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Featured Tesla exec tells it like it is

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by bwilson4web, Nov 22, 2015.

  1. dhanson865

    dhanson865 Expert and Devil's advocate

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    Flyover country - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
     
  2. iplug

    iplug Senior Member

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  3. dhanson865

    dhanson865 Expert and Devil's advocate

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    The reality is the Plug in Prius was a compliance car only sold in a couple of states not found in "Northeastern Megalopolis and Southern California" Widen that to west coast + northeast megalopolis and it'd be close enough.

    Take a look at Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard and any car not selling en masse isn't selling in my state (Tennesse).

    I can get a Volt, Leaf, or Tesla. All those other names are just compliance cars not sold nationwide.
     
  4. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    I have never seen this database before, but it appears to have individucal not household incomes. Household adds up the incomes in the household, as these can provide for food, shelter, etc. You also picked the number that was only salary. What about bonuses, stock income, other compenation. 10% is very very low. If that database has it, include all the household income and cone back. I bet it is around 13% of households for $125,000. This does not include many weathy that have low or no saleries but have a ton of wealth creating investments, that choose not to take capital gaines now or hold the funds in places that can hide gaines.
    The entry tesla is $70,000. Don't pretend ASP is needed for all buyers, otherwise there would be only one price and no options. Who cares if they qualify for the tax credit directly or through a lease. The tax credit will be gone soon and the base price will be lower.

    Why would they? ITs a small company that does not advertise. Why would they share the information.
    DOE and CARB collect this information though from those applying for tax credits.

    A high percentage of all initial adopers have household incomes (including realized capital gaines) and bonuses of $125,000 or higher. CARB is even using this number to target neighborhoods for Fuel cell vehicles. Don't get distracted by some class warfare. The amount of poople that can afford a tesla is probably around 20$ of new car buyers. They simply may prefer to use the money on other things.

    NOte it is usinally the Koch borthers pacs that argue the way you do.

    plug-ins are rich boys toys. Poor people own guzzlers It simply is politics. Don't fall into bad data or bad political rhetoric.
     
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  5. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    so - why don't YOU do it then - show Tesla how stupid it was, represented per their historic growth versus how YOU'll do it.
    Buy or build a factory - hire (say for starters) a few thousand workers - assembly line, payroll-accounting, robotics specialists, attorneys (for hundreds of supply chain contracts, land use experts, environmental, trademark, patent international, conflict of law, HR etc) chemists, Software / electronic / hydrolic-mechanical-chemicle engineers, CPA's, secretaries, janitorial, managers, VP's, lobbyists, trucking-delivery chain, supercharger network-infrastructure build-out maintenance, sales-service store reps, Expeditors, as well as the ⅔ or more left off this short list for brevity's sake.
    Atta boy! Go show 'em !! See you back here in what 6months? A year? 2?
    Don't forget - Apple will be right on your heels - and THEY have the advantage of virtually free (almost slave) labor. You WILL be creating U.S. jobs - right?
    Good show !
    ;)
    Everybody's a perfect armchair quarterback. But as Kareem abdul-jabbar put it, "you try and drag Walton down the court for 48minutes"

    .
     
    #105 hill, Nov 25, 2015
    Last edited: Nov 25, 2015
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  6. Zythryn

    Zythryn Senior Member

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    This is incorrect, it is simply not possible to start an auto company like that.

    Hyundai had been in business for twenty years and had built one million cars before they came out with the Excel.

    They did this through partnerships and growth. They also were an offshoot of the Hyundai Engineering and Construction company founded in 1947, so they already had a he'd start in terms of cash and credit.

    Hyundai Motor Company - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
     
  7. iplug

    iplug Senior Member

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    As you quoted, I pulled this right from your article, unedited. It specifically states household, not individual income from the text. I was not able to get the link within the article to work, and didn’t cherry pick anything, just pulled it right from the article. Household income, if reported correctly should include all income as you mentioned. Your numbers are closer to other sources I have come across in the past. Still, not a huge difference when considering income budgets for the Tesla Model S.

    No pretending anything on my part. That’s a presumptuous statement, however. This is about a distribution of buyers and price points. Tesla has already told us the middle point of the bell curve is at ~$100k.

