The Model 3 is looking a bit over priced now, with cars like the Kona and coming Lead 64 offering similar features, performance and better range for less money.
GM already sells an EV (Bolt), so there are less expensive options out their today. Nothing matches the Model 3's combination of performance, price, styling, and driving experience.
Said another way, Tesla still has existing orders that will keep it busy for a couple years, by which time the Model 3 line will be profitable. Which is to say, Tesla will have succeeded in creating a mass market electric vehicle and turning a profit while doing so, thus changing the landscape to one in which electric vehicles are in some instances preferred to internal combustion vehicles, and so competitors follow suit. Thus accomplishing Tesla’s stated goal of: “to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible”.
Which is jaw dropping.
But everyone is still jumping on the schadenfreuden wagon, why idk.
In other news. While you were sleeping SpaceX has a successful launch of one of their block 5 rockets. Oh and landed stage one on a moving target in the ocean. While in parallel developing a rocket to take people to mars.
This is insane. And we should all enjoy it while it lasts. Because it’s not a given that these type of accomplishments happen any given day, year, or decade.
Google and Facebook are boring monopolists. It makes sense that we enjoy their failures.
But Tesla is a really amazing company. The media coverage makes more sense when you realize that most journalists are deeply unhappy people who are, internally, banging their heads against the wall as a result of never having learned any practical skills. They viscerally hate the idea of progress, because by definition they will not be part of progress. They much prefer that the world be stuck.
It's actually more simple than that, the media likes to vilify successful and wealthy people because somehow in the last couple of years Marxism and anti-capitalism spread like a wildfire throughout media and academia. When Elon pushed back about false reporting and abhorrent standards he wacked the hornet's nest with a stick.
If you look at most of the unicorns - ie Uber - they are living off of VC funding without any clear path to profitability.
At every turn, Musk has put his money where his mouth is. He could have taken his billions years ago and sailed off into the sunset. He wanted to change the world.
Really? You can "understand" why a person, a public figure who runs several large companies, would make baseless accusations against a person he disagrees with, in an attempt to ruin this person for life?
"The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" is a sentiment that has been around for a lot longer than a couple of years.
Marxism and anti-capitalism spread like a wildfire throughout media and academia
Academia especially. There is a huge amount of anti-capitalist sentiment in our Universities and colleges. Elon Musk is a glowing icon, and living proof of the objective superiority of the capitalist system. It's no surprise that hordes of humanities-educated journalists are happy to write hit-pieces about him.
Wait, what? If the world stayed the same, there wouldn't be anything novel to cover.
The survival of journalism is inherently motivated by a need to keep things changing, which is why most outlets by-and-large are either progressive or reactionary: it's change either way.
For a car journalist, “new and exciting” is a slightly different interior, or a fresh layout for the expected knobs on the dashboard. When you start doing stuff like removing the binnacle, taking away the gear shift, and switching to a completely new Power train, they can’t cope anymore.
They have a vocabulary of a few dozen superlatives, mostly related to internal combustion engines (turbo lag, musical exhaust, roar of a motor under load at full throttle, etc). None of that works anymore. They have to develop an entirely new vocabulary for the hums and whirs of an electric drive train with torque vectoring, full torque at 0 RPM, and no exhaust to modify for truly manly neighbour-waking noises,
Electric cars have totally emasculated automotive journalism.
As long as they don't care that they are killing people, and will do so forever (with the current hardware), they are "amazing" in a different sense of the word.
And please spare me the "if they can lower the number of car fatalities overall, they have every right to actively kill a few people here and there" spiel.
> please spare me the "if they can lower the number of car fatalities overall, they have every right to actively kill a few people here and there" spiel
Why? Instead of telling people not to make arguments, please make an argument against it. It love to read a well written argument. Until I do, I'll pick less accidents of a different kind over more accidents of the usual kind.
I'm both asking a question and showing that I differ in opinion. There's no trying to hide it, it's pretty obvious.
