pezpunk that's a sweet paint job on your P100D!

When they announced the Model 3, we put down our deposit on day one.

I've had my P85 since February of 2013 - it's one of the first few thousand they produced. It is a rock solid machine with over 50k miles on it.

I've driven a lot of amazing gas and diesel vehicles - Ferarris, Lamborghinis, Shelby Cobras, Saleen Mustangs, Corvettes, etc etc etc -- even race cars. Nothing compares to the pure fun of driving my Tesla. I got in a Gallardo not too long ago which has the same acceleration as my P85 (give or take a tenth). I honestly though the Lamborghini was broken it took so long for the acceleration to kick in. You forget after you drive an electric car with instant torque how slow and disconnected it feels to drive anything else.

Oh yeah, I thought I'd miss the rumble and roar of my BMW M3. I don't miss it. A bit. I'm too busy having fun. The quiet is amazing. I can actually have conversations and listen to music.

And I've driven it from Portland to Las Vegas, Portland to Los Angeles, Portland to deep in the boonies in B.C. - it is an amazing road car, and I never worry about charging.

Uninformed people like to complain about the disposal cost of the battery packs as if they old school cadmium AA's. Let's not forget that electric car batteries last a long time - after 8 years they still have 70% of their life. More importantly Tesla already has in place a recycling system that will recapture 70% of the materials in the battery:
https://www.tesla.com/blog/teslas-closed-loop-battery-recycling-program

There may be a valuable secondary market for used car batteries too:
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1093810_electric-car-batteries-what-happens-to-them-after-coming-out-of-the-car

People sometimes say things like "Tesla loses thousands of dollars on each car they sell" without understanding (or ignoring/disbelieving) Tesla's strategy. They are making massive investments into their battery production gigafactory and their supercharger network. The first lowers the cost of the car since batteries are the most expensive part by far. But the second makes them nearly untouchable in the market for electric cars without massive investments - investments absolutely none of the other car manufacturers are making that I'm aware of.

So let's imagine another car company released a car on par with the Tesla Model 3 in terms of cost, styling, and performance. One doesn't exist today (please don't mention the Bolt, they're not in the same league), and none are coming anytime soon, but let's pretend. With the Model 3 you get access to that all-important supercharger network. With anyone else you must depend on third party chargers, most of which charge at less than a tenth of the supercharger's rate.

Lastly, every single doom and gloom prediction for Tesla conveniently ignores these investments. Sure, the Model 3 could be a bomb, and that would destroy Tesla. We'll know in a few weeks. I wouldn't bet against Elon Musk.

There's an air suspension option on the Model S. It looks like they're saying that's not an option on the Model 3.

Sky falling? Huh? Nobody said that.

Fossil fuel cars will never go away. I mean, we still have horse drawn carts in some parts of the world. I just saw quite a few in non-tourist use on a trip last month. That's not the point.

The point is about the cost, man. Anecdotally, my Model S costs me dramatically less than any luxury car I've owned. My fuel vs. electricity costs are 25% what they used to be. 25%. No oil changes. No transmission. And long distance my fuel/electricity costs are free. FREE! My sister-in-law's Leaf also has a 25% savings and yeah, I think she bought it used for $7k.

Now if you are doubting the assertion of the paper... if you don't think that trucking/taxi/transport companies will switch to a cheaper fuel cost and dump their human drivers the second it also becomes cheaper to do so, you should study how quickly ATMs were adopted (and how it led to a small fraction of bank teller jobs than before), or how rapidly self checkout lines were adopted, with a similar effect on checker jobs. The corporations that make these decisions are solely focused on profit, and it is /just about/ to cost less than a person to drive a truck when you factor in safety costs, HR costs including lawsuits, accidents and legal fees, pensions, health care, and all the myriad of costs involved in running a modern corporation with humans in it. Going electric gives them the 'green' angle, less fuel costs, less maintenance costs. Going autonomous gives them the 'safety' angle. It's all win for them. Having let myself be driven by a semi-autonomous Model S, this isn't a question of if. It is a question of when.

In your abbreviated history of the auto world, you failed to cite the dozens of automakers that produced gasoline cars and failed. Also, your citation is irrelevant, because battery technology is only today capable of delivering a decent electric car for about $35k. You might as well cite the failure of the Palm Pilot and the Apple Newton and try to predict the smartphone market collapsing.

Speaking of that, you mentioned the $65k Tesla but neglected to mention that the Model 3 is delivering in 4 weeks and is $35k. That you can lease a new VW eGolf for under $200 a month. And that you can buy a used Leaf for 8k, sometimes as little as 6k. And that Tesla has delivered an order of magnitude more cars than any of your citations, and is by most measures the most well-liked brand of car by it's owners.

The downward trend for electric car prices is pretty obvious:
Tesla Roadster ~2006: $120k. Range: 250 miles
Tesla Model S ~2012: $65k. Range: 250 miles
Tesla Model 3 2017: $35k. Range: 250 miles

Based on this, is it reasonable to predict an electric car that will cost $18k with a 250 mile range in 2023? I think so, yes. Will it be a Model S luxury car for $18k, of course not. The 2023 Model S equivalent will cost the same. You'll just be able to buy a great little no-frills economy electric car with a 250 mile range for $18k.

Compare electric car costs in the past 10 years to other sophisticated battery operated technical innovations, like digital music players, smartphones, laptop computers/pads. They all follow similar downward price curves and adoption levels, where the best and nicest are always around X dollars, but you can get something for a tenth of the price with features that are comparable to a model just a couple of years old.

These prices aren't going down magically. With Tesla, greater production numbers and clever innovations are doing it (as opposed to major scientific breakthroughs). For example, did you know that the new batteries in the Model 3 are only 50% larger but produce twice the power?

Get out and travel to some more progressive/early adopter parts of the USA and you'll see electric cars much, much more than the national average of 1%. That's where smart people go to see trends and make projections.

So to sum electric cars up, they're cheaper to operate, getting radically cheaper to own all the time, more fun to drive, and incidentally better for the environment. The writing is on the wall now. It's just a matter of time.

And I just love these arguments. I used to have the same arguments with people about the Internet slashing (paper) newspaper circulation, digital music slashing records/tapes/CD sales, streaming movies driving Blockbuster completely out of business, YouTube/Netflix slashing network TV viewing, wind/solar slashing the coal industry, and ecommerce slashing brick and mortar stores. Yes, some form of all of them are still around, just dramatically diminished. Today I have those same arguments about 3D printing, electric cars, and autonomous vehicles. Same idea: a new technology displaces an older technology. Astoundingly, people still use the same old cart and buggy arguments, pointing to past failures and themselves failing to see that technology learns and thrives from failure. It fails /forward/ not backwards.

Yes, and the bow and arrow offered several advantages over the flintlock rifle. So what?

I don't know much about that model, but it's five years old. And what do we all know about cars, Bob? That almost every car loses value over time. Of course Tesla's hold their value better than any other car of the same or lesser value, but you chose a Mitsubishi, maybe because it seems like an easy target to ridicule. Okay, let's see about that.

A gas powered 2012 Mitsubishi Eclipse MSRP was $28k and is worth $8k today, losing about 72% of value. The 2012 Mitsubishi M-IHEV MSRP was $24k and is worth $5k today and has lost about 79% of value. Not much difference if you ask me.

Of course you could compare, you know, what we're actually talking about here, a Tesla. The 2012 Model S had an MSRP of $65k and again using KBB.com and standard values prices at $41k, or a loss of about 37% of value. Of course, you'd have to factor in the $7,500 Federal rebate on the Model S, so your loss of value would actually be around 29%. Please find me a car in that same price range that is worth 70% of what the dealer cost was in 2012.

Incidentally, all prices came from KBB.com using the defaults they gave for everything, feel free to check for yourself.

Oh wait! Come to think about it, the Mitsubishi electric probably qualified for a Federal $7,500 immediate credit, too. That would make the Mitsubishi only lose 30% of value too! Man the arguments for electric cars just keep getting better all the time. Thanks, Bob, for helping me make the point.

Oh and hey, you were complaining there weren't any $18k electric cars just a couple posts back, weren't you? Looks like there /are/ some after all. The Mitsubishi at $24k less a $7,500 Federal rebate clocks in at $16,500. On top of that, you'd have almost no maintenance costs and your electric (fuel) costs would be 25% of a similar gas powered car. And you could sell it five years from now for 70% what you paid for it! WOW!

Oh my goodness, you mean to tell me the first ever autonomous crash was a Google car scraping a bus? Holy smokes WE BETTER STOP ALL AUTONOMOUS CARS RIGHT NOW!!!!

Man was never meant to travel faster than 20 miles per hour.
Man was never meant to fly.
Man was never meant to go to the moon.
Nobody needs a personal computer.
The Internet won't change anything.
Autopilots landing planes will kill people.
Fly by wire will fail.
Wind power will never be cheaper than coal.

Yeah, I know what you mean. You should try the newer electric go karts, they are an absolute blast, with the added benefit of not having to huff the fumes off those gas beasts.

I'm so happy I am that out of all that I wrote, /that/ was the single thing you found to have an issue with.

They're required to use EPA estimates which as noted before are lower than actuals. But in reality there are so many variables when you drive (any kind of power, not just electric) - terrain, road surface, wind, how heavy your foot is, traffic, temperature, air pressure... they're just estimates.

I mean, someone got 400 miles on a single charge in a Tesla Model S, but they had to drive 25 miles per hour to do it!

Personally if I drive in a sane manner, I get better than EPA estimates.

