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Tesla Tops GM by Market Value as Investors See Musk as Future (bloomberg.com)
Tesla became the largest U.S. auto maker by market value on Monday, overtaking General Motors -- a feat that would have seemed highly improbable 13 years ago when the electric-car maker first began tinkering with the idea of making a sports car. From a report: Tesla climbed as much as 3.4 percent in early Monday trading, boosting its market capitalization to about $51 billion. The company was valued at about $1.7 billion more than GM as of 9:35 a.m. in New York. The turnabout shows the extent to which investors have bought into Musk's vision that electric vehicles will eventually rule the road. While GM has beat Tesla to market with a plug-in Chevrolet Bolt with a price and range similar to what Musk has promised for his Model 3 sedan coming later this year, the more than century-old company has failed to match the enthusiasm drummed up by its much smaller and rarely profitable U.S. peer. No matter, say investors who like the stock. Tesla is a technology player with the ability to dominate a market for electric cars and energy storage. To those same investors, GM and Ford are headed for a slowdown in car sales that will erode profits. "Is it fair? No, it isn't fair," Maryann Keller, an auto-industry consultant in Stamford, Connecticut, said of GM ceding the market-cap crown. "Even if Tesla turns a profit, they will eventually have to make enough to justify this valuation."
134,500 Volts sold,
1,741 Bolts sold
2,958 ELR sold
Spark EV I could only find three year old numbers, at the time it was 2,958 sold.
25,000 model x sold
158,159 Model S sold
Tesla's *total* car sales do marginally outpace GMs electrified cars, but not overwhelmingly so. Also, GM sells a *lot* more cars than the electric vehicles. Note that in a year in the US alone, GM sells over 3 million cars, an order of magnitude more sales than Tesla has had in it's entire existence.
The valuation on Tesla is insane, just like all the 'unicorn' ones, investors obsessed with new and novel behaving irrationally. One could charitably say it's because of hyperloop and such, but I think that's pushing credibility far.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Yet Nissan sells more electric cars than Tesla and has been doing so for a while.
GM is viewed as pathetic because they had their own electric vehicle two decades ago and decided to crush them all despite people wanting to keep them. They had their chance to start the revolution but it got killed from within the company.
The fact that they're making electric vehicles again just seems pathetic and hypocritical.
However, I do wish them luck because electric vehicles or even hybrids are still a better option for most people.
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Large American car companies have been a cluster fuck since the 70s.
And yet people continue to buy their vehicles by the millions. I work in the industry and have for a lot of years. Fact is that the big US car companies are pretty well managed - they are at worst comparable to most of their competition. The problems they've had have mostly been legacy problems from back in the 80s and earlier when they didn't have as much competition. Primarily high labor and pension costs that they simply could not shed and that their competition was not subject to. US cars today are largely of good quality (with some exceptions) and all the US auto makers have managed to get their costs more competitive. FCA is still something of a mess but Ford and GM are pretty well managed and very profitable at the moment.
GM could have dominated this market starting with the EV1 years ago.
GM could have possible dominated the EV market but not with the EV1 and probably not its hypothetical successor either. They would have had to have a much longer investment horizon on EVs than was probably reasonable to expect. The EV1 was a nice enough little car if it happened to fit your needs but it was wildly impractical for most people (it was a two seater with very limited range) and hugely expensive to build. There was no way GM could have sold them profitably without huge government subsidies and it was never going to be a car with mass appeal. The battery pack in it only gave a range of 100 miles and the batteries on the last models were NiMh batteries with a capacity of 26.4kWh (a Tesla Model S has capacity 3-4X that amount). The EV1 routinely earns spots on worst car lists because it was a vehicle that relied on technology that just wasn't ready yet. EVs are only becoming practical now because of progress in battery technology.
You wanna know why GM abandoned the EV1? They developed the EV1 because the California Air Resources Board (CARB) mandated that by 2000, a certain percentage of each auto manufacturer's sales had to be zero-emissions. If an automaker couldn't meet that requirement, either they'd have to buy credits from another automaker, or they'd be locked out of the lucrative California market.
