I wouldn't hold my breath for $50k to magically be removed from the sticker price with no impact on quality.
Rich people aren't buying these for their kids - 2 or 3 years is an eternity for a kid. I mean, I'm sure that accounts for a few of the deposits, but the bulk are people who really, really, really want a Tesla but can't or won't spend $100k. It's a middle-class version of waiting in line for the new Air Jordans.
I'm not that impatient, and I don't care if people think I'm a rock star. Beetles had a very brief blip of high demand and then were quickly offered at a deep discount. They are indeed nice little machines for a one or two-person household, and quite fast.
Frankly, I'd like to see the schools have a Tech shop similar to the old auto shops. Where they can fix, repair, rebuild, etc. PCs and see how they all work.
I think technical and arts education is currently neglected. The shops, studios, and labs at the high school are adequately maintained, but they look exactly like they did in the 60s. I think jumping on the trendy "maker" bandwagon would be a way for these facilities to stay relevant while simultaneously teaching classic artistic, woodworking, and metalworking skills - while also introducing more modern electronic and programming skill sets.
I'm not at all convinced you need a laptop or tablet per child.
I think studies are bearing this out - technology is not enhancing elementary education. The best you can say is that it isn't hurting it. I don't know if this is because it inherently has no value or if the teachers have no idea what to do with it, but you seem to be right.
When you remove $50k or so from the price of the vehicle, something has to give. Sure, the battery will get cheaper to produce. Volume production should help as well. But $50k is a big number. In any case, the point of my comment wasn't to call it a "piece of shit" so much as to point out that a richie-rich will just buy the expensive Tesla and won't bother waiting in line.
It sounds like your schools have an overabundance:) Our school system is rebuilding schools, and the newer schools are being designed without computer labs. The higher-grade schools are getting a "multimedia lab" with desktops, but nowhere near enough to do general instruction. They do not currently have a laptop (or tablet) per child, but rather these Chromebook carts.
I might suggest that you are ignoring the used value of the car. Unless you plan on driving it into the ground, you will eventually have to sell it. The used price will reflect the lower "actual" price of the vehicle. The subsidy is real, but (a least part of) the savings to the end user is merely a deferred cost. A Leaf has an MSRP of $30k, but the highest price you'll fetch on the used market after driving it off the lot is around $20k. So yeah, you "saved" $7500 that the used market immediately accounted for.
they should have reasonably little trouble hitting this target.
They have two HUGE new barriers to production:
Cost
Quantity
Those are new things for Tesla, and I am optimistic but also realistic. They have never made anything in high volume, nor have they ever made a commodity car.
All of that is reasonable, although you'll be missing out on the tax credit that at least some of the early depositors will receive.
The tax credit gets reflected in the used price. Or at least it seems to in other electric cars. To be totally fair to Tesla, their cars do seem to hold up fairly well on the used market - but they are luxury cars which carry a 4 year warranty used. A used Leaf is $14-20k with just a few miles on it - the previous owner did not see any benefit from the tax credit because they lost their shirt on the used market.
why they are good cars and/or status symbols
I totally agree. You can't make economic sense of this, but people are trying. You can only make emotional sense of this. Hey, it's their money.
Yes, that is a huge bonus for electric - it is mechanically simpler.
Even so, the fuel weight of a plane is enormous compared to the mechanicals. An additional trick that you can play with an expendable-fuel plane is to weaken the aircraft such that its landing weight is lower than its takeoff weight. An all-electric plane will need a beefed-up structure to land at full-weight. This is why some planes need to dump fuel before an emergency or earlier than expected landing.
If you want the stock graphics driver for Windows, sure. Linux will give you a crappy stock driver as well. Last time I installed Windows (7), I had to download wireless drivers (obviously on a separate computer) as well as video.
Windows definitely has better generic support for a wider range of hardware, and I wouldn't claim otherwise. But installing Windows on a machine made for Windows is going to be easy every time. It's an unfair comparison. When the hardware is equally supported, both have pretty painless installs - though the activation stuff is such a PITA that I usually run the pirate utilities on my legitimate copy. God help you if you change hardware frequently.
Anyway, if you are buying any computer, you should probably check that it's good for its intended use. My "Linux" machine these days is just a VM anyway.
