Tesla Tops GM by Market Value as Investors See Musk as Future (bloomberg.com) 289
Tesla became the largest U.S. auto maker by market value on Monday, overtaking General Motors -- a feat that would have seemed highly improbable 13 years ago when the electric-car maker first began tinkering with the idea of making a sports car. From a report: Tesla climbed as much as 3.4 percent in early Monday trading, boosting its market capitalization to about $51 billion. The company was valued at about $1.7 billion more than GM as of 9:35 a.m. in New York. The turnabout shows the extent to which investors have bought into Musk's vision that electric vehicles will eventually rule the road. While GM has beat Tesla to market with a plug-in Chevrolet Bolt with a price and range similar to what Musk has promised for his Model 3 sedan coming later this year, the more than century-old company has failed to match the enthusiasm drummed up by its much smaller and rarely profitable U.S. peer. No matter, say investors who like the stock. Tesla is a technology player with the ability to dominate a market for electric cars and energy storage. To those same investors, GM and Ford are headed for a slowdown in car sales that will erode profits. "Is it fair? No, it isn't fair," Maryann Keller, an auto-industry consultant in Stamford, Connecticut, said of GM ceding the market-cap crown. "Even if Tesla turns a profit, they will eventually have to make enough to justify this valuation."
Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:3, Insightful)
Large American car companies have been a cluster fuck since the 70s. GM could have dominated this market starting with the EV1 years ago. Idiots.
Re: (Score:3)
http://www.whokilledtheelectri... [whokilledt...riccar.com]
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:5, Insightful)
Different people have different reasons for hating on Electric Vehicles. The Petrocar dealerships are threatened because a large part of their revenue stream is based on post-sales service. And the electric car is a hellava lot less prone to the little issues that hit petrocars.
Many Politicians hate Electric Vehicles because tax revenue from petro sales goes down, and those taxes are easier to hide while railing against other taxes. A lot of people have severe inertia issues. "If leaded gas was good enough for Grandpa, it's good enough for me." Anything new is anathema.
And some people are just plain nuts. How are we gonna go "coal rolling in an EV? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Where these insane idiots like to do this when they see an Electric vehicle or hybrid.
It is just going to take time for the normal people, and the actuarial tables for the lunatic fringe to die off - probably via black lung or COPD for the coal rollers - and EVs will take over just like Petrovehicles took over from the horse and buggy.
Re: (Score:2)
And some people are just plain nuts. How are we gonna go "coal rolling in an EV?
I always thought the diesel Dodge trucks that did that were poorly maintained / poorly manufactured. It would never occur to me that people were dumb enough to do it on purpose. Thanks for making today depressing.
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm on a techie mailing list which includes someone who has a deeper knowledge of the EV1 issues than appears in a tendentious "documentary".
GM was betting on rapid improvement of batteries. By the time they'd have to replace the batteries in a couple of years, they'd have better/cheaper/more powerful batteries. By only leasing the EV1, not selling them, they guaranteed that the batteries would actually get replaced, and not have to rely on everyone paying attention to recall notices, because everyone do
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nissan are in danger of missing the boat too. The Leaf is a great car and they have done a lot to get people driving EVs, especially in Europe. The problem is that circumstances have kind of screwed them - Tesla's Model 3 is looking unbeatable right now, so far ahead of anything anyone else can offer it's stunning. That big screen, full self driving if not from day one fairly early in its life, and best of all software updates in an age when most manufacturers can't keep the sat nav up to date.
On top of that they build the Leaf in the UK, and the UK plant's future is uncertain due to Brexit. It seems like they held back with the new model because of these things, hoping to release it with their ProPilot tech which isn't even as good as Telsa's auto-pilot was at release (doesn't work at low/high speeds, can't even change lanes by itself etc.)
Really sad because they could be a big player. They just need to get the next Leaf right but don't appear to have the tech to keep up with Tesla, and when the Model 3 comes along the ~40kWh car with old tech is not going to cut it at the 30k price point.
Re: (Score:2)
GM and Nissan both struggle to market their electric vehicles. They are building them, sales are sluggish (the Volt is doing okay) and most people know little about them. Dealers aren't prepared to educate consumers.
I think this is a case where they simply don't know what else to do. Musk has won over the mind share by building beautiful cars everyone wants. Nissan built a car that looks like a frog.
