Multiple commenters have observed that Tesla faces increasing competition from Ford, Porsche, and others. But I don't think it's obvious at all that competitors can catch up:
* Autopilot. Safe or not, autopilot is very convenient and super permissive, and owners seem to love it.
* Superchargers. Third party charger maintenance is an unsolved problem, and CCS DC fast chargers are often broken, where they exist at all. It's truly awful. Maybe the federal government will bail out Ford here with a charging infrastructure program... or maybe not.
* Status symbol. There's a reason Tesla has replaced Cadillac as a symbol of luxury in pop culture.
* The Model 3/Y itself is a smooth, luxurious and fast ride. Don't discount the car's ability to compete on the traditional merits. (Edit: this is my opinion, based on comparing a Model 3 to a 3 series as well as various Nissan cars. YMMV; it's subjective.)
The book, The Innovator's Dilemma, totally changed how I view situations like this. Logically it makes sense that Ford or GM could use their existing resources to build a electric car factory, and use their existing dealerships to sell those cars under their existing brand.
But in reality those existing assets are why GM and Ford cannot catch up. Dealerships make money on services and maintenance. They don't want to sell an Electric that will never need much maintenance. Trying to convert a factory that was designed for ICE cars isn't as easy as building a new factory. And the union employees that have specialized in ICE parts do not want to switch over to Electric. So GM will end up delaying plans so long that they will not be able to compete on price due to Tesla's existing economies of scale.
It was obvious in 2012 that Tesla was a threat to ICE, GM and Ford have done very little since then to catch up.
You say that, but I actually love my VW ID.4. I test drove Audi's eTron, Tesla 3 & Y, and ultimately bought an ID.4. I liked that it wasn't a Tesla (especially in the Bay Area where it's gotten BMW-asshole status.. and I say that as a previous BMW owner), was more comfortable, bigger interior, had CarPlay, more like a traditional car (no single middle screen), and was quite a bit cheaper. Were there things I liked better about other cars? Sure. But they largely weren't the important factors for me. I also got 3 years of free charging with the Electrify America network, which is no small thing, although I primarily charge at home now.
I wouldn't downplay any competition. It can take a while to catch up, but cars are fickle things that people buy for all kinds of reasons. It's not like pre-Tesla everyone owned only one brand.
And that is why everyone expects them to own the car market in the coming years. When the competition's best marketing opportunity is selling to people who've pre-decided to buy something else, you've already won. No one decides to buy a car because it's "not an Audi".
(As a Y owner, btw: the ID.4 absolutely does not have a larger interior.)
"It's not a domestic" is basically the entire value prop of the Toyota pickups and SUVs these days (last 5yr) though they have fancy marketing ways of saying that.
This is an unusual take. Toyota pickups and SUV's are generally chosen because of their reputation for being the most reliable manufacturer bar none. Tacoma's and Land Cruisers are near indestructible. It's why out in the most remote places in the world with scant access to parts, terrorist orgs and the UN drive Hiluxes and Land Cruisers, respectively.
Got a source on the "terrorists drive Hiluxes" comment? Genuinely curious. We don't get Hilux in North America so I've never been in one, and I wonder what makes it terrorist-friendly.
It's not just wikipedia though, you can find it all over.
Hiluxes are extremely durable and widespread is why. Tacoma is the closest we get to a Hilux in NA. They use to be the same, but NA market likes things a bit bigger and luxurious so the Tacoma's just don't come in single-cab and generally have more amenities.
I mean, people don't really buy not-domestic for the sake of it, they buy non-big-3 cars because the big 3 have a terrible reputation for quality control and reliability.
Which is ironic since Toyota pickups and SUVs are all made in the USA due to bizarre outdated tariffs on importing consumer trucks that have never been repealed.
The tariffs are bizarre because they don’t apply equally to passenger cars. Just pickup trucks. I believe they don’t apply to the new unibody crossover SUVs, making the situation even more confusing.
And if you disagree, it's enlightening to read the very first opening sentence in Google's first response to the Epic Games lawsuit against Android Play Store. No, not the case against Apple (which Apple largely won) and not a case which has anything to do with Apple—but the case against Google and their Play Store.
INTRODUCTION
Android, Google’s open-source mobile operating system (“OS”), is a critical source of competition against other operating systems, such as Apple’s iOS.
This wasn't really the case early on. The early android phones had LTE before the iPhone and also had turn by turn nav which was a critical feature. They also supported more networks than just AT&T.
With the iPhone 5 Apple caught up (and arguably has continued to increase its lead since then).
I thought it would have worked for Windows Phone. Those Nokia's were actually nice phones at the end and the UX was decent enough...but it was too late.
The App Ecosystems were too developed by the time Windows Phone arrived. I think they should have either (a) added the ability to run APKs in a well optimized emulator or (b) spent literal billions getting app developers to compile Windows versions.
That's for sure. Still, I held on to my Nokia for longer than I would have thought. Ultimately, I needed the Didi taxi app to have any decent chance of hailing a taxi in Beijing, so switched back to an iPhone. My MIL then got it and used it until she broke it.
We talked about all those things in Microsoft at the time. Even the running android app solution, which I might have been roped in to work on if it wasn't shot down. The reasoning being that "running android apps would discourage people from writing WP apps", which wasn't wrong. My feeling on this is that Microsoft was just way too late, you need the right thing at the right time.
but it hardly matters, it's comes in 2nd to the Model 3/Y in every other category. If ugliness was a category, the ID.4 would certainly win that though!
I haven't seen that number before, and seems somewhat spun having looked closely at both cars. The most commonly cited metric in EV circles is Bjørn Nyland's "banana box" test[1]. Both cars held 9 boxes in the back in a standard configuration, but the Y went up to 26 with the seats folded vs. 25 in the VW. And the Y has a frunk which holds another, where the ID.4 skipped that feature (somewhat inexplicably).
The Tesla is also just a somewhat larger car, to the tune of 8cm of width and 17 in length. It's definitely "bigger" for basically all reasonable consumer use cases. I'm sure there's something that fits in it that won't in the Tesla.
[1] So-named because, well, it's obvious. Nyland is probably the single best source for EV comparisons out there Definitely a must-follow youtube channel if you're into this stuff.
Does it matter how long it takes? Doesn't just total output matter?
Heck, "throw more servers at it" has been an accepted practice. Who cares if it takes 30 hours as opposed to 10 if you can have 3x the number of cars under construction at one time.
First of all worker 30 hours of labor * factory workforce is a significant fraction of the cost of a car, and not easy to improve.
Additionally a plant that takes 30 hours per car is typically going to have less output than a plant that takes 10 hours per car. Typically each minute during production the car is taking up space, being worked on humans or robots, etc. Additionally efficiencies favor shorter pipelines. Generally a 10 hour pipeline is physically shorter than a 30 hour. Parts, staff, troubleshooting etc is easier on a smaller pipeline. Additionally having each car bridge 4 working shifts for the workers has overheads of it's own compared to 1-2 shifts. Doubly so if you are trying to iterate quickly.
Imagine an assembly line moving at 0.5 mph, for the same physical foot print you could have 3 lines that are 10 hours each instead of a single line that runs for 30 hours. Now imagine there's a issue that shuts down a line for an hour, it's better if it's 1/3rd of your capacity down instead of 100%. If you try an improvement, it's better to put 1/3rd of your production capacity at risk instead of 100%.
For a typical car, only about 10-15% of the manufacturing cost is labor. And that's talking about Toyota Corollas and euro econobox hatchbacks. For a premium electric car, it's probably a single digit
Also, the whole claim would really need a citation, and careful parsing of the methodology. 3x difference in a mature industry like car assembly is very unlikely, and requires a very strong proof to back that statement up.
Tesla gives tours, and frequently discusses optimizations in reduced part counts, design tweaks for manufacturing, etc. I'd think someone with some expertise could tell if Tesla's claims are true.
Some highlights: front 3rd of chassis is one piece, rear 3rd of chassis is one piece, the glass roof is a huge piece and before that's installed things can be installed by robot (steering wheel, dash, seats, etc). Many things are radically simpler, like the interior, dash is basically a aluminum bar the width of the car with an arm for a 15" monitor. Even the ventilation system is simple, few parts, and easy to install. Most cars spend quite a bit of complexity for gauges, displays, buttons, vent controls, temp control, fan control, fans, emergency brake, air valves, etc.
Monroe on youtube (engineer with significant experience, used to work at Ford) took apart an early model 3 and wasn't impressed, didn't recommend it, and called out many details that were expensive, labor intensive, etc. He did a new model 3 and model Y and left quite impressed. Many innovative changes to make things easier to produce, cheap to reduce, reduced parts counts, etc. Monroe claims tesla is iterating their production faster than anyone else he's looked at, and he's looked at a very wide variety of cars (and other products for that matter).
Monroe also reviewed the VW ID.4 and left quite under impressed. Ironically he didn't expect much from the Ford Mach E, but was very pleasantly surprised to see innovative engineering, impressive design, and overall was quite impressed. Although he was horrified by the complexity of the cooling system and has serious doubts about it's long term reliability.
30 hours does not necessarily mean 30 man hours. And part of the difference seems to be that parts are assembled before they get to the line with Teslas (the front and rear 1/3's) , so it could be that they have the same labor costs baked in there.
Meanwhile, I assume that space is the cheapest part of the car factory, dwarfed by robotics.
I mean, the VW is cheaper than the 3, so that implies they aren't spending that much more.
I’d be curious to know what’s QA in that breakdown, or where you got that data, and what Tesla’s numbers have been over time.
But let’s assume that’s true. Tesla has been building electric cars for how long? VW is basically just getting started for real (modular platform for all their cars unlike the eGolf), and still makes ICE cars as well.
It’s never a good idea to discount your competitors. I doubt Elon does even if comments on HN do.
The economics of scale trickle down into cost savings for the consumer, even if it is by only a fraction of what the manufacturer saves. There's a reason the id.4 costs about the same as a base Model 3 and you get less of a car for it (not factoring in federal tax credit, which might be returning to Tesla soon anyways).
The manufacturers no doubt. Musk, and by extension Tesla, has been seriously focused on ease of manufacturing. Probably since the huge problems Tesla faced in the late 2010s.
They should be. The longer the build cycle the more errors there will be in the build.
Each job is a dependency for the next job. A long build time either indicates that individual assembly technicians have too many steps in their job (it is much harder to remember 25 steps than 5 steps) or that the plant is assembling more parts locally than their competitors. If you have an engine shipped in complete from your supplier that is less time your plant spends assembling a dependency at build time.
Electric cars should in theory assemble much faster than gas. Fewer parts. Less complexity in the mechanical assembly of the drive train.
When corporate overlords dictate that an assembly plant meet production numbers that it isn’t capable of accurately producing they shell out complete garbage. Inspection lines flag errors that managers ship with disregard in order to meet numbers. Every time.
Teslas are much simpler designs to build at scale, while traditional automakers have perfected the ICE design and manufacturing, they see everything through that eye and bring the warts and complexity from the devil they know (as an example, most non-Tesla EVs do not have a floor battery architecture). It is not at all inconceivable for Tesla to leapfrog the traditional automaker in building EVs they design. That does not contradict VW's ability to produce ICE at scale.
Of course there will be other brands. The iPhone is by far the most successful phone brand, and they ship less than 30% of new phones each year. Something similar could happen here, where GM loses share like Nokia did, and new companies like Lucid take a market segment, like LG does with phones.
The most recent numbers I've heard of is 75%. So android is typically a battle to the bottom, with various mostly failed efforts, consolidation, various vendors giving up on markets, etc. Motorola (bought and then sold by google), Sony, HTC and many others are not making much profit. Samsung is doing better, but constantly fighting cheaper competitors. Seems like Samsung is doing as well as it is, because of synergies relating to their production of CPUs, having a chip fab, screens, dram, flash, and cameras for the world wide market.
Android's a tough market to be in, you are competing with Google (who makes pixel phones), numerous low cost manufacturers, Apple, and your ecosystem taxed by google through the app store and the market is split among many companies in the android system so it's hard to catch google's services, play store, etc. Not that android manufacturers aren't trying. Amazon made an effort, but seems to have largely given up on calling their devices android.
I wonder if driverless cars could follow that same android lath with Waymo being the alternative car OS that all the other companies have to use - but this time having to also pay google a lot more!
Please, please - could people stop making this analogy?
Cars are not phones, and will never be. American lower class or Chinese middle class are not going to shell out $70k for a new toy every two years. Cars are not going to be made with 60% margins. You cannot wear a car in your pocket to show it off to your relatives or business partners.
Apple's business model, in short - is selling mediocre hardware for premium prices, and mask it with excellent software. Optimizing software to make it 10x better, faster, using less battery - fairly common. For any activity that interfaces with the physical world - forget it - we're tapped out, making 2-5% improvements per year. No amount of refinement will make a $20k econobox sellable for $60k
(also, ironically, LG dropped out of phone business)
>You cannot wear a car in your pocket to show it off to your relatives or business partners.
There's a few striking errors in your post, and this one is the most glaring - in that it's very visual, and also very wrong.
Consider the photo of the Tesla (Model 3) key fob [1]: it's a small car that one does, in fact, wear in one's pocket to show it off to one's relatives or business partners.
Similar with the Tesla App [2] - it shows a desirable car on your phone's screen for the very same reason; the rest is nice extras.
It took them way too long to switch over from the initial "sell electrics only to a niche crowd that wants to be unique", leading to absolutely ugly cars like the BMW i3 and whatever Citroen calls their abominations.
Check the top selling electric car list and it's all normal looking cars with electric drivetrains. It wasn't just the production that messed up, but also the design and marketing department.
My assumption is the ugly design of early electric cars was intentional to make sure they didn’t sell too well. Tesla broke that cartel and showed the reason those early cars didn’t have universal appeal is because they were horrible vehicles not because they were electric.
The fact that even BMW created an abominably ugly electric car is proof enough for me that it was an active decision to uglify them as a disincentive to purchase.
BMW must have been in a very difficult spot to release that swollen pug-face of a car into public view.
It's "smart" business, but "smart" business almost always overlaps entirely with "X unfriendly" (where X = consumer, environment among others).
This was one of the high points for my ID.4. It was futuristic enough while still being accessible. No button to unlock the door, no weird Tesla door handle to get in. No strange wanna-be look like the i3 as you mention it. Yet because it was electric, the back seat's floor is completely flat which my dog loves, and wouldn't be possible in an ICE. The turning radius is also INSANE (and better than a Tesla) because they were able to push the wheels much further out.
We leased the ID4 knowing how much competition would be out there in a few years. Honestly the last two points are the main take aways that we'll look for in any new car. Living in a city and being able to do a U-turn from a parallel parked position without making it a 3 point is just magical, especially on a compact SUV.
Do they even have to be electric or hybrids? Is it that EV buyers specifically prefer normal looking cars or is it the case that cars are getting uglier and uglier and demand for non-goofy cars have been brewing for years?
Why do people talk about only Ford and GM, as if they’re even relevant in the car world anymore?
The danger to Tesla is not these companies, aside from some
competition in the electric F-150. The real challengers are those like Kia, Hyundai, and the Japanese and European brands. Kia is already making all electric cars, so it’s proof that ICE manufacturers can switch over. Brands like Kia have decades of experience making dozens of different models every year, iterating on them, and creating new ones. Tesla barely manages with three or four models. My Kia Optima SXL has better fit and finish than any Tesla I’ve been in. I also find the Teslas I see on the road very bland. They look like old cars, because they are (in terms of their overall design).
I’ve also been in several Chinese brands, including Nio. Nio blows Tesla out of the water in terms of interior design, and I like the external look better. It’s much more luxurious feeling. We’ve yet to see if Chinese brands can compete in the west, but Nio and WM Motor are very nice cars. There are also several, and I mean several, all electric car makers in China that make quite nice cars. I’ve ridden in several where I was like, whoa, what is this car?