I've never bought or sold a used Tesla, but you can at least look at KBB.com for what they think the price should be. I think they're pretty accurate, at least as accurate as Pinside's market rates. eBay completed sales can be useful too, but I just don't know how many Tesla's are sold there.

That is a beautiful ride, tdwin.

This.

Tesla pulled off the most successful product launch in human history with no advertising.

It amazes me that people don't give Tesla the credit they deserve for this astounding feat.

Let's not forget that, at the time of the pre-order weekend, many auto industry insiders and stock analysts didn't think Tesla could launch the Model 3 in December of 2018 let alone December of 2017.

It amazes me even more that Toyota, which made so much money selling the Prius, not only has turned their back completely on electric, but recently divested of Tesla (which led to another bump in Tesla's stock price). You'd think they of all automakers would realize that the public is starved for a good looking electric car in a Prius price range.

No need to shout.

I hope you're joking, because that's an incredibly silly statement.

Bob, you have a really unusual car from a miniscule handmade American luxury automaker. Presumably you want whatever company made it to succeed? What's with all the hate, scorn and attitude towards one of the best examples of American engineering we've had in decades? I don't get it.

Come on, Bob. Your claim is that you drove 20 miles and your magical Silverado created, what, three gallons of fuel on the way? Do you actually believe you gained range on that trip?

And by the way, a nuclear submarine can stay submerged under the ocean for months, can your Silverado do that? Can you tow your boat and pop-up camper in your Corvette? Of course not. So how about we compare similar vehicles, eh?

When Tesla starts selling a pickup it'll have a 750 mile range or something crazy like that and blow the doors off of anything gas or diesel powered.

What's next, you're going to say that you like the smell of diesel exhaust?

A few things to add to this:

Many older people aren't aware that an increasing number of young Americans no longer consider a car to be mandatory.

I know a lot of younger people who don't have cars and have no intention of ever having one, whereas when I was younger it was absolutely required - for dating, for work, for a perceived need for freedom.

The reasons no longer exist, or are financially of reach for many. So they bike, they rideshare, they take public transportation. It's considered cool in many places /not/ to have a car.

This trend is accelerating as huge swaths of the population drop from the middle class and realize how little they need a dedicated car and how expensive it is to operate one, considering purchase/lease, maintenance, insurance, parking and licenses.

And for fun I thought up a few the technologies that I've adopted early and the exact types of arguments I heard from people who weren't early adopters along the way (that seem funny to me today):

1) Word processors (my family had a dedicated IBM word processor, a predecessor to the IBM PC, circa 1982):

Feature argument: "They're too hard to use, and they're hardly better than a typewriter at all. Only one company makes them."

Cost argument: "They're fifty times as much as a typewriter! And floppy disks are $10 each!"

Existing infrastructure argument: "It will cost too much to replace all the typewriters we have today. We'll have typewriters forever."

Oldschool argument: "You can't write a book the same way as with a typewriter. Typewriters are more reliable. I like the sound of the keys."

RESULT: two decades later typewriters still exist, but almost nobody uses them.

2) Digital cameras (based on my first generation digital camera, circa 1993):

Feature argument: "The resolution is too low."

Infrastructure argument: "There's only one or two models available of digital cameras but there are hundreds of film cameras. I can't buy a 500mm telephoto lens for a digital camera."

Price argument: "They're too expensive. I have to print them on a color printer which costs $1,500 plus $3 per page!"

Oldschool argument: "I like film and physical pictures much better. Digital doesn't give me anything new. The pictures don't feel the same."

RESULT: within a decade, almost nobody uses film cameras and only a tiny fraction of pictures are printed.

3) Pagers/texting/mobile phones/VOIP (starting in the mid 80s with pocket pagers):

Feature argument: "The batteries don't last. I can't call regular phones with VOIP."

Infrastructure argument: "The range/coverage is terrible."

Price argument: "They're too expensive. Service is too expensive. I have to buy all new phones to use VOIP."

Oldschool argument: "I don't need to be reached 24/7. Text messages are too impersonal. Nobody will use text messages. Nobody will trust the Internet to make phone calls."

RESULT: within 20 years almost everyone has a mobile phone. Most people text.

4) Digital news (starting with NEWSMAX on CompuServe in the 80s):

Feature argument: "They only carry a fraction of the news. There are no pictures. No video. No sound."

Infrastructure argument: "I need an expensive computer and subscription to a special online service to access digital news."

Oldschool argument: "I like the feeling of reading a real paper newspaper/magazine."

RESULT: within 20 years most newspapers go out of business. Those that remain have limited circulation and move most content online. Similar things happen with Radio/TV news.

5) Digital movie, music and book players and distribution (starting with my Archos MP3 player and PalmPilot and charter Netflix account, circa 1998):

Infrastructure argument: "none of my music is in mp3 format - all of my music is on tape/vinyl/CD. There are bookstores/music stores/theatres/video stores everwhere. There's barely any selection of movies/books/music."

Price argument: "$300 for a portable music player? Are you crazy?"

Oldschool argument: "I like going to the (whatever) store and browsing."

RESULT: within 20 years physical music, book and video stores are a tiny fraction what they once were. mp3 players can be purchased for under $10. ebook readers with batteries that last for weeks are under $50 or free on smartphones. Netflix comes standard on new TVs.

6) ATMs (circa 1978) and then Internet banking (circa 1999 with NetBank):

Price argument: "The fees are outrageous."

Infrastructure argument: "There are hardly any ATMs anywhere. My bank will never offer Internet access to my account."

Oldschool argument: "It's not safe."

RESULT: In this extraordinarily slow to adapt industry... within 20 years of each disruptive technology every bank has ATMs and then Internet access. Physical banks still exist for a variety of reasons, but there are far fewer with less tellers. Many reasons for a physical visit are being replaced with more efficient forms - e.g. smartphone bank deposits and online credit card/mortgage apps.

7) Electric cars (starting with my Tesla Model S in 2013):

Feature argument: "I worry about the range."

Infrastructure argument: "There aren't any chargers near me. There are gas stations everywhere. I can't tow my boat/Saturn V rocket/snowmobile with my electric car but my Suburban can do it just fine."

Price argument: "They're too expensive."

Oldschool argument: "I like the sound of my gas engine. Electric cars don't offer me any advantages. Gas cars are more reliable."

PREDICTED RESULT: within 20 years (2033), gas cars are effectively gone, range is 750+ miles, most vehicles are shared and autonomous.

People often forget the network and scale factors that will accelerate the demise of gas powered vehicles, just as they did in the examples cited.

Most gas stations are locally owned and operate on very small margins. At the same time, urban real estate is becoming more valuable as cities grow more dense. Many gas stations are already not the highest and best use for their locations.

It isn't just the whole gas infrastructure (exploration, drilling, shipping, refining, transport and dispensing) that will increase the cost, because in the short term, costs will go down as usage drops and supply exceeds demand.

The real problem is with the gasoline car support infrastructure: quick oil change shops, most mechanics, 12v battery stores, auto parts stores... many of these are also owned and operated locally and cannot tolerate losing many customers. They will not be 'propped up' like the big automakers by Federal bailouts. There isn't room for these small operators to pivot into similar businesses. They will go out of business, driving up the cost of maintaining a gas vehicle.

Think back... not long ago there were

1) Typewriter stores and typewriter repair stores all over the place
2) Camera stores, repair outlets and and other dedicated film developers (like Fotomats) all over the place
3) Landlines in every home and business - many businesses had to have dozens of physical lines run to them at outrageous cost
4) Newspapers and magazines delivered to every home. Newsagents everywhere.
5) Music stores, bookstores, movie theaters everywhere.
6) Many many more banks.
7) Gas stations, mechanics and oil change locations everywhere. Well, at least not for a decade or two...

It's totally cool if you think an MB interior is better than a Model S. I and many others simply disagree. That's a matter of taste. I love my futuristic high tech spartan interior. You like walnut and lots of buttons, good for you.

To say that an MB and a Tesla 'do' the same thing inside... I don't know, man. Can you stream Groove Salad or a jillion other music streams and podcasts from the Internet in an MB? Ask it to play any song ever made? I doubt it has real time traffic on a gigantic google map, either. Those are two stand out features that I use every day, and with no monthly fee. The web browser is really useful too.

BTW MB already has all electric models. I've driven one and it sucks. They are at least five years behind Tesla.

Tesla's real advantages are the multi-billion dollar investments in their supercharger network and battery factories, and their fleet of data collecting cars for their autonomous car effort. Those are very, very large barriers to hurdle. Lots of people don't understand what that really means, including MB, Toyota, GM and Ford.

MB won't put the necessary investments into the technology until it is too late - it probably already is too late. Because that's what big companies do every time. Have a look at Kodak, Blockbuster, and Nokia to see MB's future. Tesla came from nowhere and started outselling the top MB and BMWs immediately. That was FIVE YEARS ago and nobody including MB has fielded a worthy competitor. In the meantime Tesla has increased their domination of the market. Today Tesla books more reservations of the Model 3 in a day than GM sells Bolts in an entire month.

Tesla has not been standing still, either. They have innovations they haven't made public. Tesla likes to spring big surprises. The Model 3 was always talked about as having a 200 mile range.... They said not one word that the Model 3 would have a 300 mile range -- until it was ready for purchase. Same with the supercharger network. Same with autonomous hardware in their cars for free.

