But, in the specific, under Cook Apple is mostly just rolling out slow improvements to things they already had, and taking the pointless decision to remove ports and the like. All the while letting other products stagnate.
You mean just like pretty much every other gigantic company out there? How many $100+ billion ideas do you think are out there? And how easy do you think it is to capture them even if you recognize one? When Apple released the iPhone in 2007 they had revenue of about $24 billion. Last year it was about 10X that amount, most of that thanks to the iPhone. That sort of success is usually once in a lifetime and Apple's done it several times and somehow is expected to do it again which is probably unfair.
People talk about Apple not being innovative when if another company released the products they do and sold them in the numbers they do they would be described as a massive success. Take the Apple Watch for example. They sell millions of these things and if it was some small startup we'd think they were changing the world. But because it doesn't really move the needle on Apple's revenue percentage-wise we (wrongly) call it a failure.
Think of it this way. For Apple to grow just 5% next year they are going to have to create more new business than Tesla's entire revenue in 2017. Nobody is accusing Tesla of not being innovative but Apple makes more new business than Tesla's entire revenue and somehow they aren't innovating? Innovations aren't just in the big flashy things. They can be in the smallest of details and improvements.
I'm not sure anything they've done under Cook can be counted as 'innovation', just straight up evolution of a product.
I doubt even Steve Jobs would have an easy time coming up with another idea big enough to really make a difference at Apple's current size.
The number of voice calls made on mobile phones in the UK fell for the first time ever in 2017 -- despite the fact we seem hooked on our devices.
Why should this be surprising? Smartphones are really not primarily phones and they facilitate a wide variety of forms of communication. Smartphones really should be called something else because they really are handheld computers that just happen to be able to make calls as one of their added features. If you are anything like me the phone capability accounts for 1-2% of the actual use of the device.
You have a Bolt. How nice...I have a Volt (its my second one). Neither are mass produced cars.
Strange. I thought I had actually stood on an assembly line in Lake Orion Michigan where they were made. Must have been imagining that. And unlike the Tesla assembly line, it's fully functional and they aren't scrambling to figure out how to make cars or making them in tents. The Bolt has installed and functional production capacity for theoretically as many as 90,000 vehicles per year right now. A car doesn't have to sell in F150 numbers to be mass produced. Your argument is ridiculous.
The Leaf sells in similar numbers to the Volt and Bolt.
The Leaf sold just over 3700 units per month last year and has a new and improved model out this year. It will be interesting to see what Tesla's sustained sales will be once they get through the initial bolus of orders. Hope they can keep it going but I think you'll see a bit of a slowdown.
If GM had really wanted to sell a lot of Bolts, they would have given it nicer styling and not made it look like a golf cart.
While I do think that Tesla has designed nicer looking cars, I disagree that the styling on the Bolt "looks like a golf cart". It's a hatchback and a decent looking one as far as those go. You're entitled to your opinion but people but your opinion on the aesthetics isn't universal. Personally I think the Bolt EV is quite sharp looking.
If you think the Bolt proves that GM loves EVs, then you don't understand cars at all.
I don't care if GM loves EVs or not. What it does prove is that GM can make a decent EV and that they have the ability to make more and that they are investing in electrification. What this will translate to in the long run remains to be seen. In the mean time I can get a Bolt TODAY from GM but if I want a comparably priced Model 3 I'm going to be waiting the better part of a year to get it in the best case. I'm a fan of Tesla but I'm not a blind fanboi either.
The Bolt is a car designed to fail. Also GM looses about $9,000 per car for both the Volt and Bolt.
And Tesla loses money on every car they sell thus far. What exactly is your point? The Bolt is basically a mass market test bed. Were you under the illusion that it was something else? It would only be a failure if GM ultimately fails to follow up with more and better EVs in the coming years. Whether or not GM makes a financial killing on the Bolt (and Volt) is almost irrelevant.
The battery chemistry used in the Telsa are special to Tesla and not owned by Panasonic or used by Panasonic's other customers.
Other companies use other chemistries and just because Tesla has their own special blend doesn't guarantee them market success. Tesla's strategy is sensible but it's not yet clear they can get enough of an advantage for it to make a difference in the long run. I hope they succeed but they do not have an insurmountable cost advantage at present and new battery chemistries could render whatever advantage they do establish meaningless almost overnight if they can't keep the pace.
About those storage and wall batteries: That Tesla Wall thing isn't cheap as it uses just about the most expensive type of batteries on the market. Wouldn't it be a lot more economical to use cheaper but bulkier batteries, since space and weight are much less of an issue in that application?
Not currently no it wouldn't. Tesla is trying to get the unit cost of batteries much lower and to do that you need to make and sell as many of them as possible. The Powerwall just provides another sales channel to help them do this. In the long run it might not make sense to use Li-Ion batteries for this application but only once we've reached some sort of supply constraint. As long as Tesla can sell all the batteries they can make and don't run into resource constraints on the supply side it makes all the sense in the world to use the same battery cells everywhere they can.
If GM took EVs seriously starting when they produced EV-1 and kept going until now, there would be no need for a Tesla.
Maybe. The EV-1 tends to get looked at with some rose colored glasses today and almost certainly was not a viable mass market car when it was available. I know it had some fans but it was the very definition of a niche vehicle and GM was losing a substantial sum on each one sold. The biggest problem was the battery tech simply wasn't there yet. The first commercial Li-Ion battery was released around 1991 and they weren't really ready for vehicle use when the EV-1 was in production. The lead-acid and later NiMh batteries in the EV-1 really weren't good enough. Battery tech is easily the most important thing when it comes to EVs and 20 years ago it just wasn't quite there. It's kind of unfair to GM to expect them to continue to produce a vehicle with little realistic chance of being a commercially successful vehicle. Not to say GM didn't bungle the whole affair (they clearly did) but I'm not convinced the EV-1 was the answer many people remember it to be. It wasn't at all obvious at the time that continued investment in EVs was worthwhile. It really only made sense as a technology development platform and needed to have a longer term outlook than GM is probably capable of.
That said, I agree that GM could have and probably should have continued to take the technology of EVs more seriously than they did. I own a Chevy Bolt and it's a terrific little car but I have to wonder how much better it could have been if GM had been working on it for another decade... Ironically if GM had just held out a few more years Li-Ion batteries became viable just a few years after the EV-1. I think the biggest mistake was probably in them going after a mass market car first rather than taking an approach closer to what Tesla ultimately did.
The fact that GM discarded any lead they might have had is more meaningful than how many internal combustion cars they can make.
That remains to be seen. Your argument is plausible but we won't know how important it will be for a few more years yet. Just because Tesla seemingly has the lead at the moment doesn't mean they will maintain that lead indefinitely. Lot of smart people work for companies not named Tesla and Tesla has seemingly proven that there is money to be had in EVs.
Capital purchases don't have a huge impact on profits in the short term, although they do directly affect cash.
That's routinely not true. Capital purchases even when subject to a deprecation schedule can easily affect near term profits both directly and indirectly. For example a few years back our company bought a press for about $100,000. We then had to hire an employee costing about $50,000 to operate it, train the employee (more $), install the press (more $), reconfigure work flows and rearrange floor space, hire riggers, add electric service, add engineering time, and more. Even though we depreciated the cost of the press itself and some tooling, there were very substantial additional costs than cannot be depreciated that go with it.
