Ok, thanks for the clarification. Then it should only be allowed on freeways and that's on Tesla to allow it on all kinds of streets.

So speaking of the Bolt, GM has outsourced responsibility of a few key pieces to LG (which supplied batteries for the Volt).

Just a few, including the: battery cells, battery pack, battery heater, power inverter, onboard charger, power line communication module, instrument cluster, and infotainment system...

I remain convinced the Detroit automakers have a profound culture problem. Their incentives are simply not aligned with the goal of accelerating innovation in EVs---or even adoption of EVs.

They're quite content to sit fat and sloppy behind their huge capex moat, and prop up their second-rate product by spending more on marketing than Tesla's operating expenses AND capex combined.

And yeah, maybe you can get away with that when the competition's idea of an ad campaign is Elon and the three people Apple hasn't hired going out to the Gigafactory mobile village on weekends to snort lines through rolled-up Form 4's and send out the tweets.

But when you're up against a brand that alien anthropologists would classify as the world's fourth-biggest religion, um...no. No wonder Tim Cook said they're, "Just getting started."

It's not up to an automaker to create demand for electric vehicles if it doesn't exist. If it existed, I'm sure that GM and Ford could create (or buy) all the needed technology.

I doubt that GM could break-even creating cars that sell as few copies as Tesla does.

I still remember all these articles:

http://insideevs.com/bob-lutz-respon...ven-now-video/

Who do you think has created Tesla's absurd valuation? People indifferent to electric vehicles?

Lots of people clearly want electric vehicles THAT DON'T SUCK. Tesla is just taking a fraction of GM's marketing budget and trying to give those people what they want, as quickly as possible.

Could ≠ will. Incentives matter, this is my point.

Just to emphasize:

• The technology to make a decent electric luxury sedan does exist.
• In fact, an electric sedan came 650 units short of topping the Mercedes S class for best-selling luxury car in Europe over the last 9 months.
• The company that designed and manufactured this car is run on a fraction of GM's marketing budget.

These are FACTS. The only way to reconcile these FACTS with the reality that no ICE manufacturer has made a decent electric luxury car is that ICE manufacturers have an incentive problem.

Tesla Autopilot is improving rapidly:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showt...eady-improving

In post #45 Elon did actually explain that this would happen...

heltok -

Whoa, Tesla's at a real risk here of improving the experience of driving a Model S.

Pretty uncharted territory for a US automaker, will probably end with bankruptcy.

FWIW, analyst estimates for Tesla Model S sales through September were 15k-17k, which would put it at around #70 to #75 on this list of 158 US Models.

http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2015/10...-by-model.html

Shorted*

Hi Sub,

Here are some more facts:

1) Tesla has failed to hit production/sales goals continually.
2) Tesla has moved from the business of making cars into making environmentally irresponsible battery packs and poured a bunch of money into making batteries.
3) Tesla reports their auto sales in a way unique to the automarket that obfuscates their sales.

You don't seem to be able to think critically about Musk. Or even use common sense.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...s-50-000-autos
http://www.latimes.com/business/auto...002-story.html

Elaborate

While this is coy, what part confuses you? I'd imagine a company building a $5b battery plant and selling a variety of battery derived products would be a battery company and not a car company. But many people struggle to understand basic business models (see the Uber thread and the confusion regarding Google/Uber/etc).

How much money have they made selling cars? How much selling pure batteries?

The issues regarding how the PowerWall is horrible for the environment and has virtually no use cases is very well known.

So what exactly needs elaboration?

(Emphasis mine.) Well maybe you can show me where to introduce further rigor. This is my thinking:

1. Elon has been saying for years that he believes that there are "clever ways" available to lower the cost of batteries.
2. Tesla needs a huge supply of cheap batteries for the Model 3 to be a true mass-market offering.
3. Conclusion: Elon is building the Gigafactory to get cheap batteries at scale via some clever engineering.

Prior belief: this seems absurd. Elon has no experience with batteries.

Additional information: While running Tesla, Elon has also cut the cost of putting satellites in orbit by roughly three-fourths (with a roadmap to reductions of two orders of magnitude.) Elon had no previous experience with rockets.

Posterior belief: perhaps Elon knows something about cutting costs in engineering. Just perhaps.

Where am I going wrong?

Why is this any worse than when Cruise Control was invented, that someone might use it on a road with stop signs or forget to turn it off in traffic and hit someone? We just live in a super litigious society now and if it CC was invented today, the same thing would happen?

Addendum: I have no idea if Tesla will be a significant player in the auto market long-term.

But I do think it's sensible to update the prior on Elon's odds of success after he's cracked an analogous "impossibility." And even further---I think the likelihood ratio for the update should be greater than one! <gasp>

I was interested in the explanation of why they are horrible for the environment. So please elaborate, including sources.

