My biggest concern is resale value. I believe I have a realistic justification for spending $100K on a car... it's that you're not really spending $100K. You're buying an asset that will depreciate but not to anywhere near zero. If I drive it for five years and sell if for $50K, I've really paid $10K/yr. Driving ANY decent car is going to cost me at least $6K/yr so really, it's a splurge of about $4K/yr and that I feel I can afford. But that justification only holds up if the resale value does. If I buy a Mercedes CLS550 (and that's what I would buy if not the Model S) I feel extremely confident in the value it will retain. But Tesla? It COULD become DeLorean. And then I'm in trouble. And for it to hold it's resale value, the car and company have to be successful. And step 1 of this car being successful, it has to be a value. I'm torn on this whole issue of the interior-- I don't like it and it doesn't compare to others in it's class. Will this hamper it's success? I just don't know.
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This is my main concern is the 8" extra width, and 30" extra length than my current car.
My biggest concern is Tesla's long term viability.
I'm concerned that early on Tesla may not be able to generate sufficient demand among "normal" consumers to sustain their production targets. Will they be able to consistently obtain 20,000 or more reservations per year? If not, will they be able to remain viable as a niche market with a sustained reduced volume?
If they are able to maintain reasonable volumes, i.e. 20,000+ per year, will they be able to maintain customer service as volume ramps up?
Larry
I'm concerned that early on Tesla may not be able to generate sufficient demand among "normal" consumers to sustain their production targets. Will they be able to consistently obtain 20,000 or more reservations per year? If not, will they be able to remain viable as a niche market with a sustained reduced volume?
If they are able to maintain reasonable volumes, i.e. 20,000+ per year, will they be able to maintain customer service as volume ramps up?
Larry
I was actually just messing around with the speeding tickets thing. You've pretty much summed up my biggest concern. They're going to have to hire like crazy to get enough people on board to do all the customer service and that's going to lead to lots of folks who are either not as good as they should be, or just plain bad.
They'd have to really try hard to make it worse than Prius service. Love the car, really dislike the service people. At the very least, with Tesla you will get to talk to the actual person who performs the work.
Mycroft
Life happens
Next time you take your Prius in, ask to speak to the mechanic who's going to work on your car. If they refuse, walk out.
thomas.rueesch
Member
Beside's Larry's concern, which I share...is if my wife will like to drive it on a daily base
(...with all the techie stuff...and fortunatly for me, her being more the practical person than a tech geek)
(...with all the techie stuff...and fortunatly for me, her being more the practical person than a tech geek)
W.Petefish
Active Member
The points that are of concern to me:
Charging
Roadside repairs
These are not as they appear though. The fact that my roadster has gone through 2 PEM fuses is attest to my worries. (added cost for on-site power factor correction also comes into play.)
Charging
Roadside repairs
These are not as they appear though. The fact that my roadster has gone through 2 PEM fuses is attest to my worries. (added cost for on-site power factor correction also comes into play.)
KBF
Model X owner (formerly Cdn Signature Model S)
I asked my wife what her top concern was: "When will my husband stop obsessing about it". I think that's valid.
My top concern - probably how service will work in remote locations like mine. And I'm following the Cdn $ and am hoping it stays close to par for a few more months yet! My wife and I don't want to pay $100k on any car. I'm still waiting to see if the Sig will be worth it for me - there was a recent mention of good surprises for us, and if these disappoint me I may drop to P - I was P4 before, so it shouldn't be a terribly long extra wait.
My top concern - probably how service will work in remote locations like mine. And I'm following the Cdn $ and am hoping it stays close to par for a few more months yet! My wife and I don't want to pay $100k on any car. I'm still waiting to see if the Sig will be worth it for me - there was a recent mention of good surprises for us, and if these disappoint me I may drop to P - I was P4 before, so it shouldn't be a terribly long extra wait.
+1
When you buy a car, you also buy a commitment for future parts and service. Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Toyota? Few doubts that they'll outlast my car. Tesla?
