New Tesla Roadster: Zero to 60 in 1.9 Seconds, 1/4 mile @8.8; Top speed 250mph
 

https://blog.caranddriver.com/new-te...20-mile-range/

I guess we all sort of new this was coming, granted for $200k, you could build alot more. My initial reaction was ain't no way this will be a self driving autonomous car, so from that PoV it is a good thing.

I don't think this car will ever come to fruition under Musk's ownership.

For the base Roadster, a $50,000 deposit is required upfront. None of those base cars will be built until they complete the run of the Founder's Series (1,000 cars) that require a $250,000 deposit upfront, and production isn’t slated to begin until 2020.

With Musk's penchant for over promising and under delivering - that probably means you're giving him a $250,000.00 interest free loan for 3 or more years.

If I had that much expendable cash, I don't think I'd take the risk that I might get a fancy fast car someday.

How long will Tesla be in business?

Complete vapor ware. They can’t even produce the model 3s they have orders for.

Of course, it will have twice the range of any electric car that exists today. He should have went ahead and claimed it would fly to the Moon, too.

It's worse than that. If the firm goes bust, you get the chance to appear in bankruptcy court and bitch about your 250K going bye-bye, with the complete sympathy of the court and his lawyers, and nothing else.

Yep.

Musk is treading dangerous waters right now. People are beginning to see that he can't deliver on his elaborate promises.

It's a shame because Tesla products are really cool, but if he doesn't get his production issues worked out it's going to kill him as his potential investors look elsewhere.

Preston Tucker x 100?

You know people can hate on this guy, or think he will fail because his plans are grandiose. Maybe your openly rooting for it because you dont like the idea of electric cars. Im on the fence myself

But I would rather have a rich guy who dreams big, and takes care of his employees, than the same old money fogeys we ussually deal with. I work in the experimental aviation industry and we had a lot of people jump ship for Space X, none of them came begging for their jobs back

Notice no one has said the technology doesn’t work.

It will happen- maybe not on time or in budget but it will happen

I don’t like it.... but I do think it will happen. Tire technology just became VERY important to racing and high end street cars.

I'm all on board ... but Telsa has NEVER shown a profit. And subsidies are about to end, so they will be in hole for millions.

For new technology to work, it has to be economically viable. The Govt. can't FORCE it work, doesn't happen that way.

Electric cars are not the problem ... the problem is the grid ... when 100 people in a neighborhood come home from work and plug in their 100 Kwh batteries ... yeah, not going to happen without reworking the entire electric grid. And if that update occurs ... we are ALL going to pay for it, not just the people that own electric cars. Not to mention the 80% of homes what will have to have an update service just to be able to charge their cars and keep the lights on at the same time.

It's going to happen. And when batteries double their present power density, it will be practical. But the entire electric grid is going to have to totally replaced at the cost of trillions of dollars for it to be practical.

Electric cars should be CHEAPER than the gasoline cars.

You do realize that Tesla and Solar City have proven to be a lousy places to work, don't you?

Sexual harassment lawsuits, racial discrimination lawsuits , unwarranted firings, mass layoffs without legal notice, etc....

Money magazine:

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/25/tech...ure/index.html

Fortune magazine:

http://fortune.com/2017/10/13/tesla-fires-employees/

It seems strange that at a time when Tesla should need all hands on deck to start building Model 3's in quantity they are instead terminating a significant number of employees.

Musk had claimed the Tesla would be producing 5,000 Model 3's per week at this time. They are averaging about 3 per day at this time.

My Husbands Cousin now owns the family business, a machine shop that makes parts for Harley Davidson, and Indian, recently bought one of these Teslas, and drove it to my Husbands Mothers funeral. :rolleyes: His is black.

