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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

#251

Post by the_duke »

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.

Agreed.

Can't find it now, but Musk said something like "For a rocket, manufacturing is 10 times harder than building the actual rocket. For cars, it's 100 times harder".

This is not that surprising, the incumbent manufacturers have decades of experience, vast amounts of know how and optimized supply chains. There's a reason why no new manufacturers have emerged.

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

#252

Post by radium3d »

Seasonal 4th to 1st quarter may have been a loss but these numbers stand out to me as being a bit more important.

Cars sold:

Q1 2019: 63,000

Q1 2018: 29,980

Q1 2017: 25,000

Q1 2016: 14,820

Q1 2015: 10,045

Q1 2014: 6,457

Q1 2013: 4,900

Q1 2012: 0

Revenue

Q1 2019: $4.5 billion

Q1 2018: $3.4 billion

Q1 2017: $2.7 billion

Q1 2016: $1.6 billion

Q1 2015: $1.1 billion

Q1 2014: $713 million

Q1 2013: $562 million

Q1 2012: $30 million

Q1 2011: $49 million

Q1 2010: $21 million

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

#253

Post by dominotw »

newsoul2019 wrote: post #216
m463 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they could get full self driving going and sales would go through the roof.

Not so much after the local guy died on Highway 101. The sentiment in my circle is that the self driving can't be trusted.

same sentiment about a/c power back in the day. But tesla was proven right :D

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

#254

Post by stellar678 »

cperciva wrote: post #202
maxxxxx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The bar for success is different too. A rocket which safely delivers its cargo 99.99% of the time would be a huge step forward. A car which safely delivers its cargo 99.99% of the time would be taken off the roads.

It’s funny you mention 99.99% - because 40,000 people are killed by car crashes in a year in the United States, which is actually .012% of the population. So cars actually do a bit worse than your stat...

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

#255

Post by taneq »

sliken wrote: post #155
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #81

Tesla's 1.5B reduction of cash on hand was largely due to the 920M convertible bond payment — but that only happened because TSLA didn't perform to the level necessary for conversion (~$360 IIRC). I wonder what changes in terms this'll warrant for future capital raises. Then they mention that they missed a lot of revenue due to missing half their shipments overseas, and onto Q2 (But also expecting a loss in Q2). Sale…

I find the Panasonic thing very weird. Tesla claims to be battery limited, and also mentioned that their popular and in demand power walls are being throttled by lack of batteries. Does make me wonder. Is Panasonic blackmailing Tesla with limited supply to influence Tesla's battery supply in China? Is Panasonic and/or Tesla lying about the situation?

They may just be taking a calmer view of EV demand rather than betting the farm at every turn like Tesla. One or two quarters of running at capacity on a brand new factory isn't enough reason to massively upgrade your production capacity, if you think it's just a hump and that demand will settle down again. The Model 3 may be "affordable" compared with the Model S / X, but US$35k is still luxury car territory.

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

#256

Post by maxxxxx »

stellar678 wrote: post #254
cperciva wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bar for success is different too. A rocket which safely delivers its cargo 99.99% of the time would be a huge step forward. A car which safely delivers its cargo 99.99% of the time would be taken off the roads.

It’s funny you mention 99.99% - because 40,000 people are killed by car crashes in a year in the United States, which is actually .012% of the population. So cars actually do a bit worse than your stat...

If a majority of the population used a rocket daily then the numbers would be different. The number of people killed per space flight is probably a little higher than the number if people killed per drive in a car.

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

#257

Post by sliken »

golfer wrote: post #190
azinman2 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apply bankruptcy and sell the assets for cheap... Id imagine many would want to pick up the remains...

Specifically what remains? They are basically the only OEM pushing self driving without lidar. Their manufacturing facilities are childish compared to other large automakers. Solar City, powerwall, and the solar roof are huge money losers and barely make a dent in the P&L statement. Maybe just the brand name? But will the brand have the cache once it suffers bankruptcy? Maybe it will.

Seen the Cornell paper "Pseudo-LiDAR from Visual Depth Estimation: Bridging the Gap in 3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving" or the more consumer friendly "Elon Musk Was Right: Cheap Cameras Could Replace Lidar on Self-Driving Cars, Researchers Find"?

Looks like a pair of cheap cameras with good stereo separation (distance between the cameras) provides very similar data to Lidar. All without the giant domes on the roof (like the waymo cars).

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

#258

Post by maxxxxx »

bobsil1 wrote: post #220
maxxxxx wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dream on. Cars aren’t software.

Nope. Car differentiators are going to be tablet screen + special-purpose AI. Dumb cars = vinyl.

A car is a thing to get from A to B in a reliable manner. Screens and AI are secondary.

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

#259

Post by reitzensteinm »

electriclove wrote: post #238
reitzensteinm wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly right. I'm bearish on Tesla, and frequently criticise it. But I only care because I was an unashamed fanboy earlier in life. Musk kept flipping the coin to bet the company, and succeeded against all odds. It was riveting to watch. But once Tesla got large... nothing changed. He's still flipping. Model 3? Flip. Automated factory? Flip. Autonomous driving? Flip. 420? Flip. Solar City? Flip. Tesla is a s…

I agree with a lot of what you've said here but I don't think anyone is legitimately catching up. There are all kinds of announcements but no one else really building EVs in the US in volume: https://insideevs.com/news/343998/monthly-plug-in-ev-sales-s... We are getting close though but need Tesla to keep the pressure on for a couple more years.

It's going to take time for the industry to ramp up volumes, but my sense is the commitment is there now. Many EU countries are banning new ICEs in just 11 years; that's not a lot of time to make a full transition. If Tesla went bankrupt tomorrow, I don't think the overall ramp would slow down much, and it'll ultimately end with production far higher than what Tesla alone can achieve.

If Tesla (and Nissan) never existed, this entire timeline may have been offset by 5-10 years. I believe they deserve credit for lighting the fire, but by now it's self sustaining.

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

#260

Post by semi-extrinsic »

Reedx wrote: post #119
S_A_P wrote: post #14

As someone who does not have any stake in Tesla, I dont see a path forward for them without a company with the bank account on the scale of Apple/Google/Amazon funding them. Bootstrapping software is hard, hardware is harder, cars are 10x harder than those squared...

Yeah, but people have been saying they won't make it for over a decade now. It's tiresome and unproductive. Meanwhile they've done amazing things that most considered impossible. They went for it despite the difficulty and actually changed an industry. Electric cars were thought of as golf carts! Not so anymore. The idea of covering the country with chargers was a pipe dream. Now it's reality. Here's hoping Telsa con…

I'm not sure they've done things anyone considered impossible. People have said these things will be wildly unprofitable, sure, and so far those people are mostly right.

But nobody has said it would be impossible to build a big expensive electric sedan with high range. Nor did anyone say it would be impossible to build a wide coverage fastcharge network. Surely they are impressive feats, but not "thought to be impossible".

In fact, other companies have managed to build similar things. Today the Jaguar and Audi e-SUVs are competing with the Model X, in a few months the Porsche Taycan is competing with Model S, and the ChaDeMo charger network is the same size as the Supercharger one (both have 12,000 units deployed globally).

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