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:4, Informative)
Yet Nissan sells more electric cars than Tesla and has been doing so for a while.
Re: (Score:2)
Does Nissan or GM sell more electric cars compared to their respective total production and market share?
The Tesla will be hard to get for a long time to come because they haven't yet ramped up production to a Nissan-level. The problem is that no dealer wants to sell the electrics because they lose everything. They're already making minimal margins on the sale of a car, they may get a cut from the bank but they get more income reselling second hand or end-of-leases and the service work.
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet Nissan sells more electric cars than Tesla and has been doing so for a while.
No they don't. They sell more cars with an electric drive train somewhere in the chassis. The Leaf which is Nissans only all electric car with any kind of sales figures is the best selling EV in the world behind the Tesla Model S.
Which is saying something given the insane price and performance differences.
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Except Tesla's sales are not that higher than GMs when sticking to elecric vehicles. For GM a lifetime sales of 150k is dismal and hard to justify existance, for Tesla, 150k lifetime sales is roughly their whole sales. Somehow Tesla is viewed as wildly succeeding, despite not moving any more units than the 'pathetic' GM....
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:5, Informative)
GM is viewed as pathetic because they had their own electric vehicle two decades ago [wikipedia.org] and decided to crush them all [whokilledt...riccar.com] despite people wanting to keep them. They had their chance to start the revolution but it got killed from within the company.
The fact that they're making electric vehicles again just seems pathetic and hypocritical.
However, I do wish them luck because electric vehicles or even hybrids are still a better option for most people.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
In the luxury market, Model S and X are selling okay. Tesla has managed to deliver enough to rival brands like Cadillac.
Whether their success can translate to the mass market is the $50b question.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure you realize this, but Cadillac's main market is North America where they sell ~150k a year.
Re: (Score:2)
Its more than that. The Tesla is basically at production limits. Demand is outstripping supply. THAT creates the elusive self fulfilling hype machine with "I have a Tesla on order, but it won't be here for 3 months". You can't beat that kind of viral advertising.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, that's the other thing, Tesla hasn't shown they can keep up with their current 50k/year volumes that well, and it is a massive undertaking to get to support volumes that would compete with the traditional car companies. Very capital intensive and very ongoing expensive undertaking, and their cars aren't *that* different than what their competitors have on offer already.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Beautiful? The Tesla X looks like a Pontiac Aztek.
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Musk has sold investors on a vision. He now has to deliver profits. That's the problem for Tesla.
Spot on, these pie in the sky financial valuations are just that. A ponzi scheme with no substance behind where only the company's ceo and the banks make out like bandits while fucking the rest of the investors. Tesla is a physical company and they sell physical goods (cars) but there is no way in hell the company is worth 50 billion dollars even accounting for potential growth. That's wishful thinking and a dangerous game to play.
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dealers don't want to sell electric cars. EV's do not have the constant revenue stream that Traditionl vehicles have.
That's only partly true. EVs all need tires, suspension, brakes (rarely). Plus there is steady collision work, though much of that is done by independent shops.
Dealers will solve the revenue problem once they figure out they are marketing a lifestyle, not just a car. Bring on the accessories.
The real problem for the dealers, and the major automakers, is that they have no idea how to break into new markets. They survive through repeat business and stealing each other's customers. They have faced a saturated market for decades.
Still, if enough customers show up in dealers asking for EVs, they will sell them. They will have no choice. This isn't happening today in anything but tiny numbers. I'd love to hear a single story of a dealer who converted a traditional car buyer to electric--I simply don't believe it happens.
(When I bought my Volt I laid a trap for my Chevy dealer. I didn't tell them what car I wanted, instead I described all the features of the Volt without mentioning the electric drivetrain. They never suggested it. Only when I asked "what about the Volt" did the salesman start talking about it.)
Re: (Score:2)
I really hope you are right. It's not just dealers that need to get with the times though. I was looking at houses recently and very few new builds offer charging facilities, or even the ability to install a charger. They often have a public footpath between the house and the allocated parking space, so you can't trail a cable over it.
I've found dealers to be very mixed when it comes to EVs. Some have almost no interest in them, don't really want to sell you one because they think you might return it or tel
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Model 3 will have to be judged when it releases. Whether Tesla can really fare better than the traditional automakers when faced with having to support sales of 3 million or cars or more annually is *very* far away. It's much easier to do a lot of these things when you sell on the order of 50k vehicles a year compared to 3 million a year that the likes of GM and Nissan have to deal with.
