Model X is one of the best selling electric cars in the US and has very large margin for Tesla. It made a lot of news and an differentiates it from other vehicles in the class. I'm not sure I would consider it a failure.
> Model X is one of the best selling electric cars in the US
No, that car is essentially a failure and I'm amazed Tesla hasn't completely cut it from production.
It sold 1,316 units in the US September. They were selling almost 4,000 in September of '18. Even if you wanted to go by year, you're talking about 26,000 sold in the entire US in 2020 (it's best year and I'm ignoring '21 since there was a factory shut down)[1].
It's just not a good vehicle, doesn't sell well, and is utterly unusable if you live anywhere with rain or snow.
Its a luxury car, Audi is selling less e-Trons then Tesla is selling Model X in the US. The Model X this year sold almost as many vehicles as Ford Mach-E while costing 2x as much. If you compare the Model X to other cars in that price class the Model X is doing fine.
And of course they did a major revamp completely changing the architecture and have to deliver the car from 1 factory to whole world. The Model S had priority at first and the Model X was only slowly added to production again.
If you think Model X is a failure you don't understand the car industry. A car with that kind of margin is well worth doing even if it peaks at 40-50k a year globally.
> and is utterly unusable if you live anywhere with rain or snow
I live in cold Switzerland and a family in my house with 3 little children has one of them. The car is always parked outside. They seem really happy with it and this was never mentioned as an issue.
"Cold" Switzerland? Hasn't been the case in years. Bielersee used to freeze over dozens of metres for weeks, it hasn't happened for at least five years if not height.
In terms of places that are even colder then Switzerland not many people live. And you can't just compare the Bielersee, there are these things called mountains where people go up to ski and it does get quite cold.
i've lived in cold places where i've worried about breaking the handle off trying to get into my car. usually in the early spring when the warm sun can melt snow, but it has time to freeze as well.
I replied to OP but the question was pointed to a broader audience. Many on HN have _very_ negative feelings for Elon.
He's a pretty crazy guy, but I can think of few people/companies who are doing things that could have as big of an impact as Tesla, Starlink, and SpaceX.
I understand how you could have doubts with Tesla, but that how could those feelings not dissolve when seeing those reusable boosters land on their own? How many other organizations could do such a thing?
Considering they used "shower thoughts" to devalue the idea before factoring in Elons incredible track record (by company/capitalist metrics, no personal judgement required), I feel that you are being very generous towards OP.
Do you not consider SpaceX, Starlink, or Tesla to be successful? I don't mean profitable; I mean something that is pushing humanity forward?
I know that Tesla has a lot of negative press due to autopilot (and rightly so), but they are still a leader in both self-driving and electric vehicles.
If these companies push humanity forward? Honestly, I'm a bit on the fence about that. Tesla was disruptive in a sense that it made car manufacturers massively accelerate their EV plans. But do I see any continued impact? Not really.
I know that there are _plenty_ of other electric car manufacturers, and electric cars would eventually become popular, but Tesla making it happen _n_ years faster is an overwhelmingly good thing.
There's also a lot of potential (depending on who you ask) for autopilot, although I think it was a mistake to switch from lidar to pure computer vision. Time will tell.
It's reconciled that these people have elon derangement syndrome and insist that they know his business better than he does despite never having done anything like it before in their lives
Are government subsidies bad? Why? Isn't Elon doing exactly what the government is intending which is to promote the development of technologies that are beneficial but not profitable/popular?
Hasn't this approach been proven successful with the current push towards solar and electric cars?
The article even says:
> The payoff for the public would come in the form of major pollution reductions, but only if solar panels and electric cars break through as viable mass-market products. For now, both remain niche products for mostly well-heeled customers.
Neither of these products are as niche today as they were in 2015 (when the article was written).
But, claiming that SpaceX, Tesla, or Musk personally were uniquely competitive, successful, or disruptive while they had a buffer of 5bn USD in the back pocket is misleading.
Having a boatload of cash does not guarantee success. Elon positioned himself well to compete in areas that would receive those subsidies, and then used that money to create rocketships and electric cars.
I'm sure you can find _plenty_ of examples of people spending billions less effectively, e.g. the city of Boston spending $22 billion on a tunnel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig
I'm not saying he's a genius or unprecedented, just that he is successful, and that his success was not guaranteed.
I'd argue in spite of its doors. A long-range EV in the most popular segment, a full decade before a single competitor? That thing could have had a single door on the front, like the BMW Isetta, and it still would have sold like mad.
It is pulled out of his butt, the F150 sells 3/4 of a million a year (just the f150!) and makes on the low end a gross profit of $10k per sold. The model x sold about 7.5k cars in 2021, way down from the 20-30k it was selling each year.
OK let's say it sold $30k, and Tesla made a profit of $100k (more than the car sells for) for each car.
That's still less than 50% of the F150 yearly profit. LOL.
Comparing it to the F150 is idiotic. That's the most sold car in the US and in a different segment.
Compare it to other comparable cars in the same segment and it looks pretty damn good.
Lower volume high margin cars are really worth it for companies and Ford wishes it had an EV in that classed that sold have as well. The Model X sells in numbers not unlike Mach E while having double the price.
>most profitable and iconic cars in the modern era.
That's what the parent said. Not "in the EV market segment", not "looks pretty damn good".
I agree it's a silly comparison to make normally, but it's a perfectly apt reply to someone stating something so obviously out-of-touch, like the Model X being the most profitable car in the modern era.
By number of sales it's a wash between it and the S. Which are both low volume, high margin, luxury vehicles. Their high volume vehicles, the 3 and the Y drastically out-sell them naturally.
However the X and the S have very high margins in all configurations so they bring in an outsized amount of profit given their share of sales.
That said the margins on the Model 3/Y are nothing to snuff at and are superior to any other mass market vehicle.
He has been planning to put out a "hey who would pay $20 for a blue check" tweet followed by an immediate capitulation to "ok what about $8?" when a big name mocks the idea - that was the plan? That is ... not a good plan.
> And yet his companies are some of the most difficult to get a job at. Interesting.
It’s more difficult to get a tech job at FBI/CIA than Google. Does that make the US government a more desirable place to work?
As an aside, top talent definitely does NOT work at Elon’s companies. Top talent knows that “a good company mission” does not pay for rent, mortgage, or daycare.
> As an aside, top talent definitely does NOT work at Elon’s companies.
This is just not true. There's tons of exceptional engineers working at various of Elon's companies. Would you really claim that SpaceX doesn't have world-class engineers?
This is why the Model X has those silly doors.