I personally will be quite surprised if Tesla can outlive the hype it’s gotten from first adopters and its poor practices alongside increasing competition.
The Japanese have largely closed their eyes to any problem and pretend EV don't exist.
VW among the Europeans is the only one that seriously has invested in battery capacity and supply chain. BMW has not even switched to creating dedicated EV platforms yet. Daimler is a huge company that has very high aspirations for profitability and they are partially unwilling to that kill their cash cows.
Hyundai is fine and they will be a good in the market.d I mean several, all electric car makers in China that make quite nice cars. I’ve ridden in several where I was like, whoa, what is this car?
Nio is small yet and they are selling only premium cars and they are really design for cities in China more then anything esle.
> I personally will be quite surprised if Tesla can outlive the hype it’s gotten from first adopters
If at this point your are still talking about first adopters you have missed what is happening.
The idea that Tesla would go bankrupt is crazy, they literally have years long waiting list for some of their products. Yes, of course they will not have 100% market share. The point is, Tesla is far ahead right now in terms of how many BEV they produce. They are expanding really fast and they are doing really well on margin. They are well ahead of going down the supply chain, making their own cells and even their own battery factories.
Tesla has proven to be very porfitable making only EVs, non of the other non-startup companies have done that. In fact they do everything they can to not share that information.
> The idea that Tesla would go bankrupt is crazy, they literally have years long waiting list for some of their products.
Plenty of companies have gone bankrupt while customers waited for products - this does not strike me as so unrealistic as to warrant being written off entirely
Related anecdote: mega-brand Kodak died because film retailers threatened to stop carrying film if Kodak made serious moves into digital photography, as retailers relied on foot traffic driven by film (enter store once to buy film, again to return it, again to pick up photo prints). Kodak couldn’t risk its money printer, so couldn’t be ready when consumers switched to digital practically overnight.
Ditto cars. Manufacturers are beholden to dealers, who need complex vehicles that need extensive repairs. Related, fueling stations need customers who can’t power vehicles at home.
If I remember the Kodak case well - their own research predicted that digital cameras will massively shrink the total addressable market. Which is exactly what happened. Outside of professionals or hobbyist, who even buys a camera nowadays?
No amount of innovation, pivoting or clever engineering could have saved Kodak. They were not flabbergasted at the technological change. The best course of action was to milk the existing market for as long as possible, which is exactly what they did
The real irony is that parts of Kodak where totally on top of digital photography before anyone else. They built both the first digital stills camera and the first commercially available digital SLR. In fact there was a time in the 90s where they owned the (admittedly very small) digital SLR market. However the film side of the business convinced the senior executives to kill the digital side of the business, to protect their film margins.
I think this explains their delay to electrify, but at this point they all realize Tesla is an existential threat that must be competed against. They essentially let Tesla prove the market and now they know what their competing with. Dealers and service revenue is the analog to the buggy whip industry, it has to go. On what time horizon is the question.
Clayton and his friends at Harvard did a great job justifying how Tesla would not be a long-term disruptor when it expanded into the $35,000 vehicle class. It was a safe and justified thing to say in 2015, but it turns out they were pretty darn wrong about Tesla's future!
In 2015 it was a question whether Tesla figures out mass production before the others figure out EVs. I guess it was draw, Tesla figured out a way to build the existing model range reasonably well at scale while the others figured out EVs well enough to prevent Tesla from being the "only" EV manufacturer. Tesla still has to do face lifts for the existing range so. And Tesla has to show that they can build cheap EVs for a mass market.
In the luxury segment, sure Tesla is a serious contender. In the compact segment much less so.
Tesla will be a series competitor in that segment when they strategically decide to play in that segment.
The cheap Tesla are cheaper then much of the competition. And Tesla are produced at higher rates from single lines then literally any other EVs.
It simply doesn't make sense for them to go into compact segment yet. They are still growing 50% a year just on Model 3/Y and Cybertruck has gigantic potential. They simply don't have the batteries or chips to grow more. Why introduce more models if you are limited by the supply chain?
Once Tesla actually launches a compact it will be coming to all China, Europe and the US being manufactured in each place with their own battery production located near by.
A point I want to make about the "Innovator's Dilemma" with regards to my other comment: It does not happen when everyone gets together and just agrees that "X is true" with zero critical thought. It happens when a group of radicals abandon old ideas and rethinks the problem, leading to radical new ideas.
But the problem is that everyone here is just convinced that it can't happen, usually using very facile thinking. Few are asking any hard questions. As long as this stays true, hydrogen will continue to pose an enormous threat to Tesla.
Hydrogen will not be a threat to any electric personal vehicle simply because it’s 3x less efficient (electrolyze water to split it) and thus 3x more expensive to run.
Really just a meme at this point. The risk here is that hydrogen cars end up being cheaper to run than electric cars. A real possibility due to the production of hydrogen from curtailed renewables, higher battery costs, hydrogen being much more efficient than believed, as well as cheaper distribution costs since hydrogen can be piped in natural gas pipelines.
> hydrogen being much more efficient than believed
God/Allah/Nature obviously don't understand disruption, growth mindset and can-do-spirit. facepalm
There are hard physical limitations that no amount of human ingenuity can do anything about. 237kJ/mole is the theoretical minimum of energy required for water electrolysis. energy->electrolysis->energy round-trip efficiency won't exceed 45%, even if everything, from the energy source to the car wheel spinning, is perfectly frictionless and operating at peak theoretical efficiency. No, you cannot use existing gas pipelines for transporting hydrogen.
For passenger cars, EVs today are already better than what physics allow hydrogen cars to ever be.
It will likely be a transition from blended hydrogen before reaching 100% hydrogen later. Just because it won't happen all at once doesn't mean it hasn't already started.
I am not against hydrogen, but seems to me as if nobody in the space is noticing the disruption what electrical batteries already are. If battery trends continue by 2030 the value of refitting infrastructure to hydrogen easily becomes questionable [note], when there's a way to both transport and store energy more efficiently and at the same price if not cheaper. There are no signs of battery improvements to stop anytime soon or price to stop dropping.
[note] for pure hydrogen eventually everything except the pipelines will have to be replaced
I think those people are simply living in the past. It is hydrogen disrupting batteries, not the other away around. In fact, I see a flattening of the pace of battery improvements, meaning the speed of this disruption event should be moving faster than expected. By 2030 the battery "revolution" might have already collapsed and left for obsolescence.
It's important to remember that hydrogen fuel cells are batteries too. There is no reason for the metal lithium to have magic properties over other battery technologies.
Nope. Both NiMH and lead acid batteries are less efficient in this regard. And supercaps have lower energy density, although they are improving quickly too.
NiMH is around 90% efficient too. Lead-acid around 85%. Also, li-ion don't do well under high discharge rates and can drop to <70%. It's not a perfect cell technology by any means.
Tesla Model 3 is a very popular car, but aside from that, it's competitive across the field.
Japanese will fill in while US makers lag a bit but my bet is these things take time to change, and GM/Ford have incumbency advantage esp. with trucks etc..
Tesla will end up being 'another car company'. Amazing feat to break into the business, but really, if you look at EV sales over time, Tesla was just one of many players.
The problem is that now it's hydrogen's turn to do the same with batteries. Tesla is facing it's own disruptive threat, something it is completely unprepared to deal with.
You have made this and similar claims over and over again on HN, but you seem much more interested in making such claims than in supporting them, and your response when challenged has mostly been just to reiterate your statements that hydrogen fuel cells are better (for energy storage in cars) than batteries, or are inevitably going to replace batteries.
It reads more like advertising than like actual discussion.
What evidence is there that should lead us to expect hydrogen fuel cells to win over batteries, given (1) their currently much much higher costs, (2) their lower efficiency in turning electricity at the power station into kinetic energy of the car, (3) the currently much greater complexity of mechanisms required for a fuel-cell-based vehicle?
In my estimation, the ultimate problem with hydrogen isn't any of those three - it's that it's simply far less convenient than battery.
Once someone has experienced what it's like to be able to "fill up" overnight at home for all their day-to-day driving, the idea of reverting to the old "visit the fuelling station once a week" routine seems decidedly passe.
It could work for long-haul commercial vehicles though.
Except no one drives at home. Every EV fan still complains about lack of public charging stations. I suspect few people really find home recharging as any kind of game changer.
We've owned an EV for two years and charging at home has been a huge deal, especially for my SO.
She needs to get to bed early, so when hanging out with friends she hated having to go to the gas station on her way home. Often resulting in panic the next day. More than once she ran out of gas cause she forgot to look when driving off in the morning.
It takes about 3 seconds to plug in the car when we get back home, and we never have to worry about running out when we drive away in the morning.
Hydrogen would have to be significantly better in price and range to offset this for our future vehicle purchase. A mere 2x range increase over pure EV won't cut it.
For you maybe. For my SO I can assure you it's absolutely not.
Having owned an EV for two years now, it's clear that it's been good enough for us. Yes range is a bit limited, but for us it hasn't been an issue. It has some upsides like fairly trivial home-charging if you got a garage.
As such, hydrogen can't just deliver the same to be competitive. Hydrogen will have to deliver more. Longer range at same cost wouldn't be enough for us, the negatives would make it a no-go. So it would have to be longer range for much cheaper.
But I don't see how cost can be significantly cheaper, given the process inefficiencies and infrastructure required.
Looking at the concepts[1] I can't imagine them being cheaper than a home EV charger, which is about 1000-1500 USD installed. Never mind that we don't have any space for such a huge thing.
And I'm doubtful as to how much H2 we'll be able to generate here in Norway during winter.
Then I will have to disagree. I insist that it is still post-hoc rationalization.
Sooner or later, hydrogen cars will be cheaper to own than a battery car. Once this happens, none of this reasoning will hold up to scrutiny.
Should be noted that you can have hydrogen delivered in the same way propane/LPG can be delivered. In fact, gasoline/petrol could have been delivered since the first days of the automobile. None of these ideas really mattered in the end.
My experience is that complaints about lack of public charging stations tend to be more from those considering buying an EV than those actually with one.
(Those who drive an EV tend to complain more about the maintenance of the public stations than the number of them).
They really don't. Pretty much anyone with the ability to charge at home, charges at home for all their day-to-day driving, with stops at charging stations used only for infrequent longer trips.
Why do you think so? The convenience of taking a few moments to plug in when you park for the night, over taking a specific trip to a charging destination, seems pretty hard to beat (and that's before factoring in that home electricity rates are in general considerably cheaper).
In the Northeast, people often use fuel oil delivered to their house for heating. Except that this fuel oil is basically diesel/kerosene, meaning we already had a system of delivery fuel to people's houses. And yet there was never an outcry for home refueling for their cars. It clearly wasn't something that people wanted even when they had it. So it's hard to see why now all of a sudden this is a real selling point.
Probably because the idea of "you have to be home with the car waiting for the fuel guy to turn up" destroys a lot of the convenience, and the fact that car fuel tanks are more than 15 times smaller than typical heating oil tanks means you'd be paying a lot more overhead.
You have a big tank of fuel that can be stored up until you need it. It also takes a few minutes, not the hours you have to wait until a battery is full.
To clarify: Considering how popular it is to get other frequently-used consumables home delivered, like food and alcohol, it is on the face of it somewhat surprising that the same is not true of liquid vehicle fuel. My prior comment was suggesting some possible reasons this might be so.
Thinking through it some more, the objection around the vehicle needing to be home at the time the delivery is made can be overcome by having the deliveries made late at night, as long as there was some way to give the delivery driver access to the car's fuel tank. At the end of the day it may just be too inefficient to have liquid fuel delivered weekly in 30-60 litre quantities, the overhead being too great.
Home charging was one of the primary reasons I bought an EV in the first place, I hate going to gas stations especially when they're out of the way or when I'm not driving through a great area.
I do a lot of driving and still I have only had to use public chargers a handful of times over 2 years. Even if not staying at home I can usually at least plug into a 110v outlet somewhere or I stay at a hotel that has an EV charger.
Even a 110V plug still counts as a public charger. The point is that you still care about them. Even if you go out of your way to not think about them, you're still forced to use them from time to time.
The problem with (1) is that complaining about this is usually the last bastion of a dying industry. This is particularly true if the alternative is a completely new idea it would normally be much more expensive to begin with. So it would really just be a countdown until it is no longer true.
The problem of (2) is that all attempts to generate electricity with renewables (and with no fossil fuel backups) have resulted in extreme problems. In short, when it is windy or sunny, you have too much electricity and no way of storing it. When it is not windy or sunny, you have nothing and are forced to resort to fossil fuels. Ultimately, it's being found out that being able to store electricity is far more important than making it efficient.
And (3) is just dumb Ludditism. As if the small increase in complexity is any kind of problem. Fuel cells are far simpler than internal combustion engines after all. Batteries are actually worse from a supply chain standpoint since now you have a much higher need for certain elements that are not widely available.
Your reply feels to me like blustering, and trying to shout down the question.
Some data on why you think systemic hydrogen costs are going to catch up with systemic battery-electric costs, for example, would contribute to (1) far more than your posturing.
You'd be a better advocate if you spoke to the issues.
So far as I can see, literally nothing in your reply has anything to do with hydrogen fuel cells. You could say all the exact same things if what you were proposing was little nuclear reactors in cars, or storing energy in very heavy flywheels, or literal magic, or going back to burning hydrocarbons.
Therefore, nothing in your reply can give us any reason to think that hydrogen fuel cells in particular either should or will win out over batteries.
The difference is that for fuel cells, it has mostly already happened. It's quickly becoming a kind of denial where the haters simply pretend that it doesn't exist or insist on unsolved problems that have long been solved. It frankly reminds me of how Blackberry executives denied the viability of the iPhone even after it launched.
Every one of the three points I mentioned is a thing that has not, in fact, already happened. The vehicles are still more expensive than otherwise similar electric vehicles, and hydrogen is still more expensive than equivalent quantities of electricity; from a given amount of sunlight or natural gas or whatever we can still produce more car-movement via electricity than via hydrogen; fuel-cell vehicles are still more complex and difficult to make than battery-electric vehicles.
You have still not made any actual attempt to address any of these points, preferring to bluster about how people who disagree with you are stupid, ignorant, or insincere.
I am curious. Do you have any financial interest in the success of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, and/or in the failure of battery electric vehicles?
Yes it has happened or is nearly about to happen. FYI, the LR version of the Model 3 is $50k, about the same as the Mirai. By many metrics they've reached cost parity. Even if you angrily deny this, remember that EV are produced in larger quantities and benefit from greater economics of scale. It's pretty obvious the fuel cell cars are going to get a lot cheaper from here.
And as countries invest more into renewable they're are quickly running into a dilemma: Wind and solar are too unreliable to directly replace fossil fuels. This requires seasonal energy storage to solve, which as of today is only solvable by hydrogen energy storage: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/236723/1/Ruhnau-and-...
In short, even EVs will be hydrogen powered to a large extent. You can easily imagine a kind of plug-in hydrogen car that matches EVs on efficiency in broad strokes.
Ultimately, this is not really a difference of opinion but rather a difference in understanding of the facts. You simply haven't realized that fuel cell cars are already here and have already solved the fundamental problems of green energy. Batteries cars have not, and barring a miracle battery discovery will not either.
It wouldn't shock me if the Mirai has even bigger profit margins. Fuel cell systems aren't that much more expensive than internal combustion engines to build.
If the Mirai really had those losses, Toyota would be literally losing billions on the Mirai by itself.
This is very short sighted thinking then. They could end up disrupting the car industry. Especially in heavy industry where they might clean house against companies that haven't invested correctly.
Also, all of the cost is R&D. The cost of building fuel cell cars is probably very low.
What I've read lines up with the three points you've made, so I tend to agree. However:
What we're seeing in Australia is federal government support for hydrogen power after over a decade of strong resistance to alternatives (specifically renewables: wind and solar), and no support for electric vehicles at all. I'm definitely mixing together a few different areas of power / electricity / energy here, but the fact the Australian government is seizing upon hydrogen just makes my cynical mind assume that hydrogen manufacture and usage fits better with the status quo and therefore is easier to understand by those in power - ie. centralised / consolidated control as opposed to more consumer-level control.
