[peeters]

It's a lot harder to quantify "ramp-up" for these models too, because they almost never have a bare starting point. E.g. CX-3 is (IIRC) based on the Mazda2 platform, so do you include the preceding Mazda2 ramp-up in the number?

Still it's the pro-Tesla person that's making the claim; the onus is on them to provide the numbers or if it's not a fair comparison, to avoid it (or clarify it).

[jaawn]

I guess that is fair, but according to this carsalesbase.com site, it isn't even remotely close. Tesla has built/sold more Model 3s in its first year of production than anything else I can find...by a lot. They built/sold more in the past few months than entire years for all of the other models I have checked.

That's why I asked what models the other person looked at because so far all of the information I can see from the site that they linked confirms the "pro-Tesla" person's statements.

[sokoloff]

Ford sold ~559,500 1965 Mustangs in a much smaller overall market.

Chevy sold over 200K Corvairs each of the three first years of launch.

First 12 months deliveries of Tesla Model 3 were a little over 26K. First 15 months deliveries (which is more apples-to-apples with other company "first year" launches) were a little over 80K.

It's not even close, IMO... Do you see the figures differently?

[Latteland]

Those are high numbers, wow, and Tesla hardly started producing them in mass until mid year 2018. They could get to 50k a calendar year if Q3 holds. Just for estimation purposes let's use that. It's hard to believe they'd do as well as one of the best selling cars of all time, but they are in a different segment too. Tesla is selling cars that are more expensive than average, maybe a more fair comparison is the bmw 3 series, audi 3 or 4 series type cars. At least Tesla is doing pretty well at the current moment, but they are not doing as well as Mustang or Corvair - some of the best selling cars of all time.

Tesla has been limited by production of batteries and cars, now they have scaled those a lot. But they aren't the fastest of history, that seems clear. Unless they suddenly sell 125k cars a quarter they won't catch Mustang.