Tesla postpones $25k electric car

https://electrek.co/2024/04/15/tesla-puts-electric-car-codenamed-nv9-back-burner-despite-elon-musk-said/

by kklisura • 2 years ago

20 17 2 years ago

wkat4242• 2 years ago

I kinda like the idea of robotaxis. They could be cheaper than normal ones, and you wouldn't have any worry about maintenance, parking or even going back to where you left your car.

I live in a busy city and i dont even know where I'd leave a car if I had one. I often take taxis and this might make them even more viable.

BenFranklin100• 2 years ago

Tying robotaxis and mass transit seems like a winning combination. Mass transit can get one within a kilometer and a robotaxi can do the rest.

preisschild• 2 years ago

Robotaxis would be unnecessary when you embrace public transit like light rail or trolleybus. They are more efficient and thus cheaper.

lotsoweiners• 2 years ago

Plenty of people are willing to pay much more for private rides.

sudosysgen• 2 years ago

Why not both? Robotaxi technology would allow for adaptively routed minibuses to be very cheap - and in fact be even better suited at it, which would solve the last-mile problem and make every other type of public transit even more efficient.

esics6A• 2 years ago

Musk wants to make sure that BYD has little or no competition. Kamikaze management yet again from another American company. Musk is such a genius!

anonuser123456• 2 years ago

Market segmentation is a thing. Chasing price sensitive consumers doesn’t necessarily make you very profitable.

touristtam• 2 years ago

No but at the same time, Tesla aren't renowned for their build quality like VW.

Zigurd4• 2 years ago

I criticize Elon often and harshly, but putting off a low cost car might be the rational and realistic part of this set of decisions: The opportunity cost of cybertruck and other side quests Tesla has been on make doing a low-cost car something that should have been started 4 years ago, using the money that's been spent on a second rate robot or a semi truck that's good for hauling potato chips.

LightBug1• 2 years ago

I criticise Apple often and harshly, but putting off a premium car might be the rational and realistic part of this set of decisions.

Personally, I think Tesla are left holding the can at this juncture ... and the next 5 years are going to be extremely challenging for them.

Margins eaten away at the premium level - with no hope of clawing them back at the lower cost mass level.

Zigurd4• 2 years ago

A big problem is that robotaxis and FSD are not the same product. The technologies are related, but they're not even the same technology. They don't have the same goals or the same constraints. For example, everyone developing robotaxis intensively 3D maps the areas in which they're intended to operate. They use lidar and other kinds of sensors in addition to optical cameras for both mapping and to operate their robotaxis. If it turns out that camera-only autonomous driving is insufficient, not only does Tesla not have the right sensors on their vehicles, they haven't got the mapping data either. Announcing a robo taxi is as much an act of creating a product by proclamation as a Mars colony.

Havoc• 2 years ago

Short of some legislative or trade barrier it feels like BYD is just going to steamroll Tesla

Zigurd4• 2 years ago

Quality problems real or percieved, lack of dealerships, and some trade barriers will hold them back for a while. "A while" could be as little as 3 years. Not enough time for Tesla to be ready.

bennyhill• 2 years ago

I can't really imagine anywhere but North America repelling consumer demand for cheap EVs. Most countries importing what people want to buy seems like a circle of relative volume, cost and quality improvement destroying Teslas relevance.

Tesla postpones $25k electric car

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