Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings
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* Autopilot. Safe or not, autopilot is very convenient and super permissive, and owners seem to love it.
* Superchargers. Third party charger maintenance is an unsolved problem, and CCS DC fast chargers are often broken, where they exist at all. It's truly awful. Maybe the federal government will bail out Ford here with a charging infrastructure program... or maybe not.
* Status symbol. There's a reason Tesla has replaced Cadillac as a symbol of luxury in pop culture.
* The Model 3/Y itself is a smooth, luxurious and fast ride. Don't discount the car's ability to compete on the traditional merits. (Edit: this is my opinion, based on comparing a Model 3 to a 3 series as well as various Nissan cars. YMMV; it's subjective.)
Tesla is a software company that makes cars and they've gotten pretty good at making great cars.
The legacy car companies mostly make crap and their software is universally terrible*. In addition to that they're constrained by the awful dealership system and all the bad incentives associated with that.
I don't expect any of them to offer any serious competition.
*Maybe a notable exception here for Cruise which was bought by GM, but they're relegated to just one trim level on one car iirc which suggests GM doesn't recognize the threat. They also focus on high-res mapping which Tesla argues is a dead end. It's also only a subset of the problem, the car's UI systems remain bad.
More like for not being able to port their cobol-ass running UI for anything but the one target chip it was developed for lmao.
Large car manufactures typically have empires built inside of them for major areas of the car. Transmission, engine, suspension, chassis, entertainment, etc. Each with financial budgets, staff budgets, weight/size budget for anything in their car.... yes they literally count grams. They fight for their resources.
As a result of their org tree, that impacts the design and connectivity inside the car. Often have different networks of sensors, different CPUs, even different power delivery systems.
Is it the same reason other car manufacturers continue to use tiny shitty displays? I remember hearing similar arguments back then about that - the displays were 'hardened for cars' or something.
The simpler explanation is the other manufacturers can't adapt.
Radar was removed because the computer vision got to the point where the radar data was introducing noise and errors into the system - the quality of the sensor data went up after removing it. Karpathy's latest talk goes into this.
Let’s reevaluate in ten years, we’ll see how the legacy companies are doing then.
I would love to be able to even consider another brand of electric car for my next one but given where I live (Vancouver Island), I just cannot. Sure, 3rd party L3 and L2 chargers around me are fine for going around town and maybe up-island, but I cannot reasonably say the same for longer trips.
I just came back from a 3k KM roadtrip to Calgary and back and I honestly do not think it would be possible (at least, not in a reasonable amount of time) with any other car. The infrastructure is just not there. With my Tesla (SR+), the stops were like those you'd have in any other car - stopping here and there to eat and use the restroom. The car and the chargers worked flawlessly.
It really is the killer-app for Tesla.
Also, I wouldn't bet on public transit improvements in the United States anytime soon. Even the most important project for the country's highest-ridership corridor can't get built (the Gateway Project in NY).
It's absolutely relevant; one of the things that creates messed up car culture is that people buy a car that makes sense for the road trip they make once a year rather than a car that makes sense for the commute they make twice per day. A short-range EV supplemented by other modes, taxis, or even just renting a traditional car a few times a year could easily end up being a better lifestyle overall.
A Better Routeplanner (https://abetterrouteplanner.com/) is a good tool for getting an idea of what roadtrips are like in different EVs.
ABRP says Vancouver Island to Calgary in a Ford Mustang Mach-E Extended Range RWD takes 18 hours and 12 minutes. 2 hours and 8 minutes of that time is charging.
A 2021 Tesla Model 3 SR+ with 18" aero wheels takes 17 hours and 56 minutes. 1 hour and 34 minutes is charging.
A Kia EV6 Long Range RWD takes 17 hours and 22 minutes. 1 hour and 18 minutes is charging.
A Lucid Air Dream Edition takes 16 hours and 59 minutes. 1 hour and 1 minute is charging.
False. The EV6 is shipping in Korea and Europe right now. North America to follow. But let's do some different cars since you're distressed:
- Volkswagen ID.4 Pro is 18 hours and 4 minutes.
- Porsche Taycan 4S 93 kWh is 17 hours 56 minutes.
- Audi e-tron 55 is 17 hours 50 minutes.
> This video by Marques Brownlee is an interesting example
That is not a road trip from Vancouver Island to Calgary, which is what we're talking about. Do you have any specific information about driving from Vancouver Island to Calgary in particular?
Not interested in conversing further in response to this kind of needling. I'll leave you to it.
1. You need more range than your current car has to deal with these unexpected situations easily instead of luckily.
2. Balkanized charging infrastructure is brain dead. You need Tesla to switch to CCS in North America (like all other EV manufacturers have already done) and you need Telsa's chargers to charge all brands of EV (like all other charging networks already do).
The good news is Tesla will supposedly open their chargers to other brands soon. They can go ahead and put two ports on the chargers like they already did in Europe:
https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/28/22596337/tesla-supercharg...
https://insideevs.com/news/343728/most-tesla-superchargers-n...
The next step is for Tesla switch to CCS on the North American cars, also like they already did in Europe.
But in reality those existing assets are why GM and Ford cannot catch up. Dealerships make money on services and maintenance. They don't want to sell an Electric that will never need much maintenance. Trying to convert a factory that was designed for ICE cars isn't as easy as building a new factory. And the union employees that have specialized in ICE parts do not want to switch over to Electric. So GM will end up delaying plans so long that they will not be able to compete on price due to Tesla's existing economies of scale.
It was obvious in 2012 that Tesla was a threat to ICE, GM and Ford have done very little since then to catch up.
Check the top selling electric car list and it's all normal looking cars with electric drivetrains. It wasn't just the production that messed up, but also the design and marketing department.
BMW must have been in a very difficult spot to release that swollen pug-face of a car into public view.
It's "smart" business, but "smart" business almost always overlaps entirely with "X unfriendly" (where X = consumer, environment among others).
Now that EVs have arrived and make sense for every car, the styling should change to just be a good-looking good-driving car.
But ugly must sell, because I recently saw another non-Smart car that was essentially a clone, looks wise at least, of the current model. Why??
We leased the ID4 knowing how much competition would be out there in a few years. Honestly the last two points are the main take aways that we'll look for in any new car. Living in a city and being able to do a U-turn from a parallel parked position without making it a 3 point is just magical, especially on a compact SUV.
I wouldn't downplay any competition. It can take a while to catch up, but cars are fickle things that people buy for all kinds of reasons. It's not like pre-Tesla everyone owned only one brand.
Android's a tough market to be in, you are competing with Google (who makes pixel phones), numerous low cost manufacturers, Apple, and your ecosystem taxed by google through the app store and the market is split among many companies in the android system so it's hard to catch google's services, play store, etc. Not that android manufacturers aren't trying. Amazon made an effort, but seems to have largely given up on calling their devices android.
Cars are not phones, and will never be. American lower class or Chinese middle class are not going to shell out $70k for a new toy every two years. Cars are not going to be made with 60% margins. You cannot wear a car in your pocket to show it off to your relatives or business partners.
Apple's business model, in short - is selling mediocre hardware for premium prices, and mask it with excellent software. Optimizing software to make it 10x better, faster, using less battery - fairly common. For any activity that interfaces with the physical world - forget it - we're tapped out, making 2-5% improvements per year. No amount of refinement will make a $20k econobox sellable for $60k
(also, ironically, LG dropped out of phone business)
There's a few striking errors in your post, and this one is the most glaring - in that it's very visual, and also very wrong.
Consider the photo of the Tesla (Model 3) key fob [1]: it's a small car that one does, in fact, wear in one's pocket to show it off to one's relatives or business partners.
Similar with the Tesla App [2] - it shows a desirable car on your phone's screen for the very same reason; the rest is nice extras.
Each job is a dependency for the next job. A long build time either indicates that individual assembly technicians have too many steps in their job (it is much harder to remember 25 steps than 5 steps) or that the plant is assembling more parts locally than their competitors. If you have an engine shipped in complete from your supplier that is less time your plant spends assembling a dependency at build time.
Electric cars should in theory assemble much faster than gas. Fewer parts. Less complexity in the mechanical assembly of the drive train.
When corporate overlords dictate that an assembly plant meet production numbers that it isn’t capable of accurately producing they shell out complete garbage. Inspection lines flag errors that managers ship with disregard in order to meet numbers. Every time.
https://jalopnik.com/watch-a-pro-detailer-point-out-all-the-...
Heck, "throw more servers at it" has been an accepted practice. Who cares if it takes 30 hours as opposed to 10 if you can have 3x the number of cars under construction at one time.
Additionally a plant that takes 30 hours per car is typically going to have less output than a plant that takes 10 hours per car. Typically each minute during production the car is taking up space, being worked on humans or robots, etc. Additionally efficiencies favor shorter pipelines. Generally a 10 hour pipeline is physically shorter than a 30 hour. Parts, staff, troubleshooting etc is easier on a smaller pipeline. Additionally having each car bridge 4 working shifts for the workers has overheads of it's own compared to 1-2 shifts. Doubly so if you are trying to iterate quickly.
Imagine an assembly line moving at 0.5 mph, for the same physical foot print you could have 3 lines that are 10 hours each instead of a single line that runs for 30 hours. Now imagine there's a issue that shuts down a line for an hour, it's better if it's 1/3rd of your capacity down instead of 100%. If you try an improvement, it's better to put 1/3rd of your production capacity at risk instead of 100%.
Also, the whole claim would really need a citation, and careful parsing of the methodology. 3x difference in a mature industry like car assembly is very unlikely, and requires a very strong proof to back that statement up.
The 10% difference pays the next factory.
Some highlights: front 3rd of chassis is one piece, rear 3rd of chassis is one piece, the glass roof is a huge piece and before that's installed things can be installed by robot (steering wheel, dash, seats, etc). Many things are radically simpler, like the interior, dash is basically a aluminum bar the width of the car with an arm for a 15" monitor. Even the ventilation system is simple, few parts, and easy to install. Most cars spend quite a bit of complexity for gauges, displays, buttons, vent controls, temp control, fan control, fans, emergency brake, air valves, etc.
Monroe on youtube (engineer with significant experience, used to work at Ford) took apart an early model 3 and wasn't impressed, didn't recommend it, and called out many details that were expensive, labor intensive, etc. He did a new model 3 and model Y and left quite impressed. Many innovative changes to make things easier to produce, cheap to reduce, reduced parts counts, etc. Monroe claims tesla is iterating their production faster than anyone else he's looked at, and he's looked at a very wide variety of cars (and other products for that matter).