People think these big companies will never lose their dominance but time and again they die or diminish the same way. MB will keep selling a dwindling number of bad ass internal combustion cars just like Nokia kept cranking non smart phones until they were made irrelevant. Like Kodak kept selling film cameras. Like Blockbuster kept renting VHS out of brick and mortars. Wang computer. Cray. Sears. Etc etc etc.

Just like smartphones we will see new players without the internal combustion shackles, dealer networks, advertising budgets and swollen executive salaries.

The ship sailed years ago.

Mockery undermines your argument, dude. Just saying. It's also toxic to a community. I'm from a beach town and I talk that way.

Wow, I thought this was common knowledge. Maybe take five seconds and search for yourself before busting out the personal attacks next time:
https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/tesla-model-s-outsold-mercedesbenz-sclass-bmw-7-series-audi-a8-lexus-ls-and-porsche-pan
http://gas2.org/2016/02/15/tesla-model-s-outsells-mercedes-bmw-audi-and-porsche-in-us/
https://electrek.co/2017/05/26/tesls-model-s-leading-us-large-luxury-segment/

That is a very narrow, short term view. If you want to call investing in supercharging, battery factories and the like "losing money" go for it. Most educated people would call those things investments. Follow the money - what do you want to bet the author of that holds a short position in Tesla?

Speaking of that, shorting Tesla is working out real well, I believe shorts lost about a billion dollars in the last couple of days.

Some people prefer to buy cars that don't have dead animal skins in them, and that opinion seems to matter to Tesla more than yours. Again though, opinion. Not going to debate your opinion. We disagree.

MB etc. already do produce electric cars. I've driven them. And in my opinion they suck. Judging from how few have sold I am not alone.

I never said Apple is the only company that can build a smartphone. But since you mentioned it, they are the only company that can build a kick ass smartphone so good it can dominate an industry for a decade and put major players completely out of business. The App Store, music licensing deals and many other things led to that. Hmmmm. That sounds a lot like Tesla. A lot of smart investors think Apple should buy Tesla for the same reasons.

I don't think "Perelli" (sic) is a good example at all. Maybe you can explain what you're talking about there because it seems like a bad analogy to me. And IBM stopped making PCs years ago. What's your point?

Hey. It's not okay to attack me personally. It's against the rules of the forum, and it isn't nice. So cut it out.

That's not going to make any difference at all. People who can buy a Model S will do so regardless of the price being 80k or 88k. It doesn't matter. It's a rounding error if you can afford that kind of car.

Similarly, the rebate hasn't sold substantially more Bolts or I3s or non-Teslas, because the market doesn't want them.

But. The market wants the Model 3. It was the single greatest product launch in the history of mankind. Sure they had 63k cancellations since the launch event, but they are booking 1800 new reservations a day. With a $1,000 deposit each. The car is sold out for over a year.

That's exactly why they will fail. That's what Nokia said when they were at the top of their game. And Kodak. And Sears. And Blockbuster. Etc etc etc.

Absolutely. I never heard of the Maemo or I may have bought one. Sounds like a cool phone.

Your assessment that it isn't the fundamental technology but the app and music ecosystem behind it is spot on, and I think it translates well to the EV revolution. For EVs it is the supercharging ecosystem as well as owning battery production. A strong argument could also be made in user interface, too.

I think the mis-steps of Nokia are unsurprisingly similar to what the big automakers are doing and will continue to do. They look at electric cars, say "that's easy" and stay focused on their core business, fossil fuel vehicles. They make modest investments in EV tech, outsource battery production, and push out compliance vehicles because they believe they don't have to. Just like Nokia partnered with others instead of investing years before in their own tech. As you said, app stores were an obvious innovation as were touch screens. This isn't 2012 anymore. The automakers have had five full years since the Model S launched. They have delivered doggerel, exactly as predicted and will continue to do so.

Just like Nokia, the big carmakers will fail to make the massive investments in battery and charging infrastructure until it is too late. Of course, the US government will likely step in and bail US firms out as it has done multiple times in the past, (a fact very conveniently ignored by people who attack the $7,500 tax credit).

Interestingly, and happily, I don't see Stern repeating these mistakes. They appear to have taken playfield production in house and pretty quickly adopted LED lighting and LCDs.

So true. Fisker is being rebooted, Lucid is desperately seeking cash, Faraday Future doesn't seem to be delivering anything but bold announcements. Apple's car could be incredible, and they have the cash to make it happen.

That's interesting. With oil prices at such lows, and the forecast for dwindling demand, this seems to me like a super risky strategy. What is your reasoning there? Why hold on to oil stocks?

I'm not sure where else you would start a car company. But Apple and Hewlett Packard were both started in a garage and demolished major tech giants in a few years. You can innovate incredibly quickly if you have a few very smart people and none of the momentum of a massive public company.

Anyway, I don't see a Croatian startup as a valid comparison to the issues faced by major carmakers when they consider a massive pivot to manufacture EVs. For example, have you considered how long it must take just to convene a meeting of decision makers at GM, let alone get approval for anything?

I believe there are people within those car companies fighting fiercely to make EVs. I just don't believe they can pull it off institutionally. Look at the challenges and outright ridicule Ghosn has had to weather and he is the frickin CEO of Nissan!

Nissan is actually a perfect case study. Their CEO is fully behind their sole EV model, the Leaf. In September they are launching their redesign with more than double the range. My prediction is that the redesign improves the look marginally but doesn't get it close to the sex appeal of the Tesla Model 3, although the price will be similar. They announced 200 miles of range which must have felt like a big improvement from the 82 it was before. The problem is, the Model 3 now has a 300+ mile range. By the time they get 300 miles, Tesla will have 400. And Nissan still has no supercharger network. None.

That's an unusual analogy to choose. Can you explain why you think there are parallels in frozen dairy food manufacturing and building disruptive self-driving EVs? I admit that I have no experience in that industry but I'm just not seeing anything at all that maps to this discussion.

Opinion, which isn't debatable plus a Strawman argument. Nobody is claiming the Model S is is what everyone on the planet wants, nor that there are other nice cars in the 80-150k range.

But maybe you can tell me where to get one of those EV cards, because I'd like one.

So you are saying that a luxury SUV is more expensive than a lower end SUV? That's not a surprising assertion. I doubt anyone would argue against you on that count.

The second part of your argument, recouping costs, I don't believe you are correct. Certainly not in my case; I've saved thousands. No oil changes, no gasoline, no having to wait in line at gas stations or pump gas EVER, no having to wait for oil changes, or spark plugs or any other nonsense like that. It depends on what you value your time at, but at 5 years of Tesla ownership I'm way, way ahead.

I'll link to this article here for the math. It's a very interesting read:
http://www.fleetcarma.com/miles-recoup-cost-electric-car/

Thanks for the correction on the Leaf's range, goatdan

I wouldn't say Nissan is rolling out a supercharger network, just the same way I wouldn't say Nokia rolled out a new smartphone OS. Nissan, like Nokia, partnered with someone else to do the heavy lifting. I did some reading and Nissan and DBT have been working together for about seven years it looks like. I can't help but feel that's a critical mistake from Nissan instead of owning the network themselves. DBT will have to find ways to make their supercharger network pay for itself without the benefit of auto sales, that usually results in higher prices and a host of other issues. It's cool that DBT is adding superchargers all over Europe, though!

I'm very skeptical of their ability to upgrade their existing banks of 2,100 level 2 chargers to superchargers. I don't believe most of those places have the wiring or infrastructure to support the power. Those supercharger transformers are massive.

I also came across mention of a partnership between several large automakers to deploy a joint supercharger network in Europe. Also very cool, but I'm not optimistic for speed, and they have a long way to go to catch up.

Just an aside and purely anecdotal, I was in Portland's planning bureau yesterday and there was a Tesla employee there and she was making calls and doing work on her laptop every second of the more than two hours I was waiting there. You could almost see the steam coming off of her forehead she was working so hard. I was really impressed, as often you see people in this situation make personal calls or play games on their phones. Makes me wonder what the level of effort is at other automakers.

Your experience trying to find out about the new Leaf matched mine leasing an eGolf from VW. We decided lease VW's electric car for two years while we waited for the Tesla 3 to launch (and they practically gave it to us). But the salespeople had no idea about any of it's details, gave us outright incorrect information, and while they were happy to make the sale, they weren't very motivated about their own EV, either. Dealers HATE them because they never break, and dealers make all their money from service.

You've made your opinion clear like three times now. Luxury car buyers seem to disagree with you judging by sales.

I drove an E class Mercedes before my Tesla, and a BMW M3 before that. Honestly I feel the interior is way better in my Model S. It's just personal taste I guess, but I want my car to feel 21st century, not 1980s wood grain and crappy black plastic buttons.

I make daily use of that center area you don't like. I wouldn't want it to be anything different that what it is - it's a storage area unique to the Tesla and worth way more to me than cup holders. I accelerate way too fast to risk liquids in my car anyway!!

I brought it up because you accused Tesla of being cheap when they changed from leather to synthetic for their interior. They changed it because a significant number of their buyers demanded it.

I doubt that, it wouldn't make sense. They already gave their patents away for free, but I don't know if anyone has taken them up on it.

You mean share their supercharger network with other types of cars? Why would they do that? It's one of their key barriers to entry.

Apple won't license their tech. They will make an Apple car or nothing. Google will license their tech like Andriod and make tons of money but carmakers who license the tech will not have anywhere near the dominance they once did. Leadership will be passed in the same way Samsung and LG entered the smartphone market -- with a well funded new entrant. That's how disruption works.