This could be Hydrogen's killer feature in the end.
the infrastructure bill working its way through the US includes a few $billion in subsidies for hydrogen fuel, too.
there’s a couple takes on why, but the most charitable one is that solar/wind/batteries have enough momentum that they don’t need subsidies, and govt views energy diversity as a valuable thing and is subsidizing hydrogen to achieve that.
There is the possibility that Australia is simply correct in their assessment. They're a long ways away from both Silicon Valley and Brussels, and may be acting as an independent entity that is free from external influences.
I doubt physical distance has much to do with it. Australia is closer to China than the US, for example.
Australia gets a LOT of sunshine and has a LOT of empty space, which is conducive to being solar friendly. Australia also exports a lot of coal and a lot or iron ore (which is then processed using coal-generated heat), which is conducive to promoting its value and suppressing any alternatives.
Electric vehicles, however, work towards solving a specific national security problem for Australia in it's "domestic fuel security"[0][1][2][3]. A problem of which the UK is kindly highlighting the importance.
Australia is a major suck-up to the US, the government of Australia is infringing on it's citizens freedom and releasing more co2 into the atmosphere per capita than any other country.
Actually they exist now. You can generate hydrogen directly for sunlight and a photocatalyst. Although we don't know how cost effective this is right now, and the traditional way of having a separate electrolyzer might be cheaper for the time being.
How easy is it for someone handy to set up? Can the home hobbyist install a hydrogen refueling system in their garage with some panels up on the roof? (related: Does conduit handle hydrogen at 10,000psi or do I have to build it out of black iron?)
Possible. In fact a company called LAVO is building a home hydrogen battery for energy storage. Although compressing it to 10,000 psi at home is not quite ready yet, although companies are working on it.
I agree, and I think it's software - legacy companies suck at software and it's hard to become good at it.
Tesla is a software company that makes cars and they've gotten pretty good at making great cars.
The legacy car companies mostly make crap and their software is universally terrible*. In addition to that they're constrained by the awful dealership system and all the bad incentives associated with that.
I don't expect any of them to offer any serious competition.
*Maybe a notable exception here for Cruise which was bought by GM, but they're relegated to just one trim level on one car iirc which suggests GM doesn't recognize the threat. They also focus on high-res mapping which Tesla argues is a dead end. It's also only a subset of the problem, the car's UI systems remain bad.
Another great software anecdote.
During this chip shortage due to supply chain issues, Tesla sourced some alternate chips and updated their software in a few weeks to accommodate. Meanwhile the GMs & Fords of the world have spun down factories & sent workers home, not having the same agility.
Probably they asked the contract software supplier what it would take, and got an answer back with too many years in the schedule and too many $ on the bottom line.
It's not about agility, it's about other manufacturers wanting a tried and tested chip design they know will last. Tesla is more willing to gamble, although they also removed radar from their cars to reduce the need for chips.
Is it the same reason other car manufacturers continue to use tiny shitty displays? I remember hearing similar arguments back then about that - the displays were 'hardened for cars' or something.
The simpler explanation is the other manufacturers can't adapt.
Radar was removed because the computer vision got to the point where the radar data was introducing noise and errors into the system - the quality of the sensor data went up after removing it. Karpathy's latest talk goes into this.
If your "simples explanation" requires all non-Tesla carmakers to be incapable of using alternative chips because they "can't adapt", you should examine your personal biases.
those comments were made after Tesla ran into problems with their consumer grade displays.
Running into parked emergency vehicles also went up without radar.
Remember that this "chip shortage" isn't just for fancy tiny nm-process micros, it's across the whole industry. I'm in embedded systems for medical devices, and shortages of NOR flash memory, EEPROMs, oscillators, high-side drivers, ethernet PHYs, PMICs, you name it... output is just not keeping up with demand and the 1000-pound gorillas, the Toyotas and Fords and Apples and Samsungs, they make it extremely difficult when they vacuum up all the parts. It's hard to keep our lines running with our yearly quantities in the low thousands.
I saw a post here I believe, generally Tesla seems to have made a car from scratch with sane decisions made when Tesla was small. I've heard engineers claim that the central compute module for Tesla has a level of integration rarely seen outside of satellites.
Large car manufactures typically have empires built inside of them for major areas of the car. Transmission, engine, suspension, chassis, entertainment, etc. Each with financial budgets, staff budgets, weight/size budget for anything in their car.... yes they literally count grams. They fight for their resources.
As a result of their org tree, that impacts the design and connectivity inside the car. Often have different networks of sensors, different CPUs, even different power delivery systems.
I rode in a model 3. The ride is awful for a normal family car, as well as the road/wind noise. The owner admitted as much, terrible for the ~50k they paid for it. It's not a luxury car.
The status symbol is changing as well. As more people experience them , they quickly realize that compared to BMW & Porsche, they're not that special past the shiny iPad on the dash.
I have an older Model S, drove a Model 3 last week, and experienced an extremely smooth and quiet drive, basically free of NVH complaints. Will be trading in soon.
I understand that Tesla sells a ton of cars, and will continue to do so. However, I don't think they make a better product, and it's certainly not luxury. That was the point I was responding to.
The important point is that "better" and "luxury" are subjective, distilled down to "value". I can't speak for those buying Teslas (disclosure: Tesla owner), but its clear it meets their requirements; the demand is validated. Everyone has their ideal and what is most suitable for their needs. Leather and fancy interiors for some, plastic spaceship rocket cars for others.
Indeed, they have always been quiet, but it makes wind noise more noticeable not having any engine noise.
One big change is from switching the regular glass with thicker "acoustic" glass that's better at damping the wind noise. Also some changes where the glass meets on the roof and the model Y has larger roof glass so less seams.
The ride is dogshit in the model 3 and model y but you're not buying a luxury car when you buy one of those. Most of that money is tied into the software and the battery. Not amenities.
> Safe or not, autopilot is very convenient and super permissive, and owners seem to love it.
Well, Tesla best hope that other competitors don't come up with safe L4 before them.
> The Model 3/Y itself is a smooth, luxurious and fast ride.
It really, really isn't. Fast, sure, smooth, sometimes, although perception may be messing with things, because wind noise is terrible in these models - but it may also be more noticeable because of less drivetrain noise.
But it absolutely is not a luxurious ride. Go sit in an Audi Q7 or A6. BMW E Series. And feel what really comfortable seats are like. A dashboard that doesn't flex. Doorwells that don't creak when you lean your elbow on them. Nicer finishes, with higher attention to detail. I've driven in an S, a Y, and the interior build in those more resembles my older Altima, Maxima, than coming anywhere near close to my Audis, let alone my Jaguar.
> the interior build in those more resembles my older Altima, Maxima
Having driven both an Altima and a Model 3 extensively (i.e. thousands of miles), I couldn't disagree more. The vibe of these cars is night and day different.
This is not quantifiable though, it's just my opinion.
Having driven both an Altima and a Model 3 extensively (i.e. thousands of miles), I couldn't disagree more. The vibe of these cars is night and day different.
You said the ALtima and Model 3 is different, but which one is better?
Owned an Altima for 5+ years and now a Model 3 for two. I can objectively say that the ownership and driving experience has been significantly better with the Model 3.
I wonder whether attitudes about luxury cars might be changing. I've owned a luxury car before, but I just don't care about those details so much any more.
Sure, that stuff is nice. But you quickly adapt after a couple weeks and practical concerns take over. I'd rather be in a so-so interior and get fast charging easily than have a great seat and be hunting around.
I just can't get excited about luxury cars any more. Who wants to spend a ton of time in a car anyway?
Maybe a luxury car is nice for a date at a fancy place, but that's a couple times a year or something. Not a lot of people are doing black tie dinners and the opera all the time.
How much do you drive? I would guess that if you don't drive a lot, the "quiet cab" wouldn't be much of a thing to notice. Also, if the car is fun to drive, the other things are less noticeable unless you are a passenger.
Luxury cars are like business class plane tickets or a 5 star resort pool villa: they are really nice, but absolutely not necessary. If you have lots of money, why not? If you don't, you probably have better places to spend your money.
Most people buying a 3/Y are probably the people that only considered at most $35k car pre-Tesla, but now that they're trendier and electric (saving on gas bringing the price down at least $5k over the lifetime of the car), will buy the Tesla to be part of the club and the ride will be better than the cars they considered before. It also helps that people like simplistic design now more than ever, so antiquated interiors with loads of buttons to learn and keep in mind don't add to the appeal for all the millennials shopping for a luxury car.
> Well, Tesla best hope that other competitors don't come up with safe L4 before them.
Well I can't see anyone even being close at the moment. The only companies doing such things are using company drivers and doing taxicab-like services. Companies other than Tesla don't seem to want to actually sell their product to customers.
Well, a few points - the A6 is comparable price wise to the Model Y. Depending on trim, the dual motor 3's are comparable to the A6, the base model to the A4. But an A4 trim isn't much different to an A6, and still above a Model 3
I would love to be able to even consider another brand of electric car for my next one but given where I live (Vancouver Island), I just cannot. Sure, 3rd party L3 and L2 chargers around me are fine for going around town and maybe up-island, but I cannot reasonably say the same for longer trips.
I just came back from a 3k KM roadtrip to Calgary and back and I honestly do not think it would be possible (at least, not in a reasonable amount of time) with any other car. The infrastructure is just not there. With my Tesla (SR+), the stops were like those you'd have in any other car - stopping here and there to eat and use the restroom. The car and the chargers worked flawlessly.
> I just came back from a 3k KM roadtrip to Calgary and back and I honestly do not think it would be possible (at least, not in a reasonable amount of time) with any other car.
A Better Routeplanner (https://abetterrouteplanner.com/) is a good tool for getting an idea of what roadtrips are like in different EVs.
ABRP says Vancouver Island to Calgary in a Ford Mustang Mach-E Extended Range RWD takes 18 hours and 12 minutes. 2 hours and 8 minutes of that time is charging.
A 2021 Tesla Model 3 SR+ with 18" aero wheels takes 17 hours and 56 minutes. 1 hour and 34 minutes is charging.
A Kia EV6 Long Range RWD takes 17 hours and 22 minutes. 1 hour and 18 minutes is charging.
A Lucid Air Dream Edition takes 16 hours and 59 minutes. 1 hour and 1 minute is charging.
> It's worth noting that neither the Kia EV6 nor the Lucid Air have shipped a single unit to customers, so the above are only promises based on the optimistic claims of manufacturers.
False. The EV6 is shipping in Korea and Europe right now. North America to follow. But let's do some different cars since you're distressed:
> This video by Marques Brownlee is an interesting example
That is not a road trip from Vancouver Island to Calgary, which is what we're talking about. Do you have any specific information about driving from Vancouver Island to Calgary in particular?
Yeah the issue and imo the difference between my drive and MKBHD's is that mountain driving has a whole set of challenges you don't get with "regular" driving. As an example, between Kelowna and Merrit, we hit a snowstorm -- it took 40+ minutes extra driving 15-25kmph and we burned through an extra 20% battery. Had I not charged to 100% the night before I would not have made it (that drive is basically a fairly steep hill 50% of the way)
1. You need more range than your current car has to deal with these unexpected situations easily instead of luckily.
2. Balkanized charging infrastructure is brain dead. You need Tesla to switch to CCS in North America (like all other EV manufacturers have already done) and you need Telsa's chargers to charge all brands of EV (like all other charging networks already do).
The good news is Tesla will supposedly open their chargers to other brands soon. They can go ahead and put two ports on the chargers like they already did in Europe:
Perhaps, but it's neither here nor there, given the thread is about cars.
Also, I wouldn't bet on public transit improvements in the United States anytime soon. Even the most important project for the country's highest-ridership corridor can't get built (the Gateway Project in NY).
> Perhaps, but it's neither here nor there, given the thread is about cars.
It's absolutely relevant; one of the things that creates messed up car culture is that people buy a car that makes sense for the road trip they make once a year rather than a car that makes sense for the commute they make twice per day. A short-range EV supplemented by other modes, taxis, or even just renting a traditional car a few times a year could easily end up being a better lifestyle overall.
Autopilot - They don't seem particularly advanced, and there are two main types of drivers. Those who never use autopilot (so it's not a selling feature) and those who overrely on it (which leads to crashes, bad PR and lawsuits)
Superchargers - Musk says they're going to open it up to all EVs by 2022.
Status Symbol - Where are you that a Tesla is a status symbol? I mean, for a while it was because it was the only EV, but now that there are competitors it seems to be losing out.
Luxurious ride - I've only been in Model 3s, but it didn't seem that luxurious. Plenty powerful, but I expect that to be true of any EV. The fit and finish didn't strike me as on par with, say, a 'vette. Certainly, if you compare it to cheaper cars it should stack up (isn't a Model 3 still more expensive than a 3 series?). But against comparably priced cars, it seems to lose out.
I will admit that I find the giant touchscreen a huge turnoff. So it's possible that I am overly harsh on the luxuriousness.
I've had a model 3 for almost 2 years, I consider the autopilot a toy.
Superchargers are a huge advantage today, Tesla may partner with others to open their network, but they are going to charge, so it's far from apparent which cars will have access.
Status symbol, could care less. My previous cars were an Acura GSR (somewhat legendary when it came out for how ugly it was), Subaru WRX (quick, but ugly), forester (even uglier). I was shopping for something quick, fun, and RWD or AWD. Considered Golf R, Ford Focus RS, Subaru WRX/STI, various BMWs (1 series, 2 series, x1, m235i, etc), and Teslas.
Luxury ride. I've a Model 3P, 0-60 in 3 seconds, decent lap times at various tracks, and pretty competitive with today's semi-exotic rear engine corvette (0-60 in 2.9 seconds), and will beat quite a few of the corvette's on the road today in a 0-60. Not going to hang on a track with a new rear engine corvette. But way more practical, even pretty large costco trips can fit in a model 3 easily. Driving cross country with a kid, dog, and partner works well.
I cross shopped BMWs and model 3's. Ended up with the Telsa because of it delivering performance similar to some of the fastest BMWs (M3, m235i, etc), and the practicalities of a their larger/slower cars like the 335/x3. Without all the maze of expensive upgrades that BMW plays. Things like intentionally degrading the standard headlights to be significantly worse than a prius unless you pay a few $k for the good headlights. You know it's bad when the NHTSA has to embarass BMW and deny them the safety ratings until fixed. Seats that you have to pay for to fold down or have a ski passthru. Not to mention the new "wonder" 4 cyclinders (2 liter ish, turbo, 16v, etc) are getting pretty famous for exploding and leaving behind $30k engine repairs and BMW significantly shortening their engine warranties on their CPO cars.
I admit the giant touch screen was a turnoff at first, but now that I'm used to a giant map with working pinch/zoom and as responsive as a decent phone. I recently sat in a late modem 3 series and was pretty disappointed with the map/nav/entertainment system. It's really nice to have a giant responsive map (or sat mode if you prefer) built in. I'd much rather have that then a standard cockpit with a tiny map screen, often with the old/slow/gross capacitive touch screens that don't even allow pinch/zoom.
> Luxury ride. I've a Model 3P, 0-60 in 3 seconds, decent lap times at various tracks, and pretty competitive with today's semi-exotic rear engine corvette (0-60 in 2.9 seconds), and will beat quite a few of the corvette's on the road today in a 0-60.
Performance isn't luxury. I've seen plenty of powerful cheap cars. I mean the look/feel of being in there. The Tesla is fine, but a nice car feels good, not fine, to be in.
But yeah, I expect good performance from any EV.
> Driving cross country with a kid, dog, and partner works well.
Except for the need to stop at superchargers along the way and wait. How did you manage to choose the one use case that Teslas (and all EVs) manage to be worst at?
