After $702M Loss, Tesla Stock Sinks To Lowest Price in Two Years (reuters.com) 258
Tesla stock price "slumped 5% on Friday to its lowest in two years," reports Reuters, citing in part "a pitch by Chief Executive Elon Musk on autonomous cars that failed to win over investors."
Musk is still battling to convince investors that demand for the Model 3, the company's first car aimed at the mass consumer market, is "insanely" high, and that it can be delivered efficiently to customers around the world.... On Wednesday, Tesla posted a worse-than-expected loss of $702 million for the March quarter. Musk said Tesla would return to profit in the third quarter and that there was "some merit" to raising capital....
Tesla's stock has now fallen 29 percent in 2019 and the company's market capitalization has declined to $41 billion from $63 billion in mid-December. After overtaking the market capitalizations of General Motors and Ford Motor in 2017, Tesla slipped back below GM in January, and on Friday it dipped back below the market value of Ford, which saw its stock surge 10% after reporting a better-than-expected quarter. Analysts now expect Tesla's revenue to expand 19% in 2019, compared with 83% growth in 2018 and 68% growth in 2017, according to Refinitiv.
MarketWatch helpfully illustrated the -5.04% drop in Tesla's stock price over three days by animating it over a picture of Elon Musk's face in front of a bullseye.
Tesla's stock has now fallen 29 percent in 2019 and the company's market capitalization has declined to $41 billion from $63 billion in mid-December. After overtaking the market capitalizations of General Motors and Ford Motor in 2017, Tesla slipped back below GM in January, and on Friday it dipped back below the market value of Ford, which saw its stock surge 10% after reporting a better-than-expected quarter. Analysts now expect Tesla's revenue to expand 19% in 2019, compared with 83% growth in 2018 and 68% growth in 2017, according to Refinitiv.
MarketWatch helpfully illustrated the -5.04% drop in Tesla's stock price over three days by animating it over a picture of Elon Musk's face in front of a bullseye.
Of course revenues are lower in percentage... (Score:2, Funny)
So when you make more revenue, it becomes harder to make more revenue than the previous year? You don't say!
Do people working on Wall Street even know basic math?
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Well, TSLA had the misfortune to slash R&D, make M&A offers that were destroyed by the falling stock price and bail out Musk relatives (that is, Musk himself) with stockholder money with nothing to show for it.
So, your theory doesn't really apply here.
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Not to mention Musk's capital-raising smokescreen (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not to mention Musk's capital-raising smokescre (Score:4, Interesting)
But in the short term, I think they will start to feel the competition a little bit, as well as the tax benefits for EVs getting a bit less in various countries. Looking at the situation here in NL, this year the (insanely) generous tax deduction for EVs on a corporate lease has ended. Tesla sold 2200 vehicles here in December, traditionally a very weak month as most owners prefer to wait and get registration dated January of next year. However Tesla sales for January and February together slumped to 550 vehicles... the Hyundai Kona alone outsold Tesla with close to 900 sales in those months. That despite the fact that Hyundai can't produce these things fast enough, and order to delivery time for one is now 12-14 months.
Hopefully things will pick up a bit with the standard range Model 3 now being available here (we won't get the $35k version here for a while, the car sold here is the one with the higher trim level). This thing competes on price, trim and range with Hyundai and Kia, and it's one of the few cars that looks like a regular sedan so it will appeal to a fair number of people for whom the Model S or long range 3 are too expensive.
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Hopefully things will pick up a bit with the standard range Model 3 now being available here (we won't get the $35k version here for a while, the car sold here is the one with the higher trim level).
Don't worry, NO ONE gets the $35K version, not even in the US... And with faltering sales and profits, there is zero incentive to make a money-losing version. I don't think anyone will get a $35K Tesla.
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Actually the $35k version does exist, there just aren't very many of them, and you have to jump through a few extra hoops to get one. The 'Alex On Autos' YouTube car review channel just got theirs last week. [youtube.com] (Note: they paids $36k, because they ordered the blue paint option.)
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Car fires as a concern is just stupidity. WAY fewer Teslas catch fire than regular ICE cars. They're just 100% reported in the news.
