The reviewers I watch on Youtube have all commented on the cheapness of the interior.
I don't know what "reviewers you watch on Youtube", but I'm going to guess that a whopping zero percent of them have ever been inside a Model 3. The vehicle was opened up to the press, which is not a huge total number of people, at the launch event. People who were at the launch event - mainly employees and their guests - also got rides. The only other people to ride in them are the first 30 owners - mainly Tesla board members and the like - and people they've given rides too. Odds are that your random Youtube "reviewers" have never even seen one in person.
But the journalists writing articles for Motor Trend and the like have. So read what they actually say about it.
I don't think that it's going to impede sales or anything, but it's not a luxury vehicle
Actual reviewers who've been in actual vehicles disagree with you. See above.
and at least everything is soft-touch, which is still not true inside the Model S.
Again, facepalm. One of the main things reviewers have described about the Model 3 is how soft everything is. The seats are described as being almost like a pillow.
Look, you seriously need to get your info from people who have actually been inside the vehicle. Not random BSers on Youtube.
As such the HVDC cables mentioned will leave their own coast and go directly to the three target locations, with any contesting parties most likely being islands/their parent nations on the European side.
You seem to forget that Aquaman posted a video a couple months ago in support of ISIS.
Really, you don't think half a billion dollars in annual revenue (by my rough estimation of how much Tunisia stands to earn, with commercial rates and a realistic capacity factor and profit margin) would have an impact on the quality of living there?
Tunisia specifically modified their energy law in 2015 to allow projects like this. Tunisia doesn't have some scarcity of desert land, it has a scarcity of income.
So terrorists now have submarines? You do realize that the lines are underwater, don't you? Only the stations are aboveground. And there's three of them. Very large structures containing row after row of AC-DC converters, not just "one bomb and it's all gone". And even if that wasn't the case, losing one station would just mean a rebalancing of the European grid - flows changing direction, peaking coming online followed by reserve, etc. The significance of even losing all three (you're talking warfare, not terrorism - but what military would want to destroy a valuable export asset?) would depend heavily on when it happened.
And lets place that in one of the most war torn regions in the world.
Tunisia hasn't been in a war since World War II. There have only been two military skirmishes since then - one in 1961 with France over a naval base that France never gave up when Tunisia became independent, and the other a single bombing by the Israeli air force against a PLO headquarters. Internally, there have been brief periods of unrest - the most recent being the revolts that led to the resignation of Ben Ali (and the start of the Arab Spring) in 2010 - but they have never been associated with widespread bloodshed or destruction. The Tunisian Revolution in 2010, for example, only involved 338 deaths.
a company that has never once met a single deadline that they've imposed on themselves
You mean like delivering the first 30 vehicles at the end of July 2017? When the original announcement was that delivery would begin in late 2017?
as a history of many outright lies about future (and even current) products. You probably also believed that the $50,000 Model S was going to happen.
They're currently selling a $35k Model S (the Model 3). I'll have that one, thanks.
And for the record, the Model S was supposed to go on sale with a base price of $57,4k at the 40kWh pack level. Which it did, and was manufactured for a year before they canceled it because only 4% of their preorders were for it (shock of all shocks, people want more range than a Leaf). Golly gee willickers, what a scandal, a company cancelling an unpopular product line after giving it a year. I assume you find it even more scandalous that people who had active reservations on the 40kWh version got a 60kWh pack locked to 40kWh (aka, upgradeable, faster charging, less stress on the cells) at no extra charge?
Yes, they keep getting pushed back, and have been a whopping zero times. The only pushing of the schedule was when the whole schedule got pushed forward last year. And so far at least they've met the pushed-forward schedule.
I actually agree with that. I think it's stupid to pay for full self driving, and I think Tesla is being way too optimistic the timeframe. I'm not prepared to say that the hardware can't support it, but I think the challenge - both regulatory and technological - is IMHO much harder than their timeframe supports.
AP works, although its reliability level gives it mixed reviews (more positive than negative, but still decidedly mixed). Tesla really got set back when they had to start over with AP2 after the contract dispute; it's only just now getting up to the capabilities of AP1. Some people find that AP takes a great load off their mind on long trips, having only to make the occasional correction rather than hyperfocus on every detail - while others find it puts more stress on them, having to watch doing nothing but still have to make corrections at random intervals. Most people like the adaptive cruise control, but that's not as impressive as what people really want from autopilot. Self parking and the like is also popular, but not considered worth the value on its own.
