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Tesla California sales beat Chrysler, Volvo, Cadillac, other big names
- Patrick_Devine 13y agoKudos to Elon. What's with some of the hate for Tesla in the red states? Tesla is 100% American owned/operated.
- jared314 13y agoDuring the 2012 election, before Tesla showed profitability, it was lumped in with other companies that were given government loans for developing "green" technologies. Many of those companies failed and most people, who did not see electric cars as viable, felt Tesla was going to join them. So, it was held as evidence of the Obama administration wasting tax payer money during a recession. Now, Tesla is trying to sell vehicles around the traditional car dealer system. This system was setup to prevent the manufacturer from holding a monopoly on price and protect the local car dealer's investment in both inventory and services. So, Tesla is now seen as disrupting and depriving local businesses of potential sales and investment. But, in reality, most people hate the car buying process and think it needs disruption.
- dmckeon 13y agoCar dealerships are often 100% locally owned/operated.
- carlosrt 13y ago"95 percent of all Model S parts are made in-house". Designed in Southern California, and built in Northern California. Source: http://www.automobilemag.com/features/awards/1301_2013_automobile_of_the_year_tesla_model_s/viewall.html#ixzz2crMzIzNg http://www.automobilemag.com/features/awards/1301_2013_autom...
- jbellis 13y agoMaybe it has something to do with middle class incomes subsidizing an electric car for the rich.
- redcircle 13y agoThey had to widen the columns in the chart to make room for Tesla's growth numbers. What is interesting is that Tesla is right behind BMW and Daimler for the "luxury and sports" segment.
- rgbrenner 13y ago0.6% market share 4714 out of 850712 cars http://www.cncda.org/secure/GetFile.aspx?ID=2583 http://www.cncda.org/secure/GetFile.aspx?ID=2583 For comparison, Toyota is #1: 157,035
- jljljl 13y agoThats their share of the total car market. Given that their portfolio only consists of one model, it's probably better to look at their specific segment: Luxury and Sports. In that segment, they had a 12% market share YTD.
- rgbrenner 13y ago"Thats their share of the total car market." Yes, which is what the article is about. This article is not about a specific segment. This article is about Tesla selling more vehicles than Volvo, Chrysler, and 8 other manufacturers.
- hrjet 13y agoWhen Android was gaining ground 2 years back, the iOS folks used to draw similar conclusions. "But look at the market share of iOS" which was 80% back then. Today it's the reverse, Android is 80% while iOS is about 13% (IIRC). We need to realize that the trends are much more important than the current market share. Also that markets grow (and also shrink sometimes). We also need to realize that all products have a end-of-life, which means existing customers can switch after their vehicles become old after a couple of years.
- pbreit 13y agoUh...the trend is that Tesla sales increased 13,000%!
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- songzme 13y ago> legislative efforts underway in Texas, North Carolina, Colorado, and Virginia to prevent Tesla from dealing directly with customers and instead conform to antiquated franchise laws requiring them to only sell cars via independently owned car dealerships I really don't understand this. This is like saying... I make a product and I can't sell the product that I've made myself. Someone else is required to sell it for me. This law seems unfair and ridiculous. Is there a reasoning/history behind this and how it came to be?
- totalforge 13y agoMiddle men don't like confronting their own mortality. If Tesla succeeds, they can't sink their fangs into the revenue stream. If Tesla really succeeds over a longer period of time, the other car makers might start getting ideas.
- songzme 13y agoso how did it ever come to be where car manufacturers are required to sell through dealerships?
- jared314 13y agoRunning a local car dealer takes a lot of capital investment to pay for inventory and trained personal. With the franchise law, the government is encouraging, and protecting, the local business's upfront investment. This creates revenue, employment, and consumer supply to a local area. If the manufacturers dictated the price, as apposed to suggesting it (MSRP), it could starve the dealers, eliminate consumer choice, and lower local government revenue. (Local, in this case, can be considered city, county, or state government)
- 30thElement 13y agoThere's 2 reasons on top of the generic problems with vertical integration, at least that I know of. First, once an independent dealership opens, they're gonna forever be afraid that the manufacturer is going to cut off their supply and then open an official dealership next door. It screws up the value equation for opening a dealership in that the small family owned business takes all the risk so the giant mega corp can swoop in and take all the profits once they finally show up (at least that's how you pitch it to the voters). Second, dealerships make their money off of the maintenance as well as the sale. Allowing the manufacturer to dip into that maintenance revenue stream will create perverse incentives that hurt consumers. The first one doesn't really apply, as Tesla has the capital to start all of the dealerships they need and that's basically what they want; they don't want 3rd party dealerships popping up at all. The second one applies to Tesla, but I don't think it really matters. They are The Experts in electric cars right now, so any significant maintenance will probably just get shipped back to their factory anyway.