Off topic, but what do people do on Windows 10? My understanding is they've closed the activation loopholes.
I don't know what laws you have to deal with locally. In the USA, this purchase would not make any economic sense. You can go out and buy an electric vehicle right now - enjoying all of the benefits that you list - and drive it until the Tesla becomes available. And if Tesla is truly selling them at below market rate, clever entrepreneurs will take that money directly out of their pockets and resell the cars for whatever they are really worth. History shows that this will be significantly lower than the MSRP. In the US, you can get a used Leaf for $14-20k. And that's barely used, a few hundred to a few thousand miles on it.
So you could take your $1000, put it towards driving a Leaf for 3 years, saving all of that $$$ that you laid out, and have way more money to put into your eventual Tesla purchase.
but in what way do you think this model will be shit?
Let's not get too hung up on the hypothetical quality of this future car. The point is that "price is no object" people making $2,000,000 or so a year would just buy a Tesla S. They'd have their personal assistant go to the website and buy one. What's this waiting list for the cheap one crap?
As I said, I like Teslas and - pending an actual test drive and some road time on the platform - could very well see myself buying one of these cheaper models. Used, of course:)
What Linus wants and what Chromebooks actually are, are not the same thing.
The beauty of it is that won't matter. Linus can spend the half-hour it takes to setup chroot on his Chromebook and be happy*. Just like I'm quite happy with the unix that normally lives behind the scenes on my Macbook. The important thing is that unix is there at all, so that those of us who like it can use it. I wish iThings were not locked down, but in any event you can get to unix if you are determined and don't jump on every OS update. Android is a little better since there are so many careless vendors.
*Well, maybe not since he's obviously a kernel developer... I have to assume he works in a VM though.
I don't know what the school system pays for Chromebooks around here, but they definitely use them. They are on carts and they roll them around to the classrooms rather than sending the kids to a dedicated computer lab. I bought a cheap one for my wife to use while traveling, and the kids - even the 6 year old - knew how to use it and their school log-in even worked. Very close to an optimal blend of remote terminal and local caching.
If you look at the context of my comment it will make sense. The AC is claiming that rich people who won't miss $1000 are buying these. That's horseshit - those people can spend $100k on a real Tesla. I think this new model will probably be nicer than a Chevy or a Leaf, but compared to the S it will indeed be shit.
The best analogy I could offer is people waiting in line at Walmart for a new line of low-cost Louis Vutton bags. Those aren't the rich people - the rich people already have the expensive Louis Vutton bags.
Not to mention that the hydrocarbon-fueled aircraft gets lighter and more efficient as it burns fuel, while batteries stay the same weight that they were at takeoff.
Indeed. It's worse than that - I depend on some percentage of them not making the payments so that I can steal their almost-new cars at a steep discount. Fortunately, my post denigrating them on Facebook is unlikely to deter them - in fact, psychologically they are likely to double down and stand in an Apple line. The $1000 is a low-pass filter to separate out the people who can only afford to stand in line for sneakers.
The market returns around 7% on average. At best you will get 0% on this investment, and you'll overpay just for the honor of getting the first buggy models off of the assembly line. Good luck. I'll pick the 2nd year model up on the used market for 2/3 the price, because I'm not in a hurry to look cool.
You are comparing what is available right now, this instant with something that - if it comes to fruition - will not be available for several years. All talk of costs and availability are speculative and frankly don't matter at all. Tesla makes a nice luxury car - I'm a big fan even if I'm not in the market. I might even buy one of these new cheaper Teslas someday. But I'm sure as hell not buying from the first production run, and I'm certainly going to wait for demand to meet supply so that the price comes down. Look how cheaply you can buy a used Leaf compared to the MSRP (tax rebate included), especially now with gas prices in the basement.
Well, we won't laugh at the people pulling $2 million a year. But then my question would be, why are you reserving the piece of shit model when you could drive off with a real one right now? No, these people are not rich - they are just impatient and caught up in fashion and hype.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't hold my breath for $50k to magically be removed from the sticker price with no impact on quality.
Rich people aren't buying these for their kids - 2 or 3 years is an eternity for a kid. I mean, I'm sure that accounts for a few of the deposits, but the bulk are people who really, really, really want a Tesla but can't or won't spend $100k. It's a middle-class version of waiting in line for the new Air Jordans.
