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Elon Musk: Tesla 'Would Be Interested' in Taking Over GM's Closed Factories (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes CNN:
Elon Musk wants electric vehicles to be successful -- even if Tesla goes under trying. In an interview for CBS' "60 Minutes," the Tesla CEO and Silicon Valley billionaire was asked about competition from General Motors (GM), which announced last month it's laying off thousands of workers as the century-old company shifts focus to self-driving and electric vehicles. Musk appeared unconcerned. "If somebody comes and makes a better electric car than Tesla, and it's so much better than ours that we can't sell our cars and we go bankrupt, I still think that's a good thing for the world," Musk told Leslie Stahl during the interview.... "The whole point of Tesla is to accelerate the advent of electric vehicles and sustainable transport," he said. "We're trying to help the environment, we think it's the most serious problem that humanity faces...."
In his 60 Minutes interview, Musk also floated the possibility that Tesla may expand its footprint in the United States. He said Tesla "would be interested" in taking over some of the factory space GM said it will abandon during its restructuring.
The article also cites estimates from Navigant Research that Teslas now account for 20% of all fully-electric vehicles on the road today.
In his 60 Minutes interview, Musk also floated the possibility that Tesla may expand its footprint in the United States. He said Tesla "would be interested" in taking over some of the factory space GM said it will abandon during its restructuring.
The article also cites estimates from Navigant Research that Teslas now account for 20% of all fully-electric vehicles on the road today.
Maybe you should just focus on meeting market goals for a few quarters before you go overreaching again? Just a thought. Maybe you know better but people don't like promises that don't pan out.
Do, or do not, but talking about what you will do has so far cost you millions and millions and millions of dollars. If you just DID stuff without the grand facade... I think it'd work out in your favor.
Free internet advice from a non-Billionaire.
Sold some stock in the mid-to-upper $370s, and then he dropped the stock price down to the lower $360s, so I turned it immediately around into some Feb '19 calls :) Gotta love having a CEO who doesn't care whether he tanks the stock by saying things like it wouldn't bother him if his company went bankrupt if someone else made a better product ;)
So long as people keep basing their buy and sell decisions based on Elon's off-the-cuff statements, profiting on this stock's volatility will continue to be too easy. For me, it's all about the quarterly reports, so until then, it's just buy high, sell low, while ignoring any such short-term "news".
As for GM factories... meh. I assume they'd be stripped bare, like NUMMI was, which is good in terms of not buying something tooled in a way that's useless to you. You're mainly buying the floor space and utility / transport connections. But it's not going to be configured in a way optimal for their production processes. And right now, their main need is not more US production, but China and EU production.
Maybe they'd end up doing some of the development that they had planned for GF1 at a former GM facility instead - who knows. If they do buy a Michigan plant, however, UAW will surely step up their campaign - and most of the local workers would probably be pro-UAW, unlike in California where UAW had basically backstabbed them during the negotiations that led to NUMMI's closing.
Honestly? I expect that the main reason Musk said this was just to get some political leverage - hanging out the possibility that they might buy these factories in the future. But who knows, it could be entirely serious.
Seen on a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use."
The us is full of abandoned buildings all over the place.
The problem isn't finding an empty building, it's finding the people, supply chain, machinery, funding.
what federal subsidies did he get? None that I know of. He DID get a low-cost loan under King Bush II, but paid that off.
Tesla is not able to access capital markets according to the shorts, or does not want to access capital markets according to Tesla. It needs serious capex to do model Y, the Tesla Semi and to expand to 10K model 3 a week to make 35 K model 3 possible. Still it paid down 240 million in Q3 and is going to pay half of 2019 note in cash, another 480 million.
Any normal company would have raised and rolled the bonds, keeping the cash. Next Tesla factory would be in Europe. The one after that would most likely be an ex Boeing facility near Seattle WA, or near Austin TX. (Devils bargain to situate the factory there in return for direct access to Texas auto market.)
But Tesla is not a normal company. It does things, that appears to be quite irrational at the first glance.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Apparently you consider 20% margins "barely succeeds at selling Teslas at a loss".
Apparently you think nearly a billion dollars in free cash flow, when they're still far from having finished optimizing their production processes, and beating NASDAQ by 30% in the past several months, is a giant "Meh".