As for opening their supercharger network, Musk announced it would be to any car that could plug in (with an adapter they plan to sell), if the drivers downloaded the Tesla app.
Meanwhile, I'm surprised people use any built in map/nav/entertainment system. I have a phone and a tablet. Why would I want a second rate experience baked into a large purchase? Like "look at the quality of the tablet permanently mounted into this wall" isn't a selling point to me for a house.
Long term travel is no big deal. I plugin at home, so I always have a full battery when leaving, instead of the normal refuel at the beginning of long trips. My car charges at 550 mph when low. So we drive for 3.5 hours or so, everyone gets out to stretch their legs, grab a snack, potty the dog, and meet back in the car. Sure sometimes we end up waiting an extra 10-15 minutes waiting for a charge, just not a big deal. Especially when over a normal year I skip 50-100 trips to a gas station. It's really nice to wake up in the morning and know that unless I'm driving for 5 hours or more I just don't have to worry about it.
I'm a fan of the latest/greatest phones, I have a Pixel 6 Pro on order. But when driving I find it MUCH nicer to have a 15" display always showing the current map than to have some tiny phone clipped to my dashboard or windshield. I wouldn't call it second rate at all. Phone calls, voice recognition, etc works great in my Tesla. Having moved to a new city recently, I've really appreciated the nav.
One big difference is many other cars have a nav system that feels over a decade out of date from day 1. So they age really poorly.
i think you’re conflating luxury with performance and practicality. Parent probably means things like smoothness of ride, seat quality and feel, sturdiness of dashboard etc.
> They don't seem particularly advanced, and there are two main types of drivers. Those who never use autopilot (so it's not a selling feature) and those who overrely on it (which leads to crashes, bad PR and lawsuits)
Isn't that fairly biased? There is surely a group of people who use AutoPilot not overly in irresponsible ways, but because the media is selection biased to bad outcomes, we never hear about them.
I'm sure it's biased - it's based on the people I know and the people who make the news. Those are two non-random samples. Although, my two groups aren't the same as the two groups I put forward. IIRC, there were a lot of FSD purchasers upset because they feel like they didn't get what they paid for in the news.
These points are getting tired. It feels like people who pay attention to Tesla pay attention to no other cars.
* Nearly every manufacturer has an Autopilot equivalent that is as good or better.
* Superchargers will be open to all EVs. There is massive investment in charging networks. They should not be proprietary anyways if we truly want EV adoption.
* F-150 has been the best selling vehicle for years. As far as vehicles go, it doesn't need to be a status symbol to sell.
* Lots of cars are smooth, luxurious and fast. This has been a solved problem for years.
Perhaps, but I'm just trying to post-hoc explain why Tesla seems to be outselling the competition.
Also, have you considered that Autopilot is less about the quality and more about the permissiveness? Volvo sells lane keeping software that works just as well if not better, but it requires me to look at the road and keep my hands on the wheel. Tesla has no such scruples -- arguably a bad thing, but drivers seem to like it. Maybe it's the "Uber model" of self-driving: ship it early, break all the rules, but satisfy your customers.
> it requires me to look at the road and keep my hands on the wheel. Tesla has no such scruples
Note that for Model 3/Y with in-cabin cameras that’s changing with the rollout of their FSD beta software. It instantly goes to “oh crap grab the wheel” alerts if you cover the camera or play with your phone.
I think the real reason that Tesla is successful is because they do it all with a certain swagger that is embodied in Elon and is utterly magnetic to potential buyers. This is the same type of magnetism that Apple had in the years with Steve Jobs. The other guys are suits and they’re jeans and tshirts. The other guys are the establishment, and you know who everyone loves to hate these days? The man. Elon hates the man too. He’s just like you.
> The Model 3/Y itself is a smooth, luxurious and fast ride.
They're not luxurious though, even though the price is quite steep.
Tesla cars may be way better EVs than the competition but I'd really suggest anyone thinking a Tesla is luxurious to go and sit in a Porsche Taycan (which, btw, is not that much more pricey than a Model S).
Yeah, I have a model s and it's a solid ride but there are better luxury cars out there for the same price. What you can't beat though is absolute performance and honestly software. It's pretty neat to get OTA updates
> There's a reason Tesla has replaced Cadillac as a symbol of luxury in pop culture.
Cadillac hasn't been the symbol of luxury in pop culture for a few decades now. Lexus and the German up brands (BMW, Mercedes, Audi if not in the USA) are much more pervasive.
> comparing a Model 3 to a 3 series as well as various Nissan cars
I know this is your subjective opinion, but I just thought you might be interested to know that Nissan is not well regarded by car enthusiasts (their one sports car notwithstanding). A more fair comparison might be one of the luxury German brands like BMW or Mercedes, or if comparing EVs, the new Ford Mach-E.
> But I don't think it's obvious at all that competitors can catch up
They are catching up as evidenced by Tesla losing market share. It's not a very surprising result. As other manufacturers ramp up EV production they will gain EV market share because not everyone wants the same car.
Tesla is no longer a leader in EV technology. Lucid's and Hyundai's EV platforms, for example, offer options that Tesla doesn't.
It's still an important sign in terms of where Tesla will end up in the overall market.
Tesla is a tiny player in terms of overall sales, so a 50% YOY growth in marketshare is still possible. If they're also experiencing a 50% decrease in the share of new EV's sold, that's not a sign that they will dominate the EV market as their current valuation would suggest.
How long do you think they can realistically maintain a 50% YOY growth rate in deliveries? They're small enough now that 50% growth is very attainable, but that doesn't mean it's sustainable.
- Superchargers I made a San Jose <--> Portland trip recently and their importance and convenience was etched in my mind forever. I was really surprised with the one in Laytonville, CA.
- Regular software updates over the air is also a superpower. I am not sure if other car makers have them.
The one threat they cannot win against is if batteries become obsolete in the face of advances of hydrogen fuel cell technology. This represents a disruptive event, and something they cannot easily fight against.
If I recall correctly, the math for fuel cells doesn't really work out. It's more efficient to charge a battery directly than to use energy to create hydrogen and then to convert it back into electricity.
There are certain use-cases where you might want it, but probably most of the cars of the future should be battery-based EV's.
The problem with this mentality is that is impossible to create a zero emissions grid with just batteries. You'll find that long-duration energy storage is necessary. Except this can only be solved via hydrogen energy storage. So even EVs will just be hydrogen powered cars in a lot of respects.
Compared to fuel cell cars, especially plug-in fuel cell cars, EVs are the unavoidable loser. They'll be more expensive, heavier, and generally will have shorter ranges while failing to produce a real efficiency advantages.
Hydrogen is a big player in grid storage but Vanadium fuel cells, pumped hydro, more grid tie-ins all have a role.
As much as I’d like to believe hydrogen would be a great commuter car power plant, efficiency (and I mean well to wheel efficiency), safety of high pressure hydrogen, wear snd tear (mirai cars are not doing great after 6-7 years) need to be solved.
As I said, I would love hydrogen to be mainstream. I can appreciate an argument that Elon musk has a whole “fool cell” army. I still don’t see the anti hydrogen conspiracy. I follow the space industry and can swine that similar challenges with hydrogen storage exist at 1 atm.
Toyota (and Japan) still haven’t done much H2 stuff for nearly a decade despite their awesome success with the Prius. Would love to be proven wrong.
You are already proven wrong. The biggest event in green energy is hydrogen right now. The only reason why people disagree at all is ignorance of recent events.
Hydrogen infrastructure is complex. If we need hydrogen as a storage buffer, why not do it on an industrial scale at centralized locations? Why do we need a hydrogen distribution network in parallel to the EV charging networks?
I don't know if your a fanboy or not, but personally I don't think Teslas are luxury symbols, maybe they're status symbols for environmentally conscious people, or the subset of them who can afford Teslas.
I think anyone buying a Tesla because s/he wants to show off being rich would be similar to the kind of people who buy Trump-branded products because they think that brand is a symbol of wealth/luxury.
In Q3, we rolled out our “Safety Score” functionality, which will also be used for our telematics insurance product. We actively monitor braking, turning, tailgating (unsafe following), forward collision warnings and forced autopilot disengagements in order to predict the probability of a collision. This system will continue to be fine- tuned as we receive more data. We also launched our telematics insurance product in our first state – Texas – in early October. We believe our insurance premiums will be able to more accurately reflect chances of a collision than any other insurance product on the market. Additionally, we will proactively communicate to the user what driving adjustments need to be made to decrease probability of a collision.
This could backfire on Tesla. If Tesla have better data than every other insurance company, then they'll be cheaper for low-risk drivers. But now other insurance companies know the only drivers that will not use Tesla insurance are high risk, so Teslas become harder to insure with all other insurance companies for a large fraction of drivers (and you don't know in advance if that's you), which in turn makes them less desirable to buy in the first place.
> But now other insurance companies know the only drivers that will not use Tesla insurance are high risk
Not necessarily. I'd pay more for car insurance to avoid being tracked this way, but that doesn't make me higher risk. Or maybe I just want to keep my home and auto insurance bundled so I can save money on both.
The fact that there exist other reason to use a 3P insurance company doesn't really matter.
At the end of the day, if the existence of a Tesla insurance removes a portion (not all) of low risk drivers from the insurance market, the remaining drivers would be higher risk. The insurance company doesn't care about the mechanism that causes it, at the end of the day the collision rate will stabilize into a new higher rate, together with the associated insurance rate.
Insurance companies are already over pricing Tesla coverage, which is why Tesla is bothering to get into this market at all. The end effect here might just be the rate they are offering now becoming justified as Tesla plucks all the lower risk fruit away from them.
This has always been the case, regardless of any Tesla involvement. This just makes the correlation between safe driving and lower cost a little less abstract.
It will be interesting to see how this develops. Will they begin selling this data? I imagine it's valuable for rental car agencies, ride-share apps, etc etc.
They probably won't sell it but i can imagine them licensing access to the real time data and then other insurers could potentially insure the driver or some similar scheme
Selling access to the data in some fashion (think how Google, FB, etc allow advertisers to buy access to a certain user to shoaw ads) as a recurring business model is probably more profitable
If this were accurately reflected in the rates I'd be interested, but past experience suggests that it's going to be more like "if you drive perfect you might get $5/month savings, but if you brake hard that one time your rate will shoot up by $50/month".
You assume extra risk that the company won't screw you over for what is likely to be a very modest upside. There are lots of case studies of people who got massive unexpected bills because they were trying to save a few bucks. Especially since they will be able to assign the blame to the customer for their high rates. Never trust corporations more than you have to.
Hmm. Car insurance is one of the most competitive industries in the US. Lots of players, slim margins, commodity product, etc... I wonder how long a company could charge people $50 more for braking hard and not lose customers. I know if I saw a surprise like that, I'd be getting quotes immediately.
There's lots of places where tiny upsides come with huge downsides. And yet for some reason people still accept them! My partner's manager signed up for a summer energy program that could cut off her HVAC system in exchange for a super-paltry discount on her monthly electricity bill. She cursed her decisions a few hours in to the next heat wave.
I suppose time will tell. If Tesla's insurance product becomes popular (in states/jurisdictions where it's offered), that would imply that big insurance companies are not pricing competitively.
Tesla gets to cheat a bit here, in that they don’t have to charge themselves markup on replacement parts for this own cars. So in theory they should always be able to outprice other providers for Teslas.
My wife activated this on her insurance. Got an email last week saying that she is in the top 5% of “worst drivers”. Which was both scary and funny at the same time. We investigated why they deduct so much points for her driving, and the majority of the points was conducted for her being on het phone while driving. Then we realized that we drive around with her car most often and she is on the the phone while I drive..
These models has it’s problems but they are getting better - it’s just so easy to make wrong assumptions from ML models which only include a subset of variables.
and a mental state, attentiveness, etc. sensor - "Your driving performance in the next hour is estimated to be 10% worst than your average, and will incur 20% insurance premium increase for that trip. Do you still wish to start the car? "
So it is measured with a phone app and not e.g. an OBD dongle with built-in cell modem? Why not install the app on a second phone which always gets left at home?
We're on the path where each of is monitored by (hopefully benevolent) AI from birth to death. Such a scenario is really the only way for humanity.com to continue scaling, as each of us has the potential to very negatively disrupt anything/everything.
The issue with this is that in the limit it just makes the insurance premium exactly equal the payout + some margin. Some of the point of insurance is cost sharing of extreme events.
It's perhaps a little better when we are talking about behaviors that are entirely under the driver's control, but gets potentially ugly if for example someone has slower reaction time due to genetics or health and thus gets priced out of insurance.
> Some of the point of insurance is cost sharing of extreme events.
I guess this borders on a philosophical point, but I don't agree. car insurance is not (or shouldn't be, imo) a payment plan for likely crashes. if, for whatever reason, a person's reaction times are so slow that they would be priced out of insurance entirely, they shouldn't be behind the wheel at all.
Both the 3 and the Y, and it actively monitors your attention while Autopilot is engaged starting with Tesla software rev 2021.36.
Looking down at a phone, for example, causes Autopilot to alert, and three alerts in succession reduces your safety score and kicks you out of Autopilot [1] until you go through a Drive->Park->Drive shift cycle.
Oh goodie. I have a Model Y and it literally always goes insane with forward collision warnings in the parking lot for my local grocery store. I guess I'll have to pay more in insurance eventually because tesla thinks I am going to run into a parked car off to the side of me while doing 7 mph.
“Have become inattentive” is doing a lot of work in that description. It means “you fail to respond to the prompt to touch the wheel”.
I’ve gotten double digit red-text autopilot nags (the new ones driven based on camera data) on a single drive, but have never had a Forced AP Disengagement or been put in AP jail.
It's interesting that early user feedback indicated that if you wanted to max your Safety Score you actually had to drive unsafely in specific ways. For example, stopping correctly at red lights and stop signs would show up as braking, so gently running yellows/hollywood stops would produce a higher safety score.
A yellow light is not a stop sign, you are allowed to drive through it if you can make it. And it is safer to do so than to slam on the brakes, which might cause the car behind you to hit you.
States vary somewhat in their laws, but in my home state of California, the laws state only:
California Vehicle Code (CVC) Section 21452(a): "A driver facing a steady circular yellow or yellow arrow signal is, by that signal, warned that the related green movement is ending or that a red indication will be shown immediately thereafter."
CVC Section 21454: "When lane use control signals are placed over individual lanes, those signals shall indicate and apply to drivers of vehicles as follows:
(a) Green indication: A driver may travel in any lane over which a green signal is shown.
(b) Steady yellow indication: A driver is thereby warned that a lane control change is being made.
(c) Steady red indication: A driver shall not enter or travel in any lane over which a red signal is shown.
(d) Flashing yellow indication: A driver may use the lane only for the purpose of making a left turn to or from the highway."
A yellow light on a traffic control signal in the state of California only indicates an upcoming transition to a red light, which a driver must stop for. There is no requirement that a driver must stop for a yellow.
States vary significantly on this one. Oregon expects you to stop unless it is unsafe to do so. This difference is part of why we hate California drivers.
The fact that you say "in the USA" on regarding an issue that did not exist in the 18th century and is not one of the handful of things we have chosen to federally regulate since is a massive red flag that you're wrong.
And FWIW the driver's manual for my state offers no guidance and simply says it indicates the light will soon be red.
Since the other person who replied said their state on the other side of the country does this I suspect it's one of those things where there's a federally issued suggestion (probably from the NHTSA) that some states implement and some don't.
Part of the safety score is based on g forces. So if you do a smooth stop by braking ahead of the stop, you’ll have less g forces. If you slam on your brakes, well, you’ll have a lower score due to higher g forces.
I'm very curious to see if tracking the actual driving data turns up any surprises in terms of safe behavior. What if say tailgaters turn out to be safer than average drivers? I don't expect that to happen, which is exactly why I'm curious to see if it does.
I'd put a good wager that "speeders" may fall to that category.