Autopilot probably has killed a couple people, but overall they're at least as safe as regular cars. Tesla claims the autopilot is 2x as safe, but I think the times when autopilot is allowed skews those numbers in autopilot's favor. It's probably less, but no worse than 1x. Autopilot is also getting better quite quickly.
Bumpers falling off... well, I'm not sure about that
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The withdrawal of the $35k Model 3 really hurt them. In fact for now they seem to be shipping a more expensive car with software limits to reduce range, presumably at a loss, and you can only order the car in store or on the phone, not via their primary sales channel, i.e. their web site.
So now there are serious doubts about the Model 3 and Tesla's ability to deliver affordable EVs. Meanwhile the competition is undercutting them with some really good cars that are well into the affordable price bracket, wit
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Musk conveniently says that developing and manufacturing his super-chip itself will require raising capital
What is your source on this? According to the information given during Autonomy Day, the chip is already in all new model 3, s and x right now. And manufacturing of the chip doesn't require any Tesla capital expenditure because it's done by the Samsung fab in Texas.
Re: Not to mention Musk's capital-raising smokescr (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Not to mention Musk's capital-raising smokescr (Score:4, Informative)
Mainly because people have been "calling out" Tesla's financial problems for the best part of 10 years, and Tesla is still here. Mainly because for the most part Tesla hasn't had "financial problems" any more than any other company going through a growth spurt.
I mean we've just gone from a $150m quarterly profit to a $700m quarterly loss while only slightly missing the expected revenue figures which have (aside from averaged rush to meet the shipping deadline) remained quite steady. Does that sound like a company that is suddenly going under? Or does that sound like a company that is doing something like ... I don't know... building a factory large enough to double the size of their production.
Guess what, they posted huge losses when they built their first factory too. #suprise #unbelieveable #financeishard
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Enron was in business 18 years
Short sellers (Score:4, Interesting)
I really don't understand the hate against Tesla
Uber and half a dozen other companies are working on developing autonomous fleets and they don't get shit on nearly as hard.
Eventually long haul trucking will be gone, and a more efficient system will exist.
Adapt or fall into obsolescence
About 6 months ago Tesla was the most shorted stock in history. Short interest right now [nasdaq.com] is still very high, with about $9 billion betting on Tesla to fail. When you have that level of money hoping the stock will fail, it only makes sense to try to make that happen. Thus, we see lots of analysts who say that Tesla will fail, because they've bet a lot of money on that outcome.
You can tell that there's no good (or even accurate) information to be had about Tesla just by looking at the price targets: depending on which analysis you want to believe [nasdaq.com], the stock is worth anywhere from $150 to $500.
How can analysts - all with the same information - come up with such a wide variation in estimates? It's insane.
Also of note, several times (like - 20 times in the last year) people have posted negative articles here on Slashdot, only to be debunked by people who dug deeper into the facts. Several times the report was downright scary - enough to make me consider selling my Tesla stock - only to be debunked by the facts.
At this point I've given up on researching Tesla negative stories, it always ends the same way: the facts are true, but the conclusions are based on bad framing intended to get people to panic sell the stock. Right now the overall consensus is "buy" (see previous link), so there's nothing to be afraid of.
Also of note, Tesla (plus solar city) is posed to reduce US carbon footprint by a whopping 37%, but the global warming alarmists never seem to mention that as one possible solution.
You would think people could get behind such an obviously good idea, but the motive for profiteering on the stock is too great.
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Thus, we see lots of analysts who say that Tesla will fail, because they've bet a lot of money on that outcome.
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enough to make me consider selling my Tesla stock - only to be debunked by the facts.
Wait, so they're biased because they bet a lot of money that Tesla will fail, but you're not because you bet a lot of money they'll succeed?
I hold no position on Tesla. Trust me buddy, sell this stinker. Tesla smells of crazy company "just on the verge of success"! (Right before it fails). Cr
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Also of note, Tesla (plus solar city) is posed to reduce US carbon footprint by a whopping 37%, but the global warming alarmists never seem to mention that as one possible solution.
Tesla and Solar City are going to reduce the US's CO2 emissions by 37%? I'm calling BS on this one. To do that they would have to replace every vehicle and put solar panels on every building. That's the magnitude of 37% carbon reduction is.
