Quote:
Originally Posted by tonybelding
Remember also that Lotus is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for them. Tesla just have to get the components together (all of the components, not 90% of them) for the gliders in England, and then get the power train together in California..
|
Thats true... If anyone can help them to get a handle on fixing their production difficulties it would be lotus since they have had decades of experience in scheduling overruns.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tonybelding
They haven't been paid for all those cars yet. They were pre-paid in full for the first 125 cars (25 founders series, plus 100 signature series). After that the deposit price was much lower.
Also, according to Tesla, they are holding the deposit money in an account which is not to be spent until the cars are delivered. Now, there's no way to prove this. . . It's not in escrow or anything. But I'm just saying, that's what they've told us.
|
I must have misread that. I was led to believe that all of the 600 cars were paid in full.. I went back and looked again, reading any articles i could find and the truth is that nonody seems to know exactly how much money they took (the amount of the deposits) and how they are holding it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tonybelding
When it comes to money, the more important thing to remember is this: Everything they've spent on the Roadster, and everything they stand to make from it in the near future, is peanuts compared with the dollar amounts involved in the Model S. It's going to be the car that makes or breaks Tesla.
The Roadster is not really a money-making car. It's a PR exercise, and it's an exercise in learning how to make a car, and it's a halo car for the models that will follow. It's not what their business is oriented around, in terms of revenue.
|
You make a good point.. The future of electric cars is going to be in the compact/subcompact everyday driver, not the roadster and I guess the roadster can serve as the starting point to get there than that alone may make it worthwhile. The only thing that worries me are the obvious mistakes (like setting unrealistic deadlines and then missing them.) and it doesnt help build confidence.
Just because they never built a roadster doesnt mean that they couldnt do a bill of materials early on to see if they would even break even. Keep in mind that the luxury car segment is supposed to be the highest profit area for an automaker. If tesla cant make money selling the roadster, how in the hell are they going to make money on the S, an economy car which is the low-profit segment? If you look at all the other automakers they all have electrics planned for production but none of them have committed to getting them to market anytime soon. There is a reason for that and the reason is that they all know that building an electric car that has to run every day and actually work and not break down and be reasonably priced on top of it is going to be a monumentally difficult task and even the big guys do not feel that they can pull it off successfully anytime soon. In the meantime tesla would have us beliveve that with their limited manufacturing, funding and experience that they can somehow do what the others cannot.
Lets hop e that they are up to it.