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Tesla not like Apple? Fooled me - here in the SF Bay Area where Tesla is based - Elan Musk is the new Steve Jobs. Thousands waited in lines to plunk down $1,000 deposit for the new Model S. Yes, I saw lines at two separate Tesla dealerships that were blocks long. The car could be pre-ordered online, but like the Apple aficionados, people wanted to "feel" the experience in person.
I see many more Teslas (the higher-priced models) on the highways than BMWs and Prius. With the excess money and high-paid tech jobs in this area, the Tesla will be the most common car on the local freeways... until the next great thing comes along.
Except Apple makes massive profits and Tesla doesnt make any profit. Tesla is stuck with a high risk low margin business model in a crowded, mature industry, whose competition sell in days what Tesla sells all year. I'd say Tesla is more like Saturn than Apple. It'll get bought out by GM, BMW or some Chinese company and fade into their lineup.
Actually you could use coal for combustion engine. Only a different type of engine.
The efficiency of the engine itself is only part of it, having a coal application where you can turn the burn rate of the fuel off easily is no small task. In a typical coal application it takes quite a while to establish heat and once it's going it's going to burn for a very long time.
It sounds like the Model 3 is going to be a curse for Tesla. At first glance they are giving away far too much for $35k. Far too much to make a profit anyway. Initially everybody was assuming free supercharging and autopilot. Now it's apparent that it's merely "capable" of those things, incinuating they'll be an up charge to actually use them. Between that and the fact $27k after rebates just isn't going to happen is going to drive away some orders. We're probably actually talking $50k or so.
If Tesla over judges this data and builds too many batteries and service centers, they may end up stuck with over production. They're in the hole already. They need 500,000 sales a year just to survive.
Given their delay history and poor reliability record, it ain't looking good.
This.
The $35K stripper Model 3 will not exist for the initial start of production (and might not ever exist) which means there no rebate for low priced Model 3s. Tesla needs to make money and the closer they get to a $35K price, the less profit Tesla makes. The other problem is building and distributing an $80K+ car is a whole lot different than building in the $35K-$50k market.
Does a reservation lock in the price? In these days of the-government-assures-us-there-is-no-inflation, prices can go up fairly quickly. If the price of the car is locked in and you can get one for today's price when you pick it up four years from now, that might be worth something.
I wouldn't buy a car that I can not sit in and drive to make sure it is comfortable. One of my family members is tall and he doesn't fit into many cars, especially imports. That's a little car and might not be comfortable for people who are more than average height or size.
I wish they would make a coal burning steam powered car.
I will smile every time I see V8 Vega driving down the road, towing his little trailer full of coal, and jumping out at the stop lights to quickly throw another shovel of coal into the car before the light changes to green.
I've seen a little steam engine that would run on sunlight, concentrated through a lens. I wish I could remember what that engine was called. I remember it being called a parson's engine, but if I google that, I come up with nothing. The engine also ran on burning alcohol as a heat source.
Wait... maybe there wasn't steam. Maybe the engine ran just on heat.
04-12-2016, 10:49 AM
i7pXFLbhE3gq
n/a posts
Tesla's approach seems pretty sensible to me. Building up a massive infrastructure to make electric cars feasible costs a lot of money. So does ramping up production capacity.
Sales of the Model S were up over 50% in 2015. Manufacturing costs are down and margins are up with margins approaching 30%. The X is expected to be around 25%.
The Roadster/S/X early adopters are basically funding all the infrastructure development and R&D needed to make the Model 3 a reality. Unfortunately that also means Tesla has made some compromises on the S. The interior looks pretty cheap (crappy plastic panels, big gaps, awful door handles) compared to other cars that cost a similar amount. They've actually been improving the interior as manufacturing costs have come down.
Last edited by i7pXFLbhE3gq; 04-12-2016 at 10:59 AM..
Tesla's approach seems pretty sensible to me. Building up a massive infrastructure to make electric cars feasible costs a lot of money. So does ramping up production capacity.
