Tesla are running out of money and will be bankrupt by early 2019, they're asking suppliers to offer "retroactive price cuts"

[asus killer]

not so surprising, the company was run more like a vanaty fair then a real business. Will probably end up bought by one of the traditional car makers.

the fact they don't have cheap models never helped either, there isn't a single car manufacturer that can survive without the mass market, cheap car business behind (except for very eccentric brands selling insanely expensive limited models)

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

Really? I've often wondered that. I remember people saying their batteries life was halved when using them in cold climates...but I do live in the northern most Canadian city with a population over 1mil.

Yea, it indeed drops, but still delivers enough. We even have, at least in Montreal, 100% electric taxis. Many of them, and easy to spot with their white car and green roof. If you wonder, it cost the same as a normal tax (and includes free WiFI which the other taxi service don't), and they run everyday, even on the coldest days. https://teomtl.com/en/

 

If you are lucky, you can go in inside one of the few Tesla's they have, but in general, you'll be in KIA Soul EV (100% electric model).

 

[Mihle]

For those that don't do long car trips and stuff often, or use their car in work, electric cars range from one night charging is enough for a normal day of driving. More and more workplaces even let you charge your car at the workplace while you are working.

[Stefan Payne]

6 hours ago, dizmo said:

I don't think the argument is that they're currently (key word) more potent than gas, but more-so that electricity can be a renewable resource whereas gasoline cannot.

Diesel can be, though it isn't recommended because fuel competing with food is a stupid idea and will cause famins.

[AskTJ]

Tesla, running out of money?

[VanayadGaming]

FUD.

[Beskamir]

Might be a good time to buy Tesla stocks....

[Amazonsucks]

Too bad its not amazon going bankrupt

[cj09beira]

9 hours ago, asus killer said:

not so surprising, the company was run more like a vanaty fair then a real business. Will probably end up bought by one of the traditional car makers.

the fact they don't have cheap models never helped either, there isn't a single car manufacturer that can survive without the mass market, cheap car business behind (except for very eccentric brands selling insanely expensive limited models)

their main problem right now is making enough cars, so if each car is cheaper then they would be in a even worse position, i would go as far as say that they should have delayed the model 3 and kept producing only the model S and X

[yian88]

12 hours ago, dizmo said:

-snip-

Indeed Tesla has issue with simple stuff, but im not talking about tesla when i say electric vehicles, im sick of hearing of tesla who cant even get a door to close/open properly, they put too much tech at once in tesla thats why they have issues, if you remove the fancy digital stuff and self driving stuff you get a much cheaper/reliable tesla.

 

The biggest probelm remains, cars we should really have similar batteries and have a quick change mechanism instead of recharge station where they charge batteries over time, i think thats really the best solution for small cars and trucks, rechargable quick disconect/reconect batteries,  from an engeneering stand point its a piece of cake to have such a system, the real issue is car companies, gas companies and people resisting change.

 

Think of it this way: you buy your car without battery, you basically rent one out precharged to use your car, you can either recharge it (at home overnight) or quick replace it at a recharge station for a small fee, of course you will need a special card to indentify yourself so you dont just steal batteries and until you return the old one or pay a fee for its "disapearance" you cant get a new charged one.

 

Sounds complicated but it isnt, its people who make it complicated because they cant follow 2-3 extra rules different from gas cars really.

 

This is my #1 solution to the battery issue on EV. It could be very usefull for trucks aswell to have such a system, the truck pulls to the recharge station when its battery is low, gets a quick battery change in 10 minutes, precharged battery,  and leaves the old ones there to recharge and the station which passes them on to the next truck or EV once they are charged.

 

This solution also solves the issue of needing recharge ports all over the world/country with massive voltage/amp output for each EV and especially trucks, then you wont need Elon Musk's solution, recharge stations charged by solar with tesla batteries to compensate multiple vehicles recharging from the ports, since the grid cant deliver such power.

