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Tesla to raise $1B

ir.tesla.com

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Re: Tesla to raise $1B

#321

Post by Animats »

prostoalex wrote: post #230
Animats wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Model 3 will end up costing way more that $35k, to turn a profit. That's Tesla's biggest risk - they can't deliver profitably at the price point they pre-sold at. The Model 3 is an ambitious car to sell for $35K. Tesla is not a "lean manufacturing" operation; their head counts at the auto plant per car sold are currently quite high. They'll probably get that figured out eventually, but meanwhile, they nee…

> It assumes Government subsidies for solar, which may be going away for political reasons. Residential solar costs average out at 15c per kWh, post 30% tax credit. If the credit goes away, the 20c per kWh generation cost is still competitive compared to utility's retail rate. The bet is on solar technologies to continue incremental gains in efficiency, pushing the final price per kWh down. In the commercial and indu…

Most residential solar is third-party financed, either leased from the manufacturer or operated under a power purchase agreement, where the solar supplier owns the gear, acts like a utility, and sells power to the consumer. There are various incentive programs which make this viable.[1] Solar City pulled out of Nevada when one of those incentive programs went away.[2]

[1] https://financere.nrel.gov/finance/content/don%E2%80%99t-be-... [2] http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2016/01/sol...

Re: Tesla to raise $1B

#322

Post by exabrial »

mikeash wrote: post #114
marricks wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they plan to sell 500k vehicles a year soon which takes a huge ramp up form current production. Sure, they could increase production with current profits form sales but it would slow them down.

Just to quantify this a bit more: they plan to hit a rate of 500,000/year by the end of 2018, and so far the company has sold something like 200,000 cars total, ever, since it started. (I don't know how likely they are to hit that goal by the end of 2018, but they're trying.)

That's a very lofty goal indeed. They will definitely have to come down in price

Re: Tesla to raise $1B

#323

Post by aerovistae »

babyrainbow wrote: post #319
Robotbeat wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a colleague of mine (who works on rockets/spaceflight, has done so for decades) say the barge landing was impossible. As far as your other demanding questions, no breakthroughs in physics have been necessary to make reusable launch possible. People have constantly made predictions that somehow physics precludes reuse, let alone fast turnaround reuse, from being possible. But that has never, ever been the case.…

>I had a colleague of mine (who works on rockets/spaceflight, has done so for decades) say the barge landing was impossible. Surely they might have mentioned a couple of reasons. Care to share?

Unfortunately I'm unable to continue responding to you, since the responses I start to give at this point usually cause the HN admin to show up and ask me to speak civilly.

Re: Tesla to raise $1B

#324

Post by Robotbeat »

babyrainbow wrote: post #319
Robotbeat wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a colleague of mine (who works on rockets/spaceflight, has done so for decades) say the barge landing was impossible. As far as your other demanding questions, no breakthroughs in physics have been necessary to make reusable launch possible. People have constantly made predictions that somehow physics precludes reuse, let alone fast turnaround reuse, from being possible. But that has never, ever been the case.…

>I had a colleague of mine (who works on rockets/spaceflight, has done so for decades) say the barge landing was impossible. Surely they might have mentioned a couple of reasons. Care to share?

No, they didn't give any specific reasons, although I think he was thinking about the instability of the ship and lack of good enough precision landing (on the rocket-side) and station-keeping (on the ship side) as well as waves changing the angle and height of the ship. Of course, these are just engineering challenges that in hindsight look easy.

But this same thinking applies to almost everything Musk does that people think can't be done. For things in the future, consider Hyperloop and ITS.

Re: Tesla to raise $1B

#325

Post by babyrainbow »

aerovistae wrote: post #323
babyrainbow wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I had a colleague of mine (who works on rockets/spaceflight, has done so for decades) say the barge landing was impossible. Surely they might have mentioned a couple of reasons. Care to share?

Unfortunately I'm unable to continue responding to you, since the responses I start to give at this point usually cause the HN admin to show up and ask me to speak civilly.

You mean, you are at a point of losing your temper and about throw a hissy fit? For what exactly?

Lol.

Re: Tesla to raise $1B

#326

Post by mikeash »

exabrial wrote: post #322
mikeash wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to quantify this a bit more: they plan to hit a rate of 500,000/year by the end of 2018, and so far the company has sold something like 200,000 cars total, ever, since it started. (I don't know how likely they are to hit that goal by the end of 2018, but they're trying.)

That's a very lofty goal indeed. They will definitely have to come down in price

The Model 3 is supposed to start at $35,000. Demand doesn't seem to be a problem, as they have hundreds of thousands of reservations and pretty much stopped trying to solicit more while they work through the backlog. The major challenge for now is actually getting production up to capacity.

Re: Tesla to raise $1B

#327

Post by scotu »

coldpie wrote: post #293
scotu wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

collecting data at the customer's expense :) A classic playbook in our industry since RECaptcha came out

What? RECaptcha provides a very valuable service to website maintainers and users alike.

sure, I didn't intend to say that recaptcha doesn't provide a useful service, I was just saying that they pioneers, in our field, in "exploiting" (for lack of a better term in my vocabulary) a human work to solve a problem while training for free a neural network that is going to be used in a separate line of business. I think it's just pure genius

Re: Tesla to raise $1B

#328

Post by kbenson »

SEJeff wrote: post #206
Cookingboy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you invested this money with the knowledge that it was a risk, that you could lose it all, then you should probably stick with that" Yes to all of those. Rationally I can no longer justify this investment to be honest, but I like the Koolaid they are selling too much :/

I think it would be genuinely difficult for Tesla to succeed as a company and not go belly up if the Model 3 ultimately is a failure. Even with the overwhelming success and potential for a trillion dollar market of Tesla Energy, I think a failure to execute well on the 3 will overleverage Tesla to the point of no return. I'm a true believer and think they need to stick this launch (and that means service centers, sup…

Hell, at this point, I would be happy if they succeeded purely based on the future influence they may have on how cars are sold. Buying a new car at a dealership is a horrible experience, only made worse the more I know about it and the practices they use to hide the details of the transaction, and how little that helped me deal with them the last time I was in there.

That whole part of the system is a rent seeking protection racket.

Re: Tesla to raise $1B

#329

Post by wwalser »

revelation wrote: post #130
wwalser wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that AP* was for keeping the car in a lane on the interstate. Is it suppose to be capable of navigating rural roads like the video shows?

I'm not fully up to date with that, but I think it was meant to be enabled for more residential streets recently? And the AP2 is also still speed limited making it somewhat useless on interstates? In any case, I'm pretty sure there shouldn't be a button that instantly makes your car swerve into the ongoing lane..

Thanks for the info, I wasn't aware of the speed limiting, that does sound rather useless.

Re: Tesla to raise $1B

#330

Post by amluto »

cloudwalking wrote: post #253
amluto wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I test-drove an AP2 car. After a disastrous ride in which it tried to hit two parked cars and a trashcan and wanted to drive off the road entirely, the sales person said, with a straight face, that it was great for stop and go traffic on 101. I'm a bit amazed they can currently sell cars.

AP2 is currently only meant for freeway driving. The sales person was probably right. https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

Yeah, right. It is limited to 50 mph.
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