Seems like another way to avoid the death spiral trap Elon has set up for himself.
- Bought Twitter with Tesla stock as collateral
- Tesla faces falling EV sales and external competition
- Unionisation pressures, declining product quality, Elon losing his reach and audience's good graces
- Stock price falling too low can trigger a margin call on his loans
- Starts actual marketing, price cuts
- Price cuts chew into profits, stock falls
- Announces "real FSD" for 100th time
- Announces "robotaxis"
- Layoffs happening
While this might end up with a small bump in the price to avoid the margin calls, it might also end up being part of a downward spiral for Tesla in the end, depending on where and what they are cutting.
It would be unfortunate to see Tesla crash after everything due to his wish to buy Twitter and I think we might see him ousted in the following year or so. Before it was "Elon is Tesla's marketing driver so we can't kick him out", nowadays it seems way less so with him being more of a detractor.
Despite having means to do so I refuse to buy a Tesla due to Musk's antics. I don't want to bankroll that man-child's descent into Q-Anon level idiocy. There are decent alternatives sprouting all around from traditional car manufacturers.
To a first approximation, if you express a strong opinion about politics (particularly in these times), no matter which side you align with, you're going to alienate about half your customers, so it's always seemed like bad business sense to do so. That said, electric cars themselves are not strictly politically neutral these days; they've (rather sadly if you ask me) become associated with political identity, and Musk has aligned himself in the stupidest way with the political tribe that sees them as antithetical to its values. I believe this was more tenable when Teslas were seen as more luxury cars than green cars, but the proliferation of cheaper Model 3s seems to have brought them down to Earth.
Also, although I would never own one, I truly enjoy seeing Cybertrucks out in the world; they're so novel and iconoclastic and have character that so lacks in modern mass-manufactured vehicles, but it looks like they might also be a sucking wound on the company.
He would have just been so much better off for his own mental health as a techno optimist rather than this spiral into psychosis and imagined harms inflicted on him. He really should have sprung for therapy rather than for xitter.
This whole discussion is assuming Musk is the problem and somehow caused these layoffs.
But all of the "big three" US automakers have laid off thousands of workers in the last few months. Tech companies have laid off hundreds of thousands.
Tesla is both, so isn't it likely that they're dealing with the same forces that caused layoffs at other companies?
This discussion seems like several people with pre-existing (and oft-repeated here) grievances twisting evidence to fit their theories instead of forming theories based on the facts.
---
(Another fact to consider: in addition to the widespread layoffs already mentioned, there's also growing competition from hybrid makers.
US automakers race to build more hybrids as EV sales slow
It seems like most of those layoffs are a rather cynical ploy to create a temporary stock boost and pay for a buyback, maybe with some labor market manipulation (specifically, scaring developers into accepting lower wages, not unionizing, and not demanding remote work) getting done along the way. Tesla, like many tech companies and auto manufacturers, but also like most American businesses, essentially drives its decision-making around some complicated financial game the plutocrats are playing with stocks, increasingly to the detriment of anything us mere mortals can comprehend like making and/or selling goods and/or services
> To a first approximation, if you express a strong opinion about politics (particularly in these times), no matter which side you align with, you're going to alienate about half your customers, so it's always seemed like bad business sense to do so.
There's a basic principle as old as time which goes something like "never discuss politics, religion, and sports with co-workers". The reasons are obvious.
What kind of absolute moron is going to assume the public face of a few fragile companies and insist on making broad gratuitous ignorant public statements on each and every single one of these topics, sometimes bundling a bunch of them together?
I must admit I enjoy seeing Cybertrucks in the wild. They are fugly, but not as fugly in-person as I expected. Putting the development resources into a cheaper Model 2 would almost certainly been a better investment for the company though. Cybertrucks will never sell in enough volume to affect Tesla's bottom line positively.
The secret to their success is to build and test new tech in a low volume high cost vehicled then take that knowledge and build cheaper. Model S/X -> Model 3/Y.
With that info, you can easily forecast that the tech they are testing in the Cybertruk will be the foundation for the 25k car.
I think part of it is that many of those beliefs are so stupid, they taint whoever holds them. Not all beliefs are created equal, so to speak.
Also, other CEOs who might share those beliefs are at least intelligent / savvy enough not to voice them openly. Being so stupid or arrogant that you would proudly display those beliefs is seen almost as worse by many, so he doesn't do himself any favours with that.
I agree. However, hoi polloi don't evaluate others based on the objective validity of their beliefs, but rather whether they share the same beliefs, however stupid.
In a scenario where there is a normal side and a stupid side, both sides will also feel that the other side is stupid. So this means absolutely nothing.
Well yeah, I think their beliefs are stupid. It would not surprise me at all that they hold other stupid beliefs.
Like, I believe flat earth beliefs are stupid. Do people that hold them believe my beliefs in that area are stupid? maybe, but I'm pretty comfortable with that.
If Musk is sincere in his tweeting then he has the politics of a 14-year old Reddit Troll (and I would know having been guilty of such behavior myself). There are much better ways to persuade people of your righteousness than posting memes where women are flashing their vaginas at monks in order to tempt them, but of course that takes actual work and lacks the dopamine hit that comes from such subversiveness. And again, I say this as someone who appreciates the occasional 420/69 numerology or naming your car models "S", "3" (E), and "X". To me that's playful, but he's taken it far beyond that and into something much darker.
Tesla customers are the "liberal coastal woke elites" Musk hates so much. What is he mirroring exactly that they would appreciate? It's the complete opposite of what you said.
I buy a company's products. Not a CEO's. CEOs just have to keep their mouths shut and all is well if their products are good.
Hell, how many people do you think even know who the CEO of KIA is? Or of BMW? Or of Honda? Or of Stellantis?
Right.
Elon dug his own grave by having severe narcissistic personality disorder, always need to be front and centre of the daily discourse and happens to show his real right wing face now. A face that is anthesis to his customer base.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
We ban accounts that post like this, so I need to ask you to stop.
Right, he has definitely removed and shadow-banned reporters who put up things that he didn't like, while Chinese and Russian blue check propaganda accounts spam Twitter with hundreds of tweets and retweets every day PER account.
