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Comment by codeulike | Hacker News Reader

> their sales are unchanged or even increasing since 2012 when the Model S was launched.

You need to look at 2014/2015 really, which is when the Model S started being produced in decent numbers.

The Model S outsold most other 'large luxury' vehicles in the US in 2015, including the Audi A7 and A8 combined, and the BMW 6 and 7 series combined, and the Mercedez S-class.

http://gas2.org/2016/02/15/tesla-model-s-outsells-mercedes-b...

edit: re: rates of change: Model S sales increased 50% during 2015, Audi A7,A8, BMW 6,7 Mercedez S all down 5% or more.

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If you compare a Model S to a S-class Mercedes, you have never driven a S-class or be driven around in one. Just because Tesla is overpriced for hipsters doesn't mean you can compare it to other cars in the price bracket.

>Just because Tesla is overpriced for hipsters doesn't mean you can compare it to other cars in the price bracket.

Well, your prescription doesn't change the fact that magazine journalists, video bloggers, and prospective buyers do in fact compare them because they are roughly in the same price bracket.[1]

It might be possible that most Tesla buyers are only:

1) wealthy Prius owners who want to upgrade to something bigger and more technologically advanced and would never consider Mercedes S-Class

2) eco-green consumers who would only bicycle to work or hail Uber/Lyft if car travel was necessary and would never consider Mercedes S-Class

But based on forum discussions where prospective buyers test drove both and chose one or the other, it seems like there is a population of owners who seriously considered both cars. (Same type of comparison goes for BMW/Audi.)

[1]https://www.google.com/search?q=tesla+"model+s"+vs+mercedes+...

Oh yes you can, because it's a price bracket. As in, the people buying them value Teslas and Mercedeses similarly, although not necessarily for exactly the same reasons.

And if you think a S-class Mercedes is incomparably superior to a Tesla Model S, but the Tesla S is still outselling it by a wide margin, just imagine what's going to happen when Tesla's next iteration of a luxury sedan gets even closer to the Merc!

> Oh yes you can, because it's a price bracket.

Did you actually check where a Model S starts after tax credits vs. the base price of a S-Class?

"As in, the people buying them value Teslas and Mercedeses similarly, although not necessarily for exactly the same reasons."

As we don't have data here we're thrown back to opinions.

I would think Tesla users buy a Model S for the electric drive and it's an upper class car and for the branding ("I drive a Tesla, I'm cool")

People buy a S-class because of the luxary and thebranding ("I drive a S-class, I'm rich").

"but the Tesla S is still outselling it by a wide margin"

It's outselling the S-class because the market it markets itself to is larger.

Strange that you claim we don't have data then proceed to make bold claims that Tesla isn't a luxury brand, with weak supporting arguments... or close to no supporting arguments at all upon second reading.

Tesla is trying to pivot towards mass market, this is well known. Whether they keep the luxury/sports line or push those into a new brand (or sub-brand) is the big question. But I don't think anyone questions whether or not the currently available Tesla cars fall into the luxury category. Both design and price suitable fall into that category.

Mercedes might have an older and long-term luxury brand that is associated with the wealthy, which is helpful, but not an absolutely critical barrier for a brand/product to be put into the luxury category.

> Strange that you claim we don't have data then proceed to make bold claims that Tesla isn't a luxury brand, with weak supporting arguments... or close to no supporting arguments at all upon second reading.

my feeling is that parent comment wasn't claiming that tesla wasn't a luxury brand but that it was a "cool upper-class" luxury brand. Now, obviously, this is a very slippery distinction, and as someone who probably wouldn't spend that much money on a car at all, sure, it looks like a meaningless distinction... but I don't think it is, I mean, to the people who might buy the car. Tesla, clearly, is a brand for people willing to spend a lot more than the minimum on transportation, so I do think it can properly be called a 'luxury brand', but I think parent's point was that Tesla is a luxury brand that appeals to people for whom other luxury brands wouldn't appeal. I do know several people who would be vaguely embarrassed to purchase a Benz, who would seriously consider the Tesla, mostly for social reasons... and when you get down to it, social reasons dominate for cars in that price range. Hell, I might be in that group? I mean, if I came into a huge amount of money tomorrow and was looking for a luxury car... I'd probably consider the Tesla to reflect more positively socially on me than a S class or something.

Tesla is different from BMW or Mercedes just like Cadillac is different from those brands. (I mean, it has yet to be seen if Tesla will make BMW and Mercedes obsolete the way that Acura and Lexus made Cadillac obsolete. But the point being that there are big differences between the people who might buy the different luxury brands, even when the price range is similar.)

Now, i don't know that parent is correct in saying that Tesla luxury appeals to more people than Benz or BMW luxury, or Acura or Lexus luxury, but I do think that parent is correct in that the overlap between people who would buy a Benz and people who would buy a Tesla is not 100%, even though they are priced similarly.

Thanks that you've tried to understand my post - and said it in better words and with more effort instead of downvoting the post like 10 others.

Just for clarity, you were very likely downvoted for the attitude and divisiveness, not the content. What you said content-wise is mostly fine, hardly worth downvoting. But HN takes a hard line on civility.

The Tesla model S is a lot more fun to drive than an S class. But the S class is a much more pleasant and luxurious car as a passenger.

Tesla dont pay for advertising, so I'm not sure what marketing you are referring to. Or how they are reaching a larger market?

> Tesla dont pay for advertising, so I'm not sure what marketing you are referring to. Or how they are reaching a larger market?

Marketing doesn't exclusively mean advertising:

The American Marketing Association has defined marketing as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large."[0]

Tesla has a clear marketing strategy in terms of what types of cars they sell and to what types of people. The fact that they don't pay for advertising doesn't change that. Musk/Tesla can be selective about who they do interviews with, or provide test cars to, etc. Those things are part of the marketing, even if there is no explicit purchasing of advertising.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing

Well fair enough. But given they dont actually advertise in the traditional sense, I dont see how the comment above can argue that they are 'aiming for a bigger market' than Mercedes flipping Benz.

You market a product towards a market with PR, interviews, ads, design, features which is much more than

"Tesla dont pay for advertising"

Thats true. But given that they dont pay for traditional advertising, I'm not sure why you are saying that they are aiming for a bigger market than Mercedes Benz. Do you think more people of the appropriate income bracket have heard of Mercedes Benz, or Tesla?

So by virtue of giving your product a "feature" you've necessarily engaged in marketing? Sometimes people broaden definitions to such a degree they completely neuter the word.

Choosing which features to offer in which products absolutely falls into the widely accepted definition of "marketing." In fact, market segmentation is one of the most fundamental marketing strategies, and market segmentation is essentially just the practice of choosing a specific set of target customers and building features specifically for them.

Just look at the hype they get on HN.

The God King doesn't need advertising when his disciples spread his words for free.

There is price, and there is cost...

Living in the Netherlands, the price of a Tesla is around 100.000 euros. However, if I can lease the thing, the actual cost (due to tax benefit, etc) drops like a rock to a level that compares to a small, cheap car. For full electric cars you hardly pay taxes because the government wants to stimulate this clean way of transportation.

Now comparing to a Mercedes with a similar price is wrong, simply because the Mercedes with a similar price is costing much, much more in day to day operation: more tax (heavy car = high tax), no green car, so more taxes).

I believe that at least for the Netherlands, most hybrid or full-electric cars are driven by people that have a company car. We just love tax refunds. We hate the hassle of charging, so many hybrid cars in 2015 (Mitsubishi Outlander is a good example) were driven on petrol - not electricity.

> For full electric cars you hardly pay taxes because the government wants to stimulate this clean way of transportation.

