Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#161

Post by adrr » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

Brakenshire wrote: post #74

adrr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honda makes gas cars which can be filled up in 5 minutes from tens of thousands of gas stations across the US. It is not Tesla vs Honda it is electric vs ICE.

You can’t charge a Honda at home, and that with a 200+ mile range covers the vast majority of usage. And then when you do need to drive 200+ miles in a day, which for most people is a handful of days a year, you can use chargers which add 100 miles in 10 minutes. The extent of the charging network is really the only major issue left. It depends on your use case, for an urban, suburban setting or as a second car it’s…

I have Tesla and use Superchargers. It’s 7.00 for 100 miles and it takes 30 minutes not 10 and they are usually full so I have to wait. We use our gas car for road trips and skiing. The supercharger wait times up to mammoth are 2+ hours.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#162

Post by volkl48 » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

fetus8 wrote: post #104

saiya-jin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most people on HN are the actual population that is buying teslas You overestimate how many people here are willing to shell out those amounts of money for vehicle, and how practical it actually is. Yes, it is a future and whatnot and a lot of cool tech. But for say 20k euro I can have 5 year old BMW 3-er wagon. Yes, not new car, but I get 95% of the car for 1/3-1/4 of the cost. Much better fun to drive (I care muc…

I think you're underestimating how much people are willing to spend on an EV, especially a Tesla. I work in Boulder, and Teslas are literally every where. When the Model 3 deliveries started happening, our parking lot at work was invaded with the navy blue models. EVs have become quite commonplace all over the Front Range of CO, even in the less rich places. Teslas, Bolts, Volts, etrons, and Electric Fords are really…

Yeah, but these are all a certain cultural bubble where they are vastly over-represented.

EV's were 2.1% of new-car sales last year in the US. That's nearly doubling the 1.2% share from last year, and that is great growth.

But that still means 98% of new cars last year weren't. And with the average car on the road being ~12 years old, EV's are still practically a rounding error in the actual vehicle fleet.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#163

Post by jfoster » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

jdhn wrote: post #142

leesec wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember how the last U.S. car company to make it to mass production was over 100 years ago? Scaling up cars is really, really hard. It is not software.

While scaling up is hard, it's not like the expertise to scale up doesn't exist. The auto industry is pretty established, and I'm sure that there are companies and/or consultants that could help Tesla out.

Had any other car company ever scaled up as rapidly as Tesla is?

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#164

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #156

yumraj wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we follow your analogy, Apple provides both hardware and software value. In the case of Tesla, IMHO, the value is mostly hardware as in the core technology, not, IMHO, in the car/controls/screen/ that they put around. Again, as a thought experiment: Would customers not like a Mercedes/BMW/Lexus/Audi/Jag... with Tesla battery/drivetrain/superchargers but in a Mercedes/BMW/Lexus/Audi/Jag... car shell(for lack of a b…

Have you talked to Tesla owners much about this? I think you'll find that they do value the package far beyond the mechanics that move the car. In particular, I think Tesla may be well positioned in terms of autonomy. Although Waymo and Cruise might have a more robust approach, they are taking their time. I see that Tesla is very serious about bringing the benefits of autonomy to market across all their vehicles.

> In particular, I think Tesla may be well positioned in terms of autonomy. Although Waymo and Cruise might have a more robust approach, they are taking their time.

Waymo has full self-driving in limited public commercial use; there is no way that they can be charscterized as “taking their time” compared to people marketing less than full autonomy now with promises of full autonomy at some unspecified time in the future.

> I see that Tesla is very serious about bringing the benefits of autonomy to market across all their vehicles.

I see that they are serious about selling vehicles today based onpromises of full autonomy tomorrow; it's less obvious they have the combination of seriousness and competence to actually deliver on that promise.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#165

Post by jfoster » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

taytus wrote: post #65

baby wrote: post #54

These kind of posts are good publicity right? I don't see any other car company we follow so closely on the market. Tesla is the only name I can see come up again and again here, and guess what, most people on HN are the actual population that is buying teslas.

