Hillhater said:
nice looking vehicles, but strangely similar to the Audi A5 ( Model S) .. and the BMW X6 ( Model X) ?
I find it a little unsettling that for a company which has been established for nearly 10 years, that you cannot actually buy a car from them !!
..all that you can do is leave a deposit for a planned future production schedule !
I wonder who is their business strategist, and what their cash flow model looks like ?
Tesla has only been under the authority of Elon Musk for the last 6 years. Their entire plant is up and running in Fremont, California. It includes a full stamping line with automated die changes, a fully automated unibody welding army, and autonomous painting. This line has produced over 150 cars for crash test and beta models. To date, they have met every single milestone they have set. There are 8,500+ reservation holders for the Model S. The cars will begin delivery before the end of this year. Impressive if you ask me. I would have thought the barrier of entry to the car market in the US was way to high for an upstart. The fact that Tesla has built up to the point they are today is outstanding! It takes most automakers over 5 years to produce one new car. Tesla has built an entire car company in this amount of time.
Furthermore Tesla has done all of this while making strategic partnerships with Toyota, Daimler, and Panasonic. In fact, they have sold over 30,000 battery packs to Diamler for A-class hybrids and Smart Electric Drives. This partnership, along with Roadster sales and Model S reservations showed some decent cashflow. You've got to think the entire time they were doing all of this they were also building and tooling a factory. Not to mention designing two cars to build in this factory. The fact that the burn rate could be controlled and this project actually reached completion is truly amazing.