It's interesting that Netherlands seems to assume all electric cars are green. But Singapore actually calculates the carbon emissions per km and finds the Tesla Model S to be very environmentally unfriendly: the Model S attracts a surcharge of $15,000 while the BMW i3 gets a rebate of $30,000 [1].

[1] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/electric-car...

Tesla is contesting this [1].

[1] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/lta-relookin...

Yes, since electricity is generally as environmentally efficient if not much more so than gasoline, it should imply that a larger battery is even more efficient. This should be a mistake.

How is leasing cheaper than buying (due to tax benefit, etc.)?

It seems the rent/loan/buying tradeoff would be independent of the choice of car.

Put it this way - it's not cheaper, but it's more affordable.

Say a price of a brand new Tesla is 100k Euro. If you got a loan from a bank to buy it, you might be paying back 1000-2000 euro a month just to pay it back in a few years. That is quite a lot. There are companies however, which let you part-lease or part-hire or however they call it, when you pay roughly 1/2 of the value of the car over 3-4-5 years, but you don't get to keep it at the end. So you might have a brand new Tesla S, for say 400 euro a month - which is very affordable. The only caveat is that you don't get to own the car at the end - but for a lot of people that's not a huge issue.

This is like when your carrier pays for the phone, lets say you pay 10 EUR per month for a mid class phone and 20 EUR per month for a premium phone. Looks like a small difference (+ a "price" for the phone)

If you buy both without a carrier, you might pay 400 EUR for the mid class phone and 800 EUR for the premium phone. The price difference no looks huge.

(The difference in acucmulated prices is the "buying" price of the phone)

It's all well and good to "hardly pay taxes" on EVs when hardly anyone is driving them. It's not sustainable however, as revenue from road and fuel taxes will need to be replaced by some other tax at some point.

Washington state charges an extra $100 a year on evs because we don't pay road taxes through buying gas and paying the normal percentage of a gallon of gas.

> more tax (heavy car = high tax)

The weights of the Tesla Model S and the Mercedea Class S are pretty much identical.

You're just misunderstanding the parent post. He mentioned that the Tesla is tax beneficial because it's electric and the Mercedes selling at around the same price isn't because of its weight.

These two statements are not mutually exclusive.

In The Netherlands cars are taxed on multiple factors[1] including CO^2 emission, type, and very significantly on weight.

In Tesla's case the weight is being heavily offset by the lack of CO^2 emissions, whereas the Mercedes gets all the taxes of a normal gasoline car and the weight tax on top of that.

1. http://www.expatax.nl/kb/article/how-much-road-tax-will-i-ha...

but, at least in the Netherlands, they are taxed way differently. I also heard people that leased them, and in the end the price over a few years is comparable to a €30K car, not another €100K car.

Yes, I understand that. I just pointed out that the reason is not that the Mercedes is heavy and the Tesla light.

Presumably this comes from the fuel efficiency per manufacturer fleet, which tends to discourage heavier vehicles as they usually are less fuel efficient. So heavier, more polluting vehicle counts against you not strictly heavier.

It's a fair bet that anytime someone breaks out "hipster" as a general insult, the person doing it doesn't have anything worth saying

It's this generation's version of "you kids"

Often, they use "hipster" to mean "trend follower".

I'm not sure it's always not worth saying; being too focused on trends is a valid criticism.

If you can point out the human being who follows no trends at all, I'll accept that your definition has use. I don't believe that you are correct, however.

I'd that's what they mean, they should say that. "Hipster" just means "someone I don't like" and so has no value in a public forum conversation.

"Hipster" is far closer to my definition than yours.

My father-in-law had an S class which I drove from time to time. I hated the driving experience; it felt like driving a 5-ton tank. It had so many features that I counted nearly 100 buttons within reach of the driver. He had it in the shop annually for $5000 worth of work. He couldn't wait to sell it and switch to a Lexus.

I truly feel the S class is inferior in driving experience than the model S. To me it's like comparing trucks to airplanes. It's probably mostly a question of taste.