I find that I generally travel above the speed limit and feel far safer than I do when I set my cruise to the proper speed limit. Why? Because when I'm passing others I get to choose how long another vehicle is in my blind spot, or how often someone is trying to park themselves in my back seat. When I go the speed limit I always end up in a pack of cars all jockeying lanes with someone far too close to my rear bumper and a guy in front of me swaying up and down in his speed... I feel generally unsafe leaving control of my speed/position up to the other cars on the highway.
* Very obviously, these are subjective takes and likely don't reflect reality. No vehicle accidents in 17 years makes me think I'm doing something right though
Sorry, watch Canada's Worst Driver. Every time someone comes on and says they drive better by going fast they fail almost all the driving tests in braking, cornering, dodging sudden run-outs into the road and even just the simple drive better two cardboard boxes with two feet extra distance apart compared to the width of the car.
True. I thought a bit about that after submitting my comment but I figured going back to write in a whole bunch of caveats would just derail everything.
I do a lot of highway driving, and Saskatchewan doesn't see the same level of congested traffic that you'd get in bigger metropolitan areas. So my comment really does have a lot of particulars that aren't universal. I take a different approach to driving while in the city which does not involve frequent speeding.
Curious to hear what the optimistic story to justify the current incredible valuation is.
I mean, they seem to be doing very well now, but their market cap is now roughly equal to all other car makers combined. [0] That's just confusing to me.
Are people actually betting on them ultimately turning into the one modern energy company? The one battery company?
Disclaimer: I work for Toyota's research division, opinions my own.
I think Tesla is on track to have significantly lower manufacturing costs than the rest of the industry. They've been solving some of the really hard production line challenges[0][1] and appear to have a lot of industry standard optimizations left to implement on top of those.
What do you think of the Megacasting? They have moved to an architecture where they have one big casting in the front, one in the back and those are linked with a battery pack that has structure from the actual cells themselves. The machines are costume orders from IDRA in Italy, there seems to be somewhat of a bottleneck in how fast they can be made, each one is massive project. Would be hard for other manufacture to replicate that process anytime soon.
Other then BYD (and some research groups) nobody has attempted to make cells structural to the car yet. And BYD basically uses prismatic LFP cells that make it easier.
Unfortunately they have not yet managed to do the improvements to the wiring and moving to 48V. Elon basically wants to use Ethernet and PoE for everything in the car. This seems a lot harder to do then anybody outside the automotive industry understands.
Their cells and how they are produced is also quite amazing. They literally went back to 0 and rethought battery production from the ground up. The fans are trying to reproduce the process from the public video and available information (from Berlin application for example). It really seems like they simplified a lot, specially really small and difficult welding process that need to be done at high speed. They went so far as producing all their own manufacturing equipment as well, they bought companies like Hibar and have Grohmann engineering build these machines in Germany (new factory being built there as well). Will be hard for others to compete with battery production lines that can spit out 4-5x as many larger cells as a comparable 2170 line.
I know Toyota is working on its own solid state batteries, and you likely can't say more then is publicly available. Toyota seems to have made no effort to produce its own 'traditional' cells so far. I'm not sure if they plan to produce their solids themselves. And I will be very interested to see when an actual mass volume 100k+ a year car gets produced with them. I would be surprised if it was before 2028 or so. At that point 'traditional' cells will have made huge advances, it will be interested to see what advantage they will have at that point. I am eagerly waiting for more information from Toyota.
PS: The latest 'fun' thing Tesla seems to do (in Berlin), is to put the seats on top of the battery first and then drop the car frame on-top of it. Where the battery is the floor of the vehicle. Its almost like the old body-on-frame. I think the kind of stumbled into that because they wanted to eliminate the redundant layer in the floor and realized that the frame now has a hole in the bottom. I assume they will then manually insert the floor carpets in final assembly.
You ask good questions that I mostly can't answer!
I agree with your points on megacasting. Other companies can replicate it but it will take time. Just as important as the megacasting will be changes to other assembly procedures that accompany that shift, which may increase lead time till those companies can start production.
I agree that Tesla has done some really smart things with batteries and would add that "the battery industry", such as it is, runs on software that's feels like it was made in the 90s. I imagine Tesla has a more mature software stack and I think this gives them more of an advantage than is generally realized by the industry.
Since you mention battery timelines, it may interest you that Toyota has a group explicitly attempting to speed up development[0].
their market cap is now roughly equal to all other car makers combined
Well, they currently sell far more passenger electric vehicles than every other auto maker combined, and demand only seems to be increasing even as production continues to increase exponentially. Many countries and US states have gasoline car bans set to take effect in the coming decades; if the incumbent manufacturers continue to lag behind Tesla as badly as they've done so far, it would seem Tesla is poised to eat a lot of other car companies for lunch.
That alone still might not justify the current valuation, but then you add in their solar panels, solar roof tiles, stationary storage, and other things in the pipeline like insurance, renting out their EV charging network, possible AI applications and/or software licensing, etc. etc., and the valuation seems at least plausible to me.
You say this as the Ford F-150 Lighting is about to drop and there is a waiting list for the Ford Mach-E. I think the market is vastly underestimating the large incumbents ability to pivot into this sector and lower costs by leveraging their supply chain and scale.
I don't think anything you said justifies their current market cap.
Supply chains are in a dire state right now, with less-agile firms slow to adapt. And if you believe the thesis behind "Innovator's Dilemma" the scale tuned for ICE is a liability not an asset.
I think this is their biggest challenge. I also think that companies like Ford, Toyota, etc. have centuries of combined experience of supply chain management and relationships that they can leverage. I also think that if these large companies are battery constrained, then so will Tesla, even if Tesla is able to capture more of the supply, it won't matter because customers will have to continue to go to Ford and Toyota for cars in a battery constrained world to get ICE vehicles.
There are waiting lists for Mach-E because they can't make it enough. Go actually look how many Mach-E are produced compared to Tesla Model Y. There is a reason for that.
What matters is global market. The other manufactures push every possible vehicle into the markets that require it by regulation and drop prices in order to sell there.
They are one of the leading producers in all of those markets as well. What you need to monitor is BEV not 'plugin'. And some of those other cars are tiny 4k$ cars that don't really compete with a Tesla anyway.
Tesla is literally selling 2x more BEV then the second best company VW Group (including all brands). And in terms of revenue from BEV and profit from BEV they are way beyond that.
Ah good point, I was just thinking about the US, you’re right. They are still growing in EU and Asia though, and a lot of the popular EVs in China are serving a completely different price segment that Tesla isn’t even trying to compete in yet.
I don't see how they "lag behind", it's clear that auto makers started seriously investing in electric 5-10 years ago and the investment is now bearing fruits: Hyundai for instances has excellent EVs at much lower prices than tesla.
Look up Tesla’s debt compared to every other large auto company.
They also don’t waste any money on advertising. They don’t have to deal with as many third party parts providers eating away at their profits. They’re not beholden to unions or dealer networks.
All that stuff is a serious drag on profitability and market cap. Just because they make cars doesn’t mean they have to have shitty margins and high debt like the other companies.
this times 10x. Tesla saves considerable money by not having to advertise. Other brands have to spend billions a year to differentiate themselves, to stand out. Tesla is in a class of its own.
The valuation is easy to justify if you assume e.g.:
(a) that they build robotaxis ~5 years ahead of competitors
(b) they continue to sell ~50% more cars each year (they have a stated goal of 20m cars/yr by 2030)
How much is a robotaxi worth? A regular taxi can drive ~100k miles/yr @ ~$2/mile. Let's say that Tesla robotaxis undercut on price by a factor of two, thus making ~$100k/yr in revenue. Let's say 50k goes to the buyer, and 50k goes to Tesla. Five years of that would be worth $250,000. Let's divide by two to be a tad more conservative. If you're selling 20m cars a year, that's $125,000*20m = 5T of value in cars in a single year. If Tesla were doing that in a single year, their market cap would be in excess of $10T]. If you think Tesla has a 1 in 10 chance of pulling off the above, then you'd expect a fair market valuation for them today of 1T — which is roughly what the market puts them at.
Plus add Tesla Energy, which could be as big as the car business.
Plus add Tesla Bots (labor), which is probably the largest market in the world.
To be clear, they cannot build robotaxis 5 years ahead since there already are Waymo ones in limited capacity. As for not limited capacity, that is not happening for a long time.
Also it is not as clear as you think, who washes the cars used for robotaxis etc?
Tesla has been in my portfolio for a long time as well. NO plan to sell. The media has been saying to sell since 2013, goes to show what they know, which is not much.
Yeah, if you make money on a trade it means you were right about the business.
The investors in Enron were right too, until it went bankrupt.
Nothing is proven until the end. I do think Tesla has a large advantage in many respects, and a visionary leader is difficult for more legacy companies to overcome.
I can think of many ways they can expand their margins well beyond traditional auto.
But share price does not speak to any long term truth. Just a snapshot of public expectations of the truth.
You can get pretty close to "right and wrong" in the markets if you pick a strike price and expiration date, keeping in mind that "public expectations" are part of the game.
I think Taleb puts it well: “Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.”
You're asking for an explanation to the collective market forces driving this. If anyone here knew a fully accurate reason, they'd be a billionaire investor.
It's unbelievable that the established auto makers are just falling further and further behind on EVs while Tesla is opening the market wider and wider.
The Ford F-150 Lightning is about to drop. VW group is making massive investments in EVs. BMWs vision is to be the premier green automaker by 2030. Don't act like these companies are still sitting on their hands.
In < 5 years from now, the best selling EV will be the F-150 Lightning.
So I don’t really see how you think the F-150 lightning will be the best selling EV in < 5 years when they don’t even plan on making 200k of them in the first three years.
I don't know about that. Sure, the F-150 is a nice option but what is Ford doing in terms of self driving. Tesla is tackling multiple issues at the same time, most car companies playing catch up usually just care about the EV part but not the self driving aspect. In 5 years Tesla will still be the dominant EV imo because feature wise their cars will be so far ahead of everyone else.
> Sure, the F-150 is a nice option but what is Ford doing in terms of self driving.
In 5 years time, Tesla won't have solved self-driving, there'll be few distinguishing features between Tesla's self driving and whatever Ford will call its advanced driver-assist tech. If self-driving is completely solved by then, Ford will have the option of licensing Waymo's Driver platform (I predict that Waymo will not venture into large-scale vehicle manufacturing)
I think the main goal of EV's is to be more environmentally friendly. Self driving doesn't contribute to that goal and i don't think it's a thing that will make or break these other manufacturer's efforts.
The trailing manufacturers aren’t building EVs primarily to be environmentally friendly. They are trying to compete for revenue of the growing market.
And also self driving does allow for resource efficiency, which is environmentally friendly. Self driving cars have the potential to drive closer, making better use of limited road surface area and reducing traffic (which reduces emissions of other cars in the same jam). It also allows for fewer cars to serve more passengers.
I think it will be a big factor. Yes, they are two separate things in the car industry. But if I have a choice between two EVs, one with self driving and another with no self driving you bet I'm going to pick the one with self driving. And I'm willing to bet a lot of others will too.
Closed charging networks with proprietary plugs don't help you as a driver. It's just dumb, incompatible infrastructure.
Imagine if you had different electrical sockets for every different brand of appliance in your house. Imagine if you had to used branded fuel for your particular brand of ICE vehicle. It'd be stupid.
Tesla already uses CCS type 2 combo in Europe. They've released a CCS type 1 combo adapter in Korea, but the adapter will not charge as fast as having a CCS inlet on the car.
With the addition of CCS plugs on their chargers in North America and with the eventual availability of the CCS adapter to support legacy vehicles, hopefully Tesla will join the rest of the industry and start putting CCS type 1 combo inlets on the cars in North America soon.
They already offer it to a lot of manufacturers but they mostly refuse. Prime example of this was Porsche. I still can't believe they turned down that offer.
Bold claim. How large will the Lightning's charging network be in 5 years? I have multiple local superchargers, whereas my only nearby high speed third party charger frequently has broken stalls.
It will be as big as Tesla's plus all the other charging networks combined because the Lightning uses CCS Type 1 Combo. Tesla will open their network to all other brands soon:
Keep in mind that people routinely overestimate change in the short run but underestimate it in the long run.
Changing those traditional carmakers is difficult, which makes them appear fall short of your expectations of the short run. And I do expect many won't make it. But those that can change will be a force to be reckoned with in the long run.
That's partly my point though. The big guys all realized which way the wind was blowing about 7 years after it should have been obvious and are still figuring out what to invest in. Tesla could barely get a car off it's assembly line not too long ago and they have most of the market share. They should have caught up a while ago instead of making promises for 2030.
No, it won’t. People who drive f150s want a super-duty, not a tesla. They want dualies, lift kits. I’m sure Ford did their market research to make sure it would sell. The bean counters also confidently predicted trump would lose in ‘16. But I predicted he would win and I predict the lightning will lose. Plus you’ve forgotten the most important part: Ford fucking sucks. They can’t make a good EV, apparently not even on paper and certainly not in any physical sense. They have no charging infrastructure. All they have is an army of slack jawed idiots who buy Ford vehicles on principle.
> But I predicted he would win and I predict the lightning will lose.
You made one correct prediction in a completely different domain 5 years ago, and this is relevant how?
Keep in mind that the F150 has been the most popular vehicle in the US for many decades. You might be in a bubble where it seems irrelevant but those "slack jawed idiots" buy a lot of vehicles.
So? Where will Ford get the massive amount of batteries? You understand that until like 6 month ago, the CEO of Ford claims that batteries were no issues and they had to do zero investment into batteries. They said the they will simply buy on the open market.
Once they actually tried that the realized they were delusional and now made a dedicated partnerships to build their own dedicated plants.
Pickup market is 2M vehicles a year, Ford will not even be producing 100k F-150E by 2024.
Tesla in comparison is in construction of building a factory (including a dedicated battery and battery cathode factory) that should be able to produce 500k a year.
> VW group is making massive investments in EVs.
They are second in the market and their CEO just had a 'panic' meeting because they can see how they are not catching up as fast as they hopped.
Elon Musk literally was just invited to speak to VW managers to help them out.
> BMWs vision is to be the premier green automaker by 2030.
And I'm gone have body like Pitt in Fight Club by 2030. BMW is not even building dedicated EV platforms yet. They are years behind. Let them actually produce and sell some BEV before they make big claims.
> In < 5 years from now, the best selling EV will be the F-150 Lightning.
Tesla will be selling around 1M Model Y by then, maybe more. There is 0 chance this is the case.
And Cybertruck alone is very likely gone beat F-150 Lighting.
Is it though? Tesla had a vision for EVs from the very beginning and most of the industry really didn't believe Tesla would see the light at the end of the tunnel, so they put off becoming competitors. Now Tesla is hitting an incredible stride and the rest of the car manufacturers are scrambling to put something together.
Even so it seems the administration pretends they don't exist [1] or even wants to take their marketshare [2]. The established automakers have a cozier relationship with the established politicians I guess.
This is completely unsubstantiated. In 2020, Tesla had about 1/4 of the EV market and 1/6 if you count plug-in hybrids. This is big but not overwhelming considering they were the first to market with a serious product.
I have not seen any recent market share for 2021 but given onslaught of new products from every legacy car maker, I see no reason to believe they are falling behind. If anything, they are catching up.
Of course Elon and the pro Tesla media spun it that way. Biden praised GM and Ford as two of the _traditional automakers_ who had showed the most willingness to embrace the EV revolution.
Biden praised everyone expect Tesla (GM, Ford and Stelantis). For leading EV, lol.
This makes zero sense, given how these traditional automakers are dragging their feets. Unless they expect to, once again, be helped by the government when things will get ugly.
Being generous, the thinking might be that you praise the slow kids who struggle to learn when they are successful in order to motivate and encourage them to keep going. The kid who's a natural talent and highly self motivated doesn't necessarily need accolades from authority figures.
Still feels cheap, and only a fool wouldn't see how ridiculous the praise is.
