this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Tesla produced 433,371 cars and delivered 386,810.
Does that mean they have trouble selling cars and building a stockpile?
I think so. As I understand it, Tesla have produced to order before. Every car off the line went directly to a customer.
At some point, the association with Musk has to negatively impact the brand and I wonder if a portion of these headwinds are related to that. The demographic for Teslas isn’t going to be Texas conservatives so the people Musk is directly against are the same people he wants to buy the cars. I have to imagine that like myself, some people who would have probably purchased a Tesla historically would not do so now. I was thinking about going electric and getting a Tesla but won’t be associated with Musk. It’s a single sample of 1 so obviously anecdotal but I can’t be the only person.
I'm not buying one primarily because they are expensive to repair, have terrible in-cabin controls and ergnomics that I feel make them mile-for-mile more dangerous to drive than a traditional control layout, and have a lot of "fine print" terms & conditions that make a purchase unpalatable for me. It's a shame really because they're quite innovative vehicles otherwise, and they are fun to drive.
Touch controls and feature subscriptions are non-starters for me in any vehicle though. Add in that Musk is their CEO and forget it.
Musk is a self-correcting issue though. The board will oust him once the share price drops enough. If it can happen at Boeing, it can happen here too.
Just curious. Where did you find info indicating they were expensive to repair? I have an older Model S and that hasn't been my experience. I had items that could have been expensive but were repaired under warranty. I know their warranty has been pared down since then. Wondering if it's just less items covered under warranty or more repairs being necessary or some combination.
Not many 3rd party shops are qualified to work on Teslas, so repairs are generally performed at the dealers who are on balance more expensive. You've been lucky so far to have warranty coverage, but what would your out-of-pocket costs have looked like if you had to cover to cost of those repairs yourself?
How long do you intend to own and drive your Tesla, and what do you anticipate future maintenance and repair bills to look like?
Traditional internal combustion vehicles burn fuel and require regular maintenance that electrics don't. They also suffer mechanical wear & tear, and need regular maintenance, oli changes, fuel, etc. Back of the envelope math: over 100,000 miles, or say 10 years of light to average driving, you are apt to have 330 fuel fill-ups at $55 per, maybe 30 oil changes at $65 per, 5 sets of brakes at $225 per, maybe an odd $3000 in other wear & tear maintenance or a major repair. Call it $20-25k in over 10 years for cost of ownership. If you drive more, you're apt to see those costs go up. (eta: Not accountig for things like taxes, insurance, registration fees, and other wear elements like wipers, tires, and the like as they're probably a wash between IC and EV fleets)
I'm not nearly as familiar with ownership costs of a Tesla, but I do understand that there are probably fewer maintenance expensss because there are fewer moving parts to wear. The power plant and braking systems are electrical and suffer less mechanical wear, fueling costs are shifted to electric costs which are obscured by other supply costs and usage, and the fleet is young enough that most major repairs are still under warranty.
But, when do those warranties expire, and what do you the consumer do with the vehicle after that? Is there an aftermarket? A buyback or trade-in market? If you plan to "drive it into the ground," then how many miles can you expect to get out of your Tesla before you have to buy a new car? Will an extended warranty be an option?
At that point, what does an out-of-warranty battery replacement look like? I've heard it can be between $4000 and $10000, a significant portion of the ~~cost~~ value of the vehicle. How about a dead touchscreen? That's a major component for the vehicle. What about the maintenance fees for software upgrades for those systems? (eta: or ongoing software support?)
I may have made your argument for you, but I also hope I've demonstrated that potentially significant ownership costs may simply have shifted later into the life cycle. You may still have to bear them if you can't offload the vehicle.
What I hope isn't the answer is that these cars are all destined for scrap after their first owner. I buy my vehicles to drive for a long time and plan to offload through private sale or for parts. I don't know that I'll have that same luxury with Teslas, let alone the current fleet of EVs and HEVs.
edits: typos, mostly
Gods willing, I'll "Ship of Theseus" this thing in perpetuity. Future costs (excluding the battery for now) will be similar to ICE where applicable. I'll never have an alternator or transmission failure, but shocks, tires, heat, AC, and other similar items will have pretty similar costs. Touchscreen failures are pretty rare but I'm OK with that should it fail. Software updates are not a recurring cost. I imagine that would go the same route other proprietary software used to run hardware would go. Should they come out with a completely new version, there would be ample time to prep for an "end of life" scenario.
The battery degredation is a major difference. The good news is that outside abnormal failures, as it ages, the battery simply loses capacity. Most of those abnormal failures would have likely presented by now. The ICE comparison would be if your gas tank got smaller. We are a two car family for now so we could potentially push that for a long time. We could manage if the true range was less than 50 miles.
So what if decide we do want to replace the battery? $4k is much lower than estimates I've heard so far but I haven't dug into it recently either. $10k-$20k is more inline with figures I've seen. My hope is that battery tech keeps evolving and we could potentially get more range with a replacement than the original battery. That is very much a cost I'm comfortable planning for.
