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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

#591

Post by vageli »

mcv wrote: post #561
neuronic wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another German I can definitely tell you that no one here sees a Model 3 at anywhere near a BMW in production quality. If Tesla intends to market the Model 3 at the "BMW audience" - whatever differentiates them from, say, the "Audi audience" - they are horribly miscalculating at what German people expect from a car. It is not limited to EV range. Also, Volkswagen is ramping up production on their Modular Electric…

Maybe not the Model 3, but the model S has replaced a lot of the Mercedeses that used to dominate the taxi fleet in Amsterdam. It's entirely possible that Germany is more conservative than Amsterdam, though.

> Maybe not the Model 3, but the model S has replaced a lot of the Mercedeses that used to dominate the taxi fleet in Amsterdam.

> It's entirely possible that Germany is more conservative than Amsterdam, though.

The taxi driver I spoke to about it told me they were using Teslas because they had gotten an agreement for free charging. I believe this has since changed though (this was almost four years ago).

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

#592

Post by rcxdude »

imglorp wrote: post #563
dagw wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is probably more important than people give it credit for. I have an acquaintance who works R&D at a traditional car company (but on self driving features) he says the internal 'fights' between ICE and electric are very real and damaging.

You can experience it first hand if you go try to test drive a Chevy Bolt - Motor Trend car of the year in 2017. I spoke to dealers who (pretended?) unawareness of the model and didn't want to help me find one. Another tried to talk me out of it. Finally one dealer was well informed about its pros and cons, and had several for sale. Another example: bmw i3. 114 mile range on the 2017 model, really? And that's up from…

The big problem the big auto manufacturers are having is the battery and cost. A mass-market electric car cannot cost as much as Tesla's offerings, and a huge part of that cost is the battery. Even with the most optimistic cost projections of battery costs in the near future, it's hard to see how to offer an electric car which is competitive on both cost and range with an ICE car.

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

#593

Post by jp555 »

cagenut wrote: post #579
mtgx wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is wasting time, money and focus by investing too much in self-driving tech (they're even having their own chip division now! - is Tesla really in financial a position to compete with Intel/Nvidia now?). Not to mention they made all of their Model 3's thousands of dollars more expensive by including the "full self-driving hardware-that-wasn't" in every unit to the point where it didn't even make sense for Tesla…

there is a line of reasoning, rarely articulated, that EVs will never reach the price points it would take to fully 100% replace ICE cars in the private/personal market. li-ion batteries have done an excellent job walking down the learning/cost curve, but we can all see the way it bends and how much headroom is left in the chemistry. we'll likely hit $100/kwh in the next few years, but even just $80/kwh is likely 5+…

I've read that the wiring harness of a modern ICE car costs more than the transmission.

Do you think it's possible that all we need is ~$100/KWh, after which due to diminishing returns, find better ROI improving other areas like a dramatically cheaper wiring harness?

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

#594

Post by mlrtime »

imglorp wrote: post #572
raiyu wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shift want just digital cameras it was also the iPhone that made the digital camera obsolete. With digital cameras they were losing film revenue which was larger than camera sales. Car companies don't own gas stations so they will switch faster and easier than Kodak. There will be some struggles internally but not as much I suspect. Plus modern EVs have demonstrated more performance then ice so it's really just a…

> more performance than ice In some axes, WAY more. The new Roadster 0-60 is 1.9 sec, which is 0.3 faster than everything on the production list. That list needs updating now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest_production_car...

The Roadster hasn't been released yet so nothing needs updating yet.

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

#596

Post by dillonmckay »

hyperbovine wrote: post #528
pbreit wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Continuing to deny something that exists is actually beyond calling it impossible! If you've got some spare time, go read some third party research on how cameras might actually be better. Lidar superiority is a myth. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.07179.pdf

Dude, if you think a CS conference paper is going to be the secret sauce that extracts Tesla from the $5b hole it’s dig itself into, you a) know nothing about business and b) know nothing about CS.

A little decorum, please.

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

#597

Post by rayiner »

angstrom wrote: post #578
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both are solved, controlled and executed constantly by other car companies. Executed for ICE cars and their components. They don't have the supply chains for batteries, inverters, or electric motors.

If only it was so clean cut. Tesla isn't even operating in all 50 states due to specific laws in 1/2 which prohibit direct sales. This is part of the reason for switching to service centers and transitioning sales completely to app based purchasing. Tesla is driving the biggest wedge of change through the world economy in the 21st century. The impact these changes have will affect everyone who uses, sells, services a…

> Tesla is driving the biggest wedge of change through the world economy in the 21st century.

I suspect the press vitriol is because Musk actually believes crap like this. Nobody likes someone who is high on their own kool-aid.

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

#598

Post by dillonmckay »

bobsil1 wrote: post #219
phkahler wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of software in cars, but cars are not software. Making cars is a lot harder from a business perspective than doing AI. In the end software is just a file that gets loaded into a module - one step in a very long chain.

Manufacturing is well-understood, self-driving is research. Dumb cars = flip phones shortly.

I do agree with this sentiment.

The used luxury car market has out-dated electronics that cannot be upgraded.

Not as bad as epoxying an iPad2 to the dash, but close enough.

Meanwhile, I think Tesla’s are at the equivalent stage of the original iPhone or the 3gs.

We still have a way to go before this is a commoditized standard.

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

#599

Post by peteradio »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #377
deepGem wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am just curious, why does everyone believe that Waymo is way ahead. They have more miles driven, but so does Tesla. Waymo has some incredible guys going after autonomy but they have nothing to show as of yet at the L4 or L5 level. Is it because they are playing it super safe. They don't have any urgency to make money from autonomy unlike Tesla. Are they taking it easy ? Per my understanding, Tesla is tackling autonom…

Waymo is a technology demo, not a functioning operation that spits out self driving cars by the tens of thousands per quarter. They are many years away from having that. That's fine if they pull it off; it's the way big technology startups are funded. Alphabet is playing the long game here. However, Tesla is talking about making the tens of thousands cars they are shipping per quarter right now autonomous. We'll see…

If waymo has developed tech for autonomous cars then integration into existing car brands is not going to take a miracle, hell retrofitting onto my 96 cherokee isn't out of the question.

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

#600

Post by leesec »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #569
kmonsen wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure Tesla can make good cars, but not if it has to sell them at a profit. Over the lifetime of Tesla, each car has been subsidized by like 10k from shareholders and 7.5k from government. Both subsidies are going away as we speak.

Tesla doesn't make good cars. They make unremarkable cars with good drive-trains. It's like the EV version of FCA's ~700hp offerings. Sure the interior and build quality are kind of crap for what you pay but with 700 ponies on tap you don't care.

This is a joke right? They make some of the most highly regarded cars of all time. Recently buying one and showing it off almost every single person (30~) was blown away at how much better it was then their car and wanted one in the future.

Tesla has many problems but making bad cars isn't one of them, these things are awesome.

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