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Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to Market

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Re: Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to Market

#171

Post by elmar »

j7ake wrote: post #80
flexie wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether Tesla survives or not, these billions are some of the best spent money on the planet in the last 50 years. What are the accumulated losses so far? $5-10B? Even if Tesla were to spend another $50B and go bankrupt, I would still maintain it's great. What Tesla has achieved is so important in the long run for the environment, for ending the strategic dependence on oil dictatorships, and for renewing the belief i…

So what has been the net reduction of CO2 usage because of tesla to date?

Not eating meat is much more efective to saving the planet than buying a Tesla.

http://www.businessinsider.com/is-eating-meat-bad-environmen...

Re: Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to Market

#172

Post by lttlrck »

bflesch wrote: post #48
dkrich wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people so sure of this, especially given the recent plummet in oil prices? Car sales are at all time highs. Why do people assume that there's going to be a mass exodus to Tesla and EV's in the next few years?

Because many think they will be more comfortable to use, have better entertainment systems and everyone can experience sportscar-like acceleration for spending less money than a gas-powered car.

What about environmental factors? Or is new-shiny-fast the only way to coerce people to be more eco-friendly?

Re: Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to Market

#173

Post by lttlrck »

partingshots wrote: post #150
dkrich wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are people so sure of this, especially given the recent plummet in oil prices? Car sales are at all time highs. Why do people assume that there's going to be a mass exodus to Tesla and EV's in the next few years?

Electricity will be cheaper than oil in 5-10 years. For many applications, it already is now actually.

The lost gas-tax revenue streams will be replaced. It’s highly likely the TCO will reach parity with gas in short order - same happened with diesel.

Re: Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to Market

#174

Post by heygrady »

amaranth wrote: post #133
reallydontask wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to venture that it's not even a rounding error. In fact, in places it will likely have increased the CO2 emissions, again rounding error figures, due to the electricity generation mix and associated losses with generating that electricity (30-60% efficiency), plus transport losses (0.5 - 10%), plus charging loses, plus the efficiency of the motor itself.

The internal combustion engine in a car is around 20% efficiency while a coal power plant is around 55%. Gasoline powered drivetrains are also fairly inefficient leading to around 16% "tank to wheel" efficiency. Electric motors are about 90% efficient. An electric car is making more efficient use of the energy. It's also centralizing the source of the pollution rather than having to try to deal with it in every car o…

The idea that electric vehicles are "dirty" because of electricity produced from coal is now widely viewed as a myth [1]. The electric grid in the US (and worldwide [3]) is consistently and rapidly moving away from coal, which increases the "clean" factor of EVs over time [2].

[1] https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/evs-n...

[2] https://electrek.co/2017/06/05/electric-cars-cleaner-than-ga...

[3] https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/16/coal-use-china-india-li...

Re: Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to Market

#175

Post by MaysonL »

mbreese wrote: post #65
toomuchtodo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The automotive industry isn't going to let a company like Tesla bully them around. They already have. Its too late. Who else is going to be producing 500k EVs a year in the next 3-5 years? No one.

To be honest, I'll be surprised if Tesla is producing EVs at that rate too... They have 3 models of cars. I'm not even sure there is a market for 500k/year of those three models. Even expanding that to 4 models (Y) would still leave those numbers hard to hit.

Elon rarely makes categorical statements about future goals, usually throwing in a few weasel words, or "we project" or "we plan", but during Tesla's last earnings call he said:

“What people should absolutely have zero concern about, and I mean 0, is that Tesla will achieve a 10,000 unit production week by the end of next year. […] I think people should really not have any concerns that we won’t reach that outcome from a production rate.”

Re: Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to Market

#176

Post by heygrady »

reallydontask wrote: post #169
amaranth wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internal combustion engine in a car is around 20% efficiency while a coal power plant is around 55%. Gasoline powered drivetrains are also fairly inefficient leading to around 16% "tank to wheel" efficiency. Electric motors are about 90% efficient. An electric car is making more efficient use of the energy. It's also centralizing the source of the pollution rather than having to try to deal with it in every car o…

A coal power plant can reach up to ~60% if coupled with steam turbines, otherwise it's ~30%. Petrol cars can do a lot better than 20% There is a study, link below, showing what the subsidy should be for electric cars and in a lot of places in the US the subsidy should be negative. Granted things might've changed since then, but probably not to overturn the gist of it, which is the point I'm making. In places, EV cars…

City Lab has debunked that notion twice [1, 2].

