Tesla Steps Up Production

[Polish_Silver]

Battery change model

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Tesla Motors unveiled a system that will let drivers swap out the battery in a Model S in about 90 seconds, which is less time than it takes to fill up a traditional car at the pump.

Tesla hopes the new system will help overcome the fears that many drivers have about the convenience of electric cars.

At a demonstration in California Thursday night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the battery swap stations will be installed throughout the network of "supercharging" stations that Tesla is alreadybuilding out around the nation. The supercharging stations currently provide free recharging in about an hour. Musk said the battery swap, which will cost between $50 and $80, will allow drivers to get back on the road faster if they'd like.
"The only decision you need to make when you come to one of our Tesla stations is, do you prefer faster or free," he said. "Our goal here was to eliminate the objections that people have. We want to show that Tesla] can actually be more convenient than a gasoline car. Hopefully this is what convinces people that electric cars are the future."
While Tesla showed the Model S battery swaps, there were TV's above the swapping station showing a 4-minute video of a driver filling up at the pump. The cost of the 23 gallons of gas purchased at the Los Angeles gas station in the video was $99.83.
Related: 9 questions for Tesla's Elon Musk
According to analyst Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research, the quick-charge stations will be a money maker for Tesla, which plans to spend about $100 million installing the stations.
"We estimate Tesla margins on battery swap stations could be north of 60%," he said.


Our Tesla S made it from D.C. to Boston


The battery swapping technology also gives Tesla additional environmental credits from states such as California, which are pushing automakers to sell more zero-emission cars. Tesla has been able to sell those credits to the major automakers, and that has been a significant source of profits for the company.
One start-up that also planned to offer battery swapping for electric vehicles, Better Place, recently filed for bankruptcy and halted its operations. Chowdhry said that company's plans were based on the flawed assumption that all the different electric vehicles would use interchangable batteries.
Related: Tesla tripling supercharger network
In May, Tesla announced plans to greatly expand its existing supercharging network, tripling the number of stations by the end of this month. By the end of this year, Tesla drivers should be able to drive from Los Angeles to New York.
The battery swapping stations are expected to be in service by the end of the year.
Shares of Tesla (TSLA), which have nearly tripled in value so far this year, were up 2.6% in early trading.

If the battery changers are expensive, as alleged by Better Place, they need to get a lot of cars using each station. The best way to do that is reach an agreement with a large fleet customer---the post office of new york city. The postal trucks do low speed stop and go driving, with limited range. Perfect for electric. But that is not Tesla's type of vehicle.

[c1ue]

Re: Battery change model

"We estimate Tesla margins on battery swap stations could be north of 60%," he said.

I'd love to see the 'model' by which this analyst came up with '60% margin'.

A battery set for a Tesla S must cost at least $10K, maybe as much as $30,000.

Normal Li-Ion batteries are rated for 500 charges. $10K/500 = $20 capital cost; $30K = $60 cost. A minimum battery pack holds 60 kwh - at US average prices ($0.13), only $8.

So far so good.

But what is the cost of inventory? The cash tied up by this mass of Li-Ion batteries has a cost.

The charging station equipment has a cost.

There's no doubt human service time involved.

How will charging stations manage inventory - will every station hold 1 set of batteries for each Tesla S in the area?

What about turnover? Even with the 'fast charger', it will take 3 hours to recharge a set of batteries for use.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Battery change model--sucks!

I'd love to see the 'model' by which this analyst came up with '60% margin'.

A battery set for a Tesla S must cost at least $10K, maybe as much as $30,000.

Normal Li-Ion batteries are rated for 500 charges. $10K/500 = $20 capital cost; $30K = $60 cost. A minimum battery pack holds 60 kwh - at US average prices ($0.13), only $8.

.

That means you are spending $60 on new battery for $8 of electric power! Unless they can get much more than 500 cycles, this is totally futile! Does Tesla have a battery cycle spec? It seems to be crucial.

Inventory could be managed by a cloud based distribution system. You plan your trip ahead, and the system tells you where to get batts changed. But still, a lot of versatility is lost relative to gasoline.

[c1ue]

Re: Battery change model--sucks!

That means you are spending $60 on new battery for $8 of electric power!

Ah, but you missed the whole point of what I was pointedly not saying: the 'replacement cost' of Tesla's swap system is just about the cost to refill the tank on a luxury sedan...'