In 2015 all greenhouse gas emissions by transportation was 27%. That's vehicles, planes, ships, trains, and everything else. The electric power sector was responsible for 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. Of greenhouse gases 82% were carbon dioxide.
Please provide a link fo
Re:Short sellers (Score:5, Insightful)
As for “facts”, the only obvious fact is that you spend more time on tech forums than finance and economics forums.
Also, sell-side analysts that publish reports are not allowed to short Tesla. This is something the SEC is very good at persecuting. As to why the reports are so far apart, it depends on how you perform your valuation. Because Tesla does not actually generate profits, it’s treated exclusively as a growth company and all valuation are more or less based on what the analyst imagines Tesla is going to be rather than what it is presently. There is a lot of room for imagination.
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Tesla is heavily shorted because many experts think that it’s valued too optimistically. Surely you do not believe that it was selected to be bullied and shorted on a random basis or because big oil or something want it gone.
No. It was selected to be bulled for the same reason Bitcoin shot up 18 months ago to unreasonable levels. Even in the finance world #FOMO is a thing. Yes Tesla's stock is overvalued. However it's being shorted at a scale far above any other company this overvalued and one of the reasons was that a couple of key investors shorted and they are now attempting to make good.
The news cycle that comes out on Tesla is insane. A lot of professional analysts are throwing basic economic theory out the door and pointi
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enough to make me consider selling my Tesla stock
Well I hope you did, because otherwise you've suffered a 30% drop in its value so far this year.
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Ok, I listened to the earnings call almost twice over. I didn't hear that (could have missed it). He obviously couldn't have said exactly that, as:
1) The "super chip" (FSD computer) development is done. A second generation is in the works and maybe 2 years out, but the current generation is supposed to be good enough for level 5.
2) The "super chip" FSD computer is actually in production and has been shipping in cars for several weeks now.
3) A institutional stockholder asked if Tesla was going to raise mo
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One of the primary reasons the Russians make so much effort to ensure the democrats lose, is to slow any transition to electric vehicles. Russia relies heavily on oil and gas exports and will stop at nothing to keep the pipeline flowing.
Dream Day for Some People (Score:5, Insightful)
Of the top 5 electric cars for last year three of them were Tesla products.
They can do 5,000 cars a week. New factories in China within 2 years.
They have no end in site for their backlog with no advertising.
Other companies have electric cars but nearly every one of them looks like shit sitting next to any Tesla.
They are building their own battery supply which can outproduce the rest of the world combined.
Their tech investment in self-driving cars is far ahead of anyone else.
Power systems, Solar roofs -- the infrastructure that feeds power cars. Imagine early Ford owning Shell Oil. They are ahead in that too.
None of this points to a company that is failing.
But to the eternal and orgasmic delight of some parties booking a down quarter means Tesla is effectively out of business. Sorry, macho boys. Lots of tech startups book losses and they don't go out of business. You are mistaking the profitable quarters for Tesla as the best they will ever had. In fact it looks more like part of the chasm as in "Crossing the Chasm."
None of you ever seem to be discouraged by being proved wrong over and over again. I don't know what makes you take such delight in that but if that's your thing I guess you should go for it.
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They can do 5,000 cars a week. New factories in China within 2 years.
They're still stuck at producing 5,000 cars a week? Musk said they were producing 7,000 cars a week back in July. [twitter.com]
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They're still stuck at producing 5,000 cars a week? Musk said they were producing 7,000 cars a week back in July. [twitter.com]
And I remember people like you firmly, absolutely, definitively and no equivocation predicting that they would never achieve 2,000 per week. They would be out of cash before then. Remember? Probably not.
Sorry, but Musk's track record on predictions -- even admitting to some over-optimism -- is far better than yours.
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And I remember people like you firmly, absolutely, definitively and no equivocation predicting that they would never achieve 2,000 per week. They would be out of cash before then. Remember? Probably not.
Sorry, but Musk's track record on predictions -- even admitting to some over-optimism -- is far better than yours.
People like me? Show me where I doubted Tesla would make 2,000 per week or where I made any other predictions about Tesla
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Sorry, macho boys.
