Tesla Quarterly Report, Aug.8, 2014 (Risk Factors);
Our vehicles make use of lithium-ion battery cells, which have been observed to catch fire or vent smoke and flame, and such events have raised concerns, and future events may lead to additional concerns, about the batteries used in automotive applications.
[…]
The range and power of our electric vehicles on a single charge declines over time, and this may negatively influence potential customers’ decisions whether to purchase our vehicles.
And then, there’s the balance sheets.
h/t Don B.
You can sit in a garage with a powered up and ready to drive Tesla all day long. I dare you to do the same with a gasoline engine powered vehicle.
Do that all the time….and smoke too.
sean you sound like the trade in sales person ‘you have too many miles on your car.”
let me play devils advocate do you drive your carer sit in the garage?
personally I drive my car
Sonny, I have probably spent more days sitting in buildings with one or more gasoline-filled cars than you have spent on this planet since you came out of the chute.
Yes,that’s a primary concern for most automobile buyers, something their buying decision hinges on.
Hmmmm, the inventory has increased significantly. Building and not selling?
A clean running and warmed up car emits only a negligible amount of carbon monoxide. Diesels don’t emit any , so you can sit in the garage,smoke and stay warm. Here is the real reason to avoid a Tesla. Edmunds put 4 motors and two battery packs in their long term evaluation car. That was in approximately 20,000 miles and works out to about $100 grand of warranty work.
Yup, the car I have now is darn near wore out from all that sittin’ in the garage with me behind the wheel, goin’, “vroom, vroom”. Yup, time to trade the old wheels in.
Sean, where did you get your smarts, from “Idiot U” or did you just sit in your garage all day rather than the basement?
Good point, Sean. At least you’ll have a front-row seat when your Tesla decides to spontaneously burst into flames and burns down your garage, with you inside.
Just getting sick and tired of all the Chicken Little crap around electric vehicles. If you want one, buy one. If you don’t want one, don’t buy one. Does the occasional one catch on fire? Sure. So do conventional vehicles. They have manufacturing defects, just like regular vehicles. You can’t use the exhaust fumes from a Tesla to commit suicide in an enclosed space, however. Last I checked the fire numbers, it was 1 in 10000 for Teslas. It was 1 in 1300 for gasoline vehicles. You’re less likely to become a crispy critter in a Tesla. To imply otherwise is somewhat disingenuous.
Tesla is probably the first company to make a car that I’ve found exciting in the past decade. If they make it, great. If they don’t, that’s capitalism for ya. I personally hope they do as I admire Elon Musk a great deal. I have no plans to abandon my 1989 Chevy Astro anytime soon, however. If it starts and it’s paid for, I’m good with it.
Nikola Tesla may have been a geek who allowed his inventions to be stolen by unscrupulous scumbags, but his understanding of physics was well ahead of its time.
I’m with you on this one. If there is some viable and affordable electric technology, go for it.
Not that I would buy the vehicle, but trying and failing is better than whining and ripping down others’ efforts.
Sean, our electrical grid cannot support the items we have plugged in now. There are brown outs in the winter and summer already. What do you suppose will happen when we all plug in our cars every night to charge them up to get to work the next day? How many vehicles are on the road today?
Where do you think electricity comes from? Do you think electrical capacity is just going to appear? Do you think renewable energy sources like wind and solar could even come close to providing enough electricity now? If it wasnt for coal we would be freezing in the dark and wouldnt survice the winter.
Electric cars are nice but if you consider zero salvage value and poor performance, no one would buy them without the incentives. And finally, where do you think the money comes from to provide those incentives?
well now sean, rotary engines are quite nice, butt, they just don’t cut it for several reasons. Try figuring out why, and then apply the same scrutiny to your double DD battery junk-mobiles and you’ll understand why they ain’t ready for prime time. Then there is the small item Mark has mentioned, power supply. You see it takes a great deal of “engineering” to bring a new technology to market, and “electric cars” need a lot more of engineering before they are ready. Just try talking to any electric forklift mechanic and you’ll get some answers.
So Sean.You are all right with stealing tax payer’s dollars to subsidize a failing project? You are probally a CAGW believer also.And why in the he@@ would you be sitting in your garage and not using your “vehicle” for driving? Leftardism….a truly mental disease.
Except that it is crony capitalism, receiving all that “government” err, people’s money in the form of grants, loan guarantees and subsidies for the rich to buy them. As long as Tesla supports Obama.
Maybe Sean meant you can sit in your garage all day waiting for your Tesla to become fully charged and ready to drive.
Is ‘vent smoke and flame’ substantively different than ‘catch fire’? Inquiring mind wants to know.
No taxpayer funded incentives for electric cars or any other type of cars.
Let people buy whatever vehicle they prefer without government incentives.
and they will go 30 km at minus 35C so they are useless out here in the prairies! Especially since I am 63 km from a town with a supermarket!
Got a spare $100k sitting around Leftard buoy?
Doesn’t everybody?
I am a fossil fuel fan and love a good old gas guzzler the same way I love a tired old horse or dog but I cannot help but cheer for Tesla. Their battery costs are projected to drop by half once their new Las Vegas plant is running.
