Roadsters not selling

[jerry505]

mmccord - I have been thinking the same - hold out for a new Roadster. I don't want to collect, just want to drive. I'm older now and have the money. I drive a P85D L and just can't get excited about ICE cars.

SpykeDaddy - guessed what you said about roadster seats was true, thanks.

But, I am still looking for a Roadster Sport 2.5 and still might buy one. my email is [email protected] if anybody has one to sell.

Everybody here is positive and helpful and maybe I can be a roadster owner too and join the group!!!

 

[Shoulder Geek]

SpykeDaddy - guessed what you said about roadster seats was true, thanks.

I much prefer my roadster seats to my wife's MX seats or any Ms seats I have driven.

@SpykeDaddy welcome to the Minnesota roadster crew. Damn few of us left!!!

 

[SpykeDaddy]

True! One of the questions I get a lot is, "How many roadsters are in Minnesota?" I have no clue. You? Can't be many.

 

[ViperDoc]

[QUOTE="while the roadster is comfortable, I'm not sure me and my passengers can tolerate that long of a drive in the roadster seats without a break. Of course, that is individual preference.

A Model S is a beauty and a great choice.[/QUOTE]

I have made long drives in both my Roadster and my former Model S Signature, and at least compared to the Signature, I found the Roadster seats way more comfortable. I hated long drives in the Model S for that reason. I hope with all the improvements in the seats that has changed.

 

[hjr]

I was thinking about this thread today and musing about if I will be able to keep the car running in 10 years. I hope so.... but in any case I bought my 2.5 Sport because I believed in supporting the environmental aspects of electric driving, and thought I should be out front proving it. While the economy was tough back then and I worried about driving a new flashy sports car when people were suffering in the depression/recession I bought the car anyway!

I have never looked back. I love the car and especially this forum with the hackers and techies chiming in. I have almost every hack that has been developed for this car - adapters, mesh top, OVMS etc.... I actually rue the new S and X owners that are not engineers and techies... and who have no idea whatsoever about the technical aspects of their cars - like how many kWh/mile they are using, what "range mode" is all about, what the logs mean etc. Maybe that is the ultimate evolution of EV - that they are so mundane anybody can own them. I would not recommend a Roadster to somebody that is without a tech familiarity (imagine the range anxiety of those guys).

By the way - we got our X a few months back and it is fantastic too! My wife drives it daily and it is so nice to supercharge!

Now for my rave:
I am mad at Elon for his recent remarks that roadster was a 'terrible" car. Are we all his suckers? I do not think he really thought that 5 years ago when he drove his black Roadster. It pisses me off to hear him put down the car - and PEOPLE that made tesla successful. Even with its quirks, Tesla would be nothing without the legion of us who smiled for the paparazzi (even with an almost 6 year old car I get stopped or photgraphed daily), and sold Tesla to the next generation of S and X owners.

Last part of my rave - why does Wall Street knock Tesla so hard? it is American designed and built, and shaking things up. No other EV comes close in performance to even our primitive Roadsters... instead they should laugh at Porsche and BMW's offerings. Our cars may suck dirt, but the other EV competitors just blow.

 

[ecarfan]

Now for my rave:
I am mad at Elon for his recent remarks that roadster was a 'terrible" car.

That sounds like a "rant", not a "rave".

What "remarks" are you referring to? Elon does not think the Roadster is a "terrible" car.

 

[hjr]

You are right - my engineering English ! It was a rant....

You are also right, Elon called the Roadster a "disaster" at the last quarterly shareholder meeting.

Elon Musk Admits to Shareholders That the Tesla Roadster Was a Disaster

 

[wiztecy]

I don't see anywhere in that article that Elon called the car a disaster, but I understand what he ment whole-heatedly. I think the article went too far in saying disaster making the reader think it was the car itself that Tesla marketed and sold to the public These were traditional business growing pains of a startup company that, in dealing with cars in particular, have a very fast and heavy burn-rate though cash. They were learning new technology like all of us, and as we do, stumbled learning and trying to get things working while making ends meet. Yes, I heard of the cars breaking down or not working as they should with the very early prototypes, then the 2-speed trans that people said would never work and proved to be true. But they pulled it off and made history. What's a success story without the ups and downs, anticlimactic I'd say.

