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Tesla Opens Orders To All US and Canadian Model 3 Reservation Holders (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For people who put down a $1,000 deposit for a Tesla Model 3 as long as two years ago, the big day has arrived. Specifically, the day has arrived when they can give Tesla another $2,500 and then wait a few more months for their car to arrive. Days before the end of the second quarter, Tesla is now allowing all reservation holders in the United States and Canada to place orders for the Model 3. Customers will be able to choose between several variants of the Model 3 -- including the high-end "performance" model -- as well as choosing colors and option packages. However, the low-end version of the Model 3 with its long-promised $35,000 price tag isn't available to order yet.
Each customer will get a specific delivery estimate based on the model they choose and their position on the waiting list. A typical delivery window is two to four months. While the original $1,000 Model 3 deposit was fully refundable, customers who pay the extra $2,500 will be locked in three days after placing an order, the company told CNBC. That isn't a new requirement -- a Tesla spokeswoman told Ars that the company has long asked customers to pay a $2,500 deposit when they order other Tesla models.
Each customer will get a specific delivery estimate based on the model they choose and their position on the waiting list. A typical delivery window is two to four months. While the original $1,000 Model 3 deposit was fully refundable, customers who pay the extra $2,500 will be locked in three days after placing an order, the company told CNBC. That isn't a new requirement -- a Tesla spokeswoman told Ars that the company has long asked customers to pay a $2,500 deposit when they order other Tesla models.
The lowest cost option of the ones being made so far is $50K. That makes it a luxury car, not a car for the people.
for every $1,000 of stock bought eight years ago, you'd have $14,000 today
Assuming that the US/Canadian tariff fight doesn't screw all this up.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
I can't wait to get my $80k Model 3 that has been made in a tent in order to make some arbitrary 5000 cars a week production number that Musk came up with. Oh, and they didn't make those numbers, hence the "announcement". Musk is the best at distracting everyone.
For those of you debating whether to order now and splurge on the long range model, waiting for the 35K model likely means you will not get the full tax credit. The impact of this may be more than you think. Not only do you get to take the tax credit for this year when you buy now, but if you wait until the tax credit expires to sell your (now used) car, the resale value should increase by close to the tax credit amount. So it really does make sense to buy now (35K + 15K = long range Model 3 now).
Of course, now that they are opening orders to everyone. . . you probably want to closely look into the probability of getting your car in time to take advantage of the full tax credit. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Couldn't even manage to get to the second paragraph of the summary?
You bears are getting desperate.
Currently, Tesla stock is still going down.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
For people who put down a $1,000 deposit for a Tesla Model 3 as long as two years ago, the big day has arrived.
Not to dump on Tesla's, they are nice cars, but waiting two years for a car? You have to be a major fanboy to do that ... and people around here call Apple users all kinds of ugly names for queueing in front of a shop for a mobile phone 24hrs before release day.
Model 3 buyers have always (*) been required to pay a $2,500 deposit when ordering. "other" isn't appropriate here. Is that a mistake by the Tesla spokesperson or by Ars?
* It's possible that there were special rules for "family and friends (and employees)" who ordered very early Model 3s.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
For the record, a lot of us are sick of the presumtion that because we find the operation Tesla is operating to be a scam, that it means we're speculating in the market.
Sure, some of you are dumb enough to invest in Tesla in some sort of hopeful virtue-signaling gesture. Some are even dumber to be 'shorting' Tesla.
The rest of us, the majority, just think the whole venture is a little pathetic.
lol, sure thing sparky... obvious short troll is telling us that they are NOT a short troll...
I would imagine that 'the majority' really don't give a rat's ass one way or the other, while shorts would be the ONLY ones with a reason to constantly fling poo. C'mon how about you enlighten me?
Pathetic; not worth flinging poo at.
Aw, you'll never get it. Never mind.
a $10,000 plug-in electric truck with a winch, designed for the mountains, with a spare battery pack in the toolbox of the bed.
And you can buy them in Canada, so don't tell me they're not available.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
How exactly are you expecting him to prove that he hasn't shorted Tesla stock?
Perhaps you could provide some evidence that he has? Just that he's not the one slinging around accusations here.
I too have no shorted Tesla stock, despite feeling they're overpriced. I'm also sure as fuck not handing over $2500 for a car that I'd have no confidence of ever receiviung.
Luckily my financial acumen greatly exceeds my ability to type the word receivinng.
I've worked with over 100 different LED displays of various sizes and configurations over the last 10 years, and not a single one has had a backlight fail.
Also, [citation needed] for the battery pack FUD. There are many Tesla Model S vehicles on the road today, which have been on the road for over 5 years. Where are the stories about massively expensive battery replacements? It's not like every single Tesla story ever written doesn't get posted everywhere, so if this was happening, please link to it, or get out of here with your baseless FUD.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It's worse than that. When the backlight on the flatscreen goes out the car can't be driven. Backlights go out on panels all the time. In a few years the battery capacity will have diminished significantly and it will cost more to replace the battery than the car will be worth on the resale market.
1. Display panel backlights are almost certainly LED and will probably last longer than the batteries.
2. Those lithium cells in Tesla cars have been keeping charge capacity *significantly* longer than originally estimated.
Why aren't the other car companies making better electric cars then? They are already 'profitable' and and don't need VC.
