Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

If that is the moral of the story -- and your morals since this broke, have danced all around -- then Tesla shouldn't have installed two fast chargers and have been proposing trips like this to reporters in an effort to promote it as a car that can do a trip from Washington to Boston, without it taking 8 years to stop and charge for hours at a time. If you have to spend your life waiting for the car to charge up, you are correct. It's not suitable for road trips. Which gets back to a point people keep making on this thread. These cars are impractical and way too expensive for their constraints. ... which again, is why there has been less of a market for EVs (forget Tesla; they can't meet the demands of whatever market there is for their cars, because they can't meet production goals), even with every effort that has been made to induce people to buy them, including subsidization that has just added to our national debt.

 

More Federal money slung around corruptly. ... more national debt. ... more of an anchor on our overall economy.

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/02/chevy-volt-battery-factory-cranked-out-video-game-high-scores-but-no-batteries/

If we are going to blow through billions of dollars just for the hell of it and create long-term problems, can't we at least get a party that more people enjoy from it?

 

With the 85 kWh battery -- so you are spending more than $100,000 for your car, not the $61,000 number everyone likes. And only with the supercharger. There are only two of the superchargers between DC and Boston. Which was the point of the article.

With a standard 10 kw charger (the map 93Devil was so fond of -- never mind how the reporter was supposed to know where those public stations were, when the point of his trip was that he was going to use the two superchargers Tesla was promoting), a full charge is almost 9 hours (assuming their battery really does get the 285 mile range they suggest).

 

Again, making the car silly expensive and impractical for anyone except someone with FU money and a love of EVs.

As an aside -- and I am being serious, because I would love to put my money where my mouth is on this -- the only thing stopping me from taking $10K right now and shorting 250 + shares of Tesla stock is that I can't predict whether politicians will prop the company up to avoid the embarrassment of the oncoming stories about it running out of money. Unless Tesla is holding back on something -- and there is no evidence of that -- it is going to run out of money within the next half year, and with its history of not being able to produce any cars, I can't see how it starts generating enough revenue quickly enough to even make interest payments on its massive debt -- even with the amnesty they got from the Feds on making payments on the half billion of public money they got.

Without the Federal government involved, if the company has to rely on yet another secondary offering or mining the debt markets again, I don't think there is penny out there for it. At this stock price, with the way it is bleeding money, it would be the biggest no brainer short there is -- which is why there actually is all the short interest in the stock. Unfortunately, there is a wildcard. You can't do that kind of simple analysis with a company like this, because politicians have their hands in it. And I don't want to bet against political glad handing.

 

The Tesla Model S is not comparable to a Ferrari Enzo or a Lamborghini Gallardo. Putting those names next to it is ridiculous.

It's comparable to a BMW 500 series or a Jaguar XF or an Audi A7. Except it is 2 to 3 times the price of those cars, depending on the battery you go with. And for that added expense, you don't get any benefit. You get limitations.