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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

#521

Post by tim333 »

natch wrote: post #397
maxxxxx wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These comments are weird. Everybody is stretching the truth to some degree but these claims are pretty bold.

The claims sound bold because he never made them. The poster is misquoting. Elon said that Tesla would have a version of the software that could do full self driving by the end of this year. Then he very clearly spelled out that it would not be available to consumers until regulators approve it at some later date (possibly years).

I tried googling and found "Elon Musk promises fully autonomous, coast-to-coast Tesla road trip in the next 7 months" in Feb 2018, not this year. Obv didn't happen. https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2018/02/08/tesla-fu...

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

#522

Post by imglorp »

hef19898 wrote: post #480
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…

It still comes down to a race between Tesla figuring out the complete automotive supply chain and competitors figuring out EVs. Tesla had, and I would assume still has, production hell. Now it's delivery hell. Both are solved, controlled and executed constantly by other car companies (VW has an exception with the new Golf 8 that proves the rule). The competition is still struggling to solve EVs, some like Jaguar and…

Tesla has one more advantage over all the fossils: they're all in. The old guys are still challenged on mission, twisted up and fighting internally, bringing out weak token products designed to not hurt their ICE lines.

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

#523

Post by jfk13 »

coredog64 wrote: post #513
_Microft wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was meant exactly in this sense, namely that the conditions in Phoenix do not resemble the challenges in the rest of the world. Phoenix gets about 310 days of sunshine per year, only 200mm of precipitation with no snow, no fog, ...

...shitty drivers from the other 49 states, blue-haired old ladies who haven’t seen the inside of a DMV in 20 years, and massive dust storms. That 200mm of precipitation happens over a couple of days. I’ve driven in every state in the western US, and those rain storms are scary.

And what do the Waymo vehicles do during such a dust- or rainstorm? Just carry on providing rides, or go into a safety shutdown mode? (Genuine question; I have no idea.)

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

#524

Post by kmlx »

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…

wow.

here we go: > Best crash test ratings.

partly false. there are 30 cars in the same category. kias, hyundays you name it.

> Highest owner satisfaction.

partly false. only the model 3 got it. model s was dropped due to how crappy it is.

> First US-owned factory in China. Built in about 6 months.

false. it’s not built. and there are so many other corps out there that own china factories it’s not even funny.

> Willingness and ability to put auto-pilot on the road for consumers.

how many people died because of this?

> Better chip than Nvidia.

proven to be false.

> Top 2 auto battery supplier.

false. that would be Panasonic.

> Dramatically better battery efficiency.

false. same efficiency as a kia.

> No dealerships.

this is very bad.

> Plausible FSD story.

false. debunked.

> $35k price point.

false. they don’t sell $35k cars.

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

#525

Post by sokoloff »

lonnyk wrote: post #518
kmonsen wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure Tesla can make good cars, but not if it has to sell them at a profit. Over the lifetime of Tesla, each car has been subsidized by like 10k from shareholders and 7.5k from government. Both subsidies are going away as we speak.

I read earlier that model 3s had. 20% gross margin. I’m happy to find the source again if you’re interested, but I'd also love to see your source.

When considering whether a fleet of cars has been profitable, you can’t consider only the gross margin (which excludes certain company fixed costs to arrive at an answer to “was that last car we made profitable?”) but must also consider overall profitability (“did we make money doing all of the things we did?”)

Tesla’s answer to the second is “no” for substantially all of the company history.

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

#526

Post by lazyjones »

sliken wrote: post #365
Waterluvian wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

> 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.

The established car makers also have to bear the cost of having dealerships. I don't find it too unlikely that some of them are selling their EV at a loss and have the production throttled accordingly.

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

#527

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

reacharavindh wrote: post #512
neuronic wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another German I can definitely tell you that no one here sees a Model 3 at anywhere near a BMW in production quality. If Tesla intends to market the Model 3 at the "BMW audience" - whatever differentiates them from, say, the "Audi audience" - they are horribly miscalculating at what German people expect from a car. It is not limited to EV range. Also, Volkswagen is ramping up production on their Modular Electric…

Do you have any info about VW's batteries? If they are building up MEB for the next 2-3 years, they should have some idea of what they are going to do about batteries by now right? So far, it appears that batteries and drive train efficiency are the secret to Tesla's dominance in efficiency. VW would be a dumb competitor if it comes out in 2-3 years with a car that costs as much or more than a Tesla with only 60% of…

Several tests comparing Tesla with NIO show that the efficiency is the same, so not sure about "batteries and drive train efficiency are the secret to Tesla's dominance in efficiency."

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

#528

Post by hyperbovine »

pbreit wrote: post #398
dragonwriter wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Continuing to deny something that exists is actually beyond calling it impossible! If you've got some spare time, go read some third party research on how cameras might actually be better. Lidar superiority is a myth. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.07179.pdf

Dude, if you think a CS conference paper is going to be the secret sauce that extracts Tesla from the $5b hole it’s dig itself into, you a) know nothing about business and b) know nothing about CS.

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

#529

Post by Gustomaximus »

paganel wrote: post #463
cjhopman wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that's a $10 billion gap, you're delusional.

I may be delusional but I actually own a VW Group car, I know of people who make their living on mostly repairing VW's past mishaps (stuff like this [1]), I have no stake whatsoever in Tesla's future financial success, and as such I can tell you that VW (and the Germans generally speaking) are way, way behind in terms of EV technology compared to Tesla because stuff like this it's not in their engineering DNA. $10 bi…

Also other companies might be willing to go in on at this price to be a top compeitor for self driving or batteries. Apple must have considered it. Uber. Tencent. Facebook. Alibaba. Walmart.

Outside car manufacturers there's a lot of cashed up companies that would like to take a punt in this space.

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

#530

Post by Gustomaximus »

kakwa_ wrote: post #366
m3kw9 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Apple are working on car tech already.

https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-car/

There are loads of companies that could be interested. If only for automated delivery like Walmart, Alibaba, Amazon etc.

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