First, thank you for acknowledging that there was no straw man in my post.
To review: you questioned what would happen if people wanted their money back. You then opined that some people would not get their money back if they wanted to, because they “would be met with blank stares from Tesla.”
I pointed out that Tesla promises that the $1,000 is fully refundable until a firm order for a specific car is made. A reservation is not an order. The reservation agreement is perfectly clear:
Your assumption that people will get stiffed is in contradiction to the plain English of the reservation agreement. If people were to get stiffed, they’d have a good lawsuit against Tesla, just as if you put a down payment on new windows for your house and the workers never show up.
This is funny because Tesla were proven wrong because an Apple product did well more than beat them in pre-orders, but the “kind of irony” is that Apple’s marketing pretty much does the same thing with their products, making wild claims about “first evers”.
Yeah, I got that email too. I think we know they are playing loose with terminology when they say this:
They are equating reservations with sales. And since reservations aren’t sales, that doesn’t work. But if reservations were sales, then they’d be right. Of course, if you had wheels…
And they’re all shitty little cars that scream “electric car” at first glance and barely go 100 miles on a charge, let alone 200+. Again: not one of these cars would be attractive at all if they weren’t EVs.
The only logic I can make of it is that the automakers don’t want to compete with their main lineup. And so they sell EVs that could only be interesting to people that really, really like EVs and put a low priority on usability or styling.
There’s a reason that Tesla’s cars have massively outsold their competition, and that’s despite being more expensive.
You seem to think that just showing up is good enough. It didn’t matter that the EV-1 was the first to the market. It still sucked as a car. There was a group of enthusiasts that liked it, but that didn’t translate to the broader public.
What is complete fiction? That TSLA has a $34B market cap? That investors are willing to invest in them based on a reasonable promise of orders?
The whole point of having a public company is that you can occasionally convert stock holdings into cash, either by selling company-owned stock or just issuing new shares. Tesla can bleed money for a long time before this becomes a problem.
Obviously there’s no point in hoarding a giant pile of cash. They should invest every dollar they take in, and only take in what they can spend.
Since Apple has a ton of liquid cash + strong interest in autonomous cars, and Tesla Motors has cars with basic AI in them already, they are going to merge.
The new company will be call EVA - Electric Vehicle Alliance.
Under the terms, Apple will complete the Gigafactory and obtain exclusive rights to use the Tesla autos as test/development/research tools, and receive a cut of each Model 3 sales price for10 years.
Now: Go hit FB, Twitter, Snapchat, hell, MySpace and Yahoo. One of you folks should be able to create a convincing video…
You can buy 2 Mitsubishi i-MiEV’s for the price of a Model 3. Since it’s pointless to travel cross country in a Tesla the extra mileage of the Model 3 can be converted into another car.
When companies like Porsche decide EV’s are profitable Tesla is going to be one of many high dollar cars competing for the same market.
Yes, the competition wants to make money on their cars. Go figure.
It does matter that the EV-1 was first to market. It was part of a long term strategy to develop cars for future sales when the technology matures. You REALLY need to get off this fanboy bus. It’s getting seriously old.
That whole paragraph made me laugh out loud. They can’t invest money they don’t have. That’s why you’re loaning them money. They’re bleeding cash and that isn’t sustainable when entering the high production market. There’s really little difference between a budget EV and a high dollar EV. There are no twin cam aluminum V8 engines and 8 speed transmissions jacking up the cost of production. Tesla will be building “Model-S lights” with almost the same production cost and selling them for half the price.
Ahh, I see. A single i-MiEV has a range of 62 miles. So when I visit my parents 120 miles away, I can drive one i-MiEV and tow the other. When the juice runs out, I switch to the towed one and discard the first. It’s like a two-stage rocket.
Oh yes, Zee Germans. Zhey make me quake in my boots.
Turns out that Daimler’s stockholders are concerned: “We don’t really have a product for this competition from Tesla. In the long term we have some great vehicles . . . but they are virtual at this point.”
And:
*He pointed out that in 2017 Mercedes will have 10 plug-in hybrid vehicles for sale and pledged to launch an all-electric car with a range of 500km, on a single charge, before the end of the decade. *
Great; only 8 years late to the party here.
GM? Long-term strategy? I think this is one of those oxy-whatsits. GM’s only strategy is knowing how to bilk the taxpayers out of tens of billions of dollars.
GM only does things under duress. The EV-1 was a compliance car, not the beginning of a long-term sustained effort. You don’t wait 8 years between products when you have a strategy.
Well, they got the “long-term” part right, at least.
I guess you don’t know how the stock market works, then. It’s pretty simple:
What’s getting old is the name calling. You have some visceral grudge against Tesla that goes so far beyond even my criticisms of the company, and anyone who calls you out on your errors is a “fanboy.”
