Tesla Developments

michaels

Hoenir said:

michaels said:

Hoenir said:

Litigation to follow ? 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on April 25 revealed that electric vehicle maker Tesla's Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) systems have been linked to hundreds of crashes and dozens of fatalities.

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INCR-EA22002-14496.pdf

Great concept unfortunately too many drivers lack common sense. 

Seem like big numbers but there is no context in terms of accidents per mile driven compared to peers with and without adas. 
Partly it seems obvious that the better the adas the les drivers will pay full attention so counter-intuitively a better adas leads to more accidents. 
But otherwise do you ban all adas on the grounds that it reduces driver attention.  Surely the gold standard would be to see if each system increases or reduces accidents in the real world - but tricky with systems constantly evolving?

What concerns me is how patchy even the limited Tesla 'quarterly' accident rate reporting has become, surely if everything was great they would be crowing about it?!

Monthly subscription software was no doubt intended to be a major money spinner. Any such report will dent public perception.  Margins on vehicle sales are falling as the competition increases and falling sales volumes suggest that those that can afford/want a Tesla increasingly already own one. 

Or have the option of a second hand one as well as new

JKenH

Low priced "affordable" Tesla EV set to halt sales decline

https://www.am-online.com/news/low-priced-affordable-tesla-ev-set-to-halt-sales-decline

This is old news by now and the stock market responded well to Teska’s announcement of new cheaper models. However, after the drop in sales prior to the launch of the Model 3 Highland, I am wondering if we might see the Osborne Effect all over again. If Tesla are promising a cheaper car based on the existing platform, then anyone wanting a new Tesla who isn’t in a rush might just wait and see what the new offering is. All we know is it’s going to be cheaper but it will still be a Tesla, with the design cues, tech, efficiency and supercharger network that have attracted buyers in the past. If that what you want and it’s going to be £5-10k cheaper it could be worth the wait. 

To date it has worked to Tesla’s advantage that buyers have been largely sector agnostic (for instance the Model 3 was hugely popular despite being a saloon (an essentially unpopular sector) but it could also work the other way. Model 3 and Model Y buyers may  be happy to downsize (just as the 3 and Y took sales from the S and X) if the price is right. 

I imagine there are others like @Grumpy_chap (perhaps) who, coming from a smaller car previously, would have no problem stepping down a sector if the car ticked all the boxes that make a Tesla a Tesla. 

So the effect of announcing a new cheaper model could be
a) the Osborne effect causes purchases to be postponed and
b) buyers move to a cheaper (lower margin) product. 

1961Nick

The Model 2 now looks as if it'll be a Model 2.5 & use the front & rear castings from the Model 3. Although that will make a slightly larger than ideal car for that segment, the capex saving will be enormous & the development lead time will be greatly reduced. Whether they can make a $25,000 car with a decent margin is another matter though?

On the plus side, the B segment is the largest category by volume for most markets so there's initially potential to fully utilise existing spare capacity rather than building a dedicated factory.

michaels

1961Nick said:

The Model 2 now looks as if it'll be a Model 2.5 & use the front & rear castings from the Model 3. Although that will make a slightly larger than ideal car for that segment, the capex saving will be enormous & the development lead time will be greatly reduced. Whether they can make a $25,000 car with a decent margin is another matter though?

On the plus side, the B segment is the largest category by volume for most markets so there's initially potential to fully utilise existing spare capacity rather than building a dedicated factory.

I think Tesla have seen form their history that it makes more sense to get a good enough product out there than a much later 'reinvent the wheel' product.  Model X - too complex, too expensive to build, too late.  4680 - similar, cybertruck - again they cold have built something based on the S/X platform 3 years earlier.

Thing is that once you have a new model out, you can completely reengineer under the skin part way through the lifecycle - so bring out the model 2 'now' using the 3/y underpinnings and the current underutilised lines whilst working on the unboxed concept that you can then introduce and can underpin reengineered cheaper to produce 2, 3 and Y which may or may not coincide with an exterior refresh.

