http://www.6speedonline.com/articles/tesla-p85d-vs-mclaren-650s-drag-race/
So the Tesla hangs in there for the first 60 or so MPH, then gets destroyed by the McLaren, no surprises here…
Let’s start with facts. The United States has imported $171 billion of automobiles in first 6 months of 2015. Every single dollar spent on a Tesla would have gone to foreign autos. I’m proud as fuck that Northern California is designing and locally building arguably one of the best cars on the planet on their first try.
The Tesla miracle was possible because Elon Musk was able to buy the NUMMI plant in Fremont from Toyota for $50 million after GM abandoned it. It’s a billion dollar plant that he got with the last of his life savings ($20 million from Paypal) and $30 million in capital raised some very wealthy people who are @drob23 parents neighbors. In tripping over themselves to save Chrysler and GM, the government diverted resources that Tesla could have scooped up on the cheap. It was probably the right call but there is a “cost” to that - primarily that Tesla needs to build a bunch of new factories this time. Ironically, they did pick up the Solyndra solar plant in San Jose for cheap. That was a solar company Obama famously visited that went fail.
Tesla is a one product company and it’s becoming a two product company. That is literally like winning the lottery twice. If you pull this off, you become a Fortune 500 company. Many have died trying. They’re not losing $4000 per car. They’re making Porsche like margins on the Model S cars they sell, and they’re investing the proceeds and capital raised on equity and debt markets to develop an SUV and later a mid sized sedan.
A pure electric car like a Tesla is the safest vehicle design human life can ride in. I asked my doctor about how I could live until 120 years old and he said “avoid blunt trauma”. When you don’t have to bend the floor for a transmission tunnel and exhaust piping, you build an incredibly strong safety cell (like riding on a steel I-beam). It’s not as sophisticated as the German interiors but they’ve had since WWII to get it right. The software is a lot more sophisticated and that will differentiate them for some time, unless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are miracle products on version 1.0 (don’t hold your breath).
I don’t think the Model 3 is going to be $35,000. I think it’s still going to cost $65k to get into a decent one with a respectable battery.
For someone in California there is no reason to not buy a Tesla. It can take you anywhere you want to drive for free.
Most of Tesla’s future government incentives lie with Nevada and are all non cash items. Over 20 years they’ll realize $20 million in “savings”.
Telsa’s main disadvantage competitively will be their insistence on all electric. Germany will beat them in performance with hybrid drivetrains. A small displacement turbo motor on one axle, and a 10kw battery pack on the other axle. And for the first time in forever, an Audi will have 50/50 weight distribution.
GM’s pension obligations are essentially infinite and their capital structure even after multiple bankruptcies is bad enough to weigh on the stock forever. I think $50 billion is rich for GM, given the recall liabilities and inability to fix broken cars cheaply even when it’s just a software patch. OTOH, I think $50 billion is rich for Uber since the business isn’t legal yet.
You constantly resort to making things up to support your feels. Stick to facts.
Tesla is losing $4000 per car. Powering your Tesla is not free.
Are you retarded? I guess you live in a rental with your utilities included, but one day, you will get an electricity bill in the mail. At that point you will understand that Tesla is not free. Further, when you’re overpaying for a car that is priced like an S class but is a Cadillac quality (those are your words)…and you do the math on that $20,000 premium you will understand that no part of the electric experience is free. Not to mention the fact that the government is chipping in a huge amount of money to even make it $20,000 not $35,000.
You’re over your head with love for Tesla. Stick to the facts.
For the most recent quarter: $167 million spent on R&D for the new models and a $154 million loss. Each Model S produced is at least breaking even at a company that we all admit hasn’t achieved scale. Everyone expects it to be about 25x bigger.
I like to view Tesla as a battery company that also makes cars. I don’t think I’m in love with it but I appreciate the novelty. On a long horizon, I think Tesla is going to prove that cars need not be obsolete in 5 or 10 years. Yeah, it might need a $4000 battery in the year 2022. Shouldn’t be a big deal for owners that saved $200 a month on gasoline (conservatively $20,000). There simply aren’t that many mechanical parts of the Tesla that can break. As long as you pay the $600 a year service agreement they more or less replace everything free of charge, including components that might fail down the road of have a better design now. It’s not uncommon for an early Model S to get a new inverter and motor on a routine service visit. This is essentially a continuously deliverable car.