Wouldn't a free market for labor eschew any kind of border control? What do you think Musk cares most about - the nationality of the workers who assemble a Tesla, or the cost of their labor?
I think you can recognize that OP was talking about the 80% of his customers who buy EVs because they are green friendly or tech geeks, and not 20% who buy because they like Musk
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
We ban accounts that post like this, so I need to ask you to stop.
> God forbid a CEO would express his sincerely-held beliefs.
Express to who?
Who do you express your sincerely-held beliefs to? To your friends and family or do you often get on a soapbox/roof-top/social media platform and just start yelling?
Musk’s been doing the latter, and CEO or not, it comes with consequences that are directly proportional to the size of the megaphone.
For me it's not about bankrolling Elon. It's about not wanting to sink a ton of money and become critically dependent on something that is built and serviced by visibly erratic ownership. If Elon was making toasters I wouldn't care. But we're talking about a $50k+ purchase and my only means of transportation for years to come.
same, before he really spinned off into his antics, I was really considering buying a tesla. I ended up leasing a lexus instead. Next car will be full EV, but will never get a Tesla, and it is 100% because of this man's actions.
Teslas don't experience the network effect like a social network does, especially since they've opened up NACS/Supercharger to other car manufacturers.
I don't have a Facebook, Twitter or TikTok. And LinkedIn exists as nothing more than a glorified resume for me.
What is your point? I couldn't care less what other people do, only where my standards/beliefs lie. I can't/won't ever support Tesla due to Musk. If he didn't benefit from my purchase, I almost definitely would have done so.
Sure but I personally know 3 people in Sweden who got rid of their Teslas and won't ever purchase one again, that is from a very small anecdote but if it has happened within my very low sample size I'd guess that others are sharing a similar sentiment.
Two of those are older folks, not even that connected with tech in general (or much of the internet vitriol), if Musk's bad press is reaching them it seems to me a quite generalised issue.
The bad press is particularly bad in Sweden and was all over the main media, with Musk refusing to sign collective agreements with Tesla employees there, leading to strikes [e.g 1,2].
Eh only one of those examples includes the CEO literally retweeting nazi-adjacent stuff so it's a bit easier for me to hold tight on Tesla. Even my wife who is not a big tech follower will never consider a Tesla now.
I've voted R in almost every election up until 2016. Things have changed quite a bit the last 8 years.
Edit to add: I also interviewed to work at Tesla back a few years ago (before all the Twitter stuff). I thought Elon seemed pretty hard-driving but otherwise had no strong opinion. Only declined to move forward because the work/life balance seemed poor.
The conservative Sohrab Ahmari recently wrote a piece in which even he found Musk to be too conservative for his tastes. One of his complaints:
>A popular white-nationalist account with the handle “IAmYesYouAreNo” posts a meme declaring, “You are witnessing the biggest act of cuckoldry in human history. An entire civilisation willingly giving away its land and women.” Musk quotes the post, adding in his own words, “Accurate” (he has since deleted the response).
What's the mitigating context here? Can you adequately explain it for me?
Love the humblebrag. This "investing" method works until once day it doesn't. Don't get me wrong, HN is wrong a lot of times. Those two specific examples are about companies that are monopolies for all intents and purposes. Google and Meta pretty much control their primary markets. Tesla does *not* control their primary market. In fact it looks like their competitors are closing in on them very fast. No one was closing in on Google Search or Instagram/Whatsapp. The numbers never indicated that at any point in time. For tesla on the other hand...
It's not even a rational decision for me. I see a Tesla, that reminds me of Musk, I feel disgust. Very different feeling from a couple of years ago where I had Tesla connected with sort of futurism and luxury (being a relatively expensive car).
I think you're giving the media way too much credit here. Musk does a pretty great job of sidestepping his PR people to say insane, hateful, inflammatory, or just plain stupid shit. My thoughts on him come from years of hearing him tell us who he really is on a daily basis, and I'd be irritated if someone mistakenly placed responsibility for my thoughts on Musk to the media.
So you do understand that traditional CEOs have PR people that filter the public from their true thoughts. Did you also know that those PR people work closely with legacy media by giving extra access in exchange for favorable articles?
My point isn't that you should agree with Elon's tweets, but just to ask if you know why it is that you are familiar with his thoughts but not the thoughts of CEOs of companies that you give money too.
We're talking about Elon Musk specifically here, I don't know where you saw an invitation to walk in and clutch your pearls, or where you read in my reply that I think Elon Musk is the only crazy asshole CEO out there.
The context of the thread is people not buying Tesla because of the CEO. My point is that the people making these decisions are quite ignorant to the behavior and opinions of products that they do buy.
That inconsistent buying choice behavior is interesting and I brought it up. Sorry if that makes you upset.
It could be the way you're talking down to me while stating obvious facts, or it might just be that I don't appreciate someone coming in here to "what about" a thing I said about one single, specific CEO, the subject of the thread and the person all these comments are about, but I'm done with this conversation.
Sir, you just have to read Elon's Musks twitter account on his "X" platform which he owns. You don't need third parties to tell you what is wrong with him.
> Did the NYT not do the most basic research on Elon, which would have shown his consistent history of this kind of behavior they are now criticizing him for.
Twitter wasn't as big back then as it is now. Earlier all his thoughts were kept mostly to himself and social media wasn't as big. Twitter amplifies his inner thoughts. People don't seem to like it.
The most significant shift in my opinion of him happened as a result of my reading of his authorized biography (from Isaacson). I don't read much "legacy media".
Do you think there is any chance that the legacy
media has convinced you to behave this way?
If you want to suggest there's a conspiracy involving the mainstream media's coverage of Musk, you'd need to point out some comparable CEOs who behaved similarly and were ignored or covered differently.
I don't think you can, because Musk is so singular. He runs multiple cutting-edge companies and has behaved very publicly in some very outlandish ways. Publicly calling people pedos, praising the alt-right, publicly smoking weed, a compelling list of actual achievements combined with an equally large list of conspicuous vaporware promises. There's nobody quite like him. Thus the coverage.
