I bought shares with no intent to sell them until late Q4 at the earliest, most likely Q1-Q2 of next year. I'm not a day trader (fees here on US stocks are too high for that!). I'm in this for the Model 3 rampup period. It's a simple wager: Tesla proves that they can mass produce Model 3s profitably and that they have a sustained market for them, or they don't. I say yes, you say no. I put my money in when the shorts made an opportunity for me. I take it out at the end of the rampup, or when it's at least clear that the shorts have given up on their hypothesis. It's very simple.
Show me a single $35000 model 3. You claimed they would be sold back in January.
Show me where I said that.
Also, your false assertion doesn't change the fact that not only has the base model not been cancelled, but it still features prominently on Tesla's website. The notion that it had been "scrubbed from their website" is simply wrong; it's still all over their website. What they changed was the order page, when they transitioned from a reservation-based system to a direct order system. Because - news flash - you can't direct order something that's not currently in production.
Also: Your timing logic is flawed. Because nobody drives 100% DoD charge cycles. Most people will want at least 50km / 30 miles safety buffer, if not more, and only your first leg starts at 100% charge, since nobody charges to 100% on the road. You have maybe 85% of a charge to use for the first leg, and then maybe 60% of a charge to use for subsequent ones (if that).
We have been over all this. Bjorn did 510km in a Kona with normal driving, not hypermiling or anything
Oh come on. He did 510km in a Kona on eco tires and aero wheels with no passenger at an average speed of under 90kph / 56mph. And you know that.
He was seeing over 350km range at 125km/h
1) His long-range run was at 120kph, not 125. With an average slightly under that. 2) Going 68% as far at 120kph as at 90kph is a big dropoff, and a testament to the lack of good aerodynamics on the Kona.
so exceeding the speed limit constantly
120kph (75mph) - while far faster than my speed limit - is not by any stretch an unusual highway speed in much of the world. Many places drive faster. 90kph / 56mph, by contrast, is on the very low end of highway speeds, by global standards. I live in AFAIK the only developed country that doesn't have any roads with speed limits faster than that.
And you are trying to compare with the M3 LR, a car that costs $20,000 more for a similar spec.
No. Please, at least get your pricing right. Model 3 LR starts at $44k USD. You're adding PUP and who knows what else in. The "long range" Kona starts at £34,500 in the UK (no US pricing yet). So subtracting 20% VAT and converting to USD, that's $37830. Pricewise, that's slotting in 31% of the way between SR and LR. Range-wise, that's 33% of the way between SR and the nominal LR range of 310 miles, or 26% of the way between SR and the measured LR range of 334 miles.
I know you want to try to load up the Model 3 with packages to try to make it more expensive, under the excuse of "anything that Kona has, we'll tack on a Model 3 package for that", but sorry, that's not even remotely a fair comparison, since you're not doing the reverse. Kona doesn't even have a freaking app for crying out loud, let alone literally dozens of standard Model 3 features. I know your favourite package to do this with is Autopilot, but the portions of that which really matter (safety-related) come free.
You don't get to load up one with options to try to artificially boost the price; that's just ridiculous.
Bjorn also noted how well the autopilot works
Who should I listen to, some not-that-enthusiastic commentary, or my lying eyes? Here, let's quote from the comments section of that video:
"That's... actually rather terrifying." - My comment. One of the most liked comments in the thread "So the car will turn off the assist and rely on lesser technologies when you need it the most? Incredibly bad design." - THE most liked comment in the thread "we called it DDM = drunk driver mode not LFA:)" "This is dangerous:O They need to fix this in case people have a medical situation." "Thats not good. it need to drop the speed" "Scary drunk system" "That’s disappointing " "WTF I was expecting lexus lfa =("
You seem to be the only person who thinks this is acceptable. This is going to kill people. And I don't mean "one every several hundred million miles, at a rate less than a human driver". I mean frequently. You leave your hands off the wheel for too long and the car decides to drive like you're on heroin? Who the heck thought this up?
His only criticism is that it doesn't slow down if you release your hands from the wheel, so pretty much the same as Tesla used to be until the latest software update that owners are moaning about.
1) This is not true. Autopilot has always braked to a stop and put the flashers on if you cease responding to driver input
2) The only thing people were "moaning" about was the frequency of the alerts. In the latest update, they decreased them (but not to as far apart as they were previously) and made the
An obsession over P/E ratios isn't healthy. P/E is a past-looking metric. It is not predictive. If I bought a machine that could conjure gold out of thin air, and had my staff put all their focus on setting it up and getting it running, my P/E ratio would look terrible from the time I bought it to the time it was up and running at design capacity. But then I'm conjuring gold out of thin air.