Happy Elon didn't give up, especially putting the majority of his own personal money into the company. I'm sure if it was anyone else at the helm, Tesla wouldn't have survived.

 

[wayner]

Last part of my rave - why does Wall Street knock Tesla so hard? it is American designed and built, and shaking things up. No other EV comes close in performance to even our primitive Roadsters... instead they should laugh at Porsche and BMW's offerings. Our cars may suck dirt, but the other EV competitors just blow.

Huh - Wall Street loves TSLA which is why the stock trades at sky high valuations. GM trades at a P/E ratio of 4! You can't even calculate a PE for TSLA since it has no earnings, yet the company is valued at $33.5B.

 

[hjr]

Wayner: Yes, it is valued highly by investors, but read the financial pundits and you get the opposite view. I hope TSLA shows them woefully wrong in the end. In fact the Solar City plan is brilliant - wait for the 500,000 Model 3 owners to start paying for Supercharger juice and see the revenues fly in!

Roadster - don't get me wrong - I am a total fanboy - are we not all Roadster owners and early adopters! Musk is an amazing guy - if I had made his fortune in Paypal I might have hit the beach and ski slopes full time - but Elon built rockets and cool cars! I am an engineer so that is my kind of guy. The Roadster is one of the most eye catching cars of all time - even more beautiful than the Lotus its styling is based on. The longer body gives it a more elegant posture than the stubbier looking Elise.

I just get upset when they dismiss and ignore the Roadster owners that took a leap of faith in the company to buy a 6 figure car with no proven record. We did not know if the battery would last, if the paint would stick to the carbon fiber, and have to deal with that awful Alpine head unit. We did not know if now 5-7 years later if there would be an service at all! Calling the Roadster unsafe, etc makes me feel like he thinks we got conned.

OK, I am done - enough of my rant.

 

[hcsharp]

Our cars may suck dirt, but the other EV competitors just blow.

LOL that's the funniest thing I've heard in days! So true!

 

[ecarfan]

You are also right, Elon called the Roadster a "disaster" at the last quarterly shareholder meeting.
Elon Musk Admits to Shareholders That the Tesla Roadster Was a Disaster

I was at that shareholders meeting and listened to Elon and JB reminisce about the early days at Tesla. Elon was talking about how it was much harder to build a car than anyone at Tesla imagined it would be, about all the problems they encountered, the compromises they had to make with the Roadster, and so on.

So he wasn't saying that the Roadster was a bad car, or a "terrible" car, or a dangerous car, or anything like that. He was simply being honest and saying that the Roadster was way harder to bring to market than he anticipated and it did not have as many great features as he would have liked. But he was very clear that the Roadster accomplished its purpose, which was to show the world that an EV could be a fun car, a cool car, a beautiful car, and a long range car, and that it was possible to create a highly functional EV battery by connecting together thousands of off-the-shelf consumer Lion battery cells. No one had ever done that before.

The Roadster was a success on those terms. And amazingly, a decade after it was designed, it is still a great car and a blast to drive.

 

[miimura]

My other main take-away from the the Shareholder's meeting discussion from Elon and JB was that they had assumed that outsourcing was going to work for Tesla the way it works for other consumer electronics companies. They initially set up motor production in Taiwan and battery pack production in Thailand. That didn't last long. In-sourcing that stuff so that they could iterate faster was a big undertaking that they did not initially plan for.

 

[walla2]

Back to the thread title. Roadsters are not selling because I'm not selling my roadster.

 

[Nvbob]

Back to the thread title. Roadsters are not selling because I'm not selling my roadster.

We aren't either!