9 ms·
The rule of thumb in the car business is that you have to sell 40000 of the things to get the economies of scale needed to be viable. I am very for Tesla and I
by Theodores 12y ago
The rule of thumb in the car business is that you have to sell 40000 of the things to get the economies of scale needed to be viable. I am very for Tesla and I would buy an 'S' the moment my lottery winnings come through, however, is it an uncomfortable fact that despite the hype and hoopla they are not hitting the numbers needed for economy of scale that the rest of the mass-market auto industry lives by?
- jblow 12y agoBefore posting a question like this, please bother to look into the logistics involving the company (for example, their actual plans for scaling). They are a new car company. They do not yet have the capacity to manufacture at high scale, but they are working on it. Whether or not they hit their plans, 40k cars/year is well beyond their stated expectations for the year 2015. I mean, are you supposed to be able to just wake up in the morning and say "hi, I am a car company" and manufacture 50k cars?
- toomuchtodo 12y agoAs jblow mentioned, they are not at scale yet. They're using the revenue (and high profit margins) from the Model S to fund their Gigafactory construction. Once online, the Gigafactory is to bring down the cost of batteries by ~30%. They will, at that point, be at scale.