Tesla shares dive after Consumer Reports yanks recommendation for Model S | Hacker News Reader

Tesla shares dive after Consumer Reports yanks recommendation for Model S

latimes.com

As Consumer Reports suggests, this is totally understandable. Straight from CR:

> The Tesla wasn’t the only high-performance vehicle that fell below average in reliability. Others include the BMW X5 and 5 Series, and the Chevrolet Corvette.

> When automakers roll out new technology, be it infotainment, transmissions, or engine variations, it often has a deleterious effect on vehicle reliability. Tesla is not only the poster child for a new type of high-performance, high-mileage EV, but it also has been adding complex new variations as assembly-line updates, such as all-wheel drive this year. So it’s not surprising to see problems continue to crop up.

> Despite the problems, our data show that Tesla owner satisfaction is still very high: Ninety-seven percent of owners said they would definitely buy their car again. It appears that Tesla has been responsive to replacing faulty motors, differentials, brakes, and infotainment systems, all with a minimum of fuss to owners.

The CR article is here: http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla-reliability-doesnt...

It's not easy to accidentally slip on a banana peel and buy a Tesla, so I think most owners would understand the risks of buying a brand-new car company's product loaded with brand-new tech. For some that's part of the appeal. I suspect the market is over-reacting a little.

Tesla's PE in 2016 is forecasted over 130. For comparison bmw is under 10. Tesla is priced for perfection.

Comparing Tesla to BMW like that probably isn't very reasonable. No one has any expectations that BMW will suddenly decide to start selling 10x or 100x the number of cars, while that's Tesla's explicit goal.

That's an interesting point. If Quality Control issues persist (at a rate statistically significant vs. the 'competition'), and there's a larger number of vehicles purchased / in use, then I wonder if the repair and maintenance services by Telsa will be negatively affected? I mean, it's one thing to schedule an appointment when there are XX shops that can work on a brand where the local population is in the thousands (like BMW), but if there are many more cars with issues than there are shops to fix them...that sounds like a choke point to me, and one rather unique to Tesla in this regard.

Tesla is a growth company that could be a giant. BMW is a stable old blue chip. Different market values entirely.

At the individual car level, Tesla S is priced to match mid/high end sedans from BMW, Mercedes, and Audi, so that's the quality level they need to hit. And such quality isn't about reliability so much as fit and finish. Tesla is doing extremely well against very established competition in that regard.

Check out the PEG ratio, which factors in growth. Rapid and sustained growth is not guaranteed and bad press can inhibit it. But you need that growth to justify the valuation. Priced for perfection.

Priced to be the supplier for every other vehicle company that needs batteries, every utility that needs utility scale battery storage, and possibly even an Uber competitor.

Properly priced.

Right. So when tesla appears to stumble on this path, that is going to impact the share price more severely than it would a company whose value is more inline with its peers.

But Tesla hasn't stumbled on this path, its stumbled on its vehicles. The vehicles have simply been a method to bootstrap their Supercharger network and Gigafactory, which are both on schedule. Arguably, once enough vehicle manufacturers were producing electric cars, Tesla could close up their vehicle manufacturing business if they were so inclined (and exist solely to provide battery packs).

So their success in these new markets is a foregone conclusion at this point and stumbling in their most significant product doesn't affect it?

Ok. I don't buy that but it's a perfectly reasonable assertion. Buy the dips if you believe that.

> Buy the dips if you believe that.

I do!

When it comes to batteries, Tesla are more of an integrator than a manufacturer - they package up commercially available, off-the-shelf cells into batteries with some cooling and a mostly off-the-shelf battery management solution (based around a Texas Instruments IC marketed specifically for battery management in electric cars, the BQ76PL536A). That's not a high-margin business to be in because there's not much of a barrier to entry for new competitors.

Isn't PEG just based on their existing growth within the luxury market, whereas they have publicized plans of entering mass market?

No, it's their PE ratio divided by their growth rate.

Tesla' market cap is $30B. GM is $53B. Ford is $61B. If you're buying Tesla, you have to believe that they will become a huge player, and soon. They can't just be bigger, they have to be huge or else you're radically overpaying for a niche producer.

I want to play the game where we can make a fortune on high-growth stocks without any risk.

Become a bank and issue IPO's :)

Don't forget batteries. Rolls-Royce did well with jet engines, probably better than cars.

Agreed and don't forget licensing. OK so TSLA makes squeeky sunroofs, who cares, they can sell batteries and controllers and motors to ... construction crane companies or something. You know all the weird details of making a tow truck, cool, here's the parts to make it electric.

Happens all the time in the automotive industry. The first "american" hatchback car I ever drove had a nice VW engine. Ironically it was something to do with low emissions.

Well, Tesla buys their batteries from Panasonic. And the motor is a standard induction motor, not very different from what the actual (Nikolai) Tesla invented back in 1887. I agree that their control system is going to be fairly complicated, since induction motors require the AC frequency to be a function of the torque as well as the RPM.

But then most applications outside "quick 0-60 pure electric car" use brushless DC motors instead, where the controllers are simpler. Even the insane McLaren P1 hybrid, which eats Teslas for breakfast, uses a brushless DC motor. So I'm not sure there is as much of a market for Tesla's expertise as you'd think.

There are standard components, and then there's the work done to make and certify them as EV-ready. Tesla currently sells components to Daimler-Benz and Toyota.

I had no idea Tesla but the batteries from Panasonic, I thought the entire point of Tesla is that they build them in house? And what about the Gigafactory?

If it's all truly Panasonic's tech, I am surprised so many people put their money into Tesla.

Panasonic is a major investor and partner in the Gigafactory. They're also providing the initial cell manufacturing technology and over a hundred Panasonic employees will be on site helping with the setup.

With that thought, I wonder if GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi, etc will move into the market of creating electric motors for automotive use. They all have a lot of experience in electric motors.

Except it is Panasonic who makes Tesla's cells. The "batteries" can't really be used for much else because they're so customized to the car.

http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/15/07/980x490/landscape_142375080...

Tesla Home isn't doing too hot, as far as I can tell. Even SolarCity isn't recommending it to anybody... and SolarCity is Elon's baby as well!

Panasonic may make the general-purpose cells, but that doesn't mean that Tesla can't add value by making them more suitable for the EV market. In fact, it does sell components to other car companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors#Technology

Aren't the cells just 18650s?

Well, be huge, or be smaller and maintain huge margins. That's also an avenue.

Exactly... it isn't that GM-style revenues are priced into the stock it is that much greater than GM-style margins are priced in.

Whether they will achieve that is a different (and still open) question.

Tesla is showing what a car can be - Excellent UX, a nontraditional but really nice drivetrain, a good UI for the secondary systems with frequent software upgrades, etc.

It's not hard to see the trend - it's been coming for the last 15 years at least. All drivetrains will be electric, and connected to a battery and optionally a range extender of some sort. The control panel will be all big screens and apps.

Meanwhile, the existing manufacturer are perfecting the ultimate gearbox. They are in at least partial denial now, but they will soon need to dismantle those investments and some others to stay alive. Ex, Audi that has kept a really complicated gearbox instead of doing what Mitsubishi did, using a fixed gear system and a serial hybrid approach.

(To be fair, they have nothing to gain from these changes, they just want to stay slightly better than the rest.)

The bet against them is that some of them will not be able to reinvent themselves and then wither out into obsolescence.

I think that this risk might not be fully included in the price right now.

>> "The control panel will be all big screens and apps."

Noooo - tactile feedback is so important in vehicle subsystem control! [0] Please do not take away my knobs and dials.

[0] http://www.ecnmag.com/article/2014/01/keeping-feel-automotiv...

Not to ruin your day, but they're taking away your knobs, dials, and control of the vehicle.

Honestly I might not mind being unable to control the vehicle as long as I could adjust the temperature with a hardware control.

I think the endgame of a car is an artificial womb - moving you around, self-adjusting for maximum personal comfort - but with you being the one that tells it where to go.

