oxplot

There are some outliers (Texas) but in general its hard to just start your own power plant thats connected to the grid.

What if it's not and solely powered by solar (just wondering - Megachargers most likely need help from the grid).

I can carry it on my magic carpet

Oh I see. You're high out of your mind. Explains your other responses.

I'm gonna be broke after all the egg I have to buy to throw at your faces.

At least with McDonalds, you know what goes into it. They actually have a nutrition label. Show me the nutrition label of the Italian bistro. If you asked, you'd probably get kicked out because you insulted the chef.

So, actually, I'll be way more confident about my health (that's what it's called, not safety, food safety is about you not getting poisoned) eating at McDonalds, than at some rando uptown joint.

You're definitely in the first group.

Oh

I think you sorely underestimate how much emphasis large trucking firms put into route optimization.

I know software and I know Tesla's involvement in it. Based on your comment, I'm going to assume, they put maximum emphasis on route optimization, more than any other industry (which is probably false anyway). With that assumption, Tesla is in as good a position as a software company could ever be to hire the expertise (or outright purchase existing companies) and make the best software for fleet management IF that means they'll sell to significantly larger customer base.

And Tesla has a habit of ignoring those.

Tesla definitely has a habit of ignoring problems, but in all cases I'm aware of, they're non fundamental issues that can be addressed along the way. They see the bigger picture and aren't focusing on non-crucial details.

What have the Superchargers proven? That under increased load the locations can become completely overwhelmed? Even with EVs having a single-digit market share?

I'm referring to speed of Superchargers increasing over time. Newer superchargers don't have the drop in charging speed problem when two adjacent stalls are used at the same time.

I haven't met a single person in my neck of the woods that thinks waiting 30 minutes to "fuel up" is remotely reasonable. And that's state-of-the-art. We have a ways to go.

Well your neck of the wood aren't the current intended audience. Thanks to everyone else who's buying the cars at their current state. They are enabling a future where your neck of the wood can have cars that charge in a few minutes. Oh, and I'm one of them. You're welcome.

Let's wait for some real-world testing before making claims to Telsa Semi's range.

OK.

You've linked to an "accusation" without any fines. Thanks for wasting my time.

I love how you sideskipped my phsyics argument like it was nothing.

My bad.

You're still moving 1.5 tons (and constantly increasing!) of metal everywhere, to move 1 human being weighing 80kg.

True.

Price competitive how? It's impossible.

OK, you can transport at least a factor of 10x more people with the existing number of cars on the road. People who drive to work and back use their cars for a fraction of time in a day. If those cars were out moving people around the clock, they would add a huge capacity to the taxi fleet.

Now, who pays for the car? The owner. They have paid for it whether it's sitting in the car park or driving people around. The only difference is running cost of the car: electricity and mostly tire wear. That becomes the cost of transporting people with margin added for Tesla and the car owner. That's it!

Now I just realized that perhaps in your hometown, cost of public transport may be so dirt cheap. But where I live, it cost $40 AUD a week to travel 2 stations back and fourth once a day. The same trips over the same period with my car costs me $2.40 AUD in electricity and about $2.80 AUD in tyre wear (assuming $2000 AUD per 25000km which is way too aggressive). That's a total of $5.20 vs $40. Even if you double the cost to account for margin, it's still 4 times less expensive than public transport.

EDIT: even if it's exactly the same as public transport, it'll still be the preferably mode of transport, because it's door to door and you don't have to deal with anyone. Imagine someone who's happy to share with one other person, now you have bonker economics.

The lawsuits are coming, sure, it's US. People sue each other for sports. I'd be disappointed if they didn't sue Tesla ten times a year.

I'll listen when any of those actually results in Tesla being found at fault after a final decision.

How does an autonomous car not need to be parked?

As in, they don't need to be parked after every ride in the current personal transport model.

The vision that seems more realistic to me is that lucrative areas would have traffic jams full of empty self-driving taxis circling around waiting for fares.

They will be run as part of a coordinated fleet of robo taxis. Why would they be circling around waiting for customers in an area where there is no demand? Answer is they won't. They'll be directed to where people want rides much like Uber, but considerably more efficient, because they don't have constraints of a human driver they have to accommodate.

Your definiton

And many others.

And, in terms of sales, that might be your definition of 'caught up' but it's not mine.

Good for you

Well-used analagy applies here: if sales are your KPI then I assume McDonalds is your idea of a fine meal. Sorry, no.

Thanks for that analogy. Yes, one can brag all they want about the best Italian cuisine they had at a top bistro. It means nothing to most people if: they can't afford it, if they can't get a booking for months. McDonalds delivers round the clock, food that's safe and does it fast. I take McDonalds over all of so called "fine" food any day. I value my time and don't want to waste it, waiting on food.

