Tesla reports net loss of $50 million in Q1 [video]

(obligatory "This isn't Reddit" in 3)

They've got some patents on some pretty key pieces of functionality and technology which they'll be licencing out no doubt in the future when other car makers come to the table. This is what I meant about 50% of Tesla's future revenue possibly coming from licencing out their technology.

The crucial part of an electric vehicle is the batteries and if you look through the list of patents which Tesla Motors is the assignee, they've got tonnes of patents on functionality based around the batteries; temperature sensors, voltage sensors, connectors, pressure sensors and smart charging tech, battery shields and more. Sure, not all patents they've filed are in use, but it does show Tesla are at the forefront of electric vehicle tech.

Think for a moment in 2009 General Motors Vice Chairman Robert Lutz told The New Yorker "All the geniuses here at General Motors kept saying lithium-ion technology is 10 years away, and Toyota agreed with us – and boom, along comes Tesla. So I said, 'How come some tiny little California startup, run by guys who know nothing about the car business, can do this, and we can't?' That was the crowbar that helped break up the log jam."

I think this one quote sums up what Musk and the countless others who work at Tesla Motors have done, they spurned a revolution.

Yes, some people get caught up in the "aura of Elon Musk" but you've got to understand the bigger picture here, it's bigger than Musk, Tesla Motors are revolutionising the electric car industry which was basically non-existent before they came onto the scene. Nobody wanted to take on the risk of investing hundreds of millions of dollars into something that people might not want. The Global Financial Crisis most likely was a deterring factor for some companies considering the thought of entering the electric vehicle car space.

I can't think of an exact patent they have for rockets, but NASA came walking (not crawling by any means) to SpaceX with a multi-billion-dollar contract.

Musk will win.

The question is: Are batteries going to significantly improve in the next 5 years? If so, then it's a huge misstep to pursue hybrid vehicles instead of directly competing with Tesla now and building battery manufacturing capability and know-how. I have a feeling the big guys are going to keep underestimating Tesla until they've already effectively been beaten.

YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES because Tesla seems to be in the process of gettting it.

For the same reason Google was able to exist when Apple, Yahoo, and Microsoft when, by your thinking, "with their hundreds of billions of dollars and reams of engineering experience," should have crushed them. Because Google got it

It is similar to when Woz was asked how many computers they could sell and his immediate answer was "a million" Surly against IBM and their "their hundreds of billions of dollars and reams of engineering experience" Apple would fail, right? But Woz knew better and when asked how he knew he could sell a million "because there are at least a million ham radio operators" Because he got it!

For the same reason that on Slashdot, when the iPod was revealed, the editor's comment was "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." Slasdot didn't get it, Apple got it

Similarly, Tesla's cars are the first cars I've ever wanted. wanted wanted. I have a car, I use it, it isn't sexy or special to me. I want a Tesla. They aren't there yet, but they're on the path and will "get it."

Can we get over this whole financial armchair meme of what a business "loss" is? Most businesses need debt to grow.

Q2-2012 - Facebook's EBITDA was -616M (that's minus) && Net Income was -157M

Q4-2013 - Facebook's EBITDA was 1.4B (that's B for billions) && Net Income was 523M

Sources -

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Facebook_(FB)/Data/EBITDA

http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=695976

http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=821954

If you're arguing from authority, it's also worth pointing out that Damodaran was uncertain about his valuation in the comment thread after his latest valuation of Tesla.

I've been thinking about this a bit lately, more generally. My impression is that what counts as a "tech startup" in the past few years is more of a cultural question than a business, technological, or economic question. Now whether that's a good or bad thing is another question. There is something to the cultural resemblance, though I worry that it's papering over pretty significant differences, which might in some cases be more important than the cultural similarities.

Tech startups are, to some extent, just those new companies that culturally use the language of, and interact with, the social milieu of the startup scene. One has to have a general interest in technology, but it can range from deep to very superficial. Tech startups can be wholly based on developing novel technology; or their level of technology might not extend much further than "has an Android app". They could be bootstrapped capital-light companies, or capital-intensive companies in traditional industries. What seems to matter to the classification is more of a style or culture or attitude.

They aren't really distinguished by using technology, because everyone does that now. They aren't even distinguished by technology being their "thing", because many companies seen as tech startups culturally are actually pretty light on the technology— e.g. AirBnB doesn't really use technology more than any other travel-industry player does... they're mostly a new-business-model play, which happens to deploy the business model through a website, because nearly everything in travel has gone through a website for 10+ years now.

My guess is that we'll start to differentiate again a bit more in the coming years, based on more structural and less cultural factors.