Musk endeavours

[odysseus2000]

Via a Lemon Fool advert, advertising for leasing a 3:

https://www.octopusev.com/?gclid=EAIaIQ ... gJrO_D_BwE

Regards,

[dspp]

A snippet from SA confirms the overall take of Tesla as being about 50% of the world automotive battery supply:

"...Last year, in 2018, if you look at all non-Tesla electric vehicles sold around the world, the total number of batteries used in all non-Tesla EVs was about 46 gigawatt hours of batteries. So that's 1.1 million non-Tesla EVs sold last year times roughly average 49 kilowatt hours average battery pack size. So that's 46 gigawatt hours global production of electric vehicle batteries....

...Our capacity as of today, so installed capacity today, is about 44 gigawatt hours, that's 35 gigawatt hours in Gigafactory, Reno and the remaining 9 gigawatt hours for Panasonic in Japan. So size absolutely matters when it comes to reducing the cost of making a battery..."

https://seekingalpha.com/article/428489 ... -topic-now

If this is the case, then it seems to me that Fremont will be pretty much at capacity at about 350-450,000 vehicles per year because of the paint shop constraint. So I can understand how Tesla can build more 3's in Shanghai, and build more Powerwalls in Nevada, but unless they resolve the paint shop constraint then how are they going to get the Y produced in a meaningful volume in Fremont ?

Unless of course they have found a way to debottleneck the Fremont paint shop, but I have seen nothing to that effect. In fact everything I have come across suggests that the Fremont paint shop has been surviving courtesy of grandfathered status from the olden days of NUMMI as a Toyota/GM facility. Has anyone seen any indications of how they might resolve this ?

regards, dspp

[BobbyD]

Unless of course they have found a way to debottleneck the Fremont paint shop, but I have seen nothing to that effect. In fact everything I have come across suggests that the Fremont paint shop has been surviving courtesy of grandfathered status from the olden days of NUMMI as a Toyota/GM facility. Has anyone seen any indications of how they might resolve this ?

I take it a tent is out of the question?

I seem to recall reading something similar about the GF'd nature of the paint shop, although I couldn't say with certainty.

[redsturgeon]

Via a Lemon Fool advert, advertising for leasing a 3:

https://www.octopusev.com/?gclid=EAIaIQ ... gJrO_D_BwE

Regards,

I followed this up.

£490 pm for a two year lease with three month up front payment.

John

[odysseus2000]

Via a Lemon Fool advert, advertising for leasing a 3:

https://www.octopusev.com/?gclid=EAIaIQ ... gJrO_D_BwE

Regards,

I followed this up.

£490 pm for a two year lease with three month up front payment.

John

I believe this means 24x£490 =£11,760 with presumably some mileage limits.

How does the BIK tax relief fit into this?

For a London driver, there is a potential daily saving of £11.50 congestion charge + £12.50 emission tax = £24/day.

Anyone going into London say 48 weeks @ 5 days per week in a 3 saves 48x5x24 = £5,760 per year, such that over 2 years the lease cost is £11,760-(2x5760) = 11,760-11,520 = £240.

Seems attractive to me, or am I missing things here?

Regards,

[redsturgeon]

Via a Lemon Fool advert, advertising for leasing a 3:

https://www.octopusev.com/?gclid=EAIaIQ ... gJrO_D_BwE

Regards,

I followed this up.

£490 pm for a two year lease with three month up front payment.

John

I believe this means 24x£490 =£11,760 with presumably some mileage limits.

How does the BIK tax relief fit into this?

For a London driver, there is a potential daily saving of £11.50 congestion charge + £12.50 emission tax = £24/day.

Anyone going into London say 48 weeks @ 5 days per week in a 3 saves 48x5x24 = £5,760 per year, such that over 2 years the lease cost is £11,760-(2x5760) = 11,760-11,520 = £240.

Seems attractive to me, or am I missing things here?

Regards,

Not quite it is:

Initial payment £1473.54 followed by 23 payments of £491.18

so about £1000 more than your calcs.

That was for 10,000 miles per year.

For next year no BIK at all and I believe 2% of list price the year after.

Interestingly these are the inc VAT figures even though I asked for a business quote therefore I can claim back 20% from these figures.

Looks good to me.

John

[BobbyD]

Can anybody with a Telegraph sub give us a damage assessment?

Tesla is under fire as owners complain of long waits for parts and problems contacting UK customer service.

Drivers claim they are waiting up to 10 months to have cars fixed. Tesla has a rating of 3.1 out of 10 on consumer review site Trustpilot and owners allege the company’s previously high standard of service is in decline.

Martin Kulin, 59, from Horsham, west Sussex, told the Telegraph he took a £25,000 loss selling his Model S after just 11 months because of the stress. He said he was told he would have to wait seven months to have the windscreen replaced.

- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/ ... ths-parts/

[odysseus2000]

Redsturgeon

Not quite it is:

Initial payment £1473.54 followed by 23 payments of £491.18

so about £1000 more than your calcs.

That was for 10,000 miles per year.

For next year no BIK at all and I believe 2% of list price the year after.

Interestingly these are the inc VAT figures even though I asked for a business quote therefore I can claim back 20% from these figures.

Looks good to me.

John

,

Thank you for the correction.

If the leasing company advertise these kinds of figures I would be surprised if there was not a good bit of interest.

Regards

[Howard]

Via a Lemon Fool advert, advertising for leasing a 3:

https://www.octopusev.com/?gclid=EAIaIQ ... gJrO_D_BwE

Regards,

I followed this up.

£490 pm for a two year lease with three month up front payment.

John

That looks a good deal. A 3 Series BMW 320i Touring would cost about £9,500 for two years 10k miles for a Personal Lease (about 350 per month). But as you have added, for a business deal, the BIK is going to level up the costs.

By the way, have you asked about the delivery quote? How soon could the leasing company get a Tesla to your spec?

regards

Howard

PS Only problem with a Tesla might be reliability. Cautionary tale below. This guy got his new UK Model 3 very quickly three or four weeks ago. But it had a fault which meant it took two and a half weeks to repair. So it's been longer in the repair shop than in his possession so far. As I've written before, I have only had one fault with a Mercedes, VW or BMW in the last 20+ years of motoring. That was an automatic tailgate on a Merc estate which needed re-programming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDztu_bOmx0

[odysseus2000]

That looks a good deal. A 3 Series BMW 320i Touring would cost about £9,500 for two years 10k miles for a Personal Lease (about 350 per month). But as you have added, for a business deal, the BIK is going to level up the costs.

By the way, have you asked about the delivery quote? How soon could the leasing company get a Tesla to your spec?

regards

Howard

PS Only problem with a Tesla might be reliability. Cautionary tale below. This guy got his new UK Model 3 very quickly three or four weeks ago. But it had a fault which meant it took two and a half weeks to repair. So it's been longer in the repair shop than in his possession so far. As I've written before, I have only had one fault with a Mercedes, VW or BMW in the last 20+ years of motoring. That was an automatic tailgate on a Merc estate which needed re-programming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDztu_bOmx0

In the comments the guy said he ordered on the 1st-May and collected on the 29th-June, so about 8 weeks.

His comments on would he recommend the car fit in with what I have observed in the folk I know who have bought electric. So far I have found no one who wants to go back to an ICE vehicle.

Looking at the lease costs, BIK benefits, London savings etc and comparing them to a similar specification ICE car suggests that even an accountant would not find too much to complain about on the financial side.

Whether the reliability is good enough, the fears of having it go in for service and not re-appear for a very long time is too big etc I don't really know and will be very different depending on each persons use etc. I imagine as the car matures these issues will decline and as far as I understand it there would be loaner vehicle for the period.

As an investor, looking at the bigger picture: The costs, performance and owner commentary is re-assuring. Whether the 3 will become known as the Model T of the electric age in the history lessons of the future I can not know, but for now it seems to be the car that has the most chance of being so known. If I wanted to construct a case for why it will not be as popular as the Model T it would be the price which is still too high for it to be a car of the people in the way that the T was. Whether the price can be got down, or the price of the ICE raised up to effectively to do this can't I believe happen until there is much more supply, meaning that gigafactory 3 will have to be up and running reliably. Both gigafactory 2 and 3 will likely produce output that has better paint than gigafactory 1 as the latter paint shop is, as I understand it, using relatively old technology, although the number of videos I have seen of folk slating the paint job on the 3 has declined.

Regards,

[BobbyD]

Via a Lemon Fool advert, advertising for leasing a 3:

https://www.octopusev.com/?gclid=EAIaIQ ... gJrO_D_BwE

Regards,

I followed this up.

£490 pm for a two year lease with three month up front payment.

John

Happened across a thread on UK leasing whilst digging around for nything else on the Telegraph UK repairs story I linked to earlier.

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads ... 65/page-22

These guys get a lot of early mentions: https://www.drive-electric.co.uk/vehicle/

This doesn't sound great:

Have tried 3 times to phone tesla today on 01628450604 but the calls have all gone on over 1 hour and Tesla just hang up on the other end without answering.
Using the weq4u app which means that thankfully I'm not wasting my minutes on the call to them but anyone had any luck with another phone number?
Was getting through to them fine the previous few weeks so just assume there's limited staff in today for some reason?

- https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads ... ry.162454/

[BobbyD]

On the wider debate:

GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles

Toyota, Ford plan to keep hybrids as core part of their lineups, showing split in auto industry

Auto makers for two decades have leaned on hybrid vehicles to help them comply with regulations on fuel consumption and give customers greener options in the showroom. Now, two of the world’s largest car manufacturers say they see no future for hybrids in their U.S. lineups.