How are your investments looking these past couple months, AC? ;)
Seen on a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use."
He should stick to rockets.
Corporatism != Free Market
Elon did not float the idea. The interviewer asked if Tesla would be interested in buying some of the GM plants that are being closed down. Elon responded with basically a maybe. Exact quote:
“It’s possible that we would be interested if [GM] are going to sell a plant or not use it that we would take it over.”
Worth noting that GM is not planning to actually close or sell those plants as of yet. They've only committed to idling them. And because of contracts with the UAW, I don't think GM can actually close those plants. At least not until they negotiate a new contract next year.
I think you mean negative 20%. Tesla only claimed a profit last quarter due to fraudulent accounting.
Detroit-Hamtramck should be reclaimed through eminent domain and granted to Telsa's use under a conditional grant (requiring they employ a minimum number of individuals per a minimum number of years).
The factory was built by GM using land claimed using eminent domain. The Detroit-Hamtramck plant stands on 465 acres of land that was once a neighborhood known as “Poletown.”
"We're trying to help the environment, we think it's the most serious problem that humanity faces...."
Actually, Elon wants to initiate a system crash so that the User will reboot the system.
That's right, Elon Musk is actually Megabyte.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Musk is pretty good at this. Why would he want to take over a GM factory with a whole lot of UAW baggage? GM Management is mostly at fault here but the unions have played a role as well. Is it any wonder that when Toyota, Honda and BMW decided to build plants in the US they chose not to build them in Detroit? They saw all of the union problems the Big 3 have had over the years and did not want to fall into that trap.
Musk is just trying to give the impression that Tesla could be successful in those plants where GM has failed. It's a thinly veiled swipe at GM.
Even if he were serious about this he would have to invest 100's of millions, or more, into revamping the plant to build Tesla cars. Not going to happen. Maybe he is angling to have the US government give it to him for free just to keep the jobs there. Who knows.
Car and machinery design companies fabbing their products using mechfabs that serve multiple clients. Mechfabs will re-use the spaces left by the former industry players. Once the additive manufacturing is put under control using enough computing power, of course.
You know, one for each EV delivered.
Quit lying.
Tesla stock, 5 years. (The bottom of the graph is not zero.)
There are also regulatory credits (California and US)
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That subsidy goes to the buyer of the car, not the seller of the car.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
[Citation Needed]
Ohh wait, you can't provide it.
oh. I got a great idea. You should short Tesla as fast as possible with everything that you have. You will make millions if you do so. Go ahead. go make millions by shorting them. You are such a brilliant guy.
And the buyer subsidy means the seller can sell for a higher dollar...
Any qualified seller, though.
Ezekiel 23:20
So why aren't Ford GM and Toyota not selling at a higher price? They are eligible too?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
FBI has a shit ton of evidence on top of the illegal stock manipulation that felon musk attempted.
Hahaha dumbass
Nope.
There are no 'credits' from state or fed.
CA requires that car makers sell so many low-emissions cars or they can buy credits from another company.
Tesla has no need for theirs, so they sell theirs because other companies will not create and sell decent vehicles. That is the other car makers faults.
And if you insist that there are credits, by all means, provide a decent link to these.
Short selling is incredibly risky. Only professionals who can afford the risk and total fools engage in shorting. I would bet my life, soul and every penny I have there is not a single auto body shop (lolololol) shorting Tesla. You are just showing your complete ignorance.
Shorting does absolutely no harm to a healthy well run company. Shorting a healthy company it utterly moronic.
Shorting a stupidly run company is smart.
The above AC morons who think it should be illegal (omg, you are stupid af), should also logically believe that buying and then selling a stock should also be illegal. After all, by putting in a sell order, the seller is saying to the market they think the stock will go down. Shorting is the same. By putting in a short sell order the seller is saying it will go down and is deadly serious about it because if they are wrong they have to cover the difference in the rising stock price. The potential loss is essentially infinity.
Stupid ignorant people should stop blathering on the ineternet about the evils of shorting. It is a legal, logical, ethical, and perfectly sensible way for smart investors to make money on poorly run companies and is very healthy for the market by applying pressure against bubbles.
