Tesla's stock just hit a record $420
cnn.com
cnn.com
Weed jokes aside, the market has finally caught up to the fact that Tesla is years ahead of their competitors. I bought my Model 3 18 months ago and it felt like buying a car from the future. I think my feeling was correct.
2019 saw a number of serious competitors (Audi, MB, VW, Porche) release their first EVs and they've all been somewhat disappointing. Very solid first releases taken in isolation, but the market expectations were that the "Big Boys" were coming in and were going to wipe the floor with Tesla. Turns out they couldn't, Tesla's head start is real and consequential.
If you go out and actually try to put down $40-50k on a car and judge all EVs on a collection of attributes (range, efficiency, safety, charging options, tech, etc) Tesla clearly stands out. It's tough to convince yourself to put down a nearly-equivalent amount of hard-earned money for another brand, so it is no coincidence that they outsell other EVs by a very wide margin.
Incorrect. The stock value is being pushed up by:
1. Unexpected quarterly profits in October;
2. Tesla planning to open a new factory in China and securing a 1.4 Billion dollar loan to do so;
3. Apparent strong interest in the Cybertruck and the impending announcement of the Model Y;
4. USA and China are easing the trade war, which is pushing the whole stock market up (there have been "records" left and right in the past few days).
But the big one is number 2. Tesla moving into China means that they can tap into the humongous Chinese market.
For example, they've been guiding Q3 and Q4 profitablity since ~Q2 or earlier. They started building the Shanghai factory in Q1, the Model Y was announced in March, the Truck's been talked up since forever, etc.
What's really changed is that the Taycan is no longer a mystery, but a real car with a real price tag and real range. The ID.3 is almost-real and struggling with software issues. The E-Tron, new Leaf, new Bolt, etc have real sales figures. When these were unknowns, you could be reasonably skeptical of Tesla's claims, but that's increasingly untenable.
Or, as the great Silicon Valley philosothoughtleader Russ Hanneman said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo
The Model Y was announced in mid-March, to generally negative reviews/market reaction.
Middle of Nowhere, France, 11 AM. My Uber arrives, a cool Model 3, "huh, great!" I thought, "I'm gonna pry this guy's brain for info on EV's."
Sure thing the driver was a talker and over the course of the next 20 minutes proceeded to tell me all the good and bad, in his opinion — it was his 3rd or 4th EV.
Tesla is "out of this world" — his words. "And you know why? Because they have the best free charging network, period, others are not even comparable". Remember, we're in the middle of nowhere in a rural town. He points to me a couple gas stations on the map nearby: "I can charge there, super fast, no problem. But with any other brand, the German, the French, the Japanese? It's a mess. Nothing before 30-40 miles at least, can only charge during work hours, that sort of... problems. And Tesla's (sorta) free and has much more range to top it all."
Consider that we're talking infrastructure, Tesla being better than the French and German brands in France of all countries, about 200 km from the German border!
So, there's that. The headstart and pragmatism of Tesla, even far away from homeland, USA is big and consequential — it'll take years for others to catch up, and they're not heading this way as they all rely on different standards (NIH syndrome) and bodies like the EU haven't catched up on regulation yet (like they did e.g. for phone chargers normalized to micro-USB, now USB-C).
I know it's anecdotal, but for a professional driver it was pretty clear that Tesla is just about unchallenged in EV.
How stupid does it sound if I said I needed to find a Ford gas station to fill up my car?
The whole thing sounded mind-boggling, really. Anecdotally, my partner is seeking to buy a new car for a 1h commute so I wanted to get her a small EV — but the charging options make it totally impossible (short of getting a Tesla but that's way above our budget for this 2nd, smaller car). Consider that we live in France 30 km away from Luxembourg, a major financial/tech/political hub in the EU. What gives? I honestly don't get it.
If Tesla ever makes a sub-20K €/$ small EV suited for hourly commutes, they can just take my money.
That's probably because these Japanese brands use CHAdeMO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHAdeMO), while everyone else uses Combo 2.
Can't you get a charger installed where you live and charge overnight?
And none are manufacturer exclusive and virtually every gasoline powered vehicle made runs just fine on regular unleaded.
I think newer cars have knock sensors, which just means you're engine will run rich and burn way more gas than you need to in order to protect the engine but I wouldn't risk it. If you can afford a sports car you should be able to afford the premium gas to go along with it.
I have run into very rural stations with only 87 and a bottle of octane booster behind the counter.
EVs are never going to get widespread adoption until old apartments start getting torn down and replaced with new-construction apartments that have charging at every spot as a quick Google query shows something like 39 million people in the United States live in apartments with one article claiming:
>Apartment rentals will make up 27 percent of all new housing units built in 2018 and 2019. [1]
And the simple fact is, apartment owners are cheap. They generally use the cheapest appliances, the cheapest carpet, the cheapest fixtures... you think they're going to start shelling out even 1-2k$ per parking spot? Even if they added a surcharge of a few cents a kWh it would probably take them 3-5 years to recover their cost because people will charge elsewhere from time to time, and not everyone will drive an EV so some will sit unused for potentially years.
