiles are a large comparative advantage sector for the US, Germany and Japan. Displacing it - even if only by catching automakers on the wrong foot, as BYD and friends are trying to do - could result in a massive reorganization wave, coupled with recessions and political shocks. This is only possible because of China's size, of course. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
    - peacechance 2y ago
      [flagged]
- Caius-Cosades 2y ago
  "They know the future is 100% EVs" Meanwhile: "Volvo Cars abandons 2030 EV-only target" https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volvo-cars-scales-back-electric-vehicle-ambition-2024-09-04/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volvo-... "BMW backs away from £2billion electric car pledge amid plans to stick with petrol and diesel vehicles" https://www.gbnews.com/lifestyle/cars/bmw-backs-away-from-ps2billion-electric-car-pledge-amid-plans-to-stick-with-petrol-and-diesel-vehicles https://www.gbnews.com/lifestyle/cars/bmw-backs-away-from-ps... "Audi Changes Strategy, Backs Away From Electric" https://www.dagens.com/autos/audi-changes-strategy-backs-away-from-electric https://www.dagens.com/autos/audi-changes-strategy-backs-awa... "Volkswagen Walks Back EV-or-Bust Strategy That Rankled Rivals" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-16/volkswagen-walks-back-ev-or-bust-strategy-that-rankled-rivals https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-16/volkswage... Future was supposed to be nuclear powered everything at one point in the past. Lo and behold the future, we're burning coal and making fields of things that have limited lifecycles and that can't be efficiently recycled, and that are completely reliant on weather being nice.
14 2y ago
What I hate is that we keep yelling global climate change we need to act now then we tarrif byd and prevent the masses from being able to afford an EV. The average person can not afford a $50k plus car. I know allowing China to flood our market would kill the North American car industry but I honestly think allowing climate change to take a back seat instead will ultimately end up being the more costly choice. I wish American car companies could see this and find some way to provide a sub $15k car. It doesn't need to be ultra long range. It doesn't need fancy touch screens. It doesn't need power windows even. Just a basic car with a half decent battery meant to go around 150km or so.
- nunez 2y ago
  My uninformed opinion on this is that allowing cars from China, a country with extremely weak workers rights that subsidizes a substantial amount of its private sector, will flood the market with EVs at the cost of jobs stateside. What am I missing?
- Freedom2 2y ago
  There's no significant market for a car like that in the US. Just look at the commenters even here on HN who "need" a Ford F150 because their friends move ever 2 months or something, or to carry groceries that a regular sedan or hatchback could carry back.
- blisterpeanuts 2y ago
  The huge used ICE car market provides sub-$15K vehicles (aside from the inflated prices during the Covid19 supply chain situation). Today, in the U.S., there's a pretty healthy supply of used EV's as well. I recently got my kid a '22 Nissan Leaf with about 11K miles and 170 mile range, for a little over $13,000 (including EV incentives). I'm also seeing some pretty good deals on used Teslas; if I didn’t have to drive rather long distances several times a year, I'd get one myself.
- irthomasthomas 2y ago
  With buying a new EV you massively front-load the CO2. About 60% of the lifetime CO2 cost of an EV car is in the manufacturing. The most affective strategy for reducing CO2 emissions is re-using older cars for as long as possible. Buy used (EV or ICE) if you genuinely care about this stuff.
MrHamburger 2y ago
> Plus Tesla still has trouble with parts and service. The company is twenty years old now. They should have that figured out. This is direct result of constant changes in the hardware during manufacturing. It might look good from customer perspective that they are always getting latest and greatest hardware, but it is an absolute nightmare from aftermarket perspective as you don't have Model X, but "Model X 2020 Week 23" which was only model using part XYZ v1, every other model is using part XYZ v2, which is not compatible with v1 model. It gets really messy really fast. Regular OEM manufacturer won't get into this issue simply because they will close the changes and then will manufacture exactly same car with exactly same parts for i.e. 5 years straight.

worstspotgain 2y ago

[flagged]

FireBeyond 2y ago

> Plus Tesla still has trouble with parts and service. The company is twenty years old now. They should have that figured out. I think there's more nuance to this. It seems much more that, to Elon, every part sitting on a shelf for parts availability, repair and service is a part that's not on the production line going on a vehicle to increase the almighty quarterly numbers. Tesla -could- solve this tomorrow, but the Boss Man doesn't care. He has your money, and he wants to sell you another one, not repair yours.

