Elon Musk

I’m hardly an expert, but it seems obvious that Tesla will be caught and overtaken by the automotive giants in the long term, no?

It’s not a market that tends to produce near-monopolies like the internet (Google, Amazon, eBay etc.), so being dominant now doesn’t buttress you against future challengers.

I am sure his supporters are thinking

Don’t be so sure.

Tesla still have one big advantage over other manufactureres, the Supercharger network.

True. But that’s going to be an issue forced by governments soon, it’s essential to the switch over from combustion engines. The future isn’t brand specific infrastructure, it’s charging points that everyone can use, everywhere.

We’re about 10 years into viable electric cars being available to the public and Tesla is still the only manufacturer whose car you can be sure to charge without hassle on a trip across a continent. When is soon? It’s currently an expensive shambles charging a car with multiple apps and unreliable charge points. It needs more than governments, it needs the EU to sort out the mess. I haven’t seen anything tabled. They’re financing unworkable inefficient projects but not infrastructure that works today for todays cars.

It’s known what’s needed:

https://www.acea.auto/publication/european-electric-vehicle-charging-infrastructure-masterplan/

It’s just not happening.

When is soon?

France (that’s where you are, yeah?) are looking at 7 million public charging points by 2025. On the road networks to/from other countries that’s being pushed/subsidised by the EU. I’d be very surprised if they meet that target, but it gives an idea of what will be happening this decade, and government led (but yes, EU role key for your crossing Europe requirement, and arguably far too much inertia there like elsewhere).

It’s just share price, reality is Tesla are pretty solid in terms of outlook, same with his SpaceX and other ventures, they’ll go back up soon enough and it’ll be another article on how amazing a turnaround it was.

Yea, but his companies are tiny compared to their inflated share prices. The companies themselves might survive but I’m less convinced of that as time goes on.

Tesla still have one big advantage over other manufactureres, the Supercharger network. And the competition isn’t learning.

Fun fact, the number of public chargers in the UK went up 8% in a single quarter last year, that’s not cherry picking, that’s just the last number that’s available.

Another fun fact, can you guess why the adresss for our local supercharger station is “Mill Lane”, gives a clue as to why you’d probably not want to build there.

True. But that’s going to be an issue forced by governments soon, it’s essential to the switch over from combustion engines. The future isn’t brand specific infrastructure, it’s charging points that everyone can use, everywhere.

I think the bigger issue as per usual is governments will invest in literally anything other than viable public or active transit solutions.

Tesla still have one big advantage over other manufactureres, the Supercharger network. And the competition isn’t learning.

They’ve opened some sites to to other brands.

Its definitely a no brainer when your using wholly superchargers and the fact you just plug in and go is very nice.

It’s just share price, reality is Tesla are pretty solid in terms of outlook, same with his SpaceX and other ventures, they’ll go back up soon enough and it’ll be another article on how amazing a turnaround it was.

The share price reflects investors estimate of future profits. Tesla was vastly overpriced based on current and past earnings, the huge valuation was a bet that it would gain dominant market share in the future. The huge drop is an indication that investors aren’t confident about the future of the company. The CEO has a history of erratic behaviour and he made a catastrophically bad investment in Twitter. The existing large car companies have much more experience in mass-production and quality control so it’s risky to assume that Tesla will become the dominant manufacturer. It may still be a major manufacturer, but the peak share price was based on investors belief that it would be the dominant one. Personally, I wouldn’t invest in any of Musk’s businesses, he’s just too flaky to trust with money.

The share price reflects investors estimate of future profits. Tesla was vastly overpriced based on current and past earnings, the huge valuation was a bet that it would gain dominant market share in the future.

It’s definitely also an ‘asset’ in it’s own right, people bought Tesla stocks because they were going up, not because they’d made any analysis of the company. It might not take much to reverse that sentiment.

