PR more than anything. Tesla growth story is pretty much over, many people turned off the brand for a multitude of reasons (Musk, terrible service, price, lack of innovation, more EV competition). So if anything a good opportunity for Tesla to win some PR, potentially expand partnership, sell more cars.
Now they get more bad news "rental company dumps Tesla because of XYZ", the used market took a big hit as well pissing off existing owners, and I feel like this pushes newer buyers even more away.
>the used market took a big hit as well pissing off existing owners
Oh no, poor wealthy Tesla owners loosing value on their car. /s Since when are ordinary cars appreciable investments?
It's been well known cars tank in value, especially when you're an early adopter of new tech in a market that's in constant disruption. Your 1999 GeForce 256 also lost most of it's value in a year compared to other later GPUs, it's the nature of tech in a rapidly changing market.
People who expect cars to hold/go up in value need to buy limite edition exotics, not mass produced commodities.
EVs tanking in value on the used market is good for EV adoption as non wealthy people can afford them.
>> good for EV adoption as non wealthy people can afford them.
The sticker price isn't the issue. The issue is ironically fuel costs. Anyone who doesn't own their own house will rely on commercial chargers. In many circumstances a commercial charger can cost more per-mile than gasoline, and certainly they take much more time. So the non-rich, people who rent apartments and don't generally have spare time, cannot afford a used EV despite the sticker price.
Not-rich people also generally own only one car. They cannot "afford" a vehicle that is expensive to fix, both in time and cash. A couple days waiting for a part is a couple days missed work. A few weeks without a car (ie most any Tesla repair) could mean a lost job.
It's a matter of degrees. A car losing 25% of its value is much better than losing 75% over the same time period. How well a vehicle will hold its value is a factor that many people factor into their purchasing decisions.
>How well a vehicle will hold its value is a factor that many people factor into their purchasing decisions.
Cars are commodities, like microwave ovens or washing machines, not houses. You won't get any sympathy because your risky economic bet didn't pan out the way you expected it to.
> You won't get any sympathy because your risky economic bet didn't pan out the way you expected it to.
No one is offering sympathy, we're just saying that when buyers are considering a car, depreciation is a consideration.
Because, you see, no one simply burns down a 3 year old car when they want a new one - they use whatever equity in their existing car as part of the payment of the new car.
Not only that, but these were rented cheaply to Uber drivers. They'd come back with worn brakes from Ubers who'd drive hard and brake hard instead of using regen. They'd have batteries that had more cycles than most from charging to 100% whenever there was a break between rides.
They depreciated like a rented Uber, which seems entirely predictable.
>If a value of a vehicle can drop $40k over a period of a month, it is too volatile and I will never purchase such brand.
And why is this bad? Who said a brand/company is entitled to a certain amount of sales just because they exist? Aren't we in capitalisms where it's sink or swim and the market/customer is right? If a product is volatile maybe it's not good and people should orient to other brands, no?
If Tesla bins it, other better manufacturers will pick up the slack if the EV demand is there according to market forces. If the EV demand isn't there, maybe the EV hype was a bubble that was gonna pop sooner or later?
Why are you interpreting bad as some kind of moral position? You seem to be purposely misinterpreting these comments to start an argument about economic systems.
It's not bad that it happens, it's bad for Tesla if they are marketing their product as high-end/luxury while their product very obviously lacks the attributes, such as a stable/predictable value over time, that competitors' luxury products have. Someone deciding not to buy a product, for whatever reason, is the system working as intended. If Tesla can't produce a product people want to buy, Tesla will suffer the consequences, as they should. If they don't change their marketing or improve their product in the light of low sales, that's on them.
There's a huge difference between a car depreciating normally (which all of them do at varying rates) and what happened to the Model 3 depreciation curve over the last 12 months.
Nobody is asking you to cry for Tesla owners or feel bad for them. If anything, this is more of a Tesla problem to solve as it reduces the likelihood of those wealthy buyers buying another Tesla in the future as it's another negative data point to consider.
People want to know what they can expect when making a huge purchase. When the pros outweigh the cons, and I would say worse than average depreciation is a pretty big con, then buyers will look elsewhere.