General Motors Co. GM and Volkswagen AG are concentrating their investment on fully electric cars, viewing hybrids—which save fuel by combining a gasoline engine with an electric motor—as only a bridge to meeting tougher tailpipe-emissions requirements, particularly in China and Europe.

...“If I had a dollar more to invest, would I spend it on a hybrid? Or would I spend it on the answer that we all know is going to happen, and get there faster and better than anybody else?” GM President Mark Reuss said in an interview.

GM’s view contrasts with other auto-making giants, including Toyota Motor Corp. TM -2.27% and Ford Motor Co. F -2.81% , which are working on full electrics but also expanding their U.S. hybrid offerings. The differing strategies show a division within the auto industry over what is the best path to full electrification, as manufacturers pivot from their more than century-old reliance on gas-powered vehicles.

Last week, Continental AG, one of the world’s biggest car-parts makers, said it would cut investment in conventional engine parts because of a faster-than-expected fall in demand—yet another sign the industry is accelerating the shift to electric vehicles.

...Still, pouring investment into both hybrids and electrics strains car-company finances, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said. “It’s time to pick a path and commit to it,” he said.

VW and GM are focused on all-electric cars largely because of China, where new regulations require car companies to sell a minimum number of zero-emissions vehicles to avoid financial penalties.

VW plans to use its electric-car expansion in China to build scale and drive down prices faster in the U.S., said Scott Keogh, VW’s U.S. chief.

“Our strong preference is to go all-in where the market is heading, as opposed to hybrids as a way to hedge our bets,” Mr. Keogh said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gm-volkswa ... 1565602200

[Howard]

I followed this up.

£490 pm for a two year lease with three month up front payment.

Interestingly these are the inc VAT figures even though I asked for a business quote therefore I can claim back 20% from these figures.

Looks good to me.

John

You might like to look at #teslaserviceissues to see if you will be happy with a Tesla.

Obviously all car manufacturers have some dissatisfied customers, but if you skim the problems recorded it does seem that Tesla are spreading themselves too thinly and are struggling to provide a decent level of after-sales service in European markets.

Their customers with problems do seem to struggle with, generally, not having a physical service centre reasonably close by. And Tesla are building a reputation for not answering the phone or emails.

regards

Howard

[BobbyD]

You might like to look at #teslaserviceissues to see if you will be happy with a Tesla.

The hatrick appears to be:

#TeslaServiceIssues
#teslaqualityissues
#TeslaPaintIssues

[redsturgeon]

Yes, that is the deal breaker at the moment. When I said it looks good, I was referring to the financials only. I have been reading and watching a lot of stuff lately and it is not overly encouraging. I do have the advantage of having three cars at my disposal so the delays would not be the end of the world, just annoying.

John

[odysseus2000]

I have no interest in leasing so I may be completely wrong here, but if you lease, does not the firm leasing the car have to provide a workable car for all the time of the lease?

E.g. if you lease a car and then it develops a fault which is going to take months to get repaired, is the leasing company not responsible for providing another motor whilst yours is not available? From an outside view it would seem that if you lease a car but can't use it and there is no loaner then the leasing company would be breaking its terms allowing the person leasing to hand back the keys and recover pro-rata costs from the point of when the car became unavailable.

Regards,

PS I have to congratulate some of the FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) writers for how much effort they are continuing to put into tarnishing Tesla with tales of faults and delays. They seem to have cooled on the water ingress with the windows open problem that they used for a while, also poor paint jobs are less common and have now returned to the old faithfuls FUD of how much stress owing a Tesla has caused, how much money lost due to early sales, no service, no returns of emails and calls etc.

[Howard]

I have no interest in leasing so I may be completely wrong here, but if you lease, does not the firm leasing the car have to provide a workable car for all the time of the lease?

E.g. if you lease a car and then it develops a fault which is going to take months to get repaired, is the leasing company not responsible for providing another motor whilst yours is not available? From an outside view it would seem that if you lease a car but can't use it and there is no loaner then the leasing company would be breaking its terms allowing the person leasing to hand back the keys and recover pro-rata costs from the point of when the car became unavailable.

Regards,

PS I have to congratulate some of the FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) writers for how much effort they are continuing to put into tarnishing Tesla with tales of faults and delays. They seem to have cooled on the water ingress with the windows open problem that they used for a while, also poor paint jobs are less common and have now returned to the old faithfuls FUD of how much stress owing a Tesla has caused, how much money lost due to early sales, no service, no returns of emails and calls etc.

Ody

I've leased a few cars and, as they were new, none of them have gone wrong. So all that I have had to do is to take them in for a service after two years of trouble-free motoring.