Forget about driving one in a prairie winter. Only an idiot would buy one and think about driving it in the winter. Saskatchewan ranks right up there with Iceland in terms of Tesla’s marketing plan. It would be a pretty cool summer car just like a sporty convertible and I will probably buy one. Brown outs? Yes. Solution: Coal, Natgas and nukes. Let the market work.
I do not consider a quarterly $60 million dollar loss on $790 million of sales for a car still in development anything to worry about in the product life cycle of the car biz. Its still a hell of a lot better than Postmedia’s balance sheet. And its only going to get better and at the expense of the other automakers.
Unlike most electric cars, the Tesla is pretty good looking, hot performance too, both sports model and sedan.
But…
They’re quite costly to build. I recall hearing that they started selling them at $100,000 but had to raise it up to $125,000 and were still not breaking even. Then came the big government subsidies and last I heard they were selling for $75,000. I only glanced briefly at the balance sheets but I didn’t see that massive government subsidy mentioned. If it indeed isn’t taken into account then I would suggest that Tesla is being somewhat less than truthful about their financial situation or the viability of the company.
The lithion Ion battery is a boon to modern arsonists, terrorists are probably already training in the use of these gifts.
I accidentally punctured a discharged 4V cell last winter.
Burnt fingers, threw it into a packed snow bank at -30C, it melted through a foot or so of ice and snow, then created a melt chamber at ground level.
Which electric cars combusted when flooded? Was it Fischer?
Also at -30 a fully charged Lithion Ion 12V battery is useless. Zero output, unless kept warm.
Electric cars lost the technological race with the Stanley Steamer, which was blown away by the Model A.
The market for electric cars is the polluted West coast cities where hydro is the major source of electricity. The argument that nobody should build electric cars because they won’t work in Winnipeg in the winter is simply foolish. Bicycles don’t work well in the winter either, but people still buy them. Some of us work with a Canadian concept called seasonal tools.
In Vancouver this weekend. Stumbled across the Tesla store. Went in to observe. Their entire buisness model is based on image. Image. Image. Nothing more. Nothing less.
They want you to part with your money for something that is not worth 1/5th of what they are charging.
And they way they do it is to appeal to those who are entirely image conscious.
Tesla is a fashion statement. It is not a real business.
So Sean you are OK with people who can afford to plunk down $100k for a car getting taxpayer funded subsidies?
What a dull, empty life you must have.
I have, though, spent four hours in an airplane hanger waiting for the weather (hail, grey-out rain) to clear. My wife teased me (over the cell phone), “You buy an airplane that costs as much as three Masserati’s and you can’t travel when you want?”. I sez to her, “Right now, not even the VW bugs are rolling, but as soon as the weather clears I’ll be home in two hours (from 415 miles away)”.
Oh, and I smoked two cigars during the wait.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/02/22/the_electric_car_is_an_abomination_117114.html
/excerpt
“This is, of course, very different from how I plan a trip in a conventional car. This requires a lot more work up-front, work that is just fine by me. I’m okay with such investments if it means covering 165 miles in a 416-horsepower luxury car for just 10 bucks’ worth of electricity.”
This reviewer may have good technical qualifications, but he should not try writing about economics. When he talks about saving a few dollars on gasoline, surely he is aware that the Tesla model he and Broder were testing costs about $100,000. If you’re concerned about saving money, you might want to consider spending “only” $45,000 on a traditional luxury car—maybe a nice BMW—and putting the extra $55,000 into a gasoline fund. Even at today’s prices, that ought to last you—let’s see—a couple of decades. So much for the economic argument for an electric car.
/end excerpt
So they are no different when it comes to selling cars than Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Kia, BMW, Audi, Mercedes………..
Oh you’re just a bunch of sour grapes foxes. I bought my Tesla two months ago and it’s just fantastic. I can smoke out anyone else on the road, even a Porsche or Ferrari. I get instant acceleration. Double the storage space of a regular sedan. No more standing around in -25C blizzards pumping gas into the car. No more carbon monoxide in the garage. The car is completely silent – the cabin is like Carnegie Hall with the surround sound with no engine noise in the background. No more wasting time going to get gasoline or oil changes. I don’t think about the cost of gas money — my “fill-ups” cost about $10 each. The Supercharger network is growing every day — in about a month or two I will be able to drive just about anywhere in North America I would want to go without worrying about range. Yes, I can afford to pay $140K for the car but then again I’m one of those rich people that you free-market liberty-loving capitalists are so crazy about. BTW, Tesla paid back every nickel that it borrowed from the US government, with interest, ahead of schedule so the accusation that Elon Musk is a government moocher is vigorously denied.
So far – no fires. I don’t worry about fires because:
1) The car has the armored undercarriage that addresses the problem about debris jacknifing on the road.
2) I had my High-Power Wall Connector (HPWC)professionally installed unlike the moron whose garage caught fire — apprarently that was a DIY job by someone who was not an electrician. Well, if you play around with 100A and you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to get what you deserve.
One other thing — I just got a $8,500 cheque today from Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Ontario. I think of it as just a little refund on all those taxes I pay (it’s only a little less than half of the HST on the car), so I’m not at all sorry about putting it in the bank and having a little fun with all that cash. I’ll get another $1,000 for the HPWC.
Rather than just curse and seethe with jealousy, go out and buy one.