Ethiscs is a personal thing, so it's hard to argue in. Your argument though, is not in resonable. Tesla isn't willingly and actively killing people, like you write in your example. It's selling a product, that when used inappropriately, might cause accidents. Meanwhile, when used appropriately, it's saved many lives.
The point isn‘t that some new technology leads to different failure modes. That‘s okay, and good if the total number of fatalities gets lower.
But that isn‘t the case with Tesla. Tesla tries to get away with inadequate hardware and misleading advertising (I‘d even call it outright lies if you show a video touting the ease of unattended autonomous driving, and deep down on the page you bury in small print that availability depends on the jurisdiction — meaning „nowhere“)
Tesla not only wants to make a lot of money, which means that getting adequate hardware is unattractive, they also need the „Elon as visionary“ nimbus, which also means they cannot concede that their initial estimate what they needed was simply wrong, and they seem to have money trouble on the horizon anyway.
Why do you think they don’t care that people have died using auto pilot? And who is honestly arguing that they have “every right to actively kill people”?
Because they don‘t change a damn thing. Not even the advertising that suggests that autonomous driving is here, now, and usable. And of course not their hardware package, because they promised existing customers that it would be sufficient.
For the stupid argument, see any Tesla accident thread on this site. There are always a few commenters who dismiss all accident analysis and blame by claiming that current car traffic is so dangerous, of course Tesla must be allowed to be sloppy and play with peoples‘ lives.
> The media coverage makes more sense when you realize that most journalists are deeply unhappy people who are, internally, banging their heads against the wall as a result of never having learned any practical skills. They viscerally hate the idea of progress, because by definition they will not be part of progress. They much prefer that the world be stuck.
I think your overthinking this unless you have a trustworthy source; humans are just captivated by all drama related to the most successful. It's not that most people reading celebrity gossip know they will never have a successful long-term marriage and therefore buy magazines publishing the divorce of Brangelina.
The problem is, you do not know how many of the existing deposits are for the base model that has been postponed indefinitely. No one (except Tesla) knows how much of the Model 3 demand is for a product that Tesla can sell without bankrupting themselves. I suspect that many of the deposit holders are waiting for the lower priced versions- it's what they were promised repeatedly, and they were supposed to get base models starting in Q4 2017. Note also that many depositors were expecting to get a $7500 tax credit with their $35K purchase, so many folks were actually expecting a $27.5K car. Tesla might not produce the base version before the tax credit phases out.
So how much of the demand is for a real product? Tesla could reveal this information, but Elon Musk famously called inquiries about these figures "boring, boneheaded" questions. As far as profitability, the jury is very much out on that one.
"Standard battery" does not necessarily mean "base model". You can't even make a reservation for a $35K Model 3 (I just tried), but I was able to do so in the past.
I agree, nobody knows. I don't even think Tesla knows what demand will be. It's all spitballing and guesstimates.
Most people don't put down a deposit on an car that doesn't even exist yet and wait for years. How much demand will there be for the car under normal conditions, when you can take it for a test drive and buy it in the normal way, quality is known, manufacturing problems aren't always making the news, and there's no more status in having one than owning a Leaf or a Prius?
I cancelled, but only because I want an extended battery version with autopilot. I'm sure others cancelled their orders for the base version to speed up delivery.
There is no distinction in the reservation. When your reservation becomes available, you can configure any “trim” that is currently available. That was the long range first, and now long range and performance.
lol the extended battery is the only version they're producing right now. Just got mine two months ago. you dun goofed, it's amazing. But I heard the waiting list for new orders is only 2 - 5 months.
I think the touch screen on the 3 looks like someone glued an aftermarket stand to the dash, and stuck a crappy android tablet in it. Tesla interiors are subpar when compared to other luxury manufactures, and the infotainment system sucks just as hard as everyone else, but with more knockoffs (Slacker Radio). Just give me Apple CarPlay, and be done with it.
I was in the same boat. I’m one of the 24% — not that I necessarily believe that number, but it seems reasonable.
