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Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

nytimes.com

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Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#71

Post by toomuchtodo »

maxerickson wrote: post #60
toomuchtodo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a shame people condemn Tesla’s for its troubles when internal combustion gets a ridiculous amount of subsided despite it causing irreparable harm to the planet. Musk plays on Boss Mode (along with others) while everyone enjoys bread and circus and laughs at people trying to accelerate progress with regards to climate change. I hope those quarterly profits, trucks, and SUVs are worth it when climate change hits i…

Yuh, electricity production totally doesn't overlap with the subsidies that petroleum drilling gets, not one little bit, not at all. Of course moving to electric vehicles is a necessary step towards getting off of the petrocarbons, but it isn't sufficient, production of electricity also has to move off of them.

You’re being disingenuous. You want to argue drilling subsidies for fracking cheap natgas for power generation? I won’t argue against that. But it’s all going renewables on economics alone (renewables and batteries are already cheaper than natural gas and coal), just not fast enough. We need to get off of combustion vehicles and power generation as soon as possible, full stop.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#72

Post by martinald »

neural_thing wrote: post #16

Horrible quarter for them. If they don't resolve their issues with the SEC and raise capital, they will run out of cash in months.

Yeah I think people are underestimating how dire the financials are. I think the cars are pretty cool (though way too much autopilot hype) and it's awesome that EVs have came so far so quickly.

If Tesla continues burning cash like this quarter, it will basically be out of money in Q2, yet they are not raising capital which suggests there is some major problem.

I think Tesla has had an awful lot of financial near misses so far and they are lucky to have made it this far, but they can't go on being so close on financials this poor forever.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#73

Post by bobsil1 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #23
2bitencryption wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the smartest thing Musk ever did for Tesla was to start sending rockets into space and landing them over and over. It really makes you think, "Hey, if they can do all that rocket science, they can probably make a sedan." (This is mostly a joke... but it's also not entirely a joke)

Rockets may be easier to develop than a product for the mass market. Car manufacturers have had many decades of optimizations of their processes. It’s very hard to catch up.

Cars-as-software demand software-centric co's hiring ML people. Legacy won't catch up, startups will.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#74

Post by maxerickson »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #71
maxerickson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yuh, electricity production totally doesn't overlap with the subsidies that petroleum drilling gets, not one little bit, not at all. Of course moving to electric vehicles is a necessary step towards getting off of the petrocarbons, but it isn't sufficient, production of electricity also has to move off of them.

You’re being disingenuous. You want to argue drilling subsidies for fracking cheap natgas for power generation? I won’t argue against that. But it’s all going renewables on economics alone (renewables and batteries are already cheaper than natural gas and coal), just not fast enough. We need to get off of combustion vehicles and power generation as soon as possible, full stop.

I'm being sarcastic, not disingenuous.

The "just not fast enough" happens to be an important factor.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#75

Post by mwfunk »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #25
nostrademons wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that Tesla was supposed to bankroll SpaceX, but SpaceX is killing it on profits and Tesla is floundering. If anything it looks like SpaceX will end up bankrolling Tesla. Musk should forget about trying to save this planet and focus on getting to the red one.

It’s a shame people condemn Tesla’s for its troubles when internal combustion gets a ridiculous amount of subsided despite it causing irreparable harm to the planet. Musk plays on Boss Mode (along with others) while everyone enjoys bread and circus and laughs at people trying to accelerate progress with regards to climate change. I hope those quarterly profits, trucks, and SUVs are worth it when climate change hits i…

Generally when people are down on Tesla or Elon Musk, it's because they want them to succeed at displacing internal combustion engines.

They're not rooting for internal combustion engines, they're rooting for electric cars and annoyed when the company (or Musk) flounders from self-inflicted damage. At least, that seems like most of the criticism here. No one is going to respond well to an advocate of a technology they want to succeed saying and doing stuff that actively harms the cause (prime examples: George Hotz with autonomous vehicles, RMS with basically everything that RMS has ever advocated, or Julian Assange allowing Wikileaks to become a tool of corrupt governments rather than a force against them).

It's great to give credit where credit is due, but even more important to hold people and companies accountable when they screw up, especially people and companies that you want to succeed.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#76

Post by gwright »

jwr wrote: post #56
mamon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are definitely living in different universes. ICEs do not get any subsidies, quite the opposite: in many countries, e.g. the whole EU gas is so heavily taxed that more than half of the retail price is tax. Also, Tesla is an easy target to make fun of, because of its narcistic, arrogant CEO that seems to think that he can outsmart everyone, when in fact his business is a total mess.

Of course ICEs get subsidies. The subsidy is in the form of a carbon tax that we do not collect, even though we should. Every ICE produces emissions which will soon make most of our planet uninhabitable. There should be a carbon tax, so that we can offset this destruction: by building nuclear plants, or figuring out how to re-capture the carbon emitted into the atmosphere. And yet we do not collect that tax, hence he…

You have a point about the negative externalities, but insisting on using the word "subsidy" for that concept is just going to confuse people. That isn't the accepted meaning of "subsidy", in casual conversation at least.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#78

Post by kosievdmerwe »

jedberg wrote: post #12
ericd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird, they gave me back mine faster than I thought ACH would normally hit (this was maybe a month ago).

I've been waiting four years and counting... Model X reservation. Every time I call, I get a new person (Because the last person I talked to doesn't work there anymore) and they swear that they will certainly solve this for me! And then I never hear from them again.

Take them to small claims?

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#79

Post by xvector »

freewilly1040 wrote: post #40
itslennysfault wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More importantly, who cares if he did get stoned?

It’s news. Smoking weed as a guest on a talk show / podcast is something no CEO of a noteworthy company has done before. I don’t care per se but come on, it’s obviously an attention grabbing thing to do.

It’s attention grabbing because people are prudes. One of the many things wrong with this country

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#80

Post by ajmurmann »

pasiaj wrote: post #61
danappelxx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The profit margin is a lot thicker in the luxury car market. It's a lot harder for Tesla to compete with economy vehicles produced by Ford/Chevy/Honda/Toyota since they have established production lines and can out-produce and out-price Tesla.

The trade-in value of Tesla is very low in Finland. If you want to upgrade your model, Tesla has been offering 70-80k € trade-in value for a 6 month old 135k€ Model S. This means that those who upgrade their vehicles often will not even consider a Tesla. In Finland, at least, they are forefeiting one of the biggest groups of luxury car buyers.

The most surprising thing about your post to me is the price of a new Model S. That's $150k. Is the price so high because it includes VAT?
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