Tesla Motors Model S Reservations Higher Than Expected

treehugger.com:

Pent Up Demand for Electric Cars, Even in This Economy...

In about a week, Tesla Motors has taken 520 reservations for the Model S electric car (photos here, more technical details here, video of first test-drive here). In this economy, and for a car that won't be available until 2011, that is pretty impressive. "Frankly the number of cars reserved in the first week has exceeded our optimistic internal projections," said Tesla CEO, Chairman and Product Architect Elon Musk. "Enthusiasm surrounding the Model S is proof that there's pent-up demand for more affordable, fuel-efficient vehicles -- including those made in America."

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Comments

[PlayTOE]

Tesla Motors Model S electric car is a high end sedan, just like the roadster is a high end sports car. This is meant to introduce new technology while giving those who can afford it the enjoyment of using it.
Very smart business model.

I look forward to their third car hoping to see the same sort of price reduction which would make it affordable to everyone.
1 ) Tesla roadster - $ 000.oo0.oo
2 ) Model S electric car - $ 400.oo.oo
3 ) ???????? - $ 000.oo.oo > 000.oo0.oo ???

Now we need to see charging opportunities in every major shopping plaza. Shop while you top up your E-Car.

[SangZe]

Another toy for the rich. When a decent electric car is available for under $15,000, I might take a look at it. The current suggested prices mean that it will be cheaper for me to continue using my four-cylinder gas-fueled vehicle.

[Motes]

The extended range version of this car has a 70kW*hr battery (which weighs 1300lbs) and likely has to be changed out every few years given the reliability I see from laptops. That worries me for being a 'green car'. I would like to see the range of this car during standard operation, and during the summer where you will probably have the AC on which by itself drain on the order of a kW. Most people will have to recharge the car every other day which practically means that the car will be charging 3 to 4 nights a week for a few hours (charging in 30 minutes for a half charge would imply you have 50-70kW at your house which does not exist). Now imagine 50% of the houses in your neighborhood trying to sink 50kWs at 6pm.
I think electric cars will come, I know I love my electric lawnmower, but there is a reason why hybrid are big now. Electric powered cars will not work as a solution for the general population until batteries are better and there is a real solution on how to charge the cars up.

[netzwerg]

Finally one who gets it!

Todays electric cars and even the Tesla S wont be the sollution for the everyday and all year car user.

But its definately going into the right direction.

[BlackbirdHighway]

At home charging is more like 10KW, and probably every night. Imagine every house on your block has the electric stove on at the same time, just like every Thanksgiving day. Except the car has a timer so you can charge up late at night. Many utilities give a big price break then because that's when demand is low and they have excess capacity.

Laptops treat the batteries like they are easily replaceable so they don't last long in that application. Tesla goes to great lengths to increase the calendar lifetime of the batteries, more like 7 to 10 years is expected. Of course, since their Roadsters began shipping last year, we'll find out over the next 9 years if they succeeded. That's why it's important to get cars on the road now, even if it's only a few expensive ones. There's nothing like the real world to validate all that testing that was performed in the laboratories.

In any case, the old batteries can be recycled, so they aren't just thrown into a landfill.

Certainly this is not the car that's going to be bought by millions of people. Give it another generation of two after the Model S and the price should come down to about what an average gasoline car goes for and the electric revolution will be in full swing.

[KillTheMessenger]

Laptop batteries have a very short lifetime no matter how you treat them. It's the chemistry of the electrode materials that lead to losses in capacity every charge cycle and the process is accelerating as the battery ages. Newer technologies have much better life cycles. That still does not address the cost issue.

It does not take a real time test to check for battery lifetime. Accelerated testing in the lab can be done quite reliably. Tesla already knows if they can keep their promise or not.

You will have to wait for a long time before electric cars with reasonable cost profiles will be available and technology adoption in this field will take 20+ years. And that's OK. We are not running out of oil that fast.

