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Tesla releases Q1 2024 deliveries: disastrous results

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Re: Tesla releases Q1 2024 deliveries: disastrous results

#281
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be the case for some online communities, but in my offline circles (Asians working in tech in the PNW) no one seems to care. Driving on the street it seems every other car is a Tesla, and by and large everyone is pretty happy with them. I wouldn't say we're particularly pro-Tesla either, it's just that they were the best cars for the money at the time. As more car manufacturers start to deliver good EVs…

Same here in Frisco, Texas. Teslas are so common here and pretty much it is always Asians driving them. I keep hearing that Tesla is the new Toyota. But talking with some of the Tesla owners, many feel embarrassed by Elon. Many say that they will not buy another Tesla or they have some other reasoning to justify their purchase (like Elon has gone crazy but we shouldn't punish the entire company for it etc)

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Re: Tesla releases Q1 2024 deliveries: disastrous results

#282
post #111
post #73

Could it be that Musk's inflammatory language and behaviors are a turn off for potential buyers? They are a turn off for me. I like the vehicles but I'd never get one.

For me it's this + going overboard on minimalism (speed only on center screen, turn signals now buttons, wiper controls on touch screen). It's a shame because there's a lot to like about the model 3.

I tried buttons on a 2 minute drive and it's instantly obvious it's better.

Re: Tesla releases Q1 2024 deliveries: disastrous results

#283

Are Tesla sales levelling off? I'm not convinced that electric cars are going to be mainstream, apart at the high end, for a few decades.

In one decade it will be illegal to sell an ICE car in California (and about 20 other states) and Canada. Your prediction is silly.

Re: Tesla releases Q1 2024 deliveries: disastrous results

#284
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just for the cars with that yoke steering wheel, right? The controls for the more "normal" cars is pretty intuitive. Except for headlights. I don't know why it couldn't just have a switch for headlights.

No, it's for all of them. The Model 3 was updated to also have the stalks taken away and the PRND controls moved to the roof https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_eu/GUID-A5F2B9D...

Turn signals on wheel is fire. Drive mode I'm not too sure, only drove for few minutes.

Re: Tesla releases Q1 2024 deliveries: disastrous results

#285
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's for all of them. The Model 3 was updated to also have the stalks taken away and the PRND controls moved to the roof https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_eu/GUID-A5F2B9D...

Whoa, that seems like so much more work to manage and use than the current standard.

Opposite. Think about whats easier - move your thumb or entire arm?

Re: Tesla releases Q1 2024 deliveries: disastrous results

#286

Tesla has the Cybertruck now (is it shipping yet?). People love trucks, so this might work out great for TSLA. But they don't really have an SUV, which is by far the most popular form factor. The Model Y is closest but it's still a bit car-ish. Interest rates are up. Their chairman is going through a very public ...episode. They'll definitely overcome the headwinds: they still have superfans despite the Musk antics;…

> People love trucks, so this might work out great for TSLA. 1. there is essentially no market for pick-up trucks outside the US. 2. the market for pick-up trucks inside the US is dominated by suburban American dads. They love trucks because they can imagine pulling up to a job site in one. We all know, even the suburban dads, that if you pull up to a job site in a Cybertruck, the guys working there are going to laug…

> 1. there is essentially no market for pick-up trucks outside the US

You’ve obviously never been to a war-torn country. The mid-sized Toyota/Nissan pickup with a machine gun mounted in the bed is the most popular vehicle by far.

Re: Tesla releases Q1 2024 deliveries: disastrous results

#287
post #154

Maybe we're getting to saturation in early adopter market? Looking around, there are a lot of folks who could not easily live with a BEV, i.e. live in apartment buildings or don't have an easy way to install L2 charging at home.

Even people for whom home charging is not an issue aren't going to abandon their existing gas cars to get an EV that performs the exact same function for a lot more money. Having an EV is not transformational. Even with a $7,500 discount, there's still a wide gap between the value of the ten-year old gas car in the driveway and the cost of a brand new EV. Not going to a gas station is just not that beneficial to most…

> Even people for whom home charging is not an issue aren't going to abandon their existing gas cars to get an EV that performs the exact same function for a lot more money.

It's an interesting point. Still anecdotal, but our family ended up doing the first part of your sentence - that is, we abandoned our existing gas car. However, it was certainly not a lot more money - in fact part of the equation was that it was slightly cheaper to get the EV, exactly because it was not a super luxurious super long range $100k vehicle. There turned out to be a bonus benefit of 1 year of free charging at EVgo chargers, which we didn't count on but is nice.

Our main reason for this was that the gas car we replaced was requiring a lot of repairs and we were hoping to minimize the time we spend at repair shops. Hopefully the EV will require even less time than an IC vehicle due to no fluid changes.

