California law as of Jan 1 requires all new houses to have solar panels, EV charging port, no natural gas allowed. This 100% electric future being forced is attractive to Wall Street as it forces change, despite adding ~300k to the house price.
Wall Street bares no relation to the street where cars are powered by gasoline or diesel with few exceptions. It takes 75 minutes to charge a Tesla EV, much longer in cold climates (I have a Tesla owning acquaintance in Denver who confirms this).
We are n a giant stock market bubble. Tesla is a good example if this aspirational earnings exuberance IMO
Tesla Surges Above $500, Leaving Analyst Targets in the Dust
251–260 of 407 posts
Re: Tesla Surges Above $500, Leaving Analyst Targets in the Dust
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
The enterprise value is the value of a company. enterprise_value = market_cap + debt - cash Different companies are capitalized differently - some use all equity, some all debt, some a mix. Not sure I agree that other claim holders represent reductions in the "value of the company". The same company can be capitalized different ways - the enterprise value for that company should be unchanged.
Hold market cap constant. Borrow $1 trillion. Burn the cash. Is the company now more or less valuable? By your formula, how has the enterprise value changed?
This isn't "my formula" - it's the textbook finance formula: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_value
Re: Tesla Surges Above $500, Leaving Analyst Targets in the Dust
#253How do Tesla owners feel about the quality of their cars? I'm genuinely curious. This is merely an anecdote, but in my experience it seems like the overall quality of similarly priced automobiles from more traditional luxury carmakers is much higher. The only significant advantage of the Tesla is the fact that it's 100% electric. Also, this is merely a subjective personal preference, but I just don't like the style o…
I do not own one, but I had a Lyft driver show up in a Model S once.
The interior was nice but spartan. The ride quality was absolute garbage. I felt every single bump, crack, and pothole in the road. Tesla does not compete in the luxury space, only in the luxury price range.
Re: Tesla Surges Above $500, Leaving Analyst Targets in the Dust
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, multiple companies have higher quality electric vehicles, but that isn't what sells. The name is what's selling. Tesla's are pretty ugly, they have horrible reliability. You don't buy a Tesla for style, you buy it to show off.
> they have horrible reliability Any references about this? So far I've only found evidence they're functionally highly reliable.
The early build quality was poor and they had a lot of problems with ordinary things breaking that had nothing to do with being electric and everything to do with being inexperienced at making cars. They could be doing better now but it's a little early to say because the more recent cars aren't that old yet. Either way it seems more like teething issues than something they won't get right eventually.
Meanwhile it's fairly unambiguously true that electric drivetrains are a lot simpler and should require less maintenance in general.
Re: Tesla Surges Above $500, Leaving Analyst Targets in the Dust
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
I drive a hybrid and charge at home. My stats on electricity costs, after almost two years, is that my electric kilometers cost me 1/3 of my gasoline kilometers. For reference, it's in Portugal where electricity cost 0.2€/kWh and gasoline 1.5-1.6€/L.
And there's the local difference that makes or breaks this kind of calculation. For Germany these numbers currently are more like 0.3€/kWh and 1.2-1.3€/l.
Portugal has the fourth most expensive electricity in the EU. You are unfortunately above our level, because of taxation (Germany holds the top spot). Throughout the EU, the calculation is better for EVs. The median is at about 15¢/kWh.
Re: Tesla Surges Above $500, Leaving Analyst Targets in the Dust
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems really optimistic about the adoption of electric cars. I suspect adoption will be drastically slower than you're imagining, and hybrids as well as gas vehicles will remain relevant for a long time still. Toyota of course has the top-selling hybrid, and introduced a plug-in hybrid version recently. Ford was in the #2 spot and Toyota was again in the #3. Honda takes #5. I think the thesis of these automakers…
Automakers don't like gas/electric hybrids as they are more complex to design and manufacture than either gas or electric vehicles. Fuel-cell/electric hybrids are a different value proposition and will keep going. But they'll increasingly drop gas hybrids and jump to full electric, perhaps after the next generation of vehicles.
