4 ms·
The sales figures are compared against similarly priced cars by Mercedes, BMW, and Audi. If you looked at total sales of those three companies, they would crush
by ssharp 13y ago
The sales figures are compared against similarly priced cars by Mercedes, BMW, and Audi. If you looked at total sales of those three companies, they would crush Tesla. I'd imagine Audi is the lowest of the three and they probably sell as many A4's in one or two months as Tesla sells Model S's in a year.
But therein lies the huge growth potential for Tesla. I really doubted Tesla prior to the Model S and through the large investment they took during the bailout periods, but their strategy has proven solid and their execution near-flawless. By creating a high-end sedan, while focusing a lot of effort on making it an amazing car that happens to be electric, vs. appealing solely on its electric drivetrain, they've been able to focus on a market fully willing to take a risk on an unproven product.
Tesla's next challenge will be introducing electric cars to markets more adverse to risk and more sensitive to prices. The Chevy Volt is priced (before tax credits) closer to where the A4, Series 3, and C-class are, but I don't think anyone would compare the driving experience of a Volt to one of those European sedans.
- Shivetya 13y agoTesla's advantage is that they are operating in the premium car market which about twelve percent of sales and nearly half of the profit per year for automakers. So they are in an area reserved for people with a significant amount of disposable income. The challenge going forward are many, two of which are, how to overcome brand snobbery if at all, and second, once the easy sales are gone, what then? When they move down market the margins will be much tighter, which will put pressure on quality. At their current price point they can trade quite a bit of profit to get it right. However moving down market will increase the number of buyers, the question is do they get there before the mainstream players do. Most of the big makers have quite a line up coming in the 40k and down range. A reference for sales numbers can be found at http://www.autoblog.com/category/by-the-numbers/ http://www.autoblog.com/category/by-the-numbers/
- hkmurakami 13y agoSurely Mercedes and BMW once had much higher "brand snobbery" than they do today. I remember the proliferation of lower end Mercedes vehicles over the course of the 90's, and thus I'd imagine Tesla's marketing and product expansion efforts can take a page from Mercedes in making products aimed at the aspirational middle class consumer.
- rgbrenner 13y agoQ1 2013 - cars sold BMW + Mini + Rolls Royce: 448,200 Audi: 369,500 Mercedes: 341,511 Tesla: 4,750 http://beta.fool.com/sarfarazis/2013/05/08/audi-vs-mercedes-who-is-winning/33384/ http://beta.fool.com/sarfarazis/2013/05/08/audi-vs-mercedes-... http://www.bmwblog.com/2013/05/02/bmw-group-reports-first-quarter-revenues/ http://www.bmwblog.com/2013/05/02/bmw-group-reports-first-qu...