However, with a modern ICE car, it would be unusual for a dealer to have the car for longer than a day or two. As they are under warranty, one would be given a courtesy car by the dealer whilst the car is repaired. The lease company aren't involved.

I know you find this hard to believe, but most quality new cars don't go wrong. I can't remember having to take a car into a dealer for more than a day's repair for more than 20 years, actually probably 30 years! If one has a senior management position in a large company one can't be fussing around getting a temperamental car repaired. In the real world, most company car drivers expect 100% reliability.

Tesla don't cater for the majority of company car users in my view. Just look at their typical owners. We contributors to this forum are not typical. Most company car drivers don't have time to indulge in forums like this. Until they retire .

regards

Howard

[odysseus2000]

Ody

I've leased a few cars and, as they were new, none of them have gone wrong. So all that I have had to do is to take them in for a service after two years of trouble-free motoring.

However, with a modern ICE car, it would be unusual for a dealer to have the car for longer than a day or two. As they are under warranty, one would be given a courtesy car by the dealer whilst the car is repaired. The lease company aren't involved.

I know you find this hard to believe, but most quality new cars don't go wrong. I can't remember having to take a car into a dealer for more than a day's repair for more than 20 years, actually probably 30 years! If one has a senior management position in a large company one can't be fussing around getting a temperamental car repaired. In the real world, most company car drivers expect 100% reliability.

Tesla don't cater for the majority of company car users in my view. Just look at their typical owners. We contributors to this forum are not typical. Most company car drivers don't have time to indulge in forums like this. Until they retire .

regards

Howard

Yes, it is wonderful how reliable modern cars are.

However, I have known recent news cars fail with catastrophic engine faults with little more than delivery miles on them.

If someone time poor, e.g. some one in a senior management position, was to have this kind of bad luck and the leased car fail in some manner that would take a long time to repair, what would happen? From what you say, the car would go back to the dealer, the mechanics there would say it's had a serious failure and a loner car would be provided. If this didn't happen, what could the time poor person leasing the car do?

Regards,

[redsturgeon]

Leased cars by their very nature are new cars. Most new cars these days have at least a three year warranty from the manufacturer therefore they will take them back via their dealer network , fix them for free in that time period and IME provide a free loan car. I think one issue for Tesla is their lack of a dealer network.

I have not been as lucky as Howard I have had several failures of relatively new cars in the last ten years.

- A two year old Mercedes ML had a major failure of the electrics causing the heating to be on constantly. Fixed in a couple of days under warranty courtesy ML provided.

- A diesel VW (bought at one year old by me) had a turbo fail at 48k miles just outside warranty and was fixed with free parts supplied, three days in the garage (two hundred yards from my house).

- A Mini had the power steering fail, fixed in two days, courtesy car provided.

- Range Rover had a squeaky seat that was replaced under warranty with a loan car provided.

- My present BMW had the power steering fail and took a month to fix. Similar standard BMW provided for free from local car hire company for the month that it took to get the new parts. (estimated cost over £1000 for the loan car!)

Perhaps I have been unlucky but my experiences make me concerned by the reports that Tesla are below average for reliability and once a car fails then it may take a while for a response and a fix from them. I have little concern if I have an issue that is either fixed quickly or where I am provided with a similar replacement car while it is fixed. I have been lucky that this has generally been the case and each of the cars listed has only suffered one major issue rather than several.

All of the cars I have bought have a local main dealer within 15 miles from me, I believe the nearest Tesla showroom is 70 miles away this may be a problem.

Last point to note is that the only cars I have run in the past decade that have developed zero faults have been one Honda, one Ford, one VW Golf and one Lexus. Previously I had run at least half a dozen Golf GTis over twenty years and had never had a fault in any of them.

John

[dspp]

Friends of mine do, or have in the past, run Maseratis or Porsches or Ferraris. They mostly lived about a 125 miles or more from the corresponding brand's dealers & service centres (let's call that the same thing). It didn't seem to stop them buying them either new or fairly new, and they accepted the issues with getting them to the dealers for servicing & repairs. Indeed these tend to be a need for fairly frequent servicing, all-too-frequent repairs, and eye-watering bills. Oh, and they absolutely had to go to the dealer.

This is/was in the UK.

There are some relevant points in this:
- many brands do not have dealers at 25-mile intervals across the UK;
- many people live in areas where dealers are a very considerable distance away;
- the brands in question managed to remain desirable, despite a need for frequent servicing, eye-watering costs, and inconvenient but common need for repairs;
- and everyone seemed to think this was all perfectly reasonable.

I think some of you have a very metro-centric view of things, and a reluctance to acknowledge that quite a lot of the FUD you are throwing around is equally - if not more - applicable to legacy dino-juice auto than to Tesla EVs.

regards, dspp