[Jim Doran]

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.

Zero to 60 mph could take as little as a mind-bending 1.9 seconds, Musk said, with *zero to 100 mph being accomplished in just 4.2. The claimed quarter-mile time of 8.8 seconds is just as hard to fathom as the top speed of more than 250 mph. “This is the base model,” he said, without providing any hints of what other versions the company might have planned.

Three electric motors the car will use, except that they will provide 7376 lb-ft of torque at the wheels, thanks to torque-multiplying effects of a transmission and at least one differential. That’s an astronomical number but, for context, a Dodge Challenger SRT Demon delivers more than 10,000 lb-ft to the wheels in first gear. With a top speed of more than 250 mph, there is a decent chance that the Tesla will have a multispeed transmission

One motor will drive the Roadster’s front axle and two will power the back, which means it will be all-wheel drive. Musk also asserted that this new Roadster will be the first production car to hit 60 in less than two seconds or cover a quarter-mile in less than nine. The car’s capacious 200.0-kWh battery pack was also touted, enabling, it was claimed, a massive 620 miles of highway range. “Driving a gasoline sports car is going to feel like a steam engine with a side of quiche,” said Musk.

[The Champ]

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?

[Chris65LeMans]

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.

[Bob Dillon]

Originally Posted by The Champ

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.

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.

[Will]

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.

[saltman 1965]

Preston Tucker x 100?

[RocktimusPryme]

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

[1965gp]

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.

[dataway]

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.

[Half-Inch Stud]

Electric cars should be CHEAPER than the gasoline cars.

[The Champ]

Originally Posted by RocktimusPryme

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

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/

Tesla has been on a pink slip rampage this month, firing between 400 to 700 people from its automotive branch. Its solar panel subsidiary, SolarCity, also plans to let go more than 200 employees by the end of October. Former employees estimate that dismissals at SolarCity and Tesla have affected around 1,200 people in total—Tesla itself refuses to disclose the exact number. If the estimates are correct, though, this would account for around 3.6 percent of its global workforce.

So what’s behind this exodus? Is it simply the case that over a thousand employees haven’t been meeting expectations, or is it perhaps the result of recent flubs with some of the company’s new car models?

Former employees are taking the company to task for its suspicious rationale for the dismissals: poor performance. Six current and former SolarCity employees told CNBC that they were not privy to any performance reviews and had not been able to see the reports upon requesting them.

CNBC’s reporting would seem to bolster the theory that the “poor performance” rationale is a pretense so that the company can categorize the dismissals as “firings” rather than “layoffs.”

According to the WARN Act in California, where many of these dismissals have taken place, employers are supposed to give employees advanced notice of mass layoffs. However, the same warnings are not required for firings. A “fired” employee in fact filed a lawsuit against Tesla on Tuesday alleging that the company violated the WARN Act.

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.

[Firedup6975]

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. His is black.

[mgarblik]

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.

[RocktimusPryme]

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.

[Doug]

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?

[getmygoat]

Originally Posted by Doug

. 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.

[NBF823]

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.

[keith k]

Originally Posted by Half-Inch Stud

Electric cars should be CHEAPER than the gasoline cars.

The batteries they employ are VERY expensive.

[Will]

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.

[dataway]

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.