I still don't understand why anyone ever thought that was going to happen. Even if the autonomy were there, who was really going to use their car for rideshare when they didn't need it themselves? I know some people thought it would bring them a lot of value, because that's what Elon promised. But the reality would have been a classic race-to-the-bottom, and they'd have been lucky to break even after accounting for wear and tear.
Sure there might be rules and fines but people already do all this when there is real human driving the taxi!
Plus, do you really expect everyone to treat your items with the same respect and care you do? Even little things like slamming the doors or scratching up the seats with metal belts or jean studs.
Yeah maybe Tesla will make it right. But at how much effort? How correct will it be fixed?
I wonder at what price point you would have to offer the average Tesla owner to let someone puke in their car.
Or this Airbnb; https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/alberta-family-home-emptied-tras...
Or maybe it's one of these; https://duckduckgo.com/?q=airbnb+trashed+house&t=fpas&ia=web
I acknowledge the above comment re vomit in car is an edge case, and so are the links I attached. But to suggest this doesn't occur in Airbnb, and wouldn't occur with a car share service is naive.
- Horrible QA (https://www.equinoxevforum.com/threads/cracks-developing-in-...) - Extremely customer-hostile support strategies (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/angry-tesla-cust...) - Absurd cost-cutting measures/temporary bouts of insanity that cripple the UX of their cars: - Why does the Model 3/Y not have steering wheel stalks!? - Why did they try to offer the Model S with only a (bad) yoke!? - Why is there no HUD/gauge cluster on the Model 3/Y!?
I won't even get into just how ugly I (and anecdotally, many of my friends) find the Cybertruck; have you SEEN videos of people trying to actually use it as a truck and it completely failing to function offroad?
All of this stuff is directly attributable to Elon Musk. He's demanding a 25% stake in the company from his board - the same board that was found to be so absurdly stacked in his favor that his last pay package was thrown out.
Shareholders, at this point, should kick this guy out of Tesla and leave him to his true passions: shitposting on Twitter and SpaceX.
* no indicator stalks
* no forward/reverse control
* apparently the automatic rain sensor doesn't work/exist (I think that's always been true; I just learned about it)
It very much reminds me of Apple's backwards steps with magsafe, touchbar and the keyboard. Maybe they'll come to their senses but I dunno...
My Dec 2016 Model S has a "working" automatic rain sensor, it's just not as good as others I've seen. My '04 Audi A8 had a sensor so good that the first time it turned on I didn't know why, but then as I drove under some street lights I realized it had detected some really fine mist.
On the other hand, part of the reason I switched from the Audi to the Tesla was that I had $10k in broken "toys" on the Audi (1 of 2 bluetooth radios, 2 doorhandle auto unlockers, leak in the air suspension, steering wheel adjustment motor, etc), and part of what I wanted in the Tesla was something less expensive maintenance wise. So making more do less (using the cameras for auto wipers) makes sense.
I'd suspect the number of traditional rain sensor failures can probably be counted on one hand.
Tesla replace robust almost zero failure rate parts for cost only.
Only if you define "failure" as stops working. If you define it as not working, then it gives you a 100% failure rate.
The best rain sensor I had was in my old Ford Mondeo '04.
It's all about cost cutting to make EVs cheaper to buy
It was thrown out purely on the grounds that the judge didn't like it. The pay package was approved by Tesla's non-Musk general shareholders.
It was thrown out for technical but super legal reasons stemming from the Board’s lack of independence. Delaware judges don’t get to review pay packages approved by competently-run Boards.
If lack of independence is grounds for annulling the pay package, it's also grounds for annulling every other decision the Board ever approved. (It's the same Board!) That wasn't suggested; the grounds for annulling the pay package are different.
In this case Tesla screwed up at least 3 different standards that are generally biased towards the company against shareholders. Only the last of those 3 standards has anything to do with relative compensation.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-01-31/elon-m...
Or maybe the whole car could be imported.