P/E ratios are a useful tool, but it's critical to understand their limitations. They're not in any way a substitute for modeling a company's future balance sheet. Which unfortunately is harder work, but you have to do it. If you want to have a go at it for Tesla, try this for starters. Choose your own numbers.
A Honda Accord is an econobox with a fraction the standard features, it's a silly comparison. And it still loses the performance on that. And even if it wasn't a silly, losing comparison, just the energy cost savings alone (forget about tax credits) would put the Model 3 in front.
And you're apparently unaware that 1) it was not battery overheating that limited how many laps you could do at max power in the Model S and X, but rotor overheating (common misunderstanding), and 2) this does not affect Model 3, as it uses a different motor technology. Go to YouTube, you can find videos of Model 3s being raced at the track for long periods of time.
They're comparing to the situation with earlier cars. Early automobiles were seen as luxury toys for wealthy families. The Model T helped change this, but it still wasn't cheap. While a simple "purchasing power" conversion on the $850 starting price is $22,5k in today's money, the average household annual income back then for the bottom 90% was under $10k.
I assumed he was talking about the pickup, which comes out after Model Y. But that won't be in 2019 or 2020. 2021 at the earliest.
In some ways, pickup trucks are awesome targets for an EV manufacturer like Tesla. They can produce bonkers amounts of torque. They have a low CG to resist tipping with awkward loads. They can (and Tesla plans to) put high-power AC sockets on the vehicle so you can use your truck in place of a generator on a worksite. Their air suspension will self-level loads, and they're talking about adding an external compressor port to drive pneumatic tools. Lots of neat possibilities. The main downside is that pickups are "guzzlers". Which means lots of batteries, which means more expensive. So it's rightfully been slotted further down the queue, to give more time for the ongoing march of battery price declines to make it cheaper.
300 miles - you're talking about the Kona. Hyundai expects it to be EPA rated at 250 miles combined for the more expensive variant. Remember that Model 3 LR RWD range actually measured in at 334 miles EPA; Tesla deliberately downrated it so that all variants (including LR P) would get the same EPA range. The long-range Kona will come in somewhat more expensive than the 220 mile Model 3 SR (not out in the US either), but less expensive than the 310/334 mile Model 3 LR. Basically priced in the same range. But you get a small CCS-charging "normal performance", somewhat awkward handling econobox. The CCS charging aspect is key, since CCS is a terrible patchwork. Which we've gone into before - you gave me Ireland as an example (trying to pick a place in western Europe where you thought CCS would outshine the Supercharger network), I pulled up the stations along the most obvious highway route, and half of them had spent significant amounts of time down, leaving people stranded. CCS is junk. This might change, but as it stands, it's terrible. Mostly 50kW (in practice ~44kw-ish), which is just way too slow for normal people on road trips. And even on higher power chargers, while Kona might compare to an old Model X (snicker) in distance per unit time, it doesn't even come close to Model 3 charge rates (distance per unit time). Model 3 is - contrary to Bjørn's assertion - a more efficient vehicle (compare EPA ranges to battery sizes, compare drag coefficients and masses, compare realized MPH charge rates, etc - Bjørn's Model 3 testing was on non-aero rims, sport tires and with an extra passenger, vs. Kona with no passenger on eco tires and aero rims, and the comparison done at low speeds which cancels out the aero advantage). And Model 3 has vastly higher charge powers. Model 3 LR, for example (we don't have SR's curve yet) can charge for nearly the Kona's entire range than the Kona's peak power - which it has to start ramping off of in the 50s. And here we're just talking about V2 superchargers. V3 comes out this fall, and Model 3s are already designed to make use of them.
Please don't take this as me "hating on the Kona" too much. I'm only "hating on the comparison". As far as non-Teslas go, I think the Kona is a standout. Unfortunately, I'm also pretty convinced that it's just a compliance car. Like the Ioniq. Hyundai only plans to produce 40k Kona + Niro EVs globally. Which is just nothing. If they were making a profit on it, they'd make them in much greater numbers.
Indeed they are. With production. Which is the whole point, as people on this site have been ranting and raving, "Tesla can't mass produce cars". Except that they can and are.
No. The US federal tax credit starts next year at $3750, and for the latter half of the year drops to $1875. Model 3 SR is supposed to start shipping around the start of the year.
Basically, yes. A reservation reserves you a place in line.... for a specific 1) configuration grouping, 2) market, and 3) customer status (employee > Tesla owner > non-Tesla owner). It's effectively not one list, but many smaller lists.
