Tesla Passes Ford by Market Value • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla Passes Ford by Market Value

#441

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 10:33 PM UTC

tbabb wrote: post #369

username223 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The automobile industry will contract as we move from individual ownership to mobility. What does this even mean? People like to leave stuff in their cars (e.g. mug, gym bag). They like them to be at their preferred level of cleanliness or disorder. Some even use them as a means of personal expression. If "mobility" were so desirable, ZipCar would have taken off 10 years ago. The "mobility" market will be about the…

> The "mobility" market will be about the size of the taxi, bus, and train market. - A personal, individual vehicle which comes to pick you up where you are and take you to exactly where you want to go is a much MUCH higher value proposition than public transit. - Add self-driving to the mix, and the cost of that service will plummet. - When the car providing that service can drive itself, then there is little to no…

This is a common pattern to electric and self-driving enthusiasts, but unfortunately it's the automotive equivalent of Wired articles about the internet circa 1996.

Problems include:

- Cost. All of the (limited) Tesla automation technologies cost more than my last car.

- Liability. Who is liable for mishaps? As Uber has demonstrated accidents and traffic violations happen with automated tech.

- Utility. The majority of users aren't high income people in SFO and NYC. We have parking, getting picked up is cool, but not high ROI.

- Pool vs own. As we've seen with transportation services as varied as stagecoaches, cabs, railways, and airlines, service based transportation models aren't cheap. Service price is always demand driven, it will cost more when you need it.

- Owning a car in the US is one of the greatest values available in any market. I can be at any point in the CONUS in I think self driving cars may put the bullet in some cabs for good after Uber and Lyft implode, and may bring train-like scale to intercity transit. But the fantasy being sold today is just that.

Re: Tesla Passes Ford by Market Value

#442

Post by wang_li » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 10:38 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #422

wang_li wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we are serious about climate change, then sometime in the 2030s [1] we have to stop building new combustion engines. Or there might be a breakthrough in carbon capture, converting atmospheric CO2 into petroleum and we can drive combustion engines forever. CO2 capture is an area of active research and it's entirely possible that advances there will make Tesla and Solar City moot.

Even if CO2 to petroleum were 100% efficient, you're still throwing away 70+% of the energy by burning it in an ICE rather than putting it in a battery as electricity. Any likely method of CO2 to petroleum is likely to be below 50%, more like 15-30% efficient. Round-trip efficiency an entire order of magnitude worse than battery. That's why batteries are better for ground-based applications and will remain so.

I'm honestly not sure the assumptions underlying your comment. Solar cell to battery is pretty inefficient at the moment with the best solar cells converting 26% of the solar energy hitting the cell into electricity and the charge-discharge efficiency of li ion cells is 80-90%. The ultimate amount of energy delivered is less than 30%.

Regardless, if any of the biological/algal methods of CO2 to fuel techniques become successful, why would we care if 5%, 50%, 100% of the solar energy received makes its way to the end product. It's basically free energy at that point. The only thing that would matter is real estate to house the facilities.

Re: Tesla Passes Ford by Market Value

#443

Post by taysic » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 10:39 PM UTC

PinguTS wrote: post #406

tbabb wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "mobility" market will be about the size of the taxi, bus, and train market. - A personal, individual vehicle which comes to pick you up where you are and take you to exactly where you want to go is a much MUCH higher value proposition than public transit. - Add self-driving to the mix, and the cost of that service will plummet. - When the car providing that service can drive itself, then there is little to no…

The funny thing, some of this already exists these days. It is called ZipCar, Car2Go, or DriveNow. All of them suffer from the very same problem: service. It does not matter if a car is selfdriving or not. To be recognized as available by someone means a utilization of about 30% by the providing company. But a utilization of about 30% does not drive down costs. You still of costs for producing and servicing the vehic…

ZipCar does not pick you up and drop you off at location. I can tell you as a Zip Car user, there are many issues that caused me to discontinue, none of which was service.