And your dismissal of Hyundai/Kia by definition singles you out as far out there in biased land. I've test drove all three (including Tesla) and done the research. The only reason I haven't bought an ioniq 5 is because I simply can't justify it at the moment (my work-life means it'll just sit in the driveway however much I want it). But they are all ... great cars.

I have driven all the above (some through friends and Ioniq 5 by asking a stranger nicely), in addition to BYD, Polstar and anything that's available to drive in Australia, multiple times for some. I've owned a Tesla for the past 2 years and have test driven every other model as well. The handling, software, ambiance and interior of all but Tesla (and specifically Model 3) is vastly inferior. As for handling, they all feel like they'll run away and off the road any moment. I'm sure I'll get used to them after longer drives, but Tesla's doing something there that gives me more confidence when handling.

If any of these was significantly cheaper as to make up for their shortcomings, I'd happily recommend them to friends and family. But as they sit right now, no frigging way.

if ugly.

I don't know what you're talking about!

But the Hyundai/Kia are now the better cars (interior, build, comfort)

Interior of all the cars above make me feel suffocated. Their build qualities are definitely good but virtually no one I know actually cares, unless shit's falling off the car. Tesla's quality is only getting better. As for comfort, Model 3 has the most comfortable seat of any car I've ever owned (out of 3).

From the first link:

The Model 3 sedan was being described on Tesla’s Korean website claiming 'can drive more than 528 km on a single charge'. However, on its US website, Tesla describes Model 3's performance as "Go anywhere with "up to" 358 miles of estimated range on a single charge." 358 miles equates to about 576 kms, and much less than what Tesla claimed in South Korean markets. After local media raised the issue and the regulator stepped in, Tesla changed the range from ‘more than’ to a ‘maximum’ 528 kilometres.

What??!! 576km is not much less than 528km, it's more! So Tesla was in fact correctly indicating that the range is more than 528km, because it is! Either this is awful reporting or there is a mistake in there. Also saying "can drive more than" instead of "up to" isn't necessarily an exaggeration, it may simply be a mistake in wording of the website. I give them the benefit of doubt here because I've never seen Tesla advertise range like that. It's often a single number with a testing methodology suffix (like EPA). There is no "up to" or the like qualifiers.

As for the second link, super interesting content. But EPA has certified the range and all other manufacturers are free to do what Tesla does to make their range more appealing. Nothing fishy going on here as far as I'm concerned. Exaggerating range in context of a certification program is moot (unless you're cheating and Tesla is clearly not, according to this article).

A friend of mine paid the $10k as a "line jumping fee" to get his car 4 months earlier, and I assume that most informed buyers treat the FSD package the same.

Really? You thought this was a compelling example?!!! Have you never bought an "as-is" item from a shop which was on display. You pay cheaper but you can't bring it back for refund if you change your mind. This is common practice in every industry. You wanna be treated differently, you give up some perks.

People who buy FSD package as a way to jump the queue aren't buying FSD, they're buying time and as such doubt they will care about functionality of FSD.

I was referring to people who buy FSD for its current and future capabilities.

Some people are intimidated by success of others, especially if they don't have much going on in their own lives. And some people get excited and motivated by it and want to do more. Those would be the caliber of people who end up working at Tesla or SpaceX or Apple, etc and join the fun.

I have a nice/fun/convenient commuter car that hasn't needed any maintenance and the trade in is higher than I paid for it. Is it for everyone? Is it for everyone? No. But that doesn't mean there is a void in value.

I'm sure you have reasons for downplaying this, but I would follow this with "and told them, in your face losers", or something to that effect.

Saying "saving money and hassle" isn't for everyone is suspicious to say the least. Why wouldn't it be for everyone?

you can never make personal transport as cheap as public transport, because personal transport will always carry fewer passengers per ride.

Oh man, another "never" statement. An autonomous car that doesn't have a driver, doesn't need to take breaks to eat or sleep, that doesn't need to be parked, can in fact become cheaper than public transport. I invite you to do some research on that.

And people really want to ride in nice, clean, custom cars, plus they really don't want to ride with other people most of the time.

That's exactly my point, and why in presence of a price competitive option such as a self driving taxi, no one would want to catch a bus or a train with many people and dirty seats.

autonomous driving could be 50 years into the future

Not if you're in the know. It's far closer, but I'm not arguing for that. Wait and see.

You are aware that manufactures face penalties for lying and deception, right? I can't recall Tesla ever being fined for misleading marketing, ever.

Tesla semi was production ready in 2020

I guess you've never missed a deadline. That's not lying. It's miscalculation.

and was more efficient than train

A Semi convoy is expected to be cheaper than a train and they re-iterated that in the latest event. No evidence to the contrary so far.