Monroe also reviewed the VW ID.4 and left quite under impressed. Ironically he didn't expect much from the Ford Mach E, but was very pleasantly surprised to see innovative engineering, impressive design, and overall was quite impressed. Although he was horrified by the complexity of the cooling system and has serious doubts about it's long term reliability.
Meanwhile, I assume that space is the cheapest part of the car factory, dwarfed by robotics.
I mean, the VW is cheaper than the 3, so that implies they aren't spending that much more.
But let’s assume that’s true. Tesla has been building electric cars for how long? VW is basically just getting started for real (modular platform for all their cars unlike the eGolf), and still makes ICE cars as well.
It’s never a good idea to discount your competitors. I doubt Elon does even if comments on HN do.
There are reasons why your ID.4 is cheaper than the others (and it always boils down to quality of the parts).
Take a look at this Tesla, Ford, & VW's Electrical Architectures for instance. There are other tear-downs that can confirm
And that is why everyone expects them to own the car market in the coming years. When the competition's best marketing opportunity is selling to people who've pre-decided to buy something else, you've already won. No one decides to buy a car because it's "not an Audi".
(As a Y owner, btw: the ID.4 absolutely does not have a larger interior.)
It's not just wikipedia though, you can find it all over.
Hiluxes are extremely durable and widespread is why. Tacoma is the closest we get to a Hilux in NA. They use to be the same, but NA market likes things a bit bigger and luxurious so the Tacoma's just don't come in single-cab and generally have more amenities.
But I say good anyway. We should manufacture things here. Tariffs are one way to accomplish that.
INTRODUCTION
Android, Google’s open-source mobile operating system (“OS”), is a critical source of competition against other operating systems, such as Apple’s iOS.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...
With the iPhone 5 Apple caught up (and arguably has continued to increase its lead since then).
We talked about all those things in Microsoft at the time. Even the running android app solution, which I might have been roped in to work on if it wasn't shot down. The reasoning being that "running android apps would discourage people from writing WP apps", which wasn't wrong. My feeling on this is that Microsoft was just way too late, you need the right thing at the right time.
https://www.cultofmac.com/755598/apple-smartphone-profits-q2...
https://www.volkswagenofdesmoines.com/model-comparisons/2021...
but it hardly matters, it's comes in 2nd to the Model 3/Y in every other category. If ugliness was a category, the ID.4 would certainly win that though!
The Tesla is also just a somewhat larger car, to the tune of 8cm of width and 17 in length. It's definitely "bigger" for basically all reasonable consumer use cases. I'm sure there's something that fits in it that won't in the Tesla.
[1] So-named because, well, it's obvious. Nyland is probably the single best source for EV comparisons out there Definitely a must-follow youtube channel if you're into this stuff.
It reads more like advertising than like actual discussion.
What evidence is there that should lead us to expect hydrogen fuel cells to win over batteries, given (1) their currently much much higher costs, (2) their lower efficiency in turning electricity at the power station into kinetic energy of the car, (3) the currently much greater complexity of mechanisms required for a fuel-cell-based vehicle?
Other that that, I thought hydrogen was cheaper than batteries. But I don't know much about it.
What we're seeing in Australia is federal government support for hydrogen power after over a decade of strong resistance to alternatives (specifically renewables: wind and solar), and no support for electric vehicles at all. I'm definitely mixing together a few different areas of power / electricity / energy here, but the fact the Australian government is seizing upon hydrogen just makes my cynical mind assume that hydrogen manufacture and usage fits better with the status quo and therefore is easier to understand by those in power - ie. centralised / consolidated control as opposed to more consumer-level control.
This could be Hydrogen's killer feature in the end.
Australia gets a LOT of sunshine and has a LOT of empty space, which is conducive to being solar friendly. Australia also exports a lot of coal and a lot or iron ore (which is then processed using coal-generated heat), which is conducive to promoting its value and suppressing any alternatives.
Electric vehicles, however, work towards solving a specific national security problem for Australia in it's "domestic fuel security"[0][1][2][3]. A problem of which the UK is kindly highlighting the importance.
[0]: https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/a...
[1]: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australia-must-fast-track-...
[2]: https://www.defenceconnect.com.au/key-enablers/7790-what-s-n...
[3]: https://www.drive.com.au/news/government-scrambles-to-mainta...
One big idea in Australia is the possibility of exporting hydrogen. It might be a factor on their thinking.
there’s a couple takes on why, but the most charitable one is that solar/wind/batteries have enough momentum that they don’t need subsidies, and govt views energy diversity as a valuable thing and is subsidizing hydrogen to achieve that.
The problem of (2) is that all attempts to generate electricity with renewables (and with no fossil fuel backups) have resulted in extreme problems. In short, when it is windy or sunny, you have too much electricity and no way of storing it. When it is not windy or sunny, you have nothing and are forced to resort to fossil fuels. Ultimately, it's being found out that being able to store electricity is far more important than making it efficient.
And (3) is just dumb Ludditism. As if the small increase in complexity is any kind of problem. Fuel cells are far simpler than internal combustion engines after all. Batteries are actually worse from a supply chain standpoint since now you have a much higher need for certain elements that are not widely available.
Some data on why you think systemic hydrogen costs are going to catch up with systemic battery-electric costs, for example, would contribute to (1) far more than your posturing.
You'd be a better advocate if you spoke to the issues.
Once things hit their exponential growth curve, things might happen a lot faster than people expect.
Therefore, nothing in your reply can give us any reason to think that hydrogen fuel cells in particular either should or will win out over batteries.
You have still not made any actual attempt to address any of these points, preferring to bluster about how people who disagree with you are stupid, ignorant, or insincere.
I am curious. Do you have any financial interest in the success of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, and/or in the failure of battery electric vehicles?
And as countries invest more into renewable they're are quickly running into a dilemma: Wind and solar are too unreliable to directly replace fossil fuels. This requires seasonal energy storage to solve, which as of today is only solvable by hydrogen energy storage: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/236723/1/Ruhnau-and-...
In short, even EVs will be hydrogen powered to a large extent. You can easily imagine a kind of plug-in hydrogen car that matches EVs on efficiency in broad strokes.
Ultimately, this is not really a difference of opinion but rather a difference in understanding of the facts. You simply haven't realized that fuel cell cars are already here and have already solved the fundamental problems of green energy. Batteries cars have not, and barring a miracle battery discovery will not either.
Toyota Mirai... well, while I can't tell it precisely, I think Toyota is making a loss of $100-900k per car.
If the Mirai really had those losses, Toyota would be literally losing billions on the Mirai by itself.
Toyota does have a very good fuel cell, but what does it actually benefit?
Also, all of the cost is R&D. The cost of building fuel cell cars is probably very low.
Once someone has experienced what it's like to be able to "fill up" overnight at home for all their day-to-day driving, the idea of reverting to the old "visit the fuelling station once a week" routine seems decidedly passe.
It could work for long-haul commercial vehicles though.
She needs to get to bed early, so when hanging out with friends she hated having to go to the gas station on her way home. Often resulting in panic the next day. More than once she ran out of gas cause she forgot to look when driving off in the morning.
It takes about 3 seconds to plug in the car when we get back home, and we never have to worry about running out when we drive away in the morning.
Hydrogen would have to be significantly better in price and range to offset this for our future vehicle purchase. A mere 2x range increase over pure EV won't cut it.
Even so, eventually you likely will be able to refuel at home since home electrolysis is possible.
For you maybe. For my SO I can assure you it's absolutely not.
Having owned an EV for two years now, it's clear that it's been good enough for us. Yes range is a bit limited, but for us it hasn't been an issue. It has some upsides like fairly trivial home-charging if you got a garage.
As such, hydrogen can't just deliver the same to be competitive. Hydrogen will have to deliver more. Longer range at same cost wouldn't be enough for us, the negatives would make it a no-go. So it would have to be longer range for much cheaper.
But I don't see how cost can be significantly cheaper, given the process inefficiencies and infrastructure required.
Looking at the concepts[1] I can't imagine them being cheaper than a home EV charger, which is about 1000-1500 USD installed. Never mind that we don't have any space for such a huge thing.
And I'm doubtful as to how much H2 we'll be able to generate here in Norway during winter.
[1]: https://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/index.php/home-hydrogen-fuel...
Sooner or later, hydrogen cars will be cheaper to own than a battery car. Once this happens, none of this reasoning will hold up to scrutiny.
Should be noted that you can have hydrogen delivered in the same way propane/LPG can be delivered. In fact, gasoline/petrol could have been delivered since the first days of the automobile. None of these ideas really mattered in the end.
My point is it can't just be say 20% cheaper to own. It'll have to be much more than that to offset the pain of having to refuel.
Sure, if it's 20% cheaper including having the H2 delivered at home, then we're approaching something that can be considered.
As with all fuels, this shouldn't be much more expensive than from a fueling station.
(Those who drive an EV tend to complain more about the maintenance of the public stations than the number of them).
(The time required by home charging is not particularly relevant if it's happening while you're sleeping or the car is otherwise idle, anyway).
Thinking through it some more, the objection around the vehicle needing to be home at the time the delivery is made can be overcome by having the deliveries made late at night, as long as there was some way to give the delivery driver access to the car's fuel tank. At the end of the day it may just be too inefficient to have liquid fuel delivered weekly in 30-60 litre quantities, the overhead being too great.
But the problem is that everyone here is just convinced that it can't happen, usually using very facile thinking. Few are asking any hard questions. As long as this stays true, hydrogen will continue to pose an enormous threat to Tesla.
God/Allah/Nature obviously don't understand disruption, growth mindset and can-do-spirit. facepalm
There are hard physical limitations that no amount of human ingenuity can do anything about. 237kJ/mole is the theoretical minimum of energy required for water electrolysis. energy->electrolysis->energy round-trip efficiency won't exceed 45%, even if everything, from the energy source to the car wheel spinning, is perfectly frictionless and operating at peak theoretical efficiency. No, you cannot use existing gas pipelines for transporting hydrogen.
For passenger cars, EVs today are already better than what physics allow hydrogen cars to ever be.
> No, you cannot use existing gas pipelines for transporting hydrogen.
You absolutely can. In fact gas companies are already planning this exact thing.
> For passenger cars, EVs today are already better than what physics allow hydrogen cars to ever be.
Your "physics" is entirely pseudoscience.
[note] for pure hydrogen eventually everything except the pipelines will have to be replaced
It's important to remember that hydrogen fuel cells are batteries too. There is no reason for the metal lithium to have magic properties over other battery technologies.
Ditto cars. Manufacturers are beholden to dealers, who need complex vehicles that need extensive repairs. Related, fueling stations need customers who can’t power vehicles at home.
