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With how many Teslas are on the road, it obviously is. And people acting like companies like GM or Ford that were bailed out by the taxpayer 10 years ago are the benchmark of solidity is weird.
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Sep 23, 2020 23:23
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Fame Douglas posted:With how many Teslas are on the road, it obviously is. And people acting like companies like GM or Ford that were bailed out by the taxpayer 10 years ago are the benchmark of solidity is weird. What is your definition of a "solid" company? What makes Tesla so obviously "solid?"
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Sep 23, 2020 23:25
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GM and Ford bonds are practically selling at junk status. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/general-motors/2020/05/07/gm-offers-junk-like-yields-fight-stay-investment-grade/111671920/ Those companies are extremely likely to go bankrupt again in the next decade, and there is going to be less and less incentive for the government to bail them out going forward.
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Sep 23, 2020 23:25
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Squalid posted:GM and Ford bonds are practically selling at junk status. "make a good car" "no"
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Sep 23, 2020 23:35
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Somfin posted:What is your definition of a "solid" company? What makes Tesla so obviously "solid?" Tesla doesnt deserve the market cap it has, but they are undoubtedly selling a real, working product in a market that has room for growth, and doing it at a profit. They're not a giant, but its no Theranos or Nikola.
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Sep 23, 2020 23:36
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Shugojin posted:"make a good car" *Spins off Ram as its own company * *Makes a crossover under the Mustang marque *
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Sep 23, 2020 23:40
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Somfin posted:What is your definition of a "solid" company? What makes Tesla so obviously "solid?" although Tesla only produces 500,000 cars per year, their operating profit margin, which is more-or-less how efficient a company is, ranks at about 5% or comparable to Ford. This is quite remarkable given that Tesla's proportional expenses for stuff like R&D, which Tesla obviously does a lot of, should be much higher for Tesla than a company which is able to average those costs over many more units of sales. That Tesla is already competitive with the world's largest car makers by this metric indicates that they must be doing a lot of things right, better even, than their competitors.
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Sep 23, 2020 23:43
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Tesla's reported* ftfy
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Sep 23, 2020 23:53
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Fame Douglas posted:With how many Teslas are on the road, it obviously is. And people acting like companies like GM or Ford that were bailed out by the taxpayer 10 years ago are the benchmark of solidity is weird. Ford was not bailed out. Please use facts. Squalid posted:GM and Ford bonds are practically selling at junk status. SOME of their bonds are, because it's a very cheap time to borrow money so they are taking the long view and grabbing what they can while it's cheap debt. The reality is a lot more nuanced than "lol, junk bond!" OctaMurk posted:Tesla doesnt deserve the market cap it has, but they are undoubtedly selling a real, working product in a market that has room for growth, and doing it at a profit. They are selling a poorly made lifestyle signaling object. A very poorly made one that isn't price competitive with other vehices in the segments they sell into. So in this respect what they are is a brilliant lifestyle marketing company. Because they very much suck at manufacturing cars. Like seriously, they are objectively awfully manufactured. Like, 90s Korean/70s domestic kinda bad.
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Sep 23, 2020 23:53
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Motronic posted:Because they very much suck at manufacturing cars. Like seriously, they are objectively awfully manufactured. Like, 90s Korean/70s domestic kinda bad. I'm sure they do suck but they seem "solid" compared to a lot of tech companies which are basically money laundering or Ponzi schemes. They make a real thing and sell it for money, which by the standards of tech industry today seems rock solid.
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Sep 24, 2020 00:07
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EoinCannon posted:I'm sure they do suck but they seem "solid" compared to a lot of tech companies which are basically money laundering or Ponzi schemes. They make a real thing and sell it for money, which by the standards of tech industry today seems rock solid. The solidity of a company should not be based on those around them being complete shite, though.
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Sep 24, 2020 00:09
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Tesla produces fewer cars than the lines the proper car manufacturers canceled due to sales. And thus it has a larger market cap than any of them.
