← Back to context

Comment by wavefunction

14 hours ago

>the most popular car on the planet

That's the Toyota Corolla. I find this inaccurate glazing of musk to be relatively common but it always strikes me as profoundly weird.

To be charitable, according to at least some reports, the Model Y was the best selling car of 2024.

I was googling the data for 2025 and it seems that it’s number 2 now (behind the RAV4 to my surprise) with the Corolla at 3.

No idea how accurate these are, finding global numbers was harder than I thought.

Also, if you compare the entire model line up sales, Tesla isn't even in the top ten in sales. Tesla could disappear entirely and the car industry wouldn't even notice.

  • But the metric is good since it incentivizes car companies to make 1 good model instead of many different with the intent to confuse buyers

    • Car buyers are not confused. The market is naturally highly segmented. My needs "every day low distance compact car that can cope with city centre narrow streets with once a month motorway driving" is not met by the same car as "family of 5 with big dog living in a village"