I would have thought that anyone following the company would have just known that they always had showrooms. I had to check as to when they actually opened them. I guess this means that you are not really following them. (BTW, I agree that the car of the future is primarily a device to move people and not a computer or software on wheels)
For just a month or two I could have rented a car if needed. Not worth renting for 6 (or more) months just to get back a repaired 12 year old car that is still susceptible to catalytic converter theft.
DW was just luke warm on Tesla and the “no dealership” model. But until last week had refused to go into a dealer to buy a car after bad experiences ~30 years ago. She now says that was the last time she ever goes into a dealer to buy because they didn’t have the car ready when they said and didn’t know how to set it up.
Unbelievable that the sales manager said to us we weren’t important to them.
That’s my situation as well. I didn’t think they had showrooms during the Roadster era. I knew they had them by the time the S launched in 2012 - as I mentioned upthread, I had looked into how they got their approvals for one of their showrooms for a client back in the day, since they opened it in a location (Dadeland Mall) that doesn’t have zoning that allowed dealerships.
Yes, that is pretty crazy. I’ve had mostly good experiences in car dealerships, honestly - but obviously my personal experiences aren’t universally representative. I suspect that most sales managers in most dealerships would know enough not to be overly insulting like that.
Are you sure? I don’t know where to get numbers that are known good, but I see this:
Among other numbers:
France Q1 2023 – BEV models:
Pos
Model
Q1 2023
1
Tesla Model Y
9,364
2
Dacia Spring
8,264
3
Peugeot e-208
6,684
4
Fiat 500
5,538
5
Renault Megane E-Tech
4,460
6
Tesla Model 3
3,158
7
MG 4
2,687
8
Renault Zoe
2,364
9
Renault Twingo
2,195
10
Hyundai Kona
1,454
Source: PFA
Because what we agree on is a tiny part of the nonsense you are are posting.
I tried that in our previous discussion of demo drives, when you refused to imagine anything other than a dealership providing them in the way you are used to. You just ignored it. So no, I’m not going to waste my time again.
It’s easy if you try. First principles rather than whatever way of thinking you’re currently using.
I recommend Jose Pontes, over at CleanTechnica - he posts monthly updates on sales volumes from most major car markets and globally. Here’s the most recent rundown from France. You can see the breakdowns by manufacturing group at the very bottom. Stellantis has about 30% of the French EV market, followed by the Renault group at a little more than 20%. Tesla has 7.5%:
Tesla’s got the best-selling model in the Model Y. But Groupe Renault has four models in the top 10 - the Renault badged Zoe, Twingo, and Megane, and the then top-seller Dacia Spring. Your link includes the March figures, and Tesla definitely showed a strong EOQ surge in sales (the wave unwinds!) - but Renault still sold 17.2K units to Tesla’s 12.5K.
As I told you before, you’re mistaken. That wasn’t me. I completely agree that a showroom can provide demo drives - in fact, the demo drives I’ve taken in Teslas have all been through showrooms. I don’t believe I’ve ever said otherwise.
So perhaps you might offer me your suggestion on how Tesla can meet consumer preferences for immediate delivery without having inventory available close to the customer?
Okay - I’d love to hear you apply first principles to that problem and tell me the “easy” solution.
So - you don’t have a solution to share? The solution that you said was “easy” - that I lacked imagination because I didn’t see it myself? Rather than actually have a discussion and maybe share your idea about how Tesla is going to solve this problem without doing what virtually every other seller of consumer goods has done (sell from inventory from retail locations near where the consumer is)?
No, it wasn’t. If you look at that thread, I never said anything about test drives. Only vehicle sales - having the vehicles available for consumers to take possession upon sale. It was you who brought up test drives (I suspect because you got me confused with someone else - there were a lot of participants on that thread).
There’s no reason for you not to tell me the “easy” solution to this problem that you have identified, but for some reason are spending more time telling me why you won’t discuss it (based on misrepresentations of a prior thread).