Unless they can get much more than 500 cycles, this is totally futile! Does Tesla have a battery cycle spec? It seems to be crucial.

I very much doubt it. The way most systems work is to spread out the usage; either rotate around which battery packs (the whole battery system is certainly divided up into multiple 'packs') get used/charged, or else have a way to swap out specific battery pack 'sections'. The 500 charges is pretty much SOTA; the only recent differences I've seen are the LiFePo which are supposed to handle high current discharges better.

I also didn't talk about how the battery performance declines over time.

[santafe2]

Re: Battery change model

I'd love to see the 'model' by which this analyst came up with '60% margin'.

A battery set for a Tesla S must cost at least $10K, maybe as much as $30,000....But what is the cost of inventory? The cash tied up by this mass of Li-Ion batteries has a cost.

The charging station equipment has a cost...How will charging stations manage inventory - will every station hold 1 set of batteries for each Tesla S in the area?

The idea of a battery swap for Tesla is something even Tesla doesn't understand. They're asking their owners to come back for the original battery set or pay for the new ones they 'downloaded'. I'm obviously a fan and I'd love nothing more than for this company to be wildly successful but this idea has not been thought through. As you point out and Tesla policy makes clear, the batteries are precious. They have a life cycle that has high value. Tesla has made very few big mistakes but this one stands out.

[metalman]

Re: Battery change model

The idea of a battery swap for Tesla is something even Tesla doesn't understand. They're asking their owners to come back for the original battery set or pay for the new ones they 'downloaded'. I'm obviously a fan and I'd love nothing more than for this company to be wildly successful but this idea has not been thought through. As you point out and Tesla policy makes clear, the batteries are precious. They have a life cycle that has high value. Tesla has made very few big mistakes but this one stands out.

see this?

The range on a Model T manufactured between 1908 and 1927 was 170 to 200 miles, about the same as a Tesla Model S. Oil companies like Gulf and Standard Oil understood that autos and trucks were virtually the sole source of future demand for their products and that demand was going to grow like crazy so they undertook to build retail outlets for their products. These oil companies entered a heated national competition to build the most stations the most quickly to meet the future demand that ICE auto makers were creating. While Ford and car makers delivered ever-growing demand for gasoline the oil companies raced competitively to meet it by putting up filling stations all over the country.

One hundred years later there are 130,000 filling stations across the U.S. Any driver of any ICE car has access to refueling within the range of the average ICE car anywhere in the 3.8 million square miles of continental U.S. territory. As a result, the driver of any ICE car can assume when making travel plans anywhere-to-anywhere travel across the entirety of the U.S.

If a similar competitive dynamic existed for the EV market today, electricity utilities would be racing in competition with each other to build out recharging or battery swap stations today.

But they aren't.

Why?

Three reasons:

1. Unlike the oil companies of the early 1900s, electricity utilities operate as regional monopolies. There is no national competitive dynamic to build out national EV recharging or battery swap services.
2. There are other sources of demand for electricity that are more profitable for regional electricity utilities to tap into than EVs.
3. At the turn of the last century there were no alternatives to ICE cars. Today there are many alternatives to EVs, namely high mileage ICE cars that can be quickly refueled at ubiquitous fueling stations and offer anywhere-to-anywhere travel.

Without ubiquitous EV stations the anywhere-to-anywhere travel capability of every ICE car cannot be replicated. EV drivers are restricted to narrow travel corridors where Tesla can afford to supply battery swap stations. Eventually shareholders will figure out that the cost of tens of thousands of Tesla battery swap stations needed to deliver anywhere-to-anywhere travel is many times the size of Tesla's market cap, assuming regional electricity suppliers are cooperative.

If Ford had to undertake to build the infrastructure for refueling the Model T starting in 1908 the company would have failed. Tesla has no choice as there is no similar market dynamic to build out EV stations as existed in the early 1900s to refuel ICE cars.

the rest here...

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...401#post261401

case closed!

[santafe2]

Re: Battery change model

see this?