The market will be divided. You will have he Direct to consumer (DTC) native EV carmakers taking a software eating the world approach vs the legacy car makers ( franchise dealer model is 100 years old ) this is a classic case of "software IS eating the world". There WILL be blood in the water and not all legacy carmakers will survive the Tsunami. This is exactly what happ with the Apple iphone. Do you see anyone walking around with a nokia, ericsson / motorola / blackeberry? the game in the auto market is changing and it changing fast. The WHOLE ecosystem ( tooling for I.C.E is gonna die out ) Good lucky! and may the best man win. -2cent.
After many years of excitement over electric cars I finally got to ride in a Tesla. The suspension was horrible and made me sick, I felt every bump. Unless they make a dramatic change I’d never buy one.
How? By completing much larger manufacturing plants in Europe and Texas for end of year 2021, I guess.
And making their own battery cells in each plant.
And converting the Tilburg assembly line into another stationary energy storage factory. And researching locations for a few other new plants in 2023 as per Elon. And opening negotiations with India (as per Reuters, today).
> “Biden held this EV summit. Didn’t invite Tesla. Invited GM, Ford, Chrysler, and UAW. EV summit at the White House, didn’t mention Tesla once and praised GM and Ford for leading the EV revolution. Doesn’t it sound a little bias? It’s not the friendliest of administrations. Seems to be controlled by the unions.”
Musk runs around on Twitter calling people pedophiles. Musk flouted California's coronavirus regulations as a media stunt. Musk says Americans are complacent and entitled whereas he praises the Chinese as smart and hardworking. Musk says China rocks:
Unless the government is run by a bunch of children, Tesla is a public company not owned by Elon. It has tremendous pull and not inviting them is a political tantrum by the administration than anything else.
Musk called someone a pedo 4 years ago. Can we please stop?
Let's see: Does the world benefit from a CEO that has built the biggest clean-energy revolution that the world has ever seen but has spoken some shit while they were drunk?
Reputations stick, which why it's not worth it to Biden politically.
Musk has gone out of his way to earn a reputation for being a clown and he will be remembered as a clown. That's a cost of using Twitter to express yourself:
What's wrong with being a clown? My guess is that his critics are just angry that Elon doesn't feel as constrained by societal norms as they do. And that video is hilarious in its journalistic superficiality. When Elon uses the number 420, it's a joke. It doesn't matter if 99.999% of people who read it see no humour in it, it's still clearly identifiable as Elon humour. The fact that this wasn't pointed out is just sad.
Even if it wasn't a joke, tweets like that have no effect on long term stock price. (Though it could be argued that the pathetic howling of indignation around them has a very slight medium-term effect.) The only people who "lose out" as a result of tweets like that are day traders and market speculators—people who make their money off the value created by others, adding literally zero value to the economy.
It means you don't get invited to talk about EVs with the president of the United States, which is what we're talking about.
> Even if it wasn't a joke, tweets like that have no effect on long term stock price.
It still gets you fined by the SEC. Elon is just going to have to suck it up and accept responsibility for his actions instead of whining about how he doesn't respect the SEC.
I don't personally care that Tesla weren't invited. Tesla didn't suffer from not being invited. It was a nothing event that nobody would even remember today if it wasn't for the remarkable weirdness of Tesla's absence.
As for the SEC, the evidence of reality suggests otherwise. Elon didn't have to suck it up and accept responsibility. He didn't have to stop whining about how he doesn't respect the SEC.
> Let's see: Does the world benefit from a CEO that has built the biggest clean-energy revolution that the world has ever seen but has spoken some shit while they were drunk?
You might have allowed your bar to sink that low, but many of us do not agree with this assessment.
We've had enough clowns in the white house lately, we do not need Elon there as well.
> We've had enough clowns in the white house lately
It's kind of silly to equate inviting someone as a guest to electing someone as President.
But if you think Trump was a problem because he was a "clown" then I'm sorry but you've been distracted by the superficial. It's my opinion that Trump was a bad president—and continues to represent an existential threat to civil trust—but his style didn't have anything to do with it. It was his substance. Behind the clown was some awful ideas and disgusting political strategies.
Equating these two people is just silly.
Trump is a narcissist whose most economically successful skill prior to 2016 was as a "brand" and a television show presenter. He inherited hundreds of millions of dollars and while it's almost impossible to know exactly how successful Trump has been with money, estimates peg his wealth as having grown at a lower rate than the market average. Put another way, with his mix of successful and failed ventures, he has effectively lived off his inheritance.
Elon Musk is a weird guy with degrees in economics and physics, was closely involved in the success of PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX, and has become one of the world's richest people almost entirely from his own work, ventures and investments. Despite this, Elon lives a modest life with few material possessions, choosing to spend most of his time working.
> world's richest people almost entirely from his own work
This is a flat out lie, and we hear it a lot from Elon fan clubs as a soundbite as PR stunts for him. His fortunes have been built by abusing his workers and the conditions around them. And we haven't even gotten to the mines yet.
If you want to follow this clown knock yourself out, but appearances matter and when Elon wants to start acting more mature, others might give him notice.
If you're going to quote me, please quote the entire sentence rather than a fragment that misleadingly chops a list of three items ("work, ventures and investments") into a single item ("work"). That fragment does not represent what I said and is not something I believe.
When read in its entirety, what I said isn't a "flat out lie"—or at the very least it isn't disputed by any assertions you have made. Whether you think his ventures and investments are ethical is a separate question to whether they are the source of his wealth.
There was nothing misleading about that quote, and you're literally one of the last people I'll listen to on here for telling me how to send points across. You are arguing in bad faith if you truly believed that, and your reply confirms it.
You might be able to control language and the dialog elsewhere, that's not happening here.
If you want to follow this clown knock yourself out, but you can drop the glorification of Elon here.
There's plenty of things to shit on Tesla and Elon with, but I think this is the wrong take in this particular instance. Not inviting Tesla to the EV summit and acting like they don't exist is pretty suspect.
If you read the article you'll see that Musk made a baseless comment about a meeting he had no place at because it was about changing petrol car manufacturers to at least 50% EV sales. Nothing to do with political risk, just Musk being Musk and tweeting/commenting before thinking like he always does.
Given they have an enormous factory in Texas and another in Berlin both coming online before the end of the year, and they are continuing to expand their factory in California.... I'd say they're covering their bases quite well.
Isn't that exactly why you out half the plants in China? Chinese plants for Chinese cars, American plants for American cars. Europe buys from whoever has surplus. No worries.
On that note, the only reason I bought a plug-in prius prime, as opposed to the ordinary prius, is because incentives brought it down to a comparable price point.
As it happens, when I was purchasing I was a renter with no stable charging situation. I was buying a car so I could go to open houses and shop for a condo/house. I ended up buying a condo with a small driveway (for which I installed an EVSE), but most of the units in the city don't even have that possibility.
Hence, originally I had no intention of buying the plug-in model. I only got it because it was roughly the same price after incentives, and I'm thankful it worked out this way because now I charge it regularly and my day-to-day in-city trips are all electric.
> Multiple studies have shown that PHEV are worst to the environment that ICE. In real conditions.
No, studies have shown PHEV emissions lifetime emissions are higher than expected, offering less reduction from an ICE than previously expected[0], and that some PHEVs emit more than their official sources suggest[1].
But you can use common sense here: If you take comparable cars with/without a plug-in option (e.g. prius vs prius prime), then the plug-in option emits less CO2 if you charge it frequently enough to offset (a) the added weight of the battery, and (b) whatever emissions were involved in producing the battery. Obviously, if you don't charge your PHEV, it's not any better than an ordinary ICE HEV.
> Toyota is advertising HEV as "self-charging" EV
This should be illegal. HEV is just an ICE with better gas mileage.
I don't see how this is true as HEV _are_ electric vehicles powered by a fuel cell. Please expound on how this equates to an ICE.
EDIT: My parent comment was misleading perhaps, because I used the non-standard abbreviation HEV (Hydrogen Electric Vehicle) as opposed to the more conventional FCEV (Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle).
If you must know, neither “lobbying position” nor “social media shitstorms” were on my spreadsheet when I was in the decision making process and comparing features
No, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the US are booked as indefinitely lived intangibles.
That means that if the asset falls below their most recently booked price at any point in the quarter, they are required to book an impairment charge in the amount of the drop. If it goes up, they cannot book the profit until they sell.
You’re incorrect. They have about 110,000 btc I think, worth a bit over $7 billion. Their marketcap is $7.82 billion.
But they also have $2.2 billion debt. Legacy co worth about $500 million.
Add $1.7 billion to marketcap and you’ll see their bitcoin are valued at about $9.5 billion, a 30% premium. This has narrowed I think, they’ve been selling stock to arbitrage the difference.
But currently MSTR is valued less than the value of its BTC, which implies a negative value for their legacy business
Or, alternatively it could also imply that the market thinks the future value of their BTC holdings will drop. It's still difficult and costly to short BTC directly, so I do wonder if negative sentiments about it might be reflected better in things like MSTR valuation than in the actual BTC spot price.
I also looked into this at one point, and MSTR value was so incredibly correlated with the spot price of BTC that it makes sense their results didn't imapct value - everyone knows their value is entirely BTC and are trading it as a bitcoin proxy. They don't need some earnings report. Although I wouold guess either a big buy or big sell reported in their reports would crash their price.
They're still around. In fact one of the TSLAQ people just got hired by Biden as an advisor to the NHTSA. (A woman hat has cussed out Tesla on several occasions and threatened physical violence on Elon Musk.)
They expect the Model Y to be the best selling EV in the world within a few years. They are fully focused on getting Texas set up for that. Cybertruck will probably come around 2023, maybe start production at the end of 2022 if everything went perfect.
It means that they looked at the price of Bitcoin and saw that, if they had sold at that price, they would have lost $51mm.
This does not mean that they sold the Bitcoins, but that they had to set aside a reserve of money for a potential future loss on their Bitcoins.
This has nothing to do with their propensity to sell their Bitcoins or their expectations on the price of Bitcoins. Instead, it has to do with the way accounting principles work and the need to mark-to-market financial investments.
> No, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the US are booked as indefinitely lived intangibles.
> That means that if the asset falls below their most recently booked price at any point in the quarter, they are required to book an impairment charge in the amount of the drop. If it goes up, they cannot book the profit until they sell.
> $1.6B GAAP net income; $2.1B non-GAAP net income (ex-SBC1) in Q3
SBC = stock based compensation, this translates to Tesla paying $500m in stock compensation in Q3 alone. Not sure how other companies compare, but this sounds like a lot.
(2) Bullish on Tesla the business - electric cars are clearly the future, Tesla builds honestly really great cars. I don't have a car, but if I were to buy one it would no question be a Tesla. They're going to make and sell a lot more cars, period.
(3) Bearish on the valuation. At this price its still worth about as much as every other car company put together, and their competitors are growing into electric too. Market breakdowns seem to show that where options exist people do not pick Tesla 100% of the time. It's more like 12%, equal to VW in Norway.
It is however a cult meme stonk, so there's no real rationality behind it.
[edit] I've been making good money selling weekly iron condors. As much as it's moving, it's still been moving less than cultists anticipate haha.
Tesla builds honestly really great cars. I don't have a car, but if I were to buy one it would no question be a Tesla.
Did you ever drive one? I did a Model 3 test drive the other day. Acceleration is out of this world, but everything else... meh. Interior looks and feels like it lasts for about 2-3 years. Brakes feel like stepping into a pile of mud. Huge central screen for everything is more distracting than useful. I was happy to get back into my 2007 BMW when the test drive was over. Still feels solid after 14 years.
Yeah, I rent them on Turo when I've got a road trip lined up. I agree about the fit and finish, but the driving dynamics are just so much fun. I suspect they'll be able to fix up their fit and finish in time. My favorite interiors tend to be Audis fwiw.
The thing is heavy though. That was also a dealbreaker for me. I'm used to ~1.3 tons of my BMW. Just fun to throw into corners. The Model 3 I tested had about 1.8 or 1.9 and it certainly felt like it. Understeered like crazy. Also I was constantly moving left and right on the seat.
Try the other EVs then. Try a Taycan, try a Mach-E, try an E-tron GT.
I'm not trying to call out you specifically, but there are so many people who are completely unaware of what the auto market actually looks like, and then they compare a new Tesla with whatever old mid-range ICE they had before, and of course the Tesla seems like a magical space-age vehicle that is better than anything else they've ever driven.
But the competition isn't slouching. The Taycan isn't far behind the Plaid in performance, and it beats the Tesla in repeating launches. The EQS has longer range and way more tech. Super Cruise and Blue Cruise are better than Autopilot in the areas they are enabled. There's plenty of cheaper EVs than Teslas, like the VW ID.4 or ID.3. There will be tons of Rivians and EV Hummers and F150 Lightnings on the roads before the first Cybertruck is delivered, if at all. You can get a EV truck from Volvo, today, and other truck makers are following suit, so you'll get an electric semi from the competition way before the Tesla Semi sees the light of day.
And every single one of them has better interior quality, better fit-and-finish, and better customer service than Tesla.
The BMW i4 should be available next spring in the US. Looks like a regular 4-series, and faster and cheaper than an M4.
Sure, more expensive than a Model 3, but you get an actual luxury vehicle.
Tesla is still unbeaten at performance/dollar or range/dollar, so if that's important, go for it. But if other things are more important, the competition sure is heating up.
I own a model 3. The car has no presence. It doesn't feel special, like a 50k car should. Having said that,the interiors look good as new 2 years later, the autopilot is great for commute, the audio system is great, and it feels like this is what future would be.
> Market breakdowns seem to show that where options exist people do not pick Tesla 100% of the time. It's more like 12%
That's an extraordinarily hard analysis to do. Basically everyone in the industry is production-limited at this point (Tesla by factory bandwidth, everyone else by part shortages). Total volume reflects industrial realities far more than it does consumer choice.
True, but it still seems unlikely that the unconstrained choice would be 100% Tesla. Do we really think Toyota will be incapable of retaining any significant % of EV sales once that's where the industry mostly is at?
The 100% isn't really the right analysis. Market caps for auto manufacturers tend to be quite low because it's a low-growth industry, and the biggest players are non-US securities where low market caps are more routine.
Total world automotive revenue is something like $1.5T (I forget the source, that's from my head). At the same price/revenue ratio as AAPL (a similarly dominant player in a rather different industry), TSLA would only have to make up 8% of the world revenue to justify it's current share price.
Is that comparing Apples (heh) to oranges? Yeah, it is. But the point is there's no magic principle that says "auto companies get impoverished share prices relative to tech companies" either.
Broadly: the market is betting Tesla gets valued like a tech stock and not a heavy industry stock. And the valuation is pretty much where you'd expect if that were the case.
I think seeing Tesla as only a car company is a mistake.
They're a car company, but also a battery company, which means they have the potential to be huge in everything that requires batteries (e.g. cars manufactured by others, grid scale electricity storage) even when they don't make the final product.
I'm not even sure that the car business will be their main business in the long term.
If you sum the market cap of any leaders in any of those spaces you won't get anywhere close to Tesla's current valuation let alone fully realized valuation.
I'll include them as an AI company once their FSD model stops trying to kill YouTubers.
- Utilities: PGE is worth 22B.
- Insurance: Libery Mutual is 16B.
- Robotics and AI: ABB is 71B.
- Batteries: Panasonic is 30B.
- Cars: Toyota is 288B.
- Financing: Included in Toyota's valuation.
Ok so, if we sum all of these mature businesses together we get $427B, less than half of Tesla's current market cap. That's one heck of a bull case when you consider Toyota ships literally 10X as many cars as Tesla does, and all those other companies, you know, exist.
Anyone else I should huck onto the pile? There's still a half trillion dollars in market cap to make up for after all.
You miss that Tesla is better in a given space than any of the leaders you mentioned. And not just better. More importantly, and this is why it is better, is that Tesla is a tech company in each of those spaces - eg. PG&E is an utilities company while Tesla is a tech company in the electric energy space. That is the half-trillion you're looking for.