Tesla is a strong business but it’s still vastly over-valued and we’re seeing that slowly correct itself (although there’s a long way to go). They were the leaders for EV innovation for a long time and in some respects still are but as that gap closed they should have addressed their weaknesses in customer service and build quality etc. but they chose not to – I think that will come back to haunt them at some point.

The Tesla network isn’t entirely without hassle as the queues at Christmas demonstrated. But yes it is much better.

Tesla still have one big advantage over other manufactureres, the Supercharger network. And the competition isn’t learning.

If you know that’s Tesla’s advantage, you can be absolutely sure that VW &co do as well. The big issue for them is what to do about it and when. Tesla rolled into the market with presumably a lot of investment capital which allowed them to grow their network alongside their user base and consolidate that as a brand advantage. Other manufacturers didn’t have a large market share at first so it made it difficult to justify spending money from their own cash flow to create a huge charging network.

And the other thing that you need to bear in mind is that the cars are flying off the shelves faster than the traditional makers can make them. So at this stage, they don’t need to invest in a proprietary network. Even Tesla have realised that a proprietary network makes them look bad. So if they were to invest, they would probably just put money up for the companies that are already doing it.

That said, I read the other day that Mercedes Benz are starting a branded charging network, presumably because they want a premium experience like Tesla.

EDIT oops sorry, forgot this wasn’t the EV thread.

Whilst Tesla’s most visible products are the cars – Tesla describes itself as a provider of sustainable energy systems and its worth remembering that, solar, batteries and distribution are also aspects of its business, but its primary focus is the cars as that’s what’s bringing in the most money…for now.

faster than the traditional makers can make them.

Faster than Tesla can make them too. Musk is failing to staff his Berlin factory and his attitude to employees is one of th emain reasons, people don’t want to work for him.

Whilst Tesla’s most visible products are the cars – Tesla describes itself as a provider of sustainable energy systems and its worth remembering that

To parody Musk’s transphobia, Tesla is welcome to identify however it likes, doesn’t make it true.

To parody Musk’s transphobia, Tesla is welcome to identify however it likes, doesn’t make it true.

LOL

Tesla is only gong to get squeezed as EVs and the related infrastructre become more mainstream.

They may have some short and medium-term advantages, but I’d expect the silly share price to keep slipping as they gradually lose those advantages.

I always felt that Tesla was just a physical embodiment of the dot com boom. Hyped to the nth degree, possibly sensible stuff under the hoods but hugely over valued.

In 50 years, Tesla will be remembered like Hillman or Talbot.

argee
Full Member

It’s just share price, reality is Tesla are pretty solid in terms of outlook,

If twitter can solve their QC and build quality and servicing and locking-in issues, without driving up prices, then at this point they do seem to be a sustainable and viable company. And most of that stuff doesn’t actually have to be expensive, people assume that the horrible build quality is price cutting but quite a bit of it isn’t cheap, it’s just wrong. Some of it’s expensively wrong- beautifully made panels that don’t quite fit, things that cause rectification costs, doing it right first time is often cheaper than doing it badly twice. These are mostly stages that other car companies have gone through.

But, Tesla don’t at the moment show much sign of wanting to do any of it, the messaging and the actions all suggest that they’re happy with it. Which is also a stage that lots of car companies have gone through and a lot of those car companies don’t exist any more, or had to be bought out to change their ways.

But the other thing is, their market valuations etc have always been pretty divorced from real world performance, as is often the case these days, tech companies that have never made a penny can be worth billions, tech companies that make a sustainable stable existence are treated like failures. Tesla are more exposed to that than most, and a big part of that is about the cult of Musk.

One of the things that has always struck me about Tesla is their cavalier attitude towards regulations and product testing. They seem to be driven by a culture inherited from software development, where stuff is released as a beta version for public testing, updated as a release candidate for more public testing, then repeatedly patched until a stable version is released a couple of years later. This is okay for software that doesn’t have safety-critical functions, but a car that is driven by an average driver on public roads at night in terrible weather is a completely different matter.

