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Tesla Suffering Cash Flow Issues; Every Model S Means a $4,000 Loss
An anonymous reader writes: The latest reports from Tesla show a trend of missing positive cash flow targets. Despite previous guidance to the contrary, Tesla is losing more than $4000 per car in operating margin and no sign of near term improvement as they are now reducing their production targets at a time when they are also experiencing pricing pressure. A scan of articles published today on this news reveals a common opinion that Tesla will need to raise more capital soon.
A small slice of the Reuters report linked: Tesla has signaled capital spending will drop next year because the company won't be spending on a major vehicle launch. In 2017, Tesla plans to launch its Model 3 line, which the company says will start at about $35,000 and push total sales toward the goal of 500,000 vehicles a year by 2020.
Barclays analyst Brian Johnson disagreed with the company's estimates, and said he expects Tesla's capital spending will go up in 2016 and 2017 as the company ramps up its battery factory and Model 3 development. "Their small scale means the cash generation is not as great as they might have hoped for," he said.
Fed bailout too big to fail.
Subsidies running out - fun times ahead.
Stopping the losses is easy, but would kill the company:
Stop investing in the battery gigafactory
Stop investing in the upcoming new models
Stop investing in the Supercharger network.
They'd be profitable, but sitting still and would have squandered their future.
Despite that, it still works sometimes: are Jeff Bezos' ear's ringing?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Musk has repeatedly said that he's far more interested in changing the world than in making money. The dollars and cents are merely a vehicle for his visions.
Amazon's lack of profitability was/is in some ways artificial - they spent (are spending) a goodly chunk of cash on infrastructure. And even when they weren't (technically) profitable, they still had a healthy cash flow (which Tesla doesn't have).
With their debt load, an unhealthy cash flow is a real problem. Without cash flow, you're limited in your ability to re-finance or to pay interest while pushing the repayment of principal into the future. (Which isn't the best strategy overall, though it can work if the stars align.)
If they include all the investments made in battery technology, charging stations and future lines, then $4k/car is pretty much peanuts.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
No, building each Tesla does not mean a $4000 loss.
The obviously make a profit building and selling the cars - raw materials + labor is definitely less than the sticker price on the vehicles.
They are just investing huge sums developing the new Model X - so if you count all those expenses against the Model S cars sold during this timeframe, you would get this "$4000 loss per car".
Tesla took a huge risk by taking a completely new technology (battery-powered cars) and applying it in a completely new and untested way (performance car). They went into it knowing that they'd be taking a loss for the medium term.
If Tesla are already at taking only a $4k loss / 10% loss, they're doing extremely well:
- The "Supercharger" units that are being aggressively installed across many countries will be accounted for within this unit cost... It won't be long until they reach diminshing returns on their deployment, and the impact of this will tail off.
- They added a number of new product lines, all sinking huge money into R&D. They're close to establishing a range of products so the impact of this will tail off shortly.
Musk could easily choose to add $4k to the sale cost of each cars with minimal impact and result in a 0-dollar P/L, but increasing production count ensures far better long-term return by economies of scale improvements, as well as learning opportunities when scaling aggressively.
But... they plan to make up for it in volume? There's not a conversation going on there, along the lines of "Hey Elon! We're losing 4 grand per model S sold! You think maybe we should... raise the price by 4 grand?" It's not like there's really any competition. I mean, there are other electric cars, but Tesla's like the Apple of the vehicular manufacturing world.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So... what are we going to do? Say good bye to mobility? For if we don't have the means to produce electricity to power cars, we sure don't have the oil to do so, considering that you can produce electricity out of oil PLUS a lot of other means, too...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It has been suggested that Tesla should get into the battery business, as a product. They've done a lot of work to improve battery energy density. If they were to market these to laptop and cell phone vendors, would they be able to use that cashflow as a means to prop up the rest of the business?
Actually we could replace 25-30% of the cars on the road with electrics without increasing electricity production at all. You would be surprised at the amount of baseload electricity that gets produced produced in the nighttime that gets wasted.
According to this site, it takes more electricity (yes, actual electricity, not "energy" in general) to produce gasoline for a regular car than it does to drive an electric car. So when you've finished filling up your gas tank, you've already used the same amount of electricity and you haven't even started burning the stuff yet.
It's gas cars that need to die soon. Stop polluting in the middle of the city, in front of schools, etc.
Imagine for a minute living in a world where all cars were electric already. Now imagine someone having the great idea of introducing a new car that burns fossil fuels and just throws out its carcinogenic exhaust fumes wherever it's driving. You would smell it whenever one passed by (you can't now because you're so used to it). People would say it's scandalous that those things were allowed anywhere near population centers. So why are we still accepting this as normal?