It seems you're just ignorant. Hope this helps.

http://bfy.tw/2UMc

That is a totally viable roadmap to success. Elon is facing the same issues that von Braun faced in the 40s, and has made it to roughly where the space program was in the 50s in terms of what he can do. He has been able to cut costs insanely with extremely old technology.

Elon also has a history of saying/doing completely insane things. The Hyperloop being the most prominent of his noted dumbassery.

Perhaps he is an insanely great engineer and can get around the fundamental problem of graphite production being a major limiting issue. (You are aware of the production figures/price in recent times... Unless you meant the gigafactory was going to be built on a totally new type of battery than how batteries are currently produced.)

Anyway, how do you update your priors based on the new facts that I put forth. Clearly they wanna make a bunch of batteries for a negative environmental impact to go on people's walls, they also hide their sales, and continually miss targets (none of these are remotely debatable except by the truly disingenuous). Were you aware of these before?

For fun, here is another narrative:

Musk has been unable to sell many EVs. (Tesla hides their sales figures and has been cutting production for years.) They started selling battery packs to help create demand for the Gigafactory so the company doesn't immediately bankrupt. Graphite production continues to be a bottleneck in mass scaling of EVs and hydrogen fuel cells, backed by significantly larger Japanese interests, establish a foothold via a combination of infrastructure buildout and scale that Tesla can't come close to matching with its gross negative margins and small cash position.

Where is that thinking wrong?

Thought there was more substance on your part, but business as usual.

I mean everyone knows from the Uber thread that you are a class A ****** but you provided me with a list of links all saying that batteries are not at all a problem: http://www.treehugger.com/cars/life-...or-impact.html (link of a link of yours)

I know you are speaking English as a second language, but I'd consider taking some classes. That articles doesn't even conclude what you think it does.

Stupid question from a stupid guy: is their battery technology really proprietary? If there is so much demand for the batteries, why bother with the capital intensive, heavily regulated, low margin car business. Where oh by the way half of the state legislatures in America don't even want them to be allowed to sell their product.

Frankly, I'd like to see you be much more responsive to Spurious's questions before trying to have a longer exchange with you.

Anyways, if Tesla succeeds, I think it will be like 5% because of its exceptionalism and 95% because the US auto incumbents suck so incredibly hard at aligning their incentives with reality-based goals.

That degree of suckiness is actually more interesting than the Tesla story tbh...I'm going to read these two books now and explore this further.

The last bit is in your head, imo. US auto incumbents are WAY better at engineering and predicting what the market wants than Tesla. Cut throat competitive large scale car building makes Musk's rocket company look like playing with lego. A heavily entrenched bureaucracy with no commercial product, just ripe for disruption, is worlds apart from cut-throat big capital.

All of Musk's businesses are government money leeches.
Suckiness doesn't exist. Look at what Musk has achieved. Flushed billions down the toilet (and living on billions more in loans) building a car, by duct tape engineering not-ready batteries, a car that's only good for very wealthy first adopters. This car loses $4000/unit (sans dealerships sharing in the sale price profit) and has no profit in sight. So if by no incentive you mean not flushing billions down the toilet for zero commercial or first-mover or engineering advantage, I agree.

Car makers have serious plans for electrics and basically full electric hybrids which are simply waiting on the cost and quality of batteries to be right; we're a mere 2-3 years away from that. Then they will start producing in volume and make Musk's little slap-together clown show look like what it is - a colossal waste of money that loses investors money and makes no difference whatsoever to the human race.
There are elements(slight improvements to the chemistry), but it's irrelevant. Battery makers are a in cutthroat war for this huge business that's about to expand; margins will be tiny. And the "Gigafactory" ("battery factory" doesn't sound as sexy, does it?) isn't Tesla's, it's Panasonic's, who are putting up most of the capital and keeping control.

It's all fluff. Batteries at and greatly surpassing Tesla in quality and design will be available in volume and in a wide variety of configurations and custom designed chemistries to any car maker who wants them.

What part is troubling you? He has agreed with all my statements including the limited application of the powerwall, and apparently doesn't understand how having people install giant battery packs with no real function is bad for the environment. That is a First Principle level of idiocy.

Musk has created a 100m+ market with no real use case, solely designed to pollute. (Unless you believe batteries magically make energy and clean the air. Contrary to any sense.)

Sounds like you're having some cognitive dissonance to your worldview being questioned and having the binary kickback you mentioned before. Best of luck rejoining this to Tesla's hideous fundamentals and misleading sales figures. (Another fact, I cannot think of a single company that doesn't list sales figures for their autos. Tesla is unique again.)

And just to expand on the battery thing: news from today about LG chem possibly supplying Tesla batteries (before it was Panasonic, with whom they're building the factory). There's no moat here; this is a cutthroat rapidly improving business driven by billions in research funding and tens of billions in capex funding from various sources; anything Tesla has, any other auto maker will have (and better, since they can put up the capital needed and promise the volume needed for research and custom designs).