Official Tesla Model S thread

[timhebb]

Model S: Consumer Reports' Best Car Ever Tested

Amid all the media attention to this, Seeking Alpha has published a perversely long-winded pseudo-analysis, Is the Tesla Model S Green? (http://seekingalpha.com/article/1418421-is-the-tesla-model-s-green" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false. The piece ostensibly debunks the "myth" that EVs in general, and the Tesla in particular, are better for the environment.

It is perverse nonsense, of course, dressed up as a serious study.

Fortunately, as I posted in the article's comments section:

One Consumer Reports +1 is worth 1,000,000 "Shrieking Alpha" -1's.
Now your tantrum is over. Go to bed. Goodnight!

I thought the peice was extremely well done, not for the conclusion, but becasue it's so well structured that a rebuttal is actually possible.

If by "extremely well done" you mean that an uninformed reader might well be taken in by the spurious arguments presented, because they are structured in the form of a serious analysis, yes, I'd agree the piece is a convincing Halloween costume scare tactic.

In the context of the author's transparent financial interests and increasing risk of loss, it seems to me a rather pathetic, desperate grasping for survival, by any means necessary.

 

[TonyWilliams]

If by "extremely well done" you mean that an uninformed reader might well be taken in by the spurious arguments presented, because they are structured in the form of a serious analysis, yes, I'd agree the piece is a convincing Halloween costume scare tactic.

In the context of the author's transparent financial interests and increasing risk of loss, it seems to me a rather pathetic, desperate grasping for survival, by any means necessary.

Agreed.

 

[timhebb]

So funny ... Seeking Alpha deleted my comment on their piece Is the Tesla Model S Green?:

"Fortunately, one Consumer Reports +1 is worth a million "Shrieking Alpha" -1's.
Now your tantrum is over. Go to bed. Goodnight!"

Their reasoning:

Dear timhebb,
We have deleted your comment because it contains insults, obscenities or abusive language about the topic under discussion. In an effort to encourage high-quality discussion of articles, we encourage you to avoid such language. We still welcome your post if it contains a strong and polite disagreement about the issues under discussion, but we ask you to resubmit it in a form that is more appropriate for the serious tone we aim to encourage on the site.

Some pretty thin skin over there among the Alpha pack, huh?

Do you suppose it was the "shrieking" or the "Go to bed" that they couldn't tolerate? Or maybe the antisocial savagery of ... "Goodnight!"

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

OK, all you wealthy freeloaders, watch this and feel real bad. Then you will 'feel good'.

http://www.kirotv.com/videos/news/tuesday-at-5-high-tech-freeloaders/v2LQJ/

just like the news to "glorify" the villain. what they fail to mention is that the "gift" only works out to be a pretty small percentage of the purchase price of a 100,000 Tesla with sales tax credit (we will use 9% when the real tax rate is higher in most areas, lower in a few) that is $9000 plus $7500 so the "20,000" is actually more like $16,500 so it covers 16.5% of the cost of the car and provides an IMMENSE benefit to the state.

But ANY electric vehicle qualifies so lets look at the "poor man's choice" of a LEAF for say $32,000 now the tax credit on it would be 2880 plus $7500 fed tax credit totaling $10,380 or more than a third of the car.

at 21,300 for a base model S, that would be the equivalent of buying any other $19,000 car after the tax consideration so this
"wealthy" perk is not just for the wealthy, its open to anyone who cares about WA's financial, environmental and ecological health

I find it impossible to justify the need to give government assistance to anyone who can afford to blow $70k or more on a car. If I were emperor I'd limit the credit to any BEV with a sales price (not counting gov. fees) of $40k or less; every dollar over that would reduce the credit by the same amount, until you got to zero at $47,500. Every year or two the credit threshold would ratchet down by say $500 or $1,000, until the need for the credit disappeared.

so a RAV would get nothing then since its $50k?

iow, someone who had a transportation need that exceeded the LEAF but was workable in a RAV would continue to burn oil right?

the thought that greater acceptance of new technology would encourage investment into the technology hopefully resulting in products the masses can afford is not at work here?

the thought that a bit of urgency might be in order since May 2013 may end up to be "Where no Man has gone before" when average CO2 concentration hits 400 PPM?

the thought that even rich people have a carbon footprint?

???

 

[GRA]

just like the news to "glorify" the villain. what they fail to mention is that the "gift" only works out to be a pretty small percentage of the purchase price of a 100,000 Tesla with sales tax credit (we will use 9% when the real tax rate is higher in most areas, lower in a few) that is $9000 plus $7500 so the "20,000" is actually more like $16,500 so it covers 16.5% of the cost of the car and provides an IMMENSE benefit to the state.

