How Tesla is faring in the new EV Price Wars.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lily Jramale. It is Friday, which means it's time for our weekend in review, Marketplace TechBites.

On the show today, shares of Apple touched a seven week low this week

after Barclays downgraded the company.

What the dreaded cell rating says about expectations for the

Cupertino tech giant. Plus telling AI from reality might get easier in

2024. We discuss tools that can help with that and other personal tech to watch for in the year ahead.

But first, goals are good and at the start of 2023, Elon Musk set an ambitious one, a plan to sell 2 million Tesla's by the end of the year.

The company did fall behind China's BYD as the EV sales leader for the first time, but it came pretty close to that sales goal with 1.85 million

deliveries. That compares with 73,000 E.S. sold by Ford. That's if you by Ford. That grim cop came to us courtesy of Joanna Stern, senior

personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal. She told me there is a

phrase she is hearing a lot lately when it comes to electric vehicles.

People don't want EVs, they want Tesla's.

And obviously that comes down to two things.

One price. Two, charging.

Tesla has this superior charging network. One price, two, charging.

Tesla has the superior charging network in the US especially.

And so those two things made Tesla the top pick

for many EV buyers.

That's right and that was one of the key incentives was this, you know, six months of access to fast charging

if you picked up your delivery by the end of December. But the formula seems pretty straightforward here.

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