I don't think this just about 'the competition getting wiser' or 'the market for EV's getting bigger'. People aren't buying Tesla because of Musk. Maybe not every missed sale is for that reason - but if you think for one minute that his behavior and his positions doesn't affect car sales - you're simply mistaken.
As an owner I disagree. Ya, Elon is often as ass. Tesla's are fast, safe, and have all the usual EV advantages. I'm not buying a worse car just because a billionaire is an ass.
However most people that want a tesla, have a tesla.
But they all look similar, have narrow use cases (commuting on clean roads), have minimal road clearance (except the truck). People (like me) like turn signals, shifters, and temp sensors. I bought a model 3P, the only option was tires not good for under 40F (because of damage to the tires, not traction). No option for anything else, despite it being under 40F that same day a 1.5 hour drive away.
The new model 3P (no Yp yet) made the steering wheel buttons WORSE, they don't click. Pretty much a deal killer for me, especially since they removed the turn signal and shifter stalks.
Model Y is nice, but very low for a SUV at 6.6 inches. Well below what you might need if there's a snow storm.
Rivian R2 and other competition is looking pretty good, last thing I want to think about is the rotational alignment of the wheel so I can hit a moving target of a turn signal, without even a click to let me know I hit it.
I'm plenty pleased with the ergonomics of my 3P, nearly everything either has a button, voice control, or is set rarely enough (like seat heaters) that I leave it on auto. The new 3P is a disaster in comparison and won't even warn me accurately track when it's going to freeze.
I doubt it's significant. If you're not super online or in tech, it's very likely you don't know much about Musk. Millions of people own Teslas who know little to nothing about him. It's got to be a single digit percentage who don't buy because of him.
I think the Cybertruck and QC issues that have become weekly issues in the media can't be helping either. It's a big, ugly, expensive piece of crap and that has to leave some people wondering about the stories of panel gaps and other issues in other Tesla models. Add Musk to that, and the existence of alternatives and I'm not shocked that the Tesla bubble is deflating.
the cybertruck is such a failure. the US truck market is gigantic; the F-150 is the single best selling vehicle -- not car, not truck, but ALL consumer vehicles -- in the US.
There is a massive demand for the F-150 Lightning and a very pragmatic part of the US wants rechargable trucks esp. since they're more often than not commuter vehicles. Like, gas for these trucks is expensive. There is a market segment he could totally grab, and all he had to do was make a knock-off Nissan Titan with batteries and then dominate.
The rest of the market is saturated and is now competing on price, and Asia will dominate there. If you can't compete on price then you compete on image, reliability, safety, etc., but their poor QC, combined with Musk's increasingly unhinged behavior, suggests that the brand is of dubious value.
Massive demand? My feed has mentioned numerous lack of demand, parking lots filling with unsold trucks, and significant cuts to production. "According to Ford spokeswoman Jessica Enoch, one-third of the 2,100 workers will remain at the plant starting April 1, 2024."
Apparently they are cutting from 3 crews running 2 shifts to 1 crew running 1 shift.
I am in the market for a new vehicle and am strongly considering purchasing an EV. Tesla’s lineup seems stale to me. The Model 3 is relatively modern. However, the Model Y is due for a refresh but project Juniper has been delayed. The Model X, and S are also stale. Competition offers fresh models with more better build quality and design. Tesla seems to be falling behind.
You mean restyling? It's a feature of classic automakers that I actually don't like. It seems aimed at forcing consumers to get a new vehicle by making the old one seem deprecated. It's mimicking the fashion industry, where fashion shouldn't matter.
If you mean vehicle development, Tesla does that, continuously. A 2022 model 3 is a different car from a 2018 model 3, as much as a 2024 highland is. You don't need to touch the exterior to improve the car.
How strange. So you didn't ever buy the car? You never owned it, but paid for - I assume - a percentage of its sticker price over 3 years? Then do you get a credit for a new one?