No amount of innovation, pivoting or clever engineering could have saved Kodak. They were not flabbergasted at the technological change. The best course of action was to milk the existing market for as long as possible, which is exactly what they did
In the luxury segment, sure Tesla is a serious contender. In the compact segment much less so.
The cheap Tesla are cheaper then much of the competition. And Tesla are produced at higher rates from single lines then literally any other EVs.
It simply doesn't make sense for them to go into compact segment yet. They are still growing 50% a year just on Model 3/Y and Cybertruck has gigantic potential. They simply don't have the batteries or chips to grow more. Why introduce more models if you are limited by the supply chain?
Once Tesla actually launches a compact it will be coming to all China, Europe and the US being manufactured in each place with their own battery production located near by.
The danger to Tesla is not these companies, aside from some competition in the electric F-150. The real challengers are those like Kia, Hyundai, and the Japanese and European brands. Kia is already making all electric cars, so it’s proof that ICE manufacturers can switch over. Brands like Kia have decades of experience making dozens of different models every year, iterating on them, and creating new ones. Tesla barely manages with three or four models. My Kia Optima SXL has better fit and finish than any Tesla I’ve been in. I also find the Teslas I see on the road very bland. They look like old cars, because they are (in terms of their overall design).
I’ve also been in several Chinese brands, including Nio. Nio blows Tesla out of the water in terms of interior design, and I like the external look better. It’s much more luxurious feeling. We’ve yet to see if Chinese brands can compete in the west, but Nio and WM Motor are very nice cars. There are also several, and I mean several, all electric car makers in China that make quite nice cars. I’ve ridden in several where I was like, whoa, what is this car?
I personally will be quite surprised if Tesla can outlive the hype it’s gotten from first adopters and its poor practices alongside increasing competition.
The Japanese have largely closed their eyes to any problem and pretend EV don't exist.
VW among the Europeans is the only one that seriously has invested in battery capacity and supply chain. BMW has not even switched to creating dedicated EV platforms yet. Daimler is a huge company that has very high aspirations for profitability and they are partially unwilling to that kill their cash cows.
Hyundai is fine and they will be a good in the market.d I mean several, all electric car makers in China that make quite nice cars. I’ve ridden in several where I was like, whoa, what is this car?
Nio is small yet and they are selling only premium cars and they are really design for cities in China more then anything esle.
> I personally will be quite surprised if Tesla can outlive the hype it’s gotten from first adopters
If at this point your are still talking about first adopters you have missed what is happening.
The idea that Tesla would go bankrupt is crazy, they literally have years long waiting list for some of their products. Yes, of course they will not have 100% market share. The point is, Tesla is far ahead right now in terms of how many BEV they produce. They are expanding really fast and they are doing really well on margin. They are well ahead of going down the supply chain, making their own cells and even their own battery factories.
Tesla has proven to be very porfitable making only EVs, non of the other non-startup companies have done that. In fact they do everything they can to not share that information.
Plenty of companies have gone bankrupt while customers waited for products - this does not strike me as so unrealistic as to warrant being written off entirely
It not unrealistic but I think Ford and other OEM are far more at risk then Tesla.
Tesla Model 3 is a very popular car, but aside from that, it's competitive across the field.
Japanese will fill in while US makers lag a bit but my bet is these things take time to change, and GM/Ford have incumbency advantage esp. with trucks etc..
Tesla will end up being 'another car company'. Amazing feat to break into the business, but really, if you look at EV sales over time, Tesla was just one of many players.
* Nearly every manufacturer has an Autopilot equivalent that is as good or better.
* Superchargers will be open to all EVs. There is massive investment in charging networks. They should not be proprietary anyways if we truly want EV adoption.
* F-150 has been the best selling vehicle for years. As far as vehicles go, it doesn't need to be a status symbol to sell.
* Lots of cars are smooth, luxurious and fast. This has been a solved problem for years.
Also, have you considered that Autopilot is less about the quality and more about the permissiveness? Volvo sells lane keeping software that works just as well if not better, but it requires me to look at the road and keep my hands on the wheel. Tesla has no such scruples -- arguably a bad thing, but drivers seem to like it. Maybe it's the "Uber model" of self-driving: ship it early, break all the rules, but satisfy your customers.
My Volvo is better than my Model Y in every way except range. And it’s cheaper because of the tax credit.
Note that for Model 3/Y with in-cabin cameras that’s changing with the rollout of their FSD beta software. It instantly goes to “oh crap grab the wheel” alerts if you cover the camera or play with your phone.
They're not luxurious though, even though the price is quite steep.
Tesla cars may be way better EVs than the competition but I'd really suggest anyone thinking a Tesla is luxurious to go and sit in a Porsche Taycan (which, btw, is not that much more pricey than a Model S).
The status symbol is changing as well. As more people experience them , they quickly realize that compared to BMW & Porsche, they're not that special past the shiny iPad on the dash.
https://cleantechnica.com/files/2021/10/Top-20-plugin-vehicl... (Graphic)
BMW is on there, but Porsche is not. They better get moving before Giga Berlin starts up.
They're selling an image. The car is just a vehicle for that image.
One big change is from switching the regular glass with thicker "acoustic" glass that's better at damping the wind noise. Also some changes where the glass meets on the roof and the model Y has larger roof glass so less seams.
- Regular software updates over the air is also a superpower. I am not sure if other car makers have them.
Well, Tesla best hope that other competitors don't come up with safe L4 before them.
> The Model 3/Y itself is a smooth, luxurious and fast ride.
It really, really isn't. Fast, sure, smooth, sometimes, although perception may be messing with things, because wind noise is terrible in these models - but it may also be more noticeable because of less drivetrain noise.
But it absolutely is not a luxurious ride. Go sit in an Audi Q7 or A6. BMW E Series. And feel what really comfortable seats are like. A dashboard that doesn't flex. Doorwells that don't creak when you lean your elbow on them. Nicer finishes, with higher attention to detail. I've driven in an S, a Y, and the interior build in those more resembles my older Altima, Maxima, than coming anywhere near close to my Audis, let alone my Jaguar.
Having driven both an Altima and a Model 3 extensively (i.e. thousands of miles), I couldn't disagree more. The vibe of these cars is night and day different.
This is not quantifiable though, it's just my opinion.
You said the ALtima and Model 3 is different, but which one is better?
Sure, that stuff is nice. But you quickly adapt after a couple weeks and practical concerns take over. I'd rather be in a so-so interior and get fast charging easily than have a great seat and be hunting around.
I just can't get excited about luxury cars any more. Who wants to spend a ton of time in a car anyway?
Maybe a luxury car is nice for a date at a fancy place, but that's a couple times a year or something. Not a lot of people are doing black tie dinners and the opera all the time.
Luxury cars are like business class plane tickets or a 5 star resort pool villa: they are really nice, but absolutely not necessary. If you have lots of money, why not? If you don't, you probably have better places to spend your money.
Why are you comparing a Model 3 to an A6 and not an A4?
Well I can't see anyone even being close at the moment. The only companies doing such things are using company drivers and doing taxicab-like services. Companies other than Tesla don't seem to want to actually sell their product to customers.
Even if they did I don't think it would help. DC chargers are fundamentally a construction project.
Tesla Supercharger locations often get delayed for months/years as they hit roadblocks like permits, disputes with landowners, shortages.
So it's still going to be years before CCS chargers match the footprint.
If/when Tesla opens up their network it could help a lot though.
https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_locations.html
CCS plugs will overtake Tesla plugs eventually. Tesla putting CCS plugs on their chargers will make it happen faster.
They are catching up as evidenced by Tesla losing market share. It's not a very surprising result. As other manufacturers ramp up EV production they will gain EV market share because not everyone wants the same car.
Tesla is no longer a leader in EV technology. Lucid's and Hyundai's EV platforms, for example, offer options that Tesla doesn't.
Have a look at Europe. In 2019 Tesla had 30.8% market share: https://eu-evs.com/bestSellers/ALL/Groups/Year/2019
So far in 2021 Tesla has 14.2% market share: https://eu-evs.com/bestSellers/ALL/Groups/Year/2021
Tesla is a tiny player in terms of overall sales, so a 50% YOY growth in marketshare is still possible. If they're also experiencing a 50% decrease in the share of new EV's sold, that's not a sign that they will dominate the EV market as their current valuation would suggest.
It's not surprising that the world's biggest car manufacturers will manufacture cars, BEV or otherwise.
Autopilot - They don't seem particularly advanced, and there are two main types of drivers. Those who never use autopilot (so it's not a selling feature) and those who overrely on it (which leads to crashes, bad PR and lawsuits)
Superchargers - Musk says they're going to open it up to all EVs by 2022.
Status Symbol - Where are you that a Tesla is a status symbol? I mean, for a while it was because it was the only EV, but now that there are competitors it seems to be losing out.
Luxurious ride - I've only been in Model 3s, but it didn't seem that luxurious. Plenty powerful, but I expect that to be true of any EV. The fit and finish didn't strike me as on par with, say, a 'vette. Certainly, if you compare it to cheaper cars it should stack up (isn't a Model 3 still more expensive than a 3 series?). But against comparably priced cars, it seems to lose out.
I will admit that I find the giant touchscreen a huge turnoff. So it's possible that I am overly harsh on the luxuriousness.
Isn't that fairly biased? There is surely a group of people who use AutoPilot not overly in irresponsible ways, but because the media is selection biased to bad outcomes, we never hear about them.
Superchargers are a huge advantage today, Tesla may partner with others to open their network, but they are going to charge, so it's far from apparent which cars will have access.
Status symbol, could care less. My previous cars were an Acura GSR (somewhat legendary when it came out for how ugly it was), Subaru WRX (quick, but ugly), forester (even uglier). I was shopping for something quick, fun, and RWD or AWD. Considered Golf R, Ford Focus RS, Subaru WRX/STI, various BMWs (1 series, 2 series, x1, m235i, etc), and Teslas.
Luxury ride. I've a Model 3P, 0-60 in 3 seconds, decent lap times at various tracks, and pretty competitive with today's semi-exotic rear engine corvette (0-60 in 2.9 seconds), and will beat quite a few of the corvette's on the road today in a 0-60. Not going to hang on a track with a new rear engine corvette. But way more practical, even pretty large costco trips can fit in a model 3 easily. Driving cross country with a kid, dog, and partner works well.
