santoshalper
Santos L. Halper
santoshalper

Exactly. I’ve never understood Erik’s argument that ‘regulatory credit sales don’t count’. If GM had a valuable by-product of building and selling their corvettes that contributed to their profits, Jalopnik wouldn’t discount that. Sales are sales, whether they’re cars, services, or ZEV credits. Tesla’s vehicle profit

Well, the 2023 $25k vehicle they announced last month might have a solid roof and be a small car to get to that price point, but I wouldn’t count on tons of buttons in it...

I’m still holding out hope that Tesla’s german design team will make a hatch/wagon version of the model 3 that could be shipped globally.  That’d make for a more compelling option than the model Y, in my opinion.  It’d still probably have 4 doors, though.

It doesn’t seem likely to make them money. With 200+kWh on-board, it’s going to be hugely expensive to manufacture. Plus, at those prices, they’ll probably fewer than 10k a year, so not a big volume vehicle.

At this point, it seems like this is more likely to be one of the last non-SUV mustangs...

Especially when GM’s electric Hummer is on the market.  I feel like GM will have the electric-brick-on-wheels market pretty well covered.

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Yeah. Har Mar Superstar is a trip, and really fun to see live. Also, fun fact: He did the theme song for the revival of MST3K. Super cheesy fun.

Specific cost estimates vary widely, but it’s certainly possible with a fully-developed autonomous service like Uber, Tesla and Waymo are pursuing. Even with a high up-front cost, the benefits of high vehicle utilization and minimized human costs (no drivers, but a small staff for oversight, maintenance, cleaning,

Would you continue to feel that way if it costs $2-3/mile with a driver vs. $0.50/mile autonomous?  That’s a real decision that many people will be making at some point.  

No mention of H2 infrastructure?  No mention of lowering the cost per kg of H2?  I don’t see how this gets off the ground anywhere other than California without at least having a feasible plan for building out the fueling...

Yeah, who needs R&D? It’s not like there’s any fundamental changes coming in the next decade to how cars are made or powered, right?

The best part is no part.  The best roof is no roof...

Looks and sounds I’ll give you, but... LUXURY!?  We must have wildly different definitions of luxury...

Exactly. VW is smart to start offloading some of their supercar holdings before relative performance bargains like the Lucid Air and Tesla Model S Plaid are on the market stomping all over Lamborghinis in drag races (let alone the Roadster when that is available). Obviously straight-line performance isn’t everything,

I don’t think GM’s credits are ‘reset’ in any case, but Nikola would in theory have their own separate opportunity for credits (so, Nikola vehicles would need to be sold to get them) as long as it’s a separate company. In theory they could just give those credits to GM for free if they actually sell vehicles.

Nikola is much more of a liability than an asset at this point. They’re rapidly running out of cash, seem to have stopped work on their factory, are under SEC investigation, DoJ investigation, 3 separate class-action lawsuits from defrauded investors, apparently have no viable IP, are seemingly going to lose their

Yeah, Sure, but look how good the panel gaps are!

Yup, plus they’re only claiming “520+ miles” for now to get a one-up on Lucid’s 517mile claim. My guess is they’re sandbagging based on the new battery performance they discussed and it’ll be quite a bit more than 520 miles when it’s actually released.

Yeah, they’d be aiming for the Mazda 3 and CX-3 rather than the miata, most likely.