Interesting - dare I say revealing? - projection. However, the shortsightedness and greed you refer to are ever-so-slightly orthogonal to [whatever the fuck else] you've got on your mind besides TSLA.
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They can do 5,000 cars a week. New factories in China within 2 years.
Wow! Stunning! Five THOUSAND cars a week! Toyota and VW each do about 10 million cars a year [nikkei.com] which - assuming they work 365 days a year - would mean 5000 cars would be a poor output for a quarter of their work day.
The reality is that EVs are still in the 2-3% range of the market, they are an interesting thing, but by no means a mover and shaker. And considering there isn't an EV company out there making profit, it's not even sure it's a viable solution in the market, servicing that 2-3% segment.
Crossin
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Right now, economics and market demand (absent forced/artificial demand created by Government mandate or kickbacks) doesn't really justify EVs as anything more than a curiosity to a very small segment.
That there is some mighty fine whistlin' past the graveyard there, son.
So why has VW, BMW, Ford, and all these mega manufacturers suddenly decide they need to invest tons of money in a EV roadmap? (Nissan gets credit for realizing it early.) I guess they didn't get the memo that EVs are nothing more than a curiosity. I think you need to call them up and let them know.
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There's no dialog with people like you. Tesla is only doing well compare to Tesla. Sure major car manufacturers are jumping on the bandwagon, but they are closely watching everything Tesla does wrong. They have the resources to produce just as good an EV as Tesla and to sell it for less and STILL make a profit.
Tesla's motivations were noble, but the established auto makers have 100 years of experience in bringing a car to market and doing it differently just to be original or 'disruptive' is a why Tesla
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If we project the trends
Extrapolation is a dangerous business. Mr. Musk extrapolated a lot, and look where it got him.
At a growth rate of 150% a year 2-3% of the market grows to 50% in just 9 years and with the total market growing at only a few percent a year the growth in EVs will exceed the growth in the total market in just a few years.
Again, you don't know how to extrapolate. A 150% growth a year from a base of zero is plausible. A 150% growth in a maturing market is much harder. 150% growth in a mat
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A 150% growth in a maturing market is much harder. 150% growth in a mature market is an illusion.
last quarter, Tesla only sold model 3's in one single country, making up, lets be very generous 1/5th of global car sales.
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None of this points to a company that is failing.
On the other hand, losing $700M in one quarter does point to a company in big trouble.
Musk has been selling science fiction to people who really, really want to believe he can make it real.
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I really wish Tesla had directly broken this down, it would have saved some pain.
1) 188 million was debt payments. Ok, so this isn't entirely an excuse, you still have to turn a profit. It's not a recurring thing, once they work off their debts.
2) Because they shifted to producing and delivering cars overseas for a bit (the production line has to reconfigure for that), and it takes a lot longer to get the cars to their destinations... even though they produced a record number of Model 3s (63K), they ended
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Imagine if the "last 10 days" deliveries didn't happen until one day into Q2. Tesla would have reported a loss of 2-3 BILLION. Do 10 days really matter that much if they've got the cash to cover it and it's a temporary delay in deliveries? No. This is all bad reporting and shorts.
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Uh, no... he's right. They're production limited on model 3.
As was said earlier this week... nobody's made a car yet that can compete with the 2012 version of the model S. Now, maybe they're saturating the market on the S/X, maybe they're not. Model 3? Hell no, that's way production bound and will be for a while.
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I don't know what makes you take such delight in that but if that's your thing I guess you should go for it.
You could have just asked: it’s delicious money. 2017 had been a meh year for the markets, but at least shorting Tesla has been worth it.
Re:Dream Day for Some People (Score:4, Informative)
EV sales in the U.S. are not organic. They're driven by California's Air Resources Board (CARB - government agency regulating air quality). CARB implemented a ZEV mandate [ucsusa.org] in 2009. Every year, each automaker is required to sell a certain percentage of ZEVs (zero emissions vehicles). The formula is a bit complex, covering both full ZEVs (EVs and hydrogen vehicles) and partial ZEVs (plug-in hybrids), but for 2018 it required 2.5% of a car company's sales to be full ZEVs. Each year the percentage increases. For 2025 it's 8%.
