It just doesn't work: Tesla

General Discussion
#501

A $TSLA investor looking for profits has to have private equity horizons - over 10 years. The market cap represents what someone would pay to buy the whole company. A number of tech companies and automotive/industrial conglomerates could do it.

They built 79k cars on an estimate of 80k, but 3k of them didn’t get delivered to customers because they’re on a boat or a shipping truck. Not bad considering Model X ramp up was extra slow.

Anecdotally, it is interesting to see ordinary folks changing their commuter car to a Tesla Model 60-70-80. The kind of dad who buys 1 car to commute in per decade, and in the replacement cycle they are taking the plunge.

I’m starting to see an equal number of Model X and Model S on the road in and around SF bay and in deep numbers at most traffic lights, but that probably isn’t representative of the country.

My buddy who bought a Model X said the door closed on his head when his toddler kicked it. They pushed a software patch to fix that a week after he complained. So yeah, kind of half baked if you get a first year car.

I really think self driving cars are 25 years off because I think they need on-board artificial intelligence. Writing one giant computer program with every edge case for driving isn’t going to scale well. AI doesn’t yet have dedicated chipset for data centers, other than repurposed graphics cards. Some company, probably Nvidia, will invent a new CPU and instruction set, and the chip fabs to build it. That will power data centers for AI. Then at some point they’ll make a mobile version of that chipset. And at some point after that it will end up in cars with the ability to work offline. Then cars can truly drive themselves.

#502

which is the definition of fucking retarded

Actually that’s the definition of speculation or gambling. You have about as much probability of picking horses who do well if you’re picking stocks based on stock price or just hoping to jump on a ride before it stops or goes backwards.

#503

76 vs 82

missing your number by 10% is never good in any business

the excuses about the boat are bullshit. Cars are always on boats. NOBODY counts not yet delivered cars as delivered cars because of transit etc. You think if they had delivered 82k cars they’d be saying ‘oh but it could be/should be/would be more but some cars are on boats!’. No.

As I said, delivered is delivered or stamped. Shipping is part of the building process, just as putting windshields in is. Why don’t you count cars without wheels or windshields that are still on the production line?

They missed, badly, on a piddly little fucking target.

#504

The miss is not material. GM would count those cars as delivered as soon as they passed QA and were on a truck to the dealership. Since the dealer is the customer and the consumer is an asshole.

Tesla and Uber and Lyft/GM are in a race to the bottom trying to trigger the next $20 billion law suit when one of their camera cruise control cars kills children and/or a family. So foolish to think a GoPro can drive a fucking car.

#505

related

Tesla Flips the Switch on the Gigafactory
http://bloom.bg/2iIn8V8

#506

The gigafactory will be a bust. Should have left it to others to kill each other producing a product that will soon be commoditized

You produce in house to eliminate the margins you’re paying out to suppliers, after factoring in your costs of getting production going (which are gigantic) vs those margins (which are fair, but are rapidly shrinking.

Often this results in an economic albatross for the company when they’re stuck with a big expensive component to their business that they have to devote time and resources to.

I. E. We start a bank, and buy tons of buildings to put our banks in. But now we have tons of real estate and property management and cleaning services, not to mention the costs of maintaining these buildings, etc. Sooner or later we’ve got billions tied up in real estate that is saving us about 8% a year… Meanwhile our core business runs at a 14% margin. Why are we bothering? So we sell of the real estate and rent.

Tesla’s real estate albatross is the battery factory. Transitioning to Panasonic may be the plan but there’s a lot of ifs.

#507

Panasonic and other partners are paying for 50% of the facility. Tesla can always spin it out or sell the stake back to them, making them a Tier 1 supplier. But if they have access to capital markets why not.

https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/gigafactory.pdf

#508

The reason you’d want to get out if you’re Tesla is that the product is commodities (batteries) and it’s a shitty business. Think Panasonic wil be in a rush to buy them out in that situation?

Guess we’ll see.

I still maintain the cars don’t work. They’re not that great and they’re too expensive. They’re not fixing the environment. So what are they actually doing??

The roof is the first cool thing I’ve seen. But apparently it’s $75,000-100,000 to put a Tesla roof on a nice sized house. What the fuck.

