LOL, registering 300,000 preorders in 72 hours.
They delivered 15,000 cars in the first quarter of 2016!
So much hot air, this will be a major disappointment.

Waiting for a car for many years is so DDR!

Understanding the full ecological impact would definitely tone down the smug factor. The majority of our electric power is still from burning coal. Electric car batteries require strip mining, which is a nasty process. If you could assess the full ecological impact associated with an electric car, I suspect that it would be no better than a gas one.

The pre-sales are big problem for Tesla.

The procurement department is scrambling now. They do not have capacity, they do not even have a plan for this capacity.

Their purchasing and cash flow plan was for a production line with an output less than half what they now think demand is.

This will be interesting.

I find owners fall into two camps. a) blissfully unaware 'I save a ton of money on gas', but no hard facts, no details on what they pay for electricity to charge the car. Or b) they charge the car for free at work or at the Tesla station.

I haven't seen anyone with real numbers and facts to convince me of the real economy.

Monster V8 or electric car, driving cost ignorance is bliss.

In a perverse way, I think this might be Tesla's downfall... So many orders so fast? With a 2 or realistically 3-4 year delivery time minimum? Not only will this be hard to deliver upon, but I think it is going to "wake up" some sleeping giants that DO have the capacity to deliver this. Think Toyota, Honda, the VW group brands, BMW, GM, Ford...

"oh yeah? that many orders for a $35K electric-only car that is reasonably quick? Hold on a minute"... "By the end of the day on Saturday, the preorder count reached 276,000. Based on Musk's estimate of a $42,000 average transaction price with a few popular options, the number of reservations roughly equate to an $11.6 billion backlog." - they're gonna want a piece of that pie !

Not to belittle Tesla's efforts, they certainly proved the concept is viable, and they do interiors and the touch screen very well, but how hard is it for a "true" manufacturer with cash flow to crank out something like the model 3 BEFORE 2019? IMO, way easier than it is for Tesla to ramp up its pathetic manufacturing numbers to 276K new cars + Model S + Model X ! Methink that could be the way forward for VW after the diesel gate!

So far the big boys have only delivered hybrids and boring electric cars (i3, leaf anyone?).... But they have the chassis know how, the manufacturing capacity, and the electric drivetrain stuff is not exactly rocket science for their engineering staff (most of which are in F1 or WEC playing with ERS, MGUK and the like)... and bonus time, they might make cars less Fugly than the model 3 and way earlier IMO. Picture something like a less outlandish BMW i8 all electrical, for $50K.... Or less ugly than the I3 anyway... Watch Tesla's lines evaporate. I think they gave the game away !

Over 30% of all income tesla gets is indirectly from the gubmint.

If it were not for government GIVEAWAYS to tesla, they would have gone out of biddness long ago.

See, in the people's republic of Kalifornia, the gubmint gives away lots of carbon credits to companies that don't need them, and only a few to companies that DO need them (because the gubmint says they do).

The gubmint picks favorites based on political support and agendas, and punishes companies the gubmint doesn't like.

The gubmint says those companies it doesn't like need a whole bunch of carbon credits to do biddness in kalifornia, but the gubmint only gives them a little. For a fee.

So they have to buy very expensive credits from other companies. Companies that get a whole bunch of credits they don't need, like TESLA!!!!!!!

Tesla sells those free carbon credits and puts the money in their pockets, and pretends like they actually EARNED THAT MONEY. But they didn't.

Those other companies earned that money, then the gubmint stole it and gave it to the looser companies like tesla and solar plants and other STOOPID things that make ignorant people FEEL good.


And the ignorant and uninformed walk the earth thinking tesla makes good cars, they are a good deal, they are a real company.

But they are not a good or real company. They are simply at the top of the PYRAMID!

How Tesla Motors Really Makes Money... From Taxpayers | Frontpage Mag

Teslas are still well within the boutique car category and people who buy them are mainly into showing their friends and the public their new eco-toy. Yes, we Porsche owners are the same way.

I wish I could help. I've tried to keep track, but it's complicated. My wife's Volt has only been driven about 3K miles since August. In that time she's used a bit over 4 gallons of gas (160 miles), the rest has been from the charger at home where the power is $0.143 per kw/hour. She has a light foot and the car sleeps in a garage where it's warm. She gets about 4 miles per kwh, so she's paying about $0.036 per mile for fuel. Theoretically our electric bill should have gone up about $27 over the period ($3.35 a month).
I've driven my Volt 4762 miles on electricity and 12,046 on gas. It stays in a cold garage so I have to heat it up on cold days. But I do about 75% of the charging at the office where the power would be $0.08 per kwh if I paid for it (I kind of do, but with before tax dollars). I guess I've paid about $10 for electricity and whatever 300 gallons of gas cost me.

We just got our tax forms back from the accountant. We got $15,000 in tax credits from the cars. In our situation the economics of owning a Volt are astounding.

^^^ thanks for the feedback.

Cheers

Elon apparently asked for feedback and got a lot of front end grills and other treatments...
Apparently he liked that one... Please make it so, there is plenty of time !!

I'd buy that (with the "Ludicrous" option), I'm not buying the current Daffy duck.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1459891749.jpg

There is a flat black Model 3 being driven around the factory parking lot. It looks very 'rough'.

There are so many new 'things' on the 3 that the demo cars aren't really 3's. They are 3's built with S components.

The astonishing sales numbers have really put supply chain into panic mode. I was told a lot of things, nothing surprising, but all confidential.

I suspect the car, in one form or another, will be available on the promised dates.

Well, that "one form or another" leaves a lot open for interpretation.

http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/pedal-car...for-kids-1.jpg

if they can't meet production, they just have to return the deposit, yes?

The correct way to look at it is total life-cycle cost. It takes energy to build a car. The higher the cost of the car, the more energy that went into the construction.

Gasoline is $2/gallon. A car typically will go 100K miles. If it gets 25 mpg, it used 4000 gallons of gasoline. Or $8K. The cost difference for a similar electric or hybrid is more than this figure. And electric only vehicles DO use energy.

If the Tesla uses 85kWh per 200 miles, then its 100K miles lifetime usage is 42500 kWh. In my city, I pay $0.079/kwh, or $3357.5. If you pay closer to $0.20/kWh, then the cost is nearly the same.

FYI, I wrote several case studies on our hybrid energy system this morning.

Mi-Grid_Economics.pdf

I think $2/gal is unrealistic. Seems like over the past few years it's been well into the $3s and sometimes over $4/gal. Seems like these low cost gasoline periods never last very long.

And here in Cali many workplaces/shopping centers have free charging stations.

I'm sure this fad will pass just like the Prius :p

Tesla charging stations?