Now that's just silly talk. But I'll also take you up on a bet that they won't be bankrupt in two years. Name your figure.

Aviation growth of about 4% annual in the US does not exactly thrill me as an investor, and aviation profits are quite elastic and tied inversely to oil prices:
http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-12-08-01.aspx

Does Exxon sell to China? Pretty sure the Chinese have their own petro industries. As does much of the rest of the world.

I kind of doubt the worldwide lawnmower market will take up the slack.

It's all about cost of ownership. You'll be surprised how quickly people will dump old ICE cars when they can hop in an autonomous car for a couple bucks and play games during the trip instead of drive. Younger people don't care about cars as status anywhere near as much as older people. Most people hate to drive. It's scary, expensive, and a huge waste of time.

So we agree the oil industry is shrinking, but it's a good investment because they will temporarily prop up their stock prices by buying their own stock?

No. You are confusing a supply glut with the long term problem of dwindling fossil fuel reserves.

Petroleum is an extraordinarily complex topic. Basically short term oversupply drove down prices. That has pushed out the timeline for the very real large scale supply issues that we will certainly face. We haven't magically found new reserves to replace what we have used. Read the financial disclosures of those big oil companies you invest in. The info is free and public.

That's an interesting way to describe a global financial meltdown.

I'm not aware of "oil and gas" being used to make electricity on any large scale, unless you are talking about natural gas, and we are talking about oil.

Odd that you lump coal in, unless Exxon is also in the coal business? Again, we were talking about oil.

But coal, sure, in some places, will be burned for a while yet. Coal isn't the cheapest form of power, though. The cheapest is wind followed by solar. The only reason coal is used is that it used to be dead cheap. All of Trump's pushing to magically restart the coal industry is failing because it's a bad investment. I'm not talking about the fact that burning it spews radioactivity and poison into the atmosphere. I'm saying it's cheaper to use other forms of power. This is a done deal. It's irrefutable, and only a matter of time before we stop burning coal purely on the costs.

Oh and airlines don't run on batteries... yet.

You use a lot of strawman arguments. I don't recall anyone saying that. I personally believe that as long as humans are around we will have some form of petroleum industry, it just won't be anything like it is today.

But do read the financial disclosures of Exxon, Shell and BP. Maybe look at the investments being made by BP and Middle East countries in solar and wind and ask why.

I think there is a good case to be made that Tesla is acting a lot like Amazon, who I just found out apparently controls 50% of the book publishing industry.

Woah, wait what? Three days ago you said there were like two billion! At this rate ICE cars will be gone by Friday!

By the way, lithium isn't a rare earth. We have an absurd overabundance of it:
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/is-there-enough-lithium-to-maintain-the-growth-of-the-lithium-ion-battery-m

With respect to other rare earth minerals, according to this chart, running out of rare earth minerals is the last thing we should be worried about:
http://www.visualcapitalist.com/forecast-when-well-run-out-of-each-metal/

Maybe you missed the announcement that France and the UK already banned new ICE cars by 2040?

ICE cars will never die, but I think you're wrong about the rapid end of the ICE car era for at least ten reasons that have already been covered in this thread. Extensively.

Most forecasts about EVs and Tesla in particular have been just plain wrong. Just a year ago most people didn't think Tesla could launch the Model 3. Just three years ago they said they'd never launch the Model X. And just five years ago they said they'd never launch the Model S. A few years before that there was that movie "who killed the electric car?" All that looks silly now, doesn't it?

Humans tend to think that change happens slowly. But in reality, change generally happens quite fast, and then a long period of stability typically follows. That makes it look like change happens slowly.

This will happen very fast.

Think about how much faster we are adopting new technology. Start with printed books that took hundreds of years... then telephones, ICE cars, television, ATMs, PCs, Internet, self-checkout, smartphones.

Now think about how the older technology never went away but was nearly abandoned, starting with human knowledge being primarily transmitted orally, then telegraph, horses, radio, bank tellers, mainframes, analog modems, cashiers, flip phones.

Um, that's EXACTLY what I said in MY LAST POST:

Maybe you should, you know, actually read what I'm writing?

Those numbers, if they are even real, are predicated on assumptions that things won't change: ICE cars having a resale value, for example. Cost to operate and maintain, as another. There are at least eight more compelling economic reasons. I consider a 10 year transition from ICE cars feasible once manufacturing constraints are past us.

I put zero faith in forecasts, and look to historical adoption curves for insight. In 2007 many would have considered it very unlikely that most people would have smartphones in less than ten years.

I think what he's saying is, the pano glass isn't tinted. The glass blocks UV. Big difference.

My experience over the last 4.5 years has been that when I'm in the car on a baking hot day I don't feel the sun at all through the pano roof.

I haven't ever felt the window radiating heat into the car after I get into it either. I'll try to pay better attention to that in the next few days and report back.

My car isn't usually hot inside anyway as I generally remember to turn the AC on a few minutes before I get into the car with my phone.

So.... maybe you should ride in it. Just saying.

Like oil, reserves aren't proven -- they are estimated. Unlike oil, we haven't even really begun to look for lithium. Also unlike oil, lithium is very much more common than oil. Also unlike oil, lithium is reusable.

Over a 20 year timeline I'm not worried about cobalt nearly as much as I am about oil.

Junk? Why?

Really? You seem to already have made your mind up.

Would you please cite sources for Tesla's supposed 20BB debt? I see 7.69BB in debt, down from 8.15BB earlier this year:
https://ycharts.com/companies/TSLA/total_long_term_debt

I note that GM's debt is 55 billion, using your own "trusted source" Seeking Alpha:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4057368-general-motors-negative-free-cash-flow-expanding-debt

Nobody is making that argument. Why do you think having a "lock" EV's is a requirement for success? I'm not aware of any other automaker with a lock on, say, SUVs, or diesels, or hatchbacks, or pickup trucks.

What people have noted, multiple times in this thread, is that most of the "competitive offerings" are concept cars with no firm release date, price, or features.

People who have bought the Chevy Bolt seem to like it, but nobody seriously compares design or features of the Bolt to the Tesla Model 3. They're just not in the same league.

It's kind of surprising that people are still asking questions like this. Literally every carmaker is coming out with electric cars now. Do you think there might be a reason for that?

And you say you owned an 85D? It's kind of hard to believe you owned one.

So let me get this straight. You think Tesla, which has had the most successful product launch in human history is "sick" and "teetering on collapse" ???

Really?

Let's see, they're taking new 1,800 reservations a day. $35,000 * 1,800 = $65mm per DAY in new reservations. Isn't that over 22 billion dollars a year?

Don't forget to factor in the more than 300,000 reservations they already have, or that most people will spend more than $35,000.

Or that they already sell a couple hundred thousand Model X and S vehicles per year - at a profit.

Or that they sell solar panels and batteries too.

Or that they have nearly a thousand supercharging stations and their competitors have zero - COMBINED.

But don't let any of that cloud your judgement. We're just fanbois.

Cite references please. And by references I mean actual science, not some armchair columnist. I'll wait.

Because where I live my power is 100% renewable. Many Tesla owners charge their cars at home from solar and/or wind. And that is most certainly vastly more environmentally friendly than any ICE car on every single measure.

I love my diesel Cruiser! I never drive it anymore, though.

My P85 is nearly five years old. I love it and it has been extremely reliable.

As far as a sports car experience goes, it's a hell of a lot more fun to throw around corners than my M3 was. No comparison. Honestly you couldn't pay me to go back.

The 21 inch tires can last longer or shorter than 12k. Depends on how heavy your foot is. Cost of owning such a fast car.

Or, if you're cynical you might ask why are they taking their company public now if not to cash in on a couple trillion of foreign investment? Follow the money, I say.

There was a post way back about how to unlock the doors when you are inside. You have to push the park button /twice/. The first push just puts the car in park but doesn't unlock the doors for driver safety. The second push unlocks the doors, or as Tesla says: "presents the handles." I love doing that when picking people up just as they walk out, especially at night when the handle lights come on as the door handles smoothly extend. The look on people's faces is priceless.

It is almost entirely about the bottom line.

I was thinking about one other leverage point: marketing. Businesses, particularly local ones are always looking for ways to differentiate. Splashing your logo across a stunning vehicle like this is going to turn heads and cause a lot of social media tweets/snaps/instas. Heck, people still come up to me and talk about my Tesla and it's five years old (just happened again tonight)! And after that first 'feel good' wave the smart players got to ride passes, corporate green teams will be clamoring to replace diesels and have sound economic arguments to boot.

I can't wait to organize petitions to drive all the local supermarkets to Tesla trucks where I live. Total game changer.

While I'm hopeful that we can solve the density problem with supercapacitors, they still require more than ten times the density than batteries.

Some very smart people have been working for years/decades on this and they are still nowhere near dense enough to replace batteries.

Every year or two there is some potentially promising new development, but so far that density barrier has been impossible to breach.

Take this one... here's a quote I pulled from a January 2017 article on another promised supercapacitor breakthrough:
“Supercapacitors at the moment are between three and seven watt hours per kilogram; lithium-ion is around about 100. If [the new polymer] translated into a 100-fold improvement in supercapacitor energy density, that would be three to seven times the energy density of a lithium-ion battery,” Heathcote says.

The key there is /if/. The person quoted thinks they might have a prototype next year, and that prototype may lead to another proof of concept which might eventually turn into a product. As I understand it, the most optimistic timeline from a prototype of this nature to reach retail is ten years. That's /if/ it works.