I cross shopped BMWs and model 3's. Ended up with the Telsa because of it delivering performance similar to some of the fastest BMWs (M3, m235i, etc), and the practicalities of a their larger/slower cars like the 335/x3. Without all the maze of expensive upgrades that BMW plays. Things like intentionally degrading the standard headlights to be significantly worse than a prius unless you pay a few $k for the good headlights. You know it's bad when the NHTSA has to embarass BMW and deny them the safety ratings until fixed. Seats that you have to pay for to fold down or have a ski passthru. Not to mention the new "wonder" 4 cyclinders (2 liter ish, turbo, 16v, etc) are getting pretty famous for exploding and leaving behind $30k engine repairs and BMW significantly shortening their engine warranties on their CPO cars.
I admit the giant touch screen was a turnoff at first, but now that I'm used to a giant map with working pinch/zoom and as responsive as a decent phone. I recently sat in a late modem 3 series and was pretty disappointed with the map/nav/entertainment system. It's really nice to have a giant responsive map (or sat mode if you prefer) built in. I'd much rather have that then a standard cockpit with a tiny map screen, often with the old/slow/gross capacitive touch screens that don't even allow pinch/zoom.
Performance isn't luxury. I've seen plenty of powerful cheap cars. I mean the look/feel of being in there. The Tesla is fine, but a nice car feels good, not fine, to be in.
But yeah, I expect good performance from any EV.
> Driving cross country with a kid, dog, and partner works well.
Except for the need to stop at superchargers along the way and wait. How did you manage to choose the one use case that Teslas (and all EVs) manage to be worst at?
As for opening their supercharger network, Musk announced it would be to any car that could plug in (with an adapter they plan to sell), if the drivers downloaded the Tesla app.
Meanwhile, I'm surprised people use any built in map/nav/entertainment system. I have a phone and a tablet. Why would I want a second rate experience baked into a large purchase? Like "look at the quality of the tablet permanently mounted into this wall" isn't a selling point to me for a house.
I'm a fan of the latest/greatest phones, I have a Pixel 6 Pro on order. But when driving I find it MUCH nicer to have a 15" display always showing the current map than to have some tiny phone clipped to my dashboard or windshield. I wouldn't call it second rate at all. Phone calls, voice recognition, etc works great in my Tesla. Having moved to a new city recently, I've really appreciated the nav.
One big difference is many other cars have a nav system that feels over a decade out of date from day 1. So they age really poorly.
I sat in a friend's brand new Tesla recently and I had to bite my tongue because the interior just seemed... cheap.
Like, felt stretched over plastic cheap. Microsoft brown Zune cheap. And not even in the same league as my Mazda, let alone something like a Mercedes.
I know this is your subjective opinion, but I just thought you might be interested to know that Nissan is not well regarded by car enthusiasts (their one sports car notwithstanding). A more fair comparison might be one of the luxury German brands like BMW or Mercedes, or if comparing EVs, the new Ford Mach-E.
Yeah. Right after cold fusion. Hell freezing over. And pigs flying.
Hydrogen EROI is negative at 1:4 or 1:5.
There are certain use-cases where you might want it, but probably most of the cars of the future should be battery-based EV's.
Compared to fuel cell cars, especially plug-in fuel cell cars, EVs are the unavoidable loser. They'll be more expensive, heavier, and generally will have shorter ranges while failing to produce a real efficiency advantages.
As much as I’d like to believe hydrogen would be a great commuter car power plant, efficiency (and I mean well to wheel efficiency), safety of high pressure hydrogen, wear snd tear (mirai cars are not doing great after 6-7 years) need to be solved.
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/236723/1/Ruhnau-and-...
All of the safety and wear and tear issues have been solved. This is really just fearmongering at this point.
Toyota (and Japan) still haven’t done much H2 stuff for nearly a decade despite their awesome success with the Prius. Would love to be proven wrong.
Cadillac hasn't been the symbol of luxury in pop culture for a few decades now. Lexus and the German up brands (BMW, Mercedes, Audi if not in the USA) are much more pervasive.
I think anyone buying a Tesla because s/he wants to show off being rich would be similar to the kind of people who buy Trump-branded products because they think that brand is a symbol of wealth/luxury.
Services and Other - Insurance
In Q3, we rolled out our “Safety Score” functionality, which will also be used for our telematics insurance product. We actively monitor braking, turning, tailgating (unsafe following), forward collision warnings and forced autopilot disengagements in order to predict the probability of a collision. This system will continue to be fine- tuned as we receive more data. We also launched our telematics insurance product in our first state – Texas – in early October. We believe our insurance premiums will be able to more accurately reflect chances of a collision than any other insurance product on the market. Additionally, we will proactively communicate to the user what driving adjustments need to be made to decrease probability of a collision.
These models has it’s problems but they are getting better - it’s just so easy to make wrong assumptions from ML models which only include a subset of variables.
How do you inspire the lowest performers?
You assume extra risk that the company won't screw you over for what is likely to be a very modest upside. There are lots of case studies of people who got massive unexpected bills because they were trying to save a few bucks. Especially since they will be able to assign the blame to the customer for their high rates. Never trust corporations more than you have to.
It's perhaps a little better when we are talking about behaviors that are entirely under the driver's control, but gets potentially ugly if for example someone has slower reaction time due to genetics or health and thus gets priced out of insurance.
At which point there's no point in insurance, it's a glorified bond or escrow service depending on how you squint.
I guess this borders on a philosophical point, but I don't agree. car insurance is not (or shouldn't be, imo) a payment plan for likely crashes. if, for whatever reason, a person's reaction times are so slow that they would be priced out of insurance entirely, they shouldn't be behind the wheel at all.
I find that I generally travel above the speed limit and feel far safer than I do when I set my cruise to the proper speed limit. Why? Because when I'm passing others I get to choose how long another vehicle is in my blind spot, or how often someone is trying to park themselves in my back seat. When I go the speed limit I always end up in a pack of cars all jockeying lanes with someone far too close to my rear bumper and a guy in front of me swaying up and down in his speed... I feel generally unsafe leaving control of my speed/position up to the other cars on the highway.
* Very obviously, these are subjective takes and likely don't reflect reality. No vehicle accidents in 17 years makes me think I'm doing something right though
Apparently he learned that driving boats in the Navy.
Don't believe me? Try: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Canada+worse+dr...
I do a lot of highway driving, and Saskatchewan doesn't see the same level of congested traffic that you'd get in bigger metropolitan areas. So my comment really does have a lot of particulars that aren't universal. I take a different approach to driving while in the city which does not involve frequent speeding.
You must stop for a yellow (amber) light if it is safe to do so.
States vary somewhat in their laws, but in my home state of California, the laws state only:
California Vehicle Code (CVC) Section 21452(a): "A driver facing a steady circular yellow or yellow arrow signal is, by that signal, warned that the related green movement is ending or that a red indication will be shown immediately thereafter."
CVC Section 21454: "When lane use control signals are placed over individual lanes, those signals shall indicate and apply to drivers of vehicles as follows: (a) Green indication: A driver may travel in any lane over which a green signal is shown. (b) Steady yellow indication: A driver is thereby warned that a lane control change is being made. (c) Steady red indication: A driver shall not enter or travel in any lane over which a red signal is shown. (d) Flashing yellow indication: A driver may use the lane only for the purpose of making a left turn to or from the highway."
A yellow light on a traffic control signal in the state of California only indicates an upcoming transition to a red light, which a driver must stop for. There is no requirement that a driver must stop for a yellow.
And FWIW the driver's manual for my state offers no guidance and simply says it indicates the light will soon be red.
Since the other person who replied said their state on the other side of the country does this I suspect it's one of those things where there's a federally issued suggestion (probably from the NHTSA) that some states implement and some don't.
I would bet this trumps all of that junk wrt crashes by a significant margin.
Looking down at a phone, for example, causes Autopilot to alert, and three alerts in succession reduces your safety score and kicks you out of Autopilot [1] until you go through a Drive->Park->Drive shift cycle.
[1] https://www.tesla.com/support/safety-score (Control-F "Forced autopilot Disengagement")
I’ve gotten double digit red-text autopilot nags (the new ones driven based on camera data) on a single drive, but have never had a Forced AP Disengagement or been put in AP jail.
It will be interesting to see how this develops. Will they begin selling this data? I imagine it's valuable for rental car agencies, ride-share apps, etc etc.
Selling access to the data in some fashion (think how Google, FB, etc allow advertisers to buy access to a certain user to shoaw ads) as a recurring business model is probably more profitable
Not necessarily. I'd pay more for car insurance to avoid being tracked this way, but that doesn't make me higher risk. Or maybe I just want to keep my home and auto insurance bundled so I can save money on both.
At the end of the day, if the existence of a Tesla insurance removes a portion (not all) of low risk drivers from the insurance market, the remaining drivers would be higher risk. The insurance company doesn't care about the mechanism that causes it, at the end of the day the collision rate will stabilize into a new higher rate, together with the associated insurance rate.
Can you even opt-out of being tracked by Tesla? Even if you're not buying their insurance, I'm sure their EULA will grant them access to your data.
I mean, they seem to be doing very well now, but their market cap is now roughly equal to all other car makers combined. [0] That's just confusing to me.
Are people actually betting on them ultimately turning into the one modern energy company? The one battery company?
[0] https://companiesmarketcap.com/automakers/largest-automakers...
You're asking for an explanation to the collective market forces driving this. If anyone here knew a fully accurate reason, they'd be a billionaire investor.
People will take what the company makes in EPS today and assume it will stay there forever.
So in 2012, people created Tesla death watch, bankruptcy tracker etc. In 2021 people wonder why others will wait 100 years to get their money back.
The investors in Enron were right too, until it went bankrupt.
Nothing is proven until the end. I do think Tesla has a large advantage in many respects, and a visionary leader is difficult for more legacy companies to overcome.
I can think of many ways they can expand their margins well beyond traditional auto.
But share price does not speak to any long term truth. Just a snapshot of public expectations of the truth.
I think Taleb puts it well: “Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.”
Well, they currently sell far more passenger electric vehicles than every other auto maker combined, and demand only seems to be increasing even as production continues to increase exponentially. Many countries and US states have gasoline car bans set to take effect in the coming decades; if the incumbent manufacturers continue to lag behind Tesla as badly as they've done so far, it would seem Tesla is poised to eat a lot of other car companies for lunch.
That alone still might not justify the current valuation, but then you add in their solar panels, solar roof tiles, stationary storage, and other things in the pipeline like insurance, renting out their EV charging network, possible AI applications and/or software licensing, etc. etc., and the valuation seems at least plausible to me.
I don't think anything you said justifies their current market cap.
They're planning on making:
2022: 15,000
2023: 55,000
2024: 80,000
so that won't even put a dent in Tesla making well over a million electric vehicles per year.
