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

#691

Post by JohnJamesRambo » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #550

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…

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…

I don't care about self-driving tech in the least, for me it is about as likely for us to get level 5 autonomy as us getting nuclear fusion soon. Just make a good cheap electric car that works. The new Tesla chip info I've heard promising it next year sounds like a complete lie/classic Elon Musk fabrication.

https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/elon-musks-dumb-lie-about...

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

#692

Post by thorwasdfasdf » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

gibolt wrote: post #643

cagenut wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i don't know why this comment is being downvoted. He's absolutely right about every word. Fremont is not a place to be building cars. If you're gonna build in the US, Tesla could have chosen almost any other city in the US and gotten labor cost that was 33% cheaper.

Software companies can afford the higher labor cost in the bay area because they tend to have really large margin when they win. Car companies have very very low margins, even when they win, so they really need to pay attention to things like labor cost. This is a huge mistep for Tesla and shows poor judgement on Elon Musk or whoever decided to do it in Fremont.

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

#693

Post by serioussecurity » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

valine wrote: post #644

serioussecurity wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their datasets aren't useful for the problems that make driving hard. Musk is making claims which are paper thin false. If he weren't making these kinds of claims I'd take him more seriously. I promise you that the reasons this is ludicrous are extremely solid.

Edit: fwiw I've actually taken a look at a number of waymos internal systems, and sat down with people who worked on autopilot.

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

#694

Post by navigatesol » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #656

navigatesol wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you watch the presentation relating to the Tesla chip release - along with watching the fully self-driving vehicle video? Yeah, I did. It was very interesting, but it was also Computer Vision 101. Karpathy essentially explained how neural nets work to a non-technical audience. It was nice. But did you not assume this was exactly what they were doing? I certainly did. Do you think no one at Waymo/Google/Uber/App…

Of course others are working towards the same. That's the point and value of competition - and what Elon wanted to cause (whether you take it up as clever PR or genuine care) other manufacturers to start producing EVs. The point is in a highly competitive environment every incremental improvement is potentially a huge advantage in getting to market and scaling faster; Elon referenced the exponential aspect of this, e…

>My whole argument doesn't revolve around "Tesla says"

You wrote in this single reply:

Elon wanted...Elon referenced...Elon said...Elon has said...Elon believes...

This is the foundation of your argument.

Elon also said he was taking Tesla private and had a buyer at $420, and settled after being accused of fraud. Things that Elon says, wants or believes are not facts. That is my point.

>Citation needed for it not being industry leading, for their specific use case

Go look at NVIDIA’s products, or the press release they put out after the Autonomy Event. Do you think NVIDIA knows a thing or two about autonomous vehicle tech and this use case? Because Tesla’s entire program up to this point, the one I’m sure you believe is best-in-class, is built on NVIDIA product.

Can you provide a single citation that the Tesla chip is industry leading?

>I wouldn't say ~1MM chips per year is small volume,

First, 1 million is small. Second, you assume that they'll be building 1MM cars a year anytime soon, probably because "Elon said". Tesla produced ~70,000 cars this quarter. That's the reality. There is no evidence whatsoever that Tesla can produce, nor that there is demand for 1MM of these cars annually.

>I suppose it's possible you have financial interest in Tesla failing and haven't disclosed that

Ah yes, baseless accusations. You "won't make assumptions", but you'll throw that out there anyway. Just in case. If anyone disagrees about the future of Tesla, they obviously have some agenda. Elon said as much. If this forum had any neutrality, the admin would be warning and/or banning people making these accusations, which violate a number of the HN guidelines.

I don’t short stocks. I buy the odd put. I'm long everything, including Tesla through various funds. I don’t get paid by the oil industry. If Tesla went belly up tomorrow, it would harm me financially. How about you? I’m willing to bet you own a Tesla car or stock, but didn’t disclose that, while speaking with vehement positivity about the company. Why not, if you expect it of others?

I am interested in this subject matter because I find it absolutely baffling and mind-bending that there are so many red flags with this company, and yet there are segments of the population that simply cannot or refuse to see them. Of note: there seems to be a large overlap between that segment and the one that likes accusing other people of financial malfeasance or astroturfing.

