I wonder, when Tesla unveils something that doesn't fit within the parameters that those people think of as a 'car', how many will drop their reservation?
Since we don't know the details yet, we don't know how much of a departure it will be.
Since we don't know the details yet, we don't know how much of a departure it will be.
I also doubt that it will have no manual control mode, so it shouldn't an issue regardless. Tesla is clearly going the route of being a strict super-set of the capabilities of other cars, until the market decides what features are obsolete many years down the road (e.g. steering wheels).
Obviously, this is all speculative since they haven't revealed what they're talking about.
And I basically just hate trying to deal with touch screens. They get smudgy and gross at the blink of an eye, and their total lack of tactile feedback demands a tedious degree of conscious attention which makes them inefficient ways of performing routine tasks, which adjustment of an automobile's cabin controls ought to be.
Could they even legally sell a vehicle with no human control right now?
Tbh, I don't think Tesla cares. They have a ~$276 million dollar interest free loan with which to build the first wave of Model 3s. They just need to make enough on those sales to finance the next round until they get through everyone who wants one.
The goal is primarily to pay for the initial production run so they don't have to get outside financing.
http://bgr.com/2016/04/03/model-3-reservations-elon-musk-276...
> Earlier on Saturday, Musk indicated that Model 3 reservations checked in at about 232,000. That being the case, if the pace of reservations keeps up, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise to see Tesla report 300,000 reservations sometime later this week. And while the $1,000 deposits for the Model 3 are completely refundable, Tesla has effectively secured a $276 million interest free loan from eager buyers.
This is a company that, while producing just 33K cars a year, has operating expenses of $114M per week. That $276M won't be around long enough to build a single Model 3. They're going to need a lot more money.
Do you mean that a lot of people that reserved are not serious? They had to pay $1,000 for the reservation, so that looks unlikely to me.
Or do you mean the company has inflated the number of actual reservations?
Reservations are not sales. They are just something to tout to shareholders. If they wanted real numbers they'd make it non-refundable and up the down payment. The stock trades at an absolutely insane valuation (it's actually valued not too far from massive manufacturers like Ford and GM), the company will have to take on more debt to fulfill the reservations putting the company at liquidity risk. If the orders don't come through and you have increased debt burden, you're gonna have a bad time. This isn't something I'm making up, even the analysts at UBS agree.
Huh? What "middle class" are you talking about? In the USA, 2 in 3 people can't afford a $500 car repair or $1000 emergency room visit [1]. My guess is that people putting $1000 down on a car are either pretty rich or pretty serious about buying it.
1: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/63-of-americans-cant...
This is absurd. Do you seriously think that Tesla wont have every single Model 3 sold the moment it comes off the line? People were waiting in half mile long lines for days to pre order a CAR.
Straw man. No one has said that. What they've said is Tesla just got a couple hundred million in free financing.
You can check my comment history: I'm as annoyed by the Tesla hype-machine as anybody. The games they play when reporting (or not reporting) financial metrics is astounding, and I don't understand why the SV crowd finds it acceptable for a public company.
However, I want to see Tesla and the whole EV industry thrive. People just need to curb their expectations.