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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

#641

Post by pryelluw »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #638
hef19898 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Advantage competition: scaling production and delivery, economies of scale Really? Evidence suggests otherwise. Hyundai Kona Electric: huge backorders, yet they only made 2000 of them in February. https://insideevs.com/news/343420/hyundai-kona-electric-prod... Audi eTron: 2019 production targets lowered 20% to 45K/year. https://www.electrive.com/2019/04/23/audi-revises-production... Jaguar seems to be doing OK with…

I'd say in general terms including conventional vehicles and not only EVs.

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

#642

Post by kylecordes »

threeseed wrote: post #487
sliken wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Closer. No supercharging network, tiny screen (7" vs 15"), no AWD, slower (0-60 in 7.6 vs 5.5 seconds). At least the range is close (258 vs 300). Tesla does pretty well on safety (passive and active) as well. My main concern was did Hyundai skimp on the cooling and battery management system like Nissan did with the leaf. The result with leaf was rapidly degrading batteries that lost more than 25% in the first 3 years…

No evidence that consumers want a large screen instead of physical knobs. And seriously who on earth cares about acceleration beyond a certain point. I mean come on. Nobody is drag racing their car on the way to the supermarket to buy groceries.

> And seriously who on earth cares about acceleration beyond a certain point.

I have seen a Tesla performance model described as a machine to convert money into smiles.

It does.

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

#643

Post by gibolt »

cagenut wrote: post #579
mtgx wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is wasting time, money and focus by investing too much in self-driving tech (they're even having their own chip division now! - is Tesla really in financial a position to compete with Intel/Nvidia now?). Not to mention they made all of their Model 3's thousands of dollars more expensive by including the "full self-driving hardware-that-wasn't" in every unit to the point where it didn't even make sense for Tesla…

there is a line of reasoning, rarely articulated, that EVs will never reach the price points it would take to fully 100% replace ICE cars in the private/personal market. li-ion batteries have done an excellent job walking down the learning/cost curve, but we can all see the way it bends and how much headroom is left in the chemistry. we'll likely hit $100/kwh in the next few years, but even just $80/kwh is likely 5+…

It is currently manufacturered in Fremont California. Nothing in Fremont is cheap, it is no different than manufacturing in Manhattan, since employees need to pay for super high housing costs and deal with high costs of doing business.

Manufacturing in China could bring the cost down significantly, with lower wages, taxes, material costs, etc.

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

#644

Post by valine »

serioussecurity wrote: post #622
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…

This is one of those "you need to be an expert to evaluate the claim" problems. Talk to anyone with research experience who are building world scale ML systems that are used by real people, and it's unambiguous that Elon Musk is a con man. It comes down to small details, like the nature of the training data, the nature of the customizations, the nature of the business problems, the nature of the regulatory problems,…

I'm not saying that Musk has solved fsd or that he will in the near future, but if you asked anyone with experience building cell phones in 2006 if the iPhone was possible they would have said absolutely not. Technological progress is inherently unpredictable even for experts. Musk has some really good people working for him and their datasets get bigger every day, I wouldn't rule Tesla out just yet.

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

#645

Post by rtkwe »

bluedino wrote: post #633
raiyu wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shift want just digital cameras it was also the iPhone that made the digital camera obsolete. With digital cameras they were losing film revenue which was larger than camera sales. Car companies don't own gas stations so they will switch faster and easier than Kodak. There will be some struggles internally but not as much I suspect. Plus modern EVs have demonstrated more performance then ice so it's really just a…

This made me think of the future of gas stations. Will they just conver to charging stations, and charge customers to use them?

It'll be tough, most gas stations don't have a lot of space for a lot of charging stations and nothing to do while you wait for the charge. The large truck stop style ones might be able to convert more easily because they already have the larger lots and buildings with spaces to sit inside while you wait.

