Why put down $100 when you can just buy it when it's available?

I would love to know what % of these convert to real sales. Doubt it’s even 10%. I knew lots of people who reserved a 3 for $1k and never converted.

Elon has a history of showing mostly dog and pony show stuff that isn’t real or even close to prime time. See: solar roof that wasn’t even functional at the first demo, and is still mostly vaporware. He often shows these things to bump stock price or raise preorder revenue to distract from fundamentals of the business. Remember the Tesla Y? The “SUV”? Not going to even go into production until late 2020 or early 2021 ... but Elon will gladly take $2500 from you now for a hamburger tomorrow. Or $100 for something even further out.

Electric cars may be the future. But I don’t believe Tesla is the future. I hope not anyways. Massive losses, asshole CEO, no thanks.

I mean then why even enter this market? Isn’t the point of why Tesla has been allowed to lose billions of dollars for > 15 years has been that it will take over the auto market and displace the current players? That’s why they released the model 3 right? A mass market car to sell in large volume as opposed to the niche luxury vehicles they had made before. So they create a truck; trucks being the highest margin vehicle and one of the few that makes money for traditional American carmakers. But instead of making a more traditional style that may convert ICE truck owners to EV owners and grab lots of market share, they’re back to niche luxury versions? Makes no sense.

Right now Tesla has more announced future designs than cars in production.

Model Y, semi, new roadster, cybertruck. They’re really good at rolling out prototypes and doing a pony show. But I still don’t see a sound business strategy or improving margins. All I see is collecting more preorder money. Of those cars the Y is the best bet because it should share a platform with the 3 and should improve margins. But it’s taking them forever to ramp up and execute in the kind of volume they should be doing based on how long they’ve been in business.

Wait so the point of Tesla is to ... make other car companies successful? Naw dawg, the Occam’s razor on this one is Tesla has a petulant CEO and poor corporate governance; the CEO wanted a space truck from mars which makes no sense in the truck market... but because the board is packed with sychophants, no one could tell Musk that his cybertruck is a dumb idea and won’t make the company money.

Market research? Who needs it.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-and-the-dying-art-of-the-big-bet-11575090005

Imagine being one of the chumps who wired Elon Musk $45,000 to reserve a Tesla Roadster 6 years ago. Then 4 years ago a bunch of people reserved the Tesla truck. After seeing a video where Elon promised unbreakable glass that broke on stage when he went to demo it.

It's exactly this. Tesla's stock price is / was correlated with how it was perceived to be doing. And Elon's compensation is incredibly tied to Tesla's stock price. A shitload of things Tesla was supposed to do have largely proved to be vaporware; hype intended to boost the stock price whether they are actually profitable enterprises or not. Look at the undelivered products over the past 5-10 years:

Solar Roof - hardly any installs, way more expensive than originally quoted. Original presentation had non-working tiles that were just for show
Roadster 2.0 - Announced in 2017, took preorders for $50K or more dollars a pop, nowhere to be found six years later
Tesla Semi - Also announced in 2017, six years later 54 trucks built.
Tesla Battery Swap - 10 years ago there was a dog and pony show demo of a fast battery swap rendering gas stations obsolete. That is also vaporware.

There's a lot more. It isn't conspiracy to say, and I think the Twitter takeover kinda shows, that Musk comes up with hairbrained shit designed to boost the stock price, the engineers have to build it, and if it doesn't make any business sense, its quietly forgotten about.

But they make an EV Corvette, right?

Forester is a really great car. Just paid my 2019 off. Hauls pins, pretty good on gas, good in the snow, comfortable and while not the cheapest, is pretty affordable. I wish I could go electric but Subaru’s electric SUV has too low a cargo area to haul pins. Give me a Subaru forester form factor, electric, and $40k or less and I’d be all in for my next car.

This is political and shouldn't be on this site. And the other links you put out there are also junk sites. "justthenews.com"... come on dude. welcome to the internet.

You can debate a specific implementation of a battery bus, fine, but its not like public transit hasn't been electric since forever. Almost every public transit runs on electric via catenary or third rail. Hell, in Boston, there are still several electric bus routes via overhead catenary wire, which has been around forever. Also, Boston's silverline is dual mode, overhead wire in tunnels and diesel to the airport. Trying to argue that battery buses will never work because Minneapolis' buses have problems is like saying ICE cars will never work because Pintos blew up when rear ended. Those buses are often built bespoke by contractors who can be good or bad. They often underbid and fold failing to even finish delivering (see NEOPLAN in Boston).

https://fortune.com/2023/11/12/tesla-cybertruck-cant-be-resold-first-year-sans-permission-elon-musk-electric-vehicles/

This isn't new news. One thing to consider is unlike Ford or Chevy, a Tesla is a platform. When you sell a Tesla you need to transfer ownership in the Tesla app. So Tesla knows when you sell it, and can basically brick a car that isn't sold in a way they approve of. There was a big blowout on the internet a few years ago when a buyer paid for FSD tech, but when they sold it, Tesla didn't turn that feature on for the new buyer, and required them to buy the service themselves. This is kind of well known, if you sell your Tesla back to the dealership, they could "turn off" FSD in order to sell the car and FSD to the next owner (and FSD has no trade in value to Tesla). Owning a Tesla in many ways is a lot like paying monthly for a service, except there's a huge upfront cost.

Its not really surprising. The CEO of Tesla is the world's biggest bullshitter and stock pumper.

However this strategy of "probable savings" is just obfuscation. Its so easy on big ticket items paid for on debt. Total number stops becoming relevant and monthly payment becomes more important.