This is actually ruining my day and night, idiotic move to impress... who actually? Soccer mums? Drivers need to focus on the road constantly, if i look away, there can be atomic blast right ahead of me and I will not notice it properly. Even a glance for 1-2s can have grave consequences in heavy traffic.

Knobs are excellent thing. Touch screen is good only for passengers. In my knob-full car i can adjust most things without a glance away from road. Good luck hunting some effin' ipad screen

I agree. But a big oled screen for a map, settings, and secondary systems can never be wrong can it.

It reminds me of the transition from analog recording to digital recording. The finest analog recording technologies were developed just before the switch.

That's probably mostly because we stopped trying to invent finer analog technologies once we got digital.

I think Tesla is less priced for perfection and more priced for the future. Investors expect Tesla to eventually surpass companies like BMW, across the board for each model. By betting on Tesla, they're betting on Tesla being the dominating player in electric vehicles as well as electric vehicles dominating ICE vehicles in passenger categories.

I also think the price includes things like their rapidly improving battery technology that could be used for things other than cars, like storing energy from sources that can't provide a steady stream of energy, like solar.

So, there's certainly a lot going on with Tesla that isn't going on with a company like BMW.

How rational is it to bet on Tesla continuing to dominate the electric car market once the electric car market becomes mainstream? There are much, much bigger players waiting on the sidelines for market conditions to change.

They do have a significant head-start over most competitors.

When companies like Porsche talk about launching their 'Tesla killer' - it's set for years into the future.

It's definitely not rational to think Tesla will dominate, as no company actually dominates the auto industry. Toyota arguably comes closest and they don't dominate, they have a modest market share compared to what traditionally dominate companies have.

Can they one day do $20 billion in sales and ~$1.5 billion in profit? Probably. That would justify their present valuation (they will very likely carry a higher valuation than most car companies, for the same reason companies like Google carry a higher valuation than IBM). The real problem for investors, is it may take eight to ten years to justify their present valuation.

They'll have to build some billion-dollar battery factories first. (Or someone else must). This will take some 5 years per factory, so that's a clear leading indicator. Also, most new cars will be electric in 20 years, and that's a lot of cars.

Perfection or just some growth? Their volume is really small, isn't it? If they just manage to sell, I dunno, 10x more cars then that P/E would drop right down no?

Assuming margins hold up (or improve).

Probably not everyone knows what PE is (I didn't):

   The price to earnings ratio (PE Ratio) is the measure of the share price 
   relative to the annual net income earned by the firm per share. PE ratio 
   shows current investor demand for a company share. A high PE ratio 
   generally indicates increased demand because investors anticipate earnings 
   growth in the future. The PE ratio has units of years, which can be 
   interpreted as the number of years of earnings to pay back purchase price.[1]

According to [1] GE is 12, Ford 17, Nissan 10. Possible source for the P/E 130 [2].

[1] https://ycharts.com/companies/TSLA/pe_ratio

[2] http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/pe-ratio

The fact that it's net income is very important here -- Tesla are rapidly scaling up production, which means lots of capital investment with a view to increasing future revenues (and profits.)

I wouldn't take the owner satisfaction ratings too seriously, people who buy Tesla cars are mostly rich enthusiasts of new technologies and will quietly deal with a lot of issues before starting to criticize the car. If someone doesn't care about the electric engine, there's really no reason to buy a Tesla - for the same price you can get a much more luxurious german car with proven technology. It's similar to people buying exotic sports cars - they know the reliability is worse than in "normal" cars and they're much more expensive to maintain, but that's not the reason why they bought the car, so they won't complain about it.

Also when you spend over $100,000 on a car you're less likely to want to diminish its status value and other peoples' perceptions of your choices by complaining about it.

Jaguar owners have been an exception before recent quality improvements

The forearm burn you got from manually lashing your valves was a point of pride. And when you complained about the Lucas electrics, you weren't really complaining about your Jaguar, were you?

From watching a few friends own Teslas, it seems that they offer a superior repair and maintenance experience to many German car dealers, which helps with owner satisfaction in the face of reliability issues. It certainly doesn't bode well for Tesla's attempt to move to high-volume, lower-margin production, though.

Tesla has no other choice than to offer the best customer experience - otherwise they wouldn't stand a chance on the market as a new player. The question is how long will they keep it up?

At 25% margins, they can afford to keep it up long enough.

Is that high or low?

Pretty high for a car company (typical margins are under 10%).

http://www.statista.com/statistics/280346/ebit-margin-of-the...

http://marketrealist.com/2015/02/intense-competition-leads-l...

This is really the wrong question. Offering the best customer experience should, looked at systemically (aka in the context of reality), be a return on investment. Looking at it any other way is simply incorrect.

I think they are doing the right thing and exerting a lot of effort and eating a lot of cost to make right for their customers. Which makes me feel better about the ownership experience but nervous about the company's path to profit.

Tesla is in Apple's position about 10-15 years ago. Apple had a solid product (a machine that ran OSX), a loyal fanbase, and great support ratings. They did eventually translate their brand value to mass-market dominance, but only through sidestepping into other markets using iPod and then iPhone.

I wonder if that analogy fits for Tesla?

Now we're doing reverse car analogies, comparing cars to operating systems instead of vice versa.

One difference is Tesla stock is already priced as if they had already won the wider market.

As a Tesla Model S owner, and former BMW owner, I can say without a doubt that the german build quality (BMW, Mercedes, Audi) is superior to Tesla.

However driving a Tesla feels like having the first iPhone, and everyone else is driving around in Nokias. The Mercedes S class does however come close, in my opinion.

> However driving a Tesla feels like having the first iPhone, and everyone else is driving around in Nokias.

Weird I find the opposite compared to my Porsche Macan or my girlfriends Evoque.

The interior build quality is extremely poor on the Tesla and the giant screen looks tacky and difficult to use whilst driving.

I've never known a VW owner that has not had electrical problems within the first 5 years of ownership. Just my own data point.

Well, my last 4 cars have all been VW Group (Passat, Golf, Golf, ŠKODA Yeti) and I've never had any problems with them - mind you I kept them for 3 years so they were all within warranty.

Worst electrical problems we've had was with a Toyota my wife had - problems with the sunroof caused the instrument panel to fail!

neither BMW nor Mercs are in VW group (and god thanx for that!). Audi is, and generally, within those 3 brands, is considered as the cheapest, least luxurious, least fun alternative (R8 is an exception :))

To quote @GSElevator:

"Wearing a Rolex is like driving an Audi. It says you've got money, but nothing to say."

I don't know about all the other technology but the electric motor(s) should be much more reliable then the conventional combustion drivetrain

Eventually, yes. But internal combustion engines have a head start spanning decades of fixes and reliability improvements.

Isn't one of the Tesla's (and other EVs') advantages that the electric drive train is mechanically simpler, not to mention smaller, than an ICE? No cylinders, starters, water pump, oxygen-fuel mix gauge, and dozens of other things that can and do go wrong.

On the other hand, it sounds like Tesla's software and firmware are pretty complicated, meaning bugs in the 1.0 release, updates that may need to be rolled back if unexpected edge cases are discovered, hacks, faulty soldering, bad chips etc. And would lightning do a number on a Tesla? Maybe on any car, actually.

This reminded me of a reddit comment about Australian(?) army vehicles: they deliberately use older car technology like distributers and carburetors because modern electrical systems are far too complicated to repair out in the middle of nowhere. They might be OK against lightning strikes.

Then again, with any luck the charge will travel through the metal chassis and avoid ruining any components. You're definitely protected from lightning sitting inside the car. The engine? Maybe. Could be a fun experiment with high voltage :)

I've read that in high usage scenarios (busses, taxis) the reduced maintenance is already, along with reduced fuel costs, one of the things that makes electric vehicles financially viable, even with the higher up front costs

And electric engines don't? Even in cars, HEVs have been popular for twenty years (since the release of the Prius); and diesel-electric powertrains have been the standard in many vehicles since before the Model T.