- sirkneeland 13y agoAs a politically right-leaning person, I have an instinctive aversion to the state intervening in the process of the market and was convinced Tesla would end up along with Solyndra, Fisker, 123 etc in the pile of failures. I will also say that I was clearly wrong in my prediction, and Tesla has been a great success (I guess the virtue of having political opinions but not political office is that one can actually admit they were wrong and change their mind). I will state a view that (sadly) may very well be heresy on both sides of the political aisle: the success of Tesla is not a blanket validation of government intervention in green industry any more than the failure of, say, Solyndra is a blanket indictment of it. Politics aside, I'd like to ask the question: why was the Tesla investment successful where others were not? Was there any pre-investment indicator that Tesla was more likely to succeed? Did it have something that others didn't?
- sally888 13y agoHow do you define success? The intention of the program was to make electric cars for the general public. Tesla so far has sold luxury cars to the rich.
- enraged_camel 13y agoNo, the intention of the program was to give Tesla (or any other company that qualified for the program) a competitive advantage against incumbents. It definitely succeeded in doing that. In fact, it was so successful Tesla paid back the loans early. Ten years from now when people look back they will definitely say that the government played a critical role in Tesla's success. And that's a very good thing.
- sally888 13y ago"a competitive advantage against incumbents" Where did the DOE say this?
- SuperChihuahua 13y agoI believe they said "to accelerate the production of fuel-efficient vehicles for mainstream Americans and reduce the nation's dependency on oil."
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- throwaway_yy2Di 13y agoAre these sales to Californians, or does this include sales made in California and delivered to another state because of the dealership issue?
- nonchalance 13y agoThe latter, which is why the figure is so skewed in favor of Tesla.
- pbreit 13y agoIn which states was Tesla unable to sell cars in 2Q13? Of those states, would California have been the best place to import a Tesla from?
- omegaham 13y agoThe biggest example is Texas, as they have laws that prohibit direct manufacturer-to-customer car sales. I think that Tesla has had some problems in New York and New Jersey as well. As for California being the "best place," my guess is that it has nothing to do with being the best - it just happens to be be the spot where Musk said, "Well, we need to sell cars in states that won't allow us to sell things. Let's collect all of the infrastructure to serve these people in a place that's already selling a lot of cars. Let's choose California!"
- doyoulikeworms 13y agoElon Musk was also able to pick up Tesla's Fremont, CA factory from other auto manufacturers for pennies on the dollar, which I'm sure had something to do with it.
- redcircle 13y agoI see them very often in the San Francisco area.
- 3327 13y agoIs anyone else tired of tesla PR and seeing 2 tesla articles here everyday? Great for you Tesla and Mr. Musk, your PR team is great. How about posting some articles about the voltage regulation algorithm, or leak testing of lithium batteries ? Something actually interesting would be nice.
- enraged_camel 13y agoThe reason we don't see any articles about voltage regulation algorithms or leak testing of lithium batteries is that people who would read such articles are rare. They might get some interest in niche sites like Hacker News, but Tesla wants to move towards mainstream acceptance and for that to happen they need articles on subjects regular people can understand and relate to, such as how Tesla is doing in relation to other manufacturers. This is not to say that such articles are uninteresting for hackers. Many of us here root for Tesla, not only because Elon Musk is one of us but also because the technology his cars use is useful and cool. That is why you see these articles on the front page.
- clicks 13y agoAbsolutely. I'm of course supportive of innovation but I've been troubled to see this community get carried a little too far away with Tesla. I submitted this article: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/unclean-at-any-speed http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/unclean-at-any-sp... sometime ago (which is actually a series of articles that discuss possible problems with recent EVs) and it got no attention. This seems to be a trend, anything critical of Tesla, even if it's from reliable sources like IEEE Spectrum gets ignored, anything that praises it is accepted with jubilation. edit: Just to be clear I'm not attacking Tesla/Musk, I love them both. I'm peeved by everyone pretending or thinking EVs are solutions without any shortcomings whatsoever, and I'm peeved that we sometimes ignore/attack people who are in good faith just pointing out potential problems.
