Attempting to diffuse customer dismay over a substantial down-grading of the wheels and charging apparatus supplied with cars that have been backlogged for as much as two years, Tesla Motors’ Chairman Elon Musk said in an e-mail today that when the nascent electric-car maker first set its roadster’s price at $92,000, it had no idea that actual production costs would run closer to $140,000.
Yeah, someone here had a Tesla on order but after hearing about this sort of thing canceled and bought something else instead*. I imagine this will be something of a rolling snowball effect that kills off Tesla within a few years.
the main concern being, ‘if I buy this car and they go out of business, i’m fucked for support and service’
Did he get his deposit back? When I read about this, it sounded like they just kind of told people “Well, it now costs you more, so you have to pay up” and the implication was if you dropped the order you lost your deposit.
Man, the same thing happened to me: a few weeks ago, I ordered the Street Fighter IV Fightstick Tournament Edition from barnesandnoble.com because it was only fifty bucks instead of the normal hundred and fifty, and then they cancelled my order. Man! What kind of piece of shit idiots would make a mistake like that?
Yeah, well, any kind of manufacturing business where you sell things on deposit before being able to actually make them in quantity is either a con or a fiasco waiting to happen. Apparently the only people getting their Teslas right now are celebrities, for the publicity. But the people who put their deposits down should have realized they were gambling they would ever receive a vehicle.
I don’t know the details of what Tesla is telling people and IANAL but I’m fairly sure they can’t just go and raise the price of something you put a deposit on and then refuse to refund your money if you don’t like the new terms. I just don’t see how that could possibly be legal.
Err, I hope anyone buying from an upstart car company understands this. There is a reason all the small manufacturers are kit cars or marketed to enthusiasts that know how to turn a wrench or keep the vehicle running without OEM parts.
I am on the Tesla list and got the email in question, and I find it to be heavily mischaracterized by this article. This article is pretty much just mud-slinging web-“journalism”. Treat it like something you would read on Kotaku or wherever.
The letter was very respectful and explained the situation in a very down-to-earth fashion. It’s the kind of thing that I wish companies would do more often: “Hey, here’s a problem, but we fixed it, unfortunately we have to pass a minor inconvenience on to customers but it’s pretty small.” It gives me a lot more faith in the company, and its management, going forward. I feel much better about Tesla than I do about most American companies, or did about the Bush administration, etc.
Also, that reported charge time for the travel cable looks like someone pulled it out of their butt. I am pretty sure the recharge time using that cable is 8.5 hours. Basically, it’s just fine if you are charging your car nightly at home, but not great if you need to recharge in the middle of the day or at a station somewhere on the road.
Lastly, the price hike is quite minor. It reminds me of gamers complaining about XBLA games that cost $15.
Edit: I find it extremely fishy that this blog posting didn’t just quote the email, rather than writing a bunch of speculation and exaggerations. I guess that would have generated many fewer web hits.
To be clear, I don’t have a Tesla, I am just interested in maybe owning one sometime in the future, and I like to support companies that are doing cool stuff.
Electric cars are d0med. Well, at least until someone comes up with a battery that can match the range of a combustion engined car, doesn’t weigh a ton (or is made of toxic materials) and can be recharged in the time it takes to fill up the tank on an SUV.