What happened to liberals caring about climate change?
I do not think "caring about climate change" entails ignoring some fairly spectacular public behavior from a guy making electric cars.
Did the NYT not do the most basic research on Elon, which would have shown his consistent history of this kind of behavior they are now criticizing him for.
Ok but that's worse. You do get how that's worse, right?
For a forum where people proud themselves on being logical and rational, I find it quite hilarious that when it comes to identity politics and Musk, all rationality, thought and reason goes out the window.
Look, there are plenty of CEOs who's politics I don't agree with (in fact there are more than a few) but:
1. I don't go on the roof and shout that they should be "silenced" because _I_ have somehow concluded that they are idiots because their views don't align with mine
and 2. I don't judge their technology or service based on whether they support my favorite political candidate.
So if you are not purchasing a Tesla because of Musk congratulations but I suggest you also start boycotting all other CEO's who has a view you don't like, otherwise it will just make you a hypocrite.
Presenting not purchasing a Tesla, a green technology which is actually good for the planet, in the name of politics as an act of martyrdom isn't impressive.
People here hate on Musk, yet they worship a known scammer like Altman. I hope the irony is not lost on everyone.
That isn't accurately representing everyone's opinion.
There's a difference between "Musk should be silenced" and "Musk should be silent". One of them is a request directed to whatever sort of people might censor him, the other is a request directed to Musk himself.
There's more reasons to avoid Musk than just his politics (though that's certainly a part of it). There's his habit of publicly making tasteless remarks, his treatment of employees, and his broken promises to customers, to name a few.
Most people I've seen decide not to buy a Tesla because of Musk aren't acting like they've made some big sacrifice. At most, it's been "I wish I could buy one, but don't want to support him." Characterizing that as martyrdom is ridiculous.
Saying someone should ignore the people behind a product when deciding whether to buy it is also ridiculous. Yes, a lot of people do this in practice because they don't know who's behind the products they buy, or because they don't have a choice. But they do know who Musk is because he's so public, and they have so many other options.
I'm with you on the Altman thing. I've seen people on this forum worship all sorts of characters. Musk was one of those characters at one point. If you meant that as an indictment of this forum, it absolutely is, but the hate on Musk isn't the irrational part.
The parent doesn't want to support the business because of the owner. I don't see anything about political silencing or casting a judgment on the technology. Where does he talk about silencing Musk? Where does he criticize the technology?
>So if you are not purchasing a Tesla because of Musk congratulations but I suggest you also start boycotting all other CEO's who has a view you don't like, otherwise it will just make you a hypocrite.
People are free to choose what businesses they support. At the same time, I'm sure there's a certain amount of practical decision making that has to happen to meet one's needs. You can _choose_ to think of it as hypocrisy, but it's also just being practical.
Not that I'm even agreeing with the decision making of the parent. I just think your post is a ridiculous overreaction.
I have no idea who the CEO of Chrysler or Ford are, let alone what their political view is (I assume they are in favour of tax breaks for billionaires). Hell I don't really know what Bezos or Cook's view are, they certainly aren't part of Amazon or Apple.
Musk made Tesla an inseparable part of the Musk brand (so like Bezos and Amazon, or Gates and Microsoft), and then thus every rant he makes is inextricably linked to Tesla.
Interestingly, as Gates mostly retired form Microsoft decades ago, he's been a bit more known -- he does charitable stuff with malaria, and Musk powered outlets claim he's giving everyone free 5g. Both are great things. I'm sure you could dig into bad things, but Gates isn't linked to Microsoft in the way Musk is linked to Tesla
It boggles the mind how basic mechanisms to protect workers from health and safety issues and overall abuses are often mindlessly parroted as contributing to a company's problems.
Listen, if you are incapable of treating employees as people or even lookout for their own personal safety, the problems are not caused by workers getting together to do something to save themselves.
If your company fails at this fundamental level, the failure lies in the way your company is managed.
You are the problem if you want workers to work nights and weekends. You are the problem if you depend on workers sleeping in the office or factory floors to meet arbitrary deadlines.
If your managers try to argue their company can cease to exist if it can no longer subject workers to all kinds of abuse, your company should not exist at all, and the world will be a much better place without it.
I mean, sure, I get your point, but unionization problems _can_ contribute to the company's problems. Or at least lack of them do not surface problems that already exist.
Twitter is a sad joke now, I deleted my account and created a placeholder to occasionally read tweets and I get a constant stream of near-identical bot accounts following me. The site is also broken and randomizing tweets for non logged in users further reduced usability for me.
There’s still tons of activity there but to me it feels the site is in a death spiral, the team seems to just manage keeping up with bugs so there is very little useful product innovation happening, or at least it seems like that to me.
To be fair there have been more changes since Musk took over and I think that it is one of the main reasons (together with reduced headcount) for why there are more bugs now.
That doesn't mean that all of those changes are a positive, but the pace surely improved.
Yeah but I have the impression it’s mostly about revenue tweaking, not evolving the platform in a way that benefits users. Which I guess is normal as it’s a late stage scale up.
I mostly use Twitter to follow interesting people with interesting hobbies, and those same people are still there and just as interesting as they used to be. The experience hasn't changed for me at all.
I wonder how much of the complaining comes from people that primarily used it for politics and culture war shit - their filter bubbles have been popped and they're now seeing things they didn't used to see and therefore it's "gone to hell".
> Elon is Tesla's marketing driver so we can't kick him out
I confess that when he started the downward spiral, I thought it might be part of some marketing strategy: they had to bring the other half of the population who think global warming is a hoax/unimportant to EVs in order to be truly successful. It became clear very quickly that he's just losing his sanity.
It's amazing. You can argue how much input he's had into Tesla and SpaceX over the years, but it's clear that both companies did amazing things.
Then he starts his drunken/high/unwise posts and memes, both libelous ("pedo guy"), and financial ("Taking Tesla private") etc, he came out angry about people protecting themselves from covid, and of course his circle, just like people on social media, shifted, and egged him on more and more. His descent spiraled and eventually the lawyers and accountants couldn't get him out of it when it came to Twitter. It's destroyed his finances, lost his reputation, sucked his time, and he entered the spiral of conspiracy and hatred.
