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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

I think Tesla falls firmly in “luxury good” and with mass unemployment, Tesla might see much less demand for much longer than just the lockdown.

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I’ve personally gone from “should I upgrade from a Mazda 3 to a Tesla 3” to “Should I just not get a car at all once this lease is up?” In a shockingly short period of time.

I bought 2014 3 HB GT manual when it first came out. Even though I used to be a huge car guy, I just don't care to own nicer car. Maybe it's because I'm 40 and have owned nicer cars before.

Cars are so expensive these days, but a $25k compact car is so nice, why pay another $20k for incrementally nicer car?

Keep your Mazda 3 for 10 years. It's a good car.

I’d actually prefer to not own a car at all. Since I work from home now, and walked to work before, I’d rather just not have one.

But I agree, the marginal value of nicer cars is questionable at best. The benefit of a Model 3 was mostly going to be tax rebates and access to the car pool lane for my wife in crowded Los Angeles.

It seems pretty impossible to go completely carless in Los Angeles. In somewhere like New York/Chicago/DC you could do it, but LA seems way to spread out to not have a car.

I have gone carless in LA before. I could & would do it again. You just need to be willing/capable to pay enough to live near work.

My wife on the other hand would need a career change.

$10 oil doesn’t exactly help either.

You're forgetting about Battery Day next month! You will find out that Tesla hits $100/kWh, which means they'll be able to sell an electric car for the price of a gas one, without giving up range. You're also forgetting that what they're selling has no real competition, just like the iPhone didn't skip a beat through the 2008-2009 crisis. Also their full self-driving tech is ahead of everyone, including Alphabet.

I think ARKinvest's 2024 bull case of $24k/share is correct. And if you don't, I guess we'll just have to wait and see! :grin:

For the price of WHAT gas car?

The best part of ARK is when Cathie goes on CNBC to pump garbage like this, then she spends the next week selling off millions of $s of it (thousands of shares). Merited a mention in the FT this week after their latest disclosure, the 3rd time in 4 months

Would love to take the other side of any wager you offer

Those are all positive factors, but I would imagine that car sales in general (electric or not) are going to take a big hit.

When you've taken a 25% in income this year, I think many people are going to put a hold on big purchases.

> their full self-driving tech is ahead of everyone, including Alphabet

This seems doubtful, I'd be really interested to read any source that advocates that :)

Ark's 24k/share translates to 4.4 Trillion. Would be worth more than most of the currently most valuable companies on earth now combined.

And how much of what the Fed is putting into the economy will end up in stocks? ;)

Of course, the Fed should just let bad companies fail! What they're doing will hurt the long-term prospects of the country as money is misallocated in zombie businesses, instead of in promising new companies with better technology.

This makes it even more important to invest in the few companies that are genuinely growing. It keeps you above inflation!

> You're also forgetting that what they're selling has no real competition

Europe is the world's second biggest car market after China. Volkswagen Group and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance have both sold more BEVs than Tesla in Europe so far this year:

https://twitter.com/auto_schmidt/status/1250880399137529864

Across the course of the next year or two Hyundai Group will also start to sell more BEVs in Europe than Tesla does.

So far in 2020, the Audi e-tron has sold 3 times more in Europe than the Model S and Model X combined and it has also outsold both models globally:

https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2020/04/europe-march-2020.html

The coronavirus pandemic is going to put a dent in everyone's sales for a few years but BEV production will continue to ramp up. None of this is surprising. They're big car companies and they sell a lot of cars. The same pattern will play out in all markets eventually.

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