
Tesla outsells Porsche, Jaguar, others in California - ValG
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/08/26/tesla-models-s-porsche-jaguar-california/2700289/
======
auctiontheory
The title may be literally true, but is very misleading.

Many of the sales booked to Tesla in California are intended for buyers in
other states that lack a Tesla dealership (but do have Porsche and Jaguar
dealerships).

~~~
teleclimber
The article refers to "registrations" in CA. Presumably Teslas sold to out-of-
state buyers do not count towards that number.

Anecdotally, whenever I am in the Brentwood/Santa Monica/other nice areas of
West LA, Tesla sightings are getting very common. It's like the next Prius
around here.

~~~
hippee-lee
I'm up in Westlake Village and it's almost daily. My first grade daughter
points them out to me ( I talk to her about cool logos and over such things ).

She will say, "Daddy theres a Tesla logo. " I'll say, "Where and what color."
Immediately followed by, " Oh yeah, right you are. Good eye."

------
nonchalance
Old discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6267478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6267478)

Top two comments were:

"Is anyone else tired of tesla PR and seeing 2 tesla articles here everyday?"

and

"Are these sales to Californians, or does this include sales made in
California and delivered to another state because of the dealership issue?"

~~~
jlampa
The article states the numbers are "based on new-vehicle registrations.",
which would suggest they are not inflated by out-of-state purchases.

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bluedevil2k
I am totally in the Tesla camp, but to play devil's advocate, isn't
profitability the real important number here? Tesla just became profitable,
but Porsche is the most profitable car company ([http://www.dw.de/porsche-
emerges-as-worlds-most-profitable-c...](http://www.dw.de/porsche-emerges-as-
worlds-most-profitable-carmaker/a-16727077))

~~~
bnejad
I'm surprised they are making ~$22 per unit.. I didn't realize car margins
were so low. Unless that article means $22,000

~~~
lmartel
The European convention is to use dots in large numbers where Americans use
commas. So yes, that's $22000

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arjn
This may be the quiet beginning of a revolution. A shift in not only the
public perception of all-electric/non-petroleum vehicles, but also in their
availability and affordability.

~~~
Wilya
Affordability and availability ? This is silly.

Tesla is making electric cars that rich people would actually buy. Not low-end
electric cars for the masses.

~~~
dylandrop
Tesla often cites that it started out in the luxury car market to recoup R&D
costs and entry costs (getting their first factory, etc.), and have mentioned
multiple times that they're planning on building a ~30k car within the next 5
years or so ([http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/tesla-to-introduce-
new-300...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/tesla-to-introduce-
new-30000-compact-sedan-as-electric-car-company-expands-its-charging-
network/)). So no, this is not silly.

~~~
miratrix
The problem is that once you get down to ~$30k pure electric car, you're going
to end up something that looks like the Nissan Leaf, even 5 years from now.
There is no magical Tesla dust that allows them to circumvent the laws of
physics and economics.

The problem is in the batteries - Tesla Model S batteries come in 60 and 85
kWhr capacities. Using the most generous specific energy estimates and the
price estimates (265 Whr/kg and 2.5 Whr/US$ -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-
ion_battery](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery)), you're
looking at 500 to 700 lb of extra weight and $24k~$32k due to batteries alone.
Even if the price halves in 5 years, you can't make money spending up to half
the price of the car in batteries alone.

As a premium car, Tesla can charge the extra money required for the large
battery pack and things like all aluminum chassis in Model S. At the lowered
price point, the revenue just is not there to justify these things.

This basically means that to hit the $30k price point, you're going to end up
with a much smaller battery pack (like Leaf's 24kWhr battery pack) and much
smaller car so that they can hit the (lowered) performance target in both the
driving characteristics (acceleration, top speed, etc which depend greatly on
curb weight) and range (weight and battery capacity).

If you look at the engineering trade-offs required to get to $30k pure
electric car in 5 year timeframe, it's hard to imagine something drastically
different from Nissan Leaf in range, size, and driving characteristics.

~~~
dylandrop
I think what you're saying is unnecessarily pessimistic. Lots of things evolve
quickly in a period of 5 years in technology. If Tesla claims it will develop
a $30k consumer car, I'd say they probably know what they're talking about,
and they'll probably build it with quality. I mean, what's the point of going
this far, if Musk just wants to piss away all of his credibility by making a
crappy $30k electric car? If you want to guesstimate costs and hack them
together, we can do this all day, but I'd say the only way to tell is to wait
and see.

TL;DR - it's hard to make claims to the quality the next Tesla car without
having any idea of what they're going to do.

~~~
miratrix
I worked on electric vehicle space in early 2000s - there are many
improvements for sure since then, but in the battery technology, not much has
changed. 10 years ago, top of the line 18650 Li-Ion cell (same ones used in
laptops and the Model S) weighed 46g, had capacities of 2.6Ahr, and cost about
$10 a pop. Now, it weighs the same but have capacities of about 3.4Ahr and
cost about $5. 30% improvement and half the cost is nothing to laugh at, but
that also took 10 whole years!

