Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by ckastner » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 6:42 AM UTC

Well, I guess that explains the Autonomy Day [1] event from just two days ago where they presented themselves as the Pack Leader, when everyone else knows it's Waymo (by far).

Quoting user RivieraKid [2]:

Take a moment and think about why are they doing this event now. Elon is setting a stage for a capital raise, he's pitching the autonomy narrative after the Model 3 cash cow narrative failed. They're trying to convince investors (and customers) to give them money because money-printing autonomous taxi service is coming next year.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19720832

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19723650

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

#362

Post by prostoalex » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 6:45 AM UTC

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...

Over the long term declaring bankruptcy and emerging from one seems to be a standard procedure for most automotive manufacturers in the US, as well as airlines.

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

#363

Post by double0jimb0 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 6:45 AM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #281

taneq wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a very good point - Tesla's current "halo car" isn't the Model S or the Roadster 2.0, it's the Falcon Heavy.

Is it? Do people buy a $100K Tesla because the same owner owns a rocket company? Why? I’ve never met anyone who considered a Rolls because the company used to build aircraft engines

Not sure if you are serious. Becuase, yes, that is actually part of it.

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

#364

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 6:49 AM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #331

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 imposs…

First US car company in 60 years, electric at that. Best crash test ratings. Highest owner satisfaction. First US-owned factory in China. Built in about 6 months. Ability and willingness to use OTA updates. Willingness and ability to put auto-pilot on the road for consumers. Ridiculous performance. Better chip than Nvidia. Top 2 auto battery supplier. Best selling lux car in US (ICE or EV). Dramatically better batter…

> Plausible FSD story.

No.

> Camera-based autonomy.

That's among the reasons the former isn't true.

> $35k price point

That PR point has largely been abandoned. I mean, nominally they’ll still sell it to you if you jump through hoops, but they’ve deliberately made it less accessible because, as much as it was an important PR point, it was never really viable.

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

#365

Post by sliken » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 6:52 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #339

sliken wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the model 3 the deposit made a huge difference in delivery time. The production ramp was painfully slow (production hell) becuase it was a completely different car than the model S and X that Tesla was producing. Because of the slow ramp the incentive for a deposit was quite large. There was also pretty minimal competition for the model 3, mostly the chevy bolt which most don't really consider in the same class.…

Your last sentence is what interests me the most. How many people will be out $1000 or $2500 if Tesla goes under? I'm assuming deposits are about as low a priority as you can get for recovering money in a bankruptcy?

I suspect it would be a total loss. But rationally it seems like a really unlikely thing to happen. Tesla just made a $920 million payment in March, they have a 20% gross margin, and have $2.2B cash on hand. Sure they may have to slow their growth, or take out another loan, but Tesla is hardly at the brink of bankruptcy.

There are some serious competitors targeting the model S and X coming, although none I've heard come anywhere close to 370 mile range. Most impressively even those with similar size battery (like the 95kwh audi etron) only manage 56% of the range of the model S (100 kwh). It's also substantially slower in acceleration (Telsa is 4.0 second vs Audi e-tron 5.5 seconds).

But the model 3/Y competition in the $40k to $60k range is looking significantly more sparse, especially with similar range. This is where Tesla becomes significantly harder to match because if even if you can match the size of the battery, matching the efficiency is tougher. Running a substantially larger battery to make up for lower efficiency is particularly problematic at this price point.

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

#366

Post by kakwa_ » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 6:52 AM UTC

m3kw9 wrote: post #313

sandworm101 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few more years of this amd they may be bought out by the likes of BMW. The tesla brand is worth something, even if on the hood of a german car.

Elon would sell to Apple, and not these old school car manufacturers that has their tails covering their behinds

Elon Musk only controls 20% of Tesla shares, the board can force a sell upon him if the other shareholders agree on one.

And I'm not sure why Apple would buy a car company, it's too far of their core business (aka selling computers ranging from phone sized to desktop size).

