Tesla Factory Racing To Retool For New Models 257
An anonymous reader notes this story about what Tesla will have to do in order to double production every year for the next several years as Elon Musk intends. "Having just reported a $107.6-million fourth-quarter loss that sent its stock tumbling, Tesla Motors Inc. intends to double vehicle production in the next year as it finally introduces its Model X sport utility vehicle — after about two years of delays. Meanwhile, Tesla is racing to finish the design of its Model 3, the "affordable" Tesla, expected to sell in the $30,000 range after government subsidies. Musk's company is chasing General Motors Co., which plans a 2017 release of its all-electric Bolt, with a similar price and 200-mile driving range between charges."
Tesla will go supernova (Score:2)
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There will be a surge and resulting peak in demand for their expensive cars and then demand will fall off a cliff and the company will eventually disappear.
That's assuming that (a) Tesla continues to make only high-end/expensive cars, and (b) that the (now saturated) market for high-end/expensive Teslas is insufficient to support the company. The former is possible, but only if Tesla doesn't follow through on their stated goals with the Model 3 (and presumably, other cheaper models thereafter). The latter is also possible, although that problem doesn't seem to stop other high-end auto companies from staying in business.
Maybe then we'll finally stop seeing the endless supply of pump and dump stock articles that appear on /., esp positive-spin articles like this one that magically appear whenever there is negative news about the company.
Now who is being the naive optimist, e
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If the oil price kept at the same high level for another decade I think they had good chances of doing mass market electric cars. But given current oil price trends I think the Model 3 is about as low in the segment as they can get. Unless they figure out some way to magically decrease costs which would depend on battery technology advances which aren't there.
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You're assuming oil is being kept artificially high and that it really should be as low as it is. But it isn't - Saudi Arabia is throwing its weight a
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Probably. Especially considering the current freefall in oil prices. Still it's a lot more useful and interesting than, say, Facebook.
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i'm pretty sure that mercedes would be out of business if they sold at loss.
retooling (Score:5, Interesting)
I am currently working as a skilled tradesman in the fremont tesla plant. installing a massive body line that will be able to manufacture 3 body styles. Tesla is paying upwards of 12 million to get this line finished by fall. So they can ramp up production. Anyone that says it won't happen should take a tour of the plant on Wednesdays. The new line is massive and we are doing our best to finish it.
Headline phrasing (Score:2)
Did anyone else read that head line and think "hey, I didn't realize that Tesla had a Factory Racing team, those races would be fun to watch"....
Stock tumbling (Score:2)
so the short term rats dont like that i'll take time for this comapny top be succesfull. Why the fuck didn you buy into the stock in the first place. If I had the $$$$ i'd be into Tesla now and hopefully the new model shoiuld come out as the same time as my current car is paid off. Nice trade in towards the Model 3.
Sounds like a good deal (Score:2)
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I can't speak for the Model 3, but the Model S claims 295 miles per charge. Doubling that would be 590.
I don't get 590 miles on my car. Do you?
So, losing money on every sale (Score:2)
and now trying to make it up on volume? I'll pass on that business plan.
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They are doing large capital expenditures to expand production. Of course that costs money but the expectation is that they will get back once they start churning out more vehicles.
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Companies don't do capital investment out of cash flow. Learn something about finance. The IRS wouldn't allow it even if they wanted to.
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I see this moronic attempt at a "joke" every time this topic comes up, but you win today's lottery in terms of getting responses, so...
Tesla makes (significant) profit on every sale. The problem is that they don't make a lot of sales. In order to make a lot of sales, they need to dramatically invest in production. Some of that goes into upgrades and retooling (making it possible to sell cheaper cars, which will get more sales), some of that goes into sheer manufacturing capacity (more factories, including t
I can't imagine the Tesla ever being "affordable" (Score:4, Interesting)
An affordable vehicle is one that actually is about the same price as any other kind of vehicle that is physically comparable to it.
Last I heard, the model was expected to cost no less than about $45k CDN... which is more than double what my wife and I spent our current automobile.
