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Tesla Model 3 Becomes Best Selling Electric Car In World (cleantechnica.com)
Jose Pontes of EV Volumes and CleanTechnica has crunched some numbers and found that the Tesla Model 3 is now the best selling plug-in vehicle in the world. "In fact, the Model 3 was approximately 55,000 sales above the #2 BAIC EC-Series, an extremely popular Chinese model," CleanTechnica reports. "The Model 3 gobbled 7% of the plug-in vehicle market, while the #2 EC-Series and #3 Nissan LEAF each had 4%." From the report: After those top three, as the chart shows, the Tesla Model S and Model X were #4 and #5, respectively. They were followed by three Chinese models and then the Toyota Prius Prime and Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. The Model 3 (and others) helped push the world plug-in vehicle share up to 2.1% in 2018. (Double that 4 times and we're at about 30% market share.) [...] Remember, 93% of plug-in vehicle sales in 2018 were not Model 3 sales. Nearly 2 million non -- Model 3 electric cars, SUVs, and crossovers made it into consumers' parking spots. Still, there's clearly a new king of the hill, and its young Tesla's 4th model.
...is a golf cart.
Sales have tanked in the US.
Tesla are the Apple for the car world. Expensive, extremely "loyal" fans who can't look at them objectively, and a somewhat dubious guy in charge.
Of course Tesla deserve a lot of credit, but Nissan pioneered affordable EVs that were actually reliable and make economic sense. Even today you would be crazy to buy a used Tesla without a warranty. Nissan also build a much bigger, more comprehensive charging network in many European countries where Tesla are sparse or non-existent. It's not going to be fun when CCS enabled Model 3s start hogging them and Tesla don't invest in extra generic chargers at those sites.
LG deserve a lot of credit for pioneering lower cost pouch cells too. It looks like the old cylindrical form factor that Panasonic/Tesla use is not going to complete on price and density in the long run, except for certain performance applications.
None of which is to say that Tesla is bad (although an Elon claim/promise is utterly worthless - where are those solar powered chargers, or full self driving, or sentry mode, or all the other things promised (and sold!) years ago?) but credit where credit is due, e.g. acknowledgement of much cheaper, better spec long range EVs that have already made the $35k Model 3 pretty unattractive.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This doesn't make a lot of sense. You say Tesla is making huge margins, but for some reason they are shedding staff to try to get costs down so they can release the $35k Model 3. Why can't they fulfill people's pre-orders in the mean time by cutting the margin slightly?
You are also comparing an established EV manufacturer with mature battery factory to the guys still in the fast ramp to phase. If this is where Tesla is after so many years and with so much volume, compared to say Hyundai-Kia who are already profitable well below $35k and at lower volume... Well, Tesla picked the wrong battery tech and aren't really seeing the kind of volume benefits that they should be, probably due to on-going quality problems.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I can afford to pay even 100K for a car. But I wont pay more than 25K for a car. I made an exception for Tesla. There is a huge numbers of camry, accord owners who voluntarily stop at that price point. Give them a compelling reason, they will pay 60K.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You'll be surprised. Many of the newer Tesla owners in the Model 3 didn't buy to "save the world." Electric vehicles are fun to drive and might save money in TCO depending on your situation. Your situation really matters and why there are so many vehicles in the market to fit so many needs and wants. That said, Tesla is still more luxury brand than Chevy or Kia is even with the Model 3 being less than a Model S. I am surprised how people stretch to buy a car and hope they ran their numbers right.
Things like free charging at work and for fairly long commutes without needing oil changes every month and the ability to "fill up" your car every night before work are nice. Autopilot for the miles of commuting traffic also helps immensely.
We're fortunate as a family and own more than one car. Our cars that use gas are great too mainly because you can relatively economically operate a larger one at this point in time and they make good road trip cars but that's actually proving less so after using the Model 3 for long trips. Also, I find it nice to have an older, easy to maintain car that's essentially fully depreciated to use. Autopilot really does reduce fatigue on longer trips though adaptive cruise control helps immensely.
The tax credit/break is contentious for the pro/against EV camps. Tax policy as a method of motivating people and industries in one way or another is inherently linked to politics. Promoting EV cars though a tax credit was probably the right direction but has terrible delivery and optics. I agree that China might "win" in the end since their EV policies are quite aggressive also. The growth of EV as total percentage of new cars sold in China is astoundingly as ICE car market is actually shrinking and why the legacy car makers are paying attention and have plans to electrify their drive trains if they want to stay relevant.
My take is it's complicated. Nobody has all the answers or really knows where the market will be hence why there's so much money being invested.