Step back a bit and ask yourself: Why not? If it's a great car, and if it has been technologically updated, should you really care that much about a new front grill design?
It reminds me of how Ford started and owned the market, then GM became dominant by offering different colors, models, and styles that would appeal to the market segment that wanted a car but not the model T.
Other companies like BMW are doing very well with electric models because they are focused on delivering the same "BMW experience" in electric models.
As far as I can tell the 3 and the Y are decent vehicles but no longer illicit the kind of emotion that excites a purchase. I don't get the cybertruck at all in terms of product/market fit. Seems like an "Edsel moment" to me.
For most other EVs, it still feels like you're sitting in a car.
The main reason I'd consider something other than a Tesla today:
- What's the maximum range
- How much range do you get for the price
- What's the total cost (there are cheaper cars that look great)
As far as I'm concerned, nothing is outright beating Tesla on design. It's hard to beat simplicity.
Also, sitting in a Tesla on the road is a lot less special nowadays. It is the most common model. This used to be an argument I heard about why people would pick a Polestar over a Tesla: People would say "Hey, there's a car." and not "Hey, there's a Tesla." -- but nowadays, Teslas are as ubiquitous as cars, and all the new EVs have annoyingly bright beams.
Teslas are very stale inside. The "tablet as 99% of the interface" is horrible and should be left in the 20teens. Physical buttons for the most important interactions with the car are in all ways better. I understand why they do this, they are going all in on autonomous driving, so sure. I recently purchased an EV and when I sat in the Tesla, I hated it. I don't want to play the iPad driving game.
I know this is a popular opinion, but you'll be hard pressed to find a Tesla owner that shares your opinion. It could be self-selection, or it could be that Tesla's user interface actually works very well.
In my opinion, it's the latter, after observing how my parents adapted to driving a Tesla. I was actually concerned it'd be a hard transition, but I only had a couple "support calls" related to the car.
Yes, it is stalkless. You get used to this in minutes, and, IME, stalks feel antiquated soon after that.
It drives really well and is a much smoother and quieter ride than our 2020 Model 3 LR without sacrificing performance.
I also drove the 2022 Model S refresh. This car was also very nice, but it feels heavy and, in my opinion, doesn't command the cost they're asking for it (especially when it was, like, $110k for the LR variant). Also, it's headlights are somehow worse than the Model 3.
KIA has some nice EVs the EV6 line and EV9 there's a new EV3 coming soon. I'm looking into the EV9 GT. I wish the Hyundai Sante Fe had a BEV model option it looks nicer outside than the EV9. The Hyundai KIA 800V (ish) charging is superior to Tesla vehicles.
It’s not clear if Tesla is focused on new models anymore. Seems like they think that the only way to justify their stock valuation is if they improve FSD.
at this stage FSD is a meme. "We are confident FSD will be available next year and its impact will be profound" repeated year after year for a DECADE now.
Its not happening anytime soon, especially if tesla want to rely solely on visuals inputs without lidar.
What’s “stale” about the S/X, which were refreshed relatively recently, and which are still untouchable in terms of performance? The interior is wholly different from the original Model S/X and the exterior still looks great, all these years after the original release.
Why must a manufacturer change a great design just to satisfy the subset of customers who have an irrational need for annual novelty?
Surely the sales figures for the 3 and Y speak for themselves.
Tesla is not stagnating. It continues to dominate.
Maybe some people don't want to pay 2024 prices for a 2012 design? Front grill aside, the Model S design has barely budged since its debut, and the X is only 3 years newer. There's almost nothing differentiating a used S/X from a new one to a passerby, and that's not something everyone buying new likes.
Tesla isn't Porsche, their designs are getting stale.
People often buy new iPhones despite the exterior design barely changing since 2017.
When it comes to phones, buyers are smart enough to realise that it's what's inside that counts - the processor, screen tech, cameras etc. They understand that iterating these components is more important than iterating the superficial shell they're housed in.
