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Comment by TheAlchemist | Hacker News Reader

It is very possible, even probable, that Tesla's glory days are already behind it.

Their margin are contracting, and it's actually probable they will loose money in Q3, Q4 this year. They don't have any significant advantage on competition anymore, and China's competition is already well ahead Tesla.

Elon himself suggested Tesla is worthless as a 'car making company' and it's value will come from solving autonomy with FSD. While Tesla is very good at marketing, there were 2 companies allowed to operate self-driving taxis in SF past month, and there are already several operating in China. It's hard to argue that Tesla still has the lead in that domain.

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I don’t understand how people say this with a straight face when Tesla is literally becoming the underlying charging network for the entire continental US. If anything they’re at a higher risk of the feds absorbing them as a public utility then they are of becoming irrelevant.

Not irrelevant - but not making money neither.

Look at the financials of this 'underlying charging network for the entire continental US' - the optimistic ones, project that it will bring ... 10B$ in revenues in 5-10 years (revenues, not profit !).

It's absolutely meaningless in the big picture of this company revenues and valuation.

Is there a company with any sort of network (electrical, cellular, or otherwise) that's worth nearly 700B?

No one said irrelevant either, but that their best days are behind them. From an investor's point of view that could certainly be correct.

You need to re-read Elon,

It's not that he will solve FSD, Tesla is valuable until FSD is solved as then it becomes just a car company.

And he picked the correct impossible puzzle that will never be solved. Same with the SpaceX premise.

The market value is the desire of groups of people that it be solved.

The lesson here is what impossible problem is our domains that we can market that our company is attempting to solve it and which of those impossible problems happens to intersect with a large group of people wanting said problem solved.

By this logic someone should start a company promising to cure cancer then just let the trillions roll in....

> it's actually probable they will loose money in Q3, Q4 this year.

This doesn’t jive with their investor guidance, nor the sales figures. I’m curious where this prediction is coming from.

Maybe it is due to the capital expenditures from all of the new factories being built?

It's from the fact that the demand is falling and they need to slash prices to continue to sell. They benefited greatly from Covid price surges, but this is about to end. In a 'normal' year, they can't sell that many cars at the prices they did last year - let alone in a 'recession' year.

I don't think their did any investor guidance about profits - I may be wrong though.

Re factories - I don't think they are building any new factories now - are they ? The only one announced is Mexico, but they still don't even have the official permits yet.

You can download the investor report once a quarter from their website.

https://ir.tesla.com/#quarterly-disclosure

Deliveries are currently on track and each vehicle delivered is profitable, with a larger margin (18.2%) than any other major car manufacturer. This may not be true with the first Cybertruck deliveries later this year, but total number of delivered Cybertrucks will be tiny. Cybertruck deliveries should ramp up in 2024 and the margins should improve.

There is no guidance in those investors reports.

About those large margins - yes, they are a bit higher than others, but it's not that much - and they appear much more price sensitive now. Thing is, they compare themselves to Ford / Toyota etc, while they don't sell nearly as many cars. A much better comparison is to the likes of BMW / Mercedes - but it doesn't paint the same picture.

Cybertruck deliveries are definitely not happening this year (unless we talk about <100 units for marketing purposes - much like the Tesla Semi deliveries start a year ago...)

I've heard these same talking points for the past eight years.

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