Live data from Hacker News

Hertz orders 100k Teslas

bloomberg.com

351–360 of 516 posts

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#351
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe what you're saying is true regarding the company itself, but it's a meme stock. You go down and talk to people, people will say that yet wouldn't actually invest in the basket of companies of those industries. It's not a problem for Tesla or Elon per-se, but we shouldn't assign intelligence to people basically voting for their favs with their wallets.

Shouldn't also blame these people, because the stock market is as much prescriptive as it's predictive: if enough people "vote for their favs with their wallets", those favs may actually start (or keep) doing OK because of that, if they're not completely incompetent. (Myself, if I had some funds that are not already earmarked for something more important, I'd dump some into TSLA just as an expression of support to Mu…

People are generally shifting toward green investments in their long term portfolios in my little sphere of the world, but Tesla typically isn’t one of them because it’s considered too risky.

That risk is what made a lot of people rich of course, but investments in green energy companies in Denmark have seen a 15-35% increase in value, year by year, over the past decades without any real risk. It’s been safer than index funds here.

All energy companies have really, but you feel better when they are green.

Tesla may yet revolutionise batteries the same way the personal computer or the smartphone became something we all have, and thus be the best investment you could make right now, but it also might not.

The energy companies on the other hand aren’t going to stop selling a steady flow of energy to people. Why we let investors benefit from utilities is another discussion, but as long as we do, it’s going to be some of the safest investments you can get into.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#352

I was very pessimistic about Tesla and confused by their stock price. But I now believe that they indeed are doing it and that we’re finally at the EV revolution. I’m not an early adopter type and the Teslas don’t excite me at all, but I’m really delighted that the market is evolving. I’m delighted that I was wrong.

Tesla's stock price has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It seems like Tesla's success combination of a genuinely good product, the Musk hype (and troll) machine, early mover advantage, and most importantly access to cheap capital to build vertically integrated manufacturing and distribution operations that are unheard of in this industry.

Tesla's playbook is also unusual and contrarian to traditional wisdom on a number of things - unlike most tech companies, they outsource very little of their core manufacturing, making it an extremely capital intensive operation; they rely on their CEO trolling on Twitter for building hype for their products; they make promises which they almost always underdeliver and frustrate early adopters with quality issues; they make unsubstantiated claims about their self driving tech and yet are still making progress that skeptics are ignoring.

This is what keeps short sellers, stock analysts, economists and B-school profs on their toes when it comes to their predictions on Tesla. Reminds me of the early days of the iPhone era where a lot of folks were convinced it is going to fail.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be a bit crazy, but you just mentioned a slate of companies that absolutely have no future at their current scale. Sure this won't happen overnight... But my theory with petroleum is that it has so many HUGE economies of scale built into its production that a demand collapse will send it into a rapid tailspin. A small version of this happened in the Dakotas when the Saudis started dumping oil to get it under…

- People realize what a game changer it is to charge your car overnight and start every day with a full tank of "gas". It's a tiny detail, but a car that can only go 100 miles before needing to refill the gas tank is annoying. A car that starts every day with a 100 miles of range is terribly (for the oil companies) convenient.

That one is complicated a bit by housing situation - but if, if, cities and freeholders get serious about ensuring every possible parking spot (including unmarked ones) has a convenient electrical outlet nearby, that would be a game changer.

In a sense, this would be much cheaper and more convenient than supercharger stations - but what it trades in infrastructure saving, it costs in getting myriad of land owners and councils to make it happen.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of a big annoyance if your hotel does not have chargers though. Especially if you already booked it.

They'll wise up to it when people start requesting it. I'll even pay a premium for a 100% guaranteed reserved charging spot at a hotel. This way I can just gun it and arrive at 1% charge, plug in, sleep, have breakfast and be on my way with a full battery again.

Small hotel owner here. There is no grid capacity near our airport, we actually have a restriction of 15kW limit / building in the area, and we ended up powering each floor from a different building (my family owns the neighbouring houses).

We had gov't grants available to build charging stations, and couldn't get them because of the power grid situation.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#355
post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be a bit crazy, but you just mentioned a slate of companies that absolutely have no future at their current scale. Sure this won't happen overnight... But my theory with petroleum is that it has so many HUGE economies of scale built into its production that a demand collapse will send it into a rapid tailspin. A small version of this happened in the Dakotas when the Saudis started dumping oil to get it under…

We are so dependent on fossil fuels that I'm slightly more sceptical. Over 90% of global energy is created with fossil fuels. We often get fooled about the electricity sector which is something like 1/3 renewables. But electricity is only 30% of fossil fuel consumption. Even if the share of electricity increases to 40% because of ev's and we produce 80% with renewables, we still have ~70% that requires fossil fuel pr…