Mr. Musk certainly has allot of Preston Tucker personality traits and some John Deloreon thrown into the mix. He has accomplished more than most who go it alone to reinvent transportation. But his inability to deliver the promised low end vehicles in a timely manner to the hundreds of thousands who have placed orders may eventually be the end of his dreams and his car company. If you put a large enough battery, (energy density) in a car and large enough electric motors, he can probably build one that will outrun a top fuel dragster. That doesn't make it a good car by itself. A guy I work with bought the Tesla sedan with the huge battery and the ludicrous mode programming used. I went for a ride. It was the quickest car I have ever been in 0-100 MPH. It was kind of cool and fun for a ride. Would I own one? No way. Not the right demographic. He is 47 years old and I guess also the wrong demographic. He owned it 4 months and sold it off. He had bought it used and didn't lose too much on it. He said after a month or so, it was just too boring. It also had numerous electronics issues that had it in for repair on a weekly basis. Nothing serious, just little aggravating electronic and software stuff that drove him crazy. He had sold a late model Maserati to buy the Tesla. His most telling comment about owning the Tesla was, "This car is way faster than the Maserati, but it has no soul. It is a hollow antiseptic vehicle. And it is less reliable than the Maserati". This guy also owns a 1970 Challenger 440 6 pack car, so he is a car guy. So super fast doesn't always = love.

I didn’t mention Tesla or Solar City because I have no experience. I do with Space X. I personally know people there who like it.

And a layoff doesn’t make it a bad place to work. Pretty much every company has whistle blowers now about sexual harassment and racial discrimination so no dice there either. If they were compensated fairly for the time they were there I wouldn’t say it was a bad job.

If you paid me 2000 bucks a day to come and help finish a project and laid me off after two weeks when it was done I wouldn’t say it was a bad job just that I wished it lasted longer.

Also I live and work in California. It’s very difficult to fire someone for being bad at their job. So I have a hard time believing they fired all those people without proper due process and got away with it. Grab a girls butt or in my line of work take a picture in a secure area then post it on Facebook are about the only way to get gone in a hurry. Both of those you probably deserve it.

I would rather work for a company that failed but paid me fairly while it lasted than at a company where the only person making money is the CEO and grind out a lifetime.

The times they are a changin'!
 

When commercial use of electricity began in New York City, each building had its own generator powered by steam. When someone came up with the idea that they could sell electricity by extending their power system to the building across the street, laws were past (by vested parties) to prevent this “crossing the street” to sell power. Eventually, when the “vested parties” wanted it, our modern systems were instituted. (Today there are laws preventing the crossing of certain rivers with power lines in this country.)

Much as the sled-runner maker protested the wheel and the horse and buggy stablemen protested the internal combustion vehicles, electric vehicles will replace the combustion engine vehicles. But, this will not happen until the “vested parties” allow it to happen.

In other countries there are trains that regularly run hundreds of miles per hour faster than in the United States. In other countries there are extensive power transmission systems that are state-of-the-art technologies and those countries are working aggressively to advance technologies. The “vested parties” in this country are not.

How many more years do you think spark plugs will readily be available at reasonable costs? Bought any 14” tires recently?

Your explanation relies essentially on conspiracy theories which is a false narrative mostly used by the left. There are always competitive pressures looking to displace the vested parties. Its true, being large has economies that make displacing old technologies somewhat challenging. You can't just be 1% better, you need to be 10% or 20% better to overcome the reputation and safety of the known/old solution.

14" tires are not expensive because some vested party has decided that its so. They are more expensive because the volume is low, therefore, there are less and smaller competitors willing to compete for that small of a pie. The market providers are therefore able to set a price higher than previous as a result. No conspiracy.

There's also something called the innovators dilemma that is a partial explanation for this dynamic.

Its a supercar, with a supercar price tag. That being said, I still don't know if I'd prefer it to a gasoline car; there's a lot to a performance car, and I don't know that blistering quick acceleration is enough. Whats it like off the gas- does it slow like a good manual? What's it's skid pad? Can I throw it around - is it featherweight? It all reminds me of the Hellcat; yea it's crazy fast, doesn't mean it's the perfect performance car for me though.

If I wanted to crush everything in a straight line, I could probably soup up a sport bike.

The technology is getting better; they're pushing the range, but it's still questionable when it's 10 degrees outside. Most cheaper electrics seem to be in the 100mi+ range now, a vast improvement of the 80mi range, with 80% life for the first three years if you kept it outta the cold. They're still pricier too yet, so they're not touching gas around here..