Whereas oil - I mean there's just an infinite supply of that, isn't there?
Idiot.
An electric car can be powered from anything. A hydrogen car can only be powered by hydrogen, and a petrol car only by petrol and a diesel car only by diesel.
The last time I priced up an electric bike, it worked out something like 10p of electricity for each trip, which would have worked out less than 1/40th of my petrol costs over the course of a month. I can put the savings from that into something that produces a pittance of electricity quite easily.
However, that's on the cusp of being true for cars too. So much so that I'd rather have a 220V/32A outside connector on my house than anything to do with any competing technology.
Fuck, if it comes to it, I'll go to an electric bike for 90% of my journeys and literally NOT PAY for propulsion overall. I could do that in a crappy, cloudy, still country and still find a way to produce that electricity that's cheaper than running a petrol equivalent.
The only thing we don't have power for is the PEAK hours, nothing else. Otherwise, the pittance drawn by a car is eclipsed by your heating, lighting, etc.
But the beauty of electricity? It can come from ANY source. We could quite literally just burn petrol in a huge petrol engine and keep MORE electric cars powered than that petrol could have run direct.
If that were the case, wouldn't it be an easy fix? Just use the gas to generate more electricity. Ship it to a power plant or ship it to the local gas station as normal and they run a generator to charge cars. What's so special about putting the gas in car?
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
In more than ten years, Tesla turned in a quarterly profit one time. It takes real genius to lose money year-after-yearjust like Steve Jobs. Oh wait, Steve’s companies were profitable.
I know that the fanboys love to compare Tesla to Amazon, because Jeff Bezos is a loser too (his company also loses money), but both Tesla and Amazon will ultimately fail because you can’t lose money forever. As soon as Amazon tries to raise prices, people will shop elsewhere. Bezos’ strategy is to undercut competitors in existing markets, and drive them out of business so he can eventually own the market and raise prices. That’s not exactly revolutionary; the Japanese did this with the semiconductor market decades ago. It never works long-term.
I don’t know how to make Tesla profitable. They’ve been losing money on each Model S made since they introduced the model, and their time is running out. If battery-powered cars ever catch on, the average consumer will buy a Ford, Nissan, Chevy, or Toyota, and those companies will make the majority of the profit. I suppose Tesla might be able to pull an Apple and hang on to the high-end of the market (presumably where the highest profit is), but that assumes that these other established auto manufacturers won’t steal sales from them. I wouldn’t take that bet.
Tesla has a gross profit (revenue from the selling cars - the cost of building the cars) of around 23%. When you subtract sales, general and administrative cost and research and develop costs they have an operating loss. Obviously with fast growth Tesla will be able to spread out its SG&A costs and research costs over a greater number of vehicles.
From the Q2 2015 report (number millions)
Total Revenue 954,976
Total Costs of Revenue: 741,606
Gross Profit: 213,370
Research and development Costs: 181,712
Selling, general and administrative : 201,846
Loss from operations (170,188)
PG&E made those statistics for California back when the EV-1 was being planned in the 1990s.
Don't knock it, it worked for the other ostensibly American automakers, producing many of their cars and parts in Canada and in Mexico.
Don't get me wrong, from an automaker's perspective it makes sense to build cars in Mexico as it's part of both NAFTA and ALDAI (a Latin-American free-trade zone) so cars built in Mexico can be sold in nearly all of North and South America without much in the way of tariffs.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
As much as I'm a fan of electric vehicles, this analysis looks pretty flawed. They talk about "energy" efficiency (and cite "electricity + natural gas" as money spent by refineries), then immediately turn around and assume it's all electricity.
it can be estimated that about 21,000 Btu—the equivalent of 6 kWh—of energy are used per gallon of gasoline refined.
It is a simple fact that the refining of gasoline requires approximately 6 kWh of electricity per gallon of gasoline.
Here is a counterpoint that seems to make more sense. http://longtailpipe.com/ebooks...
Main points:
1) Not all the energy they use is electricity, most is actually burnt oil.
2) The process of refinement produces several products; it's unfair to attribute all the electricity to the gasoline produced.
What do you think provides the 220 voltage to the connector outside your house or to make the hydrogen or to make the steel to make the cars (or bicycles)?
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/m...
We have a long way to go still ;).
Let's look at a few other companies that are "losing money"
1. Sony
2. Sprint
3. Amazon
4. Instagram
5. Snapchat
6. Box
7. Twitter
You are welcome on my lawn.
