It just doesn't work: Tesla

General Discussion
#221

Changing the drivetrain in a Tesla is easier than changing the starter battery in a German car. They are doing things in true Silicon Valley style - ship something immediately and update it as you go. This article is talking about 6000 cars which have already been receiving the updated drivetrain design on the annual service appointment. The owners don’t even know unless they look at the slip.

Some of these components are 500,000 mile components and this is a 25 year car that you refurbish once a decade. It’s an appliance and all of this gasoline stuff is for us rich people who like to drive ourselves and tinker. Hobbyist stuff.

#222

FFS this is an ugly car. Gotta say - it just doesn’t work (for me).

http://i68.tinypic.com/o0q9on.jpg

http://i63.tinypic.com/ztxd2r.png

#223

Looks like a prius wearing a tesla costume

#224

well, it’s cheap so you can’t expect it to look great too.

oh wait…it’s $150,000.

#225

I was in an $85k Escalade recently, which isn’t even the best one. They finally got comfortable front seats (like Porsche SUVs) and leather surfaces everywhere your arms rest or hands touch, even for rear passengers. That car makes the Expedition look like a shitty old 1999 model. People will spend that much money for something that needs over $4000 of fuel. Tesla has to figure out a marketing and product trim strategy that lures those buyers first. Maybe pay Mike Rowe or some other all American dude to promote it.

To get the $100k euro SUV buyer you need a strategy like a Burberry interior and Ivanka Trump promoting it to executive women. I don’t think that day is coming.

There is probably only a market of 100,000 geeks who want this car as it is with an average sales price about $102k.

#226

LOL

#227

Funny you mention the lowest prices one and mix it in to the ‘average cost’, but Tesla fan boys like yourself fail to do this when making a post about battery range or acceleration. Only the p90d in ludicrous mode exists there. Of course the battery depleting ludicrous mode ranges are never mentioned either…just eco mode.

When you have to start lying to yourself to make your argument hold up, you know it’s over.

#228

ASP is a very common thing to track at hardware vendors. It’s a fact but you still want to argue about it?

2012 ASP - $96k
2013 ASP - $102k
2014 ASP - $107k

Those are the best estimates available. I think it shows how early we are in the cycle - that this is a toy for the “rich”. A lot of these people are repeat buyers who go back and buy another one when a new feature comes out. They have a RWD and go back for the D, they have the P and go back for the insane, they have the drive-it-yourself and go back for the autonomous, etc.

I think they are going to have a tough time with that ugly SUV. But almost every SUV is ugly. I would not expect the SUV to sell more than the sedan has, maybe even less. Again, a lot of repeat buyers will be picking them up.

#229

Missed the point completely. Nice one.

#230

70 mile range when towing 5000 pounds. Legit. Maybe we need lighter electric boats?

http://gas2.org/2016/01/04/using-your-tesla-model-x-to-tow-stuff-stay-close-to-home/

#231

Car and Driver test: “P90D’s 11.1-second, 121-mph quarter-mile run”

#232

and? You’re rehashing performance we’ve known about for a while? Also, what track did they run at? Oh wait…they didn’t run at a sanctioned certified dragstrip? Guess what list they won’t qualify for. The same list you’re dead last for B8 S4s on.

#233

The RS7 performance should stay ahead of it. The old RS7 had higher trap speed but worse ET.

The downside with that Tesla is you need like $25k of options and 95% charge to pull it off. There’s usally 240V camper hookups on site at tracks if you need to charge up for free between runs.

#234

It’s funny, all of wests predictions were, as I mentioned in the fall, reliant on an incredibly optimistic, full bore positive, no interruptions growth pattern for Tesla. To simplify it, the company, and west’s predictions, were priced for perfection. Hard to deliver on.