I'm not opposed to electric. I prefer gas, and I'd hate to see gasoline cars go, but electronics are a part of my life too, and I'd drive one daily if it were economically feasible.

The batteries they employ are VERY expensive.

I don't want Tesla to fail. In fact I'd love to see it succeed on the scale that Musk had promised. Unfortunately the facts speak for themselves. He has come nowhere near meeting his promises and there appear to be serious problems with the corporate culture which can sink a company.

There is a lot more to whether a place is a good place to work than the pay. If the bosses are all a-holes and your coworkers are a bunch of mouth breathing cretins it's not a good place to work even if the pay is generous.

I love it when people compare the USA to modern Europe and their trains for infrastructure.

1. Almost all of Europe's infrastructure was destroyed in WWII, and rebuilt with (then) state of the art equipment.
2. Most of the rail lines suitable for high speed in Europe were put into place by Monarchs, dictators and constitution systems which at the time had zero consideration for personal property or environmental considerations. Basically they just took your property if they wanted it. So the rail lines are very straight and level considering the natural topography.
3. The population density of Europe makes passenger trains far more economically viable to run in non-urban areas.

There are very few trains ANYWHERE in the world that run "Hundreds" of mph faster than US trains on a regular basis. Typical Eruo high speed rail, that I have spent many hours on, runs around 120 mph or so ... not hundreds of mph faster... that would confined to a very few trains running very select routes in maybe 3 countries in the world.

And if you think that other countries have vastly superior electrical grids are you very mistaken, very. I've stayed in three star hotels where they didn't want you to run a hair dryer. From my travels across most of Europe ... I can assure you that the US has probably the best electrical grid in the world, and our rural grid is literally DECADES ahead of many parts of Europe.

The point being ... all political, philosophical mumbo, jumbo aside .... the wide spread use of electric vehicles in this nation would require an electric grid probably twice the capacity of our present system. And TWICE the generating capacity .... you know how many years and how many trillions of dollars it would take to double our generating capacity.

No body is saying it won't happen, or sinister forces will prevent it, or that it can't be done. Pointing out the reality of the cost and resources necessary is not a Luddite position, it's an intelligent position.

[QUOTE=dataway;5811885]I'm all on board ... but Telsa has NEVER shown a profit. And subsidies are about to end, so they will be in hole for millions.

Cant pay people if you don't have the money, maybe the gov will see the problem and extend subsidizing?
That supercar looks like it would leave the ground at 200 mph.

There weren't layoffs - there were terminations.

You need to read and comprehend. The only reason "layoffs" were mentioned was that it appears that Musk was circumventing CA law by firing people instead of laying them off.

That's why there are lawsuits against Musk's companies. These folks were fired and not given any real reasons as to why..

I did read and comprehend. The article, and you, insinuate they were laid off, and that they used the terminations as cover to avoid giving requisite notice. So I called it what you were saying it was. Your saying they were gotten rid of because the company had to downsize and not for the reasons Tesla or Solar City stated. Im still skeptical. I cant imagine the lawsuits would be cheaper, and they have to know if they cant provide documentation they wont get away with it. Im not saying its totally baseless, just saying Im skeptical.

I still dont get the hate either way. If a average dude took a shot with a small business and failed, which happens all the time, we would pat him on the back and say "At least you tried, more than most people do"

But when its on a larger scale, because this guy already made a fortune, and now is trying to flip it into even grander plans, nothing but shade gets thrown his way.

I'm surprised by some here with there 'answers'.
Most seemed to be against unions?

Quote from some fired:

“Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted.The company denied union activities played a role in the dismissals.”

California is a Work at Will state I think?


If Tesla had a union at those places, they probably would require 'cause'.
But I don't think they are union?

Most big corporations don't want unions?

Out of 33,000 employees what percentage was a few hundred?

:(

That indeed would be dirty if true, and would change my opinion somewhat. I work for General Atomics, its never occurred during my generation but Ive heard stories from some of the old guard that it used to be a pointed question during the hiring interview "How do you feel about unions" If you said you were a pro union guy you likely wouldnt be hired.