You could have a cheap EV in America with a stroke of a pen. Thats kind of the point of the article. I mean maybe not on purpose.
You also have to accept that many people will go out of their way for tax credits, even if they are literally losing money to get it.
It’s almost dimensionally identical to the F-150 and the masculine “look at me” cyberpunk appearance is 100% in line with basically everything about the big three automakers’ trucks’ demographics.
The only thing BYD can do differently is eat up unprofitable markets like the $20,000 econobox EV.
Here in Brazil, EVs basically didn't exist. Only very few Prius were seen around, and I mean very few.
Now, BYD showed up and everywhere you go you see one. Had Tesla been there, the same would have happened. But they chose to not even try (or weren't competent enough to do it).
BYD is doing the same in many other countries. Pretty soon I can see BYD being the main provider of EVs in multiple countries. Tesla had years of advantage and totally missed the opportunity to expand into those markets craving EVs.
People in this thread are focusing a lot of ire at Tesla, but why do none of the other US, European, Japanese or South Korean auto makers make a showing? Why are they all behind not just BYD and Tesla but a bunch of other Chinese companies most people have never heard of? It's easy to blame Elon and his dumb tweets, but China is eating everyone's lunch in EVs, Tesla is notable solely for being in the game and losing while effectively no other auto makers are even in the game.
Literally most of the top 10 EV companies in China are doing more EV sales solely in China than the global EV sales of basically any other company on earth except Tesla (VW gets a big asterisk). A truly incredible failure across "the west".
The other auto makers don't want to switch to EVs (despite the typical PR showing around it). They were not ready for it and are many years behind. They are doing this mostly out of panic because after Tesla, it's clear that there is a market and people actually want them. Now governments are also starting to force transitions (although force is doing a lot of work here given the time frames).
What surprised me the most is BYD being sold here in Brazil, and other developing countries, when there is basically no charging network. Goes to show how the profile of consumers is different. People in the US still complain about range like they will actually travel from NY to LA, meanwhile people here are buying BYD for the luxury/status/aesthetic of it without even giving a second though about range.
My previous prediction was that it would be similar to the US where we'd only have adoption after there was progress in the charging front, but I was thoroughly wrong. People in these countries are more than happy to "sacrifice" in that front for a very expensive good looking car. It's more about the status than anything else since we don't have EV subsidies or anything similar to make it advantageous financially (at least to my knowledge).
I don’t think their success in China is a guarantee anywhere else, even if they are doing well in Brazil (which is not a very important automotive market, representing 1/10th the sales volume of the USA while having less than half of its population).
It’s also important to remember that BYD sells hybrid vehicles. Granted, they ship more pure EVs than Tesla.
I think it’s easy to see why EVs suit China well. There’s no range anxiety when you have more high speed rail than the rest of the world combined. There’s also no long-existing petrol car culture or infrastructure, China is starting from scratch. Many of their EV buyers could be first-time car buyers. Probably close to 100% of car buyers in the West have owned other cars.
From a policy level, oil is an import product for China, and components for EVs are domestic products, so they have an obvious incentive to electrify.
This goes back to my feelings on why the CyberTruck wasn’t a waste of effort: again, it’s competing with the most popular vehicle in the USA in the most profitable vehicle segment on the planet that is entirely protected by the US government from imports (the chicken tax). Financially think the CyberTruck is almost guaranteed success.
There are innovative things to admire about it - interesting steering, non-trucklike-ride, squat to load, covered bed, AC power taps, self-driv^H^H^H^Hsteering/cruise.
There are awful things to endure - lack of dedicated controls for critical stuff, everything on touchscreen in center of car.
I think it's just going to exist and at some point lose its novelty.
The other 50 is that the CEO has surrounded themselves with yes-men to the point of liability. Nobody dared point out the emperor's lack of clothes.
You clearly are not around any of the big three automakers trucks demos if you really believe this shit was ever going to succeed in it.