Plus depreciation schedules vary and some of them are quite short which is often preferred by companies because deprecation schedules often don't very accurately reflect real world economic reality. If I outlay a bunch of cash for a machine then I'm out a bunch of cash for a machine and that should in many cases result in a hit to current period earnings even if GAAP dictates otherwise. I've often joked (semi seriously) that only an accountant would be foolish enough to think that inventory is an asset - in practical terms it's more akin to a liability because it ties up cash and other resources.
The cost of capital purchases are usually amortized over some period of time.
Capital purchases of tangible equipment are depreciated, not amortized. Functionally the same thing really but just being pedantic about the proper words. You would amortize an intangible asset like a patent purchase. Why they make the distinction has never been entirely clear to me since functionally it is the same activity. Finance and accounting are weird that way.
Sure, GM makes a lot of cars. But, there is no growth story for GM.
Probably true but there is a strong cash flow and dividend story from GM. It's hard to make a huge company a lot bigger in a short time period. But GM kicks off a LOT of profit and cash and the dividend yield right now is pretty good. A company doesn't have to grow at 20% or more per year to be a good investment.
But with Tesla, that's not just a possibility...its likely.
Sure, growing from tiny to bigger is a lot easier. But the value of a company should be roughly the net present value of all future free cash flows. There is no plausible scenario whereby you can make a rational claim that Tesla is going to kick off more free cash than GM within any time period not measured in decades. Even if Tesla has the best profit margins in the business (around 10% net) starting tomorrow it's still going to take them a LONG time to get anywhere close to a company the size of GM. Just because a company is a growth story doesn't mean we chuck all rationality out the window about its likely future prospects.
No other auto maker will be able to mass produce an EV in the next 5 years
I have a Chevy Bolt sitting in my garage that says otherwise. Nissan has sold over 300,000 Leafs to date. If that's not mass production I'm not sure you understand the term. Pretty much every major auto company already has put serious money into electrification but there still is a huge market (much larger than the EV market) in ICE vehicles for them to serve too. EVs are coming and I'm a true believer in them but it's not going to happen overnight and your claim that no automaker could mass produce an EV in the next 5 years is just clearly not true.
The reason for this is while the auto makers can make cars, they can't make the EV batteries.
There are plenty of battery companies and Tesla doesn't really make their own batteries either. Panasonic does the heavy lifting for Tesla on batteries. You were aware that Panasonic is the one that made the majority of the investment for the gigafactory right?
Finally, they don't have the knowledge of the battery chemistry to make those batteries efficient enough to sell them (or the EVs that contain them) at a profit.
You have your facts wrong on that. The big auto companies are working closely with battery makers and in many cases have strong partnerships. Tesla doesn't have the advantage here you seem to think they do at least not at the moment. Plus the state of the art in battery tech is progressing rather quickly so a lead today can evaporate tomorrow.
This is why Tesla has a huge multiple. Because even the most ardent Tesla Bear will admit that many people want an EV and will be buying them in the next 5 years.
I'm not a Tesla bear but there aren't nearly enough people likely to buy an EV in the next 5 years to justify Tesla's current market cap. Not even close. And I'm a huge fan of EVs and even own one. Tesla's stock price is based on hype and overinflated expectations. It happens sometimes. There was a lot of this during the dotcom boom circa 1999-2000. Eventually Tesla's stock price will come to reflect some sort of realistic expectation of their profit potential. But currently it is arguably a good company but a hugely overpriced stock.
Number of units produced has no direct linkage to where market cap should be; rather, market cap *should be* (and I’m not saying *is*) linked to expected profits.
There is no plausible scenario whereby Tesla will make enough profit in the next 5 years to justify their current market cap by any reasonable valuation. I'm not saying they won't be worth that amount someday. But currently their market cap is detached from their economic reality. You just can't rationally expect a decent ROI on the stock if you buy it today at the current price. You're just gambling, not investing. Tesla having a market cap larger than GM is basically saying that you expect the net present value of all future Free Cash Flows to Tesla to exceed GMs. There is no rational basis to make this argument today given the ambiguity of cash flows further than 5 years out from today.
In any case, I’m a believer in this company. I have no problems with them recording losses in the mid term due to capital investment in order to have a long term payout. Whether it’s truly worth its current share price, I’m uncertain.
I feel similarly about the company but I'm quite certain that while it may be a good company it's a terrible stock at current valuation on a risk adjusted basis. You can have a great company that isn't a good investment at this moment in time. If you buy it today you are basically betting that an almost certainly overpriced stock is going to get even more overpriced in the near future. Maybe it will but you have no rational basis to justify that happening.
Don't know if you have been in the business world, but capital is depreciated over the usable life of the investment.
Accountant speaking here. No capital investments are decidedly NOT always depreciated. In fact most companies prefer to avoid depreciating assets when they can avoid it. (depreciation does not always accurately reflect economic reality) Plus even if you do have a large amount of capex with depreciation attached there often are current period expenses attached to it that are not depreciated. For example if I buy a large press I would depreciate the press but I might not depreciate the cost of the riggers to place it, the upgrades to the electrical system to run it, the training of the labor to operate it, the slow productivity at first while we figure out how to use it, the extra workers hired to operate it, the engineers time to get it working, etc. It's not uncommon to have more costs that aren't capitalized (and thus depreciated) than the ones that are capitalized.
I think you are missing the point - a loss is a loss in Wall Street reported earnings. Special one time stuff is often very well called out.
This isn't special one time stuff for the most part and if you actually read their financial statements you would know that.
Wheeling out a ton of cash now in the build up for something in the future would be a footnote on current earnings.
Have you actually read Tesla's financial statements including the footnotes? They actually talk about issues relating to gross margin which basically are amortization of fixed costs from the assembly line and productivity improvements. They have this new and expensive assembly line which A) isn't running at full speed yet and B) costs a lot to operate no matter how many vehicles they make. Until they can amortize the fixed costs over enough cars per unit time they are going to lose money.
I truly admire this (or any other EM) company's ability to say "look over here, don't look at reality".
You might actually consider figuring out what reality actually is before making judgements about it. Tesla's situation isn't an uncommon one, just more high profile than most.
So sales are up, losses are up - but they're on track to make a profit? Really?
I haven't looked carefully at their financial statements but situations like that happen pretty often. What I suspect in this case is that Tesla has a lot of one time expenses during the quarter during ramp up which will not repeat in future quarters. So it makes the financials look worse during the current quarter than is expected for future quarters. There also are issues of inventory - you make the product and then deliver it but until Tesla gets paid for the car they have tied up cash (costs) in inventory. Cash flows in companies are very often quite lumpy and costs do not always track neatly with revenues.
Remember that there are a lot of fixed costs to running an assembly line. Fixed in this case means that they have to pay the same large amount regardless of how many vehicles they produce. A fixed costs is the same regardless of whether you make 1 unit or 1 million. So Tesla incurred a large fixed expense in building the Model 3 production system but until they can get the run rate high enough they cannot amortize this over enough vehicles to make a profit. As their production rate climbs their unit cost per vehicle will fall. Basically Tesla has to increase their gross margin on the Model 3 which will happen naturally if they can continue to increase their production rate and increase efficiency of the production lines. In the mean time their losses will look short term larger but should in future quarters behave exactly as Tesla indicates - IF they can execute the plan, which isn't a trivial concern.
The problem is that the US population has no history of being subjected to false information and outright lies.
If you believe that then you have never been exposed to a church. In the words of George Carlin, "you have to stand in awe, in AWE of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest! Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told."