E.ON seems bigger than PGE (assuming you go by market cap), and I have no clue who is actually the biggest. And these each seem to represent one single regional power company.
OTOH, I didn't realize Tesla's market cap has grown that big. That is indeed kinda insane.
Rooftop solar is funny because it's by far the most dangerous kind of solar. People fall off installing those all the time. The deaths per TWh of generated electricity is a few orders of magnitude greater than nuclear. Industrial scale solar is still less safe than nuclear, but not by nearly as much.
Ultimately Tesla, like Apple, is a fashion brand. Once you've established your brand to the upper class, thereby causing the middle class to covet your product in order to signal a higher social status, the actual product that you make doesn't especially matter. Tesla is happy to forfeit the low-end EV market to other automakers just like Apple is happy to forfeit the low-end phone market to Android: low-end products are forced to compete on scale and become commodities with low margins, whereas fashion products can command much higher margins, and the existence of low-end competitors only serves to further cement your fashion brand as upper-class.
Don't forget about the whole energy side of the business: most people underestimate the potential of this because they can't see all the stuff that's coming. there's enormous potential for that to be even bigger than their automotive stuff.
Apple owns 75% of the entire profit share of the global smartphone business while making 13% of the phones. Tesla isn't even close to that kind of performance.
Not yet. But Tesla's P/E is 147 now at this quarters' rate of profit.
That's nothing for a company growing revenues at over 50% while still increasing its margins.
Also, Tesla is still production limited (i.e they would steal their competitors' market share if they have a few plants available). The only market where Tesla is not growing its share steeply is where they decided not to prioritize sales. Just look at the Model Y sales in Europe where they finally to make deliveries.
Tesla don't even have a pickup to sell yet, which is USA's #1 model.
Totally, and at some point in the future, if they're super lucky, they might be worth something around half of what they're worth today lol. I don't think they're going to grow the car market, which means they're worth at most what the car market is today. Further, I sincerely doubt theres a world in which they own 100% of the car market, so that means it's overvalued both now and into the future.
Toyota's worth 300B and they have excellent industry-leading margins. Tesla is priced at 900B while shipping a tiny fraction of the cars.
[edit] Tesla shipped 241,000 cars this quarter. Toyota shipped 2.2M. Tesla's car deliveries are literally a rounding error against Toyota's. It would take 6 years of 50% YoY growth to match Toyota's shipments alone this year.
[edit2] Toyota's PE is 9.6, so once mature, Tesla should also trade right around a 9.6 p/e, if they're really lucky.
Market valuation depends on expected future profit margin per car. Not on how many million low margin cars you have already shipped. Walmart has the highest revenue, while Apple has the highest profit. Shipping a bunch of low margin stuff is of little value.
The market expects tesla to beat Toyota by an order if magnitude on profit margin per car. As simple as that.
TBH, that's a prediction of the future that you haven't substantiated.
The fact that the have insane YOY growth with 14B quarterly revenue, are supply constrained - not demand constrained, have very high profit margin per car if you exclude new giga factory investments is sufficient to justify the stock price.
Again, that doesn’t make sense. Apple being the obvious example. You don’t necessarily revert to a market cap maximum. EVs can have high margins and scale. Tesla is positioned as the Apple of its market.
And its business is more than vehicles - a lot more. Stationary batteries also have fat margins.
> Once every other company is releasing high quality electric cars?
Like who exactly? Only the American automakers are taking this seriously. Most have them have a target of maybe 50% of their offerings to be electric by 2030. Some European brands are now starting to play serious VW at the forefront of it. And the ones resisting the most are the Japanese. Mazda doesn’t even commit to a hybrid and realizing more efficient ICs coming soon in 2024. Toyota and Honda are actively seeking to block incentives to EV makers.
And even if startups like Rivian or big players like Ford,GM and VW eventually start making cars at a much better quality, they still have to match the level of vertical integration that Tesla has. The lead they have is no joke.
Audi doesn't even have an R&D team for engines at this point. They're all in on electric, Mercedes is on a similar track. I'm not saying other companies will catch up soon, but Tesla needs to sustain their advantage for literally decades for this valuation to make sense. 10 years isn't enough.
I've heard very good things about Fords EVs. Battery tech way behind Tesla, but they're already starting to take some of Tesla's market.
Audi is a VW subsidiary. And VW's CEO (Herbert Diess) has said they don't expect to overtake Tesla, they just hope not to die trying to survive the transition.
> Like who exactly? Only the American automakers are taking this seriously.
Sorry, what now? In Europe, Tesla's market share is below 20%, because they're being outcompeted by Volkswagen and Renault. But European car makers aren't taking EVs seriously?
Couple of things. 1. I acknowledged VW as the only group seriously invested in EV 2. The statistics you mention only Europe, but if you look at US market, two thirds of the first half sales this year was Tesla, the next two Chevy (GM) and ford. Total accounting for 80% of the sales. 3. In your statistics, Tesla + VW account for 40% of the market share in EU, but your statistics is based on including PHEVs which lets be honest, isn’t exactly the same product as a BEV. If you remove the PHEVs, then Tesla suddenly starts looking a lot better. 4. And even if PHEVs were part of it, the top selling cars include ford, Kia and Hyundai. Yeah, European car makers are definitely playing catch up (with the exception of VW like I said)
Why now? Tesla are also improving and, from what we know, they're making bigger better (megacasting, cell to pack, FSD computers, etc). What's the competition's plan exactly? They'll be hard at work to try not to cannibalize their ICE sales in the meantime, too, since their resources to invest in BEV comes from ICE sales.
You think Tesla will have cheaper batteries than literally everyone else forever? Incredibly hard for me to believe that at least one company won't be able to create a competing battery. Differentiating on hardware has never been a way to create a trillion dollar company. It requires lock in via incredibly brand loyalty and Tesla doesn't have a big enough customer base atm.
What current margins? At what scale? Toyota has a best-in-class 6% profit margin, substantially better than its competitors sitting at 3%, and earns 20 billion dollars. Even at the most optimistic margins Tesla is vastly overvalued.
Ok, so what margin do you see justifying their valuation? 10%? 15%? The margins of a company like Microsoft who makes their money on software (30%)? Even if you used that last figure, they'd more than 80x over valuation on current earnings. This is a car company. There are fundamental limits on how much money you can make.
I think this really captures my view on the stock. There is one electric car in outer space right now, one premium brand. Everyone else is going to be in a race over market share and Tesla has a shot to keep high margins and use those margins to keep finding its lead.
I'll be up front in that I've never sat in either for more than in a showroom, but tell me the Taycan is not premium and the Tesla is. I have never heard of fit and finish issues like I hear Tesla customers complaining about, for example.
I think premium brands aren’t about the materials as much as they are about signaling brand values. A Porsche draws on foreign luxury ideas for playing a rich man, but a Tesla is for role-playing iron man with fancy new tech.
The taycan is not appealing to people who want a car of the future in the way the model s is. This value is intrinsic to the Tesla brand and the utility those customers get (over the costs of maintaining that brand halo) can be captured as margin for a long time to come.
Porsche is doing good, they plan to sell over 40,000 BEVs this year and 60-80,000 cars next year. Their growth rate looks good but that is still a far cry from what Tesla already sells and plans to sell next year.
I'm guessing Panasonic will prefer having more then a single costumer but regardless - that's quite a different narrative then "Tesla has a 5 year lead in battery tech".
How does Apple's profit compare to every other cell phone maker?
And how does Tesla's profit compare to every other car manufacturer?
Clearly Tesla is very early in their journey, and their valuation and PE is wildly different from Apple, they're not even in the same ballpark. The equivalent in Apple's trajectory would be Apple being valued in 2008 say after the promising iPhone launch at almost 1 trillion, does that sound reasonable to you? In fact they were valued in 2008 at 80 billion, 1/10 of Tesla at present.
I think it's too high, the parent thinks it's too high, and even Elon Musk thinks the valuation is too high (as he said twice earlier this year).
For cellphones, there is value in having the same phone as your peers, it gives you status.
For cars, there is value in having a different car than your peers, it gives you status.
The larger Tesla's market share grows, the more boring it will become to own one, and the more exciting the competition is going to get in the public mind. With comparable competition, Tesla will never ever get a total car market share over 30%.
I don't think Tesla is priced as a car company. It's priced as a car company, solar company, grid-scale battery company, and potential self-driving taxi company. Whether that justifies their price I don't know (and suspect not), I just think it's misleading to look only at their car sales, even though that's the bulk of their business right now.
I think Tesla will be successful, but the current valuation seems to assume that every IC car on the road will be replaced by a Tesla in the next 10 years.
I think Ford and Toyota are going to figure out how to be tesla a lot sooner than Tesla is going to figure out how to be Ford and Toyota.
> I think Tesla will be successful, but the current valuation seems to assume that every IC car on the road will be replaced by a Tesla in the next 10 years.
Their P/E at Q3 level of profit is 147. That's quite small for a company growing at more than 50% and whose margin keep improving. Also, the addressable market for vehicles, solar and stationary storage is almost limitless. We're not even talking FSD, where their lead continues to increase vs competitors (most are stopping their research, cf. BMW and Mercedes).
>I think Ford and Toyota are going to figure out how to be tesla a lot sooner than Tesla is going to figure out how to be Ford and Toyota.
Tesla keeps increasing its technology vs Ford in all the main areas (battery, power trains, casting, electronics, self-driving, but also market that Ford does not even pretend to serve such as energy generation and grid storage).
Toyota is completely lost. They invest far less in EV than Tesla and the gap continues to increase. They only focus on PHEV, which people aren't interested in when they have become familiar with EV (see Norway, where climate does not even favor BEV). They'll try to do something with hydrogen only because the Japanese government will subsidize them for that.
Google's numbers are based on previous quarters, not Q3. 147 is based on today's results and stock price.
And Tesla's income is growing fast so P/E is dropping at the same speed (the share price has remained stable since early 2021).
Compared to Tesla, Toyota is stagnating. Their battery technology is outdated and they invest almost nothing in BEV. They're still making a full bet on PHEV and hydrogen light vehicles. For now, Toyota simply cannot compete in BEV. They won't have the batteries and/or the materials (lithium / nickel), and every year they do nothing, Tesla, VW and others are securing multi year procurement deals.
Also, it would take years of great EV sales for Toyota to be able to outpace Tesla's battery purchasing power. And Tesla is making their own cells so they're not even playing the same game.
Cherry picking a single company from each and not accounting for market growth will not be as accurate as estimating total market and Tesla's share in each.
US electric market is $400B in revenue today, this needs to double for the fully electric fleet politicians are pushing for. This does not account for hardware sales. We could estimate that at 1T in 10 years, if Tesla gets 10%, then that is $100B in revenue.
US auto ins market is $300B in revenue today, their market share there will likely be close to their share of vehicles. Robotics I suspect will be one of the largest industries in the future. They could become a supplier of batteries, electric motors, and self driving systems to other auto companies. Elon has said multiple times he will have the conversations.
That's just the US market. You'd then have to extrapolate to the rest of the world. At a P/E like Apple or Microsoft, they would need to get to $30B earnings per year to hit $1T, which seems feasible. They have shown that they can build and scale faster than their competitors and spend many multiples more on R&D than they do as well.
If they can maintain their 50% YoY growth for 10 years, then the P/E ratio on a $1T market cap would be under 10.
> If they can maintain their 50% YoY growth for 10 years, then the P/E ratio on a $1T market cap would be under 10.
Assuming the present valuation holds. That's kind of the thing, I've zero interest in buying in if I think 10 years of 50% growth from now they might be worth today's sticker price.
I like them as a company, but I hate them as an investment.
They claim to be further along, but I have not seen the batteries tested by an outside organization. There is no information on the costs of the batteries, their weight or their lifespan. There is more to it than just saying they are solid state.
I think the science is pretty clear that solid state batteries are the way forward if they can solve the dendrite problem. They should surpass LiIon in capacity, lifetime and safety if they can solve this issue.
Realistically, Tesla sells a lot of cars overseas, so this price more likely represents them hitting ~20% of US sales. The energy side increasing volume with in-house cell manufacturing and/or supplying other OEMs could also change where they need to be with vehicle deliveries to hit a PS ratio in line with established companies.
The problem with those insane bull cases is that the various "verticals" are mutually exclusive because they cannibalize each other.
If they ever deliver on the promises of FSD, cars will become safer, which will diminish accidents which will diminish insurance payout which will diminish revenue which will diminish insurance profits, because it's an extremely regulated business where profit margins are regulated.
If they deliver on the robotaxi promise, why would anyone buy a car themselves when they can just robotaxi everywhere? If the cars make money, why would Tesla sell the cars to people in the first place?!? And if they own all their cars, how would they make money off of insurance? The only reasonable future is that making money off your robotaxi Tesla is a pipedream, which means you can't count on that argument to drive sales.
For insurance to win, FSD has to fail. But for sales to soar, FSD has to win.
Liberty Mutual is a $16B business, Panasonic is a $30B business and financing profits and revenues are usually included in car company valuations - certainly in VW's case.
Even a successful entry into both those businesses would be 45B, or 5% of Tesla's current market cap.
A company with 50% of revenue growth, 30% of automotive gross margin, almost unlimited demand (99% of global auto sales are still non-EV and Tesla's brand is just starting to become familiar), still zero ad spending, huge new markets like solar generation and stationary storage where they continue to have a massive lead in technology...
Can you name one company in such a position? Tesla price-to-earning ration based on Q3 2021 income is 147, and dropping like a stone. Looks cheap to me.
Tesla valuation only makes sense if they become a huge player in batteries/other household electronic devices and keep their dominant car margins while gaining market share.
> They're already number one, worldwide, and by far.
Source? The only info I can find in a quick search shows they have the largest single factory, but other manufacturers are larger in aggregate, and Telsa is only a small part of the overall market: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1246713/largest-lithium-...
lol, CATL's first customer is Tesla. LG is also a major Tesla supplier. Idem for Pana and Samsung. Even BYD is expected to sell their cells to Tesla (under review as we speak).
These players are fighting for Tesla's contracts, and Tesla will keep buying all their batteries while adding their own production capacity (search for "project roadrunner"). What matters is 'who has access to the end customers' and to the best tech. Tesla has so much demand from grid operator that they can easily buy all the supply. They're just limited by their own production / assembly / installation capacity.
I simply believe in their continued innovation. They have great strategy their current strategy makes them dominate in a number of industries that are all gone grow massively.
And they have consistently made the right decisions. People on HN might not like their approach to development of Self-Driving but they have invested a huge amount in deep neural nets and all the infrastructure around, including their own chips. They might well be able to sell access to that chip for example.
Tesla is deep into batteries already and is building a huge team including research and vertically integration into the machines, mining, precurser production and so on. That expertise can eventually be used in a number of ways.
I believe Tesla in a few years will seriously go after electric flight. I believe they have the talent to pull that off, maybe in cooperation with SpaceX. Its the logical next step.
They have one of the world leading materials development departments as well, shared with SpaceX.
They have the electronics, software talent and manufacturing to go into many other industries as well.
I simply believe in their execution and strategy in the long term.
People said they were crazy to make their own cars, they should just go to a contract manufacturer. But then they wouldn't have 30% margin right now. This kind of story will repeat itself.
I think what stock holders really believe is that Mr EM can continue to bullshit his way into higher and higher valuations by promising more than what he can do. It has worked up to this point, and with a high enough stock price, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
agreed. musk promises the moon and often doesn't deliver and always delivers late if at all. some examples of crazy promises:
- humanoid robots
- profitable tunnels/loop
- rocket propelled cars
- a semi
- a truck
- a network of cars that that can generate income for you passively by driving themselves around as a taxi service
- cars that drive themselves that are safer then human drivers
...
im not saying Tesla isn't successful and never delivers but it does seem exponential what musk promises and while i think it's possible, managing all these massive projects is probably too much for the company. the humanoid robots thing for me really make me feel like he's just feeding investor hysteria. (i was a former musk fanboy)
They literally started work on this a few months ago and didn't announce a product. Are they not allowed to do research? Seems pretty clear that one of the reason for this is recruitment, they explicitly said so.
