As someone who dislikes Musk's seemingly oblivious approach to "Move fast and break things" in government when real lives are at stake and expertise is not easy to come by, I really want this drop to be attributable to that. I really, really do.
I own a Tesla (2023 Model Y Long Range 7-seat), and I do enjoy my Model Y; I have some complaints, but overall I'm happy with the safety features of the vehicle. I do not and will not enable the FSD or Auto-steer; but otherwise I am happy with it, and want other car manufacturers to take note of the vertical technological integration possible when they put their minds to it.
However, in pursuit of a better bottom line, Tesla has made some affordance changes to their post 2023 models; and even their camera vision in the 2023 model is a poor substitute for ultra-sonic sensors for parking.
Combine that with their gutting of the Tesla Supercharger team; and the subsequent decline in quality of their supercharger experience, and then combine that with the macro-economic issues that are surrounding EV range and EV experiences in real world conditions; and you have a decline that can be attributed to the non-Musk effects as well.
I don't doubt his political machinations have contributed to Tesla's decline. If I could sell my Tesla, I would; (I am way underwater due to its steep drop in resale value), but I think a substantial percentage of this drop can be attributable to the hype of the EV not living up to the reality of owning an EV.
> but I think a substantial percentage of this drop can be attributable to the hype of the EV not living up to the reality of owning an EV.
If this were true, the market for EVs would decline in entirety. But it doesn't, or at least, not by 14%. For many people, EVs are ok, despite their real-world drawbacks: https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales
Slight drawbacks can be attributed to ending of subsidies for EV purchases, not necessarily because EVs are inherently worse than ICE cars.
> If this were true, the market for EVs would decline in entirety
I was just reading a different article[1] that pointed out 4 of the top EV sellers in the US (Tesla, Ford, Kia and Hyundai) have announced Q2 drops in sales. BMW is the another top EV seller whose sales dropped in Q2[2]. Of major sellers, only GM has risen.
It's probably too early to say that "the market for EVs" is declining, but this doesn't seem great.
You probably shouldn't over-focus on the US, which, at least for now, isn't a huge marketplace for electric cars (10% of new car sales in the US are electric, vs 20% in the EU and almost 50% in China). The reported Tesla decline is global.
GM sales have more than doubled. EV's do seem to be more of a winner-take-all market than gasoline vehicles. So overall numbers (which are up) seem more relevant.
When comparing 2024 H1 to 2025 H1, those GM numbers are skewed. They stopped producing the Chevy Bolt at the end of 2023, and didn't start selling the Equinox EV until May 2024. So their 2024 H1 EV numbers were lower than usual.
Similarly Ford's numbers are skewed because of a Mustang stop ship. Just more evidence that the number that matters is the bottom line total of all brands rather than individual brand sales.
Are we talking US or world-wide? Because Tesla figures are world-wide. According to the article of this HN thread, Tesla doesn't provide per-country numbers. Your [2] seems to be BMW US. [1] is paywalled.
“I don't doubt his political machinations have contributed to Tesla's decline. If I could sell my Tesla, I would; (I am way underwater due to its steep drop in resale value), but I think a substantial percentage of this drop can be attributable to the hype of the EV not living up to the reality of owning an EV.
”
I don’t know anybody who would go back to ICE after owning an EV. But I know a lot of people including myself who wouldn’t buy a Tesla because of Musk’s behavior. For me it started with the Thai cave rescue and Musk’s stupid submarine.
> I don't doubt his political machinations have contributed to Tesla's decline. If I could sell my Tesla, I would; (I am way underwater due to its steep drop in resale value), but I think a substantial percentage of this drop can be attributable to the hype of the EV not living up to the reality of owning an EV.
I'm pretty sure his political playing around has had an effect, though I think other issues such as well documented quality problems and bad comparisons to other EVs has had a greater effect. The joke that is the cybertruck is a large part of the problem too, some people don't want to be associated with that and wouldn't even if it were not for the other matters, and and its quality problems (how many recalls have there been now?) are far more well known than the issues in the rest of the product range (those products are on the whole a lot better, but is the average reasonable buyer going to take that risk?).
Up until 2021, everybody buying an EV expected to be underwater. EV prices were dropping 10% per year and Tesla was promising to deliver the Cybertruck for $40k. So if you could get a Cybertruck for $40K, a new Model Y would be a similar price. And if anybody could get a new model Y for $40K, obviously a used Model Y would be worth substantially less than that.