Maybe it is time that we teach our kids to be more critical.
To teach someone to think critically first requires being able to do it oneself.
Verifying information is hard.
Sometimes but not always. Much of the time it barely requires any real effort.
Simply believing what you're told, especially if it fits your personal point of view, is much easier.
That's hard for people who have been conditioned to believe what they are told from a young age. You know, like in a church...
True dat. Though honestly they can't afford to not take them seriously either. Tough place to be I think.
Doing a real hybrid is expensive because they don't build batteries like Tesla does.
Tesla doesn't build batteries either. Panasonic is doing the heavy lifting there. Tesla has a supply advantage but they don't really seem to have a cost advantage (yet) on their batteries. People call it Tesla's gigafactory but really it's Panasonic's. Tesla is just the sexier brand so they pretend they are the majority partner in that venture.
But they can make EVs so much cheaper because they are building their own batteries that they can actually make them profitable.
That might be true eventually but it isn't true yet. Honestly it's not clear that Tesla has any sort of substantial cost advantage at present. I think you are right about the direction of their strategy but that's going to take a while to really pay dividends if it really pans out. In the mean time there are a LOT of other battery companies working pretty hard on the problem and I don't see why companies like Ford or GM or Toyota couldn't partner with them (or buy them) and reap similar benefits as long as they don't wait too long.
Pickup truck buyers tend to expect a traditional vehicle, so I think the market is going to have to go through all the phases.
Agreed on the traditional vehicle but that's kind of my point. It's more of a marketing than a technical or economic problem. I think if Tesla hits the market with a drool worthy electric pickup that should finally start to move things along once some of the good old boys can see it perform in the real world. Similar to how the Model S is wrecking all the supercars on the drag strip.
There's actually no good place to bolt up a big battery pack on a typical pickup truck, but fitting a mild hybrid battery in someplace is trivial.
Sure there is. Right in the floor of the bed. And if you actually electrify the wheels you don't need big driveshafts and transmissions taking up ludicrous amounts of space underneath. Actually my pickup (Honda Ridgeline) has a giant space under the bed where you could put a huge battery pack without any serious modifications. Right now they store a spare tire in it and have an empty in bed trunk. Perfect place for a battery and/or electric motors.
First, NASA is not likely to be the primary entity running the next moon mission. They will participate, but that will be done by private enterprise.
Really? What private enterprise is going to do it and where is the profit motive for them? No profit motive = no private enterprise funding unless you have someone as crazy as Elon Musk who controls a private company and doesn't have to care about profits. Until you can establish a profit motive and quantify the risks private enterprise is going to sit this one out.
Second, of all of the blockers in the way to a lunar mission, a lunar surface suit is smaller in magnitude than things like a lunar lander, which nobody has at the moment.
Lunar lander, human rated launch vehicle, transport capsule, mission equipment, etc. There is no scheduled mission to the moon nor is there any mission parameters to design this stuff around nor is there much in the way of funding adequate to make it happen in the near future. We aren't going to see boots on the moon for quite a long time just like we haven't seen them for over 45 years since our last go at it. I could see a country like China doing it for national pride but it won't happen for at least another decade and probably much longer given current circumstances.
It's the cost. There was a hybrid Durango for a moment, it started at ~$85k.
If they can do a passenger sedan like the Volt it doesn't compute that they couldn't do it for a truck. I realize cost is a factor but I don't think that is the full story. I think for trucks they are simply afraid to tinker with a successful formula given that EVs and hybrids tend to have a bit of an (unjustified) hippie vibe to them thanks to econoboxes like the Prius. I think it's probably more of a marketing problem than an engineering issue.
FCA has never taken EVs seriously and their late CEO basically said publicly not many years ago they were only doing enough to meet legal requirements. I'm aware they are working on some hybrid stuff (including the Ram and reportedly the Wrangler) but I'm not convinced FCA is really taking them electrification seriously yet. I want a pickup with at least 50 miles of all electric range - not so half hearted mild hybrid.
Don't be deceived by the fact that automakers are selling very expensive pickups; they still need to have cheap models in order to be viable.
That doesn't have anything to do with the fact that they could offer a hybrid power train in the high end models. There are estimates that Ford averages as much as $13K in profit per F150 sold. The real number is probably a lower but it's a big number for sure. There is no doubt that it's the biggest driver in Ford's profits. Certainly there is margin there to be experimenting with power train options. Ford made $7.6 billion in profit last year. That's almost as much profit as Tesla had revenue.
I'm no moon landing conspiracy theorist but the combination of losing the Saturn blue prints
Evidently you are a moon landing conspiracy theorist because you could have easily verified that we still have the blue prints for the Saturn V as well as the Rocketdyne F1 engines used in the Saturn V. That isn't the problem with rebuilding them though. Here is a video explaining why we cannot simply remake the Rocketdyne F1 engines in their original glory. Short version is that the blue prints don't record a lot of important details about HOW these were actually fabricated. Each engine was custom made by hand by skilled individuals who didn't record every detail about how they did what they did. And even if they had, we don't make things the same way today so the design doesn't really make any sense to replicate anymore.
and not having a viable ship to get to the moon and not having space suits that can allow a person to survive on the moon a pretty strong factors to consider.
There is an example of the ship used to get to the moon in the Smithsonian museum as well as the space suits actually used. Furthermore all the hardware is still there on the moon to be inspected if you care to get close enough to look for yourself.
"Tesla has a market capitalization greater than GM. It makes no sense. " - considering GM went bust quite recently and your taxes bailed it out at a billion dollar loss, it makes perfect sense
Your analysis is both flawed and biased. GM went bust a decade ago because they didn't have access to cash to cover their debt obligations. Tesla only survived during the same period by borrowing $465 million from the federal government. Tesla has substantial debt obligations and their near term cash flow is still a question. Tesla is a FAR riskier investment TODAY than GM is. What happened 10 years ago is irrelevant to the discussion. Currently GM is very profitable and Tesla is decidedly not. Tesla's market cap does not accurately reflect even the most optimistic assumptions about their business prospects in the next 5-10 years.
An obsession over P/E ratios isn't healthy. P/E is a past-looking metric. It is not predictive.
No but it does provide some sense of where the current price of a company is compared to similar companies and whether it might over or under valued. You are right that it's not a replacement for a serious deep dive analysis but there is nothing about Tesla's situation that should lead one to expect they are going to be making massive high margin profits in the near future. Tesla isn't super unique among manufacturing companies and the cost models for them are well understood. Other companies make automobiles and we have a pretty good idea what they are worth and what sort of profit margins to expect and we know how the market values them. Even under the most generous assumptions about their prospects, Tesla's current valuation is highly irrational and not justified by any reasonable near term expectations of free cash flows. Someday they may be worth more than GM based on objective financial results but that day is years away.
Basically Tesla may succeed and it may even someday be worth it's current market cap. But right now, today, expecting a reasonable ROI on the TSLA stock is betting on the Greater Fool theory.
I don't really consider it risky at all, especially not compared to almost any biotech stock.
If you don't think it's a risky investment given it's ludicrously high valuation and huge debt load then you may not be understanding the meaning of the word risk. Even Elon Musk has admitted the stock is priced "higher than we have any right to deserve".
Do you seriously think it is riskier than Amazon at this point?
Hell yes Tesla is riskier than Amazon. FAR riskier. Not even a question.
*If* they need it, that capital would easily come from these sales figures and market share.
