Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EVs Are Selling Well for Everyone Except Tesla

jalopnik.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 90 posts

Re: EVs Are Selling Well for Everyone Except Tesla

#21

Post by JumpCrisscross »

mc32 wrote: post #15
fransje26 wrote: post #6

Ah. Just a stroke of good luck that Musk's $48 billion package has be approved by the shareholders then..

I guess… 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.)

Re: EVs Are Selling Well for Everyone Except Tesla

#22

Post by tsimionescu »

emmelaich wrote: post #11

And yet "Tesla Y has taken the top spot on the sales chart, outselling the Corolla in 2023 as the world's most popular passenger car." According to https://www.drive.com.au/news/tesla-model-y-worlds-best-sell... I think the car advice journalism is hopelessly polarised and political, like everything else. Sad.

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.

Re: EVs Are Selling Well for Everyone Except Tesla

#23

Post by PaulHoule »

xkbarkar wrote: post #7
Rinzler89 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Tesla's market/customer base has just saturated.

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 ba…

It is all of that.

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.

Re: EVs Are Selling Well for Everyone Except Tesla

#24

Post by dghughes »

cebert wrote: post #9

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.

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.

Re: EVs Are Selling Well for Everyone Except Tesla

#25

Post by [deleted] »

mc32 wrote: post #15
fransje26 wrote: post #6

Ah. Just a stroke of good luck that Musk's $48 billion package has be approved by the shareholders then..

I guess… 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.

[deleted]

Re: EVs Are Selling Well for Everyone Except Tesla

#26

Post by Rinzler89 »

pantalaimon wrote: post #14
Rinzler89 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Tesla's market/customer base has just saturated.

Being so strongly associated with Elon Musk and therefore his political opinions really shrank the customer base. EVs aren’t very popular with the average right wingers.

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.

Re: EVs Are Selling Well for Everyone Except Tesla

#27

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13
ghusto wrote: post #12

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: EVs Are Selling Well for Everyone Except Tesla

#28

Post by kjksf »

mc32 wrote: post #15
fransje26 wrote: post #6

Ah. Just a stroke of good luck that Musk's $48 billion package has be approved by the shareholders then..

I guess… 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.

It was re-approved by a shareholder vote, just like it was approved by a shareholder vote the first time.

At the same time a move to Texas was approved by shareholder vote, but it had nothing to do with approval of pay package.

Plus, moving to Texas would not void the Delaware ruling.

Re: EVs Are Selling Well for Everyone Except Tesla

#29

Post by cmgxyz »

xkbarkar wrote: post #7
Rinzler89 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Tesla's market/customer base has just saturated.

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 ba…

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?

Re: EVs Are Selling Well for Everyone Except Tesla

#30

Post by Sakos »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #10
xkbarkar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ba…

> Tesla had momentum and they used it to the max 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…

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?

Post reply on HN