Read my earlier posts...I had booked this...impressed w their site video...went on a test drive on the X...promptly canceled
The car companies are profitable; EVs generally are not. BAIC is making the best attempt at it (as they are the largest EV maker in the world, with Nissan close behind for 2nd place), but they are barely breaking even and probably would be failing as bad as Tesla if it wasn't for the huge support from Beijing.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The difference with those is that most exotics can still be driven safely with its analog gauges when one of their digital panels goes out - at least to make it to the dealership. From what I've seen the Model 3 is completely dependent on that screen and cannot.
Or you use your phone as a GPS speedometer. What year is it? Display some adaptability.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Check Tesla's financials. They lose money before you include R&D or capital expenditures - startup costs. Basically, the cost of the product (cost of revenue) and the administration/sales support for that product (SG&A) already put them negative.
Last quarter they had $3.4B in revenue, and the cost of that revenue was $2.95B, leaving them with $450MM in gross profit. SG&A was $686MM - meaning that just the cost of the product and the sales/administrative overhead to sell that vehicle results in a $236MM loss.
R&D, Interest Expenses, capital expenditures - those aren't even discussed at this point, we're already at a loss. It's not startup costs that are killing Tesla - it's too little gross margin on their product for their current SG&A level. Either they have to massively (and I mean by 50% or more) slash their sales and administrative costs, or they need to increase the price of their product. If Tesla completely SG&A (an impossibility, but we'll say they can for now), they still lose money based on R&D and interest. And we haven't even discussed capital expenditures.
Fundamentally, their financials simply don't work. They need to either dramatically change everything about everything they do, or they have to increase the revenue (price) of each product by 40% or more. It doesn't work out any other way.
One thing they could do is eliminate their own dealerships and let others run them. If you look at Ford, GM, BMW, etc. you'll see their SG&A is less than half that of Tesla's, per car. And it's predominantly because a huge chunk of the cost of sales, administration, support is covered by the dealers, who get a 10% margin on the vehicles sold. So the normal car companies "give" 10% of their margin to dealers, in exchange for taking on more than 60% of the SG&A costs. Tesla is trying to do it, so it's "saving" 10% of revenue and eating 230% of the SG&A than a normal car company should. Company car stores don't make sense - they are a financial death-blow, but Tesla won't change that, it's too much of their "mystique". But that one change there could well put them close to profitability...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
So, you couldn't manage to get to the second paragraph of the summary either?
Does anyone else think that this seems like a desperate attempt to raise more cash with little indication of actual manufacturing rate and quality improvements?
ROFLMAO
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
yeah,... right. which car companies would that be.. short or selective memory?
GM/Chrysler bail out - Final tally: Taxpayers auto bailout loss $9.3B - "The government said it recovered $70.42 billion of the $79.68 billion it gave to General Motors, Chrysler, Ally Financial, Chrysler Financial and automotive suppliers through the federal Auto Industry Financing Program. The program was part of the larger Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP." https://eu.usatoday.com/story/...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I also looked at those financials and completely agree. That said, I don't believe replacing their Apple Store equivalents with independent dealers fixes the problem. After all, dealerships don't work for free. The money eventually must come from somewhere, usually from the customer paying higher prices for their cars. Now if customers are already willing to pay more, then Tesla could just raise the prices themselves.
so have you backed your analysis and put all your money into shorting them?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
> In the case of all existing car manufacturers, the real reason is sunk
> costs in internal combustion engine manufacturing. Tesla doesn't
> have to worry about abandoning billions of dollars in existing property
> plant and equipment like the legacy manufacturers do.
Wrong...
1) Many manufacturers produce hybrids. That's already half-way there to pure-electric.
2) Manufacturers can produce disel and gasoline engines simultaneously, so it's not that difficult. And they are *SIGNIFICANTLY* different animals. Rather than designing new diesels from the ground up, GM cheated and tried to repurpose gasoline engines as diesel engines to save money in R&D and tooling 1978 to 1985. It was a fiasco. The right way to do it is to forget about the gasoline engine and design a diesel engine from square 1.
> The Oldsmobile diesel subsequently gained a reputation for
> unreliability and anemic performance that damaged the North
> American passenger diesel market for the next 30 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And one other "legacy component" for "existing car manufacturers" is the assembly lines and know-how to...
a) crank out hundreds of thousands of vehicles per week
b) assemble vehicles where the fit-and-finish isn't total shit.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
The thing with the Model 3 is that the touchscreen is the interface to the entire car. It would be like trying to use a smartphone with the screen out. Granted, it still has pedals and a steering wheel. I've never driven one so maybe you can turn it on and get it to go forward and reverse without the touchscreen. But given you need the touchscreen to do things like engage the wipers and turn on the defroster, if the screen goes out it's something that will need to be fixed.
If anything, the Korean car makers might be interested. They've been trying and failing to establish a luxury brand for some time now - the Tesla brand would be perfect (Toyota already has Lexus). They also seem to be a bit late to the electric car game, so they could use the tech a lot more than Toyota needs it.
To be perfectly honest, if you go out and google for news on Tesla, the people who are trashing it are in serious short positions.
To be perfectly honest, if you went out in the street polling random people about Tesla, the majority of them probably don't care about Tesla. The vapor is apparent to a lot of the public.