Tesla publishes its financial results for 2023; profit margin shrinks
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I don't even think the market cares about the Toyota Corolla / Camry, as sedans are no longer the biggest sellers, even on a global market level.
What it really seems like the market is dying for is a Chevy Equinox sold at (pre-2022 inflation) Chevy Equinox EV announcement prices.
The Bolt EUV also demonstrated that a smaller vehicle sold for sub-$30K out-of-pocket dollars will also do very well on the market, so presumably a Niro/Kona subcompact EV that was $10-15K less would also sell like hotcakes.
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Fair enough.
You've since clarified that that "came off as" xenophobic instead of "being" sinophobic, so I'm cool.
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And I think the minivan market has been in decline compared to the SUV/crossover market for a while now. GM, Ford, and Stellantis have all dropped minivans from their lineups, as have Kia, Hyundai and others. So Tesla jumping into the van makret would probably be a mistake unless it can come in a commercial van version to compete with the Transit/Express/Sprinter/Promaster
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So, the "exoskeleton" construction Elon promised at the unveiling (surprise surprise) never came to pass. It's a pretty standard Tesla cast-aluminum unibody with nonfunctional stainless panels bolted on for pure aesthetics.
I suspect much of the fundamental engineering could be translated to a more conventional-looking truck, but much of the roof and bed structure would need to be redesigned.
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Yeah, that's where I'd think that if anyone could get sales volume high enough to bring their price per unit down and keep the selling price reasonable, Tesla might be able to do it given their success on the model Y specifically.
Maybe their typical SR/LR model split with a couple gimmicky items "as standard" to keep the manufacturing costs low through standardization and then a few high margin options for the less price sensitive.
That said, I didn't realize Kia has already cancelled the Carnival, so maybe the minivan market really isn't as strong as I thought it might be.
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As an aside, if you're interested into a pretty robust deep dive into the history, politics and economics of North Korea and the North Korean society, I would highly recommend The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia by Andrei Lankov. It's a very comprehensive and clinical look at the DPRK.
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The CT uses structural adhesive to attach the stainless steel body panels to the cast aluminum unibody chassis. This is important because it needs an insulator between the two dissimilar metals to avoid galvanic corrosion issues that would rot out the unibody otherwise. I'm assuming that Tesla still does an electrochemical pretreatment for the unibody "body-in-white" before the SS panels are glued on (still not able to remove the paint line yet, Musk!) because otherwise these corrosion longevity problems would be seriously compounded in real world use.
All that to say, it's highly unlikely that the CT actually derives critical structural properties from its unorthodox chassis design. The use of SS panels created a lot of fairly fundamental engineering headaches, and the benefits remain to be seen. It does seem quite possible that you could create a simpler, cheaper, and more attractive CT design all on the same basic chassis by simply following the traditional automotive logic of welding aluminum body panels to the cast aluminum unibody and then just running the whole thing through the standard automotive paint process.
At that point you'd be making what is effectively a larger Model Y pickup. Maybe worth thinking about if Tesla ever wants to sell an EV pickup that costs less than $61K...
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I've come to think that you're probably right and it'd be a mistake (see my post a couple above), but this description is also what makes me think that IF Tesla still has any magic dust to use, the minivan market might be a good place to use it.
A decent number of fans would insist it's the best vehicle ever, "because Tesla."
And minivans actually are incredibly practical.
And there's currently no competitors in this space.
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OrangeCream
Ars Legatus Legionis
Why would the roof/bed need to be redesigned if they switched to plate/sheet aluminum? Ford uses aluminum panels in the F150 without issue:
https://www.lightmetalage.com/news/industry-news/automotive/aluminum-still-makes-ford-trucks-tough/
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As much as sliding doors make ungodly large SUVs vastly more practical, I say that what the world really needs is a new Ford B-Max or Peugeot 1007.
Behold!
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OrangeCream
Ars Legatus Legionis
The Transit Connect was built on the same platform as the BMax:
https://www.commtrans.com/2019-ford...r-minivan-13867/#iLightbox[gallery_image_1]/3
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Each robo taxi can earn tens of thousands of dollars per year.
Yet Pedo-Elon will sell them to you instead of operating them himself.
It's like the guy selling you a golden goose.
He should be in prison ...
Yet Pedo-Elon will sell them to you instead of operating them himself.
It's like the guy selling you a golden goose.
He should be in prison ...
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I don't have to support either. They're both sufficiently terrible.
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Inflation may have eased off, but wages have not kept up with inflation except for in very specific sectors. The wealthy are doing great, the middle class who is really the segment related to this article are not doing well. Credit card debt is at record levels, and defaults are picking up. Give it a year once all the layoffs take place.
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I would argue it's the reverse, it's only specific sectors like tech that have seen layoffs and retrenchment this past year. Other sectors have seen things like record union wins, competitive hiring, and continued strong demand. So far despite inflation the worst effects have still been on balance sheets of companies for debt financing
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I do wonder what the market is they're trying to target. A robot with a general-purpose AI for household chores or receptionist duties would be immensely useful and popular, but that's the stuff of sci-fi; we're a long way from general AI. That leaves industrial uses where the robot is programmed for each task, but for those you generally want a robot with a specialized shape, not an android. And that market is already well-supplied by other companies.