If a car company fails to sell their quota percentage of ZEVs, it must buy credits from a company which exceeded their quota. This is why Musk started Tesla. He realized that due to the credits, even if he had to sell the EVs at a loss, he could still turn a profit by selling the credits. If a company fails to buy enough credits to meet their quota, they are subjectto fines, and then eventually are banned from selling cars in California. And since about a dozen states automatically adopt CARB's guidelines, that car company would be banned from all those states comprising roughly a third of the U.S. population.
No car company wants to be banned from a third of the U.S. market. So they're all busy developing and marketing EVs. And due to the strict percentage quota, if they're not selling enough EVs to meet the quota, they will run sales and incentives to move those EVs off the lot, even if it means selling them at a loss (basically ICE vehicle sales subsidize the EV sales). So the EV sales figures you're seeing aren't due to organic demand, they're due to deliberate price manipulation to hit an artificial government-mandated quota.
Anyhow, getting back to Tesla now that the background material is out of the way, for 2017 (the latest year in which CARB has data [ca.gov], all the manufacturers hit their ZEV quota targets except Honda and Toyota. Honda just barely missed their quota, and bought credits from Fiat Chrysler. Toyota missed their quota badly and bought credits from Tesla. All the other major car manufacturers hit their quota. So buyers apparently disagree with your opinion that other EVs "look like shit sitting next to any Tesla." They've been buying non-Tesla EVs in sufficient quantity for those automakers to meet the ZEV mandate on their own.
I suspect this is why Tesla is having the problems it's having. They're probably trying to delay Model 3 production until later years, when the ZEV quota percentage is higher and thus the credits will be more valuable. But they also need to fill orders to make money and stay afloat. Which puts them between a rock and a hard place - fill those orders now to stave off bankruptcy, or save them for the future to make more money. Musk was probably gambling that it would take the other car companies longer to bring viable, attractive EVs to market, thus making the Tesla credits more valuable. But the speed with which they've rolled out EVs has cratered the value of the credits and put Tesla in a financial bind. This isn't to say Tesla is doomed. As the quota percentage gets higher, it becomes harder for manufacturers to subsidize ZEV sales with money from ICE sales. That could turn things around for Tesla. Or it might not.
I should also point out that California has reneged on the ZEV mandate before. They first tried to implement it in 2000. That's why there was a flurry of activity developing hybrids in the 1990s, and why GM developed the EV-1 [wikipedia.org]. Most of the Japanese car companies researched exotic (at the time) battery technologies. Most of the American car companies bet on hydrogen fuel cells. GM s
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The way to generate ZEV credits is to sell a bunch of super crappy super cheap cars (despite the extra credit for range). The more expensive the car, the less important any ZEV side of it is. Tesla is doing the opposite of what your theory predicts that they would be doing.
Meeting an arbitrary tiny proportion of EV sales for other companies does nothing to show that Tesla vehicles are not superior, obviously - on your theory of the world, any car that sells a tiny proportion of a company's sales is as good
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... or maybe they're not 17 years old? Seriously, who screws around with car racing?
A Tesla costs considerably less to drive than a gas vehicle (no matter where you are). It's not worrying about electricity costs.
A Tesla X beat a Lamborghini Aventador recently on a drag strip. A f-ing SUV! Come on.
Well, i bought more... (Score:3)
Happy to get a cheap entry price for some more shares, not particularly concerned. When a stock does what Tesla did, a lot of big investors are required to significantly reduce their position for two quarters before re-evaluating.
Tesla has issues, but they are so much better positioned than the rest of the industry for the next 3-5 years. Money where my mouth is...
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Happy to get a cheap entry price for some more shares, not particularly concerned. When a stock does what Tesla did, a lot of big investors are required to significantly reduce their position for two quarters before re-evaluating.
Tesla has issues, but they are so much better positioned than the rest of the industry for the next 3-5 years. Money where my mouth is...
"Don't try to catch a falling knife."
Tesla has issues, but they are so much better positioned than the rest of the industry for the next 3-5 years.
Maybe, just maybe, there's a reason other than inability that no other car manufacturer with billions of dollars at their disposal is jumping headlong into electric just yet.
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Maybe, just maybe, there's a reason other than inability that no other car manufacturer with billions of dollars at their disposal is jumping headlong into electric just yet.