Market share doesn't equal cash if you are selling at a loss. You can have huge market share selling $2 bills for $1 but you'll be out of business faster than you can say "Chapter 11 Bankruptcy".
But if Tesla is meeting or beating delivery forecasts
When has Tesla EVER beaten a delivery forecast? Come on. Good products but Musk is almost legendary for missing delivery deadlines.
The shorts all were betting that Musk would have no access to capital.
That's not an unreasonable bet. They have $10 billion in debt and the debt servicing on that isn't to be laughed at, even by Elon Musk. At some point even Musk would have a hard time convincing the market that Tesla can service the debt it already owes. And given how much trouble Tesla has had getting the Model 3 up to full production it's perfectly reasonable to question whether they can bring in enough revenue fast enough to service the debt. I hope Tesla succeeds but they wouldn't be the first company to fail due to cash flow issues if that were to happen.
The real reason to own TSLA right now is the amazon potential to reap the product of the short's massive miscalculation.
That's a fancy way of saying that you bought an overpriced stock and are hoping that a short squeeze will send it even higher. Tesla is a fine company and I really want them to succeed but there is no objectively justifiable reason for the company to be worth more than General Motors at this time with a tiny fraction of the sales and zero profits to date. The stock price is hugely overvalued and there is no reasonable case to be made that Tesla is going to generate enough profits in the next 5 years to make a reasonable ROI for anyone who buys at the current price.
Long distance towing at highway speed is too much for the currently available Li-on battery packs.
Unsurprisingly Tesla doesn't seem to agree with you on this point. They seem to be working on a pickup which I'm personally quite curious about.
For the Model X, towing 3500 lbs at 60 mph will probably cut your range by 40-60% depending on road condition & weather
Towing doesn't do wonders for the range of ICE powered vehicles either. And frankly I'm not convinced this is a serious issue. There are a considerable number of use cases for towing where even a big hit to range would still be well within the single charge distance of of a Tesla. I'd wager to say that aside from people moving and vacation RV use, most instances of towing are less than 100 miles. And it's not as if the technology doesn't exist to extend the range of an EV. There are fast charge stations in many places. Even if we ignore plug in hybrids you could simply put a ICE on the trailer itself and thereby charge the EV for long trips by turning into a de-facto hybrid when necessary. Best of both worlds. Access to the gasoline refueling stations for long trips but don't have to carry around the ICE when you don't need it which is most of the time.
When electric pickups do hit the market, they are going to have to ban them from tractor pulls. Otherwise, a lot of sensitive folks will be real embarrassed.
There is truth to this. I own a Chevy Bolt and I also own a V6 pickup. The Chevy Bolt has more torque than my pickup does and is smoother and nicer to drive even if you disregard the handling (which is no contest). Having driven an EV for a while now I'm firmly convinced ICEs are living on borrowed time. My Bolt has enough range to drive from Detroit to Cleveland without stopping, performs like some of the fastest hot hatches, and is much more pleasant to drive. I actually do need a pickup but the moment there is a decent EV or hybrid pickup available my ICE powered pickup is getting sold.
You'll see the way non-hybrid, non-EV gas or diesel trucks are advertised change overnight. They will never talk about their towing power again.
Probably true as well. I have no idea why hybrid pickup trucks (or EV) are not already a thing. Have the wheels being driven by electric motors and if necessary charged by a diesel or gas engine for range extension is a total win. Huge battery pack to power tools for skilled trades. Tons of torque for towing. Better fuel economy and a better ride. (electric motors are SO much nicer to drive than ICE) Aside from cost there really is no performance downside and given the hefty profit margins on pickups obviously people don't mind paying a premium for them at least in the US. I would replace my current pickup with a hybrid or EV version in a heartbeat if one were available.
Come on, every field is full of blowhards and egos.
True but IT seems stricken with an unusually high percentage of them. That's not to say all or even most IT workers are egomaniacs because that's clearly not true. But there are seemingly a larger than average number of them who seem to think that because they can program a computer that somehow that makes them an expert in all sorts of activities unrelated to programming. For example my work is primarily in manufacturing and the number of programmers I've run into (especially here on slashdot) who think that manufacturing is some trivial exercise that a trained monkey can do is astonishing. They have no idea what they are talking about but are convinced that they have a thorough understanding.
You also need to consider the number of hours worked since programmers are usually required to work a lot more hours than anyone else
I know some doctors who would like to dispute that statement. I happen to be married to one. During her residency she pulled 40 hour shifts with some regularity. Investment bankers are well known for the ridiculous number of hours they put in - 70 hours per week is a slow week for many of them. Many programmers do work very hard but they are hardly unique in working long hours.
Entrepreneur reports that tech workers in major American cities earn an average of $135,000 and yet, a survey of 6,000 tech workers conducted by workplace app Blind and reported by Quartz found that over 60 percent feel they aren't being paid enough.
I think this is the Dunning Kruger effect in all it's glory. Tech workers are routinely stricken by it, especially here on slashdot.
The volume of disinformation on the internet is growing so big that it is starting to crowd out real news
I think this article is a perfect example since that isn't actually true except in the minds of those who want it to be so. Back here in the real world "fake news" is something that mostly exists in the mind of one Donald John Trump and his supporters and it means news he doesn't like. He actually acts as if sources like Fox News report actual facts reliably. There is some actual false or misleading reporting but that is nothing new and will never go away.
And frankly if you actually use twitter or Facebook (or Fox News) as your primary or worse, sole news source then you are the problem.
Only the most loyal of fanboys could advocate for the removal of a feature that doesn't add any significant cost or require a large change in the design.
Only the most loyal fanboy's huh? Just because someone doesn't agree with your opinion or preferences doesn't make them an irrational fanboy. I hold the same opinion for Android devices. I think putting the headphone jack on the device doesn't make much sense regardless of who the smartphone maker is. And as long as there are some manufacturers putting it on the base device why do you really care? It makes a lot more sense to put it on the case that the vast majority of people use anyway. Cases are frankly an overlooked opportunity to make the hardware more modular than it currently is.
When you are producing something in the millions there is no such thing as an insignificant cost. Even something as simple as a headphone jack carries a lot of costs that most people don't even think about. There are engineering, design, tooling, warranty, and opportunity costs just for a start. By eliminating this port Apple eliminates a point of failure, reduces the component cost, makes the engineering and tooling cheaper, and reduces service costs for the inevitable problems in the field. Even if this just saves a few cents per phone at the end of the day that adds up to millions of dollars in profit to Apple since Apple sells hundreds of millions of these things every year. I assure you that fact is not lost on Apple. There is a cost to supporting legacy ports and it's pretty easy to evaluate.
If moving the headphone jack to a case makes so much sense, what advantages does it offer?
It offers the advantage of not having an unnecessary port for those who don't want it and it frees up that space to be used for some other purpose on the phone. Personally I'll take a marginally larger battery over a headphone port every time. Since most people add a case to their device anyway it makes sense for people who want the now optional jack to buy a case with the jack built in.
Do those advantages outweigh the utility of people who don't want to ensnare their device in a case
You mean all three of them? This isn't really a point of debate.
or have to remember to bring an adapter or buy a pair of wireless headphones that also need to be charged?
If you are bringing headphones anyway I doubt you're going to forget. And obviously Apple is targeting people who don't mind charging wireless headphones. If this isn't you then buy something that suits you. You don't have to buy Apple and Apple doesn't have to design their products to suit you.
