🥊 Them's fighting words! Ford's Farley disses Cybertruck: 'I make trucks for real people who do real work'

[HaulingAss]

I read your post alright. Tesla needs to acquire rights to the space they use and that costs money. It's not always optimum to lease land at a low rate of utilization. This is one of Tesla's strengths, they have an uncanny ability to grow at such a rapid rate because they are unusually good at using first principles thinking to optimize their expenditures to maximize the adoption rate of clean transport.

Everything needs to answer to that. Your desire for pull through stalls will only be addressed when it maximizes the speed of transition to sustainable transport. With the imminent release of the Cybertruck, pull-through stalls will accelerate, but they will lag behind Cybertruck ramp because demand for Cybertruck will be initially high, even without pull-through stalls.

To run a business as effectively and successfully as Elon Musk runs a business, you have to learn to think like Elon Musk. Optimizing the details matters, and it's not the same thing as an optimum user experience.

No offense, but Elon thinks about these things more productively than you do (and the proof is in his results). There are more NACS equipped cars in N. America than all the CCS1 EV's from all manufacturers combined, and also far more NACS fast chargers than CCS1 fast chargers from all the fast charging network operators combined. Tesla is profitable when they make an EV, the others are not. These things are not accidents or due to good luck. This is what is supercharging the transition to sustainable energies, first principles thinking and planning. Most people could learn a lot by learning to solve problems using first principles thinking.

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[LDRHAWKE]

It is much simpler than what many of you are saying.

it is not easy to be a CEO of one of the largest car and truck companies in the World on the verge of going belly up, or at best lose your leadership position in the industry, because of having everything invested in making horse draw buggies, and needing to borrow billions to catch up. It would make any leader nervous and flippant. Just look at his expression as he says it.

 

[cvalue13]

Well we don't know some things but if we assume the probable truth, that the CT will cost more than it was supposed to cost but not 70K for a base model. If we assume the specs match what was promised but there are some flaws that hardcore truck users notice. Then in that situation we have a rough idea of how it will play out.

agree to disagree

to make a material dent in existing new ICE pickup sales, CT will need a $40K version - the ~average price of 1/2 ton truck sales in the U.S.

I believe Tesla could and will ultimately have that some day, but which speaks to the medium-term discussion only

As for the near term discussion, we’ll have to wait and see if a $40K model is releasing soon, at any scale

Which again, I’m not saying is impossible or even unlikely

I’m only pointing out that there are a mountain of unshared assumptions behind these sorts of feints towards attitudes like “*soon* the road will be filled with only CTs and the car-casses of all others”

 

[papajamaliciousness]

agree to disagree

to make a material dent in existing new ICE pickup sales, CT will need a $40K version - the ~average price of 1/2 ton truck sales in the U.S.

Keep in mind the gas savings. For a person like me who wants to commute daily to a city 60 miles away I calculated the gas savings would be about $600. I know your electricity bill goes up but it's a fraction of the cost. So if I save $300 a month on gas (which I deliberately underestimated, realistically I would be saving maybe $450 a month on gas) then my car payment can be $300 higher without affecting my monthly budget... so I can afford more car. That is probably the reason people are willing to move from their priuses and their corollas and their civics to Model 3s.

For me I want to be able to drive there twice a day so... you can see where I'm going I guess. Big gas savings means I can afford more car.

 

[Rockvillerich]

And what do you get with solid axles and dual wheels? I don’t see why you can’t do a 5th wheel. Those necks are very tall and we don’t even know how high the side walls will be at the connection point. If a Vw bug can act as a 5th wheel, I’m going to assume Tesla can make it work.

All the motion that make independent axle suspensions great for handling, are disadvantages for towing. Solid axles are stable because they are rigid, as used in the Tesla Semi, along with dual wheels, and sorry, if you can't see why fifth wheel towing option wouldn't be ideal with CT I can't help.

 

[cvalue13]

There is a reason why Tesla has, by far, a better charging network than all the other operators combined

I’m interested in this assertion. And what “by far” means in real terms, exactly?

also seems you mean to be talking specifically and only about fast charging L3?

most up-to-date data I find that is relevent, but not determinant in either clear way to me, is:

• ~50,000 public EV charging stations in US., with ~130,000 charge ports within
• Of those 50,000 stations, 44,000 are L2 only, with about 100,000 L2 charge ports
• Remaining 6,600 charge stations include L3 fast charging, with 28,000 charge ports
• ChargePoint has 27,000 stations (>1/2 of all stations) with ~50,000 ports (40% of all charge ports) - but most L2
• Tesla has 6,000 stations with about 28,000 charge ports
• On f Tesla’s 6,000 stations, 1,600’are supercharger with 17,000 fast ports
• EA + EVGO + ChargePoint have 7,700 fast ports across their stations

So on strict numbers. if you’re talking only about L3 charge stations/ports Tesla about 1,600 stations and 17,000 ports, where all others have about half that. Add in (what I assume) is your view that Tesla’s station reliability and UI are better, then I get to maybe understanding your assertion that Tesla’s fast/L3 charging network is “by far better than all others combined”

