Just sold my Ferrari to buy more TSLA

Exactly right.

 

I didn't know Tesla owns patents for advanced battery technology. What is that technology exactly and what value do you ascribe to it?

Generally speaking, investing in technology development is a very speculative endeavor.

What will prevent Toyota, Ford, GM, Volkswagen etc. from doing what Tesla is doing? What will happen with Tesla when they have well capitalized competition, with real infrastructure(dealership networks), and prices for battery powered car prices drop significantly from 90-100k?

 

The tesla model S I drove was an utter ****pile. Literally all I had was good acceleration. The fit and finish was horrific, the interior looks terrible, the software was laggy, and the owner (a good friend) had all kinds of alignment issues.

nice looking car on the outside and good acceleration. Everything else is an absolute waste of my time.

 

Doesn't sound like the one I have or many of my friends.

Kai

 

A Tesla should be compared to the C63 that you had or a BMW 7 series or S Class Mercedes etc. It is not a sports car. Who cares what the 0-60 times are in comparison to your 430. If your 430 felt like yesterday that is a good thing. You are obviously not a sports car or car guy to begin with. Soon you will be able to program a Tesla and it will take you to your destination while you text away etc. and you will be in complete bliss which is fine while in rush hour traffic etc. but some that enjoy driving will keep a yesterday style sports car for when they want to be part of the driving experience.

 

My neighbour took me for a ride in his Tesla S. It is a nice car and gets rave reviews but it will never replace a true sports car. Stuck in traffic on my way to work a Tesla S is a great car. I wouldn't want to jump in a Tesla S just to go out and have a fun drive. I have an S63 and never remembered taking it for a drive just for the sake of taking it for a drive. Without asking I know that your 430 had paddle shifters. I'd have more fun driving any old stick shifting Ferrari any day than a Tesla S and anyone that truly enjoys driving and really being part of the experience would think the same way.

 

Everyone assumes that Lithium batteries will get cheaper and/or have large increases in energy density from where we are today. Companies like Tesla have no doubt factored in improvements in that technology as part of their growth plan. Make the cars cheaper and go longer on a charge.

I am dubious about both positions. The energy density issue will be one of incremental improvements. Two years from now there will not be Li packs that have significantly (40%? 100%?) more capacity than they do today based on size or weight. AFAIK there is no next-gen Li batteries that are sitting in labs somewhere with double the capacity that have a hope of being ready for public consumption. Maybe extremely expensive top secret stuff for the military, but I have already said too much...

Anyway back to the cost issue, currently Li is about 3X the cost of high-quality lead-acid AGM on an amp-hr basis. Many of the Li cells are manufactured in China, it is an expensive and environmentally dirty process. For now the Chinese government either directly or indirectly subsidizes their manufacture as well as ignoring the looming environmental disaster that country is facing in the next decade. Point I am trying to make is that the manufacturing process is already cheaper than it should be and economies of scale will help but not bring down the cost to where the Model S can compete with a straight gasoline car apples to apples. Ever.

This also assumes that a larger company, I'll take Toyota or Honda, does not decide to compete directly with Tesla using their Lexus or Acura brands. From my observation Tesla has done what small companies do in mature markets: find niches ignored by the big boys and try to profitably fill them. They are the primordial little rodent scampering around the dinosaurs. But the difficulty with going from a new company to selling hundreds of thousands of cars is that if you are that successful the big players also see value in competing directly with you. For cars, their dealer network and household reputation will bury you.

Tesla may be the darling of automotive stocks at the moment. Time will tell whether they are Apple...or Pets.com

 

Love Teslas and I'm not a sedan guy.
One buddy has one and had it dynoed at Cars & Coffee this past Sunday. It's the only time anyone has ever heard the dyno.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=643282045731356&set=vb.413945418665021&type=2&theater

The torque numbers were inconsistent. They went from 1500 (obvious error) to 582. Horsepower was right around 400, with 408 being the top result.

As for buying stock in Tesla, good move IMO. Only the future will tell.

 

Sorry but even with all the advantages of electric, it simply does not move my soul and that my friends is what a Ferrari does.

 

Torque is supposed to be 450.

Kai

 

I personally think Tesla's days are limited. They make a great car, but where will they stand in 2020, 2025?

By then, larger companies such as Toyota, Honda, GM etc. will have adapted the technology appropriately onto their product lines and simply run Tesla out of business. Who is going to be buying 80-100K electric sedans when Toyota or Honda can make them for half the price or less even, advertise them everywhere, with huge dealer networks, huge warranties to back them up, and the convenience of so many service facilities.

Nissan has already started with the Leaf. Granted it needs a little work still lol, but its there...

 

You do know that Toyota is a major shareholder in Tesla, and licenses Tesla's technology already?

And that is also true for Daimler?

There are some structural reasons why GM or Honda can't "run Tesla out of business." The big one is that none of them are willing to spend the billions necessary to create an all-electric platform.

If Toyota decides this is the future, they'll just buy Tesla. It's not that complicated.

 

Ferrari is an experience. Its not just performance stats.

