Tesla reportedly developing new smaller, cheaper EV after killing Model 2
Comments
tapoxi
4ndrewl
It'll be a case study in years to come.
Dually turning the brand toxic to your core customers, and having a bonfire of a strategy around products.
verdverm
I was able to drive across the US in the winter in an Ioniq 6 without using Tesla chargers. All but a couple were 350V, WY was the worst state (NY->WA), battery conditioning had charges ~200V for the first phase until charge levels became the dominant factor.
Ionna is 8 automakers building an alternative network
https://www.ionna.com/founding-partners/
Hyundai has their EV platform which has been 800V for a couple of years, future proof for the lifetime of the car considering how slow EV rollout is in the US...
tapoxi
Yeah I've had an ID4 for a few years and its certainly possible, but seemingly overnight the charging network doubled and its a net win for everyone.
Also, my mom is in her 70s, those CCS plugs are huge! I'm glad everyone was able to standardize on NACS.
Toutouxc
> All but a couple were 350V, WY was the worst state (NY->WA), battery conditioning had charges ~200V for the first phase until charge levels became the dominant factor.
Sorry but what? I can maybe understand “V” instead of “kW” (why?), but what does the second part mean?
jdeibele
EV batteries charge much faster from 10% or 20% to 60%, maybe somewhat higher than that.
Going from 20% to 80% typically takes as long as going from 80% to 100% and so standard advice is never to charge to 100% unless you absolutely have to.
Every model has a charging curve, which I've never seen a manufacturer provide but some reviews do their own.
Toutouxc
I drive an EV, I asked because the comment genuinely didn’t make sense to me.
gramie
That sounds wonderful. Our experience with an Ioniq 6 has been less spectacular. First of all, in winter the range drops from 520km to about 350km, and charging takes about 50% longer.
Then when we took a long trip we only found one or two charging stations faster than 10kW every 300km. Many of the chargers were not functioning, some were on private property (e.g. car dealerships) and closed on Sundays, and none of them were rated at more than 100kW (and typically charging at about 70kW). The ones that were 100kW often had one or more cars waiting for them, so our 90-minute charge could have taken double that.
The only exception was a Tesla supercharger station, but my wife refuses to support Elon Musk in any way, so that was out.
This is in Southern Ontario, outside the Greater Toronto Area.
burnt-resistor
Absolutely waste but with insufficient accountability. I don't understand how or why shareholders haven't sued him into penury. Taking political positions as a business figure is inherently fraught with risk, but then taking extreme political positions, openly flaunting drug use, and suggesting human decency is weakness is bloody weird and insane that will only lead to hubris. I don't want to know a CEO's religion or politics because these should be private matters.
Zigurd
That salute was too much even for the AfD. That it's not obvious to every American is an indicator of just how thoroughly boiled are we frogs.
burnt-resistor
Covert bigots with self-awareness are more worrying than the overt ones lacking it because they try hard to pretend to simulate normal civility while knowing their symbols and ideals are still widely repugnant that they avoid any association with them while accumulating legitimacy and political power.
People lacking empathy and believing they are better than others indeed represent the tao of fascism, and cannot be bargained with or appeased into cooperative, pro-social participation. Neville Chamberlain made that mistake that plunged the world into a more costlier war.
Might I also suggest that expressing self-fulfilling prophecy, learned helpless, demotivating doubt and doom is both untrue and doesn't help advance individual or collective power, hope, or change. IOW, the "we're cooked" pattern behavior people fail to see how their selfish compulsion for unfiltered self-expression harms the cause of change and harms others by demotivating them.
the_biot
Because while Musk is certainly running Tesla into the ground, without him it would sink even faster. Without his hype jacking up the share price, it's just a carmaker with 2.5 models, cratering sales, fast obsoleting tech, and no new models in the near pipeline.
All the shareholders can do is hang on to the ride for as long as they can.
dzhiurgis
I finally test drove friends BYD Sealion 7. Yes interior is very nice, soft materials, etc (to a point where it almost feels tacky). Drive felt much softer than my mid-gen Model Y (almost too boaty and rolly but thats is completely fine for a family car).
The software is not great tho, really misses the point and I can see why people hate touchscreens. No single pedal driving (idk perhaps they haven't enabled it), no phone as key, no profiles, engine start/stop button.
Overall I'd say people are sold on features without looking in depth what you get with Tesla. And Tesla still outselling any other brand here in NZ.
Hope I can try out Zeekr 7x performance in couple of weeks. I heard a lot of good things about it.
RichardHesketh
[flagged]
andrecarini
My impression as a driver-in-training is that people are too complacent and forget they are handling a machine that could at any moment kill and maim you, your loved ones and random innocent bystanders. I wish we all were more responsible about it, and I hate the Tesla philosophy of going the opposite way (the touchscreen, the sorta there but not really autopilot, etc)
Toutouxc
That’s also my impression (experienced and competent driver). The other day I saw a video of someone testing Tesla FSD in Prague (where I live), the person was praising it for dealing with various situations quickly and with confidence, while I, a local, was basically cowering non-stop in front of the screen. There was certainly a lot of YOLO energy.
estimator7292
The prevailing attitude in America is that as long as you are safe and comfortable in your gargantuan car, killing pedestrians and other drivers doesn't matter. Everyone else is beneath your contempt and if someone gets hurt or killed due to your recklessness, they deserve it.
dzhiurgis
Every new car has autopilot now, whats your point?
linzhangrun
Tesla's R&D on consumer-level products has been quite stagnant: the Model 3 and Model Y are essentially cars from many years ago. With EV technology advancing rapidly, especially under such fierce external competition (e.g., Chinese EVs), they are increasingly struggling to keep up. Today's versions of these cars are not significantly different from when they were first launched (setting FSD aside).