That's cool, but you can get a car that qualifies right now, this instant - no need to put up a deposit and wait 2 or 3 years.
I'm not that impatient, and I don't care if people think I'm a rock star. Beetles had a very brief blip of high demand and then were quickly offered at a deep discount. They are indeed nice little machines for a one or two-person household, and quite fast.
Frankly, I'd like to see the schools have a Tech shop similar to the old auto shops. Where they can fix, repair, rebuild, etc. PCs and see how they all work.
I think technical and arts education is currently neglected. The shops, studios, and labs at the high school are adequately maintained, but they look exactly like they did in the 60s. I think jumping on the trendy "maker" bandwagon would be a way for these facilities to stay relevant while simultaneously teaching classic artistic, woodworking, and metalworking skills - while also introducing more modern electronic and programming skill sets.
I'm not at all convinced you need a laptop or tablet per child.
I think studies are bearing this out - technology is not enhancing elementary education. The best you can say is that it isn't hurting it. I don't know if this is because it inherently has no value or if the teachers have no idea what to do with it, but you seem to be right.
I would never recommend the market for a short term investment. I was just pointing it out as a baseline.
When you remove $50k or so from the price of the vehicle, something has to give. Sure, the battery will get cheaper to produce. Volume production should help as well. But $50k is a big number. In any case, the point of my comment wasn't to call it a "piece of shit" so much as to point out that a richie-rich will just buy the expensive Tesla and won't bother waiting in line.
It sounds like your schools have an overabundance :) Our school system is rebuilding schools, and the newer schools are being designed without computer labs. The higher-grade schools are getting a "multimedia lab" with desktops, but nowhere near enough to do general instruction. They do not currently have a laptop (or tablet) per child, but rather these Chromebook carts.
Aren't these electric engines meant to replace turboprops, though? Those do quite well for the lower-altitude regional flights we are talking about.
I might suggest that you are ignoring the used value of the car. Unless you plan on driving it into the ground, you will eventually have to sell it. The used price will reflect the lower "actual" price of the vehicle. The subsidy is real, but (a least part of) the savings to the end user is merely a deferred cost. A Leaf has an MSRP of $30k, but the highest price you'll fetch on the used market after driving it off the lot is around $20k. So yeah, you "saved" $7500 that the used market immediately accounted for.
they should have reasonably little trouble hitting this target.
They have two HUGE new barriers to production:
Those are new things for Tesla, and I am optimistic but also realistic. They have never made anything in high volume, nor have they ever made a commodity car.
All of that is reasonable, although you'll be missing out on the tax credit that at least some of the early depositors will receive.
The tax credit gets reflected in the used price. Or at least it seems to in other electric cars. To be totally fair to Tesla, their cars do seem to hold up fairly well on the used market - but they are luxury cars which carry a 4 year warranty used. A used Leaf is $14-20k with just a few miles on it - the previous owner did not see any benefit from the tax credit because they lost their shirt on the used market.
why they are good cars and/or status symbols
I totally agree. You can't make economic sense of this, but people are trying. You can only make emotional sense of this. Hey, it's their money.
They use the $1000 to hire goons to rape you with a branding iron?
Yes, that is a huge bonus for electric - it is mechanically simpler.
Even so, the fuel weight of a plane is enormous compared to the mechanicals. An additional trick that you can play with an expendable-fuel plane is to weaken the aircraft such that its landing weight is lower than its takeoff weight. An all-electric plane will need a beefed-up structure to land at full-weight. This is why some planes need to dump fuel before an emergency or earlier than expected landing.
If you want the stock graphics driver for Windows, sure. Linux will give you a crappy stock driver as well. Last time I installed Windows (7), I had to download wireless drivers (obviously on a separate computer) as well as video.
Windows definitely has better generic support for a wider range of hardware, and I wouldn't claim otherwise. But installing Windows on a machine made for Windows is going to be easy every time. It's an unfair comparison. When the hardware is equally supported, both have pretty painless installs - though the activation stuff is such a PITA that I usually run the pirate utilities on my legitimate copy. God help you if you change hardware frequently.
Anyway, if you are buying any computer, you should probably check that it's good for its intended use. My "Linux" machine these days is just a VM anyway.
