Is Tesla TOAST ?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

My big hesitation there is the idea that owning a vehicle is so expensive. It's really not. I bought one of mine for $700 four or five years ago. It's 20 years old. A little Civic. Can get 44mpg highway. Only has an am/fm radio. Insurance runs maybe $500 per year. Gas runs maybe the same. We have good train transit near me. I use it when I have to go into the city or even further afield. But there's no way if I took busses or trains every day it would be cheaper than owning this little car. Even with repairs, insurance, gas, maintenance, taxes, fees, tolls, and everything, it can't be costing me more than $6 or $7 per day to operate the thing. That's a one-way commuter train ticket, not round trip. It is round-trip bus fare with transfers. It won't even buy you a one-way uber or taxi ride, even during regular, not "surge" hours.

Granted, I take some sort of perverse enjoyment in doing things cheaply. We had a contest with ourselves one month to see how low we could get the electric bill, and we got it under $20, which is hard to do with the higher prices we have up here. But the fact remains, it's cheaper than you think. And the fact that it sits idle 95% of the time gives it a long lifespan, if it were on the road 24/7, this car would have hit the junkyard back before 9/11. As it is, I see no reason it couldn't make it to 25 and get me antique plates that exempt it from taxes and fees in a couple years. The car it replaced had them. You can get a car on the road real cheap, if you have a parking spot.

[vt]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Good points. Most people are not tuned to being as frugal as you, though some have to because they are poor.

The real key is likely buying a used car in good condition that is a few years old, and not doing hardly any stop and go driving.

https://www.thoughtco.com/highway-ci...or-car-4062625

[GRG55]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

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.

One problem with home fuelling CNG is the house supply is at such a very low pressure and CNG cylinders typically fill to 3000 psi or 3600 psi at standard temperature. It takes a lot of energy to do the compression. Commercial CNG stations typically try to find supply at 300 psi to 800 psi on the LDC or transmission system to lower that power cost per cubic foot of gas compressed. I've considered putting a home compressor but can't make the numbers work. And I am in the industrial CNG business.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Good points. Most people are not tuned to being as frugal as you, though some have to because they are poor.

The real key is likely buying a used car in good condition that is a few years old, and not doing hardly any stop and go driving.

https://www.thoughtco.com/highway-ci...or-car-4062625

Yeah. Sounds about right. Just seems to me that the number for whom the idea of "market choice" is a cruel joke is growing rapidly as labor's share of the pie shrinks and returns to capital continue to exceed growth (all the while the laws are continually re-written to give ever more to the haves and take from the have-nots). But I'm still largely not scared that it will go on forever. People will hit their breaking point. What worries me more is the politics and bloodshed and anger the love of money will wrought. It can be random. The lash-out can happen in any direction. Probably many scapegoats and bystanders will suffer. Stamping out the grapes of wrath is a messy business. And they can see the vineyard in the distance.

[Mega]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

[Mega]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

The Hits just keep coming
https://www.carscoops.com/2018/09/el...lights-wheels/

[shiny!]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Good points. Most people are not tuned to being as frugal as you, though some have to because they are poor.

The real key is likely buying a used car in good condition that is a few years old, and not doing hardly any stop and go driving.

https://www.thoughtco.com/highway-ci...or-car-4062625

Yep. 90% of my driving consists of cruising 45 highway miles to work and back in a 2008 Crown Vic police interceptor. It rarely even reaches 2000 rpm's. With 165K on the odometer, it's in perfect mechanical condition.

This weekend I found a local dealer that sells only retired Crown Vics from federal fleets or highway patrols, like mine. They had 80 in stock. Wish I could have bought a second one as a spare. Best highway car ever made.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776

Well, this came back to bite him in the ass. SEC suing him. Seeking to bar him from being an officer or director in any US publicly traded company. While this is ongoing, good luck getting any kind of old fashioned capital raise. Stock down 10%. We'll see what the bond markets do. That joint-smoking stunt cost him basically the entire Saudi investment in market cap. This cost even more. The timelines of probabilities I posted earlier have significantly narrowed.

[touchring]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Elon needed a strong COO to keep him in check.

Steve had Tim...

[BK]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

The comparison of Apple to Tesla Motors is completely wrong. The PE multiple for Tesla has been a complete mirage for a very long time. Steve Jobs never talk about make believe computing futures the way Elon talks of autonomous fleet of Tesla, colonies on Mars, remember the robotic recharge snake, battery swapping that never existed, implanting chips in human brains, Tesla in talks with BMW, Tesla in talks with Apple, Boring holes in ground for Hyperloop.

Steve Jobs was focused on delivering real products that were a big improvement on existing technology or offering the best technology in new category of smart phone.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Seems worth mentioning that Tesla delivered 53,000 of their model 3 cars this quarter.
They promised 50,000 to 55,000

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Seems worth mentioning that Tesla delivered 53,000 of their model 3 cars this quarter.
They promised 50,000 to 55,000

Depends on what point in the timeline you look at. They moved the goalpost several times. Gotta hand it to them, they moved from about 3,500/wk in q2 to about 4,200/wk in q3. Must have come up with some hack/work around for the paint shop bottleneck. But don't forget, as recently as two months ago, they promised 6,000/wk by the end of August. They are ramping up. But not nearly as fast as they said they would. They did pump out 53,239 Model 3s this quarter, which is about as many cars as they pumped out total last quarter. And they maintained about 25k production for other models. Maybe 10% of GM's production run, for a company with more market cap. And the US justice system just let a wealthy and powerful guy off with a tiny slap on the wrist yet again. No surprises there. He even flaunted his pathetic $20m fine by posting a naughty by nature vid. We'll see how 'independent' the new chairman really is. Still don't think the fundamentals change. They need a min 25% margin, and can't make a $35k model 3 that meets it. They can sell all the $50k+ model 3s the market will bear. Think they're pretty much at the peak there. But they borrowed a lot of money based on projections of a profitably mass-market $35k car. And they took deposits based on that idea. Don't forget, comparing sales numbers to anything else is kind of silly, because people have been on Model 3 waitlists for years. They only opened up the website for depositors to configure cars in July, and only let them configure $50k+ models. That's a lot of pent up demand coming out all at once. I'm wondering how briskly they're going to sell once they work through fulfilling those pre-orders. Truth is, they might be better off slowing down production and not hitting that 6,000 per week by 2019 goal they were talking about if it means ramming through all the orders too quick and not having enough demand to keep it up. I maintain contrarian on this. The luxury sedan segment is only so big.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

... I maintain contrarian on this. ...

You and me both. But still, news is news.
I would love to see the internal Tesla quality and defect reports at year end to see if they built these 53,000 cars well or slapped them together and pushed them out the door to make the shipping number.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

You and me both. But still, news is news.
I would love to see the internal Tesla quality and defect reports at year end to see if they built these 53,000 cars well or slapped them together and pushed them out the door to make the shipping number.

Oh yeah. They laid off a bunch of people too. Not assemblers and floor workers. But I imagine some of the white collar folk that got the axe might have been important for catching emergent defects early...

[GRG55]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

The results announced yesterday were notable for the material increase in production volumes.
Will TSLA become the Amazon of automobile manufacturing? It's certainly valued as though it already is.