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Hertz orders 100k Teslas

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Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#471

Post by rkuykendall-com »

YPPH wrote: post #20
aqzman wrote: post #15

I say this having never driven a Tesla, but are they really suitable rental cars? My understanding is that Tesla vehicles differ quite a bit from regular ICE vehicles, to the point that there's a bit of a learning curve to operating the car. I'd be interested to hear from a Tesla owner on this. Maybe it's a non-issue.

>My understanding is that Tesla vehicles differ quite a bit from regular ICE vehicles, to the point that there's a bit of a learning curve to operating the car. >I'd be interested to hear from a Tesla owner on this Not a Tesla owner, but I did take one for a 30 minute test drive. There wasn't really any learning curve except for that when you let your foot off the accelerator (gas?) pedal, the regenerative braking ki…

This is unfortunate to hear. My least favorite thing about automatic cars is that the pedals don't increase and decrease the momentum of the car. Instead, the car slowly moves at all times unless the brakes are hit, and the "gas" is treated as more of a hint system for if the car should speed up or slow down.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#472

Post by trhway »

listenallyall wrote: post #469
trhway wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla price to revenue is 20x - a pretty normal for a tech company.

Tech companies generally sell software or ad space with near-zero marginal costs. Tesla does not.

Not really. The modern tech companies, FAANG, and many doing SaaS, etc. consume highly expensive labor and consume it while not linear, yet still in some significant correlation to the revenue, thus one can see that they have kind of significant marginal costs. While Tesla's marginal costs will more and more will be dominated by the R&D.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#473

Post by nebula8804 »

stmfreak wrote: post #225
Waterluvian wrote: post #163

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 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…

Do we actually have a detailed document explaining how much of their component production is actually in house? It seems like there are A LOT of common components between Tesla and others while at the same time they are clearly doing a lot of in house things that others dropped decades ago. (eg. Seat Production, having metallurgy department to come up with better alloys etc.) These are things other OEMs tossed to the curb decades ago.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#474

Post by nebula8804 »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #303
dado3212 wrote: post #286

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…

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…

>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.

THIS! Thank you for bringing this up. Few people talk about this coming death spiral. This is really going to mess up a lot of countries incomes and may have severe worldwide political ramifications. In your opinion when do you think it will trigger? It feels like when it does actually happen, its going to happen quickly. From my vantage point in the US it still seems like the majority are not realizing what is coming. Hell Companies like Ford are still introducing new vehicle platforms in ICE configuration only (Ford Bronco for example) and people are buying them up without any consideration as to the future so I suspect it won't happen this decade.

I don't know enough about the economics of the fossil fuels supply chain to make a reasonable calculation.

In terms of your other calculations your targets seems very reasonable. Its amazing at how Tesla is iterating so fast on things like Battery and Motor design. Its super sexy to see the new stuff they keep pumping out(even if the founder seems like a jerk)

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#475

Post by nebula8804 »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #459
fragmede wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh yes! We won't care about the middle east, so none of that bizarre cowtowing to the Saudi king that the US Presidents always do (I think largely to get on the post-term massive slush money that flows from the Saudis to former presidents, which I have no direct knowledge up, but seems obvious) The Navy will lose a huge reason for its existence: securing the seas for supertankers. There are so many countries we won't…

I think you are too optimistic about Israel. These other countries can be dropped easily but Israel is a huge liability that I don't know how the US will get rid of. I do feel confident that the winds are starting to fly against them slowly but I don't have my hopes up. It will likely be a generational shift that finally does them in but IDK. What do you think?

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#476

Post by tw04 »

stmfreak wrote: post #225
Waterluvian wrote: post #163

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 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…

> 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.

So basically a car company. GM makes their cars in-house. They own their own parts supplier (acdelco) and charging/distribution network (Ultium Charge 360). Ford and Stellantis are working on the same.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#477

Post by nebula8804 »

jonathankoren wrote: post #301
Jensson wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors are betting on Tesla cars getting cheap enough that average people can afford them.

Yeah, but plugin electrics are already cheap enough. They're just not made by Tesla. Nissan Leaf $28,375 Mazda MX-30 $34,645 Hyundai Ioniq $34,650 https://www.cars.com/articles/here-are-the-11-cheapest-elect...