Re: (Score:2)
Tesla's advantage is that they are the iPhone of cars. People are willing to put up with beta quality features like auto-pilot until it gets good with a software update. It's not like any other car where if the sat nav is useless you need to return it because there is 0% chance of it ever getting better.
It will be hard for Tesla, but they have a lot of good will on their side and have deliberately made it as different to a traditional car as possible, e.g. with the lack of an instrument cluster and a single
The Leaf is not a great car (Score:3)
The Leaf is a great car and they have done a lot to get people driving EVs, especially in Europe.
The Leaf is not a great car. It's a good enough car that proves there is demand for EVs but objectively it is a car with some very serious deficiencies. The worst deficiencies are that it's ugly and the range of the vehicle stinks. And before anyone repeats the meme about how far people drive in a day, it doesn't matter. If the car can't go at least 200-300 miles on a change then it is a crap car as far as the mass market is concerned in the current market. My brother-in-law has one and it's fine for a
Re:The Leaf is not a great car (Score:4, Informative)
I've owned two Leafs. They are great cars, and you don't realize how great until you live with one. For example, the interior and instrument cluster layout is brilliant, and every other EV I've tried doesn't come close. Some look better, with fancy graphics and the like, but in terms of usability the Leaf is king.
The range is absolutely fine for most people most of the time. And most people have access to more than one car - via a partner or family member. Nissan will loan be an ICE for a couple of weeks if I need it anyway, but I never have. Even long trips have been no problem.
The M3 will be fully self driving in time, just like the Model S and X. Unless Tesla screw up spectacularly, any model bought with auto-pilot hardware will get a software update to enable fully autonomous driving.
The Leaf is a niche vehicle (Score:3)
I've owned two Leafs. They are great cars, and you don't realize how great until you live with one.
I've driven one a fair bit and my brother-in-law owns one so I've spent enough time behind the wheel to get a good opinion. It's fine but all the stuff you are talking about as good features (which I don't dispute) are second order considerations. It has crap range and therefore it's mass market appeal is going to be limited. I'd buy a Chevy Bolt over a Leaf without question for the range alone. It also is a rather ugly vehicle from the outside. Most people don't care how nice the interior is if it do
Re: (Score:2)
The Leaf is dead. The Hyundai Ioniq is going to put a fork in it. It has the same crappy kind of range, but better driving dynamics and a lower price tag. The Model 3 is the least of Nissan's worries.
Re: (Score:2)
I test drove the Ioniq. It's crap. Really. The "sport" mode is like the Leaf's "Eco" mode. It's uncomfortable, low, lots of gadgets but the instrument cluster is poorly designed. It's particularly bad in an EV because you don't have engine noise for feedback on speed and acceleration, so you need the speedo to be big and clear like it is in the Leaf.
Plus the Ioniq is more expensive than the Leaf (not much on paper, but in terms of actual discounts available from dealers it's huge), and it has the wrong char
Re: (Score:3)
I wish Nissan would just skip the whole "let's make the car an Internet-connected, entertainment center, self-driving A.I." parts and just make a low-cost electric car with a decent range.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem for Nissan is that the low cost EV market is saturated with used Leafs. Especially in Europe a lot of people bought them on relatively short term deals, e.g. 2-3 years and then hand the car back.
Especially as a second car in a 2+ car household, a used Leaf is an almost unbeatable buy. Very low maintenance, all the nonsense about batteries lasting 4 years turned out to be utter bollocks (Taxi firms hitting 200k have >90% capacity remaining on 5+ year old cars), and they don't really degrade in
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The Leaf does fine in winter. Only the drivers who don't know how to precondition their cars are cold and have foggy windows. Once preconditioned, it doesn't have enough battery range to get cold again. 50 miles and you're done until recharged.
The Leaf has two real problems: Not enough range and lack of battery thermal management. The cars in northern, colder states have held up fine. In the south, their batteries become unusable after a few years. Those are pretty big flaws.
Re: (Score:2)
The Leaf does a bit better in winter than a comparable gasser. The battery has a bit of nice heft down low. My wife's leaf with snow tires did great in 3 MI winters.