1 - the zip cars available to me are a few blocks away to walk which isn't convenient if I'm carrying something or lazy.

2 - high cost. Taking uber right now is so much cheaper. Imagine if cars were self-driving. Costs would plummet

3 - parking. This can be very hard depending on where I'm going

4 - I have to pay for the length of time I'm out, not for my ride. I also need to return the car when I'm done.

These are the biggest pain points in my opinion. Also, not needing to drive myself is a huge bonus. The leverage of solving these pain points are huge, imo.

Re: Tesla Passes Ford by Market Value

#444

Post by sxates » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 10:39 PM UTC

legolas2412 wrote: post #432

sxates wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price has been rapidly decreasing in the last 10 years, to the point that it no longer makes sense to not have solar everywhere. It's cheaper than coal, and will soon be cheaper than all the other fossil fuels as well, and will continue to go down, never up. China now employs over 1 million workers making solar panels. And they're ramping that up as fast as they can, and shelving coal power plants. We've reached…

I think solar is the future, but these claims are stupid. > "to the point that it no longer makes sense to not have solar everywhere. It's cheaper than coal, and will soon be cheaper than all the other fossil fuels as well, and will continue to go down, never up." Then the market should automatically have shifted to 100% solar by now. Solar is getting cheaper yes, but it is dependent on hours of sunlight available, w…

>Then the market should automatically have shifted to 100% solar by now.

65% of new capacity in the US last year was wind or solar.[1] The world doesn't change overnight, but expect that trend to continue.

Renewable energy growth is only being slowed by lack of storage. As battery production and other storage techniques come online, it allows higher and higher % of energy to come from renewable sources.

>Don't know where that figure is from, but I guess china must be covered in solar panels by now.

Pretty good summary of the situation here: [2]

"In 2015, China installed half of the world’s wind power and a third of its solar photovoltaic capacity. Last year, solar capacity jumped 81.6 per cent and wind capacity grew 13.2 per cent. Greenpeace has said that China’s renewable energy growth rate is equivalent to installing one wind turbine and covering one soccer field with solar panels every hour. Five of the world’s top six solar manufacturing companies and five of the 10 biggest wind turbine companies are in China. By 2020, half of the country’s new electric generation will come from solar, wind, hydro and nuclear power."

[1]https://www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2016/dec-energy-inf... [2]http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2017/03/03/will-china-take-the-...

Re: Tesla Passes Ford by Market Value

#445

Post by sxates » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 10:42 PM UTC

legolas2412 wrote: post #440

sxates wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. "Tesla delivered over 76,000 vehicles in 2016" [1]. My math may be rusty, but I'm pretty sure I'm right that they're outselling everyone combined with $100k cars. They're tracking to over 100,000 for 2017. 2. Several billion dollars worth of capital investments disagree with you. And what's important isn't the current market, but the future market - these things are growing and production bottlenecks kill growth.…

You do buy in Tesla's marketing as gospel though. > A Tesla has all the hardware needed for Level 5 autonomy (which they've demo'd, but requires regulatory approval), and it's a software update away. Audi, BMW, Google etc. demoe'd similar capacity as the tesla did 2-3 years ago. Do you even understand how difficult problem it is? It's not a problem you engineer away. Do you think Tesla made machine learning breakthro…

They demo'd it, but they didn't ship it!

Re: Tesla Passes Ford by Market Value

#446

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 10:46 PM UTC

Judgmentality wrote: post #368

criley2 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it shocking that something as simple as personal belongings would be a "lock in" to existing technology. It's like saying "I prefer my horse, I can feed it grass off the side of the road, but you have to find some fancy petro-chemical station for your auto-mobile? Insane! My gas grows next to the road!" I get it, but try to put yourself in the place of someone younger who doesn't make decisions like "I would n…

Some people just like owning cars. I live in San Francisco and don't currently own a car, but I want one. Perfect example where Uber fails - I can't take my dog anywhere. Different people have different values. Also I'm quite young, so I don't think age is a strict delineation.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Passes Ford by Market Value

