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by hotpotamus 1458 days ago
Well if I buy a Ford and not a Tesla, then Ford will presumably make some money from me and Tesla won't make any. I'll give it to Tesla (and Musk really) that they really mainstreamed the electric car by making it a luxury/halo type product, but it looks to me like they're losing a lot of their first-mover advantages now and they'll probably be losing some margin. Also their CEO went kinda nuts which didn't help the brand so much, but it seems like someone got him off twitter, so that might help too.

Hopefully Tesla can stay competitive and keep pushing the tech forward, but I think they've got some tough times ahead.
2 comments
panick21_ 1458 days ago
> then Ford will presumably make some money from me

That's not at all certain when buying and EV.

> but it looks to me like they're losing a lot of their first-mover advantages now

That's what people have been saying since 2014 and Tesla has just continued to grow.

> and they'll probably be losing some margin

Given that they have improved prices quite a bit and still have lots of order backlog, I would suspect the opposite.

Maybe total operational margin will be down because of Berlin and Texas factories, but automotive margin is unlikely to go down.

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hotpotamus 1457 days ago
Just saw this post and it pisses me off. Not because I disagree - I truly don't know the future for Tesla and it's interesting, but what the hell is "improved prices" supposed to mean? Sure sounds like marketing bullshit for "increased" - I don't consider that an improvement.
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panick21_ 1457 days ago
I have dyslexia, I wanted to write 'increased'.
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hotpotamus 1457 days ago
Lol, well then I don't have much of a problem with that thesis.
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DoesntMatter22 1458 days ago
You are a on the low end of buyers, and there are a lot of them. But it's also not the most profitable segment. Tesla has been selling cars as fast as they can build them, until that changes I'm not going to fear another competitor.

Part of the reason Ford and others can even compete is that Tesla open sourced their patents. Ford and other's electric cars are being built on the house that Tesla built.

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ra7 1458 days ago
Hold on. No one is using Tesla's open patents because it would require them to open up all of their patents in return. What's your source Ford or others have used them?
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DoesntMatter22 1458 days ago
why would they have to open up all their patents in return? Tesla never named that as a stipulation. It's not like this is a GPL license

https://www.vennershipley.co.uk/insights-events/does-teslas-...

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hotpotamus 1458 days ago
Indeed, I have a hard time believing that $30K is the low end (I'm not doubting you on that - other people have said so too), but I suppose these are the times we live in. Either way I'm hoping to get a few more years and 10's of thousands of miles out of the current ride, so hopefully things will keep improving for when the time comes.
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