Forget whether or not you like this family sedan. Marvel at their distribution. Direct to consumer. Free energy for life. Software defined automotive platform with trusted seamless upgrades. Chassis that accepts drop in drivetrain upgrades. You can’t compare these things to VW window glass that drops 1mm when the door opens. It’s the most revolutionary thing that has happened to autos since an assembly line and stable, Standard Oil.
Finish/quality and feasibility aside, I do like what they’ve done to shake things up (direct distribution model) and the tech geek in me likes what they do for upgrades and stuff.
I’m curious to see how things pan out. They seem to be doing a lot better than Fiskar lol.
Audirevolution only exists because the government subsidized the Internet. And the government paid for schools which taught me how to type in 2nd grade. Do roads come from governments? Asking for a friend. Everything we have is built on existing infrastructure.
Why are European engines 2.999L and 3.999L and 1.999L? Is that because of a government too or is that a magic formula by a physicist?
The thing to point out about Tesla is it’s a privately funded company operating within a legal system and has no special incentives - they’re all available to every manufacturer or car buyer. The cars run on cheap energy and the miracle is they’re about to run on cheap storage. Yes, you can make a battery out of something dirty. You can also make it out of something clean like lithium sulfur or lithium silicon or a fucking potato. If gasoline was $1 there would be little incentive to pursue something like this soon, but it’s over $4 in California the largest new car buying market in the world. I know I spent $14,000 in gasoline driving my BMW and $8000 on the Audi so far (ex racing). It’s not a trivial amount of money even if you’re rich by some measure. It’s $200 a month. My neighbor’s electric bill went up by $20 when she plugged in her Tesla. I think mine when up $10 when I plugged in an xBox One.
https://www.thurrott.com/xbox/xbox-one/2879/microsoft-promises-to-improve-xbox-one-power-consumption
I am sorry, but to say that Tesla is revolutionary is not exactly correct.
They did not invent electric car. They did not build the first electric car. They didn’t even build the first conventionally looking electric car. In fact the first electric car was built in 1834, before the first petrol car in 1886. And that’s because electric car is fundamentally much simpler than ICE, because an electric motor is much simpler. It’s a rotating shaft rotating wheels. No conversion of piston motion to rotating motion, no gearbox, no intake, no exhaust. The only thing that Tesla did better than others is their battery. And this is the reason why the car is so freaking expensive for what it has to offer. All the fancy gadgetry and software is super cheap and gets old very quickly, but nowadays creates a lot of hype. Nearly all “cool” things that Tesla did for their car are bad design and/or done to cut costs, i.e. a touch screen is much much cheaper than a bunch of nicely machined buttons and knobs.
The best things about Tesla are not about Model S or any car they would make. Their distribution model, their service approach that they can afford because car is super simple in it’s construction, their charging stations and the fact that they are willing to share their technology are the things that deserve admiration, not their car, it’s truly nothing special for its price.
I think, they don’t even plan to manufacture a lot of cars in the future, they probably know that EVs from everyone will be here in 4-5 years, and Tesla would be unable to produce enough cars even if enough people would buy them. What they want is to make batteries and charge batteries for all the cars that other companies would make. This is the reason why they released their battery and charging technology, so others can build on it, and buy batteries from Tesla. This is why they built Gigafactory and are building the network of charging stations. In making cars they will lose, so they will try to power cars instead.
This is where you fail, repeatedly
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it is $30,000 for a new battery. Not $4,000. Tesla themselves pay about $16,000 per car for simply the battery alone. You will argue that this will go down, but it really hasn’t gone down much since the Tesla Roadster came out 7 years ago, and people killed their batteries, it was about $30,000 to replace the battery. Still the same today.No change in 7 years. You’re arguing that in 7 years it will be down 90%? Again…you’re making shit up to fit your very poor argument. I know you’re not reading this because you’re so fucking obtuse, but I’m happy to correct you and point out your foolishness.
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$200/ a month savings on gasoline adds up to $20,000 by 2022? Are you really this bad at this? That’s $16,000 or so. Further, $200/month is a number you have pulled out of thin air again. If someone drives 1000 miles a month, on a car that averages 20 mpg, they’re spending 50 x $2.50 on gas per month. That’s $125/month. That’s about 3 tanks of fuel. The tesla owner will need to fully charge his car about 5 times to achieve that, which will cost him about $75. So the savings is $50/month. Over 7 years that’s $4200.
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As we have already discussed, there is a small fortune in government subsidies here…and a huge premium that you are paying for an equivalent quality car…so you’re financially fucked unless the Tesla doesn’t depreciate. Turns out they DO depreciate, just like regular cars. So there goes that.
