Tesla delivers Model X electric SUV to take on luxury carmakers

[Zorro]

Source: Reuters

Tesla Motors delivered the first of its long-awaited Model X electric sports-utility vehicles on Tuesday, a product investors are counting on to make the pioneering company profitable after years of losses.

The launch of the Model X represents a milestone for the loss-making Silicon Valley automaker during a period of high spending and modest growth, because it can now boast a second model in production beyond its Model S sedan, launched in 2012.

"I think we got a little carried away with the X," Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk told reporters ahead of a launch event near the company's Fremont factory, where luxury Model Xs have been moving down the production line in recent weeks, nearly two years behind the company's original schedule.

Musk estimated that 25,000 customers had pre-ordered the crossover online or in its stores and that it would take 8-12 months for those ordering from now to receive the SUV.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/tesla-delivers-model-x-electric-suv-luxury-carmakers-041653315--finance.html

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I watched the rollout presentation. It's a very safe and sophisticated vehicle.

[uppityperson]

1. Article says "as high as "$144,000". I wonder what average is?

[RandySF]

4. I'm not so sure they are rolling this out to make sales

so much as trying to generate publicity.

[Kelvin Mace]

20. If memory serves,

it starts at $130K.

[nationalize the fed]

2. The Model X

is going to split whatever customer base there is for >$100,000 electric cars- there aren't that many of these people out there. Tesla will be lucky to make their numbers.

The falcon wing doors that Musk insisted on will be a nightmare and extremely expensive when the car is out of warranty. Plus the fact that the doors prevent any roof rack whatsoever. The door HANDLES that "present themselves" on a model S are chock full of problems and if it's out of warranty it's a $5,000 part. $5,000 for a door HANDLE.

Hopefully they've fixed the drive unit problems that are requiring a huge amount of replacements in the model S. Some people are on their fifth drive unit.

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/29834-Drive-Unit-Replacement-Poll
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/51595-Drive-unit-replacement-getting-better
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/49555-Statistical-poll-of-the-drive-unit-issue

[Zorro]

6. Where is the $5k door handle information found?

I call bullshit.

[snooper2]

16. Check video awesome doors :)

[jmowreader]

29. They LOOK awesome anyway...

A lot of people who buy SUVs want to carry bicycles, kayaks and other such things on the roof, which you can't do with those doors.

[rockfordfile]

7. Actually

Actually a lot of people want electric cars, but the price is a little high. Technology has to be given time.

The fossil fuel supporters are a problem to us moving forward.

[Kelvin Mace]

26. I am a bit skeptical of these claims

Consumer Reports has mentioned problems with the door handle, but not the drive unit. I find it highly unlikely that CR would rate it the #1 car two years in a row if it had this many problems.

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/05/video-the-tesla-model-s-is-our-top-scoring-car/index.htm?loginMethod=auto

In the most recent review it scored 100 and 98% of owners would buy it again.

[jmowreader]

3. Silly question here folks...

What happens if someone thinks this thing is a $144,000 Jeep, drives it through a creek, and gets water in the electrical part of the car?

[Kelvin Mace]

21. The batteries are sealed

and there are safety disconnects that engage if the vehicle is submerged. It is a far safer vehicle than a standard ICEv.

[ileus]

32. People don't drive jeep in creeks anymore....they run 40k now.

Not even the dumbest kid is gonna take mommys SUV on a trail.

[NNadir]

5. It is a mystery to me why people who are nominally liberal would worship a car that is...

...designed and made by a billionaire for his fellow billionaires and millionaires.

This has nothing to do with environmentalism. It's about consumerism. Electric cars aren't even clean, especially if electricity isn't clean, which in most places, it isn't.

[Zorro]

8. Is an electric car environmentally cleaner than a gasoline engine car?

[eggplant]

10. It depends on where you get your electricity from.

[NNadir]

14. This issue has been studied in China and the result have been published in...

...Environmental Science and Technology.

I covered this issue elsewhere, giving references within: Are Electric Cars Green? The External Cost of Lithium Batteries

In China, where most electricity is provided by coal, the fatalities associated with electric cars are higher than gasoline cars, but not diesels. This finding does not apply to electric scooters, the most widely used vehicles in China.

The car CULTure is NOT sustainable in any form, and in any case, the Tesla, even as electric cars go, is a meaningless affectation, again, for billionaires and millionaires.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

18. and for that tiny minority of Americans who don't live in Manhattan or Brooklyn

what do you suggest as an alternative to "car CULTure"?

[NNadir]

19. The car CULTure was constructed largely in the 1950's. Before it existed...

...billions of people lived and died without it.

The argument that there is no alternative is a statement that what has already happened is impossible. I hear this sort of thing a lot actually. It breaks my heart, Senator, it really breaks my heart.

It is though, rather hard to imagine a political figure with the courage to utter difficult truths. We live in a generation, after all, where millions of people have been killed for the insane proposition that life is impossible without oil even though people lived useful and productive lives for thousands of years without cars.

If you are here to argue that it is too inconvenient to save the planetary atmosphere because it is not simple and facile, well, your pretty typical of our unfortunate generation, which has been so self absorbed, so indifferent, so vapid as to destroy opportunity for all future generations.

Whenever I remind myself of this, I find it very, very, very, very hard to look a child in the eye.

I want to point something out: No legislature, no executive, in fact, no dictator will be able to pass a law decreeing that it should rain, or that the seas should never break their bounds. That won't happen.

