197 replies to this topic

[Magoo]

Others, probably most Tesla owners, will have a different view but to me, FSD in its current state is a cool automotive feature, for lack of a better term. Like a 750 hp engine, or driver-adjustable dampers, or an audio system with 19 speakers. It's fun to play with it and experience it in operation, but it doesn't truly fulfill a need. 

 

For example: Say you are a disabled person who needs a car that can drive them point-to-point without any interaction. You need it to open the garage door, back out of the driveway, drive to the pharmacy as instructed without any interruptions and with zero mistakes, drop you at the door, and go find a parking place and insert the car in it. Tesla FSD can't currently do that, but it gets closer with every update. 

 

As for being one of Musk's lab rats, indeed. When I purchased FSD, I paid cash up front and waited many months for the feature to be activated in beta form, and then I had to demonstrate that i was a safe enough driver to use it, even though I had already paid for it. And yes, it did occur to me that I had in effect loaned thousands of dollars to the wealthiest man in the world and he was riding the float. That impression grew stronger as "soon" turned out to be not as "soon" as suggested. 

 

There are people (nerds) who enjoy being beta testers of every new technological advance, for example in PCs and software. In the early days of the PC I was one of them, but I quickly got over it. Tesla FSD was significant enough to me to jump in early to see what it was about. If you are of a similar technical bent, you will find FSD worth the cost. But if not, it's not really value for the money. If you want a Tesla but want to save money, it's the first thing to drop off the option list. (That and the white interior.) A base Tesla 3 without FSD at $42K USD is actually a lot of car for the money. 

[just me again]

I occasionally drive 3 different cars with adaptive cruise control.

-Tesla 3 Highland
-VW ID3
-Kia Niro.

Of these 3. The ID3 have,by far, the best Adaptive cruise control. The Highland have the less polished one!.
If I want to drive myself. Without any help from the car. Then it's the opposite. The Highland is by far the best car of the three!!

[Magoo]

I occasionally drive 3 different cars with adaptive cruise control.

-Tesla 3 Highland
-VW ID3
-Kia Niro.

Of these 3. The ID3 have,by far, the best Adaptive cruise control. The Highland have the less polished one!.
If I want to drive myself. Without any help from the car. Then it's the opposite. The Highland is by far the best car of the three!!

 

I really enjoy driving the Tesla 3, which is no doubt why I don't use FSD that much. On many afternoons, I like to take it for drives to nowhere at all. I will today. It's a whole package, in much the same way as a third-generation Honda Accord or a BMW E46. I'm not saying it's as good or better than these two in any particular area, but that it is well-balanced, pleasing, and comfortable in the same manner. It makes you want to drive it. (It's definitely faster.) In 50,000 miles it doesn't have a single squeak or rattle, any dimunition in ride or handling. It's as tight as the day I drove it home. 

 

In fact, recently I was considering trading it in on a Highland, but volume automobile manufacturng being what it is, variable, I decided I might be pushing my luck. A new one might not be as good as the one in the garage. Also, I am not too keen on sending more money to the ketamine guy. By far the thing I like least about owning a Tesla is being identified with that knucklehead. 

Edited by Magoo, 17 October 2024 - 16:31.

[MikeTekRacing]

I occasionally drive 3 different cars with adaptive cruise control.

-Tesla 3 Highland
-VW ID3
-Kia Niro.

Of these 3. The ID3 have,by far, the best Adaptive cruise control. The Highland have the less polished one!.
If I want to drive myself. Without any help from the car. Then it's the opposite. The Highland is by far the best car of the three!!

Tesla autopilot has nothing in common with FSD.

Different software stack, very different performance.

[jcbc3]

Someone thinks Tesla has/are acting fraudulent: https://electrek.co/...raud-comes-out/

 

Apparently they have sold FSD to people whose cars will never be able to utilize it.

[MikeTekRacing]

I am running HW3 and they delivered the last update later for us. Not sure how much of an issue is on the long run - they CAN retrofit all cars with HW4 and if that's the only way to do it, they will probably do it (forced or not)

[Magoo]

Someone thinks Tesla has/are acting fraudulent: https://electrek.co/...raud-comes-out/

 

Apparently they have sold FSD to people whose cars will never be able to utilize it.