By having precharged batteries overnight at a lower rate you no longer need to solve this grid power issue.

 

But for this to work you need all the industry to cooperate to make such stations feasable,  third party battery producers to build fabs and gas stations corporations to build recharge stations etc.

 

This has 0% chance of happening right now until we reach the point of no return when we have no oil left or the climate change issues gets so bad all cars will be banned, then it will be too late to make such a system because you will need gas vehicles to build such a massive system and it would take at least a decade to get it to scale.

 

So for the naysayers id say you need to think bigger and outside the box, eventually some solution will be needed to the transport industry and most of them take decades to build to scale, so how about we stop denying reality and promote EV's right now, even if they suck for a while bang for buck at all levels? 

 

If a better solution comes to play like a breaktrough in hidrogen cells, or other form of non polluting fuel then the industry will make the change naturally, the economics will dictate that, but right now we really need to get rid of coal/gas even if its annoying and difficult, we can do it at a slow rate without economic disaster from banning fossils.

[Selah]

16 hours ago, jeffmeyer5295 said:

Good for you lol. Not everyone wants to deal with the charging and junk. Glad you made it.

Appealing to emotion is a really weak platform to argue from.

 

A 30 minute break every 3 hours is nowhere near inconvenient. That follows many safety guidelines and allows you to take care of other necessary functions.

[ItsMitch]

4 hours ago, Amazonsucks said:

Too bad its not amazon going bankrupt

i dunno but i think you really hate amazon and i think we all know that will never ever happen lol

[Quadriplegic]

16 hours ago, jeffmeyer5295 said:

 who tf outside of track cars keep one on hand?

Pretty much everyone in Europe at the very least?

[asus killer]

7 hours ago, cj09beira said:

their main problem right now is making enough cars, so if each car is cheaper then they would be in a even worse position, i would go as far as say that they should have delayed the model 3 and kept producing only the model S and X

we are basically saying the same thing, they don't have economies of scale. If you focus on few models and expensive cars you will never get that.

[dizmo]

5 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Yea, it indeed drops, but still delivers enough. We even have, at least in Montreal, 100% electric taxis. Many of them, and easy to spot with their white car and green roof. If you wonder, it cost the same as a normal tax (and includes free WiFI which the other taxi service don't), and they run everyday, even on the coldest days. https://teomtl.com/en/

 

If you are lucky, you can go in inside one of the few Tesla's they have, but in general, you'll be in KIA Soul EV (100% electric model).

Interesting. I always thought Taxis made the most sense for electric vehicles, especially in cities where really you're unlikely to travel very far in terms of distance.

[dizmo]

8 hours ago, yian88 said:

Indeed Tesla has issue with simple stuff, but im not talking about tesla when i say electric vehicles, im sick of hearing of tesla who cant even get a door to close/open properly, they put too much tech at once in tesla thats why they have issues, if you remove the fancy digital stuff and self driving stuff you get a much cheaper/reliable tesla.

-snip-

It's not complicated in theory, horribly complicated in execution. You're talking about changing the way everything works, all at once. Having every manufacturer work together towards a common standard; something they can't even do with plugs, let alone something as key to the vehicle as battery design.  Your method also requires at least twice as many batteries, if not many multitudes; they currently have trouble producing enough to meet the 1 per car scenario. Not only that, it takes a lot more to swap a huge battery than to simply plug in a plug. You'd need to either have attendants at the stations, properly trained, or have some sort of automated swapping process.

 

I do think that will be the future, as it makes more sense (unless battery tech significantly improves), but there's no way that's happening all at once. And, until the, we have what we have.

 

I find it interesting so few people think about the impact of EV's on the electrical grid. You're right, it simply can't support it, especially in places that have to import power just to meet their current demand (California, for example). Power companies also have no idea how they're going to accomplish this when it comes to be.

 

There's talk of cars eventually becoming government owned, and they'd simply be available to the public, and maintained by taxes. This makes the most sense to me. Sort of like a giant ride share program. It only really works in huge metropolis's, but I could see something like that coming to fruition in the distant future.