But ANY electric vehicle qualifies so lets look at the "poor man's choice" of a LEAF for say $32,000 now the tax credit on it would be 2880 plus $7500 fed tax credit totaling $10,380 or more than a third of the car.

at 21,300 for a base model S, that would be the equivalent of buying any other $19,000 car after the tax consideration so this
"wealthy" perk is not just for the wealthy, its open to anyone who cares about WA's financial, environmental and ecological health

I find it impossible to justify the need to give government assistance to anyone who can afford to blow $70k or more on a car. If I were emperor I'd limit the credit to any BEV with a sales price (not counting gov. fees) of $40k or less; every dollar over that would reduce the credit by the same amount, until you got to zero at $47,500. Every year or two the credit threshold would ratchet down by say $500 or $1,000, until the need for the credit disappeared.

so a RAV would get nothing then since its $50k?

iow, someone who had a transportation need that exceeded the LEAF but was workable in a RAV would continue to burn oil right?

the thought that greater acceptance of new technology would encourage investment into the technology hopefully resulting in products the masses can afford is not at work here?

the thought that a bit of urgency might be in order since May 2013 may end up to be "Where no Man has gone before" when average CO2 concentration hits 400 PPM?

the thought that even rich people have a carbon footprint?

???

Correct, the RAV4EV would be over the limit. I went back and forth about whether to set the limit to include it or not, but ultimately decided that $50k MSRP was outside any possible definition of 'affordable mass market'. If you can afford a $50k car, you're not hurting for cash. You can afford a Rav4, or an ICE+BEV combo, or a PHEV. Actually, since the MFI of Leaf owners when it was introduced was hovering around $140k the same's true for Leafs, but the price of a Leaf S now is at least reachable by a middle-class person with a much lower MFI.

Of course, since Toyota has been offering $10k of their money to buyers, there's nothing stopping them from dropping the MSRP to get under the limit - $45k would still get you $2,500 from the feds. The point of the limit is to drive MSRPs down so that more people can afford the cars, and ultimately we can do without the subsidies. If that means decontenting I'm fine with that, as I regard so many of the bells and whistles as irrelevant or unnecessary, when I'd much rather see companies putting more of the car's value in larger battery packs.

As to reducing carbon footprint, because there are so many vastly cheaper ways of reducing it than buying yourself a RAV4 or a Tesla, that argument doesn't fly with me. Taken to its ultimate level of absurdity, should governments be subsidizing people who want to buy an $845,000 MSRP Porsche 918 Spyder PHEV (AFAICT it would qualify), but just can't come up with the last couple of thousand?

I mean, the poor dears have tried everything, even checking for change between the cushions of the Louis Quatorze loveseats in their chateau music rooms and in the filter baskets of their Olympic-size pools - surely we should be helping out these deserving souls too? If you think not, next you'll be asking them to forgo the G550 and instead use the Lear (oh, the humanity!) the next time they fly to Gstaad for a ski weekend. Some may be willing to make the sacrifice anyway for the greater good of the world, but do we have the right to ask that of them? Have we really become such unfeeling monsters?!?

"I should tell my story. I'm also unemployed." —Mitt Romney, speaking in 2011 to unemployed people in Florida. Romney's net worth is over $200 million.

 

[TomT]

Actually, I had a 328i I ran for 150K and it never required anything beyond regular scheduled service... It was a great and incredibly fun car.

Good, I hope it will help me to get a very good price on that bimmer I have always wanted

Get the maintenance policy included cause they're a real screwing.

 

[evnow]

Glad the TSLA price is up. May be one day that will get me a Modal X

 

[evnow]

Let us keep this thread to things directly related to Tesla.

 

[DaveEV]

Off topic posts moved here: In Defense of Carbon Dioxide

 

[redLEAF]

Glad the TSLA price is up. May be one day that will get me a Modal X

"Tesla now worth more than Fiat" ... ($8B !) not that I speculate much but happened to buy some shares at a little under $55 once I saw how they were #1 in high-end car sales (not just EV's but selling more than MBZ S, 7-series BMW, etc.) so pretty happy with their performance but we've seen ups and down before -- have to be able to afford to lose it all as well but this last rally was a nice surprise; if it keeps going perhaps I'll add a Model X as well --- see they are a bit down in pre-market so we'll see. Nice to see this kind of performance and a few more model S's on the road.