Around here, we've had electric vehicles climbing our hills every day for over 100 years: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=lisbon+tram

That does not account for the rest of the car. The drivetrain is only a part of the car. Other manufactures are miles ahead of Tesla with everything else. Now if only Mazda, Mercedes, or other high reliability manufactures would create an equivalent car, they would blow Tesla out of the water, no question.

Maybe, but the other parts that are failing - like the door handles, the sunroof, the center console, etc - are at least as complicated or more compared to conventional cars, because Tesla decided to add a bunch of fancy features to them. What's more, owners have been complaining that Tesla won't sell replacement parts to independent repairers and that they have to drive their car to an official service center and leave it there - and because Tesla cut out the middleman and sold online rather than through a dealer network, that can be a very long way away.

Some family friends are acutely aware of this since they live in West Michigan and the nearest Tesla showroom is in Chicago.. 6hrs round trip to get your doors to open properly is stretching the limits of acceptable to even those people who are thrilled with the car the rest of the time.

I hear you, but it's important to note that it appears that Mercedes (a storied German luxury car with proven technology) currently has an even a lower reliability rating. That makes me think it's likely more than just company age and experience, I think there is something about a company's risk tolerance and how it relates to their eagerness to implement new tech. As the article states, the blander "appliance-like" cars might just be the most reliable.

And while I totally agree that owner bias is impacting the customer sat numbers, I think there's also a bit of a lift coming from Tesla's customer service, which gets pretty high marks. One of the smartest things they've done as a company is to invest heavily in service and responsiveness. A reliability issue sucks, but much less so if it can be resolved pleasantly and quickly.

Tesla has a small rabid fan base (here and on Reddit) that are willing to overlook its shortcomings. If Tesla actually delivers on its Model 3 any time soon and manages to penetrate the mainstream at all, you can be sure those customers won't be giving Tesla a pass.

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/3mtoxa/im_not_...

Take a look at that thread in /r/teslamotors (which is full of Tesla fanboys). Tesla's problems with quality and reliability are talked about as if that's what they're known for, and the comments are being upvoted (at the same time they're very optimistic about it improving but that's to be expected given its /r/teslamotors).

The problem for Tesla is they are 1990s Apple. A bigger problem for them is if when Apple enters the car market in 2020, they come in as 2015 Apple.

I own stock in the company but not anywhere near an owner of their cars, but my fan-boyism is based on the fact that this company is trying to push other larger car manufacturers into pushing forward instead of the same old same. Yeah they have some issues but they're quick at ironing them out on the new set of cars.

If and when the Model 3 releases will be the telling for Tesla. For now I will keep my stock.

If 97% of current Tesla owners would buy Tesla again, then perhaps the fanbase here and on Reddit is typical of all Tesla owners?

  Still, despite the problems and complaints, Tesla owners
  remain happy about their cars. According to its survey,
  Consumer Reports said that 97 percent of owners would buy
  their car again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/21/business/consumer-reports-...

Mercedes isn't a car you buy for reliability, and the core market are people who want to be seen driving Mercedes -- most of whom lease, because who wants to be seen driving an old car.

So yeah, they aren't Honda Accords. A friend had a "hanger queen" S class that was in the shop for 3 months in its first year. When the car itself is good, electronic doodads are supremely unreliable as well, reflecting poor reliability.

An old supervisor of mine was a Jaguar fan, and often bemoaned their reliability - "There are two days when you love your Jaguar: the day you buy it, and the day you sell it"

"The parts falling off this car are of the very finest British manufacture"

Shocking as it is (since I write software for a living) I buy only used cars with as few options as possible. All manual transmission, locks, windows and doors. I don't even have A/C in one of my two cars. Owning a car in America is like a tax: you need a car to have a meaningful participation in the economy. So while I admire Tesla's technology, through this lens I can't imagine buying one in this lifetime.

My father was the same way. My father's third new vechicle was a 90's Ford truck, and he didn't want "Anything exotic--in terms of accessories." Salesperson, "But of course you want the power windows?". Father, "No, I can roll up my own windows." Father, "Give me the truck, and throw in a factory service manual. Bye."

On the way home, I said, I remember your first car, that 50's something corvette, you bought had all the options, like FI, and even a clock. Father, "Son--back then, with just my Craftman's tool kit, I could repair anything in that car."

Father, "Yea, I have the money. I just don't like paying more for something that isn't a necessity. Plus, when the day comes that I can't roll up a window--put me in a home." He took a deep inhale on that Carlton light cigarette, and took a swig off the Mickey's beer between his legs.

His automobile sensibility rubbed off on me. I never buy a vechicle I can't work on. It hasn't been a positive with the ladies though. Actually, one time my VW broke down half way to Tahoe. My girlfriend, at the time, was complaining about my old cars. Plus, it was hot and she wasen't feeling well. I got luckey and it was a simple fix. We got back on the road, and stayed at the first motel that looked clean. That night, she said, "I don't mind your old cars. I though we were going to be stuck on that dusty road--for the night." I should have been better to her. I didn't realize how special she was at the time. The grass was not greener. I still think about her. I still think about my father.

Aint that a comnovel! Your father sounded like a nice guy. The advice is still sound.

I haven't owned a car since the 90s and I participate in the economy just fine. It's certainly more convenient to own a car, but you way overstated that

Depends on where you live and what you do.

Good point. However, your situation is a luxury afforded to you (I assume) by living in a place with proper public transit. A whole lot of people don't have that luxury.

Simply trading some luxuries for others. Owning a car is a luxury.

Only for people that live in high-population-density areas with meaningful public transit. Otherwise it's a practical necessity, unless having a job is a luxury as well.

You can move there.

Depends entirely on your location. Major US cities usually have at least functional public transit, but there are smaller towns that don't even have sidewalks. As far as they're concerned, you either drive or you don't leave your property.

I'm generally the same way. Also generally expensive cars -> expensive repairs. However Nissan Leaf's are selling for $10k on the used market. And Tesla is planning on a sub $40k model in 18 months. So stands to reason inexpensive used ones will appear on market in a few years.

> A reliability issue sucks, but much less so if it can be resolved pleasantly and quickly

Much less so ? Nonsense.

If a car is out of warranty and it continues to suffer from systemic reliability issues it is irrelevant how good the service is. You will still be significantly out of pocket and unable to sell the car on the used market.

Model S went into production in 2012[0] and has an infinite mile warranty for 8 years. These cars won't be out of warranty until 2020. It has no limit on owners and applies retroactively. Even tesla roadsters won't be out of warranty yet as they were produced in 08'. Given that there are about 2400 of them, most drivers won't pay out of pocket with a tesla for half a decade. The ones who bought roadsters are risk tolerant wealthy technophiles, who likely have repurchased Tesla cars. While I don't have data on that, if you pay over 100k for what was one of the first production electric vehicles from an unknown company and entrepreneur at the time, you have to be bullish on tech., the environment and have the funds to satiate your curiosity.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S [1]http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/infinite-mile-warranty

For whatever it's worth, there are owners on the Tesla motors subreddit who say they have issues and that Tesla won't fix because they are out of warranty.

One guy was over the mileage too (I don't remember the amount but it was absurdly high to be honest).

So maybe the limitations are different from place to place?

The Model S infinite mile warranty is only for the drivetrain and battery. All the other parts that people have been having problems with - the doors and door handles, the sunroof, etc - have a 4-year, 50000 mile warranty. (That may seem backwards, but yes, the door handle warranty really is limited-mileage whilst the drivetrain one is unlimited.)

> A reliability issue sucks, but much less so if it can be resolved pleasantly and quickly.

I think a lot of people understand that a car is a very complex piece of technology, with more failure points than they can enumerate. They don't mind minor issues, as long as it's fixed timely and without much energy spend from the owner.

minor issues are issues that does not render the car unusable.