The range on a Model T manufactured between 1908 and 1927 was 170 to 200 miles, about the same as a Tesla Model S. Oil companies like Gulf and Standard Oil understood that autos and trucks were virtually the sole source of future demand for their products and that demand was going to grow like crazy so they undertook to build retail outlets for their products. These oil companies entered a heated national competition to build the most stations the most quickly to meet the future demand that ICE auto makers were creating. While Ford and car makers delivered ever-growing demand for gasoline the oil companies raced competitively to meet it by putting up filling stations all over the country.

One hundred years later there are 130,000 filling stations across the U.S. Any driver of any ICE car has access to refueling within the range of the average ICE car anywhere in the 3.8 million square miles of continental U.S. territory. As a result, the driver of any ICE car can assume when making travel plans anywhere-to-anywhere travel across the entirety of the U.S.

If a similar competitive dynamic existed for the EV market today, electricity utilities would be racing in competition with each other to build out recharging or battery swap stations today.

But they aren't.

I think we are still in the very early stages of electric transportation. It's much less than perfect and still less than competitive. I concede that point. No one other than us early bleeders will buy one of these vehicles. I get that. But Tesla is making a little profit and planning a huge build-out of charging stations across the country. If they make it to 2015 and come out with a consumer electric car I'll buy one and charge it with my solar panels. Your idea that electric utilities seek competition is incorrect. They seek domination. Utilities work in an environment where they have no competition and seek to crush any completion that might arise. Think Ma Bell. Electrical energy generation is a monopoly in almost all areas of the US. That's changing and utilities don't like it. I don't blame them, if I sat on the board of the local utility, I'd probably hate change but it's coming at them faster then they can imagine.

[GRG55]

Re: Battery change model

I think we are still in the very early stages of electric transportation. It's much less than perfect and still less than competitive. I concede that point. No one other than us early bleeders will buy one of these vehicles. I get that. But Tesla is making a little profit and planning a huge build-out of charging stations across the country. If they make it to 2015 and come out with a consumer electric car I'll buy one and charge it with my solar panels. Your idea that electric utilities seek competition is incorrect. They seek domination. Utilities work in an environment where they have no competition and seek to crush any completion that might arise. Think Ma Bell. Electrical energy generation is a monopoly in almost all areas of the US. That's changing and utilities don't like it. I don't blame them, if I sat on the board of the local utility, I'd probably hate change but it's coming at them faster then they can imagine.

At this time Tesla is trying to use access to a chain of recharging stations as a unique marketing strategy to promote purchase of their EV over competitors...something like Apple with its operating system/hardware combination lock in the early days.

One alternative model is to make agreements with the two or three largest gasoline retailers in the country, build out charging stations at their locations and open those charging stations to all EV comers.

1) The gasoline retailers already have the best physical locations for vehicle re-fueling traffic locked up. Nobody, not even Tesla, can replicate that.
2) Gasoline doesn't make any money for the retailers...it's the traffic generator for high margin retailing of products like coffee, bottled water and snack foods (For anyone who has trouble believing this statement, think about what goes into making a gallon of coffee and what goes into making a gallon of gasoline - from exploration, production, refining and transportation. Then consider that there's 16 cups in a US gallon, and at $3.50 you are paying 22 cents per cup for that gasoline. When was the last time you bought an 8 oz cup of retail coffee for 22 cents?)
3) If EV recharging can be seen to be a traffic generator the retailers will be receptive.
4) The more EVs on the road, the more charging stations become viable traffic generators. The more charging stations the more likely someone is going to buy an EV. That brings us full circle to an EV car industry much like the current car market...the manufacturers compete on the branding and differentiation of their products, not on a monopoly access to a capital intensive charging network.

Even before the battery swap idea was floated, it was the capital intensity of the entire Tesla business model that had me concerned. Elon Musk may have deep pockets, but just like the Fed, his balance sheet isn't infinite. It is tough enough to be in the vehicle design/manufacturing/marketing game as it is. The math of amortizing the massive design, development and marketing costs of car like the Model S over such a small production run just does not work...government subsidies and tax credits notwithstanding. Having to do what GM, Ford, Chrysler, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, Honda and everyone else does NOT have to do - install a nationwide chain of refueling stations - makes the math even worse.

As C1ue has posted, the capital intensity of the battery swap idea is not something that can be hand waved away. In reality I think the battery swap is a band-aid for a problem that will go away as vehicle range is improved.

[c1ue]

Re: Battery change model

The math of amortizing the massive design, development and marketing costs of car like the Model S over such a small production run just does not work...government subsidies and tax credits notwithstanding.

