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Tesla Smashes Earnings And Revenue Expectations

businessinsider.com

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Re: Tesla Smashes Earnings And Revenue Expectations

#61

Post by olefoo »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #20
olefoo wrote: post #10

Meh, Teslas are boring status mobiles now. If you like your electric cars to be interesting and exciting. Order an Arcimoto [1] instead. 1. http://www.arcimoto.com/

Are they even in production? I know if I write a check I can get a Tesla.

I've driven one. They're fun, they tilt to the curve. And they're more practical for a single city-dweller.

Also, whoever downvoted me... can we keep this civil please?

That HACKER news is becoming a place where people downvote mentions of upstart disruptive competitors in an attempt to curry the favor of well funded established companies. Is just kind of, sad.

Re: Tesla Smashes Earnings And Revenue Expectations

#62

Post by rdl »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #58
grecy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone driving any of those super cars you mention park on the street?

It's not a supercar, but a guy in my neighborhood (in Los Angeles) parks his Bentley on the street. Me, I'd clean out my garage if I had a Bentley.

Back when YC had demo days at YC's office, rather than at a nearby museum with a parking lot, there were a lot of amazing cars street parked for blocks. And at least one highly lulzy incident involving an SL65 and an asshole machinist dragging it with a forklift into the middle of a street.

Re: Tesla Smashes Earnings And Revenue Expectations

#63

Post by mikeyouse »

grecy wrote: post #24
rdl wrote: post #19

If you've been in Silicon Valley for the past 6 months, this was obviously going to happen -- virtually everyone I know who could afford virtually any production supercar, and cares about cars, has or wants a Tesla. Not an R8, not a GTR, not a California, not a Panamera, not an M3, but a Tesla. As they ramp up their production (I think it's down to a few months wait), The only rich people (who own cars) not getting T…

Does anyone driving any of those super cars you mention park on the street?

I live in San Francisco, I rent a small apartment in a fairly nice neighborhood. Without fail, every night parked on the street are 2 Audi S5s[1], a Tesla Model S[2], an E63 AMG Wagon[3], and a smattering of Porsches (new Boxters to oldish 911's).

[1]http://www.motortrend.com/cars/2013/audi/s5/pricing/ (~$60k) [2]http://www.teslamotors.com/models/options (~$80k) [3]http://buyersguide.caranddriver.com/mercedes-benz/e-class/20... (~$100k)

Re: Tesla Smashes Earnings And Revenue Expectations

#64

Post by encoderer »

cloudwalking wrote: post #8

This is the first of many profitable quarters for Tesla. The Model S is a better car in every single regard (except for range), than any other car on the market. It is safer, faster, roomier, more fun to drive, has more storage, quieter, more convenient, and less polluting. Electric vehicles will displace combustion vehicles. Everything that makes a car, the electric car does better. Right now the electric vehicle ma…

Woah, stop that zero-emissions hyperbole engine before it runs away from you.

Seriously, it's "safer, faster, roomier, more fun to drive, more convenient, etc," than "any other car on the market?" Really?

Some of that is true. But there's also a lot of opinion there and a few total inventions. The Model S is the safest car on the market? My Mercedes stops itself if I don't see traffic in front of me hit its brakes. It gives me night vision. It will nudge me back into my lane if I drift. There's about 100 more cool safety features I can talk about, and all this in a car that costs less than the 80kwh Model S. And there's even more safety tech on the S Class which is just another 10-15k on the top Model S price tag. And of course BMW and other manufacturers have similar.

Re: Tesla Smashes Earnings And Revenue Expectations

#65

Post by rdl »

mikeyouse wrote: post #63
grecy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone driving any of those super cars you mention park on the street?

