It just doesn't work: Tesla

General Discussion
#361

Yeah that Model X may have issues, like an iPhone 1. I think the difference is Tesla has a keen interest in actually fixing them. The factory knows what they screwed up, which cars are affected, and how to address them complimentary at the next service. 100% of cars get fixed.

Porsche is one of the highest quality cars you can buy from a volume manufacturer. The electronics on my 2015 Boxster are not the best, specifically the $2000 active cruise control is completely non functioning (so I have no cruise control at all). The dealer doesn’t know what the PAS feature is, and asked me if I meant PASM or PSM. They don’t know how to fix or reset it, or how to even connect to that particular module. The only way they really can fix it is to order you another car without it. That’s the operating model for these old line auto makers, and people are sick of it.

#362

Accurate

#363

Interesting snippet from an article

  1. What yield has Tesla experienced on Model X pre-orders?
    I can confidently predict we’ll hear a lot from Tesla about the “world record” number of Model 3 reservations and how they translate into more than $15 billion of revenues.
    The simple math works. 400,000 pre-orders X $42,000 ASP = $16.8 billion. But what about experience?
    The Model X provides an important lesson: The revenue Tesla ultimately realizes depends entirely on the yield it achieves on its pre-orders.
    As of September 29, 2015, Tesla had racked up 32,748 worldwide pre-orders for the Model X. (Tesla stopped its sequential numbering of the orders after that date, which coincides with the Model X “reveal” event.)
    Those Model X pre-orders required a serious financial commitment: Signature deposits were $40,000 and Production deposits were $5,000. One would expect that those making the deposits were committed Tesla customers.
    Yet, to date, I’m seeing a bit less than a 30% yield on those reservations.

Even more astonishingly, I’m seeing an average monthly new net reservation rate, worldwide, of about 300 per month. Compare that to CEO Elon Musk’s prediction last fall of between 3,200 and 3,600 per month.
The Model X reservation yield matters for two crucial reasons. First, it foretells how deep Tesla’s losses will be on this troubled car.
Second, it illustrates how one should apply a big grain of salt as seasoning before swallowing Tesla’s narrative about the magnitude of future Model 3 revenues.

"

#364

So 25% isn’t a bad guess considering the Model 3 customers are far less committed at this point. They also don’t have a product or pricing. One of my neighbors put the $1000 down, but these is probably a 1% chance he will actually follow through considering how impatient and impulsive he is…the 2-3 year wait time is an eternity.

#365

the thing nobody is talking about is this: The ‘$35,000 base price’ was thrown out, but Elon Musk said that was contingent on a fully operational, max capacity battery gigafactory.

For those keeping score, the gigafactory is WAY behind schedule already. They are I believe through only 1 phase of the actual construction, and promised they’d have completed 2 and be well into phase 3 by end of 2015. This thing won’t be ready for years ,because their scheduled subcontractors are bailing. They’re having to redo RFP on the major work and all around it’s delaying a key element of the model 3 being reasonably affordable.

So it looks like we’re on our way to a nicely equipped, small battery RWD model 3 costing around $55,000. Not $35,000 for an AWD ludicrous mode P90D as west would have you believe. And not only that, but it’s looking like 2018 for you to get the first model 3, but it will not be the base model, it will be the most expensive models.

So people who threw down $1000 thinking they’d get a $35,000 ferrari killer in Dec 2017 are going to in fact get a $55,000 VW golf competitor in 2019-2020.

#366

Makes you wonder when TSLA’s price starts to reflect these realities. Just seems like another taxpayer-funded boondoggle that is bound to fail (sooner rather than later).

#367

I’m really interested in the $50k A4. Will go test drive it and see if I can do a 2-3 year lease until Model 3 arrives and gives Audi the sales death knell in their bread and butter segment.

#368

proving once again that west is incapable of responding to argument. #bubbleboy

#369

How can I respond to doom and gloom pessimism? They’ll never sell that many cars. They’ll never build that many batteries. Earth doesn’t have enough anodes. Mining for nickel is worse than hydrofracking. The company will be bankrupt by 2020. The US government will go bankrupt subsidizing them. I SAW A DRONE PICUTRE ON REDDIT AND THE FACTORY IS BEHIND SCHEDULE!1111

It’s the same arguments that applied to iPhone 1. The carriers are subsidizing them. The iPhone is bad for the earth - look at how polluted China is. It’s not for serious phone users. They can’t build them fast enough. It’s too expensive for normal people to afford. Everyone will stop waiting in line for them, it’s just a few fanboys. They’ll never maintain the profit margins. The people who miss this shit miss out on the rise of the most valuable companies on earth.

As for the Model X, Cadillac sold 42,274 of the $90k Escalade last year. Tesla is having trouble getting the SUV out the door but they can get to this volume. They built an extremely complicated car. I think they know this was a mistake that can’t be repeated on Model 3. They tried to build a spaceship and they should have built a large Prius.