Unfortunately the car market is irrational. Some customers want superficial new shells every year, in order to show off to others that they're wealthy enough to refresh their car.
These kind of customers may not appreciate that since 2012, Tesla has delivered several radical new Model S vehicles, albeit in the same skin. The Model S has been:
* transitioned from a single motor to triple motors (for extra performance and torque vectoring).
* increased its power from 363 hp to 1020 hp, with a breakthrough carbon-wrapped rotor allowing much higher RPM, and improved drivetrain efficiency.
* replaced its 60kWh battery pack with a 100kWh pack, improving range, longevity, power delivery and charging speed.
* made major iterations to the computer, with many new capabilities added in hardware and software.
* improved full self driving to the point where it can navigate city streets with barely any intervention.
* completely revamped the interior. Ventilated seats. Rear screen. Acoustic glass. Improved legroom and headroom. Heat pump for HVAC
---
There are many benefits to customers in Tesla preserving the exterior shell of the vehicle - in particular it means servicing is easier and cheaper, as there is less variation in parts between model years. Accessories from earlier cars are compatible with later cars. There is less needless devaluation of older models.
2017 iPhones don't share any sheet metal with 2024 iPhones the way Teslas do [1]. Yes iPhones share similar design language but their design has not stood completely still for a decade.
Other car companies are evolving their tech and their designs, while Tesla is seemingly only doing half of that.
[1] Unless we want to count the iPhone SE, their cheapest budget-oriented phone, but that only proves my point further that new designs are valued more.
> Sales data from April, collected by Automotive News, shows growth in the EV market outpacing that of vehicles as a whole. Electric sales were up 14 percent as a whole, which is a promising number. Yet, when you take Tesla out of the equation, those numbers skyrocket: Non-Tesla EV sales grew a full 69 percent over the same period.
I´d also wager that some of the competition has finally gotten they sh!t together.
Tried the new WV ev Passad and the latest Skoda Enyaq. Both have great battery range and when it comes to comfort are much better than the stiff bumby Tesla.
Tesla had momentum and they used it to the max. Now the competition has gotten wizer.
I do not subscribe to the interwebs anti-Musk rhetoric, most people do not care if he eats babies for breakfast as long as his cars are affordable, reliable, comfortable and reasonably green.
So before the Musk hate starts as is fashion in the forums these days, competition got better, Tesla are no longer ahead.
As somebody potentially in the market for an EV, I can say that for me, Musk is most definitely a factor.
Not the only factor, to be sure, but the off-putting icing on an otherwise average cake.
If Tesla were the only decent EV in town, I might hold my nose through Musk’s behaviour and buy one. They aren’t, though, so I don’t have to.
The other major factors in my decision are the very public QA issues, safety issues, and questionable design decisions (eg. all-touchscreen controls, dangerous “full self-driving” fallacy) that, combined, leave me thinking “yeah, maybe I’d rather buy from a somewhat more boring company with a longer history of _making safely-working cars_”
I don’t kid myself that the heads of most car companies are necessarily decent human beings who align with me ethically or politically, but all other things being increasingly equal, why would I opt for the one run by a childish unstable egomaniac who stands in loud, public opposition to most of what I believe in?
Maybe because VW, for example, has actually skirted pollution laws, with intent. Or because PSA management publicly derides any effort for EV transition. Or maybe because Toyota has for 20 years falsely promised EV fuel cells/engines in the next five years, all the while happily selling ICE vehicles.
If you look closely at any big corporation management, they are all egomaniacs. Just not childish enough to publicize that fact.
They had momentum and fumbled it with the Cybertruck. They retain a massive sourcing and production expertise advantage, as well as a built-in marketing advantage in their existing customers (and Superchargers).
In the time they fumbled they lost the low-end market to China. They’re currently bleeding the aspirational market to higher-end, more-differentiated brands.