This is the most insightful comment of all. The other manufactures are pouring a lot of money into R&D, but they aren't promising anything they can't deliver. I expect electric cars will be a significant segment of the car market within a few years. And I expect the next car I buy will be all electric - I'm really looking forward to it; but they're not quite there yet.
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This is not a Tesla-specific issue, but rather something that will be difficult to overcome is a number of markets, especially Western Europe, where street parking is what most people not living in a village have to deal with
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I think i have the creds to be considered a pretty savvy investor based on past history. I sold puts with the intention to buy shares at expiration, so I end up with a sufficient margin to be pretty well insulated from everything but bankruptcy. For my investment hypothesis the legacy manufacturers don’t have to “lose” for Tesla to “win.” Ultimately, I think their success is going to be in selling software and drive trains more than cars.
As for other manufacturers, VW’
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Have you seen what Ford bought from Microsoft?
Why the hate? (Score:2)
Too much hate towards Elon Musk and Tesla. The company is selling U.S. cars and exporting them. They have tens of thousands employees. Why does people wants to close a company that proved it can make money, is selling products and has cash flow?
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It's the hype people hate, and what appears to be and may turn out to be some creative accounting. The rest of the industry isn't falling behind, they just don't have to put all of their eggs in a single basket (EV) and can afford to play the long game. Tesla is doing NOTHING that any large manufacturer could not do next month if they wanted to throw the money at it. The purchase side of cars may be a load of crap overdue for change, but the manufacturing side is done the way it is done by some of the la
MAGA? You NEED Tesla & Musk & other like t (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not an American so I'm looking from the outside in.
Those Americans who are trying to run Tesla into the ground, because they don't want change or trying to make money shorting, are doing their country a disservice.
China wants to replace America as the world's top economy and super power.
They have one resource in abundance that no other country has - human resources.
They've gotten smart and realised that they can't achieve their ambition with out educating their people and becoming a leader in technology.
Look at Huawei, if you think that is just one area they want to become #1 in think again.
One of their other targets is the EV market. [wired.co.uk]
The thing that made America great was being the birth place of technological revolutions.
Aircraft, telephone, television, light bulbs, it's a long list. The space race left a legacy of innovators.
The one thing that will ruin American, that ruined "Great" Britain, is conservatism.
The complacency that comes with success and an arrogance of greatness earned by previous generations and squandered by the current one.
I don't like Trump but at least MAGA acknowledges things aren't as good as they once were.
You might not like Musk but he's put America back in the lead in 2 key technologies.
Explain to a non-American, like me, why would you want to see him fail when his failure would also be your country's?
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If the other car manufacturers are all selling good electric cars in 5 years, than Tesla will have won even if it is bankrupt.
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If the other car manufacturers are all selling good electric cars in 5 years, than Tesla will have won even if it is bankrupt.
It's fine to have a non-profit motive if you're a non-profit. It is not fine to have a non-profit motive if you're publicly traded.
Re:Rei on suicide watch (Score:5, Interesting)
Tesla can claim credit for expensive EVs like the Jaguar iPace and Audi Turd, but not the affordable ones. Nissan and Renault demonstrated that they were viable and people would buy them in large quantities, resulting in the eGolf, eUp, Ioniq, Kona, Soul, Niro, i3 etc. Those cars also help build the major charging networks in Europe, which today offer as good or better coverage as Tesla does. Nissan actually financed a lot of those chargers too.
Remember that it's only just this year that Tesla passed Nissan Leaf sales too. Until just now the majority of EVs were Leafs.
Let's say it was a team effort. I think we really have to thank Nissan in particular though, because once people realized that ~100 miles of range was actually perfectly fine for many people it both made affordable EVs viable and demonstrated that even used long range ones with heavily degraded batteries would be valuable vehicles.
GM has been making electric cars for 20 years (Score:2, Insightful)
EV1 was put into production in 1996. [wikipedia.org] Neither the marketplace nor the state of the art was ready for it though. GM and the other major manufactures have been actively working on electric cars ever since. In other words, Tesla changed nothing.
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The structure of your title implies that they made electric cars from 1996 to 2016. They did not .
