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Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Tesla’s next mistake



Elon Musk and Tesla haven’t had a good run lately. The Cyber Truck fails as a truck. It’s doing pretty good as a cautionary tale. It’s embarrassing when an old school company like Ford makes a better electric truck. Heck, Rivian makes a better truck -and it’s barely keeping itself afloat as a company.


Now it looks like Tesla and Musk are putting low cost electric cars on the back burner. Instead they are concentrating on self driving cars. That, in my opinion, could be a fatal mistake. People who love cars don’t buy them to have an AI do the driving. That’s called taking a taxi. Why would anyone want to own a personal taxi that a computer drives?


Car companies, and Tesla might be one of the worse, have fallen in love with subscription services. To unlock advanced features requires monthly payments. It seems weird to buy a car yet some of the features built in require subscriptions. 


What would really be nice to have are small, cheap, and efficient electric cars. Ideally one that can be recharged with a cheap home charger. It doesn’t appear that any US companies are working in that direction. 


The closest thing we have to a cheap and efficient electric vehicle are electric bicycles. 


Personally I’m pretty disappointed with Elon. His pet projects and increasingly erratic behavior are concerning. I’m not qualified to give financial advice, but it looks like Tesla stocks, even with current losses, are overvalued. 


-Sixbears




14 comments:

  1. You have three daughters and not one mention about title nine. I’m embarrassed for you and your grandchildren

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    1. I'm embarrassed for you for trying to shoehorn a title nine comment into a post about electric cars and Tesla.

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    2. Even more interesting 6 Bears if you did have 3 daughters. As your fairly private on line that implies that Anon mouse knows you personally.

      Michael

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    3. Well Michael, if someone knows me and won't post their name -it shows that perhaps they know what I am capable of.

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    4. You and I are peaceful, Not Harmless.

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    5. A difference that makes all the difference.

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  2. " Ideally one that can be recharged with a cheap home charger" They've been here for years. An ordinary driver or commuter with a modern plug-in hybrid can charge it from a wall socket overnight, and will almost never need to buy gas or use a public charger. Even with only a few hours to charge, a fully depleted hybrid battery can be mostly charged up, because wall charging is voltage driven (not tailored current), so that the majority of charge is delivered in the first half of the charging period.

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    1. Hybrids and plug in hybrids are popular as range anxiety is removed for the equation. The plug in versions have smaller batteries than full electrics so don't need high amperage chargers.

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  3. Best I've seen to date is the FORD maverick hybrid. Cheap to buy and 33-40mpg economical.

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  4. There were a lot of cutting-edge car companies at the dawn of the 20th Century that are now footnotes in the history of the automotive industry.

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    1. I think there's room for a few more as too many of today's car companies are building cars people don't want -certainly not at the prices charged. Who would have thought that we'd see pickup trucks going for over $100,000. That's just nuts.

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  5. Two days later and the rumor is that cheap Teslas are back on. Shrunken down versions of Model 3 and Y, perhaps as early as winter. But that is in Musk-months, so maybe 3-4 years?
    -justjohn

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  6. As a casual observer I think the comment about Title IX is right on. Very sad state of affairs when men won’t stand up for keeping men out of their daughters bathrooms

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    1. Same anon mouse, just a different tone.

      What does this have to DO about electric vehicle?

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