Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla posts big loss, cuts production of Models X and S to catch up on Model 3

finance.yahoo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 318 posts

Re: Tesla posts big loss, cuts production of Models X and S to catch up on Model 3

#101

Post by Tiktaalik »

sushisource wrote: post #60
hwillis wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the main practical selling point of a model 3 over, say, a leaf? Much better value, larger size, better fuel economy, more conventional, more power, more range, and superchargers. Cost per mile of range: $200 for the 2018 leaf, 132 for the Model 3. 147 hp vs 258 hp, 10" of extra length and 6" of extra width, over twice the range at less than half the capacity. The Tesla is way superior to any other electric…

How about compared to the Bolt, though? The Bolt seems dramatically more competitive than the Leaf. 200hp, comparable range, and cheaper than the model 3. I think people getting fed up with the wait and switching to Bolts en-masse is a possible scenario. Imagine if Chevy made an ad targeting exactly that scenario.... (You can thank me later Chevy ad execs)

The Bolt is a sort of unsexy compact hatchback so I can see it being unappealing to some groups of people even though from all accounts it's a fantastic product that matches the Model 3 in quality.

Tesla should be concerned if GM expands their market by taking their Bolt technology and rapidly expanding into vehicle lines that appeal to other groups, such as a Bolt crossover or sexy Bolt hot hatch.

Personally the Bolt looks a bit lame to me, but I'd consider one that was a bit sportier and that looked about as good as a Golf GTI.

Re: Tesla posts big loss, cuts production of Models X and S to catch up on Model 3

#102

Post by kristianp »

Someone wrote: post #32
chollida1 wrote: post #3

Since this came out as part of the Tesla earnings, here's my recap from their earnings release and call.... - Tesla will be late getting up to 5,000 units a week of Model 3. It will happen at the end of Q1 instead of the end of this year. The bottleneck is batteries. - Some lines are at only 500 cars a week. Namely the battery pack assembly, body shop welding and final vehicle assembly. - The $2.92 a share loss was m…

”Some lines are at only 500 cars a week.” That sounds better than what Tesla claims. http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-4CW8X0/549293785... (emphasis added): ”Other lines, such as battery pack assembly, body shop welding and final vehicle assembly, have demonstrated burst builds of about 500 units per week and are ramping up quickly.” If you can do burst runs of 15 km/hour, that doesn’t mean you can run a th…

"To get that $1.4 billion in revenue, they will need to sell 40k Tesla 3s at $35k each, or 3,000 a week. To get it in margin, even assuming the average model 3 will sell for $50k, they will have to sell 12,000 a week or so (at 20% margin)"

It seems like you're assuming that the cash burn will stay at 1.4billion. Expenditure should go down once the production line tooling is complete.

Re: Tesla posts big loss, cuts production of Models X and S to catch up on Model 3

#103

Post by Smaug123 »

csours wrote: post #47
revelation wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One or another amateur writer on that site predicts the bankruptcy of Tesla every other week. Even a stopped clock is right once a day.

It turns out that if you have billions in cheap funding, you can keep doing things the wrong way for quite some time.

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

Re: Tesla posts big loss, cuts production of Models X and S to catch up on Model 3

#105

Post by gordon_freeman »

chollida1 wrote: post #3

Since this came out as part of the Tesla earnings, here's my recap from their earnings release and call.... - Tesla will be late getting up to 5,000 units a week of Model 3. It will happen at the end of Q1 instead of the end of this year. The bottleneck is batteries. - Some lines are at only 500 cars a week. Namely the battery pack assembly, body shop welding and final vehicle assembly. - The $2.92 a share loss was m…

> "The company burned $1.4 billion and has $3.5 billion in cash. Raising money shouldn't be necessary."

Just curious -- If they need to raise money afterall, how easy or difficult it would be for them to get the money cheaply?

Re: Tesla posts big loss, cuts production of Models X and S to catch up on Model 3

#107

Post by ac29 »

mmanfrin wrote: post #44
neilalexander wrote: post #30

I can't help but feel that price is an inevitable factor here. Tesla Model S and Model X are expensive! Now that the novelty is wearing off and more EVs are hitting the road from other manufacturers, it strikes me that they just won't remain competitive models. I expect the Model 3 to go some way towards helping this by being much more affordable, but with delayed production on those and an interior design that won't…

I disagree completely. Tesla has 400k people who put down a grand to 'reserve a spot in line' for a Model 3. The issue is production. Tesla fired off hundreds of workers a month ago, right as they were ramping up Model 3 production. Elon seems an awesome person in terms of what he's doing at a macro level, but he sounds like a horrendous person to work for.

If they can achieve the production goal of 5000/week (an order of magnitude more than they are currently at), it will take nearly 2 years to just fulfill pre-orders. I have to believe a lot of people will be cancelling their pre-orders, and Tesla wont be getting many new pre-orders until production has caught up with demand.

Re: Tesla posts big loss, cuts production of Models X and S to catch up on Model 3

#108

Post by kylec »

pmurT wrote: post #15

I've been considering cancelling my preorder. As late as they'll be (assuming they do deliver) and my estimated place in line, the other manufacturers will have competitive offerings

No other manufacturer has a charging network like the Supercharger network, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon. Not being able to take a car on the occasional long-ish trip greatly diminishes its utility for a lot of people.

Re: Tesla posts big loss, cuts production of Models X and S to catch up on Model 3

#109

Post by peoplewindow »

dzdt wrote: post #73
btian wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then how do you explain Apple making their own SoC?

It is a part of their core product differentiation. They can get better performance and longer battery life by owning the hardware design and OS design and being good at it. Apple in particular understood lomg before competitors that battery life is an extremely important real world metric. Doing their own SOC helps them optimise that.

Seems like revisionism to me? Before the iPhone/smartphones in general, battery life on a mobile phone of a week was not uncommon. One of the first criticisms of the iPhone was that you had to charge it every night. I'm not sure I'd say that they had some unique insight into the importance of battery life.

Re: Tesla posts big loss, cuts production of Models X and S to catch up on Model 3

#110

Post by hackerguy99 »

dogruck wrote: post #4

As an engineer who has zero investment in Tesla, I truly hope they overcome this setback. Simultaneously, I know from experience that failure is a real possibility. At this point, it’s nice to have the additional transparancy into the current production bottleneck.

It's weird to me that saying "zone 1 and 2" are fine and "zone 3 and 4" are not is considered transparent or a "deep dive".
Post reply on HN