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“The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

news.consumerreports.org

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Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#211

Post by esse1972 »

hyperbovine wrote: post #111
technoslut wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After test driving a Tesla, I agree with much of what you said and one is the engine noise. I prefer sports cars and especially the sound of a V8/12. To me it's better than listening to music. I do understand that those purchasing a luxury vehicle have different expectations. Those in sedans appreciate cabin silence more than others.

It's a generational thing, I think. Two thoughts come to mind when I hear a V8/12 roaring down the street: "out-of-touch boomer" and "sea level rise". Literally nobody I know my age wants anything to do with those fossil burners. Electric (or something better, I hope) is the future.

Out of interest, which age group are you in?

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#212

Post by deelowe »

parfe wrote: post #83
codeulike wrote: post #2

More bad news for the people shorting tesla, then. edit: Up 27% on Nasdaq at 12:47 ET

People seem to really want the electric car to fail to the point of irrational investing. You don't short McDonald's because you dislike the Big Mac.

Investors don't work that way. They only care about making money(I know I don't care if tesla succeeds or not, but I'm certainly bearish on it). People are shorting it because it's an impractical car from an ROI perspective. Albeit a very sexy and cool one. Like others have said, you can get a BMW with more features and all the gas you want for less than a tesla(minus the wizbang PC interface) It's yet to be seen if a tesla for the masses will catch on. Maybe it will, but a lot of investors still think this is a fad due to the impracticality.

Remember, sometimes the market does funny things and it takes a long time for fads to die(nintento wii). That doesn't mean that the investors were wrong. It just means the public reacted in irrational ways, which happens with fads.

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#213

Post by secabeen »

aviswanathan wrote: post #152
arh68 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moreover, it's every geek's dream. You can remotely control the car with a smartphone app, monitor the car's efficiency and performance via beautiful graphs, and even have presets for charging cycles. Yuck. If that's a geek dream, I'll take the nightmare. Smartphone app? Beautiful graphs? I want raw data over RS-232, csv, text/plain, not opaque layers of App Stores and flashy (unreusable) charts.

I believe the raw data can be exported as well - the graphs are just nice to be able to glance through and quickly digest

Yep. Someone's even hacked the API: http://docs.timdorr.apiary.io/

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#214

Post by alexqgb »

nitrogen wrote: post #203
alexqgb wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today, the iPhone IS the Personal Computer. If that's not massive, category-changing, ecosystem-disrupting, change, then I don't know what is - especially since it reverberates across once-unrelated markets like GPS, photography, cartography, and...well, pretty much anything for which there's now an app. Jesus, even the word "app" is new.

The word "app" (though more frequently pluralized) dates at least to the mid 1990s. How new do you mean?

I was thinking 2009, which is when "app" - as a word with a widely yet precisely understood meaning - began taking off in the common vernacular.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=app

Using language as proxy, this looks like the point when the smartphones began turning into the most personal of personal computers in a really big way.

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#215

Post by crikli »

revelation wrote: post #149
crikli wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my thought: this car has no history, period. I'm unclear as to how Consumer Reports can reliably put out a report on a vehicle that's so new to market with such (relatively) few examples on the road. I think people really really really want the Tesla to be for real. And I hope it is. But that judgement can't be made until a few years down the road.

They have built ten thousand of them, what are you talking about?

Ten thousand vehicles is a very small run. It's a lot for a small company but _relative_ (that being the keyword) to most production runs it's tiny.

It's very similar to what Toyota did with the Prius in the US, but minus the three years of overseas sales where they had the opportunity to work out the kinks of the first generation Prius.

The other thing is that the Model S isn't going to get miled up like a normal car: it doesn't have the range. So a guy like me who never ever buys new cars looks at the S a bit askance: it's cool as hell, I want one, but I'm not going to touch one with a 10 foot pole on the used market for a few years.

FWIW I've been buying options on Tesla, I really want them to succeed and think that they will. I'm betting on it. :)

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#216

Post by mattmanser »

nitrogen wrote: post #204
mattmanser wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People use iPads all the time now in situations they previously wouldn't have used a computing device. I know of plenty of companies that have bought one just to easily demo stuff or to be able to do stuff in the field that they wouldn't have done earlier. The iPad came out to wide acclaim because they got it right and showed it was possible. So many nay sayers saying even 6 months after release that it wouldn't be p…

What portable computing market, previously dominated by Palm, WinCE, etc. create, exactly?

Compare their total market value to the post-iPhone smartphone market and try saying that again with a straight face.

And that's exactly the point I'm trying to make, perhaps badly! Before the iPhone or the iPad people knew there was a market there. But they claimed it was tiny and not worth entering or putting serious R&D into. So you ended up with hobbyist/yuppie toys.

Say tomorrow someone unveils a 3D printer that does some essential household task and every house has one in 5 years time because you'd be crazy to not have an Initech Megamaker 3000! Were Initech the the first into the market? No! But they were the ones that turned it from a hobbyist thing into a real powerhouse multi-billion $$$ market. They single handedly grew the market by orders of magnitude, they saw the actual potential market.

Whatever comparatively miniscule market there was before the iPhone is a reminder of how easy it is to think too small. Just look at the Android preview before the iPhone came out! It was utterly rubbish. Google were thinking small.

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#217

Post by revelation »

crikli wrote: post #215
revelation wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have built ten thousand of them, what are you talking about?

Ten thousand vehicles is a very small run. It's a lot for a small company but _relative_ (that being the keyword) to most production runs it's tiny. It's very similar to what Toyota did with the Prius in the US, but minus the three years of overseas sales where they had the opportunity to work out the kinks of the first generation Prius. The other thing is that the Model S isn't going to get miled up like a normal ca…

It's more than any other electric vehicle and they are actually leading sales in their segment of cars.

The market for a 70k+ vehicle might not be as big as you think.

The miles a car racks up is most certainly not a function of its range, but of the people driving it. Research suggests that if you have a more efficient car (higher MPG), you will drive more.

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#218

Post by MSM »

aetherson wrote: post #198
rjurney wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost get hit by hybrids when not paying attention. Cars need to make noise like natural gas needs to have a scent added. Safety.

Natural gas is invisible. Guess what isn't?

They're both invisible to a blind person.

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#219

Post by SatvikBeri »

lostlogin wrote: post #179
beat wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GM already had this, with the Chevy Volt (a very interesting concept in its own right). But the problem is, despite a highly sensible transition approach from gasoline to electric, it's still a CHEVY. It's built to Chevy construction standards, Chevy aesthetics.

Is the Chevy standard a good or bad thing? I ask this because the cars they sell (or rebadge then sell) in New Zealand aren't really that well built compared to European and Japanese cars.

It's not a good or bad thing on its own. It's a bad thing when you're trying to market a very different product to a different set of people.

Re: “The Tesla Model S is our top-scoring car”

#220

Post by sliverstorm »

codex wrote: post #100
jfb wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a luxury manufacturer like e.g. Audi gets to reuse engineering work from parent VW and sibling Lamborghini to improve their $100k car. Much of the comparative advantage of the Model S is due directly to the engineering differences of building an electric powertrain; they get to make different tradeoffs than BMW does in, say, an M5. The real nutcutting time will come when an established brand decides to build a hi…

I wonder how the marginal cost of an ICE compares with the marginal cost of one or two electric motors + regen + batteries + charger, and how those change over time. I suspect the electric drive train isn't cheaper now, but will be cheaper in a few years.

I suspect aside from the batteries, electric drive train is already cheaper. Modern ICE are ridiculously sophisticated and require advanced manufacturing capabilities.
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