Then there's the fact that most of the world - including me - can't get theirs yet. Only the US and Canada.
Also there's a number of configs that you just can't get yet. Yes, some are lower profit, like non-PUP and SR battery. But I'm among those wanting, for example, air suspension and a tow hitch, both options Tesla has talked about (air suspension is supposed to be early next year), and neither of which are out. Also, the white interior is now available in the AWD, not just P, but still not RWD.
It's one of those cases of "Shut up and take my money!"
Impressive mislabeling job. That article wasn't about a customer satisfaction survey. Pied Piper's surveys are how skilled a company's salesmen are at selling cars. Tesla has (for many years running) the least "salesy" salemen in the industry. By design. Tesla publicly celebrates every year scoring last in the Pied Piper studies.
The Consumer Report study I linked is an actual customer satisfaction survey.
Model 3 went into production in mid 2017, not 2015. That's two years difference. And the 13th generation Ford F-150 was mostly the same vehicle platform as the 12th generation. They replaced the body panels with alumium (the new production systems took years to develop) and they switched out a couple engine options (but they weren't newly developed engines). Most of the rest of the vehicle, including the chassis, was carried over from the 12th generation.
That's not what the word "bricks" means. And no, there is no "factory code". The whole concept of "codes" has no meaning in the context of Teslas. What it requires is recertification if you want to use supercharging. To make sure that your someone-else-pieced-it-together-car doesn't fry their superchargers and potentially start a fire. For really bloody obvious reasons.
You can still charge just fine on non-Tesla chargers, because hey, no risk to their hardware.
But, glad to know that you have short positions:) Are you really sure you don't want to buy more? You only have a couple more days before the Q2 report, don't get in too late! Come on, how much interest is the money in your bank account earning? How much interest would a home equity line of credit cost?
Okay, so keep on going to get up to $60k. We're already comparing (what kind of car, exactly?), to a 5,1s 310-mile 0-60 electric sports sedan with luxury package (all-glass roof, auto-folding heated side mirrors, about 20 other things) that can steer and park itself. But you still need to add $6k more. What else are you adding, and what exactly are we comparing this to?
Slashdot Mirror
I bought shares with no intent to sell them until late Q4 at the earliest, most likely Q1-Q2 of next year. I'm not a day trader (fees here on US stocks are too high for that!). I'm in this for the Model 3 rampup period. It's a simple wager: Tesla proves that they can mass produce Model 3s profitably and that they have a sustained market for them, or they don't. I say yes, you say no. I put my money in when the shorts made an opportunity for me. I take it out at the end of the rampup, or when it's at least clear that the shorts have given up on their hypothesis. It's very simple.
Show me where I said that.
Also, your false assertion doesn't change the fact that not only has the base model not been cancelled, but it still features prominently on Tesla's website. The notion that it had been "scrubbed from their website" is simply wrong; it's still all over their website. What they changed was the order page, when they transitioned from a reservation-based system to a direct order system. Because - news flash - you can't direct order something that's not currently in production.
Also: Your timing logic is flawed. Because nobody drives 100% DoD charge cycles. Most people will want at least 50km / 30 miles safety buffer, if not more, and only your first leg starts at 100% charge, since nobody charges to 100% on the road. You have maybe 85% of a charge to use for the first leg, and then maybe 60% of a charge to use for subsequent ones (if that).
** Ed: "6 (or if you'd rather, 7) hours."
Oh come on. He did 510km in a Kona on eco tires and aero wheels with no passenger at an average speed of under 90kph / 56mph. And you know that.
1) His long-range run was at 120kph, not 125. With an average slightly under that.
2) Going 68% as far at 120kph as at 90kph is a big dropoff, and a testament to the lack of good aerodynamics on the Kona.
120kph (75mph) - while far faster than my speed limit - is not by any stretch an unusual highway speed in much of the world. Many places drive faster. 90kph / 56mph, by contrast, is on the very low end of highway speeds, by global standards. I live in AFAIK the only developed country that doesn't have any roads with speed limits faster than that.
No. Please, at least get your pricing right. Model 3 LR starts at $44k USD. You're adding PUP and who knows what else in. The "long range" Kona starts at £34,500 in the UK (no US pricing yet). So subtracting 20% VAT and converting to USD, that's $37830. Pricewise, that's slotting in 31% of the way between SR and LR. Range-wise, that's 33% of the way between SR and the nominal LR range of 310 miles, or 26% of the way between SR and the measured LR range of 334 miles.
