Mike K's Revolving Tesla Thread

[Mike K]

I'm splitting this off from the investment thread because I think this will appeal to more people than the other one. Plus I swing off of Elon Musk's nuts.

So then, today's news was HUGE. Up until now the Model S has been a great car to own in a city but to take it on a road trip was basically not possible because of the 300 mile range.

Tesla has supercharger stations which give you 150 miles charge in 30 minutes but they're pretty sparse so far. Only between LA, San Francisco and San Diego and between New York and Boston.

So today Tesla announced that they're expanding the network worldwide as well as reducing the charging time for the same amount of mileage.

Whereas before a 30 minute charge would have gotten you 150 miles now a 20 minute charge will get you the same and a 40 minute charge will get you full capacity.

The cost? If you drive the 85kWh Model S: nothing. Essentially you get free travel across the country for life. Wanna drive from LA to Vegas? Free. Chicago to New York? FREE. That is amazing. When they release car that is cheaper to buy (and he says it's his next goal) it is going to shake the automotive industry the fuck up. I don't know a more politically correct way of saying that. This is a game changer.

Likewise, I think Tesla is going to end up being the standard for chargers. Apple rushed into the iPod and forced their standard on the industry. Suddenly if you didn't own an iPod half the radios out there wouldn't control your MP3 player or offer native support. Now I don't think Elon is foolish enough to assume that he can dominate the market forever like Apple did but what he can do is corner the charging market, effectively making Tesla's supercharger the standard for electric vehicles and charging people that don't own Teslas a fee for a charge.

Today's press release: TESLA DRAMATICALLY EXPANDS SUPERCHARGER NETWORK, DELIVERING CONVENIENT, FREE LONG DISTANCE DRIVING THROUGHOUT U.S. AND CANADA | Press Releases | Tesla Motors

Supercharger Page: Supercharger | Tesla Motors

Click to read more...

 

[Burtonrider10022]

couple the fast charging abilities with a few lightweight batteries or capacitors that could be hot-swapped and this could be even more awesome. So while you're charging half the batteries, you're just swapping out the other half, so after 20 minutes you're at 100% full.

Probably not feasible, but just a thought. Either way, that's some awesome technology to be able to do this. My guess is that this is capacitor based technology, IDK how they could have created a battery that would be able to function like this.

 

[Stink Star]

That car is amazingly badass! Fast, looks great, amazing interior.... Only problem is that it's 90k.

GM is also making the spark EV have the new SAE quick charge (in fact I think it will be the first production car with that capability) and it can do 80% charge in 20 minutes. Now granted its nowhere as cool as the tesla, but its also barely 18k after tax breaks. Also it's like 190hp and 270ft/lbs as compared to 90hp and 100ft/lbs for the gas engine so it's actually kinda quick

 

[Mike K]

couple the fast charging abilities with a few lightweight batteries or capacitors that could be hot-swapped and this could be even more awesome. So while you're charging half the batteries, you're just swapping out the other half, so after 20 minutes you're at 100% full.

Probably not feasible, but just a thought. Either way, that's some awesome technology to be able to do this. My guess is that this is capacitor based technology, IDK how they could have created a battery that would be able to function like this.

The cars equipped with the supercharger capability are equipped with dual internal chargers. So you effectively have two 220v chargers built into the car.

What's even better is Tesla built all the cars with the supercharging ability regardless of whether people paid the $2000 for it or not so even they can pay the $2000 now and have the function software activated.

 

[Burtonrider10022]

^^^ that's really cool.

now you have me looking at electric cars. I'm not about to go buy one, but they have charging stations at school so I could easily pull it off...

Electric Cars: A Definitive Guide to Electric Vehicles | Hybrid Cars

If it were 4WD or AWD I'd rock the shit out of the RAV4.

Otherwise, the Volvo looks nice (because it looks like a normal car, as opposed to the abortion that is the iMiEv thing). I'd like to see a Fusion electric from Ford, as opposed to just the Focus

 

[RICH17]

Just buy one already Mike!

 

[boostedguy05]

Here its waiting to he moves to California.

 

[ktraver97ss]

Ya he is going to have one, he swings harder than james for turks R8.