I will note that Tesla does have additional subsidies beyond the alt-e tax breaks: California for example has mandated that a specific percentage of vehicles sold be electric. Thus every Tesla sold is an 'electric vehicle' credit that will be bought by one of the large auto manufacturers.

But again, a purely artificial business.

Even disregarding the refueling buildout and the manufacturing scale issues, the technology just isn't there.

Frankly if a lower liquid fossil fuel per capita use was the over-riding concern, it would be far easier and cheaper to just force everyone to ride a motorcycle.

[don]

'Not As An Only Car'

Getting Tesla From Here to There

By JAMES B. STEWART

Whether Tesla Motors can meet its ambitious growth targets — not to mention support its high-flying stock price — may well depend on people like Jason Berkley.

I met Mr. Berkley this week when I dropped into the Tesla showroom on West 25th Street in Manhattan. The spare white-walled space could easily pass for one of the art galleries on either side of it, the art in this case being the single “signature red” Model S on the showroom floor. Several customers were stroking its sleek curves and sculptural door handles as I walked by.

Mr. Berkley was seated at a desk around the corner, and urged me to pull up a chair. With his scruffy beard, Levis and loosefitting polo shirt, the 27-year-old graduate of Indiana University looked as if he’d walked out of Google’s New York headquarters a few blocks away. Actually, he’d been working in wealth management before joining Tesla in November.

I gave him a simple but seemingly insurmountable task: sell me a Tesla.

This was not just a journalistic stunt. I’m in the market for a new car since the lease on my current model expires later this year. Like most car enthusiasts I know, I love the Tesla story: South Africa-born entrepreneur Elon Musk, now an American citizen, reinvents the automobile with a zero emission, all-electric model that in performance, appearance, technology and comfort puts the legacy automakers to shame. Despite enormous skepticism, he takes his venture public, produces more cars than Tucker, Vector and DeLorean combined (to cite three of Tesla’s legendary but failed predecessors), draws rave reviews from the automotive press, and makes a fortune as Tesla stock soars to dizzying heights. It’s the American dream writ large.

Yes, I’d love to buy a Tesla. But a) I live in New York City and park in a public garage; b) drive on weekends to a house in rural upstate New York, far from any current or planned Tesla charging station; c) can afford only one car; d) occasionally make longer car trips far beyond the Tesla range; and e) the base Tesla S costs $71,000 before rebates.

I’m hardly alone in facing such obstacles. Everyone who walks into a Tesla showroom has to be persuaded by someone like Mr. Berkley to become an early adapter — someone willing to take a gamble on a largely unproven $71,000 electric car that needs to be both reliable and safe.

I discussed the Tesla phenomenon this week with Adam Jonas, a managing director and the leader of Morgan Stanley’s global auto research team, who agreed that getting potential customers past many of the same obstacles I face “is an important issue. The population that has the financial means and the motivation to buy this car tends to live in densely populated urban areas, where the parking and municipal infrastructures still aren’t there. Tesla still has a lot of work to do to get into parking garages and get municipalities to install charging stations.”

Mr. Berkley tackled the issues head-on as I raised them, and I liked that he said at the outset that the Tesla “might not work for you.” With Google Maps on his screen, he calculated that the route from my parking garage to my house upstate was 88 miles. With a charging station installed in my barn, I could charge the battery overnight, and comfortably make the 176-mile round trip, even with the lower-cost standard battery, which delivers an estimated range of 208 miles. Mr. Berkley said that if I adhered to 55 miles per hour on the highway, I was likely to get 230 miles.

That didn’t quite solve the problem, since the Tesla loses as much as 10 miles in range for every day it isn’t used, and my car sits in the garage during the week. That might cost me 50 miles a week, which would be cutting it close. I might have to get the more powerful battery, which adds $10,000 to the base price and extends the range to an estimated 265 miles, or 300 at the 55-mile speed limit.