    Yes, I suspect most of the 10%-ers by income are actually much closer to the 1%-ers by wealth (discussed in earlier posts) and many are probably partially or fully retired. My anecdotal experience matches this. As the article you linked mentioned:

    the top 10 percent of American households have a net worth of at least $763,000; the top 5 percent hover around $1.3 million.

    Wise recommendations for you to strongly consider as well.
     
  8. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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  9. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    He's probably suggesting the number of high powered chargers out there in the cornfields is small
     
  10. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    ah, thanks. why do people think that everything has to happen all at once? i don't think we went from horses to automobiles overnight.
    people wanted automobiles, they could see the advantages over horses. eventually, the same thing will happen with alt fuel vehicles.
     
  11. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    I was thinking it came from your link. If you hit up my link and put in $125,000 it comes back with 13% Sorry the link didn't work, but the figure is 13% from that database for total household income at or over $125,000.


    ASP is indeed around $100,000 (that is average selling price mean not median). The price for a 70D base (AWD 240 mile range epa sports sedan) the most popular model is $76,200 including destination and fees, but not more options. This qualifies for between a $7500-$10,000 tax credit according to state, meaning $66200 - $68,700 before sales tax (tax credit is often taxed). The average new vehicle price is $33,600, which means a new tesla awd without extra coptions costs about twice the average new car payment. There are many that want that P90D with all the options, which raises the average (maen) new car price, but I mainly see 70Ds around here now.

    Sure, which means that top 10% can afford a new tesla. I don't understand the top 1% by wealth though. The top 1% of wealth is $6.8M, much higher than the top 10%. At least now we are on the same page. 10% or 13% are in the ballpark. Its a much bigger market than the top 1%.

    Remember most in the bottom 50% of households can't afford a new car, which means that top 10% is a much higher percentage of the new car market. I don't really want to get in class warfare. IMHO those top 20% of new car buyers can afford a clean plug-in car. If there is going to be an energy taransition that is where it will start. Then vehicle costs can fall to hit the rest of the market for new cars. Used car buyers won't get these cars until the first group is done with them.
     
  12. iplug

    iplug Senior Member

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    Looks like were getting closer to some consensus on what the available data tells us about Tesla demographics. Not trying to be difficult and I have no loyalty to Toyota. Rather, trying to make the most sense from the available data.

    To clear up something that seems to be a hangup, I have no desire to promote class warfare. The percentages used are not attempts at anything political. They are just meant to be statistics to figure out the Tesla market.

    So, let’s do some "back-of-the-envelope" estimation and go with “the entry tesla is $70,000”. There seems to be the suggestion that the 10%ile (by income) would largely favor this trim level, so let’s go with that. Next, let’s go with the official $100,000 as the average selling price. Now if the 10%ile is really buying a significant percentage of the Model S, they would “move the needle” quite at bit – actually many thousands of dollars towards $70k.

    But to maintain the $100k average selling price in that scenario, almost all of the 1-2%ile would have to buy fully loaded trims. But more than that, there would have to also be a very large percent of this percentile to keep the average selling price where it is. Just don't see that there can be many 10%ile buyers for this to reconcile.

    We all have our anecdotal experiences, but as I have noted previously in this thread, I am just not seeing a significant number of 10%ile buyers. Rather, of the “~10 people with the model S that I know enough of their finances, they are all in the top 1-2% of family income or wealth.”

    This kind of words reflexively. Take the Corolla - there are a few 1-2%ile (income) buyers, and one would have to surmise that they would buy the higher level trims. But while Toyota is more than happy to sell them this budget car, they are not in Toyota’s market demographic and thus hardly move the needle.

    20% of new car buyers can afford a clean plug-in car, but it's a Leaf or Volt or something in that class, not a Tesla - yet.
     
  13. dhanson865

    dhanson865 Expert and Devil's advocate

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    do you not even read the posts in the thread before you reply?

    I repeat it again for the reading impaired.

    The reality is the Plug in Prius was a compliance car only sold in a couple of states not found in "Northeastern Megalopolis and Southern California" Widen that to west coast + northeast megalopolis and it'd be close enough.

