In fact, it’s worse: it’s hotter and faster. More dangerous.

The automobile would never meet environmental criteria if it were introduced fresh into today’s regulatory climate.

We can do better in the 21st century. Automobile 2.0 will be automated.

I mean they could keep Tesla as a separate division and just help to ramp up production, advertising, etc.

So far, no major failures, then again it’s just a giant remote control car so what’s the big deal. People make this EV thing out to be so revolutionary. The truth is Tesla licensed the entire thing from AC propulsion and just tried to mass produce it; this is where the challenge is. Making a one off is simple, making thousands repeatable at a profit is hard! hence the big 3 is nearly dead.

I would be surprise if Tesla makes it 4 more months.
With $9M in the bank they don’t have enough cash flow to deliver the orders they have taken, especially now that it was revealed in valley wag that they have used customer deposits for operations. Elon claims he can back the deposits, but was that before he decided to cheat on his wife and having her file for divorce and take half of his remaining millions? The future looks like it’s on low charge given the initial potential.

I think you might be onto something here.
In the twilight world we’re about to enter comes Jan 2009, that proposal won’t look nearly as outrageous as it seems right now.
Free money for everyone – taxpayers (ultimately the country) be damned!

That was really amazing because my sister doesn’t know the difference between a Tundra and a King Ranch, not a car person at all. I told her the dish on Tesla’s problems, info principally gleamed from Ye Deathwatch Towne here. She was quite militant frankly in her refutation of my rationality on this. Real believer, heard it on the interwebz and all, so I was the one uninformed. Ha! But it just goes to show how this company had succeeded in fooling just about everyone who is not really plugged into (no pun!) the car biz at large.

I find this kind of scary in a way, because it looks like Uncle Scam is moving into this kind of thing (”green revolution”) in a big way with Uncle Obama locked and loaded at this point. The only thing Tesla has been very successful at is swaying public opinion and being the kind of scene a VIP or politician (technologically uninformed VIP’s and politicians at that) wants a photo-op for. I can see a mini-bubble coming of all kinds of sketchy start-ups with vaporware and promises soaking up a lot of my money in the near future just because of success in the perception biz, which is all politics and politicians run on. Tesla itself might wind up with a Treasury check or two just because of that perception people like my sister have of it. Sad.

There’s some particularly lame PRspeak:
* “Launched” does not mean “available to buy”
* “125 ordered” does not mean “any actual cars delivered”

This sounds like typical Silicon Valley: launches without product, orders without delivery. Heck, what Tesla’s shipping is effectively beta-version Roadsters.

Redundant means excess to need. The phrase “made redundant” is a little harsh, but if the needs change (ie. stem cash flow from a rich CEO who doesn’t want to end up a poor CEO) then some people become an excess.

Then they’ll lay everyone off.

Leave it to the Brits to come up with that nonsensical phrase. Redundant means duplicate. Fired people are suddenly simply duplicates who never were needed in the first place. Harrumph.