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How the hell does Tesla (sales: ~400,000) have a bigger market cap than GM (sales: ~2,000,000)? Is this just the market being irrational and Musk being a good salesman?

Is there any reason to think mainstream automakers can't put batteries in their cars? Is there any reason to believe Tesla's self-driving aspirations will pay off (over say, GM Cruise, or Waymo)?

I'm sure Tesla is fine and they make a few nice luxury cars, but I feel like I'm going crazy here: How is Tesla worth $380B, but Porsche is worth only 20B?

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I'm not particularly bullish on Tesla, but if you think of GM as the next Kodak, you won't be swayed by the sales numbers. You'll be instead looking at how they're moving so slowly on digital cameras / electric cars.

Digital vs film cameras are, I think, a pretty good analogy here in a lot of ways, both in terms of business and technology. Digital cameras were more expensive than film and, initially, less performant but had low operating costs and more convenience. It was a transition where the eventual result was clear to most people except for, perhaps, film camera buffs, but the pace of change was uncertain.

Some companies like Nikon and Canon anticipated and adapted to the transition and did really well. Some, like Fujifilm, found their niche using the expertise they had. Some, like Kodak, were so firmly planted in their ways that they gave up their massive lead waiting for the tide to turn rather than risk disrupting themselves.

I know everyone likes to use Kodak as a case-study for innovator's dilemma, but...

Kodak's patents on CMOS image sensors (which were invented in the 1970's) ran out just about the same time as all the complementary technologies became commercially viable. Things like signal processing, data storage, and energy storage.

Think about how you would perform the DCT to do JPEG compression in the early 1990s. You'd need an expensive, power-hungry ASIC. Think about storing 10-100 MB of data. That would be a 2.5" spinning hard disk.

10 MSps ADCs (fast enough to shoot a frame per second) were not exactly exotic, but still very expensive. 16MB of DRAM was a luxury on Unix workstations. How much of that do you want to spend on a framebuffer?

Think about how you'd power all this hardware. Heavy NiCd batteries with memory, yuck!

The first DSLR that really took off for photojournalism (i.e., good enough quality to use in a printed newspaper) was the Nikon D1, in 1999. It's not that nobody had the right idea (Kodak had been selling digital cameras since the late 1980's), but it took that long for technology to catch up with the idea of a digital camera. It turns out (gasp!) that nobody wanted a digital camera that weighs 40 lbs, stores fewer photos than a roll of film, and has lower image quality.

It's fun to blame Kodak management for being short-sighted, but I really don't see a winning scenario. Short of a "Bet the whole company on CMOS in 1980 on the assumption that multiple enabling technologies from 3rd parties will improve by 10-100x in 10 years and that consumers will actually like the new product while we develop the right competencies and starve investment in growing lines of business." That doesn't sound like a way to get your year-end bonus.

What magic power did Nikon have, to put themselves in place to make money from digital cameras in 1999, that Kodak didn't?

Kodak had multiple opportunities to save themselves. I'm more than passingly familiar with their situation.

400k vs 2000k is much closer than I would have guessed. I think the short answer is that Tesla is the future, and GM is the past.

Tesla is the technology leader in electric cars. Meanwhile existing automakers have massive inertia because their entire company is built around ICE cars. There is not only substantial technical know-how that you need to acquire, there is also substantial know-how that becomes obsolete, and the positions that have this know-how might resist any change.

In the case of GM you can also add that GM is largely irrelevant outside of the US and China, while Tesla finds international appeal and seems to have a much larger potential market than GM can find.

Tesla production numbers have grown about 50% per year (with high variance). This rate looks to continue with two new large Tesla factories slated to begin production in late 2021. So they could pass GM in sales quickly as GM sales are basically flat. Tesla also has higher gross margins than most other vehicle manufacturers. Plus Tesla does batteries and solar that look like high growth sectors.

Roughly speaking, the price per share of a company is a reflection of the expectations of the market about the future cash flows a company generates.

The market is simply telling us that it expects Tesla to generate more cash flow (very different than accounting profit) than of GM.

If you believe otherwise you see something the market doesn't and therefore can profit handsomely

EDIT: wording

A wise man once said, "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"

I'm sure not betting against insane shit continuing in 2020.

> Is there any reason to think mainstream automakers can't put batteries in their cars?

It seems so. They were supposed to ,,kill'' Tesla a few years ago. Also they came out with cars whose efficiency compared to their size is far below what Tesla has achieved by years of focusing on it, which means that they have a huge disadvantage even if they can get the same batteries for the same price.

Valuations may be nutty at this point... but ...

Tesla is many things - they’re a distributed utility company for one. They’re ramping up their battery production for the coming shift to clean tech infrastructure.

They have a growing distributed utility business with proven track record. They work with governments to shift their grid to battery / solar. On a global scale, this is a enormous market

Plus extensive supercharging network. Giga factories, solar roofs and they’re going to reconfigure battery tech from ground up and I won’t be surprised if they’ll have major breakthroughs.

Not to mention Tesla’s energy tech is going to be a major component of Mars Colonization. Another huge market in not so distant future. Imagine this, if America’s energy infrastructure was built by singular company (a la standard oil) at its very inception towards today.