They've sold plenty of debt alongside that equity. It's a viable strategy, but imposes burdens that equity doesn't. If you don't have a healthy cash flow, equity doesn't come back to bite you in that ass - debt does.
No, I mean things like warehouses and distribution centers and data centers - things that turn around and generate cash flow. I mean the normal meaning of the word infrastructure.
The word you're looking for is loss leader.
The problem with electric is that massive areas of Europe are totally and utterly useless for owning electric vehicles, because the norm here is for unallocated street parking, meaning you can't charge it overnight.
I don't see you pointing to any sources either. Especially for your claimed decrease in electrical capacity.
Don't knock it, it worked for the other ostensibly American automakers, producing many of their cars and parts in Canada
True, and to keep it that way they got a as well and they are not even Canadian companies!
Personally I would much rather have my tax money bail out a company like Tesla than GM/Ford/Chrysler. If Tesla can get their technology and business model to work then society will benefit in the long term from less pollution and less hassle purchasing cars. I'm not really sure what, if any, the long term benefits are of propping up a company like GM is. It might save job losses in the short term but given their reluctance to change and modernize I expect it is just postponing the inevitable.
The $4.9 billion includes SpaceX and SolarCity as well. It also includes loans which have been paid back.
Now imagine someone having the great idea of introducing a new car that burns fossil fuels and just throws out its carcinogenic exhaust fumes wherever it's driving. You would smell it whenever one passed by (you can't now because you're so used to it). People would say it's scandalous that those things were allowed anywhere near population centers
Just have to look at history to see that as long as the fossil fuel burning car is cheaper and/or better in other ways such as range, it'll displace the electric vehicle even with the toxic stinky fumes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It also includes research and development, factories with assembly lines and tooling, etc. Each additional car means every car made costs a bit less.
The USA is a third-world country when it comes to producing electricity. Burning coal and oil, seriously?
The U.S.A. government is giving a lot more money to GM, Ford, oil companies, etc. It's also wasting a lot of money on pointless wars and armed conflicts.
And you're worried about Tesla?
Congratulations, you moved the discussion over to your pet topic.
*golfclap*
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Oh, sorry, I thought we're talking about the US. You know, the country with zero public transport to speak of outside of a handful of towns where it so-so works.
But hey, if we're talking countries that actually HAVE a public transport system worth mentioning, you have a point.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Scams? Ridiculous. The government did the Republican thing by incentivizing business on the cutting edge of desirable technology. Elon Musk is just an entrepreneur doing what he is legally responsible to do for his shareholders by pushing boundaries where the government is giving money and preferential loans for companies to innovate in.
Hardly something to fault him for.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
If there was a big market for cars that can only drive 100 miles, auto manufacturers would be reducing the size of their gas tanks to reduce weight and gain 0.25mpg.
Since they're not doing that, clearly it's not a market big enough to care about.
No one has a gasoline pipeline to their house to constantly refill a 100 mile range gas tank, but many homes can conveniently recharge an electric car.
Unless of course electric chargers are installed which can be used to charge any car (for a fee of course).
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Those places usually have decent public transport though.
Then I'm afraid you don't know what infrastructure means.
noun
1.
the basic, underlying framework or features of a system or organization.
2.
the fundamental facilities and systems serving a country, city, or area, as transportation and communication systems, power plants, and schools.
http://dictionary.reference.co...
Infrastructure is exactly what the supercharger network is.
They'll make up for their losses with high volume? Because -4000 (loss) * 1000 (high volume) is, like, a positive number?
So they are using more electric power but more of it comes from out of state. The energy mix is changing from Coal and Nuclear to Natural Gas.
I still don't think the amount of available peak generation capacity to power electric vehicles changed tremendously though.
It was in the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car". Accurate enough for you?
Here in Canada, at least, if you want a Tesla there's a 5 month waiting period to get it. That's how far back the order queue is. There's definitely massive demand, so at least there's that.
And that loss leader utilizes the supercharger infrastructure they are building.
Citation please, because as of this year, Amazon is finally bringing in profits. They stole the Costco/SamsClub model and are making money through a membership program that incentives a small number of people to spend dramatically more.
That said, I sold all my AMZN shares years ago. I probably should have kept them, I could have paid off my house with them.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It's a scam if it isn't going to the oil companies for 'exploration'.
Who is going to fund hundreds of millions of such chargers...?
You really haven't been to the UK, have you?
Same thing as using government incentive to buy an electric car or solar panel. You are not scamming the system when using incentives specifically put in place to encourage the action you are taking. That's the other way around, it is the system working as expected.
