Have we misjuded Tesla

[Mega]

[EJ]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

Wisely they focused on differentiating factors: motors and batteries. The fact that the body design for manufacturability is so poor is the result of hurrying the car to market. The car is somewhere between a mass produced prototype and an actual product. It's a problem that can possibly be solved over time with subsequent iterative improvements.

That said, a friend who runs a Japanese factory was brought in and spent three days there ostensibly to recruit him for the job of correcting the design and fixing the manufacturing process. He turned the job down because he thought the task was not feasible. They'd have to start over from scratch, in his view, and of course that's not an option when you have a production schedule to keep to.

[BK]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

Motors are just another Elon Musk illusion. Talk to your average Tesla Model 3 owner and ask what they think of the power train tech in Tesla and they will tell you "Elon is going to save the world".
Latest Tesla news from Taiwan television - go to 3:54 mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwe-gXnX7q0 Motor technology comes from Taiwan company called Fukuta. Elon Musk AC Induction motor is so unreliable that Model 3 now uses a permanent magnet motor design like every other car manufacturer. Keep in mind the original Founders of Tesla (Not Elon) named the car company after Tesla because it was Tesla who came up with the Induction Motor. No Magnets in the AC Induction motor which made it lighter than permanent magnet motor.
Making the lightest weight electric motor is useless if you Mean Time to failure is the shortest in the industry and there seem to be a lot of motor failures for Tesla owners.

IF you talk to a new Porsche owner you will be deluged with details about the motor and transmission. Talk to a new Tesla owner and you will be deluged with how Elon will save the world.
EJ dead right you cannot short a cult stock or a religion.
Does the American in this group photo look familiar to anyone???? https://www.google.com/search?q=tesl...dcQSLZNkriYaM:

CTO of car company does not go over to Taiwan for a photo shoot unless it is for a major supplier.
http://www.fukuta-motor.com.tw/tw/ne...051000003.html

[Mega]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

[santafe2]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

If anything offered in this thread has value, it should be very clear in the next year or so. In November of 2017 EV sales in the US were ~17,000 cars. In November 2018, ~44,000. A YOY ~150% increase. Where did it come from? Tesla. In November 2018 they controlled almost 56% of the US market and sold 24,600 of the 44,000 EVs sold. If the quality is as bad as proposed here, they're toast. Tick tock.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

If anything offered in this thread has value, it should be very clear in the next year or so. In November of 2017 EV sales in the US were ~17,000 cars. In November 2018, ~44,000. A YOY ~150% increase. Where did it come from? Tesla. In November 2018 they controlled almost 56% of the US market and sold 24,600 of the 44,000 EVs sold. If the quality is as bad as proposed here, they're toast. Tick tock.

Just keep in mind that was after years of pent-up demand and pre-order deposits for Model 3. Here's a Men's Journal article about it from 2012. Still think there's a cap for $50k+ luxury vehicle market, EV or otherwise. Put another way, there's only so many Porsche's to displace. Folks outside of rarefied income brackets will have to make do with their Civics and Priuses. People seem to forget that the CEO had promised on a $35k Model 3 on several occasions. It never materialized. He also promised a $49k Model S. It never materialized either. That came out at $70k. For those keeping track, he's promising prices at exactly 30% less than he can deliver each time. Seems awfully coincidental for someone not systematically overpromising and underdelivering at least, no? All I'm saying is that they're a company built on lying to investors and the public. "Going private at $420 per share, funding confirmed." Lies have afforded them an outsized, huge market cap. You can choose to believe that the lies are meant to be serving some grater good or that they're some kind of 4D chess played by a genius. But I don't play 4D chess. I'm too stupid. I prefer baseball. And I call balls and strikes like I sees 'em.