If you google "supercapacitor breakthrough" you'll find article after article about a major improvement that has yet to pan out commercially. There's a lot of hope, a fair amount of smoke and mirrors, some possible misdirection... but no concrete products.

I do believe we'll eventually figure it out, but I'd expect interim products or hybrid products first, and probably in different products than cars. Laptops or other consumer devices for example, same as we saw with lithium ion gradually replacing nickel metal hydride.

Meanwhile, battery density is increasing at a predictable rate. The new Tesla roadster has more than double the range of my Model S, which is exactly in line with my earlier predictions about battery density that I posted in this thread.

So I wouldn't worry about the Gigafactory becoming technologically outdated just yet. Anyway, Elon's got nearly half a million orders for the Model 3, heaven knows how many for the Model S and X, the new truck, and all the powerwalls - and that's just today.

Thanks for that link. If I understand correctly, that guy's breakthrough could double the capacity of a lithium ion battery and make them impossible to burn. That's a great innovation. I hope his team can get it to scale and keep it cost-competitive.

I agree with you 100% on performance. I do think what Ferrari, Lamborghini and McLaren have on Tesla is batshit insane looks and the "look at me look at me" roar they make. The Tesla roadster is a beautiful car, but the P1... that's just in another league. I could care less about making noise, but I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority with that view.

I just read the transcript of Tesla's Q3 2017 earnings call and there was some great stuff in there. I didn't realize they have grown by a factor of 100 since 2012! That's simply astonishing.

With destination charging and superchargers I can already go anywhere I want on 80% charge in my 5 year old Tesla P85. I haven't had to charge my car to 100% in something like two years. Last time was when I was doing the Vegas - Los Angeles run against a headwind and I didn't want to slow down.

I've yet to see the massive investments needed to get a non-Tesla fast charging network in place, but surely that will come. This is an area where Tesla has a massive first mover advantage.

For sure the vertical integration cannot be understated. The investments they've made in battery and robotics are impressive. All the other big manufacturers have to pass profit on to contract providers at each stage. That's going to be very tough to beat.

The only thing I'd add to bolster their lead in self-driving is the data collection they have from their 250,000 cars.

I also think their solar and battery manufacturing capability is a major factor on lowering the cost of operating superchargers long term.

Based on their Q317 earnings call they may be turning that financial corner in late Q118. I think it'll be closer to Q318.

I don't understand your point. You obviously know that the gas tax on every gallon of gasoline sold is at least $0.25. So compared to a fossil fuel burning car, electric car owners are still not paying our fair share for maintaining the roads. What's your problem? How else is the infrastructure going to be paid for?

Re: a phone GPS solution, so anyone who shuts off their phone while driving gets to dodge road taxes?

Re: an ODB solution, what about the millions of cars without ODB ports including my Tesla?

These aren't very realistic.

See, I used to own a retail biodiesel fueling station so I actually know more about this than you might think.

You can buy gas that isn't road taxed for non-road purposes. Diesel for home oil heating for example isn't taxed.

The forms aren't fun to fill out, and at least in my state they watch that like a hawk, but if you have a legit use you can buy non-road taxed fuel.

Yes you can shut off the GPS. You put the phone in a potato chip bag. The mylar acts as a faraday cage, totally blocking the signal.

Besides, the scheme is useless. What about passengers, riders on buses, taxis, and streetcars? Think about it. It's a silly idea.

Trust me, this problem has been looked at by tax regulators for years and years. Registration price hikes are the easiest to manage, basically zero cost to administer, and 100% effective. Everything else can either be circumvented or costs a fortune. Care to speculate on costs to install plug in sensors on cars?

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

― Upton Sinclair

See, you've chained three things together that don't seem at all related. Are you just stringing together thoughts or do you believe these statements are connected?

I think what you are saying in your first argument is that servicing is what makes a dealer a "staple." We all know that dealers make their money from selling service instead of cars. That's one of the reasons they cannot be expected to sell EV's because it forces them to reduce their own revenue because EVs require vastly less maintenance. What's your point?

Your second argument is that dealers somehow have some magic juju that other professional credit organizations lack for getting people with poor credit histories car loans. As has been pointed out, this isn't remotely true.

What seems to be true is that subprime auto loans from dealers seem to be rampant, see:

https://www.investors.com/news/gm-risky-subprime-auto-loans-fuel-sales/

That's not much of a good reason to use or trust big auto credit.

And your third point... cost for manufacturers will somehow "skyrocket" because... well, you don't say. Could you explain what you mean?

Here you go, chaining things together that aren't related again. It makes it really hard to follow whatever point you're trying to make.

By "it" presumably you mean financing? Surely you are aware that Tesla has their own financing arm?
https://www.tesla.com/support/tesla-lending

You claim that failure rates for ICE cars are lower than the "tech" required for EVs? Seriously?

You'll have to give citations for that, please. My direct experience is that my Tesla is by far the least expensive car to maintain in anywhere near the same price range that I've owned.

Maintenance. Not repair. Yes, a Tesla Model S costs more to fix when it's in an accident. That's not the same as reliability /at all/. Anyway I'd argue, from experience, that has more to do with the aluminium body, sole source parts, and rarity of the vehicle than EV tech. This however, has to do with insurance, not maintenance.

That ship has sailed, my friend. The dealers lost years ago. It just hasn't fully played out yet. It's like the music publishers and retail CD sales -- they died sometime around 1998 when the first MP3 players hit the market, it just took a few years for the adoption rate to catch up with their momentum.

People /hate/ dealers. There are real reasons for that hate. Like you, dealers have had the luxury to stand back and laugh instead of innovate, or address the reasons for hate. And because of that attitude, they're dead.

I've spent my entire life in the tech industry in one form of software development or another, and in school I studied AI. I can tell you that you're totally wrong. And even /if/ full street autonomy were to be attained next year at the research level (which it will not be), time to market for big auto will be at least a decade to put full autonomy in ordinary low end cars like a Bolt. Hell, just the regulatory hurdles could take a decade.

So, and it's odd I have to say this to you given that you're in the auto industry, haven't basically all of the major automakers have already announced EVs for next year or the year after? I'm not talking about crappy compliance cars, but real EVs. And don't most predict major shifts to be primarily EV in just a few years? And how many have announced ICE models with full street autonomous features for sale in the next few years? None, right? That kind of kills your argument right there.

You make that sound as if it's a bad thing. Yes, they're investing in a multi-billion dollar supercharging network that may literally be unbeatable. And in a multi-billion dollar battery factory that, yeah, may literally be unbeatable.

That's what a company should do with it's money. INVEST IT. It makes me sick that Apple (and others) are sitting on billions instead of making better products. It's shameful. I cannot think of a single other company that so aggressively invests in better products. It ought to be law. Yes, great, take profit. But don't sit on mounds of cash like a greedy dragon, FFS.

I'm pretty sure that a smartphone app can do that better, faster, cheaper, fairer and to a wider audience of credit offerers and auto sellers than someone walking into one lone dealer.

I'm also pretty sure that the best course of action for an individual, particularly one with a lower credit rating, should first be aggressively shopping for the best credit deal, and only then matching the right cars to that, and then let those manufacturers come back with their best offer. That is never going to happen in a dealership, mate.

No, the world will be a better place once they're gone.

I can walk to my nearest Tesla service facility. It's cavernous - bigger than any dealership I've ever seen.

Your claim that autonomous cars are easier to implement than EVs had me howling with laughter.

The auto world moves slow, yes. That's why they were displaced by Tesla, a silicon valley startup. And that's why they'll be even slower to adopt autonomous car technology. Can you imagine how many lawyers will need to be convinced at GM or Ford before they allow a fully autonomous car on the road? The big auto firms will insist on Federal regulations that cover their asses before they sell a single one of them!

Back in the day I test drove an EV1. The experience was really strange - the dealer was trying to talk me out of it the entire time, talking the car down, emphasizing it's weaknesses.

Fast forward to test driving a Leaf, right when it came out. The dealer had no idea what it could do, similar to your experience.

About two years ago we leased a VW eGolf for my wife (knowing Tesla would be late delivering their Model 3 to us). It's been a great car, even though it's a compliance car that was never meant to sell in volume. It's no Tesla, but my wife loves the thing. It's sporty and fun to drive. All it needs is range like the Model 3, she says (well, and the Tesla supercharging network). We got an incredible deal on one, and negotiated free service to boot.

The thing is, the dealer experience was abysmal. They knew nothing about it. Range, operation, service, charging times, basic care and operation. Critical things like the difference between one type of charger option and another and even which type of charging system the very car we were leasing had.

The truth is, the dealers don't /want/ to know anything about EVs. They are hoping that EVs will go away, because they know that EVs will kill their service profit.

Think of the last thing you had done on your ICE car, chances are an EV doesn't have that part. With an EV there's no oil changes or filters, no spark plugs, no transmission, no drive shaft, no exhaust systems or catalytic converters, no fuel flow sensor, no turbo, no oxygen sensors, no radiators, no cylinders or gaskets, not even fluids besides brake fluid and windshield washer fluid. They're even reducing the wiring harnesses, at least at Tesla.

EV's are vastly more reliable than ICE cars. Batteries are holding more charge than expected after years of use. Electric motors are holding up extremely well - having no moving parts helps.

All that that means no money for the dealers to make.

Because of this truth, dealers as we know them will be gone in a few years. And nothing of value will have been lost.

I was in Los Angeles this week and saw my first Model 3 "in the wild" on the freeway with new tags and a delighted driver inside. I just got a glimpse of it, and I almost mistook it for a Model S. It looked beautiful.

