Mastodawn

@GottaLaff that's incredibly sloppy reporting. Both model x and s had full refresh. That's the plaid version you'll see on drag racing yt beating dedicated drag cars.

Model 3 highlander is full refresh. Model y as well.

When it gets that sloppy hard to take story seriously which is problem because there are real issues. Also totally ignores new cybertruck shipping now and scaling up. And the semi in low volume production.

I'm not a musk fanboy but this missed the real stories totally.

Sir Osis of Liver 🇨🇦 🇲🇽

Model Y
2022 225,799
2023 385,897
2024 (ytd) 108,999

Model 3
2022 195,698
2023 232,702
2024 (ytd) 42,000

Model S
2022 90,473
2023 26,701
2024 (ytd) 6001

Model X
2022 24,099
2023 24,700
2024 (ytd) 499

Cybertruck
2024 (ytd) 3,878

Traditional car models get a mid cycle refresh after 2-3 years and a whole new model at 5-6 years.

The Model S is 12 years old and refreshed or not, it looks really dated. The same for their other models.

The Ford Lightning was introduced in '22, a mid cycle refresh is already scheduled and work on an all new model is already underway.

@Sir_Osis_of_Liver @GottaLaff I'm not sure I'd use the traditional car companies do x or y angle because the entire point of tesla was to not do what they do. Like outsourcing everything but engine and body in white building. Note stories without larger context of overall industry sales meaningless.

VW ID4 total flop for example Terrible software, Dietz fired, I believe pulling back from inhouse development aka toral fail. Ford loses something like 20k per ev they sell. Tesla has good margins.

Tesla is a car company, no matter what Elongated Muskrat says. And cars are still as much fashion as anything else.

Tesla had the advantage of being prime mover and was able to secure early suppliers at favourable margins. As those contracts get renewed, other companies are now competing with them. They are losing their cost advantage.

Especially so in China where BYD, which started out as a battery supplier is absolutely decimating Tesla, their largest market.

Car manufacturers used to be vertically integrated, with the original Ford Rouge plant (among others) having raw materials going in one end, and completed cars out the other. It has some advantages, but it also had limitations, and can greatly reduce flexibility and increase design times and costs.

ID4 has had software revisions and it's solid now. They also have ID3, ID7 and a bunch of other stuff in the pipeline. Each new release has been better than the previous one.

But VW doesn't have to rely on EV sales margins at the moment. They've got decent profit in their ICE lines, and especially from Porsche, Audi, both of whom had been bringing out really solid EVs
on top of their ICE products, and have a lot more in the pipeline.

Right now, there is no replacement in the pipeline for the 6 year old Model 3, Model Y let alone the absolutely ancient Model S and X. We're going to continue to see Muskrat drop prices to maintain sales numbers, but a company can only do that for so long before they simply don't have the cashflow to do new designs.

@Sir_Osis_of_Liver @GottaLaff don't get me wrong. Much to my chagrine I didn't buy tesla when I was telling my friends to, but at this moment I just can't get my finger on where it's really going. It depends on if their cognition model in fsd 12 works. I say no. But surprise twist it's working in real robotics. Agility in market. Really hard to predict.

Byd I believe not doing as well as expected in europe and no plans to build plant in usa. Mexico yes.

Elon stupidly alienating his buyers

FSD so far is still at Level 2 driving at best. Consumer Reports puts the Tesla systems about mid-pack with Ford Blue Cruise and GM's Super Cruise being the front runners of the ones they've tested.

At this point the Mercedes Pilot system is the only one to achieve US approval as a Level 3 automated driving system.

@Sir_Osis_of_Liver @GottaLaff ford blue cruise impossible. Couldn't even do curve on freeway last year, or year before. Unless they got new logic engine? When lightning came out. CR do weird testing. Don't trust it. Mercedes haven't followed or seen. Cruze/waymo both trash. Neither should be allowed on road.

A lot of these depend on what I call slot car logic: micromapping plus gps plus light vision/radar/lidar. None of those are real. Just hacks.

CR do very detailed testing. They are far from the only ones who've had issues with FSD.

The few experiences I've had with Blue Cruise, it performed as advertised.

@Sir_Osis_of_Liver @GottaLaff I decided to stop following fsd closely for a few months at least once I realized beta tester TOS apparently does not allow for showing serious ongoing failure.

I'm going to remain very skeptical of CR and mercedes until see what its parameters are, ie can only be used under xyz circumstances. Which is what most do.

What's interesting is where current machine learning systems fail for AI and driving they are working in robots. Slower. Simpler problems.

@Sir_Osis_of_Liver @GottaLaff there's a lot to watch. No way mercedes cracked AGI. Absolutely none. Or rather their software vendor. Zero chance.

My feeling all these systems based on long discredited but easy to map to compute theories of cognition. Because geeks they didn't take right classes. Mercedes probably using very basic but reliable for subset of driving logic. Can never pass that.

True test: next fsd major upgrade core not incremental change. If so on wrong path. Robots though.

Mercedes got US regulatory approval as a Level 3 driving assistant system, and are the only ones so far.

@Sir_Osis_of_Liver @GottaLaff we may be witnessing Musk failing to read bios of similarly famous engineers like Howard Hughs.

Note rest of oems trying to pull back on bev and do hybrids or phev because they are losing money. This is a bigger story with far more bits.

Elon blowing it big time with twitter big bit. Elon not understanding cognition and humans another. Not grasping freedom of speech unrelated concept to corporate social media big part. All symptoms. Baglino, Kirkhorn leaving...

@Sir_Osis_of_Liver @GottaLaff Lightning not hitting gen 2 refresh. V1 not dedicated ev platform. Modified ICE platform. Rushed to market to establish presence. Gen 2 is actual real full ev. That can't lose money or ford has to exit. Gen 1 audi, mercedes, taycan poor. Taycan has bad resale value. Vw poor. Toyota can't get a real ev, using chinese. GM Bolt better branded LG bodied by GM. Asians doing well. Kia/Hyundai,BYD, I think they are making profit. Very dynamic situation.

The lightning is a far better truck than the Cybertruck at doing truck things.

Having a platform to use for a single model is a waste of resources. The F150 chassis was designed for electrification from the early days of development.

And it's launch went far smoother than Cybertruck, with only a minor glitch with the battery supplier.

Even though the Cybertruck was announced first, the Lightning made it to market almost two years sooner. That's important in the car business.

And Ford doesn't need to make huge profits off the Lightning to start off with. The profit in an ICE F150 can top $30k, and they sell close to 1M/year in just the US and Canada.