I ended up getting the reservation email the same day I bought a different car. I’m sure the 3 drives great, but the idea of another 4-5 month wait (which would have probably have been 6-8 months and pushed out past the tax break) wasn’t appealing. I’ll definitely look at it in the future, but the combination of not being able to even sit in one (no demo available at my local Tesla), let alone test drive one, with the wait just wasn’t worth the risk.
But for me the final thing that made me cancel my day one reservation was all of the production hell talk. I don’t want a car produced in an assembly line that has problems. The multiple line setups (the tent???), the varied production speeds, removing tests and welds that at one point seemed essential... That’s not a good way to ensure consistency. Hell, how much did they have to push (and how much got missed) to make their vaunted 5k/week goal? Maybe in 2-3 years they will have things streamlined enough to get past these issues. But for now, I didn’t to be a guinea pig.
The inside of a Model 3 is not anywhere near as nice as the inside of any other expensive car. For $40k at an Acura dealer you will get the top-of-the-line interior with fancy stitching on the seats, an actual instrument package, Android Auto and CarPlay, etc. And that's at a price point where Tesla cars are currently not even available.
It means the speedometer is in front of the driver where it belongs.
>> Android Auto and CarPlay
> You think that's a feature worth shelling out for, I think it's a crutch.
On the Internet, opinions are pretty much free of charge, of course. Android Auto voice control is dramatically better than the voice control that comes in a Model 3, and Android Auto pre-caches map tiles along your route (and anywhere else you specify) while the software in the Model 3 never preloads anything so it's pretty much always showing blank tiles when in an area of no mobile coverage. Also when Tesla goes out of business or for any other reason decides to stop supporting and paying for the mobile data connection in the Model 3 owners are going to wish they had something more like AA or CarPlay that's upgradeable separately from the vehicle.
Luxury for me means a touchscreen that works, a media/navigation system that doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out, a car that adapts to my preferences at every step of the way, evolves as technology evolves around it and an experience that was deliberately crafted from start to finish.
Luxury for me does not mean fancy stitching, special leather, a mechanical clock on the dashboard for no reason, software that doesn't get updated, exquisite wood grain in random places, lots of knobs, shiny trims, "dealership experience", or 4 years of free oil changes.
I think you'll see the definition of luxury change as our concept of mobility changes. Traditional markers of luxury won't matter anymore and that will leave incumbents who have traditional luxury as their core competence in a weird place.
This. Traditional “luxury” cars are like those Nokia phones they made with gold plates and swarowski “crystals”. Nothing but gimmicks, and a laughable feature set compared to an iPhone.
Except that the Tesla's huge touchscreen is about as usable as the Vertu phone. And unlike Vertu, Tesla has no precious materials in it. Tesla has the innards of an old Hyundai.
I can understand when you laud Tesla for being emissions-free, or for high torque, or for figuring out how to cool Panasonic's battery packs properly. But pretending that it is a luxury car is just silly.
There are some gimmick luxury cars out there but for car people, there are some damn fine experiences out there. An entire range of expensive UX from the rugged to the sleek. Cars are just different.
I'm not convinced that a single, large touchscreen is actually good UX for a car. Knobs make me feel way safer while driving because they give be instant feedback on my selected setting by either clicking or snapping into position.
I don't want to take my eyes of the road to change my AC setting, to enable the rear window heating, or to change the radio channel.
Before people now come around to tell me I can have both: there's limited space in a car for that. If you place everything too narrow, you won't gain anything in terms of safety.
I think you have to drive one for a weekend to truly be the judge. Your argument is the kind of argument people made about tactile keyboards when iPhone first came out with a completely software one. On the surface, it was a valid concern - physical keyboards were simply far better input devices than software based ones when considered in isolation. However keyboards are part of a system, and in the system the physical keyboard was a local maxima. For the system to grow past that local maxima, it had to ditch the physical keyboard.
Yes there are tradeoffs to make, but it's a different set of tradeoffs - ones that we can adapt around given a better future for the system as a whole. That being said, you really have to live with it for a weekend before being able to judge it in full.
