This manner of cost estimation is not convincing to me, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone. There are plenty of small things that cost a lot of money, because, perhaps, of the precision or techniques required to manufacture them or their components, or the dearness of the materials that compose the minority of the object.

TL;DR: What is a sub-one ounce object made mostly of silicon that costs more than a thousand dollars. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116...

>TL;DR: What is a sub-one ounce object made mostly of silicon that costs more than a thousand dollars. (intel i7)

In that case, you are paying for the IP, not the silicon.

The Tesla motor is a simple design, no magnets, no brushes. I assume they are hand-built. Some, but not too much precision machining required.

Think about how much precision goes into a 2TB hard drive that costs $100 retail.

I often come to the wrong conclusion when "just thinking" about it, especially in domains where I am not even a novice. Also, the fact that I don't find listings for 500hp brushless motors for <10k online calls into question the results of your thought experiment.

I can see where you get your belief -- I wasn't questioning that it is a reasonable one to hold. But I am asking for evidence that compels me to a confidence level I'd actually bet on. Data will be required. Thought experiments are not sufficient.

(Don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing you for failing to provide data. It may not be publicly available. And it is not your duty to give me this. But that is what I am asking for, and if you don't have it, you don't have what I want, your duty or no.)

You're making an assertion that runs counter to the common wisdom that electric cars will require less maintenance, so the burden of proof is on you.

The fact that you can't find brushless motors online that retail for less than $10k is not convincing, because it's a new use case, a unique design, and they're not selling them outside of cars. You don't know what the pricing is. As far as materials, that amount of copper isn't going to help it get to $10k.

EDIT: Oh sorry, I mistook you for the originator of this thread, jesusmichael. He asserted that, not you.

So your logic tells you that Tesla has "invented" an electric motor, so rugged that it can withstand that riggers of being inside a consumer vehicle on the open road with a novice operator, in various environmental conditions, that is a fraction of the cost of similarly powered electric motors that operate in static environments, such as a factory floor, with experienced operators and fixed maintenance schedules? Wow.. I have a bridge to sell you... you're not the guy to be discussing "common wisdom"...

You're bringing up a lot of irrelevant stuff.

Novice operator - the operator of the motor itself is the control electronics, not the driver. If the operator can do something to damage the motor, the design is faulty.

Industrial electrical motors and control electronics like those in robots have completely different tolerance requirements, and are made in relatively low volumes, and so there are fewer units to support development costs.

relatively low volumes? Nearly every machine in every factory in the world has an electric motor of some ilk.. Have you ever been in a factory?

The novice operator and put the machine itself in a situation in which it will not operate correctly, extreme cold, flood, etc. Steep grade + Lead Foot = burnt coil. While I do agree with you to some extent... there is some user input... but motors in Tesla... are still pretty complex..

I meant that the individual models of industrial motors are made in low volumes relative to the motors in a mass manufactured product like the Model S, not that there weren't many electric motors in industry. There obviously are quite a lot of them involved in industry, but they come in many types, each of which has to pay back its own development budget.

I never made that assertion. I'm only asking questions.

"Common wisdom" does not create a burden of proof for detractors, especially if the common wisdom is never, that I can find, backed up with evidence. That is absurd. It would be like saying that the burden is on non religious people to prove that Jesus is not god because billions of people think he is.

Yeah, sorry about that, I got you mixed up with another poster.

But I do think that it's backed by evidence. There's no multi-gear transmission, and while there are moving parts, and other than the wheels/brakes, they aren't bathed in liquids that need regular changes and they aren't subjected to combustion and various other destructive forces that an ICE is constantly subjected to. There's relatively little force transmission hardware needed. The motors themselves should be relatively low-friction, and mechanically are much, much simpler than internal combustion engines (compare a breakdown of the parts of an ICE vs. electric motor, they're in completely different leagues). Air-fuel mixture control, turbochargers, and all manner of other chemical energy management systems are replaced by solid state electronics.

As to your i7 costs, lets conveniently ignore the costs of the FAB, the equipment to make that small little piece of silicon is enormously expensive

What about volumes of scale?

It doesn't cost $1000. What you're paying for is R&D. Just like a Windows 8 DVD doesn't cost hundred of dollars to make

The implicit claim being that Tesla does not factor in R&D when they charge consumers for replacements?

No, just pointing out that processed silicon does not cost Intel anything close to $1000.

Also I doubt R&D cost for an electric motor is high because the technology is mature.

Given how vertically integrated Tesla is, this is the right approach. Include a factor for time on capital equipment (number which can be produced per year per machine, cost of machine, cheap cost of capital, wear on machines, depreciation over lifetime) and you'd probably be good (maybe $3k total for the part?)

If it's a commodity item (like most electric motors, but maybe not the one in the Tesla), with a competitive market, you might be able to estimate cost by looking at open market pricing, but for something like SpaceX, that clearly doesn't work.

Tesla is closer to SpaceX in thinking than it is to most car companies, especially startup car companies.