Yes, but Tesla's margins are much higher. This will probably drop if they ever manage to make a 90s Corolla equivalent and go downmarket, but it seems they still sell as much as they can make for the moment.
The carmakers are selling every car they make, but that's now because dealers are rebuilding their inventories. The number of cars sitting in dealer inventory has gone up quite a bit over the past few months. GM can count that as a sale, but at some point dealers are going to stop buying cars faster than they are selling them...
At the same time people aren’t as flush with cash. During the pandemic, car dealerships were selling cars sight unseen and months from delivery. Buyers aren’t going to accept that anymore. The dealerships need inventory to show people.
The IONIQ5 is also evidence that if Tesla ever did have a lead on "design" of EVs, that lead is now lost. The IONIQ5 looks... cool. When I see one on the street, it stands out, and I want one, even though I don't really care for cars or EVs. Teslas had some of that feeling in the early days, but they seem very pedestrian to me now.
Could just be my brain being weird. Or could be the fact that there are Teslas freakin' everywhere in most of the (non-aggressively-red-to-the-point-of-drinking-gasoline) USA now.
I edited my previous comment but yes. What I wrote is that Tesla isn't anymore in a market where it's the only relevant EV maker and now Porsche, Mercedes and even Korean automakers make much more appealing EVs than what Tesla has in the lineup.
Isnt that due to the chip shortage brought on by covid? Car companies wanted to and had the ability to produce more cars if they had the chips. I dont think that was Tesla's ceiling.
Toyota weighs the cost of running individual wires (as a part of the harness) when building the Yaris. The margins are that hard at the low end. Adding any small tiny feature is hard due to the cost they are trying to hit.
Can't speak of the Yaris. My 2008 Prius with more than 100kmi runs flawless though. Surely (even accounting for survivor's bias) there would have been ways to cut costs. Methinks there are other motivations in play then just maximizing short term profit. I believe Toyota is in there for the long run. I'm not so sure that Tesla is.
I have had Prii since 2001 (back when it was a sedan). Had good experience with them until recently: 2011 prius with 110K miles had to have it's engine replaced. Decided to do that instead of getting another car because anecdata tells me this was an aberration.
Did you have the EGR valve and cooler cleaned? It's the most notable issue with the 2009-2015 that leads to head gasket issues. Although, some say it's fine until ~140k ish, it could happen earlier if oil changes weren't full synthetic, yearly, or less than 10k miles.
Toyota also sells 10 million vehicles a year, 10x what Tesla does. So yeah, any small change to their model lineup is under scrutiny because it gets multiplied 10 million times over.
I guess. The luxury manufacturers, like Tesla, will just increase the price or add a subscription if they think they can market a feature. There's no money for that on the Yaris, the customers can't afford whatever it is.
Per the GP, Toyota is making twice the total profit. They might have to sell more than twice as many cars to do it, but as you acknowledge, for Tesla to make that much profit, their margin would also likely decline.
Total profit matters more than margins, unless you have reason to believe the margins will hold true at any level.
"Selling every car they make" is what every manufacturer does, and they throttle production to accomplish it. This is not unique to Tesla. Do you think there are graveyards of unsold cars out there?
does any Tesla owner have an issue with how long it takes to charge a Tesla? And IIUC it has to be charged more often than a similar Toyota with a full tank.
Charging at a gen2 supercharger (not even gen3, which are available in the viscinity of where i live as well) goes at a rate between 300-510 miles of charge per hour (depending on the current battery charge) for me.
Charging at my apartment building garage is slow (given it only uses a regular 110v outlet, the same one you would use to charge your phone), but i just leave it overnight, so the speed doesn't matter much in that scenario.
The charger at work is somewhere in-between, but i can easily get about 70-100 miles of charge per hour.
And the costs make it very worth it for me. At the supercharger, my last fill up cost me $16 (i typically drive the car down to 15-20% charge, and then fill it up to 80-90%), and it went up to $20 about twice in my 3 years of ownership (when i was very close to empty). At the apt building and at work, it is free. Meanwhile, even pre-covid (aka before 2019, because that's when I switched cars), my Camry would routinely take about $40-50 to fill up (and I would try to get it filled once I have about 20% of the tank left).
Ah right so there's chargers at work and at home, then you wouldn't notice the charge times. I have heard folks having to drive to and wait at charger locations, that is a hassle. So that's only until the charging infra at apartments and offices catch up.
My apartment has no charging infra, it just has a few regular 110v outlets, the exact same kind people have in their houses.
As for superchargers being busy, I guess there might be some specific one that is busy at a specific time of the day? Because I have about 4 different supercharger locations within 7 miles of where I am, and that's not counting non-Tesla-branded chargers. For context, I am in Seattle area, and as I am looking out of my window overlooking Mercer St, at any given point in time, I can see at least 2-3 Teslas (not even counting other EVs), which tells me that a lot of people find EVs to be very viable in this area.
3 years ago, there was only 1 supercharger location within that same distance. Every other grocery store and a large public location where people park (like IKEA or a movie theater) has charging spots.
My musings aside, overall I agree with you. However, charging infrastructure these days is more viable already than what most people assume. Not everywhere yet, of course, but it is getting there.