As an investor I don't expect any profit from this anytime soon.
> - profitable tunnels/loop
The literally just signed a huge deal to expand the Loop in Las Vegas.
They successfully bid on a number of other projects as well. They are testing their next generation tunneling machine.
That is not Tesla btw. different company.
> - rocket propelled cars
Its really just air-pressure release valve. Its not as crazy as it sound. It will happen eventually but only for a maybe a few 100 cars. Again, not really all that relevant, just like most Hypercar products by big car companies.
I think it will happen in a couple year but its basically just a 'look we are better then you' project.
- a semi
Why is that crazy? They haven't done it because they are limited on battery and chips. They can currently grow without inducing more products. Each Semi would mean 4 less Model Y.
They are working on the Semi and related Mega chargers. They have multible test vehicles on the roads. They just recently set up a bunch of Mega chargers in Nevada.
- a truck
Again, they are setting up a factory and battery factory next to it. This is clearly going to happen and when it does it will be at large volume. A vehicle program being a few month delayed isn't really special.
> - cars that drive themselves
I don't think it will happen anytime soon but Tesla is at the forefront of making it happen in the general case that is enough for me.
This doesn't really seem crazy, other car companies have cars, trucks and semi in their lineup as well.
theres nothing wrong with trucks or semis, my problem is all these projects are unfinished. it reminds me of the hobby developer who starts projects frequently but never finishes. Also this is a corporation so these are all expenses until they turn a profit. You could argue that they need to do something with all the investor money they get, and i would agree but i just think its too much ongoing at once.
> Seems pretty clear that one of the reason for this is recruitment, they explicitly said so
this doesnt change my opinion on whether they should dive into robotics while having 5-8 other major projects ongoing, i didnt even mention tesla solar.
> Its really just air-pressure release valve. Its not as crazy as it sound
you dont need to explain how itll work, i know already, and i think it wont work in practice, or at least its not worth the marginal speed increase for the added weight of the pressurized tanks (even disregarding the safety of it all)
> The literally just signed a huge deal to expand the Loop in Las Vegas.
the economics of the loop make no sense. its not profitable now, and whether they expand that will not change anything. They need FSD for the loop to be worthwhile, and theyve shown already that their current tech is unable to navigate the tunnel without a human driver.
> They haven't done it because they are limited on battery and chips. They can currently grow without inducing more products. Each Semi would mean 4 less Model Y.
sounds like an excuse to me, it may be true but then as a CEO its irresponsible to announce youll ship semis in 2020 and almost two years later its still not on the market. Maybe dont make promises before you know they're realizable at scale
i didnt even mention in the original post, tesla solar (roof tiles, battery bank, etc), Hyperloop, building tunneling machines. i understand these arent owned by tesla. But theyre still managed in part by musk and he has stated he splits his time between all his ventures. Again my issue is with the number of, and scope of each project, and their reputation to deliver on time.
> it reminds me of the hobby developer who starts projects frequently but never finishes
The goal of company is not to make as many projects as possible, but to make money. It simply makes no strategic sense to create more products while they are growing 50% a year with existing products.
They will bring these products to market when it makes sense.
> this doesnt change my opinion on whether they should dive into robotics while having 5-8 other major projects ongoing
Tesla is not a small company anymore, they have lots of profit and free cashflow. They need to start series long term research projects and investments to continue that.
> and i think it wont work in practice, or at least its not worth the marginal speed increase for the added weight of the pressurized tanks
There is no reason it wouldn't work, people have done the math on this. Its not just about speed but also about handling.
> the economics of the loop make no sense
Great that you have so much knowledge of that. Please share the detailed economic model. They are underbidding the competition on a number of projects and I for one no longer bet that Musk companies will go bankrupt.
> They need FSD
No they don't. Its a much simpler and much more constrained problem.
> tesla solar (roof tiles, battery bank, etc)
I think you mean Tesla Energy. Battery packs are no-brainer for them.
Solar roof is a bit pointless I would agree. But I don't think Musk spends much time on it.
> Hyperloop
Not an active project. This is literally a 7 year old blue paper. Boring company might restart something like it eventually.
> But theyre still managed in part by musk and he has stated he splits his time between all his ventures.
Well if you are gone mention Boring company then SpaceX is far bigger distraction. But the thing is, these other ventures have existed for many, many years. Some since Tesla existed.
> Again my issue is with the number of, and scope of each project, and their reputation to deliver on time.
I mean its fair enough but reality is Tesla is increasingly a really large vertically integrated company. Elon Musk can't (and never could) oversee every project all the time. As a company of the size of Tesla with their growth aspirations they need to have many projects in flight. Tesla recruits many smart people and need to have project for them to work on.
Semi and Cybertruck are the sensible next products and they need to be ready so working on them is total no-brainer.
I think among people not obsessed with the details, not delivering Semi might matter. But generally doesn't hurt their reputation because most people don't know or care.
i feel like you agree with me in your opening statement they ARE saying they'll bring these products to market. im not going to refute all your points but you have an extremely optimistic view. Loop NEEDS fsd because basically right now its a taxi service and every single driver needs to be paid. have you heard of buses? theyre economically cheaper. People have done the math on this and its contrary to your point. If you want contrary points just lookup thunderfoot on youtube. hes the one who convinced me to stop investing in tesla.
Its extremely optimistic that a company that is proven to be able t build EV at scale (literally the biggest EV company in the world) and is growing 50% a year can introduce a new EVs and work on research projects at the same time?
That a company that is the largest buyer of batteries in the world can make strage systems with those batteries?
Maybe the timelines are to short but the idea that its not realistic is just nonsense.
> Loop NEEDS fsd because basically right now its a taxi service and every single driver needs to be paid.
Again, just because it has drivers now doesn't mean it needs to be capable of FSD. Its an extremely limited well mapped area on dedicated lanes. Totally different requirement.
> have you heard of buses? theyre economically cheaper
Just because you prefer some other solution doesn't mean something you don't like isn't viable.
> People have done the math on this and its contrary to your point.
Are these the same people that said Tesla could never reach volume production, EV would never be profitable, orbital rockets couldn't land and that rocket reuse would never be economical?
Again, can you please show me detailed cost model and not just 'people' (whole likely work for competitors) did some napkin math and said it wasn't competitive.
> If you want contrary points just lookup thunderfoot on youtube
You realize with this statement you have immediately disqualified yourself from any discussion. He is basically a youtube troll who generates clicks from gullible Musk hater. I mean seriously, his video are just embracing to watch in their incompetence. If you actually use him as a source for what works and what doesn't you have no credibility.
In the space community, meaning people space journalist, and people who professionally analyze space his is basically regard as a joke. He directly contradicts what former SpaceX employees say, what former Astronauts say and so on. He doesn't believe things in offical NASA reports and so on. Literally no credibility.
For Tesla you have people like Sandy Munro, former lead engineer at Ford and leading an independent shop consulting on automotive production with 50 years experience who comment on issues like production. And instead you believe some guy with no actual industry experience who clearly does not have accuracy as his first goal, but rather showing how much smarter he is.
The guy is a joke that produces video like it was 2005. I mean if he is so amazingly smart that he can reason about every single engineering project in the world why can't he make a video that looks doesn't look like a 8 year old put together.
Seriously, there are people on yt who spend 100s of hours researching videos, talking in detail to engineers from all over the industry and build connections, find publicly available papers and patents. TheLimitingFactor on yt validates each video with a number of experts on the subject before he releases it.
While thunderfoot basically just spends 90% insulting people and then 10% showing some misleading data about something that he didn't understand in the first place.
You have seriously been taking in by a charlatan.
> hes the one who convinced me to stop investing in tesla.
If thunderfoot is the sum of your research on these topics then you shouldn't have invested in the first place.
thunderfoot isnt the sum of my research. you just argued against buses in lieu of a solution 10x more expensive. its not about personal choice wanting to take a bus or not. its about economics. the loop currently costs more money then it takes to operate. i used to be an evangelist like you, but now i see it for what it is. hype and under delivery
I didn't argue against buses, buses are great. But the idea that because buses exist Boring company is wrong is idiotic. You can literally put a small bus in a loop. Sometimes you want to go underground, it just makes sense. And when you do doing that in those kind of tunnels makes sense.
The Teslas at the moment are clearly just because its an easily available cheap platform. I think eventually we should move to 1-person or 2-person 3-wheeled pods and small buses or transport pods.
A point to point high speed underground loop is an interesting idea with a lot of potential. As clearly pointed out by them, the long commercial viability depends on the tunneling cost.
> i used to be an evangelist like you
I'm not an evangelist. The fact is Boring company has commercial products and have successfully bid on some project. They are putting their money where their mouth is and investing in research and investing in loop systems. That is enough for me. I'm not gone dismiss it based on some 3rd rate yt research or industry experts who say 'this will never work'.
I am happy to just watch and see what the come up with. As in other cases, people make fun of the initial version, after 3 iterations it looks decent and after 3 more iteration its a great system.
I had the same reaction to the humanoid robot announcement. Totally impractical, but a great excuse for investors to throw money at Tesla on the assumption that they will "solve the labor shortage" in a frothy environment where FOMO is enough to drive stock prices.
And to continue the cycle, he uses the crazy valuation to get more capital and deliver a small part of what he promises, starting the cycle again. It is a hype-enabled bubble that nobody knows when will stop.
This is where I'm at. I love my Tesla. I think the company makes amazing cars and has a very bright future, but the stock price and valuation is too high. If they manage to execute flawlessly on everything they want to do then the current valuation might make sense, but as it stands, in my opinion, I don't think the stock is worth it. On the short time horizon (1-3 years) though, I don't see the stock dipping though either because $TSLA =/= Tesla company.
It's funny to keep seeing people post this exact same comment regarding Tesla's valuation, on every single earnings report since 2012.
I mean, it's obviously going to come true at some point following a stock price growth to S&P500-dominating levels. It's always been richly valued and that is as true today as ever. The laws of physics prevent this from continuing forever, and the likelihood is great that there will be a correction downwards at some point, perhaps dramatic.
But it's a bit farcical to read this almost word-for-word identical opinion again and again and again and again, starting from a point in time where the stock price was 0.5% of what it is today.
Having followed Tesla since almost the beginning and being in and out of TSLA for the last 5 years I can say that the current stock price is a tad high for me. I can't speak for others. Tesla has been targeted by many people for almost its entire existence claiming they're frauds, their tech doesn't work, they won't be able to scale. They've proven most of those people wrong and continue to be an awesome success. But again I think the current stock price is absurd and very hard to justify.
“The percentage of stock borrowed by traders, a standard measure of short interest, has slumped to 1.1% of Tesla’s shares available for trading, according to IHS Markit Ltd. as of last Thursday. That’s the lowest since 2010, when the carmaker went public.”
Holding on to my put options, but I'm really harsh in the red.
I do believe that Tesla has a bright future in the industry, but their current market cap is just straight up ridiculous. Unlike any other tech giant, they will never be able to reap the kind of margins with their products (cars!) like a "normal" tech company can, and at some point the rest of the car industry will catch up. Also, Elon Musk is a walking time bomb in my opinion, eventually he'll go too far with one of his endeavors and possibly drag everything else down with him.
> Unlike any other tech giant, they will never be able to reap the kind of margins with their products (cars!) like a "normal" tech company can
Why? Only a minority of customers purchase FSD but the take rate keeps increasing. This can easily double the margins. Also, the insurance business is nascent and hugely profitable. And the new Model S and X production lines were almost suspended for 3 quarters due to shortage (most profitable products). Also, each new factories are far more efficient than the old ones, and they'll open two giant one in the coming months.
I'm short Tesla the FSD tech company. Tesla the electric car company is crushing for now at least. It'll be interesting to see if that holds true as VW, Ford and GM are starting to come on strong. But the real competition doesn't start until the Japanese manufacturers get into the EV game.
What on earth makes you think they're "too far behind"? That concept baffles me. It's not like there are any network effects, and engineering something you know can be done is always a lot easier.
(The Supercharger network seems like it's going to be opened up in 2022)
It'll be pretty spectacular when stagflation and recession finally hits in earnest. They are not immune, even though they, as a manufacturer of luxury goods, will fare better than most.
In recession, companies offering the most innovative products tends to speed up and quickly gain market shares. Also, Tesla is by far the car makers with the least debt and they can easily finance themselves. I wouldn't be in their competitors shoes: they aren't profitable with EV and they must keep their ICE business afloat (or die).
Stagflation will still hammer Tesla pretty bad. Think of what it'd do to their sales if Model S was $200K instead of $70K. We're headed in that direction. And before you say "it can't happen here", I've seen it happen in a country which too thought "it can't happen". And then it did. That's why Bill Gates is buying farmland and Black Rock is buying houses - they know what's coming. Worse yet, unlike Russian hyperinflation in the 90s (or Venezuelan today), this will be _global_.
No. They can only count it if they sell it. They actually had to take a $50M "impairment" hit on their bottom-line since the price of BTC dropped below their cost basis again this quarter.
Taking an "impairment hit" is a great way to lower performance a smidge so as to not let Wall St. run away with its Q4 projections.
I'm full-blown conspiratorial about how Tesla uses BTC to manipulate its financial reports. I don't think what they're doing is illegal or even all that innovative, other than to use BTC and not some other thing to do this.
Have you looked at Tesla delivery queue wait times recently? Not need to spin up controversies when the market demand is clear and explains the tailwind. They have been leveraging the demand to increase ASP both by increasing prices and shifting to a more profitable mix (Need the car sooner? Get the higher margin model!)
Right, which is why, if you knew about how that sausage was made (as an officer of Tesla), you'd want a way to control investor expectations, because what you just said sounds really good, and if something went wrong, or if it weren't quite as awesome as you just described, I'd be really mad if I were an investor and Tesla missed those lofty projections.
It doesn't "fool" anyone, because it's not foolish. Tesla buys Bitcoin, that's an expense. Tesla sells Bitcoin, hopefully at a profit, that's revenue. That action gets reported quarterly, which is what happened to generate this submission.
Tesla can time that to happen in specific parts of the quarter to either make its overall revenue look better or worse. It's not fake, it's not "fooling" anyone, it's just part of the balance sheet.
Companies do this all the time with non-crypto assets, crypto is just probably easier than buying/selling an office building, especially when your CEO is Elon Musk and can control the price of Bitcoin with a tweet.
It's separated out, any investor can see it clear as day. Hell if financial influencers on youtube go through these things you can sure bet that Wall Street is well aware and they would not be able to manipulate Wall Street's forecasts via this method.
Is there any evidence that they have sold Bitcoin more than the one time they did last quarter? I am pretty sure they also haven't bought any since their original purchase.
I'm confused about why you would want this evidence. Do you think I'm suggesting they're fraudulently hiding Bitcoin sales? Not selling (and taking the $50mil hit) is an action, too.
Also, Bitcoin is probably one of the profitable ventures of Elon Musk. It's just a matter of time that Tesla will try to spread throughout different countries.
that is what is expected for growth stocks .amazon has been overvalued forever too. Tesla went from losing billions to making billions. That is a huge comeback and reflected in the share price.
* Autopilot. Safe or not, autopilot is very convenient and super permissive, and owners seem to love it.
* Superchargers. Third party charger maintenance is an unsolved problem, and CCS DC fast chargers are often broken, where they exist at all. It's truly awful. Maybe the federal government will bail out Ford here with a charging infrastructure program... or maybe not.
* Status symbol. There's a reason Tesla has replaced Cadillac as a symbol of luxury in pop culture.
* The Model 3/Y itself is a smooth, luxurious and fast ride. Don't discount the car's ability to compete on the traditional merits. (Edit: this is my opinion, based on comparing a Model 3 to a 3 series as well as various Nissan cars. YMMV; it's subjective.)