There are a lot of people who think that autopilot is "the reason" to get a Tesla - they love it, they think it's the future, etc. Other reviews are decidedly more mixed. And of course FSD is a phantom product at the moment.
so tell me again why did they repay their another loan in record time and then pursue this presumably more expensive loan?
For one, by repaying early they avoided letting the US government cash out on $300m worth of stock options. For two, it deprived people like you of a cudgel to say "See, they're dependent on the government". Not like it stopped you, or not like people like you ever bring that up about companies like Chrysler that never repaid part of their loans.
You know, by the way, you don't need to ask these things, you can just look them up for yourself.
the reason why this is sort of interesting is that they're seeking money this way and that is usually not a very good sign for a company like this in a situation like this.
So you think that stockholders should want to be diluted rather than pay interest, in a company undergoing a rapid expansion? Praytell why?
it just isn't. it's a sign that the usual lenders/investors have put on a squeeze on how much they are willing to dump money
Ah, yes, because you can just put $1,5 billion dollars on your credit card.
if you had been touting ford as an industrial genius in 1901,
Given that Ford Motor Company wasn't even founded until 1903, that's a stupid comparison.
In your analogy, 1901 is 2001 (Tesla was founded in 2003). Ford's prototype car Sweepstakes is AC Propulsion's tzero. The equivalent on Ford's timeline to the present is the middle of 1917. And ironically, in 1917 Ford was just starting on the River Rouge complex, the Gigafactory of its day.
And as for your long "bank" screed, I don't even know which bank you're talking about. Tesla Motors as received investments from numerous sources (including banks) over the years. Tesla's starting capital was provided by Elon Musk and Mark Tarpenning out of their personal assets (Musk's from the sale of Paypal); the Series B funding round added in Valor Equity Partners. Wait a minute, is it Paypal that you're trying to say is a "bank that is not a bank" in your screed?
The 3 with PUP and the 310mi range starts at $44k. The short range version deliveries begin in fall, so not exactly a long wait.
Eventually Tesla will discontinue that model and lie that there was a lack of domain just like they discontinued the base model for the S
And your data that it wasn't commonly purchased is?
The higher-range S and X models have continuously drifted down in price over time. Just this week, Model X prices were reduced by $3k. Do you have a problem with that? How exactly do you think things should proceed, if not "prices continue to drop over time as tech advances yield longer ranges, with the shortest range versions eventually discontinued" and "a reasonable attempt is made to have a distinguishing line between midrange prices/featuresets and high-end prices/featuresets"? No, serious, let's hear your copy of If I Ran The Zoo.
Smart investors never gave their money to tesla in the first place
Yeah, try googling "Tesla stock" and clicking the "5 year" button. All of those smart people who craftily avoided having their money increase 12-fold....
The 60k number comes from Tesla. Do you pick and choose to believe only the things Tesla says that you can scream "Dooooom!" about and call everything else a lie?
The cash flow from customer deposits makes up revenue that is declared in SEC filings. So if you think that the company is faking it, and for some reason the SEC is missing it, by all means take your conspiracy to the SEC.
Meh, it's understandable - bondholders face only the risks, without the long-term benefits. Stockholders have floated Tesla's value to such highs because they're invested in the future of the company, selling millions of cars per year (M3 is being tooled for half a million on its own). Bondholders get none of that, they only get interest. So they take all of the risk with none of the reward (beyond interest). Since the risk is quite real, the interest rates have to be higher to compensate.
Meanwhile, to Tesla shareholders, selling bonds means not having to dilute. So what if they have to pay more interest? From their perspective, that interest is coming from the revenue of a completed Model 3 plant. Which means that they've succeeded growing this former-startup into a giant.
The margin on S and X is 25%. Model 3's expected margin is also around 25%.
Furthermore - and please pay attention to this part - A company undergoing an exponential scaleup is not supposed to be returning profits. They're supposed to be investing every last penny they take in in order to minimize how much additional capital they have to raise to fund the scaleup.
If another person on this thread makes that stupid misunderstanding of the "60k cancellations" statement I'm literally going to hit my head on the wall. That's 60k over the coarse of the past year, while the total number of active reservations has climbed to nearly half a million. After the first deliveries they were netting (read: positive) 1800 new reservations per day.
Selling more convertible stock means more dilution. Selling bonds means that they want to hang onto their share in the company, and feel that paying interest after the plant is online is worth the benefit of not having to dilute.