[Phentos]

I had been looking at purchasing a Model 3 next year, but with Tesla's long term outlook being bleak like the sources claim, I might have to look elsewhere. I guess I'll probably just stick to hybrids like a Prius.

 

It doesn't help that there's only one supercharging station where I live. One supercharging station in a city of 500K. 

[Amazonsucks]

11 hours ago, SC2Mitch said:

i dunno but i think you really hate amazon and i think we all know that will never ever happen lol

Seen the AH drop in facebook? Facebook and amazon are unsustainable companies. Eventually this bubble will pop like the .com bubble.

 

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebook-stock-crushed-after-revenue-user-growth-miss-2018-07-25

[ItsMitch]

1 minute ago, Amazonsucks said:

Seen the AH drop in facebook

Yeah, I have custom alerts for MarketWatch to alert me of drops of 20% on major tech companies. 

[GoodBytes]

18 hours ago, Phentos said:

I had been looking at purchasing a Model 3 next year, but with Tesla's long term outlook being bleak like the sources claim, I might have to look elsewhere. I guess I'll probably just stick to hybrids like a Prius.

 

It doesn't help that there's only one supercharging station where I live. One supercharging station in a city of 500K. 

Personally, unless you plan to keep the car for a few years only (lease?!), I would not buy a Tesla Model 3, for now... I would wait for gen 2 minimum. Tesla is still a new car manufactures, and very new in mass production of cars.

 

In Montreal we have 0 charging station, I just checked, I lied, we now have 2x Tesla Supercharger station. One with about 8 charging stating in a shopping center parking center, which is a very borderline OK mall. And the other is at the Tesla dealership/service center... 2 spots. Oh and for reference, they are many Tesla's on the road here. I mean its not your common car, but you do see some here and there within a week of driving around.

 

Like I mentioned previously, you cannot think an electric car like normal gas powered car. Your car is 100% charged the moment you wake up (assuming your car charges in 8h or less, and you are at home a minimum of 8h...), Tesla rates the small battery of the Tesla Model 3 at 354km (220 miles). Say you get half of that for some reason, that is 40,000miles (64,605 km) per year. And that is assuming you only charge it at home, and not at work. I doubt you'll be out of battery in the day, assuming you charge it every night.

 

[Phentos]

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

Personally, unless you plan to keep the car for a few years only (lease?!), I would not buy a Tesla Model 3, for now... I would wait for gen 2 minimum. Tesla is still a new car manufactures, and very new in mass production of cars.

 

In Montreal we have 0 charging station, I just checked, I lied, we now have 2x Tesla Supercharger station. One with about 8 charging stating in a shopping center parking center, which is a very borderline OK mall. And the other is at the Tesla dealership... 2 spots. Oh and for reference, they are many Tesla's on the road here. I mean its not your common car, but you do see some here and there within a week of driving around.

 

Like I mentioned previously, you cannot think an electric car like normal gas powered car. Your car is 100% charged the moment you wake up (assuming your car charges in 8h or less, and you are at home a minimum of 8h...), Tesla rates the small battery of the Tesla Model 3 at 354km (220 miles). Say you get half of that for some reason, that is 40,000miles (64,605 km) per year. And that is assuming you only charge it at home, and not at work. I doubt you'll be out of battery in the day, assuming you charge it every night.

 

Oh yea that's another problem I have with Tesla cars. You have to connect the power pack to a 240V circuit with beefy amperage if you want decently fast charge times. I rent and I know my landlord would freak if I proposed to do that 

 

I think something like that is more viable if you just own your own home. And live in an area where power doesn't cost $0.24 per Kw/h during summer. Last electric bill was $766 and that was with only moderate A/C use during 105+ degree days.