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:5, Informative)
134,500 Volts sold,
1,741 Bolts sold
2,958 ELR sold
Spark EV I could only find three year old numbers, at the time it was 2,958 sold.
25,000 model x sold
158,159 Model S sold
Tesla's *total* car sales do marginally outpace GMs electrified cars, but not overwhelmingly so. Also, GM sells a *lot* more cars than the electric vehicles. Note that in a year in the US alone, GM sells over 3 million cars, an order of magnitude more sales than Tesla has had in it's entire existence.
The valuation on Tesla is insane, just like all the 'unicorn' ones, investors obsessed with new and novel behaving irrationally. One could charitably say it's because of hyperloop and such, but I think that's pushing credibility far.
Re: (Score:2)
The Volt and ELR are plug-in hybrids, not EVs: the gasoline engine is still mechanically linked to the drive train. Tesla's valuation is nuts because their revenue is far smaller than GM, not because GM sells almost as many hybrids as Tesla does EVs.
Still, the valuation reflects the market's expectations for future revenue, not current revenue. Tesla is seen as having more potential for revenue growth than GM.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, the Leaf has outsold them all. There are nearly twice as many Leaf vehicles sold as Tesla.
I don't buy for a second that Tesla has *that* much potential upside.
Re: (Score:2)
It's kind of an uneven comparison, because the pricepoint of the Leaf and the Model S are so different. It's not unusual for a $35,000 car to outsell a $75,000 car regardless of if they're EVs or not. As you lower the pricepoint, exponentially more people are willing and able to pay that much for the vehicle. A more direct comparison would be to come back in a few years and compare the model 3 to the Leaf, since they're much closer in price. I suspect that Nissan will be shipping the Leaf with a much larger
Re: (Score:2)
It's really faith in Musk as a visionary, not numbers, that drives this.
If Musk got hit by a bus the market value of the company would evaporate.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The vision is the substance.
Re: (Score:3)
You held on to your Stanley Steamer stock, didn't you?
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:4, Insightful)
The valuation on Tesla is insane, just like all the 'unicorn' ones, investors obsessed with new and novel behaving irrationally.
Exactly.
Tesla's P/E ratio is... non-existent.
GM's P/E ratio is 5.7 and their dividend yield is 4.46%. GM's If investors had *any* sense, GM's P/E ratio would be 16, which would make it's market cap $141.6B, and Tesla's market cap would be around $10B.
Honestly, obsessing about market cap is *stupid*.
Re: (Score:2)
The thing that gets me is that already Tesla lags behind Nissan in electric cars sold cumulative *and* ongoing. It's volumes are in line with competing with Maserati, and somehow people don't give FCAU a huge bump because people like Maseratis.
If you want to say it's not about the cars, ok, maybe. I doubt the hyperloop will be a big win, but *maybe* they can be a trusted brand in solar power, which doesn't have household brand names of great strength yet. But at least in the cars (which is what most ever
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
The EV1 might have been well loved, but it had many of the same shortcomings of other electric cars of the day which caused electric cars to fail to get any mainstream adoption: poor battery technology (lead acid in the first set of EV1s) and ugly vehicles. It's not a coincidence that the first electric vehicles to find widespread success looked like normal cars and not wierd pod-cars like the EV1.
If GM hadn't killed the EV1, it would have continued on as a niche product.
Stop it with the EV1 (Score:4, Informative)
Large American car companies have been a cluster fuck since the 70s.
And yet people continue to buy their vehicles by the millions. I work in the industry and have for a lot of years. Fact is that the big US car companies are pretty well managed - they are at worst comparable to most of their competition. The problems they've had have mostly been legacy problems from back in the 80s and earlier when they didn't have as much competition. Primarily high labor and pension costs that they simply could not shed and that their competition was not subject to. US cars today are largely of good quality (with some exceptions) and all the US auto makers have managed to get their costs more competitive. FCA is still something of a mess but Ford and GM are pretty well managed and very profitable at the moment.
GM could have dominated this market starting with the EV1 years ago.