If you are looking for reliability or low expenses why did you consider Ferrari?

Ferrari and tsla are worlds apart

 

Good post Tundra
At the same time, I'm convinced to take a test drive now


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Ok lets say a tesla can do 80 miles on track, its weight will have toasted the tires and brakes long before then. Now battery swaps are a lab stunt, no swap stations exist, and would you exchange your batteries for ones from a station of dubious origin and care. The battery swap plan in Israel flopped. I mean would you swap your batteries from a new 2017 tesla from ones that may have come out of a 2013?

Lets also look at the supercharging stations. Do you really think that they can just keep building staions and giving away electricity for free. Its a great publicity stunt and investment to offer the charging stations now, and in reality they dont give away that much power because nearly every elctric car is charged at home. But the stations till cost to build and must have power. Its things like this that make me realise Musk is a great marketeer and built a great product but I wonder about the soundness of his long term buisness plan.

None of which is to denigrate tesla. I think the product is brilliant and Musk suceeded in building a real useable electric car from scratch where BMW spent 3.5 billion to make a crappy hybrid.

The busiess model though is to sell electric cars to rich people who can and choose to pay for the tech. BTW its the same model toyota uses for the prius. Those shopping on a budget can do the math and figure out you never recover the cost of the tech. As others here have said, its also hugely dirty between the cost of making and scrapping the batteries as well as all the high cost energy intesive lighweight materials.

Look at audi, the costs in energy to produce aluminum can never be recovered over the lifetime of the car in fuel savings. in fact the most enviromentaly freindly car over its lifetime is a grand cherokee, normal iron is no so energy intesive to produce or scrap.

Now its true Electrics dont emit smog, and its also true that legislation in terms of emissions make hybrids and electrics attractive to manufacture. Tesla profit such as it is comes from selling ZEV credits and pricing is directly related to gov incentives. So yes regulation may skew the numbers towards electrics. But we are also going liquid enerygy independant in the usa and nuclear which produces a lot of electricity is hugely unpopular.

Now its also true that Teslas new tech is getting a leg up with gov help, but that is fair just like aerospace did.

Where is it all heading, because unless we have mandated emission free zones, even at half the price an electric is going to be more expensive than a gas alternative. So yeah for the wealthy who like eco concious, or people like me who enjoy some new tech and like the idea of vibration maintance free sedans tesla is great. If its by the numbers though, there is a question mark.

Lets also be objective. the interior is sparse for aluxury sedan, the dash top feel cheap and flimsy and rear passenger legrom is compromised by the flat floor for the battery. Yes its a magic machine so Musk may pull off even better ones in the future, but short of China mandating electrics, which is a real possibility Tesla will struggle to sell 400k cars per year.

As to the Op, where do electrics fit in for ferrrari. Its true many of us fud nothig compares to a sticj ferrari, but you may have noticed that they dont build stick ferraris no more. Now look at european emission legislation, it seems quite likely we wills ee hybrid ferraris, hel they just launched aturbi cali today. Its not hard to see a Euro all electric ferrari in the future cruising though Geneva or London. But for the rest of Us ferrari and the Euro manufacturers may learn at their peril that we want powerul gas motors. Hell we even hate stop start which all euro cars have.

There is a reason why BMW still offers a stick on its M cars here and its 30% of sales. In the fodge challenger its 505 of sales, 30% of vette sales are still stick too. There is also a reason why many of us dont buy new ferraris.

So yeah the electric tech is great, yeah Musk hit the ball out the park with the tesla and in reality its a 200 mile range(still great) but as a rip roring sportcar I dont see it. A ferrari is a swiss watch not a quartz watch, they will forget that at their peril. I know I woudl much rather have or even drive just once a 288/f40/f50 than a laferrari. Ever wonder why a F50 is more than an Enzo, yeah its more fun.

 

I drove one this weekend; it's truly as addictive as a Ferrari. I would LOVE to drive one every day, and plan on it in the future. However the Ferrari will always be a different experience, not a good daily driver. My car is 31 years old - a dinosaur - and who doesn't want to ride a dinosaur every now and then?
Kevin

 

A couple of additional comments:

1) My brother took his Model S on the track, and had a great time with it. I know there are several threads on the Tesla boards about going on the track. It's not a great track car because after a few hard laps, it does start limiting the power.

However, it was never intended to be a great track car. Would you take your Mercedes S-Class on the track?

2) Superchargers. The supercharger business model is actually really interesting. Tesla pays nothing for the land, but does pay for the electricity and the hardware. However, in many of the sunnier locales, they are going to put up solar canopies, which will at least somewhat (and maybe signficantly) offset the electricity cost, on an aggregate basis.

The point of superchargers is for them to be located between major cities, so there is less temptation for the locals to just always charge off of them-- although if there are Tesla owner local to them, there is nothing forbidding that.

As someone on the Tesla messageboard said, "The good news is I live near a Supercharger. The bad news is that otherwise, I live in the middle of nowhere."

3) Battery swap. IMO, this was a stunt which earned Tesla some money courtesy of the State of California, and that's it. I've heard nothing about battery swap actually being implemented.