They certainly are having problems in getting the 3 into the required production that will and has all ready lost them a shed load, as lots of tesla's sales have been because there was no real competition, and the 3 is the mass produced one that would have stamped their name as a big boy, the others are catching up fast. You cannot really put all the blame onto Musk, He has a dream he has his team build it, then his team make promises to him I guess and they do not deliver. Regarding their trucks, if they can produce the numbers it will certainly give them a much needed cash injection. On Paper and if they have the charging infrastructure cannot see how they can fail in the short term. I am surprised though Tesla did not introduce a small / transit size van first, Take the Price range of vans they are dammed expensive compared to cars, plus when you look at the numbers on the road of vans, those are the vehicles that are all diesel, and have to drive to towns, and cities.
No one makes money in trucks. It still astounds me that a business with no market penetration, no real market products to talk about, gets Marge scale investment for public contracts and worth 10 times the largest vehicle producer in America is. Dotcom mystique right there
Yeah over 300k Units to date is not really small fry tbh of the most advanced vehicle you can buy and a leader in the market of new technology, you cannot take it away from the ground breaking ideas moving forward with a solution or one solution to the effects petrol, and diesel vehicles. I bet the main vehicle producers did not want the change, they wanted to drink the world dry first, and make the most they can out of existing technology and manufacturing. I must admit 6 years ago I laffed at the idea of Electric vehicles and even said naa will never take off, how wrong was I and so many others.
Elon Musk and Co are super impressive despite talk of Emperors new clothes and so on ( @bradders ). Despite not hitting the mainstream yet the progression they have made is phenomenal. Making rockets land back on earth again for re-use is a serious achievement. They are slowly become a real success rather than pie in the sky dreams. I reckon that once the support infrastructure for electric cars and other cutting edge stuff catches up that their technological lead will make them the top players. Theres a good bit of writing here illustrating their approach: https://www.wired.com/story/spacexs-top-secret-zuma-mission-launches-today/ SpaceX’s model of accepting development cash and completing contracts that lead to bigger ones has been a lucrative business model. Before it was a serious launch provider, the company was awarded almost $400 million to develop the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo capsule. After SpaceX spent nearly $450 million of its own cash to complete the vehicles and reach developmental milestones, they were awarded a $1.6 billion contract by NASA to deliver cargo to the ISS.
Like I say, snake oil salesman . Not sure they have landed a rocket yet, have they? Plenty of success in knowing how not to do it. No doubt that him and his close team have some real sci-fi ideas, and seem to be able to get the financial backing to kick projects off.
They land and reuse the first stage booster and have done so successfully a number of times. There is a world of difference between sub orbital flight, which is what the first stage booster does, and recovering and reusing an orbital vehicle, which is what the shuttle was. The solid rocket boosters of the shuttle were recovered and reused after they splashed into the sea, therefore it could be argued that the Falcon 9 concept is not that far removed from the shuttle, albeit at a fraction of the cost. Tesla is another one of those companies that have a massive valuation but little or no profit, whether that can change remains to be seen.
Now that is something that proves the ‘most obvious solutions are the best’ theory. Although, again, how widespread is their use and are they ‘real’ or ‘in design and pre-production’ Forgive me, I’ve spent most of the last 5 years in technology businesses where the top guy spends 90% of the time wondering what people will buy, NOT what is available to sell.
"ice" is just a deliberately confusing acronym which some people like to use to mean "internal combustion engine". Or may be "in car entertainment".
