I really really really want Tesla to succeed. But I cannot convince myself to buy a Model-S, it is just past my pain threshold. And for that I am sad.
I'm largely in the same boat. I'm planning on buying a car in the next year and while I think the Model S is downright beautiful, I can't do it. The base model is right in the price range I'd be willing to pay, but the problem is the range; even under optimal driving circumstances, it's quite a bit short of what I'd need to make the trips I'd like to make. One of the higher end models has the range I'd need, but I can't justify the extra $20k or whatever it is.
Hopefully in a couple years there'll be a car from them priced at the perfect level with the things I need, but it's just not there yet.
It spends about $100M per quarter and it has $200M of cash [1]. So in the next 6 months, Tesla will need to bring margins way up (unlikely), dramatically cut expenses (opposite of the current plan), or raise lots more money.
The company already has $400M in debt. I hope it can raise more. Or that the public will pony up more investment. I also really really want Tesla to succeed.
[1] See "Cash Flows" tab: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATSLA&fstype=ii&...
If you didn't need to own the car, then things like a vehicular equivalent of the old livery stables and post horses might be viable.
I'm putting my money into Tesla because I believe that if they can make it to the Model E (Bluestar - $30-40k sedan) then we'll have a whole new ballgame on our hands in the automotive space. The Model S is the testing ground for volume manufacturing, the Model X will test platform re-use, then we reach the Model E which will drive down costs.
In the mean time I encourage you all to test drive one - even if you are not going to purchase - it's quite the experience. The Tesla stores around North America are now getting their in-store models for test drives. With leasing opening up next summer (rumour has it) it should also make it a tad more accessible to the general public.
At this price point I am willing to vote with my wallet in hopes that it will spur on further investment to broaden the market in turn driving down prices through better technology and higher volume sales. This is no different than the PC market in the 1980s - very expensive to buy a PC, but if none of us did then we would have had a different outcome.
What is different about this investment than, say, buying a Ferrari is that this feels like something that is moving us forward rather than burning cash on a cool car that the ladies will dig (although you do hope for that as well - it's cool being green after all, right? :)).
Electric propulsion just is better for any type of friction based transport within our atmosphere (trains/buses/planes/cars/bikes). The only problem was battery density per dollar. However, thanks to the incredible - and I mean incredible - success of laptops, phones and tablets over the last decade that problem is just about solved (due to astonishing volume/economies of scale/incremental li-on research/massive factory investment).
High battery density at low cost (key) + 92% efficient electric motors (already done) = cheap, efficient transport for all - everywhere (think the electrification of trains - but throughout suburbia). Hook up this electrified network and make it fully autonomous (cars/trains/buses/planes) - and we've just turned the physical world into the Internet. No more oil shocks, no more traffic jams, no more pollution (in city centres), no more time wasted, fully networked, no more car ownership, no more driver deaths - for more see Google car discussions elsewhere.
We will utilise fully electric transportation systems within the decade for the same reason that gasoline/diesel based transport dominated electric back in 1900 - it's just better, faster and cheaper.
It also has the benefit of allowing us stop giving a shit about the hell hole that is the Middle East (I went there).
With the introduction of electric cars, the astonishing growth and dramatic lowering in cost of solar PV (thanks to China) and the development of nuclear fusion with the ITER plant - you'll soon wonder why you cared about the price of oil at all.
The electric car will send everyone in the Middle East back to Africa level care and development levels - a.k.a. We will no longer give a shit and brutal poverty.
However the facts of the matter are such:
Gasoline is only ~15% efficient. Gasoline is assumed to be past peak oil - hence prices must rise with time (look at your local petrol station). Battery tech on the other hand falls in cost by 5% per year. Electric engines are 92% efficient - batteries fall in cost 4x over next decade - EV cost/range parity will occur by 2018.
Give it 5 years and they'll be electric Toyota Corolla's rolling around with middle class drivers behind the wheel.
- $30k base (I buy around $20k, but can justify the delta because of the fuel savings), could care less what the top end is, but probably no more than $45k.
- Accord or Sonata size. I'd even settle for a BMW 3-series or C class size.
- For the base price I want 300 mile range.