What about longer trips? Mr. Berkley showed me a map of the country with current and planned high-speed charging stations, where Tesla owners can recharge the battery in 30 to 40 minutes at no cost. Two of these stations are up and running in Connecticut, which would have made it possible for me to drive the Tesla on a recent trip to Wellesley, Mass., which is 200 miles from Manhattan, with just one recharging stop. By the end of 2014, the company expects to have stations covering 80 percent of the continental United States, most near coffee shops, restaurants and other amenities.
That still might not get me to and from Cooperstown, N.Y., about 200 miles from Manhattan, where I drove last weekend. Cooperstown is well off even Tesla’s most ambitious grid. But how often do I go to a remote place like that? “Every once in a while you’d probably have to rent a Zipcar,” Mr. Berkley conceded.

So the Tesla seems feasible, which got me to the cost. Seventy-one-thousand dollars (let alone $81,000) is far more than I’ve ever paid for a car. I’ve read that most Tesla customers are already driving BMW 7 Series, Mercedes S-Class, Porsches and other high-end performance cars. I drive a Mini Cooper.

Mr. Berkley thought I could get by with relatively few options, holding the cost down. Every Tesla buyer gets a $7,500 federal tax credit. The fuel savings also add up. He estimated that every $1 of electricity is the equivalent of $5 in gas, even more if the charging is done during off-peak hours. And while there isn’t a track record to gauge Tesla’s resale value, Tesla offers a guaranteed buyback after three years of 50 percent of the purchase price. And I’d be willing to bet that early Teslas will be valuable collector’s items. The more Mr. Berkley talked, the more reasonable the Tesla seemed, more like an investment.

Then we got into the car, which has ample headroom and only two buttons on the dashboard. Almost everything is controlled from an iPad-like touch screen embedded in the center of the dashboard. It’s also an Internet connection and was displaying the home page of The New York Times. I worried that might be a little distracting, but Mr. Berkley said it’s nice when you’re stuck in traffic.

The car is indeed gorgeous to look at. Why do the G.M. Volt and Toyota Prius seem so stodgy by comparison? It’s not that those companies couldn’t have hired the same design talent. (Franz von Holzhausen, who did the much admired, now discontinued Pontiac Solstice roadster while he was a designer for G.M., designed the Tesla S.) I was soon testing color, upholstery and wheel cover options on a large wall display, and was ready to schedule a test drive.

Mr. Berkley and his colleagues in Tesla’s more than 50 stores and galleries worldwide are obviously doing something right. Tesla said it delivered 5,150 Models S cars in the most recent quarter, exceeding the company’s target of 4,500. An annual selling rate of 40,000 by the end of next year looks “pretty safe,” according to Mr. Musk. The news sent the stock surging two weeks ago.

Tesla shares, lately around $161, have nearly quadrupled in the last year At $19.5 billion this week, Tesla’s market capitalization is now about 40 percent of G.M.’s, which is $48.5 billion. In an appearance on CNBC this week, Mr. Musk conceded that the market was being “very generous” to Tesla and “the valuation is more than we have any right to deserve.”

Mr. Musk has been compared to the Apple founder Steve Jobs as a master showman, and he surely knows that Tesla’s valuation isn’t based on sales or any other traditional metric. “The stock market loves a great story, and this is about as compelling as it gets,” Mr. Jonas told me. “Great stories can be overvalued. You could argue the stock’s valuation has gotten ahead of its foreseeable success, but who’s to say? As long as the story is working, which it seems to be, there’s a lot of potential. At 150 bucks, if Tesla were to miss expectations, there would be a severe correction. Until that time, it’s all about the journey, not the destination.”

Should there be a fire or accident, despite Tesla’s outstanding safety record so far, all bets might be off. After I left the showroom, I imagined myself gliding down the cobbled street outside in a new Tesla, generating zero emissions but plenty of curiosity from pedestrians and other drivers, and probably no small measure of envy. I haven’t felt that way since my first car, a used 1964 Falcon convertible. But then reality started to intrude. What if I lost power in the country, as happened for four days after Hurricane Irene? I guess I’d have to invest in a generator or have a second, gas-powered car for emergencies. And do I really want to pay $71,000, only to be lining up some weekend for a Zipcar?

“It’s not yet practical as an only car,” Mr. Jonas told me, as I was coming down to earth. “You have to treat it as a toy and be completely cool if it doesn’t work. But there’s still tremendous potential. Before the first-quarter results, people were betting Tesla wouldn’t last the year. Now the question is, These guys are for real, but how big can they be? There’s been a seismic change. The auto industry hasn’t seen anything this disruptive since the dawn of the Japanese manufacturers.”