 

Not really. I have a Tesla with the HW3 box and it runs the latest and greatest FSD software.  The HW4 box did not ship until early in 2023. The writer is speculating that future versions of FSD may only run on the HW4 box. That remains to be seen. 

 

Thus it might be a little early to be throwing down the word "fraud."

[Greg Locock]

Musk has sensibly announced the $25000 Tesla is dead. Having worked on various cheap cars I think this is a wise move. Competing in the same space as MG and BYD (I have just spent 7 weeks driving an MG3 , probably the nastiest near new car I have ever driven) is not going to work.

[Nathan]

Maximize profit per kwh of battery produced.  He should go after Bentley and Rolls Royce.

[Greg Locock]

Well, he has sort of, he started in the masstige market with the S. Jag, BMW, and the like. I'm not sure Bentley/RR really have the volume to be worth chasing, and there are plenty of other people in that space anyway. I'd say Tesla could be the Audi or Lexus of the EV world. Quite a comfortable place, enough money around that penny pinching is of little concern, enough volume that you are mass producing not piecework.

[Magoo]

I dunno but I think a $25,000 USD (38K AUD) Tesla is doable. In that pricepoint in the USA we have the Toyota Corolla and Cross Corolla, Nissan Sentra and Kicks, and sundry Hyundais and Kias. These are pretty acceptable cars. 

 

For an EV costing baseline, consider the Tesla 3 long range RWD at $42.5K USD. There was a base Tesla 3 right at $40K with a 57 kWh battery (NFP from China) but it was discontinued very recently. 

 

The Tesla Model T,  I will call it, will have to be a CUV/crossover for volume. How about front drive, torsion axle rear. Gigacasting floor pan. 2600 mm wb. Battery pack in the 45-50 kWk range. No glass roof, no FSD hardware, cloth interior. 

 

I think a major reason it's not happening is revealed in Isaacson's biography. Musk has an aversion to cheap cars. He doesn't think they're "sexy" (his term). The Cybertruck and Cybercab are his kind of project, while the Tesla 2 is not. Which is why he got behind them and never got behind the small car project in Isaacson's reporting. But if Elon could see it a worthy technical challenge, something nobody else can or will do properly, it's actually pretty cool. 

 

To me, prioritizing the Cybertruck and Cybercab over the low-price Tesla was a strategic error in product planning---that is, if, as Musk has long said, the prime objective of Tesla is to speed the auto industry's transition to EVs. But more recently, Musk has apparently decided that the future of Tesla is autonomy, which is part of his whole AI vision and all that. That's an area I know nothing about, but from my ignorant perspective, that is some years down the road. A low-price Tesla could be a game changer right now. 

 

All this said, maybe Tesla doesn't want another product with volume equal to or greater than the 3 or Y, and all the problems with exploding the production capacity yet again. And there are all kinds of engineering and financial issues that are not within my view. Just spitballing here. 

[Lee Nicolle]

Musk has sensibly announced the $25000 Tesla is dead. Having worked on various cheap cars I think this is a wise move. Competing in the same space as MG and BYD (I have just spent 7 weeks driving an MG3 , probably the nastiest near new car I have ever driven) is not going to work.

And you expected anything else?

[Greg Locock]

Musk has never put profitability at the top of the list, so I thought he might start that project, if only to discover it was much more difficult than it sounds.

[BRG]

Cheap small cars have always been more of a loss leader for manufacturers, to lure in new buyers who will later on the more expensive (and profitable) models.  

[Magoo]

Musk is getting a sack of coal from me this Christmas. 

[Greg Locock]

BRG - An argument I have never understood, admittedly.

Edited by Greg Locock, 07 November 2024 - 22:05.

[gruntguru]

Musk is getting a sack of coal from me this Christmas. 

 

Ahhh . . . combustion.

 

Very kind of you - Elon and Don will stay warm this Christmas.

[Fatgadget]

Cheap small cars have always been more of a loss leader for manufacturers, to lure in new buyers who will later on the more expensive (and profitable) models.