 

[Shibby50]

Not sure if this was in any of your threads or not but they also announced that they paid off their government loan 9 years early. Fuck yeah

 

[sickmint79]

i don't think some of these dreams are going to pan out like replacing your batteries unless you blowtorch them. you can reduce life just by normal things and maybe even do so significantly - and the batteries ARE NOT cheap. lot of excitement about tesla which hasn't really proven they can really make cars for a profit yet have they?

 

[Mike K]

i don't think some of these dreams are going to pan out like replacing your batteries unless you blowtorch them. you can reduce life just by normal things and maybe even do so significantly - and the batteries ARE NOT cheap. lot of excitement about tesla which hasn't really proven they can really make cars for a profit yet have they?

No indeed they haven't but they will. You can see where they were, where they are and where the trajectory is pointing them. They estimate 26% profit margins now that they're working with larger economies of scale. Likewise you have to consider that warranty work is also factored into the bottom line and an electric powertrain has exponentially less components to fail than a tradition internal combustion drive train and the components are more reliable than their internal combustion counterparts. They're not paying for alternators, for transmissions, engines, etc.

Speaking as someone who's 2 year old, 25,000 miles 535 has been in for service no less than 5 times in 8 months and has received about $8,000 in parts under warranty I don't think the savings in warranty work can be overstated and I think it's something most people haven't even thought of, mostly because your typical analyst isn't also a car guy. Now granted, BMW has been absolutely awesome about servicing the car but still, that comes out of their bottom line.

I also think Tesla is going to lock in the charging market regardless of who makes the cars. Everyone will be using Tesla equipment because Tesla's infrastructure is going to push the barrier to entry much higher for competing brands that don't already have a charging network.

This company is here to stay in some form or fashion and it will be profitable.

Not sure if this was in any of your threads or not but they also announced that they paid off their government loan 9 years early. Fuck yeah

Yeah, they did it by diluting their stock but the market didn't seem to care so yeah!

Ya he is going to have one, he swings harder than james for turks R8.

Secretly I hope that I end up doing an assload of driving in LA so I can justify one. Anything over 20,000 miles a year and it ends up being a wash between it and the BMW.

 

[sickmint79]

No indeed they haven't but they will. You can see where they were, where they are and where the trajectory is pointing them. They estimate 26% profit margins now that they're working with larger economies of scale. Likewise you have to consider that warranty work is also factored into the bottom line and an electric powertrain has exponentially less components to fail than a tradition internal combustion drive train and the components are more reliable than their internal combustion counterparts. They're not paying for alternators, for transmissions, engines, etc.

Speaking as someone who's 2 year old, 25,000 miles 535 has been in for service no less than 5 times in 8 months and has received about $8,000 in parts under warranty I don't think the savings in warranty work can be overstated and I think it's something most people haven't even thought of, mostly because your typical analyst isn't also a car guy. Now granted, BMW has been absolutely awesome about servicing the car but still, that comes out of their bottom line.

what i see more likely is tesla being bought out or becoming some kind of OEM supplier in which case they won't be making those massive profit margins. that is pretty anecdotal. i had a '97 M3 from 2002-2005, a '89 535i from 2004-2005, and a '04 545i from 2010-2012. i autocrossed the M3 and 535i, and had their mileage from 50-90k, 220-260k, and 60k-95k. total parts $3k? i think i'm being generous with that. possibly quite generous.

 

[Mike K]

what i see more likely is tesla being bought out or becoming some kind of OEM supplier in which case they won't be making those massive profit margins. that is pretty anecdotal. i had a '97 M3 from 2002-2005, a '89 535i from 2004-2005, and a '04 545i from 2010-2012. i autocrossed the M3 and 535i, and had their mileage from 50-90k, 220-260k, and 60k-95k. total parts $3k? i think i'm being generous with that. possibly quite generous.

Yeah but post is a perfect example of why you need to look at large data samples. I mean the 545 is notorious for being an absolutely wretched turd and you didn't seem to have any issues with yours. Transmission problems, engine problems, electronics, etc that were all resolved in the 2006 model year update but plagued that car and pretty much anything that had the 4.4 or early revisions of iDrive. Then you have the newer direct injection cars with their own slew of problems. So your experience, at least with one of the cars, is directly contrary to the norm which is why you can't pay much attention to data in small samples like that.

