Tesla Nabs 8% of the U.S. Luxury Car Market

The federal government is not a bank.

If you need a loan, go to the bank.

Okay, without having the access to internal financial documents of the company let’s assume the profitability of the entire company right now relies on the tax credits. I personally disagree but let’s move ahead. I paid full sticker and sales tax for my model S and ordered every option. That’s $120k +. If it were $150k I would still buy it. Do you have any idea how many collector cars are registered in the US? Over 20 million! Why does that matter? Each one of those cars is owned by someone and the amount of buyers for cool cars even at $150k would blow you away. Of course the car has to blow you away too. The Tesla S does, that is well established. But what happens when this same technology is available for the masses at $30k? This dog hunts!

Think about it this way. Do you say the same thing about your phone? It was likely made in China and I could easily say, “Yeah, (insert your phone brand) makes money, but it is only because they are exploiting low wage workers.” You take advantage of anything available to succeed, if the government is offering financial assistance you use it while you are building the brand, infrastructure, and everything else a new company needs! Whose fault is it that the other companies need the credits and Tesla has an overage? In over 90 years no other company has ever been able to successfully start a new car company. The winner is always the end user, everyone should be cheering no matter what happens later.

Did you watch any videos yet? Type TED Elon Musk on YouTube and watch that one first. Now try to imagine a current automotive CEO laying his or her fortune on the line to make our world a better place. He isn’t doing it for the money!

The federal government is not a bank.

If you need a loan, go to the bank.
........
The usual argument is that federal money is best for basic research—that is reasearch that won’t yield results inside the 5 years or so that corporations generally work.

But in addition to that the most effective agency in the US government pound for pound is DARPA. They fund companies that create products that have DOD dept of defense applications. Their money lies at the base of a huge portion of the USA technological base.

Typically speculative private capital yields results in somewhere between 1 and 30 to 1 and 100 tries.

The feds decided to play this role in the renewable resources field. Most of the money was thrown away. but there have been few successes. about as much as you’d expect. If tesla succeeds and helps change the world— alas it will reflect well on government investments in R&D.

The real deal for the feds of course would be to invest in thorium lftr development. after all the feds developed working prototypes of the thorium lftr design at oak ridge labratory from 1966-70.

The developer of thorium lftr reactors Alvin Weinberg was the head of oak ridge labratories. he also held the patent on the original light water reactors.

He said the thorium lftr designs were orders of magnitude cheaper better safer than the light water designs. the thorium reactors were abandoned because they were not dual use. they could not be used to produce nuclear weapons.

Edward Teller, father of the H bomb —wrote his last paper on thorium reactors. For more info on this see http://www.amazon.com/kindle-store/dp/B0089Z7V6Y

I compare federal R&D investments to things like clearing rivers of debris and creating dikes for flood control.

There’s no cut and dried rules here. The feds paid a company to build the hoover dam. Today NASA is stepping back from building and running rockets and letting SpaceX and others compete for their business. (SpaceX is a company that Elon Musk built.Musk currently runs Tesla)

That said, I do understand there’s plenty who believe that private capital should take a lead role in all R&D. That the government should be strickly hands off.

The federal government is not a bank.

If you need a loan, go to the bank.
........
The usual argument is that federal money is best for basic research—that is reasearch that won’t yield results inside the 5 years or so that corporations generally work.

But in addition to that the most effective agency in the US government pound for pound is DARPA. They fund companies that create products that have DOD dept of defense applications. Their money lies at the base of a huge portion of the USA technological base.

Typically speculative private capital yields results in somewhere between 1 and 30 to 1 and 100 tries.

The feds decided to play this role in the renewable resources field. Most of the money was thrown away. but there have been few successes. about as much as you’d expect. If tesla succeeds and helps change the world— alas it will reflect well on government investments in R&D.

The real deal for the feds of course would be to invest in thorium lftr development. after all the feds developed working prototypes of the thorium lftr design at oak ridge labratory from 1966-70.

The developer of thorium lftr reactors Alvin Weinberg was the head of oak ridge labratories. he also held the patent on the original light water reactors.

He said the thorium lftr designs were orders of magnitude cheaper better safer than the light water designs. the thorium reactors were abandoned because they were not dual use. they could not be used to produce nuclear weapons.

Edward Teller, father of the H bomb —wrote his last paper on thorium reactors. For more info on this see http://www.amazon.com/kindle-store/dp/B0089Z7V6Y

I compare federal R&D investments to things like clearing rivers of debris and creating dikes for flood control.

There’s no cut and dried rules here. The feds paid a company to build the hoover dam. Today NASA is stepping back from building and running rockets and letting SpaceX and others compete for their business. (SpaceX is a company that Elon Musk built.Musk currently runs Tesla)

That said, I do understand there’s plenty who believe that private capital should take a lead role in all R&D. That the government should be strickly hands off.

What crap.

Nowhere in the article is the term "US luxury market" defined. I mean, that's sort of important.

This statistic smells ugly.

Tesla didn’t generate a profit by selling sexy cars, but rather by selling sleazy emissions “credits,” mandated by the state of California’s electric vehicle requirements. The competition, like Honda, doesn’t have a mass market plug-in to meet the mandate and therefore must buy the credits from Tesla, the only company that does. The bill for last quarter was $68 million. Absent this shakedown of potential car buyers, Tesla would have lost $57 million, or $11,400 per car. As the company sold 5,000 cars in the quarter, though, $13,600 per car was paid by other manufacturers, who are going to pass at least some of that cost on to buyers of their products. Folks in the new car market are likely paying a bit more than simply the direct tax subsidy.

How’s this going to work in the future? As long as the competition has to pay greenmail to Tesla, probably just fine. And with California gradually ratcheting up the electric-vehicle mandate, maybe just finer. No wonder the stock price doubled and Goldman shelled out.

April 2013 U.S. Luxury Car Sales Rankings By Model - Top 56 Best-Selling Luxury Car Sales In America - Every Luxury Car Ranked

http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2013/05/usa-luxury-car-sales-rankings-by-model-april-2013-ytd.html

How about 2.3%

What crap.

Nowhere in the article is the term “US luxury market” defined. I mean, that’s sort of important.

This statistic smells ugly.
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The title of the article is:

“Tesla Nabs 8% of the U.S. Luxury Car Market”

The first sentence of the article reads:

” the Electrification Coalition released a report last week stating that Tesla’s Model S made up 8.4% of the U.S. luxury automotive market in the first six months of the year.”
‘’’’’’’’’’’

I went to the Electrification Coalition site. Here’s what they say:
http://www.electrificationcoalition.org/media?type=50
http://www.electrificationcoalition.org/StateOfMarketPresser

“Tesla’s Model S has captured 8.4 percent of the luxury market in the first six months of 2013, and sold more units than several in-class competitors including the Audi A8, BMW 7-series, and Mercedes S class.”

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so yeah you’re right. They have not totally pinned down the definition of “US luxury market”. Could be the number is very narrowly defined.

However, the report was prepared in conjunction with PricewaterhouseCoopers—which limits the fudge factor.

“This was a key finding of a new Electrification Coalition (EC) report released today in consultation with PricewaterhouseCoopers.”

Likely if you went to the original report and PricewaterhouseCoopers or somewhere else — you could get the precise definition of Luxury Car Market. But I didn’t want to spend the time doing so.

Musk was a significant Obama contributor in 2012.
That disqualifies ANYBODY according to my grading system.

There you go.