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BMW Overtakes Tesla in European EV Sales for First Time

electriccarsreport.com

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Re: BMW Overtakes Tesla in European EV Sales for First Time

#141

Post by socksy »

serial_dev wrote: post #131
Mistletoe wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We cancelled ours when he tweeted and insinuated there were valid reasons for someone sneaking into the Pelosi house and hitting her husband in the head with a hammer. It would have been our second Tesla purchase and now we have none. Could not imagine being associated with Elon in any way and certainly not in the car I drive around.

The article is about European sales though. I know some European people are obsessed with American politics as if there was nothing worth discussing that's European, but the number of people who knows and cares about whatever happened at Nancy Pelosi's house, then knows what Elon had to say about that, then deciding it's so egregious that they can't buy a Tesla anymore it's probably single digits.

Elon is not exactly beloved in Europe either, for all sorts of non Pelosi related reasons

Re: BMW Overtakes Tesla in European EV Sales for First Time

#142

Post by LeoPanthera »

primitivesuave wrote: post #130
two_handfuls wrote: post #22

The Tesla brand has suffered enormously due to the actions of its owner.

Meanwhile the actions of BMW's founder (Herbert Quandt) have been largely forgotten.

Do you feel that a person who died in 1982 has any influence over the company today?

Re: BMW Overtakes Tesla in European EV Sales for First Time

#143

Post by AnthonyMouse »

marcosdumay wrote: post #91
okr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it not the mission of Tesla to make electrical cars an alternative to cars running on petrol? To me this was achieved. Bmw or Tesla, i do not care about that too much. But we have an alternative. Great! And politics, well, only for people who do not agree with him it is an issue. But that's normal in politics, is it not?

> But that's normal in politics, is it not? Excluding a part of the population for no practical reason at all is bad business. But when the politics becomes extremist, that share becomes huge, and it becomes disastrous business. Some people are motivated enough to lose business for their principles. But the guy's principles is "big business is right"... I'm not sure what he wants to achieve.

> Excluding a part of the population for no practical reason at all is bad business. But when the politics becomes extremist, that share becomes huge, and it becomes disastrous business.

Companies do this all the time though. The trade off is, of course, that you get more support from customers the other side.

> But the guy's principles is "big business is right"... I'm not sure what he wants to achieve.

This is not an accurate representation. For example, the Twitter acquisition followed a period of Twitter (and most other social media) banning a lot of conservative accounts for publishing truthful reporting (New York Post) or actual satire with the disfavored political leaning (Babylon Bee), at which point Musk did a Twitter poll asking the entire site if Twitter adheres to the principle of free speech:

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1507259709224632344

70% said it didn't, so he bought it.

This upset a lot of people (not least the people who liked the preexisting system that tended to ban their political opponents) and they've been characterizing everything he does in a negative light since. So then you'll get a lot of stories about a left-leaning account being suspended with the implication that he's just doing it the other way now, with no investigation into whether the suspension was deserved, or just characterizing the unavoidable false positives and false negatives in moderation as a willful bias etc.

That isn't to say he's a saint, but the impression you'd get from reading a lot of this coverage is that he's the devil.

Re: BMW Overtakes Tesla in European EV Sales for First Time

#144

Post by al_borland »

jltsiren wrote: post #84
root_axis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right, but I'm not so sure it's actually impacting sales to a large degree. For most people a 50k car is a huge investment that won't hinge on whether or not you agree with the CEO's politics.

I think it should be the opposite. If you buy a cheap thing and suddenly start feeling uncomfortable using it in public, you can just buy another cheap thing. With expensive things, you want to play it safe, because replacing it will be expensive if you start having second thoughts.

Step 1 is to stop buying things (or not) because you care how it will make you look to other people who don’t actually care.

I don’t have a Tesla, but if someone is going to judge me based on the assumed political views of the CEO of the car brand I happen to drive… they need to get a life.

Does the company make a good car? That’s the only thing that actually matters.

Re: BMW Overtakes Tesla in European EV Sales for First Time

#145

Post by epistasis »

okr wrote: post #70
epistasis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Tesla's execution has been really terrible. There's some really good tech inside their cars, but the direction of which cars to make, when, and the investments in non-car tech, the over-promising of "Full Self Driving," etc. All huge detractors. There's also the CEO, who has a huge public profile, deciding to become extremely political, which smart CEOs usually avoid doing because it has little potential to help…

Was it not the mission of Tesla to make electrical cars an alternative to cars running on petrol? To me this was achieved. Bmw or Tesla, i do not care about that too much. But we have an alternative. Great! And politics, well, only for people who do not agree with him it is an issue. But that's normal in politics, is it not?

