Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonknee | Hacker News Reader

In one version of accounting... In another they made $16M. What's clear is Tesla has been dramatically more successful at selling an electric car than any other company.

View on HN

Nissan will sell its 100,000th all electric LEAF early next year. They sell around 15,000 a quarter.

The problem is that the current stock price implies that they will be dramatically more successful than any other car company (electric or otherwise). It's all relative to expectations.

Some market caps from Google Finance:

  TM, Toyota 203.72B
  VLKAY, Volkswagen AG 114.33B
  DDAIF, Daimler AG (USA) 85.52B
  HMC, Honda Motor Co 71.86B
  BAMXF, BMW 68.69B
  F, Ford Motor Company 67.33B
  GM, General Motors 51.52B
  NSANY, Nissan Motor  36.86B
  AUDVF, Audi 36.42B
  TSLA, Tesla Motors Inc 21.47B
  FIATY, Fiat  9.35B

So, no, I don't think Tesla is quite at those levels of expectations yet. (As full disclosure, I own some Tesla stock.)

What complicates this analysis is the fact that these other companies sell in the millions--hundreds of times more cars than Tesla does in a year. Tesla's market cap is one million dollars per car to be sold in 2013.

And of course, the part which you neglected to mention: None of these companies have growth prospects which are anywhere near those of Tesla. Added in the potential disruptive potential of an all-electric car future once battery technology gets only slightly better than it is today.

I agree with you up to the point that this is a complicated analysis which can't really be done, but no further. This earnings call was really very positive, but the delivery was pretty lackluster.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com