[adventured]

Their critics are very loudly proclaiming Tesla is an immense failure, that the Model 3 is a failure, and that they're going bankrupt in a matter of months. The FUD being broadly directed at Tesla is astounding and reeks of bias of one sort or another.

The other major automakers are running years behind where Tesla is at today. That's where the embarrassment should be today: those automakers are still gleefully selling tens of millions of fossil-fuel-only vehicles.

Producing 20,000 Model 3 vehicles per quarter this year will be an accomplishment (even in spite of Musk's absurd prior goal). It implies they can push well over 100,000 units in 2019. These days they're being given little credit for what they are accomplishing. When they hit that 20,000 quarterly marker, the Model 3 becomes one of the best selling mid-priced luxury vehicles on the planet in its first year.

[danso]

How are the other makers "years behind" Tesla? The Model S is the best-selling EV but not by an order of magnitude. GM was pretty close last year in sales and I don't think it's a bad bet to bet that GM will beat Tesla in getting self-driving tech (GM Cruise is only second to Waymo in testing self-driving, at least in California).

https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/12/30/the-5-best-selling...

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/31/16956902/california-dmv-s...

Tesla deserves credit for getting other automakers to take the EV market seriously, but they are by no means years behind Tesla in terms of production and sales.

[Robotbeat]

Nah, I think the other EV manufacturers ARE years behind Tesla. They shouldn't be, either. The Leaf could be charging at >100kW with 250 mile range and selling like hot cakes, too, but they marketed it as a long range golf cart and were way too incremental and conservative with the battery (although they did seem to address their early problems that stemmed from not properly cooling the battery like Tesla & GM do). And they never built out their charging network like Tesla has.

For self-driving, though, Waymo seems to have the edge right now for near-full-autonomy. Tesla's system is really much more like a really-fancy adaptive cruise control right now. But if Tesla gave them LIDARs (currently expensive, but may become cheap enough for Tesla to just add-on) and made them drive like grandmas (like Waymo) around well-mapped, dry locations, then they likely would be in the same ballpark. Which isn't to demean Waymo's impressive efforts at all.

[adventured]

Using one example to represent the industry is the issue in your premise. This list nicely proves my point:

How many EVs is Volkswagen selling per year?

How many EVs is Subaru selling per year?

How many EVs is Fiat selling per year?

How many EVs is Ferrari selling per year?

How many EVs is Daimler selling per year?

How many EVs is Ford selling per year?

How many EVs is PSA selling per year?

How many EVs is Hyundai Kia selling per year?

How many EVs is Mazda selling per year?

How many EVs is Suzuki selling per year?

Tesla is in fact still embarrassing the auto industry and selling EVs by an order of magnitude beyond what nearly all of the major auto companies are. The above listed companies are selling millions of fossil-fuel vehicles and should be heckled aggressively for it.

The fact that so few major automakers are selling EVs at all, demonstrates that what I've said is correct.

But hey, all these fossil-fuel makers have great plans for the future. One day soon.

The question is: how come those companies aren't being bankrupted for the horrific products they're producing by the millions? Where's the FUD attack on those corporations (which would actually be useful in dramatically improving the world)? Priorities are entirely screwed up when its the EV maker getting smacked around for not selling enough EVs.

[jacquesm]

VW: 350 e-Golfs / week

Nissan has delivered 300K leafs (why did you leave them out?).

Chevvy sells about 20K volts / year.

Lots more data here: https://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

The companies you list are selling millions of fossil-fuel vehicles because that's their business: selling cars. And as long as they can continue to do so profitably they will do so.

And whether or not Ferrari makes fossil fuel cars or not is immaterial, the numbers aren't there.

Fiat has an electric car but they are not turning a profit on it (it is priced very low, and they still can't sell them).

So does Renault, they too make electric cars, and have been doing so for quite a while.

[nopriorarrests]

>Tesla is in fact still embarrassing the auto industry and >selling EVs by an order of magnitude beyond what nearly >all of the major auto companies are.

Um, no.

"November was another good month for GM’s Chevy Bolt EV US sales. The electric vehicle hit a new record with almost 3,000 units sold in one month – bringing the total to over 20,000 units to date". [0]

Of course total Tesla sales are higher than 20K units, but if we are talking about EV cars in mass segment, Tesla is being outsold at this moment.

