Weekend Economists: Spock Lives! March 6-8, 2015

[Demeter]

57. Will Tesla Ever Make Money?

because, you know, that's the IMPORTANT THING!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/as-tesla-gears-up-for-suv-investors-ask-where-the-profits-are

Chris Ziegler presses the pedal of his Tesla Model S. It surges forward silently and instantly -- unlike gas-powered cars that roar and gulp for air before accelerating. Driving in the hills north of Los Angeles, he whips through hairpin turns without worrying about flipping over. Thirteen hundred pounds of batteries under the floorboard make that nearly impossible.

Ziegler loves everything about his all-electric, $107,000 Tesla, including that he recharges its batteries using solar panels in the trees above his house. That lessens his contribution to climate change and his dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf -- which Ziegler patrolled as a Navy gunnery operator in 1983.

“I’m stunned major automakers haven’t fired back with a product to compete with Tesla,” says Ziegler, 49, a real estate project manager in the L.A. suburb of Monrovia. The license plate on his Model S reads “Waat Gas,” Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its April issue.

Ziegler is so convinced the Tesla is the car of the future that he and his wife, Barbara, a sales executive for an institutional investment firm, sank 90 percent of their liquid assets in its shares beginning in 2010, when the stock sold for $16. Barbara also earned hundreds of thousands of dollars trading options against investors who thought Tesla would fail, she says...