- richardjordan 13y agoHacker news audience. We love technology. We love entrepreneurs. The audience skews towards being more concerned than average about issues like energy depletion. Elon Musk - superhero entrepreneur. Tackling big ideas (how often do you see comments in threads bitching how Silicon Valley doesn't tackle big ideas any more?). Addressing energy crisis problems. Building real, hard, technology. Doing so in a way that is making money and beating an industry which has massive legislative protection, political support from all kinds of protectionist players, known lobbying organizations with a track record of killing innovation JUST like this. Not sure that for this audience this is getting too carried away with Tesla. The Tesla story is the epitome of much that many many folks on here believe in, aspire to, and stand for.
- rgubarenko 13y agoMany people including me were skeptical about Tesla when it just came out. I'm surprised it became that popular at that price. On one hand it's good, because means that people are ready to pay more for technology and innovation.
- SuperChihuahua 13y agoDon't forget that they also care about the environment and the US dependence on foreign oil. They will also save money since they don't need to buy gasoline.
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- TallboyOne 13y agoI saw the other thread about Tesla S.... never heard of it up until now.. To be honest it seems like my dream car. Going to test drive one soon and buy the middle or top model of the S. So insanely sexy.
- rgubarenko 13y agoRegarding requirement to sell through dealership ... This kinda "service proxy" (which can be easily eliminated but it's not) is a common problem in this economy. Same thing with real estate agents. Do we really need that RE agent for our house sale/purchase to go smooth? Why not just create one central official website where sellers and buyers can find each other and do all paperwork, money transfers, bidding and other stuff online according to strictly defined procedure? I don't see any technical difficulty here.
- Domenic_S 13y ago> Same thing with real estate agents. Do we really need that RE agent for our house sale/purchase to go smooth? Huh? No. For sale by owner is a thing, and plenty of people buy without agent help. The only reason to use an agent is to have someone else handle your paperwork and if you're selling, market your home. There is no law requiring you to use an agent. In contrast, many states have franchise laws forbidding a car manufacturer from selling its own cars to the public.
- sremani 13y agoIn the quest for zero emissions - we are creating the Electric Cars - I want to compare the environmental footprint of Electric car building vs Normal cars, there are interesting articles pointing to the fact the electric cars have bigger carbon footprint for manufacturing etc. I would love to have Cradle to Grave Carbon footprint of Cars not just during the operational phase.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoIf you're interested in following up on this you can start with some of the stuff Amory Lovins[1] has done at the Rocky Mountain Institute. He was one of the first people I am aware of to look at the entire life cycle of cars as a way of evaluating different options. I've not always agreed with his conclusions but I appreciate the clarity of his presentation and thinking. [1] http://www.rmi.org/Amory+B.+Lovins http://www.rmi.org/Amory+B.+Lovins [2] http://blog.rmi.org/blog_the_electric_car_lighter_less_costly_plugged_in http://blog.rmi.org/blog_the_electric_car_lighter_less_costl...
- jared314 13y agoThis has been discussed for at least the last decade. An electric car's carbon footprint is based on the current, and future, efficiency of electric power generation, storage, and distribution. The production and destruction is a fixed carbon cost depending on the manufacturer. > In the quest for zero emissions - we are creating the Electric Cars The point of using electricity is the flexibility, and choice, of fuel sources. Reducing emissions from consumer vehicles is a wonderful side effect.
- ballard 13y agoFrom a long-term cash perspective, it is likely that, due to the market segment, saturation may be reached faster as most UHNWIs that want one will have already purchased a unit already. But of not yet customers are at least un-convinced, conservatives, cheapskates, brand loyalists and bad timing quants that maybe microstrategized. Without enough cash, what are the odds of Tesla pulling an iPhone 5C to tap others with six-figure incomes?
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- mixmastamyk 13y agoAm I the only one that doesn't care for the styling? It looks good from the back and side, but I don't like the big mouth in the front. Also not a fan of the lines on the dash and steering wheel. Would still take one of course. ;)
- ronik 13y agoHype.
- kenshiro_o 13y agoWith so many millionaire/wealthy hackers in California it is not so abnormal. Plus Tesla being based in this region they probably benefit from the proximity and the Silicon Valley Pride effect. Now I'd be really interested to see Tesla being more aggressive in cities like NYC/New Jersey and Boston. There are definitely quite a few well off people who would be charmed by the car.