> Tesla has accomplished something no other automaker can claim: It's made a relatively affordable electric car.

That remains to be seen. Selling something at a loss doesn't equate with making something affordable.

> > Tesla has accomplished something no other automaker can claim: It's made a relatively affordable electric car.

That quote doesn't even make sense. The Model 3 isn't even the cheapest all electric car...

The Smart Fortwo Electric ($26K), Nissan LEAF ($29K), Volkswagen e-Golf ($30K), and Mitsubishi i-MiEV ($23K).

So Tesla is the only automaker that can claim they made a "relatively affordable electric car" by producing one that's more expensive and has sold fewer units? I do not understand.

Those cars have a range between 58 miles and 125.

How about we stick to the claim at hand instead of trying to spin the topic into more favorable avenues. The quote was:

> > Tesla has accomplished something no other automaker can claim: It's made a relatively affordable electric car.

Nobody is arguing that Tesla's vehicles have no merit, we're picking apart that absurd claim.

Wasn't that goal already met by the EV1 back in the 80s? If you're willing to live with compromises (short range and long recharge times), affordable electric cars are a long since solved problem.

> Wasn't that goal already met by the EV1 back in the 80s?

The EV1 wasn't for sale at any price, so it also wasn't relatively affordable. It was leased at a loss to meet a state law while GM lobbied against the law. (Same with its contemporaries the Toyota RAV4EV and the Honda EVplus.)

Pretty sure the RAV4EV was sold in limited quantities, there's at least two different ones I have seen in downtown Los Altos over the past 10 years, so Toyota didn't try to destroy them all like GM did with the EV1.

That's right, I had some RAV4 EVs were sold after the leases when the line was discontinued (though you may have also seen the newer RAV4 EV, as it was resurrected in 2012.)

Selling something the customer can't buy doesn't make sense either. Waiting a month for your new car to be delivered is insane waiting three years is a broken system.

Tesla Motors expects their customers to be fanatical. But what if I just want to buy a car like a normal person?

Waiting a month is normal in some countries, like mine - Uruguay - if you want a particular make, color or optionals it's worse (they ship it via container from wherever it's produced and takes months).

In Argentina there was a time where slightly used cars sold for more than retail price simply because you had same-day availability instead of waiting for months.

Isn't that BS anyways? What about the leaf and volt?

They don't sell any of their vehicles for a loss... do people not read/understand the financials before stating something?

They have a positive operating margin per vehicle, they for the most part always have. Is it as high as they want the margin to be yet, no, but it's not a loss. Are they spending a ton of money? YES! They are spending more on Cap Ex and R&D than Chevy and Ford combined. This is the same argument people made with Amazon for 15 years.. until one day Amazon became one of the top 5 companies by market cap. A high growth company should be reinvesting every dollar, and then borrow a shit ton more to reinvest still.

This isn't really accurate, they shut the line down for a week or so a while back and from indications since then (VIN registrations and deliveries) it seems like they're probably producing around 2,000 a week now.

The trend line they added to the graphs on that page were put in recently to try and show this I think.

That is inaccurate. They did over 2,000 last week and are tracking for 2,500 by the end of this week. There are groups on the forums and such that keep track of the latest VINs people have. Also I believe the goal is 5,000/week, not 10,000.

According to the article they're currently close to but not quite reaching 300 cars a day, which would put them closer to 2,000 per week.