I think people are right - purpose built physical buttons and switches will always be superior at some level to software buttons, especially when driving. However, it's worth considering if there is the promise of a better future for the whole system by going down the 100% software route. Maybe it's a bit ahead of its time, but consider a semi-autonomous future where drivers mostly only assist driving and spend 90% of their time free to do other things (1). In the mean time Tesla gets better at delivering software updates to hundreds of thousands of cars in the wild, improving their software processes as a competitive advantage. Other car companies simply aren't doing this. In the future, every car company will need to do this and learn to get good at doing it.
(1) If you've tried Autopilot, you know it's good enough that engaging with the touch screen for extended periods is no problem at all.
> I'm not convinced that a single, large touchscreen is actually good UX for a car.
For a car with a human driver, it's both a bound input service and bad for key driving displays. For a fully automated car with a human “commander”, it's not a bad idea, but then the centerline mount is probably not ideal.
I highly doubt that traditional traits of luxury like interior build quality, fine details, mechanical touches, etc. will ever go away. The Tesla is a great car, but for people with a different taste, there are some really nice alternatives. For people with lots of money, there are far better driving experiences to be had.
The geek part of my brain is not the part that lights up when I’m driving.
according to Needham & Co. analyst Rajvindra Gill. Tesla disputes that"
I'm trying to find some substantiation for the claim but I'm not finding anything. The closest I see is from BI that there was a "note to clients." The claim is falsifiable so ostensibly this analyst has information other people don't have somehow.
I'd sure like these analysts to show their work, when they do these "projections." The news media and traders seem to respond to them, so there must be something to it, but I'm incredulous generally.
Anyone have any insight on whether these analysts can actually substantiate their projections?
Tesla could easily refute the numbers by revealing actual cancellation numbers. The fact that they haven't, legally speaking (referring to SEC disclosure requirements), means the numbers are on point (but might have different significant if explained in a different context).
Tesla has, in fact refuted it in a a statement that they had a net increase in orders of model 5s last week. The authors just refused to post it, which is a pretty common hi job recently. When Matt “Trump is paying him how much” Drudge starts to run articles like this on the Drudge Report, you know the fix is in.
With all the hype around the original preorder, I suspect a lot of people who preordered were not serious anyway, or fell victim to wishful thinking about their ability to afford the car.
So in any case, even without the production delays, a higher than normal rate of cancellations would not be surprising.
Besides that I wonder how accurate the claim of the cancelled orders is, Tesla at the beginning of the month clearly stated that they had about 420k reservations. Whatever the number of cancelled reservations are, it seems that the number of open reservations is quite stable.
It is not a surprise that there are quite a few cancellations. People might need a car more urgently, or just reconsidered. On the other side, of course people haven't stopped putting down reservations. And so far, Tesla has not marketed the car.
This is just about to change, Tesla has prepared 100 Model 3 Performance to be set up at the Tesla stores for offering test drives for the first time, since the Model 3 came to market. That is certainly going to create more orders, as most people wouldn't place an order without a proper test drive.
Would you honestly believe a Tesla spokesperson? If these happened, seems like it would show up in a quarterly earnings call. Those things have to be somewhat trustworthy. Now if they don't deny the claims, then I'd worry a bit, no matter what the spin is.
Many mainstream car companies, particularly GM with its all-electric Chevy Bolt have cars with roughly comparable specs to the Model 3 and you get get one today. The allure of getting something now instead of waiting surely contributes to some of these cancellations.
Yep. You can walk into any Chevy dealer nationwide right now and walk out in an hour with a Bolt for under $35k. There are 114 of them sitting in inventory within 25 miles of my house, according to Chevy's web site.
It certainly says a lot about marketing and mass psychology. But then again, anyone who will pre-order any kind of product is a self-identifying irrational economic actor. There's no accounting for them.
