Impressed Yet? Tesla Delivers 50,000 Units To Customers In 2015

I'll be impressed when they can run consistently at a profit, without depending on government (AKA taxpayer) handouts, and when they are shown to have done it sustainably, year after year for at least 5 years, and their books are in good shape... and hoards of customers aren't getting their drivetrains replaced at 60,000 miles. In the meantime, Go Tesla GO!

I'll be surprised if you still have the same opinion after taking a P90D for a spin and then asking some owners how they feel about the reliability of their cars.

runninglogan1: Are you suggesting that everything I mention won't matter to me as soon as I feel how briskly a P90D accelerates in "Ludicrous" mode? Perhaps that might be true for you, but for me, that idea is just ludicrous.

Guess you missed the part about how they also have the most satisfied customers in the entire auto biz. You must also find that ludicrous.

runninglogan1: You appear to miss some business fundamentals! High customer satisfaction is likely to result in increased unit sales. If that's your only measure of success, then yes, Tesla is getting better all the time.

However, an enterprise lives and dies by profit, or for the lack of profit, the ability to keep receiving money, such as grants or bailouts, so they can continue to do business. When we look at Tesla and notice they lose about $4,000 per car they sell, and you multiply that by 50,000 cars, that makes a loss of about $220,000,000. If you increase the unit sales by 50% due to the happy customer effect, then you increase the LOSSES by 50%. In laymen's terms, the more they sell, the deeper they dig their hole.

Tesla needs to make some big changes to become profitable, and analysts agree that Tesla has not presented a viable plan on how to do that. This doesn't mean it *won't* happen. It just means people are hoping that someday, someone figures out how to make it happen. In the meantime, Tesla continues to operate at a loss, and the more units they sell, the more money they lose.

But they do have happy customers, so yay.

More breathless cheerleading. Without Obama paying them, Tesla would have folded by now.

Where's the supplemental article about the Tesla catching fire at the charging station that was submitted two days ago?

MDarringer: I believe your "Without Obama paying them" statement may offend Obama supporters, and so become politically charged. Putting politics aside, Tesla's accounting clear shows these facts:

(1) They lose about US$4,000 for every vehicle they sell (i.e., they're operating at a loss)

(2) They shore up their losses primarily through government grants and government subsidies. BTW, when I say "government", I mean "the government acting as a middle-man to borrow money, give it to Tesla, and then send the bill to taxpayers in the form of increased national debt and debt-support costs."

(3) The means by which Tesla gets government (taxpayer) funding is arguably "questionable". For example, the government offered a fat financial incentive to companies that develop and implement "quick-change battery" technology to relieve EV range anxiety. Tesla did this. Well, *technically* they did it by equipping their vehicles to be "quick-change ready" and by creating one (1) quick-change station in all of the United States to perform the task. So if you drive a Tesla, chances are excellent you'll never see a quick-change station in your lifetime, let alone use one. However, Tesla happily applied for and received the funds for their "accomplishment". Perfectly legal.

Whether Obama is to be credited/blamed for this is irrelevant. What is pertinent is that it's a big part of how Tesla is staying afloat while they continue to sell vehicles at a loss, operate at a loss, and have no viable plan in place to become profitable. And yet, there are sufficient numbers of people playing the stock market who are betting on Tesla shares, and some are even profiting on their trades.

Tesla invited Model S owners in CA to use the battery-swapping station and very few took them up on the offer simply because it is not needed, and as it turns out it is not practical (look up Better Place). The supercharging network that Tesla has deployed in NA, Europe, and China allows their customers to drive long distance pretty much everywhere.

Tesla is massively investing in their gigafactory to lower the cost of making batteries and to increase their availability. That allows them to do two things, make the lower priced-higher volume Model 3 and fulfill the massive demand for electricity storage through the Tesla Energy powerwall and commercial grid storage solutions.

But hey, believe what you want.

The gigafactory apparently will only be 1/6th the size as promised when it opens. What does that tell you about money supply and demand for non existent and probably never arrive Model 3?

So that they can begin making the battery cells as fast as possible. The rest is under construction with the intention to build more factories in other locations.

P90D is limited to 155mph. Funny watching drag races where it leads for about 300ft until the real exotics blow by them at 200+mph. but alteast you got to 60mph in .1 sec less.

It's a fokken family sedan, how often do you shuttle yer kids to daycare at 200+ mph?