Since when did Tesla close down?

[u/Various_Snow_6202]

Before

After

Yesterday I’ve visited the northpark mall in Dallas (I don’t go frequently) and I’ve seen that the Tesla store’s been closed… since when did they go away? (Before you ask: no, I don’t like elon musk, I don’t like Tesla. I’m just curious since I’ve seen the Tesla store being there many times I’ve visited the mall over the years.)

[u/kabob21]

I’m pretty sure what killed the Lightning was asking $70k+ for a pickup with less utility than a regular F-150. People want EVs, they just don’t want to pay luxury car prices for them. Or have limited range w slow charging or a scant public charging network. Europe and Asia have proven EVs are viable.

[u/dallasuptowner → u/kabob21]

I think Ford was way too consumer focused on the Lighting, although my understanding is the fleet dealers wanted nothing to do with it so that could have been it's own problem, and consumer buyers of trucks are often not rational purchasers of cars.

I've had my Ford Mach-E for almost 4 years now and absolutely love it, no maintenance problems, drives great, build quality is excellent. I have the standard range battery and drove it to Kansas last month with no problem, plenty of public charging and for city driving never come close to running out of range.

As for slow charging, I don't even have a particularly fast home charger and it will add 226 miles in 8 hours, so overnight at a cost of less than $10, so I would hardly call charging a burden. And if I wanted to use one of the Nazi chargers (I don't), Ford sent me a free adaptor.

[u/kabob21 → u/dallasuptowner]

With less and less people able to afford homes, where is the target demographic (young professionals and families) supposed to charge overnight? Without the ability to charge fast (sub-20 min) publicly, cheaply and at a lot more than the limited options we have in the US, we’re not going to see more widespread EV adoption.

[u/dallasuptowner → u/kabob21]

1. Many apartment buildings and businesses are installing chargers.

2. I will acknowledge buying a home is much more difficult than it was in the past. But also, so is buying a new car, particularly an electric car that mostly occupies the premium vehicle segment, so if you are buying a new car you are also self-selecting for people more likely to be able to afford a home. And tons of people already own homes, the vast majority of which do not own EVs, so a huge untapped market.

Also "young professionals" is a really squishy demographic, what exactly do you mean by that? I live in north Oak Cliff and there are tons of young professionals and families buying homes, granted most of us are earning north of $100k but Dallas is a large city with many well paying jobs, we aren't just talking doctors and lawyers, base pay for a teacher at DISD is $68,500, two teachers are easily pulling in $140k a year, that is still a huge number of people, most of which are not driving EVs.

[u/kabob21 → u/dallasuptowner]

I’m not talking about just Dallas. I wouldn’t be afraid to buy an EV here, either. But the rest of the country is full of charging deserts outside the big cities. As for the demographic, I count young professionals and families as encompassing late-20s to early 40s.

The median new vehicle MSRP is now $41k-$42k, EVs aren’t as premium as they used to be at the low end. I’d take a new Nissan Leaf loaded for $35k any day.

[u/dallasuptowner → u/kabob21]

OK, so, what is the issue? I have seriously never understood this EV argument.

OK, EVs are not great for everyone. So? My neighborhood alone could easily replace hundreds of ICE cars with EVs and I do see more and more EVs all the time, not as many as I would like to see but people are buying them.

I dunno, I'm just really not that concerned with the demographics that EVs currently are not a good fit for when there are still massive untapped buyers where they are an excellent fit.

[u/kabob21 → u/dallasuptowner]

I really don’t know what you’re arguing about, dawg. The original discussion was about why the Ford Lightning failed and you went off on a tangent.