But if you’re talking about charge network total, it would seem all others combined have about 44,000 stations to Tesla’s 6,000, and about 100,000 charge ports to Tesla’s 28,000

even sandbagging for reliability etc, it becomes less clear how strongly I should feel about Tesla’s overall charge network being “better by far” than all others combined?

then there’s the separate issue of how strongly this delta should impact a given buyer’s choices, given that they have charging at home.

me for example: I’ve been to a public charging location a total of 6 times in 1 year, only twice L3 (and haven’t had problems with access or reliability)

would I like more/better - always

does it materially sway my use case’s future buying? Unclear

 

[Rockvillerich]

Those seem like pretty small niche needs within the pickup community. Tesla could leave that market to Ford and focus on serving the needs of the other 98% of pickup owners who don't need those things.

Later they could even make specialty versions of their cybertruck to address the super heavy duty users.

Very correct, heavy towing is about the only place the CT would not be awesome, and in every other case the CT will far outperform conventional pickups.

If Tesla wanted to design a HD vehicle capable of serious towing it would be easy enough. The Tesla semi has solid axels, dual tires and a box frame for good reasons.

 

[Almost Mars]

It should be fine for me. I never haul more than 10k lbs. If it's not good enough for you and the other .001% of the population that need a dually, that's unfortunate and I can't help.

If you aren't interested, I'm curious as to why are you here?

 

[HaulingAss]

Bob, there is no need to get adversarial or insult me about it, I'm just explaining how Tesla thinks about these things. They care about driving the transition to sustainaable transport more quickly, even if it doesn't align with how you think they should best expand or whether it serves your particular needs the best. It's not set in stone either.

Every location is different, typically the owner of that location is not the same person as the next location and has different goals and preconceptions that Tesla must work with in order to get a signed lease agreement. We do not know the specifics of the lease negotiations for any of the sites you have pictured above so it's impossible to say what, exactly, drove the final results. I just know that Tesla has a corporate culture that teaches and encourages first principles thinking. That means every lease negotiation will work with what they have and consider the plusses and minusses of alternate locations, paying more or waiting longer to get the landowner to come around, etc. It's not a simple, cookie-cutter process that has predictable results.

Given the above, it's not clear what you are taking issue with.

 

[Cyberman]

I like statements like this. Poking the bear could lead to lower prices on the Cybertruck, just to be vindictive. It’s not wise to challenge Elon. Though Mark will kick his ass in a cage match ?

What is a Mark? It's when as you're planet hopping, the tether drags you across the surface of a given planet and Almost Mars your face.

 

[cvalue13]

So if I save $300 a month on gas (which I deliberately underestimated, realistically I would be saving maybe $450 a month on gas) then my car payment can be $300 higher without affecting my monthly budget... so I can afford more car. That is probably the reason people are willing to move from their priuses and their corollas and their civics to Model 3s.

For me I want to be able to drive there twice a day so... you can see where I'm going I guess. Big gas savings means I can afford more car.

gas savings is nice. but for most it's a perk, not determinative. in the US average commutes just aren't that long, and gas is relative cheap. and now that interest rates are 3X, jumping into a new car means jumping into materially higher interest payments, that eat up any fuel savings.

im not suggesting people dont *say* that's why they're doing it (i myself used that line with my wife), but for many they're variously explaining it to themselves (or their wives) or confused about the all-in expense benefits after taxes, interest increases, etc.

the actual ROI for fuel cost savings is remote or minor for the majority of buyers.

 

[papajamaliciousness]

gas savings is nice. but for most it's a perk,

Gas savings is far more important for me than for other people, but your post underestimated it. Don't forget that tesla is stealing market share from cars that get 35 mpg or 50 mpg like a corolla or a prius, but the vehicles tesla is competing against with the CT get 18 mpg.

 

[cvalue13]

With these factors in mind, and Ford dragging its feet, I predict cybertruck will be the best selling truck in the world by 2025. What do you think?

I like your optimism, but think it lacks basis or scope, so far

far as we know, Tesla is only selling the CT in North America by 2025.

then there's the TAM: people incorrectly cite that eg "Ford sells 800,000 F150's a year", when in fact Ford does not report F150 sales, but instead F-series sales ... which include the F150, 250, 350, and 450 - same reporting is true of GM, etc. And the CT isn't competing with the breadth of this category.

Of that universe of F-series trucks sold annually, a not insignificant portion is to fleet - and it remains to be seen what Tesla will do in fleet management

So now we're down to the universe of F150 and other 1500 series trucks, on possibly mostly on the retail side of the business.

Of that universe, the average sales price is ~$40,000

Which is all to say, whether the CT "will be the best selling truck in the world by 2025" depends heavily on how many units it offers at a $40K price point, and how many of those units it produces.

 

[lksfstcars]

History has a habit of repeating itself!

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