ChadS
Last tank of gas: March 2009
I have many minor concerns, but the Model S advantages easily outweigh most of them. My major concern is jerry33's: will the Model S be good enough at long distances that my wife will let me sell our Prius?
Buying a second Tesla doesn't make sense if I still have to keep a gas car around. The car is clearly big and comfortable enough for long trips, and I think the range is fine. But will I be able to fast-charge every 200 miles? We don't yet know where Superchargers will be, the SAE is completely MIA, and we don't know if the existing CHAdeMO infrastructure will be supported. So, we wait for news.
If long-distance trips still require a gas car, so we would only drive the Model S locally, there are plenty of fine plug-in cars that can do local driving coming out this year--and most of them are an awful lot cheaper. Maybe we'd lease one of those and wait for a practical long-distance BEV.
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I hate to dog the company I'm rooting for, but for me, all their "surprises" so far have left me wanting. Perhaps it's the over exposure we get here in the forums, but I haven't really been wowed by anything that I was supposed to so far (still unsure what the big surprise was at this weekend's event?)
Driving a Tesla in an area where drivers really suck is probably my #1. Many people seem to only look one direction, one time, and then go!
other concern is ~290 mi to Bay Area (conveniently where most family lives) and I plan on doing the trip 'regularly'. My concern is degradation rate and will I still make it in 15 yrs w/ a short stop? The 10 yr old car (lexus) that I have seems like a 2-4 yr old car and how will the Tesla 'weather' compared to this?
other concern is ~290 mi to Bay Area (conveniently where most family lives) and I plan on doing the trip 'regularly'. My concern is degradation rate and will I still make it in 15 yrs w/ a short stop? The 10 yr old car (lexus) that I have seems like a 2-4 yr old car and how will the Tesla 'weather' compared to this?
You are lucky. That's one more direction than they look around here here. It's a small miracle if they stop at a stop sign.
This one I'm not worried about. There appears to be much less to wear in the Model S than the Lexus.
I think I echo many here when I say that my biggest concern is the interior.
There are several elements to that concern:
There are several elements to that concern:
- Fit and finish. I only have brief seat time in a Roadster, so my exposure to Tesla's fit and finish is extremely limited. The Roadster seems fine but did have the prevailing air of "after-market." Obviously the Model S should eschew that feeling, but in its place will be concerns about the quality of the materials. For example, none of the photos I've seen to date inspire confidence in the long-term durability of the leather. Real-world photos of Alphas and Betas show an unusually high degree of patina and lack of tautness. Obviously these early cars get used and abused by a variety of driver types and a real driver should expect better. I absolutely baby my cars' interiors--dusting, vacuuming, and conditioning the leather regularly. So I assume the leather will endure well enough, but I nevertheless cringe when I see the leather in photos to date.
- Design (ignoring the media console for the moment). Again, speaking of the seats, as I've said elsewhere, the seats look to have insufficient side bolsters and an unconventional headrest that I can't say I like. They don't seem "beefy" enough for a luxury vehicle; and on the other hand, they don't look like they will fit snugly enough for a sport sedan. I absolutely do not want to slide around while taking turns.
- Media console design and how it will age. Again, as with the above, I've said this elsewhere. We are on the cusp of some great developments in display technology and the Model S' display will feel antiquated much more quickly than a conventional car's user interface. Don't get me wrong; I think this is the right way to go. But unlike my PC, I can't replace the monitor when a better model is available. Consider resolution. Aside from hearing that it is "high resolution," has Telsa specifically cited the resolution? I suspect it's no better than a 17" computer monitor (say, 960x1440 or thereabouts). That is not "high resolution" in my opinion. That's normal resolution. The iPhone 4 and more recently the iPad 3 have dropped the proverbial gauntlet on high-resolution. Anyone using those words who doesn't match that pixel density is being disingenuous. Furthermore, we are also on the cusp of larger OLED displays. I worry that in 2 or 3-years' time the Model S' monitor will look antiquated in just about every conceivable way. It will look chunky, low-resolution, dark, and (worst of all in my book) highly reflective to glare.