One other unexpected change we encountered is that due to charging at home, we spend less total time fueling up the car, i.e. no more gas station visits. The time we occasionally use the free EVGO charger is at a department store so it's a side effect of going shopping instead of a single-purpose refueling trip.

Re: Tesla releases Q1 2024 deliveries: disastrous results

#288

Is there any evidence that the best-fit portions of the market are getting saturated. There are plenty of places in the USA where an ICE vehicle is just a better fit, given usage patterns, lack of charging facilities etc.

Well, it's a specialty item that can substitute for a very popular mainstream one in a number of popular use cases.

And come close to substituting in a number of cases that might still lead to a bit of rapid adoption.

More ideal as an incremental acquisition for many of those who already possess the mainstream merchandise. Not so much desirability for those that would have to choose one or the other. So that's a smaller subset of the niche.

Then there are those who find the novel solution is superior for their particular needs, an even smaller subset, but more enthusiastic.

Seems like the behavior would be to fly off the shelf until the subsets of the mainstream have been saturated, then plateau at the rate that the mainstream becomes amenable to replacement.

At the smallest of scale, like with handcrafted items, it can occasionally be easy to do well financially as long as you can sell all you can make. This can happen when they're "flying off the shelf" so there can be relentless pressure to just make more, and the pressure can seem unending when there is a multi-year timeline for any scale-up activities.

If the market matures at a less-giga-than-anticipated level, and you end up in the process of building more than you can sell on an ongoing basis, you have reversed the financial opportunity that was supposed to accrue by building more to begin with.

One day when you wake up and can no longer sell all you can make for some reason, it's a whole different ball game.

Re: Tesla releases Q1 2024 deliveries: disastrous results

#289
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities in those countries, for the most part, were built around public transit. As a result, navigating by car is difficult and sometimes costly. Retrofitting public transit into a city designed for cars at that same scale is unbelievably expensive before the costs of changing public opinion are factored in. I say this as someone who dislikes what suburbs have become and would _love_ to see public transit proliferate…

Where I live I’m Columbus I can still see the trolly tracks lining my streets. Buildings were torn down to pave over for parking lots. There is not this extensive retrofit that needs to occur for many American cities, it just needs to be funded. In my home state of Ohio and in my home town we are spending a billion dollars to build a new ramp and make some other changes to a highway that was built well after the city…

Where I live I'm Sam Houston ;)

The city named after me was also founded (1836) purposefully on undeveloped land and planned from the beginning to become an urban center and territory capital.

Within 3 decades of when Columbus got going, so I would have to say they both have a downtown layout that was originally designed for horses and horse-powered vehicles to begin with. And to accommodate a lot more horses in the future than there were in the area at the time.

Plus think of the gig workers. I can only imagine one of the blocks where people are waiting for an Uber today, is where early residents were once waiting for a Wells-Fargo coach. Once the Wells-Fargo startup was able to leverage being online 24/7, at your local telegraph office ;)

Streetcars came in the late 1800's and I would expect tracks were laid on what could be considered thoroughfares.

There was probably quite a bit of urban character by then and a good chance it was the rapid transit offered by the march of technology, rather than the mass transit aspect that was most appreciated by the riders. Houston already had horse-powered "buses" before this.

Next thing you know, a few decades later there's Model T's and you can really save tonnes of animal feed while helping the environment (at the time) at the same time. They all shared the roads even if it was not all horses and pedestrians as intended any more.

After years of mass-production, it would be like cars are reproducing faster than horses and taking over the place, car owners would have growing influence. Plus if for some reason older mass-transit hardware were deteriorating at a faster rate than the payer could justify reversing, there would be increasing incentive to eventually throw in the towel and let people drive themselves around.

It could happen ;)

Technology marches on but the mainstream beats the most heavily-trodden path.

Re: Tesla releases Q1 2024 deliveries: disastrous results

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live I’m Columbus I can still see the trolly tracks lining my streets. Buildings were torn down to pave over for parking lots. There is not this extensive retrofit that needs to occur for many American cities, it just needs to be funded. In my home state of Ohio and in my home town we are spending a billion dollars to build a new ramp and make some other changes to a highway that was built well after the city…

Where I live I'm Sam Houston ;) The city named after me was also founded (1836) purposefully on undeveloped land and planned from the beginning to become an urban center and territory capital. Within 3 decades of when Columbus got going, so I would have to say they both have a downtown layout that was originally designed for horses and horse-powered vehicles to begin with. And to accommodate a lot more horses in the…

Thankfully technology continues to march on, and the march of progress will continue to free us from being required to buy cars instead of starting new companies.
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