If humans were rational economic actors, we wouldn’t have exhaustive behavioral studies on how to nudge their decisions towards more positive outcomes.
I've been considering a Tesla, but I can't pull the trigger. The 3 looks boring S knockoff, and have been plagued with quality issues. Supposedly the issues are more under control now, but the early 3s in the parking lot at work have crooked body panels. It turned me off.
I do like that Tesla made an electric car that doesn't look stupid and doesn't suck. For far too long all that existedd were citicars[0] and NEVs[1]. Also, the diamond lane sticker is very seductive. The thing that I can't stand is the interior. It's so empty. The infotainment sucks just as hard as legacy manufacturers (knockoff Pandora, shitty maps, stupid apps like Paint), doesn't have any gadgets (e.g. blindspot detection), and then the standout features features are gimmicks. An autodrive that falls in the uncanny valley, a self park that required to me to hug bumpers on a crowded parking lot, and summon, which is essentially a three four line macro (although, that is something).
Ultimately, the car is disappointing. I guess I'll just wait and get a Porsche Taycan[2], which is ironic because it wouldn't exist without Tesla.
I have been driving a Model 3 since for 3 months now and it's the most amazing car I have ever had. I switched from a BMW 3 series, which is a no contest comparison. The autopilot is the killer app for driving long distances on the freeway especially in traffic. I let a friend drive for a while and then, after driving home in his own car, said 'I feel like I just saw a washing machine and now I have to wash my clothes by hand.'
This guy Gill says Tesla is going to go bankrupt because no one wants to buy its cars, and he says it is going to go bankrupt because it won't be able to produce cars fast enough to meet demand.
I wonder how much of his total fortune he has bet on shorting Tesla stock. It sounds like he is getting pretty desperate.
87 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] threadWhat is a Lead 64?
2. They have inferior performance.
3. They match the range of the Short Range Model 3.
Which is jaw dropping.
But everyone is still jumping on the schadenfreuden wagon, why idk.
In other news. While you were sleeping SpaceX has a successful launch of one of their block 5 rockets. Oh and landed stage one on a moving target in the ocean. While in parallel developing a rocket to take people to mars.
This is insane. And we should all enjoy it while it lasts. Because it’s not a given that these type of accomplishments happen any given day, year, or decade.
Google and Facebook are boring monopolists. It makes sense that we enjoy their failures.
But Tesla is a really amazing company. The media coverage makes more sense when you realize that most journalists are deeply unhappy people who are, internally, banging their heads against the wall as a result of never having learned any practical skills. They viscerally hate the idea of progress, because by definition they will not be part of progress. They much prefer that the world be stuck.
Least terrible billionaire (no sleight to Buffet and Gates though, solid philanthropy effort of their part).
At every turn, Musk has put his money where his mouth is. He could have taken his billions years ago and sailed off into the sunset. He wanted to change the world.
Uber subsidizes rides. No one knows what will happen to Uber once they charge enough to turn a profit on each ride.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-must-raise-fares-and-...
I’m not condoning what he said, but I can understanding what lead up to it.
I can't understand that at all.
I have seen people ruined for more petty disagreements.
https://www.poynter.org/news/today-media-history-mr-dooley-j...
The survival of journalism is inherently motivated by a need to keep things changing, which is why most outlets by-and-large are either progressive or reactionary: it's change either way.
Most journalists cover vituperation, politics, and angst.
They have a vocabulary of a few dozen superlatives, mostly related to internal combustion engines (turbo lag, musical exhaust, roar of a motor under load at full throttle, etc). None of that works anymore. They have to develop an entirely new vocabulary for the hums and whirs of an electric drive train with torque vectoring, full torque at 0 RPM, and no exhaust to modify for truly manly neighbour-waking noises,
Electric cars have totally emasculated automotive journalism.
And please spare me the "if they can lower the number of car fatalities overall, they have every right to actively kill a few people here and there" spiel.
Why? Instead of telling people not to make arguments, please make an argument against it. It love to read a well written argument. Until I do, I'll pick less accidents of a different kind over more accidents of the usual kind.
