Slow Moving Vehicle

And if energy really gets that cheap, we will waste large quantities of it, deplete the easy resources, and drive the price back up...EVs are not for everyone, but they serve a purpose for those who have them.

@golden2husky G2H, this time you are correct. The boom bust energy cycle might start up in earnest again if natural gas becomes a transport fuel.

@Landcrusher My point is a little different than yours. Cheap natural gas drives down the price of mogas and diesel. All this happens in various markets and for reasons you have probably never even heard of. CNG for vehicles is kind of a side issue. You should be aware that a business cycle in the oil bidness (or in most mining businesses for that matter) is very long - 25 to 30 years. You see on the supply side of the market, you have to find the new sources, do the technology, do the politics, raise the capital, build the production facilities and then finally bring the stuff to market. On the demand side of the market the transportation capital stock turnover goes for 10+ years. The power generation capital stock turnover goes for 20 up to 50+ years.

There is no advantage in having a particular market share in oil. As long as someone is buying all you produce (true for Saudi production), your goal would be to maximize the price, not increase production in order to reduce the price.

@jimbob457: From the sales of Civic HX, your analysis is wrong.

@th009 Sorry, I skipped over a few steps in the analysis. I am not used to talking to car industry people many of whom appear to be almost totally ignorant of the energy business. The Saudis want to produce between 5 and 8 million barrels per day of oil in a global market of around 80 mmbbl/d. They and their neighborhood pals have enough capacity to set a price that will accomplish this in today's situation. Back in the 1980's Sheik Yamani lost his job because he failed to appreciate the political implications of what might happen if Saudi oil production fell too low - say well below 5 mmbbl/d. That eventuality would be that foreigners would rule Arabia. In 1990 that might well have happened, except that the OPEC customers preferred to deal with the Saudis rather than Saddam Hussein. Needless to say, the Saudi royal family was not amused. The Al Sabahs even less so. What is important now is the what we currently refer to as 'fracking'. It represents in its entirely a technological breakthrough that has changed everything in the energy business in both the short and long term. It looks like it might be similar in its impact to Fritz Heber's early 20th century invention that allowed people to extract nitrogen fertilizer from the air. Heber's process destroyed the thriving 19th century guano trade. The Saudis and their Gulf State pals must take the economic measure of 'fracking'. Their very survival (certainly in their present form as the world's weirdest society as they set out to build in 1948) depends on it. I am guessing they will start with $70/bbl which their current national budget is built on. If that doesn't work, I suspect they will go lower. Just wild ass speculation, but from what I have read, current 'frackers' talk like they operate in two dimensions. Good mining technique operates in three dimensions. The current problem with 'fracking' is its very rapid production decline rate. I am thinking that if you are essentially creating your own reservoir, it might make more sense to do so in a three dimensional lattice work. It is really possible that the Saudis and OPEC in general have been totally screwed. There is a interesting article in a recent Atlantic magazine that makes such a case. I am not saying I agree with it, but one cannot rule it out. Anyway, I do conclude that $100/bbl. Brent crude is not gonna last.

Why is it so hard to comprehend the difference between two simple concepts of "Q1 2013" and "since inception"?

@Pete Zaitcev It's not, but I'm betting this is Tesla's first "big" quarter, and their "since inception" would be

@TorontoSkeptic "There is a limited market for $100k cars. There are only so many people who can afford them, whereas $28k compacts have a potential market of millions." Yet both BMW and Hyundai make money. I would say the instant massive torque, quite and smoothness of an EV make it a good fit for a luxury car.

To accept a point that the model s doesn't make sense, I'd have to think that every other expensive luxury barge doesn't make sense. Tesla & Nissan are not competitors here, so there is little gained from comparing their cars like that.

There is a limited market for $400 scarves and $10k handbags, but Hermes still has a market cap of $20 billion. Exclusive pricing doesn't mean a lower ceiling on profits.

@TorontoSkeptic The Leaf has been with us since December 2010, or about 2.5 years. If you take Leaf sales and average them by quarter, you have about 6,250. So really, the Leaf isn't doing that much better than the Model S in numbers, and obviously in revenue Model S is doing much better. I seem to remember Nissan got a multi-billion dollar DOE loan for development while Tesla got less than half a billion. It seems likely that Leaf cost considerably more to develop and so from a standpoint of return on investment I would think Tesla is doing far better. I know Tesla is producing cars for roughly breakeven and I'd be surprised if the Leaf's losses are not enormous. The truth is that people who are affluent enough to want an eco-statement as a car are also affluent enough to want a luxury ride. For this reason, it really makes a lot more sense to market electric cars in the same way Tesla is doing - expensive initially and then growing cheaper as costs go down. I think that is a big reason the Leaf and Volt didn't find traction in the market. I have seen more Tesla Model Ss (two) and Fisker Karmas (two) on the road here in South Florida than Leaves (0) or Volts (1). D

HYBRID cars currently have a 3.34 share of the U.S. market. All plugins (including range extended such as Volt, and plug-in hybrids) have 0.56 percent of the U.S. market. See www.hybridcars.com/april-2013-dashboard/