As I'm in the market for an electric/hybrid, been very impressed with the Tesla (note: i live in northernCA where charging stations are frequent). http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2014/04/08/tesla-is-smarter-than-other-auto-companies/ ladies and gentlemen, we're looking at the future
Wait till they start building their own batteries and the price point goes down to 30-40k. Of course, this will be in years.
Yeah, I cant wait until dealerships are eliminated completely. The internet has more information than any salesman ever could. They just get in the way. Netflix (#1 on that list) disrupted the market (duh), and disruption when it comes to the car buying marketplace is welcomed. They should just dispense the damn things out of a vending machine, I'm sure Japan is on it. The day there's no car sales profession will be a good day.
Informative thread bro. Guys like me already own a Tesla and listen to Howard Stern all the time in it. http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=8836659&postcount=51 But seriously...it is the greatest car out there by far. I've had it for less than 3 months and I've already put about 5,500 miles on it. My only gripe with it would be that I am wearing out the tires too fast lol. The P85+ is very fast, but there is so much torque the tires spin a lot when you accelerate moderately quick. I actually took a drive down that waste of a toll road Hwy 130 in the Austin area where the speed limit is 85 mph. I was cruising at a 100 mph like nothing and decided to push it a little more and got up to 118 mph and it felt like I was cruising at 65 mph. Great car...I love it. I wish I would have bought the stock when I bought the car.
Forget Tesla as a car company. They have some of the most advanced battery technology out there. That's the main reason their stock is where it is at today. They keep making advancements that can be utilized for so many things other than cars. That technology is what is going to take over in my opinion.
The day Tesla can provide the Model S at a $30k price point will completely bring the car industry to it's knees.
Dealerships need to die. Why would people be taken advantage of during one of the most important purchases of their lives (next to a home)?
The battery technology isn't too crazy. The battery pack is like 7000 little batteries made by Panasonic.
As long as there's a resale market and those places are open on weekends and after work, dealerships aren't going anywhere. There's a lot of boredom and ego wrapped up in a car purchase.
Gas powered cars are still 5 times more likely to catch on fire and are much more dangerous when they do. They should get those under control. And yes Tesla got it under control... http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tes...-shield-and-aluminum-deflector-plates-model-s March 28, 2014 Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S By Elon Musk, Chairman, Product Architect & CEO In 2013, two extremely unusual Model S collisions resulted in underbody damage that led to car fires. These incidents, unfortunately, received more national headlines than the other 200,000 gasoline car fires that happened last year in North America alone. In both cases, the occupants walked away unharmed, thanks to the car’s safety features. The onboard computer warned the occupants to exit the vehicles, which they did well before any fire was noticeable. However, even if the occupants had remained in the vehicle and the fire department had not arrived, they would still have been safely protected by the steel and ceramic firewall between the battery pack and the passenger compartment. It is important to note that there have been no fire injuries (or serious, permanent injuries of any kind) in a Tesla at all. The odds of fire in a Model S, at roughly 1 in 8,000 vehicles, are five times lower than those of an average gasoline car and, when a fire does occur, the actual combustion potential is comparatively small. However, to improve things further, we provided an over-the-air software update a few months ago to increase the default ground clearance of the Model S at highway speeds, substantially reducing the odds of a severe underbody impact. Nonetheless, we felt it was important to bring this risk down to virtually zero to give Model S owners complete peace of mind. Starting with vehicle bodies manufactured as of March 6, all cars have been outfitted with a triple underbody shield. Tesla service will also retrofit the shields, free of charge, to existing cars upon request or as part of a normally scheduled service. During the course of 152 vehicle level tests, the shields prevented any damage that could cause a fire or penetrate the existing quarter inch of ballistic grade aluminum armor plate that already protects the battery pack. We have tried every worst case debris impact we can think of, including hardened steel structures set in the ideal position for a piking event, essentially equivalent to driving a car at highway speed into a steel spear braced on the tarmac. We believe these changes will also help prevent a fire resulting from an extremely high speed impact that tears the wheels off the car, like the other Model S impact fire, which occurred last year in Mexico. This happened after the vehicle impacted a roundabout at 110 mph, shearing off 15 feet of concrete curbwall and tearing off the left front wheel, then smashing through an eight foot tall buttressed concrete wall on the other side of the road and tearing off the right front wheel, before crashing into a tree. The driver stepped out and walked away with no permanent injuries and a fire, again limited to the front section of the vehicle, started several minutes later. The underbody shields will help prevent a fire even in such a scenario. The first of the three shields is a rounded, hollow aluminum bar that is designed to either deflect objects entirely or, in the case of a self-stabilizing, ultra high strength object, like a three ball steel tow