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And you know this how? From your extensive collection of precisely zero Model 3s?...

In other words, you are a troll, or perhaps a paid shill, with no actual knowledge on the subject.

Hey whoever57, you have a stiff boner for that troll/shill/no knowledge tranny Karen Pease/KarenRei don't you?

Hey wait a minute, are you faking Model 3 ownership to garner the homosexual affection of one KarenRei?

It affects all Model 3s.

And you know this how? From your extensive collection of precisely zero Model 3s?

Last time I checked Karen Pease/KarenRei also has extensive collection of precisely zero Model 3s.
Also whoever57, you're the Musk fanboy faking ownership of "my Model 3".

Never happened on my Model 3.

Hey whoever57, why are you spamming slashdot about "my Model 3", but not posting over at the de facto Model 3 owners forum M3OC?
Hell KarenRei doesn't even own a Model3 and he post there regularly.
Seems to me you are faking ownership of your Tesla my friend.

Never happened on my Model 3.

Hey whoever57, why are you spamming slashdot about "my Model 3", but not posting over at the de facto Model 3 owners forum M3OC?
Hell KarenRei doesn't even own a Model3 and he post there regularly.
Seems to me you are faking ownership of your Tesla my friend.

"guy"?
https://model3ownersclub.com/m...

Not cool at all. Don't be a dick.

"guy"?
https://model3ownersclub.com/m...

I paid 55K way beyond my comfort zone.

Hey 140mandak262Jamuna, why are you completely absent on the de facto Tesla Model 3 forum M3OC?
Seems like you're faking ownership of your Model 3 my friend.

Also didn't you say you paid "50k" 4 months ago? Now it's "55k"?
You're not very good with numbers are you?

My Tesla Model 3 stores 75 kWh.

Hey 140Mandak262Jamuna, why aren't you posting over at model3ownersclub.com?
It seem like you are faking ownership of your Tesla Model 3 for whatever reasons?

Dude, you don't actually own a Tesla Model 3 do you?
Who the fuck calculates electricity cost based solely on the consumption charges?
Is your utility company giving you lifetime free pass on delivery charges? Like Pacific Gas & Electric(PG&E) will maintain power lines, transformers, power plants for you for free for life?
Your 13 cents per kWh typically doubles when you add in what your utility charges for delivery...maybe that's why Tesla charges you 26 cents per kWh at the Superchargers.

BTW 140Mandak262Jamuna, you're not posting at model3ownersclub.com apparently.
Why are you spamming slashdot.com with your fake EV ownership, when you are completely missing in action over at M3OC?
Seems a little suspicious.

Hey 140 Mandak262Jamuna, I can tell you're passionate about EV and your new Tesla Model 3.
I'm sure you are a even more prolific a poster over at model3ownersclub.com, where the real action is.
However I cannot find the username "140 Mandak262Jamuna" over at M3OC.
Perhaps you can share your M3OC username, because the prospective Tesla buyer would greatly benefit from insights from you and other Model 3 owners.
Thanks man.

Yeah, well, I think if that was actually the case, a lot of Tesla drivers would have noticed and been raising hell. They haven't.

edmunds.com sure is raising hell about their Model 3 LR 36.8 kWh/100miles.

Motortrend don't seem pleased by their 34.9 kWh/100miles (103.7 MPGe) Model 3.

CarAndDriver sound disappointed by their 200miles range Model 3.

This German Environment Minister (and Green Party Tree Hugger)rejected his Tesla (not a Model 3 this time but a Model S P100 (100kWh battery, Model 3 LR only has a 75 kWh battery)), due to 190 miles range (300km), among other quality issues.

Fact of the matter is, reliable sources are getting ~200miles range from Tesla big battery offerings.

I kind of favor reliable sources with known track records rather than anonymous cowards like Rei/KarenRei/Karen Pease, or even yourself Kyr Arvin.

Hey Idou, why aren't you posting at model3ownersclub.com?
You're a claim owner of a Model 3, and you're posting like a troll on slashdot, but nothing, zilch, nada, zip on the most popular owners club forum?
Looks a little suspicious doesn't it?
So...how much is Elon paying you to suck his knob?

This always-musk-defending Rei? https://slashdot.org/~Rei

how do you know is really a she?

She doesn't exactly leave a light digital footprint. See, for example, here.

Tesla vehicles sell because people love them. Highest consumer satisfaction rating on Consumer Reports, every year.

Consumer Reports poll of its "subscribers/owners".
"Subscribers/owners" including WindBourne, KarenRei, Karen Pease, KS Kyosuke, barsteward, apoc.famine, haruchai, sfcat, aaarrrgggh, Bruce Perens, bgarcia...

Wow, what a coincident the same "subscribers/owners" also posts on slashdot.

Too bad international tear down experts like Sandy Munro is not a Consumer Reports "subscriber/Owner":

...I thought that this(Model 3) was one of the worst fit and finish I've seen in decades...

...these are flaws(Model 3) that we would see on a Kia in the 90s...

Hey Rei/Pease, which do you prefer to be called?
KarenRei
Karen Pease

Karen Pease
or
KarenRei

who to follow? tough choice...

You think Rei is "paid" to "share the good news"? You have a very high respect of slashdot influence to think someone will be paid full time to write a few comment here.

Rei:
>he/she claims to be from Iceland
>post frequently at 0200-0500 local Iceland time (in this thread he posted 0213, 0216, 0220, and 0304 local time)

either he's not from Iceland, or he's losing sleep for pay (I certainly wouldn't shill at 0304 for free)

he/she also posted in youtube under "karen peese" (same stock picture as "KarenRei")(changing your username willy nilly when you wanted to be taken seriously?)

Rei does not hide who she is.

https://www.model3ownersclub.com/members/karenrei.7284/

I enjoy reading her comments here. She's interested in Telsa and reads several Tesla discussion boards so she often posts facts I had no idea about before they are common knowledge. She does post prolific answers about Teslas but she provides references to back up things she claims, which puts her way ahead of most on Slashdot.

If you really don't like seeing what she posts, use the "Enemy" feature on Slashdot and it will effectively mod her posts down for you. You will probably still see some of her posts as she is routinely modded to +5 when she writes something informative.

As for Elon Musk, I doubt he hangs out on Slashdot. He does hang out on Twitter, and he can't have that much free time to hang around on multiple sites.

Before you get your hopes up too much about Jaguar...

It's not an "American problem", it's a capex problem. Until other manufacturers start throwing the sort of capex at EVs that Tesla has, they'll struggle to compete. They can make price/feature uncompetitive models and mass produce them, or they can make price/feature competitive models via subsidy and then limit the supply. But they can't mass produce and subsidize, and rob from their gasoline sales at the same time. It's capex that reduces your per-unit cost.

A couple manufacturers have announced plans to start putting serious capex toward EVs. Volkswagen, for example. That will start to pay off a few years down the line. But not today.

It was a bunch of news with short term and/or minimal financial repercussions, except for the Moody's downgrade, which itself was based on said news with short term and/or minimal financial repercussions. And it is irrelevant to Tesla as, even if one believes they're "running out of money" (which is a nonsense claim), with $3,4B in the bank they'd still have no need to go to the markets in the short term and they have fixed terms with their suppliers, so whatever rating Moodys happens to give them today is of little to no bearing.

I don't expect the Q1 results to shut these people up (as the current increase in production rates won't be well represented in it), but I expect the Q2 results to do a pretty good job at it. Even if production rates average 2k/wk and even if margins didn't improve at all (which they obviously should as the line gets up to higher rates), across Q2 that'd be a massive revenue increase without a correspondingly large SGA increase.

What financial statements? SpaceX is a privately held company. And it's on a roll.

You're thinking of Tesla. They already went bankwupt ;)

Seriously, there was literally no news with a long-term impact that affected this slide, apart from the Moody's statement, which was itself based on no news with a long-term impact. The plunge in price was due to a surge in short positions based on a bunch of short term bad news. And the liquidity arguments are absurd.

In broader terms, the bear argument is that Tesla is not going to be able to pay off 900-and-something million in bonds due in spring 2019. Not a typo: 2019. And if that sounds like a lot of money, remember that even in Q1, Tesla's gross profit (quarterly gross profit) was $2,2 billion dollars. Tesla is already producing twice as many vehicles per week as they averaged in 2017. Averaged over Q1? No, it was only the upgrades during recent Fremont downtime that pushed them up that high. But it's important to remember that that gain is just *one* quarter of production acceleration. Even if you want to pretend it's a burst rate (in which it's probably more like 2500/wk extrapolated in order to have the whole week average 2000/wk), and that the 2000/wk is really smoke and mirrors and sustained is really more like 1000-1500/wk, a quarter ago the sustained rate was ~250-450/wk with a burst rate of 1000/wk

Yes, there's also Tesla's SGA expenses which in Q4 were roughly equal to their gross profits, but those don't grow linearly with gross profits; SGA expenses have to scale up before production and sales, and there's no reason to expect SGA growth to anywhere near match gross profit growth. Even at present, SGA is roughly equal to gross profit; the losses were because of ~$1,4B in R&D, which A) can be cut at any time, and B) doesn't increase at all with production scaleup.

Tesla had $3,4B cash on hand as of Q4. Go ahead and subtract the ~200M due in November and call it $3,2B. Now remember what was previously written: after the Fremont downtime earlier this month now up to double the rate as in 2017. Does that mean double the revenue? No, it's even better than that, because they have operations costs and depreciation on their production hardware regardless of how many vehicles it turns out; this means that they simultaneously grow the margin as they scaleup.

This isn't going to dramatically alter Q1's figures, although the quarterly loss will be smaller than Q4's. But it's going to have a profound impact in Q2, and depending on the rate of growth during Q2, even more profound in Q3 and Q4.

Of course the bears live in another world where Tesla is actually secretly super broke and going "bankwupt" tomorrow and will never produce anything and blah blah blah. We know this. TTAC's Tesla Deathwatch is dead, so long live Seeking Alpha, right?

What financial statements? SpaceX is a privately held company. And it's on a roll.

You're thinking of Tesla. They already went bankwupt ;)

Seriously, there was literally no news with a long-term impact that affected this slide, apart from the Moody's statement, which was itself based on no news with a long-term impact. The plunge in price was due to a surge in short positions based on a bunch of short term bad news. And the liquidity arguments are absurd.

In broader terms, the bear argument is that Tesla is not going to be able to pay off 900-and-something million in bonds due in spring 2019. Not a typo: 2019. And if that sounds like a lot of money, remember that even in Q1, Tesla's gross profit (quarterly gross profit) was $2,2 billion dollars. Tesla is already producing twice as many vehicles per week as they averaged in 2017. Averaged over Q1? No, it was only the upgrades during recent Fremont downtime that pushed them up that high. But it's important to remember that that gain is just *one* quarter of production acceleration. Even if you want to pretend it's a burst rate (in which it's probably more like 2500/wk extrapolated in order to have the whole week average 2000/wk), and that the 2000/wk is really smoke and mirrors and sustained is really more like 1000-1500/wk, a quarter ago the sustained rate was ~250-450/wk with a burst rate of 1000/wk

Yes, there's also Tesla's SGA expenses which in Q4 were roughly equal to their gross profits, but those don't grow linearly with gross profits; SGA expenses have to scale up before production and sales, and there's no reason to expect SGA growth to anywhere near match gross profit growth. Even at present, SGA is roughly equal to gross profit; the losses were because of ~$1,4B in R&D, which A) can be cut at any time, and B) doesn't increase at all with production scaleup.

Tesla had $3,4B cash on hand as of Q4. Go ahead and subtract the ~200M due in November and call it $3,2B. Now remember what was previously written: after the Fremont downtime earlier this month now up to double the rate as in 2017. Does that mean double the revenue? No, it's even better than that, because they have operations costs and depreciation on their production hardware regardless of how many vehicles it turns out; this means that they simultaneously grow the margin as they scaleup.

This isn't going to dramatically alter Q1's figures, although the quarterly loss will be smaller than Q4's. But it's going to have a profound impact in Q2, and depending on the rate of growth during Q2, even more profound in Q3 and Q4.

Of course the bears live in another world where Tesla is actually secretly super broke and going "bankwupt" tomorrow and will never produce anything and blah blah blah. We know this. TTAC's Tesla Deathwatch is dead, so long live Seeking Alpha, right?

Ed: Accidentally linked to a specific post in that thread, while I meant to link to the thread itself.

A counterpoint.

Nobody else can compete with them yet, although they all talk up a storm about what they're gonna do real soon now.

Here's a great example of what happens when supposed "Tesla-killer" meets reality. Or take the Kona electric. Funny how a "$30k-ish 290-mile crossover" turns out to be in actuality a "hypothetically 150-mile $31k** vehicle the same size as a Bolt or Leaf that does 0-60 in 9,3 seconds", and if you want to get Bolt-style range and not as horrible acceleration (0-60 in 7,6s) you have to add on some as-of-yet price-undisclosed upgrade package. And of course, this totally-serious-vehicle meant for totally-serious-competition is only planned for production in volumes of 30k per year and only to be sold in the US in ZEV states.

** - They dropped the nonsensical 290 mile claim for the "extended" pack Kona and are now saying that they "estimate" it will get around 250 miles EPA rating. But since they've been playing fast and loose with the numbers so far, I wouldn't be surprised to see some fudge factor there too. It's worth noting what EPA combined ratings mean for real-world highway ranges - Bolt, for example, has a combined rating of 238 miles, but only goes about 190 miles at a steady 75mph - and it's more streamlined than the Kona. As for the $31k figure, that's presuming that the EU price that they announced already included VAT, and that there's no premium charged in the US. Otherwise, increase that base price.

I-Pace also plays the same "Crossover" game that the Kona does, although at least not as badly. They like to pretend that it's a Model X competitor, when in reality it's far smaller - not even as long as a Model 3, let alone an S, let alone an X. Beyond everything in the above link, they've cranked up the dishonesty to 11 in their advertising, such as their "drag race" against a Model X 75D (a much larger, heavier vehicle than the I-Pace), where they then start talking swapping it out for the Model X P100D, but instead switch the driver to a 100D (no P) and hope that nobody will notice.

And of course, for all of them... no supercharging. Aka, no road trips - at least unless you like hanging out at charging stations. I-Pace is especially bad; it's astounding how inefficient they managed to make it - something that combined with its comparatively low charging power (particularly given that most CCS stations are only 50kW) makes it fill up at a comparative crawl.

But from what I have read from owners

You clearly haven't been hanging out on the Model 3 Owners Club. It's amazing the disconnect between how certain individuals seems to want to portray it, and how non-selection-biased random owners describe their vehicles. Or, for that matter, photograph them. I watch person after person get their invite, pick up their car, and then rave at how amazing it is... then I check out the latest article to show up about the Model 3 on Google News where they act like everyone's car is held together by gaffer tape and they're furious.

To put it another way: "I just picked up my new (insert-topic-of-interest) and it was perfect!" doesn't go viral in the same way that "I just picked up my new (insert-topic-of-interest) and there was something wrong with it!". Seriously, for example, the rash of coverage over the person who had a dead 12V battery. Literally the only dead 12V battery that's ever been reported in a Model 3, and there were dozens of articles written about it - despite the fact that Tesla sent a guy to his house to take care of his battery for him.

Or more directly: check out some of the teardown videos linked in TFA. Does any of that look like poor build quality to you? One thing that's neat is you'll notice blue markings on a number of the bolts; that's common in the aerospace industry, but rarely in the automotive industry. Those are witness marks. They're used to double check that bolts were tightened to the proper tightness.

That's not to say that there haven't been some issues. Things that actually have been problems, at least over certain points in time:

  * There used to be frequently a small sag in the hood, going a several millimeters out of alignment with the sides at its middle. It's been fixed in recent vehicles.

  * While handling has gotten extensive praise, some people who don't like a stiff "sports suspension" feel have been complaining about that. Tesla is reportedly working to soften the suspension some.

  * Noise, while quiet by ICE standards, is relatively high by EV standards. Namely, road noise (connected to the aforementioned stiff suspension) and wind noise (worse than the S). But both have been reducing with recent VINs.

  * There's some issues that relate to preference. Some people don't like the Aston Martin-style door handles, while others aren't bothered by them. Some people think the door and frunk hood needs to be shut too hard, while others prefer the solid feel. Etc. So whether they're "defects" depends on your personal preference.

There are some GUI issues as well, but they decrease with each over-the-air update, as well as getting new features. At the top of the most-requested features list that hasn't been implemented yet is moving cruise control speed from the GUI to the right steering wheel control (akin to volume control and station selection are on the left steering wheel control). There have also been a couple issues related to it not remembering various types of infotainment / preference settings between drives; most (but not all) of these issues have since been patched.

Probably a couple other things I'm forgetting.

How come we only apply this to Musk? How long have we been hearing about the "imminent" Tesla-killers coming from the German automakers? I remember an article in the (hugely anti-Tesla) Daily Kanban in 2015 talking about how Porsche was getting ready to crush Tesla with the super-awesome-stupendulous Mission-E (along with a bunch of other no-show EVs), because the concept looks so double-plus awesome! Guess what? It's 2017 and it's still two years off. But wait, we finally got some spy shots of them finally testing - and guess what? After facing design reality, the concept now looks like nothing more than a glorified Panamera. Just wait for the disappointing stat/price point/production figures!

Anyone who has followed the history of concept cars over the years knew damned well that this was going to happen, because it always does. Concept cars are art pieces, not things that are actually practical from aero / production / functionality designpoints. But far too many people have trouble conceiving of anything but that the only reason Tesla is succeeding is that the big automakers have been "keeping their powder dry" all this time, can crush Tesla at any point in time, and are just about to do so, any day now. The fact that they aren't and can't is inconceivable to them.

(In case any is curious as to why they can't... link)

Shitty : fails to detect enormous object right in front of the car, when one of the stated purposes of the system is to detect objects in front of the car. Half-assed : the vendor of the hardware disassociates itself from Tesla stating the tech is not being correctly implemented.

I wrote a short article on this incident: Thoughts on the recent Autopilot-related deaths.

Here's the TLDR version:
- Autopilot controls speed & steering, keeping the car in the lane.
- The Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) feature is the technology that should have stopped the car to prevent the accident.
- Tesla was using Mobileye's AEB implementation.

Lots of other companies are using Mobileye's AEB as well. It was only an issue in the Tesla because the driver was paying no attention to the road. In other vehicles, the driver would have hit the brake themselves when they saw the big truck in front of them.