[lektrode]

Re: 'Not As An Only Car'

Getting Tesla From Here to There
By JAMES B. STEWART

Whether Tesla Motors can meet its ambitious growth targets — not to mention support its high-flying stock price — may well depend on people like Jason Berkley.... the 27-year-old graduate of Indiana University looked as if he’d walked out of Google’s New York headquarters a few blocks away. Actually, he’d been working in wealth management before joining Tesla in November.

the right background, i guess - not yer every day/common used car salesman could/would know how to pitch the targeted tire kickers in this bracket, no siree.

I gave him a simple but seemingly insurmountable task: sell me a Tesla.


Mr. Berkley tackled the issues head-on as I raised them, and I liked that he said at the outset that the Tesla “might not work for you.”

whooo... nice take-away and right off the top too - 1st challenge with those who can have/buy anything they want: try and stop em, take it away from em - yeah, i'll bet he's nice n smooth...

.... The more Mr. Berkley talked, the more reasonable the Tesla seemed, more like an investment.

Mr. Berkley thought I could get by with relatively few options, holding the cost down. Every Tesla buyer gets a $7,500 federal tax credit. The fuel savings also add up. He estimated that every $1 of electricity is the equivalent of $5 in gas, even more if the charging is done during off-peak hours.

OH!
its simply wonderful isnt it???
that people who CAN AFFORD TO DROP 71grand on a 'playtoy/not-yer-everyday workmobile' get a $7100 gift (bribe from DC) to then suck down HUGE amounts of fossil-fuel (or GAAASP!!! nuke) generated KWH's and get subsidized for that, too?
but i guess if they have big enuf of a house, they can get more subsidies/tax credits to cover their entire roof with silicon
(and then cause the rates for The Rest of US to skyrocket, as the grid groans under all this....

WHEEEEEEEEE!!! too much fun greeeeeeen livin/lifestyle!

i tell ya, its awe inspring just how they can spin stuff when they really want to, without looking/sounding like they shillin for crony-capitalists agenda???

naahh, that wouldnt be... ummmm... ethical

Then we got into the car, which has ample headroom and only two buttons on the dashboard. Almost everything is controlled from an iPad-like touch screen embedded in the center of the dashboard. It’s also an Internet connection and was displaying the home page of The New York Times. I worried that might be a little distracting, but Mr. Berkley said it’s nice when you’re stuck in traffic.

oh great!
now in addition to waiting at lights turned green while the thumber set gets done texting their latest 'critically important' missive on twitsville, we'll have to wait til they get to the end of the story (they kinda long on the nyt, ya know) before they notice its time to take foot off brake and go...

and if manipulating an ipod or iphone is any indication of the level of 'intuitiveness' required to do something like say turn on the defroster or change the radio station, there are just bound to be a few 'distractions' - esp if the windaz fog up on a 2lane road, at 55mph... (while theys twittin or maybe doin the nyt crossword puzzle, cuz they bored, on cruise control...)

The car is indeed gorgeous to look at.....

well thats nice - i mean fer 71grand, shouldnt it oughta?? (grg55 showed us a truly inspiring jag the other day)

Mr. Berkley and his colleagues in Tesla’s more than 50 stores and galleries worldwide are obviously doing something right. Tesla said it delivered 5,150 Models S cars in the most recent quarter, exceeding the company’s target of 4,500. An annual selling rate of 40,000 by the end of next year looks “pretty safe,” according to Mr. Musk. The news sent the stock surging two weeks ago.

Tesla shares, lately around $161, have nearly quadrupled in the last year At $19.5 billion this week, Tesla’s market capitalization is now about 40 percent of G.M.’s,

oh hey!
another gov subsidized 'success' story...
wonder how much the IPO underwriters have peeled off the top of all this GOV SUBSIDIZED MARKET MANIA/MADNESS
and who'll get stuck holding the bag when The Truth comes down...

Should there be a fire or accident, despite Tesla’s outstanding safety record so far, all bets might be off. After I left the showroom, I imagined myself gliding down the cobbled street outside in a new Tesla, generating zero emissions but plenty of curiosity from pedestrians and other drivers, and probably no small measure of envy. I haven’t felt that way since my first car, a used 1964 Falcon convertible. But then reality started to intrude. What if I lost power in the country, as happened for four days after Hurricane Irene? I guess I’d have to invest in a generator or have a second, gas-powered car for emergencies. And do I really want to pay $71,000, only to be lining up some weekend for a Zipcar?