And whatever other lies musk said back then.

Promised 500 miles. Delivered 500 miles. Turned the impossible (according to pretty much everyone, from Bill Gates, to CEO of truck making companies who joked that Tesla Semi will be breaking laws of physics) into late. Still not lying.

Musk is prolific deceiver, I dont trust a single thing coming out of his mouth nor his websites.

He doesn't have websites. He has companies that have websites.

Tesla cars are notorious for its expensive repairs. Its a huge cost and risk switching to it.

Is that why Hertz, that puts the most number of miles on a passenger vehicle has ordered 100000 Teslas, 20% of its global fleet, because it loves to waste money on cost of repair?

Calling it's driver assist Autopilot, calling its software FSD, repeatedly saying "FSD is coming next year" is overpromising, misleading marketing and lying

OK, finally an actual example and the one I expected.

TL;DR is that if Tesla was in fact doing anything the regulators found to be hurting the customers, they would be forcing Tesla to make changes (and they have re FSD in some minor ways). It's fun to make a big deal about nothing but no one is buying FSD and thinking, Tesla robbed me $10K. They get it, play with it, it doesn't do what they promised, they can get a refund for the FSD package, and even a full refund for the entire car. People tend to keep their Teslas, so that's a non issue.

Majority of people don't buy Teslas for promise of FSD (in fact, most don't even believe it). They buy it because right now, it's a great car. As far as delivering great cars is concerned (which is the vast majority of cases), Tesla has delivered time and again.

Also, Tesla has never lied about FSD, only missing deadlines. If anything, their progress has shown anything but any attempt to lie to customers. They are moving as fast as they can and no one in the industry comes close.

I'll be happy to see, for once, someone talk about misleading marketing about anything but FSD. You can take FSD away any day and it won't make a blip of difference to Tesla's sales or margins.

OMG! So sorry to hear that. That's awful! :( but thanks for sticking with it.

the infrastructure likely makes heavy use of batteries to avoid stressing out local substations and avoid abusing grid peaking

From Tesla's presentation, it looks like that.

Who has the financial incentive to build charging stations? Both out and back and point to point operators will build charging infrastructure at their own hubs/terminals and use them for themselves.

Don't forget that Tesla will probably end up building the most number of chargers over time. Charging is its own business with its own margins (e.g. Supercharger network). In other words, it's a source of net income for Tesla so as they build more trucks, they'll build more chargers as they've done to date with passenger cars and Superchargers.

Everyone has caught up

They are caught up when they start outselling Tesla (or heck become available so one can actually buy one).

Great cars (which I don't think Hyundai/Kia are by any stretch of imagination, from piss-poor software to poor charging infrastructure, but let's discount this for now) can exist at great prices all they want, but if I can't get my hand on one and the 500 or so that show up once every few month get gobbled up in seconds, they practically do not exist at all.

And mind you, the disparity in production is not gonna go away any time soon. They're all limited by battery production and unless they make their own batteries, Tesla has long been in the line to buy batteries from anywhere they possibly can, as much as they can. They don't screw around.

BYD is far more of a competitor to Tesla than Kia/Hyandai have been to date.

EDIT: and Tesla is no exemption here - once they have a Cybertruck selling in competitive "numbers", it becomes competitive. Until then, Rivians and Fords are leading the pack (and I must say, beautifully).

It's called aiming high!

Did a quick search. Diesel Semis' curb weight ranges b/w 10000lbs-25000lbs. The 10000lbs one may not be comparable in performance/range to Tesla Semi so keep that in mind.

Tesla Semi based on the estimate in the article, is about 27000lbs.

since as a general rule rail is cheaper than trucks

That's not the way to approach claims that a new tech/product is disruptive. General rules may not (and usually do not) apply.

I hope they don't lobby against mass transit (of goods and people). But they probably will, making things worse for all us.

People in general are not fond of the experience of mass transit. They only do it because it's either (or all):

- cheap (no parking fees, car purchase/maintenance)

- less hassle (no need to find parking in busy areas and no need to have all attention to driving)

If personal transport can be made cheaper, less hassle and hands-free (all of which is possible by autonomous vehicles), then people will vote with their pennies and no lobbying will be required by Tesla.

How will this be worse?

I agree - trains make more sense than running overhead wires over highways.

Sorry I should have been more specific. I'm referring to economics from the viewpoint of the business operating a fleet. Given almost all business do not hold back from whatever incentive and subsidies are available to them, it's fairly reasonable boundary to confine the comparison to.

Why not ?

As in, we run out of fossil fuels (or it gets prohibitively expensive) and your truck becomes brick because its internal battery and electric drivetrain is pretty much useless without the ICE part.

Solar, wind and thermal are practically unlimited for duration of the planet's existence.