    Take a look at Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard and any car not selling en masse isn't selling in my state (Tennesse).

    I can get a Volt, Leaf, or Tesla. All those other names are just compliance cars not sold nationwide.

    not at all, try again. I'm saying I can't buy compliance cars designed for CARB compliance in Tennessee.

    I actually live in an urban/suburban metro area but they don't ship cars to the dealerships here. They aren't even off menu options. If I buy a Rav4 EV and ship it from California to Tennessee I risk the dealers saying they won't do warranty work on it. Maybe the same for the Plug in Prius.

    Either way I don't bother, I have an EV by another manufacturer.
     
  14. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    our 2nd home is in Nolensville - spitten distance from both Franklin and Nashville. Here's a plugshare map of all the tons of CHAdeMO & Tesla Chargers in the surrounding area.

    2015-11-25-15-43-02-1.png
    Sorry to hear you're ev can't make the 19 miles between our 3 towns.

    Maybe I'm just reading impaired like Bisco. Kidding aside, the infrastructure increases weekly across the nation. Moreover there are multiple routes across the flyovers nowdays on the supercharger network. Including myself, we are in huge part, a spoiled lot in this country & have no more sense of adventure then the New Yorker who buys his dinner and has his shoes resoled on the bottom floor of his tower. But time continues to make things better for those of us who are less tolerant to accept anything but the most convenient. And that's okay - I hear the Kia Soul (uses Chademo) electric is starting to be sold in more states, so there you go .... getting better.
    .
     
    #114 hill, Nov 25, 2015
    Last edited: Nov 25, 2015
  15. FL_Prius_Driver

    FL_Prius_Driver Senior Member

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    I actually think it is happening "all at once". Tesla looks to have a huge number of backorders of the Model X. They don't seem to be slowing down Model S sales. They are also working hard to get the Gigafactory running. It is not the speed of EV adoption that is slow, it is the size of the manufacturing mountain that is so incredible huge for EVs to be mainstream.

    The great thing about being an engineer is understanding the amount of planning, financing, and infrastructure development needed to START mainstream production. The initial hurdle of successful EV mass use was safety (not cost). This is solved. The next hurdle is scaling the mass manufacturing of Lithium Ion batteries to match that of ICE engines. This is only solvable the exact same way all car parts are made affordable....by making them in the millions per week with high quality and reliability. Tesla is attacking this with a vengeance while the other car makers dither. They are run by accountant based executives more like VW CEOs than the Tesla CEO.

    What is fun to watch is the mass market misunderstanding of EVs continue. The engineering truth is just about everything important in an automobile is both superior and more economically accomplished with electric power instead of gas. The last gasp of desperation is "refuel time". Good luck on that stopping EV adoption. It will be the superior economics of EVs that kill off ICE cars.
     
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  16. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    it's not that fun, since it's slowing adoption. it maybe the superior economics, but no one can predict when it will happen. besides, if it happens too fast, the grid won't handle it. the timing should work out very well at the rate ev's are growing.

    i don't think we'll know what the pip is until the next gen comes out. but for now, i agree that you can't buy one without a bit of aggravation. i don't really understand your displeasure with toyota, when you have so many other options.
     
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  17. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    I can understand his displeasure - if he feels the way SOME do about Toyota's Australian coal burning hydrogen car.

    I'm weak - couldn't resist
     
  18. FL_Prius_Driver

    FL_Prius_Driver Senior Member

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    I'm not sure how adoption is actually considered slow. It is mighty impressive when looked at from an engineering and manufacturing viewpoint instead of a marketing viewpoint. The trouble with a marketing viewpoint is it overlooks the realities of supply and demand. The limitation is batteries are just flat expensive since they are production limited. Expensive batteries make for either expensive EVs or short range EVs. The grid is a non-issue if you work out the amount of energy needed for EVs compared to air-conditioning. A hot spell is far, far more stressful to the grid than any surge of EV use.
     
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  19. Sergiospl

    Sergiospl Senior Member

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  20. Zythryn

    Zythryn Senior Member

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