Anecdotal evidence, on my work we have a variety of laptops. A Lenovo was having issues with the trackpad. I created a ticket, and the next day a technician was onsite and fixed it. We also had an Asus that was having issues with the screen, so we created a ticket and we had to ship it away for 5 weeks before it was back. We're only buying laptops with onsite support now, even when they cost a premium, because the alternative is buying a new laptop if one of them has any issues that needs to be fixed.

Sounds like the crux is that reliability means different things to different perspectives.

Those Mercs (or BMWs, or Audis) are targeted as lease-first cars, if you go larger than their compact sedans (C-Klasse, 3er, A4). The cars are built to swaddle you in luxury for 24-36 months or 30,000 miles, get a refurb, then get resold at 80% original price as Certified Pre-Owned vehicles. Then they need to start having small issues to maintain a relatively predictable revenue stream for the the dealership mechanic networks.

The CR notes are on the money -- really, the more tech in a car, the more likely you are to have issues. It's a big, heavy, complex dynamic system getting blasted with debris and weather. It's sometimes surprising just how durable some of the high-tech wizardry in modern autos is.

The Tesla's getting AWD? That's cool. If they can get the range up over 400 miles, I would be very interested (albeit still unable to afford one). Hoping actually that I do slip on a banana peel at some point :)

They announced AWD over a year ago.

Interesting; I just went there (http://www.teslamotors.com/models) and it looks as though the AWD actually increases range. I would have thought that it would require more energy. Two separate motors, one for front and one for rear; I guess their engineers found a way to divide the work pretty equally, versus one larger motor on just the front axle.

> versus one larger motor on just the front axle.

I think you mean rear ;)

Harley Davidson has a rabid fan base that defies logic far more than Tesla's. Most Harleys price 40% higher than better, faster and safer motorcycles out there, they use stamped steel parts where other makers use aircraft-grade aluminum, their engines haven't meaningfully changed since WWII (their first liquid cooled engines were just hitting the market a few years ago). It's branding. Tesla is much closer to delivering the "real thing". They will succeed, I think.

That's fine for today's Tesla customer but the analyst's point is that when they go up against the Leaf those customers are going to be a lot less forgiving.

I got my P85 in July 2013 and I can absolutely confirm what Consumer Reports is saying.

My car has (and continues) to have all sorts of small fit-and-finish issues. While I've never had a drivetrain issue or any major problem, I have had some wireless and door handle issues that required as new Master Control Unit. Sadly, the work replacing the MCU introduced even more squeaks in the dashboard area :(

That all said: I still love the car and I expect I'll buy another Tesla some day in the future.

Right there with you. <3000mi on the car and the drive unit needed to be replaced, the front left strut area makes a popping when turning the wheel, and I can hear something flapping while driving.

My 2013 P85 was in for service 4 times before the alignment was fixed correctly. Sticky sunroof. Rattles. 12v battery failure causing full system failure. Motor replacement. Charge port battery broke.

2014 P85D: Total vehicle failure at 218 miles on the odometer. Front motor replaced. Rear motor milling failure. Rear motor replacement again as part incompatible with Autopilot.

That all being said, the service is painless and I still love my car. I'm not going back to BMW unless kicking and screaming.

Painless if there's a service center nearby. This is all making me seriously reconsider buying one when I'd have to travel to get it serviced...

I do live very close to a service center and that certainly is a factor in my ownership. If I didn't live near an SC, I would opt for Ranger service.

Unfortunately it looks like that's no longer an option: http://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/ranger-service-plan-n...

Ranger service still exists but not in all locations.

I wonder how much post-purchase rationalization is going on there. With a $100,000+ car having to be serviced that many times - it sounds like a major inconvenience for people who work hard to make a living (so as to afford a $100K+ car). Coming back and buying a new one one year after that then also breaks about a week after purchase and saying "Oh I still love it" shows that SJ's Reality distortion field is alive and kicking.

I suspect other high end brands don't have fit-and-finish issues, but is it true or just brand distortion field ? any actual bmw / mercedes owner ?

My 2014 Fiat has started to turn into a rattle can. It is expected of these cars from what I've read. But considering I get 40+mpg, I'm fine with it rattling down the road.

My mother's 2015 BMW 320d has needed to go back to the garage at 6 months old to have its sunroof replaced. A BMW 320d isn't especially high end, it's true - but I imagine that (aside from the engine...) it consists of mostly the same parts as something fancier like a BMW 335i or 335d.

My dad's 2011 BMW 640i, probably closer to the Tesla in terms of price point, seems to have been trouble free so far.

My 2012 M3 needed an entire new engine at 16k miles. Unfortunately, unlike a Tesla, replacing my motor can't be done in a couple hours (or for a couple grand).

But the fit and finish is fantastic!

I don't get it. I have so little free time, the last thing I want to deal with is getting my car fixed. I have a Toyota Camry Hybrid and I have never had to do anything with it whatsoever, other than drive it whenever I want to

You are comparing rational approach to biased enthusiasts/early adopters one. Tesla has little to no appeal for common consumers, it just doesn't deliver much for ridiculous price, with many shortcomings.

But it's a new gadget, it shows where future is heading to. it's not there yet for most people.

Once it will deliver something for masses (ie 3x reach, maybe half-2/3 the power, half the price, no constant baby technology issues), people will be all over it. But in those 10-15 years, other manufacturers will have similar offers.

They are not standing idly - all have (coming) hybrid cars, many able to run for limited time in battery-only mode. Once market is big enough, they adapt their technologies to electric-only.

Is it possible that quieter cars (without combustion engines) simply seem squeakier?

One of the trappings of luxury is a quiet cabin. If you're driving a nice car (that's not a sports car) you won't hear the engine. This used to be advertised heavily before it became standard on most decent cars.

I think the squeaks /u/Lightbody is describing are related to repairs, which are absolutely the last thing you want to do to a car, especially dash, headliner, doors, large non-mechanical areas.

Another trapping of high quality cars is fit and finish, which include things like smoothness of edges and gaps, flushness, door closing effort, paint quality, etc.

If you look at things like the edges of Tesla's components and the width of the gaps between doors, they are poor compared to (other) luxury cars. [1]

To be sure, I do think Teslas have AMAZING features, like handling and acceleration, but they do show their youth in fit and finish.

1. http://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/fit-and-finish-odditi...

Disclaimer - I work for GM, but this is my personal opinion only. I honestly am glad that Tesla is providing stiff competition that spurs innovation.

Interesting that this important line was omitted from the LATimes article:

“Despite the problems, [CONSUMER REPORTS] data show that Tesla owner satisfaction is still very high: Ninety-seven percent of owners said they would definitely buy their car again."

That is a direct quote from the CS article and featured in other prominent media. (1)

I get that a negative CS article could potentially influence brand perception for non-owners but seems somewhat irresponsible to report only the negative side of the story especially when the Tesla LITERALLY ranked #1 in Consumer Reports 2014's Automotive Satisfaction.

(1) http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2015/10/20/teslas-pe...

(2) http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1095745_tesla-model-s-to...

This is why I no longer consume mainstream media news. They ALL have an agenda and that is either to scare you or make you angry. And they obviously don't care about lying by omission in order to garner views.

The scare people is bad, and immediately feels like worse reporting than the "makes you angry kind", but in the long run I'm much more concerned by the trend of news consumption heading towards the "makes me angry" kind. It can't be good for overall mental health.

It can't be good for the health of society either. All those little anger-inducing tweaks add up, shaping national sentiments and thus voting patterns.

Comparing Tesla to existing car companies misses the point entirely. Telsa is an energy platform company that is investing in delivering (Supercharger network) and storing (Gigafactory) energy. Cars are certainly the current "killer app" today, but are likely to be followed by many other applications in the future.

Yes, it's starting to look as though the cars are merely a shell for the very profitable batteries they're going to be cranking out in Nevada. Perhaps the whole Tesla car idea was a buyout play -- get established, build a name, then sell the whole thing to GM for $30 billion.