It’s like the car…you overpay by $X and then save 3% of $X a year in electricity, reaching payback in 33 years (assuming the time value of money for 33 years is zero…which it isn’t) .

#509

Every owner I talk to says it’s both the best car they’ve ever owned, and it’s full of bugs and glitches. Feels like something they’ll get right in 7 years. I wouldn’t buy the first Model 3 off the line for sure.

#510

People seem to fall in love with it and can’t seem to see the faults. And because they never shut the fuck up about their car they’re too invested and once the problems or faults become apparent, they have to ignore them to save face. That’s my Impression.

#511

I think it’s people who would never spend $100,000 on a car but made an exception to get into the Tesla bubble. People who would otherwise be totally happy with a loaded economy car like the most expensive Prius, or a lux SUV for $50k-$60k.

#512

reminds me of the VF “superchargers” for the Audi V8 customers

#513

But there is now a ludicrous plus mode which drops the P100D down from 2.5 to 2.4 in the 0-60. Only cool thing is the mod was basically a quick software upgrade that netted 33 HP , although when the mode is selected a warning is displayed that says it will cause “accelerated wear of the motor, gearbox and battery.” - Not sure what that means to the owners warranty.

http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1108311_tesla-ludicrous-plus-mode-slashes-model-s-p100d-0-60-mph-time-to-below-2-5-s

#514

Tesla to charge $15 for a 150 mile supercharge?

http://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-announces-pricing-for-supercharger-use/?sm_id=organic_fb_social_MT_170113_sf50860453#sf50860453

#515

That’s not very competitive with gasoline. I mean it’s better but it’s a lot more money than free.

People drive about 100 times that in a year (regular drivers) so that’s about $1500 a year at Tesla stations.

My garage has a big honking dryer looking outlet. Maybe I’ll get a plug in car for the hell of it.

#516

I think over time things will start to unravel. First these kinds of things were free but thats kinda how these things work. They start out free to get people to make the plunge and after they got enough people on the hook they spring all the hidden fees that the tax dollars paid for back on to the consumer. Again electronic cars are not free

#517

I think what they’re expecting is you drive this thing 12k miles a year, you get 5k of energy from home, 5k of energy from your employer at work, 1k from Tesla for free, and 1k from Tesla paid.

#518

don’t you get that amount once in your car’s lifetime? or is it annual? THought that’s what I read.

Looking at cars the other day that have all electric capability (i.e. a Tesla or a car that is a plug in hybrid that can operate at full bore on nothing but battery like a Porsche Cayenne S e-Hybrid) and there’s really not that many good options.

If you want AWD, and something nice, you’re only looking at SUVs
If you want a car of some sort, you’re stuck with either FWD or RWD and then you’re looking at 2 litre 4 bangers mated to a battery/motor.

You can get an S class with a V6 and a battery…but it’s $100,000+
You can get a C class with a 1.9 4 cyl and a battery but it’s RWD
You can get an A3 with a 4 cyl and a battery but it’s FWD

Or you can get a Panamera S e-Hybrid for $90,000.

The SUV choices are pretty good including an X5 (4 cylinder+) a GLE (6 cyl+), a Volvo XC90 (6cyl+ I think) and of course the Cayenne (S4 V6+)

The Cayenne is the best option of the bunch I think but they’re so new you either buy one for $90,000 or you just wait a couple years for them to depreciate. Doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.

These are all canadian prices, so you can cut those by about 25-30% to Americanize them.

The other options are the various Models S. There’s a problem there though in that if you’re out of charge you’re out of charge. The others are small batteries for your typical daily drive/trips to the store but you can always go gasoline mode if you go far. The TEsla though is battery only and if you live somewhere rural it’s nail biter time when you go on a trip.

Great summary here:

http://www.plugincars.com/cars

Surprisingly there are zero Toyota or Honda products in there. What’s with that? There are GM, VAG, BMW, MB, Ford, Hyundai, Fiat, Kia etc…but nothing from the big 2 Japanese brands.

#519

If I had a Tesla I’d do this to it, because west

http://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/news/a32307/this-modified-778-hp-tesla-race-car-can-hit-60-mph-in-21-seconds/

#520

And it’s still slower than the Audi quattro rally car…from 30 years ago…on gravel.