I’m not a car guy. It isn’t clear where they go from here. But they both didn’t use their momentum “to the max,” nor are they out of steam.
When the Cybertruck launched was already too late for them to have launched a "budget" Tesla, and a budget Tesla is what they really needed to cement their lead in the EV industry. Now there are a bunch of decent competitors in Tesla's market segments and China is eating (or will eat) everybody's lunch in cheaper segments (except for the US, I guess, with the 100% import tax).
I have no idea what they're doing. It looks like the budget Tesla is dead in the water and they're all in on robotaxis? How is that going to work? What's their actual strategy for the near to long-term future?
> When the Cybertruck launched was already too late for them to have launched a "budget" Tesla
Sure. When the Cybertruck started diverting resources it wasn’t.
> they're all in on robotaxis?
Current market leader is Mercedes with an SAE Level 3 vehicle [1]. (Tesla markets like it’s Level 5, but it’s technically Level 2, same as my Subaru.)
Waymo is Level 4 [2]. They appear to be at their field’s forefront. If Tesla could sell a Level 4 vehicle, even one that only carries that guarantee on certain routes at certain times of the day in certain weather, it would be a game changer.
Is the only Level 3 vehicle on the roads in Germany and now California and Nevada. Until Tesla steps up and says you don’t have to pay attention, that the car can drive itself and if it fucks up it’s on Tesla, it’s Level 2. Not in the lead.
> it just follows the car in front
No, that’s active lane keeping. My Subaru does that.
> Cannot even change lanes
Yes it does [1].
> Works only under 40MPH
If you want to exceed this, you can switch to its Level 2 mode.
FSD is a very advanced Level 2 system. (Probably the most advanced.) But it’s still Level 2 because you are still supposed to closely supervise it.
First of all, consumers are used to rapid changes (churn?) in automotive design, every few years there is a major reworking of nameplates like the Toyota Corolla, Chevy Silverado, and such. Tesla hasn’t been keeping up.
Sales though is about emotions as much as anything else and the way people feel about Musk makes a difference. My take is Musk was always a bit of a punk who appealed more to some people (tech bros) than other people (women) and that tendency to rub some people the wrong way was always there but he went through a phase where it intensified. It was not so important to ‘please everybody’ when they were selling just a few cars but when you become a big brand like GM or the NFL you can’t win by driving anyone away.
I don’t know what he was thinking but from the viewpoint of making and selling cars the pivot to “conservatism” was not a good idea. For one thing liberals are a lot more interested in buying EVs and recently conservatives have been polarized against them. If “coal rollers” in Texas were going to flock to Tesla because Musk was mocking “woke” people on Twitter and leaving California that would be one thing but it isn’t.
My son’s views are relatively conservative compared to mine but he’s much more negative on Tesla and Musk than I am and his reasons cover everything from an antipathy to connected cars, touchscreens and cars becoming an extension of phones like the Apple Watch to questions of character.
It doesn’t help that like all the ex-China manufacturers, Tesla is ignoring the mainstream market and instead fixating on the profitable but limited luxury market.
As a relatively early investor, I have been watching Tesla subs for a long time. Even though I sold 2 years ago I still pay attention. While certainly not the only factor, public opinion on Musk is a significant factor it appears:
> The survey also found that 87% of Model 3 owners are considering a Tesla for their next vehicles. That means it’s a fairly small percentage of people who are actually walking away from Tesla overall, and only about one in five of those people are doing it because of Musk
People considering buying a Tesla isn’t the same as people actually buying a Tesla.
13% of owners found the experience so bad they are completely unwilling to consider the brand. People who dislike the cars or company but want a sub 45k EV with ~300 miles of range still don’t have a lot of options. Thus most current owners would at least consider buying another Tesla.
Why do you think those 13% found the experience very bad? They might have moved to an area where there are no superchargers, they may want to try something different (which people do, even if they like what they have today), they might want a different body type (sport instead of the family), there may be many other reasons.