Space X is probably the only company on earth that’s gonna have the means to build Mars colonies en mass.

Long term (20+ years) Tesla is laying the groundwork for new world(s!), both Earth and Mars. This is mind boggling and other car companies are apples to oranges comparison.

I think you're comparing tesla global sales to gm us sales. gm global sales are about 8M/year

Stock market usually looks at the future valuation of a company. I think TSLA will hold its value for the next 3-4 years. But, other manufacturers are going to catch up after that. For most of the investors, 3-4 years is enough to invest today. The rest of them believe that Tesla is going to keep its innovation pace in other areas like self driving cars.

Is not it like with Apple that most (all?) of Tesla sales are 100k cars while GM has to compromise and sell a lot of cheap vehicles?

The comparison doesn't really work:

Apple makes a healthy margin on their lower sales numbers and has an associated services revenue stream to boot.

Tesla loses money on car sales and has managed to squeeze out some positive earnings by selling regulatory credits to their competitors. It's not a "selling less luxury goods but at a higher margin" story.

If we assume that the regulatory credit revenue stream eventually dries up then the case for the valuation seems to revolve around Tesla becoming the only car company and/or Tesla being or becoming so much more than just a car company.

> Tesla loses money on car sales

According to Tesla latest results, automotive gross margins were 27.7%, significantly above industry average.

> managed to squeeze out some positive earnings by selling regulatory credits

Of $7,611 million in quarterly revenues, $397m are regulatory credits.

Additionally, one of S&Ps criteria to include a company in the S&P is 4th consecutive quarters of GAAP profits, so I believe that the S&P agrees that Tesla does generate real profits

[1] https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/4E7BR9_TSLA_Q3_2020_Updat...

positive earnings == profits.

I am not questioning their profitability but simply pointing out that without the regulatory credits they would not be profitable. The linked earnings release confirms that the profits ($331M) are lower than the regulatory credits ($397M).

Yeah, that's normal for startups, they are made profitable (not "become profitable", this is not a process but a deliberate choice) after the growth phase, not during or, in case of Tesla, before it (as you pointed out, they still sell low amounts of cars). Tesla is in process of building their first factories and learning and developing the production, that costs money - money that other car makers have already paid off, but they paid it and their stocks looked just like Tesla at that time. Actually, it is incredible how good margins Tesla has given their stage as a carmaker, and it's a miracle they are profitable at all.

See this HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25118086

Tesla needs its years too. And it's looking good so far.

> the profits ($331M) are lower than the regulatory credits ($397M)

Correction. They made $874 million in profits in Q3 out of which ~$543M came out as stock-based compensation for Musk (a non-cash expense but has to be reported on GAAP-profit line). This is unusually high and is due to the recent run-up in stock price.

They were definitely significantly profitable net of regulatory credits in Q3. Their automotive gross-margin in Q3 was ~23% excluding regulatory credits. Such margins are unheard of in the auto industry.

Tesla had to manufacture and sell $7.6B in cars to qualify for those credits. As such the credits boosted their gross margin from 23.6 to 27.7%.

The credit revenue will continue as long as competitors continue to sell their polluting ICE vehicles which need EV offsets. And after factoring in credit revenue, Tesla will continue to aim for marginal profits just above break-even while investing as much as possible back into growth.

Their cars generate an industry leading margin even without the credits. So if the question is, could Tesla be profitable without that $397mm the answer is obviously Yes, by spending $397mm less on future growth.

Last year Toyota Motors EVP in North America said, “This is going to be a slow evolution in the U.S. market, unlike in China and Europe where there are government regulations. Nobody is selling electric vehicles at a profitable margin.”

The statement was wrong when he said it, but even more wrong now. EV is clearly a disruptive technology that is poised to become superior in every possible metric for passenger cars, and even short-haul trucking.

Honestly it’s past the time for harping on the “Tesla is structurally unprofitable” trope — I think it’s just willful blindness at this point.

Because Tesla is primarily a technology and energy company. But even if you look at Tesla as a car company, it's misleading to compare them to a traditional automaker like Ford. You must compare Tesla with Ford AND some tier one parts suppliers AND all Ford dealerships across the globe AND a global gas station network.

Few automakers are nearly so vertically integrated. None are investing in bleeding edge battery technology. None are deploying grid-scale energy services.

It's all about lithium, I guess.

Some points of my view having just bought some stocks:

- reasonable but ambitious long term plans to increase the worlds battery production to insane new levels

- thereby doing actually something against climate change, like no other company

- thereby having the chance do get in serious competition with the largest energy companies in the world (oil/gas)

- long term plans to decrease the disadvantages of weight, cost and size of their current main disadvantage, batteries

- they are nailing energy effiency in their cars

- Full self driving beta is rolling out. No manufacturer is improving their already sold car like tesla does. This is key for me

- they feel like the apple of energy

- cybertruck looks awesome, thats a bold move for such a player

- battery wall, solar roof and tesla car are an insanely harmonic product for many places in the world

- using a tesla supercharger? Imagine Volkswagen getting a part each time you refill your car

- they innovate not just to show of on some event but to include it in their mass production

- they commit to public long term plans

- their non-marketing works. I mean come on, he shoot a tesla into space

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