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We shall see. I really liked the driving experience of the S when I did my test drives (I did several test drives, including a 3 or 4 day extended test drive to try and convince myself to buy one), but there were a bunch of minor annoyances that I couldn't get past at the price point, but most of them appear to be fixed in the 3.
I'm *extremely* optimistic about Tesla in general, but I've gotta take care of me first. My current car, while not high mileage (62k), is 12 years old and crammed full of gimmicks like magnetic suspension, power hard top and other stuff that I live in terror are going to die at any moment and cost me a fortune. I've been trying to tell myself for ages that I will not see my car before Easter, and even the "Dec-Feb" delivery window the estimator gives me is something I've been trying to tell myself is BS… but at my heart I'm an optimist… and it *sucks* to have the cynical side of me gloating while the optimistic side watches his only hope for something "good" to happen in 2017 die.
It is our first (and last)! You should have warned me!
I found that while I owned them, I loved them, and after I got rid of them both times I asked myself "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?"
That said, they were both black and I have *absolutely* learned my lesson about black cars: NEVER AGAIN.
For the record I do not own a single share of Tesla and never have. I LOVE the cars and I LOVE Elon - and I believe Tesla will succeed wildly in the long run - but I make my daily bread as a vulture investor. Tesla is not a vulture stock and my hardwired dumpster-diving value-seeking investing instincts just won't let me buy any Tesla stock lol. I do not own any tech stock at all. Believe me - I get envious when my buddy brags about his Facebook ROI. I kicked myself when Tesla rose over 50% this year. But - I sleep well at night knowing the things I buy are well under their intrinsic value and I have downside protection. My great grandfather lost his chain of pharmacies in Manhatten during the Great Depression. I still remember Black Monday. I remember the massive buying opportunities generated by the S&L crisis a few years later. I remember the crash of 2000. We all lived through 2008's housing crash.
As for the Model 3? I have not one but two day-one, California, existing Tesla owner reservations. I lined up in Pasadena for about 5 hours to get mine in. But one year later I'm no longer sure I want a Model 3. Since I got that reservation I bought a second Model S that had the goodies my first one didn't - air suspension, ventilated seats (a god send for my sweaty back), premium audio and the HEPA filter. The air suspension is soooooooo nice and I am not 25 years old any more. Model 3 sounds like it may be the best handling sport sedan in history from the early reports - but I am also into comfort at this point in my life for long drives. I do not like the coil suspension S and the coil 3 should be even rougher riding than the coil S. I have pure sports cars for track days and when I want to go Sunday canyon carving. For regular business use I like my air suspension S. BUT - 335-350 mile range on the 3 sure would be nice for $50K. My 75D S (upgraded 60) only charges to 249 miles at 100%. I can easily chew through that in a normal day of a 120 mile drive for business, with HVAC on, cruising at 75-80 mph, followed by some city driving. The Model 3 is such a crazy value proposition. What about you - will you miss the size and ride comfort of your S? Or are you hungering for a return to a more compact, sporty sedan that is more fun to drive?
You are one of the "OG" forum members. I have not had an S earlier than 2016 - so I think that folks like you helped Tesla iron out all the bugs for latecomers like me. In 32K miles I have had no problems at all with either S - the best reliability record of any cars I've ever owned. But I feel you - if my car had a lot of problems then cold wife feet would be an issue.
One of my 3 reservations is for my girlfriend. BUT - her Hyundai SUV is paid for - and guess who is buying her a Model 3. Yes - moi. So - the delays don't really bother me because my cash is still in my pocket lol. And if she got too antsy there are always CPO S's down in the 3 price range now.
