tesla motors

[coopasonic]

My money's on dual-motor S

Because the current 0-60 in 5 secs just isn't fast enough?

Not even close to fast enough. I can have that in a number of ways for $30k.

[Zaxxon]

My money's on dual-motor S

Winnar.



Since the driver assist features are rolling out on current deleveries and none have the D mark, I think this has to be dual motor.

[Biyobi]

It's the "Distance" model. Max speed is 75mph and acceleration is curbed to promote charge life, netting you 475 miles between charges.

[LawBeefaroni]

[Jeff V]

It's the "Distance" model. Max speed is 75mph and acceleration is curbed to promote charge life, netting you 475 miles between charges.

Is that 475 miles real or imagined? Nissan said I could get up to 500 miles on a tank with my car, in reality, it averages less than half that.

[Zaxxon]

My money's on dual-motor S and the 'something else' is probably an overview of the new driver assist features that just started showing up on cars in the past two weeks (lane departure warning, camera-assisted speed limit overlay on the spedometer, ACC).

Winnar!

Tesla unveils the D.

-Dual-motor option on the 60/85 trims is $4k, and improves 0-60, top speed, and range
-New P85D replaces the old top-of-the-line P85+, does 0-60 in 3.2 (OMGWTFBBQ!), and is $120k
-Autopilot handles lane keep, ACC, braking, maintaining changing speed limit, and can change lanes on its own when you turn on your signal. Will also parallel park as well as let you out, then park itself in the garage.

[Zaxxon]

Also, here's a demo of the OMGWTFBBQ part.

[McNutt]

That car is insane, in a good way.

[Biyobi]

Too many episodes of Top Gear are fooling my brain into thinking they had no audio pickup on the track. Cars going that fast are supposed to make impressive vroom-vroom noises!!

I've worked with computers too many years to be comfortable with the self-driving part, but damn me if I don't want one of these beasts.

[LawBeefaroni]

I know a lot of the cock-of-the-walk Tesla drivers on my commute are probably clamoring for their pre-orders right now even though speed and range are two things that aren't really a problem around here.

[Scraper]

That tweet raised the company value by a lot http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/08/investi ... =obnetwork crazyness.

[LawBeefaroni]

That tweet raised the company value by a lot http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/08/investi ... =obnetwork crazyness.

Temporarily, of course. It's worth less now than the day before he tweeted.

[Zaxxon]

That tweet raised the company value by a lot http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/08/investi ... =obnetwork crazyness.

Temporarily, of course. It's worth less now than the day before he tweeted.

Yeah, it's been a solid week of beat-down for the stock.

[Scraper]

That tweet raised the company value by a lot http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/08/investi ... =obnetwork crazyness.

Temporarily, of course. It's worth less now than the day before he tweeted.

Yeah, it's been a solid week of beat-down for the stock.

Maybe he should make another cryptic tweet.

[Zaxxon]

Or reveal the X. The D event was all good news, but I think the thing most likely to stoke investors is a near-production-ready Model X.

[Biyobi]

That tweet raised the company value by a lot http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/08/investi ... =obnetwork crazyness.

Temporarily, of course. It's worth less now than the day before he tweeted.

Yeah, it's been a solid week of beat-down for the stock.

It's been a solid week of beat-down for a lot of stocks.

[Zaxxon]

Indeed.

[LawBeefaroni]

Indeed.

Very true, the overall implosion of the market hasn't helped obviously, but TLSA is underperforming the QQQ and SPY since the 10/1 tweet. I think the announcement disappointed a lot of the speculators who jumped in after the tweet.

[Isgrimnur]

Add Michigan to the haters.

Governor Rick Snyder today signed bipartisan legislation aimed at discouraging Tesla Motors from selling its electric cars directly through company stores.

House Bill 5606, sponsored by state Rep. Aric Nesbitt, also prohibits auto manufacturers from dictating fees franchised dealers can charge customers. The legislation allows individual auto dealers to make the business decision whether to charge the transaction fee.

Snyder said direct sales of new vehicles is already banned in the state. This law will explicitly require all automakers to sell through a network of franchised dealers.

Earlier today General Motors urged the governor to sign the bill.
...
Todd Maron, Tesla's general counsel, said the Michigan bill goes beyond requiring sales through a franchised dealer to prohibit the use of a gallery to simply display cars and communicate in person with consumers.

"People don't introduce bills unless they intend to change the law," Maron said. "Secondly, people don't sneak language in at the last minute unless they know it will be consequential."

Asked what Tesla's next step will be, Diarmuid O'Connell, vice president of business development, said it was unclear if they would file a lawsuit.
...
Last month, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that Tesla can keep selling from a shopping mall in the Boston suburb of Natick.