[0] https://electrek.co/2017/12/01/chevy-bolt-ev-us-sales-record...

[maxerickson]

Multiple automakers have good enough electric drivetrains to really shorten the time Tesla has to fix their production volume and fit & finish issues. If they don't execute this year their decade of brand building is not going to amount to a whole lot (maybe they have until midway through next year?).

The other automakers aren't pairing the drivetrains with big expensive batteries, so they aren't selling them with big expensive batteries, but there's also only so much consumer demand for $45,000+ electric vehicles.

[Fins]

And how many EVs would Tesla be selling without heavy subsidies and a Musk effect?

Besides, selling a car of Tesla's quality would be embarassing to every company on your list. Well, maybe not Suzuki, but probably to them, too.

[toomuchtodo]

All automakers receive EV subsidies. Why are non-Tesla automakers so bad at building EVs if they receive the same subsidy Tesla does?

[Fins]

Tesla's are the largest, though, since they have largest batteries.

Tesla builds EVs, that's the only thing they sort of can do (of course they can't actually build them at profit, but that's a problem for Tesla's shareholders). Others will build EVs when they can be profitably sold, because it isn't their only business.

[toomuchtodo]

> Others will build EVs when they can be profitably sold, because it isn't their only business.

Tesla's margins are the highest in the industry for their vehicles. Legacy automakers don't want to innovate and cannablize their own business, which is why they cannot succeed.

If you want to sell like Tesla does, and get the level of subsidies they do, sell vehicles that people want and will pay for. There's a reason people would rather wait years for a Model 3 then buy a Bolt, i3, or other half-attempt at an EV by a legacy automaker.

[adventured]

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...

Tesla in fact ranks with Acura on quality, above Volvo, and just below Volkswagen and Ford.

The low rating on Mercedes should be pretty embarrassing for them, they're merely one quality notch above Tesla and comparable to Ford.

[jacquesm]

Those rankings are pretty fishy. Acura is just a rebadged Honda and they rate completely different. Also Kia and Hyundai rate higher than Mercedes, Porsche and Volkswagen, which is completely against my experience with those brands.

FWIW it has Tesla scoring near the bottom of the pack with 37 points out of a possible 100, with the lowest entrant scoring 26 points.

Volvo is surprisingly low on that ranking, I know they are now owned by Geely but their brand still has 'super reliable' as an image here in Europe which again contradicts the ratings.

I'm not sure what the inputs were and what definition of reliability they have but I'm definitely interested in finding out more.

The FAQ is here:

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...

And I suspect that one reason more expensive vehicles drop like a stone on the report is because they are more complex and so there is simply more that can break, on top of that a person that pays $100K for their car is more likely to be dissatisfied when something isn't working perfectly.

You'll never hear a Kia owner complain about some detailing, but if you paid $85K for a Tesla then you would expect a certain level of quality and you'd be more likely to go back to the dealer for that reason alone if what was delivered wasn't perfect. So this report is as much about expectations and brands as it is about actual reliability.

My own - super simple - method of determining vehicle reliability is to look at second hand car website and to sort by descending mileage in yearly cohorts. That very quickly shows which cars are solid and which aren't. Yes, it is 'survivorship bias', but you can discount for that by weighing by the original number of vehicles sold of a particular model.

[Fins]

So to put it another words, every large automotive conglomerate has multiple brands that are greatly more reliable than Tesla.

Not sure about Kia, but their parents at Hyundai definitely do have better build quality than Tesla. I would imagine that someone buying a new one would complain to the dealership if they tried to shove a car with body gaps as bad as Tesla's ton them... And on a Hyundai less than half the price of Model S you get stuff like cooled seats that Tesla doesn't even offer currently (luxury car, right!) and that didn't work worth crap when they did offer them...

[bluGill]

That is owner satisfaction, which means nothing. It is common for that list to have a car to have a significantly different rating depending on what the logo on the hood it. If the car has the GM brand it will be rated lower than if it has the Toyota brand, even though the car is EXACTLY the some other than the brand.

[jacquesm]

That explains the Honda/Acura difference. I could not make sense of that.

[Someone1234]

> Their critics are very loudly proclaiming Tesla is an immense failure, that the Model 3 is a failure, and that they're going bankrupt in a matter of months.