It would take something called "imagination" to be able to read, and understand Jared Diamond's insightful yet very depressing book "Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail." It's about cultures that failed because they couldn't overcome their "need" to live in unsustainable ways, Easter Island, Norse Greenland, etc.

From my perspective, and I realize I have the luxury of being an environmental radical - I'm not asking for anyone to like me or vote for me - I think our society is choosing to fail.

We are choosing.

I have no idea what sort of Senator you are, where you live, how you vote, any of that. But if you are a senator, thanks for all the highways, the concrete, the asphalt and the gasoline. I have a wonderful life because of that stuff, but truth be told, I hope not to be remembered or thought of when all that stuff is ruins and waste as surely it will be, in the blink of a geological eye.

As Shakespeare put it so wonderfully in a play about, um, Senators, "The evil that men do lives after them."

For the record, I put out all of my feelings about energy elsewhere, in a diatribe too long to read: Current World Energy Demand, Ethical World Energy Demand, Depleted Uranium and the Centuries to Come

Have a nice day. Be sure to vote for some Tesla tax breaks. Our rich folks need them.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

30. We're talking about globally hundreds of trillions in sunk costs here

and a tripling of the world's population. This isn't a lack of imagination, there are some pretty severe logistical issues here. There is also the slight issue that outside of gentrified enclaves that are unaffordable to all but the most affluent most cities are still completely unlivable and were very much unlivable when people left.

Senator Walter Sobchak is a joke, an absolutely ridiculous concept.

I'm a piece of shit from Orange County who owns a riding lawnmower, votes a straight Democrat ticket - even when they're morons and has worked on several large Canadian energy projects.

And as a matter of fact, I almost bought a Tesla from a colleague moving overseas, but realizing I might be moving to France myself I couldn't pull the trigger.

[Kelvin Mace]

28. Do you have a source for

fatalities associated with electric cars being higher than gasoline cars?

Update: Ah, I see, you are referencing a paper from a blog post you wrote. While I agree with some of the points of the cited paper, comparing US energy production to China's is an apples and oranges kind of thing. Enforcement of enviro rules in China are practically non-existent. That is starting to change, but the average coal-fired plant in China is about WAY dirtier than the average US plant.

[NNadir]

31. Your source for the claim that "the average coal plant in China is WAY...

...dirtier than the average US plant" is what?

Does the US have a special place it keeps coal ash? The only factor evaluated in the cited paper was air pollution, but air pollution is only part of the external costs of coal.

In the blog post, the point about coal, by the way, was peripheral to the main argument, which was about lithium batteries and their external costs.

Air pollution is only one factor in the health consequences of the car CULTure. There are many others. The fact that electrical cars in greenhouse gas terms are equivalent to gasoline cars getting a modest 26 mpg applies I think in a lot of places, even if it wouldn't apply in my state, NJ, where 50% of our electricity is nuclear, although some of that capacity is soon to be supplanted by dangerous natural gas, making our electricity dirtier.

It is startling to me, really startling, how much passion this stupid car for billionaires and millionaires generates, this among people who nominally call themselves "liberals."

I wish we could generate as much enthusiasm for the fact that about two billion people on this planet lack decent sanitary facilities, but alas, that was not to be.

This car has a huge thermodynamic problem, since it involves the conversion of chemical energy (for the most part), dangerous coal and dangerous natural gas, into thermal energy, into mechanical energy, into electrical energy, transport of the electrical energy, re-conversion of the electrical energy back into chemical energy, conversion back to electrical energy, and finally into mechanical energy and heat.

This is, owing to the second law in a purely thermodynamic sense, nonsensical and obscene.

[Kelvin Mace]

27. Generally,

even if you are getting power from a coal plant (which are dying off), since the economies of scale make it cleaner from "excavation to motivation".

I am fortunate enough to have a solar array, so it is very clean and zero cost for "fuel".

[rockfordfile]

9. the same could be said

The same could be said for fossil fuel supporters. I could see a exception for classic cars.

[truthisfreedom]

13. Electricity is far cleaner than gas.

It's way more efficient. For example, to refine one gallon of gas requires 5kwh of electricity. Skip making the gas and put that electricity into a Tesla, and you can drive 20 miles and save 19 pounds of carbon from being released.

[Kelvin Mace]

23. 5kWh of electrcity cost

55 cents using the average national cost, or less than 3 cents a mile versus 8 cents a mile for the average gas car.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

17. All cars are made by millionaires and billionaires. What's your point?

I want an all-electric because I would save tons of money. The power is centralized, so fix the power plants and everything else is fixed by default.

[Kelvin Mace]

22. Musk's innovations

are driving the industry toward EVs, which are more energy efficient by a factor of 3-4.

[killbotfactory]

25. Not quite

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html

[Lychee2]

12. Here's a picture of it.

[packman]

15. It sucks to be poor - I got the Envy Blues

Would love to have one. I don't hold much to big mansion houses or big yachts, or even those 1/4 million dollar cars - but I sure would like to have one of those (you know, because it's electric).

[Kelvin Mace]

24. If you want an EV

check with your local CarMax or Nissan dealer and look for a used Nissan Leaf. They are going for $10-$15K with 30-40K miles. I picked up a 2012 SL (top of the line) with 9300 miles for $20,000 below its original list price. I drive it almost every day and it is a joy.

Need something with range beyond 60-80 miles? Look for a Chevy Volt which only has a 35 mile electric range, but has a gasoline generator on board which will kick in when the battery is exhausted and gives you a range of about 300 miles. 88% of Americans drive less than 35 miles a day.

[ileus]

33. But...but....SUVs are evil.