But we bought anyway -- it was like buying computers 20 years ago -- yes, you could buy a lot more computer for less money in a few months, but if you were always waiting you'd never buy a computer.
The difference is that we expected the same thing to happen to gas cars. If you can buy a good electric car brand new for $30K, any used car gas or electric is worth substantially less than that.
And that's what would happen if we had access to Chinese cars and prices. $8K for a pretty good small car. $15K for a model 3 competitor. $25K for a model Y competitor. $35K for Porsche Macan competitor.
> Up until 2021, everybody buying an EV expected to be underwater
Not if they believed the CEO of Tesla, he was out there telling them they would be buying an appreciating asset. And now, that might sound dumb (and in hindsight very clearly is), but there were a lot of people who did believe.
> but I think a substantial percentage of this drop can be attributable to the hype of the EV not living up to the reality of owning an EV.but I think a substantial percentage of this drop can be attributable to the hype of the EV not living up to the reality of owning an EV.
What is the "hype" of owning an EV? I've owned one, I now have a hybrid. It wasn't because the EV didn't live up to some imagined hype, it was actually one of the better cars I've ever owned at its job, but my requirements changed an an EV didn't fit.
On a per mile basis it was cheap, the performance was exceptional, and the infotainment was light years ahead of most other vehicles. Is there someone out there expecting it to walk the dog and cook and clean too?
Just to make this concrete: I keep spreadsheets for all my vehicles, and I enter every single fuel up. My family's CRV costs $0.161/mile to drive.
I bought a VW ID.4 in January, and I also track its recharges. That car costs $0.030/mile. I don't know yet about maintenance, but just for the daily driving, gas costs 5.36x that of an EV. What would be a $45 fill-up of gas is an $8.40 electric bill.
On a per-mile basis, depreciation is a real killer.
I just (like an hour ago) sold the car that I’ve been driving for the past 12 years. I paid $11k in cash for it, and sold it for $3k. Unless you do a lot of driving, it’s tough for an EV to make up that kind of difference based on cheaper fuel.
The "Hype" (not sure why we're using scare-quotes here; as if somehow EVs are the only thing that aren't subject to the Gartner Hype Cycle) surrounding EVs include some of the following:
- Range is vastly overstated, especially in adverse weather conditions (like cold, snow, or even heat) As an example, in spring, when conditions are perfect (70 degree weather, not too sunny, not too cloudy), my Tesla Model Y LR that is supposed to get 330 miles from a 100% charge gets ... 250. That's not even close to accurate. In winter or in adverse weather conditions it can drop down to as much as 180. That's close to a 50% drop.
- Taking an EV on a long trip is not a simple prospect; and even now in 2025 Tesla still hasn't made it convenient to put in a destination and get there. Somehow the tesla navigation assumes (and up until this latest software update you had to do it yourself) that somehow when you get to where you're going a charger will be within x% of you, for whatever percentage of "x" is when you arrive at your destination. Until the latest update, we had to trick the Tesla by making our destination a round trip affair, to get it to give us a super-charger that would hopefully be close to where we're going, so it wasn't a matter of getting to our destination and manually figuring out where the nearest supercharger is. (We use it for Hockey, so we are frequently driving up the East Coast from the DC Area).
- To keep on the Super Charger issues, it is common to arrive and find undocumented issues with Superchargers (their latest updates also seem to have tried to deal with that problem, though it's not 100% fixed), or entire Supercharger stations literally being out of service but not documented on their side.
- Outside of First party charging; the thirdparty charging, like through Chargepoint et. al. is even worse. As an owner of a Tesla, it's more likely that any third-party charger I try to use will have a problem where my car doesn't actually charge. It's super annoying and at a recent visit to Hershey Park PA, I didn't find out until I came back two hours later that no charging had occurred. I don't blame Tesla for this (though it'd be nice to have a push notification warning me after 5 minutes that nothing is charging), but this is a larger EV Problem.
- Overall, taking an EV somewhere still means planning your trip carefully to ensure your destination has charging, how you're getting there has charging, and a back-up plan in case that charging doesn't work.
- Like recently, my spouse took our Tesla to Massuchusetts to pick up our daughter from Soccer camp; and to where we were going there was literally a route that was backed up for 4 hours, and another route that had no superchargers for about 100 miles. So we could either deal with the fact that she was in traffic for four extra hours, or we could deal with the fact that no first-party chargers were in the other route and hope the third-party chargers were up to snuff.
