{"id":43312,"date":"2018-05-04T03:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T07:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=43312"},"modified":"2018-05-03T10:44:01","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T14:44:01","slug":"teslas-tipping-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/05\/04\/teslas-tipping-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla’s tipping point?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Tracinski<\/a> on the amazingly long run Elon Musk and crew have had in the electric car business without (yet) turning a profit:<\/p>\n

Elon Musk may finally be running out of other people\u2019s money. That\u2019s the upshot of a report<\/a> on how Tesla is burning so much cash it may run out by the end of the year. This is a company that has raised more than $5 billion from its investors so far, and it is still going to need many billions more \u2014 if it can get them. What is more interesting is how Tesla got to the point where it is still bleeding cash, just when it was finally supposed to be making good on its extravagant promises.<\/p>\n

The company has always been a triumph of PR hype and political messaging over reality. Why invest in Tesla? Why buy a Tesla? Because you\u2019re not just buying a car \u2014 you\u2019re participating in a social and technological revolution. You are the leading edge of the new era of electric cars and the obsolescence of the gasoline engine \u2014 which will literally save the planet<\/em>, or so the story goes.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just about global warming. You\u2019re also helping Elon Musk revolutionize the entire manufacturing process by building super-automated, hyper-roboticized factories. He\u2019s on the leading edge of the self-driving car revolution, already introducing a feature he calls \u201cAutopilot.\u201d If we don\u2019t manage to save this<\/em> planet, don\u2019t worry. By boosting Musk, you\u2019re helping him find us another planet to colonize<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In actuality, what has Tesla produced? A very nice car \u2014 for $100,000. There are a lot of very nice cars you can buy for $100,000, if you\u2019re the sort of person who thinks this is a reasonable amount of money to spend on a car, as opposed to a house. More to the point, there are a lot of very nice cars you can buy for $50,000. But Tesla has been able to charge an irrationally high premium<\/a> for sleek design, technological glamour, and what a Tesla-owning friend of mine describes as \u201chappy tree-hugger feelings.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Tracinski on the amazingly long run Elon Musk and crew have had in the electric car business without (yet) turning a profit: Elon Musk may finally be running out of other people\u2019s money. That\u2019s the upshot of a report on how Tesla is burning so much cash it may run out by the end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,15,13],"tags":[111,1006,51],"class_list":["post-43312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-technology","category-usa","tag-cars","tag-elonmusk","tag-pr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bgA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43313,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43312\/revisions\/43313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}