Tesla Watch
November 2nd, 2015




Tesla is a ridiculous company.

Consumer Reports gave the Model S the highest rating it’s ever given an automobile. Because Tesla is such a hype monster that even CR can’t resist them. Then last week, suddenly, CR downgrades Tesla to “worse than expected” because–surprise!–the cars have reliability issues. Who could possibly have guessed that a tiny company making several thousand cars a year wouldn’t have the resources for rigorous reliability testing?

What makes Tesla really ridiculous? It’s market valuation is currently $27B. That’s exactly half of GM’s market cap. Half! You know how many cars GM sold last year? 9.9M. You know how many Tesla sold? 31,665. Let’s write out those numbers:

GM: 9,900,000 vehicles sold

Tesla: 31,665 vehicles sold

GM market cap = 2 x Tesla market cap

Actually, it’s a good thing Tesla didn’t sell too many units because they still lose $4,000 on every car.

Bob Lutz is still on the case, God love him. His appraisal is even more devastating.

Just a reminder: Your tax dollars subsidize the sale of every single Tesla so that the rich envirobros only have to spend $100k, and not $107k, on their electric luxury sports cars.

Update: Here’s an example of why the cult of Tesla is so insufferable:

Bob Lutz has an eternity of experience in the car industry and I have none so, of course, I could be wrong. But after about 20 years (a good chunk of those years in Japan) of covering products/technologies that have failed and succeeded, my gut feeling is pretty refined.  (And no one should discount the cult phenomenon. See “The Cult of Tesla Motors.”)

That’s Brooke Crothers at Forbes.com. Want to know how data-free this guy is? Later in his piece he muses on how sales are going for both Tesla and the Chevy Volt in Los Angeles and on the Main Line outside of Philadelphia. Where does his sales data come from? His eyeballs:

I just hope that General Motors does a better job of marketing the Volt in some of the under-performing areas like suburban Philadelphia’s Main Line.  The Model S is becoming an increasingly common site on the Main Line — which wasn’t the case a year ago. If the much (much) more expensive Model S can build a market on the Main Line, there’s no reason the Volt can’t too. But that is in fact the case: it’s a shock to come from Los Angeles where there’s a very healthy population of Volts to essentially zero population on the Main Line. I would be more worried about the Volt than Tesla if I were Bob Lutz.

Just for giggles: As of April 2015, GM had sold 70,000 Volts lifetime. Best guess how many vehicles there are in Los Angeles? 5.8 million. That’s healthy? ayfk?



  1. WershovenistPig November 3, 2015 at 11:16 am

    The modern-day C.K. Dexter Havens out on the Main Line, driving to the Merion Cricket Club in a Chevy? I think they get stopped at the entrance if caught driving a domestic.

    It looks like Crothers is suffering from choice-supportive bias: He drives a Volt and thinks his electric car is amazing. He seems to disproportionately notice his fellow Volt-buying Angelenos, because, hey, we all love to have our choices affirmed by others.

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  3. Jason O. November 3, 2015 at 12:59 pm

    Wait, a conservative who invokes GM (in any fashion, for any purpose) without reflexively bleating “government motors,” or “bailout” until blue in face?

    HIGHLY problematic, JVL.

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  5. Gabriel November 3, 2015 at 9:49 pm

    I live by the Sony lot, work at UCLA, and drive by the Fox lot to get from one to the other. I see probably 25x more Teslas than Volts on the street. OTOH, I know one Volt owner personally and don’t know any Tesla owners.

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  7. AOHenry December 8, 2015 at 2:39 pm

    Anyone besides me remember the bad review of the Tesla in that bastion of conservatism “The New York Times” (you need italics here)? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the-ev-highway.html?_r=0

    It appears the reporter might have been right after all…

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