Zooming out to a global level, geopolitics becomes important to consider as well. As soon as renewables are able to change the power dynamics between eg Russia and Ukraine (Ukraine is dependant on Russia for oil for heating in the winter) things get very interesting indeed. We are still decades away from that imo.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla’s stock price is confusing if you compare them to a car company. But they are not just a car company. They are also a car manufacturing supply chain, having brought much of their component production in house. They are also an energy company, both generation and storage, but also distribution, like gas stations. Think Exxon, BP, Chevron, ARCO, etc. They are probably a few other things, but this is the mystery o…

For the record, their market cap is also greater than "Australia's Woodside Petroleum, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Imperial Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Shell Energy North America, Canadian Natural Resources, ConocoPhillips and French group Total [combined]" [1], so they're also valued kind of crazy compared to energy companies...and that was in January 2021 before the most recent spike. Sure, part of that is faith in renewable…

So if they’re so big now, why can they throw more weight around than energy companies in terms of getting rid of the fossil fuel lobby?

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#357
post #321

Tesla surges by over $100B on a $4B (revenue) deal, likely at very low margins. Memes galore.

This isn't just a very profitable deal for Tesla, it is a strong indicator towards that electric cars are really around to stay and that the electric car market is growing quickly. If it is more profitable for Hertz to buy Teslas than other brand cars, it should be for most car rentals and probably also most other customers. Not too long ago Elon talked about Tesla making up to 20 million cars per year in 2030. That…

> Of course this statement was treated as Elons typical optimism, but deals like this pave the way to that actually coming true.

I feel people have really short memory wrt. Elon's optimism. Not everything he promises pans out (autopilot being the prime example), but usually, it does, just slightly later than promised.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you his the accelerator steady, you can easily keep a pretty constant speed. It's not like you have to either be slamming on the accelerator or completely off the accelerator, you can keep it constant and hold a speed. I really prefer single pedal as with just the single pedal I get far more control of my speed than if I had to switch between two pedals. Want to slow down a little? Just ease up a little. Want to g…

Oh my, this reminds me of a Lyft I got home from the airport once. The driver didn't know how to hold the throttle steady and was constantly on and off the gas for the entire 15 mile drive back home on the interstate. I was nauseous and nearly puking by the time I got home, even sitting in the front passenger seat because I'm already prone to motion sickness. I'm hoping their car was actually broken in some way, beca…

Oh god, I feel you. That, but with a 2 y.o. feeling sick in the back, on their way to a pediatrician's office, was my wife's recent experience with one of the faux-taxi services (Bolt or FreeNow, don't remember which), and the driver was lucky - few more minutes of this, and he'd have to do a thorough cleaning of the back of the car.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#359

I was very pessimistic about Tesla and confused by their stock price. But I now believe that they indeed are doing it and that we’re finally at the EV revolution. I’m not an early adopter type and the Teslas don’t excite me at all, but I’m really delighted that the market is evolving. I’m delighted that I was wrong.

I am very happy with the Tesla company, CEO, marketing, and cars, but I can't believe that it should be worth 1 trillion dollars. A trillion is one with 12 zeros.

I know you can't compare valuation and production of a company, but still. If Tesla were making 10,000 dollar profit per car - and they don't - they would have to produce 100 million cars just to make a trillion. They produce less than 1 million per year. I know they also sell batteries etc. but it's still mainly a car company.

Their yearly profits might be a few billion. So their value is more than 100 times their yearly profits. This is insane for a manufacturing company. Currently their P/E ratio stands at more than 330. VW, a very well run auto manufacturer has a P/E ratio of less than 6, Ford 17, Mercedes-Benz 7, BMW 5, Hyundai 15.

These are all companies with electric cars on the road and a future that is totally committed to electric vehicles. These are all companies that already have production facilities, etc.

I like Tesla and their business model. I just think the stock is hyped way beyond what is sustainable.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#360

I was very pessimistic about Tesla and confused by their stock price. But I now believe that they indeed are doing it and that we’re finally at the EV revolution. I’m not an early adopter type and the Teslas don’t excite me at all, but I’m really delighted that the market is evolving. I’m delighted that I was wrong.

Tesla's stock price has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It seems like Tesla's success combination of a genuinely good product, the Musk hype (and troll) machine, early mover advantage, and most importantly access to cheap capital to build vertically integrated manufacturing and distribution operations that are unheard of in this industry. Tesla's playbook is also unusual and contrarian to traditional wisdom on a n…

Lucky they have cheap equity capital because their debt is junk status. And some of the self-fulfilling prophecy is the cycle of good old WS analysts overrating an asset, Tesla, and their simple endorsement creates an inflationary cycle that generates a huge bubble and more me-too analysts - where have we heard that before? And we know how those end up despite all the transient commentaries that 'its different this time'. I doubt the Fed will be eager to bail TSLA investors out the way they did the banks in 2009 though.
Post reply on HN