To extrapolate further, I don't want to drive it into the ground. I want to keep this vehicle as long as possible and prop it up like some mangled Frankenstein if necessary. The big reason is that I have free supercharging for life. That means, excluding any legal shenanigans to remove that, I essentially have "free gas" for life. I understand this puts me in a vastly different position than most people, especially those looking to buy an EV.
All that said, I'm mainly asking things like "where'd you hear this bad news" somewhat in an effort to keep my ear to the ground. Life happens and there's tons of ways I'll be in the market again for an EV. Just want to stay abreast of the situation, but also to combat any false or misleading info. In their current form, EVs aren't appropriate for everybody. But I've run into a lot of people that think that based on false/misleading info. You seem to have a firm enough grasp of the situation though.
"For now" said Elon, an evil grin spreading on his face.
I'm under no illusion that it's actually a permanent situation. It's just contractually permanent... unless they alter the deal.
Make that a sample size of two. I wanted a tesla as soon as my current car gives out but I won't go anywhere near them now because of Musk. I know there's no ethical consumption under capitalism but giving money to Musk is a bridge too far for me.
I still hope SpaceX succeeds despite him though.
I mean, even there, the marketplace of electric cars has expanded. For a while, it was the only car, then the only good car, now I see a lot of people buying fancy brand new not-Tesla cars that don't seem to have the drawbacks of the earlier not-Tesla electric cars.
I might consider one used, for 1/3 or less the price of new. But would be holding my nose for sure. And not enthused about driving a phone with wheels, but there's hardly an EV out there that isn't.
He’s certainly put me off as well. That and the state of charging, and the performance in the cold, and the lying …
Tesla's biggest customer base is in China. I doubly they care about American politics.
No, but he’s going to have to drastically drop the price to compete with Chinese EVs.
There is nothing wrong with a logistical strategy of pushing products to market (without a demand). It's a reasonable way to be able to push the price down. And I believe that is what Tesla wants to do? Tesla is not supposed to be a luxury brand
If you produce a car, you better sell it. You're in trouble otherwise.
Yes a car is definitely not something that increases in value siting on a shelf ( if you don't believe Musk). But they made the same car for years, so it is the same car as a few years ago? Does it matter if I get one from the shelf or one a year from now really?
it looks like they have trouble selling though. the reason behind the gap is more dangerous than the gap itself.
They did lower prices several times, but even though Tesla may not see itself as a luxury brand, they're definitely in the higher priced range. And there they are competing with more and more compelling offers from other companies, including traditional car manufacturers.
Tesla at this point has no edge. It's not cheap, not well built, range is just okay, the only thing it has is brand recognition. But that can backfire, obviously.
Here in Germany, Tesla's image used to be excellent, then they built a gigafactory near Berlin and had to be dragged by courts and striking workers to comply with the law, and they still thought it would be a good idea to put a water thirsty factory in the middle of a stretch of land that is literally turning into a desert right now. And Musk just stood there and laughed his simulation of human laughter into the faces of journalists and the chancellor when confronted during the opening.
Yeah definitely what they want to do, it is a well known tactic for company looking to lower their market cap to devalue their product and not seek the most money for it.
Why would anyone want to intentionally produce more than the current demand which lowers prices and therefore profit?
Unless you mean they produce more to lower their own costs, which I doubt would really be the case here.
One of the problems with the automaking industry is that there's a lot of stuff where you buy a very expensive machine and have a very expensive setup for said expensive machine (molds, templates, whatnot) and then the cost for almost everything else (materials, person-hours, etc) is lost in the noise.
Scaling up and down a car assembly line is hard so an automaker really wants to plan this out really really well such that the design is done at exactly the right time for the big switchover, you have a constant staffing level for the line, all of the machines are working roughly at their optimum capacity, and you've got enough spare cars so everybody can go to the lot and get a car of their choice fast enough to satisfy whatever impulse caused them to want a new one.
So I guess mayyyyybe possibly they are working to get ahead of the seasonality of car buying but I'm betting that what really happened is that they screwed up their planning, possibly because some chunk of the potential buying population doesn't want a Tesla anymore.
Like an X-factor, would you say?
Yup, demand for BEVs is going down. It turns out, the early adopter demand has been largely saturated and the mass market isn't particularly enamored with it. It's not just Tesla, it's pretty consistent across the market.
Prices need to go down, battery tech needs to improve, and infrastructure needs to be more convenient.
I think inflation eating the economic wiggle room for many is a bigger factor.
Unless of course ICE cars are doing better? But I think growth was not expected for ICE, but it was for EV.
Sales in the car industry are growing, while EVs are contracting:
My understanding is that hybrids are seeing the most demand, while EVs are seeing a drop in demand.
They're building a pile so high they can walk to mars.
No, no. That one at the top isn't a stock photo, it's the cars delivered.