I guess I'm an eternal optimist WRT Tesla (I am not with investments - which is why I'm a vulture - always seeking bottom price for protection against unforeseen disaster). So to you I reply:
1 - I do not think other manufacturers are catching up on L2/L3 to be honest because I think Tesla is laying a very solid foundation to get to L4/L5. I make an analogy to studying. Back in college I was that guy buried in my o-chem textbook doing problem sets in the basement of the library. It didn't look like anything was happening - it looked like I was struggling for hours by testing myself on new and difficult problems, doing retrosynthesis that made my brain hurt, etc. I felt really stupid every day. That is - until exam days came around and I would consistently kick everyone's ass because I made my neurons struggle every day. And every night the pathways were strengthened while I slept - and I woke up more competent than the day before. Research consistently demonstrates that the most effective, robust, long-term and deep learning in humans happens through intense mental struggle.
I think that is what we are seeing with Tesla's AP2 video uploading fleet learning project. A massive, intense struggle to build a robust self-driving neural net the likes of which the world has never seen - and which can only be built by tens of thousands of cars driving billions of miles and forcing millions of corner cases through the neural net. Nobody else is doing that - nobody. Nobody will be doing that, AFAIK, for several years.
I believe Tesla's AP2 project looks like it is failing only to naive observers who make simplistic, snapshot-in-time comparisons to AP1 and to what appear to be competing technologies by the likes of Cadillac, etc.
This is a good question and I think I agree with your implied conclusion - no, it won't. I believe Elon is smart enough to know how to pivot his PR strategy in whatever way will be needed when that day arrives - the day of real competition. To think otherwise is to view Elon as a real dotard - which his track record shows he is not.
But the 3 isn't delayed - it's in production NOW. It's shipping - NOW. A ramp delay that could hurt the 3's future would need to be measured in years not months. This is because there is no competition for the 3 on the horizon. It sounds like competition for the S is coming more quickly - if Lucid gets funding, if MBZ builds an e-class size EV soon. But AFAIK the competition in the 3's price range doesn't exist and the auto industry made a bad mistake in delaying development so long. I could be wrong. But in any case the 3 is ramping right this very moment as you and I are talking. This is not like the X situation where it isn't even being made and we are hearing about delays with falcon doors, etc. And the 3 is in fact ramping up - we have that data.
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You be driving one of these? The way I slept well at night while driving aging high mileage, high dollar luxury machines was by building spreadsheets to track repair expenses and realizing that even the most failure-prone luxobarges saved me so much money each month in depreciation that it did not matter if one year I had to replace $5,000 worth of fancy air shocks, or have a 12 cylinder engine removed to access a faulty vacuum hose, etc. You pay one way or another - in depreciation or in repair and maintenance. Your old car is saving you enough each month by not rapidly depreciating that it is paying for the risk of parts failing prior to you getting your Model 3.
I agree.
:thumbup: Then I'm sorry for the implication that you had less skin in the game since I assumed you might not have had a reservation.
While I'm flattered, I'm far from an OG owners.
I didn't wait for 4 years to get my S. And when I was buying it I was pretty sure the company had no chance of going belly up.
In 48k miles, 2.5 years of ownership, I've been at the service center 11 times. 5 door handles, 2 12Vs, 1 leaky sunroof, GPS broke twice (biggest issue was the limited speed of AP when it thought I was on a neighboring road), etc.
During my last GPS issue, Tesla had my car for nearly a week. I had a new 100D loaner (by new, I mean it had 46 miles on the odo), they sure made HUGE progress with the cabin noise, the rattles, the seat comfort, etc. since my 2015 70D car.
The CPO route has also been discussed at my house, heh.
Audi is releasing L3* in 2018 on the A8. It's a huge leap to go from L2 (even as good as Tesla's L2 is) to L3. Even if it's a low-speed L3. L3 is a game changer.
*Up to 37mph or some nonesense.
Even cars like the new Honda CRV (a friend of mine got one, I got to play with it this weekend) has L2 (lane keep assist + ACC) above 40mph. And that's far from a luxury car. I can name a lot of other cars that have L2.
I agree that Tesla is likely still doing better in the number of disengagements per mile driven (I know that's not recorded for L2 stuff). But when they released L2 2-ish years ago, there weren't a lot of manufacturers doing it. Now? Whole different ballgame.