This is the financial model the large investors have been working on. Luxury market saturation followed by commoditisation of EVs.
Go look at the Invesco QQQ ETF on Morningstar and they're the only loss in the top 10. Also why you diversify your investments and don't go all in on TSLA. Ride it, dump it.
It would be kind of weird if the customer base for a Tesla 3/Y was fundamentally different from the customer base for, say, a VW id.4 or that Hyundai whose name I forget that is everywhere, tho.
Moving the blame on right wingers feels incredibly wrong.
Reminds me how certain movie directors blame the right wingers for their movie flopping, when the real reason is their movie just sucks mega balls period. Just own your failures and stop looking for right wing straw men everywhere as scapegoats.
Money talks in the free market and consumers vote with their wallets so if you make products that are top quality and great value, they'll buy them regardless of your political orientation.
Could be that Tesla is reaching market saturation - nearly everyone that wants one, now has one. I just bought out the lease on my Model X and previously owned a Model S prior to that. Both are great cars.
If you look carefully, the numbers are not nearly as convincing. The article (the real one, from Automotive, from which the numbers are quoted) is behind the paywall, but even the visible portion indicates that the pickup in sales is in response to major factory rebates, often in excess of $10k.
This might be not be a pickup in interest in EVs, but a factory fire sale as they adjust to demand shifts. My 2c.
A small personal note as one who have choose a new BEV 2 years ago: I was choosing to avoid Tesla because while their software is objectively far less CRAP than the others it's still much more "car as a service" than the others.
I do reject surveillance capitalism so I prefer a crappy surveillant Chinese with buggier crapware but less services and even NO OTA than a western one who reach the point of selling insurance "depending on how you drive".
If our automakers want to understand that we are better at software than the rest of the world but people do want to own and control not being puppets enslaved by services things can change, otherwise they have choose to commit suicide bringing us, the west, with them.
Clicking through to the source—or at least the part that’s not paywalled—it’s not clear how great that 69% increase is. It’s described as the result of heavy incentives to clear excess inventory.
> Electric sales were up 14 percent as a whole, which is a promising number. Yet, when you take Tesla out of the equation, those numbers skyrocket: Non-Tesla EV sales grew a full 69 percent over the same period. Nice
This is such dodgy reframing that I feel compelled to fix it: "EV sales are up 14%. Manufacturers other than Tesla made up the bulk of that".
But that isn’t the story. Tesla’s contribution to the 14%, the growth, was negative. We’re looking at the difference in differences, not absolute values.
it's dodgy reframing, but you can't conclude that non-Telsa manufacturers made up the bulk of it, at least from that isolated quote
Suppose Tesla had 99% market share at the start of the period. Sales of the entire market growing by 14% could be explained by 13.44% growth for Telsa's share and 69% growth for the other 1% market share.
without knowing the absolute values, the headline is fairly meaningless
I agree that the "framing" can be misleading, but in this case, it's burying how bad it is for Tesla actually.
> New Tesla registrations fell 17 percent in April, marking three consecutive months in the red. Tesla’s share of the U.S. EV segment dropped to 46.3 percent in April from 63.8 percent a year earlier, S&P Global Mobility said.
Tesla's growth in sales isn't just lower than everybody else's. It's negative. They're selling less than they used to while also losing market share and while their competitors have plenty of sales growth.
But it was approved a while ago, except for some reason Delaware went against precedent and disallowed it so they moved to Texas where it was re-approved.
> Delaware went against precedent and disallowed it
Board competence is super precedented. Normally the courts defer to business judgement to an obnoxious degree, but if the Board isn’t independent it can no longer be assured to be serving its fiduciary duty. (To investors majority and minority.)
The ruling was mostly not about board's competence but based on judge's opinion that during original vote the shareholders weren't properly informed about things.