"The Model S has the S Class beat in acceleration if you drop the extra $10k for ludicrous mode, but the S Class interior is worlds better. Not even in the same league."

You could have just as easily said:

"... the C class interior (or the 3series or A4) is worlds better. Not even in the same league."

It's stupefying how poor and sparse the Model S interior is. Setting aside issues of taste (that is, adjusting for the fact that it is a minimalist design) it's just completely out of place in a 100k+ car.

Not everybody likes wooden panels, leather seats and all the bling bling. I really feel good in the model S.

> wooden panels, leather seats and all the bling bling

every high end german car interior is completely customizable. all that wood can be replaced with plastic, or carbon fiber. all the leather can be replaced with alcantera. all the bling bling can be replaced with lightweight alternatives, or just omitted entirely from the build. you can literally change the seatbelt colors on a porsche, or the color of the stitching in the leather.

you wouldn't know this, because you probably never actually shopped for one, you decided on tesla because you like the fact that it's electric and are a fan of the company. there's nothing wrong with this, that's how many buyers of porsche, audi, etc, operate -- but it shows that you aren't really the target market for the german stuff.

"Not everybody likes wooden panels, leather seats and all the bling bling. I really feel good in the model S."

That's why I said "adjusting for differences in taste".

The A4[1] has a very tasteful, restrained design that is also extremely high quality with high end materials. It also is much, much nicer than the Model S.

[1] Low end, entry level Audi.

The Model S has the S Class beat in acceleration if you drop the extra $10k for ludicrous mode, but the S Class interior is worlds better. Not even in the same league.

The S Class interior looks gaudy, over-the-top, and old-fashioned to me — something from a bygone era:

http://www.arodmercedesbenz.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/S...

But I say this as a millennial with an engineering degree, so I don't really know if the marketers particularly care about my opinion on what is stylish or not.

Another millennial here. Your S Class interior image looks great to me. I'd go black over brown but still looks great. I just looked at some pictures of the Tesla and my god that looks awful inside. The inside of a luxury car should be a lot nicer than that. Also why the giant screen? Knobs and buttons make so much more sense - they're easier to use without looking while driving. I've also heard various stories about people rebooting their cars essentially because everything is baked into that screen. It just seems like a downside to me in every way.

You picked like the most old-fashioned style you could.

http://automiddleeast.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/AMG-spo...

I'm 25 and I would pick this over plastic and poor leather in tesla any day.

Go sit in both, they're not even close. I'm a millennial too, but that has nothing to do with being able to appreciate a luxury car interior. FWIW neither the S Class or Model S appeal to me because I like going to the mountains and drive on sketchy forest roads.

> The Model S has the S Class beat in acceleration if you drop the extra $10k for ludicrous mode, but the S Class interior is worlds better. Not even in the same league.

You don't need to pay anything extra to beat an s-class, based on their website. The slowest Tesla, the station wagon/suv x version on the slowest/lowest end battery (75kwh) was 0 to 60 in 6.0 seconds, beating all model s's-class mercedes. This was the easiest comparison site I could find, the various models of both cars makes it a little hard to pick one spec model to compare. Never the less, the low end tesla suv beat all s class.

http://www.zeroto60times.com/vehicle-make/mercedes-0-60-mph-...

http://www.zeroto60times.com/vehicle-make/tesla-0-60-mph-tim...

The s class interior is nice. My dad has one, so many buttons, but it's smooth, etc. Soon, Mercedes will start advertising that the new s class is not like your dad's oldsmobile, i mean mercedes.