Once the battery plant has economies of scale, they'll be fueling a whole new generation of electric vehicles by other makers, perhaps including the upcoming Apple and Google auto-pilot offerings (the Nexus car? the iCar?).

Then there is the home and small office market for backup power, storage of daytime solar energy, off-grid and remote locations e.g. ranger stations in national parks. It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out.

Except those uses of energy are better solved by Redox-flow batteries, Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES), or pumped hydro.

http://energy.gov/oe/services/technology-development/energy-...

A single $5 Billion pumped-hydro plant can store 30 Gigawatt-hours of energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta...

The energy demands of this country will be met by utility companies and their massive infrastructure projects. A few hundred MW-Hrs from Tesla is pretty small in the great scheme of utility energy storage.

I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that Telsa is competing with utilities to store energy at scale. I meant storing energy for personal use (vehicles/homes/etc). They will certainly source all of their energy from said utility companies.

The large scale energy use projects are leveraged by personal users however.

If you have net-metering, then you sell your energy back to the grid. I mean, California's energy situation sucks (and will continue to suck until they build some large-scale energy storage solutions). But the majority of the country can just use net-metering... sell the energy back to the grid and get all the benefits of stored energy without actually having to buy Tesla's Batteries.

Home solar is more valuable with an attached battery. Without it, most setups as sold will shutoff if your home loses grid power. A battery is not the only way to solve this but it's the best solution if you can afford it.

But that's not what people use Solar Panels for. They use Solar Panels to reduce (or even negate) electricity costs.

Spending tens of thousands of dollars on batteries that only last a few hours when grid-power is lost is not a luxury the typical person can afford. But solar panels that are cheaper (and provide revenue through net-metering) will revolutionize the energy industry.

The average homeowner uses 30 kW-hrs of electricity a day. So... what, three Power-Walls per day of backup energy for $10k + installation costs + inverter costs? With a power output of only 2kW? This is going to cost maybe 20k or 30k for a solution that gives you power for more than a day.

In contrast, a simple gasoline generator will get you 5kW of power (6kW peak) and run for as long as you have gasoline. This crazy solution costs like $600 from Home Depo... and has several decades of experience to prove its effectiveness.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Powermate-5-000-Watt-Gasoline-Pow...

Generator + Solar Panels is still looking a hell of a lot more practical than Solar Panels + Battery. $50 of gasoline is going to run you ~25 gallons, enough to last 2+ days without any power. And if a crazy hurricane "Sandy" situation occurs again, you can always go out to the local gas station to grab more gasoline for day 8, day 9, or day 11 without power.

I mean, seriously? 10kWh per PowerWall is laughably small.

----------

I mean, when do you lose power for extended periods of time? Answer: when major hurricanes or snowstorms hit. That's what. It isn't like your Solar Panels will work while they're completely covered in snow. You'll need the generator if you actually want reliable off-grid energy anyway.

Maybe get a generator + Tesla 10 kWh wall battery? Then you get the best of both worlds. The Tesla will grandfather your solar energy advantage in the evening after the sun goes down, and the generator kicks in when the grid goes down. So your primary use of the grid will be, say, midnight to 6am while you're sleeping.

Yes, throwing more money at a problem generally solves it. But most people can't afford $10k to $20k appliances for backup power.

The true solution is the centralized utility providing energy storage for the masses. Again, large-scale infrastructure projects like the Bath County Pumped Storage Station and strong investments into a reliable local grid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta...

This plant provides dozens of Gigawatt-hours of energy storage for millions of Americans.

http://www.powersouth.com/mcintosh_power_plant/compressed_ai...

110 MWs of power for hundreds-of-thousands of homeowners.

-----------

You tackle this energy problem by building a strong, reliable city, town, or neighborhood. At least if you want to tackle the energy problem of the 99% instead of the 1%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_are_the_99%25

The solution is, build large-scale energy storage plants (CAES, Pumped Hydro), and then have local homeowners use the large-scale battery for storage and energy. IE: Net Metering.

I have home solar. I'm sharing my experience. With a small battery, your solar power will continue to function if separated from the grid. I'm not sure what the argument is. I installed my system without a battery. I don't have a battery installed today. But what I said is, I find home solar to be more valuable with a battery.

And if a crazy hurricane "Sandy" situation occurs again, you can always go out to the local gas station to grab more gasoline for day 8, day 9, or day 11 without power.

During Sandy 80% of New Jersey gas stations were closed, so no you couldn't just run to the local gas station for a top off. Batteries + solar aren't going to power your whole house through Sandy but it will keep a minimal power level indefinitely so you can charge your phone, run your fridge, and perhaps have a night light to read by. Though I have to agree I don't see the point of giant batteries outside of a doomsday prepper strategy. It is much easier and cheaper to just draw power from the grid at night.

We've had energy storage devices for homes for a while now.

It isn't exactly tearing up the market. Very few people are willing to pay the significant upfront cost for the benefit of ongoing but small reductions in power bills. And that is with government subsidies (at least in Australia).

I don't see how Tesla's superior technology is going to affect the product proposition.

Similarly, we've had electric cars for a while, and we've had high end sports cars and sedans for quite a while, but Tesla came along and blew most of them out of the water. Except for range, which will be solved sooner or later, it's a stunning tour de force, especially coming from an American manufacturer.

I have faith that Elon Musk will also think of a way to disrupt the home energy storage market, which in my opinion scarcely exists anyway. People have clunky, loud generators for emergencies, and it's possible to get rechargeable batteries to store your solar power, but there's not really an elegant solution yet to the after-dark problem. A quiet, high capacity "home battery" such as Tesla is planning might just be the ticket.

http://www.electricgeneratorsdirect.com/power/10-kw-home-sta...

You can get 10kW of power from a Gas generator for $3000 (hooked up to a Propane fuel tank... or to a gas line if you trust those). A 500 gallon propane tank will keep you running virtually indefinitely, and will only cost a few thousand after installation costs.

So you're realistically looking at $5k to $6k for a gas generator solution for a lot of people.

In contrast, Power Wall is $3500 for a paltry 2kW of power... not enough to even run my air conditioning unit let alone the rest of my house. This cost does not include the inverter, the additional batteries that need to be built out, or the electrician who needs to come out and set this all up. After that extra money spent... it is unlikely to run for much longer than 24-hours.

It is clear what the sane, reliable solution is. A gas generator. The Power Wall doesn't come anywhere close to the specs.

The Tesla website says the $3500 battery is 10 kWh.

Anyway, the prices will undoubtedly come down over time. Competition from China, etc.

kWh is energy storage. I'm talking about kW: kilowatts. Tesla's batteries can only output 2kW.

This means that the PowerWall can't even supply a typical 3-ton air conditioner (which uses up 3500Watts of power).

Lets just look at your typical appliances: your air conditioning is on (3.5kW starting, 2kW running), your refrigerator turns on (1200W starting, 200W running), and then the Sump Pump started to go (2kW starting, 1500W continuous).

Just preventing your food from spoiling and your basement from flooding is going to require TWO powerwalls before the inefficiencies of an inverter.

I'm not even talking about capacity (kWh). I'm simply talking about the amount of power the Tesla batteries are rated for. 2kW (3.3kW peak)

--------

> Anyway, the prices will undoubtedly come down over time. Competition from China, etc.

On the contrary. It looks like Tesla is trying to loss-lead on batteries to help scale up their Gigafactory. Tesla is assuming the cost will come down already, and is burning cash until it happens.

> Very few people are willing to pay the significant upfront cost for the benefit of ongoing but small reductions in power bills.

There are nine million households in Australia.[1] 1.4 million (one in six) have rooftop PV solar installed - "the highest proportion of any country."[2] Tesla is debuting its household battery storage in Australia because of the opportunity it presents. I expect within ten years, more than half of solar powered houses will have some form of storage installed.

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-06/fact-file-housing-in-a... [2] http://www.theage.com.au/comment/here-comes-the-solar-power-...

