281–290 of 463 posts
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I mean the idea that Elon Musk could extend Tesla into a robot company is laughable — and as laughable all the other things Elon Musk has actually accomplished.
Is that more or less laughable than all the things that he promised but didn't accomplish?
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> * when in full-auto on a single lane road, when there's an exit on the right the Tesla 3 almost always slightly swerve towards the exit before coming back in its lane. None of the Megane, the EQE or the BMW i4 do that. A minor nuisance. Unless you happen to be at the ready attentively double-checking whatever the assistance is doing - then it must be infuriatingly annoying! Guess what you're supposed to be doing, a…
I 'd freak out for sure. How can you be cool with your car changing direction when it should not? And how can someone not pay attention? What will you do? Sleep? Read a book?
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The difference seems to be that Tesla was 5-10 years ahead on everything: Minimalistic interiors, modern infotainment, mobile app performance, and of course they lead the way in making electric cars viable by showing that they can both look good and blast off in record time. But you're right that other automakers see Tesla as a threat and are catching up; for example, the range and charging curve improvements on mode…
> Minimalistic interiors Is this something you see as a benefit? For me Tesla's overall aesthetic, including both their exterior looks and interior design, along with the absence of physical controls that go long with that represent their biggest downsides (outside of build quality).
> Is this something you see as a benefit?
Yes. It's a distraction free operating environment. Tesla's aesthetic choices are semi-scandinavian/Ikea. Minimal doesn't have to be that style specifically. The early New Beetle did a passable job. The typical car is like MS Word with every ribbon open at once. A minimalist interior is focus mode.
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Exactly. Tesla stock price should be looked at in a log plot.
Regardless, it's still 10x overvalued if we're simply considering it to be a carmaker. It's currently 7x the value of Ford with a fraction of the production.
I'm not sure you can say that when the market cap is still 10x car companies that deliver orders of magnitude more cars than them. Even a high growth car company wouldn't justify that valuation. No, Tesla is still very overpriced for a car company based on hype.
I'm not gonna say TSLA isn't overpriced but number of cars isn't a great metric. Let's look at some financials: Tesla: mcap $388B, debt $9B, op income $12B, free cash flow $9B GM: mcap $49B, debt $110B, op income $10B, free cash flow $1B Ford: mcap $48B, debt $139B, op income $11B, free cash flow $3B Tesla makes more money than Ford or GM, while having much less debt. The fact that they sell fewer cars means their ma…
Tesla, and even more Uber, were priced as if self driving cars are almost here. The idea that services like Uber without the drivers would make car ownership obsolete drove those valuations. Now that self driving cars are many decades away, instead of less than one decade away, is bring stock prices down. I always questions how fast we would see self driving cars, not because of the technology, but because of consume…
Perhaps some people did give a negative answer, but that isn't really why the median is zero. If you asked 100 people, and 51 said $0, and the other 49 said anything else at all (including all saying $1m) then the median would be $0. No negative answers needed.
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The giant tablet screen that sticks out like a sore thumb is the opposite of minimalistic, or minimalistic in the worst way. I wonder how long Tesla can get away with not offering CarPlay/Android Auto functionality. The lack of that basic, cheap, and frequently used feature disqualifies any car from consideration in my view.
I don’t love that I have to use the touch screen to open my glove box, and I certainly think there are a lot of UI issues (and the lack of integration with phones beyond regular bluetooth), but one thing I appreciate is that there aren’t any blinding dash lights. I can see a lot better at night in my Tesla as a consequence compared with any other vehicle I’ve driven.
I find Saab's solution to be extremely elegant - on some, if not all models, there's a night mode button - what happens is that all non-essential instruments are simply dimmed to black (leaving only the speedo lit), until something happens which warrants your attention; the instrument in question will then come on.
Simultaneously, it dims all button backlights &c to just about off, so that you only get some assistance in locating the control you're after, not losing your night vision the moment you let your eyes stray from the road.
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Is it really that simple? Is there something about Tesla’s technology that enables longer ranges? Surely they just put in bigger batteries and charge more for the car, and competitors could also do that if it was really a primary competitive advantage of Teslas.
Many of the competitors are STILL building on an ICE chassis and stuff batteries where the center axle would have been etc. When enough of them finally switch to pure EV platforms things will quickly improve I guess. But designing a new chassis that behave as well as their previous premium models, is not something they do in 1 year so it makes sense there is some delay.. The competitors also charge much less quickly,…
A trivial example (in unnecessary complexity, physical properties not really involved): on the German website, when you pretend to be ordering an Audi A6 you get twelve different sets of wheels to choose from at five price points. And that's before you add winter wheels to the mix. And tire options, and different approaches to the pressure gauge problem and theft preventing bolts. The Tesla S offers a choice between baseline and expensive an optional winter wheel. Now this isn't an example that directly relates to range, but it's organisational cruft. They need to have boatloads of people employed only for solving various aspects of their solution to the made-up problem of not enough wheel choice (all the way from design to spare parts logistics..) and that robs focus. Those people might actually have better careers than their peers dealing with batteries and they do compete for intraorganizational attention. It's all rooted in customer expectations built over decades of inventing car problems to solve better than the competition, after the ICE was basically done. New, BEV-specific lines can help (apparently the e-tron gets by with only eight sets of wheels at two price points, yay!), but they are far from being as much of a fresh start as that blank slate as Tesla has been.
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I think a lot of car manufacturers have gone the path of no physical switches and it's becoming irritating. You shouldn't have to navigate screens to adjust your hvac while driving.
VW admitted it was a mistake and will go back to physical buttons with next gen of their models.
I'm not sure you can say that when the market cap is still 10x car companies that deliver orders of magnitude more cars than them. Even a high growth car company wouldn't justify that valuation. No, Tesla is still very overpriced for a car company based on hype.
I'm not gonna say TSLA isn't overpriced but number of cars isn't a great metric. Let's look at some financials: Tesla: mcap $388B, debt $9B, op income $12B, free cash flow $9B GM: mcap $49B, debt $110B, op income $10B, free cash flow $1B Ford: mcap $48B, debt $139B, op income $11B, free cash flow $3B Tesla makes more money than Ford or GM, while having much less debt. The fact that they sell fewer cars means their ma…
It is totally valid to criticize musk for not delivering a full self driving car on when he said he would, but that hasn't put the profitability of the company at risk. If GM cannot deliver a volume Car at a profit in a world where ICE is illegal what is going to happen?