Really, seriously, none of you have a fucking clue what shorting even is and should stfu about it. Go actually read something before looking like morons again.
Musk wonders about making a better electric car, how about making one that doesn't cost$ 40000+?
"Shorting does absolutely no harm to a healthy well run company." I think the case can be made that shorting can do harm. That's a bullshit assertion as written.
I maybe agree with some of what you said but that thrust is false. If there are companies that game the system with PR linked to short sales as we've seen, explicitly for the purpose but diffuse enough to get away with it for the 6 months to a year after which investors have moved on and forgotten about it, you can move the market whichever way you want if you've got people in positions to do that. Sometimes it backfires, of course it's risky, but to say there's "no" power to hurt an otherwise vanilla company there is just insanely naive shit. Proven false.
at getting into the press, usually for good stuff.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Put up or shut up.
Now cite your shit.
As opposed to Trump's illegal stock manipulation this past weekend (again via Twitter)? Yeh, zero tariffs. Done deal.
The laws against politicians manipulating the market with false statements are even stronger than those for company execs. Given that Trump nearly mirrored Musk's tweet scenario even down to the 10%+ pops across numerous stocks crushing shorts all over to a tune of many more billions than the Musk action, all Musk has to do next time is say, "listen, I'm just following the example of POTUS".
FBI has a shit ton of evidence on top of the illegal stock manipulation that felon musk attempted.
[Citation Needed] Ohh wait, you can't provide it.
Apparently you consider 20% margins "barely succeeds at selling Teslas at a loss".
Apparently you think nearly a billion dollars in free cash flow, when they're still far from having finished optimizing their production processes, and beating NASDAQ by 30% in the past several months, is a giant "Meh".
How are your investments looking these past couple months, AC? ;)
They had 20% gross margin. Gross margin is just the amount you make over the direct inputs to the product. In hardware, 20% is pathetic. Net margin is what matters, because net margin accounts for R&D expense, overhead, facilities, etc.; it's much closer to profitable and adding to the cash position than gross margin is.
And they got there by selling up-sold Model 3s. The Model 3 was advertised as a $35k car, but they don't sell that model, they only sell the most upgraded one which puts it around $49k; that is not sustainable. The Model 3 is built and marketed as an affordable sedan, but the only ones selling are priced at a mid-range BMW or Lexus, high-end sedans; those are usually options for less price-conscious people of which there are only so many.
And they do not have $1B in free cash flow, they have $1B short term assets (effectively cash) on teh books. $1B free cash flow means they are bringing in net $1B in cash, which they are not.
GM never said it was closing the plants. It said it was idling production and pulling programs. It might not seem like it, but those are two *very* different things in the automotive world.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Would be awesome to help out those workers in Oshawa.
No, the current company was founded in 2009 and IPO’ed in 2010. Pre-2009 shares are worthless.
> The article also cites estimates from Navigant Research that Teslas now account for 20% of all fully-electric vehicles on the road today.
Probably 95% of fully electric vehicles on the road are scooters, just saying. And that is in North America, the percentage is probably much higher in Asia.
I love this about Tesla haters.
They don't make any money on their $35k car.
---but their quarterly report says they do make money and are cash flow positive now...
Yeah but all the cars they sell are $35k sold with overpriced options so they end up being $50k cars.
Every time. That's like saying the movie theater doesn't make much money on ticket sales, they just make it up on the options (popcorn and soda).
No shit. That's the business.
Proven? Please cite specific cases.
Also, what you describe is illegal market manipulation not standard short selling.
Try again.
I see the ignoramuses up voted you. Despite the accolades of ignorant slashdot Tesla fanboys, you are still wrong. As stated.
Are you ready?
Pretty good, actually. Shorted Tesla on the fraudster's fake news peak, covered during the SEC investigation, made enough to buy a nice house in Iceland.
I believe he wants to enrich Tesla with UAW workers culture.
So it's harmless when it's not abused, but it encourages abuse? Then it's about as harmless as tobacco.
