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Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

nytimes.com

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Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#331

Post by pbreit »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #260
Reedx wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but people have been saying they won't make it for over a decade now. It's tiresome and unproductive. Meanwhile they've done amazing things that most considered impossible. They went for it despite the difficulty and actually changed an industry. Electric cars were thought of as golf carts! Not so anymore. The idea of covering the country with chargers was a pipe dream. Now it's reality. Here's hoping Telsa con…

I'm not sure they've done things anyone considered impossible. People have said these things will be wildly unprofitable, sure, and so far those people are mostly right. But nobody has said it would be impossible to build a big expensive electric sedan with high range. Nor did anyone say it would be impossible to build a wide coverage fastcharge network. Surely they are impressive feats, but not "thought to be imposs…

First US car company in 60 years, electric at that. Best crash test ratings. Highest owner satisfaction. First US-owned factory in China. Built in about 6 months. Ability and willingness to use OTA updates. Willingness and ability to put auto-pilot on the road for consumers. Ridiculous performance. Better chip than Nvidia. Top 2 auto battery supplier. Best selling lux car in US (ICE or EV). Dramatically better battery efficiency. No dealerships. Online ordering. Plausible FSD story. Camera-based autonomy. $35k price point.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#332

Post by wil421 »

electriclove wrote: post #238
reitzensteinm wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly right. I'm bearish on Tesla, and frequently criticise it. But I only care because I was an unashamed fanboy earlier in life. Musk kept flipping the coin to bet the company, and succeeded against all odds. It was riveting to watch. But once Tesla got large... nothing changed. He's still flipping. Model 3? Flip. Automated factory? Flip. Autonomous driving? Flip. 420? Flip. Solar City? Flip. Tesla is a s…

I agree with a lot of what you've said here but I don't think anyone is legitimately catching up. There are all kinds of announcements but no one else really building EVs in the US in volume: https://insideevs.com/news/343998/monthly-plug-in-ev-sales-s... We are getting close though but need Tesla to keep the pressure on for a couple more years.

The big ones are doing things at a scale Tesla can only dream of. It takes a lot of time to change production lines and the big ones don’t have much incentives to switch off ICE. The governments need to help us here.

Ford sold one million F-150s last year. A F-150 every 29 seconds. That’s only one model.

Without going off on a tangent, large companies aren’t able to innovate like smaller companies can. They prefer to buy or partner with smaller company to build someone, Mazda developed the old Ford Ranger. Ford just invested $500m in Rivian.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#333

Post by camjohnson26 »

arkitaip wrote: post #27
jedberg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been waiting four years and counting... Model X reservation. Every time I call, I get a new person (Because the last person I talked to doesn't work there anymore) and they swear that they will certainly solve this for me! And then I never hear from them again.

How is that not theft?

It is, welcome to Tesla.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#334

Post by newnewpdro »

taneq wrote: post #244
2bitencryption wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the smartest thing Musk ever did for Tesla was to start sending rockets into space and landing them over and over. It really makes you think, "Hey, if they can do all that rocket science, they can probably make a sedan." (This is mostly a joke... but it's also not entirely a joke)

That's actually a very good point - Tesla's current "halo car" isn't the Model S or the Roadster 2.0, it's the Falcon Heavy.

What? SpaceX and Tesla are completely distinct companies. What you're saying here is somewhat insulting to the folks at SpaceX who are actually responsible for creating the Falcon Heavy.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#335

Post by _pmf_ »

sytelus wrote: post #295
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #81

Tesla's 1.5B reduction of cash on hand was largely due to the 920M convertible bond payment — but that only happened because TSLA didn't perform to the level necessary for conversion (~$360 IIRC). I wonder what changes in terms this'll warrant for future capital raises. Then they mention that they missed a lot of revenue due to missing half their shipments overseas, and onto Q2 (But also expecting a loss in Q2). Sale…

I'm still trying to figure out the root cause. Is it because, production is not keeping up to demand? Or is it because demand is dying? So far it seems former, not later. Some analysts are saying random things like impact of tax credit and competition coming in to EV market. I still don't see anything close to Tesla offering in EV space, at least in US. They really need to focus on offering EV at $18K price point wit…

> Or is it because demand is dying?