You dont need to pay for Ludicrous mode for the Tesla to be quicker than the Merc. I think a vanilla 90D (without the P) is sufficient.

this. cars are not comparable because they cost similarly, but because the driving experience/comfort/luxury/etc are similar.

does any tesla cut corners as sharp as BMW? is the luxury feel of being inside comparable to S class? and so on.

the only positive feedback on Teslas i've heard compared to those germans is acceleration. part of the whole experience, but personally not the most important one - that would be handling for me, BMWs are out of this world

Saying it's just "acceleration" is an oversimplification. It's hard to describe what it's like driving a good electric car. It's not just that it accelerates faster, but the acceleration starts exactly when you want it to. Everybody i've let drive my S has been skeptical, and then blown away.

Yeah, the interior is not as nice as a top end BMW or Mercedes. I don't care, driving the car is amazing. I drove a $150k Audi RS7 the other day. The whole time i wanted to be back in my S.

> the interior is not as nice as a top end BMW or Mercedes.

The interior is not as nice as our 328 wagon. It's no where close to a high-end model. They are fascinating cars, but the fit and finish and range are still lacking (from my perspective, anyway). And sedans are boring.

Have you driven one?

I've driven the model S on two different occasions. It was incredible. However, I went with my second BMW because of how incredibly awful the tesla interior was in terms of fit and finish. The car had 30k miles and there was constant rattling and noises coming from various areas of the interior made worst by the fact that the car was completely silent. I'll revisit Tesla in another 5 years when they've had time to work out their quality issues.

Given what Tesla have achieved, and the engineering hurdles they have overcome, it's kinda strange that they neglected the interior so much. I would have though that this would be one of the easiest parts of a car to get right.

Hire some established car interior people from existing companies, and work with existing suppliers of luxury manufacturers. The interior is the one part of the car that doesn't need to try to be innovative, so they could have basically just copied their German rivals. Am I missing something about how hard this is?

Also, is it really that bad? I've never driven or ridden in a Tesla, but I've looked inside one in a showroom and thought it looked pretty nice inside.

I think a lot of it is psychological and about branding and luxury signaling, but I also think that build quality is one of those things where you have to get everything right, it really is a case of the whole being larger than the sum of the parts, so you can't just subcontract out the parts and slap them together.

And at the end of the day, quality costs, and the price of the Model S is high enough already.

My soon 3yo Mercedes E-class doesn't squeak, rattle, flap, wobble, dinkle, pop or waffle anywhere. Nothing.

Meanwhile, the Tesla I test-drove felt much cheaper. It's nice enough, but it really feels like the cheapest entry-level German luxury cars, while it's priced like their highest-end cars. I've also seen reports that build quality is hit-and-miss, they start to squeak and rattle after a while if you're unlucky.

Almost same story here, I picked a Mercedes E-class instead of the Tesla, the interior completely blows the Tesla away at half the price.

Yes, the Tesla is super fun when you get to push the speeder, but the rest of the time it's just not. This was also a year before Tesla launched their "autopilot", and I picked an E-class with Mercedes' self-driving tech which had already been on the market for years at that point...

Yes, both the S and the roadster.

> but the acceleration starts exactly when you want it to

Have you ever driven a manual? They, too, can give you acceleration exactly when you want it.

My biggest gripe about driving in the US. No manuals to rent -.-

What Tesla does do better is the constant torque. That must be fun.

> They, too, can give you acceleration exactly when you want it. > My biggest gripe about driving in the US. No manuals to rent -.-

This comparison is not even in the same time zone. The average American drives a car with gearing technology at least two or three entire generations beyond manuals. Electric cars feel like a couple generations beyond even the best automatic setups.

A car with a good CVT, for example, doesn't even switch "gears", it's one continuous acceleration from 0 to speed. My current car, a hybrid with a primary motivating electric motor, makes my wife's CVT feel like a steam-punk jalopy.

A good electric car, on the other hand, makes even the best automatic feel like the engine is dragging, or you're pulling a trailer or something.

Manuals, even great ones, feel like some stone-aged anachronism. After riding around in an electric, then getting in a manual, you can't believe that cars are still being made with such terrible gear shifting contraptions. It's like that car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with all the lever pulling and pedal pumping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KiZv2pOo5o

I must not have driven any good automatics then. They all felt sluggish and unresponsive. Biggest problem being that they downshift after I press the throttle, not before.