We've all read about people who have committed career suicide on twitter, or at least caused themselves major problems (Justine Sacco comes to mind, but James Gunn too), but Musk is a category on his own. I look forward to a detailed biography.
Elon's brand has become toxic enough that firing him might be the right move, but there's no way it happens with a board made up of sycophants and drug buddies.
It's bizarre how far that guy has fallen after being one of the greatest corporate fundraisers and hype men of all time. I guess some personalities don't respond well to being an unaccountable mega billionare.
with the gigafactories out and market pressure to build EVs, I feel like Elon has achieved what he set out to do. If he borrows too much and builds too many factories, those factories will still be producing cars after Tesla is liquidated. I can see why he'd be so cavalier with Tesla's survival given what else is happening, the momentum is achieved even if he loses a lot of money.
That he'd turn that leverage to X though, I didn't like to see. Even as a Musk fan, it looks like a functional alcoholic buying a bar. Twitter probably does have a lot of military value as a propaganda vector, but it's hard to see how he could be an improvement over Jack Dorsey without ending up in conflict with the military industrial complex that pays for that propaganda.
Given all that we know now, Musk's concern for the environment seems a lot more like good marketing than a deeply held belief. A lot of what he says is nonsense but sounds neat, like pretending that we're close to building a Mars colony. Undermining public transit actively makes the world worse off, but helps him sell more cars.
How much of his immense wealth and power has he used to help the environment in ways that don't enrich himself?
Well... whether he's responding to a market need versus creating a market need versus responding to a moral obligation is very hard to untangle. That's part of why nobody's found a better system than capitalism yet - the most self-serving actions are often also the most public serving. I will say from the perspective of someone who specialized in renewable energy all through undergrad, renewable energy is cheap but requires storage. Expensive storage is the reason wind and solar have trouble competing with coal and gas on a dollers per watt basis. Subsidizing the creation of a lot of batteries by bundling them with cars people would buy anyway is the kind of brilliant but dirty growth hacking only a Silicon Valley Techbro would have the audacity to try. I can't comment on his motives, but I don't have a better idea for how to accelerate renewable energy adoption than the path he's pursued. Affordable storage is the keystone that supports that entire structure, in 2009-2014 it was the big unanswered question among my professors.
As for enriching himself by helping... I don't think there's a perfect solution there. The Rockefeller-Gates system of making money in one industry and funding purely philanthropic ventures in another comes with its own moral hazards. For profit work in a field of public interest comes with different ones. Both are preferable to taking no interest in the public good IMHO. Personally, if I was a billionaire I'd try to fund ventures that are in the public interest and also have paying customers, it promotes a certain kind of honesty that would be important to me, but I think any oligarch that claims to be trying to help should be given the benefit of the doubt, societal incentives are just so much more aligned that way.
This only really works (for some value of 'works') if you go for external autarky, internal free market. Otherwise, you very much have the government picking winners and losers; banning or heavily tariffing the import of foreign steel, say, will be great for your steel industry, but probably pretty dire for other heavy industry, which consumes steel.
Even the autarky option (or somewhat less extreme options like only applying protectionism to end products, rather than raw materials and intermediate products) is only free market if you kind of decide that _end consumers_ are not part of the free market. The car industry in particular has produced many examples of how this goes; look at the East German and Soviet car manufacturing industries, or to some extent the British one prior to European accession. Pumping out shoddy overpriced products which only had a market because people were forced to buy them, and which were utterly unable to compete once imports were finally practical.
I didn't say it was a good idea, I was explaining the mentality behind it.
It's an outset from a group of people that want to be free from govt regulations but also protected from foreign competitors, who they can't directly influence. They don't care about consumers beyond them buying their product at the highest possible margins.
And the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is neither democratic, a republic, or of the people.
People use inaccurate self-descriptions all the time, especially for political good will. If you want to insert quotes around the phrase in your head, go for it.
I visited China over the Christmas Holidays last year. Reliable and cheap sums up what I saw from electric vehicles at the time. The taxi I took also did a battery swap in the middle of our trip, which took maybe five minutes and was heartening to watch.
I think Tesla is still the luxury brand even in China, and that can sustain a company for a long time, but I predict it'll lose more market share for a while.
Elon Musk even says so himself that he believes Chinese EV's are good. His personal experience from a couple of years ago, and also as per his team feedback recently.
>I’m not in the car biz and I’ve seen this coming with clarity for over a decade.
Me too. I was working in the German automotive industry back then, and left when I saw Tesla and China going full steam ahead on all things EV while German car makers were still pushing on diesel, and still do.
>If I can see it then how is it that every car company hasn’t been preparing low cost EV offerings of their own?
For the same reason Kodak invented the first digital camera and then shelved it to not compete with their film manufacturing business long enough for the Japanese to beat them at digital and kill them.
Big corporations are fiefdoms with vested interest to maintain their status quo, not to push to company to self-disrupt itself, meaning they'll just wait and watch someone else eats their lunch.
German cars usually have (together with Japanese, I'd say) the best reputation in reliability. And ICE cars are full of electrical components, perhaps more so than the electric cars (since ICE cars are generally more complex than electric ones). So I struggle to reconcile your comment with what I hear ...
I've never heard of german cars being known for most reliable. And when they break they are the most expensive to fix. For example audis always had issues with oil leaking and in the US audi mechanics charge the most per hour and they are hard to work on.
according to consumer reports, bmw is the most reliable at 9th most reliable automaker, audi and merc are way down
Reputation for reliability doesn't mean reliable! In most top 10 list of reliable car brands (as a whole) there might be one or two German brand in there (with Mini usually being the highest of the German brands).
I'm told that the Volkswagens made in Mexico are significantly less reliable than those made in Germany. I had a Golf which exemplified this -- all of the motory bits (not a gearhead) seemed fine, but everything else was shit from the windshield wipers that only worked on sunny days to the inexplicable decision to power the automatic locks with the vacuum system.
Because its not as easy as just saying "lets make low cost EV". That has to do with battery and supplychain. EV already need gigantic capital investment on it own.