GM could have possible dominated the EV market but not with the EV1 and probably not its hypothetical successor either. They would have had to have a much longer investment horizon on EVs than was probably reasonable to expect. The EV1 was a nice enough little car if it happened to fit your needs but it was wildly impractical for most people (it was a two seater with very limited range) and hugely expensive to build. There was no way GM could have sold them profitably without huge government subsidies and it was never going to be a car with mass appeal. The battery pack in it only gave a range of 100 miles and the batteries on the last models were NiMh batteries with a capacity of 26.4kWh (a Tesla Model S has capacity 3-4X that amount). The EV1 routinely earns spots on worst car lists [time.com] because it was a vehicle that relied on technology that just wasn't ready yet. EVs are only becoming practical now because of progress in battery technology.
Re:Hey GM, how about that EV1? (Score:5, Informative)
GM built the EV1 (using a lead-acid battery). Ford and Chrysler bet on hydrogen fuel cells, which didn't pan out (still haven't). The Japanese automakers tinkered with EVs, but decided the technology was unfeasible at the time and focused instead on hybrids.
1999 came around and GM was the only company with a car which would meet CARB's emissions-free requirement the next year. GM had invested over a billion dollars developing the EV1, but they stood to make many times that in licensing fees from 2000 and on. Everything was looking rosy for them.
Then the whole thing collapsed. The other automakers convinced CARB that the zero-emissions requirement was technologically unfeasible with year 2000 technology. And that the best they could do at the time were hybrids, which used a battery to improve efficiency, but still got all their energy from the ICE. CARB agreed and rescinded the zero-emissions requirement, instead using a less-stringent low emissions vehicle and ultra-low emissions vehicle requirement (LEV and ULEV).
Basically, CARB pulled the rug out from under GM. They'd coerced GM into investing over a billion dollars in the technology, then on the eve of GM hitting paydirt, CARB changed the rules making it impossible for them to recoup their investment. This is why companies hate government regulations - because unlike real-world physics which remains constant, regulations change based on politicians' whims. You spend a billion dollars trying to comply with an upcoming regulation, then they suddenly change the regulation making all the money you spent irrelevant. CARB even had the unmitigated gall to ask GM to continue selling the EV1 after pulling this double-cross.
Do you understand now why GM recalled all the EV1s and had them destroyed? CARB was trying to get the benefits of the technology developed for the EV1, while denying GM the promised financial payout for developing the technology in the first place. GM wasn't playing that game. If they were going to take a billion dollar bath on the project, there was no way in hell they were going to let CARB derive any benefit from the whole shenanigan.
Tesla is no different. The only reason they made a profit for two quarters, and aren't even further in the red in the other quarters is because they're able to sell carbon credits to automakers who don't meet CARB's zero-emissions requirements. In other words, Tesla's "success" is an artificial regulatory construct. The only difference between Tesla and GM is that CARB stuck with the ZEV requirement this time. If they'd abandoned it at the last minute like they did with GM, you can bet the Musk would've given CARB the middle finger as well and abandoned Tesla.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
FTA: "Even if Tesla turns a profit, they will eventually have to make enough to justify this valuation."
GM posts $9.43B in net profits for 2016 http://www.detroitnews.com/sto... [detroitnews.com]
Tesla NET Income for 2016, $674.9M https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
Yeah GM is real worried....
TSLA is a sentiment stock (Score:5, Insightful)
If you made money on it, good for you. The company is grossly overvalued. Get out while you can.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The company is grossly overvalued.
Compared to a competition which only survived due to a loan from the government?
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah because tesla's only competition in the car market is from US Companies.
Re: (Score:2)
It is. I have a friend who works in electric vehicles in Germany. All the big players are moving on this now. Nobody argues about it being the future anymore, the discussion has moved on to how they smooth the transition into electric vehicles while best protecting their existing investments.
To a large extent, Elon has been responsible for bringing about this change in attitude so quickly. But look at your average car buyer. They don't care how many cylinders or fancy engine tech the thing has. Fiat put a h
The emperor's new clothes (Score:2, Insightful)
It's shocking how much faith investors seem to have in what is essentially a Ponzi scheme with stockholder money despite how obvious it is. There is no way Tesla is ever going to make a profit in many years to come, even if it manages to pour more money into it several more times. The hallowed Model 3 will get trampled in the mass market. Several major companies that actually know how to build cars will have competing electric cars right around the time the Model 3 will be available in significant numbers,
Re: (Score:2)
Do you believe then that a majority of Model 3 deposits will not convert to sales? If just half of the deposits become sales, the Model 3 will be the top selling EV of all time. Leaf sales are sluggish and the Bolt EV is expensive and slow to roll out. Anyone else is a small player in the market or doesn't have a vehicle in production yet. The best competition so far seems to be the Volt, which is a plug-in hybrid rather than a true EV.