Re:I can't imagine the Tesla ever being "affordabl (Score:5, Interesting)
The cost of the car is the combination of the purchase price, and the price of fuel, maintenance over the life of the car.
The "average American" spends $3,000 per year on gas. That is $30,000 over ten years. Tesla supercharger stations are free. And, electricity is cheaper than gas.
That Tesla will never need an oil change.
Interestingly, ignoring the recommended maintenance does NOT void your Tesla warrantee.
Just something to think about.
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Sigh. (Score:2)
There are a lot of different market segments in the auto industry. The Model S is extremely competitive in the high-end luxury sedan segment where cars regularly sell for $80K+. The Model 3 will be targeted at the $35-40K midrange sedan segment, a segment in which hundreds of thousands of cars are sold right now (BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, etc.)--the Model 3 will be sold at a similar price-point as those other cars.
Eventually electric car technology will ripple down into economy segments. That's how new technol
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Even $35k, which it wouldn't cost, by the way, is about 70% more than what we spent on our current car.... and Volkswagen's midrange sedans go for about $25k CDN. not $35-$40... at those prices with a VW, you are easily looking at their higher end vehicles.
I am expecting the model 3 to check in next year at about $45k CDN.
Make no mistake about it, I'd certainly deeply want one... but at those prices, the gasoline saving are entirely irrellevant when you can't afford the monthly payments on the car in
The first car cost more than a horse. (Score:2)
So there's a good example of a vehicle costing more than the vehicle it replaces.
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Affordable is a relative term. Affordable to whom? Everyone in the world, or people in the segment where the vehicle is targeted?
And what does "physically comparable" mean? Same rough size and door count or do you get down to powertrain specifics, interiors, etc?
And I would argue whatever Tesla's affordable model is it will not be physically comparable to what you can buy for $18K USD. It will very likely have a far more luxurious trim, more bells and whistles and better performance.
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Oh, yeah, because he's hurt so many people with his ambition and ego. He's practically Stalin.
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Right, because "zomg, we can't build cars fast enough" is such a horrible problem for him to have.
Re:Sweet, sweet karma (Score:4, Insightful)
Leave it to the trolls of Slashdot to trash anyone successful... Even an Engineer with a vision of a better tomorrow.
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It's an error in the summary and/or article. Elon still claims that the Model 3 will sell for 30k before subsidies.
Re:Sweet, sweet karma (Score:5, Informative)
No, Elon says it's $35,000 before subsidies [jalopnik.com].
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Either way, when you factor in the cost of fuel, the TCO still works out to be competitive with an average mid-range family sedan, even at the current low price of gas. This advantage is bound to grow over time as the price of oil inevitably rebounds.
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Nonsense, not cost-competitive at all. $22K gets you a sedan, 27 MPG in the city, for $1700 yearly gasoline bill at $3 a gallon and 15,000 miles. Burning hydrocarbons is clearly the superior choice for the family on a budget
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Your electric bill for the same 15,000 miles would be about $400. The extra $1300 a year can go a long way to buy a nice electric car rather than a POS bottom of the line econobox oil burner.
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Not that far. Admittedly the Tesla's are nice cars but the thing is the other manufacturers are not standing still. A lot of the traditional manufactures will have their own, lower cost, electrics with similar ranges. Sure the Tesla might be a nicer car but most people cannot afford high end or even midrange luxury sedans. They need something serviceable and ideally at least somewhat nice, but not necessarily the top of the line. This could bite them if their margins are not similar to a company like B
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Your electric bill for the same 15,000 miles would be about $400. The extra $1300 a year can go a long way to buy a nice electric car rather than a POS bottom of the line econobox oil burner.
Until Mr. Musk - or the stockholders/board of Tesla - decide it's time to start making a profit and not giving away tens of thousands of dollars on each car in order to gain customers... Then the price of the car will necessarily increase well beyond the "break even" cost versus an ICE powered vehicle.
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Or if you live in Canada. Price of gas before this whole dip was almost $6 a gallon up here. 35K for a sedan that will save an average Canadian commuter almost 2K a year in fuel costs is a total no brainer if they were already shopping in a similar market segment.