If I have saved someone from drowning I still may not kill an enemy. Unsurprisingly the state will still imprison me.
Are you seriously arguing the opposite, under the guise of „just asking questions“?
Ethiscs is a personal thing, so it's hard to argue in. Your argument though, is not in resonable. Tesla isn't willingly and actively killing people, like you write in your example. It's selling a product, that when used inappropriately, might cause accidents. Meanwhile, when used appropriately, it's saved many lives.
But that isn‘t the case with Tesla. Tesla tries to get away with inadequate hardware and misleading advertising (I‘d even call it outright lies if you show a video touting the ease of unattended autonomous driving, and deep down on the page you bury in small print that availability depends on the jurisdiction — meaning „nowhere“)
Tesla not only wants to make a lot of money, which means that getting adequate hardware is unattractive, they also need the „Elon as visionary“ nimbus, which also means they cannot concede that their initial estimate what they needed was simply wrong, and they seem to have money trouble on the horizon anyway.
That‘s what makes the company scummy.
For the stupid argument, see any Tesla accident thread on this site. There are always a few commenters who dismiss all accident analysis and blame by claiming that current car traffic is so dangerous, of course Tesla must be allowed to be sloppy and play with peoples‘ lives.
I think your overthinking this unless you have a trustworthy source; humans are just captivated by all drama related to the most successful. It's not that most people reading celebrity gossip know they will never have a successful long-term marriage and therefore buy magazines publishing the divorce of Brangelina.
I m just saying, one has to appreciate Elons humor. He is selling tesla shorts right now:
http://choicegear.org/index.php/product/mens-tesla-bib-short...
Unfortunatly, they are not meant for swimming, so maybe- should expand his product-pallet with a bathing short in size r (for rat).
So how much of the demand is for a real product? Tesla could reveal this information, but Elon Musk famously called inquiries about these figures "boring, boneheaded" questions. As far as profitability, the jury is very much out on that one.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/MkRKzvc.png
They'll get some credibility back when their trailing run rate has been 5000/week for a while.
Most people don't put down a deposit on an car that doesn't even exist yet and wait for years. How much demand will there be for the car under normal conditions, when you can take it for a test drive and buy it in the normal way, quality is known, manufacturing problems aren't always making the news, and there's no more status in having one than owning a Leaf or a Prius?
I ended up getting the reservation email the same day I bought a different car. I’m sure the 3 drives great, but the idea of another 4-5 month wait (which would have probably have been 6-8 months and pushed out past the tax break) wasn’t appealing. I’ll definitely look at it in the future, but the combination of not being able to even sit in one (no demo available at my local Tesla), let alone test drive one, with the wait just wasn’t worth the risk.
But for me the final thing that made me cancel my day one reservation was all of the production hell talk. I don’t want a car produced in an assembly line that has problems. The multiple line setups (the tent???), the varied production speeds, removing tests and welds that at one point seemed essential... That’s not a good way to ensure consistency. Hell, how much did they have to push (and how much got missed) to make their vaunted 5k/week goal? Maybe in 2-3 years they will have things streamlined enough to get past these issues. But for now, I didn’t to be a guinea pig.
What does that mean?
> Android Auto and CarPlay
You think that's a feature worth shelling out for, I think it's a crutch.
> What does that mean?
It means the speedometer is in front of the driver where it belongs.
>> Android Auto and CarPlay
> You think that's a feature worth shelling out for, I think it's a crutch.
On the Internet, opinions are pretty much free of charge, of course. Android Auto voice control is dramatically better than the voice control that comes in a Model 3, and Android Auto pre-caches map tiles along your route (and anywhere else you specify) while the software in the Model 3 never preloads anything so it's pretty much always showing blank tiles when in an area of no mobile coverage. Also when Tesla goes out of business or for any other reason decides to stop supporting and paying for the mobile data connection in the Model 3 owners are going to wish they had something more like AA or CarPlay that's upgradeable separately from the vehicle.