The actual facts is that GM produced the EV1 20 years ago. You can't buy a 2006 EV1 because they don't exist. Hell you can't even buy a 1996 EV1 today, but you seem to ignore facts while pretending others are the ones doing it.
If you want to defend GM, at least learn the truth [wikipedia.org]:
At the 1990 Los Angeles Auto Show, General Motors President Roger Smith unveiled the GM Im
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If the other car manufacturers are all selling good electric cars in 5 years, than Tesla will have won even if it is bankrupt.
Other companies were working on electric cars before Tesla, and will satisfy a market that exists, so how would Tesla have 'won'?
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If the other car manufacturers are all selling good electric cars in 5 years, than Tesla will have won even if it is bankrupt.
No, if Tesla goes bankrupt, then its stockholders, employees, and CEO lose. The industry and society in general might win, but it's clear that Tesla will lose if it ceases to exist.
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He created Tesla with two goals:
1. Make electric cars cools
2. Force other manufacturers to make electric cars
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Re: Rei on suicide watch (Score:5, Informative)
Since Elon Musk wasn't born in the 1800's [wikipedia.org], he clearly was not the first one to come out with an electric car.
Also, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning created Tesla [wikipedia.org], not Elon Musk.
You mean the same manufacturers [wikipedia.org] who tried to kill electric cars [wikipedia.org]? Please.
On the same page, it says "The Tesla Model 3 was the world's best selling plug-in electric passenger car in 2018.", meaning that a small company like Tesla still beats all the other big companies in the electric cars segment.
You'd think GM, Ford, Chevy, Honda, Toyota or Nissan could sell more electric cars than the expensive Tesla cars, but no.
For example, General Motors went bankrupt in 2008 [wikipedia.org] due in part to its focus on trucks and SUVs instead of fuel efficient and electric cars.
"Manufacturers already were moving in that direction" does not paint the whole picture. They had at least a two decades head-start on Tesla but still can't sell more electric cars than the more expensive Tesla cars.
So good for them for finally making electric cars, but you can be sure they would still not have any electric cars today if it hadn't been for Musk's "funding and take-over" of Tesla.
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You mean the same manufacturers [wikipedia.org] who tried to kill electric cars [wikipedia.org]? Please.
Perhaps they realized it was economic suicide to move to all-electric at that time, and in large part that is still true. No one is making profit on electrics - and lack of profits is what kills companies. If the option is "better ICE vehicles" or "nothing", most people will vote for former.
Re: Rei on suicide watch (Score:4, Insightful)
And eating junk food is good for your wallet because it's cheaper. But in the end, it will kill you.
Electric vehicles may not be (as) profitable as ICE vehicles, but pollution could kill the human race. Stop looking at profits and look at the whole picture.
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Is that a seven hundred million dollar loss on numbers that Wall Street pulled out of their collective asses, or actual loses?
And if those losses are caused by investments into R&D, manufacturing capabilities, etc, if profits from other quarters can cover it then I say fuck Wall Street and their obsession with short-term profits. In the long run, that kind of strategy can kill any company, big or small. Unless you're called GM, in which case a government bailout will save you. Wall Street keeps their pr
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Could you please explain how New Math makes a $700 million LOSS into any sort of profit?
Well, because it's the loss of the company, not the loss of the 'electrics' (i.e. the cars) it makes and sells.
If I make a car for $20k and sell it for $25k I have a $5 operating profit. If I'm paying $4k in overheads, loan repayments and other attributable costs (including depreciation on equipment bought to make the cars) than I'm making $1k net profit.
If I take that $25 and spend $2k of it on buying more equipment so that I can make more cars in the future, I'm now making a loss as a business, even thoug
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or actual loses?
Pretty much all of it is actual losses that necessitate desperate short term cost-cutting and revenue raising measures. Hence the removal from the menu of the "electric volkswagen", the cheap electric car for the masses that was the original raison d'être of Tesla. Hence the sale of vaporware like the "FSD chip", the "robotaxi" bullshit, the "tesla insurance" and so on. Solar City all over again.
And if those losses are caused by investments into R&D,
They are not, Tesla reports slash
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yeah, vaporware ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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You didn't fix anything, you re-wrote the quote to make it something else entirely.