- Seats 4-5 adults
- don't need leather seats or other fancy stuff, just a/c am/fm/hd/xm radio with an Aux in. Don't care about touch screen nonsense, GPS nav, maybe just give me a place to put my phone and it'll fill in for all that stuff. I don't even care about a CD player, the phone will handle it all through aux.
- Cruise control is cool, but I won't pay a dollar more for it
- 0-60 in under 6 seconds.
- 5 star crash ratings all around
- sell it with civic/accord like reliability for 5 years
- then I'll buy it
everything else is cool, hell I'd love to plunk down on a top of the line model-S, I drool when I watch Veyron top speed runs, I love this stuff, but honestly when I get down to it, I think of cars like rapidly depreciating transport appliances. They have to be cheap and reliable, utilitarian and just reasonably comfortable (not luxurious). I don't care if the car is 50/50 weight balanced, or the car can park itself, or the cup holders retract into the dash. I don't give a shit about this. It's not that I can't afford it, it's just that I'd rather do other things with my money. This is not a value judgement on those that do spend on cars, but it's not what I spend my money on.
I'm the type of car buyer that buys 1 car every 10-12 years and drives them for over 250k miles or till the wheels fall off. I buy in the segment of cars that sells something like a quarter million cars a month in the U.S. alone. There are a lot of us.
(and yes, the model-S and X are probably among the most beautiful production cars in the world today)
For a lot of people, car sharing provides people with the benefits they need from a car without the hassle of owning it.
In the case of electric cars, where a huge barrier to using one is the charging time, car sharing nearly completely solves the problem. Because cars are returned to the same locations in between reservations, they will be constantly charging during the time they're not being driven. Plus all the infrastructure cost is shared over the members (if, for example, you live in a city, you might not be able to install a charging station because you have on street parking)
> "It's really been my goal from the beginning for Tesla to produce a mass-market car," Musk says.
It blows my mind that the article and comments here have yet to mention the Nissan Leaf.
http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/index
Isn't that more mainstream already? By miles? I see them in New Hampshire for chrissake. You can get them for 27K after rebate.
Does nobody care because it doesn't look fast?
We need ~250-300 mile range cars going at 30K for mainstream adoption.
It's interesting it that it likely means they cannot make the margins they want.
http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2012/08/11/living/automotive/...
From today: "The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society's needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge," said, Uchiyamada, who spearheaded Toyota's development of the Prius hybrid in the 1990s.
But perhaps I am just poor.
May be their production capacity can't handle the high volume so they price it to throttle demand.
The reason this is possible is that hybrids and EVs have the margins of much less expensive cars.
Edit: added a sentence
Though a car that could act as a pod that could attach onto a transport train line would truely open up interesting options in personal transport and charging alternatives.
Wolfram has the estimate for you: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2885*kW*h%29%2F%28300*...
Thats half of what you pay per mile with a Prius: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28gas+price%29+*+%281%...
Not included in these calculations is the wear and tear of a standard gasoline engine, which are still running on pretty much the design of the original 1885 Daimler Reitwagen.
On that front, Better Place says they can make money leasing batteries to you at 10 cents a mile.
Selling a 50-100k sedan almost requires it to aim at the BMW 7 market, IMO. But don't despair, over time they'll expand the lineup and I'm sure they'll make one that fits your needs.
The next model should be 30-50k and I would expect it to be about the size that you describe.
Could you expand on this? How exactly will Tesla bring about its own demise?
- $30k base price
- Be a Ferrari
You're basically asking for the performance and size of an M3, the reliability of a Civic, the range of a Japanese gasoline car, all for the price of... well, a Civic. Presumably all while maintaining electric's 200mpgE+. Of course it would sell; it would be the biggest bargain in automotive history.
*mpgE = miles per gallon equivalent
And I believe Shai Agassi said his goal is to get a car down below $10,000 (without the battery). If safety wasn't a concern, it'd be easy to build such a car.
