Tesla Motors May Be Having an iPhone Moment 452
pacopico writes "Telsa Motors has started churning out 500 of its all electric Model S sedans per week. Bloomberg Businessweek just did a cover story about the company, suggesting that Tesla is becoming more than just a fad of rich folks in California. According to the story, 75 percent of Tesla's sales now come from outside of California, and the company appears poised to raise its sales forecasts for the year. There's a lot of talk about Tesla's history and why it survived when Fisker and Better Place failed too."
Re:Why not Windows Phone 8? (Score:4, Informative)
The next generation of social marketing maybe.
Re:Why not Windows Phone 8? (Score:4, Informative)
Because at one point in the history of technology there came a point when the sales of the iPhone absolutely skyrocketed and changed Apple as a company and it's position in the Consumer Electronics Industry, as well as the industry and customer expectations to a large degree.
By drawing an analogy to that moment, the author is suggesting that Tesla Motors is about to have an equally significant effect on the motoring industry as a whole, and people's expectations of cars.
Re:MSRP of $62,400 Though? (Score:5, Informative)
60 kWh car is $62,400. $72,400 for an 85 kWh and $87,400 with upgraded features
Have you seen what a Lexus LS Hybrid costs? It's easy to walk out of an Acura dealer with a mass produced gasoline vehicle for $60K. Tesla is right in there at a reasonable price (US wages relative to the international market are a separate issue). Consider some places in the US you can buy a tiny ranch for $600K and average annual salaries are $130K or so, and a $60K car isn't outside of the realm of typical.
I thought I was living a pretty average lifestyle but I spent $6,600 on my current car
Nah, you're pretty far to the low side there. 75% of car sales are used, at about $9K on average. 25% of car sales are new, with the latest average at $31K. That puts the overall average at $14.5K, which puts you at, what, the 20th percentile or so?
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't blame the reporter, blame the Tesla chief designer:
Re:Rich People's Fads (Score:5, Informative)
You do know that a Model T cost $850 in 1909 which for an average worker was around 2 to 4 times their average income. Even at 60k the Model S is around 4x that of a non-tipped worker making no more than Federal minimum wage (and more than 86% of people are at or above this income level). So a Model S is really no more expensive for a minimum wage worker than a Model T was for the low-end average income of a 1909 worker.. Prices came down on the Model T with increased sales volume just as prices will go down on Tesla cars if growth continues and they sell more volume.
Re:Testla is good... (Score:5, Informative)
Citation needed. Desperately. This doesn't jive with basic math.
What basic math are you using then?
A truck carrying 10,000 gallons of gasoline uses about 14.28 gallons to go 100 miles.
Transport loss is 0.14%
An electrical transmission line will lose about 0.75% over 100 miles at 1000MW (per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses [wikipedia.org])
The energy density of gasoline is a huge factor when considering the cost of transport. The IT equivalent is the old story about the bandwidth of a stationwagon of data tapes travelling down the highway.
When dealing with transport of energy, the density matters, and chemical energy density is hard to beat.
Re:Testla is good... (Score:4, Informative)
The World Bank lists it by country. [worldbank.org]
Emmissions (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, I don't doubt that it's a fine electric automobile, based on a Lotus Elise,
The Model S is not based on the Elise. The Tesla Roadster was but that no longer is in production. Try going to Tesla's web site before posting next time.
Personal prejudices and preferences aside, my biggest issue with electric cars is that you're really just shuffling the emissions around.
You're forgetting several important details. First is that you can power an electric vehicle with power from non-fossil fuel sources. Hydro, wind, solar, nuclear etc. You can actually reduce the emissions to a good approximation of zero. Second is that it is MUCH easier to control emission at the generating station than it is to try to do it on every tailpipe out there. Would you rather have one big filter or millions of small ones? Third is that the power efficiency of electric motors is significantly higher than for internal combustion engines. ICEs waste a huge amount of power in the form of heat. Fourth is that you have the option of powering an electric vehicle with fossil fuels that are potentially less polluting. Instead of coal you can power it with natural gas or even oil.
Until we get a point of 100% clean renewable energy, I'm not sure the trade-off is worth it.
So nothing is worth doing until it is perfect? That's a pretty tragically stupid argument.
Logistics (Score:4, Informative)
If the truck is driving back empty, they should fire their logistics guy.
The problem with this is that because it's a hazardous flammable and fairly poisonous liquid substance you're transporting it in a tanker designed for hydrocarbon fuel, not a general transport vehicle. You still need to get the trailer back to the refinery/distribution point to move more gasoline, but the selection of items that can go into the trailer is extremely limited - can't put food products in there, can't put potable water or drinking alcohol, etc... That's assuming any of this is produced at your distribution point.
Longer ranges it's piped or transported by railroad, but for ~100 mile final transport, they are stuck driving back with an empty trailer.