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Sep 24, 2020 00:11
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What exactly makes Tesla a tech company besides their lovely software that can apparently brick your car and leave you locked inside with a practically inaccessible manual override? Or do you mean the self driving features that occasionally kills people?
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Sep 24, 2020 00:12
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Motronic posted:Ford was not bailed out. Please use facts. 7 percent above treasury rates for a new issue isn’t cheap unless treasury rates are negative
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Sep 24, 2020 00:21
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Motronic posted:Ford was not bailed out. Please use facts. Yes they were
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Sep 24, 2020 00:24
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Ooh, a Chevy fansite's editorial page where they say that Ford got a government loan and that's the same thing as getting bailed out by a different act using a different mechanism
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Sep 24, 2020 00:38
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eXXon posted:What exactly makes Tesla a tech company besides their lovely software that can apparently brick your car and leave you locked inside with a practically inaccessible manual override? Or do you mean the self driving features that occasionally kills people? people are already paying $8000 for their lovely software on top of the price of the car Motronic posted:Because they very much suck at manufacturing cars. Like seriously, they are objectively awfully manufactured. Like, 90s Korean/70s domestic kinda bad. It's perfectly fair to criticize them for all the poo poo product quality in stuff like the finish and panels. But on so many of the really important elements their manufacturing isn't just good, it's great. If you're interested in exactly how Tesla's products beat the competitors, i recommend looking at the youtube channel of Munroe and Associates, who breakdown commercial vehicles to reconstruct their production process. They then sell their reports on this to car manufactures who are interested in what the competition is doing, or they make recommendations for how to improve existing products. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls6nGG7s7JU To quickly summarize some of their key points, the big automakers aren't selling any electric cars that can match Tesla products on range or acceleration because they literally can't. They don't know how and won't for years even if they dump billions of billions of dollars into solving their problems. Tesla cars have also improved radically over the past few years, and are continuing to do so.
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Sep 24, 2020 00:38
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Somfin posted:Ooh, a Chevy fansite's editorial page where they say that Ford got a government loan and that's the same thing as getting bailed out by a different act using a different mechanism Fine, here's Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2012/08/29/automakers-report-card-who-still-owes-taxpayers-money-the-answer-might-surprise-you posted:While not characterized as a “bailout” by any means, let’s be honest: Ford’s loan – received at a critical time when other sources of financing weren’t available to automakers or their suppliers – no doubt helped the carmaker survive the industry crisis and contributed to its strong market position today, especially after the Obama Administration finalized tougher fuel economy rules this week. Don't be obtuse.
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Sep 24, 2020 00:52
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eXXon posted:What exactly makes Tesla a tech company besides their lovely software that can apparently brick your car and leave you locked inside with a practically inaccessible manual override? Or do you mean the self driving features that occasionally kills people? they're not a tech company, they're a car company with tech company branding, so they can combine the worst of both worlds
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Sep 24, 2020 03:18
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Squalid posted:although Tesla only produces 500,000 cars per year, their operating profit margin, which is more-or-less how efficient a company is, ranks at about 5% or comparable to Ford. This is quite remarkable given that Tesla's proportional expenses for stuff like R&D, which Tesla obviously does a lot of, should be much higher for Tesla than a company which is able to average those costs over many more units of sales. That Tesla is already competitive with the world's largest car makers by this metric indicates that they must be doing a lot of things right, better even, than their competitors. Where does this 5% come from? Can you show your work on this? I mean, drag out numbers from Tesla's and Ford's 10-Ks. As near as I can tell, Tesla lost 862 million dollars last year on $24.5 billion in revenue. Ford only made 47 million on $156 billion in revenue. That income is down from 3.6 billion the year before, which is weird. Tesla spent $1.34 billion on R&D from $24.5 billion, or 5.5% of revenue. Ford spent $7.4 billion on R&D from $156 billion in revenue, or 4.7% of revenue. Your argument seems to be that Tesla must be operationally efficient because it 'obviously' spends a lot on research so it must make it up in operations, but I just don't see it. I'm not seeing any super efficiencies on either companies part here. Also, I don't want this to be a Tesla vs Ford thing, but I don't have time to research the whole industry.
