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

#441

Post by oblio » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:47 AM UTC

georgerobinson wrote: post #434

lancewiggs wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a statement that’s easy to make from a privileged position. Luxury is in the eyes of the beholder, and that car costs two thirds of the median income (before tax, healthcare, housing, food) in the USA.

It's the same in Western Europe, the difference is that cheap lease deals and finance have made them affordable for a significant amount of people and so these cars are extremely common. You see more 3 series than Toyota's or Hyundai's.

Are you sure about that? https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46774053

Every sales graph I've ever seen has relatively cheap cars such as the Fiesta, Golf, Corsa, etc. at the top. Not big Mercedes or BMWs.

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

#442

Post by oblio » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:49 AM UTC

dagw wrote: post #440

oblio wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lol, is this a serious question? A lot of people can't afford expensive cars...

And a lot of people who can afford expensive cars might still priorities spending their money on other things.

Obviously, my point was that OP was just brushing away something like 60-80% of the population like they didn't exist.

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

#443

Post by oblio » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:50 AM UTC

dd36 wrote: post #293

robocat wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

TSLA is the exact same position as AMZN a decade ago. They don’t need to make profits. They need to invest in assets and scale, which is exactly what they’re doing.

Amazon basically never lost money (or at least not in a material way). That's different.

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

#444

Post by arethuza » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:52 AM UTC

youngtaff wrote: post #380

whamlastxmas wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rolls definitely have a prestige factor due to their aircraft engines. And personally when I see Tesla hardware and tech I admire the level of engineering that goes into it and feel that part of the reason it's so good is because there's many shared competencies between the two companies

You know Rolls-Royce the car company and Rolls-Royce the jet engine maker are difference businesses - split apart in 1973

Indeed, Rolls-Royce cars are made by BMW.

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

#445

Post by Gudoguru » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:54 AM UTC

dd36 wrote: post #293

robocat wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

TSLA is the exact same position as AMZN a decade ago. They don’t need to make profits. They need to invest in assets and scale, which is exactly what they’re doing.

Except AMZN was cash positive and their lack of profitability was due to the fact that they were investing money they were generating from sales. TSLA on the other hand have to raise money from the market to fund their operations, let alone invest in assets and scale. The two companies are not in the exact same position

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

#446

Post by jcfrei » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:56 AM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #279

iamaelephant wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would this be doable for Tesla but not every other car manufacturer?

Incumbent car manufacturers are actually lightyears behind in experience that Tesla provides. Just look at their dealership model that is design to robe user at every step in the process. From tech perspective, majority of Toyota line up still doesn't even have good smartphone connection story in 2019. Honda still have bare minimum driver-assist. Toyota Sequoia hasn't been literally updated for years and a giant car…

The reason incumbent car manufacturers seem lightyears behind is probably because they run a sustainable business model. While the Tesla experience seems superior it doesn't yet appear capable of turning a profit. I really doubt that lack of ingenuity on the incumbent side is the reason for the gap you describe.

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

#447

Post by madeofpalk » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:57 AM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #377

deepGem wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 autonom…

Waymo is a technology demo, not a functioning operation that spits out self driving cars by the tens of thousands per quarter. They are many years away from having that. That's fine if they pull it off; it's the way big technology startups are funded. Alphabet is playing the long game here. However, Tesla is talking about making the tens of thousands cars they are shipping per quarter right now autonomous. We'll see…

> Tesla is talking about making

Emphasis is mine. What Tesla says, and what ultimately does are very rarely aligned.

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

#448

Post by novaRom » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:59 AM UTC

sliken wrote: post #294

taneq wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. Seems like Tesla may have misjudged the model 3 demand and should have increased the number of production lines more slowly. I think in Fremont factory has 6 lines. One for X, one for S, and 4 for the model 3. Seems like they should just move one or two of the lines from model 3 to the model Y, which shares 75% of the same parts instead of committing to building several new lines in Reno and China. While the…

>> While the model 3 may be luxury, it looks crazy cheap compared to the electric Audi, Volvo, BMW, and Porsche competitors...

I tried Tesla test drive and one thing I don't like is how cheap it feels inside. Low quality materials. So you cannot compare just their prices without mentioning materials and build quality.

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

#449

Post by Gudoguru » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:59 AM UTC

emptyfile wrote: post #419

paganel wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VW Group’s recent Audi e-tron has to 30-40% lower range than a Tesla 3 (~200 miles vs ~325 miles) and as such I would totally see them putting forward the money to buy Tesla in order to bridge this big technological gap.

Gotta love HN comments about Tesla.

Agreed

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

#450

Post by Neil44 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 9:00 AM UTC

kec wrote: post #146

kylec wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BMW doesn't need to pay top dollar for a prestigious brand, they already have one. Tesla will be bought out by the likes of Geely or Tata who don't have strong brands of their own, but have already been going around and scooping up smaller car brands like Volvo and Jaguar.

They have history of doing so though: They own both Mini and Rolls-Royce now.

They saw the value of the Mini brand and didn't want to put a BMW badge on a lower end car, so they held onto it when they jetisoned the rest of the Rover group. The RR brand is selling to different customers than the BMW brand is. But I don't see that BMW would need the Tesla brand, there's too much overlap there IMO.