Tesla is going to sell as many as it can build, certainly this year
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Half of deposits becoming sales would be extremely optimistic, but even then, it will be years before Tesla has actually made them and by that time, there will be enormous competition from companies that have huge resources, lots of experience building cars and lots of capacity, and who can support their electric efforts with the profits from internal combustion engined cars, while Tesla will have its hands full just keeping things afloat while selling Model 3s at a loss for at least a few years.
Re: (Score:2)
No question they have their hands full, and an uphill battle for years to come. But I'm not going to count them out yet. Tesla has emerged from adversity over and over. They are focused and driven, and this attitude mirrors their leader, Musk.
With the projected volume that Musk has committed to, 10,000 cars a week by the end of 2018, they may catch up to demand in a couple years. Of course they also have a history of slipped schedules, so there is still much to prove. The car doesn't need to be profita
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with you, though I do like the traditional car companies seeing:
1) Enough to make them worry and be competitive.
2) The amount of investor money up for grabs by being visibly innovative.
Re: (Score:2)
[...]There is no way Tesla is ever going to make a profit in many years to come[...]
Well if AC can speculate, so can I !
One way to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles would be to make legislation to phase out ICE cars. Mainstream manufacturers would not like it but one way to deal with the chicken and egg problems of electric car adoption would be to set out a modular design for passenger cars and mandate that from... say 2025, all new models need to be ready for retrofitting an electric drivetrain as per the standard. Non-compliant manufacturers will have to take their focus away
Re: (Score:2)
What you've just written pretty much defines the investing market since the dot.com era, aside from one (painful) deep breath of rationality in 2007.
Financially, the world is literally sitting atop a soap-bubble, with governments desperately scrambling to maintain the illusion for the wallowing masses.
Yeah this is overvalued, so what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah the Stock is severely overpriced and, as much as I like Tesla, there's no way it's value can compare to GM and Ford at the moment. We all know that, and we all know this balloon will eventually deflate. So what?
Unless someone put a gun in your head and force you to buy Tesla stock and kept them no matter what happens, this is good news for everyone. It's a proof of confidence to an emerging car maker in North America (who would have thought this would be possible in the 2000s?). Also, it send a serious message to the GM/Ford and it make them better (Ford is back on track and it's Ford Fusion is, in my opinion, the best mid-size sedan in the market, and for GM is launching the best competitor to Tesla Model 3 with the Chevy Bolt).
This is better for the car industry and it's better for the environment.
Re: (Score:2)
GM posts $9.43B in net profits for 2016
Tesla posts $675M in net profits for 2016
Tesla has a LONG way to go.
Meanwhile, gas hovers near $2 per gallon. (Score:2)
Electric vehicles are fighting for market share at a time near historically low gasoline prices. There are several reasons for that--a price war between OPEC and domestic producers, fossil fuel industry protecting itself from growth of EVs, and decreased fuel demand due to more EVs and fuel efficient cars.
But the net effect is that few consumers can see the real value of an electric vehicle, and that's not about to change. With Tesla, consumers are seeing something else besides driving on pure electricity
Re: (Score:2)
Tesla sells around 50k vehicles a year.
Nissan moves around 5.5 million units a year.
GM moves around 10 million vehicles a year.
Toyato around 17 million a year
Tesla is more like Maserati than a general car company (similar regard, similar volumes of sales, similar pricing). Maserati is only a small slice of FCAU, and FCAU market cap is less than half of GM.
Re: (Score:2)
Electric vehicles are fighting for market share at a time near historically low gasoline prices.
EV market share just jumped over 20%. It's still under 3% but clearly fuel prices are not the only major driver of EV sales.
Re: (Score:2)
Remember AOL (Score:4, Insightful)
Backlog/Demand is the reason for the valuation (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm trying to find the current backlog for Tesla cars and it seems to be somewhere north of 400k vehicles with close to a billion in deposits for the orders. Nobody else has that kind of traction (if you'll excuse the pun) for current, announced or planned vehicles - in comparison, in 2016 Mercedes sold 374k vehicles in the US.
Yes, the investors are taking a risk on Tesla, but isn't that part of the job description?