Since then…

  1. Tesla’s stock is down has moved from $270/share to $160/share and their maket cap has been cut by $15 billion
  2. Tesla’s growth has slowed, and they are disappointing in a number of ways
  3. Tesla’s big claim to be ‘free’ on chargeups (which actually cost $10-20 to go 200 miles) is eroding as electricity costs have been increasing aggressively
  4. Tesla’s perceived ‘advantage’, being non-dependent on expensive oil for fuel, has also eroded as the price of oil has settled in the $30-35 range, meaning an RS7 owner can now travel 400 miles for about $35…in otherwords the exact same cost as charging a Tesla for the same distance, without the hinderance of a 5 hr charge in the middle of it, limited charging locations and ever-present range anxiety

The stock price is the funniest. West made this post on September 15th. that week Tesla hit $270 and in his mind was poised to quickly become the largest market cap auto in the world. Today Tesla sits at $22 billion, down from $35 billion. VW is barely down since the fall, sitting at about $56 billion in market cap.

Moral of the story is when west gets excited about something (Tesla, Apple, you name it) it’s time to take your money off the table if you’re aligned with him as he’s your classic bandwagon jumper, late to the game.

#235

Oil might very well be under $50 for 5+ years. It’s a pretty dangerous thing for the banking system because energy companies have a trillion in debt, half of it unsecured. A few big players are consolidating energy assets through credit facilities spread across multiple banks and they only expect it to last a couple of years before things recover. Over time they may take some big losses. It’s a musical chairs game like housing.

@Saki - all I said was that in 10-15 years time 5-10% of the US car fleet would be pure electric, and that Tesla would have a monopoly in this area. That still holds true. It really doesn’t matter if the market is testing lower prices on growth stocks. That’s kind of a natural cycle to balance supply and demand, and see if institutional buyers come back at lower prices. It’s funny that you confound stocks and companies. Did you expect a 20 year bull run or something? That this record streak would continue forever?

Your expectation that an affordable Tesla will appear as quickly as the new A4 shows you don’t have the patience for investing. It’s going to be the cheapest form of per mile transportation that you can buy. The resale value is going to mean you can take a motorhome loan on it. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume you can get 25 years of service out of it with almost 0 maintenance. You also don’t know that the population of people who need transportation is larger than the population of people who like gasoline cars with on board combustion. The latter just makes middle class people poor as they toil with broken cars and parts they didn’t know existed.

#236

Interesting that VW is barely down despite the TDI saga

#237

barely down since the fallout of the scandal…however it got crushed initially.

#238

No. You did.

Your statement was that Tesla would be the largest market capitalization auto company in the world. You extrapolated incredible growth that is frankly foolish and as we’re seeing, just isn’t happening. You also extrapolated stock market participants staying blind to the facts while the fantasy of high growth, high losses companies surviving persists.

Then, you’re assuming a ‘monopoly’ on electric cars, even though Audi and the like are creating electric cars just as a fun side project to crush Tesla and to show it how economies of scale work in the auto business.

The only reason you started throwing these ideas around was because you got caught up in the hype machine and got excited at the peak of Tesla’s market value…classic behaviour for someone who has only been investing for 5 minutes. Very pets.com of you.

#239

It will take a bit more time for that to play out than the time from Apple making an iPod to having monopoly power in mobile patents and digital content. The primary reason is car replacement cycles are longer than device replacement cycles. I never said “by Q1 2016 all investors will realize the Tesla investment thesis and assign a 0% discount to the fleet outcome in 2030”. I think I did say it would be interesting to check back on this post in 10 years.

Apple is insanely successful company for exploiting a currency peg, off shoring labor in a developing market, not paying taxes, and using a bond scheme to buy back stock from any block seller that would make the price go down. They also make phones.

You incorrectly focus on whether you emotionally like or dislike a Tesla product, and use that to rationalize why Tesla will lose to products you like better. What you’re missing is that Tesla will get to 500,000 (and then 1mm) sales a year, that their DISTRIBUTION is revolutionary, and that their continuing costs on labor and recalls are categorically different than traditional auto manufacturers. It will result in a profit margin never before seen in the auto industry. This will form the basis of the most valuable company in the world.

A decade of low oil prices will force weak hands out of electric and make Telsa’s monopoly easier.

#240

I hate being right. $CHK was marginal. What will really shock the markets is when larger energy companies are on their knees in 3 years.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-08/chesapeake-energy-craters-22-percent-on-restructuring-report