Tesla Motors May Be Having an iPhone Moment

pacopico writes "Telsa Motors has started churning out 500 of its all electric Model S sedans per week. Bloomberg Businessweek just did a cover story about the company, suggesting that Tesla is becoming more than just a fad of rich folks in California. According to the story, 75 percent of Tesla's sales now come from outside of California, and the company appears poised to raise its sales forecasts for the year. There's a lot of talk about Tesla's history and why it survived when Fisker and Better Place failed too."

Comments

Re:MSRP of $62,400 Though?

[bill_mcgonigle]

60 kWh car is $62,400. $72,400 for an 85 kWh and $87,400 with upgraded features

Have you seen what a Lexus LS Hybrid costs? It's easy to walk out of an Acura dealer with a mass produced gasoline vehicle for $60K. Tesla is right in there at a reasonable price (US wages relative to the international market are a separate issue). Consider some places in the US you can buy a tiny ranch for $600K and average annual salaries are $130K or so, and a $60K car isn't outside of the realm of typical.

I thought I was living a pretty average lifestyle but I spent $6,600 on my current car

Nah, you're pretty far to the low side there. 75% of car sales are used, at about $9K on average. 25% of car sales are new, with the latest average at $31K. That puts the overall average at $14.5K, which puts you at, what, the 20th percentile or so?

Re:Rich People's Fads

[Lunix Nutcase]

You do know that a Model T cost $850 in 1909 which for an average worker was around 2 to 4 times their average income. Even at 60k the Model S is around 4x that of a non-tipped worker making no more than Federal minimum wage (and more than 86% of people are at or above this income level). So a Model S is really no more expensive for a minimum wage worker than a Model T was for the low-end average income of a 1909 worker.. Prices came down on the Model T with increased sales volume just as prices will go down on Tesla cars if growth continues and they sell more volume.

Re:Testla is good...

[IndustrialComplex]

Citation needed. Desperately. This doesn't jive with basic math.

What basic math are you using then?
A truck carrying 10,000 gallons of gasoline uses about 14.28 gallons to go 100 miles.
Transport loss is 0.14%

An electrical transmission line will lose about 0.75% over 100 miles at 1000MW (per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Losses)

The energy density of gasoline is a huge factor when considering the cost of transport. The IT equivalent is the old story about the bandwidth of a stationwagon of data tapes travelling down the highway.

When dealing with transport of energy, the density matters, and chemical energy density is hard to beat.