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Re:Sweet, sweet karma (Score:4, Interesting)
If you think burning fossil fuels in an ICE at 25% efficiency is green, then keep on sending your money to the terrorists.... EVs emit less CO2 than ICE cars even if the electricity comes from dirty coal because there is much higher efficiency at all stages. Coal is on it's way out for electricity generation, BTW, in case you haven't heard. Worldwide coal consumption has decreased for the past few years and the "war on coal" is just getting started. Wind and solar electricity are now cost competitive with coal and much cheaper than nuclear.
EV cars are much cheaper than gas... even the cheap gas we have today. Gas would have to go below $0.50 a gallon to be cheaper than electricity for cars.
if by "much higher efficiency" you mean 40% vs 25% (Score:2)
If you think burning fossil fuels in an ICE at 25% efficiency is green, then keep on sending your money to the terrorists.... EVs emit less CO2 than ICE cars even if the electricity comes from dirty coal because there is much higher efficiency at all stages.
if by "much higher efficiency" you mean 40% vs 25%
then yes.
factor in transmission line losses (6% [eia.gov]) and charging losses (10-20% [teslamotors.com])
and it's not so much more efficient.
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Why do you think we are in an endless war in the Middle East? Why do you think Obama rushed to kiss the ring of the new Saudi king? Oil is fungible and the US has put itself in charge of ensuring there is plenty to go around. We all would be fucked it ME oil was cut off.
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While this is true if it wasn't for the ME pushing down the oil prices that oil would be a lot more expensive.
It's true that Europe and China would be the first to suffer though.
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You have a lot more energy security with electric vehicles though. If for whatever reason the market changes you can switch the generators without replacing all the cars on the road.
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If you're gonna factor in transmission line losses and charging loss, then you also have to factor in idling and drivetrain losses, which brings the fuel efficiency of an ICE down to about 15% [consumerenergycenter.org]. Not counting the energy required to actually make the fuel in the first place (which is also not zero). More importantly, though, electric cars are source-neutral: they don't give a shit if their electricity comes from coal, nuclear, or solar.
Re:if by "much higher efficiency" you mean 40% vs (Score:5, Informative)
1) You missed out the "transmission" losses for the fuel (it takes roughly 1.2 gallons of fuel on average to transport 5 gallons of fuel to the petrol station)
2) You missed out the transmission losses for a mechanical car (around 30% of your energy is lost in the gearbox/diff/...)
3) EVs are actually about 90% efficient, not 40%.
4) Power plants are roughly 50-60% efficient even if you assume you use fossil fuels to generate the power.
What this adds up to:
Fuel powered car = 80% (fuel tanker efficiency) * 26% (engine efficiency) * 70% (transmission efficiency) = roughly 15% efficient total system (ignoring the amount of energy it takes to dig up the fuel and carry it to shore)
Electrically powered car = 60% (power plant efficiency) * 94% (power grid efficiency) * 85% (charging efficiency) * 90% (engine efficiency) = roughly 43% efficient total system.
Add to that that you hypothetically in the future can then replace the fossil fuel burning power plant with a {nuclear | wind | solar | ... } one, and you get a rather huge win. You're literally using one third the power to drive your vehicle.
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I am curious that you say fuel tanker efficiency is 80%, that would indicate that a tanker uses 20% of the energy contained in the fuel it transports. I don't know what the right number is, but I would be very surprised if it used that much energy.
But, with that said, I'm not sure that is the right way to compare overall energy benefit anyhow. If you were burning oil for electrical generation vs burning gas in a car, t
Electric cars get ~100mpge. (Score:2)
yawn.
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I am curious that you say fuel tanker efficiency is 80%
I took it to mean the "last mile" road transportation of fuel to gas stations. That's going to be less efficient than supertankers on the high seas.
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Whoever thinks a 416lb 4650lb car is "efficient" or "green" missed high school physics.
Meh, it's more efficient than my 420hp, 3950lb sedan. I think mine has more luxury features, and it was considerably cheaper, but 19MPH is plenty brown (not that I care about this eco-shit, but relative to that you can't really fault the Model S).