[SPQR1775]

If you believe that 50K isn't high for a car, tell me where you work at?! I am an officer in the Army and unless I can get an American made car for 30K or less, I will drive my Japanese Mitsubishi until 2011 when I will certainly purchase another Japanese made vehicle or a German one. American auto makers are greedy, there price tag is stuff in BIG Vehicles that are not fuel efficient or green. I HOPE THEY ALL GO BUST! Ford creat

[Pleneras]

Well said. It's all about the profit. When flatscreens came out they were 10,000, the following year half that and the year after half of that. They just want to make as much money off the first shipment under the assumption "it's the first batch." This thinking is why they sell very little instead of selling big at an affordable price. There are innovators out there with the right engine, but they will not sell to the big 3 or anyone. They too want to produce. Hydrogen Cell is the way to go.

[KillTheMessenger]

I think you forgot when flat-screens were invented. The first plasma display was demonstrated in 1964! I worked on one of those early computer displays for a couple of years. They went for a couple thousand dollars. Back then it was a fortune. They were great for orange/black graphics work because they didn't lose their image even without refresh. The first color display was shown in 1992 by Fujitsu. In 1997 the first display went on sale for $15,000. So in the first 30 years you have almost no adoption beyond science and the price is basically flat.

"There are innovators out there with the right engine, but they will not sell to the big 3 or anyone. "

We want to hear names!

:-)

"Hydrogen Cell is the way to go."

It would be if hydrogen grew on trees or could be pumped from the earth.

[netzwerg]

The problem is, you still need a real car for the winter, because heating your car in the winter sucks empty the batteries very fast.

Nice fun-toy though.

[sculptor]

I have my doubts about what you claim. If the car uses decent insolation (look up aerogel) I doubt the car would average more than 500 watts for heating in the worst weather. The battery on this car, for it to have a 300 mile range) has got to be in the ballpark of 100 KWH. That would be enough to heat the car for 200 hours.

[netzwerg]

500Watts wont heat anything. my hairdryer got 1200Watts, try heating your car from freezing to lets say 20°C with that...wont work.

[StopGlobalWarmingBeVegan]

That is one fine looking car!

[wordvarc]

Aptera...

[wordvarc]

My 'bailout money' is coming...Please send mine.

[dolphy]

Also, if you buy a used Prius for 15K and convert it to a plug-in, you will need another 10K and also voids your warranty.... and you have a used Prius as a car.

[dolphy]

You should know that a Toyota Corolla S is 20K. 50 K is not a VERY HIGH price for a car now.

[OkieMon]

the car GM should have built....the volt with be DOA.....

[RegularEinstein]

GM did build the EV-1 in the 90s then recalled and destroyed all but 1 of the 50 or so they built. Imagine if they kept with the project rather than letting big oil bully them into wiping it off the face of this earth. Perhaps they would be rolling in dough rather than rolling in a death spiral.

[Decipherer]

Truth be told, Big Oil bullied the automakers since the early years of the 20th century -- nothing new about that. Think of the analogy of the IBM PC and Microsoft: IBM = Automakers, Microsoft = Big Oil.

Who's making money and still healthy?

Recall, too, that ~100 years ago, automakers manufactured vehicles capable of running on steam (!!!), ethanol, and electricty -- gasoline or diesel were not on the forefront. Rudolf Diesel, the inventor of the first practical compression ignition engine that bears his name, designed his engine to use peanut oil.

It was the unholy alliance of Standard Oil, the automakers (Ford, mainly), and Firestone Tires which began to dismantle urban mass transit and due to their combined political force at the federal, state, and local levels, started a process whereby our entire country was built around personal petroleum-fueled transportation.

At the end of the day, however, our automobile industry which sold it's soul to petroleum is in near collapse, with massive economic implications for our country. The fall of GM, Chrysler, and the rest is not so much the result of bad design, management or other factors, it is their slavish and exclusive dependence on petroleum.

[Pleneras]

That's what they get for conspiring to Kill Their Own Electric Car!

