Right, but that’s a short-term price hike - EV prices have been coming down for decades, and are on track to continue to come down as battery designs continue to be cost optimized. The fact that right now Nickle prices are high due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupting supply lines isn’t a long-term issue -…

Nope - over the time that Tesla raised prices 20%, the average car sale price went up 24%. The only difference is that Tesla raised their list price, since they sell direct, and the legacy car companies’ sales prices are inflated by the dealers selling for over list price through markups.

Dealers on average add 15-20% to the cost of cars, in their overhead - marketing, sales commissions, SPIFs, etc. And these days, insane markups due to car shortages have tripled dealer profits year-over-year. That’s how Tesla can match the traditional car companies on price and still make over 3x the margin. And when…

Why? Combustion engines are only 25% efficient - they waste 75% of the energy in gasoline as noise, heat and pollution. There’s a reason that EVs cost 1/4 as much per mile to run.

There have been a series of radical innovations in battery technology, and there are a stream of improvements coming. The costs came down from $10,000/kWh in the 1970s to nearly $100/kWh now, and it’s continuing to come down - Tesla’s new 4680 batteries are cheaper to make, and much cheaper to assemble, than the…

EV costs, and battery costs, have been driven down consistently long term. The cost was $10,000/kWh in the 1970s and it’s nearly $100/kWh now, with constant innovation in battery chemistry and design continuing to drive down the cost of making batteries.

Yes, right now the increase in demand for raw materials has…

With the M1 Mac’s, you really don’t need a desktop - the laptops’ performance is identical (for the same chip), because unlike Intel-based laptops, the M1's have very little power or thermal throttling, so unplugged and plugged in run at virtually the same speed, very different from the Intel-based laptops that drop…

They roughly doubled the price and doubled the performance (CPU, storage, RAM) for each step up. That’s a pretty good deal - once you get over the “sweet spot” on PCs, usually increasing performance is disproportionately expensive, making them a worse and worse deal sold only to people who _really_ can justify paying…

Yes. At least Tesla’s transparent about it - they tell people that they use the safety score, so you can see _now_ what they would rate you for, and they list what safety scores equate to what rates, as examples, so you can see how much the rates can vary depending on how you drive. So while it’s a little spooky to…

True, plus the casing. The larger battery has a smaller percentage of the volume consumed by the casing, which is also how it has greater kWh/kg energy density. Other than that, in theory the batteries could be a shape that packs denser, like a hexagon, or a brick, instead of a cylinder. I’m not sure if the physics of…

Interesting, different cultures value people very differently. In China, they value the elderly more because they’ve accumulated so much knowledge, while in the US we value the baby’s greater potential future life. (Simplifying...).

Legally the driver is responsible for the car, in any driver assist system - Autopilot, FSD, or GM Cruise all operate under the same regulatory domain, legally the same as basic “cruise control” or “automatic braking”.

Given that there are 60,000 FSD Beta users, it’s inevitable that eventually there would be an accident…

The Cybertruck has 120v and 240v plugs, so it can power home equipment, though you wouldn’t want to power your whole home, including HVAC, from your car as it’d drain the battery pretty quickly - a current Tesla battery could power a house for perhaps two days, but could keep your food cold in the fridge/freezer for a…

No, they are saying that the cells can be packed more densely, so they can fit 15% more power capacity into the same space as using more, smaller cells. The manufacturing costs are also lower, as there are many fewer assembly steps to building packs from 1/5th as many batteries.

I think that’s why Tesla has introduced their own insurance. Early on, Tesla insurance tended to be overpriced, because they tried to sell Model 3 owners insurance based on the Model S/X repair costs, which led to insane rates. We found insurance that cost about the same for 3/Y as we did for our gas cars, but it took…

Exactly right. I’d also add that while EVs typically cost more than a comparable ICE car to purchase, they also cost 70% less per mile to fuel, and 40% less to maintain (based on long term fleet data), so they cost less than ICE cars over their lifetime.

And, of course, batteries are continuing to drop rapidly in…

Yes, charging to 100% only makes sense for overnight charging before a long trip. On a road trip, it’s faster to charge to 80% twice than charging to 100% once. The Tesla route software (in the car) optimizes trip times, so you don’t need to figure it out yourself.

Tesla’s consistently said that they were shipping the tri-motor Cybertruck first, then dual-motor, then lastly single-motor. So in effect challenging Tesla to do what they said they weren’t going to do is a little odd...

Yes, this makes the new tax credit far more useful, since in general tax credits aren’t useful to people in the lower 50% of incomes - they don’t pay enough income tax to fully benefit from a tax credit, and they can’t afford to pay 100% of the price up front and then hope to get some money back next tax season. Of…

Historically Tesla has always delivered on their announced pricing. They start at the top trim, then as they optimize manufacturing they work their way down to the cheaper trims. They may not sell many of the cheapest model, just enough to deliver on pre-orders (e.g. the $35k Model 3). But given that the Cybertruck has…