I think he may have just tanked his chances. People buying cars in that price range 1) expect to have mechanical service available for the foreseeable future, and 2) don't like to be associated with losers. You don't want to drop $90k on a cool new car and then six months later have your friends roll their eyes or pity you when you roll up at the party.
"Wired.com: At the end of the day you're still zero for three; you have so far failed to put a rocket into orbit.
Musk: We haven't gotten into orbit, true, but we've made considerable progress. If it's an all-or-nothing proposition then we've failed. But it's not all or nothing. We must get to orbit eventually, and we will. It might take us one, two or three more tries, but we will. We will make it work.
Wired.com: How do you maintain your optimism?
Musk: Do I sound optimistic?
Wired.com: Yeah, you always do.
Musk: Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work."
Considering the next 2 launches where successful I think he had reasonable expectations at the time. As CEO your in a strange place of needing to be advertise and create a positive image without creating unrealistic expectations so people trust what you say in six months.
It seems like an odd interview to give; almost more like a rallying call to staff than a marketing pitch to the public. But whenever I've seen an interview with Elon Musk, he's always been extremely honest. Maybe he's not thinking this through as a marketing pitch and just being honest about the challenges ahead?
Until you need a replacement part, and they're out of production...
For a discontinued car (or, a car made by a defunct company) to still be drivable, there needs to be a sufficiently large community of enthusiasts around it that have figured out how to fabricate the parts that are no longer available.
Now, this has certainly happened. Lots of cars from the 1920s and on are still on the road, and a cottage industry has sprung up around keeping them running. However, the defining feature of these cars is that a substantial amount were sold.
Getting parts made in the future for a very unusual and technologically advanced car like a Tesla if the company is no longer around is going to be very expensive indeed. It will cross from being a daily driver to being a project car, and the owner will need to be very dedicated to the project.
3D printers sure look like they could help with this problem in the future. Heck I'd love for mandatory escrow of every component's 3D models with an agency which has the power to release them into public domain upon certain conditions (car company fails, component no longer available from any manufacturer, class action successful, X years have passed, etc)
If 3d printers today could do suspension parts, do you really think that the lack of 3d models would mean that they'd be useless for restoring old cars?
As I pointed out, 3D models help with a minor problem, a problem that has other solutions. They can't make much difference.
I think this is Elon Musk defining a "problem" which he knows he can solve successfully. By defining the problem as "can we sell 20k cars/year", he'll be able to point in 6 months that "yes, we did sell 20k cars, and in only 6 months".
The big open question (which Tesla doesn't want to set as the benchmark for success) is selling a mass-market car (the next one). I'm confident Tesla can do a 50-100k unit/yr high end product ($40-100k) on its own, eventually, but building a $20k car and shipping hundreds of thousands is a different matter.
