391–400 of 705 posts
I didn't understand what enables them to get rid of aisles inside buses? People still need to reach their seats right?
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You are comparing premium tesla sedans with ford and Honda cars, of course premium car will take longer to build. Porsche for example produced 189,000 cars [1] in 2014 with 19,000 employees. And the average price of Porsche car is also lower than Tesla's. [1] - http://press.porsche.com/news/release.php?id=897
Calling it a logical fallacy that a premium car takes longer to build because it is premium.
Next, the QA on a premium car has to me more stringent, simply because the expectations are higher.
So I can't imagine luxury car not taking more time to make than a budget car.
"A first principles physics analysis of automotive production suggests that somewhere between a 5 to 10 fold improvement is achievable by version 3 on a roughly 2 year iteration cycle. The first Model 3 factory machine should be thought of as version 0.5, with version 1.0 probably in 2018." What that really means: Tesla is going to lose a ton of money per car on the Model 3, or raise the price, until at least 2022. T…
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Say what you will about their "antiquated" business practices, but Ford consistently does one thing that Tesla never does: it turns a profit
I find the obsession with "turning a profit" when it comes to Tesla a bit weird, especially on this forum. Remind me again: this is Hacker News run by Y Combinator, right?
That said they certainly have a huge hill to climb, but as he said its one we all need to climb so great that they are pushing ahead with a business model to make it there
My points of skepticism: 1. Semis . A typical long haul semi gets well under 10MPG. In some cases not much more than half that. They are heavy and need a lot of energy to move. A Tesla Model S weighs 4650 lbs and has a range of a couple of hundred miles. A semi truck can weigh up to 80,000 lbs. That is a lot of weight to get rolling and a lot to pull up a grade. Semis spend a large part of their time driving at highw…
1. They'll be able to line the entire trailer with batteries. Elon's pretty good at physics and engineering: if he says this can be done better than existing gas-powered semis, you're not going to be able to prove him wrong with some back-of-the-envelope arithmetic, as if he hadn't considered this. Obviously he has and knows it will work. Tesla didn't get this far on vague conjecture. 2. Maybe so, but it will happen,…
My points of skepticism: 1. Semis . A typical long haul semi gets well under 10MPG. In some cases not much more than half that. They are heavy and need a lot of energy to move. A Tesla Model S weighs 4650 lbs and has a range of a couple of hundred miles. A semi truck can weigh up to 80,000 lbs. That is a lot of weight to get rolling and a lot to pull up a grade. Semis spend a large part of their time driving at highw…
1. They'll be able to line the entire trailer with batteries. Elon's pretty good at physics and engineering: if he says this can be done better than existing gas-powered semis, you're not going to be able to prove him wrong with some back-of-the-envelope arithmetic, as if he hadn't considered this. Obviously he has and knows it will work. Tesla didn't get this far on vague conjecture. 2. Maybe so, but it will happen,…
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This, citing employee numbers is somewhat meaningless without any data on the number of non-employees working in your supply chain. Could indeed very well be a case of outsourcing differences rather than a difference in productivity.
No industry counts the number of employees within a supply chain. It might be impossible and it's half the point in having separate SC entities...it's irrelevant to a car manufacturer how many miners various aluminium companies feel they need to hire, say.
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I can't figure out what you're trying to say. You think it's bad he wrote it himself, or good? Are you saying his writing it himself was a mistake, or wasn't? And it does or doesn't sound formal enough? It needs rigor and doesn't have it, or it does have it?
He should have written it with more formality and more rigor. Tesla is a public company and there is already a perception among investors that this is a facade. Musk needs to reposition Tesla as less of a personal experiment/quest and more of a legitimate enterprise that acknowledges its fiduciary duty to its shareholders. Tone and communication are very important in this regard. This release failed to adopt a tone a…
2) In most cases, "formality" and "rigor" only works to mask unfortunate realities and incompetence. Being plain spoken need not imply ignorance nor thoughtlessness. I may not be a sophisticated investor, but Musk's ability to so clearly outline the plan (and proven track record of executing such plans!) gives me great confidence.
3) I view the entertainment and excitement that Musk provides is a small, but welcome dividend that I'm happy to share with non-investors alike. I feel sad for you that you can't or won't appreciate it.
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Ford is subsidised by 100 million year-old bottled, well, barreled, sunlight. (Tesla's subsidised by lithium salt concentrations in Bolivia, but that's a rather smaller overall subsidy.)
Isn't Tesla also subsidized by the government?
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies