Tesla Trolling

I need a Tesla. I spend about $300-$400 a month on gas.
Get the Chevy Bolt or Volt. Bolt is pure EV and over 200 mile range. The Volt is 40 miles then and ICE kicks in.
Or the old standby Toyota Prius.

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Get the Chevy Bolt or Volt. Bolt is pure EV and over 200 mile range. The Volt is 40 miles then and ICE kicks in.
Or the old standby Toyota Prius.

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I could never buy a Chevy and could never own a Prius :p
 
I need a Tesla. I spend about $300-$400 a month on gas.
$300-$400 / month is meaningless to us unless we know your current mpg and driving patterns. There is a good chance a Tesla would not fit your mission at all.
 
$300-$400 / month is meaningless to us unless we know your current mpg and driving patterns. There is a good chance a Tesla would not fit your mission at all.

I was mostly trolling when I said that...
 
A friend has a Tesla Model X. It's a pretty decent ride with some features most cars don't have. I like it. I wouldn't buy one though for two reasons. One, they cost too much. Two, charging stations are not ubiquitous enough to make it convenient.

Do you have electricity at home? How many times a year are you driving more than 250 miles in a day?
 
Then keep buying that gasoline that seems to be getting cheaper by the day! Trolls like gasoline, right?

I like the Tesla...I think it’s a cool car and the SUV model is pretty cool too. I couldn’t afford one though. Not even close. And I agree with much of what’s been said here. It wouldn’t be practical for me. I don’t like spending that much on gas, but owning a truck came a long with growing up racing motocross
 
@denverpilot One thing I just noticed - the person being interviewed on your OP is Anton Wahlman who writes for SeekingAlpha.

Not sure how much you know about SeekingAlpha, but it's basically an unedited pile of garbage written by people who take a long or short position in a stock, and then try to manipulate the stock price up or down. There is absolutely no oversight - anybody can write anything, and on top of it get paid per click.

Seeking Alpha is where you go when the National Enquirer is starting to get to real for you. Or if you miss the old penny stock scams.

Wahlman has a published short position in TSLA. I didn't listen too much to the video but it was the same drivel of how Tesla has never made a gross profit on Model S / Model X (their profit margins have been solidly between 20% and 25% over the last 4 years), blah, blah. You can maybe use it for entertainment - it's funny seeing Wahlman's predictions of how the lower gas prices was going to kill Tesla in 2014. Or how the Bolt killed Tesla in 2015.


The funniest guy on SeekingAlpha is John Peterson who has a short position in TSLA and long position in AXPW (AXPW produces that universally hated start/stop technology for modern cars), and started blogging in 2012 for everybody to sell all of their TSLA stock and buy AXPW. So John start posting negative garbage around Tesla over and over again. He predicted TSLA would have no more orders left after 2013. That there can't ever be enough battery production capacity in the world for even the Model S needs (also 2013). That the first battery fire would take out the company. That the Gigafactory was a hoax and will never get built. The Tesla lied to the SEC about subsidies (2014) and how Elon was going to get arrested.

Meanwhile TSLA is up 10 fold since he started, and Axion went from $100'000 per share, to $0.006 per share today, after a reverse split of 1:700000. But he's still at it today, trying to get people to dump TSLA and buy AXPW. I believe he lost his house on that bet. Kind'a sad really.


I strongly suggest you get your financial news elsewhere. As much as people complain about fake news, whether you're on the CNN side or the FOX side, it does not even begin to compare with SeekingAlpha. It not just negative side, there's also equally ridiculous claims on the positive side.


Earlier in May the WSJ reported TSLA is the most shorted stock on any American exchange, and further shorts are unable to find shares to borrow.
 
I like the Tesla...I think it’s a cool car and the SUV model is pretty cool too. I couldn’t afford one though. Not even close. And I agree with much of what’s been said here. It wouldn’t be practical for me. I don’t like spending that much on gas, but owning a truck came a long with growing up racing motocross

I have a truck too, well actually a Ford E-350 van that I use for towing, camping and crap hauling. The key is the right tool for the job. I also have a Chevy Bolt EV that I do about 90% of my driving in and I never charge at a public charger. I can't afford a Tesla either. My Bolt cost me under $30,000 in the end, so still expensive for a car for me, but within reach.

The thing is, so many people won't consider an EV because they expect it to be an exact drop in replacement for the vehicle they're driving now. For some people they are, but most not. But if you look at them as a second car, they make a tremendous amount of sense. Besides all the money stuff, electric cars are just plain fun. Trust me, once you start driving electric, all your other vehicles start becoming less appealing to drive.
 
Tesla has certainly paved the way no matter if they survive or not. Their biggest problem is when companies like Daimler put their engineering and manufacturing might behind EVs. It looks like they're starting to get serious.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/mercedes-benz-confirms-second-upcoming-ev#backfires

I think they'd all do themselves a favor by settling on a universal high-rate charging protocol, or at least a universal connector that can sense the ideal charging current for different batteries. Last time I checked there were three competing connectors and even more charging protocols. It would also help Tesla. They could continue to charge their owners' cars for free, but charge (as in money) to fast-charge (as in power) any EV, regardless of manufacturer.

Rich
 
I have a truck too, well actually a Ford E-350 van that I use for towing, camping and crap hauling. The key is the right tool for the job. I also have a Chevy Bolt EV that I do about 90% of my driving in and I never charge at a public charger. I can't afford a Tesla either. My Bolt cost me under $30,000 in the end, so still expensive for a car for me, but within reach.

The thing is, so many people won't consider an EV because they expect it to be an exact drop in replacement for the vehicle they're driving now. For some people they are, but most not. But if you look at them as a second car, they make a tremendous amount of sense. Besides all the money stuff, electric cars are just plain fun. Trust me, once you start driving electric, all your other vehicles start becoming less appealing to drive.

I suppose if I was in the market for a vehicle it would be a consideration...but I have no truck payment now and certainly don't want to go spend 30K just to have an electric vehicle. 30K can buy a lot of gas. Maybe in 5-10 years there will be an EV F150 lol.
 
I suppose if I was in the market for a vehicle it would be a consideration...but I have no truck payment now and certainly don't want to go spend 30K just to have an electric vehicle. 30K can buy a lot of gas. Maybe in 5-10 years there will be an EV F150 lol.

A little more pricey, but here you go.
http://workhorse.com/pickup/

Tim
 
Very interesting. Now a real question for you. You said (and I think you’re being very specific so why I’m asking) that one of the cars has made a 20-25% profit. This doesn’t ring right with me if they’re burning through $700M a year.

Was the statement about the specific car, and not the overall company, or is there something I’m missing here? If it’s about the car, that just seems like book cooking to me. Claim the car is profitable but the company is bleeding cash?

Here is where the gross profit (and the 700M net loss comes from).
upload_2018-5-23_12-36-1.png

Looking at gross profit
If you look at total automotive revenue ($2.735b)/ total automotive cost of revenues ($2.195b) = gross profit% of 24%
Company overall of revenues ($3.4b) / cost of revenues ($2.9b) = overall gross profit% of 15%

It drops overall because service runs at a small loss right now (the far majority of vehicles are still under warranty - this will change over time), and the solar business & energy storage margins are tiny right now.

Net Loss
Anyway, so with all the profit, where do the losses come from then?

Take the $456m gross profit, and deduct:

$367m for R&D -> this is R&D on the Model Y and Tesla Truck. Not proportional to numbers of existing models they sell
$150m for for interest expenses -> Sins of the past. Not proportional to numbers of cars they sell.
$686m from general sales & admin -> See below

That gives the $784m net loss.

Sales & admin
Of course I 100% expect you'll come back saying if they don't spend the sales & admin money they won't sell any cars. That's true - some of that is showroom expenses which are proportional to vehicles sold - the rest are fixed.

Compared to 12 months ago, Tesla's quarterly revenue is up $712m while the sales & admin expenses increased by $83m. That's 12% - so let's attribute 12% of sales & admin expenses as being directly proportional to vehicle sales. That's 12% of $686m, which is $80m. It would be nice decreasing the other $600m fixed expenses as well, but neither selling fewer or more vehicles would make any difference in this.

I'll throw in another one. Not shown above, but $50m of vehicle revenue came from ZEV credits, which shouldn't exist in the first place and are meaningless in the long run. Add $50m to the $80m proportional sales & admin expense, and subtract $130 from the vehicle revenues.

Vehicle profit
With the $130m of soft expenses, it means vehicle revenue goes down to $2.6b at direct expenses of $2.2b. Even with all proportional cost attributed to vehicles included in there, they are still making ~18% profit on vehicles.

So when someone says "Tesla is losing $13k on every vehicle sold", it is utter B/S. The more vehicles they sell the more money they get - which by definition is gross profit. Simple as that.

There is only one thing they need to do to actually be net profitable as well: Sell more vehicles. Which at this point means make more vehicles. Tesla still has to prove that they can actually do that of course.
 
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Earlier in May the WSJ reported TSLA is the most shorted stock on any American exchange, and further shorts are unable to find shares to borrow.

TSLA has been on and off the most shorted stock (by percentage of float) on any American exchange since 2013.

What is WSJ going to report on next - the iPhone 5S ?

And there were much higher share shortages back in 2013 (in March 2013, if you loaned out your TSLA shares to be shorted you were paid 60% annualized interest! It only lasted a few weeks though).
 
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Here is where the gross profit (and the 700M net loss comes from).
View attachment 63325

Looking at gross profit
If you look at total automotive revenue ($2.735b)/ total automotive cost of revenues ($2.195b) = gross profit% of 24%
Company overall of revenues ($3.4b) / cost of revenues ($2.9b) = overall gross profit% of 15%

It drops overall because service runs at a small loss right now (the far majority of vehicles are still under warranty - this will change over time), and the solar business & energy storage margins are tiny right now.

Net Loss
Anyway, so with all the profit, where do the losses come from then?

Take the $456m gross profit, and deduct:

$367m for R&D -> this is R&D on the Model Y and Tesla Truck. Not proportional to numbers of existing models they sell
$150m for for interest expenses -> Sins of the past. Not proportional to numbers of cars they sell.
$686m from general sales & admin -> See below

That gives the $784m net loss.

Sales & admin
Of course I 100% expect you'll come back saying if they don't spend the sales & admin money they won't sell any cars. That's true - some of that is showroom expenses which are proportional to vehicles sold - the rest are fixed.

Compared to 12 months ago, Tesla's quarterly revenue is up $712m while the sales & admin expenses increased by $83m. That's 12% - so let's attribute 12% of sales & admin expenses as being directly proportional to vehicle sales. That's 12% of $686m, which is $80m. It would be nice decreasing the other $600m fixed expenses as well but either fewer or more vehicles being sold doesn't make a difference there.

I'll throw in another one. Not shown above, but $50m of vehicle revenue came from ZEV credits, which shouldn't exist in the first place and are meaningless in the long run. Add $50m to the $80m proportional sales & admin expense, and subtract $130 from the vehicle revenues.

Vehicle profit
With the $130m of soft expenses, it means vehicle revenue goes down to $2.6b at direct expenses of $2.2b. Even with all proportional cost attributed to vehicles included in there, they are still making ~18% profit on vehicles.

So when someone says "Tesla is losing $13k on every vehicle sold", it is utter B/S. The more vehicles they sell the more money they get - which by definition is gross profit. Simple as that.

There is only one thing they need to do to actually be net profitable as well: Sell more vehicles. Which at this point means make more vehicles. Tesla still has to prove that they can actually do that of course.

Good stuff. I would argue that “make more vehicles” assumes in the above that they don’t need more plants and capital expenditures to do that, or the expense numbers climb and “making more vehicles” doesn’t quite work.

I always get leery of the “we will make it up in volume” claims of anyone, not just Tesla.
 