I live in San Francisco, I rent a small apartment in a fairly nice neighborhood. Without fail, every night parked on the street are 2 Audi S5s[1], a Tesla Model S[2], an E63 AMG Wagon[3], and a smattering of Porsches (new Boxters to oldish 911's). [1] http://www.motortrend.com/cars/2013/audi/s5/pricing/ (~$60k) [2] http://www.teslamotors.com/models/options (~$80k) [3] http://buyersguide.caranddriver.com/mercedes-benz…

Surprisingly it usually works out fine to park a totally empty $100k car on the street in SF, but if you leave $0.25 on the seat of a $500 toyota, some crackhead homeless fucker will break your window ($100-300 to fix it) to steal it.

Re: Tesla Smashes Earnings And Revenue Expectations

#66

Post by dangrossman »

anateus wrote: post #29

The last several months in Silicon Valley I do not remember the last time I went outside for more than 5 minutes and not seen a Tesla. I noticed about a week ago I stopped caring, much as I do not especially remark on noticing a Honda or a Ford. That's a good sign, though likely very geographically localized.

> though likely very geographically localized

I live a bit outside Philadelphia (but visit the city proper often), and haven't seen a Tesla here yet.

Re: Tesla Smashes Earnings And Revenue Expectations

#67

Post by lambda »

cloudwalking wrote: post #8

This is the first of many profitable quarters for Tesla. The Model S is a better car in every single regard (except for range), than any other car on the market. It is safer, faster, roomier, more fun to drive, has more storage, quieter, more convenient, and less polluting. Electric vehicles will displace combustion vehicles. Everything that makes a car, the electric car does better. Right now the electric vehicle ma…

> in every single regard (except for range)

And price, and convenience.

> more convenient

No it's not. The lower range, low number of charging stations, and long charging times make it quite inconvenient for long trips.

I bought a used car 3 years ago for less than the cost Tesla charges for replacing the batteries on its car (which you are estimated to need to do after about 8 years). This car is a station wagon, so has much more storage space than a Tesla. I go camping every year, about 550 miles from where I live. I can make that trip in about 10 hours including food and gas stops. For the same trip, I would need to make at least two hour long charging stops at Supercharger stations along the way (if I had the highest-end battery option). But there are no Supercharger stations along my route; so I would need to find places to charge with ordinary power sources. If I used ordinary 10 kW 240 V sources, it would charge at a rate of about 30 miles of range per hour, effectively tripling the length of the trip; now what was a long 10 hour drive has turned into a 30 hour trip, which means finding places to stop and sleep overnight (which hopefully can give you a charge).

Furthermore, I live in an apartment, without a dedicated parking space. I need to park on street. So there's nowhere I could charge my car at home; I can't exactly run a power cord down and across the sidewalk to my car. Neither is there anywhere to charge my car at work. There's no way I could even use a Tesla for commuting right now, let alone longer trips.

With a gasoline powered car, I just fill up at any gas station, my car holds the gasoline overnight so it doesn't matter where I park, and for the above describe trip, I need to stop for gas once before leaving and once on the trip, each a 5 minute stop.

The Tesla Model S is an amazing car. But claiming that it's more convenient, or is a better car in every way but range, is a vast overstatement. It would be absolutely awful for me, and many other people with similar needs.

Some of these problems are solvable; there will be more Superchargers installed, the price will probably come down, there will probably be more electric vehicle infrastructure. But it's still a gamble to say that they will completely eliminate all of these advantages that a gas powered car has over an electric car, at least unless the price of gas spikes dramatically.

Re: Tesla Smashes Earnings And Revenue Expectations

#70

Post by encoderer »

chuhnk wrote: post #52

Ask HN: Will anyone be buying Tesla stock when the markets open tomorrow? I'm wondering whether its a good investment moving forward?

Wait for profit takers to bring it down a little but yes, if you're willing to hold for the long term -- 5+ years at least -- I believe in it. I think a $100 price target is not absurd. Of coruse, Tesla is so comically far from becoming a mainstream car company that it's not for the feint of heart. It's not their products that will challenge them I don't think. It's the difficult of scaling a car company. No easy task.
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