Along with this, there seems to be a significant demand for electric vehicles. I don't expect them to overtake fossil fueled vehicles any time soon, but at least 10% of buyers are seriously interested in EVs and Tesla is the number one name there with generally great reviews for products compared to the competition (ie the Leaf makes you feel like you're settling for less and the Volt/Bolt just don't have the cachet), the company is serious about renewables/reducing customers' carbon footprint and a rock star CEO.
You can say it's a fad stock, but there are some solid fundamentals there in terms of backlog and customer demand which justify a high stock price.
Maybe if the Model 3 turns out to be a lemon, things will change with regards to the stock, but as I said, part of the job description for an investor is to take risks and people seem to think that there will be a reward at the end of the day.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd argue that the fact that Tesla isn't a car company is also part of the valuation.
Everyone commenting on this article seems to have a vision of Tesla as it was several years ago (as a company that put electric drivetrains into Lotus cars). But Tesla hasn't been that in years - Tesla is a vertically integrated energy and transportation company. Electric vehicles are just the sexy front end - the Gigafactory, utility scale storage, SolarCity, and an actual live, working, iterating self-driving system are t
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe if the Model 3 turns out to be a lemon, things will change with regards to the stock, but as I said, part of the job description for an investor is to take risks and people seem to think that there will be a reward at the end of the day.
I doubt the Model 3 will be a flop, it wont do as well as expected due to competition, but it wont flop either.
The problem is, the technology isn't quite there... and the infrastructure is nowhere near there. there are only 680 locations with fast chargers in the UK, even then you're looking at an hour per charge from less than empty. Take note, only 188 of the 1004 chargers (across 680 locations) are Tesla's supercharger stations, most of them are slower chargers that take over twice as long.
So an EV is fi
Tesla is cool. GM not dead. (Score:2)
Tesla is undoubtedly cool. Their cars seem to be holding up well, despite some hiccups and a weird amount of hate from the 'MURICA folks -- especially given that Tesla is
1) on track to be the most "domestic" of domestic automakers -- 90% when the gigafactory is fully working.
2) creating jobs in America
3) creating EVs that are sporty, fun to drive, etc.
I do see them as the future -- but they are a growing niche player. As an American I'm happy they are here and I'm happy to see what they are doing. It's good
Not completely insane (Score:2)
The price isn't completely insane. If you figure that GM sells 10 million cars a year, but has very narrow profit margins. Tesla is looking for a production rate of 0.5 million cars by the end of next year and 1 million cars a few years after that. But Tesla has a much higher margin on its cars than GM. So if you look at the projected profits of Tesla selling 1m cars vs. GM selling 10m cars, Tesla comes out on top.
Of course, when Tesla is selling 1m cars per year, they'll likely still be expanding, so t
Overvalued if just a car company (Score:2)
If you think Tesla is a car company - then it's overvalued.
If you think Tesla is a battery company that happens to sell cars - then the valuation is closer to correct.
The real key to their offering is batter management. Taking tons of little batteries as commodities and making them appear as one big battery. Then resizing that big battery for accomplishing things which at the time was expensive. Such as powering a car or a house.
Re: (Score:2)
The real key to their offering is batter management. Taking tons of little batteries as commodities and making them appear as one big battery.
Uh no. Even the Honda Insight did that from the beginning.
Re:Madoff is small time compared to Musk (Score:5, Insightful)
Tesla has cars on the road, it's not vaporware company. His other companies are also progressing with their goals too.
If you want to talk about something that took a lot of people's life savings and that was completely legal, let's talk about the fucking banks. Not only did they ruin people's lives but they also got more money for bailouts. Banks, the very place that's supposed to be about managing money, fucked everyone and got more money on top of that. I wonder why the people at the top didn't get the firing squad.
Re:Madoff is small time compared to Musk (Score:5, Insightful)
because they are in control of the single american party.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, and if I had the money for a Tesla X P90D I would buy this car instead: http://www.porsche.com/interna... [porsche.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Tesla has cars on the road, it's not vaporware company.
There is a continuum from "long established manufacturing company with a proven history of sales and profits" to "perpetual motion type scam". Just because Tesla is not the latter does not make its valuation realistic.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, they have real product and companies are acheiving goals, so it's not empty.
