Beyond the drama of Elon Musk, Tesla's cars are exciting drivers



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If you read a story about Tesla, you are probably ingesting the level of drama that you normally expect from a RuPaul dredging race. That's what happens when you combine a high-level electric car manufacturer, a Harvey Dent-ish stock price, and a CEO with a taste for incendiary tweets. But as Tesla accelerates the production of Model 3 and continues to roll out Model S and Model X sedans, more and more of its cars end up in the hands of customers. Customers who put hundreds of thousands of kilometers on their odometers, stretch their batteries to full capacity, and hit the touch screens and slam the doors again and again and again.

And that means the rest of us is more clear picture of how these vehicles are standing in the real world, and how they are doing when you wipe off the hype that comes with the Tesla logo Front. And for the car manufacturer of Elon Musk, some recent (if anecdotal) results look pretty good. Here is a quick overview.

Earlier this month, German car rental company Nextmove set a new range record in a 3 model, covering 622 miles on a single charge, more than twice the promised figure. OK, so they did it on a track, averaging just 22 mph, and with the autopilot system of the car that works the steering and the pedals. (They sat a dummy in the car for the 28-hour slog.) But the utterly unrealistic feat points out that the Model 3 is an impressive impressive machine that has clocked about four miles per kWh of battery in the WIRED test. Hypermiling might not mean much in the real world, but as more electric vehicles enter the market, buyers will start paying more attention to efficiency. So, it's a good look for Tesla.

Building the Right

Happy customers do not do you much good if you can not make money by putting them in cars. Tesla's chances of doing so appeared grim in April, when badyst Munro & Associates said that Model 3 was so expensive to build, that Tesla could not sell them for profit (she also reported a terrible build quality). This week, however, the company reversed its findings. After completing his dismantling of the vehicle, he found that Tesla could make about 30% profit on each vehicle, better than any other electric car. "I have to eat raven," Munro told Autoline Network

Munro called Tesla's efforts to simplify the car's electronic bay a "symphony of engineering" that reduces costs and simplifies the construction of the car. It also points to the mirror. On model 3, he estimates the cost at $ 29. On the BMW electric i3, it's $ 93 because there is on-board electronics for sensors, or garage door openers – which are ordered on the central screen in the model 3). For a Chevrolet Bolt, it's $ 164 because there is a rear view camera in the rearview mirror. "This kind of thing happens quite often in the Tesla, they did a very good integration of the systems," Munro said.

This is the second dismantling company to say that Tesla can make real money on the model 3. It costs about $ 28,000 to build (unsurprisingly, Elon Musk took to Twitter to call it "the best badysis of model 3 so far"). The cheapest version on sale is now $ 49,000, but Tesla still promises a $ 35,000 version, with a smaller battery, will be available in six to nine months.

Staying Alive

Potential buyers of electric cars worry often will hold over time. Electric vehicles have not been long enough, enough of them, to convince them one way or the other. And even though they have simpler powertrains that reduce maintenance costs compared to internal combustion engines, they also carry huge battery packs that can make the uninitiated nervous . The company, which offers routes between cities in southern California and Nevada, issued a ticket this week saying its model S 90D had exceeded 400,000 miles and carried thousands of pbadengers. Tesloop says the seats and the interior have stood up well.

It took twice to replace the battery. Once at 194,000 miles, when a "chemistry problem" led him to display the wrong range, and again at 324,000 miles, for an unspecified fault spotted by a service center. All replacements were made free of charge, under warranty. And another of his cars ran 300,000 miles on his original battery and saw the degradation (or loss of range) of about 10 percent – not too bad for so many miles. Tesloop says its calculations show that the S model costs $ 0.05 per mile in maintenance, but that a similar gasoline car like Lincoln Town Car or Mercedes GLS would have cost up to $ 0.25 per mile .

Tesla is still facing a difficult battle A profitable venture, which according to Elon Musk is a priority for the rest of 2018. But in the midst of a difficult year, Tesla can relax knowing that at the unless some of his customers dig their cars. Until the next crisis comes, anyway.


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