I'm not so sure about that. You may think Elon Musk is a genius or mega charismatic guy. I see a lot of value on what Musk is trying to achieve, but I think he would have way more credibility if he just stopped overpromising and under delivering. I'm starting to believe people post more and more about Tesla because of that.

The only way to achieve as much as he does is by setting goals that you don't really know you can meet. If you only set goals you know you can meet, you won't be ambitious enough to be Elon Musk.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#166

Post by pmart123 » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

notfromhere wrote: post #152

bksenior wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think thats bad. Tesla is about to have to head to head with all the majors who are now starting to finally harvest about a decade of their own research in the space (prompted by Teslas early success). Musks ambitions and outbursts strike me as a man who suffers from the top killer of successful entrepreneurs, The skill/talent portability fallacy. It's this idea because you did something similar well, that your a…

It's probably going to turn out that the guys who've been building cars for a century can figure out battery technology faster than the battery guys figuring out how to scale auto manufacturing

I'd be skeptical about this. The extreme/rare event is Tesla got hundreds of thousands of people to put a down payment on a car with zero marketing costs. Unfortunately, Solar-city and taking on convertible debt vs. equity have shrunk down their runway. Had they not done the related party transaction and issued equity, I think they could ramp production at a slower rate without the quality issues you hear about. I don't think Elon's episodes have helped his case either the last year. An interesting question though is whether there was anyone else in the world who could have created a car company in the 21st century, and gotten it to as far as he has?

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#167

Post by jfoster » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

octorian wrote: post #95

robjan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the bigger picture, it's lost about one week of gains and it's been rising and falling 10% for a while now

It does often seem that any news report about TSLA "soaring" or "plummeting" turns out to really just be a small'ish osscilation. At this point I tend to take most of these with a grain of salt.

The media tends to overstate how much a single story moves a stock. Not limited to Tesla, and I would say 10% is actually one of the larger movements than is typically associated with a single story within a day.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#168

Post by mcguire » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #116

yumraj wrote: post #101

I think it's more or less generally agreed that Tesla has the best in class battery, charger and perhaps drive train, including motors, technology. However, they have a single car plant and struggle with production and quality, after sales support and so on. I wonder, as a thought experiment, if Tesla would be more successful if they become the OEM, providing their technology to the various car manufacturers. Somethi…

I don't think so. Tesla is like Apple in a way. They are both the "Brand name" and the "technology" all in one package, and splitting the 2 would lead to each one being significantly less than half their total. Personally I think what would be best for Tesla (in a vacuum) is if they stopped trying to grow so quickly, and grew much like the other car manufacturers did, over a longer period of time, so that missteps an…

They cannot afford to slow down because their market cap will fall and (1) they won't be able to get more money, and (2) they won't attract fans and media.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#169

Post by bufferoverflow » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #168

Klathmon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. Tesla is like Apple in a way. They are both the "Brand name" and the "technology" all in one package, and splitting the 2 would lead to each one being significantly less than half their total. Personally I think what would be best for Tesla (in a vacuum) is if they stopped trying to grow so quickly, and grew much like the other car manufacturers did, over a longer period of time, so that missteps an…

They cannot afford to slow down because their market cap will fall and (1) they won't be able to get more money, and (2) they won't attract fans and media.

They get money by selling cars at a profit.

Re: Tesla’s First-Quarter Deliveries Plummet

#170

Post by gordon_freeman » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

If I want to invest in Tesla or any other company (another ex: Boeing), I'd ask myself this q: Is this something temporary problem that smart people would easily able to overcome? Or is this something fundamental or structural issue that's gonna be there long-term. I don't see this delivery issue for Tesla dragging on beyond this quarter. Lately, I have seen specifically with Tesla that short-term concerns have been dragging down the stock way too much.