GM built the EV1 (using a lead-acid battery). Ford and Chrysler bet on hydrogen fuel cells, which didn't pan out (still haven't). The Japanese automakers tinkered with EVs, but decided the technology was unfeasible at the time and focused instead on hybrids.
1999 came around and GM was the only company with a car which would meet CARB's emissions-free requirement the next year. GM had invested over a billion dollars developing the EV1, but they stood to make many times that in licensing fees from 2000 and on. Everything was looking rosy for them.
Then the whole thing collapsed. The other automakers convinced CARB that the zero-emissions requirement was technologically unfeasible with year 2000 technology. And that the best they could do at the time were hybrids, which used a battery to improve efficiency, but still got all their energy from the ICE. CARB agreed and rescinded the zero-emissions requirement, instead using a less-stringent low emissions vehicle and ultra-low emissions vehicle requirement (LEV and ULEV).
Basically, CARB pulled the rug out from under GM. They'd coerced GM into investing over a billion dollars in the technology, then on the eve of GM hitting paydirt, CARB changed the rules making it impossible for them to recoup their investment. This is why companies hate government regulations - because unlike real-world physics which remains constant, regulations change based on politicians' whims. You spend a billion dollars trying to comply with an upcoming regulation, then they suddenly change the regulation making all the money you spent irrelevant. CARB even had the unmitigated gall to ask GM to continue selling the EV1 after pulling this double-cross.
Do you understand now why GM recalled all the EV1s and had them destroyed? CARB was trying to get the benefits of the technology developed for the EV1, while denying GM the promised financial payout for developing the technology in the first place. GM wasn't playing that game. If they were going to take a billion dollar bath on the project, there was no way in hell they were going to let CARB derive any benefit from the whole shenanigan.
Tesla is no different. The only reason they made a profit for two quarters, and aren't even further in the red in the other quarters is because they're able to sell carbon credits to automakers who don't meet CARB's zero-emissions requirements. In other words, Tesla's "success" is an artificial regulatory construct. The only difference between Tesla and GM is that CARB stuck with the ZEV requirement this time. If they'd abandoned it at the last minute like they did with GM, you can bet the Musk would've given CARB the middle finger as well and abandoned Tesla.
Umm no it does not. GM made NET profits of $9.8 Billion dollars in 2016. Tesla made $675 Million. So no their R&D budget did not expand. Tesla now have to deliver on profits or with will see their stock tank.
There are also very legitimate reasons for not wanting an electric vehicle. Over time batteries lose their ability to hold a charge, which leads to a gradual decrease in range. Eventually the batteries will need replacing entirely, and that is incredibly expensive.
An eight year old ICE car is perfectly usable. An eight year old electric car will likely need a fortune spending on it to replace the batteries, which will be more than the car is worth. This gives electric cars a resale value of precisely zero.
With electric cars being new, we haven't started to see these issues yet, but in a few years these problems will start to come out and I suspect many people will be regretting their purchases.
This also brings into question how green an electric car is. The majority of the carbon produced over the life of a car is during the manufacturing stage. If these cars have to be scrapped due to being unsellable, it will mean they're actually less environmentally friendly than traditional gasoline powered cars.
I'm all up for an electric car, but I'm not considering one until the issues with battery lifespan are addresses. That will likely become a pressing issue for electric cars once people start getting hit with huge battery replacement fees.
I've owned two Leafs. They are great cars, and you don't realize how great until you live with one. For example, the interior and instrument cluster layout is brilliant, and every other EV I've tried doesn't come close. Some look better, with fancy graphics and the like, but in terms of usability the Leaf is king.
The range is absolutely fine for most people most of the time. And most people have access to more than one car - via a partner or family member. Nissan will loan be an ICE for a couple of weeks if I need it anyway, but I never have. Even long trips have been no problem.
The M3 will be fully self driving in time, just like the Model S and X. Unless Tesla screw up spectacularly, any model bought with auto-pilot hardware will get a software update to enable fully autonomous driving.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There are 5 year old Teslas out there. It appears you lose around 15% of the capacity after 150000 miles. It's not too bad compared to a regular car.