Luxury for me does not mean fancy stitching, special leather, a mechanical clock on the dashboard for no reason, software that doesn't get updated, exquisite wood grain in random places, lots of knobs, shiny trims, "dealership experience", or 4 years of free oil changes.
I think you'll see the definition of luxury change as our concept of mobility changes. Traditional markers of luxury won't matter anymore and that will leave incumbents who have traditional luxury as their core competence in a weird place.
I can understand when you laud Tesla for being emissions-free, or for high torque, or for figuring out how to cool Panasonic's battery packs properly. But pretending that it is a luxury car is just silly.
I don't want to take my eyes of the road to change my AC setting, to enable the rear window heating, or to change the radio channel.
Before people now come around to tell me I can have both: there's limited space in a car for that. If you place everything too narrow, you won't gain anything in terms of safety.
Yes there are tradeoffs to make, but it's a different set of tradeoffs - ones that we can adapt around given a better future for the system as a whole. That being said, you really have to live with it for a weekend before being able to judge it in full.
I think people are right - purpose built physical buttons and switches will always be superior at some level to software buttons, especially when driving. However, it's worth considering if there is the promise of a better future for the whole system by going down the 100% software route. Maybe it's a bit ahead of its time, but consider a semi-autonomous future where drivers mostly only assist driving and spend 90% of their time free to do other things (1). In the mean time Tesla gets better at delivering software updates to hundreds of thousands of cars in the wild, improving their software processes as a competitive advantage. Other car companies simply aren't doing this. In the future, every car company will need to do this and learn to get good at doing it.
(1) If you've tried Autopilot, you know it's good enough that engaging with the touch screen for extended periods is no problem at all.
For a car with a human driver, it's both a bound input service and bad for key driving displays. For a fully automated car with a human “commander”, it's not a bad idea, but then the centerline mount is probably not ideal.
The geek part of my brain is not the part that lights up when I’m driving.
I'm trying to find some substantiation for the claim but I'm not finding anything. The closest I see is from BI that there was a "note to clients." The claim is falsifiable so ostensibly this analyst has information other people don't have somehow.
I'd sure like these analysts to show their work, when they do these "projections." The news media and traders seem to respond to them, so there must be something to it, but I'm incredulous generally.
Anyone have any insight on whether these analysts can actually substantiate their projections?
[1] http://uk.businessinsider.com/10-things-european-markets-jul...
If Tesla executives don't care about this guy or his projections then they wouldn't think it's worth their effort to respond.
It seems like the finance world's version of Twitter trolls.
So in any case, even without the production delays, a higher than normal rate of cancellations would not be surprising.
It is not a surprise that there are quite a few cancellations. People might need a car more urgently, or just reconsidered. On the other side, of course people haven't stopped putting down reservations. And so far, Tesla has not marketed the car.
This is just about to change, Tesla has prepared 100 Model 3 Performance to be set up at the Tesla stores for offering test drives for the first time, since the Model 3 came to market. That is certainly going to create more orders, as most people wouldn't place an order without a proper test drive.
I do like that Tesla made an electric car that doesn't look stupid and doesn't suck. For far too long all that existedd were citicars[0] and NEVs[1]. Also, the diamond lane sticker is very seductive. The thing that I can't stand is the interior. It's so empty. The infotainment sucks just as hard as legacy manufacturers (knockoff Pandora, shitty maps, stupid apps like Paint), doesn't have any gadgets (e.g. blindspot detection), and then the standout features features are gimmicks. An autodrive that falls in the uncanny valley, a self park that required to me to hug bumpers on a crowded parking lot, and summon, which is essentially a three four line macro (although, that is something).
Ultimately, the car is disappointing. I guess I'll just wait and get a Porsche Taycan[2], which is ironic because it wouldn't exist without Tesla.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicar
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle
[2] https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/future-cars/a12778510/...
I wonder how much of his total fortune he has bet on shorting Tesla stock. It sounds like he is getting pretty desperate.