ADB6F88F-5F49-41F7-935C-76F7DE6ADF01.jpeg

Typical airport and back Volt trip for me. 92MPG.
 
Ours sure is. I think they all are. It was a requirement when we were shopping (used).

I assumed he was referring to the linked electric truck, but I checked and that one is AWD as well.

Yea I’m not sure what he is referring to. My dad has a Ridgeline. Not a truck I would purchase personally, but like you said...they are all AWD. I believe the new ones it is optional?
 
Learn something every day!

Just went to the Honda website and the base “RT” model is FWD-only, and on the “Sport” and “RTL” models AWD is optional.

So we were wrong and he was right. Confession is good for the soul!
 
Learn something every day!

Just went to the Honda website and the base “RT” model is FWD-only, and on the “Sport” and “RTL” models AWD is optional.

So we were wrong and he was right. Confession is good for the soul!

Yes although that is new for this year (or might have started when they came out with the new body style). Before that you are correct that they were all AWD.

A FWD truck...interesting
 
Good stuff. I would argue that “make more vehicles” assumes in the above that they don’t need more plants and capital expenditures to do that, or the expense numbers climb and “making more vehicles” doesn’t quite work.

I always get leery of the “we will make it up in volume” claims of anyone, not just Tesla.

The NUMMI plant that Tesla bought back in 2010 made 500'000 vehicles per year when Toyota and GM shared it. No reason Tesla can't reach that either before needing another plant.

Of course, they have an additional manufacturing problem of also needing batteries, but they have the gigafactory for that is currently sized to produce 460'000 packs a year, and the building is large enough to expand to 2 million packs a year.

So they're not going to need more plants for now. They might need more equipment - who knows. But for that kind of stuff they can easily raise capital if needed. What's a few billion dollars between friends?

The game is really Tesla's to lose at this point.
 
Just watched “Who Killed The Electric Car.” Tesla is doomed! :D
 
The NUMMI plant that Tesla bought back in 2010 made 500'000 vehicles per year when Toyota and GM shared it. No reason Tesla can't reach that either before needing another plant.

Of course, they have an additional manufacturing problem of also needing batteries, but they have the gigafactory for that is currently sized to produce 460'000 packs a year, and the building is large enough to expand to 2 million packs a year.

So they're not going to need more plants for now. They might need more equipment - who knows. But for that kind of stuff they can easily raise capital if needed. What's a few billion dollars between friends?

The game is really Tesla's to lose at this point.

Didn’t GM and Toyota have significant robotics installed there prior to leaving? Did Tesla buy those assets?
 
Didn’t GM and Toyota have significant robotics installed there prior to leaving? Did Tesla buy those assets?

They sold all of that equipment via auction. Tesla bought a bunch of it. Not sure what percentage.
 
That 2.6B in sales is mostly Model S and X I would assume. Since 3 just started shipping. Therefore there is no way to know yet if Tesla will win or lose as they make more cars.

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A FWD truck...interesting

Well, Honda correctly identified that a whole lot of "truck" buyers aren't using them as trucks. They are more commuter cars in the form factor of a truck. Since the Ridgeline is based on the Pilot, why not offer FWD only and save the buyer some bucks?

Way back in the '80s, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Isuzu, Ford, GMC and Chevy used to offer true "mini pickups". In those days they were really cheap and many people bought them simply because they were one of the cheapest new vehicles one could buy then. These were basically 1/4 ton trucks, but they were RWD and people just used them as two seat cars with a huge trunk with no lid.

Perhaps Honda is trying to tap back into this idea??
 
Well, Honda correctly identified that a whole lot of "truck" buyers aren't using them as trucks. They are more commuter cars in the form factor of a truck. Since the Ridgeline is based on the Pilot, why not offer FWD only and save the buyer some bucks?

Way back in the '80s, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Isuzu, Ford, GMC and Chevy used to offer true "mini pickups". In those days they were really cheap and many people bought them simply because they were one of the cheapest new vehicles one could buy then. These were basically 1/4 ton trucks, but they were RWD and people just used them as two seat cars with a huge trunk with no lid.

