Even if the payload is 30k-35k lbs in the conservative case, it still makes it a no brainer for high volume , relatively lower weight applications. Consistent, predictable routes and economies of scale can be achieved on high traffic routes, especially if the terrain is uneven. I just hope the Semi can outperform Diesel semi a lot in the lifetime maintenance costs.
Might make a lot of sense up in the PNW where electricity prices are very low (thanks to abundant hydro and low population density) and diesel prices are relatively high.
The electric drive train with regeneration would also be very beneficial in the PNW's more rugged terrain.
And at least Washington and Oregon are quite keen on environmental improvements, so they might get low resistance and even help from government and regulators.
In the presentation, Musk stated that the drivetrain is guaranteed for 1 million miles. I have no data on what sort of guarantees Diesel Semi manufacturers offer. Would be good to work that out. There is battery life and degradation as well to take into account.
Anyone who's visited TSMC can tell you drive unit failures have been happening before 100k miles let alone a entire million.
People have had back to back drive unit failures on new cars.
I recall a MS owner getting the run around about an impending DU failure (which manifests as a whine under acceleration) as their warranty was about to expire, only to have it fail out of warranty.
Now people are trying to DIY DU whine on cars that haven't even made it to 100k.
Running a DU in a simulated 1 million mile test is nowhere near the same as actually lasting 1 million miles in the real world over as many years as that would take.
The only thing that matters is the percentage of those failures before the 1mil miles. And that'll be a while.
If Teslas had nearly any concerningly significant number of drivetrain failures, nobody would buy them and they've been around long enough for people to catch up. I did plenty of research before buying mine and I follow Tesla quite closely. Haven't heard any concerns in this regard.
I expect Tesla to only get better for the time being.
We need to stop pretending like replacing one powerplant with another will change that. An entire generation of drive units are failing because of an issue the same boring issue that kills so many ICEs: Coolant getting where it's not supposed to because of a failed seal, causing lubricants to fail.
If you want a car that will go a million miles today, a "boring" base model Lexus is probably a safer bet than a Model 3.
> When people have to resort to this as the leading example of their argument, it's clear they've got nothing of substance left to argue with
Tesla and SpaceX are dependent on D.C. Elon was historically Teflon. Denying a gift to an opposition is delusional. It’s not going to tank the company. But it takes the good-natured response to his timeline optimism, and potentially re-frames it.
Tesla offered a discount in order to that people do not wait until buying in January when a new credit becomes available to people. And this is in a tiny part of the global market as well.
To jump from 'company offers discount' to 'company is dead' is literally the dumbest fucking argument I have ever heard. Seriously wtf.
Also they literally made record profit last quarter and are expected to make record profit this quarter all while still growing rapidly for a company this large.
Claiming Tesla is a dead company is really the height of idiocy. Like if you don't like Musk that fine, but really just denying reality because of that makes you look like very foolish.
Yes. This incentive applies only to the US. Only for December. Only on certain variants of Model 3 and Y. All thanks to people unwilling to take delivery in December due to IRA kicking in on January 1, 2023.
Superb! Thank you! This is exactly what I was after. Reading now.
Edit: The first one:
“Short via long dated put options” …
Is it not a conflict of interest for someone who is shorting Tesla to maintain an “elonmusklies.com” website? Or is the disclosure of their short position enough to excuse their bias?
Do you realize that claims about how the future will unfold are speculative? Why is Elon held to such an impossibly high standard when he makes obviously-speculative projections about what he thinks will happen in the future? Everyone knows he's over-ambitious and over-optimistic about deadlines, but why are we framing that "failure to accurately predict the future" or "failure to estimate a correct timeline" as broken promises and lies? What if we held all of us engineers, tech managers, etc, to the same impossibly high standard?
You may not have a dog in this fight, but these two websites are a little dishonest about how they frame things. Also there's a clear conflict of interest, because they're disclosing a short interest in the stock.
> Why is Elon held to such an impossibly high standard when he makes obviously-speculative projections about what he thinks will happen in the future?
It's because he actually makes these projections while all the other CEOs are tight lipped. Elon is also right on Twitter, loud and center. It takes rational thinking to understand that what he says are speculative projections.
If you've never seen the Sea Lioning comic, I recommend it:
"Sealioning refers to the disingenuous action by a commenter of making an ostensible effort to engage in sincere and serious civil debate, usually by asking persistent questions of the other commenter."
It’s sad that you think cliche tropes are a way to engage in civil discourse.
I’m not even slightly “attached” to Elon. That’s nonsensical. I just asked a polite question. He is as “hateful” as anyone else who has accumulated enough success to have a few enemies along the way. This thread was meant to be about the Tesla Semi truck a superb milestone and you felt the need to attack the CEO of the unquestionably successful company personally. Who’s being hateful?
Sealioning, indeed.
I have 20:20 vision, thanks. Not even slightly “blind” ... anyone can see that Elon is far from perfect. Has made many mistakes in public…
Anyway, as you say, “you choose not to listen”.
I chose to believe in a better future; because the alternative is grim. Elon is _building_ the future whether you and the Haters like it or not.
@daguava Next time your company puts astronauts on the ISS and safely lands reusable rockets on earth, talk to me about Elon not keeping his word.
If you are referring to current twitter moderation, this characterization is untrue. Twitter is currently banning, permanently banning (and then unbanning) accounts that did not broke the law at all.
