Quote:
Originally Posted by rob13572468
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.
|
My understanding is that Martin Eberhard did an estimate early on, and figured out if they only did the Roadster and if Tesla was only going to be a sports car maker, then they could become profitable very quickly.
There were two things that threw his calculations off. First, they got sidetracked doing stuff that wasn't related to getting the Roadster out the door. They were too quick to pour resources into the White Star/Model S. They also had the whole deal to sell battery packs to Th!nk Nordic. They had too much spending on stuff that wasn't Job One.
The second problem was the delays, particularly the transmission. They spent a lot of money on transmissions that didn't work. They got 80% of the components together to build cars, then couldn't build cars because they couldn't get together the remaining 20% (including a working transmission). They also had a contract with Lotus saying they would start production by a specified date -- so when that didn't happen, Lotus hit them with a $4,000,000 tab. And so it went.
What they've done is: cancelled the Th!nk battery deal, put White Star on hold for a while (it's back on track by now), fired a bunch of people, moved battery, motor and transmission production, and final assembly to California, and put the remaining engineers to work on cost-reducing the Roadster. They went over "every bracket" figuring out where to save a few dollars. Then they increased the sticker price. (If I recall right, the base price was $92,000 originally, and now is $108,000. But I haven't checked those numbers.) After doing all that, they believe they've got the Roadster project back in the black -- and hopefully a few good lessons learned.
Again I have to point out, it's better to learn those lessons on the Roadster than on the Model S, where the volumes and dollar amounts involved will be much higher.