[Fatgadget]

Balls BRG!
You pulled that statistic from out of where exactly?
.....Are you suggesting the Ford Cortina was a loss leader and it was really those lumbering Zodiacs and Consuls and Granadas that raked it in for Ford UK?...Good grief!

[Sterzo]

I don't claim to know how general it was for smaller cars to be unprofitable, but I do recall reading that the much-loved Issigonis Mini made an average loss of £2 per car over its life. So why did they keep making it? Because it all-but covered the costs of employing thousands of people, hundreds of agents, and the fixed costs of factories and plant which would otherwise be scrap and represent a bigger loss. And "downsizing" would have affected the viability of the business as a whole.

 

Plus, as BRG suggests, it presumably aimed to create brand loyalty for upgrades to bigger and better BL products. (Had there been any).

[BRG]

Balls BRG!
You pulled that statistic from out of where exactly?
.....Are you suggesting the Ford Cortina was a loss leader and it was really those lumbering Zodiacs and Consuls and Granadas that raked it in for Ford UK?...Good grief!

The Ford Cortina was hardly a small cheap car at the time.  It was very much mid-range.  The 998cc Anglia was the base car in the Ford range   But yes, those lumbering behemoths were where money was made because they cost comparatively little more to make but sold for a far higher price.  

 

In 1965 for instance, a Mini cost £470, an Anglia £492, an Imp £509 or you could get a Reliant for £487.  A Cortina would set you back £668 and a Zephyr 6 a princely £900.  Or push the boat out and get a Rover 2000 for £1,298.  Now do you imagine it cost three times as much to build a Rover than an Anglia?

[Sterzo]

Now do you imagine it cost three times as much to build a Rover than an Anglia?

You raise some thought-provoking points, but as so often the answer is that we don't really know. (Though someone, somewhere must). I toured the Ford factory in 1970 and it brought home how much of the cost was in expensive plant such as massive presses that slammed a former onto each steel panel. The fixed cost was huge, the incremental cost per unit less so. The numbers made therefore influenced average cost much more than in (for example) the food manufacturing industry where I worked later.

[Greg Locock]

At the time Ford expected to make some profit on small cars, since they wrote a note saying they don't see how the Mini could be sold for whatever it was sold for. Here's a long and partisan essay on BL's profit strategy.

 

https://www.aronline...n-mini-profits/

[BRG]

That article raises another rationale for making small cheap cars - to win brand loyalty.  The same reason that car makers sometimes give sweet-heart deals to driving schools on the basis that if you learn on to drive in a car, you might go out and buy one when you get your licence, and then stay loyal to the marque forever.  Nissan did this with the original Micra which was the learner driver car of choice for a while. 

[Greg Locock]

Oh I know that is often claimed. 

[Lee Nicolle]

The Ford Cortina was hardly a small cheap car at the time.  It was very much mid-range.  The 998cc Anglia was the base car in the Ford range   But yes, those lumbering behemoths were where money was made because they cost comparatively little more to make but sold for a far higher price.  

 

In 1965 for instance, a Mini cost £470, an Anglia £492, an Imp £509 or you could get a Reliant for £487.  A Cortina would set you back £668 and a Zephyr 6 a princely £900.  Or push the boat out and get a Rover 2000 for £1,298.  Now do you imagine it cost three times as much to build a Rover than an Anglia?

An Imp was dearer than an Anglia and a Reliant only marginally cheaper. Out of that lot it would appear the Anglia was the best value for money.

A Z car sounds a lot better value that a Rover. 

I have driven most of those cars and none of them except maybe the Zephyr offer any excitement what so ever.

Lat Reliant I have seen was doing burnouts on top of a tank!!

[Magoo]

It was sort of interesting watching Musk's introduction to presidential politics. Babe in the woods. 

 

Reportedly, he spent somewhere between $100 million to $200 million in the final weeks of the campaign. Given his stated net worth of $309 billion, that's around $1,500 to him. 

 

Also reportedly, the president-elect and his transition team are none too pleased with the wunderkind. They didn't like his taking so much credit for the election or trying to position himself in public as co-president. 