I think that in addition to proving a point about technology, they also wanted to be a very economically successful company.

That second part is at risk, and if Elon's decision making power has been better reduced, they'd probably be really far ahead of where they are now.

Re: BMW Overtakes Tesla in European EV Sales for First Time

#146

Post by leesec »

theluketaylor wrote: post #136
ta8645 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The step-change is real, and a lot of people don't know that Tesla now has the best self-driving ability out of all the competition. But that's only true on 4th gen hardware, and unfortunately that represents a minority of the vehicles sold to date.

Mercedes is taking legal liability for their L3 system. That's better than Tesla GM's supercruise allows safe hands free driving as a L2 system. That's better than Tesla Waymo is operating a true L4 system in multiple markets. That's better than Tesla. Tesla has a better than average L2 system in autopilot. They have a downright dangerous L2 system in FSD that through its very design encourages unsafe driving habits.…

FSD literally yells at you if you look away for more than 2-3 seconds. it's much safer than not

Re: BMW Overtakes Tesla in European EV Sales for First Time

#147

Post by NightlyDev »

jen20 wrote: post #113
DoesntMatter22 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd since BMWs are not known for reliabilty

Perhaps I’m the odd one out but I haven’t had any issues in 20 years of BMW ownership across two continents. Never had to do anything except routine service and consumables. One 3-series diesel in Europe made it to 220k miles before I sold it, and it’s likely got another 10 years of daily driving in it.

You're not the odd one out. BMWs cars generally have less faults that most other brands, but as with all brands, the number of faults varies greatly based on the model.

Re: BMW Overtakes Tesla in European EV Sales for First Time

#148

Post by GaggiX »

okr wrote: post #70
epistasis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Tesla's execution has been really terrible. There's some really good tech inside their cars, but the direction of which cars to make, when, and the investments in non-car tech, the over-promising of "Full Self Driving," etc. All huge detractors. There's also the CEO, who has a huge public profile, deciding to become extremely political, which smart CEOs usually avoid doing because it has little potential to help…

Was it not the mission of Tesla to make electrical cars an alternative to cars running on petrol? To me this was achieved. Bmw or Tesla, i do not care about that too much. But we have an alternative. Great! And politics, well, only for people who do not agree with him it is an issue. But that's normal in politics, is it not?

>But that's normal in politics, is it not?

Yes exactly in politics and not in business, in particular if you are the CEO.

Re: BMW Overtakes Tesla in European EV Sales for First Time

#149

Post by primitivesuave »

In this particular case, it's worth the reminder that BMW's founder (Günther Quandt) was a strong financial supporter of the Nazi party, and his children (Herbert and Harald Quandt) enslaved tens of thousands of people in BMW factories before the collapse of Nazi Germany. I'm not trying to tell anyone to boycott BMW or Mercedes - just trying to add some historical context for those who instantly react to Tesla news with "Elon is bad".

Re: BMW Overtakes Tesla in European EV Sales for First Time

#150

Post by theluketaylor »

darkteflon wrote: post #87
SllX wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve been in the BEV market for a bit. Not long after the first Tesla Model S was released, BMW released the i3. That one’s since been discontinued but they have at least 8 other BMW i models on the market.

The i3 was such a great city car, well ahead of its time. Such a shame that they have apparently abandoned the EV design ethos embodied in that car (and that car alone) in favour of bloated luxo-barges. Tell me that your EV strategy is about brand greenwashing without telling me it’s about brand greenwashing. They seem to be really focused on chasing the Boomer demographic. I’m a happy former customer (twice over) bu…

i3 was a fascinating car and remains one of the best used cars currently available, but it had 2 bets that BMW lost badly.

1) That batteries would remain really expensive. Lithium batteries have been falling in price for a long time and EV demand was only going to drive new innovations and economies of scale, so even at the time that seemed like a poor bet. BMW wasn't entirely wrong since battery prices stayed quite high during the model lifespan, but it didn't really matter because bet 1) lead to bet 2) 2) Carbon Fibre construction. BMW bet that EVs would need to be light to extract range from small batteries, so they made a CFRP monocoque and made a wager they could find ways to manufacture CFRP at scale more cheaply. They were pretty wrong (though it has led to an explosion of carbon fibre trim options on M models that is nearly pure profit)

i3 had such a small battery, but it still had the huge EV cost penalty that made early EVs very niche. That proved pretty fatal, though the few that got one did tend to really like them.

That double failure scared BMW pretty badly and they retreated to shared platforms, so every EV they sell can't take advantage of the packaging benefits being an EV allows. There are huge spaces for engines up front that is nearly all wasted.

Despite that deficiency BMW has invested a ton into their EV powertrains, so they actually have some of the best efficiency out there.

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