"This is an embarrassment for the State of Michigan and democracy," said Daniel Crane, a law professor at the University of Michigan. " When no one was looking, the car dealers slipped language into the bill that would strengthen their case against Tesla. They went to the Governor's office and told his staff they needed this change in order to avoid the result in Massachusetts, where the Supreme Court ruled against them and in favor of Tesla."

Crane also disputed the governor's assertion that this didn't change existing law.

"Does the law change anything or not? If it doesn't, why did the car dealers want the changes?" Crane said.

[noxiousdog]

Or reveal the X. The D event was all good news, but I think the thing most likely to stoke investors is a near-production-ready Model X.

I still can't imagine any logical valuation of Tesla. It's worse than the Amazon situation. At least Amazon is inventing a new industry. There's an argument (not a good one) that they can some day get better margins than retail. Tesla makes cars. At scale they are going to be limited by being a car company. The margins and limitations than apply to every other car company are going to apply to them as well.

[Isgrimnur]

I thought the common wisdom was that they were pioneers in the battery field that just happened to be using cars as a method to get them to the marketplace.

[Vorret]

So... I'm curious, why don't they just create Tesla dealership?

[noxiousdog]

I thought the common wisdom was that they were pioneers in the battery field that just happened to be using cars as a method to get them to the marketplace.

That's even less likely. Batteries are easy to reverse engineer.

[stessier]

I thought the common wisdom was that they were pioneers in the battery field that just happened to be using cars as a method to get them to the marketplace.

That's even less likely. Batteries are easy to reverse engineer.

Easy to figure out how the bits go together, yes. Easy to replicate, not so much.

[Zaxxon]

Easy to procure production capacity required for millions of vehicles, even less so.

[Kraken]

So... I'm curious, why don't they just create Tesla dealership?

Dealerships are a horribly expensive way to sell cars, and that sales model would probably die out pretty quickly without protection. I'm guessing Tesla, as a forward-thinking company, wants to avoid that particular albatross if at all possible.

[noxiousdog]

Stessier: It didn't take long for lithium ion batteries to be ubiquitous, and in fact, Panasonic is Tesla's primary supplier.

Zaxxon: It's just as hard for Tesla as it would be anyone else.

Actually, I'm glad I did this exercise. Sometimes the numbers sound worse than they are.

It's a pretty easy math problem. Currently it's a 30 billion dollar company. To me, that means I want it to profit 3 billion per year sometime in the foreseeable future. At 20% profit (which is likely ludicrous... long term the luxury car market is 10%-15%) that's 15 billion worth of sales. At 70,000 per car, that's over 200,000 cars per year, but I don't think it's unreasonable that he's selling a million cars per year within 5-10 years, though at a reduced price.

To be fair, Musk thinks he's going to be able to produce (and I assume sell) 100,000 cars in 2015. I'm curious how he gets there since battery production is already falling behind.

So I guess if he can keep margins up, and he doesn't run into labor issues it's reasonable.

[stessier]

Stessier: It didn't take long for lithium ion batteries to be ubiquitous, and in fact, Panasonic is Tesla's primary supplier.

There are tons of phone suppliers but Apple does quite well for itself. Tesla could be that for batteries - yes, there are others but theirs could be the best/most reliable/ highest energy density/etc. I have no idea if that will happen, of course, but it could be a path forward.

I have second hand knowledge of trying to increase the energy density in the things. It's quite a challenge and doing it repeatedly more so. How many car battery suppliers are there? They can be ubiquitous and still come from only 2-3 places.

[Zaxxon]

Zaxxon: It's just as hard for Tesla as it would be anyone else.

I agree--but Tesla (and to an extent Nissan) seems to be the only one actually doing something about it, and it's not a problem that a company can solve overnight. It's a multi-year process to bring a new production facility online. Tesla also has actual stationary storage units in production and plans to greatly increase their footprint to position themselves to be ready if/when that market takes off. I'm not sure I buy the 'Tesla as energy supplier that just happens to also make cars' theory, but it's pretty clear that they are making progress toward the stationary side of things.

To be fair, Musk thinks he's going to be able to produce (and I assume sell) 100,000 cars in 2015. I'm curious how he gets there since battery production is already falling behind.

Panasonic has agreed to ramp up production, and Tesla has a multi-year agreement with them leading up to the opening of the gigafactory a few years from now that Tesla says will cover their planned growth. We'll see.

So I guess if he can keep margins up, and he doesn't run into labor issues it's reasonable.

The other aspect that I think Tesla has an edge in is the software side of the car. Most automakers these days are really, really good at making internal combustion engines. And nearly every other part of the car is outsourced. That's not to say that other manufacturers can't pivot, but they're not currently set up to do so. If Tesla keeps innovating on the touchscreen / smartphone experience, it seems feasible to me that they increase their lead.

