Is Tesla TOAST ?

[Mega]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Not long now......................
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Li65P_3lvM

He can only pull this trick once, big shorts coming.........Jag/Audi/Porsche/BMW coming.......

[vt]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Mercedes unveils Tesla challenger with $12 billion attack:

https://www.bloombergquint.com/busin...lan#gs.dMG7b88

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Mercedes unveils Tesla challenger with $12 billion attack:

https://www.bloombergquint.com/busin...lan#gs.dMG7b88

If all goes according to plan, and every company sells what they're projecting for all of these cars, their total worldwide unit sales in 2020 will be about as many F-150s Ford sold in Texas alone last year. They sold 896,764 F-series in the US total in 2017. That's why I still think this graph is funny and the media obsession with this small niche segment of the auto industry is over the top.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

All great points, dcarrigg. I suppose it's human nature. The business analysis of production numbers is pretty boring, while we are naturally entertained by the hero story of David and Goliath. From a business perspective, though, I still think these admittedly small EV production numbers are a big deal.

My experience with electric vehicles starts back in about 1990, when we did fleet demonstrations of alternative fuel vehicles including the old GM G van plug in EVs. SoCAl Edison had converted some full size Chevy vans with 2,000 lb battery packs and electric drive trains, no fuel tank. On a good day, driven carefully, the range was 20 miles. That's ten miles out and ten miles back. Back then the technical community had no real hope that anyone would ever voluntarily purchase a battery powered vehicle. We worked with policy makers to dream up incentive programs that might entice a few hundred people to buy one.

As of today the world has purchased more than 4 million EVs, and looks like global sales are about 2 million EVs a year.
They are clearly here to stay, and earning market share, and are by all measures a real product on the cusp of profitability and growth without incentives.

It's immensely satisfying to us old enthusiasts to see we were generally correct, that if people could be shown battery powered cars and if we could nurture the segment and push the battery development for a few years, people would like them and buy them and we could break away from our complete dependency on petroleum.

So yeah, Musk is a side show and it's hard to take him seriously, but electric vehicles seem here to stay, and in that one small small way we've all kinda changed the world.

[touchring]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

All great points, dcarrigg. I suppose it's human nature. The business analysis of production numbers is pretty boring, while we are naturally entertained by the hero story of David and Goliath. From a business perspective, though, I still think these admittedly small EV production numbers are a big deal.

My experience with electric vehicles starts back in about 1990, when we did fleet demonstrations of alternative fuel vehicles including the old GM G van plug in EVs. SoCAl Edison had converted some full size Chevy vans with 2,000 lb battery packs and electric drive trains, no fuel tank. On a good day, driven carefully, the range was 20 miles. That's ten miles out and ten miles back. Back then the technical community had no real hope that anyone would ever voluntarily purchase a battery powered vehicle. We worked with policy makers to dream up incentive programs that might entice a few hundred people to buy one.

As of today the world has purchased more than 4 million EVs, and looks like global sales are about 2 million EVs a year.
They are clearly here to stay, and earning market share, and are by all measures a real product on the cusp of profitability and growth without incentives.

It's immensely satisfying to us old enthusiasts to see we were generally correct, that if people could be shown battery powered cars and if we could nurture the segment and push the battery development for a few years, people would like them and buy them and we could break away from our complete dependency on petroleum.

So yeah, Musk is a side show and it's hard to take him seriously, but electric vehicles seem here to stay, and in that one small small way we've all kinda changed the world.

Thanks for sharing. In your opinion, can battery technology really advance a lot more? We've been stucked with Li-ion for many years - just look at the iPhone, the batt starts to die after 3 years and many Li-ion devices explode when charging.

Is there really enough Nickel and Co to replace the world's production of gasoline cars?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Generally I'm with you. Just more impressed with the Prius and the Leaf than the $50k plus luxury segment. These people put out more CO2 heating their pools to 80 degrees in a month than I do in a year even with a 20 year old ICE car.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Thanks for sharing. In your opinion, can battery technology really advance a lot more? We've been stucked with Li-ion for many years - just look at the iPhone, the batt starts to die after 3 years and many Li-ion devices explode when charging.

Is there really enough Nickel and Co to replace the world's production of gasoline cars?

