601–610 of 778 posts
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.
Amazon had losses for 5 years in the beginning of their existence, and then showed profit
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neither did Amazon for many years. They are scaling up.
Tesla Net Income, Millions... Q1 2019: -702 2018: -976 2017: -1,961 2016: -675 2015: -889 2014: -294 2013: -74 2012: -396 2011: -254 2010: -154 2009: -56 2008: -82 2007: -78 Amazon had losses for 5 years in the beginning of their existence, and then showed profit
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, you would expect that someone from tech revolutionizing an entire industry at global scale would get a little bit more respect and appreciation here.
I respect the engineers and workers actually doing the revolutionizing, not the man taking all the credit and the money.
No one has put more blood sweat and tears into Tesla than Musk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Another issue is subsidies. Carmakers have enjoyed billions from the states... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toyota-mazda-jobs-factbox...
That's not counting an $80b bailout... https://www.thebalance.com/auto-industry-bailout-gm-ford-chr...
And what about gas prices being artificially kept low with subsidies... https://www.nrdc.org/experts/danielle-droitsch/time-us-end-f...
So the true cost and TCO of an ICE car is not at all obvious to compute compared to an electric.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No it's not a joke. The Model 3 and Model S have relatively high NVH and a relatively cheap feeling interior compared to vehicles of the same class and price point. You're paying German car money but it goes to the drive-train instead of the "luxury German driving machine" experience. There's nothing wrong with that but to talk up Tesla's vehicles as though they're luxury cars is foolish.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Like if Tesla gives you 700 mi range but Audi does 500mi, does anyone really care? In this case, yes, because current battery tech charges much faster from 0-80% of the battery, so a battery with more range than you'll use is still beneficial because it'll charge faster for the portion you do use. But I'm being snarky--that's not your point. Tesla's advantage is far more than just range. * The battery management sy…
I think you're wrong about Tesla having an advantage in the non-electric parts of the car. The legacy car makers are way way better at actually building cars at a profit. If a big touchscreen was a way to do that they have the chops to pull it off (or at least one of the suppliers does). There is/was a race between Tesla getting good at traditional car manufacturing and the legacy car makers coming up with their own…
Traditional automakers are, indeed, much better at profitably making what consumers wanted in 2012. It's not clear how well they'll react as expectations change, driven in large part by what Tesla's shown can be done. Being a lot better at profitably making flip phones only helps while people still want flip phones. And just because everyone was using flip phones in 2006 doesn't mean they would be in 2010.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It still comes down to a race between Tesla figuring out the complete automotive supply chain and competitors figuring out EVs. Tesla had, and I would assume still has, production hell. Now it's delivery hell. Both are solved, controlled and executed constantly by other car companies (VW has an exception with the new Golf 8 that proves the rule). The competition is still struggling to solve EVs, some like Jaguar and…
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.
I caution you to read more about this, as you see statistics like this quoted often in the press. It is almost always an indicator of issues with article quality.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good point — remember that Kodak released some of the first digital cameras. They still failed to switch fast enough.
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…
Even had they executed more aggressively and better than they did, they'd have gone through hard times. (See Fujifilm which did a better job with a smaller company and still struggled.)