Tesla Motors Talk

#1
Anyone here have/will get a Tesla?

I currently have a Model 3 on order, hopefully it is being delivered in 2-3 weeks. I reserved the car over 2 years ago sight unseen and can't wait to finally get it.
 
#2
Anyone here have/will get a Tesla?

I currently have a Model 3 on order, hopefully it is being delivered in 2-3 weeks. I reserved the car over 2 years ago sight unseen and can't wait to finally get it.
The production has been delayed yet again.... Tesla is pushing orders back at least another 6 months
 
#4
Anyone here have/will get a Tesla?

I currently have a Model 3 on order, hopefully it is being delivered in 2-3 weeks. I reserved the car over 2 years ago sight unseen and can't wait to finally get it.
Had one.

Nice car. Fairly fast. Had this massive screen in the dash that was quite cool.

Full charge gave about 200 miles, depending. Made me nervous because I used to forget to charge the thing. Watching the available miles whittle down was quite unnerving.

Not too many charging stations at that time.

V
 
#9
Not a lot of positive outlook here for a company that has almost half a million people putting down money for one in advance. Any other auto manufacturer have anything close?
 

Slinky Bender

The All Powerful Moderator
#10
Tesla is selling about 100,000 cars per year. Market cap $47.41 billion.

Toyota is selling about 10 million cars per year. Market cap $194.59 billion.
 
#11
Tesla is selling about 100,000 cars per year. Market cap $47.41 billion.

Toyota is selling about 10 million cars per year. Market cap $194.59 billion.
Can't really compare that way IMO. Your leaving out Self Driving Tech, Solar Panels, Battery Storage, Utility scale power solutions (Southern Cali, Australia, Islands of Hawaii), Semi Truck etc. Current Market Cap is based on where investors are expecting the company to go not where it is currently at. Toyota has invested heavily into Hydrogen Cars and it really hasn't panned out so far.
 
#12
At $285 a share it's hardly worthless. But it's always been a momentum trade anyway, and it's definitely lost its momentum.
Back in the day we didn't call momentum trading by that name; we used to call such trading as "the game of the greater fool" (from the greater fool theory). Great method of making money as long as you know to get out just before the music stops.
 

Slinky Bender

The All Powerful Moderator
#13
Can't really compare that way IMO. Your leaving out Self Driving Tech, Solar Panels, Battery Storage, Utility scale power solutions (Southern Cali, Australia, Islands of Hawaii), Semi Truck etc. Current Market Cap is based on where investors are expecting the company to go not where it is currently at. Toyota has invested heavily into Hydrogen Cars and it really hasn't panned out so far.
Fine, so what actual metric would you like to use (aside from "smoke and mirrors")?
Revenue?
Tesla 2017 revenue $12 billion.
Toyota $250 billion.
Profit?
You can't even go by that because Tesla's is a negative number.

"Tesla reported $3.3 billion in revenue, which was expected, but also posted a $771 million quarterly loss — its largest quarterly loss ever."
So it seems that any talk of them doing better as the company does more sales is BS since as sales volume grows, so do their losses.
(Insert joke about Jewish businessman who claims his secret of success is selling everything below cost and when asked how he makes money proclaims "volume!').
 
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#14
Ah, but the market never looks back. Just look at Amazon. Hasn't shown a profit in 20+ years, but the stock just keeps going up and up. (Personally, I kept thinking the party would have to end at some point - like it maybe has with Tesla - and the stock would come crashing down. Now I'm starting to think that Bezos is just cooking the books, and when he sees, or thinks he sees, the street turn on him, he'll start showing massive profits and just refuel the rally).
 
#15
Ah, but the market never looks back. Just look at Amazon. Hasn't shown a profit in 20+ years, but the stock just keeps going up and up. (Personally, I kept thinking the party would have to end at some point - like it maybe has with Tesla - and the stock would come crashing down. Now I'm starting to think that Bezos is just cooking the books, and when he sees, or thinks he sees, the street turn on him, he'll start showing massive profits and just refuel the rally).
And it makes sense to wait until he sees, or thinks he sees, the street turn on him, he'll start showing massive profits and just refuel the rally as opposed to showing the profits now?
 
#16
And it makes sense to wait until he sees, or thinks he sees, the street turn on him, he'll start showing massive profits and just refuel the rally as opposed to showing the profits now?
Sure. The longer he waits, the more money he'll have to show later as profits. He clearly doesn't need to show any now. The stocks up 70% in the past year without showing any profit at all.
 
#17
Fine, so what actual metric would you like to use (aside from "smoke and mirrors")?
Revenue?
Tesla 2017 revenue $12 billion.
Toyota $250 billion.
Profit?
You can't even go by that because Tesla's is a negative number.

"Tesla reported $3.3 billion in revenue, which was expected, but also posted a $771 million quarterly loss — its largest quarterly loss ever."
So it seems that any talk of them doing better as the company does more sales is BS since as sales volume grows, so do their losses.
(Insert joke about Jewish businessman who claims his secret of success is selling everything below cost and when asked how he makes money proclaims "volume!').
A big part of an automotive design is tooling cost. For a new design this can be on the order of 200-300M (for one new model with no common parts from other older models). This is not a problem for auto manufacturers who may make 1M cars of a certain model whose style changes are minimal over a 5 year typical model style; it is a serious obstacle to market entry for a new manufacturer. Also, an established manufacturer, of which Tesla is not, can partner with his vendors such that the vendor will eat his own tooling costs based on a multiyear contract ( obviously the tooling costs will be amortized as a higher price to the part).

Assuming (and a very big assumption in this case) that the variable costs (labor, raw material, facility operating costs ) are significantly below the vehicle sales cost there is a number of vehicles where the profit rapidly increases.

Tesla is making a very big bet and both the investors and purchasers (hoping that the company will be around for product support).

This is not the type of investment that someone at or near retirement should be putting into his retirement nest egg.
 

Slinky Bender

The All Powerful Moderator
#18
I agree and you see this with small specialty car companies that are around for a few years and then disappear like Bricklin, DeLorean, Etc. where not too many years later purchasers of such vehicles could not find replacement parts. If Tesla goes out of business, what is the expected life going to be for their cars (especially since "repairs" are almost exclusively Parts Replacements as opposed to actual "repairs")?
 

justme

homo economicus
#19
He should have kept making small production status vehicles and licensed the technology/brand to an experienced automaker for a mass-produced offering. But the disrupt hubris is strong in techland.
 
#20
He should have kept making small production status vehicles and licensed the technology/brand to an experienced automaker for a mass-produced offering. But the disrupt hubris is strong in techland.
I believe Elon offer those patents with out a royalty but no auto maker wanted anything to do with it.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
That is from June 2014

Small excerpt as to why they open sourced

"At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales."
 
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