[1] https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/ford-f-150-lightning-e...
Will be interesting to see how it plays out.
[1] - https://insideevs.com/news/523295/europe-plugin-car-sales-ju... [2] - https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Electric-cars-in-China/Sur...
They are one of the leading producers in all of those markets as well. What you need to monitor is BEV not 'plugin'. And some of those other cars are tiny 4k$ cars that don't really compete with a Tesla anyway.
Tesla is literally selling 2x more BEV then the second best company VW Group (including all brands). And in terms of revenue from BEV and profit from BEV they are way beyond that.
They also don’t waste any money on advertising. They don’t have to deal with as many third party parts providers eating away at their profits. They’re not beholden to unions or dealer networks.
All that stuff is a serious drag on profitability and market cap. Just because they make cars doesn’t mean they have to have shitty margins and high debt like the other companies.
That's key. Enterprise value is essentially debt + equity, and other car makers have much more debt than Tesla.
(a) that they build robotaxis ~5 years ahead of competitors
(b) they continue to sell ~50% more cars each year (they have a stated goal of 20m cars/yr by 2030)
How much is a robotaxi worth? A regular taxi can drive ~100k miles/yr @ ~$2/mile. Let's say that Tesla robotaxis undercut on price by a factor of two, thus making ~$100k/yr in revenue. Let's say 50k goes to the buyer, and 50k goes to Tesla. Five years of that would be worth $250,000. Let's divide by two to be a tad more conservative. If you're selling 20m cars a year, that's $125,000*20m = 5T of value in cars in a single year. If Tesla were doing that in a single year, their market cap would be in excess of $10T]. If you think Tesla has a 1 in 10 chance of pulling off the above, then you'd expect a fair market valuation for them today of 1T — which is roughly what the market puts them at.
Plus add Tesla Energy, which could be as big as the car business.
Plus add Tesla Bots (labor), which is probably the largest market in the world.
Also it is not as clear as you think, who washes the cars used for robotaxis etc?
I think Tesla is on track to have significantly lower manufacturing costs than the rest of the industry. They've been solving some of the really hard production line challenges[0][1] and appear to have a lot of industry standard optimizations left to implement on top of those.
[0]https://electrek.co/2019/07/22/tesla-revolutionary-wiring-ar... [1]https://www.designnews.com/automotive-engineering/teslas-swi...
Other then BYD (and some research groups) nobody has attempted to make cells structural to the car yet. And BYD basically uses prismatic LFP cells that make it easier.
Unfortunately they have not yet managed to do the improvements to the wiring and moving to 48V. Elon basically wants to use Ethernet and PoE for everything in the car. This seems a lot harder to do then anybody outside the automotive industry understands.
Their cells and how they are produced is also quite amazing. They literally went back to 0 and rethought battery production from the ground up. The fans are trying to reproduce the process from the public video and available information (from Berlin application for example). It really seems like they simplified a lot, specially really small and difficult welding process that need to be done at high speed. They went so far as producing all their own manufacturing equipment as well, they bought companies like Hibar and have Grohmann engineering build these machines in Germany (new factory being built there as well). Will be hard for others to compete with battery production lines that can spit out 4-5x as many larger cells as a comparable 2170 line.
I know Toyota is working on its own solid state batteries, and you likely can't say more then is publicly available. Toyota seems to have made no effort to produce its own 'traditional' cells so far. I'm not sure if they plan to produce their solids themselves. And I will be very interested to see when an actual mass volume 100k+ a year car gets produced with them. I would be surprised if it was before 2028 or so. At that point 'traditional' cells will have made huge advances, it will be interested to see what advantage they will have at that point. I am eagerly waiting for more information from Toyota.
PS: The latest 'fun' thing Tesla seems to do (in Berlin), is to put the seats on top of the battery first and then drop the car frame on-top of it. Where the battery is the floor of the vehicle. Its almost like the old body-on-frame. I think the kind of stumbled into that because they wanted to eliminate the redundant layer in the floor and realized that the frame now has a hole in the bottom. I assume they will then manually insert the floor carpets in final assembly.
I agree with your points on megacasting. Other companies can replicate it but it will take time. Just as important as the megacasting will be changes to other assembly procedures that accompany that shift, which may increase lead time till those companies can start production.
I agree that Tesla has done some really smart things with batteries and would add that "the battery industry", such as it is, runs on software that's feels like it was made in the 90s. I imagine Tesla has a more mature software stack and I think this gives them more of an advantage than is generally realized by the industry.
Since you mention battery timelines, it may interest you that Toyota has a group explicitly attempting to speed up development[0].
[0] https://medium.com/toyotaresearch/accelerated-materials-desi...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-05/biden-snu...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/14/tesla-toyota-and-honda-criti...
You misspelled "unions".
This makes zero sense, given how these traditional automakers are dragging their feets. Unless they expect to, once again, be helped by the government when things will get ugly.
Being generous, the thinking might be that you praise the slow kids who struggle to learn when they are successful in order to motivate and encourage them to keep going. The kid who's a natural talent and highly self motivated doesn't necessarily need accolades from authority figures.
Still feels cheap, and only a fool wouldn't see how ridiculous the praise is.
In < 5 years from now, the best selling EV will be the F-150 Lightning.
And also self driving does allow for resource efficiency, which is environmentally friendly. Self driving cars have the potential to drive closer, making better use of limited road surface area and reducing traffic (which reduces emissions of other cars in the same jam). It also allows for fewer cars to serve more passengers.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/28/22596337/tesla-supercharg...
Closed charging networks with proprietary plugs don't help you as a driver. It's just dumb, incompatible infrastructure.
Imagine if you had different electrical sockets for every different brand of appliance in your house. Imagine if you had to used branded fuel for your particular brand of ICE vehicle. It'd be stupid.
Tesla already uses CCS type 2 combo in Europe. They've released a CCS type 1 combo adapter in Korea, but the adapter will not charge as fast as having a CCS inlet on the car.
With the addition of CCS plugs on their chargers in North America and with the eventual availability of the CCS adapter to support legacy vehicles, hopefully Tesla will join the rest of the industry and start putting CCS type 1 combo inlets on the cars in North America soon.
In 5 years time, Tesla won't have solved self-driving, there'll be few distinguishing features between Tesla's self driving and whatever Ford will call its advanced driver-assist tech. If self-driving is completely solved by then, Ford will have the option of licensing Waymo's Driver platform (I predict that Waymo will not venture into large-scale vehicle manufacturing)
https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/28/22596337/tesla-supercharg...
They'll start in Europe first because Tesla already uses CCS in Europe.
Changing those traditional carmakers is difficult, which makes them appear fall short of your expectations of the short run. And I do expect many won't make it. But those that can change will be a force to be reckoned with in the long run.
You made one correct prediction in a completely different domain 5 years ago, and this is relevant how?
Keep in mind that the F150 has been the most popular vehicle in the US for many decades. You might be in a bubble where it seems irrelevant but those "slack jawed idiots" buy a lot of vehicles.
Copied from another comment…
> They're planning on making:[1]
> 2022: 15,000
> 2023: 55,000
> 2024: 80,000
[1] https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/ford-f-150-lightning-e...
So I don’t really see how you think the F-150 lightning will be the best selling EV in < 5 years when they don’t even plan on making 200k of them in the first three years.
So? Where will Ford get the massive amount of batteries? You understand that until like 6 month ago, the CEO of Ford claims that batteries were no issues and they had to do zero investment into batteries. They said the they will simply buy on the open market.
Once they actually tried that the realized they were delusional and now made a dedicated partnerships to build their own dedicated plants.
Pickup market is 2M vehicles a year, Ford will not even be producing 100k F-150E by 2024.
Tesla in comparison is in construction of building a factory (including a dedicated battery and battery cathode factory) that should be able to produce 500k a year.
> VW group is making massive investments in EVs.
They are second in the market and their CEO just had a 'panic' meeting because they can see how they are not catching up as fast as they hopped.
Elon Musk literally was just invited to speak to VW managers to help them out.
> BMWs vision is to be the premier green automaker by 2030.
And I'm gone have body like Pitt in Fight Club by 2030. BMW is not even building dedicated EV platforms yet. They are years behind. Let them actually produce and sell some BEV before they make big claims.
> In < 5 years from now, the best selling EV will be the F-150 Lightning.
Tesla will be selling around 1M Model Y by then, maybe more. There is 0 chance this is the case.
And Cybertruck alone is very likely gone beat F-150 Lighting.
I have not seen any recent market share for 2021 but given onslaught of new products from every legacy car maker, I see no reason to believe they are falling behind. If anything, they are catching up.
https://insideevs.com/news/486325/world-top-ev-automotive-gr...
You can drive a model X with its air suspensions in boat mode (or whatever it's called) and it's another story.
And making their own battery cells in each plant.
And converting the Tilburg assembly line into another stationary energy storage factory. And researching locations for a few other new plants in 2023 as per Elon. And opening negotiations with India (as per Reuters, today).
Sounds solid to me.
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/10/19/president-bidens-pick-f...
https://electrek.co/2021/09/29/elon-musk-calls-out-biden-con...
Wow.
Musk runs around on Twitter calling people pedophiles. Musk flouted California's coronavirus regulations as a media stunt. Musk says Americans are complacent and entitled whereas he praises the Chinese as smart and hardworking. Musk says China rocks:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/31/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-china-ro...
So why would Biden invite him when Musk brings so much baggage?
Musk called someone a pedo 4 years ago. Can we please stop?
Let's see: Does the world benefit from a CEO that has built the biggest clean-energy revolution that the world has ever seen but has spoken some shit while they were drunk?
The answer is unequivocally, YES.
Musk has gone out of his way to earn a reputation for being a clown and he will be remembered as a clown. That's a cost of using Twitter to express yourself:
What's wrong with being a clown? My guess is that his critics are just angry that Elon doesn't feel as constrained by societal norms as they do. And that video is hilarious in its journalistic superficiality. When Elon uses the number 420, it's a joke. It doesn't matter if 99.999% of people who read it see no humour in it, it's still clearly identifiable as Elon humour. The fact that this wasn't pointed out is just sad.
Even if it wasn't a joke, tweets like that have no effect on long term stock price. (Though it could be argued that the pathetic howling of indignation around them has a very slight medium-term effect.) The only people who "lose out" as a result of tweets like that are day traders and market speculators—people who make their money off the value created by others, adding literally zero value to the economy.
It means you don't get invited to talk about EVs with the president of the United States, which is what we're talking about.
> Even if it wasn't a joke, tweets like that have no effect on long term stock price.