[touchring]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

I noticed that Tesla stock appears to be doing very well relative to the FAANGS during the recent tech bloodletting. Any thoughts?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

No. I'm too dumb for that too. Tesla options are crazy expensive. It's stock moves based on both a buy-and-hold cult of Elon and a risk-junky chaos-is-a-ladder casino playground. It's prone to wild one-day swings. And analysts have targets anywhere from bankrupt to $4,000. So people load up on calls and puts and use it to imagine a hedge for all sorts of insanity. It's led by a CEO shedding executives as fast as Trump sheds cabinet-level officials who chronically lies and says he has no respect for the SEC and now publicly admits his company was close to death just a few months ago. Even if you trust the books and numbers presented on the financial side by a guy like that, and some of the figures from the last quarter are laughably farcical, and you take his sales projections at face value, and you look at the debt loads, you'd have to come to the conclusion that the stock is overpriced. But it's not about that. It's not about typical valuation metrics. It's not about ev/ebitda or debt/equity or any other normal corporate mba type analysis. It's about guzzling whiskey and spinning the roulette wheel on the crazy train. If you've got the stomach for it, you might make money. You might loose too. You might even go totally off the rails and get wiped out.

One thing Musk has that most CEOs don't is a massive PR infrastructure. Sites like Electrek and Teslarati and whatnot are just the tips of the iceberg. He can sway online opinion much faster and harder than most. He has always been super PR conscious. And he has spun up a great (and totally fake) backstory. It has been going for a long time. Here's a 2010 article he got placed in the New York Times after he sent out e-mails berating them for not mentioning him in a previous Tesla article. Notice, it calls him a "rocket scientist" up front. He's not. He's just not. He has a business degree. He hired rocket scientists. But he's no Warner von Braun. It also calls him "Tony Stark" which is clearly an image he wanted to cultivate for himself. The story of him getting into a physics PhD program at Stanford and dropping out after the first week is a lie. It never happened. Nobody at Stanford remembers him. He didn't dream up the electric car at Tesla. He didn't even found Tesla. He bought it. Why would the New York Times simply lie about that? Why would Musk pay PR companies to maintain the lies in his Wikipedia article for years after the truth was out there? These are questions I don't have answers to. But I think it's a big part of building and maintaining the cult. And regardless it goes to show how little facts matter in Tesla world. Everything you hear is one part Goebbels.

[BK]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

Check out Inside EV
A writer is https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-loveday-8a5055115/

Clearly a Tesla propaganda site

What are the odds that Mr Lovejoy daughter gets
An article in Fortune http://fortune.com/2017/03/02/tesla-...-bria-loveday/

[santafe2]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

Just keep in mind that was after years of pent-up demand and pre-order deposits for Model 3. Here's a Men's Journal article about it from 2012. Still think there's a cap for $50k+ luxury vehicle market, EV or otherwise. Put another way, there's only so many Porsche's to displace. Folks outside of rarefied income brackets will have to make do with their Civics and Priuses. People seem to forget that the CEO had promised on a $35k Model 3 on several occasions. It never materialized. He also promised a $49k Model S. It never materialized either. That came out at $70k. For those keeping track, he's promising prices at exactly 30% less than he can deliver each time. Seems awfully coincidental for someone not systematically overpromising and underdelivering at least, no? All I'm saying is that they're a company built on lying to investors and the public. "Going private at $420 per share, funding confirmed." Lies have afforded them an outsized, huge market cap. You can choose to believe that the lies are meant to be serving some grater good or that they're some kind of 4D chess played by a genius. But I don't play 4D chess. I'm too stupid. I prefer baseball. And I call balls and strikes like I sees 'em.

I was re-reading, my post to see what set off your Tesla rant. I'm observing and documenting here, not cheer leading. Tesla no longer needs to survive, they've proven that the technology works. Not just for the environment, but for racing. Take the two latest super cars, the Porsche 918 and the Ferrari LaFerrari, they're hybrids. In my mind Musk is performing a valuable service, pushing automobile technology forward in ways that no other car company has been able to do. I don't care if he's a carny. I don't care if lots of folks get stuck with a car with no car company or a worthless stock. That's the gamble they're taking. I care about automotive / transportation technology moving forward.