- Wear and tear on the car tires. I got 30,000 miles out of my tires and the tire technician said that was pretty good. They regularly deal with Teslas and other EVs that eat through tires much more quickly than the tires are rated for (and these are Tesla approved tires) due to the weight of the vehicle and the braking dynamics.
- Supply chain for repairs. There's lots of collision centers in the Washington DC area. There are lots of vehicles hanging out, waiting for parts. By far the most vehicles that stay out there the longest (both from my conversations with folks that work at the collision centers and my own eyeballs, I pass two every day) say that EVs, especially Teslas, have a much longer lead time than non-EV vehicles for parts, and that there are not as many OEMs for those parts. So that means if you get in a wreck with a Tesla, you can be waiting weeks or months when someone else might only wait a week or two for a part. As the supply chains improve for EVs that will get better, but that's still a concern for now, and a reason why you can't go "all EV" if you do any serious driving (like we do).
- Charging is not yet as easy as finding a Gas station and taking five minutes to pump gas. It's 15-30 minutes at a Supercharger depending on what you're charging to. Luckily most of the super chargers I used have good amenities close by, but some don't. Some are random mall parking lots with nothing nearby.
These are things the hype cycle doesn't tell you about and you don't realize until you've actually owned an EV and tried to make it your day-to-day vehicle. It's wonderful for short commutes to work; but there are real drawbacks, especially using it for long distance trips or trips that include winter weather.
I would counter your charging anecdote almost entirely with my anecdote. I have never had to worry about arriving at a destination without enough to make it to another supercharger, that worked great in 2022 when I got my model 3 and works great today. I have never had so much as a single issue with a supercharger not working or being out of service and not saying it on the car screen. I don't have any rebuttals for your other points: winter range stinks, and tires wear faster than gas equivalents. EVs really need a battery innovation to add another 100 estimated miles to really push them into the mainstream imo. If we can get to the 450ish range that would help a lot.
The range thing is weird, because it’s simultaneously too little for your use case, and too much for mine. What I want is a shorter-range (like 200 km/125 miles would be perfect, it gives enough buffer by being about double the max range I’d ever need in practice) that saves on upfront cost and weight by having a smaller battery that can be my household’s secondary city car. But as-is, there’s no EV that’s cheap enough to justify buying as a cheap, low-range city car.
So instead of my household having one EV and one gas car, we’ve got two gas cars.
I dunno, like it might be the best option if I was set on an EV, but it feels like it has a bigger battery than necessary rather than just having a smaller battery, including a heat pump on the base trim, and not air-cooling the battery. (And chademo is pretty unappealing, and lack of AWD is a downer.)
All-in-all, it feels like a lot of compromises compared to our current second car. (A 2019 Impreza hatch.)
> These are things the hype cycle doesn't tell you about and you don't realize until you've actually owned an EV and tried to make it your day-to-day vehicle.
I could point by point argue my experience, which has a lot of differences to your experience, but those are just our anecdotes.
Where I fundamentally disagree with you is that this is still the hype. I think everyone in the world knows these things at this point and talks about them. We are the point where the “hype” is anti-hype with the points you raised.
I don’t own an EV right now because it doesn’t fit my use case, but I actually think the “hype” has swung too far back the other direction.
> but otherwise I am happy with it, and want other car manufacturers to take note of the vertical technological integration possible when they put their minds to it
Can you make practical examples of this vertical technological integration?
The Tesla App allows me to lock, unlock the car, pop and close the trunk, check the cameras, schedule it to warm itself up, input destinations, see its real-time location, and see charging issues.
The app isn't clunky to use. It's wonderful, and it's really well made.
The car's infotainment system is vertically integrated; all of the features are available in one common interface and work well with one another. The car will automatically turn down the fans when I'm on a call, as just one example.
The cameras turn on and show me the blind spots when I'm changing lanes (my only complaint there is that the side-view mirrors do not physically allow me to position them as recommended by NHTSA).
The integrated maps also include charging station availability; and the maps automatically update (I don't need to buy an SD Card from a manufacturer with the updated maps). The software team is able to push updates to my car; so if there are bugs with their bluetooth, it gets fixed without me having to go to the dealership and hoping they care enough about their technology stack to fix it.
If there are bugs, they get fixed; and since they're not dealing with different third-party modules, they own the entire stack that is in the car.