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Sep 24, 2020 03:24
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People seem to forget that a famous musk dialogue is Top spaceX engineer: we can buy this rocket part for 100,000 from x company Elon: Nah gently caress that you have 5,000. Build it.
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Sep 24, 2020 03:26
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ford sells more than 2.5 times as many f-150 trucks as tesla sells of all their vehicles tesla's insane market valuation is because investors are still hoping to rope in many more fools on the fancy promises of self driving cars and that the electric car market will continue to expand given that americans buy shitloads more trucks than sedans, probably not
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Sep 24, 2020 03:33
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nonathlon posted:Right on. I had a pre-iPod MP3 player and the change was night and day. While techbros shrieked that it didn't run ogg vorbus and couldn't be loaded with their own special directory structure, the vast majority of people found the hardware and software combination easy and did what they wanted. Apple excels at that, making things just work. Slashdot posted:No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
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Sep 24, 2020 03:47
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eXXon posted:What exactly makes Tesla a tech company besides their lovely software that can apparently brick your car and leave you locked inside with a practically inaccessible manual override? Or do you mean the self driving features that occasionally kills people? They suckle from the VC tweet. That’s it. That’s the measure of a tech company. e: That’s supposed to be “teat”, but I’m leaving it.
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Sep 24, 2020 04:11
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Boot and Rally posted:Where does this 5% come from? Can you show your work on this? I mean, drag out numbers from Tesla's and Ford's 10-Ks. So I originally got that number from an article but pulling up the 10-k and it's at least ballpark. I think I'm messing up part of the calculation somewhere, I'll spare you my strained math, but depending on if I drop or add certain values I'm getting a value for operating profit between 5 and 6%. For anybody reading not aware, the formula for operating profit is Operating Profit Margin = Operating Income / Sales Revenue, the formula for which I borrowed from here. The reason we might be interested in this value is also described by that page like so: quote:The operating profit margin ratio is a useful indicator of a company's financial health. It can be used to compare a company with its competitors or similar companies. For example, a company with a ratio of 8 percent whose competitors average more than 10 percent may be at more financial risk than another company with the same ratio whose competitors average 7 percent. Here is Tesla's most recent financial statement.. My numbers were for the first half of 2020. I think I might have been unclear. Tesla doesn't spend a lot on research compared to its competitors. So why are its vehicles so much better in terms of cost and performance than its competitors? Why is Tesla the company that is at the forefront of battery manufacturing and powertrain performance? Your guess as to that is as good as mine, but whatever they are doing is working. Presumably every dollar they spend on research is just put to much better use than that of their competitors. At this point I don't think Tesla's technological advantage is really worth questioning. VW's CEO has outright said they were 2-3 years behind, and that was probably optimistic. Tesla is doing things literally nobody else does, like listen to how excited this old detroit hand gets describing the engineering behind their work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGffUODWWSE In a later interview Munroe says that he submitted 17 design modifications for this part to Tesla, and literally a few months later he gets asked to take apart another car and all of his suggestions had already been implemented. By contrast, he complains in five years at a Detroit automaker he couldn't get one manufacturing improvement through. Squalid fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Sep 24, 2020 |
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Sep 24, 2020 04:54