 

Soon he may be learning the first rule of political donations. You donate to politicians so they can do what they are going to do, never so they will do what you ask them to do. The bastards never stay bought. 

[BRG]

It was sort of interesting watching Musk's introduction to presidential politics. Babe in the woods.

 

Lamb to the slaughter more like.  Given that both Trump and Musk have the attention spans of four year olds, I wonder if Elon will even last until the inauguration?

[Greg Locock]

"Now do you imagine it cost three times as much to build a Rover than an Anglia?"

 

Um, a factor of 2, easily, 3 maybe. The Anglia was the bottom of the bin. One of the best medium size cars on sale at the time vs a clown car

 

 

 

 

vs

 

[gruntguru]

Predictiion.

Musk will have the greatest impact of all Trump's team of flunkies.

Edited by gruntguru, 15 November 2024 - 21:42.

[jcbc3]

Yeah - he is by far the smartest of them. Unfortunately no less crazy.

[Magoo]

Yeah - he is by far the smartest of them. Unfortunately no less crazy.

 

In my view from 50,000 feet, Musk has an extremely high IQ and an EQ that may not register in the normal adult range. 

 

Also, in Musk and Trump we have two narcissistic sociopaths who manifest in totally different ways. 

[jcbc3]

I'm no expert (do'h), so this is an interesting article. Also seem as if the comments raise interesting points.

 

https://insideevs.co...1Cfvvm4hlCXHkgA

 

TL;dr

CATL (battery producer) thinks it makes better batteries than TESLA. However, there pro's and con's to both approaches.

[BRG]

Yeah - he is by far the smartest of them. Unfortunately no less crazy.

I sort of wonder how the owner of Tesla, the largest and most successful BEV maker, fits in with an apparent agenda of climate change denial, fossil fuel and fracking promotion and such.

[jcbc3]

tax cuts for the rich

[Magoo]

I sort of wonder how the owner of Tesla, the largest and most successful BEV maker, fits in with an apparent agenda of climate change denial, fossil fuel and fracking promotion and such.

 

I think he's having a mental health episode. Not two years ago he was calling DJT a moron. But after the DJT's reaction to the assassination attempt, Musk decided (possibly on ketamine) that Orange Jesus was a man of superhuman courage and the only one to lead the free world. (Personally, I saw a hopeless ham with no situational awareness.) His political affiliation is at cross purposes with his personal interests, but that is not so rare in the cult. 

 

I don't know this, but it appears that Musk has broken ties with the only two human beings with any positive influence on his emotional state, his former girlfriend (and mother of three of his 12 known children) Grimes, and his brother Kimball. According to his recent pronoucements, the guiding force in his personal development is ketamine. 

[gruntguru]

I sort of wonder how the owner of Tesla, the largest and most successful BEV maker, fits in with an apparent agenda of climate change denial, fossil fuel and fracking promotion and such.

 

For sure it doesn't fit, but it doesn't take the IQ of a Musk to see that the benefits of being a Czar in a Trump dictatorship will far outweigh the downsides.

[djr900]

I sort of wonder how the owner of Tesla, the largest and most successful BEV maker, fits in with an apparent agenda of climate change denial, fossil fuel and fracking promotion and such.

I don't think Musk has ever really been any kind of environmentalist.

Yes, he has said things that make it sound like he is, when it suits his agenda.


If you really cared about the environment, would you really have a space rocket business ?

Isn't there enough space junk orbiting the earth already

I don't know what fuel Spacex uses, but is it zero tailpipe emissions ?

[gruntguru]

The "space rocket business" exists so we can one day export the human plague (sorry - human race) to Mars having rendered this planet uninhabitable.

[MikeTekRacing]

I sort of wonder how the owner of Tesla, the largest and most successful BEV maker, fits in with an apparent agenda of climate change denial, fossil fuel and fracking promotion and such.

it goes the same way as Tesla was NOT invited to the electric car summit Biden had, where he congratulated GM for leading the electrification race.

That didn't make any sense, this does not. They are of course, related. It's just politics

[MikeTekRacing]

I don't think Musk has ever really been any kind of environmentalist.

Yes, he has said things that make it sound like he is, when it suits his agenda.


