TSLA - Tesla Motors

[rkbabang]

i like the business model of getting potential client to fund development LoL

no need for new shares

 

And doing it without Kickstarter taking some percentage off the top.

 

[bookie71]

https://www.consumerreports.org/automotive-technology/tesla-semi-electric-truck/

[rkbabang]

https://www.consumerreports.org/automotive-technology/tesla-semi-electric-truck/

 

This is very true:

 

“a large number of crashes are caused by human drivers of passenger cars, who may underestimate the ability of large trucks to see them or stop quickly. Self-driving trucks may not help much in those cases.

 

Right now, big rigs are at fault in about 18 percent of their crashes, says Randy Mullett, a former senior executive with Con-way, a freight transportation and logistics company, and now a consultant in Washington. There’s no reason to think that self-driving trucks won’t be struck by other vehicles as they are now more than 80 percent of the time. 

 

“Why do we think it’s going to be any different when a machine is driving?” Mullett says.

 

There won’t be a dramatic safety benefit until the entire fleet of vehicles on public roads is autonomous—passenger cars as well as trucks.”

[Guest Cameron]

i like the business model of getting potential client to fund development LoL

no need for new shares

 

At least they are getting creative at burning cash

 

[gokou3]

Direct links:

 

https://www.tesla.com/roadster/

 

https://www.tesla.com/semi/

 

Am I the only one who thinks having only one seat on the semi is a stupid idea until self-driving is implemented?

[John Hjorth]

Personally, I speculate the Tesla Semi will flop dearly as is. To me it seems evident, that Mr. Musk & his R&D team haven't done suffient work on understanding the lifestyle and work conditions of being an employee at a trucking company.

 

Basically, as an employee of a trucking company, you work out of an office on wheels, pulling something. And when you're on duty, you're on 24/7, untill the next few days off duty, perhaps many days from now.

 

Working hours simply has other dimensions. It's about beeing on duty, or not. Not about working or not. On duty you can be driving or standing still with the truck. That - standing still - means either being passive [i.e. asleep] or being private. [Having sex in standing position gets cumbersome over time, I speculate.] There is no place for either.

 

I speculate there will be some kind of battle with unions about this. Perhaps the cabin will be prolonged, otherwise Mr. Musk and his R&D team need to include accommodation costs in their calculations.

[rkbabang]

Personally, I speculate the Tesla Semi will flop dearly as is. To me it seems evident, that Mr. Musk & his R&D team haven't done suffient work on understanding the lifestyle and work conditions of being an employee at a trucking company.

 

Basically, as an employee of a trucking company, you work out of an office on wheels, pulling something. And when you're on duty, you're on 24/7, untill the next few days off duty, perhaps many days from now.

 

Working hours simply has other dimensions. It's about beeing on duty, or not. Not about working or not. On duty you can be driving or standing still with the truck. That - standing still - means either being passive [i.e. asleep] or being private. [Having sex in standing position gets cumbersome over time, I speculate.] There is no place for either.

 

I speculate there will be some kind of battle with unions about this. Perhaps the cabin will be prolonged, otherwise Mr. Musk and his R&D team need to include accommodation costs in their calculations.

 

Most trucking isn't long haul trucking.  There are plenty of people who drive 18 wheel rigs for a living who sleep at home every night.

You are correct though that a sleeper version would be required for long distance trucking, but this version would be fine for other segments of the market.  It is odd not to have the 2nd seat though.

 

[Spekulatius]

Just shut up and give da man da money!  8)

1.4 G in acceleration for the roadster - you get pushed my pushed harder in the seat than you get pushed down by gravity. You will pretty much leave anything but a formula one car in the dust.

 

I wonder how long the tires last on this thing.

[rkbabang]

Just shut up and give da man da money!  8)

1.4 G in acceleration for the roadster - you get pushed my pushed harder in the seat than you get pushed down by gravity. You will pretty much leave anything but a formula one car in the dust.

 

I wonder how long the tires last on this thing.

 

In theory you don't have to accelerate that quickly every time... I know that's crazy talk, my tires would wear out rather quickly if I owned this thing.

 

[DTEJD1997]

Hey all:

 

Does anybody else find it odd that TSLA is announcing a semi truck AND a high end sports car right at this moment in time?

 

They are having INCREDIBLE problems with producing the model 3.

 

They are having INCREDIBLE losses and cash flow issues.

 

If they can't produce the model 3, how are they going to produce semi trucks & high end sports cars?

 

How many more BILLIONS in capital investment is it going to take?  Surely they can't produce 5 different models in one factory?

 

If they are losing money bigly, how are they going to spend BILLIONS on tooling, new employees and a new factor(ies)?  My guess is they will borrow it, and maybe issue more shares?

[kab60]

They should issue more shares. I'm surprised they haven't taken more advantage of the share price instead of raising all that debt.

[awindenberger]

They should issue more shares. I'm surprised they haven't taken more advantage of the share price instead of raising all that debt.

 

Totally agree with you on this.

[no_free_lunch]

I was a big bull on Tesla last year after it got clobbered post election.  I have made some good money, took some off the table awhile back and now I'm 95% out.

 

I think there is too much priced into the stock at these levels.  I think there will be more shares issued unfortunately so even current market cap is lower than it will be at end of day.  Personally I would rather see debt issued as, if the growth rates they need are achieved the debt will be manageable.

 

I suspect this company will succeed, given what I am seeing elsewhere in the market it could even be a 2-3x up from here if they can associate themselves as a tech company but I have speculated enough for now.  It is also possible they succeed but stock is where it is today.  When you buy here you are betting on significant market share takeover at margins above current car companies.  Upside beyond that requires entrance to new markets or significantly higher margins.  We will see.  Still like the company but hope to be back in at a more reasonable level some day.