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As 2-ton, 400+ HP sedans go, "25-40" is pretty darn good. Of course, it all depends on what your priorities are - you might be surprised how many Tesla owners rank CO2 fairly low on the list.
Sure you can... (Score:2)
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The supply is too constrained.
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Re:Sweet, sweet karma (Score:5, Insightful)
Average sales price of a new car in 2013 was $31,762. Apparently a lot of people have that kind of money to buy a car.
No one. Well, except all those people buying (Score:3)
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Just because its cost-competitive doesn't mean people will buy it. Who has $35k to shell out for a car?
Cars don't have to be affordable for people to buy them. A family that needs two cars should have a household income of well over $100k per year before they should be buying $30k+ new cars (IHMO, and based on the 20/4/10 rule). But they probably only have to make median income to qualify for the loans.
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I do and I don't really care if you think the whole idea of trying to build an electric car company is a waste of time to you. Don't buy one.
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Your insurance is insane and in a 40 MPG car that is 250K miles worth of travel at the current cost of gas.
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Teslas are for rich people.
This year. Unlike certain whiners, the government is thinking long-term.
Why is the government giving subsidies to people for buying these cars?
Because the government has a long-term goal of reducing carbon emissions and reducing America's reliance on oil. Subsidies for electric cars help develop battery technology and other infrastructure necessary for making that transition, sooner and less disruptively than the market would manage on its own.
That means middle class people like me have to pay more in taxes so we continue to not be able to afford an expensive car like a Tesla and so that the rich can afford to buy a Tesla for less than the true cost.
The upside for you is that when the shit finally hits the fan regarding oil consumption (either due to geopolitical problems, peak oi
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Our upside might be much greater if that money were used for development and improvement of solutions.
Re:Subsisides for rich people? (Score:4, Insightful)
Giving a few wealthy folks money to buy high cost EV's that often aren't even their primary vehicle isn't going to do much to help the global warming situation.
I think it already has -- the model S showed the auto industry that there is a market for electric cars, if those cars provide a good customer experience. Before Tesla, the general thought in the car industry was that electric cars would have to be cheaper than gasoline cars in order to sell, but that idea never worked -- because it was impossible to price an electric car that cheap without stripping it down into an unsellable golf-cart. Tesla demonstrated that the way to sell electric cars wasn't to make them cheaper than gasoline cars, but rather to make them better. Now we have other manufacturers (BMW, Nissan, GM) competing to get into that market, and the development-and-competition ball is rolling. The next step is for competition and volume production to bring prices down, just like they did for gasoline cars in the early 20th century.
Our upside might be much greater if that money were used for development and improvement of solutions.
Perhaps, if you knew which companies to throw the development money at. But that's a hard thing to predict reliably (witness the long succession of "visionary" electric car companies whose products went nowhere, despite significant investment). This way, the customers decide which electric car designs are worth supporting and which are not.
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I think it already has -- the model S showed the auto industry that there is a market for electric cars, if those cars provide a good customer experience
Tesla was not first to market with an EV. They did move first into the high end market, but what will matter is the lower end mass market where existing EVs are trying to sell. And, Tesla has yet to make money even though they are selling high end and have subsidies working in their favor, so that's not exactly the model that others will rush to.
The EV market would evolve, with or without subsidies, and with or without Tesla. That some wealthy folks that don't need the money are getting it isn't really h
Re:Subsisides for rich people? (Score:5, Insightful)
Tesla was not first to market with an EV.
No, but they were the first to sell an EV that made non-geeks' pulses quicken. The vehicles sold before that were more of the "eat your vegetables" variety, and thus doomed to be money-losing niche vehicles, useful only as arguments against the viability of the electric vehicle market.
They did move first into the high end market, but what will matter is the lower end mass market where existing EVs are trying to sell.
Sure, but you can't get to the mass market without starting somewhere viable. Previous attempts to start at the low end failed (see: EV-1, RAV4 EV), and failures don't help the EV market grow.
The EV market would evolve, with or without subsidies, and with or without Tesla.
