LOL. Are people still pretending that the Kona is an "SUV"? Have you sat in the back seat? It's only suitable for amputees. It's a "CUV", which only describes form factor, not size.
I'm not going to write them off so quickly. But they certainly are behind. Starlink launched its first test satellites a year ago. And they have the massive advantage of owning their own launch service, which also happens to be by far the cheapest in the world.
But you never know. I absolutely wish OneWeb the best. LEO constellation-based broadband is going to be a game changer for much of the world's population.
And the market disagrees with the SEC. Don't look now, but Tesla is actually up. In what world does the market think that the SEC has a plausible case against a company and actually go up after the SEC takes the CEO to court? And this is against negative macros!
That's not what was said during the call. What was said was:
Colin Rusch
Thanks so much. Can you talk a little bit about the geographic dispersion for the guidance for 2019, where you're expecting the Model 3s to sell through as well as the other models?
Elon Musk
Well, I think we did, actually. Yes, it's clear in our letter.
Deepak Ahuja
We indicated in Q1, we will start delivering Model 3s in Europe and China. And we also shared a chart showing the potential market size for midsized premium sedans in North America, Europe and Asia, suggesting those markets could be even bigger. So I think that gives a good sense of where we'll be. And we'll launch the right-hand drive version at some point to go to the other markets.
Elon Musk
Yes. Maybe in the order of 350,000 to 500,000 Model 3s, something like that this year.
Absolutely nothing whatsoever about these being annualized figures. Specifically "this year". And only about Model 3s, not counting S+X.
Again, those numbers might be wrong, but they were public guidance given in an official context. Indeed, Musk's tweet was so non-market moving (premarket) that the last trade of TSLA before Musk's tweet was $307,10, and the average price of all trades after it up until the "correction" was $307,24. Effectively no budge whatsoever. Volume was light as well compared to pre-tweet.
Let's be clear on what all of the numbers actually are.
Q4 letter: 360-400k vehicle deliveries Q4 call: 350-500k Model 3s produced Tweet: around 500k vehicles produced
These are not the same thing. Deliveries are not production (there's also inventory, both in-transit and accumulated - both of which are to be much higher this year vs. last, due to the international launch of the Model 3 and Tesla's new policy to locally stock common configs for faster delivery), and Tesla makes more than just the Model 3 (e.g., ~80k S+X this year).
Yes, there is a lack of clarity between the Q4 letter and call (I wouldn't expect up to 100k M3 inventory, although it's possible) - but resolving that ambiguity is an issue entirely unrelated to the case. What matters is that Musk's tweet clearly falls within the range of publicly disclosed information. Because the earnings call is an official source of public information disclosure.
There seems to be a common mistaken view (even repeated by some journalists) that the SEC settlement requires anything Musk posts to be pre-read and pre-approved. This is not correct. The social media policy, imposed on Tesla by the settlement, requires Musk to seek approval for communications which contain material information - nothing more.
So the question is: is reiterating already public numbers from official channels (aka, the Q4 earnings call) "material information"? Yeah, good luck making that argument. That doesn't mean that the numbers from the call will be proven correct - but they were previously publicly disclosed information, and thus not material information. And regardless of whether one thinks that Musk should have every tweet pre-approved, that is not his obligation - he is only required to have tweets containing material information approved.
Now, let's put yourself in the shoes of a Tesla attorney. And let's say that Musk's statement in the earnings call was not guidance that you wanted repeated (e.g. overly optimistic or whatnot). What do you do? The company has an obligation to make sure that it's putting out are as accurate as possible. So if you only want the 400k figure repeated, then what's the solution? You jointly draft a followup "correction" tweet, of course. This does not in any way change the fact that what was stated previously was already public information.
Hold on, after being told that I can charge anywhere on the road and I just have to go there if the lights are on if I'm running out of power at -40C and I can charge, you are now saying "You're not supposed to charge on 110V"??
You can:
A) Charge on 110V B) Charge at -40C C) Preheat the vehicle
What car does snow not fall into? I've never in my life owned a car that's managed to completely prevent snow ingress.
