Tesla: how long do you think they'll last as a company..?

[Killroy1999]

Tesla's sales are a rounding error for the big guys and you can't spend awards.

Actual car companies need to make an honest 35% on a real accounting basis (GAAP) just to re-coup tooling costs and generate the cash for the tooling for the next generation of vehicles.

Tesla is losing money on a GAAP basis and have a snowball's chance in hell of breaking even let alone financing other models. So they pretend that GAAP doesn't apply and pump their share price as hard as they can so that they can stay afloat with equity sold for "expansion capital".

If you are really interested, you should listen to the earnings report that I linked to.

 

[Eldritch]

They don't have any battery technology, they simply package Panasonic batteries.

Remmeber the earlier post about how many guys at Tesla are Soft/Dev guys? That is their battery schtick. I dont' know their product well enough to say personally, but the presentation there is that they are trying to be pioneers in battery management.

 

[Blankpage]

Someone on Bloomberg a week or two ago said the stock was a potential ten bagger. He must be holding a lot of stock, and waiting to to unload

 

[mrmarklin]

Just as long as it doesn't inconvenience you, right?

Look back 200 years. Oil wasn't even on any horizon as a useful item. Barely known to exist. The eastern US was being deforested. Now the opposite is occurring.

Look forward 200 years. There will be something else to worry about as an energy source, but I doubt oil will be it.

I'm no Chicken Little.

 

[mrmarklin]

Oh boy, hundreds more years of shitty foreign policy, environmental ruin and military conflict because we are too scared, stupid or lazy to find a slightly different way to commute to work.

Hey, I like Harleys. Knock it off!

 

[sckego]

Look back 200 years. Oil wasn't even on any horizon as a useful item. Barely known to exist. The eastern US was being deforested. Now the opposite is occurring.

Look forward 200 years. There will be something else to worry about as an energy source, but I doubt oil will be it.

I'm no Chicken Little.

This article has a pretty interesting review of the history of energy usage and it's effect on the environment we live in: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html

The problem with running out, whenever it happens, is that if the world is anywhere near as reliant on fossil fuels at that point as we are now, it’ll cause an epic economic collapse. As fossil fuels grow more and more scarce, prices will skyrocket. That will cause a furious rush to develop renewable energy technology, but it may be too late at that point to prevent a worldwide economic meltdown.

Basically, we’re currently living off of a trust fund we found underground, and we’d better learn how to get a job before it runs out.

For our sum-up for this section, how about:

At some point in the future, either really soon or just a little soon, we’ll have no choice but to stop running everything on fossil fuels, because they’ll either be gone or too expensive.

This statement highlights the fact that we’re very much in what will be known as the Fossil Fuel Era of human history.

Bringing back our first statement—if we continue to burn fossil fuels as much as we are, things might get really shitty kind of soon—suggests that if we continue to dick around in the black zone until we’re forced out by short supply, we’re risking making the yellow zone permanently worse for humans to exist in.

This is why Elon Musk likes to say that the indefinite extension of the Fossil Fuels Era is “the dumbest experiment in history.” He emphasized this point to me: “The greater the change to the chemical composition of the physical, chemical makeup of the oceans and atmosphere [due to increased carbon emissions], the greater the long-term effect will be. Given that at some point they’ll run out anyway, why run this crazy experiment to see how bad it’ll be? We know it’s at least some bad, and the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it’ll be really bad.”

In other words, as it relates to the above timeline—there’s potentially huge long-term downside to staying in the black area for too long, so let’s just get ourselves to the yellow part as soon as we can.

 

[Archimedes]

In that link I posted, Musk answered the question about Operating Income would be 10-15% if they stopped investing in new product.

He's referring to new product, not the investment required to generate the current 'profit'. Tesla has never generated a cash-on-cash return on anything they have ever developed and it remains to be seen if they ever will. And the chance they actually generate cash-on-cash returns that even remotely cover the risks taken from the investment period though today is almost nil. But we all now that doesn't matter when we have that supreme embodiment of the greater fool theory that we refer to as the U.S. equity markets.

 

[louemc]

starting to see more teslas on the road which is a good sign for them...

but not so mainstream in the general population...

with that said, would one say tesla will be up there with chevy, honda toyota or fall off the market like a ford on the road..?

Can't call it.... Way too complex, Plus they don't let me sit in, at the board meetings...

 

[kevin 714]

This article has a pretty interesting review of the history of energy usage and it's effect on the environment we live in: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html

This graph is predicated on the fact there even IS sustainable and renewable energy.

