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That's been Tesla's business plan for quite some time, use luxury cars to fund the company to mass production. It isn't news, but it does seem out of context.
by mey 10y ago
That's been Tesla's business plan for quite some time, use luxury cars to fund the company to mass production. It isn't news, but it does seem out of context.
- forgetsusername 10y ago>That's been Tesla's business plan for quite some time In practice, they've used stock dilution and debt to fund the business.
- wrsh07 10y agoPlus selling some higher end cars to extend their runway and build out production facilities...
- canes123456 10y agoThe high end cars have only been "profitable" recently. If you taken into account R&D and the production build up, the model s still in debt.
- _benedict 10y agoextending your runway implies unprofitable
- njharman 10y agohttps://finance.yahoo.com/quote/tsla/financials?ltr=1 https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/tsla/financials?ltr=1
- Randuin 10y agoIs the Model S not mass produced?
- mey 10y agoCompaing US sales of Model S for 2015 to say something like a Toyota RAV4 (a popular but not top selling car in the US) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S#Top_selling_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S#Top_selling_coun... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4 Model S 2015: 25,202 Toyota RAV 4 2015: 315,412 In the US, the best selling vehicle the Ford F-Series which sold 780,354 in 2015 So I wouldn't say it's not mass produced, but it hasn't hit full economy of scale, and isn't designed to.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoIf you really want to make Tesla production numbers seem tiny then compare it to vehicle platforms.
- thinkmassive 10y agoCompared with other EVs the volumes seem pretty high: http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/ http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/ Compared to a comparable line of luxury cars, for instance the BMW 5-series, the volumes are relatively low: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_5_Series#Production_and_sales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_5_Series#Production_and_sa...
- njharman 10y agoThe roadster wasn't, Each model has funded devel/production of the following model. I think parent meant S&X are funding "mass productions (model 3)"
- sowbug 10y agoProduction for the masses might be more on point.
- collinmanderson 10y agoThey frequently get a lot of people complaining that they're just selling really expensive luxury cars to the rich, so they have to keep repeating this. The high performance car is needed to both fund mass production and prove that electric cars aren't golf carts. Sorry, I tried finding a citation for that. It's in some Elon video from the past month or so.
- sowbug 10y agoSecret Master Plan from ten years ago: https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-j...
- collinmanderson 10y agoRight. Right. I mean I was looking for a citation on them getting a lot of complaints from people who don't know their master plan.