They don't seem equivalent:

1. Nissan Leaf $28,375 - 150 Mile range for this price. (It is not advisable to drive this car long distances because the battery overheats and will reduce charging)

2. Mazda MX-30 $34,645 - ~100 mile range (ideal conditions)

3. Hyundai Ioniq $34,650 - 170 miles

Model 3 starts at 262 Miles and has the superchargers + most of the stuff Tesla is known for included (sentry mode, good UI software, games, etc). I don't know about you but it seems like a second gen car whereas the others are all on first gen.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#478

Post by caf »

stetrain wrote: post #410
bink wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The drive stalk and the parking brake, sure. But are you explaining to them how to shift into neutral? How to turn on/off the windshield wipers? Headlights? Pairing phones to use as keys? How to use the valet card? I have a model 3 but I forget this crap all the time. They'll need to provide decent documentation beyond the touch screen (and I'm sure they will).

Most people won’t need to touch those things. Headlights and wipers are auto by default. Neutral is needed for car washes or towing which are both abnormal situations for a rental. And I kind of doubt they’re going to let you pair it with a phone key to the normal Tesla app like you own the car.

In fact they instruct you that you're not authorised to organise towing yourself, you have to use their emergency assist number if it needs a tow.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#479

Post by m0zg »

HWR_14 wrote: post #433
m0zg wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This line of reasoning reminds me the time when Android came out and people were predicting the imminent death of then-newborn iOS. Tesla is Apple of car manufacturing. That much is pretty obvious if you drive one of their cars. They seemingly deliberately depart from what everyone else is doing. And my bet would be that they'll continue to do so, and continue building out technological capabilities that no other man…

> Tesla is Apple of car manufacturing. Can you explain what on earth that means? Apple makes good use of their device ecosystem, purchased app lockin and network effects to maintain an excellent position. Tesla has none of those benefits, other than their US (not EU etc. which is required to be open) supercharger network (which they promised to open to all EVs). When I read your post (e.g. it's obvious as soon as you…

It means they bet on vertical integration, and they make product decisions no other manufacturer has the balls to make, and win because of it. Observe how _nobody_ can make a laptop that's better than MBP in spite of having several _decades_ to observe what Apple does. The same is the case here. Tesla has insurmountable avantage in this regard simply because they are not a "traditional" car manufacturer and have no "legacy" they have to maintain.

But the best explanation is to just go to a Tesla dealership and take one of their cars for a spin. It _feels_ like iPhone.

Re: Hertz orders 100k Teslas

#480

Post by Seanambers »

jonathankoren wrote: post #453
Seanambers wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as Tesla can grow at or around 50% a year all those numbers you are using are useless. They will be halved every year from the current level. Yeah right now its seems crazy, and it is a unbelievably high valuation. But its more a sign of things to come. The other OEMs are laden with debt, which Tesla doesn't have so any comparison there would be at the EV level which doesn't make Tesla look that out of line c…

Tesla needs to execute, and I’m not sure that’s their strong suit. Sure they identified that it was finally time for the electric car, and made an electric car that wasn’t ugly as sin (gdiaf CitiCar and EV-1), but theiyre plagued with manufacturing delays and poor workmanship. The other manufacturers simply are better at putting quality cars out the door. Sure they were late to the game, and but it’s not a foregone c…

Well, the fog of 'war' is thick right now. I've chosen to place my capital and belief with Karpathy and Elon. Tesla seems like to best multivariate bet and it's priced like a winner in that respect.

With regards to execution, I don't think anyone has done a better job of scaling physical production faster than Tesla? And you don't have to like Elon but he sure does know a thing or two about this.

I've heard both the quality argument and the Tesla killer argument for so long that I no longer believe it to be true. If they could, they already would - I would suggest that you drive a Tesla for a couple of days, then go back to ICE. All the revving of the engine and performance hooplas seems so last century after that. A comparison kills the ICE alternative (except for long ranges atm).

The consumer will if given a choice (Tesla supply is restriced) choose the best offering at the lowest price and everything is lined up for Tesla to be just that.

The big joker from my perspective is what the EU / US / Japan / Korea will do to ensure strategic production capacity / industrial strength capacity, enormous subsidies are definitely on the table.

China is all in on electric so they have nothing to lose.

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