Sales of the Model S were up over 50% in 2015. Manufacturing costs are down and margins are up with margins approaching 30%. The X is expected to be around 25%.
The Roadster/S/X early adopters are basically funding all the infrastructure development and R&D needed to make the Model 3 a reality. Unfortunately that also means Tesla has made some compromises on the S. The interior looks pretty cheap (crappy plastic panels, big gaps, awful door handles) compared to other cars that cost a similar amount. They've actually been improving the interior as manufacturing costs have come down.
Tesla's actually made some pretty questionable business moves. Why own your own stores when you can franchise them out? Even Apple sells phones in other places other than Apple stores. I wouldn't even bother with trying to create supercharger stations and perpetually pay for your own infrastructure when few people take electric cars out of town. Stopping every couple hours for 40-60 minutes isn't the strongest selling point for EVs. Just make something that looks nice and has decent acceleration and people will buy it anyway. If you have demand but can't make production, just raise your price until production catches up to demand. Why even offer a lease deal if you have a supply problem? Why bother selling to China and Europe until your North American demand is met? The guy is signing himself up to build infrastructure on 3 different continents at the same time, long before tapping his home market to its full potential. Why pay off a low interest DOE loan early when you're just going to turn around and ask for more money to build a gigafactory? Why was the Model X even built at all? They could have been selling Model 3's right now if they didn't waste so much time and money on what was suppose to be a simple body swap on the same chassis. At the very least they could have freed up some cash to invest more than $10 into the lame interiors of the Model S and 3.
I will smile every time I see V8 Vega driving down the road, towing his little trailer full of coal, and jumping out at the stop lights to quickly throw another shovel of coal into the car before the light changes to green.
There won't be any jumping out of the car. In a hand fired application there will be a a very deep firebox you would fill to the top, might be like 50 pounds and the equivalent of 3.5 gallons of oil. The combustion rate and heat output is dictated by the amount of air hence the reason you can get very long burn times from coal without bothering with it. Typically 12 hours but on the lowest setting it might be 2 days.
With a car you wouldn't bother with hand fed and go right to automatic stoker, you'd be able to run it for days.
Quote:
Wait... maybe there wasn't steam. Maybe the engine ran just on heat.
I believe you're thinking of the Stirling engine, if you have wood stove it makes for interesting conversation piece and even provides some usefulness.
Yeah, eventually as PHEVs and BEVs become more common you'll see more states charging either flatrate or mileage-based fees in lieu of gas taxes to pay for roads`.
Take a 328i which is more comparable, similar price for the vehicle.
328i would cost around $1,600/yr with CA average gas prices.
Model S would cost around $744/yr in my part of CA for my zone, others are lower. Call it $700 as the Model 3 should be more efficient and our rates are higher than most of the state.
On more of an apples to apples even after assuming a $300 fee/yr, it's still decent over a similar car. If you want to save money, of course that's not what you buy. You drive that econo box that people wouldn't buy which isn't exactly true as Model 3 (probably the second generation) is on the short list of things I'd potentially look at to replace my econo box which costs about $150/yr more in gas than a Tesla Model 3 would cost in electricity. Nothing to do with saving money though. If I wanted to save money I'd just buy another econo box.
Thank you for comparing the Model 3 to a BMW 328i! I don't see why others are so concerned about arguing over the cost effectiveness of the vehicle. They are only talking about the cost effectiveness because it's an electric car and it's a new thing. Nobody discusses the cost effectiveness of buying a 3 series over an economy car even though it's similar in price to a Model 3.
Last edited by newjerseycouple; 04-13-2016 at 06:39 AM..
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In a hand fired application there will be a a very deep firebox you would fill to the top, might be like 50 pounds and the equivalent of 3.5 gallons of oil. The combustion rate and heat output is dictated by the amount of air hence the reason you can get very long burn times from coal without bothering with it. Typically 12 hours but on the lowest setting it might be 2 days. 