Your entire comment is hostile and outside the guidelines for this site. We’re in this for honest discussion, not “let me play you the world's smallest violin for them” or “Are Tesla owners gonna starve or become homeless”.
The discussion was started on the basis that there's only an acceptable depreciation a car should have, whereas there's no such thing and I made that statement as clear and as direct as I could even if others don't like it.
"Buying a car today is an investment into the future. I think the most profound thing is that if you buy a Tesla today, I believe you are buying an appreciating asset, not a depreciating asset."
-Elon Musk, 2019.
Whether you believed him or not is a different matter but that's what he said at the time.
You are arguing with a straw man. Managing depreciation on a vehicle has nothing to do with anyone expecting appreciation. Many people simply want to maintain a reasonable residual value for their next trade in, and/or maintain an above-water loan.
LOL. Tesla believes heavily in PR, Musk just doesn't believe in PR departments.
That's why if you're involved in a Tesla accident, even a fatal one, Tesla will have no hesitation holding a press conference, pulling vehicle telemetry, to make sure that (rightly or wrongly) blame goes to you as the driver and not Tesla.
They'll make statements like "Autopilot wasn't to blame here. The vehicle had warned the driver of his inattentiveness", and the Tesla fans will nod their heads, reassured.
What will later come out will be that Autopilot was active, and that while a driver attention (steering wheel) warning had occurred on the fateful trip, it had happened ONCE, and that that one time was EIGHTEEN MINUTES prior to the collision.
But there won't be a press conference to correct those details.
You know, it's hard to know what sources other people consider to be "reputable" these days, so perhaps you could put on your big boy britches and google the subject to find a source you like rather than expecting us to know what you trust and don't trust? I mean, shit, if you bothered to look at the Verge article you'd have seen the link to the NTSB report. Here ya go...
So, Google's results only seem interested on showing the articles about the NTSB's ultimate findings, not the ones that were originally reported immediately after the crash. I then assumed that some of the articles I had linked in that post would probably link back to their own previous articles about it, and figured I'd just start by going through that list from the top down.
Sure enough, the second one I linked, from CBS News, linked to their older article on it, entitled, "No one was driving Tesla before fiery crash that killed 2 passengers in Texas, authorities say".
>The assertion had two parts and these stories only reflect the latter.
They don't, actually. Take this line from the Ars piece (though Ars isn't the only one that says something like this - most of them do! :D), for instance:
>The possible involvement of Autopilot was suggested in the wake of initial reports that one of the two occupants—specifically the driver—was found in the back seat of the car.
If you click the Ars link, you'll notice that the phrase "initial reports" also links to their own article written immediately after the event, titled, "Cops 'almost 99.9% sure' Tesla had no one at the wheel before deadly crash".
Musk might claim to not believe in PR but his twitter activities (both the purchase and his actual tweets) strongly imply he does care about public opinion and his ability to shape it.
What Musk does on Twitter is wholly separate from Tesla not having a PR department to handle some of the things that OP suggested. In fact, I'd wager that the lack of a PR department hampers Tesla's ability to control the negative reactions towards the company that have been caused by Musk's attempts to shape public discourse on Twitter.
The parent comment said "Tesla doesn't believe in PR". It's clear that Tesla does in fact believe in PR judging by all of Elon's related activities, they just do it differently than other companies.
Elon believes in doing his own PR, but Tesla does not, simple as that. If I'm to believe that Tesla does believe in PR then, as I mentioned in response to another user, I'd wager they'd be doing a lot more to improve their image given how much of a negative impact Elon's poor attempts at shaping public discourse via Twitter has had on Tesla lately, where their stock is at, etc.
An "about" page is bog standard stuff and a pretty paltry effort in the grand scheme of the things a PR department at a company the size of Tesla would otherwise traditionally be doing. It's like, yes, technically that's a form of PR, sure, but it ain't much.
Now they get more bad news "rental company dumps Tesla because of XYZ", the used market took a big hit as well pissing off existing owners, and I feel like this pushes newer buyers even more away.