https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2023-us-auto-sales-figures-by-...
It was a segment the ICE car manufacturers mostly ignored and now they have profitable competition where it didn’t exist before. Maybe not wrecked but definitely lold.
I don’t know what being loved really has to do with production. It won’t take long for a bunch of companies to have equally loved products, and in 30 years, Tesla’s “lead” will be a footnote. Unless they do, future tense, wreck everybody.
It’s a weird response to to my claim that everything but the product matters just as much, if not more. I’m not at all saying Teslas product is or isn’t the best at the moment.
Nobody likes car dealerships anyway so nobody misses that. The new trend amongst the kids these days is buying cars without even test driving them.
My point is that Rivian could easily find a crack that would allow them to be profitable and it wouldn’t even need to be as big as Teslas.
100% anecdotal, but between service woes, initial quality complaints, and Musk's latest antics, several early adopters I know have sworn off the brand. And I know several people ICE-owners looking for an EV, but not considering Tesla at all for the above reasons.
Seems to me Tesla's only real edge at this point is the SuperCharger network. But, that lead will diminish over time, especially if they open the network to all EVs.
Tesla is still growing fast, has extensive self owned infrastructure in charging and service that will be very profitable and is a huge, huge asset. Tesla is competitive with European car makers in Europe, a market GM has dropped, and Ford mostly so relaying on VW MEB to stay in it at all. Tesla is competitive with car makers in China as well. GM and Ford have very little chance of even establishing their EVs seriously there. In fact the opposite, cars from China will compete with them in the US.
In the meantime the car industry has historically high level of access production capacity. Lots of old ICE and engine plants running below capacity, closing them is hard and costly. At the same time they have to do 10s of billions of new investments in new facilities.
At the same time the ICE sales are going down, lower economics of scale, access manufacturing means seriously negative margin. And that right around the time when anybody with half a brain will realize that buying and ICE car will be a bad investment and resell value will be low. This will collapse resale value of ICE cars and that impacts their financials.
Battery materials are a limiting factor already, and there is no physical way all the announced car makers plans can actually happen. Yes, mining is expanding, but not as fast as battery manufacturing and EV demand. Those companies that did not planned for this for the last 5 years will run into massive issues.
> It’s taken them a decade to get a dealer network built.
Meanwhile Ford and GM and co are literally in a war with dealerships over service. VW is literally suing its dealers and the auto lobby are launching a large scale lobbying effort to prevent the dealers lobbying effort. This could potentially cut 100s of millions away from the already thin profits of the car makers.
Literally every other car maker would kill to be in Tesla position.
> Their repairs timeline sound just as horrifying as their competitors.
Maybe be true or not, but on service, current car makers only maybe 20% of the money, the rest goes to dealers. Tesla will earn 100% of the money.
Its not well understood, but parts are a huge reason why traditional OEMs are profitable at all. Tesla meanwhile has very few old cars on the road, and many new cars under warranty. Despite that, Tesla service business is already profitable, and that is before millions of cars will go off warranty in a few years.
Again, literally every single car maker would love to be in Teslas situation.
One last point, if you insist on comparing how many cars they make. Look at the trendlines, not just a single year.
