And Tesla gets half of its American sales in California and about 20% to Florida where there are no anti-Tesla laws, then another good chunk to Oregon,Washington, Nevada, and Arizona.
There are large swaths of America where Tesla is incognito.
Audi has come on strong in the last 10-20 years.
Volvo has gone from the brand of value conscious liberals to competing directly with BMW and Mercedes.
Since the Germans never royally screwed up reliability and dependability the Japanese never established a beachhead in Europe. Ergo BMW, Mercedes and to a lesser extent Audi have dominated company cars with lower spec C Class 3 Series where in America those are Accord,Camry, Malibu and until recently Fusion. And the percentage of company cars is much higher in Europe. In foreign lands, the Germans attack the higher margin sales. As Detroit automakers tend to do in Foreign lands.
GM/Ford concentrate in the upper 1/3 of the market in China for example.
All good points.
I have been thinking about the predicted "blue wave" this November. Most people are concentrating on how it might impact Washington DC. (That is the subject of the Market Politics thread...) In the states it will probably have an impact on state legislatures too. Last year it almost happened in Virginia. Some states might find a Democratic majority for the first time this decade. While the dealership lobby will still be active in those states, a Democratic legislature may be a bit more willing to think about changing the dealership laws at least in some places. I wouldn't get my hopes up about states like Michigan, but Tesla might get a leg up in some of the other states.
No guarantees, but the odds improve at least a little.
What we have here at TMC is not exactly a representative sample of the American car buyer. There are lots of American buyers in the bottom half of the socioeconomic strata that should be buying a 4 year old Prius or LEAF but stretch their budgets to lease a low spec BMW 3 Series, Mercedes CLA Class or even a used Cadillac Escalade.
In America there are quite a few "millionaires" that make $40k/year. Tesla is not unique among premium brands in getting people to stretch their budgets. The largest Mercedes dealer in the US is due South of Los Angeles in Orange County. Fletcher Jones Motorcars. They run ads saying "If you can afford a Honda Accord EX we can get you into a Mercedes."
Interestingly Bob Lutz of all people recently made similar points:
He was lamenting the decline of the auto industry in general. He set aside autonomous driving as something that would happen eventually, but talked about the things impacting the industry today. He made the same point you did about leasing cars. Because of it, anyone who can afford $400/mo can get into just about any brand of car.
They also touched on Tesla and in this longer format he was able to put his thoughts about Tesla in better context than a short interview on CNBC. He pointed out that he thought Tesla's cars were excellent in design and innovation as well as driving quality. He mentioned that too many car companies have made EVs that were very different from ICE and screamed to the world you were driving an EV and Tesla was the first to come out with an EV that didn't scream it to the world. Which he thought was a good thing.
His primary issue with Tesla is about their business model. He does make a valid point that the competition can bring out EVs that are as compelling as Tesla at a lower price, even if they are losing money on the car, they can make it up with ICE sales. As he points out GM can make up all the losses on the Bolt by raising the price of their pickups $200 each.
I do think he's missing some things. Tesla has gotten the cost per unit for EVs rolling out the factory door down much below anyone elses cost thanks to volume producing li-ion batteries. Tesla's volumes even when the M3 hits full production is below any of the major auto makers. Next year they may make it to about 500K cars, but that will still be 1/2 of Subaru's production and 1/20 GM, Toyota, or VW.
However all the competition coming along will all be in limited quantities in the first few years at least. If demand for these competitors is high, they will have the same problem as the eGolf and Kona. They will run out of batteries and have to slow down or idle production. Tesla is at least partially battery limited too, but their limits are much, much higher and they have a cheaper path to making more.
While the traditional car companies have ICE sales to fall back on, Tesla energy has a strong potential market there that they may be able to exploit soon. The solar roof has been slow to get off the ground and the Powerwall sales have been badly backed up. If they can get that side of the company straightened out soon, that will spread their areas of income better.
I do have my concerns about Tesla though. They have not expanded the service center network for the Model 3 and both delivery centers and service centers are overloaded. Ranger service has been expanded, but what they can do is limited. They have now put out the call for existing owners to help with new customer orientation the last two weeks of this month. While it is a good opportunity for existing owners who want to talk about Tesla to find a willing audience and experienced owners can probably tell new owners things the delivery people don't know, but it shows how thinly stretched the company is.
Tesla also needs to open up training for repair to non-Tesla employees so independent shops can work on them. That doesn't impact the warranty work, but it does help with the cars out of warranty that need work as well as those under warranty they owner is willing to pay for because going to Tesla is too difficult. Tesla has set up some company owned body shops and that's OK, but they need to fill the parts supply line. Many damaged cars sit for months waiting for parts from Tesla. Cars get in accidents, modern safety features can reduce them, but not eliminate them.
Tesla has been brilliant at pulling rabbits out of hats both innovating and coming up with novel solutions to problems. The manufacturing tent was an amazing success. But one area where they are weak compared to other companies making cars is logistics. In some areas they manage the logistics OK, but good logistics for a complex organization has many layers of logistics and Tesla is terrible at some of those areas.
The spare parts problem is one of them. A good logistics plan dedicates a certain small percentage of production towards making spare parts that will be needed in the field. Those parts are then stored as close to where they might be needed as practical and you wait for the orders to come in.