>Do you think Tesla will completely fail? Do you believe their stock is overvalued?

No idea, but I doubt it fails completely. There's value in there somewhere. Probably selling high-end, high-margin EVs to wealthy people, the market they probably should have stuck to.

Is the stock overvalued? Of course.

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

#695

Post by jerska » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

ckastner wrote: post #406

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…

Personally, I believe it for two reasons: First, it seems that everyone but Musk is claiming so, so either everyone else is wrong, or Musk is wrong. I find it far more likely that this is just another "funding secured" type of claim, than an actual win. Case in point: see this evaluation [1] from only a year ago, where Tesla was ranked 19 out of 19 (Waymo was #1). And the timing of the announcement, only two days bef…

Do you have an even worse source? This Navigant « study » keeps coming up in comments about Tesla without any explanation on the methodology whatsoever.

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

#696

Post by djakjxnanjak » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

dayaz36 wrote: post #265

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...

We've been hearing this since the company's inception. There was even a website back in 2008 with a time clock of when Tesla will go bankrupt. Ironically the site went bankrupt and is not around anymore. Meanwhile Tesla has become a multi billion dollar company with the largest BEV fleet in the world. Tesla has done this in the face of a constant onslaught of smears from the media and social media comments like yours…

Every big company that went bankrupt made it for years without going bankrupt.

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

#697

Post by NotSammyHagar » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

base698 wrote: post #635

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a lot of cars rapidly depreciate in the first year. A model S losing almost half its value in a year or so is no incredible shock.

Last year this time some of the same models selling for $40k in the used market were $80k. These were for some of the oldest cars in the pre-owned segment. The biggest hit to value came with the Tesla price lowering. Id expect a 20% loss but not 50%. Porsche and Lexus don't lose 50% the first year.

I have a 4 year old s85d. A year ago I got an offer to trade in for 50k from tesla. I bet the value went way down because My ~260 range is so much less than 370.

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

#698

Post by hef19898 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #692

gibolt wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i don't know why this comment is being downvoted. He's absolutely right about every word. Fremont is not a place to be building cars. If you're gonna build in the US, Tesla could have chosen almost any other city in the US and gotten labor cost that was 33% cheaper. Software companies can afford the higher labor cost in the bay area because they tend to have really large margin when they win. Car companies have very…

Tesla over estimated the benefits of automation. Maybe they thought that labour costs wouldn't be that much of a factor anyway.

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

#699

Post by rifung » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

goshx wrote: post #291

rifung wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you would expect that someone from tech revolutionizing an entire industry at global scale would get a little bit more respect and appreciation here. I'm not one of the people negatively commenting but I personally think one's character is significantly more important than ones accomplishments and he doesn't really seem like a good person. I admire that he is trying to do something about global warming. Nevertheles…

Why he doesn't seem like a good person to you?

His (public) behavior is not that of someone I'd look up to.

As others have said, his accusing of someone to be pedophile is very low. I strongly disagree with the marketing and, in my humble opinion, reckless release of Autopilot.

I also really don't like how he handled the issue with the SEC. Whether he intended to or not, he did misled investors with his tweets about having funding secured and instead of just admitting he made a mistake acted like he could do no wrong. He's actually surprisingly similar to Trump in his inability to take criticism with grace.

Again, I don't think he's an evil person but my impression is that he's let his wealth and fame get to his head. I can't say I blame him, people idolize him like he's the second coming of Jesus. I'm sure that kind of admiration isn't healthy for anyone and I am sure it'd mess me up too.

He's very much like a real life Tony Stark, and I suppose a part of me resents that he has so much admiration. It has nothing to do with him but I hate the idea that people seem to place success above everything else, when that's really not what should be important and I'd argue that emphasis on success probably leads to a lot of unhappiness in modern society. But I digress.

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

#700

Post by Radzell » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

kmonsen wrote: post #504

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…

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.

Sandy Munroe A guy who rip appart cars proved this wrong a while ago. The Tesla M3 only takes 25k to build with parts and labors.