All these companies have massive debt, low margin, need to continue to make money on ICE.l, transition to EV. To also make a profital low cost EV is insanly hard. They are struggling to develop a profitable high cost EV.
A lot of the supply chain is in China, so investing in that is pretty hard.
It’s true that they need to invest more but that’s a self-inflicted problem: they have enormous resources and lavish government support available but they really want the high-margin light-truck era to continue and have been treating EVs as a fad they’ll support only if ICE buyers are willing to overpay as much as ICE SUV buyers have. We’re reading about Ford cancelling battery plants, not being unable to find funding. When Chevy cancelled the Bolt, it was their best selling EV - but not nearly as profitable as the luxury models they wanted people to buy.
That’s a separate issue: the point was that there’s demand at normal price points, less so in the higher-end ranges they targeted. Most of the commonly cited reasons for the low 1-2% margins were things like battery plants where startup costs are high but will not be a problem when they resolve yield issues.
The problem is at 'normal price points' you can't make the profit. The battery alone is so expensive, even at good yield, that it a huge part of the cars cost.
AFAICT China isn't dumping. They're subsidizing internal consumption.
A Chinese EV is ~$10,000 cheaper in China than it is outside of China. This is a massive advantage to Chinese vehicle manufacturers. They can scale up production using the internal market, and then use that scale to push down the external unsubsidised price.
Pretty much exactly the same as the US. An American EV is about $10,000 cheaper in the US than elsewhere. $7500 because of the rebate, and the rest in shipping and other costs.
Dumping is more specific than that. What you're describing is simple price discrimination. Dumping additionally requires that the good be sold internationally for less than the cost of production.
Not saying USA is not doing it, and both Germany and France is doing it as well in the wake of Corona. But the amount is visible and until we get more transparency, we can only assume that China is doing it even more, because they are known to do that for strategically important sectors.
From a legal/WTO case standpoint, yes. Selling at a loss in general is perfectly legal, and lots of companies do that for all kinds of perfectly legitimate reasons. Using price discrimination to sell at a loss only in certain markets with the intention of damaging the domestic market in that region is when you get into trouble.
> If I can see it then how is it that every car company hasn’t been preparing low cost EV offerings of their own?
They... have, though? As far as I know, most of the European ones have at least one more or less ready to go. Generally not on the _extreme_ low end (ie not competing with the 10k BYD), but Renault, VW and Stellantis all have models in the 20-25k range pre-subsidy due to launch in the next year. The Dacia Spring (20k) has already been out for a bit, of course.
Dacia Spring is a Chinese designed and built car with a Dacia badge on it. It's really not great by EU standards[1]. The steel panels on it are incredibly thin and flimsy. It's more of an four wheel electric tuk-tuk with a shell, designed to reach a cheap EV price point. For some users that's good enough but for some it's a no-go.
> If I can see it then how is it that every car company hasn’t been preparing low cost EV offerings of their own?
Because they didn't believe that EVs or small cars were something that could be profitable, at least not compared to the high margin, cash cow SUVs. Instead, they did what they did the last few decades - invest into lobbying to keep emission standards relaxed. Only when Volkswagen and a fair few others got caught cheating, that business model went down the drain and suddenly they had to change.
> A few are but most seem in denial. Ford is the only US one I’ve heard rumors about having something in the works.
BMW is investing almost two billion dollars into its Spartanburg plant to produce electric versions of the X series SUVs [1].
> Tesla meanwhile spent tons of capital and time on ridiculous microniche products like the cybertruck.
Indeed. The thing is a joke on wheels... it shows that unlike SpaceX with Gwynne Shotwell, Tesla (and Twitter) don't have an "Elon handler" responsible for pushing back.
Tangent but: the ultimate "Elon handler" at SpaceX is not just Shotwell but NASA, the DOD, and their satellite customers.
Space launch is not like cars or really most other products. Your customer is highly technical and highly informed and they absolutely will not launch on a rocket that doesn't meet certain design criteria and in many cases they will require the ability to review the rocket's actual design blueprints and software (with NDA in place). NASA and the DOD will demand this, full stop.
If SpaceX didn't have someone like Shotwell pretty much running the show there's no chance they'd ever get a customer beyond the low end of the satellite launch market. They'd also have trouble getting the FAA to allow them to fly, and with good reason. A rocket is basically a bomb that explodes in one direction, and many of its failure modes involve it exploding in all directions.
Elon's been great (at least in the past) at assembling teams, getting funding, and motivating people to do really hard shit. (Not sure how he'd fare today with his baggage... his brand has taken a hit.) He also knows enough about engineering to hire competent engineers. Beyond that I see little sign that he's actually good at managing or day to day operation and certainly seems no good at product design. This differs from Jobs who at least had killer intuition there. Jobs would have laughed the cybertruck out of the room.
> Space launch is not like cars or really most other products. Your customer is highly technical and highly informed and they absolutely will not launch on a rocket that doesn't meet certain design criteria and in many cases they will require the ability to review the rocket's actual design blueprints and software (with NDA in place). NASA and the DOD will demand this, full stop.
You should read Isaacson’s biography of Musk - there are sections about SpaceX where Musk questions assumptions and goes against the status quo in assembly, operations, and pricing so deeply embedded in the NASA/Boeing/Northrup dynamics.
Anyone that says they won't buy a Tesla due to Elon's antics but will buy a Chinese EV is a hypocrite. China is a fascist state and no company does anything without party involvement.
I don't say I agree, but there are degrees of personification. A faceless Chinese car company is harder to personally hate than an edgelord parroting points about the great replacement theory on his own social network.
It's not just the opinions he holds, it's the activist effort to implement those opinions in society. His access to capital assists those efforts, so buying a Tesla is seen as directly complicit. People then choose a substitute EV which may or may not be a Chinese brand.
But it's not some attempt to punish him. It's because I don't trust him to be a stable long term owner of the company that is building and servicing my car.
I agree that sounds hypocritical but I don't see a lot of people saying that. I don't even know if I can buy cheap Chinese EVs in the US, or when I'll be able to. It's not really an option that's on the table as far as I can tell.
