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Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

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Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#321

Post by misja111 »

alister wrote: post #314
Pxtl wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://xkcd.com/947/

Here's another illustration of how our intuition about compound interest can be really wrong: Futurama scene where Fry has been transported to the year 3000 and he still has his ATM card: The bank teller checks Fry's bank balance. She says, "You had 93 cents in your account in 2000. With an average interest rate of 2.25% compounded for 1000 years . . . that brings your balance to $4.3 billion dollars." The math is co…

Another thing that many people forget is that while compound interest gives you more money, at the same time inflation makes your money worth less. So what you should really be looking at is the difference between the inflation and the interest rate: the so called 'real interest rate'. Currently in the US, that rate is negative ..

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#322

Post by radiorental »

jodrellblank wrote: post #287
radiorental wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sorry, Tesla bought struggling Solar City as it needed a complete residential energy storage solution to leverage rebates from energy companies. I.e. the sum of the parts is greater than the whole in terms of final price to consumer.

SolarCity was/is $4B in debt at the time of the acquisition. If Tesla's car division fails, solar panels is not the cash cow the company is going to fall back on.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#323

Post by jordache »

flexie wrote: post #191
hueving wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or withdrawals from people. The deposits are non-committal so people can cancel without losing anything.

I can't think of any product I'd rather have than a Tesla. I think Tesla will sell millions of Model 3. Which other car is 400,000 people waiting patiently to buy for two years, even putting down a $1,000 deposit? Tesla is doing to traditional car manufacturers what Apple did to Nokia.

you do realize market forces for a $600 consumer device is very different than a durable good that costs 50x more?

Your anecdotal insight into how desirable the tesla is to you means nothing in terms of the market

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#324

Post by MarkMc »

slg wrote: post #210
Matt3o12_ wrote: post #171

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.

I think the commitment of $1000 is overblown. What is the actual opportunity cost here? Maybe $50-$150 depending on the interest rate and time frame you want to use for your estimates. That is nothing in the scale of a car purchase and it buys you the right to receive the car several months quicker. Relatively speaking it is like someone paying $10 to have a new laptop shipped to them overnight instead of by ground e…

You are missing the psychological element. In general, people:

(a) Feel a strong obligation to be consistent with past behaviour - not just in placing the deposit, but then thinking and reading about the new car design and wanting a Tesla for months or years.

(b) Want to avoid admitting the 'mistake' of giving Tesla a free loan. Not just admitting the mistake to themselves, but also to all their friends they told about their deposit.

(c) Hate giving up something they 'own' - ie. their place in the queue

(d) Value something that's scarce more than something that's easily available

(e) Are more likely to want something that other people love and are queueing up to buy.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#325

Post by JBReefer »

misja111 wrote: post #321
alister wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another illustration of how our intuition about compound interest can be really wrong: Futurama scene where Fry has been transported to the year 3000 and he still has his ATM card: The bank teller checks Fry's bank balance. She says, "You had 93 cents in your account in 2000. With an average interest rate of 2.25% compounded for 1000 years . . . that brings your balance to $4.3 billion dollars." The math is co…

Another thing that many people forget is that while compound interest gives you more money, at the same time inflation makes your money worth less. So what you should really be looking at is the difference between the inflation and the interest rate: the so called 'real interest rate'. Currently in the US, that rate is negative ..

I feel like I can't get a handle on the inflation numbers I see. I pay - and the math checks out - roughly the same amount for gas, produce, and essentials. My smartphone is 1/3 the cost it was 10 years ago.

And then housing and health insurance is like 2.5 times higher. It all totals to be the official rate, but man does it feel uneven.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#326

Post by sidegrid »

Ntrails wrote: post #311
bkanber wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten years is short. Thirty years at 6% gives you $200k, for instance.

what? Not on $1k it doesn't. 1.06^30 is like 5.5 ish? Unless you mean on saving 1k pa which is not what they are talking about, and means you're very much changing the game (and apparently not derisking towards retirement)

35k?

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#327

Post by JBReefer »

greglindahl wrote: post #249
smogcutter wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The point is that soon they'll need a whole lot more of them, and first party repair centers as well. "Sorry, we have trouble with quality control at 3rd party shops" isn't going to cut it for a mass market car. Re: Ford and Delorean, this is not the hill I want to die on. But what I mean is that the batteries, charging stations, etc, all live or die with the cars. If they can successfully create a mass market…

Uh, what fraction of body shops do aluminum? Model 3 is not like Model S/X. And problems at body shops has nothing to do with problems at first party repair centers. I'm happy to agree that the future is uncertain, but you aren't adding much in the way of fact into the discussion.

I'm sure a growing number do, now that the most popular vehicle in America is made out of the stuff (F150)

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#328

Post by bkanber »

Ntrails wrote: post #311
bkanber wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten years is short. Thirty years at 6% gives you $200k, for instance.

what? Not on $1k it doesn't. 1.06^30 is like 5.5 ish? Unless you mean on saving 1k pa which is not what they are talking about, and means you're very much changing the game (and apparently not derisking towards retirement)

On $35k, the price of a Tesla, which is what prompted that xkcd link

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#329

Post by MegaButts »

Anchor wrote: post #312
MegaButts wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is he is selling it as a working product. Imagine if pharmaceutical companies could eventually cure diseases by testing a drug on consumers, but sold it to them as working - when in reality it is going to kill a bunch of people while the company figures out what works. In the long run this could be a win, but would you be okay with that? The obvious solution to my complaint - rename Autopilot so…

Imagine a car company that sells cars that may kill people driving them. And imagine that it would actually be one of the most common accident type that kills people. Would you be okay with that? The thing is, every product is working and not working at the same time to a degree. It is only a matter of statistics - are we better off with or without the product.

The difference is, until recently, nobody knew the statistics for self-driving cars and how often they disengaged (by the way, Tesla is doing horribly in this regard). The information for traffic deaths has been public for decades.

Again, my emphasis is on the point that Elon Musk is spinning the information to his advantage. He has no interest in bringing attention to the shortfalls of his technology, only to sell the public on his soon-to-be-level-4 Autopilot system. He is also wildly misleading the public as to the capabilities of his technology, but unless you work on self-driving cars you wouldn't know that.

Of course it's his job to do this, and any sane businessman would. Which is entirely my point - Elon Musk is a salesman first and foremost.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#330

Post by bkanber »

kriro wrote: post #313
bkanber wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Driving electric cars instead of hybrids in areas where the electricity is primarily derived from unclean sources is not better than hybrids for the environment. As of two years ago the only country where that was the case was India. Right before that, South Africa and China both became clean enough for EVs to be an environmental net positive. Power produced in the US is some of the cleanest in the world, and getti…

The entire clean energy argument depends on your classification of nuclear energy. Long term storage issues put it squarely in the unclean category for me so I'd argue that US energy is by and large pretty unclean. I'm also pricing in the expected value of meltdowns in my unclean rating. It's hard to quantify exactly but the black swan events have pretty catastrophic consequences for the environment. Since I've witne…

Nuclear power is only 20% of US energy production.

Nuclear waste is a political problem, not a scientific or engineering one. We're not allowed to recycle it the way we want. Blame President Carter.

Coal power puts more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear does.

You have no idea how to "price" the cost of meltdowns into your "unclean" rating. TMI's incident did not have any effect on public safety.

I don't think it's tinfoil-hat-crazy, I just think it's uninformed.

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