You're not supposed to charge on 110V, you're supposed to install a proper charger. I mean, it's great that Model 3 is efficient enough that you can usually actually get away with it, but the US's NEMA 10-15 sockets are a joke when it comes to power output - they can barely run a hair dryer, let alone a whole car. A proper wall charger has 8 times the power output.
That said, if your friend doesn't want to / can't install an actual charger (who buys an EV without having a plan for charging it?), and can't connect to, say, a dryer or range socket (they're vastly more powerful than a 10-15), I'd recommend a Quick 220 for him. It has two plugs, which you plug into out-of-phase sockets (it checks), producing a single split-phase (double voltage, double-power) socket.
I'm not sure where CR ranks the 3-Series, but the 5-Series was one of six models (including the Model 3) that CR pulled their "Recommended" ranking from in this latest update. But of course, if there's something negative to say about Tesla, it drowns out all other news.
Short summary: VW wants to emulate Tesla and build Gigafactories (in conjunction with SK Innovation, which would be playing the role that Panasonic does with Tesla). However, they're being held hostage by their current supplier (LG), who is threatening to cut off all battery shipments to them (immediately) unless they drop their Gigafactory plans. VW is trying to find a way out of this mess, as they see the Gigafactory approach as being essential to ensuring a sufficient supply of cells at a low enough price to meet their target price points and be competitive.
To people who didn't know better, they'd think that you actually have a Model 3. You don't - you're a consistent Tesla foe on this forum. You're just repeating FUD that you heard.
Going down the list:
1) There were two cases (out of hundreds of thousands of cars) of the bumper coming off. It wasn't due to being "in the rain", but rather driving quickly through standing water (the bumper was acting like a parachute, and Model 3 has crazy amounts of torque). These cases were half a year ago. No new cases have been reported since.
2) According to the Model 3 Owners Survey, conducted last August (when autowipers were brand new; they've gotten better since then), the ratings for autowipers were:
57,0%: They do their job just fine 25,5%: Very rarely don't wipe, or wipe too often - but it's not a problem 9,7%: Minor issues that probably should be fixed. 7,8%: Moderate to major issues
These are similar numbers to what you'd find for a review of any autowiper system - and this was the very first release.
3) You can make the water go into the trunk by applying RainX to your rear windshield, which makes the water slide off faster and over the rear gutter. But there is a rear gutter (it was enlarged last year regardless).
4) According to the Model 3 Owners Survey (again, last August, involving a lot of early vehicles) 76,5% were "very satisfied" with their exterior fit and finish, and 16,9% "mostly satisfied" (93,4% total). For interior fit and finish, the numbers were 80,2% and 17,0%, respectively (97,2%). Infotainment system satisfaction ("the screen") were 58,2% and 31,3%, respectively (89,5%). These are exceedingly high numbers.
And these exceedingly high numbers show. Since we're talking about Consumer Reports, wouldn't it be great if they had polled what people thought of their cars? Why, they did! And of all of the different models from all of the different manufacturers, Model 3 owners loved their cars the most. 92% satisfaction. Specifically, the question they were asked about was whether, after having owned the car, they would make the same purchase decision again. So IMHO it's rather odd for Consumer Reports to recommend against a car that their own survey found brought their owners the most joy, and ALSO got the lowest VSS (combined probability of injury score) in NHTSA history.
I do have two issues with CR's methodology, which I'll mention here.,
1) They're giving the impression that we're talking about recent Model 3s here. This is not true. This data was collected on Model 3s from early last year to the middle of last year. These are early-run vehicles that they're talking about. For example, they mentioned the "phantom click" issue. That only existed on some vehicles delivered from February to April 2018 in the 4000-15000 VIN range, due to a bad batch of displays from a supplier. The problem has not existed at all in any form for nearly a year. Yet it's something that CR cites. Note how low those VINs are; Tesla's VINs are now nearly 300k.