The demand was for something that they no longer sell.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#336

Post by _pmf_ »

sliken wrote: post #155
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #81

Tesla's 1.5B reduction of cash on hand was largely due to the 920M convertible bond payment — but that only happened because TSLA didn't perform to the level necessary for conversion (~$360 IIRC). I wonder what changes in terms this'll warrant for future capital raises. Then they mention that they missed a lot of revenue due to missing half their shipments overseas, and onto Q2 (But also expecting a loss in Q2). Sale…

I find the Panasonic thing very weird. Tesla claims to be battery limited, and also mentioned that their popular and in demand power walls are being throttled by lack of batteries. Does make me wonder. Is Panasonic blackmailing Tesla with limited supply to influence Tesla's battery supply in China? Is Panasonic and/or Tesla lying about the situation?

> Is Panasonic and/or Tesla lying about the situation?

Panasonic makes rational business decisions. Tesla is being Tesla.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#337

Post by camjohnson26 »

AQuantized wrote: post #196
basetop wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same handful of characters repeating the same ad hominems every earnings report. Anti-weed puritans whining about "joe rogan weed". The pro-news crowd attacking him for his rebuff of the news industry. The "thailand crowd" for lack of a better word upset Elon Musk brought up pedophilia epidemic in thailand. And the short seller crowd claiming this earnings report is their vindication and their road to riches…

How is "Elon Musk brought up pedophilia epidemic in thailand" at all an accurate description of Elon Musk calling a cave diver a pedophile just because he was an expat in Thailand? There may be people who go overboard on the Elon hate, but this just seems like the opposite bias.

And he doubled down in that email to the Buzzfeed reporter and implied that he had proof for those bogus claims. He’s being sued for that.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#338

Post by _ph_ »

jaabe wrote: post #330
sytelus wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still trying to figure out the root cause. Is it because, production is not keeping up to demand? Or is it because demand is dying? So far it seems former, not later. Some analysts are saying random things like impact of tax credit and competition coming in to EV market. I still don't see anything close to Tesla offering in EV space, at least in US. They really need to focus on offering EV at $18K price point wit…

EV are still too expensive and Tesla ridiculously so. That’s not a problem if you can’t keep up with demand, but competition creeps up. Why would you buy a Tesla when you can buy a Hyundai Kona for a lot less? We need better leadership though. I live in Denmark where EVs aren’t very widespread because of taxes. In Norway more than half of new vehicles sold are EV. Norway has more money than us, but they didn’t really…

First of all, you basically cannot buy a Hyundai. The production is far below Model 3 levels. Here in Germany, you are looking at 12 months wait time due to demand far exceeding supply.

Also, the Model 3 is a very attractive offering. It is the faster car, aims at the typical BMW audience, and most of all, has the supercharger network available.

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#339

Post by Waterluvian »

sliken wrote: post #327
dogsgobork wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pool of people that put down $1000 thinking they were going to buy a $35k car, has to be much larger than the people willing to plunk down $2500 for a $48k car (the cheapest pre-order currently available). The multi year wait for the $35k version to be available (and quickly abandoned) can't help.

With the model 3 the deposit made a huge difference in delivery time. The production ramp was painfully slow (production hell) becuase it was a completely different car than the model S and X that Tesla was producing. Because of the slow ramp the incentive for a deposit was quite large. There was also pretty minimal competition for the model 3, mostly the chevy bolt which most don't really consider in the same class.…

Your last sentence is what interests me the most.

How many people will be out $1000 or $2500 if Tesla goes under? I'm assuming deposits are about as low a priority as you can get for recovering money in a bankruptcy?

Re: Tesla Posts Big Quarterly Loss as Its Electric-Car Sales Lag

#340

Post by kakwa_ »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #203
golfer wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla has about $9B in debt. They are not an attractive takeover candidate. They've never turned an annual profit.

Neither did Amazon for many years. They are scaling up.

That's actually complete wrong. Amazon did have 2 years of somewhat heavy losses (around 1999 to 2002), with one pretty dramatic loss the quarter the dotcom bubble exploded.

But after that, they turned a profit almost every quarters, generally very small compared to their revenue, but a profit, and when they lost money, it was also quite small compared to their revenue (apart from 2 isolated quarters in 2012 and 2014).

Basically, apart from it first 2 or 3 years, and some isolated losses, Amazon was, for most of its existence, targeting a slightly above 0% net margin, and succeeded at it, proving it was self-sustainable.

It's not the same as Tesla which is consistently losing around 10 to 20% of its revenue for nearly the past 10 years.

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