Consumer Reports: Tesla is best car tested since 2007

[CuteOldGuy]

YES!!!! WE ARE FINALLY GETTING SOMEWHERE!!

For those of you who want to soak the rich, where do you think innovation gets started? IT'S WITH THE RICH!!!

Who had the first TV's? The RICH!

Who had the first computers? The RICH!

Who had the first heart transplant? The RICH!

Who had the first cars? The RICH!

Who had the first cell phones? The RICH!

Almost all innovation is developed to MAKE RICH PEOPLE HAPPY!

Then the manufacturers make enough money to innovate, and reduce the cost, as poorer people see what the rich have, and demand the same thing. Then through innovative technology and economies of scale, the items are produced at a price which will expand their markets into the lower segments of the economic scale.

Where once only the rich had cell phones, now we give them away.

Do away with the rich, and the profit motive, and do away with innovation and advancement.

YOU ARE FINALLY GETTING IT!

[Guest032516]

Originally Posted by BigLouie

You don't know much about business do you. Do you know how long it too Amazon to become profitable? Over 6 years and they didn't have the manufacturing start up cost that Tesla did.

I know enough about business not to compare a dotcom company to an automaker.

Virtual companies like Amazon, FaceBook and Google operate under an entirely different set of rules due to the potential huge payoff that can be achieved in a 5 to 10 year time line.

Amazon could have been profitable much sooner were it not for the fact that they kept borrowing to expand. It was a deliberate strategy. ALL revenue was dumped back into the company to buy up more servers, memory, and data bandwidth. The key to companies like FaceBook and Amazon is to get EVERYONE signed up as a customer before another company comes along and replicates what you did and grabs a bigger share of customers.

The barriers to entry for virtual companies are low. A competitor can create the software for a competing website in a few months. They can lease server space and vast amounts of storage. But if you already have the customers locked up, low barriers won't help them.

It is too late to start a new big social media company - Facebook has all the customers tied up for life. The subscription is free. And, since FaceBook won't allow the members to move all of their profile, pictures, and posts over to a new website, none of the customers are going to go to the aggravation of rebuilding their profile on a new social media site.

The investors in dotcoms were uniquely willing to wait in order to get to 500 million customers and THEN cash in.

But none of those peculiar attributes applies to an auto manufacturer. Tesla already has well established competitors - Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, VW, and all of the other auto giants.

Tesla isn't ever going to get to 500 million customers and they certainly won't do it in 5 years. They have been in existence TEN years and they have - what? - 4,900 customers?

When Amazon was 5 years old and still not showing a profit, it probably already had 100s of millions of customers. THAT is why the investors carried it as long as they did.

[BigLouie]

Then how did Saturn start out with a low-cost model? Hyundai? What about Jet Blue and Spirit in the airline industry?

The Saturn Corporation was an automobile manufacturer and brand, established on January 7, 1985 as a subsidiary of General Motors in response to the success of Japanese automobile imports in the United States. It's not hard to start out with a low cost model when your a subsidiary of GM. Duh.

Hyundai was founded in 1947 and started producing cars in 1967. By the time it started releasing cars in the US in any volume it was already a mature manufacturing company plus it did not have to invent the automobile first.

Jet Blue and Spirit did not have to invent the modern passenger plane as part of their start up. Heck all they had to do was follow the Southwest Airline model and buys plans.

While electric cars had been around since the 1800s the high cost, low top speed and short range of electric vehicles, compared to later internal combustion vehicles, led to a worldwide decline in their use. Telsa had to develop new technology and that cost time and money.

Let me give you one bit of advise. Don't apply for the head of GE any time soon as you are laughably unable to understand modern industrial development.

[Guest032516]

Originally Posted by BigLouie

Jet Blue and Spirit did not have to invent the modern passenger plane as part of their start up. Heck all they had to do was follow the Southwest Airline model and buys plans.
What is your point? Since they were entering a mature market with plenty of big players and even existing low-cost carriers, that would make it HARDER to turn a profit, right? And yet they did - in a lot less than 10 years.

While electric cars had been around since the 1800s the high cost, low top speed and short range of electric vehicles, compared to later internal combustion vehicles, led to a worldwide decline in their use. Tesla had to develop new technology and that cost time and money.
So what did they develop?

Let me give you one bit of advise. Don't apply for the head of GE any time soon as you are laughably unable to understand modern industrial development.
As are you.

Tesla will continue to be a fast gimmicky rich man's toy for years to come. There is at least a 50% chance that whatever profits they are showing on the sale of 5,000 (!!) cars will prove ephemeral.

The Tesla comes with a $7,500 federal tax credit. What happens to that profit when the tax credit goes away? And they can still only sell 4,900 units in a quarter? After 10 years?

[bojulay]

I have one of these on backorder.

[pyramider]

Consumer Reports is a biased publication. Its credibility is shakey at best and yet Consumer Reports believe they are non biased. They refuse to explain how a private label product can be listed. Example, look at its appliance reviews ... Kenmore is not a manufacturer ... Kenmore/Craftman is a private label of Sears. Sears goes to the manufacturers with certain specs and gets bids. The Kenmore appliances used to be all Whirlpool, nowadays it could be Whirlpool, Fridgadaire, GE, or a Chinese brand.