IMO, this is Elon not understanding the market he's talking to. This type of warranty sounds great to general consumers.
In commercial trucking, it's more about the downtime. Making it to 1 million miles doesn't really matter if the maintenance along the way isn't easier. These trucks will still require tire changes plus maintenance to shocks/struts/control arms/air pressure systems/etc. Stays might be shorter, but commercial trucks already have processes for maintenance.
How do you know they didn't take any of that into account?
In every single field lots of studies have been done on electric vehicles of all kinds, including cars, trucks, vans and planes. And every single time, electric vehicles show that they are cheaper to maintain.
> but commercial trucks already have processes for maintenance.
And I'm sure they would like to get ride of as many of those processes as possible.
The standard warranty on a semi-truck engine is 4 years and 400,000-600,000 miles. A million miles isn't impressive, it screams "we're so far behind, we need to distract them with flashier incentives."
Maybe they can build up their reputation in time to pay for all the warranties. I guess it worked for Kia? IIRC that's around the time that all those "cash back" incentives became popular with the other manufacturers, before they jumped on the 10k bandwagon too.
Yeah - if I were signing a contract for these semis, I would want the '1 million miles' warranty to mean 'if the truck stops working and can't be repaired by Tesla within a week, then Tesla will buy back the truck for the purchase price * miles driven/1 million.'
I'd define 'stops working' as 'stops being road legal or able to drive at the speed limit with the rated load for at least half the advertised range'.
So a broken cab heater or faulty app wouldn't be reason for a warranty return.
I would obviously expect to pay a higher ticket price to get this warranty.
A new semi truck starts at about $100k on the low end. You can get the same level of service by spending $5k on a coffee machine meant for coffee shops.
Intrigued so did a bunch of searches for commercial machines and can't find any mention of "fix it or take it back and pay me for my time" terms anywhere.
In general, if you want this you'd lease the machine. Fairly common for independent cafes and restaurants (and those bean-to-cup machines in offices).
Though, also, the heavy-duty commercial machines are pretty reliable and service-able; you wouldn't generally expect to be out of order for a _week_ even if you owned it.
The promise of EVs is basically less downtime and lower cost. You'll still have to swap tires of course. Brakes will last a lot longer because they are not used a lot. There is no diesel engine to service. The drive train is the bit that is supposedly going to last a long time without efficiency decrease. All the rest is going to be similar. But it looks like some of the more expensive maintenance is going to be easier.
I'd say Elon Musk has a good product here that will likely sell very well.
I also own a Tesla. Over the 6 years I have owned it my automotive costs have decreased by some 80% compared to the ICE vehicles I owned prior. Significantly, the “no oil changes/no weekly fill up” costs immediately saved me around $2800/year. Maintenance costs have dropped to next to nothing, primarily being around tires and windshield wiper fluid.
There’s also no risk of getting a catalytic converter stolen.
What are your expenses that are so dramatically above the norm?
>What are your expenses that are so dramatically above the norm?
My comment about cost was in relation to purchase price, not ongoing cost.
I recently bought a 2022 Model S Plaid, and while there are certainly cheaper Teslas out there (namely, all of them), Tesla doesn't come close to competing with ICE vehicles on cost of acquisition.
I don't know what your situation is, but here's mine:
Got a Model 3 back in 2020. The service I've had to get done to date has been what's in the user manual: tire rotation, cabin air filter replacement and brake fluid check. That's it! No down time other than the few hours per service visit (for which they paid me equivalent of $50 USD to travel from and to the service center on each visit).
And I've used 90% Superchargers to charge and despite that, saved a lot on gas.
I'm glad that you haven't had any issues. I bought a new Model S Plaid a few months ago. Since then, it has been in for service three times, nearly all of which was for work that can be accurately categorized as "Tesla didn't finish putting the car together."
Examples:
There was a very large, very obvious gap between the charge port cover and the adjacent brake lamp assembly. Easily over a half-inch. I was dreading the possibility of getting 'in spec'-ed by Tesla, but my concern was misplaced. Turns out, Tesla hadn't finished installing the brake lamp assembly. It wasn't fully seated.
Rattling from under the frunk? Multiple clips were missing from the plastic trim, and of the clips that were present, many weren't actually clipped in.
Thunking sound from the driver side front tire on bumpy roads? The hub bolts and upper shock bolts were all loose.
Rattling from the center console? Tesla hadn't torqued down the fasteners that attach it to the car.
The hood ornament on the front comes with protective plastic that is supposed to be removed at installation. It wasn't. And it's not the kind of plastic that you can just tear or peel off. Tesla had to do that.
Did I mention that I found out - at delivery - that the new car needed a new windshield?
I have another service appointment coming up soon. The trunk floor was slightly crushed in (about an inch) where the floor meets the rear passenger seat. They would have replaced the trunk floor a while ago, but they couldn't due to parts availability. Also, some of the weather stripping is separating from the car, and it can't just be pushed back in place.
Oh yeah, here's one: after my most recent service appointment - for the suspension issue - my driver profile no longer existed. Good times.
There's more.
Somehow, I still like the car — mostly because it's insanely fast. But this is totally bonkers for any new car, let alone one with a $145,000 price tag.
It’s not eligible in my state, though I wouldn’t pursue a claim if it was.
I totally agree on the insane comment.
I also own a 2018 4Runner. It has around 180,000 miles, has been driven over some of the roughest backcountry routes in the United States, and has had no quality or performance issues. Ever. Just routine maintenance.