I don't see how they could know in advance that I'm going to accelerate unless I tell them. Hence the sluggishness can not possibly be removed.

Unless you count flappy pedal gearboxes as automatics as well. Then yes, far superior to traditional manuals.

Mind you, even Formula E has a flappy pedal 5-speed gearbox despite being all electric.

I haven't driven a fully electric car yet, and I'm sure their power output is impressive, but I have driven hybrids and they were crap in terms of fun-to-drive.

I drive a Prius. If you don't jam on the accelerator, it responds instantly. If you try to accelerate very quickly, it pauses to let the engine spool up, causing that sense of hesitation. But a little tap on the pedal at low speeds can provide quite sudden acceleration, something a conventional car really can't do.

However, my mom's (fully-electric) Leaf is worlds apart. No matter how hard you step on the accelerator, it always responds immediately, fully, with seamless, continuous thrust.

A Tesla? I've never driven nor ridden in one, but I can only imagine it being like a launch-type roller coaster: immense, terrifyingly sudden acceleration.

The only way a manual can hope to compare is if you rev the engine and drop the clutch, which probably isn't something you do everyday.

> I must not have driven any good automatics then

Probably not. Modern autos like CVTs don't actually even shift, not in the way that a manual or very old fashioned automatic. They can feel a little mushy, but on modern generation vehicles power is pretty instantaneous and about as continuous as you can get in a non-electric vehicle. They aren't "fun" though and tend to be built to maximize efficiency over speed or power. But they're mathematically more responsive than any manual could be and they're effectively always in the "right" gear, up/down shifting doesn't really make sense.

Other than the occasional rental or when riding in my friend's cars, and between our household cars and the occasional electric I've been in, I haven't felt a gear shift in a couple years. It actually feels a little alarming these days when you do feel one. Manuals are worse, they don't feel fun anymore, they feel like there's something mechanically wrong with the car.

Because of these qualities, most racing leagues have banned CVTs, since a performance oriented CVT would outperform any other shifting strategy in most kinds of racing. It was tried out by Williams decades ago for F1 and is said to have been astonishingly faster since it kept the engine in peak torque. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3UpBKXMRto

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2007/05/03/banned-continuously-va...

http://www.rstreet.org/2014/07/15/the-twisting-tale-of-the-c...

But the industry is starting to move beyond CVTs now and direct drive is starting to hit cars. Teslas are like this, but even some consumer hybrids don't have any sort of gearing anymore. CVTs beat manuals for shift speed, but direct drive, because there's no such thing, beat CVTs. These are both the correct answer, manuals are some sort of weird vestigial technology that clings on because of all kinds of weird myths about performance and efficiency and notions about what's "fun".

I'll toss this out, a ludicrous launch in a Tesla is much more fun than any ICE engine transmission system.

>>I don't see how they could know in advance that I'm going to accelerate unless I tell them

You can learn to drive an automatic, just like you can learn to drive a manual. In mine, I just blip the throttle down a bit to force the car to downshift if I'm anticipating an overtake soon - it's something you learn if you drive long enough. Besides, I drive a car with an AMG 7-speed Dual Clutch transmission, where the shift takes fractions of a second - I could not possibly change that fast in a manual. No chance.

I've forgotten about dual-clutch transmissions. The Bugatti Veyron, for example, uses a dual-clutch with a fully-automatic mode for performance. I think VW produces a dual-clutch with something like 8ms shift times.

> I don't see how they could know in advance that I'm going to accelerate unless I tell them. Hence the sluggishness can not possibly be removed.

That's the thing... any trace of that sluggishness is gone in a Tesla (or other quality electric). From the moment your foot starts moving even the tiniest amount on the accelerator, you feel your back being pushed into the seat. There is zero delay.