Hehe... um... might want to check your pricing. Model 3 starts at $35k (without credits). With a standard featureset comparable to a BMW 3-Series optioned up to $41-42k.
Of course you can option it up further. The current announced options are:
* Premium upgrade package (misc added luxury details): +$5k
* Metallic paint: +$1k
* Long-range (310 instead of 220 miles range; 5,1 second instead of 5,6 second 0-60; 8yr/120k mi battery warranty instead of 8yr/100k mi): +$9k
* 19" "turbine" wheels: +$1,5k
* All-wheel drive: TBD (stated to be cheaper than on the Model S, where it costs $5k)
* Performance variants (should be a 0-60 in 3-4 seconds): TBD
So, with every option available you can bring it up to maybe $55k (without credits), possibly more for fully optioned-out performance versions. But it's not even possible to bring to $80k.
"Stores and malls" are not "closing at an alarming rate". The US is in an expansion.
Giving a bond offering is hanging onto stocks. That's the whole point, to avoid dilution of stock.
It's very simple. Tesla has customers lined up for nearly two years, and that's if their scaleup goes as planned. They have business out the wazoo, if they can deliver. Which takes tons of money. There's about a dozen different ways they can get large amounts of money, but the goal is to do so in the manner that minimizes how much ownership in the company they have to give up to do so.
We need a new round of short sellers to lose another half billion dollars betting against Tesla;) Hey, maybe a new TTAC Tesla Deathwatch while we're at it!;)
60k cancellations over the course of a year. Meanwhile they've grown to nearly half a million active preorders. And since the launch event they've been netting (new orders minus lost orders) 1800 per day since the launch event. All this with Tesla attempting to anti-sell the Model 3 to preferentially push sales of S and X, since that means short-term cash that can be used to help fund their scaleup.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what "reviewers you watch on Youtube", but I'm going to guess that a whopping zero percent of them have ever been inside a Model 3. The vehicle was opened up to the press, which is not a huge total number of people, at the launch event. People who were at the launch event - mainly employees and their guests - also got rides. The only other people to ride in them are the first 30 owners - mainly Tesla board members and the like - and people they've given rides too. Odds are that your random Youtube "reviewers" have never even seen one in person.
But the journalists writing articles for Motor Trend and the like have. So read what they actually say about it.
Actual reviewers who've been in actual vehicles disagree with you. See above.
Again, facepalm. One of the main things reviewers have described about the Model 3 is how soft everything is. The seats are described as being almost like a pillow.
Look, you seriously need to get your info from people who have actually been inside the vehicle. Not random BSers on Youtube.
You seem to forget that Aquaman posted a video a couple months ago in support of ISIS.
So I can assume that the main threat to it would be Libyan terrorists? ;)
Really, you don't think half a billion dollars in annual revenue (by my rough estimation of how much Tunisia stands to earn, with commercial rates and a realistic capacity factor and profit margin) would have an impact on the quality of living there?
Tunisia specifically modified their energy law in 2015 to allow projects like this. Tunisia doesn't have some scarcity of desert land, it has a scarcity of income.
So terrorists now have submarines? You do realize that the lines are underwater, don't you? Only the stations are aboveground. And there's three of them. Very large structures containing row after row of AC-DC converters, not just "one bomb and it's all gone". And even if that wasn't the case, losing one station would just mean a rebalancing of the European grid - flows changing direction, peaking coming online followed by reserve, etc. The significance of even losing all three (you're talking warfare, not terrorism - but what military would want to destroy a valuable export asset?) would depend heavily on when it happened.
Tunisia hasn't been in a war since World War II. There have only been two military skirmishes since then - one in 1961 with France over a naval base that France never gave up when Tunisia became independent, and the other a single bombing by the Israeli air force against a PLO headquarters. Internally, there have been brief periods of unrest - the most recent being the revolts that led to the resignation of Ben Ali (and the start of the Arab Spring) in 2010 - but they have never been associated with widespread bloodshed or destruction. The Tunisian Revolution in 2010, for example, only involved 338 deaths.
The abundant test drive reviews disagree with you.