Again, I will say that I personally know a fair amount of people who have gone to Space X and been very happy. That being said, company like that mostly only takes on skilled labor, well compensated positions, so maybe in a company like Solar City where you have a larger percentage that maybe arent as skilled, more easily replaceable? They get treated worse. IDK.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/17/tesl...-bob-lutz.html

https://arstechnica.com/information-...-market-share/

I like what you did there lol.

Not picking on GM here since I mostly buy from them, but of course he says that. And about GMs batteries being superior even if he is correct it doesn’t matter. Perception is reality. The public thinks Tesla is more advanced. American automakers put out unreliable cars compared to their counterparts for a couple decades and it took another couple decades to shake that. Maybe they still haven’t totally shaken it.

That being said I’m sorta surprised now thinking about it that one of the big 3 hasn’t tried to release a sporty electric to undercut the Model S.

As much as I love IC engines ... I can certainly imagine myself in an electric when power density is four times what it is today (KWH-Vol-Wt). At present nothing comes even close to a hydro-carbon fuel as far as BTUs of energy that can be stored in a given volume, and a given weight. But I have zero doubt that within 15 years they will be there.

At present I do have an ethical problem with them. Too toxic, and they are no where near pollution free, they merely redistribute pollution from the point of use, to the point of generation ... as long as we are using coal, and oil generation plants. Even when you talk about renewables, Hydro, Nuclear, Solar, Wind ... you are still talking about the redistribution of hazard, inconvenience, environmental effects etc. from the city where the majority of the energy is used to the rural areas where it generated. At least with petroleum, the cities that use the most, suffer the most and it motivated them to change their habits rather than penalizing people out in the country.

As a person that lives in an area that gets 20 below zero in the winter .... not sure how they are going to resolve the problem of vehicle heat in the winter. In climates like this it can reduce range 50%. There are days up here when it's all my V8 can do to produce enough heat to keep ice off the windshield. There are people driving Tesla that actually wear a snowmobile suit in the winter, or use heated gloves and jackets meant for motorcycle riding.

But eventually it will be solved .... but I have no idea where the country is going to get the extra electricity to replace trillions of BTUs of hydro-carbon generated energy. Better start building Nuclear plants quick. Solar isn't going to cut it, people charge at night, and the technology to store solar on a large scale doesn't exist yet. We've dammed most of the rivers already that can supply large scale hydro.

I guess good home solar systems with good storage capacity would help a lot ... charge the house batteries all day, use them to charge the car at night.

Going to be interesting times for the kids.

The "average" guy didn't get access to $465,000,000 government loans on a business that has never turned a profit (and most likely never will).

If he's so rich, why didn't he use his own money? Because he didn't want to risk it?

It's more that a few hundred.

Tesla isn't announcing the numbers, but from CNBC on October 25th:

"The total number of dismissals could not be determined. However, former employees estimate around 1,200 people have been fired in the company's wave of dismissals at Tesla including SolarCity. That figure does not include previously announced layoffs."

The key here is that Tesla should be increasing employment as they have hundreds of thousands of deposits for Model 3's.

They have a huge factory that can easily produce thousands per week, but they can't seem to build more than a few per day.

The 'average guy' will never get a gov't loan?

Tesla subsidy:

Tesla Subsidies


Now let's talk about some REAL subsidies!

Subsidies

:)

I am all for getting rid of all subsidies.

Imagine how much we would save if big oil paid back their oil subsidies instead of paying their CEOs mega pay?
(trillions and trillions)

:eek:

The hate is real in here.

Probably because this isn't a Tesla forum. Tesla owners looking for love should go to the Tesla forum. Pontiac owners go to the Pontiac forum.

I don't own a Tesla, my daily driver is a diesel truck. I simply respect an American citizen building an American company bringing American jobs to America. I guess he should just outsource all the jobs like GM. You remember GM, that company that killed Pontiac?

Do I love Pontiac cars? Of course. Does that make me ignore GM's corporate behaviour, of course not, because I'm intelligent enough to separate the two.