hitch, absorb the impact and force it to pike upwards well forward of the battery pack. This pierces the plastic aeroshield and front trunk liner, but causes no damage affecting safety and the car remains in control and driveable before, during and after the impact. This is followed by a titanium plate, which has exceptional strength-to-weight properties and is more commonly seen in aerospace or military applications. The titanium plate prevents sensitive front underbody components from being damaged and aids in neutralizing the road debris. By this point, the vast majority of objects will have been deflected or crushed. For the rare piece of debris that remains intact, we added a third shield, which is a shallow angle, solid aluminum extrusion that further absorbs impact energy, provides another layer of deflection and finally causes the Model S to ramp up and over the object if it is essentially incompressible and immovable. Thanks to high speed cameras fixed underneath the cars during testing, we have a close-up view of what happens to the objects on impact. As illustrated in the slow motion videos below, the shields destroy everything from a solid concrete block to a steel alternator and safely capture and eject objects made of ultra-hard steel. The protective qualities of the underbody shields are substantial, but their effect on the overall structure of the vehicle is minimal. In total, the shields only have a 0.1 percent impact on range and don’t affect ride or handling. Wind tunnel testing shows no discernible change in drag or lift on the car. As the empirical evidence suggests, the underbody shields are not needed for a high level of safety. However, there is significant value to minimizing owner inconvenience in the event of an impact and addressing any lingering public misperception about electric vehicle safety. With a track record of zero deaths or serious, permanent injuries since our vehicles went into production six years ago, there is no safer car on the road than a Tesla. The addition of the underbody shields simply takes it a step further. - Elon
Not even close. Actually it has to do with lobbying and special interests. Buying a car is such a hassle because you can't go to a supermarket of new cars or an Amazon where consumers can buy directly off the internet and test drive them vs each other at the same location. 16k+ dealers around the nation with the help of state legislatures have made this a problem. Car manufacturers like Ford or Toyota would love to sell directly to people. However, by law they have to go through car dealers. Geographic restrictions, family restrictions, franchise restrictions, and more protectionist laws since 1937 have made car dealers addicted to lobbying. Supporters of car dealers argue that they employ many locally, support community initiatives, and that they have to put a lot of money up front. Problem is, neither micro nor macroeconmics supports this model. You'll see many car dealers with bad reviews, having locations in rural areas with very few sales, charging prices with zero transparency, and passing down their businesses to families which by law extends their franchise forever. Someone I know who works in the PR industry was hired to run a negative campaign against Elon Musk. You can guess who his clients were. They obviously weren't too happy with the open car-business/non-dealer model that he proposed.
it's around the corner once they build their gigafactory and mass produce the batteries cheaper. here you go, you troll. the government closed their investigation on the matter. feel free to look into it yourself. DETROIT (AP) - The U.S. government's auto safety watchdog has closed an investigation into Tesla electric car battery fires after the company said it would install more shields beneath the cars. The shields, an aluminum bar, a titanium plate and another piece of aluminum, will supplement a quarter-inch-thick aluminum plate now on the Model S, the only model that Tesla now sells. They're designed to stop road debris from penetrating the car's battery pack. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began investigating the Model S last year after two battery fires that were caused by road debris. In each case, one near Nashville, Tennessee, and another near Seattle, debris punctured the aluminum shield and the battery, touching off fires. Drivers were able to safely pull off the road and escape without injury, but the cars were destroyed. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a statement Friday that the company will retrofit Model S cars sold in the U.S. with the new shields, at no cost to owners. At the end of February, Tesla had sold about 22,000 of the cars in the U.S., according to Autodata Corp. The additional shields will be provided upon owner request or as part of normally scheduled service, the statement said. The move is not a recall, a Tesla spokeswoman said. Earlier, Tesla issued a software update that raised the Model S ride height to help deal with the issue. "Tesla's revision of vehicle ride height and addition of increased underbody protection should reduce both the frequency of underbody strikes and the resultant fire risk," NHTSA said in documents posted Friday on its website. "A defect trend has not been identified." Musk said in his statement that the moves bring the risk of debris striking the battery "down to virtually zero" to give Model S owners complete peace of mind. The new shields, he wrote, are not needed for a high level of safety, but it's valuable to minimize inconvenience to owners and address what he said were misperceptions about electric car safety. Tesla also said it added the shields to cars in production starting on March 6. http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/story/25099128/feds-close-investigation-of-tesla-battery-fires if you're still going to poke holes in it, then you're just here to antagonize and actually don't care about the topic. if you do care, then research it yourself