Motor Trend - Exclusive: Tesla Model 3 First Drive Review - Motor Trend
Top Gear- Tesla Model 3 review: first drive of Elon Musk's affordable EV
The Verge - A closer look at Tesla Model 3's spartan interior
The Verge - Tesla Model 3 first drive: this is the car that Elon Musk promised
Bloomberg - Tesla’s Model 3 Arrives With a Surprise 310-Mile Range
Bloomberg[/COLOR] - Driving Tesla’s Model 3 Changes Everything
Car and Driver - 2018 Tesla Model 3: Everything We Know | Feature | Car and Driver
CNET - Tesla Model 3 is well worth the hype
Car Advice - Tesla Model 3 quick drive review | CarAdvice
Fortune - Here’s What Reviewers Think About Tesla’s Model 3 So Far
Ars Technica - All the things the Internet hates about the Tesla Model 3 have me excited
Mashable - Driving a Tesla Model 3 is pretty damn awesome
TechCrunch - Your smartphone is the key for the Tesla Model 3
But hey, feel free to live in your own little world and deny reality to your heart's content.
You mean like delivering the first 30 vehicles at the end of July 2017? When the original announcement was that delivery would begin in late 2017?
They're currently selling a $35k Model S (the Model 3). I'll have that one, thanks.
And for the record, the Model S was supposed to go on sale with a base price of $57,4k at the 40kWh pack level. Which it did, and was manufactured for a year before they canceled it because only 4% of their preorders were for it (shock of all shocks, people want more range than a Leaf). Golly gee willickers, what a scandal, a company cancelling an unpopular product line after giving it a year. I assume you find it even more scandalous that people who had active reservations on the 40kWh version got a 60kWh pack locked to 40kWh (aka, upgradeable, faster charging, less stress on the cells) at no extra charge?
Yes, they keep getting pushed back, and have been a whopping zero times. The only pushing of the schedule was when the whole schedule got pushed forward last year. And so far at least they've met the pushed-forward schedule.
I actually agree with that. I think it's stupid to pay for full self driving, and I think Tesla is being way too optimistic the timeframe. I'm not prepared to say that the hardware can't support it, but I think the challenge - both regulatory and technological - is IMHO much harder than their timeframe supports.
AP works, although its reliability level gives it mixed reviews (more positive than negative, but still decidedly mixed). Tesla really got set back when they had to start over with AP2 after the contract dispute; it's only just now getting up to the capabilities of AP1. Some people find that AP takes a great load off their mind on long trips, having only to make the occasional correction rather than hyperfocus on every detail - while others find it puts more stress on them, having to watch doing nothing but still have to make corrections at random intervals. Most people like the adaptive cruise control, but that's not as impressive as what people really want from autopilot. Self parking and the like is also popular, but not considered worth the value on its own.
There are a lot of people who think that autopilot is "the reason" to get a Tesla - they love it, they think it's the future, etc. Other reviews are decidedly more mixed. And of course FSD is a phantom product at the moment.
You know, the "Tesla is going to go bankrupt any day now" screed was tiresome back when TTAC was doing it a decade ago. Now it's just silly.
Only to people who are not paying attention is that "a new".
For one, by repaying early they avoided letting the US government cash out on $300m worth of stock options. For two, it deprived people like you of a cudgel to say "See, they're dependent on the government". Not like it stopped you, or not like people like you ever bring that up about companies like Chrysler that never repaid part of their loans.
You know, by the way, you don't need to ask these things, you can just look them up for yourself.
So you think that stockholders should want to be diluted rather than pay interest, in a company undergoing a rapid expansion? Praytell why?
Ah, yes, because you can just put $1,5 billion dollars on your credit card.
Given that Ford Motor Company wasn't even founded until 1903, that's a stupid comparison.
In your analogy, 1901 is 2001 (Tesla was founded in 2003). Ford's prototype car Sweepstakes is AC Propulsion's tzero. The equivalent on Ford's timeline to the present is the middle of 1917. And ironically, in 1917 Ford was just starting on the River Rouge complex, the Gigafactory of its day.
And as for your long "bank" screed, I don't even know which bank you're talking about. Tesla Motors as received investments from numerous sources (including banks) over the years. Tesla's starting capital was provided by Elon Musk and Mark Tarpenning out of their personal assets (Musk's from the sale of Paypal); the Series B funding round added in Valor Equity Partners. Wait a minute, is it Paypal that you're trying to say is a "bank that is not a bank" in your screed?
Got it. Tesla is lying to the SEC, and the SEC doesn't give a rat's arse.
You've convinced me! Subscribe me to your newsletter!
The 3 with PUP and the 310mi range starts at $44k. The short range version deliveries begin in fall, so not exactly a long wait.