I think the bottom line for many people is EVs are still not as cheap as ICE options and definitely not as convenient, yet. When that situation changes I don't know why most consumers would stick to ICE.
You can go to Alibaba and buy a $5,000 EV and then spend a similar amount to import it. It's a lot of hassle, but makes for an entertaining Youtube video.
For the mainstream, likely about 18-24 months after BYD breaks ground on their Mexican factory, which could happen any day now.
And it depends on your definition of "cheap". BYD is obviously going to start with American sized vehicles. The Internet might want the subcompact $10,000 Seagull, but we're much more likely to get something like the $35,000 Atto 3 as the cheapest model to start.
> I don't even know if I can buy cheap Chinese EVs in the US
The only one you can is the EX30, but even that's more pricy than a Tesla Model 3.
The truly cheap EVs you see in Asia (eg. The lower end BYD, Zeekr, MGs) are aimed at developing markets, not developed.
And yes, plenty of Eastern European members of the EU (the ones where the cheaper end EV makers are targeting) are still developing/emerging markets - Romania, Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria still are developing (though might not be in 10-15 years).
Higher end Chinese EVs like Polestar and Volvo (Volvo has been Geely for almost 2 decades now) are aimed at developed countries, in order to manage the brand perception.
Chinese EV brands and models are available all over Europe and the rest of the free world. US is an exception.
Many western brands are manufacturing in China and exporting globally (Tesla, Geely/Volvo/Polestar, BMW Mini, Mercedes smart, Renault etc. Hell even the Dacia EV is actually a Chinese car). Some of those are entering the US (Volvo, Polestar, Mini)
Not all of them. Most Chinese EVs in Europe are SAIC (MG Group) or Geely (Volvo, Polestar).
BYD hasn't entered the market yet, let alone the upcoming brands like Xiaomi, but is largely targeting Eastern Europe as their initial phase.
Also, Smart was only recently resurrected as a German-Chinese JV.
> even the Dacia EV is actually a Chinese car
It uses the CMF-A, which is a French-Japanese joint platform.
German automotive players tend to have JVs with China and targeted the Chinese and (before the war) Russian market. French automotive players tend to have JVs with Japanese players and targeted Europe, South America, Korea, and India.
> US is an exception
They are available in the US as well under the "Volvo" and "Polestar" logo, as both are subsidiaries of Geely.
> Many western brands are manufacturing in China and exporting globally
Absolutely! But for now they don't have significant marketshare YET. It's still Tesla, BMW Group, VW Group, and Daimler-Benz Group (which is going to start using a Chinese platform as they fell significantly behind).
In the US EV platforms need to be domestic in order to be cost competitive, but in the German automotive industry, they're going to start importing Chinese EV platforms (as German automotive brands were almost entirely dependent on China - the VW Jetta was China's Honda Civic).
In the next year, that kind of importation will most likely be banned and retroactive tariffs will be in place by June-July [0]
Plenty of Chinese brands are sold in Europe. Nio, BYD, Xpeng, Zeekr, GWM (Ora) etc etc they're all there. Xiaomi isn't outside of China yet as they have launched literally a week ago only.
Oh, you can find many people saying the first part on this comments page. Up to now, nobody is saying the second part, but I guess a lot of people will practice it mostly because of the price.
But then, I don't expect the people thinking about (and rejecting) buying a Tesla to be the same ones that buy a Chinese car because of the price.
The ethical concerns go both ways. Elon has disregarded safety and ethics by selling what amount to prototypes on the street.
I’d rather drive a reliable EV from China (a country that manufactures every “American” tech staple such as iPhones) than drive a Cybertruck for example.
With solid state batteries you can puncture them, cut them, and shoot them with a bullet. It's much harder to make them catch fire and they keep working:
Again, 'solid state' is a marketing term. There are lots and lots of different things that exist under the larger term 'solid state'. And they have different properties.
And in traditional liquid batteries there are also a number of changes happening that change the behavior of the battery under these conditions.
Making judgment on that stuff based on small scale lab test just doesn't really hold up.
These batteries all have to go threw automotive testing. And by the time they are actually commercial, then you can compare them to the newest generation of liquid batteries. And then maybe the perform slightly better or maybe not.
> It's not a strictly zero-fluid solid-state chemistry, instead utilizing a semi-solid layout that includes solid material suspended in a liquid electrolyte.
I was amazed at those "battery swap" stations that popped all over china for motorcycles.
That's a great solution for electric cars: Install "battery swap" walls on each gas station, and make cars allowing said battery swap (if the car "floor" is full of batteries, make it so that it is split in "packs" that can be pulled from the side to be swapped)
The adtech industry in the west has driven the normality of constantly connected devices. Now we'll have the chineese government constantly connected instead of just the billionaires.
You won't be able to get a car which isn't connected, just like its increasingly hard to get a TV that isn't connected. The cultural acceptance of this has been driven from the trillions spent by advertising companies in double-dipping -- companies not content with making a product and selling it for a markup, they have to squeeze an extra $10 out of that $500 TV -- and that has massively weakened the security of society, both directly (Internet of Shit) and through expectations (IoT supply chains controlled by hostile agents)
The price of cars is pretty ridiculous so I’m at a point where I welcome some competition. I’d prefer to buy non-Chinese, but these companies need to remember how to make an affordable vehicle.
And make sure the bean counters are kept busy somewhere else, otherwise they're just going to produce the same garbage that comes out of any MBA run manufacturing firm located in China. MBAs are the scourge of reliable products, they drive everything to shit all in the name of a few pennies of "cost optimization."
> The battery economics really doesn't seem to work.
Huh what? Tesla hasn't been selling at a loss for years, in Q3/2022 they made a solid 15.000$ pure profit per car - that's what allowed them to cut prices without going into losses in the first place.
Naaah, not even close. 2021-2022 were a very unusual situation - they got lucky with chips shortages (and admittedly they've got it figured out) allowing them to sell at very high prices - the leader event suggested that Teslas are appreciating assets...
Reality is catching up quickly. Margins already crashed, and yet governments are still heavily subsidizing EVs. Without subsides, Tesla would never make any money (nor would their competition).