You fucking suck at facts.
I don’t know how to restate enough times that gasoline is between $4 and $5 in California. Most people with premium cars spend up to $300 a month on gasoline per car. People who switch to Tesla are seeing a $30 electric bill. These are anecdotes - you can contrive whatever math you want to prove Tesla is an impossible idea while everyone enjoys theirs.
It wouldn’t matter if oil was free in California. We have limited refinery capacity in the state which constrains gasoline production, so it will always be expensive unless 10 million people move away. It’s another external cost of burning oil that the state is seeking to diversify out of with other vehicle propulsion types. In 120,000 miles of driving in a decade I spent nearly $25k on gas in the United States. If I hypothetically had a Model S for a decade and wanted to replace the battery, I’m sure they would sell me a battery pack with monthly payments of $500 for 4 years. The retail price of batteries is about $500 a kW. The gigafactory is supposed to make it economical at less than half that cost.
Smog is a serious problem and California is the foremost outpost in the first world. We’re not going to turn into China where you can’t see daylight for 2 weeks. LA is going to have air as clean as Hawaii by 2050 and Tesla is the first step to getting there.
What if a 10 year old A4 wasn’t a 10 year old A4? What if you just dropped a new 2.0T in it at the Audi dealer? What if it already had maximum torsional rigidity because the chassis was strong from the get go? What if it didn’t have buttons that get outdated and whose springs wear out? What if the timing chain and the fuel filter and the engine mounts and the AC compressor weren’t problems at all?
I will call bullshit on Tesla for the “691 HP” P85D. Not quite. The math on adding up the rear drivetrain and front drivetrain isn’t certified by SAE, and the butt dyno tells me it’s not there. The 70D is a 300 HP car and the 85D is a 400 HP car, as we know them from caveman gasoline cars with complicated drivetrains. I think the Tesla math tries to make a comparable number so consumers can equate. The Tesla makes big torque and has drivetrain loss under 2%.
The income tax refund doesn’t even cover the state sales tax, so no one is “raping” the government or getting a special deal.
The oil companys get tax breaks too so do any powered motor development companys. But sakimano have a few good points. The battery is as much as a small new car that gets 40mpg. Since Tesla isnt selling batterys now on a payment plan I dont see them starting. Even if they did sell the battery on a payment plan the payment plan length wouldnt be longer then the warranty on the battery would be. There is still more money that needs to be paid to recycle the battery so thats another cost and another potential long term issue as something needs to be done with the batteries and over a long time the batteries will need to have the waste go somewhere. That can be decades of hazard waste.
The big issue about battery powered cars still remains. They cant be your standard form of DD as you will need another car always. As you need to put a battery car down for hours and hours to charge
If nothing changes, then things will always be the same as they are now. Fortunately everything changes daily in Silicon Valley. There are battery technologies that will charge faster and discharge faster. A big company will commercialize them, and we think that company is Tesla.
We know that right now, today, you could own a Tesla for a decade and pre-emptively replace the batteries for less than gasoline would cost you over the same time horizon. If batteries get cheaper you save (a safe assumption) and you probably get 20% more range on upgrade. It’s really hard to establish resale because Tesla is creating huge deflation in the electric car market. For $70k today you can get a Tesla that is as good or better than the $130k signature edition from a few years ago (they have AWD for instance).
They’re nearing the limits of performance as far as the human body can stand it. The novelty of that is wearing off, and the focus moves to brining adequate performance at a price anyone can afford (even a Canadian).
Personally I’m interested in dual drivetrain electric hybrids from Porsche. My Boxster would be a better car if the front wheels were pulling it with electric motors in addition to the rear wheels being driven by a 2.0L turbo flat 4. Whoever said the Tesla frunk can’t fit a suitcase is wrong - the Boxster is a lot smaller and fits a full size checked bag, and 2 other carry on bags.
I think the issue of subsidies doesn’t make anyone look innocent. Hey here’s another $400 million going to a Ford plant very close to home. And somehow we’ve doled out $14 billion to the big 3?
How about this - instead of $400 million, Ford should be forced to surrender that nice chunk of Oakville real estate, gotta be worth more than the bullshit Edges and Flexes they make there. What a stupid place for an auto plant nowadays. It’s not like they’re employing people from Oakville lol.
At this point it doesn’t look like any domestic manufacturer can actually stand on its own two feet. The whole situation is fucked. Why do people need new subsidized cars at all? So they can dump it in 5 years and get a new piece of shit that was only designed to last that long?