Given that re-approval happened at similar levels of shareholders support, that judgement seems incorrect.
And yes, it is unprecedented as in "there's no similar ruling in Delaware history".
And I stress "similar", not the "board competence" idea you made up.
As you yourself noted, the precedent in Delaware is that judges stay away from second guessing boards or shareholders and this seems like an activist ruling, not something based on past Delaware rulings.
> ruling was mostly not about board's competence but based on judge's opinion that during original vote the shareholders weren't properly informed about things
That second bit of analysis never kicks in if Musk isn’t a “controlling shareholder.” Put another way, the ruling wouldn’t have been legal if the Board were deemed competent.
The Court found “Musk was the paradigmatic ‘Superstar CEO,’ who held some of the most influential corporate positions (CEO, Chair, and founder), enjoyed thick ties with the directors tasked with negotiating on behalf of Tesla, and dominated the process that led to board approval of his compensation plan,” thereby concluding “Musk controlled Tesla” [1].
This means the Court no longer defers to the company, but must decide if “the compensation plan was entirely fair.”
> it is unprecedented as in "there's no similar ruling in Delaware history"
What are you quoting?
In any case, you’re correct: the entire fairness doctrine has only needed to be applied by Delaware thrice before, in the 1980s [2] and then 2022 [3]. The novelty remains in Tesla’s closely-construed Board.
“Put simply, neither the Compensation Committee nor the Board acted in the best interests of the Company when negotiating Musk’s compensation plan. In fact, there is barely any evidence of negotiations at all. Rather than negotiate against Musk with the mindset of a third party, the Compensation Committee worked alongside him, almost as an advisory body.”
“The Board never asked the $55.8 billion question: Was the plan even necessary for Tesla to retain Musk and achieve its goals?”
“The incredible size of the biggest compensation plan ever—an unfathomable sum—seems to have been calibrated to help Musk achieve what he believed would make “a good future for humanity” [related to Musk’s goal of colonizing Mars]. [T]hat had no relation to Tesla’s goals with the compensation plan.”
> As you yourself noted, the precedent in Delaware is that judges stay away from second guessing boards or shareholders and this seems like an activist ruling, not something based on past Delaware rulings.
Revisiting and potentially invalidating decisions regarding compensation is like an entire standalone unit in business associations/corporate law classes. There are flow charts with forks named after precedential cases.
> The ruling was mostly not about board's competence
Because showing that was so trivial that it barely needed to be done. People working directly for Musk asserted they had no financial ties to him or any of his companies. The board fucked up within the first few lines of legal boilerplate of the agreement.
The remainder was trying to find out if anything within the agreement wasn't tainted by the boards fuckery.
This is essentially down to marketing strategy. Tesla only makes two mass-market cars, the 3 and Y. This is pretty unusual in the industry. VW Group, say, makes about 10, with another 10 or so coming soon, all on the same platform, some of which, like the Cupra Born, are just a straight-up rebadge of others.
The number of sales of a _specific model_ of car is rarely a useful comparison point, because, in most cases, any given model of car has a bunch of sister models for market segmentation purposes anyway.
> car advice journalism is hopelessly polarised and political
Not sure why you’re coming to such a weird conclusion from two sets of facts that are mutually compatible.
Tesla makes the best-selling EVs. We don’t have sales numbers for Q1, but they’re probably in line with 2023. The news is that while most of 2023 involved reporting on how EV sales were flagging, on review, we find EV sales are growing fine, it’s Tesla’s that are stable. That means they’ll continue to be a top seller. But less top than before.
Key point being in 2023. Meanwhile, so far in 2024, they have sold fewer cars than this time last year. This is not unexpected after a massive success in one year, except for people who like to imagine that growth continues forever.
What in your linked article do you think is falsely framed or incorrect?
It doesn't seem political or polarised to report on the top selling EV with the latest available data. Are you suggesting Drive wouldn't have if it were another brand selling the most?