For example:
Tesla Investigated over Phantom Braking—416,000 Cars Involved

Calling the Tesla driving assistance “Full Self Driving” is an extremely reckless thing to do, even if the fine print has weasel words to blame the human driver when things go wrong. Established car companies know that stunts like that will eventually get you hauled into court so they take regulations and safety very seriously and spend years testing new cars to try to fix problems before they are released to the public.

So, basically, Tesla have been taking shorcuts in product development, releasing poorly developed products that have quality control issues and Musk’s fanbois have been making excuses for this, assuming that the car industry can be run like the software industry. I don’t think that the Tesla culture of willful negligence will be sustainable and they will have to grow up and learn how to do quality control properly if they want to take on Toyota and the other big players.

I kind of admire musk with his space-x project, but he really needs to stay in his lane. (pun intended).

Leaving mostly EV infrastructure up to the private sector is totally doomed to failure.

If the government won’t invest in critical services I can’t see this being on their radar either.

I’ve had an EV for five years and charge at home. It seems the the time to charge out and about is way too slow for the amount of cars now kicking around.

For the first time owning an EV it’s starting to currently feel like the Betamax of cars (and I say that as a paid up supporter of Betamax.)

This proprietary charging malarkey reminds me of the early roll-out of ATMs. “Excuse me mate, is there a cash machine round here?” – “Sure, which bank are you with?” It can’t last. The Betamax analogy is a good one, some format eventually has to win and it’s not necessarily going to be the best one.

Mind you, we’ve had a quarter of a century to standardise on phone chargers, so…

People are buying EVs faster than ever. Public charging will have to change, there’s no option.

I was under the impression that Tesla was priced where they were because of the “Full Self-Driving” promise, which never materialised. While the implementation is impressive in the US it’s nowhere near autonomous, and given there’s been nothing new for six months seems to have hit a big stumbling block.

Tesla vehicles are extremely safe as a result of their AI and vision processing skills*, along with the fundamental design, but they’ve already been leap-frogged by most other manufacturers. Even a ten-year-old Volvo will deliver a smoother and more confident drive on the motorway using cruise control.

Their AI lead engineer didn’t leave for no reason.

* My Model 3 computer can track lane markings on the motorway in appalling conditions, often better than I can do myself. But then it sees a lorry merging 3/4 of a mile away and craps itself.

TBH look at Nikola – never delivered a vehicle but was valued more than Ford Motor Company.

Demo of the truck driving was it rolling down a hill 🙂

At least Tesla have cars on peoples driveways.

While the implementation is impressive in the US it’s nowhere near autonomous, and given there’s been nothing new for six months seems to have hit a big stumbling block.

There were some technical critiques of the system a year or so back. As I recall, they are using light detecting sensors to try to detect obstacles instead of radar, but that requires so much computer processing power that it’s not feasible with the technology that Tesla have.

The Betamax analogy is a good one, some format eventually has to win and it’s not necessarily going to be the best one.

I don’t think so. Most cars use the same charging standards – even Tesla. The only reason you couldn’t previously use Tesla chargers with other cars is that they didn’t let you. The rollout to allow this was just software to unlock it. There are a few older cars with an older standard (but also notably one current car I think) but most charging stations have both anyway.

A better analogy would be early telecoms deregulation in the UK. Lots of companies all trying to offer the same thing, but they ended up all folding and selling their assets or being bought up. Or filling stations – all differently branded, and slightly differently priced but essentially the same.

Mind you, we’ve had a quarter of a century to standardise on phone chargers, so…

Hence why the EU got bored and told the phone manufacturers what the standard is going to be.
I think its the same for car chargers although not sure its been formalised into law yet vs a preferred standard which is very likely to be law.

As I recall, they are using light detecting sensors to try to detect obstacles instead of radar

They primarily use vision eg normal cameras.
I dont think they ever used Lidar (although may be bringing it in) and removed radar a while back.