 

Tbh I think I'll just get a Prius  

[Bensemus]

16 hours ago, yian88 said:

The biggest probelm remains, cars we should really have similar batteries and have a quick change mechanism instead of recharge station where they charge batteries over time, i think thats really the best solution for small cars and trucks, rechargable quick disconect/reconect batteries,  from an engeneering stand point its a piece of cake to have such a system, the real issue is car companies, gas companies and people resisting change.

This is a terrible solution that Tesla actually worked on with the S and dropped it. Batteries are massive and expensive. You would have to have huge facilities to store enough batteries to handle the volume of traffic a current gas station handles. I believe the battery in a Tesla costs around $10,000. Just ten stored batteries is $100k. They will come down in price but I can't see how companies would want to store large numbers such valuable items at hundreds of locations.

[Amazonsucks]

4 hours ago, Phentos said:

Oh yea that's another problem I have with Tesla cars. You have to connect the power pack to a 240V circuit with beefy amperage if you want decently fast charge times. I rent and I know my landlord would freak if I proposed to do that 

 

I think something like that is more viable if you just own your own home. And live in an area where power doesn't cost $0.24 per Kw/h during summer. Last electric bill was $766 and that was with only moderate A/C use during 105+ degree days.

 

Tbh I think I'll just get a Prius  

Toyotas 8AR-FTS engine is actually fun and has thermal efficiency that rivals hybrids. I highly recommend them in the Lexus lineup. Havent driven the Toyota branded cars with one but theyre probs pretty good.

[d-kressjr]

On 7/24/2018 at 10:43 AM, Master Disaster said:

Yeah, totally agree. Concentrating on the high end first wasn't very smart, they were never going to shift enough supercars to become self sustainable.

 

As you said, now electric has become mainstream other manufacturers have joined the party and taken a huge chunk of Tesla's potential customer base away.

 

 

The company could only focus on the high-end cars! Your telling me from a financial standpoint they would have been better off making a car for masses to start??? That would have been horrible for the company as higher-end luxury cars allowed the company to make a larger margin per-car, giving them enough money to get the chance to try and produce a lower-end car. 

 

People who claim other car manufacturers are taking a 

On 7/24/2018 at 10:43 AM, Master Disaster said:

huge chunk

from Tesla's potential customer base away, I don't know where they are getting this evidence from.

Let's take the Chevrolet Bolt from example, the only other car that really competes with a Tesla from a range standpoint with a 238 mi range.

Currently, on autotrader.com, there are 1,736 of those cars for sale. GM is only scratching ~2,000 cars a month right now. There are 67 Model 3s on high markups for sale.

There are still 420,000 people who had given up $1,000 with the hope that they could touch the car in a year. The only thing holding Tesla back is their inability to produce the bloody thing to supply the demand. 

From my PoV, I don't see how other car manufacturers are taking a huge chunk away from their potential customers because I see 420,000 reasons that say otherwise.

[Master Disaster]

12 minutes ago, d-kressjr said:

 

The company could only focus on the high-end cars! Your telling me from a financial standpoint they would have been better off making a car for masses to start??? That would have been horrible for the company as higher-end luxury cars allowed the company to make a larger margin per-car, giving them enough money to get the chance to try and produce a lower-end car. 

 

People who claim other car manufacturers are taking a 

from Tesla's potential customer base away, I don't know where they are getting this evidence from.

Let's take the Chevrolet Bolt from example, the only other car that really competes with a Tesla from a range standpoint with a 238 mi range.

Currently, on autotrader.com, there are 1,736 of those cars for sale. GM is only scratching ~2,000 cars a month right now. There are 67 Model 3s on high markups for sale.

There are still 420,000 people who had given up $1,000 with the hope that they could touch the car in a year. The only thing holding Tesla back is their inability to produce the bloody thing to supply the demand. 

From my PoV, I don't see how other car manufacturers are taking a huge chunk away from their potential customers because I see 420,000 reasons that say otherwise.

You're looking at every manufacturer individually, that's not how markets work.

 

You'd need to look at every electric vehicle on sale combined and then compare that against Tesla's sales number.