I mean macro-economics in the long-run. As a niche, it's fine and profitable; but ICE market is just too massive, and replacing large parts of the supply-chain and transport-infrastructure will likely cause issues on the supply side.
Batterie had 10 years of massive investment and an ever growing market share. The supply chain issues are being worked on.
Hydrogen cars a statistically insignificant and have basically no growth. The supply chain has seen little investment and there is not even a prospect that any real investment will go into.
Its the same old 'get governments to pay oil/car company to sell a fake future'.
Yes, but you need to build a similar network of hydrogen pumps as we already have for gas, hydrogen requires more power and infrastructure to store, requires more energy to extract, cars need pressurized tanks, ............
Batteries are simply cheaper, and require far less infrastructure.
Neither Lithium nor Cobalt have hard limits. Lithium is incredibly common. It does take a while to spin up new mines but all lithium producers are increasing capacity and there are 100s of startup ups working on it, many with government support.
Cobalt is not as common but still not actually hard to find. Plus Cobalt is an increasingly small part of most batteries. LFP batteries will be in all lower cost EV. And even in higher cost NMC its by now less then 10% and trending even lower.
Neither of these are significant long term supply issues.
> I don't think EVs are sustainable in the long-run
I think EVs today are a great niche technology that might have organically grown to dominance in several decades and tech iterations, but the current policies of forcing them down everyones throats from the top via regulation has doomed EVs. My 2c.
Toyota btw is focusing on hybrids, hydrogen is a non-existential side research for the Toyota.
It's a shame, it feels like we're moving backwards in some ways. Like in Europe, Tesla sales are down and we are introducing huge tariffs on electric vehicles from China, meanwhile the German Greens are happy pushing for more coal and lignite burning (since they opposed nuclear power, and now Russian gas).
It's hard to believe that the self-driving tech will develop well at this rate.
You have to look at both domestic and imported sources: Germany’s nuclear shutdown has led to a steep rise in imported electricity, presumably from dirtier sources than nuclear.
Heh. The won't be more coal in .de, even the approved projects aren't being built, and the theory that more coal would be burned hasn't come true yet.
The graphs are clear: coal shrunk from 33% to 26% of electric power generation last year. Some people expected an increase. They were wrong and the greens were right.
> The graphs are clear: coal shrunk from 33% to 26% of electric power generation last year. Some people expected an increase.
This is in part due to the fact that Germany is now able to import more energy compared to 2022 which saw a decrease in gas availability but also a reduction in nuclear energy production in France due to technical issues.
Sure. The amount of coal burned decreased by about 30%, and the decrease would have been different if this/that. It would not have been an increase though, and the people who predicted an increase ended up being wrong by a large factor.
1. Germany is an energy exporter 3/4th of the year. In the quarter where Germany does import energy, it so because Germany is not needing enough energy and power plants are turned off.
When Germany imports energy, coal based energy in Germany is 50% down. Imports are replacing coal. (Which should be obvious, because running coal plants has fuel costs, solar and wind have no fuel operating costs)
2. This is a 18th century view. Modern states since the 19th century operate on the comparative advantage idea. e.G. Germany imports nearly 100% of electronics (toys, tools) it is using. Countries do not need to produce everything they need, they can import from other countries.
> 2. This is a 18th century view. Modern states since the 19th century operate on the comparative advantage idea. e.G. Germany imports nearly 100% of electronics (toys, tools) it is using. Countries do not need to produce everything they need, they can import from other countries.
This is not how energy works, especially not renewable energy.
When it's sunny in Germany, neighbouring countries will also be producing and trying to export solar energy at the same time.
Are those numbers for Germany or for the world? If for Germany, OK -- it is (still) a rich country and can pay for it's choices, including importing electricity at whatever the market prices for it. Although it's manufacturing has been hit pretty bad.
But for the world the total use of fossil fuels is going to keep growing long-term unless we mass switch to nuclear, which is unlikely. My 2c.
Manufacturers are hiring due to the workers being very scarce (older ones retiring, young ones not coming in the same numbers). That doesn't tell the story of growth or decline in manufacturing (e.g., COBOL hiring doesn't tell the story of it's growth, just that supply is shrinking faster than the demand).
No they didn't, Germany has been hit by rising natural gas costs more than other Western countries due to sanctions on one hand and dropping exports (Germany was by far EUs largest exporter to Russia) on the other hand. Cost rises are mostly due to primary energy usage not electricity though.
With dropping demand and rising inflation, Germany has a bad economy (just as bad as the UK, but due to different reasons, the UKs main driver is Brexit).
Third, in a crisis Germans spend (even) less money for longer, while people in the US earlier overspend their credit limits. Which boosts the US economy, especially after a recession it growths earlier and faster.
Because of the bad economy BMW and other companies in Germany did not hire as many people as the US did (also compare US to German labor laws as a reason why Germany is well behind the curve when it gets to economy growth).
It will keep growing until it doesn't - why people don't factor in that the sun will shine a lot longer than the wells will pump when discussing these plans I don't understand. Is technology so turbulent that no one wants to make predictions beyond the next ten years any more or what?
Chemical manufactoring has been hit by the sanctions against Russia, not because of electric energy but because German chemical plants had sub-market price deals on natural gas for heat intensive processes. This has nothing to do with electric power.
Nuclear is expensive to build [0]. It is expensive operate, even with the massive subsidies of insurance and waste deposit costs by the taxpayer.
On top of that Germany has no exploitable Uranium deposits any more (after delivering Uranium to the USSR for decades, mine was closed 1990), so Germany would need to import nuclear fuel, e.G. from Russia (as the US does [1]). I don't think depending on Russia for energy security is a good idea.
It's also the fact that unlike with e.g. gas or coal, the uranium fuel is only a small factor in the overall energy production cost. Given the miniscule amount needed, you can stock up on it to protect against supply shocks.
But it doesn't matter. It's not possible to lead a factual discussion on nuclear energy in Germany. Since the 1970s it has been mainly an emotional / ideological matter.
Nuclear energy was phased down because of emotional / ideological decisions (by all parties!) and it will not come back because it can't compete economically with renewables nowadays. It's as simple as that.