Slashdot Mirror
But, in the specific, under Cook Apple is mostly just rolling out slow improvements to things they already had, and taking the pointless decision to remove ports and the like. All the while letting other products stagnate.
You mean just like pretty much every other gigantic company out there? How many $100+ billion ideas do you think are out there? And how easy do you think it is to capture them even if you recognize one? When Apple released the iPhone in 2007 they had revenue of about $24 billion. Last year it was about 10X that amount, most of that thanks to the iPhone. That sort of success is usually once in a lifetime and Apple's done it several times and somehow is expected to do it again which is probably unfair.
People talk about Apple not being innovative when if another company released the products they do and sold them in the numbers they do they would be described as a massive success. Take the Apple Watch for example. They sell millions of these things and if it was some small startup we'd think they were changing the world. But because it doesn't really move the needle on Apple's revenue percentage-wise we (wrongly) call it a failure.
Think of it this way. For Apple to grow just 5% next year they are going to have to create more new business than Tesla's entire revenue in 2017. Nobody is accusing Tesla of not being innovative but Apple makes more new business than Tesla's entire revenue and somehow they aren't innovating? Innovations aren't just in the big flashy things. They can be in the smallest of details and improvements.
I'm not sure anything they've done under Cook can be counted as 'innovation', just straight up evolution of a product.
I doubt even Steve Jobs would have an easy time coming up with another idea big enough to really make a difference at Apple's current size.
The number of voice calls made on mobile phones in the UK fell for the first time ever in 2017 -- despite the fact we seem hooked on our devices.
Why should this be surprising? Smartphones are really not primarily phones and they facilitate a wide variety of forms of communication. Smartphones really should be called something else because they really are handheld computers that just happen to be able to make calls as one of their added features. If you are anything like me the phone capability accounts for 1-2% of the actual use of the device.
You have a Bolt. How nice...I have a Volt (its my second one). Neither are mass produced cars.
Strange. I thought I had actually stood on an assembly line in Lake Orion Michigan where they were made. Must have been imagining that. And unlike the Tesla assembly line, it's fully functional and they aren't scrambling to figure out how to make cars or making them in tents. The Bolt has installed and functional production capacity for theoretically as many as 90,000 vehicles per year right now. A car doesn't have to sell in F150 numbers to be mass produced. Your argument is ridiculous.
The Leaf sells in similar numbers to the Volt and Bolt.
The Leaf sold just over 3700 units per month last year and has a new and improved model out this year. It will be interesting to see what Tesla's sustained sales will be once they get through the initial bolus of orders. Hope they can keep it going but I think you'll see a bit of a slowdown.
If GM had really wanted to sell a lot of Bolts, they would have given it nicer styling and not made it look like a golf cart.
While I do think that Tesla has designed nicer looking cars, I disagree that the styling on the Bolt "looks like a golf cart". It's a hatchback and a decent looking one as far as those go. You're entitled to your opinion but people but your opinion on the aesthetics isn't universal. Personally I think the Bolt EV is quite sharp looking.
If you think the Bolt proves that GM loves EVs, then you don't understand cars at all.
I don't care if GM loves EVs or not. What it does prove is that GM can make a decent EV and that they have the ability to make more and that they are investing in electrification. What this will translate to in the long run remains to be seen. In the mean time I can get a Bolt TODAY from GM but if I want a comparably priced Model 3 I'm going to be waiting the better part of a year to get it in the best case. I'm a fan of Tesla but I'm not a blind fanboi either.
The Bolt is a car designed to fail. Also GM looses about $9,000 per car for both the Volt and Bolt.
And Tesla loses money on every car they sell thus far. What exactly is your point? The Bolt is basically a mass market test bed. Were you under the illusion that it was something else? It would only be a failure if GM ultimately fails to follow up with more and better EVs in the coming years. Whether or not GM makes a financial killing on the Bolt (and Volt) is almost irrelevant.
The battery chemistry used in the Telsa are special to Tesla and not owned by Panasonic or used by Panasonic's other customers.
Other companies use other chemistries and just because Tesla has their own special blend doesn't guarantee them market success. Tesla's strategy is sensible but it's not yet clear they can get enough of an advantage for it to make a difference in the long run. I hope they succeed but they do not have an insurmountable cost advantage at present and new battery chemistries could render whatever advantage they do establish meaningless almost overnight if they can't keep the pace.
About those storage and wall batteries: That Tesla Wall thing isn't cheap as it uses just about the most expensive type of batteries on the market. Wouldn't it be a lot more economical to use cheaper but bulkier batteries, since space and weight are much less of an issue in that application?
Not currently no it wouldn't. Tesla is trying to get the unit cost of batteries much lower and to do that you need to make and sell as many of them as possible. The Powerwall just provides another sales channel to help them do this. In the long run it might not make sense to use Li-Ion batteries for this application but only once we've reached some sort of supply constraint. As long as Tesla can sell all the batteries they can make and don't run into resource constraints on the supply side it makes all the sense in the world to use the same battery cells everywhere they can.
If GM took EVs seriously starting when they produced EV-1 and kept going until now, there would be no need for a Tesla.
Maybe. The EV-1 tends to get looked at with some rose colored glasses today and almost certainly was not a viable mass market car when it was available. I know it had some fans but it was the very definition of a niche vehicle and GM was losing a substantial sum on each one sold. The biggest problem was the battery tech simply wasn't there yet. The first commercial Li-Ion battery was released around 1991 and they weren't really ready for vehicle use when the EV-1 was in production. The lead-acid and later NiMh batteries in the EV-1 really weren't good enough. Battery tech is easily the most important thing when it comes to EVs and 20 years ago it just wasn't quite there. It's kind of unfair to GM to expect them to continue to produce a vehicle with little realistic chance of being a commercially successful vehicle. Not to say GM didn't bungle the whole affair (they clearly did) but I'm not convinced the EV-1 was the answer many people remember it to be. It wasn't at all obvious at the time that continued investment in EVs was worthwhile. It really only made sense as a technology development platform and needed to have a longer term outlook than GM is probably capable of.
That said, I agree that GM could have and probably should have continued to take the technology of EVs more seriously than they did. I own a Chevy Bolt and it's a terrific little car but I have to wonder how much better it could have been if GM had been working on it for another decade... Ironically if GM had just held out a few more years Li-Ion batteries became viable just a few years after the EV-1. I think the biggest mistake was probably in them going after a mass market car first rather than taking an approach closer to what Tesla ultimately did.
The fact that GM discarded any lead they might have had is more meaningful than how many internal combustion cars they can make.
That remains to be seen. Your argument is plausible but we won't know how important it will be for a few more years yet. Just because Tesla seemingly has the lead at the moment doesn't mean they will maintain that lead indefinitely. Lot of smart people work for companies not named Tesla and Tesla has seemingly proven that there is money to be had in EVs.
Capital purchases don't have a huge impact on profits in the short term, although they do directly affect cash.
That's routinely not true. Capital purchases even when subject to a deprecation schedule can easily affect near term profits both directly and indirectly. For example a few years back our company bought a press for about $100,000. We then had to hire an employee costing about $50,000 to operate it, train the employee (more $), install the press (more $), reconfigure work flows and rearrange floor space, hire riggers, add electric service, add engineering time, and more. Even though we depreciated the cost of the press itself and some tooling, there were very substantial additional costs than cannot be depreciated that go with it.