Perhaps Honda is trying to tap back into this idea??

Yep that’s exactly why my dad bought one. It’s a “truck” that drives and handles like a car/SUV.
 
That 2.6B in sales is mostly Model S and X I would assume. Since 3 just started shipping. Therefore there is no way to know yet if Tesla will win or lose as they make more cars.

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Correct. The sales right now is mostly X and S. Tesla has announced aiming for a 20% gross margin for the Model 3.

Can they achieve that? Nobody know at this point.

In the beginning of the Model S productions Tesla announced they were aiming for 25% gross margins on a Model S and everybody laughed at them (articles saying how ridiculous this is since those margins at higher than Porsche). But they reached that 3 quarters later. So I wouldn’t bet against them being able to do that. Probably would be a safe bet that it won’t be as quick as Elon says it will happen though - but it’ll probably get there.
 
@deonb

Article from six months ago on GM:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ise-of-profitable-electric-cars-idUSKBN1DF272

In the article, they said by 2021 GM expects the per kWH price to be below $100 by 2021. I recall Tesla saying they will be below $100 kWH by 2019, and some speculating they are already there with the Giga factory. Any current data?
The battery seems to be the largest price component, and therefore is a large determining factor if the car is profitable or not.

Tim
 
@deonb

Article from six months ago on GM:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ise-of-profitable-electric-cars-idUSKBN1DF272

In the article, they said by 2021 GM expects the per kWH price to be below $100 by 2021. I recall Tesla saying they will be below $100 kWH by 2019, and some speculating they are already there with the Giga factory. Any current data?
The battery seems to be the largest price component, and therefore is a large determining factor if the car is profitable or not.

Tim

Obviously hard to say for sure with Tesla, since they don't publish that.

But the last public SWAG was $124/kWh for cars at the pack level in Feb 2017. (Using previously published $190/kWh and later-published "35% savings at the Gigafactory").

A newer indication from Nov 2017 is the Semi's price difference between the 2 published models:

a) 300 mile range version for $150k
b) 500 mile range version for $180k

So $30k buys you 200 extra miles. The stated energy consumption of the Semi is 2kWh/mile, which means $30k buys you 400/kWh extra.

Which is $75/kWh retail... Of course this isn't being sold yet - it's effectively a 2021 price estimate.

Finally, the current Tesla retail price for replacement packs on the Model S is $140/kWh. If you go by the massive markup Tesla generally has on replacement parts, their manufacturing cost would be $14/kWh... just kidding. But it effectively places the maximum possible cost at $140.

I seriously doubt they've broken $100 though. I think Elon would have had an “I told you so” moment if that happened.
 
Obviously hard to say for sure with Tesla, since they don't publish that.

But the last public SWAG was $124/kWh for cars at the pack level in Feb 2017. (Using previously published $190/kWh and later-published "35% savings at the Gigafactory").

A newer indication from Nov 2017 is the Semi's price difference between the 2 published models:

a) 300 mile range version for $150k
b) 500 mile range version for $180k

So $30k buys you 200 extra miles. The stated energy consumption of the Semi is 2kWh/mile, which means $30k buys you 400/kWh extra.

Which is $75/kWh retail... Of course this isn't being sold yet - it's effectively a 2021 price estimate.

Finally, the current Tesla retail price for replacement packs on the Model S is $140/kWh. If you go by the massive markup Tesla generally has on replacement parts, their manufacturing cost would be $14/kWh... just kidding. But it effectively places the maximum possible cost at $140.

I seriously doubt they've broken $100 though. I think Elon would have had an “I told you so” moment if that happened.

I personally believe that the price and performance of both the Semi and Roadster 2 are entirely predicated on the estimated price and performance of battery technology by 2020, or 2022 or so. Basically gambling on an educated guess. In the meanwhile, show off some neat looking prototypes and collect deposit money. This strategy works for Elon only. I don't think any other company in the world could get away with it.
 
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