Since the Chevy Volt came out, I've owned 3 of them. Without really trying I'd average 100 mpg, when i got obsessive, I could reach 1,000 mpg. Who needs more than that in a commuter car. But GM can't sell them so they're going away. There are several other examples among the 40 some electric / hybrid electric cars. Only Tesla has created the circus atmosphere that make large numbers of people willing to buy an electric car. Again, who cares if Tesla is real, they've created a message that resonates and that message will survive.

[seobook]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

Again, who cares if Tesla is real, they've created a message that resonates and that message will survive.

If they no longer survive as a company (if it is more than a debt restructuring they go through & they actually fully go under) then the message they will have left behind will also contain that important piece of information.

And anyone else pushing to innovate on a parallel plane will have their assertions & statements called into question.

The mainstream media is reactive & narrative driven.

[jk]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

the first portable computers, "luggable" was the term, were the osborne and kaypro iirc. [i'm not sure whether to count radio shack's machine]. my first computer was a kaypro, in 1982. the fact that those companies went away didn't kill the portable computer market.

with bmw, audi et al as well as all the other makers, the technology will go on if it's worth anything.

[santafe2]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

If they no longer survive as a company (if it is more than a debt restructuring they go through & they actually fully go under) then the message they will have left behind will also contain that important piece of information.

And anyone else pushing to innovate on a parallel plane will have their assertions & statements called into question.

The mainstream media is reactive & narrative driven.

You're giving the MSM more credit than they deserve. They're just starving squirrels looking for a nut. Innovation does not happen on the MSM plane.

[seobook]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

I think the media is typically selling the last battle/war. They often project the recent past into the future indefinitely.

If Tesla sinks then any other electric-only car company will be viewed with deep suspicion.

If hybrid and electrics are portions of bigger & established companies then so be it, but if Tesla fails, any stand alone startups focused on electric would get tarred and feathered by reporters writing the easy story about how they look a lot like Tesla.

[EJ]

Re: Have we misjuded Tesla

I was re-reading, my post to see what set off your Tesla rant. I'm observing and documenting here, not cheer leading. Tesla no longer needs to survive, they've proven that the technology works. Not just for the environment, but for racing. Take the two latest super cars, the Porsche 918 and the Ferrari LaFerrari, they're hybrids. In my mind Musk is performing a valuable service, pushing automobile technology forward in ways that no other car company has been able to do. I don't care if he's a carny. I don't care if lots of folks get stuck with a car with no car company or a worthless stock. That's the gamble they're taking. I care about automotive / transportation technology moving forward.

Since the Chevy Volt came out, I've owned 3 of them. Without really trying I'd average 100 mpg, when i got obsessive, I could reach 1,000 mpg. Who needs more than that in a commuter car. But GM can't sell them so they're going away. There are several other examples among the 40 some electric / hybrid electric cars. Only Tesla has created the circus atmosphere that make large numbers of people willing to buy an electric car. Again, who cares if Tesla is real, they've created a message that resonates and that message will survive.

There's another critical EV adoption development here that is key to the adoption of all new products: it takes time for consumers to put their initial fears and prejudices aside before you get to the the broader market of early majority consumers.



Range anxiety was the major obstacle for EV adoption. Tesla overcame that once it hit the 200 mile range threshold. That was the magic number.

Consumers decided that they almost never drive their commuter car that far in a day, can rent or use a second car for longer trips, and the cost savings and performance benefits of daily Tesla use made the range limit+time to charge vs performance+economy trade-off even easier to make.

Besides the Tesla PR machine, consumers needed to see many Tesla on the road and none by the side of the road out of juice.

But it sure took a long time and a pile of capital for Tesla to get there, starting with the Roadster 10 years ago.