That's an assertion only -- I don't see any evidence to back it up. Before Tesla's successes, no other companies were marketing a desirable electric car, and there was little evidence that any of them had much interest in doing so in the future.
Sure, the EV market would have caught on anyway, decades from now, after gas prices rose high enough that almost nobody could to afford to drive a traditional car anymore; but that's a rather grim scenario that I think we are well-served to avoid.
That some wealthy folks that don't need the money are getting it isn't really helping anybody expect them and Tesla.
Them, and Tesla, and everyone else who will buy an electric car that wouldn't have existed without Tesla's demonstration of how to profitably sell EVs, and all the other car companies that can now take advantage of the technology [forbes.com] Tesla developed.
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, and everyone else who will buy an electric car that wouldn't have existed without Tesla's demonstration of how to profitably sell EVs
A very speculative statement, not to mention the fact that Tesla has been losing money.
Re:Subsisides for rich people? (Score:4, Interesting)
A very speculative statement, not to mention the fact that Tesla has been losing money.
I don't think I can convince you with further argument, so I'll just leave you with this paragraph from the "History of Electric Vehicles" page on Wikipedia (see the page itself for citations [wikipedia.org]):
Senior leaders at several large automakers, including Nissan and General Motors, have stated that the [Tesla] Roadster was a catalyst which demonstrated that there is pent-up consumer demand for more efficient vehicles. GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz said in 2007 that the Tesla Roadster inspired him to push GM to develop the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid sedan prototype that aims to reverse years of dwindling market share and massive financial losses for America's largest automaker.[79] In an August 2009 edition of The New Yorker, Lutz was quoted as saying, "All the geniuses here at General Motors kept saying lithium-ion technology is 10 years away, and Toyota agreed with us -- and boom, along comes Tesla. So I said, 'How come some tiny little California startup, run by guys who know nothing about the car business, can do this, and we can't?' That was the crowbar that helped break up the log jam."
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I think the biggest impact Tesla will have is in mass battery production as they plan, but that is in the future, not the present.
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That money should go into R&D and infrastructure where eventually a larger percentage of the people can benefit.
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I'd like to see the average income for a Tesla owner, I imagine it is relatively high. I also imagine most would have bought a Tesla regardless of the tax break, so I agree we should not be subsidizing the sales of cars for higher income individuals.
I'm still in favor of the professionals making laws and public policy, rather than leaving decisions to *your* imagination.
But still... let me give it a try - "I imagine that Assad and the Syrian rebels would come to some accord if the U.S. threatened to nuke the entire country, so let's start with one of their smaller cities, and see if they take the hint."
Hey, I like this!
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And GMAFB about "professionals making the law". You must live under a rock if you think these laws are not as much political/lobby driven as they are substantiated.
So, if you don't believe most Tesla owners are relatively wealthy, plea
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That's exactly where the money is going. (Score:2)
Tesla is building out a high-speed charging network and funding R&D for a mass-market $35k electric car.
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If the network is going to be a public gift, then that would be OK. Why not fund those efforts directly instead of giving the wealthy a piece of the pie?
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I know some 'open source' licensing says you can use it for free as long as you don't sell it, I doesn't sound like that is what Tesla is doing, but surely they'
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You think the only people buying $67K cars are rich? Umm, wow.
No, I am well aware that the lower middle class also buy cars like that. However, only the rich can AFFORD cars like that. Back when I had a job, my household income was just about $110k, and I considered an affordable car for my income to be about $25k. People shouldn't be buying cars that cost more than their yearly income. They really shouldn't be buying cars that are even 1/4 of their yearly income.
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How are you thinking about the capital cost of a car? While there is depreciation a car still retains some of its capital value. I buy cars that are 2 years old and sell them after a 3 or 6 year cycle. Across a 3 year period I have never sold a car at less than 60% of what I originally paid for it, and usually it is a higher percentage than that.
Financially I treat my vehicles as a rental. I structure my income so that I pay my fuel, financing, servicing and insurance from my gross income. This means t
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Rich or very stupid.
