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Hertz orders 100k Teslas

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Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#381
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even higher margins with electricity. Instead of charging you $5 a gallon, they can even charge $.50 per kWh (or translate it to miles) and that's something like a 3x markup. Even more if they use a renewable energy source. In my rough calculations, it costs something like $5-$7 to charge from empty to full on my Model-3 mid-range.

Cost depends on local electricity prices. In Bay Area, it would cost $21-25

"San Francisco area households paid an average of 26.3 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity in September 2021." [1].

The standard Model 3 has a 50kWh battery, so the cost is roughly $13.

If you charge between 23:00-07:00 the cost is reduced to $7 [2], though presumably that incurs the cost of installing an extra meter. It would be $9.50 sticking with a single meter for house + car.

(For what it's worth, in Denmark the lowest I'm charged is currently double the night rate for PG&E, although the peak day rate is similar. It varies depending on demand and how windy it is forecast to be [3]. But petrol is $2.10/L, so the other commenter's 100L car would be $210 to fill — though at 12.5L/100km, it's pretty inefficient. New vehicles in the US use 9L/100km, in the EU new vehicles average under 5L/100km.)

[1] https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/averageenergyp...

[2] https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o...

[3] https://i.imgur.com/Aml0CUw.png

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn't Tesla one of the least capital efficient ways to invest in transport electrification? How much of that will end up in genuine R&D and furtherance of your aims, as against paying for transient meme interest and massive risk loading?

Tesla spends like 5x as much per car on R&D.

They literally developed a completely new battery manufacturing factory and cathode plant from the ground up. Plus of course their own batteries with their own chemistries. No other car company comes even close to that.

They are vertically integrating to the point where they themselves are building their own battery manufacturing equipment.

They are even slowly getting into mining themselves. And of course solar, stationary storage and so on.

Hard to see what company is doing considerable more. Tesla is doing a pretty large amount of innovation.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#383
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing the automotive industry benefited more from outsourcing because they were heavily unionized. Outsourcing parts allowed them to get the parts from sub-contractors that didn't have to pay union wages. Tesla started much later and didn't have this problem.

So is Tesla another labour rights arbitrage at heart? That would make me sad. It feels to me that even taking the company at face value, this valuation is just silly. And I thought that for years, so clearly as a short-seller I’d be toast. But the more the price levitates, the more unreal it feels.

No it isn't. The difference between union and non union is far smaller then people have in the idealistic fantasies.

Tesla employees are payed just as well, and with stock options they actually historically have been paid WAY, WAY better.

The thing about Tesla is that its forward looking for a long time since they have a stable leadership with a clear long term plan. This leadership has been leading the company for more then a decade and all their plans have worked out.

Tesla now certainty is worth now what they were valued at a few years ago.

For myself, I would already consider electric flight as part of their future revenue. Its a logical next step but it will take 10 years. Of course I can understand that other people think this is crazy. But flat out, for me, I see them growing 50% a year for many more years with no end in sight.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They kind of can.

Example: the australian PM who repealed their carbon tax, is now working with his coal baron buddy on a green hydrogen plant. He's now calling for a ... brace for the irony ... carbon tax to help his new business.

edit: correcting myself, getting two PMs mixed up, Turnbull scrapped new Carbon Tax plans while PM, under pressure from Abbot (who he replaced as PM), who in turn had scrapped an existing carbon tax. Still demonstrates the slow shift of the well-connected politicians to follow the money.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#385
post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah I'm not a domain expert on decarbonization or anything, but from what I've seen on the industrial manufacturing side of things in the US, electricity prices would have to be consistently very low for the cost of re-outfitting existing natural gas heating systems with electrical ones to make sense without fairly punitive carbon taxes, and even if you pass carbon taxes in first world countries to make it "worth it…

Air source heat pumps are more efficient than gas boilers so total energy usage would decrease [1]. Running costs are also lower, but installations cost are currently higher.

You would need to generate more electricity, although this could be mitigated through improved insulation and smart control of heating systems (for example turning off the heating for 30 minutes during spikes in usage, assuming the temperature is above a certain level).

[1] https://www.edfenergy.com/heating/advice/air-source-heat-pum...

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#386
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, the major car manufacturers' dealership networks are franchises . Yes, they have massive financial arms but they are for financing the vehicles, not for insurance.

Car manufacturers aren't by an large allowed to own dealerships in the United States. The point is, the number of dealerships is a good proxy for demand and sales. Also, dealerships by and large don't make much money on the sale of cars (due to having to purchase the cars from the manufacturer), but rather they make their money on the service and repair of cars. Even then, they're not really rolling in the dough. Gen…

> but rather they make their money on the service and repair of cars. Even then, they're not really rolling in the dough.

Car companies already make huge money on service. Plus in sum, all dealerships combined make huge money on service.

Once Tesla has an large aging fleet they will make an absurd amount of money. Something people don't yet consider is that Tesla has been losing massive amounts money building out their global service network and because of having no fleet, making little money from it.

Tesla has industry leading margin now, while having negative margin on the highest high margin business for traditional companies.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#387
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…

That 90% is much easier to replace than you think because its mostly wasted as heat and inefficiency.

Once you factor in the fossil fuels used to extract fossil fuels it all topples pretty quickly.

The main source of trouble will be people ignoring the issue until it becomes urgent and not planning a smooth transition, global procrastination rather than the actual task itself.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Their rating just got upgraded.

Tesla as a company has basically retired all debt, they have 16 billion in cash and no debt. Their position is far better then other car companies.

> I doubt the Fed will be eager to bail TSLA investors out the way they did the banks in 2009 though.

Even if the Tesla stock dropped by 90%, Tesla would be perfectly fine. They do not really on raising money anymore. They create large amounts of free cashflow and enough profit to finance considerable future investment.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#389
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…

Why is this not profitable for Tesla? The cars were bought at full consumer prices and Tesla has very good unit margin.

In 2012 Elon predicted 500k vehicles in 2020 and he was spot on. So lets see the 2020 prediction for 2030.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#390
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was talking about Tesla having lowest probability of injury in a crash, as measured by NHTSA (and every other agency that does crash testing).

A good chunk of this is that Tesla's are designed very carefully for these exact tests. I'm willing to bet performance would drop substantially if you modified the test even a little - for example changing the collision angle from 0 degrees to 5 degrees. Other car manufacturers also 'design for the test', but less so I suspect.

Its the opposite. Tesla actually specifically does not design for Tests only.

They literally have data and video of every crash and update their cars to deal with real world crashes.

See for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KR2N_Q8ep8

Teardown of the cars have reviled that they are very sturdy built, maybe even overbuilt at points.

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