My Infiniti payment is something like ~$550/month. To go to a Model S would only cost me ~$800 more per month, which is 5 hours of my time from a billable perspective.
Yes, the payment is higher, but I'd have no fuel expenses (currently ~$350/month), so technically its only $450 more a month (3 hours of my time).
If you went with the 60 kWh Model S, your payment would only go up $130, INCLUDING gas. If you're spending $350 a month in gas, you'd actually save money over your Infinity.
That just indicates that you make enough money to buy a more expensive car, not that the Tesla is not significantly more expensive (i.e., about double what you are paying).
That's entirely fair. I didn't look at it that way.
What do we consider affordable? I haven't had the time to do this, but you could take US Census data (average/median income per zip code), derive a formula for percentrage of income someone can spend on transportation, and thereby determine what affordable is.
A Model S is definitely a luxury item at this time; on the other hand, if it was self-driving, and could roll into bays to recharge all in software, with access being on-demand (Uber, with no drivers), they wouldn't be expensive. It would be the same as a company buying airplanes and selling seats on said expensive aircraft.
Maybe we're looking at Tesla wrong. They're not selling luxury cars; they're bootstrapping a mobility company by selling to the wealthy.
It's the best strategy also because it makes sense to them to produce a car that has a controlled demand, since they're essentially limited by battery production. It also showcases the quality of the brand, associating it with reliability and luxury -- and it's a sedan, which has a smaller power requirement than other luxurious classes.
Yes, but you're assuming those affordable cars are for purchase. If Elon can make them self-driving, you get the benefit of never having all the expenses that go with vehicle ownership, and he makes the spread between an expensive electric transportation appliance and people paying dirt cheap rates to get from A->B (because electric is so much cheaper per mile than petroleum).