I know you want to try to load up the Model 3 with packages to try to make it more expensive, under the excuse of "anything that Kona has, we'll tack on a Model 3 package for that", but sorry, that's not even remotely a fair comparison, since you're not doing the reverse. Kona doesn't even have a freaking app for crying out loud, let alone literally dozens of standard Model 3 features. I know your favourite package to do this with is Autopilot, but the portions of that which really matter (safety-related) come free.
You don't get to load up one with options to try to artificially boost the price; that's just ridiculous.
Who should I listen to, some not-that-enthusiastic commentary, or my lying eyes? Here, let's quote from the comments section of that video:
"That's... actually rather terrifying." - My comment. One of the most liked comments in the thread :)" :O They need to fix this in case people have a medical situation."
"So the car will turn off the assist and rely on lesser technologies when you need it the most? Incredibly bad design." - THE most liked comment in the thread
"we called it DDM = drunk driver mode not LFA
"This is dangerous
"Thats not good. it need to drop the speed"
"Scary drunk system"
"That’s disappointing "
"WTF I was expecting lexus lfa =("
You seem to be the only person who thinks this is acceptable. This is going to kill people. And I don't mean "one every several hundred million miles, at a rate less than a human driver". I mean frequently. You leave your hands off the wheel for too long and the car decides to drive like you're on heroin? Who the heck thought this up?
1) This is not true. Autopilot has always braked to a stop and put the flashers on if you cease responding to driver input
2) The only thing people were "moaning" about was the frequency of the alerts. In the latest update, they decreased them (but not to as far apart as they were previously) and made the
An obsession over P/E ratios isn't healthy. P/E is a past-looking metric. It is not predictive. If I bought a machine that could conjure gold out of thin air, and had my staff put all their focus on setting it up and getting it running, my P/E ratio would look terrible from the time I bought it to the time it was up and running at design capacity. But then I'm conjuring gold out of thin air.
P/E ratios are a useful tool, but it's critical to understand their limitations. They're not in any way a substitute for modeling a company's future balance sheet. Which unfortunately is harder work, but you have to do it. If you want to have a go at it for Tesla, try this for starters. Choose your own numbers.
A Honda Accord is an econobox with a fraction the standard features, it's a silly comparison. And it still loses the performance on that. And even if it wasn't a silly, losing comparison, just the energy cost savings alone (forget about tax credits) would put the Model 3 in front.
And you're apparently unaware that 1) it was not battery overheating that limited how many laps you could do at max power in the Model S and X, but rotor overheating (common misunderstanding), and 2) this does not affect Model 3, as it uses a different motor technology. Go to YouTube, you can find videos of Model 3s being raced at the track for long periods of time.
They're comparing to the situation with earlier cars. Early automobiles were seen as luxury toys for wealthy families. The Model T helped change this, but it still wasn't cheap. While a simple "purchasing power" conversion on the $850 starting price is $22,5k in today's money, the average household annual income back then for the bottom 90% was under $10k.
I assumed he was talking about the pickup, which comes out after Model Y. But that won't be in 2019 or 2020. 2021 at the earliest.
In some ways, pickup trucks are awesome targets for an EV manufacturer like Tesla. They can produce bonkers amounts of torque. They have a low CG to resist tipping with awkward loads. They can (and Tesla plans to) put high-power AC sockets on the vehicle so you can use your truck in place of a generator on a worksite. Their air suspension will self-level loads, and they're talking about adding an external compressor port to drive pneumatic tools. Lots of neat possibilities. The main downside is that pickups are "guzzlers". Which means lots of batteries, which means more expensive. So it's rightfully been slotted further down the queue, to give more time for the ongoing march of battery price declines to make it cheaper.
ED: "..nearly the Kona's entire range higher than the Kona's peak power..."
300 miles - you're talking about the Kona. Hyundai expects it to be EPA rated at 250 miles combined for the more expensive variant. Remember that Model 3 LR RWD range actually measured in at 334 miles EPA; Tesla deliberately downrated it so that all variants (including LR P) would get the same EPA range. The long-range Kona will come in somewhat more expensive than the 220 mile Model 3 SR (not out in the US either), but less expensive than the 310/334 mile Model 3 LR. Basically priced in the same range. But you get a small CCS-charging "normal performance", somewhat awkward handling econobox. The CCS charging aspect is key, since CCS is a terrible patchwork. Which we've gone into before - you gave me Ireland as an example (trying to pick a place in western Europe where you thought CCS would outshine the Supercharger network), I pulled up the stations along the most obvious highway route, and half of them had spent significant amounts of time down, leaving people stranded. CCS is junk. This might change, but as it stands, it's terrible. Mostly 50kW (in practice ~44kw-ish), which is just way too slow for normal people on road trips. And even on higher power chargers, while Kona might compare to an old Model X (snicker) in distance per unit time, it doesn't even come close to Model 3 charge rates (distance per unit time). Model 3 is - contrary to Bjørn's assertion - a more efficient vehicle (compare EPA ranges to battery sizes, compare drag coefficients and masses, compare realized MPH charge rates, etc - Bjørn's Model 3 testing was on non-aero rims, sport tires and with an extra passenger, vs. Kona with no passenger on eco tires and aero rims, and the comparison done at low speeds which cancels out the aero advantage). And Model 3 has vastly higher charge powers. Model 3 LR, for example (we don't have SR's curve yet) can charge for nearly the Kona's entire range than the Kona's peak power - which it has to start ramping off of in the 50s. And here we're just talking about V2 superchargers. V3 comes out this fall, and Model 3s are already designed to make use of them.
