Just wondering if anyone here, out of the 253,000 people that put $1k down on the new Tesla 3 ? With Tesla hoping to have them ready to deliver late 2017 early 2018.
I'm wanting a black and Red one for his and hers.

Eric

 

Wow, $250 million just in deposits

I don't think I can swing a Tesla purchase this year.

 

Yeah, I'll get right on it...

Personally, I'll never own a car with a touch screen. I'll also never buy a Tesla. I've met Elon due to business with SpaceX. He's one of the few people who can make me look modest.

 

I hear ya Joe, I still have at least 15 more years prior to retirement so I'm thinking this may be the way to go. So much stuff in the media with cars going electric, driving themselves etc.
I'm thinking our G8's will be ready for summer cars by then as well. I plan on keeping both G8's just because they are a good fun car to drive with the rear wheel drive in them.
The sticker price is only $42k each I don't think its priced out of the market.
Has anyone here put their thousand dollars down for 1 or 2 ?

Octania, yes huge $$ just in deposits, I hope they can put together a good car. Over 10 billion in sales so far if no one backs out and takes the 1K lose.

Eric

 

Anyone here ?

 

I haven't and don't really see the huge advantage of putting the deposit now or later. Most of the better tax refunds spots are already taken and 2-3 years is a long time for competitors to come up with maybe comparable cars. The other issue is that isn't Telsa's factories only gauged to output about 55,000 cars a year? A couple of my co-workers put down the 1G so I'll watch how that goes.

 

Yes, but his pretentiousness is part of the marketing. While I can't say I like his personality, I do like his innovation.

 

I do not see the upside to it right now. The news here just did a spot on it yesterday. They made some really interesting observations.
1. Tesla is only tooled to put out between 50-70,000 cars a year.
2. Even though the MSRP is between 30-42 thousand dollars, the expected dealer markup will put them at around 60-70.
3. **BIG ONE** The electric car tax break may not apply if you get one. Apparently, the federal government only issues 75 thousand of these breaks to each car maker per year. So logic says that even if they can produce 250 thousand of them, you will probably NOT get a tax break.
4. Last one...the rule of thumb on electric cars is "you want more mileage out of the batteries, the more expensive the car is". If Tesla's $120,000 cars only give you a 300 mile range, what will a 35 thousand dollar car give you?

 

heres my take.here in iowa i recently got a letter from my power company.it said that with new legislation just signed that their power plants have to cut emissions something to the effect of 45% of their current levels soooo that basically means they will have to cut out the coal fired plants.some of which are not paid for yet.
so i ask with more and more electric cars getting charged off the grid.just where is all this power gonna come from??california has rolling black and brown outs enough as it is.

 

Not a Tesla, but it does have a lot to like: http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/107...drive-ces-2016

 

Except you're talking about the 85S. And that car is faster than a ZL1 Camaro in the 1/4. Top gear did a stint on it. So I don't think you'll see a much reduced range, just a much reduced non performance oriented car.

 

I live in the DC area. The next time I see one of those sanctimonious environmentalists driving around in their $80,000 Range Rover and complaining about what my old, not fuel efficient, '71 Olds is doing to nature, I might just snap.

In regards to your question, the only viable answer right now is nuclear power. Oh wait... there's a moratorium against that. So let me get this straight, the government is demanding that the power companies get more efficient, and at the same time deny them a way to do so...definitely sounds like a government operation to me.

 

Hey, I'm just saying what they were talking about on the local news. But it does make sense.


Wasn't that the Tesla that also destroyed the Hellcat 2 out of 3 times in the 1/4?

 

I used to let that bother me, and it sort of turned me bitter against my car. It is terrible on fuel, and the performance stock is atrocious. I'll end up getting rid of mine and getting something that handles better and goes like hell. Or getting my rotary wing license in addition to my fixed wing. Flying everywhere sounds a lot better.

Yes it was. News people and non technical people just say things that sounds good. I tell my fiance the same thing, just because you say something, doesn't make it true.

 

"2. Even though the MSRP is between 30-42 thousand dollars, the expected dealer markup will put them at around 60-70."

To clarify, there are no Tesla "dealers".... only direct factory outlets. There are no franchises, and anyone working at a Tesla store is an employee of the corporation. I doubt Tesla will jack with its own list price.

 

Actually they already did it.


The model S was supposed to sell for 70 grand. However, because of the unexpected demand, prices rose to over 100 thousand.

 

And yet they're still losing money every quarter ....

 

Tesla hasn't built more than 60,000 cars in one year. Ford builds more than that many F150s in a month. Most of the 280,000 people who put down deposits will be lucky to see their cars before the end of this decade. Any bets on how many cancel?

 

I believe the term you want is "quicker" - 11.9 vs. 12.2 (for a 2012 ZL1, the 2017 car is expected to be in the 11s also). Of course, how many all out quarter mile runs can you make in a Tesla and still have enough range to drive home?

 

Not a Trofeo fan, eh Joe?

 

Actually, I do like them.

Other than the wrong-wheel drive.
And missing two cylinders.
And the Buford motor.

Fortunately, the VIC was an option.

 

Okay. Point is, the Tesla beat it.

My point was about the 85S is not made to be a range driven car, it's a performance, cool factor car. A 40k electric car may have the same range or more because it's not made to do the quarter in under 12 seconds. The price tag between models isn't what dictates range, which is what I was getting at.

