Tesla Delivers First Batch of Model S Electric Sedans 311
After years of tantalizing pictures and promises, on Friday the first 10 Model S sedans left Tesla's Fremont, California factory. This first handful of the new S has long been spoken for, and the cars have been delivered (or are on the way) to buyers around the U.S. Even with tax-supported subsidies, the new sedan isn't cheap: the subsidized base price is just under $50,000. Still, 10,000 people have put down five grand apiece for the chance to own one. Wired has a brief piece on what the S is like to drive. What's a 160-miles-per-charge, $50k car worth to you?
Well (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If you`re buying one of these . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
$50,000 is chump change given the market they're targeting; it's well in line with the purchase costs of similarly-outfitted gassers and it costs a hell of a lot less than the German models. If their build quality is somewhere in between typical American shit (Even the Ford GT famously has flimsy interior, and it's the most expensive American production car ever AFAICT) and a decent kraut kan then the price is eminently reasonable.
Why can't they extend the range? (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't need to do 0-60 in 5.6 seconds. It does need to go further on a fully-charged set of batteries.
Why the hell do people obsess about 0-60 time? How often do you ever accelerate flat out from 0 to 60?
Environmental Impact? (Score:2, Insightful)
1. what happens with the batteries when it's done?
2. what is the cost of building these things?
3. is the manufacturing process cleaner or worse than fuel burning cars?
4. what about the impact on the electric grid? Is there any?
5. Isn't COAL a huge part of our electric grid?
6. Does this increase the dependance on coal?
7. Is there any repercussions from increasing our dependance on coal?
To be honest, I don't know much about these things, but I always wonder about, "Are these GREEN alternatives actually GREEN? Or is it just GREEN on the surface? And what does GREEN really mean?" I really hate political buzz-words, because they never seem to mean what they imply.
Re:To streamline future posts (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get these out of the way as well.
I put $5K down 2 years ago. Yes, its expensive, but no more than a mid-level Audi or BMW (I love the S4 as well as the M5, respectively). I make over six figures, and have for the last several years, so I've already put a large downpayment aside and can easily afford the $400-500/month payment.
I wanted a luxury car that was all electric and could hold my myself, my wife, and my on-the-way kids. It also needed to be usable by my wife for errands, driving the kids around, etc.
I would buy this car even if gas was $2/gal. Someone has to eat the R&D costs for the price to drop for everyone else.
Re:If you`re buying one of these . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why can't they extend the range? (Score:2, Insightful)
How often do you ever accelerate flat out from 0 to 60?
Way more often than I go over 200 km in one trip. They need to drop the 0-60 time back into the low 4s range like the roadster, and halve the range if need be.
re:tesla delivers first batch (Score:4, Insightful)
Even with tax supported subsidies, gas isn't cheap.
Gas shill Luddites would have us using a hundred year old technology instead of solving the technological problems that new technology always presents, all the while denying that there can be any negative consequences from any technology filling the coffers of right wing bloviating ignoramuses.
What's it worth to you to keep gas filled blow-hards redistributing money into the hands of cronies preparing the ground with lies and deceit for the next phony yellow cake war of liberation.
Donate your money to Al-Quaeda why don't you; Exxon Mobil, Shell, etc do with their royalty - and I do mean royalty - payments to Wahabi Arabia.
Or not.
If you can't afford the current tesla, wait a little longer; toyota will be using tesla battery technology to introduce an electric suv based on the toyota Rav model.
http://pressroom.toyota.com/releases/toyota+tesla+build+rav4+ev+woodstock+ontario.htm [toyota.com]
tesla has comitted to introducing a 30k+ model X suv by 2015.
http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx [teslamotors.com]
This comment has not been approved by the Ameican Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation, their employees or contractors.
Re:Environmental Impact? (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea is to make the consumer portion "green" and non-emissive, because then over time the underlying power generation can be made less polluting or swapped out for entirely new methods of generating power without requiring any "upgrades" or action by the consumer. It is definitely easier to regulate, and probably less expensive and more efficient to implement, emissions control at a handful of large power stations than millions of individual car engines.
Willingness to pay may be higher ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose a $50,000 ANYTHING would be worth about $50,000 to me.
Actually its more complicated than that. The car may be worth significantly more or less than the amount paid to an individual person. The car itself may only be worth $40,000 to a person but something else, say greening their image, may be worth $10,000+. One the other hand the car may be worth significantly more than $50,000 to an extremely environmentally conscious person, so this person essentially thinks its a deal. Yet another person may also think it is worth significantly more because they added up the price of the components and found a higher number, appreciate the taxpayer subsidy, and want to purchase now before that subsidy goes away - say due to a change of political administration.
