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Comment by lottin | Hacker News Reader

This is very worrying. Don't they have financial advisors at Tesla? An automaker should focus on making cars. This is what they specialise in and what they are good at. They should not be speculating with financial assets. Tesla shareholders can do that themselves, if they wish to.

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Tesla is not an automaker and i don't know why people keep calling it that. It is a technology company.

It's designed chips, software, Cars, trucks, manufacturing lines, battery's, solar panels - And oh my god, if you saw the random products the engineering team designed in Keto Factory outside Fremont, you'd think very differently about Tesla as a company.

What's a technology company?

That's pretty much all the things you need to design to be an automaker these days, perhaps with the exception of solar panels.

Well then it's shocking how much if this is outsourced by the average automotive company

Tesla makes 93% of its revenue by selling cars and 7% with energy generation and storage.

'Selling Cars' doesn't quite describe what Tesla does such as saying apple is just a phone designer. They are both selling platforms that are very much software and technology driven. Tesla app store and gaming console isn't a car. Developing 30 times cold rolled steel casting with a unibody design is definitely some next level manufacturing as wekk,

Is Amazon still just an online book store?

Ultimately this comes down to Mr. Musk stomping his feet until his personal vision starts being called "strategic" by Tesla C-level.

Would you consider Porsche an automaker? I assume so; then, it might surprise you that most of their revenues and profits don't come from producing and selling cars, but rather from financial products.

According to Porsche, Porsche Automotive had a profit of €4,110 million in 2018, whereas Porsche Automotive and Financial Services had a profit of €4,396. [1] This means the financial services branch contributed 6.5% of the profits. [1] https://annualreport2019.volkswagenag.com/divisions/porsche....

Tesla stock jumped up 2% today on the news. If you think TSLA stock is overvalued, you can short it but there is a graveyard of dead shorts and pairs of red satin short shorts to commemorate it.

Personally, I’ve wondered why this hadn’t all happened sooner with companies. However often times Tesla is the trailblazer and the other companies copy & follow.

Don't think this as financial move, think it as marketing move.

He buys Bitcoin for $1.5B to get publicity for the fact that he will accept bitcoin.

Bitcoin has low liquidity. Selling large amounts affects the markets. $1.5B supports BTC valuation in the case that BTC speculators want to buy 50,000 Teslas.

Maybe they'll just release a RISC which lets you mine bitcoin with your Tesla or Powerwall, and use that as a selling point.

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