And your data that it wasn't commonly purchased is?
The higher-range S and X models have continuously drifted down in price over time. Just this week, Model X prices were reduced by $3k. Do you have a problem with that? How exactly do you think things should proceed, if not "prices continue to drop over time as tech advances yield longer ranges, with the shortest range versions eventually discontinued" and "a reasonable attempt is made to have a distinguishing line between midrange prices/featuresets and high-end prices/featuresets"? No, serious, let's hear your copy of If I Ran The Zoo.
Yeah, try googling "Tesla stock" and clicking the "5 year" button. All of those smart people who craftily avoided having their money increase 12-fold....
Hey, you should write for TTAC! ;)
The 60k number comes from Tesla. Do you pick and choose to believe only the things Tesla says that you can scream "Dooooom!" about and call everything else a lie?
The cash flow from customer deposits makes up revenue that is declared in SEC filings. So if you think that the company is faking it, and for some reason the SEC is missing it, by all means take your conspiracy to the SEC.
Oh yeah, I forgot - you can also add in autopilot for $5k, and full self driving (not yet available) for $3k.
Meh, it's understandable - bondholders face only the risks, without the long-term benefits. Stockholders have floated Tesla's value to such highs because they're invested in the future of the company, selling millions of cars per year (M3 is being tooled for half a million on its own). Bondholders get none of that, they only get interest. So they take all of the risk with none of the reward (beyond interest). Since the risk is quite real, the interest rates have to be higher to compensate.
Meanwhile, to Tesla shareholders, selling bonds means not having to dilute. So what if they have to pay more interest? From their perspective, that interest is coming from the revenue of a completed Model 3 plant. Which means that they've succeeded growing this former-startup into a giant.
The margin on S and X is 25%. Model 3's expected margin is also around 25%.
Furthermore - and please pay attention to this part - A company undergoing an exponential scaleup is not supposed to be returning profits. They're supposed to be investing every last penny they take in in order to minimize how much additional capital they have to raise to fund the scaleup.
If another person on this thread makes that stupid misunderstanding of the "60k cancellations" statement I'm literally going to hit my head on the wall. That's 60k over the coarse of the past year, while the total number of active reservations has climbed to nearly half a million. After the first deliveries they were netting (read: positive) 1800 new reservations per day.
Selling more convertible stock means more dilution. Selling bonds means that they want to hang onto their share in the company, and feel that paying interest after the plant is online is worth the benefit of not having to dilute.
Hehe... um... might want to check your pricing. Model 3 starts at $35k (without credits). With a standard featureset comparable to a BMW 3-Series optioned up to $41-42k.
Of course you can option it up further. The current announced options are:
* Premium upgrade package (misc added luxury details): +$5k
* Metallic paint: +$1k
* Long-range (310 instead of 220 miles range; 5,1 second instead of 5,6 second 0-60; 8yr/120k mi battery warranty instead of 8yr/100k mi): +$9k
* 19" "turbine" wheels: +$1,5k
* All-wheel drive: TBD (stated to be cheaper than on the Model S, where it costs $5k)
* Performance variants (should be a 0-60 in 3-4 seconds): TBD
So, with every option available you can bring it up to maybe $55k (without credits), possibly more for fully optioned-out performance versions. But it's not even possible to bring to $80k.
"Stores and malls" are not "closing at an alarming rate". The US is in an expansion.
Giving a bond offering is hanging onto stocks. That's the whole point, to avoid dilution of stock.
It's very simple. Tesla has customers lined up for nearly two years, and that's if their scaleup goes as planned. They have business out the wazoo, if they can deliver. Which takes tons of money. There's about a dozen different ways they can get large amounts of money, but the goal is to do so in the manner that minimizes how much ownership in the company they have to give up to do so.
Anyway, since Slashdot has gone hard on bear articles about Tesla, have a bull one.
We need a new round of short sellers to lose another half billion dollars betting against Tesla ;) Hey, maybe a new TTAC Tesla Deathwatch while we're at it! ;)
*sigh*.
60k cancellations over the course of a year. Meanwhile they've grown to nearly half a million active preorders. And since the launch event they've been netting (new orders minus lost orders) 1800 per day since the launch event. All this with Tesla attempting to anti-sell the Model 3 to preferentially push sales of S and X, since that means short-term cash that can be used to help fund their scaleup.
Yeah, nobody wants their stupid Model 3. Except for the half million people waiting in line for it, but apart from that, nobody! ;)