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Ha. I love Tesla, but if that happens I'll eat my hat.
That said, after finishing said hat I'll drive up to the local store and place an order on one since that'd be within my price range unlike a Model S.
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Is $7500 the difference between affordable and unaffordable to you? In your universe, are government incentives that might help us soon get off of polluting, non-renewable resources akin to acts of the devil or are you just one of those who has inexplicable contempt for anyone or anything successful?
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Re: They're pedaling as fast as they can... (Score:5, Interesting)
And peddling too... ;-)
Seriously, we've heard this gripe before, and gotten over it just fine. They used to complain that it couldn't be done. Then the Roadster proved them wrong. Then they said it couldn't be repackaged for the "mainstream" luxury market, until Tesla started shipping the Model S. Then they said Tesla would never be able to ramp up Model S production to meet demand, until... well, they're still trying to catch up with the backlog of orders, but they are making progress.
And simultaneously they are also (finally) bringing the Model X to market and investing heavily in the Giga Factory to enable high-volume production of ALL electric vehicles, especially their own Model 3.
FTFA: "Tesla has lost its luster, he said, and could soon lose credibility."
Any investor who is so short-sighted as to sell off Tesla shares based on the incidental losses last quarter had no business buying those shares in the first place. Elon has been crystal clear about his plans for Tesla's development right from the beginning. If you're freaked out about strict GAAP losses at such an early stage of growth, then you don't have a realistic understanding of how such large (huge) capital-intensive enterprises bootstrap themselves. Such investors were just looking for a short-term capital gain, and wet their pants at the first sign of slow-down in Tesla's meteoric rise. Good riddance to them.
Bottom line: Tesla has a multi-thousand-customer waiting list for the Model S, and 20K reservations for the Model X... If you do the math, that's a couple BILLION in pent-up demand for a product that only Tesla currently provides. And lucky for them, they haven't even built those factories yet. So unlike the "major players" in the market, they don't have to "re-tool"... they're building from scratch, which gives them an advantage at least as big as the disadvantage you claim.
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I've been a TSLA stock holder long enough to be extremely happy with my stock purchase. And you're right anyone who is just buying it for short term I think is terribly misguided. When I bought it, I bought it both for ideological statement of supporting a technology I want to see change the market and also because this is was one of those rare opportunities to buy a stock like Microsoft or Ford when their future was still uncertain.
That being said I can see why people would be worried about TSLA. I'm go
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Tesla has some self-driving attributes, and is likely capable of switching to full autonomy well before Ford could produce 50k cars per year with the technology. What Tesla can't do is handle things that would require 5-10 different models to be in parallel development. They don't do "platforms" that let you cheat that development and just make a new body and interior for each version.
Tesla has not seen saturation levels yet for their $100k automobile; their very real challenge is in sustaining that produ
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So, if Tesla's sales were to double along with their market cap, they would be a size roughly comparable to Ford, but their business is nowhere near as brisk as Ford's. What I'm trying to say is current investors have priced in perfection in reaching the compan
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Hm.. well... you pretty-much validate my point here. If you are buying TSLA as a "hot stock" investment, then you deserve to take your short-term loss. But if you instead had the "vision" to see this as a long-term opportunity, you might understand why we are still YEARS away from knowing how the TSLA gamble will play out. And you would not be perturbed by random fluctuations in the market.
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You miss his point. The current price of Tesla prices in more or less perfect execution. There is only downside, no upside.
Like buying/staying in Krispy Cream donuts when they were worth as much as the rest of the baking/donut industry. Take your profits.
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Erm... whaa....? I'm not sure... was there a verb in your second sentence there?
Imagine for a sec that I'm not high on cocaine... how would you explain your point now?
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True, but there are a couple substantial differences: Ford has thin gross profit margins and lacks the vertical integration between manufacturing, sales, and service. It also has substantial legacy costs which limit its flexibility.
Long term, Tesla's P/E should be closer to 15, not the 20 that Musk seems to think. They have a future, but there is plenty of risk.
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Say what you want about Wall Street - and I'll be right there to join in - but they do know bullshitters and bullshit.