2) Specifically because of all of the anti-Tesla FUD, most Model 3 buyers went over their vehicles with a fine-toothed comb, in a way that buyers of other vehicles do not. There were even long "checklists" circulating around that many people used to make sure that their vehicles were flawless at delivery. Who does that for any other vehicle? Now, there's nothing wrong at all with doing this - diligence is great when buying a car. But it messes with self-reporting surveys like CR's. The more a person searches for any little issue
This isn't correct. What they're describing isn't an atmosphere at all; it's an exosphere. The difference being that an atmosphere is dominated by particle collisions (and thus behaves like a gas) while an exosphere is dominated by collision-free travel (and thus behaves like individual particles). If at the given temperature, the average particle traveling upwards will experience less than one collision before it reaches the upward end of its arc, it's an exosphere; otherwise, it's an atmosphere.
You know, I just had a heartwarming thought. I could drop dead tomorrow, and yet for years to come, people on Slashdot would be crediting any story that gets posted about Musk/Tesla to me. It's nice to know that people think about me when I'm not around:)
Not saying this is wrong, but QCS appears to be a husband and wife consulting outfit, looking at their website. Which raises the question - who checked over their research and OK'd this analysis of the statistics?
Absolutely nobody. Also, their funding? Who the heck knows Peer review? Hahahaha, why bother with that? Tesla's response? Why bother to post that? The fact that if you read over this "analysis" most of the data appears to validate the NHTSA but the author dismisses it (all but 5714 out of 43781 vehicles) for seemingly inexplicable reasons? Meh!
It's against Tesla, so by all means, publish it far and wide. "Some guy with a website says that the entire NHTSA is wrong on a 2-year-old report, this totally warrants extensive news coverage!"
The challenge is not "squeezing harder". The challenge is "not obliterating your combustion chamber". The higher the pressure, the more reactive the combusting gas/plasma is with the walls of the combustion chamber. It's extremely hard to find materials that these conditions won't eat away.
I love the various hacks that have been used in rocketry over the years to deal with "difficult problems", which throw away a bit of performance in order to not have to deal with them. One of the most recent ones that springs to mind is that North Korea "dealt with" the stability problems on their missiles by adding a ring of stationary (no axial rotation, aka non-maneuvering) grid fins around the base. They deliberately increase the drag of the first stage in order to keep it stable (like a shuttlecock).
Chamber pressure is correlated to both thrust (higher chamber pressure = higher mass flow rate) and efficiency (and thus ISP, see here).
AFAIK, thrust density is the more key factor here, at least for Super Heavy (the first stage). There's a sort of "maximum height" to a rocket stage which relates to the thrust density. Your ability to pack more engines into the rocket corresponds to the rocket's cross section at the base. These engines in turn have to lift a column of liquid sitting above them; each engine can be viewed as having to lift the portion of the column of liquid directly above it (in addition to dead mass and payload). Eventually you get to a height where the mass of liquid (plus overhead) above each engine equals the thrust, and you don't move at all. The higher the thrust density of your engines, the taller you can realistically make that stage, the more fuel it can carry, and - for a given ratio of lower stage mass to upper stage mass - the heavier the payload it can launch (for a given dV). Other options to increase rocket upper stage masses come with disadvantages, such as making the rocket higher diameter (more air resistance) or adding strap-on boosters (more air resistance, more complexity, more work in recovery for reuse).
Thrust density is primarily of importance for lower stages (which is why you don't see many hydrolox lower stages without boosters), and why strap-on boosters (incl. very high thrust density solid rocket boosters) are commonly added to the first stages of large rockets. Thrust density limits are also why small rockets tend to be shaped like pencils (very high aspect ratio) while large rockets tend to be fatter, particularly at the base. For upper stages, ISP is of greater importance.
Also, for a rocket of a given (constant) height, improving its engines' thrust density comes with another advantage: they burn through their fuel faster and deliver the stage's dV faster. While there are limits to how fast you want to do this in the lower atmosphere, once you're past max-Q, more thrust is better (up to the G-force limits of your payload/passengers), as it means lower gravity losses.
This doesn't make a lot of sense. You say Tesla is making huge margins, but for some reason they are shedding staff to try to get costs down so they can release the $35k Model 3.