I have no idea what Tesla will actually do after they double in size from here. Or maybe double twice. But I’m pretty sure that they’ll stick with the same sales model until after the Cybertruck works through its pre orders. Then when the “model 2” arrives they’ll see what kind of pre order volume they get and re-evaluate. Lots of pre-orders will keep the model the same, probably. If not they have lots of choices before they allow unlimited independent dealers. For example, they could allow independent dealers in a few select countries (not North America). They could establish regional distribution centers where people could go to pick up their cars as assigned by showrooms or online. Maybe pay extra for 1-2 day (prime) delivery to your driveway (skipping the regional center or drawing from it). Or maybe pay less if you show up with 1 week+ notice (or whatever current demand dictates).
These regional centers would only be located in places with high volume so they’d be busy all the time, by design.
As total volume goes up they have to have some place to park at least a few days of inventory and they’d like to minimize how many times each car gets loaded on a truck or ship and how far they travel this way.
Legacy auto makers already have these regional distribution centers, often near shipping ports for imported cars where you often see 1000+ cars parked. (This is where they store a big portion of their 60-100 day inventory)
Nor do dealers have to be independent (much less unlimited). Tesla could choose to run its own dealers, in states that allow that. They could add on-site inventory to an existing showroom, or have an off-site inventor lot. That inventory lot could be collective, holding inventory for a region’s worth of showroom’s - though that presents logistical challenges on its own, which I think argue against that model.
But regardless of whether Tesla increases inventory capacity at individual showrooms (on-site or off-site) or collectively for groups of showrooms, that still involves growing their not-yet-sold inventory significantly. Which is the point I’ve been trying to make. Tesla’s been able to avoid the “inventory” aspect of dealerships (nothing to do with test rides) because they don’t face material volumes of competing BEV inventory in the U.S. Once that changes (as it has in Europe and China), Tesla’s going to have to meet customer expectations about delivery timing that other manufacturers are going to be meeting.
Software has a high cost of development, and the automotive software will be in a state of constant development. The future is the Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) where the software is the primary determinant of performance and function. With traditional ICEs the hardware defines what the vehicle can do. In the SDV model, the functionality and performance of the hardware can be continually be improved or even added to by new software. Customers will expect continued improvement of their vehicles with software updates.
I know you don’t like this, but the car really will become increasingly like a computer. All computers are structurally pretty similar in that they have a couple of processing units for computing and graphics, RAM memory, and data storage. What provides functionality to the computer is the software. This is now rapidly becoming true for cars.
The BEV is also structurally simple. It has a battery, one or two electric motors, brakes, suspension, and wheels. These components are now increasingly coming under the control of a central computer, which means it will be the software that defines how these components will perform. It also means that modifying the software will modify the performance of the hardware. Companies will be competing to improve the operating software to provide better and new functionality to existing hardware. The software will become the central component of the vehicle.
It will go both ways, just like with computers. On one hand you will have companies that want to be like Apple, vertically integrate and customized the hardware and software to provide an attractive customer experience. On the other will be companies that will use third party software, platforms, and batteries (effectively turning these into commodities) and hope to distinguish themselves in some way from others using the same stuff. Probably more companies in the second group given the high cost of developing a BEV from scratch. A repeat of the battles between Mac and the horde of PC makers.
Why isn’t an elevator that is entirely electronic not an electronic device? Seems to me that electronics describes how something works, not what it does.
Somewhat under the radar was this announcement from Google and Renault that they collaborating to create an SDV with the goal:
My opinion is that you are somehow stuck on the idea that Tesla must evolve to how the legacy dealers operate at the high volume that they have. I don’t see it that way. Dealers buy/lease big lots to have as many car choices available to sell to capture the buyer that really wants a car soon. If they can satisfy a same day buyer then the others are easy/easier. It is up for debate if they are mostly competing against the other brands of cars or the other nearby dealers of the same brand.
I’m sure this varies somewhat geographically, but most of the bigger dealers seem to have the other brands covered because the management owns dealerships of many brands – so they don’t really care what brand you want.
If Tesla moves to needing/having more days of inventory they don’t have to do this at every neighboring dealer-like showroom because they aren’t competing with each other. If the car you want is 25 miles away, not a big deal. Heck, I had to wait 2 hours for a car I had an appointment to pickup that was only 50 feet away!
But again, Tesla has all the data on where most sales take place and could strategically try different sales methods in different geographies to optimize their approach. You and I don’t have all that data so we are just guessing at what might work.