Plus depreciation schedules vary and some of them are quite short which is often preferred by companies because deprecation schedules often don't very accurately reflect real world economic reality. If I outlay a bunch of cash for a machine then I'm out a bunch of cash for a machine and that should in many cases result in a hit to current period earnings even if GAAP dictates otherwise. I've often joked (semi seriously) that only an accountant would be foolish enough to think that inventory is an asset - in practical terms it's more akin to a liability because it ties up cash and other resources.
The cost of capital purchases are usually amortized over some period of time.
Capital purchases of tangible equipment are depreciated, not amortized. Functionally the same thing really but just being pedantic about the proper words. You would amortize an intangible asset like a patent purchase. Why they make the distinction has never been entirely clear to me since functionally it is the same activity. Finance and accounting are weird that way.
Sure, GM makes a lot of cars. But, there is no growth story for GM.
Probably true but there is a strong cash flow and dividend story from GM. It's hard to make a huge company a lot bigger in a short time period. But GM kicks off a LOT of profit and cash and the dividend yield right now is pretty good. A company doesn't have to grow at 20% or more per year to be a good investment.
But with Tesla, that's not just a possibility...its likely.
Sure, growing from tiny to bigger is a lot easier. But the value of a company should be roughly the net present value of all future free cash flows. There is no plausible scenario whereby you can make a rational claim that Tesla is going to kick off more free cash than GM within any time period not measured in decades. Even if Tesla has the best profit margins in the business (around 10% net) starting tomorrow it's still going to take them a LONG time to get anywhere close to a company the size of GM. Just because a company is a growth story doesn't mean we chuck all rationality out the window about its likely future prospects.
No other auto maker will be able to mass produce an EV in the next 5 years
I have a Chevy Bolt sitting in my garage that says otherwise. Nissan has sold over 300,000 Leafs to date. If that's not mass production I'm not sure you understand the term. Pretty much every major auto company already has put serious money into electrification but there still is a huge market (much larger than the EV market) in ICE vehicles for them to serve too. EVs are coming and I'm a true believer in them but it's not going to happen overnight and your claim that no automaker could mass produce an EV in the next 5 years is just clearly not true.
The reason for this is while the auto makers can make cars, they can't make the EV batteries.
There are plenty of battery companies and Tesla doesn't really make their own batteries either. Panasonic does the heavy lifting for Tesla on batteries. You were aware that Panasonic is the one that made the majority of the investment for the gigafactory right?
Finally, they don't have the knowledge of the battery chemistry to make those batteries efficient enough to sell them (or the EVs that contain them) at a profit.
You have your facts wrong on that. The big auto companies are working closely with battery makers and in many cases have strong partnerships. Tesla doesn't have the advantage here you seem to think they do at least not at the moment. Plus the state of the art in battery tech is progressing rather quickly so a lead today can evaporate tomorrow.
This is why Tesla has a huge multiple. Because even the most ardent Tesla Bear will admit that many people want an EV and will be buying them in the next 5 years.
I'm not a Tesla bear but there aren't nearly enough people likely to buy an EV in the next 5 years to justify Tesla's current market cap. Not even close. And I'm a huge fan of EVs and even own one. Tesla's stock price is based on hype and overinflated expectations. It happens sometimes. There was a lot of this during the dotcom boom circa 1999-2000. Eventually Tesla's stock price will come to reflect some sort of realistic expectation of their profit potential. But currently it is arguably a good company but a hugely overpriced stock.
Number of units produced has no direct linkage to where market cap should be; rather, market cap *should be* (and I’m not saying *is*) linked to expected profits.
There is no plausible scenario whereby Tesla will make enough profit in the next 5 years to justify their current market cap by any reasonable valuation. I'm not saying they won't be worth that amount someday. But currently their market cap is detached from their economic reality. You just can't rationally expect a decent ROI on the stock if you buy it today at the current price. You're just gambling, not investing. Tesla having a market cap larger than GM is basically saying that you expect the net present value of all future Free Cash Flows to Tesla to exceed GMs. There is no rational basis to make this argument today given the ambiguity of cash flows further than 5 years out from today.
In any case, I’m a believer in this company. I have no problems with them recording losses in the mid term due to capital investment in order to have a long term payout. Whether it’s truly worth its current share price, I’m uncertain.
I feel similarly about the company but I'm quite certain that while it may be a good company it's a terrible stock at current valuation on a risk adjusted basis. You can have a great company that isn't a good investment at this moment in time. If you buy it today you are basically betting that an almost certainly overpriced stock is going to get even more overpriced in the near future. Maybe it will but you have no rational basis to justify that happening.
Don't know if you have been in the business world, but capital is depreciated over the usable life of the investment.
Accountant speaking here. No capital investments are decidedly NOT always depreciated. In fact most companies prefer to avoid depreciating assets when they can avoid it. (depreciation does not always accurately reflect economic reality) Plus even if you do have a large amount of capex with depreciation attached there often are current period expenses attached to it that are not depreciated. For example if I buy a large press I would depreciate the press but I might not depreciate the cost of the riggers to place it, the upgrades to the electrical system to run it, the training of the labor to operate it, the slow productivity at first while we figure out how to use it, the extra workers hired to operate it, the engineers time to get it working, etc. It's not uncommon to have more costs that aren't capitalized (and thus depreciated) than the ones that are capitalized.
I think you are missing the point - a loss is a loss in Wall Street reported earnings. Special one time stuff is often very well called out.
This isn't special one time stuff for the most part and if you actually read their financial statements you would know that.
Wheeling out a ton of cash now in the build up for something in the future would be a footnote on current earnings.
Have you actually read Tesla's financial statements including the footnotes? They actually talk about issues relating to gross margin which basically are amortization of fixed costs from the assembly line and productivity improvements. They have this new and expensive assembly line which A) isn't running at full speed yet and B) costs a lot to operate no matter how many vehicles they make. Until they can amortize the fixed costs over enough cars per unit time they are going to lose money.
I truly admire this (or any other EM) company's ability to say "look over here, don't look at reality".
You might actually consider figuring out what reality actually is before making judgements about it. Tesla's situation isn't an uncommon one, just more high profile than most.
So sales are up, losses are up - but they're on track to make a profit? Really?
I haven't looked carefully at their financial statements but situations like that happen pretty often. What I suspect in this case is that Tesla has a lot of one time expenses during the quarter during ramp up which will not repeat in future quarters. So it makes the financials look worse during the current quarter than is expected for future quarters. There also are issues of inventory - you make the product and then deliver it but until Tesla gets paid for the car they have tied up cash (costs) in inventory. Cash flows in companies are very often quite lumpy and costs do not always track neatly with revenues.
Remember that there are a lot of fixed costs to running an assembly line. Fixed in this case means that they have to pay the same large amount regardless of how many vehicles they produce. A fixed costs is the same regardless of whether you make 1 unit or 1 million. So Tesla incurred a large fixed expense in building the Model 3 production system but until they can get the run rate high enough they cannot amortize this over enough vehicles to make a profit. As their production rate climbs their unit cost per vehicle will fall. Basically Tesla has to increase their gross margin on the Model 3 which will happen naturally if they can continue to increase their production rate and increase efficiency of the production lines. In the mean time their losses will look short term larger but should in future quarters behave exactly as Tesla indicates - IF they can execute the plan, which isn't a trivial concern.
The problem is that the US population has no history of being subjected to false information and outright lies.
If you believe that then you have never been exposed to a church. In the words of George Carlin, "you have to stand in awe, in AWE of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest! Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told."