I had a conversation with a (recently-departed) Tesla mechanic the other day (who has had experience working with every other type of car), and he said, "I knew every Tesla owner in the tri-state area on a first-name basis. Everything breaks." He did say that it's getting better with the newer models.

Everything breaks on other cars, too. I am not really sure what you're getting at with this comment. A mechanic sees nothing but broken cars.

Maybe this wasn't clear in my earlier comment, but he has been a mechanic for lots of other types of cars, and he stated that the reliability was materially worse than other cars.

I think what people don't get is, A lot of Model S owners have no problem paying to be beta testers. Problems occur, but Tesla is fantastic about fixing them quickly through their service centers.

mechanics generally do not see the all the cars in a given local area time and time again except for regular servicing.

There aren't many Teslas in any area.

Plenty of people have brought cars before Model S was on sale, and never had a problem. That is reliability. In Denmark we have our fair share of Model S. I live is a smaller city and I see at least 5 every day. I haven't heard about a single Model S without issues, which is the same as a mechanic that states he is on first name with every single Tesla owner in the area.

They are behind most other manufactures in production knowledge, and they're using new technology. Of course it'll be near impossible for them to avoid issues altogether.

My 2013 Model S has had its share of issues. My car is on its third drivetrain. Am I unhappy about it? Nope. Was it a hassle? A little. Was it a show-stopper? Nope. Did Tesla always take care of the issues to my satisfaction? Absolutely. Would I buy another Tesla? Not only YES but I cannot imagine ever buying anything else ever again.

Tesla's huge weakness continues to be communication between company and customer. That is and always has been my number one area of concern. Not reliability. Except in terms of communications reliability. They are terrible at managing expectations. At providing quick and timely updates. At explaining functionality (ESPECIALLY in the age of autopilot) for not only safe driving but also simply maximizing enjoyment of all the car's capabilities. Tesla as a company is a shambles when it comes to communicating. It unfortunately continues to be a low priority to fix it. I wish CR would ding Tesla for lousy communications. Because customer complaints about their weakness as communicators go unheeded.

But I would still buy a Tesla again and plan to.

As someone who typically drives cars outside of their warranty period, I don't understand the lack of concern about reliability after your 3rd drivetrain. I suppose if you are leasing the car that is one thing, but with that kind of warranty work I would be extremely hesitant to buy a used Tesla.

The Model S powertrain warranty is 8 years/infinite miles.

My current car is 14 years old. My previous two reached 16 and 17 years.

I try to run then as long as possible because cars are money sinks.

The future won't be like the past. I don't expect to own a car 8 years from now in any scenario (electric self driving cars on demand).

Owning a vehicle just seems like such a waste, so much capital tied up in something that sits around all day. Could you imagine airlines that let aircraft sit idle 95% of the time?

There won't be any self-driving on-demand cars in 8 years. Maybe 28.

8 seems like an extremely reasonable guess.

The Tesla motors will get much more reliable with time. Nobody has mass-produced such a high torque motor before, it will take time to get the manufacturing ironed out. They will certainly get them to last much longer, but even if they don't the motor unit is only a couple thousand dollars and only takes a couple hours to swap. A Electric powertrain is significantly simpler than a combustion vehicle.

Well then this is obviously not an issue for you. You don't sound like the type to be an "early adopter" for cars, so I think it would be out of character for a consumer like yourself to buy a Tesla is the first place.

I don't think they're alienating a significant portion of their demographic by not catering to people who only buy a car every one or two decades, especially considering they're selling a luxury sedan and they're the only successful American automotive company for at least a few decades.

I would love to buy an electric car for my next vehicle. But if the operating cost, including repairs, is higher than a conventional car, then that's not a good deal for me. I'm certainly not going to pay a premium just for that.

I also don't like being stuck on the side of the road. Frequent powertrain repairs like I hear being reported on this page greatly concern me.

I'd say your expectations around car ownership are significantly out of line with a typical car buyer or someone who may be reading Consumer Reports. I don't think most people buying cars have any real expectation about communication or any relationship with the manufacturer of their car, and having the drivetrain replaced twice would seemingly be a dealbreaker in terms of brand loyalty for a great many car owners.

Obviously early adopters make for a different market, but I think your experience only serves to confirm Consumer Reports' latest report.

Out of curiosity, why would a drivetrain replacement be a dealbreaker? The replacement is usually a one or two day job in the service center, and they give you a loaner Tesla while they have it. Why do you care if they pre-emptively replace your drivetrain?

It's hard to gauge how widespread these failures are if only people who had problems report in. My anecdata point is that my 2014 Ford had no issues whatsoever and I would find it extremely annoying if I had to waste time driving to/from service centers for things that most modern cars haven't been failing at for years. Even more so if I paid as much as the Teslas cost.

Any sort of repeated major problem with an essentially brand new car would be a dealbreaker to many people because it's so rare with most modern cars. It's an inconvenience in day-to day-life caused by something you paid a premium on to buy new, and it's an indication that once the warranty runs out, you're stuck with potentially expensive repairs. Even if you don't intend to keep the car, reliability problems hurt the resale value.

I don't see the problem. Early adopters are shaking out the bugs in the Model S and the Model X. If Tesla adopts the Uber model, you're never going to care if the car has problems, it'll be Tesla's problems.

All of this hand wringing assumes car ownership is going to continue as it has in the past. I'd say the tea leaves are showing something different with self driving cars advancing as quickly as they are.

Tesla Model:

* Sell expensive cars to people who are rabid enthusiasts.

* Hustle hard to get Superchargers and Gigafactory done (funded by expensive cars from step 1)

* Perfect autopilot/autonomous systems

* Sell Model 3 to those who want to buy it, rent by the mile to those who don't want to buy

* Profit hard.

If the car drives itself and you rent a trip rather than buy and own a specific vehicle, why would most people care to pay a premium for a Tesla trip rather than just getting a Nissan Leaf With Google or Hyundai e10 With Uber or a self-car2go or...?

My model assumes Tesla is the innovator, and has self-driving cars first (possibly in a partnership with Google). Uber is playing catchup, and incumbent auto manufacturers won't want to lose 90%+ of their demand to by-the-mile rentals.

How much does being first matter here, though?

A self-driving taxi service is not easy to scale because in addition to good maps of anywhere you want to service, you need to own and maintain physical cars (starting with nightly cleaning on weekends). This isn't an app, and being popular in California won't help you operate vehicles in Barcelona.

On the other hand, once someone makes a good-enough software platform, they can just license it to any local Addison Lee-type taxi/minicab company that already owns the cars and has experience maintaining them. If that someone is Google, they might just give it away like the rest of their products.

Uber got relatively large adoption by largely avoiding trying to scale too much horizontally, by using local drivers with their own cars - routing is the only thing they've done (and it's not as good as local knowledge). They claim to not be a transportation company at all, they just connect contractors. That sort of thing won't be possible with self-driving Tesla taxis.

Plus, we don't yet know if Tesla is any good at making non-premium cars.

Regarding incumbents trying to avoid cannibalisation - are you familiar with carshare systems operated by BMW and Daimler?

A 7 Series on its third drivetrain within three years would have people tearing up message boards about how terrible internal combustion engines are

After you drive a Tesla, you feel everything else is outdated.

Today I drove a conventional car and it just feels so clunky and slow.

On the other hand, I prefer a normal key for opening my car, a simple, proven tech that works. Tesla has all those "someone had this idea and incorporated it in the car" that is typical of startups.

Everything has to be new and this makes reliability suffer in little stupid things, the basic experience is far superior to anything else.

The same happens to Apple in new products, you pay extra and you are the Guinea pig on anything new they include, think on ghost screens with retina display.

Not that I can afford a Tesla anyways, but... I really like my old Toyota 4runner for the same reason you like a traditional key.

I like being able to open it up and follow very clear mechanics while generally understanding what I'm looking at.

That is kinda expected. This is a new company after all, with new technology.

What I didn't see in the article was: how are they handling the failures?

