Hacker News Reader

Comment by tdees40 | Hacker News Reader

Tesla' market cap is $30B. GM is $53B. Ford is $61B. If you're buying Tesla, you have to believe that they will become a huge player, and soon. They can't just be bigger, they have to be huge or else you're radically overpaying for a niche producer.

View on HN

Don't forget batteries. Rolls-Royce did well with jet engines, probably better than cars.

Agreed and don't forget licensing. OK so TSLA makes squeeky sunroofs, who cares, they can sell batteries and controllers and motors to ... construction crane companies or something. You know all the weird details of making a tow truck, cool, here's the parts to make it electric.

Happens all the time in the automotive industry. The first "american" hatchback car I ever drove had a nice VW engine. Ironically it was something to do with low emissions.

Well, Tesla buys their batteries from Panasonic. And the motor is a standard induction motor, not very different from what the actual (Nikolai) Tesla invented back in 1887. I agree that their control system is going to be fairly complicated, since induction motors require the AC frequency to be a function of the torque as well as the RPM.

But then most applications outside "quick 0-60 pure electric car" use brushless DC motors instead, where the controllers are simpler. Even the insane McLaren P1 hybrid, which eats Teslas for breakfast, uses a brushless DC motor. So I'm not sure there is as much of a market for Tesla's expertise as you'd think.

There are standard components, and then there's the work done to make and certify them as EV-ready. Tesla currently sells components to Daimler-Benz and Toyota.

I had no idea Tesla but the batteries from Panasonic, I thought the entire point of Tesla is that they build them in house? And what about the Gigafactory?

If it's all truly Panasonic's tech, I am surprised so many people put their money into Tesla.

Panasonic is a major investor and partner in the Gigafactory. They're also providing the initial cell manufacturing technology and over a hundred Panasonic employees will be on site helping with the setup.

With that thought, I wonder if GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi, etc will move into the market of creating electric motors for automotive use. They all have a lot of experience in electric motors.

Except it is Panasonic who makes Tesla's cells. The "batteries" can't really be used for much else because they're so customized to the car.

http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/15/07/980x490/landscape_142375080...

Tesla Home isn't doing too hot, as far as I can tell. Even SolarCity isn't recommending it to anybody... and SolarCity is Elon's baby as well!

Panasonic may make the general-purpose cells, but that doesn't mean that Tesla can't add value by making them more suitable for the EV market. In fact, it does sell components to other car companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors#Technology

Aren't the cells just 18650s?

I want to play the game where we can make a fortune on high-growth stocks without any risk.

Become a bank and issue IPO's :)

Well, be huge, or be smaller and maintain huge margins. That's also an avenue.

Exactly... it isn't that GM-style revenues are priced into the stock it is that much greater than GM-style margins are priced in.

Whether they will achieve that is a different (and still open) question.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com