Quite true. When a company manages to be first to market AND has government subsidies** it's easy to become the leader until such time that cars of equal value and lower price arrive. That time is coming up on us real fast. Tesla's biggest advantage up to now has been the free electricity that they were giving away through the supercharger network. Making it exclusive to Tesla using a proprietary interface gave them an advantage over all their competitors. Musk told everyone that it was too difficult to use a common, standard interface. Now that Europe is requiring that all charges use a standard (CCS???) Tesla has implemented a supercharger that works with Teslas and their competitors too. ** subsidies in the form of rebates to the car buyer, allowances for building the charging infrastructure and sell-able carbon credits and car pool lane access, among other things.
exactly how prius got started. whether anyone will be catching up to tesla anytime soon is an open question. they can hardly produce any cars yet. meanwhile, teslas keep improving at a lightning pace.
Elon is his own worst enemy, not unlike the Dotard who also seems desperate for attention. He doesn't need our defense or worship while he is still trying to figure out life. I respect him for showing that EVs can be profitable and you really can't knock SpaceX (until there is a catastrophic loss of life). But Elon runs his mouth too much, and as a result he says some really stupid and obvious things out loud. I think he could take a lesson or two from Jeff Bezos, but even Bezos is starting to run his mouth too so it might be an inevitable trait of those with inferiority complexes. I mean what a time to be alive to see "respected figures" out themselves as petty internet trolls. These guys are no Howard Hughes, not even close, they don't hold a candle to a long list of industry magnates and self-built people. So I don't discount my observations of what these guys put out there themselves as me being political or hating the rich, we all just need some perspective. To help with perspective I remind myself that a million seconds is 11 days and a billion seconds is 32 years.
First - they (manufacturers) were ALL entitled to subsidies. Most manufacturers wasted their incentive $$ on 'average' plugins - far from outstanding. The price/value component? not so easily quantified, because many manufacturers still make EV's that can't charge on NEAR as much power as new gen superchargers. up to now? Free ended in 2017 ... not even the whole year. Tesla was more than willing to share but other manufacturers didn't want to pay for it. No, other manufacturers wanted to leave charging infrastructure up to somebody else. One thing this fails to address is that in order to run on the supercharger network, regardless of manufacturer, the car has to be able to acknowledge that it belongs on the system. Plug your bastard ev in all you want w/ your CCS plug. If you want to play, you have to pay. The other manufacturers don't choose to ... so that kind of fault-finding is best directed at the other guys, not Tesla. .
It has been years since Tesla gave free lifetime Supercharging to a car. The proprietary plug is not an advantage in Europe and China, since it isn't used "Musk told everyone that it was too difficult to use a common, standard interface." When and where did he say that? At the time the Model S was planned for market, there wasn't any fast DC charging standard that would meet the speeds Tesla wanted. CHAdeMO topped out at 50kW at most, and CCS was years away from even being available. On top of that, there wasn't anybody making a serious push of deploying a nationwide charging network. Tesla wanted to show that a BEV could replace an ICE car. For that, they needed a fast charging network that would reach across the country. Since no one was building that, they ahd to do it. Which were available to everyone else. The gen2 Prius benefited from similar subsidies, and Toyota is still using Prius CAFE numbers to offset the Tundra and Sequoia.
Are you saying that Musk has reneged on the free for life charging that was part and parcel of the pre 2017 purchase price? As for "too difficult to use..." Look up the statements Musk used last year to try to convince the German government that they needed superchargers that were only for Tesla products. If it were a normal company, you'd be able to find such statements in the press release archives.
Having owned a Tesla since March 26, 2019, some of these claims hold little water: subsidies - the tax credit aged out and we only got ~$4,000 on our 2020 tax bill. It no longer exists yet Tesla is production limited with white-hot demand. CAFE credit sales - the other car makers always had the freedom, they refused, to build CAFE compliant cars instead of their rolling pieces of junk. The rules were clear and unambiguous so they gave Tesla, over the years, massive monies so we might breath pollution free air and less CO{2}, global warming. free electricity - the only free electricity I got was when someone cited my postings and gave me a referral. Instead of an advertisement budget, word-of-mouth rewarded. Sad to say, that program has ended. Every other SuperCharger session was paid for including some 'idle fees.' BTW, I understand what today is a very small number of Tesla EVs had a longer 'free' SuperCharger access ... way less than 10%. proprietary interface - the CCS-1 has and remains such a disaster combining both unreliable and expense. So our 50 kW limited, BMW i3-REx is billed at the same rate as a 350 kW other EV. The CCS-1 fast DC chargers are using time, not kWh, to bill the customer, a premium electrical expense. In contrast, my latest Tesla charge was based on staggered charge rate and time. This misconceptions (aka., public lies) remain all too common. Meanwhile, Tesla seems to make plenty of profit from the cars they make. Bob Wilson
Go back through the Tesla statement where they said they would share. You'll find it has a lot of caveats and gotchas. Like agreeing to never sue Tesla if you license their proprietary interface. I believe that a Ford Mustang was able to do just that not long ago. It had something to do with finding a supercharger in that was using the new standard as well as the proprietary one. Someone let it slip that the mustang and certain European cars could use it. There's a thread here somewhere about it.
Poor Bob. You only got a $4,000 subsidy on a $45,000 Tesla. My heart bleeds for you. Is tesla production limited because of demand, or is it because they keep promising models that they have no intention to deliver? How many of their trucks did they sell before the first one was even made? A LOT, if I remember correctly. Now the truck is not even on the horizon. Oh yeah, there's that recent move to sell only the more expensive models, eliminating the cheaper models that they promised.
The thrust of the two articles and studies were that there needs to be a certain number of people able to buy new EVs (or hybrids to a certai9n extent) so that a certain number are sold at a certain margin to justify a stock price of X. Every time I go out I see deserted new car lots but the bottom feeder lots are chock full. Do I think Tesla will continue to be successful? Yes. The question I was raising was will it be successful enough to justify the price it was being bought at THEN. And back then everyone was very positive about the stock. Having read the article, I began to question so I invited others o read the article and comment. After a 36% drop, do you think it is now fairly priced? Where do you think it will be priced a year from now?
He's dead if you're wondering Well yeah, they market their cars as luxury vehicles without the luxury vehicle quality you'd expect. Profit. Don't get me wrong, I'd buy a Tesla or other EV when my time comes, and we all went through some of this scrutiny when we bought our Prius with people questioning the design/quality and why we'd pay a premium for it.
i don't hear too many complaints from people who chose tesla over other luxury vehicles. a lot of whining from gear head reviewers and short sellers though
musk is an interesting personality, but when i look at most geniuses: jobs, gates, bezos, branson, ellison, et al, they all are
Ever buy the latest music album only to get home and find out it is less than stellar, but because you paid full price it starts to grow on you? We all have.
Following this logic, no car would score poorly. The fit and finish issues are overblown. Most people are extremely happy with their new Teslas. You can throw personal attacks at Musk, other posters, etc, but the fact is, Tesla has better margins, better percentage growth, and better debt ration than any of the other major car companies.
So - no one drives off the Toyota show room floor w/ defects or fit & finish? Hmm - Guess it was just me then .... the only one that ever had a dead MFD (for example) . .