The EV-1 is irrelevant to anything happening today. Nobody has driven one in a decade and a half. The Chevy Bolt appears to have no heritage associated with the EV-1. Instead, the Bolt appears to have its roots in the Volt (I know how much you despise that car), which Bob Lutz pushed after he saw the Tesla Roadster. So it seems Elon, not the EV-1, has more responsibility for the Bolt’s existence at all.
By the way, have you noticed that Bolt annual production isn’t expected to exceed 30,000 per year? I mean, you keep talking about how the big automakers are going to crush Tesla because of their huge production capacity… And yet, GM doesn’t expect to sell but one-tenth of the EVs that Tesla has received reservations for.
Oh hell no. I’ve acknowledge The model S and the successful exploitation of a niche market. That doesn’t mean I plan on having Elon’s baby anytime soon. You’re substituting high praise for the car in place of the reality of producing it. Tesla has demonstrated the performance/cost benefit of electric motors in high performance cars. He hasn’t demonstrated the ability to produce them profitably.
It’s the progenitor of every EV car produced in the last half of the 20th century.
nope, sorry, made no such statement. I’ve talked about Tesla’s continued financial losses and inability to meet production deadlines as their achilles heel. It has nothing to do with their product. The other automakers have the resources to build whatever they want to build and as battery technology makes these cars viable they will ramp up production overnight as if someone flipped a switch.
GM and other companies operate on profit based business model. Tesla has been selling small production runs of expensive cars at a loss. Now they plan to enter high volume production. By default they’ve overextended themselves with battery production between their car and power storage products. Something has to give or they will again be late delivering their product. They MUST make a profit on the Model 3 because loses on a larger scale will crush the company.
What’s the problem? It’s talking about greatest sales. Period. iphone had greatest sales by unit count where Model 3 had greatest sales (okay, reservations) by dollar volume. Since they’re different metrics, they’re both right.
I have no problem with the idea of owning an electric car, and a 200 mile range between charges is not a deal-breaker for me as I generally stay within 10 miles of home.
However, I have a ton of little nitpicks that make me unlikely to ever own one of these.
For instance, I will not be buying one new. The price they are discussing represents about 2 years pay for me, and is literally 40 times the largest amount I have ever paid for a car. It is about 17 times the price of the cars I was looking at the last time I was shopping.
The statistics I have seen say that my short legs mean I am putting my life at risk just by sitting in the driver’s seat of any car made after 1992. This can be solved by removing the airbag, but it is illegal to sell the car in that condition, so I would have to replace an expensive part if I ever wanted to sell the car.
I am not a big fan of computerizing things that work just fine without it: I see no reason for my turn-signals or windshield wipers to be computer controlled. When I turn on the switch, I want power to flow to the wiper motor. If the wipers don’t come on, I want to know it is either the switch, the motor, or a broken wire somewhere.
I have a long list of reasons like that which basically add up to my ideal vehicle being a 1965 VW with disc brakes. Wish I could find one for cheap.
(And I would not mind at all of that VW was electric.)
I perceive this as the big untapped market. I suspect a lot of people would be happy to pay $10K for a decent conversion of something they already have. With off-the-shelf parts that might let them add battery capacity when they can afford it. And/or have a swap in option (more batteries for when more range is needed, or perhaps a generator).
God yes. I’m 6’4 and my Wife is 5’1". And it seems that now they are going away from adjustable peddles to a telescoping steering wheel. I guess that alleviates the air bag problem, but doesn’t help much with my long legs even with seats back all the way.
I’ll think about buying electric when they sell one with the same basic capabilities and off road/snow abilities and cargo area as a large mid-sized SUV (think Grand Jeep). And it charges in 5 minutes.
Or when I’m forced to buy one because ICE is no longer available.
I’ve explained why it isn’t, you just keep repeating that it is. Let me repeat: the guy who killed the EV-1 started the Volt/Bolt family based on the Tesla Roadster, not on the success of the EV-1.
:smack: You just explained to me how the big automakers will crush Tesla with their production capacity right after you said that you’ve never said such a thing.
This is about as profound a statement as saying that if I don’t eat anything, I will starve. Uh, yeah. I appreciate that insight.
Oh well then, it must be true because someone on the internet says so.
The major auto makers have the reserve cash flow to do whatever they think is profitable. Tesla does not. The Model 3 is a sink or swim venture. The Bolt is just another car to GM.
I have no idea what all goes into the Tesla factory - rolls of sheet metal? Raw fiberglass and carbon cloth + resin?
I’m going to guess the glass is formed by someone else.
Chrysler just laid off an entire shift at some plant.
Could Tesla farm out the production of complete shells and then do the final assembly - glass, doors, interior, battery packs and motors, wheels and paint?
Are such sub-assemblies farmed out in the auto world?
Boeing buys finished fuselage, wings, and some other rather central parts.
There has too be lots of forming presses twiddling their thumbs at this point.
