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Tesla Factory Racing To Retool For New Models
An anonymous reader notes this story about what Tesla will have to do in order to double production every year for the next several years as Elon Musk intends. "Having just reported a $107.6-million fourth-quarter loss that sent its stock tumbling, Tesla Motors Inc. intends to double vehicle production in the next year as it finally introduces its Model X sport utility vehicle — after about two years of delays. Meanwhile, Tesla is racing to finish the design of its Model 3, the "affordable" Tesla, expected to sell in the $30,000 range after government subsidies. Musk's company is chasing General Motors Co., which plans a 2017 release of its all-electric Bolt, with a similar price and 200-mile driving range between charges."
Especially when the "affordable" version (which is not really that affordable) is only "affordable" via government subsidies. Why don't you tell us what the real price is, Elon?
45 mpg 4 passenger cars sell for $10k new. During the high gas prices in Canada last year, I'd pump $200 a month into mine. Now it's more like $110.
Let's assume $250 a month, and that electricity is free, just to give Tesla the best advantage, even if unrealistic. In 8.3 years the Tesla would save me money. Factor in interest and realistic electricity prices, make it 10-12 years.
Sorry, still not doing it for me.
Average sales price of a new car in 2013 was $31,762. Apparently a lot of people have that kind of money to buy a car.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
You can get a better performing car for less than a tesla if you forgo electric.
Obviously you have never actually looked at the Model S specifications. The performance edition of the all wheel drive version has 691 horsepower. The rear motor alone has 443 ft lb of torque at zero RPMs. Can you get a more powerful internal combustion engine? Sure. But where? The 2015 Corvette tops out at 650 horsepower. The 2015 Mustang tops out at 435. The 2015 Camero tops out at 580. And none of those seat 7. The 2015 Cadillac XTS tops out at 410 horsepower. The 2015 Cadillac CTS tops out at 420. The 2015 Audi S8 tops out at 520 horsepower and it is NOT cheaper than a Model S.
And then in the same paragraph, you start talking about efficiency. You do realize that high performance and high efficiency simultaneously is ONLY possible in electric vehicles? Internal combustion can't do it. When you punch an electric motor, it stay 98% efficient. When you punch an internal combustion engine, its already miserable efficiency drops into the single digits. When an electric vehicle recharges, it's power source is NOT being pushed to the performance limit. It continues to operate at its best efficiency.
Most importantly, the energy source to recharge an electric vehicle is 100% fungible. If you live near a nuclear power plant, recharging your car is already producing 0 CO2. Zero. None. That is never possible for your fossil fuel car no matter how efficient your car gets. It will ALWAYS produce more than zero CO2. Build more nuclear power plants, or solar plants, or windmills, or all of the above, and the more electric cars there are, the less CO2 is produced by transportation. That's physically impossible with a fossil fuel fleet.
You must try really hard to be wrong about literally everything you said.
Giving a few wealthy folks money to buy high cost EV's that often aren't even their primary vehicle isn't going to do much to help the global warming situation.
I think it already has -- the model S showed the auto industry that there is a market for electric cars, if those cars provide a good customer experience. Before Tesla, the general thought in the car industry was that electric cars would have to be cheaper than gasoline cars in order to sell, but that idea never worked -- because it was impossible to price an electric car that cheap without stripping it down into an unsellable golf-cart. Tesla demonstrated that the way to sell electric cars wasn't to make them cheaper than gasoline cars, but rather to make them better. Now we have other manufacturers (BMW, Nissan, GM) competing to get into that market, and the development-and-competition ball is rolling. The next step is for competition and volume production to bring prices down, just like they did for gasoline cars in the early 20th century.
Our upside might be much greater if that money were used for development and improvement of solutions.
Perhaps, if you knew which companies to throw the development money at. But that's a hard thing to predict reliably (witness the long succession of "visionary" electric car companies whose products went nowhere, despite significant investment). This way, the customers decide which electric car designs are worth supporting and which are not.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Leave it to the trolls of Slashdot to trash anyone successful... Even an Engineer with a vision of a better tomorrow.
Tesla was not first to market with an EV.
No, but they were the first to sell an EV that made non-geeks' pulses quicken. The vehicles sold before that were more of the "eat your vegetables" variety, and thus doomed to be money-losing niche vehicles, useful only as arguments against the viability of the electric vehicle market.
They did move first into the high end market, but what will matter is the lower end mass market where existing EVs are trying to sell.
Sure, but you can't get to the mass market without starting somewhere viable. Previous attempts to start at the low end failed (see: EV-1, RAV4 EV), and failures don't help the EV market grow.
The EV market would evolve, with or without subsidies, and with or without Tesla.
That's an assertion only -- I don't see any evidence to back it up. Before Tesla's successes, no other companies were marketing a desirable electric car, and there was little evidence that any of them had much interest in doing so in the future.
Sure, the EV market would have caught on anyway, decades from now, after gas prices rose high enough that almost nobody could to afford to drive a traditional car anymore; but that's a rather grim scenario that I think we are well-served to avoid.
That some wealthy folks that don't need the money are getting it isn't really helping anybody expect them and Tesla.
Them, and Tesla, and everyone else who will buy an electric car that wouldn't have existed without Tesla's demonstration of how to profitably sell EVs, and all the other car companies that can now take advantage of the technology Tesla developed.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.