I am no longer current with these technologies, and I have never been an electrochemist. I worked with a couple good electrochemists way back then so I have a lot of respect for the things they know. From my limited understanding we can perhaps double the energy density of lithium ion batteries before we hit the laws of physics.

But from the perspective of an automotive engineer, EVs have made important breakthroughs in owner perceptions and attitudes that will allow all sorts of better cars. EVs just don't carry much energy in the batteries, so as a class they are lightweight and low power and short range. They require a charger not available on every street corner and take a long time to charge. A conventional gasoline car can go from anywhere to anywhere else without concern, quite literally. No driver worries about being able to refill with gas even driving from a remote backwoods location in Maine to some remote spot in the Nevada desert. We just take for granted we can drive for two hundred miles and will pass a half dozen fuel stations along the way, refueling the car in ten minutes. Not so for EVs.

That's a huge shift in public attitudes about what a car needs to be and still be worth owning. They are accepting that their nice new car might only be useful around town, and might be unavailable for hours every day while it charges, and might not be a high power race car that can easily go more than 100 MPH. It might be a small little thing that tops out at 90 MPH. To me that's a big deal that can pay off in many ways that will make global economies more stable and keep the planet healthier. Now if we can somehow convince people in the Midwest to take a transit bus to work most days....


Oh and your point about key metals being too scarce to replace the iron in piston engines in the global fleet is very astute. Back in the day we examined fuel cells for automotive use, and one of my coworkers examined known reserves of platinum against the amount needed to replace all the light duty cars with fuel cell power. Not even close, orders of magnitude less platinum available than the amount needed. Lithium is pretty abundant, and the rare earth elements aren't rare at all.

[GRG55]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Like most alternate fuel vehicles, including CNG, they seem to work best in urban "return to base" applications. Transit buses, taxi fleets, waste collection, school buses, delivery and courier routes, home to office and return commuting, that sort of thing. Those applications alone could make a big difference if switched from liquid hydrocarbon fuels to EV.

The increasing urbanization trend is another enabler to the adoption of EV.

[Mega]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Tesla getting KILLED !!!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...just-one-month

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Like most alternate fuel vehicles, including CNG, they seem to work best in urban "return to base" applications. Transit buses, taxi fleets, waste collection, school buses, delivery and courier routes, home to office and return commuting, that sort of thing. Those applications alone could make a big difference if switched from liquid hydrocarbon fuels to EV.

The increasing urbanization trend is another enabler to the adoption of EV.

Quite correct sir. Back in the 1980's and 1990's we had transit bus fleets running experimental alt fuel engines. The very first were at Triboro in New York running hand-build DDC 6V92 engines burning 100% methanol. Coming home to base every night is a huge advantage when you try to run experimental vehicles in the real world - you only need the one fuel station and the one maintenance shop.

The system of gas stations we've built around the world is an amazing thing, underappreciated by most people. When you discuss any other energy source it looms large. At least everyone's home has electrical power available. CNG keeps trying to put small slow fill fuel compressors into homes and businesses but so far these just have not caught on, despite the fact most people have a natural gas line to the house. The FuelMaker corp still sells them http://www.cngnow.com/vehicles/refue...g-at-home.aspx



CNG, methanol, ethanol, propane, they all work very well but none of them have yet overcome the lack of a fuel station network. EVs have managed to do it.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Tesla getting KILLED !!!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...just-one-month

It does seem the bloom is off the rose. Over at Quartz they have a nice article today https://qz.com/1382308/teslas-stock-...ng-executives/

It has this list of senior staff who've walked away before the latest heads of accounting and HR ducked out.

March 2017: Tesla’s director of hardware engineering, Satish Jeyachandran, left for Alphabet’s self-driving car unit, Waymo
March 2017: Vice president of human resources Mark Lipscomb leaves for Netflix
April 2017: Chief financial officer Jason Wheeler departs after 18 months and is replaced by Tesla’s former finance head Deepak Ahuja
May 2017: Vice president of human resources Arnnon Geshuri, leaves after nearly eight years at the company (paywall)
June 2017: Former Apple engineer Chris Lattner, leaves after serving as top of Tesla’s Autopilot engineering team for less than six months
Sept. 2017: Vice president of business development Diarmuid O’Connell departs (paywall)
Aug. 2017: Tesla loses its senior director of battery technology, Kurt Kelty, to the startup Plenty
Feb. 2018: Jon McNeill, the former global president of sales and service leaves for Lyft
March 2018 : Top financial executives Eric Branderiz (chief accounting officer) and Susan Repo (vice president of finance) depart
April 2018: Autopilot chief Jim Keller leaves to return to semiconductor engineering


It doesn't help when the founder and CEO goes on TV with a goofball comedian and smokes some pot.
Sure it's legal there, but appearance do matter for a publicly traded company. It was hard to take Musk seriously before he got stoned on TV wearing a tee shirt that says "Occupy Mars". I suddenly recall the old TV turn of phrase "jumped the shark".

