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Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

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.

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

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.

Depends on where you live and what you do.

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.

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"

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.

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.

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-...

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.

> 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.

> 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

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.)

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?

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.

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.

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."

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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 :)

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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 :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.)

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.

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).

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.

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 ;)

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