If you think any current truck owner is at all interested in a cybertruck's design, you are definitely one being bullish on Tesla.
I've owned trucks nearly my entire life and wouldn't touch the thing with a 30-foot pole. Across the various auto enthusiast forums I participate in, it's universally mocked. Among the folks I know that own pickups, everyone else feels the same about its design as I do.
The only people I have heard say that it's not outright ugly are people that are Tesla fanboys and even among those it's generally "it's not that bad".
It is not a "masculine look" - it looks like something someone who can't form sheet metal put together in their garage.
As bad a truck as a 2024 F-150 is in terms of truck-ness, it is still a truck and will perform a baseline number of truck things more or less competently, even if it would get roundhouse kicked by an 2004 F-150 in terms of doing actual work. Or hell, get yourself a Rivian truck if you want. It has a striking design which doesn't utterly ruin it as a truck and is similarly priced to boot.
And, it's worth noting, in the extremely long ramp up for the Cybertruck we're already seeing things like the F-150 Lightning, which incorporates all the benefits of an electric truck, and is sold by an OEM that actually does QA and sells via standard dealerships, and just looks like a normal ass truck while inheriting all the pluses of that fact (the ability to hold a bicycle, for example). Like, unless you are just 100% irrevocably sold on the looks of the Cybertruck, I cannot fathom why you would spend ballpark 30% more on a less-capable vehicle.
And if you just want a status symbol, the electric Hummer IMO absolutely demolishes the Cybertruck in terms of aesthetics while also being a vastly superior vehicle and is ALSO coming from a reputable, well established brand.
TL;DR: The Cybertruck took so goddamn long to actually become available that it's disappointing launch version is already getting lapped by competitors who are selling comparative machines for lower prices that are more capable and look better, and don't come with the baggage, political and otherwise, that the Tesla brand increasingly brings.
The Cybertruck bed is a full 6 foot bed. It’s got a liner, it’s got tie-downs, it is a real truck bed. It is practically an F-150 clone in packaging and sizing.
The Cybertruck took almost exactly 4 years between concept reveal and shipping which is totally reasonable for the auto industry. Just ignore the Peter Molyneux-like promises of Elon Musk and it’s a totally normal car launch timeline.
Off-road deficiencies are all over the place with EVs because they’re heavy. No other brand is going to defy physics.
Cybertruck competitors in the same price range you can order are the F-150 and the Rivian R1T. The Rivian base model is $10k more and the F-150 base model is stripped down, you get things like manual adjusted seats. But hey, it is cheaper at the same range.
The mid-tier Rivian is basically the same price as the Cybertruck mid range. The one deficiency with is at the high end where Rivian offers more range, but that’s also a getting to be a very expensive truck.
The Hummer is not even in the same class of vehicle. It’s a 5 foot bed truck. If you’re going to point fingers at electric trucks that aren’t usable work trucks, that’s the one. It’s also starting at $100k. Not in the same price class at all.
Putting the feelings about Elon aside I’m just calling it like I see it here: Tesla is competing in a market which is highly lucrative, is very high volume, and they have some legitimate advantages like charging network and software that competitors can’t match. Heck, they’ve even got a reliability advantage over Rivian (Consumer Reports).
Ford and GM gaining access to their charging network this year. I always hear how their software is an advantage, but how? At point I feel like people just say Tesla software is “better” without having actually compared it to anything else because I’ve yet to run into a situation where it seems better to me.
The length and width aren't the only concern: the tapered-off roof bit that goes to either side of the bed means you can't put anything in the bed that's wider than the bed on either side, and if you've used a truck before for, for example, landscaping: a common way to use it is to park it near your work area where you're, I dunno, tearing some brush down or something, and chuck shit into the bed as you work. With my F-150, I raise my bed cover up which keeps my rear-cab glass safe, and I can now load this easily from all three directions to the rear: this can't be done with a Cybertruck, without risking damage to the bodywork that's (stupidly) over the edge of the bed.