Now THAT is bullshit!
Consider: Madoff, Enron, Qwest, WorldCom...
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Anyway, is that guy really taken seriously as an analyst or viewed just as a talking head?
Re: PR Machine (Score:2)
I've always thought that He's on the same level as honey boo boo....
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"What's next? A supply chain?
Artisanal automobiles.
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You should consider the business model of slashdot. How does slashdot make money? I suspect page views are part of it.
If i were running slashdot, I'd be able to tell you, based on over a decade of historical data, which types of articles generate the highest ad revenues. I'd make sure those articles appeared as often as possible, and I'd look for feedback effects to make sure I wasn't over doing it.
If you want to know why slashdot has lots of articles in Elon Musk, Tesla, Gender in CS, and Microsoft, it'
Re:Coal power cars make little sense (Score:5, Informative)
This has been debunked numerous times. EVs have less CO2 emission than gasoline cars even when the electricity comes from dirty coal.
Here's one good article with references:
http://www.greencarreports.com... [greencarreports.com]
Re:Coal power cars make little sense (Score:5, Insightful)
You can get a better performing car for less than a tesla if you forgo electric.
Obviously you have never actually looked at the Model S specifications. The performance edition of the all wheel drive version has 691 horsepower. The rear motor alone has 443 ft lb of torque at zero RPMs. Can you get a more powerful internal combustion engine? Sure. But where? The 2015 Corvette tops out at 650 horsepower. The 2015 Mustang tops out at 435. The 2015 Camero tops out at 580. And none of those seat 7. The 2015 Cadillac XTS tops out at 410 horsepower. The 2015 Cadillac CTS tops out at 420. The 2015 Audi S8 tops out at 520 horsepower and it is NOT cheaper than a Model S.
And then in the same paragraph, you start talking about efficiency. You do realize that high performance and high efficiency simultaneously is ONLY possible in electric vehicles? Internal combustion can't do it. When you punch an electric motor, it stay 98% efficient. When you punch an internal combustion engine, its already miserable efficiency drops into the single digits. When an electric vehicle recharges, it's power source is NOT being pushed to the performance limit. It continues to operate at its best efficiency.
Most importantly, the energy source to recharge an electric vehicle is 100% fungible. If you live near a nuclear power plant, recharging your car is already producing 0 CO2. Zero. None. That is never possible for your fossil fuel car no matter how efficient your car gets. It will ALWAYS produce more than zero CO2. Build more nuclear power plants, or solar plants, or windmills, or all of the above, and the more electric cars there are, the less CO2 is produced by transportation. That's physically impossible with a fossil fuel fleet.
You must try really hard to be wrong about literally everything you said.
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The Challenger SRT Hellcat claims 707 hp. Got schooled at the dragstrip by a Model S P85D, but the driver was inexperienced and running stock rear tires. Still, that’s a lot of horses for some $60K.
http://www.roadandtrack.com/mo... [roadandtrack.com]
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Its misleading to specify torque at zero rpm, your power is zero because there is no movement.
What does movement have to do with anything? Do you even know what torque is? Here, let me help you with that. [wikipedia.org] In a nutshell, it's force. There's all kinds of forces in the world that don't result in movement. Lucky for you. You're sitting in a chair, aren't you? Demonstrating an instance of force without movement all by yourself. Amazing, isn't it. Forces get applied before movement starts.
All of the above cars you mention can beat the tesla in some or many of what people would call performance specifications, such as acceleration...
Tesla P85D 0-60 mph 3.2 s [zeroto60times.com]
Audi S8 0-60 mph 3.9 s [autoblog.com]
Yes, the sports cars can beat it. It's a SEDAN. A five door
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Just wait for the Apple electrical car!
That's what Steve Jobs would have wanted.
And watch how the posting counts on Slashdot stories are triple that of Tesla stories, with the most vicious pro-electric commenting and moderation you've ever seen. It'll make Tesla supporters look like lazy, staid, boring old people. You hear me? OLD PEOPLE!
Everybody will HAVE to have the new hotness. If they don't, they'll just DIE.