Tesla is worse than most for chasing subsidies and grants, but I think they can all go to hell with what we’ve paid out to them all. How come the domestic automobile industry can’t survive on a non-parasitic model and have to fuck us with both a tax burden AND shit cars?
True some of the US automakers have received subsidies for jobs and economic value. Have you seen how much tax Ford pays the town of Oakville? The province of Ontario? The government of Canada? It’s STAGGERING. Tesla? $0. Not to mention the income tax from the tens of thousands of employees. So why is our government giving subsidies to Tesla and Tesla buyers again?
Also, last time I checked, the guys on this site who bought Fords didn’t get $7500 from the federal government. From your and my tax dollars. For what? THe Tesla buyers get it because it’s ‘green’. Even though it’s light years from green.
Ya I was going to say you don’t compound one error (targeted tax breaks for car manufacturers, oil tax credits, etc.) by doing something even worse (taxpayer subsidies to wealthy individuals to purchase $100,000 Teslas). For me, the bottom line is that Tesla CANNOT SURVIVE without taxpayer funding. Or at least it would seem. It’s a boondoggle at this point. If Tesla wants to source private money to fund its unprofitable ventures, be my guest. But when they come to Washington, D.C. (and state and local governments) with their hands out, I say fuck off and leave the taxpayer the hell alone.
Tesla, among other tech companies, is the reason California is running a surplus again (and just paid off a $15 billion bond from 2004). Instead of paying pensions, Tesla pays employees overtime and stock bonuses. The stock bonuses are restricted shares that vest every quarter. On vest, 41% of them are sold to cover taxes. The state gets that money immediately.
Nobody gets out of California without paying taxes LOL. You guys make it sound like not only does the government give them everything for free, but Uncle Sam is also a venture capitalist that funds their capital intensive businesses. This couldn’t be further from the truth. They’re given penny promises and they turn them into millions.
Does anyone here actually think the world would be worse if every premium new car had a 10 kW battery in it so that people could do their entire commutes without buying gasoline? I know you guys are all rich and would gladly pay to use gas sitting in traffic, but most people just want cheap transportation.
Tesla loses money and pays no tax. They are not contributing to California’s income statement in any way shape or form. Capital gains from stock sales are irrelevant. Are you going to also credit DeutscheBank for helping California out of their defecit, since their shares have appreciated handily and any shareholders who sell for capital gains are helping California?
Step away from the keyboard…you’re making shit up again.
Nobody is saying electric isn’t interesting. Audi didn’t build an electric R8 and A3 because it had 160 million to burn.
The fact is that if they build a product that stands on its own merit, and can be sold for a reasonable profit WITHOUT a bunch of handouts from my tax dollars, let’s see it. Until then, fuck off.
If I want to open a restaurant that sells healthy food and charges $150/person will the government offer $25 per guest in free handouts? Why not? Why are they offering this for luxury cars? Serving healthy food is far more valuable to society than pretending electric cars are green.
I don’t think you have the faintest understanding about the roles of corporations and governments. Many tech companies run R&D centers in the United States that generate losses, and blockbuster new products. It’s pretty hard to tax a corporation because there are many schemes for licensing IP between shell companies over sovereign borders. What you can do is tax the 4000 employees who work there. That’s real money for the federal government and state government. $600 million a year in R&D salaries is no small thing. That’s $60 million for the state and $150 million for the feds.
The $150 a plate restaurant example is ironic because there has been a health insurance fee of $5 (or 2% when the checks are lower) on every check to make sure the person cooking the food isn’t in poverty because of a doctor’s bill or ER visit. You should look at Tesla the same way - rich customers are subsidizing battery research so everyone can drive to work on battery power one day.
I don’t know why you care about America’s tax rules anyway. Really, who cares if someone buys an $80,000 electric car, pays $7000 in sales tax plus $500 registration, and then gets a $7500 income tax rebate next April? It’s just a tax free car, not an outright subsidy. Why not start a huge diatribe about Europe?
you’re so egocentric
here’s a hint : nobody gives a flying fuck about california. Just you. Go read my OP. It never once mentions California. You’re the only jackass to bring up California. Then you’re asking why people are talking about California??? Are you seriously this oblivious?
Westwest…you’re too annoyingly dumb to even discuss anything with . You’re the most obtuse person I’ve ever met on a forum. That’s saying alot because there are a lot of morons out there. You’re just completely off topic constantly, address nothing, and run in circles while basically arguing with yourself.
Go do it somewhere else please.