Problem is that the usual techniques for making nice curved shapes don't work on such a material, so they used folded metal sheet instead, resulting in that "low poly" look.
Considering that the DeLorean is also made of stainless steel and also has a rather angular shape, you are bound to make the comparison. The necessarily noticed it at Tesla and I am not sure what they intend to do with that. The DeLorean is iconic and (back to the) futuristic, it also had the reputation of a terrible car and was a commercial failure.
That said, the resemblance is unmistakable. The designers could not have been unaware of the dmc-1200.
As for the reputation of the delorean’s quality and commercial failure, I don’t think this would give Elon pause in the slightest. That guy does whatever he wants.
They could also maintain their brand image and sell their mid range luxury models achieving less volume at a higher profitability margin.
Show me where Toyota has casting machines anywhere near the scale of what Tesla is using in Model Y, or board design, or AI chips, or even things like buying experience.
Fundamentally “best” can be reduced to margins because everything else shakes out in a competitive market. Tesla has the best margins, and they will bring that margin advantage down to the $25k price point and Toyota won’t stop them.
The other big number you can look at is depreciation and operating costs. Tesla has the lowest depreciation and operating costs per mile at its price point, making it substantially cheaper to own a $45k Tesla than a $45k ICE.
A $25k Tesla with the same fundamentals could be had for perhaps $200/month with $0 down and would essentially obliterate any passenger car competition in any consumer environment where it’s possible to charge it.
I would not expect Tesla to have any compunction of selling a $25k vehicle under the Tesla brand. I don’t think their S/3/X/Y cachet would be hurt by a smaller sibling.
Toyota has 10s of millions of happy customers, and has car after car after car on top 10 lists, every year. From everything I've read, the Tesla service experience is horrible.
>Tesla has the lowest depreciation
Source for this? Or do you believe they are appreciating, too?
>Tesla has the best margins
You know this stuff is dead simple to look up, right? Toyota has profit and operating margins higher than Tesla. So, no, they aren't "the best".
A Tesla Model 3 after 3/5 years has a residual value of 77.47%/58.96%/45.35%(est), versus for example a BMW 3 Series after 3/5/7 years with a residual of 61.56%/41.71%/34.15%. [2, 3]
And the apt comparison for margins is gross margins not operating margins. Operating Margins will be higher for a stagnant company conversing cash versus a rapidly growing company. Gross margins show you how much they are earning per unit sale, regardless of how much of their profit they are re-investing in future growth.
Tesla automotive gross margins in Q3 were 27.7% versus Toyota gross margins of 18.1%. [4, 5]
[1] - https://www.thestreet.com/tesla/news/tesla-tops-consumer-rep...
[2, 3] - https://caredge.com/tesla/model-3/depreciation https://caredge.com/bmw/3-series/depreciation
[4, 5] - https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/4E7BR9_TSLA_Q3_2020_Updat... https://finbox.com/NYSE:TM/explorer/gp_margin
"Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments"
https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux
“It was always our goal to try to make an affordable electric car,” said Musk, referring back to his 2006 Tesla Motors Master Plan.
https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-j...
Rumor is, they are already working on the $25K sedan that's one tier below the Model 3.
https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/tesla-model-2...
Companies that make high volume low price models...well they shower in money.
From what I’m told, it wasn’t very well made and on top of that it was underpowered.
So I get the iconic aspect from movie lore. And I get the founder was very... idiosyncratic —and an underdog and ultimately spiraled into making very unfortunate choices.
But other than that, what’s the appeal?
I honestly don’t like back to the future much, not more than any other movie, and it’s popularity from that has dissuaded me from buying one (not to mention the soaring prices due to the film.) Nor do I particularly care about the founder or his choices.
For some, the design simply has a great appeal. An EV refresh would be a dream and I would absolutely buy a somewhat overpriced Tesla produced Delorean.
I’d buy an electric delorian just for the unique style. I love the cybertruck’s look too, and although I wouldn’t buy one because I have no use for a pickup truck right now, I’d like to see more of them on the road and fewer white, gray, and black soap bars.
They do drive well, crash well, and have sweet fuel economy though. So for ICE it’s probably best. I’m happy to see EVs having design flexibility again.
But there is clearly a market for them and if people are willing to pay north of $500,000 for this https://www.cyanracing.com/volvo-p1800-cyan which in all honesty I like much more than the DeLorian there is clearly quite a bit of money to be made here.
I don’t think a DeLorian body kit for a Model 3 would be a particularly complicated engineering venture, and unlike the new Roadster you don’t have to design essentially an electric super car to make it appealing.
The Model 3 performance and range is quite attractive charge $450,000 extra for the nostalgia factor and if you make it a limited edition say 1000 units I can guarantee that they’ll be gone in a minute, heck at that price they might be able to even sell more than that.
Because the doors go like this:
--\__/--And a reboot EV means chance it is well made and overpowered.
That would seem at odds with a one off limited edition.
750,000 preorders means that these low-volume production advantages are mostly moot, but perhaps Tesla will still take advantage of this to create some low volume variants.
Which is the only way you're going to see variants -- the unibody design of the Cybertruck means that coach-builders can't use a cutaway base.
I do wonder how accessible they'll be as even today with mass production getting the color, price, options you want has always been a bit of a hassle / compromise outside of ... cars I don't want ;)