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Bob Lutz, car-guy-to-the-max, former VP of GM and Chrysler, with time at BMW before that, wrote this recent article --
http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a26859/bob-lutz-tesla/
The opening paragraph is gloomy:
Tesla's showing all the signs of a company in trouble: bleeding cash, securitized assets, and mounting inventory. It's the trifecta of doom for any automaker, and anyone paying attention probably saw this coming a mile away. Like most big puzzles, the company's woes don't have just one source.
and the prognosis goes downhill from there mentioning competition from Audi, the lack of enough dealers to attract more buyers and other problems.
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Everything you know is wrong!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @05:54PM
He says the company is "losing $4000 per car" which, if true, means consumers aren't paying enough to cover the costs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Friday October 30 2015, @07:22PM
He says the company is "losing $4000 per car" which, if true, means consumers aren't paying enough to cover the costs.
Yeah, Chevy Volt lost money on every sale too. Except, Chevy was losing close to $40,000 per vehicle. [reuters.com] Lutz knows a thing or two about losing money.
The thing is, Lutz isn't taking into account the massive cost savings that Tesla expects to reap when its battery plant comes on line.
Musk will probably end up selling batteries to Chevy.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2015, @08:07PM
Well until I see an actual source on that, he hasn't show himself to be spot on with the rest of his arguments.
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Friday October 30 2015, @08:48PM
Odd. That's probably taking into account the infrastructure Tesla is building in their supercharger network. Or just taking their losses and dividing it out over the number of cars they sell.
I was under the impression that the markup on the base model was around $10k and goes skyward from there. They justified the markup as they were building out the supercharger network.
The thing is, when you are building up infrastructure, profit/loss statements can be made to look as good or bad as you want. If you want it to look good, just slow down infrastructure investments for a quarter.