It still gets you fined by the SEC. Elon is just going to have to suck it up and accept responsibility for his actions instead of whining about how he doesn't respect the SEC.
As for the SEC, the evidence of reality suggests otherwise. Elon didn't have to suck it up and accept responsibility. He didn't have to stop whining about how he doesn't respect the SEC.
And yet you're clearly agitated by it.
> Elon didn't have to suck it up and accept responsibility. He didn't have to stop whining about how he doesn't respect the SEC.
Yes, his inability to do so is one of the reasons he is clown. An inability to accept responsibility for himself is a personal failing. It's weak.
An odd thing to say given that I haven't said anything about it. Perhaps you are confusing me with someone else?
You might have allowed your bar to sink that low, but many of us do not agree with this assessment.
We've had enough clowns in the white house lately, we do not need Elon there as well.
It's kind of silly to equate inviting someone as a guest to electing someone as President.
But if you think Trump was a problem because he was a "clown" then I'm sorry but you've been distracted by the superficial. It's my opinion that Trump was a bad president—and continues to represent an existential threat to civil trust—but his style didn't have anything to do with it. It was his substance. Behind the clown was some awful ideas and disgusting political strategies.
Equating these two people is just silly.
Trump is a narcissist whose most economically successful skill prior to 2016 was as a "brand" and a television show presenter. He inherited hundreds of millions of dollars and while it's almost impossible to know exactly how successful Trump has been with money, estimates peg his wealth as having grown at a lower rate than the market average. Put another way, with his mix of successful and failed ventures, he has effectively lived off his inheritance.
Elon Musk is a weird guy with degrees in economics and physics, was closely involved in the success of PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX, and has become one of the world's richest people almost entirely from his own work, ventures and investments. Despite this, Elon lives a modest life with few material possessions, choosing to spend most of his time working.
This is a flat out lie, and we hear it a lot from Elon fan clubs as a soundbite as PR stunts for him. His fortunes have been built by abusing his workers and the conditions around them. And we haven't even gotten to the mines yet.
If you want to follow this clown knock yourself out, but appearances matter and when Elon wants to start acting more mature, others might give him notice.
When read in its entirety, what I said isn't a "flat out lie"—or at the very least it isn't disputed by any assertions you have made. Whether you think his ventures and investments are ethical is a separate question to whether they are the source of his wealth.
You might be able to control language and the dialog elsewhere, that's not happening here.
If you want to follow this clown knock yourself out, but you can drop the glorification of Elon here.
I wonder how many years it will take before people stop bringing up a single event from years ago as if it was the norm.
"the measure also offers union-made EVs assembled in the United States an additional $4,500 tax incentive."
I’m hoping this car lasts maybe a decade. I have my eyes on Tesla now but I do wonder if it will be just as appealing in 10 years
https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/E2EA0E4F-BAD9-4...
Toyota is advertising HEV as "self-charging" EV, that's cynicism.
No, studies have shown PHEV emissions lifetime emissions are higher than expected, offering less reduction from an ICE than previously expected[0], and that some PHEVs emit more than their official sources suggest[1].
But you can use common sense here: If you take comparable cars with/without a plug-in option (e.g. prius vs prius prime), then the plug-in option emits less CO2 if you charge it frequently enough to offset (a) the added weight of the battery, and (b) whatever emissions were involved in producing the battery. Obviously, if you don't charge your PHEV, it's not any better than an ordinary ICE HEV.
> Toyota is advertising HEV as "self-charging" EV
This should be illegal. HEV is just an ICE with better gas mileage.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54170207
[1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1130586_report-plug-in-...
I don't see how this is true as HEV _are_ electric vehicles powered by a fuel cell. Please expound on how this equates to an ICE.
EDIT: My parent comment was misleading perhaps, because I used the non-standard abbreviation HEV (Hydrogen Electric Vehicle) as opposed to the more conventional FCEV (Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle).
As it happens, when I was purchasing I was a renter with no stable charging situation. I was buying a car so I could go to open houses and shop for a condo/house. I ended up buying a condo with a small driveway (for which I installed an EVSE), but most of the units in the city don't even have that possibility.
Hence, originally I had no intention of buying the plug-in model. I only got it because it was roughly the same price after incentives, and I'm thankful it worked out this way because now I charge it regularly and my day-to-day in-city trips are all electric.
Does that mean they sold all of them at a loss of 51M?
That means that if the asset falls below their most recently booked price at any point in the quarter, they are required to book an impairment charge in the amount of the drop. If it goes up, they cannot book the profit until they sell.
In, say, Microstrategy’s case, the market has entirely ignored any impairment announcements. This has been sensible I think.
(The market also has Microstrategy well overvalued compared to its holdings, but that’s another matter)
That was the case and there was a great spread trade for anyone who had the stomach for it.
But currently MSTR is valued less than the value of its BTC, which implies a negative value for their legacy business.
But they also have $2.2 billion debt. Legacy co worth about $500 million.
Add $1.7 billion to marketcap and you’ll see their bitcoin are valued at about $9.5 billion, a 30% premium. This has narrowed I think, they’ve been selling stock to arbitrage the difference.
Or, alternatively it could also imply that the market thinks the future value of their BTC holdings will drop. It's still difficult and costly to short BTC directly, so I do wonder if negative sentiments about it might be reflected better in things like MSTR valuation than in the actual BTC spot price.
Really strange. Anyone remember TSLAQ? lol
They're still around. In fact one of the TSLAQ people just got hired by Biden as an advisor to the NHTSA. (A woman hat has cussed out Tesla on several occasions and threatened physical violence on Elon Musk.)
Act $1.86 EPS
Notably the carbon credits have decreased in contribution
>TBD: Cybertruck - In development
I thought Cybertruck was supposed to be built in Texas?
> We are making progress on the industrialization of Cybertruck, which is currently planned for Austin production subsequent to Model Y.
What's that mean? Cybertruck coming out in the 2030s?
Why would you assume that?
Model Y production is literally already in pre-production phase and will be scaling all next year.
Cybertruck will be 6M-1Y behind in Austin.
They will need massive battery capacity for Cybertruck in addition to 500K Model Y. This is what people don't understand.
They are planning 500K Model Y and 500K Cybertrucks, that needs more battery then currently is being produced in Nevada.
In addition to the other supply chain, chips and battery is required to be available to seriously start Cybertruck.
That is why Austin will include a dedicated battery factory and even a dedicated cathode manufacturing plant.
> Bitcoin-related impairment of $51M
> No, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the US are booked as indefinitely lived intangibles.
> That means that if the asset falls below their most recently booked price at any point in the quarter, they are required to book an impairment charge in the amount of the drop. If it goes up, they cannot book the profit until they sell.
This does not mean that they sold the Bitcoins, but that they had to set aside a reserve of money for a potential future loss on their Bitcoins.
This has nothing to do with their propensity to sell their Bitcoins or their expectations on the price of Bitcoins. Instead, it has to do with the way accounting principles work and the need to mark-to-market financial investments.
SBC = stock based compensation, this translates to Tesla paying $500m in stock compensation in Q3 alone. Not sure how other companies compare, but this sounds like a lot.
I think Ford and Toyota are going to figure out how to be tesla a lot sooner than Tesla is going to figure out how to be Ford and Toyota.
Tesla Solar, Battery, Car Insurance and Car Financing off the top of my head.
Musk even said insurance could be 30%-40% of Tesla's auto business
If they ever deliver on the promises of FSD, cars will become safer, which will diminish accidents which will diminish insurance payout which will diminish revenue which will diminish insurance profits, because it's an extremely regulated business where profit margins are regulated.
If they deliver on the robotaxi promise, why would anyone buy a car themselves when they can just robotaxi everywhere? If the cars make money, why would Tesla sell the cars to people in the first place?!? And if they own all their cars, how would they make money off of insurance? The only reasonable future is that making money off your robotaxi Tesla is a pipedream, which means you can't count on that argument to drive sales.
For insurance to win, FSD has to fail. But for sales to soar, FSD has to win.
Even a successful entry into both those businesses would be 45B, or 5% of Tesla's current market cap.
They're already number one, worldwide, and by far.
>keep their dominant car margins while gaining market share.
They're doing both at the same time.
Source? The only info I can find in a quick search shows they have the largest single factory, but other manufacturers are larger in aggregate, and Telsa is only a small part of the overall market: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1246713/largest-lithium-...
edit: here's a better source, showing them not even number one for Electric Vehicles https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-top-10-ev-battery-makers
These players are fighting for Tesla's contracts, and Tesla will keep buying all their batteries while adding their own production capacity (search for "project roadrunner"). What matters is 'who has access to the end customers' and to the best tech. Tesla has so much demand from grid operator that they can easily buy all the supply. They're just limited by their own production / assembly / installation capacity.
Can you name one company in such a position? Tesla price-to-earning ration based on Q3 2021 income is 147, and dropping like a stone. Looks cheap to me.
And they have consistently made the right decisions. People on HN might not like their approach to development of Self-Driving but they have invested a huge amount in deep neural nets and all the infrastructure around, including their own chips. They might well be able to sell access to that chip for example.
Tesla is deep into batteries already and is building a huge team including research and vertically integration into the machines, mining, precurser production and so on. That expertise can eventually be used in a number of ways.
I believe Tesla in a few years will seriously go after electric flight. I believe they have the talent to pull that off, maybe in cooperation with SpaceX. Its the logical next step.
They have one of the world leading materials development departments as well, shared with SpaceX.
They have the electronics, software talent and manufacturing to go into many other industries as well.
I simply believe in their execution and strategy in the long term.
People said they were crazy to make their own cars, they should just go to a contract manufacturer. But then they wouldn't have 30% margin right now. This kind of story will repeat itself.
im not saying Tesla isn't successful and never delivers but it does seem exponential what musk promises and while i think it's possible, managing all these massive projects is probably too much for the company. the humanoid robots thing for me really make me feel like he's just feeding investor hysteria. (i was a former musk fanboy)
They literally started work on this a few months ago and didn't announce a product. Are they not allowed to do research? Seems pretty clear that one of the reason for this is recruitment, they explicitly said so.
As an investor I don't expect any profit from this anytime soon.
> - profitable tunnels/loop
The literally just signed a huge deal to expand the Loop in Las Vegas.
They successfully bid on a number of other projects as well. They are testing their next generation tunneling machine.
That is not Tesla btw. different company.
> - rocket propelled cars
Its really just air-pressure release valve. Its not as crazy as it sound. It will happen eventually but only for a maybe a few 100 cars. Again, not really all that relevant, just like most Hypercar products by big car companies.
I think it will happen in a couple year but its basically just a 'look we are better then you' project.