 

[augustiron]

This graph is predicated on the fact there even IS sustainable and renewable energy.

light reading....
http://www.sandia.gov/~jytsao/Solar FAQs.pdf

Which renewable energy resources have the greatest potential for
supplying 15 TW of C-neutral power?
(from the research paper, the required amount of carbon neutral power needed by 2050)

"There are four sources with theoretical potentials exceeding 15 TW: solar, wind, geothermal,
and ocean waves.
There are only two sources, however, with extractable potentials exceeding 15 TW: solar and
wind. Though geothermal has significant theoretical potential, its extractable potential is much
less because it is mostly in the form of “low-grade” heat, with low conversion efficiency into
chemical fuel. Also, though ocean waves has significant theoretical potential, its extractable
potential is much less because it is in the form of mechanical power, with low conversion
efficiency into chemical fuel.
Finally, there is only one source with technical potential safely exceeding 15 TW: solar.
Though wind has significant extractable potential, its technical potential is much less, in large
part because much of its power resides geographically over the relatively inaccessible deep
oceans. The same is true for solar, but because its extractable potential is so huge its land-based
technical potential remains large."

 

[Killroy1999]

Apple was bankrupt at one point in the late 90's? Hmmm....


most over-inflated stock of all time?

SURELY, YOU JEST!
#TexasAir

Ford was also broke and kicked out of his own company with his name on it. He also did not invent the assembly line, he copied it from the Bicycle industry.

 

[Killroy1999]

There's hundreds of years of known oil reserves out there. Not worth worrying about running out.

And a lot of it will stay in the ground because it is not economical to extract it. Just like all the new American oil that is worthless because it cost $70 a barrel to produce, but oil is only worth $60 thanks to OPEC.

 

[TheRobSJ]

Ford was also broke and kicked out of his own company with his name on it. He also did not invent the assembly line, he copied it from the Bicycle industry.

I believe it was Ransom E. Olds that did the first automobile assembly line.

 

[MC BumSlap]

Ford was also broke and kicked out of his own company with his name on it. He also did not invent the assembly line, he copied it from the Bicycle industry.

Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer, Inc. never filed for bankruptcy.

 

[Blankpage]

Apple Inc., formerly Apple Computer, Inc. never filed for bankruptcy.

But I read it on Wikibarf that they did.

 

[Killroy1999]

They don't have any battery technology, they simply package Panasonic batteries.

You can't really say that if you look at Tesla Motor's 200+ patents.

Originally I thought that Tesla's battery pack strategy was not optimal. They assembled laptop batteries into large packs because laptop batteries are considered a cheap commodity and mature.

Chevy looked like they had the optimal solution by developing larger cells for the Chevy Volt.

I thought that the larger format Chevy cells and pack would be better optimized for cars, have less packaging and less weight for energy capacity.

Tesla ended up having a much better pack for a lot less effort and money.

They built a production sedan that does 0-60 in 3.1 seconds. They were able to add all wheel drive and add 60 HP and add range up to 270 Miles EPA all at the same time.

To say that they don't have any technology is just ignoring the facts, which people seem to do when it come to Tesla.

 

[MC BumSlap]

But I read it on Wikibarf that they did.

I believe everything on the internet as well

 

[f=ma]

You can't really say that if you look at Tesla Motor's 200+ patents.

Originally I thought that Tesla's battery pack strategy was not optimal. They assembled laptop batteries into large packs because laptop batteries are considered a cheap commodity and mature.

Chevy looked like they had the optimal solution by developing larger cells for the Chevy Volt.

I thought that the larger format Chevy cells and pack would be better optimized for cars, have less packaging and less weight for energy capacity.

Tesla ended up having a much better pack for a lot less effort and money.

They built a production sedan that does 0-60 in 3.1 seconds. They were able to add all wheel drive and add 60 HP and add range up to 270 Miles EPA all at the same time.

To say that they don't have any technology is just ignoring the facts, which people seem to do when it come to Tesla.

He was referring to Apple...lol

 

[Archimedes]

And a lot of it will stay in the ground because it is not economical to extract it. Just like all the new American oil that is worthless because it cost $70 a barrel to produce, but oil is only worth $60 thanks to OPEC.

But that's the rub, once it becomes scarce, the price will rise and all that oil we be economical to extract. There is a toooooooon of oil left that can be profitably extracted at a price level that is not a global economic growth killer. Oil doesn't have to be $200 a barrel for that oil to be profitable and the oil industry can turn the production spigot on and off pretty damn quick.

I'm all for renewable energy as the long term solution, but there is a lot of oil left that is extractable at a reasonable cost/profit equation. And there's probably more out there that hasn't even been found yet. The sky is not falling. Today or in the very near term. But it is still a long term problem.

 

[augustiron]

... The sky is not falling. Today or in the very near term. But it is still a long term problem.

100 years is long term to you for an issue of this magnitude?

As mentioned elsewhere, oil is not just fuel, petroleum is used in nearly everything and by nearly everything in some form or another. This is not simply that fuel will get expensive so we will find other ways to deal. (although that is the one part Tesla is focused on, besides distributed energy storage + solar as a replacement for coal and gas power plants)