I have heard anecdotally that gas stations make terrible money on their actual fuel sales and the real margins are on food inside so it may work out in the end but that low but broad base flow may be an important part of the business.

In the end though they'll probably largely die out inside cities with charging mostly happening at home, at work, or in parking decks/lots. There will definitely be a need for them along highways and stuff though to service long drives. In the end that's a looooong ways off, even if you completely ban the new sale and import of ICE vehicles there's going to be a long tail for used cars until electric vehicles become 100x less expensive.

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

#646

Post by gibolt »

Roark66 wrote: post #543
_ph_ wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, you basically cannot buy a Hyundai. The production is far below Model 3 levels. Here in Germany, you are looking at 12 months wait time due to demand far exceeding supply. Also, the Model 3 is a very attractive offering. It is the faster car, aims at the typical BMW audience, and most of all, has the supercharger network available.

>Also, the Model 3 is a very attractive offering. It is the faster car, aims at the typical BMW audience Until you find out your range goes down significantly when you drive fast... I was seriously considering tesla model 3 as most of my trips are below 40 miles, but occasionally I do need to drive to another city 200 miles away, and when I do I want to be able to drive at the same speed I normally use at the motorwa…

Most cars at that speed will get significantly reduced range, due to engine inefficiency and drag. Even then, a battery with 220 mile range should still get well over 100 in reality .

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

#647

Post by neuronic »

sliken wrote: post #478
neuronic wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've used similar nav systems from BMW, Subaru, and Toyota and they seemed like lame software running on a 5-10 year old phone. Poor touch screens, smaller screens, poor voice recognition, and poor nav. I'd rather they just have an aux port for music and let me hang my own tablet on the dash somewhere. Thought the same, but the newest Volkswagen generation has improved a lot. Their touch screens and software feel m…

Comparable to google Nav on a new iphone or pixel 3? If so, I'll definitely have to keep an eye on the future VW electric cars.

No, definitely not but they have still made leaps from previous iterations. And I think that's a very positive development.

My subjective impression is it basically went from major annoyance to "quite usable". I recently used it on a trip from Northern Germany to Amsterdam and it worked really well.

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

#648

Post by Klathmon »

bluedino wrote: post #629
imglorp wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can experience it first hand if you go try to test drive a Chevy Bolt - Motor Trend car of the year in 2017. I spoke to dealers who (pretended?) unawareness of the model and didn't want to help me find one. Another tried to talk me out of it. Finally one dealer was well informed about its pros and cons, and had several for sale. Another example: bmw i3. 114 mile range on the 2017 model, really? And that's up from…

It's just a car, to the salesman. If I went in and looked for a Chevrolet Equinox and the dealer didn't have anyt, they'd try to sell me another model. Just like if you went to Best Buy looking for a certain TV, they'll just try to sell you the one on the shelf

I've had on multiple occasions gone into a dealership and had them tell me that they have the car i'm asking about, but that I don't want that car, and that I want this other car instead.

I went into nissan to look at the Juke a while back, the asshole wouldn't even let me look at it until I literally started leaving. He just kept pressing the Rogue saying that I'd like it a lot more... Then when he finally took me to it, it was still wrapped in plastic and they said they couldn't do a test drive.

Another time I went to go look at the Chevy Bolt when it first came out, they said they had a few in stock, but they would not stop trying to get me to test drive a Malibu instead. They kept pushing how it was a better car, how it was cheaper, how it would go further, how it looks better.

Eventually they let me test drive the Bolt, but the whole time the guy just kept pointing out how all the features in the car were also in the Malibu.

It just left such a shitty taste in my mouth. I literally went in there asking about a single model of car each time, and it seemed like they did everything they could to actively sabotage my ability to buy it.

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

#649

Post by bryanlarsen »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #527
reacharavindh wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Niro has efficiency but it's fast charging and acceleration is considerably worse than Tesla's.

eTron has fast charging and acceleration but efficiency is considerably worse than Telsa's.

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