“It’s not yet practical as an only car,” Mr. Jonas told me, as I was coming down to earth. “You have to treat it as a toy and be completely cool if it doesn’t work. But there’s still tremendous potential. Before the first-quarter results, people were betting Tesla wouldn’t last the year. Now the question is, These guys are for real, but how big can they be? There’s been a seismic change. The auto industry hasn’t seen anything this disruptive since the dawn of the Japanese manufacturers.”

yeah, but can it ever compare with this??? (below)

never mind take ya where little beauty can go:

Ahoy, Driver! An Amphibious Car Refuses to Sink Into Oblivion

A Flop in the 1960s, the Amphicar Is Prized Today; Rough on Land, Slow on Water

• By
• SPENCER JAKAB
• CONNECT

Meet the Amphicar, a German classic car from the 60's that leads a double life--as a boat. WSJ's Spencer Jakab reports.


"I brake for fish," says a sticker on the back of Tony Ortokales's car.
It's the sort of thing an avid angler might have on his bumper, but the license plate reading "H20 CAR" suggests something else. The propellers below the bumper tell the rest of the story.

Mr. Ortokales, a 54-year-old machinist from Laconia, N.H., is the proud owner of one of the 500-odd Amphicars remaining in the world. About 4,000 were built. The only mass-produced amphibious passenger car, the German import sold between 1962 and 1967. That's around the time many current owners, mainly middle-aged men, spotted the cars when they were still children and fell in love.

"I saw one coming out of a lake as a kid in South Dakota, and it was like something out of James Bond," says Jon Erdahl, a 53-year-old retired media executive from Loudon, N.H. He next saw one, with a "for sale" sign on it about a year ago and made an offer on the spot. "To me, it's a boyhood dream."

Jack Howland, a 56-year-old engineer from Georgetown, Mass., first saw an Amphicar when he was 12 on Lake Winnipesaukee, N.H., and knew he had to have one.

Mr. Ortokales smiles at the memory of his first encounter: "I saw this funny-looking car with propellers, and I didn't believe it was real."

Amphicars draw a crowd. During a "splash-in" this month organized by Mr. Ortokales and his wife, Denise, in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, people rushed to snap pictures and gawk as the cars drove in and out of the water. Boaters did double-takes and pulled up close when they saw oncoming headlights. Sometimes, onlookers are more alarmed than amused.

"The first time I drove mine into the Connecticut River, someone called 911," says Mr. Howland. "My buddy called to ask if I had taken my car out, and he said they were looking for me."

This Car Brakes for Fish

View Slideshow



Spencer Jakab/The Wall Street Journal An Amphicar in the driveway of Tony Ortokales of Laconia, N.H.

Larry DePasquale, a 58-year-old Air Force employee from Celina, Ohio, owns three Amphicars and loves to surprise bystanders. "I've had people shout: 'No, don't do it!' They think you're committing suicide."

In the 1960s, visitors to President Lyndon Johnson's Texas ranch got the shock of their lives when, according to an aide, he offered them a ride in his Amphicar and then said the brakes had failed as he let is roll down a hill into a lake.

Sometimes they can be too exciting. During the second day of the "splash-in," the Ortokales family's Amphicar started to billow smoke and take on water in the middle of a lake because of a short circuit in its bilge pump.

Safely back in the driveway of their house that evening, they managed to laugh it off as fellow-enthusiasts assisted with repairs. One attendee, 57-year- old real-estate investor Mike Lacroix from West Chesterfield, Mass., was asked why his wife hadn't joined the rest of the party on the lake. He told the story of when they took their Amphicar out on a Florida river at night to visit a wildlife preserve not accessible to regular vehicles. But because he had forgotten to turn on the bilge pump, his car began to sink in the alligator-infested waters and barely made it back to shore. "Since then, she hasn't been very amphibious," he says.

The Amphicar was the brainchild of Hans Trippel, a German auto designer who is better known for the gullwing doors of Mercedes-Benz sports cars. Trippel experimented with amphibious cars in the 1930s and later built several hundred military ones for the Wehrmacht during World War II. A competing military design from Volkswagen called the Schwimmwagen was more successful.
After the war, Mr. Trippel returned to his dream of building a commercially viable amphibious car. But after designing a prototype of the Amphicar, he had no further involvement with its Berlin manufacturer.

