Tesla owners have very high satisfaction. Not sure what to tell you. All automakers have defects, and all of them have cars that catch fire. GM had to advise owners of the Bolt not to park it near anything combustible, you know, like a home.
These sorts of problems w. Tesla are indicative of very low quality control standards.
I've never heard of any other car doing something like this.
10k mile Tesla needs battery replacement
Tesla Owner's car has caught fire and company has yet to address it
Steering Wheel falls off
Taycan interior vs Model S interior
Water leaks through Model Y hatch door
Tesla is selling every car it can make, and it is growing production very rapidly. They have had to raise prices to manage their backlog.
Musk wouldn't have to sell his children to acquire legacy OEM production lines or anything else. He could easy just acquire GM, Ford, etc. if he cared to. Tesla has 15x the market cap of GM. He doesn't want to because the legacy OEMs are burdened with a bunch of garbage assets and liabilities. It's not clear why he would want to use legacy OEM production lines. VW's CEO has remarked that Tesla is able to make cars with shorter production time and that VW should emulate Tesla. Tesla is also new capacity in a very capital efficient way. Their new factories create enough gross profit to pay off the capex within a year or two.
That Tesla has 15x the market cap of GM but sells a fraction of the cars is indicative of an irrational market valuation of Tesla.
There is nothing unique about Tesla anymore. It used to be that they were the only mass-market electric vehicle out there. But that moat has disappeared. Now that every other auto manufacturer, even the ever reluctant Toyota is getting into the EV market it becomes only a matter of time before Tesla is just one more auto manufacturer out of many, albeit a manufacturer with poor quality standards, expensive cars, and a CEO going through a midlife crisis.
Why would you buy a Tesla Model S when you can just get a Porsche Taycan / BMW i8 / whatever electric luxury sedans are available in 2025. Its not the plain interior styling, consistent issues with build quality, or weird ass steering yoke. Tesla's days as a multi hundred dollar stock are numbered and eventually it will be priced as an auto manufacturer that only sells a fraction of the cars that Honda, Ford, GM and Toyota do.
All this is probably just a tangent. Go ahead and hate Musk. It isn't going to stop robotaxis from coming. Google, GM, and many others are also working on it, though I think their approaches will take longer to reach wide deployment.
What other approaches? Using LIDAR instead of cameras?
Let me tell you, a camera only approach to self-driving cars will NEVER work.
Ever.
Because humans have multiple senses that we use to drive; object permeance, spatial awareness, hearing, etc, even then we automatically adjust our driving standards based on external conditions like weather, uncertainty, construction etc.
You sound like you're trying to portray Tesla as a company that's in some sort of trouble. It's not. Tesla has an enviable combination of being highly profitable while having very little debt and huge growth. They're quickly becoming one of the biggest car companies in the world. Their market share of EVs in the US is dropping because for the better part of a decade they were practically the only option. Now they finally have some competition. That speaks to the strength of the EV market, not any sort of failing for Tesla.
Tesla is not even in the top 10 of auto manufacturers in the US
Automotive Sales Data and Statistics
www.goodcarbadcar.net
| January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December | Total 2021 |
General Motors | 223,390 | 242,071 | 230,765 | 231,805 | 222,924 | 219,659 | 162,479 | 144,732 | 150,298 | 146,405 | 146,405 | 149,030 | 2,269,963 |
Toyota Motor Corp | 166,232 | 183,051 | 241,987 | 227,519 | 231,733 | 197,316 | 212,351 | 179,302 | 145,192 | 139,031 | 144,502 | 166,033 | 2,234,249 |
Ford Motor Company | 142,577 | 162,834 | 213,270 | 197,063 | 160,520 | 114,676 | 118,917 | 123,343 | 155,384 | 174,464 | 157,417 | 172,257 | 1,892,722 |
Stellantis - FCA | 150,290 | 150,287 | 169,075 | 163,872 | 157,570 | 163,871 | 135,266 | 130,255 | 135,398 | 137,170 | 137,171 | 137,171 | 1,767,396 |
Honda Motor Company | 92,225 | 106,328 | 148,538 | 156,482 | 176,815 | 153,122 | 135,542 | 114,656 | 95,716 | 97,083 | 84,309 | 105,068 | 1,465,884 |
Hyundai Kia Auto Group | 85,269 | 98,527 | 160,676 | 135,872 | 174,043 | 145,005 | 118,834 | 115,184 | 113,973 | 114,128 | 92,988 | 99,340 | 1,453,839 |
Nissan Motor Co | 100,410 | 100,410 | 112,963 | 109,165 | 104,967 | 109,165 | 75,180 | 72,397 | 75,180 | 73,281 | 73,281 | 73,281 | 1,079,680 |
Volkswagen Group | 51,087 | 51,087 | 57,949 | 69,409 | 66,719 | 62,535 | 45,770 | 44,073 | 45,770 | 45,360 | 45,360 | 45,360 | 630,479 |
Subaru Corporation | 46,400 | 48,300 | 65,726 | 61,389 | 56,558 | 42,877 | 50,125 | 49,373 | 56,724 | 36,817 | 33,045 | 51,146 | 598,480 |
BMW Group | 24,869 | 24,916 | 27,979 | 35,758 | 34,385 | 35,758 | 27,697 | 26,670 | 27,697 | 38,871 | 33,631 | 33,631 | 371,862 |
Daimler | 28,774 | 28,890 | 32,368 | 31,213 | 30,015 | 31,213 | 24,022 | 23,135 | 24,025 | 25,189 | 25,189 | 25,632 | 329,665 |
Mazda | 25,259 | 21,544 | 31,991 | 31,117 | 42,187 | 32,605 | 32,739 | 27,262 | 24,045 | 19,519 | 20,547 | 19,422 | 328,237 |
Tesla | 21,120 | 21,120 | 23,760 | 24,751 | 23,799 | 24,751 | 28,350 | 27,301 | 28,350 | 26,232 | 26,232 | 26,232 | 301,998 |
Volvo | 8,151 | 9,164 | 9,924 | 11,046 | 13,221 | 12,258 | 11,575 | 10,686 | 9,350 | 8,701 | 7,667 | 11,681 | 123,424 |
Jaguar Land Rover | 8,000 | 8,000 | 9,067 | 7,477 | 7,186 | 7,474 | 7,433 | 7,159 | 7,433 | 12,566 | 12,566 | 12,566 | 106,927 |
You don't seem to recognize that the EV market becoming more competitive is very bad for Tesla because aside from being electric cars, they are not well differentiated from other brands, meaning that over time, we should expect Tesla to become priced as an auto manufacturer, not as a technology firm.