#447

Post by woodpanel » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 10:55 PM UTC

username223 wrote: post #300

erikpukinskis wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are so many car makers, there is no monopole they could get. Same for solar and batteries. The automobile industry will contract as we move from individual ownership to mobility. But along with that transition some manufacturers will keep up and others will not. Tesla is hoping to be one of the winners, taking perhaps 25% of the mobility market as the car buying market dries up. Tesla's valuation is also base…

> The automobile industry will contract as we move from individual ownership to mobility. What does this even mean? People like to leave stuff in their cars (e.g. mug, gym bag). They like them to be at their preferred level of cleanliness or disorder. Some even use them as a means of personal expression. If "mobility" were so desirable, ZipCar would have taken off 10 years ago. The "mobility" market will be about the…

This 'switch from ownership to mobility'-buzz is one of the most overvalued ideas recently. Much like the Kindle was supposed to kill the book.

Why must some people see new inventions always as colossal destroyers of products they don't like instead of the more humble 'enriching ones freedom to choose'?

Re: Tesla Passes Ford by Market Value

#448

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 10:57 PM UTC

breser wrote: post #433

Spooky23 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market makes mistakes over value all of the time. Look at the sad tale of post-bankruptcy Kmart, and how they used hype, valuation and newly available credit to gobble up Sears. Predicable trainwreck ensued. Tesla is alike and different. They have an amazing management team, Apple-like religious fervor/hype machine, but a marginal product category. Their continued growth is only possible as long as they can convi…

Calling Tesla just another car company is really missing the boat on their business. Tesla started as a car company. It's how most people are aware of them. So I don't really blame you for this mistake. However, Tesla today is an integrated energy company. They make Solar Cells (the part of the business formerly called SolarCity), Stationary Battery Systems (generally referred to as Tesla Energy) that range in size f…

That's a great point. I guess the question to test your assertion is whether distributed electricity generation and storage is the cash cow AWS is. AWS took long lead time, high cost, high risk tasks and made them like ordering Chinese food.

End of the day, even with all they have achieved, the whole machine blows up once the hype train pulls to a halt.

Re: Tesla Passes Ford by Market Value

#449

Post by mattnewton » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 11:08 PM UTC

PinguTS wrote: post #406

tbabb wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "mobility" market will be about the size of the taxi, bus, and train market. - A personal, individual vehicle which comes to pick you up where you are and take you to exactly where you want to go is a much MUCH higher value proposition than public transit. - Add self-driving to the mix, and the cost of that service will plummet. - When the car providing that service can drive itself, then there is little to no…

The funny thing, some of this already exists these days. It is called ZipCar, Car2Go, or DriveNow. All of them suffer from the very same problem: service. It does not matter if a car is selfdriving or not. To be recognized as available by someone means a utilization of about 30% by the providing company. But a utilization of about 30% does not drive down costs. You still of costs for producing and servicing the vehic…

As a zip car member, I wish it did all those things, but it is a far cry from the self-driving future GP is talking about. I'm also worried about tesla's market share, but more because I don't know if they can corner all the markets they are about to compete in: automotive manufacturing, batteries and set driving systems are all hard enough problems for an entire company. It's a lot to get right.

Re: Tesla Passes Ford by Market Value

#450

Post by dilemma » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 11:13 PM UTC

woodpanel wrote: post #447

username223 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The automobile industry will contract as we move from individual ownership to mobility. What does this even mean? People like to leave stuff in their cars (e.g. mug, gym bag). They like them to be at their preferred level of cleanliness or disorder. Some even use them as a means of personal expression. If "mobility" were so desirable, ZipCar would have taken off 10 years ago. The "mobility" market will be about the…

This 'switch from ownership to mobility'-buzz is one of the most overvalued ideas recently. Much like the Kindle was supposed to kill the book. Why must some people see new inventions always as colossal destroyers of products they don't like instead of the more humble 'enriching ones freedom to choose'?

They're true believers and their faith is called religion.