Maybe it is time that we teach our kids to be more critical.
To teach someone to think critically first requires being able to do it oneself.
Verifying information is hard.
Sometimes but not always. Much of the time it barely requires any real effort.
Simply believing what you're told, especially if it fits your personal point of view, is much easier.
That's hard for people who have been conditioned to believe what they are told from a young age. You know, like in a church...
FCA can't afford to take EVs seriously.
True dat. Though honestly they can't afford to not take them seriously either. Tough place to be I think.
Doing a real hybrid is expensive because they don't build batteries like Tesla does.
Tesla doesn't build batteries either. Panasonic is doing the heavy lifting there. Tesla has a supply advantage but they don't really seem to have a cost advantage (yet) on their batteries. People call it Tesla's gigafactory but really it's Panasonic's. Tesla is just the sexier brand so they pretend they are the majority partner in that venture.
But they can make EVs so much cheaper because they are building their own batteries that they can actually make them profitable.
That might be true eventually but it isn't true yet. Honestly it's not clear that Tesla has any sort of substantial cost advantage at present. I think you are right about the direction of their strategy but that's going to take a while to really pay dividends if it really pans out. In the mean time there are a LOT of other battery companies working pretty hard on the problem and I don't see why companies like Ford or GM or Toyota couldn't partner with them (or buy them) and reap similar benefits as long as they don't wait too long.
Pickup truck buyers tend to expect a traditional vehicle, so I think the market is going to have to go through all the phases.
Agreed on the traditional vehicle but that's kind of my point. It's more of a marketing than a technical or economic problem. I think if Tesla hits the market with a drool worthy electric pickup that should finally start to move things along once some of the good old boys can see it perform in the real world. Similar to how the Model S is wrecking all the supercars on the drag strip.
There's actually no good place to bolt up a big battery pack on a typical pickup truck, but fitting a mild hybrid battery in someplace is trivial.
Sure there is. Right in the floor of the bed. And if you actually electrify the wheels you don't need big driveshafts and transmissions taking up ludicrous amounts of space underneath. Actually my pickup (Honda Ridgeline) has a giant space under the bed where you could put a huge battery pack without any serious modifications. Right now they store a spare tire in it and have an empty in bed trunk. Perfect place for a battery and/or electric motors.
First, NASA is not likely to be the primary entity running the next moon mission. They will participate, but that will be done by private enterprise.
Really? What private enterprise is going to do it and where is the profit motive for them? No profit motive = no private enterprise funding unless you have someone as crazy as Elon Musk who controls a private company and doesn't have to care about profits. Until you can establish a profit motive and quantify the risks private enterprise is going to sit this one out.
Second, of all of the blockers in the way to a lunar mission, a lunar surface suit is smaller in magnitude than things like a lunar lander, which nobody has at the moment.
Lunar lander, human rated launch vehicle, transport capsule, mission equipment, etc. There is no scheduled mission to the moon nor is there any mission parameters to design this stuff around nor is there much in the way of funding adequate to make it happen in the near future. We aren't going to see boots on the moon for quite a long time just like we haven't seen them for over 45 years since our last go at it. I could see a country like China doing it for national pride but it won't happen for at least another decade and probably much longer given current circumstances.
It's the cost. There was a hybrid Durango for a moment, it started at ~$85k.
If they can do a passenger sedan like the Volt it doesn't compute that they couldn't do it for a truck. I realize cost is a factor but I don't think that is the full story. I think for trucks they are simply afraid to tinker with a successful formula given that EVs and hybrids tend to have a bit of an (unjustified) hippie vibe to them thanks to econoboxes like the Prius. I think it's probably more of a marketing problem than an engineering issue.
FCA has never taken EVs seriously and their late CEO basically said publicly not many years ago they were only doing enough to meet legal requirements. I'm aware they are working on some hybrid stuff (including the Ram and reportedly the Wrangler) but I'm not convinced FCA is really taking them electrification seriously yet. I want a pickup with at least 50 miles of all electric range - not so half hearted mild hybrid.
Don't be deceived by the fact that automakers are selling very expensive pickups; they still need to have cheap models in order to be viable.
That doesn't have anything to do with the fact that they could offer a hybrid power train in the high end models. There are estimates that Ford averages as much as $13K in profit per F150 sold. The real number is probably a lower but it's a big number for sure. There is no doubt that it's the biggest driver in Ford's profits. Certainly there is margin there to be experimenting with power train options. Ford made $7.6 billion in profit last year. That's almost as much profit as Tesla had revenue.
I'm no moon landing conspiracy theorist but the combination of losing the Saturn blue prints
Evidently you are a moon landing conspiracy theorist because you could have easily verified that we still have the blue prints for the Saturn V as well as the Rocketdyne F1 engines used in the Saturn V. That isn't the problem with rebuilding them though. Here is a video explaining why we cannot simply remake the Rocketdyne F1 engines in their original glory. Short version is that the blue prints don't record a lot of important details about HOW these were actually fabricated. Each engine was custom made by hand by skilled individuals who didn't record every detail about how they did what they did. And even if they had, we don't make things the same way today so the design doesn't really make any sense to replicate anymore.
and not having a viable ship to get to the moon and not having space suits that can allow a person to survive on the moon a pretty strong factors to consider.
There is an example of the ship used to get to the moon in the Smithsonian museum as well as the space suits actually used. Furthermore all the hardware is still there on the moon to be inspected if you care to get close enough to look for yourself.
"Tesla has a market capitalization greater than GM. It makes no sense. " - considering GM went bust quite recently and your taxes bailed it out at a billion dollar loss, it makes perfect sense
Your analysis is both flawed and biased. GM went bust a decade ago because they didn't have access to cash to cover their debt obligations. Tesla only survived during the same period by borrowing $465 million from the federal government. Tesla has substantial debt obligations and their near term cash flow is still a question. Tesla is a FAR riskier investment TODAY than GM is. What happened 10 years ago is irrelevant to the discussion. Currently GM is very profitable and Tesla is decidedly not. Tesla's market cap does not accurately reflect even the most optimistic assumptions about their business prospects in the next 5-10 years.
An obsession over P/E ratios isn't healthy. P/E is a past-looking metric. It is not predictive.
No but it does provide some sense of where the current price of a company is compared to similar companies and whether it might over or under valued. You are right that it's not a replacement for a serious deep dive analysis but there is nothing about Tesla's situation that should lead one to expect they are going to be making massive high margin profits in the near future. Tesla isn't super unique among manufacturing companies and the cost models for them are well understood. Other companies make automobiles and we have a pretty good idea what they are worth and what sort of profit margins to expect and we know how the market values them. Even under the most generous assumptions about their prospects, Tesla's current valuation is highly irrational and not justified by any reasonable near term expectations of free cash flows. Someday they may be worth more than GM based on objective financial results but that day is years away.
Basically Tesla may succeed and it may even someday be worth it's current market cap. But right now, today, expecting a reasonable ROI on the TSLA stock is betting on the Greater Fool theory.
I don't really consider it risky at all, especially not compared to almost any biotech stock.
If you don't think it's a risky investment given it's ludicrously high valuation and huge debt load then you may not be understanding the meaning of the word risk. Even Elon Musk has admitted the stock is priced "higher than we have any right to deserve".
Do you seriously think it is riskier than Amazon at this point?
Hell yes Tesla is riskier than Amazon. FAR riskier. Not even a question.
*If* they need it, that capital would easily come from these sales figures and market share.
