
Tesla Model 3 is the top selling American car in the USA - jv22222
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/08/tesla-model-3-is-1-top-selling-american-car-in-usa/
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smackfu
Aren’t the three “foreign” cars ranked above it also made in America?

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IkmoIkmo
Yes, but it doesn't mean they're considered American. If you would, according
to that logic you'd have to say that the iPhone is a Chinese
(Korean/Taiwanese) product.

But yeah it's a bit silly to bring nationalism/politics into a comparison of
car sales. The whole comparison is really designed to mislead people who don't
know better and don't look any further, to conclude something that isn't
really true. Because where various manufacturers produce >10m cars, and
multiple American manufacturers did >6m, Tesla averaged about 0.1m last year
and will do about 0.25m this year. That's pretty sweet, but not the conclusion
most people would have when they read a Tesla car was the top selling American
car in the US.

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bbertucc
Where are these numbers coming from? The publication only cites itself as a
source.

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ddeck
From a website that has published around 30 pro-Tesla articles in the last
week alone[1], which headlines such as:

 _" Tesla Model 3 Total Cost of Ownership Estimate — Crushing It"_

 _" #1 Highest Grossing Car In USA = Tesla Model 3 … Model Y Will Crush “Tesla
Killers” … German Wake-Up Call"_

 _" Tesla Model 3 = Lightning, Model Y = Thunder"_

 _" New BMW 3 Series Too Little, Too Late To Slow Tesla Model 3 Disruption"_

 _" Tesla Model 3 = 4th Best Selling Car In USA (Maybe)"_

 _" #1 Tesla Model S Dominating Large Luxury Car Sales In USA"_

 _" Tesla Crushes Quarterly Delivery Record"_

[1] [https://cleantechnica.com/?s=tesla](https://cleantechnica.com/?s=tesla)

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IkmoIkmo
Which mostly has to do with having few models (65% of production is in this
one model) and a national sales focus (50% in US), rather than the car selling
(or rather, manufacturing) so well.

There's multiple US manufacturers which produce >6m cars a year. Tesla is
looking at about 0.25m or so. Interestingly enough Tesla has a higher market
cap than Ford.

Still, I can't say it's not impressive. Q3 2018 production is more than 3x
what it was in Q1 2018. That's pretty ridiculous (although to be fair, growth
was flat in the years prior).

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swarnie_
Why are 90% of the cars on that list terrible? After the Telsa you need to
read all the way down to number 15 to find something else i'd actually want to
drive/admit owning.

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xiphias2
Tesla has an effect similar to iPhone, where people spend more to have it than
what they used to generally for a car before. Even Tesla leadership was
surprised by it (they expected to get to $35k sooner, but also didn't expect
to be able to sell so many cars at $50k).

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Tepix
Sounds reasonable, but do you have a source?

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mxschumacher
not counting SUVs & trucks

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true_religion
Not many people count trucks as cars though.