It's so exciting to see these getting delivered. Yet another thing "they" said Tesla couldn't possibly do -- even by the end of 2018:
https://electrek.co/2016/11/23/tesla-model-3-late-adam-jonas-morgan-stanley/
https://electrek.co/2016/08/09/tesla-model-3-2-years-late-wrong/

On the drive down from Sacramento to Los Angeles on the 5 freeway, I saw four semi trucks loaded with brand new Teslas.

Now it'll be interesting to see the goalposts for Tesla's success getting moved by the Tesla shorts and uninformed armchair prognosticators. Now that Tesla is delivering they'll have to change their target for why Tesla is such a bad company, just as they did with the Model S and X. Production of the Semi or the Roadster perhaps?

UBS knows because Tesla is a publicly traded company. All publicly traded companies must freely publish their earnings, expenses and cash on hand among many other things (including the gigafactory) every three months. You can see them here:
http://quicktake.morningstar.com/stocknet/secdocuments.aspx?symbol=tsla

SpaceX is privately held, so very few people know the financials of that company, which is separate from Tesla.

Having said that, this article seems to address Tesla's many options for dealing with any cash crunches that do occur, if they do:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4127268-tesla-cash-problem

I really hope Porsche fields an awesome electric car. This one doesn't look like the 'one' but it's a good start from them.

It'd be tough for me to buy a Porsche, though. My sister owned two of them - brand new - and she got soaked every time something went wrong. Every. Time. Thousands every time. She'll never have another.

WRT the marketplace their complete lack of a supercharger network makes it a tough sell for a daily driver or a touring car, so they'll be forced to sell to the uninformed weekend short range driver type of buyer.

That CEO Fisker is in a difficult place. In order to get attention on his product he has to make these outrageous claims.

I don't think claims like this help accelerate EV adoption.

First, physics. You would need a fusion reactor in your garage to provide the power to charge 700 miles in one minute. Even if his battery can be charged that fast, the infrastructure cost to make that possible is out of reach.

Second, 700 mile range in less than two years is unlikely. 500 mile range is already pushing the limits, going purely on past capacity improvements over the last decade. But I guess he can't say that because the new Tesla Roadster will do 500 in 2020.

No, you are out of date.

The last update from Elon at the end of 2017 said that at the last week of the year they were on pace to do 1,000 per week. They now project 2,500 per week by the end of Q1, then 5k per week by the end of Q2.

That would be interesting - how would you find out?

I've done a number of trips in my Model S P85 over 1,000 miles. The car has never been off on it's prediction. I have no range anxiety now.

I ran my battery down to zero -once- just to see what it was like. My destination was Mt. Shasta before the supercharger network was there. I knew I was ten miles from the charger, so I kept speeding up so I would reach my destination on empty. The car has extra mileage below zero, BTW. Somewhere around 15 miles IIRC. It isn't good for the battery, so I never did it again.

Your range estimate does adjust to your driving style, to a degree it takes terrain into account as well. The only thing you have to watch out for is speeding in a heavy headwind. Twice I've had to reduce speed from 75-80 down to 60-65 for a few miles because of that - once from Vegas to LA, and another time from SF to LA.

Strange, it looks to be an SUV, not a Mustang. I really hope it's awesome, but I have my doubts. It's impossible to say.

But hey, by 2020 they will have had seven years since Tesla launched the Model S to make an absolutely amazing car. SUV. Whatever it turns out to be.

Did anyone see yesterday that Ford announced they are "all in" on electric? Now that they've let a silicon valley startup dominate the market and launch their car for the masses they're all in? Of course, "all in" for them is an 11 billion dollar investment over the next four years, and a mixed lineup of 40 electric and electric hybrids by 2022, less than half of which will be all electric. I coudln't tell if those models will be worldwide or just in the USA, but I'm guessing worldwide partly because China has a huge electric car incentive program, and partly because Ford only has 36 models in 2018 in the USA.

Also, I'm not at all confident that investing $2.75bn per year will get them to where they need to be in 2022 to compete with Tesla. Tesla went from producing 1,000 cars a year five years ago to over 100,000 cars last year.

Ford is feeling a /lot/ like Blockbuster trying to beat Netflix, Sears trying to beat Amazon, Kodak trying to beat Apple...

Unless something has changed, Panasonic put at least a billion into Gigafactory 1, so I think they're still partnered with Tesla.

I've had good luck with the valet at Century City. Might save you some time...

Kodak doesn't need to worry as long as they don't develop digital cameras. Samsung may have 7 years head start on digital cameras, but Kodak has over a hundred in building cameras. Samsung had the biggest obstacle in developing a CCD and all the other camera stuff, which is the hardest part of it all except marketing. You look at a camera and the CCD is impressive, but you have all other aspects like how to make a lens, etc. that will last. Kodak has a huge advantage in those areas and how to evolve the development of a camera. All Kodak needs is to continue their camera knowledge and continue to adapt a CCD. Perhaps Kodak will buy CCDs from Samsung. I believe Kodak will be making cameras longer than Samsung and Samsung will survive as a digital camera supplier.

Fixed that for you.

Naw, most people don't care one way or the other. But since EVs are at least 50% cheaper to operate, and way more fun to drive the EV market is exploding. Your choice of words, "forced" and "coaxed" are puzzling and not consistent with reality.

Except a massive solar and battery business.

Kodak sells millions of cameras a year.
Blockbuster rents millions of videos a day.
Tower records sells millions of CDs a month.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

This isn't a very good analogy. If Disney wanted to compete with Netflix, instead of focus on their core extremely profitable content creating business and instead pursue distribution they would face the same dilemma that others have - they wouldn't be able to sign up other content creators because those other content creators would not want to support a competitor. How is that similar to Ford v Tesla?

Take a look at the weak sauce numbers for other struggling content creator-only distribution plays. If that was a viable strategy Disney would have done it. Compare and contrast to Ford's "all-in" on EVs last week with similar statements from Blockbuster v. Netflix, Record/CD stores v. Apple, Nokia v. Apple, Sears v. Amazon or many other disruptive stories.

This is a perfect example of using bad data to claim a false majority.

You claim that an unknown and unquantifiable number of people on a forum have an opinion that you agree with. Totally valid opinion.

However this opinion is not reflected in actual sales data, nor in carmaker's actual plans.

The fact is that Tesla has so changed the game that even Ferrari is talking about an all electric supercar.

I doubt that very much, but we will see this year.

Really? I didn't know you could buy a car (other than a Tesla) with Level 3 autonomous driving. I'm not talking about adaptive cruise control, but Level 3. What models are available? I'm not in the market, but I'm curious.

I have to correct some misinformation in that last post.

You haven't had to plan ahead on a trip in a Tesla for years now. There are superchargers and destination chargers all over the place, and they're all free*.

More than 99% of the time people aren't driving on long trips. The vast majority of the time with an EV you save time since you never have to go to a gas station - you charge your car at home. Do you get gas once a week and spend 10 minutes doing so? That's 520 minutes a year you save with an EV.

Everyone knows that on a longer trip, gasoline costs tons more but you fill up a bit faster. But let's look at this a little more closely. I just drove a new Mustang from Portland to LA, about 1,000 miles. I've also made the trip in my Tesla several times. With an ICE car I eat and then I have to get fuel. With my Tesla, I charge my car while I'm eating. So many of my charges don't take any extra time at all, while getting gas takes 10 minutes each time on top of eating. I ate 5 times on my trip, so that's 50 minutes I had to spend getting gas that I didn't spend with my Tesla, that's two charges. Halfway in Sacramento I also charge overnight so that doesn't take any extra time either. That's half my charging taking zero time right there. So I have four more times that I'm not eating or sleeping that take 30 minutes each, during which I stretch, take a little walk, get a snack and go to the bathroom. So maybe, maybe I spend an extra hour and a half over a 1,000 mile trip. For the comfort and safety of using autopilot, with no fuel cost, that extra time is nothing.

A Maryland -> NYC trip is a perfect example. It's a 3.5 hour drive and well within the range of any Tesla on a single charge. Get lunch or dinner anywhere along the way (or in NYC) with a supercharger or a destination charger and you spend zero extra time charging and it costs nothing. Or stay the night and charge for free. With an ICE car you waste 20 minutes and however much 400 miles of fuel costs you, because you have to fill up before you leave and at least once on the way.

*If you ask any Tesla owner including me, we can give you a code for free Supercharging for life if you buy a Model S or X - they just renewed the program. I have a couple of codes left.

Congratulations! It's beautiful.

Yeah I got mine a couple days ago too!

Today was a great day for humanity.

There must be hundreds of video reviews of the Model 3 now, all of them glowing that I've seen. Dude posts the clickbaityest "things I hate" video.

So predictable.

Of course it takes getting used to something different. Some people hated computer mouses and graphical user interfaces, touch screens, smartphones, digital cameras, telephones, the telegraph, yeah pretty much anything that was different.

This reminds me a bit of the brouhaha when Apple shipped a one button mouse, or removed buttons from the iPhone, or PC makers stopped shipping PCs with floppy drives. Tempest in a teapot stuff. Clickbait.

Besides, there's a pretty good argument to be made that one shouldn't be adjusting things in their car while driving, even if using muscle memory. The number of people driving while texting or goofing off with their phones has just skyrocketed. I routinely see people with their heads down absorbed in their phone while driving in all manner of conditions. I'm all for removing ways for people to be distracted while driving.