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Because there's still aluminum structure there that determines the shape of the roofline and bed sills and so on, that would need to be redesigned for a more conventional appearance. You can't just redo the stainless panels in aluminum because it's not rigid enough to hold the sharp creases and flat planes.
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Have a close look at the egg when the robot releases it; there's a very visible shift in its position, which strongly implies that they were using magnets to position it. And if they were using magnets, that in turn raises the question: was it a real egg? I'm willing to bet a very large sum of money that it wasn't.
I would have been far more impressed with the egg demo if they had done all of the careful handling and then deliberately crushed the egg to show that it was a real, raw egg, rather than a prop that would be much more forgiving of excess pressure from the robot's fingers. That they didn't do that is, to me, very telling - it certainly makes it extremely plausible that that part of the video was faked.
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https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-trackerIf you look at job-stayer versus job-switcher the peak for job stayers in 2022 was 6% median wage growth and 8.5% median for job switchers.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FPCPITOTLZGUSAThe general consumer price metric inflation gauge in 2022 was 8%.
Some people were doing better, but even job switchers, on median, were only doing slightly better than inflation. And job stayers were doing worse.
There are lots of things that don't factor into these calculations, but regardless significant fractions of the working population in the US alone saw their purchasing power decrease.
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Redo the stainless steel in aluminum and you might have to melt/round off some of those creases, resulting in ... a DeLorean pickup truck!
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OrangeCream
Ars Legatus Legionis
I’m not sure what you mean. It doesn’t need to be redesigned for a conventional appearance. And while aluminum might not be be able to do the flat planes and creases plate steel can, that doesn’t mean it can’t be used to a reasonable degree. If it needs redesign it isn’t to look different, but to look as close as possible.
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If they drop the QA any lower it would start causing issues on other cars around it - and that might actually just work?
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Of course, that's been happening for decades: https://www.statista.com/statistics/185369/median-hourly-earnings-of-wage-and-salary-workers/. There was a covid-bump near the end of that chart (that looks much larger than it actually was -- note the y-axis labels), but purchasing power hasn't really budged since the 1970's.
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Sure, I said that badly. I didn't SPECIFICALLY mean sedans - just vehicles at those price points.
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What style of vehicle, pray tell, is the Kia Carnival, if not a minivan?
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Is it canceled after 2024? I just looked on their website and saw the 2024 Carnival, so I assumed it was still continuing.
Edit: Motor Trend has a quick review saying it'll be updated for 2025..
https://www.motortrend.com/features/2024-kia-cars-lineup-updates-changes/
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I dunno, it looks like such complete dogshit that I think they need to whole-ass any redesign they might consider.
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Oh I missed that, didn't know they renamed the Sedona so I was looking for that, they hid it amongst the SUVs on their website. They really made it look like an SUV too, at a quick glance you wouldn't tell if you didn't notice the door handle location
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Perhaps Tesla should consider licensing out some of their technology, such as their heat pump design? I think every manufacturer would love to make use of that. It might help to grow the overall market for EV’s.
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And yet the average age and education of a worker has increased since then. People may be advancing in careers as they age, but those advances don't pay as well as they used to. https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/...rker-diversity-and-wage-growth-since-1940.pdf
I'm curious whether the Statista stats are factoring in higher costs for benefits that are paid out of those hourly earnings.
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That's a case in point. There's a reason there was no follow-up to the EV1. The EV1 wasn't a viable car (nor was it intended to be); it was an experiment. That's why it was lease-only and was crushed after 3 years.
Note that I didn't say "Musk" but "Tesla". I agree with you. Musk does deserve some credit, too, for recognizing the potential and funding (and later taking over) Tesla.
Still later than the Tesla Roadster. There also were milk-delivery trucks and golf carts since the 1950s (if not earlier). But they were only useful in their niches.
Tesla really was the first who built a viable battery car that could hold its own against traditional cars. Granted, it was expensive and poor quality.
It may surprise you that I'm actually defending Tesla here. But credit where credit is due, IMO.
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Scary Devil Monastery
Ars Scholae Palatinae
It's honestly speaking not that TSLA couldn't figure that out. For better or worse an enormous amount of driven future-friendly engineers leaped on to the idea of working for the first major EV car maker back in the day before Musk dropped trou and revealed himself for what he truly was in ways impossible to ignore.
No, it's the TSLA work environment. Move fast and break stuff. Impossible deadlines. Designers and factory workers going on their third day awake trying to push out a working final model - any working final model - before the Big Boss of Bosses throws a hissy fit and has half of them fired at random for refusing to magic up a road-ready vehicle and toss the blueprints at the klan gatherings intended to churn out enough vehicles that the White Patriarch will waggle the taint bolstering his chin and cheeks in approval.
That aside the entire design process also follows the same principle which castrated TSLA's venture in FSD - Musk saw fit to handicap the proces of developing one as a result of which the company first to put serious muscle behind the concept are now dead last in the marathon, desperately trying to get their wheelchair to catch up to all the other runners.
That's how you find the Teslas full of stuff you don't expect a car to have, like the ability to use the dashboard as a game console, while a lot of equipment considered common utility on cars in general is conspicuously missing.
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