Lastly: Hyundai's "autopilot" is terrifying.
Please don't take this as me "hating on the Kona" too much. I'm only "hating on the comparison". As far as non-Teslas go, I think the Kona is a standout. Unfortunately, I'm also pretty convinced that it's just a compliance car. Like the Ioniq. Hyundai only plans to produce 40k Kona + Niro EVs globally. Which is just nothing. If they were making a profit on it, they'd make them in much greater numbers.
Indeed they are. With production. Which is the whole point, as people on this site have been ranting and raving, "Tesla can't mass produce cars". Except that they can and are.
No. The US federal tax credit starts next year at $3750, and for the latter half of the year drops to $1875. Model 3 SR is supposed to start shipping around the start of the year.
Basically, yes. A reservation reserves you a place in line.... for a specific 1) configuration grouping, 2) market, and 3) customer status (employee > Tesla owner > non-Tesla owner). It's effectively not one list, but many smaller lists.
No matter how many times you repeat a myth, that doesn't make it true.
Deleted from the website, huh? (search "standard battery")
Funny, that (Scroll to "Model 3 specs")
That's the press kit and the Model 3 info page, respectively - the two most prominent places on the website to look for info on the Model 3.
Then there's the fact that most of the world - including me - can't get theirs yet. Only the US and Canada.
Also there's a number of configs that you just can't get yet. Yes, some are lower profit, like non-PUP and SR battery. But I'm among those wanting, for example, air suspension and a tow hitch, both options Tesla has talked about (air suspension is supposed to be early next year), and neither of which are out. Also, the white interior is now available in the AWD, not just P, but still not RWD.
It's one of those cases of "Shut up and take my money!"
Impressive mislabeling job. That article wasn't about a customer satisfaction survey. Pied Piper's surveys are how skilled a company's salesmen are at selling cars. Tesla has (for many years running) the least "salesy" salemen in the industry. By design. Tesla publicly celebrates every year scoring last in the Pied Piper studies.
The Consumer Report study I linked is an actual customer satisfaction survey.
Care to actually respond to the post you hit the reply button on?
Model 3 went into production in mid 2017, not 2015. That's two years difference. And the 13th generation Ford F-150 was mostly the same vehicle platform as the 12th generation. They replaced the body panels with alumium (the new production systems took years to develop) and they switched out a couple engine options (but they weren't newly developed engines). Most of the rest of the vehicle, including the chassis, was carried over from the 12th generation.
That's not what the word "bricks" means. And no, there is no "factory code". The whole concept of "codes" has no meaning in the context of Teslas. What it requires is recertification if you want to use supercharging. To make sure that your someone-else-pieced-it-together-car doesn't fry their superchargers and potentially start a fire. For really bloody obvious reasons.
You can still charge just fine on non-Tesla chargers, because hey, no risk to their hardware.
Had no clue that a Ford F-150 is a "new model". Thanks for letting me know.
Tesla has the highest consumer satisfaction rating in the industry. 90% satisfaction rate. By contrast, Chevy and GMC are ranked 72%, Buick is 66%, and Cadillac is 64%. The only brand close to Tesla is Porsche, at 85% satisfaction.
But, glad to know that you have short positions :) Are you really sure you don't want to buy more? You only have a couple more days before the Q2 report, don't get in too late! Come on, how much interest is the money in your bank account earning? How much interest would a home equity line of credit cost?
Yes, please do check out my posts on the subject.
Okay, so keep on going to get up to $60k. We're already comparing (what kind of car, exactly?), to a 5,1s 310-mile 0-60 electric sports sedan with luxury package (all-glass roof, auto-folding heated side mirrors, about 20 other things) that can steer and park itself. But you still need to add $6k more. What else are you adding, and what exactly are we comparing this to?