Fuel is ~15-20% of operating costs, ~15-20% are other operating costs, ~60-70% is construction costs. The 15% would go down to ~10% if nuclear plant operators would pay market rate waste deposit and insurance costs as part of operations.
> Germany would need to import nuclear fuel, e.G. from Russia (as the US does [1]). I don't think depending on Russia for energy security is a good idea.
U.S. nuclear power plants imported about 12% of their uranium from Russia in 2022, compared to 27% from Canada and 25% from Kazakhstan, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Not sure what your comment wants to say, that yes, the US is importing uranium from Russia, or yes, it is importing uranium from Russia, but more from other countries?
It first has to be taken up by the Senate.
Shifts like these have to happen in a strategic and deliberate manner, with tradeoffs that can be diametrically opposed to one's other geopolitical positions.
"The United States last month announced a $2.7 billion plan to boost domestic production of uranium fuel, while France last year announced a big increase in its own ability to turn raw uranium into usable nuclear fuel." - https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/04/us-nuclear-reactors-rus...
Is it really the case that running an existing nuclear powerplant is less cost-effective than the alternatives, so much so that closing plants is a good idea from green energy point of view?
The minimal costs of operating nuclear are around the same as the investment costs of solar parks, around $30/Mwh (building nuclear power plants is around $200/Mwh).
For example a nuclear power plant has employed 700 people.
A solarpark does not need a lot of FTE employees to operate (+ low maintanance).
That does not include waste deposit costs for hundreds of years and real insurance costs without subsidies by tax payers.
That's no excuse for shutting them down and burning coal. They should be kept online until firmed renewables have completely displaced fossil fuels and only then be shut down.
([Edit] I would also not shut them down it I wasn't clear on this)
There is also no excuse for gasoline powered cars. But gasoline powered cars are the majority of sales. Or diesel powered trains, which are the majority of trains in the US. Or eating meat. Or flying in planes.
The US is burning more coal than Germany, and probably should build more nuclear plants to replace burning coal. But the US doesn't.
People do whatever they like, not things they should do.
The US is also much larger than Germany and is in the process of building more nuclear plants.
If you care about the environment, nuclear is the only sustainable option at the moment. The plant costs have a very long time to recoup. Lots of plants built in the 80s seem perfectly capable of going until at least the 2050s without any danger and have requested license renewals to do exactly that. Each additional year further drives down the total cost of ownership.
I'll also note that people stupidly think only in terms of CO2. The truth is that a lot of the "forever" chemicals used in tho construction of wind an solar (along with loads of other toxic sludge) pose a much higher risk to the planet. If life on the planet starts getting killed off by the chemicals we spread everywhere, the temperature increases in a few hundred years don't matter in the slightest. We'll last way longer fighting CO2 than we will against the dangerous chemicals we're pumping out.
> the temperature increases in a few hundred years don't matter in the slightest.
There are dense locations near the equator where the wetbulb temperature has gone over 34-35 degrees celcius, which is higher than is survivable by healthy adults for more than a small handful of hours. These extreme events will keep getting worse, leading to heat stress, prolonged school closures, etc. Not all of these people have access to air conditioning because we're talking about countries with less than $6k GDP per capita. Eventually this will drive climate refugees.
"Where did all the bugs go?" is a serious question representing a serious and potentially life-ending problem caused by the many chemicals we're pumping out.
A few million climate migrants are insignificant in comparison to the loss of the lower layers of the ecosystem that cascade upward into mass die-offs though ironically, that would make the manmade CO2 issue go away...
Per capita electric power usage is twice as high in the US as in Germany.
Per capita CO2 emission is twice as high in the US as in Germany.
(depends on people of course, I never owned a car and I never bought electricity from coal plants, my parents did and I moved out when I was 18)
"How about per-square-kilometers?"
Not sure what that metric would be useful for? Can you give me an idea?
I would be interested in the metric "sum ton CO2 per capita" from 1945 to 2024 (Or 1871 when Germany was founded, or 1949 when Germany got its constitution)?
As I wrote, its not as costly but more expensive than solar.
Currently tax payers are subsidizing nuclear with billions of Euros.
Most energy is needed during the day time.
Energy usage has been leveled across the day due to the demand of big power plants in the 50s and 60s, as they produce energy in the night and companies wanted to sell that, so society had to adapt.
Not sure where you are based, in Germany wind blows at night.
But electric car sales are up year-on-year; who cares if one car brand isn't?
> and we are introducing huge tariffs on electric vehicles from China
This may or may not happen; it's not clear that the impact will be huge in the long-run if it does, as the manufacturers will likely just set up shop in Europe (similar to how European manufacturers build a lot of their US-market cars in the US to avoid punitive US tariffs).
> As a founding member of the association, Greenpeace e.V. holds only five shares at €55 in the cooperative, otherwise the environmental group and the company are financially and legally independent, although they share the same office building in Hamburg.
It's kind of unclear just how much this organization actually is Greenpeace or not. That being said, extremist political parties and movements (e.g., UKIP), are so often financed by Russia as a form of covert ops that I wouldn't be surprised to find that they were a significant backer of Green Peace proper as well.
Notably also the CDU, Angela Merkel's party. Of course, CDU is now reversing course and saying that they were never against nuclear, but this is factually wrong.
- Bought Twitter with Tesla stock as collateral
- Tesla faces falling EV sales and external competition
- Unionisation pressures, declining product quality, Elon losing his reach and audience's good graces
- Stock price falling too low can trigger a margin call on his loans
- Starts actual marketing, price cuts
- Price cuts chew into profits, stock falls
- Announces "real FSD" for 100th time
- Announces "robotaxis"
- Layoffs happening
While this might end up with a small bump in the price to avoid the margin calls, it might also end up being part of a downward spiral for Tesla in the end, depending on where and what they are cutting.
It would be unfortunate to see Tesla crash after everything due to his wish to buy Twitter and I think we might see him ousted in the following year or so. Before it was "Elon is Tesla's marketing driver so we can't kick him out", nowadays it seems way less so with him being more of a detractor.