Posted on 04/20/2016 8:31:48 AM PDT by bananaman22
The unveiling of Tesla’s Model 3 electric car was no less than the lifting of the final curtain on a game-changing energy revolution. And if we follow that revolution to its core, we arrive at lithium—our new gasoline for which the feeding frenzy has only just begun.
Unveiled just on 31 March and already with 325,000 orders, it seems that the market, too, understands that the Model 3 is more than just another electric vehicle. In one week alone, Tesla has racked up around $14 billion in implied future sales, making it the “biggest one-week launch of any product ever.” (And if you think the “implied future sales” negates the news, think again: Each order requires a $1,000 refundable deposit.)
It will change the world because it is the first hard indication that the tech-driven energy revolution is not only pending, it’s arrived. The Model 3 and its stunning one-week sales success—apparently achieved without advertising or paid endorsements--brings the electric car definitively into the mainstream, and there is no turning back now. Competitors will step up their game and the electric vehicle rush will be in full throttle—so will the war to stake out new lithium deposits.
(Excerpt) Read more at oilprice.com ...
Recharge time is more important than range. When they get the time to charge the same as the time to fill a 20 gallon tank then call me.
Hmmmm...research lithium futures.
Lithium is rare but not as rare as cobalt. Lithium cobaltite is the anode in these batteries and the cobalt is the major raw material cost. Cobalt comes mostly from the Congo and its price is determined by cartels. The “new” lithium mineral sources in Nevada will not lower the lithium cost because recovering the lithium values from these ores is energy intensive, i.e. calcining, making the brine sources such as Chile and Argentina much cheaper. But again, no one especially Elon Musk ever talks about cobalt cost.
No offense you do not want fractional ownership of a vehicle you depend on and don’t want others bodily fluids all over.
Have you seen the uv light tests in hotel rooms? Hotel rooms are the fractional ownership flagship example. Their “cleaning staffs” are why things do not get actually clean.
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Yet people still rent hotel rooms and cars as well as buy fractions of jets.
If you soil a car, you hit a button to drive itself to the detailer. If you get a car that’s soiled, you send it automatically to the detailer and another car shows up. Nothing’s perfect. If fractional ownership isn’t for you, there will be other options available.
For me its all about price. Get it as low as a regular car, and I am in. Assuming decent range (200 miles). See, I dont need super range or super fast chargine, thats what my OTHER car (gas guzzlin truck) will be for. The vast majority of my driving is less than 100 miles per day, and an overnight recharge does the trick. So I say bring em on.
The head of Tesla, Elon Musk, _hates_ the negotiation model. Like most products, he just wants customers to visit a web page, see the price, and order. Like Apple, a showroom may be available but most real sales are “build to order”. He’s actually extended this beyond Tesla (as we discussed): occurred to me to tell you he’s doing the same with SpaceX.com - you can literally go to a website, see the sticker price for launching rockets into orbit, and order a launch via email ... that the price is in the tens of millions of $ doesn’t faze him. No more protracted negotiation designed to squeeze the customer by sheer exhaustion & ignorance & misdirection.
See SpaceX.com
Understood.
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