[1] https://www.nreionline.com/multifamily/apartment-rentals-now...
AFAIK they have already standardized on the IEC 62196 Type 2 connector (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_2_connector) for AC charging and the Combo 2 connector (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Charging_System) for fast DC charging.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-fordpass-charging-netwo...
Ford announced no such thing and your summary is false. They are investing in a rival network (consisting of multiple independent providers) that they claim is more extensive than Tesla's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuYRwf93Umo
clickbaity title but it was interesting to see the practical side of things rather than the skyrocket moonshot company changing the world.
Often that's bad news, though. If your competitors cannot sell their product, that's a sign of a small/poor market.
I get what you mean about the car of the future, it glided past silently (couldn't hear it through my motorcycle helmet) like something from the future.
Would be the car I buy if I ever went 4 wheels.
My only complaint is the price, but it's a Porsche so what can I do?
The Taycan release looks very promising.
Porsche seems poised to eat the majority of profits from this space with the Taycan.
There's not a lot of money to be made selling baseline Model 3s. And Toyota & Honda et al will soon be coming for the entry level space.
Tesla seems like they'll be around for the long haul. But it doesn't seem like they're going to be highly profitable with a small market share like Porsche or Mercedes. It also doesn't seem like they're going to be the next Toyota.
But my crystal ball isn't working. I have no idea what will happen.
But it'd be a lot harder for Tesla to grow that big if the incumbents were to provide meaningful electric competition in the near term.
Even with ICE cars, people have always compared multiple cars' EPA/mileage, drivability, etc. It's hardly a new issue.
Do the math.
Ford/GM don't even have an R&D row on their income statements.
Right now, though, after sales care is pretty much non-existant, I have rattles that I didn’t have in a car with over 100k on the clock, the handover was chaotic and rushed, the interior is cheap.
Even so, I have no regrets. And I’ll recommend the car because it is such a game changer. It drives brilliantly and, of course, it’s great to know that I’m not pumping out diesel fumes. But if there was a EV BMW 3 series with the same range and performance I don’t see how the Model 3 could compete.
On the other hand, Tesla lets you return the car within a week if you don’t like it.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/23/tesla-lands-1-4-billion-fr...
- Porche's Taycan EV is supposed to be the closest direct competition for Tesla cars, but its having production issues.
- Tesla just pushed a new software update that includes a lot of useful features (voice keyboard/commands, an official camping mode, saving camera clips on honk, etc)
- A lot of miscellaneous positive press is cropping up from the end of the year and end of the decade type reporting - Time for example put it as one of the "best gadgets of the decade".
- They recently released and presumably are testing a paid software update to boost M3LR off the line acceleration, which is an interesting situation to obtain revenue from already sold cars.
- Internally they're pushing to sell a lot to break sales numbers before EOY. Some places are reporting that they're even selling showroom floor models.
- They secured a US$1.4B loan from Chinese banks for GF3 acceleration, which was already ahead of schedule.
- They closed on the land for GF4 and are reportedly looking to start building Jan 2020.
- The recent news of possibly reinvigorating the EV tax credits in some way probably also helped.
- Solar is ramping up as well.Prognostications of Tesla’s doom have gone from concerning, to annoying, to boring, to pathetic[1]
Tesla has a successful ongoing business just selling Model 3's and Y's. The S could be destroyed by the Taycan, the Cybertruck could flop, the Semi could fail to take off, Autonomous driving could remain a slightly more intelligent cruise control, their solar tile business could fail and Tesla would still be OK. It wouldn't be worth $420 a share, but they wouldn't be bankrupt either.
1: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/21/prognostications-of-tes...
Eidiran's post just led me to a few posts about it, and I found this article where you can see a video of the guys back at the exact place of their high school they met at 4:20. I really enjoyed this.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-420-code-The...
Depending on how one spent their high school afternoons, it might bring back memories :)
Hah, this journalist is so out of touch with the joke. 420 is the time to blaze it!
“420” was established term for weed before SB 420 of 2003 was introduced; the slang didn't come from the bill but the bill was introduced on a timing to exploit the slang.
Also, Medical Marijuana was legalized by Prop 215 of 1996, SB 420 of 2003 was a measure to revise some provisions of the regulatory regime.
Funding secured.That has always been the case. Perhaps you meant "Media and markets know focus on Tesla's building cars in volume". It takes time to build plants, install machine them and organize the whole logistics/delivery part. They've always been focusing on this, and had to run the show so people would be ready to take delivery by the time they reach mass production.