Elon Musk admits Tesla's math was wrong

<i>Under the new deal, Tesla owners should be able to get their payments down to about $580 a month just factoring in gasoline savings alone, Tesla said.</i><p>Is he subtracting fuel savings from the car price? I recall there was an HN thread complaining about this but I can't find it...<p>Here's the calculator. They claim an "effective cost" of $579/month (default choices), which it seems means $917/month in actual payments, plus negative $261/month in fuel savings:<p><a href="http://www.teslamotors.com/true-cost-of-ownership" rel="nofollow">http://www.teslamotors.com/true-cost-of-ownership</a>

You know, there's a possibility that it would suck if investors got itchy and pulled out of TSLA after these news.<p>I mean, it would be <i>very</i> understandable, but from a game-theoretical point of view, there's the question of what you want to signal as an investor. If it's too costly to make mistakes, or worse, if you inadvertently signal it's fine to err <i>given the company doesn't ever admit it publicly</i>, then there's a variety of possible outcomes. The least worst is you end up with glorified, electrified, GM stock. The worst is, you end up with Enron. Which, incidentally, Wikipedia says was too "one of the most innovative companies" back then.<p>Of course, you probably already know that.

This is a bizarre article. Are we going to see "Verizon/AT&#38;Ts math is wrong" articles because they are marketing smartphones at a price tag of 0$?

Horrible mea culpa.<p>"We appreciate the feedback from a number of journalists and customers that the first version of our financing product wasn’t quite right,”<p>It wasn't that they were doing really complex calculations that they made an error on, they were being intentionally misleading. That is what they should be sorry for, not that the math was not "quite right"

"Honey, look, a Tesla is only going to cost us $580 per month"<p>"No dear, the actual payment is closer to $900"<p>"No. Look here, it says the effective payment is $580."<p>"Sure, sure. You still have to send them a check for $900."<p>"What? How do we get to $580 then."<p>"Well, they are saying an electric car is going to save you over $300 a month in fuel and proposing you take that into account."<p>"Wait a minute. I don't get it. That can't be true. Can I put the $300 per month in the bank and save-up for a nice vacation?"<p>"Nope. That money goes to Tesla. The real payment is about $900."<p>"That can't be right."<p>"Look, go to that neat cost-of-ownership calculator and set the annual mileage to zero. Let's pretend you are going to buy the car and put it in a museum, never to be driven. What's the monthly payment? About 900 right?"<p>"Let me see... Crap! That's bullshit."<p>"Yup."

I hate that someone called an enterprise "Tesla".<p>Knowing nothing about Elon Musk (well, at least now I know), my first thought when I saw that title was that Tesla (the man)'s math were wrong.

There has not been a very big media backlash like there was to the first $500/month story. The lack of media backlash may seem to validate the second announcement to consumers. Tesla is proving skilled at neutralizing bad press.

It doesn't matter really, he admitted his mistake and the price is still within the price range I would pay to take this world another step in what I consider to be the right direction.

Bit of a tongue in cheek question. Is the math for Falcon done in the same fashion? Yes, I'm a Skylon fan.

First they did it with the roadtrip range calculations and now this one. Credibility is hard earned easily lost you know.

And their solution is to extend the loan term so you pay the monthly payment longer than you possess the car!<p>I don't see what they hope to gain by lying about price to wealthy customers who presumably got their wealth through the application of something exceeding5th grade arithmetic

My first thought reading the headline was: "No way! Nikola Tesla can't have been wrong. He was a genius!"<p>Then, reading the article, I realized it was about a car manufacturer.