Quote:
Originally Posted by son_of_siggy
Yeah, what kind of company offers pre-paid maintenance packages?! 
The Tesla supercharger will recharge 150 miles in 30 minutes, or the equivalent of 300 miles in one hour.
http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger
I'm not saying your arguments are invalid, I'm saying that with time, they will become less of a concern. You also have to remember that when Henry Ford was selling cars, people also raised similar concerns, as the cars didn't actually go very far, and refueling stations were no where near as prevalent as they are today. People weren't going cross-country by car at that point. Ford was not selling a viable alternative for horse and train travel at that point. He was designing with the future in mind though.
Again, I'm not saying your concerns aren't valid ones, I'm just saying that people said the same thing about ICE, and eventually the technology and infrastructure caught up. |
Well, time is the real issue here isn't it? Just running very crude numbers I don't see where Tesla can survive based on the market sales it can achieve. In 2011 BMW sold a total of 11,300 7-Series cars (from BMW's annual report). Assuming Mercedes and Audi sell a relatively equivalent number of S-Classes and A8's, the total sales market for the Tesla's class is on the order of 35,000 cars. Say, just for discussion sake, Tesla steals 30% of those sales, that’s 10,500 cars. Say Tesla makes $10,000 profit per car, that's $105 Million dollars. Saying Tesla will steal 30% of its market sales is highly doubtful, saying it will make $10K per sale profit is highly doubtful as well. Those are generous gesstimates.
Considering it takes every other manufacturer nearly a Billion dollars or more to launch a new ICE model (and that is with using shared infrastructure/resources of engineering, manufacturing, common parts, and suppliers, etc.) I just don't see where Tesla has that kind of cash and investment to survive long term. $105M doesn't go very far in the auto industry. Then, add in it is going to build its own fueling stations and give away the electricity for free, the picture to me is even less viable.
Just my two cents...