Duh. How exactly do you think you bring the cost of a car down - magic? You reduce parts and labour cost. The latter is known as layoffs.
And it's not a "Rei says" they're making huge margins; it's their official filed quarterly statements, for the past half decade.
Why can't they fulfill people's pre-orders in the mean time by cutting the margin slightly?
Yes, let's zero out R&D, new gigafactory construction, gigafactory expansion, paying off past debts, building up cash reserves, building new Superchargers, tooling for new vehicles....
Sales are always low in January, Tesla made a huge pre-tax credit phasedown push (although they've almost completely compensated for the credit reduction via cost savings since then), and they're focusing production on European and Chinese models - not simply for the ability to sell with a much higher ASP (very high take rates on M3P, for example), but because it's quite time critical due to the trade wars (March deadline for the renewal of tariffs against China, and next week a new ruling about whether to start a 90 day countdown to impose tariffs against Europe, which would also meet with retaliatory tariffs on the auto industry). There's now 7 RORO ships out there full of Model 3s, not counting the Glovis Captain which recently unloaded at Zeebrugge.
Tesla always focuses on what's time critical. Before the US credit phasedown, that was the US. Now that it's 6 months until the next, smaller phasedown, the focus is on China and Europe.
The issue is that you don't just need a lower sale price; you also need a lower production cost. One intuitively expects these two to correlate, but at low volumes, they don't; so long as EVs are a small percentage of a manufacturer's sales, pricing is more dictated by factors such as legal compliance, trying to establish a place in the market, and maturing one's designs.
As it stands, EV profitability varies greatly between manufacturers.
The primary problem is that your base costs - batteries - are high, but your incremental costs - such as motor power - are low. A Model 3 drive unit, for example, was estimated by Munro & Associates to cost $754 - yet just the catalytic converter alone on a Prius costs more than double that. So, whether you're making some slow, plodding, econobox EV, or some lightning-speed entry-level luxury EV, the differences in production cost aren't that great. The exact same situation applies to China - battery cells are traded globally, and Chinese EV makers face the exact same challenges in making their battery packs affordable. Sure, they can cut costs on the rest of the vehicle - but you're still stuck with needing an expensive battery pack (or selling cars with poor range and charge speeds).
Thankfully, battery prices have been falling like a stone. So this situation keeps improving every year.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL. Are people still pretending that the Kona is an "SUV"? Have you sat in the back seat? It's only suitable for amputees. It's a "CUV", which only describes form factor, not size.
The problem is not demand but production. They're making them in tiny quantities, because Hyundai earns basically nothing on its EVs.
Calling a system that's never been tested in space "fully finished" is just silly.
I'm not going to write them off so quickly. But they certainly are behind. Starlink launched its first test satellites a year ago. And they have the massive advantage of owning their own launch service, which also happens to be by far the cheapest in the world.
But you never know. I absolutely wish OneWeb the best. LEO constellation-based broadband is going to be a game changer for much of the world's population.
GEO != LEO.
And the market disagrees with the SEC. Don't look now, but Tesla is actually up. In what world does the market think that the SEC has a plausible case against a company and actually go up after the SEC takes the CEO to court? And this is against negative macros!
That's not what was said during the call. What was said was:
Absolutely nothing whatsoever about these being annualized figures. Specifically "this year". And only about Model 3s, not counting S+X.
Again, those numbers might be wrong, but they were public guidance given in an official context. Indeed, Musk's tweet was so non-market moving (premarket) that the last trade of TSLA before Musk's tweet was $307,10, and the average price of all trades after it up until the "correction" was $307,24. Effectively no budge whatsoever. Volume was light as well compared to pre-tweet.
Let's be clear on what all of the numbers actually are.
Q4 letter: 360-400k vehicle deliveries
Q4 call: 350-500k Model 3s produced
Tweet: around 500k vehicles produced
These are not the same thing. Deliveries are not production (there's also inventory, both in-transit and accumulated - both of which are to be much higher this year vs. last, due to the international launch of the Model 3 and Tesla's new policy to locally stock common configs for faster delivery), and Tesla makes more than just the Model 3 (e.g., ~80k S+X this year).
