321–330 of 778 posts
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Elon would sell to Apple, and not these old school car manufacturers that has their tails covering their behinds
I'm sure countless startups thought similarly until an evil old-school behemoth like Microsoft turned up offering tons of money.
They took down the S/X lines (layoffs in January and cutting the standard range versions in March) to update them, and the end result is the S/X can now manage 370/325 miles for the long range versions.
https://www.motortrend.com/cars/tesla/model-s/2019/exclusive...
The etron and ipace are both significantly smaller and/or have significantly less range than the S/X, and Tesla has the supercharger network to boot, which doesn't bode well for the competition.
https://i.redd.it/8c80wcj608u21.png
They also have ~$2.2 billion in cash and ~$.7 in bonds due over the next couple years, which leaves them with a ~$1+ billion buffer.
http://ir.tesla.com/static-files/6db4f56e-1532-4cd6-b8dc-3ff...
They managed a ~20% margin on the 3 even after introducing the SR+.
Last but not least, they may be in a very beneficial position with their ZEV/GHG/etc credits if they can continue to EV/PHEV pull buyers away from other manufacturers. Those manufacturers will either have to buy credits from Tesla to offset their lower EV/PHEV sales, which increases the values of those credits for Tesla, or reduce the cost of their EVs/PHEVs, which eats into their margins and their ICE sales.
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People have been predicting failure for Tesla since the beginning. At each stage saying they’d fail and not be able to execute. Every time so far they’ve been wrong. I like my model 3 a lot so I’d recommend one - I don’t think the people speculating on Tesla are particularly good at it.
The question is, can we see how Tesla can get yearly earnings of say $5 billion to justify the valuation? Maintaining a high profit per car seems to depend on selling a premium product, or presuming that other car makers cannot compete. When shifting to the mass market (more than say 1 million vehicles per year), surely the profit per vehicle has to decrease sharply - even if Tesla can earn more than the industry $1k…
To Elon’s point the Model S has been out since 2013 and there’s still nothing as good on the market from any other manufacturer.
They have a huge head start to say nothing of their charging network and the issues legacy brands will have fighting with dealers.
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This wasn't reported much, but Tesla also expanded their ABL (Asset Based Lending) credit agreement by $500M in March 2019: https://ir.tesla.com/node/19561/html Without that, they would have $500M less cash on hand. They shipped half of their cars in the final 10 days of Q1. Finances must have been pretty tight at the start of March. That was around the time they announced they are closing all stores, firing sales pe…
Probably because 90% of the ppl can’t tell the difference between model X and Y.
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Billionaires have billionaire friends. It won't be too difficult for Elon Musk to talk to the Google folks and get a few billions in funding, for an appropriate equity.
Why would the Google folks help a potential Waymo SDC competitor?
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 was close to buying a used Tesla from Tesla, but this is making me pause. Am I being unreasonable? I live in the Bay Area where I feel like the only person without a Tesla or two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8ro6kpKlw0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgMTx_xFezM
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This wasn't reported much, but Tesla also expanded their ABL (Asset Based Lending) credit agreement by $500M in March 2019: https://ir.tesla.com/node/19561/html Without that, they would have $500M less cash on hand. They shipped half of their cars in the final 10 days of Q1. Finances must have been pretty tight at the start of March. That was around the time they announced they are closing all stores, firing sales pe…
The pool of people that put down $1000 thinking they were going to buy a $35k car, has to be much larger than the people willing to plunk down $2500 for a $48k car (the cheapest pre-order currently available). The multi year wait for the $35k version to be available (and quickly abandoned) can't help.
The production ramp for the Y is expected to be much better than the model 3. There's two announced locations (Reno and China). Tesla also has substantial experience building the model 3, and the Y shared about 75% of the parts. Additionally the model Y is a very conservative design. Same motors, same batteries, same nav, same display, same steering wheel, same seats, same autonomous hardware, same sensors, etc. The announced differences I've heard of are low tech tings like the chassis and suspension. Nothing crazy like the model X gull wing doors to throw a schedule off.
Combine that with significant increase in competition from Audi, Volvo, Porsche, Rivian, and others expected in 2020 there's a much less exclusive market for people interested in a small crossover/SUV in 2020.
I'd be quite surprised if Tesla doesn't sell every model Y they can make for a good long time, but the world is a really different place than it was when they opened up the model 3 preorders. With that said I did put a deposit down on the Y, it's still my guess at the best small SUV for 2020. If things change I can get a refund.
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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.
Just to be pedantic, in the US market $35K is technically the low end of premium car territory. Actually luxury car territory starts significant higher.
Cars in the 35-45k range are routinely referred to colloquially as "luxury" cars. I agree you can quibble with this terminology, but it is absolutely common to refer to these cars as luxury, albeit the absolute low end of luxury.
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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.
It gets far worse when you consider the total cost of wars to protect the flow of oil.
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'm still trying to figure out the root cause. Is it because, production is not keeping up to demand? Or is it because demand is dying? So far it seems former, not later. Some analysts are saying random things like impact of tax credit and competition coming in to EV market. I still don't see anything close to Tesla offering in EV space, at least in US. They really need to focus on offering EV at $18K price point wit…
Why would you buy a Tesla when you can buy a Hyundai Kona for a lot less?
We need better leadership though. I live in Denmark where EVs aren’t very widespread because of taxes. In Norway more than half of new vehicles sold are EV. Norway has more money than us, but they didn’t really need it for this transition and nothing they did are things we couldn’t have.
They simply had better political leadership than we do. I know some Americans might call free market, but we have 150 years of history to show that big advances in society are driven mainly by the public sector if they are to benefit all and happen quickly.