They even discontinued the S and X.
I don't know how Tesla plans to cope with the next 10 years. Compared to space, AI, and even autonomous driving, electric vehicles may have already become "too boring" of a thing for Musk.
AngryData
I mean I don't think a lot of things on cars need or sometimes even can be improved other than the battery tech. Producing nearly the same body and control systems for 20+ years could save on manufacturing costs and could save customers on repair parts costs.
Nobody jumps in a 2002 car and bemoans the fact that it lacks lane drifting warnings or that the door handle doesn't have some overengineered mechanism, it still does everything they need and more without difficulty. 90% of people's complaints would be, if not so directly, "It was made over 20 years ago and parts are worn and sloppy" which almost all disappears if the exact same car still rolled off the line today and was new. It is also a chance for iterative improvements when engineering flaws are found, like cracks on hard wearing components or early bearing failures.
But that doesn't seem to be the kind of thing Tesla ever planned to actually attempt so it doesn't help them now. It may have been brought up once or twice before as an idea but nobody has ever mentioned more robust tooling in their plants to plan for it, repair parts are still super difficult to come by, and there have been substantial changes of component design between years that make them incompatible and not just improvements.
klooney
I saw a Cybercab on the 280 today, it looked kind of cool but kind of weird, too. I wonder if it'll be the same thing physically.
Zigurd
Given a last-minute announcement of a new vehicle in a crisis situation, that vehicle can't be too different from what already exists.
microtherion
Quarterly earnings will be released April 22. My impression is that in recent years, such rumors tended to cluster around earnings reports (which largely haven't been great the last 2 years or so), presumably as distractions.
bdangubic
They don’t really need this though, every TSLA investor already louds that TSLA is not a car company - I think now it is no longer “Robo”taxi company either but humanoids-data-center-on-Jupiter-moon-mining company. Hence, absolutely no need for any EV announcements :)
ramesh31
It will still be $30k+ out the door, guaranteed. There's zero interest in making an actual affordable car when their margins are so high at that level.
jerlam
There are a lot of new $30K EVs on the market right now, as manufacturers have added a lot of incentives since the EV rebate expired. And a lot of slightly used EVs are coming off lease this year.
Tesla is going to struggle since their brand no longer has any cachet and people aren't interested in subscribing to a kinda-self driving feature.
mullingitover
It's not that it doesn't have cachet, it has anti-cachet.
People of Musk's exact political stripe absolutely are not impressed if you drive a Tesla, and everyone else, at minimum, is silently counting it as a character flaw and judgment problem.
To top it off, they're not the latest or the greatest EVs available and it's common knowledge at this point. The two metrics that they maximize, range and 0-60, are not really a big factor in day-to-day ownership in the way that a smooth ride and build quality are.
znkynz
Will be eaten alive by the chinese competitiors at that ridicilous price point.
devonnull
File this under I'll believe it when I see it.
BonoboIO
Yeah … vapoware like the roadster.
Morromist
I wouldn't be too shocked if they're real. They aren't going to be making humanoid robots that actually are useful and don't price 99% of people out of buying them and they have to come out with something new eventually.
And they can copy a lot of features from the better, cheaper chinese cars and just sell them for 3x as much in the american market because they have no competition here and the chinese are barred from selling their cars here.
Still, even if the are real it doesn't mean their company should be valued at 21x Ford's value, or even 1x Ford's.
FireBeyond
I'd say they're as real as the $35K Cybertruck Musk promised us (not that many of us wanted it).
Morromist
Exactly! That's a perfect analogy.
cyanydeez
Tesla is basically proof positive that the market, oligarchy and fund managers are all in the Epstein-sphere of influence. No rational market would suffer the type of business management and products that Tesla produces.
quantified
You're forgetting a fan base. It's in the same category as a meme stock or NFT back in the day. Same way that haters gonna hate, believers gonna believe, and sometimes attack those who question/threaten their worldview. The boosters boost because they BELIEVE.
jfengel
I don't think the comparison is entirely fair. There was never anything to NFTs. It was always a scam.
Tesla builds actual cars. For a while, these cars were innovative, and the best of their class. Their price was based on a wildly optimistic version of what they could become, but at least it had some nonzero value.
It's true that they've stopped innovating and have fallen behind, so that "optimism" has turned in the direction of "pure delusion". But I still think it's unfair to compare it to something that never demonstrated any value of any kind.
quantified
NFTs actually appreciated in price for a while. Still waiting for our FSD Teslas to appreciate and be useful as robotaxis as promised by Musk.
There is definitely a meme element here. It is fair to compare anything to anything, just not to equate anything with anything. There is, I think, sufficient overlap on certain dimensions to warrant looking at them together.
AngryData
To me it is just proof that modern capitalist markets are inherently flawed in serious ways that nobody wants to admit. Everyone goes on and on about market efficiency and liquidity and capitalism doing some sort of self-balancing act, but it repeatedly fails over and over again on both individual and larger group scales. It just seems closer and closer to simple gambling, using the wealth and capital of large masses of society, but with the potential winnings mostly just going to a small few.
cbeach
Your comment has more than a whiff of “never driven a Tesla”
It's a shame what happened to this company. I used to really want a Tesla, but now the brand signifies your support for Musk/DOGE, they killed half their lineup, and they keep mentioning that cars aren't the future as they aim for driverless taxis and robots.
At least they opened the supercharger network. My mom picked up a Cadillac Optiq and even with her being on the other side of the country she was able to seamlessly transition to an EV.