My only complaints are that I can't use Waze on my Tesla, which shows where cops are, and sometimes their navigation routes are wonky and aren't practical (like driving through the middle of DC to avoid going around the beltway), but otherwise the technical experience of owning and operating a tesla an using their infotainment system is lightyears ahead of any other car I've driven.
Contra that with the Volkswagen I just rented where its Carplay crashed and crashed the whole infotainment system; or the bug where its rearview camera stayed on until I manually closed it when I shifted into drive;
1) I drove a 2025 VW ID4 for months and car play has never crashed the infotainment once. I don't understand the argument for the rearview camera, if you keep being in reverse of course it will stay on until you shift to drive. Also, my ID4 unlocked itself through the app even just through bluetooth proximity.
2) Pretty much all the features you list are on competitors cars from ages or borderline irrelevant (I really don't care about fans getting quieter during calls). E.g. blind spots warning are decade+ old technology.
That’s the bug, that the rear view camera stayed on when I shifted into drive until I manually closed it. I could reproduce that bug reliably, leaving me to believe it’s just not a big deal to the manufacturer to fix.
Also, just because you’re unable to crash the infotainment system doesn’t mean no one is, or that it’s hard to crash.
These aren't unique to Tesla, though a lot of manufacturers want you to pay to have a lot of that stuff in their app, which is fucked.
I also want less touch controls and less entirely featureless controls. My car is a 2012 Mini Countryman (no screens other than dot matrix displays) and I was on a roof at a work site and threw my keys down to another guy to move it, He described it as being like `in a spaceship`. Which really tickled me because he had a 2024 mustang with big touch screens in it. I guess mine was like a spaceship to him because of all the physical controls and toggle switches.
My parents have a 2021 Hyundai Santa Cruz (First model year!) and the design is baffling to me. The AC controls are on a capacitive touch display below the main one so you have no idea what you're doing unless you're looking at it. There are also multiple controls with almost no tactile feel at the base of the drive select lever and seat climate controls mounted to the front of the center divider that just a few raised bumps on would go a long way to helping quickly identify them while pawing around there to turn the seat heat/cool. The infotainment does OTA but the maps updates require using a USB drive. You can do it at home though it is an incredibly clunky and antiquated process.
To be perfectly honest the only things about the Santa Cruz that I wish my car had as far as the electronics go is blind spot/camera feeds and modern media support (carplay). Other than that I strongly prefer my incredibly aged dash. My front and center is just a tachometer with a small dot matrix display that shows the current speed digitally with one more below that for a couple other things (I leave it on real-time fuel consumption.) That is it. I'd rather use my phone for maps (Standalone or via carplay) over anything built in to any vehicle I've ever driven.
Does Tesla make their app worse if you drive a non-tesla? When I scroll around looking for chargers in their app it is one of the laggiest, most frustrating map interfaces I've ever used. Much worse than other charger networks' apps or plugshare.
I can't really agree with the app. Yes, it isn't bad. Wonderful and well made? Not so much. I see this as more of a testament to how bad the rest of the industry is. And I say this as someone who thinks this vehicle sets the baseline standard for a good vehicle experience.
I'll start this by saying that while I don't agree with all the UX decisions Tesla has made, the UI of their interface and app is certainly extremely polished.
But (and I'll note you didn't claim this specifically) a lot of these are things others do.
My Audi app lets me lock and unlock the car, check fuel level/range and oil, need for service, see its location, etc.
Cameras with indicator usage is across multiple manufacturers.
I do not need to buy map updates, they come over cellular. As do software updates.
I realize that software is a different beast, but if you're comparing VW based on a rental, then the Teslas I've rented at times were garbage, too. Poor sealing so the cabins whistled at freeway speeds, non-updated software that played havoc with the cars world view, showing cars and trucks around me constantly vanishing and reappearing, phantom vehicles. Not to mention a plethora of "sensor/camera/etc blocked" even though the vehicle was clean.
(responding to earlier version of comment referencing China).
Note that Tesla learned a lot of their vertical integration and manufacturing expertise from the Chinese. Their first factory in Fremont produced low quality product at a high price. Then they built a factory in China using a lot of local expertise which produced a much higher quality product much cheaper. Their German factory is a clone of the Chinese factory.
Reports are that Ford is in panic mode after analyzing the quality and performance of recent Chinese cars. If other companies are similar perhaps positive changes will be made in at least some of them.