It is one thing to have a car that's unreliable, but that you can then take to a dealer and get it back a couple of days after with everything fixed. It is another if you have to fight the company every step of the way to get it fixed or, even worse, pay for their mistakes out of your own pocket.

They address this in the article.

> Tesla spokesman Ricardo Reyes said the Palo Alto automaker keeps in close communication with its customers to “proactively address issues, and quickly fix problems.”

Yeah, but do they?

As far as companies go, I have a decent level of trust on statements by Tesla. But it is still a company, and that statement has to be independently evaluated.

Yes.

They have a 97% satisfaction rating.

They actively update their cars through software and hardware/parts[1]

Just because they're a company doesn't mean they're trying to screw everyone over. Do you think they roll out cars with bad parts of purpose? No of course not.

[1] http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tesla-adds-titanium-underbod...

I can only speak to anecdotes, but the three Tesla owners I know have been called by Tesla to ask the customer to bring the car to a service center so that Tesla could address something the onboard computer had reported.

My experience is that Tesla service means well, but so far they haven't completely solved my issues. They try though, and the car goes back to service November 3rd.

Fortunately, they give me a nice loaner vehicle (usually a better model) while mine is in the shop.

Based on personal experience with a slightly creaky pano-roof and from other owners they're pretty expedient about solving issues. If you're buying one out of warranty it's definitely a concern.

That said I think the advantages of such an incredible piece of technology outweigh some repair issues down the line.

Based on commentary in various owner forums, it seems that Tesla is handling these issues generally very well, and makes repairs without some of the common quibbling of a lot of dealerships. So while it's annoying to bring in the car frequently for problems, they do at least seem to be handling the problems well.

A lot of owners however seem concerned about what will happen after the warranty period, when these repairs start costing the owner.

New technology, like fit and finish, door handles, etc? There are drive train issues, but there are plenty of decorative and functional issues that are solved problems. My dashboard shouldn't creak cheaply in a near $100K car.

Tesla was founded in 2003 and is now 12 years old. It is not a new company.

Okay, I'll be sure to dial back my 'traditionalist' bent when it comes to vehicles and technology, it doesn't help make any points.

...but with the Model S as the 2nd iteration of a Tesla vehicle, and their first "ground up" model, how does this bode for the often stalled release of the Model X? It very much reminds me of issues faced by software companies, but there's some leeway being given to Tesla I don't think is really deserved. As in, if the last release was really buggy over the course of several years of fixes and patches (and the occasional feature removal like the swappable battery packs), then should expectations be tempered?

Anyway, I'll keep an eye on the company and what its products mean for the industry as a whole.

> how does this bode for the often stalled release of the Model X?

I would wait for version 5 to come out when they work out all the kinks.

They'll sell like hotcakes cause CUV is a thing. They were very smart to make their 3rd car a CUV.

Seems like a great opportunity to get yourself some (relatively) cheap $TSLA.

That's what has happened. At (5%) came up a little then down till another (5%) and up again on volume, then dropped to its (12%) relative min on the day and has been slowly coming up and I predict will continue to do so as all the people that believe in it hold the shares they bought at the min and will sell again when it recovers. A tidy little day traders profit session.

I struggle to come up with any metric on which TSLA is cheap.

I still think we should give Tesla the benefit of the doubt. This article feels like a hit piece, again. At the very least, it's a media organization gleefully taking a hit at an innovative company. I support Tesla less because it has great cars, but because it's really trying to build a better car.

Seeing as how the battery system is primarily what makes electric cars expensive, I really wish automakers would start delivering plugin hybrids that have, say 75 - 100 mile range on battery (to keep cost down), along with a very low horsepower gas engine. (Most plugin hybrids give you about 20 - 30 miles on battery).

The way it would work: the battery would drive the front wheels, and you would use the battery for most of your driving -- but when it got down to 20% charge, the gas engine would kick in to power the back wheels. The battery could provide acceleration, and the gas engine (about 20HP?) would maintain highway speed (and trickle charge the battery when running off gas). That way, you are using electric for most of your daily driving, but won't get range anxiety.

Let's not go down that path again. All sorts of mutant variations have been designed/built. The successful hybrid is one that allows both gas and electric to contribute simultaneously on demand, so as to increase the maximum performance. While not impacting the efficiency of running on electric-only when that works.

Chevy already has the Volt and the 2nd generation gets 50 to 53 miles EV and over 40 on gas afterward. The i3 is 70 to near 90 EV and similar in gas mode. Cadillac will have the CT6 which is a full sized car with the new Volt power train and expectations are high for it too.

Yeah, i would like to see about half again more in base EV range, the cover the mistakes cover emergencies ev range we are not seeing now.

The most important car coming in the next two years isn't from Tesla, it is again from Chevy and it will be the Bolt, they are promising 200 miles EV at less than 40k, possibly under 30k with tax incentives. They already are testing it with near production mules and claiming that 200 was easily done. Their battery costs are 145 or lower per kwh and expected to fall to 100 by 2020. Production is slated now for late 2016 having been moved up - not back.

This is exactly what the Chevy Volt offers.

At least the BMW i3 with range extender is similar to what you described. Its range without the extender is 81 miles (EPA). The range extender is a two-cylinder gasoline engine from a motorcycle.

An internal combustion engine which purely charges the battery seems to be the way things will go in the future, like the current BMW i3 with optional "range extender".

Though inertia will keep various other hybrid designs available in the near term.

the issue is that current ICE range extenders in plugins are still those old ICEs originally designed to drive the wheels and thus there are inherent trade-offs decreasing efficiency. What you want is an ICE designed for efficiency. You can hit 50%+ efficiency if you design for it.

In other words, you want the Chevy Volt.

As most of the responses will show, people aren't very fond of the idea.

I like it, but replace internal combustion engine with a micro turbine and the opportunities for a "better" hybrid system are extensive.

I think people are skeptical that the trade offs made in the Volt are bad. A heavier Volt with less available power might not perform comfortably.

Your suggested configuration has very big downsides. Basically, your config would be an electric car which carries around a complete internal combustion engine, gas tank, and exhaust system just in case it runs out of battery. For simple commutes and around town, you'd be better off jettisoning the weight and cost and getting a slightly bigger battery.

The hybrid car as originally conceived is genius: Small and efficient gas engines are very gutless. Add an electric motor to fix the gutlessness and improve efficiency in stop-and-go circumstances.

Electric cars are wonderful too. Trying to combine the benefits of all-electric with a hybrid is questionable.

That's why I mentioned a low HP engine, that would be just enough to maintain highway speed, to keep the weight small. Gas tank could be small, maybe 5 - 8 gallons.

Now your low HP engine is lugging around a giant empty battery. :-)

There may be trade offs to be had, but it seems to me that it's too easy to think "electric good" and not examine the tradeoffs carefully. I think that's why the original Prius did not have a plug-in option: it made no sense to people who analyzed the trade-offs. It was introduced simply because there was a market for "electric good".

I think the right trade-off is either all electric, or small-battery hybrid. It also might make sense to have a five-mile battery for people who make a lot of sub-five mile trips, but still regularly go further.

Do you have an opinion on the Jaguar C-X75 concept?

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-depth/analysis/jet-power-bla...

Wow, that looks really cool. Sadly it was going to be a million dollar car, and it was cancelled in 2012 after only 3 prototypes were built.

Well, yeah, traditionally the highest grade technology gets deployed in performance or luxury settings first, then makes its way down to mass production. IIRC that's what happened with airbag systems. So I don't see the genesis avenue as inherently limiting. MTT made the RetroRocket and it did the whole Hot Rod Power Tour without any significant issues, I think.

> For simple commutes and around town, you'd be better off jettisoning the weight and cost and getting a slightly bigger battery

I think the general desire for a plugin-hybrid is for the longer journeys so you don't need two cars.

> Trying to combine the benefits of all-electric with a hybrid is questionable.

It's a tricky trade-off but it's an interesting comparison.