[Zaxxon]

Also, to clarify: Musk doesn't see 100k produced in 2015. He sees ending 2015 at a 100k run rate.

[noxiousdog]

Stessier: It didn't take long for lithium ion batteries to be ubiquitous, and in fact, Panasonic is Tesla's primary supplier.

There are tons of phone suppliers but Apple does quite well for itself. Tesla could be that for batteries - yes, there are others but theirs could be the best/most reliable/ highest energy density/etc. I have no idea if that will happen, of course, but it could be a path forward.

I have second hand knowledge of trying to increase the energy density in the things. It's quite a challenge and doing it repeatedly more so. How many car battery suppliers are there? They can be ubiquitous and still come from only 2-3 places.

Tesla doesn't make batteries as far as I can tell. They just assemble the cells in a form that is good for a car.

Apple is selling for 10 times earnings rather than 400 I would mortgage my house to buy TSLA at 20.

[LawBeefaroni]

That seems to be the general idea. But I don't see how that hope justifies a $30B market cap.

And I think their Toyota RAV4 EV contract was less than $30M last quarter. Don't remember exactly but pretty sure it was around there.

[Zaxxon]

And I think their Toyota RAV4 EV contract was less than $30M last quarter. Don't remember exactly but pretty sure it was around there.

Toyota threw a bone to Tesla on the RAV4 when they invested in Tesla. Toyota's pinning their future on hydrogen.

[noxiousdog]

That seems to be the general idea. But I don't see how that hope justifies a $30B market cap.

I'm swapping sides on this.

Are we agreed that 30B should be 3B in profit?

If so, that's not that unreasonable as I mentioned previously.

What would really make it interesting is if they could get into the non-luxury market or if it's even worth their while.

[Zaxxon]

To expand on my earlier comment about conventional automakers having outsourced all but the engine, here's a part of a talk given last year by Marc Tarpenning, one of the original Tesla founders (since departed). He talks about how he's consulted for other manufacturers since leaving Tesla, and that they have even less electrical expertise in-house than he had anticipated. I don't see a whole lot of EV innovation coming from other manufacturers for some time yet.

What would really make it interesting is if they could get into the non-luxury market or if it's even worth their while.

Per the secret master plan, the intent is to go to $35k next, and lower than that as the tech continues to fall in price. Again, we'll see.

[LawBeefaroni]

That seems to be the general idea. But I don't see how that hope justifies a $30B market cap.

I'm swapping sides on this.

Are we agreed that 30B should be 3B in profit?

If so, that's not that unreasonable as I mentioned previously.

What would really make it interesting is if they could get into the non-luxury market or if it's even worth their while.

I think they are around $2B/year in revs. Using your generous 20% margin target, they will need around 7.5 times their curent revenues to generate $3B in profit.

Of course, by the time they reach that $15B in revs the forward looking market will value the company at $180B or something. As the saying goes, "the market can afford to stay irrational far longer than you can afford to stay solvent." That's why I'm not betting against TSLA just yet. This will not have a PE as low as 10x for a long, long time.


EDIT: Just had strong deja vu writing those last three sentences. Weird.

[noxiousdog]

I think they are around $2B/year in revs. Using your generous 20% margin target, they will need around 7.5 times their curent revenues to generate $3B in profit.

That's not hard to believe. Their trailing 4 quarters are 2.4B in revs and will easily be over 3 in fiscal 2015.

Of course, by the time they reach that $15B in revs the forward looking market will value the company at $180B or something. As the saying goes, "the market can afford to stay irrational far longer than you can afford to stay solvent." That's why I'm not betting against TSLA just yet. This will not have a PE as low as 10x for a long, long time.

Unless something goes horribly wrong

[Carpet_pissr]

Yeah, and like Amazon, if you try to pigeonhole them and value them like a traditional company, using P/E and whatnot, you will probably be asking yourself, 10 years from now "but really how long can they sustain this valuation?! It's madness, and has been for the past 10 years!"

Some rulebreakers just run in the so-called "overvalued" space for a loooong time.

[noxiousdog]

Yeah, and like Amazon, if you try to pigeonhole them and value them like a traditional company, using P/E and whatnot, you will probably be asking yourself, 10 years from now "but really how long can they sustain this valuation?! It's madness, and has been for the past 10 years!"

That's a straw man.

We are saying, "how do they get to 3B worth of profit and how long will it take?"

Some rulebreakers just run in the so-called "overvalued" space for a loooong time.

Or the emperor has no clothes. There's plenty of those too.

[Carpet_pissr]

Or the emperor has no clothes. There's plenty of those too.

True, that.