>Musk's seemingly oblivious approach to "Move fast and break things" in government
DOGE wasn't incidentally and accidentally breaking things in their effort to save money, they were yammering about saving money as they systematically gutted the regulatory agencies investigating Musk.
To be fair, they also dismantled tons of important things with quiet constituencies that had nothing to do with Musk (USAID / PEPFAR, NIH, NEA, etc. etc.)
I meant in the context of helping him / his businesses - he clearly has an 'interest' in Africa but there was no financial or regulatory incentive for those cuts - they were just malicious on their own.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration laid off 4% of their employees
CFPB was responsible for probing Tesla for any customer complaints around auto-financing loans but they had not yet ever formally fined or sued Tesla. They were closest attempt at being 'gutted' with around 90% reduction, but all layoffs were halted by a judge.
You should really try FSD, I have it drive me from SF down the peninsula and back every day and it’s amazing, basically requires zero intervention.
I think the political complaints are dumb and people over index on stuff that doesn’t matter because of partisan politics. HN has hated on Tesla and musk for years despite continued success across multiple difficult industries.
If the robotaxi work in Austin succeeds they’ll have a massive advantage. There’s really nobody close to what Tesla is doing.
I had a 2018 M3P and now a 2025 Model S Plaid, the vision stuff works better, the quality is a lot nicer, there are a lot more superchargers and more are v3 or v4.
The quality of the comments on this thread suggest there’s still value here to buy. When people dismiss stuff for dumb reasons it’s easy to make money. It’s been the story of Tesla from the beginning.
Just FYI "basically requires zero intervention" is nowhere close to what's needed for self-driving.
It needs to be probably 1-2 orders of magnitude better than what the vast majority of people would actually experience as "zero interventions ever".
One intervention every 80 miles ("basically zero") is 178 interventions per year for the average American driver. Let's say conservatively that 10% of those avoids an accident, you're looking at 17 accidents caused by each driver per year, never mind the accidents they're just victim to due to misfortunate of being near someone else's 17 annual accidents.
It’s still supervised, the Austin robotaxi is running unsupervised with newer software in a more controlled rollout.
For supervised minimal intervention is fine and 99% of the time I’m just sitting there watching. It’s still extremely valuable and useful and something nobody else is close to. It makes driving a lot simpler and safer. I already think it’s better than most people and would rather have a driver use it than not if I’m a passenger.
Unsupervised will be amazing if they can pull it off generally and will have major market effects, but obviously it’s harder for the reasons you describe.
I'm sure Teslas automated features work well in California, where their engineers are based. They do not, however, work as well in the varying climates found on the East Coast. This is funny as a "works on my machine" approach to testing, but tragic since real lives are at stake.
My dad takes his from Western New York down to Florida pretty regularly and does FSD most of the way.
I think these complaints are just outdated - it has improved rapidly over the last two years. If you never use it why would you think you have an accurate model for how good it is in different environments?
SF is also hardly a simple environment to drive in, it’s more complicated than most east coast driving.
I know you are making stuff up as I own a Tesla and live on the East coast and FSD is nowhere close to what you are describing. You can barely use FSD 4 months out of the year.
I use their adaptive cruise control; and unless they intentionally nerfed it compared to their FSD, I have to be really careful using it in the DC area, as it will randomly brake in certain places.
With the latest Tesla Updates I can tell it thinks there's a grade or curve issue that is causing it to brake; but before the latest update it would just randomly brake in certain places (coming down from 70 to 40 very quickly) and that is just dangerous in the DC area.
I own a Tesla (2023 Model Y Long Range 7-seat), and I do enjoy my Model Y; I have some complaints, but overall I'm happy with the safety features of the vehicle. I do not and will not enable the FSD or Auto-steer; but otherwise I am happy with it, and want other car manufacturers to take note of the vertical technological integration possible when they put their minds to it.
However, in pursuit of a better bottom line, Tesla has made some affordance changes to their post 2023 models; and even their camera vision in the 2023 model is a poor substitute for ultra-sonic sensors for parking.
Combine that with their gutting of the Tesla Supercharger team; and the subsequent decline in quality of their supercharger experience, and then combine that with the macro-economic issues that are surrounding EV range and EV experiences in real world conditions; and you have a decline that can be attributed to the non-Musk effects as well.
I don't doubt his political machinations have contributed to Tesla's decline. If I could sell my Tesla, I would; (I am way underwater due to its steep drop in resale value), but I think a substantial percentage of this drop can be attributable to the hype of the EV not living up to the reality of owning an EV.