You can't make this shit up
Israel Defense Forces Verified Account .@elonmusk builds rockets at @SpaceX and digs tunnels at @boringcompany - to help mankind. Hezbollah in Lebanon does the same... to kill Israeli civilians. twitter.com/elonmusk/statu
@IDF
12:29 PM - 8 Dec 2018
Sure they were trying to badmouth Hezbollah but what I get of this is that Hezbollah won a war against Al Qaeda and ISIS, they're like SpaceX and Boring Company and they can fight back against Israel if provoked because Israeli prime minister tries to avoid prison yet again. Lol, IDF PR. Now I think more highly of Hezbollah. Nasrallah == Elon Musk.
I want to believe
[Citation needed]
Oh wait you cant prove it
https://nypost.com/2018/10/26/tesla-faces-fbi-probe-over-model-3-numbers/
Wait, you wanted to see the actual evidence from their investigation? That's not possible. Might as well try to recover Hillary's classified emails. There is consensus here, therefore it is settled.
What happened to believing all accusations by default? Where there's smoke there's fire amirite? #metoo
For one, all of the aid the U.S. gives African countries to maintain some semblance of stability. We have to pay them or else the cobalt will stop flowing.
Ohio is a union state. Factory comes with UAW baggage and nonsense.
The province of Ontario (Oshawa plant) is "union optional". GM was/is unionized, but Toyota (which has three plants in ON) is not.
Seems that if the company you work for isn't filled with assholes, workers are less likely to need the muscle of unions to get decent contracts.
I agree that the need for another TSLA plant in North America is questionable: they have one already, and are building in CN and EU, so that would probably be enough.
ya got nuked on twitter ,,,,for postng a legal roayalty free iamge of a giant wasp man demo mesh i had to render from the new blender 2.8 beta
i can help ya make it happen any how peace out man
If there was something there they would have charged him by now. This is bean counters checking the numbers.
Let me know when he is using child labor and skirting worker pay and SEC filings. FBI probe, isn't that!
The Enron guys HATED short sellers. The exposed their BS. Without shortsellers there would be no one looking critically at a company: only cheerleaders. You guys should watch the movie "The Big Short". Then come tell me shorts are bad.
There are companies that game the system with PR linked to hype the stock as we've seen. What reality are YOU living in? Short sellers are crucial. Otherwise it is just fanboys and cheerleaders.
I knew Rei was behind all these Tesla stories. What a fanboy. Why do you anonymously submit these stories? Are you ashamed?
Note that the factory Tesla is using right now, is in fact an old GM/Toyota plant. So it was neither an idle question, nor an idle answer.
GM is also building electric cars and the demand also outstrips supply. For that matter, *every* major car manufacturer has an electric car for sale and every one of them has a waiting list. So the writing is on the wall. Petrol cars are doomed.
The people want electric cars and the supply is at present only limited by the availability of batteries.
I do t need to prove it. The FBI will.
He can start producing a lower cost version of his car (let's call it the Model T) that shave a zero off those pricetags as a car "for the masses".
This is what Henry Ford did with HIS Model T; this is what Musk could do.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
No evidence, eh? So, as stated, nothing bad, wrong, unethical, etc about shorting. The short seller is taking a huge risk. No harm to the company or anyone else.
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And to directly reply to your weak attempt at making a counter point: knives can be used to kill people; ban all knives.
You anti-short Tesla fan boys are just ignorant as all fuck. Please please please read something before posting more anti-short idiocy again.
And for the record, I have never shorted a stock, bought/sold Tesla, etc. I simply know you are stupid and ignorant and pointed it out. Tesla success or failure means absolutely nothing to me either way. Ok, not entirely true, I would like a 0-60 sub-two seconds roadster so maybe I am a bit of a Tesla fan, after all, but you are still ignorant morons.
Thanks. I didn't see how to do that.
They made money ONE quarter. Jesus Christ. One fucking quarter.
Decent vehicle? Have you been reading up on Tesla? The normies are killing them. They expect quality with a Q, Tesla spells quality with a K. Kwality Tesla.
There is no chance that GM would sell its shutdown plant(s) to Tesla even if it never intended to reopen them again, at least at terms even approaching reasonable. Sadly defunct factories don't generally get reused these days, they are sat on by either a company unwilling to sell to its competitors or by third party investment firms that think they're going to rake in cash by buying up all of the vacant factories in an area and trying to extort money from companies that can likely far more easily go find a vacant farm field somewhere and build a whole new factory rather than pay their exorbitant prices.