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Tesla Q1 2021 Results

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Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#301
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post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite to the point, as the growth of Tesla isn't just a single data point, but the growth is pretty constant over many years.

Because it’s the initial phase of the curve? COVID is exponential until it isn’t, on what basis do you think it’s fair to extrapolate?

About 8 years of growth following the exponential curve? Just look at all the quarter numbers.

Of course, at a certain point Tesla is going to stop growing exponentially. The competition is growing, the total car market is limited. But if Tesla is continuing on the current trajectory for 2-4 more years, they have a chance at becoming the largest car manufacturer in the world.

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla has already lost marketshare in almost every market so they won't be bigger than Ford in 2 years. They will likely lose their regulatory credits some time this year because VW, Audi, Porsche and Ford have strong offerings.

How does Tesla lose market share while achieving record (+ 109%) sales? The market certainly hasn’t been growing faster than Tesla has.

When you define the market as electric vehicles instead of passenger vehicles. In Europe, the electric vehicle market is growing very fast.

But all these EV sales come at the expense of gas/diesel sales, so I think it is a bad idea to consider EV's as a separate market.

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#303
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> We believe that a vision-only system is ultimately all that is needed for full autonomy. Our AI-based software architecture has been increasingly reliant on cameras, to the point where radar is becoming unnecessary earlier than expected. As a result, our FSD team is fully focused on evolving to a vision-based autonomous system and we are nearly ready to switch the US market to Tesla Vision. This is a huge gamble IM…

I'm not entirely convinced it's a good idea, but one convincing argument I've seen is that sensor fusion is hard and it's not a priori clear which sensor to believe when they provide conflicting information. It's entirely possible that they get better predictive accuracy from vision-only data then in the analogous situations with vision+radar data.

The industry has been sensor fusion for decades. Training Autopilot neural networks to hallucinate road parts is easy but doing uncertainty estimation on simple radar measurements is hard? Also you still have to fuse the data from the multiple cameras.

I'm almost doubting my entire knowledge in the field now when all of a sudden everyone just accepts that "sensor fusion is hard" statement.

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#304
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if other companies aren’t growing faster. VW tripled electric car sales in 2020 compared to 2021: https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/2021/01/Volkswagen-bran...

When you sold 1 car yesterday, and sell 2 today, you have doubled your sales. It's misleading to talk about growth in terms of percentage points (or doubling/tripling, etc), if it's somewhat low numbers.

VW has just started selling their first "real" electric cars based on their all new platform.

If that platform works out then Tesla is going to compete not against one or two new models, but they'll suddenly compete against two dozen models.

Unless VW fucks something up in the next year, I just don't know how Tesla expects to compete with them. Tesla only has a handful of high end cars; they have no family cars, no vans, no compact cars, no busses.

VW is great at building models for every niche and at every price point. No matter what kind of car you want, VW (or Skoda or Audi) has multiple options for you.

Tesla is currently still ahead, but I'm not sure they can match the breadth of VWs upcoming model palette (if VWs new platform works out).

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#305
post #224

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I had to look it up but for reference in Q1 2021 the big auto makers delivered the following. Ford: 521,334 GM: 642,250 Toyota: 2.46 million VW: 2.5 million If Tesla holds up they'll be larger than Ford in 2 years and be the largest automaker in the world in 4 years.

That assumes the other car manufacturers aren't growing too. Most of the car industry has had their best growth in 1st quarter sales for nearly a decade. It will be interesting to see Q2 numbers - March sales seemed to be contributing most to the quarterly growth, but the chip shortage may effect production.

Most manufacturers selling EVs have had decent sales on those. They are basically flying off the shelves. Plugin hybrids are popular as wellof course but they are more complex to build and maintain than a simple battery EV: they have a cost disadvantage.

And that's a problem in a market with low margins that is about to be flooded with ever cheaper EV models. Petrol and Diesel cars are still important to a lot of manufacturers and that's market that is looking pretty grim right now.

Short term there are those manufacturers that have been planning and building giga factories (to build batteries and assemble cars) for the last few years and are bringing more online. And there are those who did not do that and are now struggling to secure battery supplies to match their ambitions. It will take them many billions to fix that. All while their existing ICE product lines are under increasing pressure.

The likes of Toyota, GM, VW, etc. will be very dependent on their ICE production for the foreseeable future. Of those, VW and GM are very serious about ramping up production capacity of course. Particularly VW looks like a solid contender for the #2 position behind Tesla short term at this point (that's their own stated ambition even). But still, most of their sales is still ICE vehicles and that's just not a growth business at this point. Lower margins, lower volume, and the threat of obsolescence decimating the second hand value.

However, the real threat to manufacturers is coming from China. Cheap mass produced EVs are already a reality there. There are multiple manufacturers there producing very high quality products that are looking to start exporting. 10-15$K EVs in the current market would be highly disruptive to companies depending on selling lots of 15-20K ICE vehicles. That's why Tesla is looking to produce a 25$k vehicle in China.

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#306
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now Tesla is outperforming competition on three points: * 0-100km/h times * Range * Charging network I believe most people don't care about the 0-100 speed. And most people can live with a little less range. So this leaves the network as a selling point. I believe it depends on the country how important this is. For example in the Netherlands you can cross the whole country on one charge. So you don't need a ne…

You forgot: * Software

Diminishing returns come much faster and harder for software in cars. Software not being the main focus of a car.

Especially now with Android Auto/Apple CarPlay.

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#307
post #98
post #61

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I think most people define premium by the build quality, interior design, options etc. But if you want to only define it by price, then the model 3 is definitely not in the premium segment. It's a very cheap car... So much so that I know a few people that literally joke at a white model 3 company lease as "your consulting job must suck"

So you're defining premium cars by the things that everyone hates about those cars, other than build quality. The German car companies will nickle and dime you to death with options, they have terrible interiors/user interfaces, etc. Granted I wish the model 3 had cooled seats but meh. Even a model S doesn't count with that logic.

Compared to a luxury German car I think the model 3 has far worse isolation, more plastic and vibrations, fake leather, much less seat options in terms of adjustments, often misaligned panels. All OK for the mid range car that it is, but I was responding to Tesla calling it the best selling premium car.

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#308
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to look it up but for reference in Q1 2021 the big auto makers delivered the following. Ford: 521,334 GM: 642,250 Toyota: 2.46 million VW: 2.5 million If Tesla holds up they'll be larger than Ford in 2 years and be the largest automaker in the world in 4 years.

Tesla cars are not interesting for many customers in EU (except maybe nordic countries), they will go with VW/Audi/BMW or other brands. You can't easily extrapolate the growth from US to EU or other parts of world.

Teslas are too expensive. The average selling price for a car in the EU is lower than in the US (for developed countries) and much lower than in the US (for the developing countries).

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#309
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget impossibly advanced German car user interfaces, such as trackpad to gesture individual characters to spell a word!

For reference: https://youtu.be/_aV91djgwEc I'm astonished this made it to production. Red tape and bureaucracy means nobody is willing to push back against a feature that is bad and potentially dangerous (maybe not any more dangerous than touchscreens though).

> maybe not any more dangerous than touchscreens though

Maybe not any more dangerous than fancy lane control marketed as full self driving...

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#310
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a bold statement. Here in Berlin I am seeing the model 3 a lot these days.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/renault-zoe-ecli... Less Tesla's are getting sold while other car makers have massive growth in their sales.

My comment cited anecdotal evidence so defer to your link with facts.

The Porsche Tychan is a really compelling threat to the Model S, too.

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