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Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

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Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#91

Post by Kliment »

threeseed wrote: post #79
ryanhuff wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect as they fix one issue (production, etc), the next in line becomes the bottleneck. Now it’s delivery logistics, but once that’s fixed, it will become service, which already seems to be straining.

Companies around the world are building, shipping and supporting products simultaneously. Really confused why Tesla can't do the same.

The way I understand it what the previous poster was saying was that they're building a high-volume pipeline which is likely to have issues as it's new to them, and the delivery issues can't show until there's sufficient volume coming in from manufacturing, and the service problems can't show until there's sufficient volume of vehicles delivered.

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#92

Post by Animats »

_ph_ wrote: post #88
Animats wrote: post #84

Tesla still isn't doing all that great on production.[1] They've been unable to sustain the 5,000 units a week output for the Model 3 line. They're back down around 4,000. The week to week numbers are all over the place, from 2000 to 6000. Auto plants are usually much more consistent. A Ford exec points out that their F-150 production line at the Rouge produces a truck every 55 seconds. You can take the plant tour in…

First of all, we don't know whether the production is "all over the place". Your are quoting the weekly numbers from the Bloomberg tracker. But this tracker does not know about actual production numbers. It mostly looks at VIN allocation, which is not directly coupled to production numbers. Typically, Tesla allocates about 30% more VINs than the production numbers. Based on that, Bloomberg came close to the total qua…

Ford's Rouge plant has a steel mill. Iron ore comes in via barge. They have a glass plant. A power plant. A casting plant. An engine plant. Now that's vertical integration.

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#93

Post by lozaning »

MrEfficiency wrote: post #23
lozaning wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope Tesla succeeds, but I cant deny I'd love to pick up a 3 on the super cheap because Tesla went belly up.

This sounds good until you realize you bought a first generation vehicle(unreliable parts) and a company that is no longer producing them.

Nah, Im going full Rich rebuilds style. Buy 3 of them for a couple grand each, frankenstein them together into one working vehicle.

Not rooting for Tesla to go out of business, but the result of it could be a ton of cheap EV parts hitting the market.

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#94

Post by danso »

Besides the problematic assertions this article makes about Tesla's business fundamentals (already addressed in the comments), I just want to call out the absurdity of its media conspiracy theory:

> Media outlets are doing what they can to survive. They’re laying off seasoned journalists with strong fact-checking instincts. They’re laying off fact-checkers. They’re laying off editors. They’re rethinking how they write headlines to compete with clickbait...Tesla and Musk are big eyeball grabbers. They have been for five years, as this Google Trends graph shows. One publisher I work with regularly told me, anecdotally, that anything with Tesla or Musk in the headline is likely to perform better than average.

Only someone who has his head firmly in the Tesla bubble could imagine that the eyeballs that Tesla/Musk articles attract are any kind of significant blip in the revenues or traffic of a major general news outlet. It's really hard to imagine how clueless this author is, as if he had just woken up from a 2 year nap and doesn't realize what currently dominates the headlines and reader traffic.

Take this Sept. 4 article from BuzzFeed News, which arguably directly led to Musk bringing a libel suit upon himself: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/elon-musk-thai-...

I would bet a decent chunk of money that the reporters who worked on that story get paid more, and put more work into that article than did their colleague for this article from yesterday, "16 Bakers Who Should Be Very, Very Ashamed": https://www.buzzfeed.com/jamiejones/people-who-wont-be-winni...

The "16 Bakers" article has 326,000+ views, according to Buzzfeed's own metrics. The BuzzFeedNews domain does not display pageview metrics, perhaps partly to look more dignified, but also because BuzzFeed's reported articles generally are nowhere near as popular in pure pageviews as the standard Buzzfeed listicle. Moreover, the Buzzfeed listicles sell ads (the Bakers' listicle has a sponsored Uncle Ben's ad), whereas the BuzzFeedNews articles rarely have any ads.

So tell me how paying quality reporters to write damaging articles about Tesla/Musk helps BuzzFeed's bottom line?

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#95

Post by jonknee »

alonmower wrote: post #86
jonknee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can cover it with cash, issuing stock or a combination of the two. They're convertible notes with a fixed conversion rate, Tesla doesn't get to decide on what the noteholder wants. If the stock price isn't high enough whoever is holding the notes will demand cash (cash that Tesla doesn't have).

I think the above comment was claiming that they could issue stock to generate the cash that they'd use to pay back the convertible notes with

On the second quarter call this year, Elon Musk stated:

> “We’ll not be raising any equity at any point... I have no expectation of doing so; do not plan to do so.”

Issuing new shares would be a disaster. Far more likely is they come up with a way to roll the debt forward.

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#97

Post by dwighttk »

1123581321 wrote: post #76
csours wrote: post #71

Disclaimer up front: I work for a Tesla competitor, any opinions are solely my own. From the linked article: > "And now NHTSA testing shows that the #1, #2 and #3 cars with the lowest likelihood of injury in a collision are the Tesla Models 3, X and S in that order." https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-model-3-nhtsa-safet... https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/national-highway-traffi... > "NHTSA does not distin…

The CNET article you linked says: “Over email, a Tesla spokeswoman did offer more explanation on the probability-of-injury statistic. NHTSA compiles raw injury data in a load of spreadsheets every year, and it computes the overall probability of injury, listing it as a Vehicle Safety Score in its published results. That's where Tesla pulled the data from, and you can check this year's results for yourself on regulati…

Man regulations.gov is a terrible site. The only document I could find that contained "vehicle safety score" was:

https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=NHTSA-2015-0119-0001

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#98

Post by reissbaker »

threeseed wrote: post #81
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that show the debt servicing costs vs the expected profitability of the current production pace? The August/September production numbers were pretty robust, and given the profit margin on the current models I could see the debt being serviced. The tweets and executives leaving are just drama. Tesla will make or break on the production rate and the profitability per car, both of which seemed on target, but I have…

> Tesla will make or break on the production rate and the profitability per car Sure. For now. But every car company is releasing electric cars over the next few years. Many of which look like serious threats against Tesla's more profitable models. Electric as a differentiator will disappear and all that will be left is (a) brand, (b) design, (c) quality, (d) service. None of which Tesla is better than its competitor…

You need a charging network to fix range anxiety, and infrastructure to make batteries at scale. Charging network the major brands don't really have an answer for yet. And as for batteries, the major brands are still stuck at the small batch, high end segment of the market, because no one makes enough batteries to tackle the lower ends of the market except Tesla — everyone else just buys their batteries from Asia. BMW is trying to reopen their old, shuttered plants, but still are only aiming to be able to support 20-25% of their cars being electric by 2025, despite claiming that a fraction of that by 2020 constitutes "mass production." [1]

That's a long "for now."

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaclyntrop/2018/07/01/bmw-is-ge...

Re: Tesla Is Doing Much Better Than Headlines Suggest

#99

Post by csours »

dwighttk wrote: post #97
1123581321 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CNET article you linked says: “Over email, a Tesla spokeswoman did offer more explanation on the probability-of-injury statistic. NHTSA compiles raw injury data in a load of spreadsheets every year, and it computes the overall probability of injury, listing it as a Vehicle Safety Score in its published results. That's where Tesla pulled the data from, and you can check this year's results for yourself on regulati…

Man regulations.gov is a terrible site. The only document I could find that contained "vehicle safety score" was: https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=NHTSA-2015-0119-0001

It's linked from the CNET article: https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=NHTSA-2017-0037
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