A new report estimates that the company led by Elon Musk accounted for just under half of all battery-powered vehicles sold in the second quarter of the year.
A new report estimates that the company led by Elon Musk accounted for just under half of all battery-powered vehicles sold in the second quarter of the year.
At this point, I’m not sure why anyone would actually buy a Tesla. The alternatives are far less expensive, the “features” of a Tesla are unpolished and dangerous, and the money doesn’t go to a megalomaniac with a god complex.
As someone who bought one recently (past yearish) there’s several things:
The charger network: Superchargers are so much more plentiful than the alternatives, and there’s still not a great central charging app. I have 3 different ones installed on my phone and honestly most of them suck besides Tesla’s. Non-tesla chargers are basically just at apartments, businesses, and malls. Very few of which actually help me
Autopilot: when used within reason it’s a great feature. I use it in clear weather conditions for highway driving which probably covers 75% of my total time driving. In the optimal environment it feels much safer than a human and the (admittedly biased) data seems to back that up. Also having it commute for you in stop and go traffic is a huge game changer
Tesla is an all electric car company. I don’t necessarily trust other big auto companies to continue supporting electric, and to keep supporting specific electric models. We’ve already seen major auto manufacturers drop a charging standard (which is probably better for Americans) but what’s to stop them from doing it again? What stops them from stopping support for a specific model and running out of parts for it? I don’t expect an all electric car company with 5 models to do that
Yes, Elon is a massive piece of shit. You know who else is? Every auto exec. The only difference is that they’re quiet and effective. Those old money fucks have done so much more harm to our planet because they know how to influence politics effectively. Something something, ethical consumption, something, something, capitalism
Overall I got a mid-price electric car with a decent set of features. I’m relatively happy with my purchase while understanding the clear limitations of it
I just wanted to thank you for your reply. It was so well written and easily digested I feel like I got hours worth of research out of it. God bless Lemmy.
My 2 cents (more like $2 now that I wrote it) is that no car made in the past 20 years can be maintained to the degree older cars could, and electric cars will suffer from the same ephemeral lifespan as all modern autos do. Electric or not, makers will continue to abandon vehicle platforms regularly and aggressively in order to ensure no single component or technology becomes affordable or obtainable outside of a manufacturer-sponsored limited warranty plan. And they will lobby against our attempts to extend the service life of electric drivetrains in the name of safety or design secrecy.
Oh your battery still working at 1 million miles? Sorry we don’t make your seats or dash anymore.
I’ll carve a dash from a tree and craft seats from junk, but when they stop supporting the software, then you’re super fucked. I love my Model Y, but I hope every day to see news that someone has jailbroken it and is working on an open OS for it.
This is actually something I’m paying attention to: Which EVs get hacked and fossed.
I’m hoping the 40KWH zoes get done soon.
Just to be clear, Tesla is really good about their software. They still support their earliest cars, whereas my 10yo Chevy is SOL. But time comes for us all
Good thing Elon Musk fired the entire Supercharger team then.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/inside-story-elon-musks-mass-firings-tesla-supercharger-staff-2024-05-15/
Other autodealers aren’t fucking their own company over by destroying the top reason you listed for buying their cars. We’re well into the point where its clear that Elon is a terrible businessman not just morally, but also for you as the Tesla customer. There’s no way Superchargers can be maintained (let alone expand) if the team is gone.
Well when I purchased my car he hadn’t done that, so it didn’t factor into my decision. To your second point. That’s literally what they just did, I mentioned that in my comment. A bunch of auto manufacturers are switching their primary port, that’s another way of fucking your charging network. However, to my benefit, they’ll probably be picking up some of Tesla’s slack on NACS charging stations. Finally, worst case scenario it’s not like Tesla disappears off the face of the earth. If Elon fucks it all to hell they’ll break the company into pieces, sell the various pieces to other auto manufacturers and life will move on
You mean like Delorian? Or Fisker Ocean?
Nah man. When a car company goes under, they’re dead. We know what it looks like. Otherwise, the #1 car recommend should be Fisker Ocean since its like $25k per car right now. But we all know that company is dead and no one will buy it out of bankruptcy, save those cars, or offer services (or parts) on those cars moving forward.
Same thing if Tesla ever collapses. At best maybe some patents get bought out but no one will want to be left paying the bill and supporting the (now screwed) customer base.
I don’t think you realize how much Elon fucked over Superchargers with the firing.
There were projects with $50,000+ to $300k amounts put up by local businesses as they prepared for Tesla Superchargers to be installed in their parking lots earlier this year.
These businesses have gotten ZERO emails, phone or any other communication from Tesla. Why? Because the company fired everyone. Everyone involved in Superchargers is gone. That’s no more build out, no more maintenance, no more nothing.
Presumably Elon will figure out (eventually) that this is a bad idea. But then what? He already betrayed a huge number of business customers. Who will want to install new Superchargers in their business after this misstep?
Like I get it. Tesla is losing money and they needed to fire people to keep going. But its not a good look.
I dislike Musk and Tesla’s interiors enough that I’m going with a different brand, that said…
The big answer is still the charging network, even with Telsa opening up to NCAS from other manufacturers. If you buy a non-Tesla NACS car, you still only get access to about 1/3 of their network. And the Telsa’s network is still usually much faster and more reliable than its alternatives.
I would also argue that the price to range ratio is still pretty compelling when compared to the competition.
Yup, the Supercharger network is great. Last year my wife and I did a road trip up a down the east coast in our Model Y, and thanks to the superchargers and their integration with the Tesla navigation system we never had any issues.
Having said that, I’m hoping that the rollout of other NACS networks picks up steam. 5 or so years from now when I start thinking about a new car I’ll be taking a hard look at non-Tesla options for both vehicles as well as charging.
the biggest reason back then was that it had the best charging network option. as NACS slowly becomes the defacto connector standard, the unique factors that teslas have starts to yo dwindle.
in pure EV though the alternatives arent entirely less expensive. its a game of certain features over others. For example with traditional car conpanies, many of them still have a terrible cartainment system, with some threatening for example to take away apple carplay/android auto in favor of their own propietary service.
It’s one of the few cars that qualifies for the full federal tax credits
… which it has no fucking business doing. This is further evidence of oligopoly
Charging network and autopilot.
The other factor not yet mentioned is charging time/range. There are EVs with more range, and EVs with faster charging times, and EVs that are cheaper, but there are no EVs with a comparable long-range driving ability as Teslas for less money. The Hyundai ioniq 6 is comparable now but it’s new, untested, and doesn’t really have a used market
Is it? I’ve seen a fair few here in Seoul.
Yes you’ve seen a few…they don’t have hundreds of thousands of them that have driven for several years yet. It’s a brand new platform, so it is definitely considered new and untested. Luckily Hyundai has a good track record for making cars in general, and they have BEV experience from the original Ioniq, which is still one of the most efficient BEVs on the market (although range and charge speeds lack severely on those), and the Ioniq 5 so that should work in their favour. Let’s hope they learned a lot from their shitty release of the Ioniq 5 which had an unbelievable amount of SW issues, especially related to battery management.