However, it's not 'worth more than General Motors' degree of success either. Also no signs that will change any time soon, *maybe* in a decade. It's certainly premature for the valuation to be where it is already, whatever your optimism is for the companies chances.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
On top of it having cars on the road, it's building out a nationwide network of superchargers, so it is putting in place the infrastructure that will be needed to transition to an electric car future. Unlike GM's attempts [wikipedia.org] people believe in Tesla's, which is why their valuation is so high. They are doing it for real, not as a "look it can't work!" exercise like GM.
Tesla's prospects (Score:3)
Tesla has cars on the road, it's not vaporware company. His other companies are also progressing with their goals too.
Tesla hasn't made a sustained profit yet and it's still not clear if it is going to ultimately succeed as an ongoing enterprise. The fact that they've sold some product is nice but not sufficient. TSLA as a stock is wildly over valued given the likely prospects of the company in the next 10 years.
If you want to talk about something that took a lot of people's life savings and that was completely legal, let's talk about the fucking banks. Not only did they ruin people's lives but they also got more money for bailouts.
What the banks did is utterly irrelevant as to whether Tesla is a good investment or not. Your argument is nonsense. They have absolutely nothing to do with one another nor are they comparable.
Re: (Score:2)
He wasn't comparing them to each other, he was comparing both to a Madoff scheme (going back to the OP). I understood his point, you apparently missed it entirely.
It was a flawed topic to begin with. Madoff's "enterprise" was entirely financial, Tesla is a technology and manufacturing company. Madoff's collapse was only a matter of time, Tesla's future remains to be seen.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are more than enough rare-earth minable sands in the U.S. It's just, no-one (kept) invest(s/ing) in it, so China is cheaper. If you guys really are going to need those rare-earths, you'll build mines on your own soil... now I think about it, what IS holding you back??? Didn't you need more jobs?
In Europe, things are be a bit different... too small and too overpopulated in most places and the wrong regimes in the few areas (way east) where it might be possible.
world map of rare earth element deposits [usgs.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Same can be said about Apple or Facebook too, right?
I think the big "when" everyone hopes for is "when" it's not their problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
First, thank you for (correctly) calling out Musk as the lying, manipulative douche bag that he is. If you give his cars a bad review, he goes ape shit which results in automotive journalists being very careful what they say. As such I will never never trust a review of a Tesla.
Moving on, cars GM makes that I want/could settle for:
Cars Tesla makes that I want/could settle for:
If you travel at all (I do all of the time), Tesla's entire product line is mor
It's the battery stupid (Score:3)
A mac computer, these days, is the thingy you plug you iphone or tablet into. The latter two are more visible sexy status symbols whereas the latter is less so and if it's a desktop doesn't even get seen in public. And yet it's still a money maker and more importantly gets you to embrace the whole apple ecosystem which becomes self re-inforcing with itunes, and appleTV and any number of things you'd prefer not to lose if you were to switch to something else. Wrap that up in a superior customer service pa
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
i think most companies would love a market as large as a diminished iphone market. on top of which the deployed base is not diminishing-- lots of money from apps and music. Your point is...
Re: (Score:2)
except we have fossil fuel reserves sufficient for about 1000 years (mostly coal, which can be broken into any desired length hydrocarbon: gasoline, diesel, nat gas, kerosene, bunker oil for cargo ships, etc.)
Tesla makes expense toys for the well to do.
smarter countries will have cheap electric cars and be recharging them with mix of fossil and nuclear power. smart long term solution would be arrays of solar panels and storage, U.S. too dumb to lead like that.
Re: (Score:2)
I think battery can be competitve, as for many drivers and conditions, the drawbacks are less severe. On the other hand, the amount of maintenance required is significantly reduced compared to an internal combustion engine. Of course, I don't see how Tesla is somehow magically more advantaged, particularly since Nissan has moved a lot more leaf vehicles than Tesla has moved any vehicle.
Re: (Score:2)
Electric charging stations? Anyone could make a compatible one if Tesla's really took off. And they can likely do it a lot cheaper if they happen to own, say, thousands of fuel stations in convenient locations. There's no market there.
Software updates? To do what?
Advertising? Where? To passengers? You can't advertise to drivers while they're driving.
Apple don't make money on advertising. Or software. They give it away with their hardware. You can't buy MacOS for anything other than a Mac.
Similarly
Re: (Score:2)