I own a Tesla but I am not a Tesla fan boy by any means. My wife drives an Ioniq 5. Really looking forward to branching out beyond the brand for my next EV but this article on the big automakers’ finances going into a tough market definitely gives me pause. Don’t want to go back to the early days where Tesla was the only game in town.
It’s good for Tesla stockholders but bad for the planet. More competition means more choices and faster adoption. The legacy OEMs are just clueless.
I’m starting to believe that we may in fact need a few bankruptcies among legacies because that would A) clear the bad for the good and B) force the remaining survivors to up their game.
Tesla started mass production of EVs earlier, so Tesla reached economies of scale earlier.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out.
Tesla: We took your stalks so you’d take our stock. Thank you for your sacrifice.
I am a Tesla fanboy. The E-GMP platform looks really promising but Hyundai / Kia do not have a reputation for quality under the hood. Only time will tell.
I think Tesla needs to offer base models.
- A base $32K (before rebates)model 3 highland SR RWD with manual seats and no heated rear seats, Tesla Vision, camera based ADAS, and mechanical HVAC controls without stalks.
- A base 39K (before rebates) model Y SR RWD with manual seats and no heated rear seats , Tesla Vision, camera based ADAS, and mechanical HVAC controls without stalks.
Packages:
Long Range comfort RWD package $7K: LR battery, Front heated memory seats
Long Range comfort AWD package 12K: LR battery, Front heated memory seats
Luddite package $5K: Radar based ADAS, USS, Stalks, HUD
Autopilot 3K
Enhanced AP 6K
FSD 12K