A comparison I thought of... It's the difference between pressure-sensitive touch screens and capacitive.

> I haven't driven a fully electric car yet, and I'm sure their power output is impressive, but I have driven hybrids and they were crap in terms of fun-to-drive.

Yep, hybrids are nowhere close to a Tesla. Go take a test drive, you'll see in the first few seconds what I'm talking about.

No, they can't. :) Seriously, driving fuel powered cars -- manual or not --, do not get close to the experience of driving an electric car.

Caveat: I am from Germany, have driven manuals all my life.

Every time I even drove a Citroen C-Zero shared car from Multicity for 10mins, getting back into a manual car -- even one of the nice CLA Mercedeses that car2go now offers --, feels like going back from the 21st to the 19th century.

Can you have possibly overlooked the perfect car - the Citroen 2CV?

"#Citroen c-zero vs #2CV which one is going to win?":

https://www.flickr.com/photos/65912627@N06/6892145177/

My money is on the 2CV.

Yes, for years. Have you driven a Tesla?

The Tesla is quicker, and can drive itself better. Sure, the Merc wins a lot of the other categories. I think it is reasonable to compare them.

> The Tesla is quicker, and can drive itself better.

In what ways can Tesla drive itself better in comparison to S class systems?

http://www.thedrive.com/tech/4591/the-war-for-autonomous-dri...

Except a Tesla S is more comparable to an A6/5 series/E class in regards to size and interior quality.

outsold is a different claim than what the GP claimed. It also doesn't say anything about profitability. A lot of startups outsell the competition at a loss per unit. And then try the "just sell more" approach. Things may work out for Tesla if they can ensure their funding helps them reach the end of the runway and lift of - or not. And then "outsold" will be a sad feather in the cap.

My link shows that Tesla sales increased and all the others went down (comparing 2014 to 2015).

If Tesla just sold the Model S, they would be profitable. Margins are pretty good for each Model S. But selling just the Model S is not the plan, hence the huge cash burn.

>If Tesla just sold the Model S, they would be profitable. Margins are pretty good for each Model S. But selling just the Model S is not the plan, hence the huge cash burn.

I'm curious where you draw this conclusion from. Tesla definitely burns a ton of cash, but it's primarily capex ($1.6bn in 2015), which doesn't directly affect their profitability.

2015 R&D was $718 million. Even if we assume none of that is related to the model S and add it back, they still would have lost $170 million (net profit). And this is the marginal profitability, ignoring all the R&D expense from prior years that went into the model S.

Telsa are loss leading, hoping to grow their brand and technology to the point and out compete their rivals by the time the vehicles are truly profitable. If the capital markets remain favorable to them for a long enough time, they might just do it. Or established brands may acquire their technology once they deem the market to be sufficiently mature for them. Or we may have a problem in the markets, and Tesla's continuing cash requirements might lead them into difficulty.

I'm basing it on what Elon Musk said at the 2015 North American International Auto Show. And the often mentioned 20% margin on the Model S.

http://uk.businessinsider.com/heres-everything-elon-musk-sai...

I'm typically inclined to look at the financials rather than what executives have to say ;)

I presume he's talking gross margin, which excludes prior R&D (except capitalized), marketing, distribution & sales costs, office/admin expenses, financing costs etc.

Just Mercedes’ luxury cars combined sold more than the Tesla S.

By about 12%. And they are losing ground.

The thing is, anyone who wants a Tesla model S probably bought it last year or this year. Anyone who wants an S class or a nice Audi or BMW may have bought one three or four years or more years ago. A spike in sales in the first year or two of real availability, resulting in "outselling" other luxury cars, is not really surprising. It will be more interesting if it keeps up after all the people who want an EV already have one.

They said that in 2013. I got mine in 2012 (when there really were few model s). Then they said 2014 was the top, then 2015. We'll see if 2016 is the top.

Thanks very much for digging up those numbers!

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