- User interface responsiveness. To date, the user interface has been demonstrated to be slow. To be clear, a user interface must respond before I can even sense that it didn't respond immediately. (Around 0.1sec.) Videos to-date have shown that Tesla incorporated a visual "pulse" graphic that indicates to the user, "I've received your input at this screen coordinate, give me a moment to comply." And that is helpful. But the ideal is to not even need that because the desired action occurs just as quickly as the pulse graphic does now.
- And then there's the general concern of the suitability of a touch-screen interface for such a totality of function control. My recent experience with touch-screen devices (iPhone 1, iPhone 3, Android 2.2 phone, Android 4.0 phone, Nook 1.0, Kindle Touch, and more) is a mixed bag. A critical mistake repeated by so many designers of touch user interfaces is this sad hubris: removing all hard buttons. The Kindle Touch is the most egregious demonstration of this--omitting hard buttons for next and previous page is the most glaring design error in the entire history of the Kindle product line. I worry that the routine Model S experience will become haunted by every-day operations that have been made to require unnecessary concentration and precision because they have been shoehorned into a touch-screen interface. I don't know what those specific operations will be, but I can take a guess at one: opening the sunroof. Consider you are driving and want to open the sunroof. Here is option A: "I'll reach up and push the rocker switch." And option B: "Oh, forget it, I can't take my eyes off the road long enough." I like the glamor of an on-screen user interface for controlling the sunroof and don't think it should be removed; but I worry that key redundant hard buttons will be sacrificed at the altar of touch-screen purism.
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I forgot to mention the flip-side. Having driven an electric car for two years and having since missed it every day, I am absolutely not concerned about any of the hackneyed concerns that are made so threadbare by the media.
I don't care about range; I live and work in Los Angeles so I'll never run the battery to zero.
I don't care about recharge time; I'll recharge every evening.
I don't care about fictional stories about the environmental devastation caused by batteries or whatever; My choice to drive an electric car is not in any single way motivated by the environment.
I don't care about the cost of electricity; it's a luxury car, I can afford the electricity. Good grief.
I don't care about resale value; it's a luxury car, they depreciate like nothing else, a car is not an investment. Besides the Roadster demonstrates that resale value will most likely be "good" at least.
Those said, I agree with some of the concerns raised by others about the reliability and how Tesla as a company will take care of us, their customers. But even there, by comparison, I am far more concerned about the interior. Reason being I feel it's likely enough that the Model S will have no worse than moderate reliability (that is, no worse than say a German luxury car) and that Tesla will treat us moderately well (that is, about at the average of all other auto manufacturer). If my Model S malfunctions a few times during its tour of duty, that's fine. I don't expect it to immediately deliver on the electric car promise of reduced incidence of malfunctions due to lower mechanical complexity.
Sure, the batteries could catastrophically fail in some spectacular fashion. But I don't think that's likely. By way of comparison, it is a certainty that the interior technology will look dated in three years.
I don't care about range; I live and work in Los Angeles so I'll never run the battery to zero.
I don't care about recharge time; I'll recharge every evening.
I don't care about fictional stories about the environmental devastation caused by batteries or whatever; My choice to drive an electric car is not in any single way motivated by the environment.
I don't care about the cost of electricity; it's a luxury car, I can afford the electricity. Good grief.
I don't care about resale value; it's a luxury car, they depreciate like nothing else, a car is not an investment. Besides the Roadster demonstrates that resale value will most likely be "good" at least.
Those said, I agree with some of the concerns raised by others about the reliability and how Tesla as a company will take care of us, their customers. But even there, by comparison, I am far more concerned about the interior. Reason being I feel it's likely enough that the Model S will have no worse than moderate reliability (that is, no worse than say a German luxury car) and that Tesla will treat us moderately well (that is, about at the average of all other auto manufacturer). If my Model S malfunctions a few times during its tour of duty, that's fine. I don't expect it to immediately deliver on the electric car promise of reduced incidence of malfunctions due to lower mechanical complexity.
Sure, the batteries could catastrophically fail in some spectacular fashion. But I don't think that's likely. By way of comparison, it is a certainty that the interior technology will look dated in three years.
smorgasbord
Active Member
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