Yes, there is a lack of clarity between the Q4 letter and call (I wouldn't expect up to 100k M3 inventory, although it's possible) - but resolving that ambiguity is an issue entirely unrelated to the case. What matters is that Musk's tweet clearly falls within the range of publicly disclosed information. Because the earnings call is an official source of public information disclosure.
There seems to be a common mistaken view (even repeated by some journalists) that the SEC settlement requires anything Musk posts to be pre-read and pre-approved. This is not correct. The social media policy, imposed on Tesla by the settlement, requires Musk to seek approval for communications which contain material information - nothing more.
So the question is: is reiterating already public numbers from official channels (aka, the Q4 earnings call) "material information"? Yeah, good luck making that argument. That doesn't mean that the numbers from the call will be proven correct - but they were previously publicly disclosed information, and thus not material information. And regardless of whether one thinks that Musk should have every tweet pre-approved, that is not his obligation - he is only required to have tweets containing material information approved.
Now, let's put yourself in the shoes of a Tesla attorney. And let's say that Musk's statement in the earnings call was not guidance that you wanted repeated (e.g. overly optimistic or whatnot). What do you do? The company has an obligation to make sure that it's putting out are as accurate as possible. So if you only want the 400k figure repeated, then what's the solution? You jointly draft a followup "correction" tweet, of course. This does not in any way change the fact that what was stated previously was already public information.
You can:
A) Charge on 110V
B) Charge at -40C
C) Preheat the vehicle
Pick any two.
What car does snow not fall into? I've never in my life owned a car that's managed to completely prevent snow ingress.
You're not supposed to charge on 110V, you're supposed to install a proper charger. I mean, it's great that Model 3 is efficient enough that you can usually actually get away with it, but the US's NEMA 10-15 sockets are a joke when it comes to power output - they can barely run a hair dryer, let alone a whole car. A proper wall charger has 8 times the power output.
That said, if your friend doesn't want to / can't install an actual charger (who buys an EV without having a plan for charging it?), and can't connect to, say, a dryer or range socket (they're vastly more powerful than a 10-15), I'd recommend a Quick 220 for him. It has two plugs, which you plug into out-of-phase sockets (it checks), producing a single split-phase (double voltage, double-power) socket.
I'm not sure where CR ranks the 3-Series, but the 5-Series was one of six models (including the Model 3) that CR pulled their "Recommended" ranking from in this latest update. But of course, if there's something negative to say about Tesla, it drowns out all other news.
Also, for serious EV news that apparently has flown entirely under the radar for most people today...
Der Zellkonflikt mit den Zulieferern
Short summary: VW wants to emulate Tesla and build Gigafactories (in conjunction with SK Innovation, which would be playing the role that Panasonic does with Tesla). However, they're being held hostage by their current supplier (LG), who is threatening to cut off all battery shipments to them (immediately) unless they drop their Gigafactory plans. VW is trying to find a way out of this mess, as they see the Gigafactory approach as being essential to ensuring a sufficient supply of cells at a low enough price to meet their target price points and be competitive.
AmiMoJo doesn't actually have a Model 3. He's a consistent Tesla foe here, who just repeats whatever FUD he can find.
To people who didn't know better, they'd think that you actually have a Model 3. You don't - you're a consistent Tesla foe on this forum. You're just repeating FUD that you heard.
Going down the list:
1) There were two cases (out of hundreds of thousands of cars) of the bumper coming off. It wasn't due to being "in the rain", but rather driving quickly through standing water (the bumper was acting like a parachute, and Model 3 has crazy amounts of torque). These cases were half a year ago. No new cases have been reported since.
2) According to the Model 3 Owners Survey, conducted last August (when autowipers were brand new; they've gotten better since then), the ratings for autowipers were:
57,0%: They do their job just fine
25,5%: Very rarely don't wipe, or wipe too often - but it's not a problem
9,7%: Minor issues that probably should be fixed.
7,8%: Moderate to major issues
These are similar numbers to what you'd find for a review of any autowiper system - and this was the very first release.