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/tesl...n-fiat-H2tC~7oARqSxMQWbAFCOBA.html?cmpid=yhoo

 

[LTLFTcomposite]

I think of Jim Cramer as a little kooky, but this was one of his more thoughtful moments:
http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/video/11918867/tesla-wait-turns-off-cramer.html?cm_ven=YAHOOV&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA&s=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[walterbays]

http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...mpany_is_a_little_bit_apple_a_little_bit.html

So how can Tesla persuade General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, and other car giants—not to mention other car startups that are similar in size to Tesla—to all work together to improve the world’s electric vehicle infrastructure? By licensing its tech to its competitors, in the same way that Google gives Android away to every phone-maker in the world.

 

[mitch672]

http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...mpany_is_a_little_bit_apple_a_little_bit.html

So how can Tesla persuade General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, and other car giants—not to mention other car startups that are similar in size to Tesla—to all work together to improve the world’s electric vehicle infrastructure? By licensing its tech to its competitors, in the same way that Google gives Android away to every phone-maker in the world.

That is Elon's long term stated goal, in fact the licensing fee is likely to cover unlimited usage of Teslas SuperCharging network (eventually, they want to keep it just for their own products for the immediate future). It's been speculated they'll make more money eventually licensing SuperCharger access than they will be able to make building cars, it's all laid out in this SeekingAlpha article:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1300141-supercharging-tesla" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[redLEAF]

I think of Jim Cramer as a little kooky, but this was one of his more thoughtful moments:
http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/video/11918867/tesla-wait-turns-off-cramer.html?cm_ven=YAHOOV&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA&s=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks for this ... always, always take whatever Cramer says with a grain of salt. And after all that, he actually agreed that if he could get one today and not have to wait 9 months he would buy one; I agree its a speculative stock but it went over $80/share, can't all be vaporware.

 

[LTLFTcomposite]

And after all that, he actually agreed that if he could get one today and not have to wait 9 months he would buy one; I agree its a speculative stock but it went over $80/share, can't all be vaporware.

The company and its product are indeed real, but the valuation is forward looking into time periods of some obvious risks, namely the onslaught of competition. This is an industry that is slow to pick up on a trend but dogged about milking one, and the establishment won't sit by indefinitely and watch Tesla garner an unchallenged 10, 20, 30 percent of the luxury segment.

Re Cramer and the nine month wait, I couldn't help but wonder, what is this guy's net worth, must be in the hundreds of millions. Why not drop 5K to get on the list? You'd think someone with an investor mentality can appreciate that 9 months isn't an eternity.

 

[smkettner]

^^^ goes to say Tesla sales may improve as inventory grows.
IMO most people prefer the impulse buy.

 

[DaveEV]

"Talking Cars with Consumer Reports: #5 Tesla Model S"

The video is a Consumer Reports Tesla Love Fest - they really like it!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXP4Do1xPGk[/youtube]

 

[scottf200]

Pretty interesting move that the new 4.5 firmware changed to percentage charging...
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/16284-Waiting-for-4-5-firmware/page6?p=332255&viewfull=1#post332255" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Charge Limit
Many customers have asked for the ability to adjust the Model S charge level based on individual anticipated driving needs. To provide this flexibility, charge level options, Standard and Max Range, have been replaced with a slider that allows you to specify the charge limit by percentage.
* To adjust the charge limit, tap the "Set Charge Limit" button and slide to the desired value.
* You can select form 30% to 100% charge. (now 50% to 100% per pictures below)
* The new setting will apply for scheduled and immediate charging instructions.

Pretty awesome right there. That's one setting that many LEAF owners have been asking for for two years and the savvy owner will use it to maximize battery life.

Interesting that they allow the user to default to a range-charge (100%) - I wonder if that changes back to a regular charge after each charge?

Would appear they decided that 30% was too low and whent with 50% min. Via this TMC post:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/16284-Waiting-for-4-5-firmware-now-with-release-notes/page17?p=339030&viewfull=1#post339030" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[TomT]

This makes sense since there is little or no advantage to battery life below 50% charge and they may have also felt that customers would select 30% thinking it would give better battery life and then find themselves potentially short on charge if their driving changed slightly...

Would appear they decided that 30% was too low and went with 50% min.

 

[Petecomp1]

Check out Tesla stock price today (5/13/13) (woo-hoo)! Great to see Tesla getting a big boost. Helps the cause immensely since Tesla's success will push Nissan and others to hurry up and try harder on the range issue, which, when all's said & done, is the deal-breaker for most I'd say. Will my 2016 lease-up be a Nissan or a Tesla? Love my Leaf but...
Pete