Market share doesn't equal cash if you are selling at a loss. You can have huge market share selling $2 bills for $1 but you'll be out of business faster than you can say "Chapter 11 Bankruptcy".
But if Tesla is meeting or beating delivery forecasts
When has Tesla EVER beaten a delivery forecast? Come on. Good products but Musk is almost legendary for missing delivery deadlines.
The shorts all were betting that Musk would have no access to capital.
That's not an unreasonable bet. They have $10 billion in debt and the debt servicing on that isn't to be laughed at, even by Elon Musk. At some point even Musk would have a hard time convincing the market that Tesla can service the debt it already owes. And given how much trouble Tesla has had getting the Model 3 up to full production it's perfectly reasonable to question whether they can bring in enough revenue fast enough to service the debt. I hope Tesla succeeds but they wouldn't be the first company to fail due to cash flow issues if that were to happen.
The real reason to own TSLA right now is the amazon potential to reap the product of the short's massive miscalculation.
That's a fancy way of saying that you bought an overpriced stock and are hoping that a short squeeze will send it even higher. Tesla is a fine company and I really want them to succeed but there is no objectively justifiable reason for the company to be worth more than General Motors at this time with a tiny fraction of the sales and zero profits to date. The stock price is hugely overvalued and there is no reasonable case to be made that Tesla is going to generate enough profits in the next 5 years to make a reasonable ROI for anyone who buys at the current price.
Long distance towing at highway speed is too much for the currently available Li-on battery packs.
Unsurprisingly Tesla doesn't seem to agree with you on this point. They seem to be working on a pickup which I'm personally quite curious about.
For the Model X, towing 3500 lbs at 60 mph will probably cut your range by 40-60% depending on road condition & weather
Towing doesn't do wonders for the range of ICE powered vehicles either. And frankly I'm not convinced this is a serious issue. There are a considerable number of use cases for towing where even a big hit to range would still be well within the single charge distance of of a Tesla. I'd wager to say that aside from people moving and vacation RV use, most instances of towing are less than 100 miles. And it's not as if the technology doesn't exist to extend the range of an EV. There are fast charge stations in many places. Even if we ignore plug in hybrids you could simply put a ICE on the trailer itself and thereby charge the EV for long trips by turning into a de-facto hybrid when necessary. Best of both worlds. Access to the gasoline refueling stations for long trips but don't have to carry around the ICE when you don't need it which is most of the time.
When electric pickups do hit the market, they are going to have to ban them from tractor pulls. Otherwise, a lot of sensitive folks will be real embarrassed.
There is truth to this. I own a Chevy Bolt and I also own a V6 pickup. The Chevy Bolt has more torque than my pickup does and is smoother and nicer to drive even if you disregard the handling (which is no contest). Having driven an EV for a while now I'm firmly convinced ICEs are living on borrowed time. My Bolt has enough range to drive from Detroit to Cleveland without stopping, performs like some of the fastest hot hatches, and is much more pleasant to drive. I actually do need a pickup but the moment there is a decent EV or hybrid pickup available my ICE powered pickup is getting sold.
You'll see the way non-hybrid, non-EV gas or diesel trucks are advertised change overnight. They will never talk about their towing power again.
Probably true as well. I have no idea why hybrid pickup trucks (or EV) are not already a thing. Have the wheels being driven by electric motors and if necessary charged by a diesel or gas engine for range extension is a total win. Huge battery pack to power tools for skilled trades. Tons of torque for towing. Better fuel economy and a better ride. (electric motors are SO much nicer to drive than ICE) Aside from cost there really is no performance downside and given the hefty profit margins on pickups obviously people don't mind paying a premium for them at least in the US. I would replace my current pickup with a hybrid or EV version in a heartbeat if one were available.
Come on, every field is full of blowhards and egos.
True but IT seems stricken with an unusually high percentage of them. That's not to say all or even most IT workers are egomaniacs because that's clearly not true. But there are seemingly a larger than average number of them who seem to think that because they can program a computer that somehow that makes them an expert in all sorts of activities unrelated to programming. For example my work is primarily in manufacturing and the number of programmers I've run into (especially here on slashdot) who think that manufacturing is some trivial exercise that a trained monkey can do is astonishing. They have no idea what they are talking about but are convinced that they have a thorough understanding.
You also need to consider the number of hours worked since programmers are usually required to work a lot more hours than anyone else
I know some doctors who would like to dispute that statement. I happen to be married to one. During her residency she pulled 40 hour shifts with some regularity. Investment bankers are well known for the ridiculous number of hours they put in - 70 hours per week is a slow week for many of them. Many programmers do work very hard but they are hardly unique in working long hours.
Entrepreneur reports that tech workers in major American cities earn an average of $135,000 and yet, a survey of 6,000 tech workers conducted by workplace app Blind and reported by Quartz found that over 60 percent feel they aren't being paid enough.
I think this is the Dunning Kruger effect in all it's glory. Tech workers are routinely stricken by it, especially here on slashdot.
The volume of disinformation on the internet is growing so big that it is starting to crowd out real news
I think this article is a perfect example since that isn't actually true except in the minds of those who want it to be so. Back here in the real world "fake news" is something that mostly exists in the mind of one Donald John Trump and his supporters and it means news he doesn't like. He actually acts as if sources like Fox News report actual facts reliably. There is some actual false or misleading reporting but that is nothing new and will never go away.
And frankly if you actually use twitter or Facebook (or Fox News) as your primary or worse, sole news source then you are the problem.
Only the most loyal of fanboys could advocate for the removal of a feature that doesn't add any significant cost or require a large change in the design.
Only the most loyal fanboy's huh? Just because someone doesn't agree with your opinion or preferences doesn't make them an irrational fanboy. I hold the same opinion for Android devices. I think putting the headphone jack on the device doesn't make much sense regardless of who the smartphone maker is. And as long as there are some manufacturers putting it on the base device why do you really care? It makes a lot more sense to put it on the case that the vast majority of people use anyway. Cases are frankly an overlooked opportunity to make the hardware more modular than it currently is.
When you are producing something in the millions there is no such thing as an insignificant cost. Even something as simple as a headphone jack carries a lot of costs that most people don't even think about. There are engineering, design, tooling, warranty, and opportunity costs just for a start. By eliminating this port Apple eliminates a point of failure, reduces the component cost, makes the engineering and tooling cheaper, and reduces service costs for the inevitable problems in the field. Even if this just saves a few cents per phone at the end of the day that adds up to millions of dollars in profit to Apple since Apple sells hundreds of millions of these things every year. I assure you that fact is not lost on Apple. There is a cost to supporting legacy ports and it's pretty easy to evaluate.
If moving the headphone jack to a case makes so much sense, what advantages does it offer?
It offers the advantage of not having an unnecessary port for those who don't want it and it frees up that space to be used for some other purpose on the phone. Personally I'll take a marginally larger battery over a headphone port every time. Since most people add a case to their device anyway it makes sense for people who want the now optional jack to buy a case with the jack built in.
Do those advantages outweigh the utility of people who don't want to ensnare their device in a case
You mean all three of them? This isn't really a point of debate.
or have to remember to bring an adapter or buy a pair of wireless headphones that also need to be charged?
If you are bringing headphones anyway I doubt you're going to forget. And obviously Apple is targeting people who don't mind charging wireless headphones. If this isn't you then buy something that suits you. You don't have to buy Apple and Apple doesn't have to design their products to suit you.