- a semi
Why is that crazy? They haven't done it because they are limited on battery and chips. They can currently grow without inducing more products. Each Semi would mean 4 less Model Y.
They are working on the Semi and related Mega chargers. They have multible test vehicles on the roads. They just recently set up a bunch of Mega chargers in Nevada.
- a truck
Again, they are setting up a factory and battery factory next to it. This is clearly going to happen and when it does it will be at large volume. A vehicle program being a few month delayed isn't really special.
> - cars that drive themselves
I don't think it will happen anytime soon but Tesla is at the forefront of making it happen in the general case that is enough for me.
This doesn't really seem crazy, other car companies have cars, trucks and semi in their lineup as well.
> Seems pretty clear that one of the reason for this is recruitment, they explicitly said so
this doesnt change my opinion on whether they should dive into robotics while having 5-8 other major projects ongoing, i didnt even mention tesla solar.
> Its really just air-pressure release valve. Its not as crazy as it sound
you dont need to explain how itll work, i know already, and i think it wont work in practice, or at least its not worth the marginal speed increase for the added weight of the pressurized tanks (even disregarding the safety of it all)
> The literally just signed a huge deal to expand the Loop in Las Vegas.
the economics of the loop make no sense. its not profitable now, and whether they expand that will not change anything. They need FSD for the loop to be worthwhile, and theyve shown already that their current tech is unable to navigate the tunnel without a human driver.
> They haven't done it because they are limited on battery and chips. They can currently grow without inducing more products. Each Semi would mean 4 less Model Y.
sounds like an excuse to me, it may be true but then as a CEO its irresponsible to announce youll ship semis in 2020 and almost two years later its still not on the market. Maybe dont make promises before you know they're realizable at scale
i didnt even mention in the original post, tesla solar (roof tiles, battery bank, etc), Hyperloop, building tunneling machines. i understand these arent owned by tesla. But theyre still managed in part by musk and he has stated he splits his time between all his ventures. Again my issue is with the number of, and scope of each project, and their reputation to deliver on time.
The goal of company is not to make as many projects as possible, but to make money. It simply makes no strategic sense to create more products while they are growing 50% a year with existing products.
They will bring these products to market when it makes sense.
> this doesnt change my opinion on whether they should dive into robotics while having 5-8 other major projects ongoing
Tesla is not a small company anymore, they have lots of profit and free cashflow. They need to start series long term research projects and investments to continue that.
> and i think it wont work in practice, or at least its not worth the marginal speed increase for the added weight of the pressurized tanks
There is no reason it wouldn't work, people have done the math on this. Its not just about speed but also about handling.
> the economics of the loop make no sense
Great that you have so much knowledge of that. Please share the detailed economic model. They are underbidding the competition on a number of projects and I for one no longer bet that Musk companies will go bankrupt.
> They need FSD
No they don't. Its a much simpler and much more constrained problem.
> tesla solar (roof tiles, battery bank, etc)
I think you mean Tesla Energy. Battery packs are no-brainer for them.
Solar roof is a bit pointless I would agree. But I don't think Musk spends much time on it.
> Hyperloop
Not an active project. This is literally a 7 year old blue paper. Boring company might restart something like it eventually.
> But theyre still managed in part by musk and he has stated he splits his time between all his ventures.
Well if you are gone mention Boring company then SpaceX is far bigger distraction. But the thing is, these other ventures have existed for many, many years. Some since Tesla existed.
> Again my issue is with the number of, and scope of each project, and their reputation to deliver on time.
I mean its fair enough but reality is Tesla is increasingly a really large vertically integrated company. Elon Musk can't (and never could) oversee every project all the time. As a company of the size of Tesla with their growth aspirations they need to have many projects in flight. Tesla recruits many smart people and need to have project for them to work on.
Semi and Cybertruck are the sensible next products and they need to be ready so working on them is total no-brainer.
I think among people not obsessed with the details, not delivering Semi might matter. But generally doesn't hurt their reputation because most people don't know or care.
Its extremely optimistic that a company that is proven to be able t build EV at scale (literally the biggest EV company in the world) and is growing 50% a year can introduce a new EVs and work on research projects at the same time?
That a company that is the largest buyer of batteries in the world can make strage systems with those batteries?
Maybe the timelines are to short but the idea that its not realistic is just nonsense.
> Loop NEEDS fsd because basically right now its a taxi service and every single driver needs to be paid.
Again, just because it has drivers now doesn't mean it needs to be capable of FSD. Its an extremely limited well mapped area on dedicated lanes. Totally different requirement.
> have you heard of buses? theyre economically cheaper
Just because you prefer some other solution doesn't mean something you don't like isn't viable.
> People have done the math on this and its contrary to your point.
Are these the same people that said Tesla could never reach volume production, EV would never be profitable, orbital rockets couldn't land and that rocket reuse would never be economical?
Again, can you please show me detailed cost model and not just 'people' (whole likely work for competitors) did some napkin math and said it wasn't competitive.
> If you want contrary points just lookup thunderfoot on youtube
You realize with this statement you have immediately disqualified yourself from any discussion. He is basically a youtube troll who generates clicks from gullible Musk hater. I mean seriously, his video are just embracing to watch in their incompetence. If you actually use him as a source for what works and what doesn't you have no credibility.
In the space community, meaning people space journalist, and people who professionally analyze space his is basically regard as a joke. He directly contradicts what former SpaceX employees say, what former Astronauts say and so on. He doesn't believe things in offical NASA reports and so on. Literally no credibility.
For Tesla you have people like Sandy Munro, former lead engineer at Ford and leading an independent shop consulting on automotive production with 50 years experience who comment on issues like production. And instead you believe some guy with no actual industry experience who clearly does not have accuracy as his first goal, but rather showing how much smarter he is.
The guy is a joke that produces video like it was 2005. I mean if he is so amazingly smart that he can reason about every single engineering project in the world why can't he make a video that looks doesn't look like a 8 year old put together.
Seriously, there are people on yt who spend 100s of hours researching videos, talking in detail to engineers from all over the industry and build connections, find publicly available papers and patents. TheLimitingFactor on yt validates each video with a number of experts on the subject before he releases it.
While thunderfoot basically just spends 90% insulting people and then 10% showing some misleading data about something that he didn't understand in the first place.
You have seriously been taking in by a charlatan.
> hes the one who convinced me to stop investing in tesla.
If thunderfoot is the sum of your research on these topics then you shouldn't have invested in the first place.
The Teslas at the moment are clearly just because its an easily available cheap platform. I think eventually we should move to 1-person or 2-person 3-wheeled pods and small buses or transport pods.
A point to point high speed underground loop is an interesting idea with a lot of potential. As clearly pointed out by them, the long commercial viability depends on the tunneling cost.
> i used to be an evangelist like you
I'm not an evangelist. The fact is Boring company has commercial products and have successfully bid on some project. They are putting their money where their mouth is and investing in research and investing in loop systems. That is enough for me. I'm not gone dismiss it based on some 3rd rate yt research or industry experts who say 'this will never work'.
I am happy to just watch and see what the come up with. As in other cases, people make fun of the initial version, after 3 iterations it looks decent and after 3 more iteration its a great system.
Their P/E at Q3 level of profit is 147. That's quite small for a company growing at more than 50% and whose margin keep improving. Also, the addressable market for vehicles, solar and stationary storage is almost limitless. We're not even talking FSD, where their lead continues to increase vs competitors (most are stopping their research, cf. BMW and Mercedes).
>I think Ford and Toyota are going to figure out how to be tesla a lot sooner than Tesla is going to figure out how to be Ford and Toyota.
Tesla keeps increasing its technology vs Ford in all the main areas (battery, power trains, casting, electronics, self-driving, but also market that Ford does not even pretend to serve such as energy generation and grid storage).
Toyota is completely lost. They invest far less in EV than Tesla and the gap continues to increase. They only focus on PHEV, which people aren't interested in when they have become familiar with EV (see Norway, where climate does not even favor BEV). They'll try to do something with hydrogen only because the Japanese government will subsidize them for that.
They would have to see 50% YoY growth for 6 more years to reach the same number of deliveries as Toyota alone let alone the entire car market.
- Utilities: PGE is worth 22B.
- Insurance: Libery Mutual is 16B.
- Robotics: ABB is 71B.
- Cars: Toyota, the biggest and highest margin is 288B (on 700B in revenue).
So let's be very, very generous and assume Tesla is able to execute as well as Liberty + PGE + ABB + Toyota. Thats $400B. 44% of today's valuation.
I don't see a path to $900B down the line, let alone today.
US electric market is $400B in revenue today, this needs to double for the fully electric fleet politicians are pushing for. This does not account for hardware sales. We could estimate that at 1T in 10 years, if Tesla gets 10%, then that is $100B in revenue.
US auto ins market is $300B in revenue today, their market share there will likely be close to their share of vehicles. Robotics I suspect will be one of the largest industries in the future. They could become a supplier of batteries, electric motors, and self driving systems to other auto companies. Elon has said multiple times he will have the conversations.
That's just the US market. You'd then have to extrapolate to the rest of the world. At a P/E like Apple or Microsoft, they would need to get to $30B earnings per year to hit $1T, which seems feasible. They have shown that they can build and scale faster than their competitors and spend many multiples more on R&D than they do as well.
If they can maintain their 50% YoY growth for 10 years, then the P/E ratio on a $1T market cap would be under 10.
Assuming the present valuation holds. That's kind of the thing, I've zero interest in buying in if I think 10 years of 50% growth from now they might be worth today's sticker price.
I like them as a company, but I hate them as an investment.
And Tesla's income is growing fast so P/E is dropping at the same speed (the share price has remained stable since early 2021).
Compared to Tesla, Toyota is stagnating. Their battery technology is outdated and they invest almost nothing in BEV. They're still making a full bet on PHEV and hydrogen light vehicles. For now, Toyota simply cannot compete in BEV. They won't have the batteries and/or the materials (lithium / nickel), and every year they do nothing, Tesla, VW and others are securing multi year procurement deals.
Also, it would take years of great EV sales for Toyota to be able to outpace Tesla's battery purchasing power. And Tesla is making their own cells so they're not even playing the same game.
Isn't Toyota investing heavily in solid-state batteries?
Their current price to sales ratio is ~6x less than a mature company like Amazon.
https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/ps_ratio https://ycharts.com/companies/TSLA/ps_ratio
To reach the same price to sales ratio they would need to go from ~250,000 vehicles/quarter to ~1,500,000 vehicles/quarter, which is ~44% of US sales.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/30/us-auto-sales-forecast-to-pl...