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

The increasing urbanization trend is another enabler to the adoption of EV.

The one thing I've been warning people about that, at least in the US, is that the increasing urbanization trend really began with the oil spike in 2005 and the recession and reversed by nationwide aggregate stats in 2016. The latest 2018 figures I heard have even the giants of growth from last decade like Brooklyn and Silicon Valley's San Jose actually losing population. Suburbs are now growing faster than large urban areas again. I don't think the popular narrative has really picked up this change yet. There are a few spots bucking the trend: Salt Lake City, Seattle, Las Vegas and Atlanta. But the general trend among US metros has been a slowing of growth in the urban core and an increase in growth of the suburbs and exurbs.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Great set of facts, dcarrigg. Urban core areas are different than suburbs for population growth, because they are land locked and built out.
An old city center can show strong population growth as it gentrifies and turns every shabby storefront and warehouse into hip urban condos, and the cool people move in by the thousands. Then it hits the phase where small old building are torn down and replaced with mid rise and high rise condos. Then that's about the end for population growth.

A popular and growing city like Columbus then starts spreading the gentrification out on the edge, but pretty soon the addresses change to the oldest suburbs. I'm not sure we can draw many conclusions about urbanization from a top level look at these statistics like this. I sense no trend to abandon densely populated city centers, except as rising prices drive people out a bit further.

[vt]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

The key to leaving urban centers is marriage and the arrival of children. Once the kids are old enough for school
the move to the suburbs accelerates. It will be instructive to watch birthrates to determine how big this move may
be. The millennial generation will provide a good laboratory of how these trends will play out.

Another trend will be how many baby boomers move to be near their grandchildren in the urban and suburban centers
surrounding them.

With the bad traffic congestion one sees in most suburban areas around the urban core I see the potential
of almost no one owning a vehicle 15 years from now. The millennial generation doesn't even want to buy cars,
because they are used to biking, ubering, and public transportation. Plus they don't have the money to spend.

At some point you may see virtually no one, except outside urban areas, having a vehicle has a large monthly expense,
sits idle for 95% of the time, costs a lot to maintain and insure, and they can just push a button on a phone and get an
uber that will possibly soon not have a driver.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

The key to leaving urban centers is marriage and the arrival of children. Once the kids are old enough for school
the move to the suburbs accelerates. It will be instructive to watch birthrates to determine how big this move may
be. The millennial generation will provide a good laboratory of how these trends will play out.

Another trend will be how many baby boomers move to be near their grandchildren in the urban and suburban centers
surrounding them.

With the bad traffic congestion one sees in most suburban areas around the urban core I see the potential
of almost no one owning a vehicle 15 years from now. The millennial generation doesn't even want to buy cars,
because they are used to biking, ubering, and public transportation. Plus they don't have the money to spend.

At some point you may see virtually no one, except outside urban areas, having a vehicle has a large monthly expense,
sits idle for 95% of the time, costs a lot to maintain and insure, and they can just push a button on a phone and get an
uber that will possibly soon not have a driver.

Thanks vt, I think you are spot-on. For many years some European cities have been moving to push private automobiles out of city centers by requiring exorbitant permit fees. Sure, if you are an on-call surgeon working at the big central hospital you will pay a thousand a year for the windshield sticker. The rest of us mere mortals can take the train and save a bundle. Dense urban landscapes just can't afford the private auto model, the land use requirements are huge. Years ago I read a study that some cities had up to 1/4 of all the acres devoted to cars when you count the streets, driveways, and parking spots. Once population gets past a certain high density it seems best to keep most of the single occupant private autos out on the edge of town and use transit and taxis. The attractive personal benefits you mention only add to the case.