Saleen Automotive, Inc. (fka SLNN)

[FredVestor]

The Tesla Model S is not like any other car, ICE or EV. They don’t work on an annual model basis, meaning they don’t have a 2013 model. 2014 model etc. other than the actual date it was produced. The Model S evolves with the company. Tesla has been doing a lot of R&D on the Model X and since it is being built on the same platform as the Model S, they have been implementing all the improvements to the Model S also. They don’t announce it to anyone when they upgrade something like that. Saleen would have to adjust every time Tesla decides to do something like that. They can’t just adjust their design with each new annual model like with the Mustangs.

Elon Musk said during last week conference call that the Model S has gradually dropped several hundred pounds since the first production models. The Model S that Saleen is currently allegedly tuning right now would most likely be different than a Model S a customer would bring to Saleen to modify in a few months. They would have to adjust to something.

Tesla is also famous for providing OTA software updates for free to all of his customers. Would Saleen be able to guarantee to its customers that all updates provided by Tesla would be compatible with the “Saleen Tesla Model S”? I doubt that. A lot of the features added after delivery would affect changes that Saleen would make to their customer car:

- Hill Start Assist
- Smart Air Suspension
- Superchargers and visited chargers
- Battery Meter and Cold Weather
- Improved Range Calculations
- Update for less battery loss during sleep mode
- Adds support for new Ionizer hardware

These are just some added features from versions between 5.5 and 5.12. What happen when Tesla releases the version 6.0? Will Saleen need to redo their “software tuning” to adjust?

In my opinion, Saleen is using their “Tesla project” purely for marketing purposes and they don’t intend to release a decent product or maybe even no product at all.