If we're only talking about Range, there's not a A Body w-30 on this board that can do 300 miles without fuel. Even at a 60mph hopeful 12mpg. But many people have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on them... Why? It's not about the range. It's about the fun factor. Yes, I understand that a w-30 can pull over for gas, refill in 10 minutes. And someday, electric cars may be there too. I think the technology in the Tesla is pretty amazing. I don't have a need to drive more than 250 miles at a time anymore, so I've actually considered one.

But I have an unsatisfied need to be faster than the guy next to me at a red light.

 

Of course, the range of an A-body can be extended with a five minute "recharge"...

Seriously, I understand that electric cars can be very quick. Electric motors produce max torque at zero RPM. That still doesn't make me want one. I just can't see driving a "transportation appliance" (or even worse, having it drive me...). To each their own.

 

Tesla hasn't built more than 60,000 cars in one year. Ford builds more than that many F150s in a month.[/I]

I'm not sure I understand the correlation between a Ford pickup and a limited production sedan. Perhaps a comparison to a BMW 7 Series and a Mercedes-Benz S Class would be more appropriate? I couldn't find 2015 production totals, but just under 49,000 7 Series were built in 2014. Average Mercedes-Benz production of the S Class over the years was approximately 70,000 vehicles. I wonder if BMW and Mercedes-Benz would be profitable manufacturers if all they offered was the 7 Series and the S Class?

 

The point was a comment about production capacity and the ability of Tesla to fill those 280,000 orders anytime soon. It's also a comment about investor stupidity, where Tesla market cap is more than Ford's.

By the way, as another (admittedly unrelated) example of differences in scale, GM built about 750,000 of the aluminum 215 engines in three years of production (1961-63). It took Rover about four decades to equal that output.

 

Joe is correct on the 60k. A good assembly line will line off 500/shift, 1k a day, ~22k a month. If you've got three lines banging away making the same model, you get 60k a month easily. But, and I think this was his point, spike demand is hella hard on a factory.

I know the Toyota plants very carefully look at line speed; we can make some extra with overtime, but you don't want to speed up, reprocess everything, hire more people, upgrade the equipment to go faster (that's actually my job), and then lose the demand and have to slow down because you're making too many now that demand has lost. It's like blackjack, with the 21 being "market demand." You want to make precisely market demand during normal production hours, with overtime to cover for downtime.

Tesla cannot accelerate to meet the deposit's amount in any sort of reasonable time because it would cost too much, and they'd wreck the demand.

Their video which everyone is drooling over is funny because of how clean, how expensive, and how slow the lines are. A real production line is noisy, all the paint is knocked off, everything shines with a dull, hammered finish of worked metal like a hard-chromed Terminator, and it hauls ***.

Incidentally, they effed up our wiring harnesses for the EV RAV4 a few years back. Every one had to be redone.

 

I really didn't think this forum was the place to ask such a question, My interest in the Tesla is that these cars will be upcoming by 2018. I figure its time to get aboard one while the rebates are coming into play. My thinking is, eventually the electric car will be the new way to get around in life. However we like our Old Oldsmobile and our G8's I would never want to give them up.
I feel in the years to come people may look at us driving our Olds and think were poisoning them.
We all know how people get when it comes to environment stuff and Olds cars.

Eric

 

No, I'm not touching a Tesla. I'm skeptical the battery technology is where they claim it is and while I do think battery powered cars have a bright future, the tech just isn't there yet. So much of Tesla's support is fear, shame, and hype rolled into one narcissistic ball of nonsense.



Well the high priests of the Church of Gaia have stated on multiple occasions that clean and abundant energy is bad. It's always amazing to see people support policies that will make electricity be way more expensive and then complain when it actually happens. What do they think "live with less" actually means?

A lot of them have been thinking that since the late 60's. Where I live the city's policies for decades has been to discourage driving as much as possible, so the even though the population in the region doubled in the past 30 years no new freeways or highways have been built with the last one only grudgingly built in the 80's. Living in the suburbs outside of the city shields us from at least some of the BS but Portland casts quite a shadow over the region. One such example was the $1.5 billion light rail line that was rejected 9 times by the people in this area that ended up getting built anyway.

 

http://www.autoextremist.com/current...rnal-life.html

 

Good link.

Media thinks anything Musk touches is gold. His rocket landed on the recovery ship this time, which, while cool, does not surmount the fact that it would have been cheaper just to either make a new one that didn't have all the landing power and telemetry, or, better yet, recover them like NASA recovered the boosters.

When you have tons of money, you can afford to be wasteful.

 

I really didn't care for Tesla at all until my boss bought one (P90D) as a company car.

The car is impressive to say the least, instant torque will throw you in the back seat, it handles better than some of the more expensive cars I had a pleasure of driving, yet it has room for 7 and it's extremely comfortable. It's a very well balanced car, it's very fast, feels very solid, the brakes will put you trough the front window if you don't have a seat belt.
The car feels good on the road, I can't explain it it just feel right. I tried hating it but when driving it, especially on mountain roads, I couldn't help but to grin. I have nothing negative to say aside there is no exhaust rumble, it's too quiet for my liking.

If I could afford one I definitely would buy one.

 

I could not have said this better myself, and I myself, like Tesla's.


I had a similar impression of them. Although I didn't drive one on mountain roads.

It's not about not being able to afford one, I think a lot of us here could, if we really wanted. Sure we'd have to make some sacrifices, but there was a time when I wanted a $300 intake for the olds, and I made 7.xx an hour, and I made sacrifices to get it.

The 80-100k that it'd spend on the Tesla is primed to make a decent down payment on property in the next few months, as renting, albeit my landlord is awesome and my rent is dirt cheap, is a waste.