Realistically, Tesla sells a lot of cars overseas, so this price more likely represents them hitting ~20% of US sales. The energy side increasing volume with in-house cell manufacturing and/or supplying other OEMs could also change where they need to be with vehicle deliveries to hit a PS ratio in line with established companies.
I mean, it's obviously going to come true at some point following a stock price growth to S&P500-dominating levels. It's always been richly valued and that is as true today as ever. The laws of physics prevent this from continuing forever, and the likelihood is great that there will be a correction downwards at some point, perhaps dramatic.
But it's a bit farcical to read this almost word-for-word identical opinion again and again and again and again, starting from a point in time where the stock price was 0.5% of what it is today.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-04/tesla-sho...
(1) Bearish on Elon, I think he's nuts.
(2) Bullish on Tesla the business - electric cars are clearly the future, Tesla builds honestly really great cars. I don't have a car, but if I were to buy one it would no question be a Tesla. They're going to make and sell a lot more cars, period.
(3) Bearish on the valuation. At this price its still worth about as much as every other car company put together, and their competitors are growing into electric too. Market breakdowns seem to show that where options exist people do not pick Tesla 100% of the time. It's more like 12%, equal to VW in Norway.
It is however a cult meme stonk, so there's no real rationality behind it.
[edit] I've been making good money selling weekly iron condors. As much as it's moving, it's still been moving less than cultists anticipate haha.
[edited, I mistyped 75% as 85% initially]
[1] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-handset-market-o...
Like who exactly? Only the American automakers are taking this seriously. Most have them have a target of maybe 50% of their offerings to be electric by 2030. Some European brands are now starting to play serious VW at the forefront of it. And the ones resisting the most are the Japanese. Mazda doesn’t even commit to a hybrid and realizing more efficient ICs coming soon in 2024. Toyota and Honda are actively seeking to block incentives to EV makers.
And even if startups like Rivian or big players like Ford,GM and VW eventually start making cars at a much better quality, they still have to match the level of vertical integration that Tesla has. The lead they have is no joke.
I've heard very good things about Fords EVs. Battery tech way behind Tesla, but they're already starting to take some of Tesla's market.
Sorry, what now? In Europe, Tesla's market share is below 20%, because they're being outcompeted by Volkswagen and Renault. But European car makers aren't taking EVs seriously?
That's nothing for a company growing revenues at over 50% while still increasing its margins.
Also, Tesla is still production limited (i.e they would steal their competitors' market share if they have a few plants available). The only market where Tesla is not growing its share steeply is where they decided not to prioritize sales. Just look at the Model Y sales in Europe where they finally to make deliveries.
Tesla don't even have a pickup to sell yet, which is USA's #1 model.
Toyota's worth 300B and they have excellent industry-leading margins. Tesla is priced at 900B while shipping a tiny fraction of the cars.
[edit] Tesla shipped 241,000 cars this quarter. Toyota shipped 2.2M. Tesla's car deliveries are literally a rounding error against Toyota's. It would take 6 years of 50% YoY growth to match Toyota's shipments alone this year.
[edit2] Toyota's PE is 9.6, so once mature, Tesla should also trade right around a 9.6 p/e, if they're really lucky.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/267272/worldwide-vehicle...
And its business is more than vehicles - a lot more. Stationary batteries also have fat margins.
The market expects tesla to beat Toyota by an order if magnitude on profit margin per car. As simple as that.
The fact that the have insane YOY growth with 14B quarterly revenue, are supply constrained - not demand constrained, have very high profit margin per car if you exclude new giga factory investments is sufficient to justify the stock price.
And how does Tesla's profit compare to every other car manufacturer?
Clearly Tesla is very early in their journey, and their valuation and PE is wildly different from Apple, they're not even in the same ballpark. The equivalent in Apple's trajectory would be Apple being valued in 2008 say after the promising iPhone launch at almost 1 trillion, does that sound reasonable to you? In fact they were valued in 2008 at 80 billion, 1/10 of Tesla at present.
I think it's too high, the parent thinks it's too high, and even Elon Musk thinks the valuation is too high (as he said twice earlier this year).
Maybe, maybe not. But they have double the margin of everyone but Toyota and Toyota is dragging its feet on going EV.
They were only talking about 4680 and structural battery packs a year ago and it’s about to go into mass production.
I'll be up front in that I've never sat in either for more than in a showroom, but tell me the Taycan is not premium and the Tesla is. I have never heard of fit and finish issues like I hear Tesla customers complaining about, for example.
For cars, there is value in having a different car than your peers, it gives you status.
The larger Tesla's market share grows, the more boring it will become to own one, and the more exciting the competition is going to get in the public mind. With comparable competition, Tesla will never ever get a total car market share over 30%.
That's an extraordinarily hard analysis to do. Basically everyone in the industry is production-limited at this point (Tesla by factory bandwidth, everyone else by part shortages). Total volume reflects industrial realities far more than it does consumer choice.
Total world automotive revenue is something like $1.5T (I forget the source, that's from my head). At the same price/revenue ratio as AAPL (a similarly dominant player in a rather different industry), TSLA would only have to make up 8% of the world revenue to justify it's current share price.
Is that comparing Apples (heh) to oranges? Yeah, it is. But the point is there's no magic principle that says "auto companies get impoverished share prices relative to tech companies" either.
Broadly: the market is betting Tesla gets valued like a tech stock and not a heavy industry stock. And the valuation is pretty much where you'd expect if that were the case.
Did you ever drive one? I did a Model 3 test drive the other day. Acceleration is out of this world, but everything else... meh. Interior looks and feels like it lasts for about 2-3 years. Brakes feel like stepping into a pile of mud. Huge central screen for everything is more distracting than useful. I was happy to get back into my 2007 BMW when the test drive was over. Still feels solid after 14 years.
Try the other EVs then. Try a Taycan, try a Mach-E, try an E-tron GT.
I'm not trying to call out you specifically, but there are so many people who are completely unaware of what the auto market actually looks like, and then they compare a new Tesla with whatever old mid-range ICE they had before, and of course the Tesla seems like a magical space-age vehicle that is better than anything else they've ever driven.
But the competition isn't slouching. The Taycan isn't far behind the Plaid in performance, and it beats the Tesla in repeating launches. The EQS has longer range and way more tech. Super Cruise and Blue Cruise are better than Autopilot in the areas they are enabled. There's plenty of cheaper EVs than Teslas, like the VW ID.4 or ID.3. There will be tons of Rivians and EV Hummers and F150 Lightnings on the roads before the first Cybertruck is delivered, if at all. You can get a EV truck from Volvo, today, and other truck makers are following suit, so you'll get an electric semi from the competition way before the Tesla Semi sees the light of day.
And every single one of them has better interior quality, better fit-and-finish, and better customer service than Tesla.
Sure, more expensive than a Model 3, but you get an actual luxury vehicle.
Tesla is still unbeaten at performance/dollar or range/dollar, so if that's important, go for it. But if other things are more important, the competition sure is heating up.
This was true pre-plaid, but no longer. Tesla majorly beefed up thermals on the Plaid.
> try a Mach-E
It's crap, don't bother if you enjoy handling. Germany is the only option ATM.
> Super Cruise and Blue Cruise are better than Autopilot in the areas they are enabled.
Ah yes, Blue Cruise, which can't drive curves on a highway by itself. Seriously, what metric are you using here?
> There's plenty of cheaper EVs than Teslas, like the VW ID.4 or ID.3.
In the US, only the ID.4, and that starts at the same price as the Model 3, which is ubiquitously reviewed better.
You're making strong points, but the fact remains that Tesla is ahead. This will change, but not yet.
They're a car company, but also a battery company, which means they have the potential to be huge in everything that requires batteries (e.g. cars manufactured by others, grid scale electricity storage) even when they don't make the final product.
I'm not even sure that the car business will be their main business in the long term.
I'll include them as an AI company once their FSD model stops trying to kill YouTubers.
- Utilities: PGE is worth 22B.
- Insurance: Libery Mutual is 16B.
- Robotics and AI: ABB is 71B.
- Batteries: Panasonic is 30B.
- Cars: Toyota is 288B.
- Financing: Included in Toyota's valuation.
Ok so, if we sum all of these mature businesses together we get $427B, less than half of Tesla's current market cap. That's one heck of a bull case when you consider Toyota ships literally 10X as many cars as Tesla does, and all those other companies, you know, exist.
Anyone else I should huck onto the pile? There's still a half trillion dollars in market cap to make up for after all.
Still hoping for the SpaceX of nuclear to emerge.
This is my biggest 'beef' with Elon, I much rather he work on nuclear then trying to make solar roofs.
This presentation by Seaborg is pretty interesting though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Dz9sfBKEg
OTOH, I didn't realize Tesla's market cap has grown that big. That is indeed kinda insane.
https://electrek.co/2021/10/04/people-are-not-betting-agains...
In stagflation, preexisting debt is a blessing.
Borrow a dollar, return the equivalent of 10 cents 5 years later.
Plural? Which, other than Toyota, could imagine competing with Tesla in EV?
This would be true 5 years ago, if they'd started then. They're too far behind now.
(The Supercharger network seems like it's going to be opened up in 2022)
The materials are hard to come by, and the manufacturing expertise to be flexible about chips seems to be unique to Tesla so far.
Of course, the engineering effort to make a decent EV is significant, as we saw from James Dyson.
I do believe that Tesla has a bright future in the industry, but their current market cap is just straight up ridiculous. Unlike any other tech giant, they will never be able to reap the kind of margins with their products (cars!) like a "normal" tech company can, and at some point the rest of the car industry will catch up. Also, Elon Musk is a walking time bomb in my opinion, eventually he'll go too far with one of his endeavors and possibly drag everything else down with him.
Why? Only a minority of customers purchase FSD but the take rate keeps increasing. This can easily double the margins. Also, the insurance business is nascent and hugely profitable. And the new Model S and X production lines were almost suspended for 3 quarters due to shortage (most profitable products). Also, each new factories are far more efficient than the old ones, and they'll open two giant one in the coming months.
Me? I'm still holding shares since 2012.
I'm full-blown conspiratorial about how Tesla uses BTC to manipulate its financial reports. I don't think what they're doing is illegal or even all that innovative, other than to use BTC and not some other thing to do this.
Tesla can time that to happen in specific parts of the quarter to either make its overall revenue look better or worse. It's not fake, it's not "fooling" anyone, it's just part of the balance sheet.
Companies do this all the time with non-crypto assets, crypto is just probably easier than buying/selling an office building, especially when your CEO is Elon Musk and can control the price of Bitcoin with a tweet.