They don't need to be first to L3 (and it looks like they wont be), but they need to have a better/as-good-as L3 as the competitor to keep the advantage in this area.
I never implied that L2 is failing. I said that Tesla was WAY ahead of the game a few years ago and the game is catching up.
It's like growth spurts in kids, right? At one point they're the same height, next morning one is a head taller
. I'm sure Tesla will make the big jump soon, but I don't see them getting light years ahead in the near future. The Mobileye seperation cost them a lot of development time. I hope to be proven wrong.I'll agree with your underlying premises about a long-term delay, but the 3 is delayed based on Elon's predictions. Sure he can update them, and then we'll have another 15 page thread.
It's not just about the 3. It's about the charging network too. The 3 can truly be a more or less affordable ICE replacement. Porsche said they're coming out with a charging network at some point in time. Will it actually happen? Who knows. I hope so, not because I want to get a Porsche, but because I hope it spurs more competition about EV manufacturers and pushes Tesla to be better.
The former
I actually love the XLR despite the numerous shortcomings it has, but I feel like it’s just waiting for the worst possible time to have a failure of something horrible. That’s a VERY good point regarding the depreciation vs the repair costs though, and while there was some STUPIDLY expensive work done back in ~2010 (reseal engine, replace all 4 magnetic shocks), it’s very reliable since then. In fact, a window motor (I did the work), and a coil pack (I did the work) are all I can think of in the last few years.
mod note: moved some posts with personal attacks away, and that means I had to move posts that quoted those posts away as well. They can be found in snippiness.
False analogy. Samsung makes a commodity product cash cow in a mature industry - not a difficult-ramp product with a giant, unknown market size and no competition for its product. Tesla also does not make "mistakes" with its guidance as you and @Garlan Garner keep saying. It speaks an implied language to set really high goals and Elon is open about this. If you think otherwise then you by implication think that the entire stock market is dumb enough to not realize Elon consistently makes crazy optimistic predictions and the market has not priced this factor into its stock - but you, lone insightful individual typing away on the internet - have spotted the fatal valuation mistake the rest of the investing market and customer has been granting Elon a foolish pass on for the last decade.
If you *are* that lone genius then put your money where your mouth is and short the stock.
Looks like Tesla may have been misleading analysts and investors about its realistic Model 3 production capabilities...
Tesla: Production Of Model 3 To Average 226,563 Units Per Year Over Next Five Years
Tesla: Production Of Model 3 To Average 226,563 Units Per Year Over Next Five Years
Not bad! We'll all be sending our positive vibes over and hope your current car stays in tact until February
SpiceWare
Member
When I look at Telsa.com I don't see "promised delivery date", I see, in a font larger than anything else on the page:
There's a big difference between Promise and Estimate - you can plan for a promised date, you can hope for an estimated date.
My M3 reservation says Nov-Dec and I don't expect that to change or pushed back alteast until end of Q2 when I get my car.
What time did you reserve (including time zone)? I didn’t reserve until 9pm pacific because I lost track of time and forgot to set a reminder :|
I don't remember, about 2 hours after reservations started. I drove by in the morning, there was a line, I was lazy so I went to work (I used to work like a mile from the service center), came back 2 hours later, no line.
Noon EST maybe?
insaneoctane
Well-Known Member
I find some expectations in thread ungrounded. Has the stock tanked? No. Why not? Because it is the analyst's job to add some risk to Elon's predictions. It is NOT Elon's job to sandbag his estimates to ensure that he always meets them. He gives what are known as "success oriented" estimates. He does not assume things that *might* go wrong do, quite the contrary, he assumes that Tesla is better than last time they had a product launch and will make fewer mistakes. Since Tesla is not as seasoned as some of the other companies there are some misses. Hopefully fewer than last time, but in the end Elon's estimates are success oriented and assume everything goes well unless he *knows* it won't and then he would include that in his guidance. While it surely would have been nice to meet the original numbers, I don't know a single analyst worth anything that didn't already expect some of this. I am disappointed, but still excited to get my Model 3 and I have not given up that it may be this year.