"[I]t’s important to realize that the situation reflected in this data represents the past, not the present. States across the country are rapidly cleaning up their grids, thanks to cap-and-trade programs, investments in renewable energy, tightened air quality standards, and more coal plants put to sleep." [2]

"Here’s the cool thing about electric vehicles in the U.S. right now: In many areas, the longer you own one, the cleaner it gets." [1]

[1] https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/06/electric-vehicles-are-c...

[2] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/12/the-surprisin...

Re: Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to Market

#177

Post by heygrady »

sremani wrote: post #53
ramphastidae wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like how BlackBerry, Palm and Nokia held off Apple, right?

Tesla has been around for a while and GM actually has a car that directly competes with Tesla Model 3, and many are coming. Sure Model 3 will be marquee model, but it did not have surprise element of iPhone nor people buy Cars every two years. Even to this day, building EVs with big batteries is not economical or profitable, that may change now, but building EV is not a rocket science. Every major Auto manufacturer h…

Gas prices and EV sales are, perhaps counter-intuitively, unrelated [1]. It has been widely reported that low gas prices do not affect EV sales [2].

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/17/demand-for-electric-vehicles...

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-car-sale...

Re: Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to Market

#178

Post by ckastner »

jblow wrote: post #151
ckastner wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, any company not yet bankrupt could be called profitable. Profit is a reflection of past performance, not future potential.

By this metric just about every single new business is a failure, including 100% of YC startups. At that point is it a useful distinction to draw?

Your conclusion is wrong.

A profit is a realized financial gain. In a given period, income surpassed expenses.

A business failure is a business that has failed, it has ended.

A lack of profit can lead to failure, but in no way implies it.

Re: Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to Market

#179

Post by dkrich »

mikeash wrote: post #153
dkrich wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, on pretty much every metric. So do you think that the Motorola Razr was a better product than the iPhone because you could buy an extra battery and swap it out? I remember well when the first iPhone came out and people waited in line for hours to be able to buy one. It was just so different than any other phone available at the time. I don't really feel that applies to Tesla, and I think most consumers (not pe…

Why do you keep comparing to middling dumbphones? Compare the iPhone to contemporary high-end smartphones and you'll see that the iPhone was behind on pretty much every metric. The big exceptions were: 1. UI. 2. Web browser. 3. AT&T unlimited data plan. It turned out that those three metrics were really important , and that being ahead on a few really important metrics is better than being ahead on a bunch of less im…

Because the middling dumbphones are what comprised the majority of the market, the market that Apple completely took over. How many people were using smart phones as a % of overall market in 2007? The only real players that I can remember were Palm and Blackberry, and both those were terribly executed in comparison to the iPhone.

And yeah, more than 10% of reservations were cancelled but that couldn't possibly be because people don't actually want the car at a large scale, could it? I tend to pay attention to what people do and not what they say, and the fact is that consumers purchase ICB autos at orders of magnitude higher numbers than EV. When push came to shove, 65k people who actually made the conscious decision to spend $1k to reserve a car suddenly decided they no longer wanted it. But your only reason is that "sometimes people change their minds." To me that's a nice way of saying a lot of people don't want to spend $35k on this car.

Re: Tesla Burns Through Record Cash to Bring the Model 3 to Market

#180

Post by heygrady »

am1988 wrote: post #163
this_user wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Audi already had to scrap one of their EV models, because its technology was so far behind Tesla's by the time it was ready to hit the market. Traditional car makers are just extremely slow to adjust, because they have never faced any real disruption. They've effectively been selling the same product for decades with only some marginal and incremental improvements. Tesla, on the other hand, is using the SV model of d…

> Traditional car makers are just extremely slow to adjust, because they have never faced any real disruption Is there a term for the dismissive attitude tech people have for any older company?

I think the term you're looking for is "history" [1] as in, "tech people tend to adopt a historical view of older companies." With extremely few exceptions, the older a company gets the more obsolete it becomes [2].

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2017/03/22/sears-to...

[2] http://io9.gizmodo.com/25-obsolete-technologies-that-future-...

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