If they produced what their customers were demanding then why the fuck did they go bankrupt?
Here's the extrapolated sentence, since you can't seem to connect two dots: ."
"For example, General Motors went bankrupt in 2008 due in part to its focus on trucks and SUVs instead of fuel efficient and electric cars, which is what their customers demanded
FTFY.
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Nobody was demanding electric cars either. The economy was in a major recession after the banking/housing that started in the 1990's finally burst.
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People are extremely skilled at selective reading today... Is it a full moon or something?
It wasn't just a lack of electric cars, it was also a lack of fuel efficient cars. (That's what the "and" part means in "fuel efficient and electric cars")
People wanted fuel efficient cars since the economy was in a major recession, but just like in the 1970's, American companies didn't off
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Correction, that's something he pulled out of my ass, which I in turned pulled out of Musk's own quotes.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019... [cleantechnica.com]
Re: Rei on suicide watch (Score:2)
Well, maybe they should have done more due diligence then.
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Indeed. Milutin Tesla and uka Mandi created Tesla.
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Duka Tesla (D with a line in it... Slashdot ate the unicode character)
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https://cleantechnica.com/2019... [cleantechnica.com]
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I think it's similar to Apple and their push of FireWire back in the USB 2.0 days.
The market wasn't moving fast enough for the requirements of their users, so they pushed something that was better but not as widespread.
Then USB 3 came along, almost as good as FireWire and backwards compatible with USB 2.0, and made FireWire mostly irrelevant for most users.
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FireWire would have had a chance if there wasn't high licensing fees and everyone used the same damn name. When you start calling a standard by different names: IEEE 1394, FireWire (Apple), i.LINK (Sony), and Lynx (Texas Instruments), it sure as hell doesn't help it become an actual standard in real-world usage.
Re: Rei on suicide watch (Score:2)
FireWire died a long time beforehand USB 3 around.
FireWire was killed by USB2.
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Did anyone factor in the bankruptcy of GM in 2008 and its subsequent bailout?
You know, the one your taxes paid for?
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So it's not ok for GM to fail because it's government money (i.e. the money of US citizens), but it's ok for Tesla to fail because it's Wall Street money? (i.e. the money of shareholders, i.e. people who have enough money to live and spare money to spend on risky ventures).
No wonder the USA's economy is fucked up.
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Yes, because the shareholders willingly risk their money. The taxpayers, on the other hand, don't have a choice.
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And so did Tesla. In advance.
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Tesla repaid their loans. Nobody pays back subsidies.
Show me when Ford paid back all the subsidies they got for the last century.
Also, don't confuse loans, subsidies and bailouts.
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Please don't say that. Things are going fairly smoothly at Space X. Keep his interfering incompetence at Tesla so the damage is contained at one place. The more involved he gets somewhere the worse things get. Maybe someone at Tesla can find him a "super important" project to occupy all of his time so everybody can get their work done in peace.
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Here you go: Tesla electric bicycle.
Super fun project that a lot more people will be able to appreciate, unless it ends up as a 5K$ e-bike.
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Stock trading is a crime in my and everyone else's book
No, just yours, and only because you don't understand it.
Ownership in a company has value, from the net assets of the company, from the voting rights to guide the company's direction and from payments by the company to its owners (known as dividends).
Stock trading is merely the exchange of ownership in a company for money.
That's all it is. Exchange of of something of value for actual cash.
buy or sell a piece of debt that company has to somebody else
No, that's the bond market. Different thing. Shares aren't a form of debt, they're ownership.
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No. The stock market thinks that Tesla as a company has a certain value.
That the value isn't zero demonstrates very succinctly that the stock market believes that Tesla will continue to build and sell electric motor vehicles.
So I think it's not the stock market that's retarded.
Tesla's external headwinds (Score:2)
No, the stockmarket knows that virtually every significant car company worldwide has a BEV program, and every car company and his dog is working on some form of AV technology. One thing car companies are good at that Tesla isn't is build quality. They'll introduce BEVs when they are profitable (2021-2023 is my guess) , and AVs if they ever get good enough (my bet is decades away for L5).
So at some point TSLA will stop being valued as a tech play, and just join the vast mass of car companies, which are value