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Squalid posted:So I originally got that number from an article but pulling up the 10-k and it's at least ballpark. I think I'm messing up part of the calculation somewhere, I'll spare you my strained math, but depending on if I drop or add certain values I'm getting a value for operating profit between 5 and 6%. I'd prefer to go off the audited 10-K on file with the SEC. You're still not showing your work here. There is no line in any of the financial statements that says "operating income". Which numbers are you using? If you use the same method with the Ford 10-K, how does that compare? How do both those numbers compare to the Ford 10-K that claims an operating profit margin of 6.7%? This seems like something that should be very straight forward to calculate and arrive at a definite number for Tesla, not a range of possibilities. Squalid posted:I think I might have been unclear. Tesla doesn't spend a lot on research compared to its competitors. So why are its vehicles so much better in terms of cost and performance than its competitors? Why is Tesla the company that is at the forefront of battery manufacturing and powertrain performance? Your guess as to that is as good as mine, but whatever they are doing is working. Presumably every dollar they spend on research is just put to much better use than that of their competitors. What does it mean to be 'so much better in terms of cost and performance'? I could be convinced the powertrain is good. I've seen even some staunch haters agree that Tesla has been working on that for a while, long before Musk. It is not at all clear that the rest of the car is 'so much better' than any of the major manufacturers. Is there enough data on the lifetime of the batteries to determine if they are any good yet? Squalid posted:At this point I don't think Tesla's technological advantage is really worth questioning. VW's CEO has outright said they were 2-3 years behind, and that was probably optimistic. Tesla is doing things literally nobody else does, like listen to how excited this old detroit hand gets describing the engineering behind their work: When I read VW saying they are 2-3 years behind a company with a 10-15 year head start I don't hear something that is necessarily good for Tesla. Constantly reworking parts might explain why Tesla lost almost a billion dollars last year. You could give the automotive majors the same level of credit you're giving Tesla. Maybe if the majors aren't implementing Munroe's suggestions, whoever they are, they aren't cost effective or even necessary. This is some weird appeal to authority.
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Sep 24, 2020 06:38
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i mean if we want to estimate a cars manufacturing quality, I'm definitely not qualified to rate companies on that metric. I kinda have to rely on some sort of authority and it's literally the job of these guys to tell professionals how to build their own drat cars. But If you watch those videos you don't have to take Munroe and Associates at their word, because they show you all the parts and explain why Tesla performs so well. And they have the parts from the other manufacturers on hand to contrast them. If you really want to see my math here. Now I definitely remember the article I read the other day gave an operating profit of 5.4% but the number I spit out was more like 5%, I think I hosed up accounting for services and other tesla business. quote:What does it mean to be 'so much better in terms of cost and performance'? I could be convinced the powertrain is good. I've seen even some staunch haters agree that Tesla has been working on that for a while, long before Musk. It is not at all clear that the rest of the car is 'so much better' than any of the major manufacturers. Is there enough data on the lifetime of the batteries to determine if they are any good yet? Well I'm maybe not the best expert here, but other major manufacturers are struggling to produce any EV that is remotely competitive with a Tesla in a comparable class. For example you can see the Ford Mustang Mach E compared with a Tesla Model Y in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTu33WtBm8c Jump to 3:47 for some basic specs or you can just go to the companies' websites. For vehicles in similar classes the Model Y is capable of longer ranges (316 vs 300) and more torque (497 lb-ft vs 428 lb. -ft.). And no competitor in North America has access to a supercharging network with coverage remotely close to Tesla's. The situation might be different elsewhere, idk. And of course Tesla sells maybe the first truly luxury software in the world in the form of the autopilot system. Useful or not it makes money either way, and their competitors still can't match it. There might be battery lifetime data, idk, but they seem to retain resale value relatively well.
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Sep 24, 2020 07:34
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How much are they paying you for each one of these posts?