3) You can make the water go into the trunk by applying RainX to your rear windshield, which makes the water slide off faster and over the rear gutter. But there is a rear gutter (it was enlarged last year regardless).
4) According to the Model 3 Owners Survey (again, last August, involving a lot of early vehicles) 76,5% were "very satisfied" with their exterior fit and finish, and 16,9% "mostly satisfied" (93,4% total). For interior fit and finish, the numbers were 80,2% and 17,0%, respectively (97,2%). Infotainment system satisfaction ("the screen") were 58,2% and 31,3%, respectively (89,5%). These are exceedingly high numbers.
And these exceedingly high numbers show. Since we're talking about Consumer Reports, wouldn't it be great if they had polled what people thought of their cars? Why, they did! And of all of the different models from all of the different manufacturers, Model 3 owners loved their cars the most. 92% satisfaction. Specifically, the question they were asked about was whether, after having owned the car, they would make the same purchase decision again. So IMHO it's rather odd for Consumer Reports to recommend against a car that their own survey found brought their owners the most joy, and ALSO got the lowest VSS (combined probability of injury score) in NHTSA history.
I do have two issues with CR's methodology, which I'll mention here.,
1) They're giving the impression that we're talking about recent Model 3s here. This is not true. This data was collected on Model 3s from early last year to the middle of last year. These are early-run vehicles that they're talking about. For example, they mentioned the "phantom click" issue. That only existed on some vehicles delivered from February to April 2018 in the 4000-15000 VIN range, due to a bad batch of displays from a supplier. The problem has not existed at all in any form for nearly a year. Yet it's something that CR cites. Note how low those VINs are; Tesla's VINs are now nearly 300k.
2) Specifically because of all of the anti-Tesla FUD, most Model 3 buyers went over their vehicles with a fine-toothed comb, in a way that buyers of other vehicles do not. There were even long "checklists" circulating around that many people used to make sure that their vehicles were flawless at delivery. Who does that for any other vehicle? Now, there's nothing wrong at all with doing this - diligence is great when buying a car. But it messes with self-reporting surveys like CR's. The more a person searches for any little issue
This isn't correct. What they're describing isn't an atmosphere at all; it's an exosphere. The difference being that an atmosphere is dominated by particle collisions (and thus behaves like a gas) while an exosphere is dominated by collision-free travel (and thus behaves like individual particles). If at the given temperature, the average particle traveling upwards will experience less than one collision before it reaches the upward end of its arc, it's an exosphere; otherwise, it's an atmosphere.
You know, I just had a heartwarming thought. I could drop dead tomorrow, and yet for years to come, people on Slashdot would be crediting any story that gets posted about Musk/Tesla to me. It's nice to know that people think about me when I'm not around :)
Absolutely nobody.
Also, their funding? Who the heck knows
Peer review? Hahahaha, why bother with that?
Tesla's response? Why bother to post that?
The fact that if you read over this "analysis" most of the data appears to validate the NHTSA but the author dismisses it (all but 5714 out of 43781 vehicles) for seemingly inexplicable reasons? Meh!
It's against Tesla, so by all means, publish it far and wide. "Some guy with a website says that the entire NHTSA is wrong on a 2-year-old report, this totally warrants extensive news coverage!"
The challenge is not "squeezing harder". The challenge is "not obliterating your combustion chamber". The higher the pressure, the more reactive the combusting gas/plasma is with the walls of the combustion chamber. It's extremely hard to find materials that these conditions won't eat away.
I love the various hacks that have been used in rocketry over the years to deal with "difficult problems", which throw away a bit of performance in order to not have to deal with them. One of the most recent ones that springs to mind is that North Korea "dealt with" the stability problems on their missiles by adding a ring of stationary (no axial rotation, aka non-maneuvering) grid fins around the base. They deliberately increase the drag of the first stage in order to keep it stable (like a shuttlecock).
Chamber pressure is correlated to both thrust (higher chamber pressure = higher mass flow rate) and efficiency (and thus ISP, see here).
