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Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

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Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#281
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unclean power plants are still vastly more efficient than the most efficient internal combustion engines. That's why trains are electric wherever possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_locomotive

> Unclean power plants are still vastly more efficient than the most efficient internal combustion engines. I don't think so. > That's why trains are electric wherever possible. 1. Thing is, you don't have to refuel electric locomotives, so that saves time and logistics. Unless you plan to install a pantograph on the roof of your Tesla, you still have to refuel it. 2. Unlike cars, diesel locomotives do not use any ki…

You don't think so? Is that your opinion or a fact?

Most calculations I've seen seem to conclude electric are more CO2 efficient per mile; from 2 to 9 times depending on which state is producing the power.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla is doing to traditional car manufacturers what Apple did to Nokia. Sincerely, and with all due respect, this is a false analogy. What happened to Nokia was pretty much self inflicted. Mismanagement, competing empires, complacency. Apple did not start shipping low end brick phones and eat Nokia's market. Post '08 bailout automotive manufacturers are lean and hungry (for the most part) Furthermore, the 'traditi…

Fair opinion, but I think you are arguing the wrong point. Apple ate market share from Nokia because of brand advantage. Many commentators mention that manufacturers are improving their EV product, but I think that boat has long sailed: Tesla vs. Ford won't be about features, but the brand.

Sorry, when the product is north of 30K, you'll find a significant number of people will put what they can afford ahead of brand loyalty.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#283

Tesla shorts can't get a break. First a smooth $1B+ capital raise without a stock hiccup and now this.

I didn't short the stock but I can understand why someone would. They are expected to generate over 90% of their value after 2020 [0]. There's the expectation that Elon Musk will definitely deliver, that Tesla market share will not be eaten up by other carmakers when they seriously start releasing electric vehicles. The expectation that electric and not another form of energy, such as hydrogen, will dominate, etc. Th…

If there were a significant economic downturn, I wonder how much that might impact their initial wave of buyers.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#284
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best case: you're shorting Sun Microsystems at the beginning of 2000, and it goes from $300/share to $3/share in the next 3 years. ( http://www.1stock1.com/1stock1_211.htm ) My advice is to just not touch tech stocks; going short on them is just as dangerous as going long.

Even the best case wouldn't have you more than double your money, if you put up 1:1 collateral. I guess you could have less collateral than this, but in that case, given a growth stock, you would be wiped out if there was a modest increase. I don't see the risk/reward curve for long-term shorting.

When the price starts dropping, you would have to sell more shares to maintain a 1:1 ratio. For example, you can double the number of shares each time the price drops by half, and make up to 200%.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming a pure profit motive. Literally everything Elon Musk is doing has a strong element of trying to save the world. The goal of Tesla is to make every new car sold electric, if they have to command 100% of the market they will do that, but they'd rather there be some competition.

> Literally everything Elon Musk is doing has a strong element of trying to save the world. Maybe. Or maybe he's just saying that to make money. If Elon Musk ends up being completely successful in all of his endeavors, he will be the world's richest person by far . I suspect the truth is in the middle. He does want to change the world, but he's not willing to become poor (let's say a net worth of less than a million…

He's 79th richest person on the planet at age 45 with only Zuckerberg being richer while also being younger.

He was foundationally involved in one of the biggest early online payment companies, one of few private rocket launch companies with NASA contracts, basically the single electric car company to change the world's views on electric vehicles, and a major solar / battery company.

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/590wi9/i_am_elon_mu...

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/590wi9/i_am_elon_mu...

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk...

These are Reddit AMA quotes from a car company CEO.

Do you really think it's likely that he can't code, can't handle electronics, doesn't understand rocketry, doesn't understand any engineering, hasn't earned any riches, and is just tricking everyone and leading a cult of personality?

If the combined 50,000 employees of Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City can't deliver on his promises, that means he's a fraud? And if they can, it's solely down to his brilliance?

If he's only half as great as he's made out to be, that's still 200th richest person in the world and head of only one or two international industry changing companies, but that's just not good enough for you?

smh.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla is doing to traditional car manufacturers what Apple did to Nokia. Sincerely, and with all due respect, this is a false analogy. What happened to Nokia was pretty much self inflicted. Mismanagement, competing empires, complacency. Apple did not start shipping low end brick phones and eat Nokia's market. Post '08 bailout automotive manufacturers are lean and hungry (for the most part) Furthermore, the 'traditi…

I dont know... Tesla is currently training their driving AI using the existing fleet in shadow mode. How do you skip this step and go straight to level 4? They need months of tuning outside a lab, worldwide. A lot of car manufacturers still refuse to build an EV from the ground up. They are reusing an ICE platform and converting them to EVs. Mazda don't even acknowledge that they need to build EVs. https://electrek.c…

[deleted]

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#287
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ford doesn't do batteries, solar, supercharging stations, autopilot tech, etc. Delorean produced 8,583 vehicles. :) But I get your point.

> autopilot tech On the contrary. They're well along that path. Not sure what solar has to do with cars. And charging stations? Do you think that's profitable secret sauce?

Tesla bought SolarCity http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/21/13698314/tesla-completes-... - even if they totally flump on cars they still have solar installations, gigafactory (developments), charging stations they could lease and tech/patents they could sell to other EV manufacturers.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#288
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they lost access to $1,000 until they cancel (plus 3-6 weeks, since it can allegedly take Tesla this long to refund the money). I don't think 400,000 have just $1,000 to spare for a really anything they will just cancel. The $1,000 mean that the person who reserved it really wanted the car and is unlikely to just refund it unless they have a very good reason to do so.

The sort of people who would consider buying an expensive sedan can probably afford to loan Tesla $1000 for a year or so. I reserved a Model 3 because I figured that if I didn't, I would be at the end of a very long waiting list and would probably lose out on the federal rebate. The most likely outcome is that I'll decide that's too much to spend on a car and cancel, but it still made sense to me to keep my options o…

You could always sell it immediately.. you would probably get even a slightly higher price than you paid by impatient people

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#289
post #3

> Tencent is a prolific investor. It holds equity in Snap, this year’s hot tech IPO, among others following an early investment. While that interest in messaging makes sense since Tencent’s operates China’s dominant chat app — WeChat — it isn’t immediately clear whether the Tesla investment has strategic undertones. This was my immediate question as well. Is this purely an investment for its portfolio or is there a s…

tencent has 2 primary competitors in china, primarily alibaba and baidu. baidu's business model is to copy everything google (so google maps, youtube, self driving cars, etc), but these 3 companies are converging on a lot of these things as baidu gets into self driving cars, was an investor in uber, etc. i think because they have a huge amount of capital, that they can make these types of investments to prepare themselves to take on alibaba and baidu head on in the future.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#290
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but not controlling strategy I mean, they bought all of league of legends. Their primary driver is most likely "let's make money".

Games are Tencent's backyard and cash cow.

not entirely true, i imagine wechat is a huge advertising platform for the as well.
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