It's basically the same issue the 04 Silverado had with those stupid plastic bits they put behind the cab, except on the Cybertruck, it isn't shitty plastic you can break off and be done with it: it's part of the paneling.
> The Cybertruck took almost exactly 4 years between concept reveal and shipping which is totally reasonable for the auto industry. Just ignore the Peter Molyneux-like promises of Elon Musk and it’s a totally normal car launch timeline.
Yes, and quite smartly, GM shut up about the Hummer until it was ready.
> Off-road deficiencies are all over the place with EVs because they’re heavy. No other brand is going to defy physics.
The electric F-150 is a much, much more capable off road vehicle. I think the trick is designing a vehicle to do a thing and then make it look nice, versus designing it to look neat and then trying to figure out how to make it do things.
> The mid-tier Rivian is basically the same price as the Cybertruck mid range. The one deficiency with is at the high end where Rivian offers more range, but that’s also a getting to be a very expensive truck.
Yes, and again, the F-150 and Rivian are suitable for use as a truck where the Cybertruck isn't. That's my point. And again, if you don't actually want a truck, just an expensive SUV, that's where I think the Hummer is actually superior to the Cybertruck. Haven't heard about a Hummer rusting 5 days after delivery yet.
> The Hummer is not even in the same class of vehicle. It’s a 5 foot bed truck. If you’re going to point fingers at electric trucks that aren’t usable work trucks, that’s the one. It’s also starting at $100k. Not in the same price class at all.
Which is why I brought it up as an option, because I genuinely cannot fathom someone who wants a work truck buying one of these stupid cybertrucks. They're even worse than modern trucks are on every axis and are also expensive as shit.
> Tesla is competing in a market which is highly lucrative, is very high volume, and they have some legitimate advantages like charging network and software that competitors can’t match.
Worth noting that a ton of the market for trucks is in fleet vehicles, which Tesla just... cannot do. They can't move the volume enough for, for example, a telecom company that needs a fleet of trucks for servicing their network. And no sane teleco is dropping $65k per truck for service fleet business.
And again, they're shit trucks.
I think Tesla is playing up moving into the truck space but what it really is, if we're being honest, is a luxury SUV. A weekend toy for wealthier families, that's just what it is, not judging. My F-150 is largely a toy itself, I use it for light yard work but it also has 22" rims and SUV tires because I don't do anything harder than grass with it. I'm just honest with myself when I say mine is a toy, and that's fine.
And that's what the Cybertruck is, and it's not going to do volume for that exact reason, and I think it's also going to struggle as a luxury SUV too because, frankly, it's hideous and the Tesla brand doesn't swing like it used to in the minds of consumers.
https://www.avantauk.com/top-14-largest-warehouses-in-the-wo...
Full Self Driving but really lane keeping assist L2
Mother of all factories but really 30% of mother
Vacuum-sealed underground tubes capable of moving people en mass at high speed but really a 15mph underground paved road for Tesla cars
Linear growth of battery density but stuck on same chemistry
Used to have radar but now disabled on cars that have it because vision is like the human eye don’t need anything else
Or maybe your point is "Tesla is not helped by its government as much as BYD is"? Which could be a fair point.
Model 3: 186″ L x 73″ W x 57″ H
Accord: 196″ L x 73″ W x 57″ H
Civic: 179-184″ L x 71″ W x 56″ H
BMW 4 series: 188-189″ L x 73″ W x 55-57″ H
BMW 3 series: 186” 72” 57”
I have a garage where that extra inch or two of width is really important.
I wonder why a CEO lying to pump his stock is not yet illegal. Otherwise what's topping Sundar to come out and say "Google will have AGI in 6 months, buy Alphabet stonks wink-wink".
> And it worked.
I know, because a couple of my friends put all their saving in TSLA stocks during the pandemic. And all it cost Elon was his credibility and being exposed as a clueless liar to the point if he'd say the sky is blue, I'd double check.