They're going to follow customer demand. If demand for electric cars remains low, they aren't going to abandon the types of cars that are selling really well for them in order to simplify the production process. And there are a lot of reasons to think that demand for electric cars is not going to skyrocket all of a sudden: range anxiety, lack of charging stations, gas prices being fairly low, the time it takes to charge, etc.
Re: Tesla Surges Above $500, Leaving Analyst Targets in the Dust
#257According to Robinhood: “Tesla's stock has jumped 35% over the past month, becoming the most valuable American car company ever. GM and Ford produced a combined 39x as many cars as Tesla did in 2019, but the electric carmaker is now more valuable than GM and Ford combined. Oh, and Tesla lost almost a billion dollars over the past year while GM and Ford made over $10B in profit. Investors care more about future profit…
I read a different analysis [0] arguing that comparing the market cap of Tesla to that of Ford and GM isn't really comparing apples to apples, since the latter have enormous pension fund liabilities. 0: https://mondaynote.com/tesla-and-apple-valuation-questions-c...
How enormous are these pension fund liabilities? Looking at the balance sheet of GM, their last annual pension fund liability was put at $18B, roughly 10% of their total liabilities. It doesn't seem much and probably shouldn't factor that highly into comparisons with TSLA, right?
Re: Tesla Surges Above $500, Leaving Analyst Targets in the Dust
#258Plainsite recently published a 100-page report summarizing all the key findings from the tesla short or $TESLAQ community... some of the allegations around corporate governance, self-dealing, and outright lies are pretty damning if true:
https://www.plainsite.org/realitycheck/tesla.html
Not endorsing their findings, merely saying it's an interesting read to understand the other side. Its allegations are well referenced with sources.
Re: Tesla Surges Above $500, Leaving Analyst Targets in the Dust
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's what you're missing... Most of the major automakers: Ford, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, etc do not have viable business models in the near future. They are so far behind in sustainable transportation its only a matter of time until they lose their economies of scale and are no longer viable businesses. It's an "Iphone moment"... the other car companies have great "flip phones" right now.
This seems really optimistic about the adoption of electric cars. I suspect adoption will be drastically slower than you're imagining, and hybrids as well as gas vehicles will remain relevant for a long time still. Toyota of course has the top-selling hybrid, and introduced a plug-in hybrid version recently. Ford was in the #2 spot and Toyota was again in the #3. Honda takes #5. I think the thesis of these automakers…
The number one factor that leads to one future or the other is battery price.
With high battery prices the market stays with hybrids longer.
With cheap and plentiful batteries it moves faster to full EV.
What'll be interesting is if some vendors have access to lots of cheap batteries and so are living in one future while competitors are in the other.
Re: Tesla Surges Above $500, Leaving Analyst Targets in the Dust
#260How close are they to figuring out how to handle holding a battery charge in colder temperatures? A few owners around here I've spoken with have said they are experiencing nearly half the mileage this winter season and it's been a struggle for longer daily commutes. They also need to preheat the battery and some have resorted to using another vehicle. Been on the fence for a while and since we operate with one car th…
This is a big reason I avoided a Tesla this time around. If you live in Colorado and ski, you'll not only often be parking your car in extremely cold temperatures overnight, but also know that blockages on I-70 during sub-freezing temperatures are relatively common, and those blockages can add anywhere from half an hour to 6 hours to a commute. There's already a high enough risk that the battery range will be reduced in that weather, that my destination won't have a fast-charger, and that I won't be able to fully charge the vehicle overnight; but, the risk of me being unable to start the car on the highway in that weather were too much for it to be a useful option.
To be fair, Tesla is much more of a viable to me than any other EV, but as someone who works from home and only uses their car for excursions rather than daily commuting, it's not for me.