As for missing features, Tesla is usually great about fixing things in software. My car didn't ship with quite a number of features including voice control, and they keep adding goodies. The media player has always been too basic for my taste. I understand why they don't want to open up app development to the entire world, but they really should polish that media player up.

Where did you get that figure? I thought they don't release their monthly sales until the end of the quarter.

LOL I think you mean "anecdotal"

This is a false equivalence you're trying to pull here. Put another way, it's bullshit.

Safety features build on each other. The more you have, the safer the car is. A car that can withstand a heavy side impact is not as safe as a car capable of actually taking an action, like braking or steering to save your life, because the latter car is already at least as able to withstand the same kind of impact.

The NTSA, using the scientific method, will agree with me that a car with collision avoidance is safer than a car without. This is what the OP was saying.

But no, you had to go and claim that the fundamental truth, that a car with collision avoidance is safer, WASN'T true because some uninformed person said something. That's bullshit. Stop it.

The Model 3 has a control stalk like every other car to control cruise control/autopilot. You control the volume of the radio from a button right on the steering wheel.

Seems like you haven't even looked at the car very closely, or you are deliberately trying to paint it in a bad light.

I was talking about fiddling with things that require attention and distract you from driving, not fundamental driving features. Just. Like. I. Wrote.

There are a lot of things one can do that one shouldn't be doing while driving. As in, anything that isn't driving. There shouldn't be any reason to mess with climate control while driving. You set a temperature when you start driving and you're done. It's not a janky analog dial like in your Subaru, man. You set it to like 72 degrees and it stays at 72.

And as I said in a post I made a couple back, their media player functionality isn't very good. I believe they'll make it better. People still make the fundamental mistake with this car that it's 'done.' It's not done. They are going to keep improving the software just like they have in their other cars, same way Apple has done with iOS.

Amazon was most certainly NOT the elephant in the room in 1998. In 1998 people were making the exact same arguments as you're making today about Tesla. That. Is. The. Point.

We've covered this in depth previously, but you're making the "incumbents shall overcome" argument which as we know didn't work for, let's see, every other incumbent ever. See Kodak, Sears, and Blockbuster but there are many others. It would be unusual to see the incumbents survive through this. It's possible, but unlikely.

It's laughable that you say Tesla has little to show for it's massive investments. Investments are not 'blowing through money' - doing coke and throwing parties is blowing through money. Tesla now has the largest factory in the world (and is building others), an unparalleled charging network, owns most aspects of the production of their cars, and has gone through several orders of magnitude in car production since they began just five short years ago. They have a waiting list for selling product that is in the billions of dollars. And they don't advertise!

I utterly fail to see how an aging infrastructure in building ICE vehicles with a massive reliance on third party vendors can compete with Tesla now. Many of their core competencies are not required: transmissions, engines, exhaust systems. Their dealer networks, once thought a huge asset, are now extraordinarily dangerous because dealers will not sell EVs since their revenue depends on repairs and EVs require vastly less maintenance and repairs.

The reality is that Tesla continues to produce incredible cars. Demand for them is so high they cannot produce them fast enough. People are threatening and in some cases cancelling their pre-orders why? Because the car sucks? No, the car is awesome. It's because they can't get one. This is what we call a good problem to have. And a solvable problem.

On the other hand, the finest challenger that the incumbents have been able to muster in FIVE YEARS is the Bolt. It's not a bad car, but it simply does not compare to the Model 3. Sales of the Bolt reflect that - in January they were less than half of the Model 3. If the Bolt were a true Model 3 challenger, they would be selling tens of thousands of them a month, since as you claim, the incumbents can outproduce Tesla and there is clearly a market demand for hundreds of thousands if not millions of $35k EVs. The reality is that there isn't enough demand for the Bolt compared to the Model 3 and there never will be. People would rather wait.

Nobody cares today that Tesla was also massively late on the Roadster and Model S and Model X because they are all incredible vehicles. You're late to the party, rubberducks so to catch you up, Elon's management style is to ask for the impossible and settle for the wildly improbable. It continues to work.

No, actually they weren't. Facts: in 1998 Amazon's gross revenues were $610 million. Ebay's gross revenues were $502 million for the last two quarters of 1998 alone.

I was very much active in ecommerce and the Internet, as a user of the Internet since the 80s, professionally and as an investor starting in 1994 and it was by no means common knowledge that Amazon would even be around in two years, let alone 20 and be in the position they were in now. As I said.

It's exceptionally unwise to assume things about people. I did quite well in the 90's being aware of the massive change that disruption had on established players. I saw and said and profited the same with many disruptions as they happened -- IBM and the PC, Apple and the iPod and iPhone, digital cameras, Sony's PlayStation, and Tesla to name a few.

Ignore disruption at your own peril.

Amazon was unfettered by the brick and mortar incumbents. The incumbents, like today's automakers, saw Amazon coming. People told them to make massive investments in the Internet. And they failed to do so, and in so doing, they failed. By 1998 Amazon was big and sure they were on the radar of the big brick and mortars, but the incumbents thought Amazon merely had a toehold and they could jump in any time they wanted. The time that the incumbents should have begun their massive investments was no later than 1996. It's the same now with automakers.

A flameout for a massive corporation takes years if not decades, so it's not surprising that many people can't see it. But the story has already been written. It's now just waiting to play out.

Could incumbent automakers survive this disruption and still stay on top? Sure. They'd have to turn their backs on their dealers and sell direct, though. I don't see that happening.

Since you're curious, I'll try to walk you through it.

Since the Bolt has been for sale for so long one would expect, if it were a successful car, that it would meet the expectations of the carmaker. It hasn't. Sales have been dreadful according to Chevy. Chevy said they could easily sell 50,000. They sold less than half of that.
https://insideevs.com/chevrolet-bolt-sales-prediction/

As I said, the Bolt isn't a bad car. It just doesn't compare to the Tesla Model 3 for a number of significant reasons. On top of that, the GM dealer network doesn't want to sell EVs. That's the real problem for GM, and all incumbent automakers.

It's not so much a victory for Tesla as it is the nature of the game now. Tesla is poised to profit from it, traditional automakers are not. I don't understand how you can fail to see that.

You say production is stagnant, I say they've continued to dominate luxury car sales for an astonishing 5 years.

And as everyone who follows Tesla knows, there are only so many $100,000 cars you can sell, and their success hinges on rolling out large numbers of Model 3's.

They've been making massive investments in their production lines. Battery production. Automation/robotics. Autonomous driving. User interface. Data collection. Putting big dollars into owning the entire production line. Expanding their supercharger network at an amazing rate. Adding solar production and house/industrial battery production. As with anything worthwhile, it takes time. As with anything worthwhile, some failures and setbacks are inevitable.

People like you blasted Tesla in 2016 saying there was no way they would deliver a single Model 3 in 2017, let alone 2018. Now they're delivering and the goalposts are set back. Now it's because they're only delivering a thousand a week. As soon as they break 2,500 a week people will blast them because they're not making 250,000 a year, then 500,000 a year, etc. etc. People like you will always just move the goalposts and shift your argument to some other nitpick. I've seen it with all the other disruptions, too.

So yeah never mind their current rate of production is an order of magnitude more than they were doing a few months ago. Or that they've been able to about double their car production every year for five years. Never mind that people are loving the car. Let's ignore their astonishing victory delivering a massive power grid to Australia in just a couple of months. Ignore how people love Tesla cars like literally no other car on earth. No, let's just focus on the failures and the past.

I really, really look forward to revisiting your comments in a year @rubberducks, it's going to be so much fun.

In other words you have nothing meaningful to rebut my points so you resort to a personal attack. Got it.

That data seemed fishy, so I looked for data myself.

I'm not sure where the OP got their data, but this chart shows a different story:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-vehicle-deliveries/

FTFA:
Q2 2015: 11,532
Q3 2015: 11,603
Q4 2015: 17,400
Q1 2016: 14,820
Q2 2016: 14,370
Q3 2016: 24,500
Q4 2016: 22,000
Q1 2017: 25,000
Q2 2017: 22,000
Q3 2017: 26,150
Q4 2017: 29,870

Looking at a larger dataset tells me a different story: Q4 2017 was more than a 35% increase over Q4 16, and more than double - nearly TRIPLE Q3 2015. Not exactly what I'd call stagnant! Note this doesn't factor in growth from solar and battery sales.

How easy it is to tell different stories with the same data, and how dangerous it is to cherry pick data from a narrow range as it doesn't factor in seasonal differences or longer term trends.

I reserved online and got my invite weeks ago. Existing owner, first day res though.

Based on. What. Exactly?

I love this thread. It always provides such entertainment.

They've never been bailed out, unlike their competition.

Most analysts believe that if they hit 5,000 Model 3's a week they won't need to raise more money. All they have to do is reach a certain level of production. There's no reason why they can't do that. Increasing volume on a production line just takes time and capital. It's not like they're trying to put men on Mars. (That's a different company)

All that shows is that two major luxury brands have to price their luxury car offerings near or beneath the market leader Tesla.

If they believed they were better, you can damn well be sure they'd price them that way. See the $250,000 Tesla Roadster.

Do you think maybe there's a reason Jag hasn't disclosed pre-sales figures for the I-Pace?

Anyway, you're asking the wrong question. The question is: who's going to want to sell an electric Jag or Porsche?

Dealers won't want to sell them because electric cars won't bring in service revenue like an ICE car.