The reason Tesla aimed upmarket first is to sell a somewhat mass-market, high-quality product (Roadster and Model S), when the underlying tech is still somewhat expensive - meaning the early products will be relatively expensive (think of early laptops, iPods, solid state drives, anything really). So you're getting a great product, just not cheap. Other electric car manufacturers try to make cheap, small, slow electric cars that are a joke and no one takes seriously:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REVA
Elon Musk is using rich dentists to finance the R&D of the mass-market, affordable electric car that regular middle class people could buy.
It's a very smart plan, in my opinion. Ensures high-quality products throughout the adoption curve, meaning that investors, future customers and even competitors will take Tesla seriously. Having rival car companies sit up and take notice is great, meaning competition. Look at the rash of MP3 players on the market after the iPod launched - this forces prices down, for both the raw materials and the finished products. We're at a tipping point.
Ford and GM, established car makers, have gross margins of about 12-15%. Tesla's margins are much lower, at least today. But let's ignore working capital needs and pretend Tesla had the "great" margins of its competitors, then that's still only $50M of cash contribution. Tesla will need lots of cash this year.
Don't forget, by the way, we have to power electric vehicles with something. I expect as gasoline rises in cost, electricity is going to as well, offsetting some of this differential.
It doesn't have to be that way, but what with our fear of nuclear power...
Anyway, I am completely in favor of electric vehicles for many reasons, but to call them inevitable within the near future, I think is unrealistic. Unless we come up with capacitors of wildly improved energy density (on the order of 1,000x) at which point I hope and expect the gasoline automobile market will fold overnight.
"During our drive, we used 78.2 kW-hrs of electricity (93 percent of the battery's rated capacity). What does that mean? It's the energy equivalent of 2.32 gasoline gallons, or 100.7 mpg-e before charging losses. That BMW 528i following us (powered by a very fuel-efficient, turbocharged, direct-injected 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine) consumed 7.9 gallons of gas for a rate of 30.1 mpg. The Tesla's electrical energy cost for the trip was $10.17 (at California's average electrical rate); the BMW's drive cost $34.55. The 528i emitted 152 lbs of CO2; the Model S, 52 -- from the state's power plants."
Really, that's all I'm arguing, is that we are not twenty-four months away from the electric car takeover. It's probably more than a decade out.
Recharge times are about as much an issue as they are for smart phones. Humans need to rest ~12 hours a day. During that time they charge their tablets, phones and wait for it - also their cars. Charging is not an issue if you need to sleep.
Long car trips are not relevant for the vast majority of people for the most time. iPod succeeded because it's what people needed - not what they thought they wanted.
Smart phones have 1000mAh batteries. A Nissan Leaf can mostly charge in a 12 hour period, and get 80 miles on that charge. What about if you want 200 miles, or if you've got an SUV? The grid is not prepared for that kind of power draw.
Agreed, but there is no clean solution yet for that remaining 5%, which will keep many people from buying one.
Making it smaller would probably require a lot more complex engineering and tradeoffs when it comes to the powertrain/batteries/etc.
It's actually very smart because they are leveraging all the work they have done for the Model S and getting another model out of it. Elon Musk has said in interviews that the Model S was actually over 90% new parts, which made it very complex to design and get the supply chain going. If the Model X has a significantly lower number of new parts, that'll make a big difference to the bottom line and time to market.
The specs for the Model S (options section of the site, actually) state the single plug charger replenished 31 miles of ranger per hour of charge, and the optional dual plug charger replenishes 62 miles of ranger per hour of charge.
That doesn't address power grid problems if there is a large influx of demand because of electric vehicles, but at least it's at night, when there's less demand on the system from other sources. Ideally, that would spur more power grid development, but I'm not going to make predictions on such sparse and tenuous assumptions (even if they come from myself).
I've driven cross-country many times and we never stopped for 30 minutes every 200 miles. We might be off the freeway for 15 minutes every 300 miles, but less than 10 minutes of that time is available for charging. (Pulling off the road and getting somewhere to do something takes time.)
And no, eating within walking distance of the only charging station in Elko, Winnemucca, or Battle Mountain isn't enough.
Solves your problem of charging for cross-country drives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-Azrt_wUkc
And we even have some running in Israel already:
http://www.just-auto.com/the-just-auto-blog/israels-quick-dr...
