Photo: screenshot from YouTube
Even though work on the 10 million square feet Gigafactory hasn't commenced yet, Tesla wants to extend its operations with a new factory in Europe. According to Elon Musk, the European assembly plant will see the green light once Tesla sales in this part of the world reach 160,000 cars per year, which is a pretty ridiculous figure considering that only 7,535 Model S vehicles have been assembled from January 1st to April 30th of 2014.
As a further matter, the American EV constructor just marked its first ever profitable quarter and doesn't expect to sell more than 35,000 cars by the end of the year. Mind our frankness, but this is just the typically unrealistic Elon Musk jibber-jabber. The upcoming Model X crossover and the $35,000 smaller brother of the Model S are still light years away from entering mass production, while the Supercharger network is still in its infancy on European soil.
After personally handing over the keys to the first U.K. customers of the right-hand drive Tesla Model S just a week ago, Musk declared for the media that he plans to open a R&D center in the United Kingdom "either next year or the year after," and also expand the final assembly plant located in Tilburg, the Netherlands. Back in April, the Tesla CEO declared at a Beijing conference that his company will most likely build a local plant in China in the next three - four years. By doing so, Tesla will be able to go around the 25 percent import tax and sell cheaper cars on a competitive market with increasing demand for pure-electric drive luxury cars.
We remind you that the Palo Alto-based manufacturer currently builds only one car bearing the Model S nameplate at its Fremont, California plant. It's a four-door luxury sedan with an electric motor the size of a watermelon, but it can do the 0 to 60 mph run in just 4.2 seconds thanks to 416 horsepower and 443 lb-ft of instant torque available on the P85 variant. And theoretically, you can travel 265 carbon-free miles on a single charge, which is far better than other pure-electric models available nowadays. But whether the Model S will keep its crown as the best EV around, only time and how rival manufacturers will use Tesla's patents will tell.
As for the Model X electric SUV, Musk is adamant the new nameplate will be launched Stateside in the summer of 2015, while deliveries are expected to start by the end of the year. As for the yet unnamed baby Model S, the entry-level offering from Tesla is expected to be launched in three years time, sport a sticker price of around $35,000 and have 20 percent smaller dimensions than its bigger brother.
After personally handing over the keys to the first U.K. customers of the right-hand drive Tesla Model S just a week ago, Musk declared for the media that he plans to open a R&D center in the United Kingdom "either next year or the year after," and also expand the final assembly plant located in Tilburg, the Netherlands. Back in April, the Tesla CEO declared at a Beijing conference that his company will most likely build a local plant in China in the next three - four years. By doing so, Tesla will be able to go around the 25 percent import tax and sell cheaper cars on a competitive market with increasing demand for pure-electric drive luxury cars.
We remind you that the Palo Alto-based manufacturer currently builds only one car bearing the Model S nameplate at its Fremont, California plant. It's a four-door luxury sedan with an electric motor the size of a watermelon, but it can do the 0 to 60 mph run in just 4.2 seconds thanks to 416 horsepower and 443 lb-ft of instant torque available on the P85 variant. And theoretically, you can travel 265 carbon-free miles on a single charge, which is far better than other pure-electric models available nowadays. But whether the Model S will keep its crown as the best EV around, only time and how rival manufacturers will use Tesla's patents will tell.
As for the Model X electric SUV, Musk is adamant the new nameplate will be launched Stateside in the summer of 2015, while deliveries are expected to start by the end of the year. As for the yet unnamed baby Model S, the entry-level offering from Tesla is expected to be launched in three years time, sport a sticker price of around $35,000 and have 20 percent smaller dimensions than its bigger brother.
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