Tesla can nudge people towards the most efficient sales method with pricing. Legacy makers can’t easily do this with their dealership model where they have an MSRP but the dealer (by law) can charge whatever they want.
That is worth reading again, IMO.
How are the legacy makers dealing with this? By trying to get more sales online – Tesla’s model!
Yeah. I’m thinking aerodynamics, fenders, trunk space, color, headlights, seat comfort, convertible top, grille, safety features, materials, wheel track for cornering, warranty, price, and a host of other things as are traditional in marketing the product.
By this definition my refrigerator, freezer, washing machine, dryer, Roombas, air conditioner, heater, vacuum cleaners, clocks, microwave, stove, air fryer, table saw, elevator, alarm clock, overhead lights, garage door opener, televisions, radios, alarms, computers, iPads, phones and who knows what else are all “electronic devices” - hardly distinguishable from each other. Or perhaps “defining them by use” makes more sense? A car is going to be for transportation , which is its primary function. If you want to call it “an electronic device”, well nobody can stop you, but also nobody will know what you are talking about. The rest of us think it’s “a transportation device.”
I agree there will be some companies using proprietary software like Tesla (also sales and distribution channels) and others using third party software (like Android or Windows in the computing world.) It would not make sense for Maserati to shoulder the cost of building such software on such a low volume product, but a Maserati will still look, feel, and perform differently than a Toyota, and will command a different price and value-set in the consumer’s mind.
Don’t computer (box) manufacturers continue to upgrade the hardware too? Better processors, with/without CD, crisper displays, different input plugs, more shapes and sizes, folding screens, etc. Software can do many things, it can’t do everything. Hardware will change, and style will change That’s just the history of everything (not just cars.)
Of course Google would love to be the one licensing software to a variety of manufacturers, that’s what they do. Bill Gates figured out that ditching the icky part of manufacturing hardware was a great business plan, and Google already has the Android experience of dealing with multiple manufacturers. This is not a surprise. Apple has been nibbling around the edges for years on this too, but hasn’t found (or at least announced) a pathway in. Their experience dealing with multiple hardware platforms was a disaster. That doesn’t mean they might not like part of this lucrative sector worldwide.
But not by anything remotely like computers or phones. That’s the key thing that I think you’re missing.
If you have the hardware for a computer, you can program software for that computer to do an enormous variety of tasks. It can run a spreadsheet, download videos, play games, compose music - an almost endless array of functions.
If you have the hardware for an electric motor, you can program software for that motor to…run the motor within the physical capabilities of the motor. That’s it. Whatever the motor is able to do, the software can tell it to do - but that’s an extremely limited set of outputs - and generally speaking, all you want to do is optimize the performance. Because the motor is ultimately a mechanical device.
That’s why I keep bringing up the example of an elevator. No matter how good the software for any particular elevator is, the function set of the elevator is so narrow that there’s really not a lot of variation in how well the elevator performs based on the software.
For BEV’s, the same is going to be true. The characteristics of the BEV are going to be set by the physical and mechanical components of the car. Obviously all the body type and configuration, of course - software doesn’t turn a two-door coupe into a pickup truck. But also the drive performance, for the most part - it’s going to depend almost entirely on how good/big the motors are, how good the shocks and dampers are, how good/big the batteries are. What provides functionality to the car isn’t the software, and never will be - it’s the hardware.
Sure, software affects that - within a very narrow range. You want to optimize the controls of the hardware. But when Tesla wants to improve the driving performance of one car type versus another, it doesn’t do that by giving it different software. It gives it bigger motors (X v. Y) or extra motors (Plaid 3-motor vs. dual motor). Hardware changes, not software.
And you hated it - and it sounds like your wife has not only swore not to ever do business with that company again, but any car dealer ever. Not great customer satisfaction (though it sounds like that was affected by the egregious treatment you received).
Sure, you can spread available inventory around different showroom inventory spaces more readily if you own all those dealers - but there’s logistical issues in having the car a customer wants in Showroom B if the customer happens to be 25 miles away in Showroom A. None of them are insurmountable (customer can drive 25 miles, or they can wait an hour or two for the car to come to them) - but they are friction on the sale being made, That’s one of the main reasons why manufacturers are willing to bear the capital costs of carrying large inventories - to avoid that friction, to avoid the possibility that the customer might instead choose a different manufacturer’s car.