Model 3 basically needs to just be a 17:20 scale Model S made of steel instead of aluminum, with fewer features and cheaper motors. They’ll ship it. The average sales price is not critical, so no need to sell the expensive cars first. That would be a huge tactical mistake with the preorder holders.

#370

The news tonight said Tesla is leasing another 1,000,000 sq ft in two adjacent buildings the length of 17 football fields, in Livermore. Making history. The second order effects to the economy are huge. $10 billion of supplier orders. Unemployment at 2%.

#371

You need to reply to those because your asinine assertion is that Tesla is going to sell 400,000 cars next year. That’s why you fucking numpty. -8

#372

Even if you’re COO of Tesla you can’t be certain how many cars will be produced between 1/1/2018 and 12/31/2018. You put good managers on it, commit to some metrics in Thanksgiving 2017, and hold them accountable to the outcome everyone thinks is possible. Maybe it’s 200,000 cars (120,000 of Model 3) if there are quality issues that slow the robots. Maybe it’s 500,000 cars if they can scale horizontally to 3 bay area plants.

The entire premise of your thread is incorrect. You can’t say “IT JUST DOEZNT WERK” when 1,000,000 Model 3 or more will be built. It will be a runaway success not seen in American consumer products since iPhone.

What you actually mean is it doesn’t work for you. You still have another form of transportation. It’s safe to assume innovations might not work, or might be a regression. But even as this one is on the precipice of being as mass market as a Prius, you dig in. I’m just wondering which company $TSLA is going to replace in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

There’s literally 30,000 people in the Bay Area that work for Tesla or their suppliers working on this. With certainty the vision will be fulfilled.

#373

I think you’re just too frantic to focus on the facts.

The cars are way too expensive.
The cars are not very well made.
The cars are not environmentally friendly.
The cars are government subsidized on the Tesla end.
The cars are government subsidized on the buyer end.

On top of all of this, they are burning billions and paying for the business with share sales.

That’s what doesn’t work. Nobody said they’ll go bust tomorrow. Nobody said they won’t sell cars. I just said that this model is retarded.

#374

“For the month, the average transaction price rose an estimated 1.9% to $33,865 for a light vehicle in the U.S., with Detroit auto makers posting particularly strong numbers, according to Kelley Blue Book.”

Yeah, $35,000 is way too expensive? They’re not as well made as other American cars - really? They don’t spill unburned gasoline, leak unburned oil, burn oil, burn gasoline, or pollute the air. The US is a popular place for “subsidized” capital markets, no argument there (DID YOU KNOW COMPANIES CAN BORROW FOR 500 BASIS POINTS OVER US TREASURIES). The buyer beit will run out when the 200,000th car is delivered, from a company that will make tens of millions of cars (i.e. it has 0 bearing on the success of the company).

Do tell how you would start a global car company without “burning billions” or “raising money at the IPO/secondary offering window”.

#375

ok, bye bye westwest. If you can’t focus on the facts, GTFO.

#376

Sakim starting an innovative silicon valley company thread would be like me starting a hockey thread. Hockey is subsidized by the canadian government. The team busses pollute. The game isn’t very fair. It’s completely artificial to play it when the temperature is above 0. The players have obscene salaries compared to sports that make more money. It’d be totally impractical for 7.2 billion people to have hockey sticks - we would run out of plastic. I like other sports better – IT JUST DOESNT WORK.

#377

Well I saw an suv in person today much better looking in person!

#378

Was just listening to a money manager talking about the gigafactory on TV. He thinks one of the reasons the gigafactory is so far behind is because the battery technology that the factory was planned for has already been leapfrogged so Tesla is stuck and doesn’t know what to do with it for now. There goes the model 3 price reduction. Don’t forget, the $35,000 base price was contingent on in house full on battery production at gigafactory.

He also mentioned the powerwall…that despite thousands of people who sent in deposits on that, Tesla has already scrapped half of that entire project and refunded all of the deposits.

Pretty funny. They need to raise money, so they lie about the $35,000 price of the model 3, and the wannabe, underfunded folks who can’t afford a model S (like westwest) throw money at them. This does two things…gets people excited about a car that will never exist (vapourware) and brings money in for free…and also jacks the stock price up so the retail investors will throw more money at that. Allowing them to issue more treasury shares at ridiculous pricing.

Fun watching the ponzi scheme/shell game being played.

#379

From today’s Journal:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-loses-two-manufacturing-executives-1462382198

#380

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-04/two-tesla-production-chiefs-to-leave-ahead-of-biggest-challenge-yet

From the article:

Next up for Tesla may be its biggest manufacturing and production challenge yet: building the Model 3. The $35,000 mass-market electric car received deposits for 400,000 reservations in the weeks after the March 31 unveiling of the prototype. Before the designated launch date of late 2017, Tesla needs to massively ramp up production capacity—first for the Model X, then for the batteries that power all of Tesla’s vehicles, and finally for the Model 3 itself. Much of that effort will now fall to an as-yet-unnamed top production executive.

Manufacture and deliver 400,000 Model 3 in the next 18 months? I don’t see a problem.

But according to West it’s already happened: