Tesla Will Discontinue the Roadster

Attila Dimedici writes "Tesla has announced that their business model has failed. Their basic idea was to sell a boutique electric car to fund the development of a regular consumer electric car. With this announcement they are saying that they did not sell enough of the Roadster to make producing it profitable. If that is the case, it is only a matter of time until Tesla closes its doors. I thought their approach was the most likely to create a successful fully electric car. Although it is possible that the technology they have developed will allow the existing car companies to develop successful fully electric cars, it is a shame that Tesla has failed to become a successful car manufacturer." CT: As a huge number of you pointed out, the linked article is not nearly as doom and gloom as the submitter: Tesla isn't locking the doors and throwing away the keys, they plan on selling a $80k sedan in 2012 with a 300 mile range.

Comments

How did you come to that conclusion?

[damn_registrars]

The statement

it is a shame that Tesla has failed

Doesn't make any sense if you read the linked article.

From TFA:

Tesla Motors (TSLA) will stop taking orders for the car in the U.S. in about two months as the carmaker focuses on its Model S electric sedan

Further:

the two seat Tesla Roadster sports car was never intended to be a huge seller. Tesla reported sales of 1,650 Roadsters worldwide by the end of April, 2011.

And

Tesla's next big thing: Tesla's roadster production is coming to halt as the maker of battery-powered cars switches its focus to the upcoming Model S electric sedan.

There is absolutely no indication in the provided article that Tesla is going away. They are just stopping the roadster so they can focus on a new car, which was part of their long-term plan some time ago.

In other words, things are going as planned for Tesla. People claiming this is the end of the company are just spouting FUD for whatever reason.

Re:How did you come to that conclusion?

[NeutronCowboy]

This is one of the few times where I wish there was a bury option for stories, if not outright delete. The summary is the exact opposite of what is said in the story,is reported by everyone else, and even of what can be inferred through looking at Tesla's financials.

Maybe instead of filtering stories on editors, we need the ability to filter stories on submitters. I have yet to see a story by Attila Dimedici where the summary wasn't the exact opposite of what was actually going on.

Re:How did you come to that conclusion?

[Bertie]

Seriously, who wrote it, Jeremy Clarkson? It just stinks of negative PR by somebody with an axe to grind. Slashdot should really be ashamed of itself for giving such a tirade of obviously biased bullshit such a wide audience.

Dimdeici is jumping to conclusions

[Anonymous Coward]

The article says they they are focusing on the Model S, their new luxury sedan. He obviously didn't read the article that he linked.

Summary is just plain wrong

[benjamin_scarlet]

The article says they're stopping production of the roadster to focus on the S. It says nothing about anything failing.

Re:RTFA, PEOPLE.

[jra]

And I think it's time to take away Samzenpus's keys, for letting that summary out.

Re:These guys are actually innovating

[bre_dnd]

From TFA: Tesla's next big thing: Tesla's roadster production is coming to halt as the maker of battery-powered cars switches its focus to the upcoming Model S electric sedan. The first sales of the Model S sedan are expected to begin around the middle of 2012. At a starting price of about $58,000, the base model will have a driving range of 160 miles.

No need to worry yet

[damn_registrars]

Tesla is not closing or going away. Some idiot here at slashdot didn't bother to read the linked article. If they had, they would realize that this is not the end for Tesla as a company, just the end of a vehicle that was too expensive for many people to buy.

Furthermore, anyone who knows anything about Tesla knows that this has been part of their plan for some time. Build a roadster to get the technology working - and to show to the public that it really is as good as claimed - and then discontinue it to focus on a family sedan. Their first car achieved brand recognition and proof of concept, while bringing in investors. Now they are retooling and setting up a new shop to show that they can make it work on a larger scale.

Unfortunately, they have already sold out in part to a traditional auto maker, so how far they will be able to go unhindered is anyone's guess.

Re:No need to worry yet

[dave562]

Furthermore, anyone who knows anything about Tesla knows that this has been part of their plan for some time.

You are 100% correct about this. A friend of mine went to work for Tesla about a year ago. He was telling about all of the planning that they were doing to shift their production from the roadster to the sedan.

Above and beyond that, Tesla has a lot of patents. They have the best batteries in the industry. Tesla is a long way from going out of business. If anything their biggest concern is probably trying to figure out how to not get gobbled up by another company who just wants their intellectual property.

Re:No need to worry yet

[Nethemas the Great]

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the roadster's sales. It was the supply side that had issues. There has never not been a waiting list to get one of those things. The problem was that they cannot keep up with demand. They might be priced outside the reach of the average middle-class American but that never hindered sales. A 6 month wait list hindered sales.

Regular cars are not 75K

[Shivetya]

First the article title sucks and the summary is worse.

They are not going out of business, not yet at least. They are going to stop producing the roadster which had a very limited market and work on getting their sedan out.

As to the person I am replying too, it is not the big American three that are at fault, as far as I can tell each continent it quite adept at producing and buying gas guzzlers. In fact while the average person in Europe might be keen on efficient small cars Europe is the land of gas guzzling exotics. I guess the little people should be happy with their itty bitty cars while the rich and powerful blissfully ignore any such concerns.