If you really cared about the environment, would you really have a space rocket business ?

Isn't there enough space junk orbiting the earth already

I don't know what fuel Spacex uses, but is it zero tailpipe emissions ?

I don't think that's true. Tesla's mission is to accelerate transition to EVs. Opening up patents and stuff like that are proof in that direction. 

SpaceX is about Musk's desire to help humans have a back up plan for Earth. You can agree or disagree with him, but having a backup plan for our current planet is not being anti-environment person. 

We are one asteroid away from extinction as a race. The question is not if it will hit, but when. Affordable space travel could accelerate human's ability to be a multiplanetary species. 

[Wuzak]

I don't think that's true. Tesla's mission is to accelerate transition to EVs. Opening up patents and stuff like that are proof in that direction. 

SpaceX is about Musk's desire to help humans have a back up plan for Earth. You can agree or disagree with him, but having a backup plan for our current planet is not being anti-environment person. 

We are one asteroid away from extinction as a race. The question is not if it will hit, but when. Affordable space travel could accelerate human's ability to be a multiplanetary species. 

 

Tesla's mission is to sell more Teslas.

 

SpaceX is about putting satellites into orbit of the Earth. Maybe slightly more affordably.

 

Musk's obsession with Mars would appear to be stock pumping for SpaceX.

 

Mars is not a great candidate for a second human planet, and any such colony may not survive without supplies from Earth.

 

Environmentally speaking, fixing Earth has to be way easier than making Mars survivable.

 

Affordable space travel?

 

We're not there yet. 

 

The Starship and super-heavy booster are designed to deploy a large number of StarLink satellites into low Earth orbit.

 

For the Moon mission, it will take at least a dozen Starship launches to get one Starship to the Moon.

 

How many would be needed to go to Mars?

[Wuzak]

I don't know what fuel Spacex uses, but is it zero tailpipe emissions ?

 

SpaceX uses RP-1, which is basically Kerosene, for Falcon 9, and are using liquid methane for Starship and the Super-Heavy Booster.

[mariner]

Turning back to cars they say you can prove anything with numbers so here goes. Data from Kelly Blue Book report

 

In Q3 2024 Tesla sold 167K of units within a total US EV market of 346K units  a share of 48.2%

 

In Q3 2023 Tesla sold 157K of units in an EV market of 312K units so a share of  50.3%

 

So Tesla's share is down 2%

 

However Telsa's 2024 sales include the Cybertruck which wasn't sold in 2023 

 

Taking that out for a like for like comparion, Tesla Q3 2024 sales were 150K units of cars , down by 7K units or 4.5%.

 

The Tesla share less Cybertruck in Q3 2024 was 44.2%.

 

Obviously part of the market growth isnew entrants in 2024 but it doesn't change the situation that Tesla has seen it's like for like market sahre drop from 50.3% to 44.2%.

 

 

That probbaly won't bother Musk's ego or Wall Street's love of Tesla but I suspect an old time car guy  like say Iaccoa would be going nuts at his sales operations?

Edited by mariner, 19 November 2024 - 09:50.

[BRG]

A decline in market share is inevitable as the legacy manufacturers really get going, and the Chinese start to make in-roads.  Particularly as Tesla aren't now interested in a cheap small EV which will numerically be the majority as the EV market matures.

[mariner]

BrRg youa re absolutely right about the Legacy mfrs. GM is hoping to sell 200K EV's this year - but teh Chinseds are effectively blocked from the US market by high tariffs .

The derailed EV sales by mfr. and model are here 

 

https://www.coxautoi...ed-10-14-24.pdf

 

Intrestinglu GM are the biggest single mfr. after Tesla which really surprised me. 

Edited by mariner, 19 November 2024 - 14:50.

[MikeTekRacing]

Tesla's mission is to sell more Teslas.

 

 

That's not how the company has acted though. As I said, opening up the patents does not support this. Giving other companies access to superchargers does not support this.

If anything they should have done the opposite to both.

 

it's rather easy to ignore what happens and imagine what you think is the reason

[Greg Locock]

I gather you haven't read Tesla's mission statement.