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OK--everyone calm down!
Cairns makes an interesting point, but I think Elon's nuttiness may get him chucked out of his own company. It's certainly happened before, and has even been pretty hilariously depicted on HBO's Silicon Valley.
Tesla still has a lot going for it as a brand, and it has a pretty loyal customer base. Demand is still high, and I think the mission is worthy. I would expect quality problems on an early car with the factory under so much stress. Based on that, I probably would not have bought the car myself. But my daughter didn't ask for my opinion, and she tends to manage her own life pretty well.
One nice thing about Teslae is that they are really pretty simple in comparison with regular IC cars and certainly hybrids, which combine both IC and electric technologies and are thus hugely complicated. By contrast, Tesla has one or two electric motors and batteries, no transmission (just a reduction gear), and everything in the powertrain plugs in. So the standard big-ticket IC car worries like cylinder wall scoring and IMS bearing failures are nonexistent. That leaves the standard peripherals, which can be expensive, for sure, but overall, I see the risk as a bit lower than with regular first-year cars.
I do hope I haven't jinxed things . . .
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