In short, prices do not always match a person's willingness to pay, a more technical phrase for what its worth to person. A price generally needs to be at or below that willingness to pay. Apple sold a bunch of iPhones at $600 when it was introduced. Those people who thought an iPhone was worth $600 paid less than that when newer more capable models were introduced at $500 and then $400.
Give it a year and I'm sure that will change drastically.
Again, that depends. Back to that government subsidy. If the subsidy is removed and the price for a new car goes up then the used car may retain its value to some degree.
Re:To streamline future posts (Score:5, Insightful)
Within my lifetime, gas has gone from .23/gal to 4.00/gal. If we are going to repair roads, etc. I suspect that we will need to double taxes. That will mean that we will within a couple of years pay around 6/gal, and I would not be surprised to see us approaching Europe levels of oil prices.
First, the roads were built with the current gas taxes. Why would we need to double them to maintain the roads?
OK, let's assume gas is $6.00/gallon.
$30000/6=5000 gallons of gas.
At 20 miles per gallon, that's 100,000 miles, or the typical life of an American made car.
How many miles do these batteries last, anyway?
Doesn't matter, if you are buying one of these to save money, you are making a mistake. If you are buying on of these to save the environment, you'd be better off buying a Honda Civic and spending the $30,000 planting trees or something.
Re:To streamline future posts (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, a tesla model S has higher performance than most cars in the same costs brackets. And have you seen the vehicle. Beautiful. Basically comparable or better quality than German or Japanese cars.
By 2015, the model S is expected to drop to around 45K without subsidies. Likewise, they will have their sub-30K car out there. I was told that it would get around 120-150 miles/charge and have 0-60 of around 6 secs or less.
Point is, I will take that. This is no different than what happened with Ships, Trains, ICE Cars, Aviation, and now space.
Re:To streamline future posts (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm. High density urban living has a much lower ecological footprint than low-density sprawled living.
With high-density urban living with good rapid transit, most people could get by without a car and rent one for the occasional weekend holiday or renovation project.
Re:To streamline future posts (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you should go back and do some actual calculations. About 30 seconds of googling tells me that standard, commercially available solar panels for making roughly 700 kWh a month would cover about 400 square feet. The combined area of my garage and relatively small house is over 2000 square feet.
The battery back on the base Tesla S is a 40 kWh battery pack. With a 400 square foot system, it should produce enough energy to charge a Tesla battery pack about 17 times in a month. That should get you about 2500 miles in a month.
Seems like plenty of room on my roof to charge an electric car, if I wanted to. I would just need to solve the problem of my car not being there during the day when the panels produce most of their energy.
Re:To streamline future posts (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm glad you are financially stable but you know you're selfish, right?
Why is it such a bad thing being "selfish" in this situation? I highly doubt that the person you were responding to here robbed somebody else at gunpoint or engaged in any sort of unethical or nefarious method of obtaining that wealth other than simply applying their talents in some useful fashion that was seen as desirable by others and compensated for hard work and skill.
I do think there is a way to be ecologically stable and still enjoy the fruits of your labor. The "trend" of various nations and political philosophies isn't necessarily predestined and inevitable either, but then again neither is mass genocide of 99.9% of humanity either.
Re:If you`re buying one of these . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I drive cross-country about once every 5 years. Renting a car when I do that can make sense even if I don't own an electric car.
Re:To streamline future posts (Score:4, Insightful)
How's the air quality in the countries where all your stuff is made?
Well, a lot of my stuff is made in America, and my car was made in Japan, so fine (contrary to legend, Americas manufacturing capacity hasn't shrunk, it's just that American manufacturing is mostly automated now, so manufacturing employment is vanishing). From what I've seen, air quality in any city in India (which makes very few goods for export) is worse than in China. The world is not so simple as you make it out.
Air quality is low in places working through their industrial revolution becuase other things are more important to the people living there. The same was true in Western nations during our industrial revolution.
Re:To streamline future posts (Score:4, Insightful)
Electric motors are cheap and known. Energy storage systems? Not so much.
The Tesla battery packs are works of art. Thousands of cells being babied by control systems that monitor charge states, temperature, etc. Once the manufacture of these packs scales up, and more is known about how the react out in the field for extended periods of time (10+ years), the prices should come down considerably. Until then, those with the cash are going to be subsidizing the R&D that needs to be done (by buying cars that are too expensive for most people).
I admit though, its not all altruistic. The Model S is a hot looking car.
Re:If you`re buying one of these . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
At greater than $0.45/kwh, the price to buy it isn't your biggest worry.
Please don't spew false information. PG&E nighttime rates for EV charging are about $0.05/kWh, which is about like buying gasoline for $0.50/gal.
Even at the made-up price you pulled out of your bunghole, it's still comparable to the per-mile fuel cost of a gasoline car, never mind the practically-zero maintenance cost of the electric.