And a lack of chargers will compromise them too. Once people take delivery of the I-Pace we will see a lot more of tweets like these:
https://twitter.com/martinjguk/status/974781069655527424

Jaguar's website is hysterical. I wonder why they don't link to maps of charging stations and instead say, "Ask your Jaguar Retailer for more information on your local and national public charging networks."

Citation required. Because I think that statement is bullshit.

https://bgr.com/2017/12/22/tesla-vs-porsche-customer-satisfaction-rankings/

More bullshit.

How exactly is another manufacturer going to have lower margins than Tesla? Tesla doesn't advertise, makes nearly all of it's own parts, makes cars in an increasingly automated fashion. A lot of their investment is behind them. They sell more EVs than anyone else in the world and have a backlog of demand in the hundreds of thousands of cars.

Citation required. Because I think that statement is also bullshit.

The last thing I read on Friday was an analyst saying that Tesla's current valuation has built into it less growth than Tesla is predicting.

There may be a point you're trying to make there, but I can't understand it. Something about batteries being hard to buy, or too expensive?

Tesla is making epic investments in battery production, vehicle production, automated production, semi-truck production, solar cell production, supercharging networks, distribution and sales in order to maintain dominance. FTFY.

Because?

Give me one single example of an established corporation maintaining dominance in the face of a major disruptive technology. I've used digital cameras, e-commerce, mobile phones, movie rental, and music distribution as examples why Tesla and other startups will dominate the auto market. I have others. Give me your counter example. Any one will do.

So you're discounting network effects and lowered costs due to higher volume and owning all aspects of production? Why?

I mean, Tesla is even saving money on transporting their cars now since they're using their own Tesla Semis.

No, actually foreign and domestic competition hasn't grown much at all in the five and a half years since the Model S was launched. To compete with the dominant player in the EV market (Tesla) you need real differentiation and meaningful reasons not to buy a Tesla.

There are no cars on the market that compete with the Model S. None. Going on six years now. The Porsche eMission isn't available and won't be until who knows when. Ford? GM? Audi? BMW? Mercedes? Peugeot? Renault? Crickets.

There's exactly one car that competes with the Tesla X, the Jaguar I-Pace. Or it will, when you can get one sometime this year. I wish Jaguar well, and it's a good looking car, but I don't think they'll outsell the Model X. They're the same price as a Model X and as far as I can see their differentiator is a traditional luxury interior vs. the Tesla X's radically spartan luxury interior. No supercharging network, no big screen, no falcon wing doors, no zombie apocalypse air filtration. It's not a threat to the Model X and I'm willing to bet we'll see low sales volume from the I-Pace.

The BMW i3 and Chevy Bolt compare with the Tesla Model 3 on price, but they're nowhere near the Tesla on features and value.

I keep waiting for the announcements of huge investments in global supercharging networks or battery production but I'm not seeing it. Ford's big announcement that they're going "all-in" is typical of all the other automakers. They're slowly going to roll out hybrids and limited all-electric cars over the next decade, avoid investing in high speed charging networks, outsource battery production, and avoid cannibalizing their ICE market and alienating their dealer networks until they die.

That's the only one I can think of, too. AT&T was very shrewd to make that iPhone exclusivity deal with Apple, and they have made massive infrastructure investments.

Telcos are in a special class though, since they receive government monopolies. For that reason I'm not sure telcos are a good fit for discussing the auto industry.

For me the question is, are automakers more like AT&T or more like Sears/Blockbuster/Kodak/Tower Records?

As was previously mentioned, the grandfathered "unlimited not unlimited" data plans and AT&T's massive retail footprint and epic advertising spends do account for a lot of their market share.

No, I'm not saying that at all. I think they're going to do what all established dominant corporations (without government monopoly protection) do in the face of disruption; try to play both sides and lose.

That's exactly what all the established automakers seem to be doing.

For me the big hurdles that established carmakers have to overcome:

1) Big established auto doesn't control retail distribution so somehow they have to find a way for their dealers to make money, or start distributing directly. How are they going to do that?

2) Big established auto don't make their own batteries. How are they going to keep prices in line with the dominant player who does make their own batteries, when they have to give profit and pay shipping to whatever battery manufacturer(s) they use?

3) Big established auto doesn't have an established worldwide fast charging infrastructure. If they rely on third parties to deploy fast charging or join together and use a non-proprietary standard for charging, as all of them seem to be doing, Tesla gets to say "you can use their charging network /and/ ours." This is a non-trivial time and capital-intensive spend and it's hard for me to see big auto doing anything but playing catchup.

4) Big established auto relies on ad buys to drive sales. The dominant player does not advertise at all, and has shifted the game to a high-touch direct to consumer Apple store retail experience. It's cool, fun and sexy to go to the Tesla store. It's an outing. People tweet about it. How does that compare to the dealer experience? Will big auto be able to position their products to be as cool, fun and sexy? I don't have data to back this up, but I wonder if Tesla's retail stores cost less than the advertising done by big auto per vehicle sale?

Also not pissing, just interested in meaningful debate.

Wow, I haven't heard the word "weird" used to insult people's ideas that way since high school.

Whether or not you are an adult, I invite you to see the world as a larger place where people care about things you do not. Practice empathy. Insulting people because they hold views different than yours is bigotry, it's not cool, and it's against the policies of this forum.

If this thread annoys you, trash it and you'll never see it again.

Not really when you consider the amount of money Volvo pays to advertise.

What a senseless loss of human life.

I'm confused. First you say there's "no way the car should have hit" then you "agree it might have been unavoidable" - which is it?

I think it's difficult to say whether or not a human paying attention could have avoided the pedestrian. I wasn't there. The camera could have picked up more or less than the human eye. The low light features on some of these dash cams is impressive.

It's an issue but not the biggest one.

No, the real tragedy is that someone was being paid to sit behind the wheel and intervene when (not if) a situation just like this happened, and they were incapable of acting because they were staring at their phone. It's gross negligence. I hope criminal charges are forthcoming on that person.

Anyone who has used a car in autonomous mode for any length of time, as I have, will agree the technology isn't yet safe or ready. The person behind the wheel is at fault. Don't let the LIDAR or gadgets distract from the real issue.

We don't know that. We will never know what really happened. It's possible that they were riding and fell off their bike and were lying flat on the road concussed, heard the car coming and had just stood it up moments before they began walking it to the other side of the road.

For this reason I withhold judgment on the pedestrian.

I think I missed where anyone said it was "okay," or that this isn't being taken seriously by the people in charge of implementing autonomous driving.

Definitely thinking about it. If they're shipping ~2,000 Model 3's a week that adds something like half a billion in gross revenue per month doesn't it? Plus ~1,000 Model S, ~1,000 Model X a week, battery and solar sales....

Yeah, it is looking like a strong buy. It went up considerably today. It's a volatile stock, though, because oil/auto advertising funded media (I'm looking at you, Wall Street Journal), and well-heeled shorts always find a way to make good news bad, and when they can't, they just make stuff up.

Tesla breaks 4,000 cars a week and they say they missed targets, despite the fact that Tesla's growth rate is unparalleled in the modern auto industry. Hello, it's Elon Musk. His gig is to promise Jupiter but deliver Mars, when his competition is still fiddling around with toy rockets. 93% satisfaction with Model 3 owners - it doesn't even get mentioned.

Astonishing that she only broke an ankle crashing into a fire truck aka wall of steel at 60 mph.

Then the car explodes taking with it a ten square block area.

Whatever, dude. I see three or four a day and they look gorgeous. The Bolt, IMO, looks like any other subcompact car - boring and forgettable. I sat next to several Model 3’s while charging on the way to and from the NW Pin show and all I can say is... WOW. There was a black one that almost made me want to sell my P85... almost.

So Tesla is at 3,500+ Model 3’s per week production and they should reach 5k per week soon.

I’m counting down until the goal posts are moved for Tesla once again. You can already see the negative focus begin to change to Model Y, Semi and “Tesla-killer” articles touting concept cars 2-3 years out from established automakers.

I’ve also seen an increase in the intensity of negative comments since the stock price has surged over the last week. Some people are really taking it in the shorts.

I never watch TV, but I had occasion to over lunch with my son on Saturday. I was blown away by how many car ads - we saw at least 5 Audi ads during the 40 minutes we watched a soccer match. They all started with their electric Formula E race car of course. That just reminded me that as long as the big automakers are spending as much as they do on advertising we will see a steady stream of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt articles coming from the media and finding a way to spin the astonishing things Tesla has done and continues to do into negatives. The exact same thing happened with Linux and Open Source.

I see at least 5 a day now in my area. They're gorgeous. The performance version just started rolling off a new assembly line at the factory, too.

While it's not fair to compare the Bolt with the Model 3, the Model 3 is now outselling the Bolt at least 5 to 1, and the only reason this number isn't higher is that Tesla isn't building more. https://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

The market has spoken. The Bolt is a dud. There's just no demand for a boring expensive electric subcompact, as anyone even remotely connected to EVs should have known. I would have thought BMW's dismal i3 and Mercedes' even more dismal subcompact EV would have been enough data for Chevy.

The 35-60k market does not buy subcompacts. They (used to) buy a BMW 3-series. Now they buy Model 3s, as the Model 3 is now selling more than any other mid size premium sedan in the USA. Not just electric, any mid size premium sedan - Audi, Mercedes, BMW...

If Chevy really wants to compete they need to market electric Camaros and Corvettes. Well, that and install 10,000 superchargers, since Tesla just crossed that milestone this month too.

Chevy, it's 2007 and Nokia is calling!

Tesla-Model-3-market-share (resized).jpg