Off topic, but what do people do on Windows 10? My understanding is they've closed the activation loopholes.
I don't know what laws you have to deal with locally. In the USA, this purchase would not make any economic sense. You can go out and buy an electric vehicle right now - enjoying all of the benefits that you list - and drive it until the Tesla becomes available. And if Tesla is truly selling them at below market rate, clever entrepreneurs will take that money directly out of their pockets and resell the cars for whatever they are really worth. History shows that this will be significantly lower than the MSRP. In the US, you can get a used Leaf for $14-20k. And that's barely used, a few hundred to a few thousand miles on it.
So you could take your $1000, put it towards driving a Leaf for 3 years, saving all of that $$$ that you laid out, and have way more money to put into your eventual Tesla purchase.
but in what way do you think this model will be shit?
Let's not get too hung up on the hypothetical quality of this future car. The point is that "price is no object" people making $2,000,000 or so a year would just buy a Tesla S. They'd have their personal assistant go to the website and buy one. What's this waiting list for the cheap one crap?
As I said, I like Teslas and - pending an actual test drive and some road time on the platform - could very well see myself buying one of these cheaper models. Used, of course :)
Wow, it's almost like I said that it was only $1000 in the very next sentence. Did you get so angry that you stopped reading my 3 sentence post?
By the way, it's only refundable until the car goes into production. And it's not refundable at all if the company goes tits-up.
Haha, see what happens when you hook too many tubes up to your computer?
What Linus wants and what Chromebooks actually are, are not the same thing.
The beauty of it is that won't matter. Linus can spend the half-hour it takes to setup chroot on his Chromebook and be happy*. Just like I'm quite happy with the unix that normally lives behind the scenes on my Macbook. The important thing is that unix is there at all, so that those of us who like it can use it. I wish iThings were not locked down, but in any event you can get to unix if you are determined and don't jump on every OS update. Android is a little better since there are so many careless vendors.
*Well, maybe not since he's obviously a kernel developer... I have to assume he works in a VM though.
I don't know what the school system pays for Chromebooks around here, but they definitely use them. They are on carts and they roll them around to the classrooms rather than sending the kids to a dedicated computer lab. I bought a cheap one for my wife to use while traveling, and the kids - even the 6 year old - knew how to use it and their school log-in even worked. Very close to an optimal blend of remote terminal and local caching.
If you look at the context of my comment it will make sense. The AC is claiming that rich people who won't miss $1000 are buying these. That's horseshit - those people can spend $100k on a real Tesla. I think this new model will probably be nicer than a Chevy or a Leaf, but compared to the S it will indeed be shit.
The best analogy I could offer is people waiting in line at Walmart for a new line of low-cost Louis Vutton bags. Those aren't the rich people - the rich people already have the expensive Louis Vutton bags.
Not to mention that the hydrocarbon-fueled aircraft gets lighter and more efficient as it burns fuel, while batteries stay the same weight that they were at takeoff.
Indeed. It's worse than that - I depend on some percentage of them not making the payments so that I can steal their almost-new cars at a steep discount. Fortunately, my post denigrating them on Facebook is unlikely to deter them - in fact, psychologically they are likely to double down and stand in an Apple line. The $1000 is a low-pass filter to separate out the people who can only afford to stand in line for sneakers.
The market returns around 7% on average. At best you will get 0% on this investment, and you'll overpay just for the honor of getting the first buggy models off of the assembly line. Good luck. I'll pick the 2nd year model up on the used market for 2/3 the price, because I'm not in a hurry to look cool.
You are comparing what is available right now, this instant with something that - if it comes to fruition - will not be available for several years. All talk of costs and availability are speculative and frankly don't matter at all. Tesla makes a nice luxury car - I'm a big fan even if I'm not in the market. I might even buy one of these new cheaper Teslas someday. But I'm sure as hell not buying from the first production run, and I'm certainly going to wait for demand to meet supply so that the price comes down. Look how cheaply you can buy a used Leaf compared to the MSRP (tax rebate included), especially now with gas prices in the basement.
Well, we won't laugh at the people pulling $2 million a year. But then my question would be, why are you reserving the piece of shit model when you could drive off with a real one right now? No, these people are not rich - they are just impatient and caught up in fashion and hype.