According to a post by Diarmuid O’Connell, Tesla’s Vice President of Business Development,
The Model S platform will also be used for derivatives including a minivan, cross-over utility vehicle and a utility van for fleets and other industrial or civic uses
The Model S sedan already claims seating for seven, with a third row of jump seats under its rear hatch. But hey, why not build other models on the same platform? Nobody shopping a Tesla is going to care about overlap, price premiums or branding issues. The EV business model is still squarely in the “set a price and hope there are enough early adapters out there” era, and more models will help differentiate Tesla from competitors like Fisker. Besides, Tesla has made it clear that they don’t want to be a luxury car maker forever. Elon Musk sees high-end products like the Roadster and Model S Sedan as cocoon from which Tesla will emerge as a fully-formed, mainstream EV manufacturer. And if you’re going to worry about the Silicon Kids on the basis of this one blog post, it should be because of the following syntactically-challenged sentence:
We’re already engineering the Model S, a seven-passenger family sedan that will have a base price of $49,900 after a federal tax credit that will cost the equivalent of a car that retails for $35,000, given the relatively expensive cost of gasoline vs. electricity.
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So what he’s saying is I get to pay for $15,000 worth of energy up front? Such a deal.
Lets see, at $2.59 (local price) 15,000 will buy 5,791 gallons, x 30 mpg = 173,730 miles.
I wonder how many times you get to replace the battery pack in 173,000 miles, or is the replacement included in the up front costs.
No I didn’t think so.
Paul
Don’t forget interest :) Man…to make those numbers he must consider the electricity to be free. A car that size if gas powered would probably get 30 mpg or less and last about 175-225k
In all fairness though, the disparity between gas and electricity will probably increase in the future, since oil resources are dwindling and electricity can be produced from a multitude of resources, and very cheaply off-peak.
Also consider that maintainence costs should be lower and reliability higher (at least until you have to replace the battery.
I’ll be interested to see their new designs though.
Here we have an unusual situation. This manufacturer plans to make more kinds of cars than the number of its cars that I have actually ever seen.
In other news,
I will be rolling out my new line of hybrid-solar powered ocean going container vessels. There will also be a cruise-ship variat, and a floating city.
I just need a coupla billion from Uncle Sugar…
Thanks to that horrible sentence structure, I have no clue how much it actually costs.
Also, a seven-passenger sedan? Really…?
I’m curious to see what the IIHS thinks of this thing. I’m assuming the kids sitting in those jump seats are not going to like having a barrier hit them in the back of the head at 40mph.
Man, that’s a beautiful car.
Apparently the price of snake oil has risen to $49,900 a bottle after a tax subsidy.
I remember reading that GM is involved with Tesla. That’s a big turn-off for me.
In all fairness though, the disparity between gas and electricity will probably increase in the future, since oil resources are dwindling and electricity can be produced from a multitude of resources, and very cheaply off-peak.
I don’t know where you live, but where I live in California, the price of electricity is rising nearly as fast as gasoline. Over the past two years, my electricity bill has nearly doubled, while my usage has decreased by approximately 25%, an increase in unit cost of over 100%. I’d have to go back over 5 years to find the point at which gasoline was less than half of todays costs. This is in an area supplied by a major hydro electric plant and in a state with a significant amount of hydro generating capacity (though that is decreasing thanks to environmental challenges of existing dams when their lease renewals come up). I have no idea how he figures $15,000 in fuel savings, unless he is comparing it to a gas powered vehicle that gets 10 mpg or less like some of the V12 sports/luxury cars out there.
“Man, that’s a beautiful car.” (Amen!)
With a hatch,too!
They couldn’t have picked a better look for some pretty expensive, electric Kool-Aid.
I keep playing the powerball, though (fingers crossed).
I will be rolling out my new line of hybrid-solar powered ocean going container vessels.
You know, if you’re going to pick an analogy to poke fun at what you perceive as something being ridiculous, perhaps you should make sure that your analogy hasn’t already been done:
Toyota’s Solar Car Carrier
It could be seen as a “mild hybrid” (solar only provides 6.5% of the power), but it’s still a hybrid solar-powered ocean-going container vessel.