JKenH

Tesla Even Gives Up On Next-Gen Gigacasting: Report

Amid wider fears that Tesla is pivoting away from actually making cars to focus on artificial intelligence and autonomous driving, a new report indicates it may also be dropping a groundbreaking manufacturing technique that was once meant to create its next-generation electric vehicles. 

According to a report from Reuters today, Tesla has canceled plans to use a new generation of "gigacasting" in its future products. The company was reportedly working on a plan to cast the entire underbody of its next-generation car out of a single piece.

https://insideevs.com/news/718125/tesla-single-piece-gigacasting/

Grumpy_chap

JKenH said:

I imagine there are others like @Grumpy_chap (perhaps) who, coming from a smaller car previously, would have no problem stepping down a sector if the car ticked all the boxes that make a Tesla a Tesla. 

Quite possibly.
I like the comfort and cabin space of the TM3 and, had I not gone for that then it would have been a Mondeo or XE in all probability.
I'd be willing to sacrifice some cabin space if uplifted by higher quality ambience and better seats. 

JKenH

Inside EVs has been accused recently of being anti - Tesla because of a number of negative stories. Here’s another one. Make of it what you will. Tesla reportedly had 2m advance orders for the Cybertruck so maybe the ones in this story are awaiting the accelerator fix or maybe not. 

Hundreds Of Teslas Are Piling Up In A Vacant Mall Parking Lot

A local service center says that its lot can't handle the "growing inventory," which includes dozens of Cybertrucks.

Now, the local service center has the capacity to park about 135 vehicles (including customer cars). It's not clear just how full the lot is at the moment, but historical satellite imagery shows that the lot is often more than half-filled with vehicles. Locals say that it's not uncommon for Teslas to be parked at the shuttered mall, but the number of cars in recent weeks has skyrocketed. So why the sudden uptick in mall-parked Teslas?

Workers at the local Service Center told local news that its lot is "not big enough to handle the growing inventory."

https://insideevs.com/news/718406/tesla-vehicles-lot-demand-texas/

Hoenir

JKenH said:

Inside EVs has been accused recently of being anti - Tesla because of a number of negative stories. Here’s another one. Make of it what you will. Tesla reportedly had 2m advance orders for the Cybertruck so maybe the ones in this story are awaiting the accelerator fix or maybe not. 

Clever marketing. Just $250 for a non refundable deposit for a concept car in 2019 draws in 1 million orders. In 2023 the vehicle when it's launched retails at a price over double what was said at the outset.  Orders evaporate overnight. 

Magnitio

Hoenir said:

JKenH said:

Inside EVs has been accused recently of being anti - Tesla because of a number of negative stories. Here’s another one. Make of it what you will. Tesla reportedly had 2m advance orders for the Cybertruck so maybe the ones in this story are awaiting the accelerator fix or maybe not. 

Clever marketing. Just $250 for a non refundable deposit for a concept car in 2019 draws in 1 million orders. In 2023 the vehicle when it's launched retails at a price over double what was said at the outset.  Orders evaporate overnight. 

They are currently delivering Cybertrucks for people who reserved them in 2019. There are definitely some who are not proceeding, but there is still a significant backlog and prices for low-mileage cars are considerably higher than list price. From reading some of the comments by people awaiting delivery, there have been some delays between their car being manufactured and delivery taking place.

JKenH

Even More Tesla Layoffs Are Underway; Design, Engineering, HR Impacted

The automaker is still on the chopping block and it’s unclear when these layoffs will end.

It’s not over yet. After a tumultuous week marred by hundreds of dismissals within Tesla’s Supercharger team—the same team that helped build North America’s largest and most reliable charging network—it seems like that the automaker's relentless layoffs are continuing into this week.

During the weekend, several Tesla employees appeared to have been laid off, as reported by workers on LinkedIn and various social media platforms. Employees from design and engineering teams, product managers, and human resources, among others, shared on social media that they received notifications of the layoffs via email over the weekend, with many being informed on Sunday.

https://insideevs.com/news/718636/even-more-tesla-layoffs-may/