"A large part of the film accounts for GM's efforts to demonstrate to California that there was no demand for their product, and then to take back every EV1 and dispose of them. A few were disabled and given to museums and universities, but almost all were found to have been crushed; GM never responded to the EV drivers' offer to pay the residual lease value ($1.8 million was offered for the remaining 78 cars in Burbank before they were crushed). Several activists are shown being arrested in the protest that attempted to block the GM car carriers taking the remaining EV1s off to be crushed."

[StanlyManly]

Apparently a $55,000 car is considered "more affordable".

[dolphy]

Cadillac Escalade is 75K, Lexus LS460 is 85K, Hummer 1 is 120K, MB S500 is 130K. This is almost in the price range of a Toyota Avalon Limited which is 40K or a Honda Pilot.

[sculptor]

Hey, try running the numbers... Take off $7500 bucks with the government subsidy, subtract another $10,000 from using electricity instead of gasoline and another $5000 in maintenance savings from junking the internal combustion engine. It looks like bargain price ($35,000) for a sporty luxury sedan.

Note, for the numbers I assume $3.00 gas prices over a 150,000 mile lifetime (the batteries will likely last a lot longer than this.)

[StanlyManly]

I guess electricity is free in your universe. Also in your universe, imported cars don't come with a 10 year, 100k mile warranty, and electrical cars have 0 maintenance.

Luxury isnt exactly something most Americans can afford at this point. But big businesses have never cared... they'll find a way to make you "buy" even if its with credit or fearmongering. Oh wait...

[KillTheMessenger]

Try running the same numbers for a Prius and you end up with... tons of money in your pocket. How are you going to save $10,000 by using electricity? A Prius uses 325 gallons of gas a year. That's $1500 if we assume almost $5/gallon. So you end up with maybe $1200 worth of savings a year. If you pay interest on the price difference of $30,000 (assume it's 5% per year), that's $1500 in annual interest already. So you won't even break even.

[lvogt]

"Thousands" would be a story. Still, good luck to them. It looks like a nice car.

[BlackbirdHighway]

It's only been one week since they started taking orders!

[KillTheMessenger]

And it's going to be three years before they start delivering...

:-)

[marlovian]

Let's all meet back here in 2011 to find out how many reservations were cancelled.

[Decipherer]

I'd be curious to learn how many of those placing orders for this car will still have jobs by then. Might be a good indicator as to whether the recovery plan is working.

Sure hope it is -- if so, I'm buying one of these babies!

[DRaymond]

I'm sorry, but I don't buy that this represents some sort of pent up demand for an electric car so much as collectors looking for a novelty. Are there 530 collectors willing to put down money to have a shot at being the first in america to own one of the very first of a very limited production unique vehicle? Yes.

The thing is that at its current price there is no way that the Tesla makes economic sense. It can only br rationalized as a fashion statement. Its a way to combine both 'I'm richer than you' with 'I'm greener (more planetarily virtue) than you'. in one purchase.

[KillTheMessenger]

Agreed. But the "I am richer than you" part pretty much negates the "I am greener than you part" already. But I can see how many rich people on the search for the next toy will master this act of lobotomizing themselves mentally just fine.

[DRaymond]

True but the I'm greener goes a long way toward negating the guilt of being so consumptive of resouces in general. The Tesla is like carbon credits you can sit in.

[BlackbirdHighway]

If price was all people cared about, then we would all be driving a Kia or a Hyundai .

[StanlyManly]

Not sure if you noticed, but a lot more people are driving Hyundais and Kias. Perhaps a few years ago, people did not care about price so much, but they do today. I guess you weren't aware of this little recession that's been going on.

[DRaymond]

Sure there are other 40+ thousand dollar cars. Not all value is simply measured in low price. The thing about the Tesla is that you also have to buy another car for longer trips.

[digitalprophet]

Either way I'd rather people over-compensate with a green car rather than a HYBRID Escalade that still doesn't have a good MPG rating..

[DRaymond]

True, but I never said the hybrid Escalade made economic sense either.