The other car manufacturers are not blind idiots, they are seeing EVs are becoming a thing, but it's also in its early stages. The question for them is when should they start switching their line-up, and that's the difficult decision. Too early, and they end-up with too expensive and less convenient cars compared to IC vehicules, too late and you have basically miss the bus.

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

#367

Post by prostoalex » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 6:54 AM UTC

sorenjan wrote: post #105

cmer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think pretty much every single person who owns a Model S/X would tell you that they're never going back to the old German crew. Tesla enjoys the strongest brand loyalty of any car manufacturer. Apple-like loyalty. Tesla doesn't feel like a toy, it feels like the future. They're years ahead of everybody else in terms of tech that is usable today.

Have you seen this thread [0] that's supposedly about their backend? Doesn't sound like years ahead, it sounds like an overstretched software startup chasing the latest silicon valley trends. How well will their cars work in 20 years? Will they have sorted out the service issues in five years? Besides, when the other car manufacturers starts putting out electric cars with interiors that consists of more than a cost s…

> I still think betting on autonomous driving is a strange decision for a small company that have plenty of other stuff to focus on.

Yeah, but how expensive is that team?

Considering that

1) it gets some good PR (although other manufacturers are slowly starting to catch up with their own lane assistance + lane departure + adaptive cruise control features)

2) that PR effect probably generates a good influx of resumes from software engineers well-versed in AI, hardware, data science, etc.

3) those engineers can then be assigned to work on other software features, as shifting priorities demand

If you fired everybody on Autopilot team, you'd probably need to spend most of that saved cash on recruiting funnel.

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

#368

Post by gattilorenz » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 6:57 AM UTC

hw wrote: post #318

newsoul2019 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're not supposed to go to sleep or take your eyes off the road with self driving. Just like how you can't rely on chat bots and AI to fully answer your customers' questions. What's not reported in the media is how self driving / autopilot has saved lives. There are plenty of videos online about Teslas making the right split second decision to swerve (in the right direction) or apply the brakes to avoid an accident…

This is drifting off topic, but... you're advocating for being constantly alert while the car drives itself? Doesn't this have the same cognitive load as driving, with possibly the additional time needed for "flexing your muscles" to regain control of the driving wheel?

To me, self driving means that I can not care. If I must pay attention to avoid being killed, it is at most some glorified adaptive lane keeping and/or emergency braking. That's nice to have, but it's not self driving.

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

#369

Post by deepGem » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 6:59 AM UTC

ckastner wrote: post #361

Well, I guess that explains the Autonomy Day [1] event from just two days ago where they presented themselves as the Pack Leader, when everyone else knows it's Waymo (by far). Quoting user RivieraKid [2]: Take a moment and think about why are they doing this event now. Elon is setting a stage for a capital raise, he's pitching the autonomy narrative after the Model 3 cash cow narrative failed. They're trying to convi…

Am just curious, why does everyone believe that Waymo is way ahead. They have more miles driven, but so does Tesla. Waymo has some incredible guys going after autonomy but they have nothing to show as of yet at the L4 or L5 level. Is it because they are playing it super safe. They don't have any urgency to make money from autonomy unlike Tesla. Are they taking it easy ?

Per my understanding, Tesla is tackling autonomy purely based on supervised learning. Waymo probably has something else, semi-supervised or unsupervised, where they collect data from a small geo-fenced area and can extrapolate that to the real world. I don't know.

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

#370

Post by double0jimb0 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 7:01 AM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #354

vinay427 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not conflicting because they refer to different senses of quality, in my estimation. Tesla's models can be said to lack in quality by design (materials, luxury features) compared to German and especially Japanese cars at a similar price point. The German cars generally lack in quality in terms of longevity and robustness, statistically and anecdotally.

Well, yeah they're playing on the meaning of quality. When you spend 80k on a car you expect it to be both solid, pretty and not a money pit on the long run.

$80k cars are the poster children of money pits. You must not be familiar with the space.