Natural gas. Your WSJ article is a year out-of-date, and simply wrong:
http://pipedot.org/story/2015-...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Who would that be, exactly? The oil companies? I don't think you thought that one through...
From the TFAWACNDR ( the fine article which Anon Coward did not read )
“What Anders has achieved is an important breakthrough.
Admittedly we do not have a good method to release the energy on demand, and we should increase the energy density further still.
But now we know which path to take in order to succeed”, says a visibly enthusiastic professor Mogens Brøndsted"
So a way has been found to store much more energy that can NOT be released when needed. Should we refer to this as undispatchable locked energy storage?
Do let us know when that last tricky step has "succeeded". Those niggling little problems that looks so easy usually takes years to decades to resolve and then additional time to commercialize.
I do have high hopes but my flying car and fusion reactor are 30 years the date I was promised.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Electrical companies, local governments and perhaps others.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
1) That's oil that could have been left in the ground or used to produce electricity or some other use.
2) That's almost entirely accounted for. The calculation takes the BTU of a barrel of crude, refining efficiency (~85%) and the BTU of the resulting refined products and converts the difference to kilowatt-hours.
Keep in mind that's only the energy consumption of the refining process. If you do a full "well-to-wheels" analysis of the various energy sources, fossil fuels start to look ugly very quickly.
http://www.plugincars.com/refi...
http://www.eia.gov/energyexpla...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
It's already under way and more are being added every day.
Most outdoor parking spots in places with harsh winters have electric plugs for the ICE block heater. Those electrons, surprisingly, work perfectly with EVs.
Sunny places which describes a LOT of America have started building solar carports at shopping centers and stadiums.
Your car gets shade AND electricity in one fell swoop. Same can be done at public parking lots.
The grid can be made ready faster than EVs will replace ICEs.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Too obvious for some.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Sure they are. Nothing stopping those other companies from getting in the EV, alternative energy or battery business.
Between them, GM and Chevron held the rights to large-format NiMH batteries for nearly 20 years years and somehow just couldn't succeed.
.
But there's more to that story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Tesla is a cool car, but current developments in a surprisingly older technology may make batteries (at least for cars) a thing of the past.
Good news everyone! There's still hope that the status quo may survive!!
Requiem for the American Dream
Why would electrical companies get involved with end user infrastructure, and wouldn't it be a subsidy if governments got involved?
You are being very America centric there, and that doesn't work for a lot of the rest of the world.
For example, no cars in the UK have ICE block heaters. I have yet to see an EV charge point at any shopping centre, and pretty much all stadiums here have zero spectator parking (which isn't really an issue as it means neither a ICE or an EV vehicle would be used, I'm just pointing that out).
What Axe do you have to grind? You chastise the one guy who is doing the most to get us off of foreign oil that we buy from our very worst enemies... the same despots that destroyed the Twin Towers and the Pentagon... cretins that still today are unleashing terrorism not just in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Syria, but Australia, Malaysia, France, Britain, and throughout Africa... if we drive EVs, the $450 billion we spend yearly on oil stays here for our schools, hospitals, roads and bridges. So what is your hidden agenda that you don't point out that the oil industry and the Big Tree car makers have been receiving hundreds of billions in handouts and subsidies for decades, but also conveniently ignore the fact that Tesla borrowed a few hundred million during the depths of the recession and paid it back ahead of time, WITH INTEREST? So, Anonymous Coward, what has made you so transparently biased, and why not tell us who you are and what Musk has you so worried about? Do you want to maintain status quo, rather than the country shifting to EVs? I have two electric vehicles, neither of which is a Tesla. I spend no more money on oil changes, tune-ups, smog tests or tranny service that EVs do not require. My month expenses are virtually nil. What about that has you so eager to attack unfairly? (Moderator: no, AC is NOT "informative".
Tesla latest car has doors that open up and are very non urban friendly. Try getting out of one in a tight parking lot.
As the animation on the Model X page shows, the Falcon Wing doors are very urban friendly; they require less space between cars than conventional doors do.
Would it be a subsidy? I don't know, depends on the prices they charge, right?
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Again, that's energy consumption, not electricity consumption. The claim was " it takes more electricity (yes, actual electricity, not "energy" in general) "
The problem is that most refineries produce some of their own power and do it by burning some of the fuel they're refining or producing so the line between "energy" and "electricity" is blurred.
PDF below indicates that of 36 total refineries in Texas & Louisiana, 19 of them are identified as producing (some of?) their own power - ~2.5 GW installed capacity.
That's not much less than the overnight demand for Los Angeles.
http://www.iaee.org/documents/...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body