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Sep 24, 2020 10:57
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Squalid posted:
They just started with a blank sheet of paper. This is the thing with almost all of these startups (regardless of industry), if I give you X billion to get into an industry you can start on day 1 with a fresh clean architecture, no legacy manufacturing sites/processes/sunk-costs and you get to do whatever is the modern techniques from the ground up today. That's all these companies have in terms of competitive advantage half the time. So with Tesla you see all the advantages and disadvantages you would expect from a company starting with a clean sheet... shiny software and lots of manufacturing mistakes from a lack of experience, new large manufacturing sites built where you would want to build manufacturing sites today, poor QA process because they don't have a long history of known issues to check, problems in non Californian weather environments because they don't have test sites in sub-zero conditions but reduced overheads due to their lack of these same sites etc. There is a thing where a new entrant (with enough money behind them) gets to do the thing that make sense today, today. It gives the impression that they are geniuses, but the reality is that they are just unconstrained by legacy. Give them 50 years and they will find they have exactly as many old managers who are just biding time waiting for their pensions: The same factories not quite fitted to the needs of the production line. The same lengthy, costly, and tedious QA process. The same expensive massive multinational infrastructure needed to roll out a vehicle world wide in all conditions. The same lovely out of date internal coms and HR system. The software systems will now be built on a layer built on a layer built on a layer that goes back decades and are sub-optimal. That's not to entirely excuse the rest of the industry for being slow into the EV space, but big organisations always are as a function of their size, and that has little to do with the name badge. I have seen so far only because I stood on the shoulders of giants, style.
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Sep 24, 2020 13:04
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Squalid should be forced to read every page of the CSPAM Musk thread.
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Sep 24, 2020 13:57
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Electric cars a loving waste of time and resources as long as our grid remains based on carbon emissions.
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Sep 24, 2020 14:21
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yeah, i agreed with the earlier point about luxury electric vehicles being a lifestyle brand for tech nerds who want to save the world through more ethical consumption
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Sep 24, 2020 15:12
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The only ethical consumption is tuberculosis.
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Sep 24, 2020 15:26
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eXXon posted:The only ethical consumption is tuberculosis. Mods? This is thread title material.
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Sep 24, 2020 15:40
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Sextro posted:Electric cars a loving waste of time and resources as long as our grid remains based on carbon emissions. Well the great thing about them is that get greener as the grid gets greener, unlike the oil combustion cars of 2020 which will never be green at all. Just because we need to green our grid to get the full effects doesn't mean we shouldn't be investing in them now- we don't exactly have the luxury of time.
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Sep 24, 2020 16:45
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Sextro posted:Electric cars a loving waste of time and resources as long as our grid remains based on carbon emissions. 1. Generating power from fossil fuels is more efficient at the power station level than at the car level. 2. Renewable energy continues to climb. Currently 32% of California and 11% nationwide. California has climate advantages here, but they also have a history of tax subsidies. Renewable energy efficiency also continues to climb.
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Sep 24, 2020 17:10
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Nothingtoseehere posted:Well the great thing about them is that get greener as the grid gets greener, unlike the oil combustion cars of 2020 which will never be green at all. Just because we need to green our grid to get the full effects doesn't mean we shouldn't be investing in them now- we don't exactly have the luxury of time. Yeah I pay a premium here in CO to "get my electricity from wind" which really just means investing in it. I'm sure my actual electricity is still coming from the coal plant in SW Denver, but at least I'm signaling to Xcel, and enabling them, to switch, and they are making strides doing that. For the time period I had a Volt, that was about as close as I could get to zero-emissions driving.
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Sep 24, 2020 17:16
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Great for California, hope they install sufficient generation for the water desalination plants. Electrification of fossil fuels burning things is of course a positive change, but the entire concept of the personal vehicle is inimical to the levels of environmental impact we need to be striving to reach. Ideally not by strip mining what's left of the global south for lithium.
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Sep 24, 2020 17:16
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Sextro posted:Electric cars a loving waste of time and resources as long as our grid remains based on carbon emissions. This is a Penn Gillette level understanding of the issue.
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Sep 24, 2020 17:17
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i'm plus one on the idea that land use patterns oriented around mass ownership of personal vehicles will never, ever be environmentally sustainable and so electric cars are at best a stopgap and at worst greenwashing overconsumption of land
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Sep 24, 2020 18:12
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