The Betamax analogy is a good one, some format eventually has to win and it’s not necessarily going to be the best one.

‘Best’ is subjective. The problem with betamax was that Sony was both a device manufacturer and a rights holder and distributor of film and tv  content. They wanted to lock the machine and the content you could buy to view on it together. Betamax owners could only buy or rent films that Sony distributed. VHS owners could rent or buy anything.  It was better in the sense that It was a better engineered system, it was worse in the sense there were fewer films you could watch on it.

Consumers aren’t daft enough to fall for that now – you know, buy  a TV that only works if you keep paying for a sky subscription for instance. 🙂

I think “Betamax was best” was very much an urban myth. We had one… my Grandad gave it to us as he’d swapped over to VHS, because that was way better 😃

Consumers aren’t daft enough to fall for that now – you know, buy a TV that only works if you keep paying for a sky subscription for instance.

or buy a car with heated seats, but they only work if you keep paying? Nah, no-one would be that daft surely 😂

zilog6128
Full Member
I think “Betamax was best” was very much an urban myth. We had one… my Grandad gave it to us as he’d swapped over to VHS, because that was way better

I was a tv/ video engineer back in the 80’s and it was definitely true. That said, they were harder to repair in my experience but I think that was as much about Sony being Sony as the system itself. The same could be said about their Tv’s back then.

I was a tv/ video engineer back in the 80’s and it was definitely true.

maybe at the very outset, but then VHS improved massively (LP, superVHS etc) and overtook it surely? Not some weird conspiracy! Plus picture quality of industrial equipment may have been better, but certainly there was no difference on home equipment. Everything looked equally shit 😃

I’m guessing no new surprises from the man himself over the last couple of weeks has resulted in this thread going way off-topic and now discussing various standards? Varying standards is definitely a change as the man himself doesn’t appear to have many standards…;-)

but its primary focus is the cars carbon tax credits as that’s what’s bringing in the most money…for now.

That’s his primary business, the cars are a by product like animal feed from a flour mill.

I think “Betamax was best” was very much an urban myth. We had one… my Grandad gave it to us as he’d swapped over to VHS, because that was way better

It was a better format – outlived VHS in professional applications by a long. Until a few years ago the master copy of my girlfriends films , shot and edited digitally, would go to the broadcaster on a Digi-beta tape

It was a better format – outlived VHS in professional applications by a long.

nobody is talking about professional (I’m sure it was/is superior for that!) use though when they repeat “beta was better”, they’re talking (erroneously) about home video, which was pants 😃

or buy a car with heated seats, but they only work if you keep paying?

That’s not exactly how it works. I don’t think. You don’t pay for heated seats when you buy it AND have to pay to keep them running, do you? As far as you know, the car doesn’t have them if you don’t pay for them.

That’s not exactly how it works.

nope, that is exactly how it works, incredibly! Someone mentioned on another thread that it’s cheaper for them to build cars to the same spec, and just lock features that aren’t paid for, rather than build multiple variations of a vehicle. Which does make sense I guess, in a twisted way. I believe Merc do (or are planning to do) something similar, except this is relating to performance (artificially throttling acceleration, unless you pay extra).

https://www.bmw.co.uk/en/shop/ls/dp/Seat_Heating_SFA_gb

I’m guessing no new surprises from the man himself over the last couple of weeks

Oddly enough today several third party apps are failing on twitter. Its currently questionable whether its an outage or whether they have been blocked.

That’s not exactly how it works. I don’t think.

Currently its a case of heated seats etc are included in every build but if you dont pay up front then they dont get turned on.
There do seem to be attempts to switch though to either tying it to the account (so they have to be rebrought by any subsequent owners) or turn them into a pure subscription offering.
One trick which seems to being tried is including a 3 year subscription on the assumption good chance it will be sold on and hence the original purchaser wont be fussed and they might get double pay.