This is a classic straw man. You've created a fictional persona which you then describe as:

> The FUD being broadly directed at Tesla is astounding and reeks of bias of one sort or another.

How about we stick to what other posters you're replying to are actually saying rather than creating fictional personas in order to then attack them.

[adventured]

I wasn't attacking the parent or implying that was their bias.

I intentionally structured the response as a point about the extremely wide-spread criticism being directed at Tesla.

This: "The FUD being broadly directed at Tesla"

I inserted "broadly" for exactly that reason. I also intentionally avoided using "you" or similar (re-read what i actually wrote, you should instantly notice my reply is clearly not targeting the parent just based on what words I use), so as to hopefully avoid leading anyone to think I was claiming the parent was the source of that FUD.

[nopriorarrests]

I don't know what you are talking about re:FUD.

I'm neutral on Tesla both emotionally and financially and have no skin in this game, but I can say that TSLA bears have a very compelling case on their hands, with numbers, future projections, industry comparisons, etc. It's not often bear position is so well reasoned. In fact, TSLA bulls are much more often "selling the dream".

[MadcapJake]

I would agree with the parent, as a laymen casually observing HN and the major news outlets this is really what it feels like, a complete shift in news/commentator opinions of Tesla.

[elvirs]

they are given a ton of credit. their stock value was a good proof of how much credit they were given but you can't keep being late and not delivering on promises to hundreds of thousands of customers who made deposits while the CEO is busy building flamethrowers amd hats to sell them on twitter

[pavs]

In case there is any confusion, Musk is not actually building flamethrowers and hats in person. His time is as wasted as saying "yes" to this ideas. Which is to say that not much at all.

[cheerioty]

I'm pretty sure those are his ideas ;)

[dahdum]

I tend to think Tesla benefits far more from hype and Elon charisma than is being hurt by FUD. There are still many real risks to their success, from outright failure to middling future sales. It wouldn't be shocking to see them eventually exit sales and license their tech / batteries to major automakers down the road as the major revenue stream.

All that said, their fanciful production plans can't hold much weight with institutional investors after so many misses, so it should be priced into the market.

[Fins]

Calling Model 3 a luxury vehicle is rather a stretch. Even Model S lacks things Hyundai one third the price has.

While no other company can come close to Tesla in selling half-baked (or altogether nonexistent) stuff to the gullible, packaging Panasonic batteries in an overpriced golf cart isn't something that any company that knows how to actually build cars would be particularly concerned about.

[dmode]

Lol, I have a Hyundai and a Model S. What you wrote makes zero sense

[Fins]

So... your model S has cooled seats? Tesla doesn't offer them now (and apparently they didn't work when they did). My wife's Sonata has them, and they work.

Not even talking about stuff that is to be expected in a $70K+ car, Tesla doesn't quite compete with a $30K econobrand when it comes to creature comforts.

[dmode]

Let's see. My Hyundai doesn't offer any kind of Autopilot features or advanced safety features. My Hyundai doesn't get monthly software updates that improves the car every month. My Hyundai doesn't have a world wide supercharger network to take long trips for free. My Hyundai doesn't have advanced voice features that are constantly improving. Doesn't have natively integrated streaming and podcasts app that can be controlled with voice. Doesn't have integrated Google search with voice command. Doesn't have an AI driven climate preconditioning. Doesn't have a simple UI to maintain separate driver profiles. Doesnt have an interface to customize a myriad of settings. This is just a start. I can keep going

[Fins]

Let me guess... it is a 10 years old Elantra?

Let's see... my wife's Hyundai does have adaptive cruise control that actually works and does not try to kill her, it has line assist that works as well, it does not get some buggy and unexpected changes in behavior that make it work worse than before. It can actually drive from San Jose to Vegas non-stop without sitting for a couple of hours in the exciting world of Kettleman City's Supercharger station. It integrates with whatever podcast/streaming app she has on the phone, got integrated Google search with voice control, has a perfectly working AC system (and what the hell is an AI driven climate control anyway? Does that come with little Elon's waving fans around your head or something?).

Oh, did I mention that it does not try to kill her? And cools our butts when it is hot outside? And that the body panels actually fit? All of that in a cheap brand for $40K less than a Tesla. For the kind of money you paid, I expect massaging seats, rear seat recliners, maybe even safety better than that of an old Kia.

Sorry. Not being very impressed here.