THE TRUCK!

“Whenever somebody buys the Tesla Roadster, every penny that Tesla makes goes into development of lower cost mass-market vehicles,” Musk said, noting that laptops and cellphones went from expensive trinkets to cost-effective necessities over time. “You can’t get to the low-cost cars unless you start with the expensive cars.” - from a 2008 presentation that Musk gave at The Hollywood Hill​

Elon once pointed out that had Tesla gone directly in cheaper EVs, it would have gone out of business and there would be no Tesla to make EVs in the future. Called the "learning curve," you start with profitable if expensive EVs to learn and fund the development of more affordable EVs. But each must make a profit today or the company disappears along with the promise of any future EVs.

Bob Wilson

 

Tesla already did that. Following Model 3 should have been Model 2.

 

right, and you probably think it's never coming

 

How many times do you want the same history lesson?

 

which one, the history of word salad?

 

I suspect the Model 2 is coming soon enough from Tesla's Chinese engineers but also likely the Mexican and unannounced India factories.

Bob Wilson

 

It's okay to be a harsh critic of Tesla - for not doing what YOU think they should do.
instead of doing what YOU think they should do, they prioritized getting their model Y up & running. look how well it's sales are doing .... even tho the model 2 wasn't priority. Can that reality get an acknowledgment?
.

 

It's like you are following a script. The same thing happened in the past. I point out realities of business and it gets spun as what I think is important. Bottom line, enthusiasts don't like facing what it takes to get great engineering to reach ordinary consumers.

 

Maybe read your own post above that you wrote ?? which said that YOU think model 2 should have been next?
by not acknowledging Tesla prioritized model Y over a model 2 ... & its huge success, all your response did was deflect. Markets change and if Tesla doesn't think a teeny 2 car will be as successful, then what's wrong with not building it ever - much less building it before the Y.

 

You were well aware that the discussion has been about this rollout. Attempting to shift focus elsewhere was part of the script. If you don't like that history, tell us how this time it is different.

 

2025 Ford Ranger Lightning Electric Pickup: Everything We Know About the Midsize EV Truck (motortrend.com)

Current estimate 35k for a future Ranger full electric.

The Ranger hybrid is currently available (or maybe that's the Maverick?), other than being effectively sold out, and priced pretty fair, I believe.

 

I'm curious why it's perfectly fine for Tesla to focus on the Model Y as a priority and this is ok, but everyone dogging the hell out of Toyota because they believe it is best for their business to focus on hybrids at the current time? Isn't it the same thing? Are hybrids not selling?

 

john say that's not what this thread is about.

but then again the only reason the Y came up was because John (w/ all of his marketing prowess & manufacturing know-how) insisted the model 2 should have come out before a pickup, regardless of how USA loves their pickups - nevermind the manufacturer's profits that go along with it.
Yes there's nothing wrong with (plugin) hybrids other than there's a hope that ev's will further save even more fuel than a plug-in hybrid. So it doesn't matter that neither you nor I agree with that philosophy. There are downsides to having dual propulsion systems such as more complexity & cost, but it also allows for more versatility ... should i dare to go further off topic.
.

 

Sure hybrids are selling. So are gas guzzling trucks.
The Model Y vs Model 2 is a choice of different form factors of the same family of Drive Train tech. Tesla is also young and can only do so many different things at one time.

Toyota has huge resources & infrastructure. They could easily put more than the current token gesture towards EVs.
And because they were so slow, they are just starting to learn from initial mistakes.

 

that's pretty gracious towards Toyota .... that they were so slow. But let's not forget the Scion IQ ev ... with its high price, & 38-50 mile range.
Scion iQ EV - Actual Sales Versus Toyota's Initial Expectations

What was that something like a decade ago? Shopping cart size cars work okay in some markets like China and Japan. No, Toyota has the know-how & the years of experience but they chose instead to pour their money into their hydrogen sedan hoax as well as big bucks lobbying & advertising against, electric cars



even tho they know ev's don't need 4 hours to charge. This is where John will claim lessons learned. But then he can't apply his lessons learned to GM with the Chevy volt. But every manufacturer learns lessons from product that isn't as successful as they'd hoped.
.

 

dup

 

I have no requirements for a Cyber Truck.

Hummm, rethinking my requirements.

Bob Wilson

 

Well, when that &35,000. Ranger comes out, that will be the death of the cybertruck.
And it can’t happen soon enough, in our opinions

 

I was just reading about the steer-by-wire system in this truck. No mechanical backup, apparently. I'm not aware of another one like this on the roads right now.

I would have to imagine that somebody at Tesla is sweating bullets, praying that this thing doesn't cause any accidents until after they get some real numbers shipping.

@fuzzy1 would be the one to properly feel the stats, but an injury or fatality related to a fleet that small would make a pretty harsh dent in the actuarial tables to be used for pricing the insurance on the entire later production run.

Much the same way the Concorde went from being one of the safest airplanes ever produced to being one of the most dangerous, just by one single crash- sample size counts for a lot.

 

Fly by wire Tech has been around for decades & through bad experiences in aerospace (where Musk poached much of his crew) - the industry has either incorporated 3 or 4 levels of redundancy. Who wouldn't rather feel safe with that - versus the texting driver

That said, how awesome is it to watch/observe that steering yoke - needing to turn only a few degrees to reach one lock point to the opposite at slow & non-moving dynamics versus the controllers that would only allow for a very small degree change at high speed - all the while factoring in Dynamics of snow rain ice / loss of traction .... all
stuff that had to be calculated via aerospace.