Don't pile accolades on Tesla, they have yet to prove they can deliver this sedan and have a sustainable business models. All the dreams in the world amount to nothing if they don't come to fruition. Just because someone claims they can solve the problems of the world does not excuse them from actually delivering. Seems to me that vaporware is very common in most industries and far too many investor's lose their shirts over well executed glossy presentations.

Re:Regular cars are not 75K

[timeOday]

It's rumored that Toyota and Honda have been selling their hybrids at a loss, mainly to keep their CAFE average in conformance as they were selling more SUVs

I will see your a rumor and raise you a cite:

According to the Japanese newspaper Nikkei (via Green Car Congress), each hybrid that Honda and Toyota sell earns the respective company about $3,100 in profit.

In fact Toyota has been meeting this persistent rumor with the same answer - they are turning a profit on the Prius - since 2002.

Uh what?

[bmo]

>Subby writes bad summary totally at odds with the meat of an article - probably didn't read the article and submits it anyway.
>gets "voted up" in the firehose by idiots that didn't read the article.
>gets posted on the front page by an "editor" that didn't read the article.

There are 3 layers of fail here, all of them inexcusable.

>Slashdot readers actually read the article and call Subby and the editor stupid

The Apocalypse is here.

--
BMO

Re:These guys are actually innovating

[Kell Bengal]

I agree - the summary is completely incongruous with the article. My understanding was that Tesla was always going to make a sedan after the roadster. According to the article, they are doing exactly that. Doing exactly what you planned to be doing sounds like success to me.

The fact that they are discontinuing the roadster seems peripheral, although one may ask why they would discontinue them if they were profitable. Perhaps they don't have enough capital to tool more than one production line at a time? Perhaps the sedan is expected to be more lucrative and they don't want to pay the opportunity cost of continuing to make roadsters.

Stock market disagrees with summary

[rcs1000]

Well: there's a surprise. Summary says: Tesla announces business model has failed and bankrupcy imminent.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Tesla's stock is up in an down market. The company is trading comfortably above its six month average price. The company, IIRC, always said that there would only be 2,500 Roadsters made...

Next year, the Model S will launch. The company has thousands of preorders, with people having put real money down.

The Model S may, of course, fail miserably. But the absurd FUD in the summary is ridiculous.

No.. No.. No..

[LoveMuscle]

This was Tesla's plan for a while now, and the article says nothing about their business model failing. The cannot use the government funds they were given to develop a sports car, it must be used for the Model S. Also they based the Roadster on the Elise Chassis, and Lotus has quit making them. This isn't reddit or I'd down vote for the horrific summary. There is lots of info in their IPO filing, and elsewhere..

Also the basis of the business model for the Roadster was to smash the image of the electric car being a hippie-green eco-shitbox, which most electric car's to date have been. That was a resounding success.

http://www.teslamotors.com/about/press/releases/tesla-gets-loan-approval-us-department-energy
http://www.allcarselectric.com/news/1042150_tesla-roadster-production-to-end-in-2011-new-version-expected-in-2013

#740..

Re:These guys are actually innovating

[rilister]

You can tell the Roadster served it's purpose because "Besides building its own cars, Tesla has a business partnership with Toyota Motor Co (TM) to produce a plug-in electric version of the RAV4 SUV and a deal with Daimler (DDAIF) to provide batteries for an electric version of the Smart ForTwo minicar."

That's Toyota, developer of the Prius, admitting that Tesla have technology and know-how that they need. That's what the Roadster bought Tesla.

Re:These guys are actually innovating

[Andy Dodd]

Yes - I don't see how this article indicates that the business model has failed at all. I think, if anything, it has succeeded wildly - my guess is that the Roadster was likely less of a "fundraiser" than as a "halo car" for marketing. If you want to sell your tech to potential partners (Their partners list includes Daimler and Toyota) it helps a LOT to have a widely recognized vehicle.

A lot of times "halo cars" fail - but for Tesla it seems to have succeeded. They now have partnerships with major automotive manufacturers to license their tech. (Toyota RAV4 EV, SMART EV, Mercedes A-Class E-Cell).

Re:These guys are actually innovating

[Sensible Clod]

Tesla's Roadsters are built on a Lotus chassis. Since Lotus is discontinuing that model, Tesla won't be able to make more Roadsters. It really is that simple.

Re:Sad, but not unexpected

[s73v3r]

Considering that approximately 66% of electricity in the US is generated by fossil fuels, electric cars are not really much of an alternative. Just because you don't burn fossil fuels directly in the car doesn't mean they are not dependent on fossil fuels.

Maybe, but two things:

1). Power plants are much more efficient at converting fossil fuels to power than a bunch of individual engines.
2). The thing with electricity is that the sources can be changed out for cleaner ones without most of the consumers noticing. So while now that number is 66%, in the years to come it is expected to drop.

Re:Sad, but not unexpected

[Chris Burke]

Keep in mind that calling it a "sedan" may give the wrong impression that it's going to be like a Toyota Corolla.

It's going to be more like a BMW "luxury sports-sedan", which only makes sense to try to go for that market given that it's priced as though in that market. Quite a few people find those pretty sexy, and will probably find the high acceleration rate of the Tesla offering to be a nice sexy icing on the sexy cake too.