If you face no competition from other manufacturers on that dynamic, as Tesla generally does not today in the US, then that friction can be easily ignored. If the customer is going to face friction at any seller, then your friction doesn’t matter much.
That cuts both ways. Tesla gets to control their pricing lever - but they then don’t have the flexibility to (effectively) charge different prices to different customers, down to the granularity of the dealer level. Customers dislike haggling over car prices - but they don’t dislike it enough to overcome the enormous benefit that provides to car manufacturers. That’s why fixed-price new car sales never got a foothold in the industry prior to Tesla. It’s been tried (most notably the Saturn model - the MSRP laws don’t really block manufacturers from doing that), but never spread.
Again, for new EV’s that are massively supply-constrained and have no real competitor models (like the Lightning), there is no benefit. Ford doesn’t need flexibility on the price, and they don’t really need to adjust the price granularly in specific areas to maximize sales. So for those models, they’re trying to cut the dealers out, because in those circumstances the dealers’ pricing functions don’t add value. But in a mature, “normal” BEV environment the market forces that have dissuaded manufacturers from adopting that “Saturn” model will reassert themselves.
How is software going to change my four door sedan into a truck that can haul sheet rock?
How about when my kids go off to college, will it change my four door sedan into a two-seat convertible for me and the Mrs.?
I am surprised that no one has yet proposed regional inventory centers and having the cars drive themselves to the various showrooms or even straight to the customer …
It was suggested upthread. As Hawkwin pointed out, we’re a long time away from that technology.
But perhaps most importantly, there are economic reasons why that’s a problem - at least if you have regional inventory. Customers aren’t likely to take title to their car sight unseen. They don’t today, for the most part. They typically don’t complete their purchase until they can look at their car at a delivery center or showroom.
So those cars would remain owned by Tesla as they’re driving from the regional lot to a showroom or delivery center or house. And that’s a cost for Tesla - maybe even more than having them hauled - for anything but a short trip. Putting lots of highway/street miles on an unsold new car runs the risk of turning a “new” car into a “used” one. All “new” cars have some miles on them - they’ve been driven a bit around the factory floor and dealership/showroom areas, and many (most?) have been test-driven a few times. But if you have regional inventory, you’re looking at some “new” cars showing up with 50-100 miles on the odometer, which becomes a liability for Tesla if the customer doesn’t take possession of the car (say, because it got a scratch in the paint from road debris on the drive down).
That wasn’t a definition. You are confusing electrical device with electronic. An electrical device uses electricity to do something. An electronic device controls the flow of electricity, often by processing information, to do something. A light bulb is electric but not electronic. An automatic lighting unit where electricity runs a control board that processes data from a light sensor to control a light bulb is electronic. That light bulb is now part of an electronic device.
Your typical BEV uses electricity to power on electronic control units (ECUs) that process inputs from a range of sensors that then control the functions of the vehicle. That is an electronic device.
That is only partially true, and that part is getting smaller all the time. One simple example, the performance and range of a BEV battery depends greatly on the ability to control battery temperature. Batteries produce lots of heat. How that heat is dissipated is controlled by software. Goofy and others have argued that BEV batteries will eventually become commodity products, like AAA batteries today. Probably true for virtually all the physical components of a BEV. If that is the case, then the primary way to differentiate BEV performance from different manufacturers will be how those components are used and integrated. For that the software is at least as important as the hardware, and will become more so as the behavior and connectivity of cars become more complex.
I think you have that reversed. As a mature technology, the design and structure of elevators have gotten so generic that there is no real performance distinction between the hardware from different companies. It is the software that controls the acceleration and velocity of the elevator, trying to optimize serving as many people possible with a comfortable ride. Software is what defines differences in elevator performance.
Have you bought a washer recently? Samsung, LG, and GE all have similar hardware. It’s just a washing machine after all. Where they differentiate themselves is in their software that do stuff like use sensors to detect dirt levels and fabric types to optimize the wash cycle. That is the new direction of things. Software is developed to accomplish a task and then the hardware is designed to optimize the functionality of the software.