The biggest problem with batteries is that they're chemistry-bound - you don't
get the free twice-every-2-years type of thing that we're used to in computing
world.

Even with the Nissan Leaf type of vehicle, the growth in battery capacity and
more efficient / lighter chassis may result in extension of range to, say, 150
miles from 100 miles by 2018. Will that make it a no-compromise electric car?
What would the no-compromise range be?

Looking at what Tesla has done, and what Elon has said (who actually very
carefully said "sort of affordable" \-
[http://greenenergyholding.blogspot.com/2013/08/teslas-
next-e...](http://greenenergyholding.blogspot.com/2013/08/teslas-next-
electric-car.html)) what's more likely is a new model starting at, say, $40k
($30k after tax credits) with fairly limited range, with really usable range
starting at around $50k. Is that affordable? Probably not. But probably does
fit the label of "sort of affordable".

------
awwstn
The most interesting part of this article to me is that the Ford F-Series
pickup truck is the nation's top selling automobile.

It makes sense now, but it wouldn't have been my first guess.

~~~
speeder
To showcase Brazil crazy taxes: on our local eBay clone, a new F truck costs
250k USD Oo

~~~
jlgreco
At that point it probably starts to make sense to find "some guys" down at the
docks that can help you with some shipping containers...

------
jchrisa
Shameless copy/paste of my comment from the earlier article:

My problem with the rah-rah around Tesla is that, good as they might be
compared to the status-quo, they are still cars. There's not enough attention
paid to the fact that cars and the sedentary lifestyle they encourage are a
net-negative for most people. Many of the folks I talk to who'd like to move
to an active form of transportation don't because they are scared of being hit
by a car. We've effectively ceded huge swaths of public space to single
occupancy vehicles, and made it off limits to humans. This is bad for the
health of the people in those cars, but also bad for everyone else.

~~~
apetrovic
So, your opinion is that we should ban cars from highways so people can use
bicycles to go to work?

BTW, I call bullshit on "folks" you talked to - if one _really_ wants to "move
to active form of transportation" one just do it. Instead of sitting in the
car and complaining how life isn't fair.

~~~
vecinu
You seem to have ignored the main point of the OP you're responding to.

It is not SAFE to be on a bike on a public road. Do you read the news and
notice how almost every week you hear of a bicyclist being hit and/or killed?

I for one do not ride my bike to school because I do not feel SAFE, no matter
if I wear a helmet, pads and armor.

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imownbey
This seems like an unfair comparison. While people buy new Porsches and
Jaguars when they need them I think a lot of people have been buying Tesla
because of the novelty.

This doesn't make this any less impressive, but I am not sure that it is fair
to make the comparison of a company which needs to generate novelty year after
year (like Jaguar and Porsche) with an entirely novel company (like Tesla).

If Tesla was putting out yearly models than this would be much more news.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
>> While people buy new Porsches and Jaguars when they need them

....meeeeh, nobody really neeeeds a Porsche, they just buy them for the
novelty (of sportiness) one could say. I think a Tesla in certain areas
(anywhere near a big city) could make a much more practical purchase than a
Porsche...

edit: Also, 60k ain't what it used to be. Heck, you'll pay that for a 3-series
BMW these days (335i).

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codex
Tesla offers something these other luxury manufacturers can't: access to
California's HOV lanes without meeting the occupancy requirement.

------
jeroen
We already had an arstechnica article about the same news here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6267478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6267478)

------
geargrinder
If the government gave money to buyers of Porsches like they do for buyers of
Teslas these number might be different.

Or better yet, stop taking my tax dollars and giving them to rich people to
buy a luxury electric vehicle.

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level09
is it fair to compare Tesla sales to Porsche, Jaguar ? aren't these from a
different class ?

~~~
pbreit
Porsche and Jaguar both sell very direct competitors to Tesla. Which makes it
even more impressive that Tesla's one model is outselling those brand's in
their entirety.

~~~
sliverstorm
It will be more impressive if Tesla sustains the lead. Auto sales are very
"bursty", with huge jumps at the first offering of a new model, and the Tesla
S is not only a new model, but the _first_ viable electric in its class. So I
expect the levels of demand we see (in its class) today, like the surges of
floodwaters, are the highest they will be and will dwindle from here.

------
curiousDog
Still kicking myself for selling my stock at $90.

~~~
alyx
Still kicking myself for not buying the stock when it was $27 :)

~~~
mehrdada
If you want to kick yourself for not buying anything, which is not a wise
thing to do considering there's always something growing faster than you'd
expect, kick yourself for not buying TSLA options, not the stock. That's where
the real money was.