I'm sure there are people out there that had a GM 350 diesel that never gave them any problems too.

I don't see anything pointing to Tesla becoming an OEM supplier. If anything is anecdotal I'd say that's probably it.

 

[slowchevy]

been seeing a few around town lately. hot looking cars

 

[sickmint79]

Yeah but post is a perfect example of why you need to look at large data samples. I mean the 545 is notorious for being an absolutely wretched turd and you didn't seem to have any issues with yours. Transmission problems, engine problems, electronics, etc that were all resolved in the 2006 model year update but plagued that car and pretty much anything that had the 4.4 or early revisions of iDrive. Then you have the newer direct injection cars with their own slew of problems. So your experience, at least with one of the cars, is directly contrary to the norm which is why you can't pay much attention to data in small samples like that.

I'm sure there are people out there that had a GM 350 diesel that never gave them any problems too.

I don't see anything pointing to Tesla becoming an OEM supplier. If anything is anecdotal I'd say that's probably it.

my point was merely your own 8k seems pretty atypical.

nothing anecdotal about my tesla becoming an OEM or getting bought by someone for their tech theory. just my thoughts on where they will go because i don't really expect them to survive as an actual car manufacturer really.

 

[Mike K]

my point was merely your own 8k seems pretty atypical.

On that we can agree. Likewise your $3000 spread amongst three cars is atypical (and also doesn't account for warranty work that would affect BMW's bottom line). So the truth lies somewhere in between but either way, I can virtually guarantee that Tesla will have fewer warranty claims just by virtue of the simplicity of the drivetrain. Likewise labor will be less expensive as well since you can just drop the sled with the motor on it and replace it.

 

[sickmint79]

yah but battery replacement is what, $30k?

 

[Mike K]

It goes down by the day and there's no real issue with the batteries. It's $12,000 for the customer to buy it flat out for the 85kWh version, 10k for the 60.

The nice thing about this though is that they aren't really breaking down walls with respect to the battery. It's just 7000+ cells together. Granted there's the potential for something to go wrong but so far they're not seeing it on the Roadsters and those have been around for 5 years and the Model S uses largely the same technology plus according to Tesla is nearly impossible to brick unlike the roadster.

So the warranty I think is largely piece of mind/ marketing though that's a valid concern and any kind of wide spread problem with the battery could have sweeping implications for the company.

 

[sickmint79]

we shall see !

 

[sickmint79]

if you are holding any tesla i'd sell some covered calls at 110 or above and expect to keep the money. although i'm under the impression you're kind of just in and out.

 

[Mike K]

I'm out... I didn't have the time to micro-manage it right now so I figured I'd pull out.

My wife seemed to be talking me into a Model S today though... There's something in the water out here.

 

[sickmint79]

celebrity ceo musk to demo charge in less time than it takes to fill a gas tank on the 20th. bet the stock will go up or down?

 

[Eagle]

charge in less time than it takes to fill? Sure. Question is how much charge? 10mi? 25mi? Took the boss's 85 to lunch the other day with 4 ppl total. Plugged into the 30A charging station in downtown Naperville and it picked up like 60 miles over something like 70 minutes.

The car is cool... but he's got a laundry list of issues w/Tesla support. He also paid for the onsite support, so they're always at work fixing his issues for him in our parking lot. Last time I saw the car, the rear passenger window had fallen into the door and it was going to rain, so he taped a bunch of erasers to the glass once he'd pushed it up into place. I felt really bad for him that day!

I think the car as I've seen it (loaded 85) would be a deal around the 90k mark... which is nearly 30k less than what he bought his for. But this driving across the country for free business really does sound enticing and would eventually recover some of the costs.

 

[sickmint79]

rich people toys.

there may be a day regular folks own a full electric as a commuter car, but not until they are 30k and can go 200 miles - we are a long way off from that. and i doubt tesla will be the ones making them.

 

[Eagle]

I thought that Tesla had a much more affordable option coming out in the next year or so?