[Guest Cameron]

I was a big bull on Tesla last year after it got clobbered post election.  I have made some good money, took some off the table awhile back and now I'm 95% out.

 

I think there is too much priced into the stock at these levels.  I think there will be more shares issued unfortunately so even current market cap is lower than it will be at end of day.  Personally I would rather see debt issued as, if the growth rates they need are achieved the debt will be manageable.

 

I suspect this company will succeed, given what I am seeing elsewhere in the market it could even be a 2-3x up from here if they can associate themselves as a tech company but I have speculated enough for now.  It is also possible they succeed but stock is where it is today.  When you buy here you are betting on significant market share takeover at margins above current car companies.  Upside beyond that requires entrance to new markets or significantly higher margins.  We will see.  Still like the company but hope to be back in at a more reasonable level some day.

 

Their cost of capital is what 6%? And ROIC is negative 15% issuing debt just puts them in an even bigger hole, F and GM can't even earn their cost of capital.

[rkbabang]

They should issue more shares. I'm surprised they haven't taken more advantage of the share price instead of raising all that debt.

 

+1.  It is irresponsible to not issue shares at these prices.  They should be doing a secondary offering and trying to raise $30B

[Liberty]

If I was Musk I'd have issued more equity too to have a few more billions in cash in the bank as a buffer to get through the Model 3/Gigafactory ramp up, but his risk tolerance is much higher than mine, and I'm sure people were telling him to issue tons of equity around when the Model S was ramping up too, and back then the stock was in the $30-range, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[doughishere]

If I was Musk I'd have issued more equity too to have a few more billions in cash in the bank as a buffer to get through the Model 3/Gigafactory ramp up, but his risk tolerance is much higher than mine, and I'm sure people were telling him to issue tons of equity around when the Model S was ramping up too, and back then the stock was in the $30-range, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

whats elons interest in the company?

[Guest Cameron]

If I was Musk I'd have issued more equity too to have a few more billions in cash in the bank as a buffer to get through the Model 3/Gigafactory ramp up, but his risk tolerance is much higher than mine, and I'm sure people were telling him to issue tons of equity around when the Model S was ramping up too, and back then the stock was in the $30-range, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

whats elons interest in the company?

 

his reputation.

 

and 33 million shares

[Liberty]

If I was Musk I'd have issued more equity too to have a few more billions in cash in the bank as a buffer to get through the Model 3/Gigafactory ramp up, but his risk tolerance is much higher than mine, and I'm sure people were telling him to issue tons of equity around when the Model S was ramping up too, and back then the stock was in the $30-range, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

whats elons interest in the company?

 

his reputation.

 

and 33 million shares

 

Proxy says "Shares Beneficially Owned" is 37,193,974, or 26.5% of the company. I think he also owns some of the debt/debentures, but haven't really followed that, so not sure and don't feel like digging it up right now.

[Guest Cameron]

Have to amend my previous comment about Tesla's cost of capital, I forgot that they capitalize some of their interest which is fine under the assumptions that they use but it doesn't give a real picture as to how much they really pay in terms of interest expense.

[Spekulatius]

I think it is pretty clear by now that Tesla is clueless about manufacturing. just as an example, the precessorm of the Tesla Factory build up to 420k cars a year with 4700 workers in 2006, so this was about 90 cars/ employee. This wasn’t a plant as highly automated as the pics showed in Tesla articles (I visited the plant myself in 2007 or so )

Now Tesla builds roughly 100k cars with now 6000 workers in the Tesla factory with the same footprint, plus they have all these other facilities in Lathrop, Gigafactory etc., supposedly everything is highly automated now etc.

 

Now TSLA cars are more expensive and probably more complex to assemble, than the cars that were build in the Nummi factory, but still,now 10 years later, all these robots and 25% of the productivity from way back then. Maybe they should hire some engineer and managers from Toyota and and get this place fixed.

[JRM]

Now TSLA cars are more expensive and probably more complex to assemble,...

 

I thought that advantage of EVs was the simplicity.  2000 moving parts down to 20 or something ridiculous.  You're giving Tesla too much credit. 

[Liberty]

I think it is pretty clear by now that Tesla is clueless about manufacturing. just as an example, the precessorm of the Tesla Factory build up to 420k cars a year with 4700 workers in 2006, so this was about 90 cars/ employee. This wasn’t a plant as highly automated as the pics showed in Tesla articles (I visited the plant myself in 2007 or so )

Now Tesla builds roughly 100k cars with now 6000 workers in the Tesla factory with the same footprint, plus they have all these other facilities in Lathrop, Gigafactory etc., supposedly everything is highly automated now etc.

 

I don't think you're comparing apples to apples. Pretty sure that many of those 6000 (which is a 2016 number) at the Fremont plant are doing all kinds of others things, like R&D and software, autopilot, and working on next models (Y, truck, Semi, Roadster) and building the lines for the Model 3 and such. At the old NUMMI plant, this was just assembly of vehicles afaik.

 

The requirements are also very different for a mature plant than for one for a company growing revenues/units at rates of 50-100% YoY. In other words, you don't need as many people to maintain a stable system than to build and maintain a rapidly changing system.

 

But I could be wrong.

[kab60]

Came across this (Haven't had a chance to read it yet): https://thomasthethinkengine.com/2017/11/18/optimist-prime-tesla-is-ignoring-a-truckload-of-risk/

[randomep]

 

 

I suspect this company will succeed, given what I am seeing elsewhere in the market

 

 

Succeed at WHAT exactly? In a capitalist mindset the goal is to make a profit on each car. Right now they have never done so, and they have been around how many years?  If you think eventually they will make a profit per car, can we put a estimate on when? at the 400,000th Model 3?  or the next model, or the next model after that?