What will it take to make you seriously consider an EV?

Depends on how you feel about two-dollar bills.

 

I estimate 415-420k deliveries for Q1, and I wont be surprised it falls below that.

Since Tesla is forcing their sales staff to give a FSD demo for every new purchase, I can only imagine sales are pretty low. Tesla has also reduced their referral credits by 25% and now raising prices across the board. It seems they are focus on revenue and not volume.

 

They have started advertising and that is something that Musk resisted doing in the past.

 

The illogical resistance to advertising in the U.S. is totally driven by Musk's ego and pride. But we all knew when supply caught up to demand that would change.

 

FSD means little when you have maniacs driving around in beat up Nissans being held together with duct tape and selfishness.

 

Wall street predictions are absolutely terrible. I wanted to call sub 400k deliveries so i took the average between that and the 435+. The over night push for FSD 12 rollout had a sheer desperation feel.

I am eyeing a $135.00 entry point over the next 3 months.(Currently $175.00).

That said, this bodes poorly on the EV industry as a whole. Any mfg not named Tesla or BYD should be highly concerned. (looking at you Rivian)

 

the sudden FSD push and the Twitter verse suddenly having glowing reviews on FSD was a dead giveaway delivery was in the gutter.

 

Quebec electric snowmobile maker Taiga suspends production, lays off 70 workers

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/quebec-electric-snowmobile-maker-taiga-suspends-production-lays-off-70-workers-1.2054377.amp.html

 

l.o.l

This has be a parody. Right?

 

While the sudden push of FSD 12 out to the general public may have been intended to be a distraction, it really is a step change from FSD 11. That is undeniable. I have it.

Of course, this doesn't prove they will fully solve autonomy.

 

What’s the saying…80% requires 20% effort?

for true autonomy ..its a catch 22. a lot more cars need to be autonomous.
Like someone said earlier, altimas with paper plates are the wild card. Solve for altimas, solve FSD.

 

With autonomy, FSD is well past 80. It's more like in the mid/high 90s from my FSD 12 experience. The real question is how hard is it getting from 98 to 100 when AI and machine learning are involved. What Tesla has that no one else has is a million+ vehicles on the road generating edge case data. Their other gaping chasm of an advantage is every single Tesla is one over-the-air (OTA) update away from "autonomy" if they ever achieve it.

I've grown tired of the "robotaxi" pipe dream over the years. IMO, if FSD works with zero interventions nearly always, it's a very compelling product. For the first time (because of FSD 12), I now think that could be possible. The rate of improvement over the next 6 months should tell the tale.

(My Model 3 is downloading FSD 12.3.3 "FSD Supervised" right now.

 

Considering teslas are driven by a lot of Asians (including Indians) I welcome FSD!!

 

I don't see it as a distraction. There seems to be a clear focus on improving the revenue numbers. His intention is to hook people going out the gate. 3 month free FSD will become the standard on every new purchase in attempts to hook them on the $200.00 over the one time 12k cost.

I am using 12. It still has a long way to go before the steering wheel will need to be removed, but it is impressive software. Now Tesla has a vast amount of new driver experiences to train on. If you consider maybe less than .5% of the tesla fleet has been using V12 and now it is deployed on almost every new car, better data can be used to train outside of the few V12 beta users. Ultimately I think it was a bad decision to over night roll out, but Musk could be gambling on outperforming and correcting 'bugs' before lawsuits stack up in large numbers.

Tesla has discontinued the discount program and 'raised the price'.

Tesla China is offering 0% loans. I don't think that has anything to do with the company as a whole but more about a domestic Chinese stimulus.

As I also mentioned, referral credits have been reduced to 7500 TP's (a big cheap sales program). Each referral earns 10,000 points, at the equivalency of ~$500, why reduce the value by $125.00. Thats chump change for a guaranteed sale.

Model 3 refresh has been disjointed. I am not sure why they started offering it in the US.

It seems Tesla is trying to cut back on overall COGS while improving revenue. It really feels like they are using Q2 to artificially keep the stock price down.

I find it mildly comical that Musk finally 'capitulated' to advertisement and it turned out to be a terrible growth quarter. Now he can pull a Trumpism and claim advertisement killed sales.

 

It still has a long ways to go. It navigates the road well like a good bot. However it fails at real world awareness. I let my FSD randomly drive me to where its hearts content, however on two separate occasions, it tried to navigate me into an private gated area in which the gate was open with signs clearly market no trespassing with warnings of fines. It felt a little creepy.

But after experiencing 12, I am fully continence its a matter of time before someone trains a model to attack people. Christine felt more like a comedy but its kinda scary that theoretically you could embed training to attack a very specific person while the car would otherwise acts perfectly normal.

 

Allegedly, because FSD 12 is pure AI, the rate of improvement will drastically increase. That's why I say the next 6 months should be telling. For that matter, based on what's been said about it already, 12.4 later this month should reveal a lot.

 

Not nearly enough, but there is a measurable decrease in the Bay Area's carbon dioxide levels due to EV use--and we're not at the tipping point yet:

The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) across the Bay Area has brought a small but steady decrease in carbon dioxide emissions to the region, a new study has found.

...

“That’s 2.6 percent less CO2 per mile driven each year,” lead author Naomi Asimow, a graduate student in the department of earth and planetary science, said in a statement. “What we report is around half as fast as we need to go to get to net zero emissions by 2045,” she added.

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-e...ic-vehicles-emissions-decline-bay-area-study/

 

Tesla reportedly abandons plans to make a less expensive $25,000 electric vehicle

The so-called ‘Model 2’ was thought to be priced at around $25,000. But now, Elon Musk is shifting attention to a new robotaxi platform.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/5/24122064/tesla-cancel-affordable-electric-vehicle-model-2-china

 

Womp womp.