It was all for the best. After making a splash at the 1961 New York Auto Show, the company thought it could sell tens of thousands a year to Americans. Those estimates turned out to be way too optimistic. Between 1962 and 1967 fewer than 3,800 were sold in North America plus a few hundred more in Europe. Many were given away in lieu of severance pay to employees.

A publicity stunt that involved a successful crossing of the English Channel got headlines. Another in the Strait of Gibraltar was less auspicious, since it involved the first-ever collision of a ship and an automobile. More stringent U.S. safety requirements in 1968 finally sank Amphicar Corp. itself.

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Amphicar Model 770

There have been other attempts at passenger cars that float, fly or even can submerge, but none approaching Amphicar's brief heyday.

"While people tend to be terribly fascinated with them, they tend not to buy them," explains Doug Hilton, who runs the fledgling Land, Air, and Sea Museum near his home outside London. He has an Amphicar in his collection of 25 dual-purpose vehicles.

Price was an issue as well. Back in 1965, Amphicars cost upwards of $3,200 or nearly twice as much as a Volkswagen Beetle, a more practical German import.

Today though, an owner of a mint-condition Amphicar can get $50,000 or more for it. Mr. Erdahl says he probably could have put a kid through college for what it cost to restore his. Even so, the seller "had tears in his eyes as we drove away."

Owners admit that, even by 1960s standards, they weren't exactly dreamboats mechanically. Capable of up to a bone-juddering 70 miles per hour on land and only seven on water—hence the "Model 770" moniker—both their maritime and road handling leave much to be desired.

"What they say is true—it's a boat on land and a car in the water," says Nick Ortokales, a 25-year-old computer programmer from Seattle who flew home to be with his parents for the splash-in. "But it's just so much fun."

no kiddin, huh? it even kinda looks like a 1964 ford falcon convertible...

like ford, i bet they didnt need a gov subsidy or multibillion dollar stock bubble to do it all, either.

[radon]

Re: 'Not As An Only Car'

Id buy one if it weren't for the winters here. The roadster is a bit pricey for a summer toy.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Tesla Steps Up Production

so i guess the(my) 1st question becomes: are they getting fed 'green bux' too?

They got a $465M loan from the stimulus. Their IPO raised $226M.

[bpr]

Re: Tesla Steps Up Production

They got a $465M loan from the stimulus. Their IPO raised $226M.

They apparently paid that off: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-22/tesla-pays-off-its-465-million-loser-loan

This has prolly been covered in the last eight weeks, but I'm just catching up. The IPO was in 2010, same year as the loan.

[Bundi]

Re: Tesla Steps Up Production

They apparently paid that off: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-22/tesla-pays-off-its-465-million-loser-loan

This has prolly been covered in the last eight weeks, but I'm just catching up. The IPO was in 2010, same year as the loan.

The benefit of a strong stock price is the ability to fill the coffers.

In the 6 months ending June 2013, Tesla’s cash flow from financing netted the company $600.6 million in positive cash. This figure is net of the DOE loan repayment which was a negative ($452.3) million hit. It also reflects a major equity offering in this period which added $360 million in cash and a convertible debt offering which added $660 million in positive cash. In addition the company added cash in this period from a warrant issue at $120.3 million and from proceeds of stock option exercises at $55.1 million (looks like it was primarily a Musk exercise). See below for more details.

Notably, cash flow from operations in the first 6 months of 2013 was only $25.9 million and capital expenditures in the same period were $98.2 million.

Tesla had a total cash balance as of June 2013 of $746.1 million.

10Q here.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da...htm#tx549636_3

Convertible debt offering

In May 2013, we issued $660.0 million aggregate principal amount of 1.50% convertible senior notes due 2018 (Notes) in a public offering. The net proceeds from the offering, after deducting transaction costs, were approximately $648.0 million

Equity offering

Concurrent with the execution of the Notes and related transactions, we also completed a public offering of common stock and sold a total of 3,902,862 shares of our common stock for total cash proceeds of approximately $355.5 million.

Since inception and through June 30, 2013, we had accumulated net operating losses of $1.08 billion and have used $698.8 million of cash in operations.