AFAIK, thrust density is the more key factor here, at least for Super Heavy (the first stage). There's a sort of "maximum height" to a rocket stage which relates to the thrust density. Your ability to pack more engines into the rocket corresponds to the rocket's cross section at the base. These engines in turn have to lift a column of liquid sitting above them; each engine can be viewed as having to lift the portion of the column of liquid directly above it (in addition to dead mass and payload). Eventually you get to a height where the mass of liquid (plus overhead) above each engine equals the thrust, and you don't move at all. The higher the thrust density of your engines, the taller you can realistically make that stage, the more fuel it can carry, and - for a given ratio of lower stage mass to upper stage mass - the heavier the payload it can launch (for a given dV). Other options to increase rocket upper stage masses come with disadvantages, such as making the rocket higher diameter (more air resistance) or adding strap-on boosters (more air resistance, more complexity, more work in recovery for reuse).
Thrust density is primarily of importance for lower stages (which is why you don't see many hydrolox lower stages without boosters), and why strap-on boosters (incl. very high thrust density solid rocket boosters) are commonly added to the first stages of large rockets. Thrust density limits are also why small rockets tend to be shaped like pencils (very high aspect ratio) while large rockets tend to be fatter, particularly at the base. For upper stages, ISP is of greater importance.
Also, for a rocket of a given (constant) height, improving its engines' thrust density comes with another advantage: they burn through their fuel faster and deliver the stage's dV faster. While there are limits to how fast you want to do this in the lower atmosphere, once you're past max-Q, more thrust is better (up to the G-force limits of your payload/passengers), as it means lower gravity losses.
Duh. How exactly do you think you bring the cost of a car down - magic? You reduce parts and labour cost. The latter is known as layoffs.
And it's not a "Rei says" they're making huge margins; it's their official filed quarterly statements, for the past half decade.
Yes, let's zero out R&D, new gigafactory construction, gigafactory expansion, paying off past debts, building up cash reserves, building new Superchargers, tooling for new vehicles....
The link in the post literally quotes Jaguar's CFO calling it a compliance car.
Sales are always low in January, Tesla made a huge pre-tax credit phasedown push (although they've almost completely compensated for the credit reduction via cost savings since then), and they're focusing production on European and Chinese models - not simply for the ability to sell with a much higher ASP (very high take rates on M3P, for example), but because it's quite time critical due to the trade wars (March deadline for the renewal of tariffs against China, and next week a new ruling about whether to start a 90 day countdown to impose tariffs against Europe, which would also meet with retaliatory tariffs on the auto industry). There's now 7 RORO ships out there full of Model 3s, not counting the Glovis Captain which recently unloaded at Zeebrugge.
Tesla always focuses on what's time critical. Before the US credit phasedown, that was the US. Now that it's 6 months until the next, smaller phasedown, the focus is on China and Europe.
Interestingly enough, this story was posted right as the first delivery of Model 3s to China is arriving in Tianjin. :) Also the second shipment to Europe will also arrive at Zeebrugge shortly.
I agree with the AC above - what you want is a used Leaf.
The issue is that you don't just need a lower sale price; you also need a lower production cost. One intuitively expects these two to correlate, but at low volumes, they don't; so long as EVs are a small percentage of a manufacturer's sales, pricing is more dictated by factors such as legal compliance, trying to establish a place in the market, and maturing one's designs.
As it stands, EV profitability varies greatly between manufacturers.
The primary problem is that your base costs - batteries - are high, but your incremental costs - such as motor power - are low. A Model 3 drive unit, for example, was estimated by Munro & Associates to cost $754 - yet just the catalytic converter alone on a Prius costs more than double that. So, whether you're making some slow, plodding, econobox EV, or some lightning-speed entry-level luxury EV, the differences in production cost aren't that great. The exact same situation applies to China - battery cells are traded globally, and Chinese EV makers face the exact same challenges in making their battery packs affordable. Sure, they can cut costs on the rest of the vehicle - but you're still stuck with needing an expensive battery pack (or selling cars with poor range and charge speeds).
Thankfully, battery prices have been falling like a stone. So this situation keeps improving every year.