For example, a 50 mile range may actually cover 80% of my travelling and so I could have a small battery and then use gas for the rest of the journeys. I don't need a 200 mile battery to get me up to 95% of my journeys.

It'll depend heavily on your actual variation on use though.

> Seeing as how the battery system is primarily what makes electric cars expensive, I really wish automakers would start delivering plugin hybrids that have, say 75 - 100 mile range on battery (to keep cost down), along with a very low horsepower gas engine. (Most plugin hybrids give you about 20 - 30 miles on battery).

20-30 gives you a decent commute on pure battery, anything longer is a questionable trade off of amount of battery you are lugging around, killing efficiency.

> The way it would work: the battery would drive the front wheels, and you would use the battery for most of your driving -- but when it got down to 20% charge, the gas engine would kick in to power the back wheels.

I don't know that a vehicle that switches from FWD to RWD while driving is a really good idea, or what advantage this mechanism has over more conventional and well-established hybrid systems.

Shares reportedly[1] down 10% due to report.

[1] http://seekingalpha.com/news/2840766-tesla-lower-after-consu...

But still have 97% saying they would buy the car again? That is a statistic that doesnt match the claim that the cars arent good.

There is a category of car, where the buyer identifies with a group. They don't buy the car for price or service record; they buy it to join a club. The VW Beetle; the PT Cruiser; Cooper's Mini all are cars like that. It doesn't matter what resale value they have, or how often they break down. All that matters is the self-image of the person doing the buying. They go into it knowing they will like the car, no matter what. So the 97% number is entirely expected.

The customers having problems simply aren't making that claim.

CR didn't say the car wasn't good, they said it wasn't reliable. The car performed very well on their tests related to the road; so it is fun to drive, safe, comfortable, etc.

The problem is that it breaks; and then you need to get it fixed. It seems Tesla is pretty good about fixing things without giving you trouble about it; so they make the negative experience into a positive/neutral one.

This leaves you with a good car, not reliable, but still with happy owners; so everything makes sense to me.

And the stock overreacts to all kinds of news, and it is true that reliability will matter as far as their future profits (if they keep everyone happy it costs a bunch; if they don't, they'll lose sales).

So some sales figures from random unchecked websites

Tesla: 10k/qtr or 40k cars pa BMW: 26k/mth or 312k car pa

So BMW sells 8x tesla (lots of hand wavy around figures), and tesla is selling at 13x BMW

Seems like a good bet - Tesla just needs to replace one of the worlds major brands. VW just imploded so there is room in the market without any major shifts.

http://jalopnik.com/tesla-is-finally-giving-us-sales-numbers...

http://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1122009

I've read most of this stuff before and am still excited to get a Tesla once a more reasonably priced one comes out. One thing keeps bugging me, though: If I wanted to get up tomorrow morning and drive across the country in a gas car, I could do it no problem. When I run out of fuel after ~325 miles, I just stop for 10 minutes at a gas station and head back out on the road. With a Tesla, I need to carefully plan out charging stations <200 miles apart and stay there for what, at least an hour at a time? Do Tesla drivers just not go on road trips?

http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger has all the information you need. Realistically, an hour is the higher end of the waiting time - you can get significant range in fractions of that time. Additionally, the navigation software on the Tesla will automatically route your road trip through Superchargers, so you don't have to calculate where you need to stop.

I knew there was a pretty extensive network of superchargers, but I really underestimated the nav. Really appreciate the reply.

It's a great help, but your original point still stands. With a ICE you can simply point on a map and start driving. With a Tesla, you have to make sure there is super chargers on the way, even if the Nav helps you, you still aren't free to do as you want.

This is where if companies were honest they'd send out cards

"Thank you for beta testing"

as maybe a 10th generation owner someday, I say thank you to all previous owners too for spending the money to work out the bugs

"automatically retractable door handles". Forgive me for being ignorant about this, but as soon as I read this (that not only it exists, but is a "signature feature") I couldn't help but wonder why...

Does anyone here know why such a feature would exist? Sure it makes one ooh and ahh when they're about to buy it, and probably the first few months after, but does anyone think if this feature does not perform perfectly, it could only possibly cause more buyer's remorse than anything else?

Aerodynamics. Protruding handles are a source of drag, so it was eliminated.

The thing that gets me is I read that it causes people to be locked out of their cars if it doesn't work right. I've seen plenty of cars without protruding handles that don't lock you out of the car.

I wonder if anyone would care if they were shown the math behind the amount of drag it reduces vs. the possibility of temporarily being locked out of their cars on random occasion.

On the one hand, they're a new company relative to the others; they are taking many risks, and they won't perform flawlessly - so I give them a lot of slack for trying and mostly succeeding.

Also, they are very good at fixing things when they screw up.

On the other hand, their stock price is WAY over valued. Hopefully we will get gentle ratchets to bring it back down to earth, such as this.

I'm not convinced the stock is overvalued. Tesla could end up not only making cars, but reworking the whole electric grid. How often does a company get to change a fundamental utility like that?

Oddly, I was just thinking the other day about how Tesla had a reputation for being a bit prototype-y but I hadn't heard anything about it recently, so I concluded they'd massively improved.

Based on this they're better, but still not great.

Was it not Consumer Reports that had a string of issues with their first model S, or was that another car magazine?

Are you thinking about the NY times article? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the...

No, I remember that as well, but there was someone that had the car and liked it but needed to get lots of parts replaced. Edmund's maybe? Yes that was it:

http://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2013/long-term-road-tes...

Is interesting how much influence Consumer Reports wields relative to other publications that review and rate products.

Don't own a Tesla, or have an opinion on their reliability, but wonder sometimes if we don't need a Consumer Reports for Consumer Reports.

I'm a Tesla fan and I actually expect this from a new car company with their first product from the ground up. They need to figure this out if they want the Model 3 to be mass market though. I want to buy it and it doesn't even exist yet.

Só Lexus, the one that kills people with a stuck accelerator, is the most reliable. Okay...

I'm pretty sure that was found to be caused by people accidentally hitting the accelerator.

This is the best time ever to buy Tesla stock. it's being globally shorted.

Just HFT algorithms attempting to get ahead of each other.

I wonder how many CR editors shorter Tesla stock before this was published. It wouldn't even be considered insider trading. I don't really put much stock in CR, unfortunately, the markets did -- quite unfairly actually since most folks buying Teslas aren't doing comparison shopping using CR.

The number is zero. Any more than that would be a serious scandal--can't imagine that would be legal. Market manipulation is a pretty serious crime ever since the days of Jay Gould.

I'm not so sure, remember when it was perfectly legal for members of Congress and their staff to use information gained through their jobs to make stock purchases? I mean this was just a few years ago....

When it was? It still is, as far as I recall.

Is it your contention that Congress also created a special exemption for Consumer Reports? That seems like:

a. It credits CR with a lot more power than CR actually has.

b. We would have heard about it before now.

I'm not saying that consumer reports did anything wrong, but insider trading or not, it happens. And places we would not expect. Who would've ever thought that members of Congress in their staff would be allowed to do insider trading? Until someone pointed out that it was illegal some years back, it never crossed my mind. I assumed it was illegal

It absolutely would be considered insider trading, as this report before its publication clearly falls under the definition of Material Non-Public Information, ie. any information that could reasonably be expected to affect the price of a security, and that hasn't been published yet.

You need a 'duty of trust' to a company to be an insider for IT purposes. There is 0 way a CR writer would have that.

A CR writer would absolutely have duties to CR. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/484/19 for an example of a journalist who was convicted in such a situation.

There is likely some confusion here. Look at this quote from the article:

"Just last month, the magazine awarded one version of the car — the all-wheel-drive Tesla Model S P85D — 103 points, a tally so high it broke the Consumer Reports road-test ratings system."

So last month's issue is published, hmm, where do you go from here, up or down? That's the time you buy into a short because you know the next news can't possibly be as good.

Its not insider trading if you get your short position the week after last month's magazine comes out, yet its almost guaranteed profit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com