TheAlchemist 2y ago
The reason he's doing it is that ... it costs a lot of money to provide adequate service for the millions of cars they sold. It's much cheaper to just not do it.
- nothercastle 2y ago
  Service is a profit center idk why you wouldn’t focus on Selling parts and labor at 200-300% markup vs 10% car margins
  - bravetraveler 2y ago
    Agreed. They've done the hard part, make and sell cars. Ride the gravy train. Money printer: someone at a service desk + small logistics problems. It's usually most optimal to stop fucking around. Gadget stores don't keep us nerds around for our winning personalities, everyone benefits from service.
  - trog 2y ago
    I have heard so much about how electric cars are close to zero maintenance. I suspect they want to ride that wave as long as possible to further that perception.
    - nothercastle 2y ago
      That might be true but tire rotations and cabin air filter replacements are still high profit. I think it might be more that a large percentage of electric car repairs are for items covered under warranty so until there is a sizable used fleet outside of warranty they want to minimize claims by making it hard to do.
Animats 2y ago
Customer service is so not Silicon Valley. It's surprising that Waymo is doing OK in a service business. All those cars have to be stored, recharged, and cleaned. Somewhere there's probably someone that didn't come from Google in charge of that.

worstspotgain 2y ago

As far as false dichotomies go, "Tesla or BYD" is about as bad as it gets. On the whole, the world is a little worse off if you buy either. Might as well buy a gasoline car then. If you're on the fence, consider giving the other US/EU/Japanese automakers a couple years to catch up. They know the future is 100% EVs. They're steering enormous ships with large investments and many stakeholders.

presentation 2y ago
Is it bad to buy BYD because you don’t like China?
- worstspotgain 2y ago
  The political rationale is well known, so I'll add the economic one. The world economy has globalized around the principle of Comparative Advantage [1]. It means every country specializes on what it's relatively better at. It also means that your country can be in for a world of trouble if your comparative advantage changes. In turn, it means that a large adversary can attack you by turning the tables on your advantage. Automobiles are a large comparative advantage sector for the US, Germany and Japan. Displacing it - even if only by catching automakers on the wrong foot, as BYD and friends are trying to do - could result in a massive reorganization wave, coupled with recessions and political shocks. This is only possible because of China's size, of course. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
  - peacechance 2y ago
    [flagged]
Caius-Cosades 2y ago
"They know the future is 100% EVs" Meanwhile: "Volvo Cars abandons 2030 EV-only target" https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volvo-cars-scales-back-electric-vehicle-ambition-2024-09-04/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volvo-... "BMW backs away from £2billion electric car pledge amid plans to stick with petrol and diesel vehicles" https://www.gbnews.com/lifestyle/cars/bmw-backs-away-from-ps2billion-electric-car-pledge-amid-plans-to-stick-with-petrol-and-diesel-vehicles https://www.gbnews.com/lifestyle/cars/bmw-backs-away-from-ps... "Audi Changes Strategy, Backs Away From Electric" https://www.dagens.com/autos/audi-changes-strategy-backs-away-from-electric https://www.dagens.com/autos/audi-changes-strategy-backs-awa... "Volkswagen Walks Back EV-or-Bust Strategy That Rankled Rivals" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-16/volkswagen-walks-back-ev-or-bust-strategy-that-rankled-rivals https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-16/volkswage... Future was supposed to be nuclear powered everything at one point in the past. Lo and behold the future, we're burning coal and making fields of things that have limited lifecycles and that can't be efficiently recycled, and that are completely reliant on weather being nice.

14 2y ago

What I hate is that we keep yelling global climate change we need to act now then we tarrif byd and prevent the masses from being able to afford an EV. The average person can not afford a $50k plus car. I know allowing China to flood our market would kill the North American car industry but I honestly think allowing climate change to take a back seat instead will ultimately end up being the more costly choice. I wish American car companies could see this and find some way to provide a sub $15k car. It doesn't need to be ultra long range. It doesn't need fancy touch screens. It doesn't need power windows even. Just a basic car with a half decent battery meant to go around 150km or so.

nunez 2y ago
My uninformed opinion on this is that allowing cars from China, a country with extremely weak workers rights that subsidizes a substantial amount of its private sector, will flood the market with EVs at the cost of jobs stateside. What am I missing?
Freedom2 2y ago
There's no significant market for a car like that in the US. Just look at the commenters even here on HN who "need" a Ford F150 because their friends move ever 2 months or something, or to carry groceries that a regular sedan or hatchback could carry back.
blisterpeanuts 2y ago
The huge used ICE car market provides sub-$15K vehicles (aside from the inflated prices during the Covid19 supply chain situation). Today, in the U.S., there's a pretty healthy supply of used EV's as well. I recently got my kid a '22 Nissan Leaf with about 11K miles and 170 mile range, for a little over $13,000 (including EV incentives). I'm also seeing some pretty good deals on used Teslas; if I didn’t have to drive rather long distances several times a year, I'd get one myself.
irthomasthomas 2y ago
With buying a new EV you massively front-load the CO2. About 60% of the lifetime CO2 cost of an EV car is in the manufacturing. The most affective strategy for reducing CO2 emissions is re-using older cars for as long as possible. Buy used (EV or ICE) if you genuinely care about this stuff.

MrHamburger 2y ago

> Plus Tesla still has trouble with parts and service. The company is twenty years old now. They should have that figured out. This is direct result of constant changes in the hardware during manufacturing. It might look good from customer perspective that they are always getting latest and greatest hardware, but it is an absolute nightmare from aftermarket perspective as you don't have Model X, but "Model X 2020 Week 23" which was only model using part XYZ v1, every other model is using part XYZ v2, which is not compatible with v1 model. It gets really messy really fast. Regular OEM manufacturer won't get into this issue simply because they will close the changes and then will manufacture exactly same car with exactly same parts for i.e. 5 years straight.