It may SEEM like a minor Update; but it rolled-out eGPU support for macOS; so OBVIOUSLY there were some fairly "deep" changes to the whole Display Framework; so, breaking a couple of THIRD PARTY display products is pretty much a foreseeable thing.
No, it is not. When Microsoft rolls out a new OS, it's pretty much 100% backwards compatible with all hardware as-is, and in the case that the default settings don't work, you can run it in an older compatibility mode and continue on. Even parallel and serial ports - heck, GPIB and 488! - are still supported.
Just indicates that Apple is about to announce a new tethered monitor that Just Works... No need for that DisplayLink thing anymore - heck, it doesn't even work!
No no no, you're all wrong. The gross margin is all that matters and if you have a positive gross margin then everything is great and your company will never die! Rei has said as much - and that you don't understand a margin is different than profit. Gross or net... Too many of the Tesla fanatics love to talk about a 25% gross margin, but fail to acknowledge the 20% loss on every product sold, at the end. It's not just capitalization of the factory (NUMMI was nearly complete in the first place), but advertising, marketing, distribution, and other costs that will never really go down, even as shipments go up.
So you are talking GROSS margin, yet you always say "margin" or the car's profit margin - both of which are not correct. It's easy to show a big gross margin when you discount all the costs associated with making and selling a product! Cost Of Goods Sold ignores everything except the Bill Of Materials and the labor involved - and that is what you base a gross margin on. In other words - you're looking at an irrelevant number, because even if Tesla stopped "investing" in growth, their actual profit margin would still be negative (albeit not as much) - because of all the other costs associated that a gross margin ignores.
Gross margins prove the economic case for your products; operating margins remain negative until you've grown large.
False. Many companies, small and large alike, start off with positive profit margins, or manage to become profitable within a few years (not the 13+ of Tesla). On one hand you and the Teslerati keep arguing that Tesla is the biggest and owns the market, yet here you argue they are too small to make a profit - meaning the market really is small, too. Which is it? Are you happy that Tesla dominates an essentially-zero-sized market, or are you happy they are losing money on every car they sell because growth?
Standard practices is to do soft tooling first, especially at proto stages. THEN you do a hard tool so you can hold a tighter tolerance, reduce wear and tear on the tool, etc. over time. The cost differential is about 20-30%. Unless you mean that Tesla is shipping with soft-tooled parts? With consumer electronics, you typically do soft tools for prototype and EVT stages, sometimes for DVT (mostly hard tools for DVT), and hard tools for PVT and mass production - because it gives you the best insight into long-term production tolerances you'll get from your process and thus informs what your product will do over time.
Where's the numbers? I posted my link - the margin is negative when you use actual, real GAAP numbers. ANYONE can claim a product "makes profit" if you discount massive amounts of overhead and expenses required to make that product... Blow away infrastructure, marketing, NRE, tooling, pensions/stock options, and you can make anything look good! The reality is, though - you cannot do that. At least per GAAP. That's called fudging the books, and Tesla got into a lot of hot water over that, a few years ago. And so now they report the truth - and the truth is that they lose money on every car they sell.
Mercedes E class outsold Tesla S, and I believe Audi A6 and A8 did the same as well. BMW's luxury series - 5/6/7 sedans - outsold the Tesla S (note that BMW splits up their "high end" models into 3, whilst Tesla has a single model - compare luxury-to-luxury would be the 5/6/7 versus the S). MOST cars sold - IC or EV - are econoboxes for a reason - most people don't want to dump that much money into a vehicle. Looking at ALL new passenger vehicles sold in the US (cars and trucks), the average is around $36K - about half that of the entry-level Model S. And for every new car sold, there are about 2 used cars sold - and they average around $17K. The Model 3 MAY make a dent, but it starts at the average new price, and is really well out of the average price most people want to pay (about $24K, between new and used).
Huh. The graph I link to shows MARGIN. It is NEGATIVE. And guess what - with a negative margin you CANNOT have profit! Margin is simply a ratio of profits to revenues, and when that is negative - there is no profit. YOU should learn what margin and profit really is, because you continue to actually lie (and at this point, the number of times you've been corrected and continue to state the same thing, it IS, in fact a lie) about the financial realities. Please post ANY GAAP numbers that show I'm wrong. Go ahead - the profit margin is negative.
Skipping proto tooling would be a big gamble for a well-established company; for a start-up, that's suicide and IMHO just further confirms the team at Tesla really doesn't have much experience in manufacturing.
Telsa has yet to actually BUILD 100K model 3s. Elon says they can finally deliver at that rate - but it's not been seen yet (his weasel words "If things go as planned today" actually hint that they may not hit that rate).
I wouldn't put too much faith in that. Tesla 25% margin is not plausible even for their higher-end cars except perhaps the Performance trims
So you're saying that Tesla has been lying to the SEC for years? The average margin on S and X was 25%. Their overall automotive margin is down to 18%
Those are lies, Rei - plain and simple. I've called you on them before and you still spout them. The reality is that Tesla has had exactly ONE profitable quarter in the last 5 years (when they booked the Model 3 preorder income), and average about a -13% loss. That's straight from the GAAP numbers from their annual reports. If you have other numbers - put them up.
Or the market simply does not support the demand for that many full EVs. Hybrids seem to be catching on left-and-right, especially here in China (where I am right now), but pure EVs are still lagging - presumably because of the charging and range issues.
a vehicle designed to - like the S and X - turn a profit 25% margin
Designed to turn a profit, sure - who doesn't design to turn a profit? The problem is, Tesla has had exactly ONE profitable quarter in the last 5 years, and that was when the booked all the pre-order sales for the Model 3. Historically, they're running about a -13% profit margin. That's the fact - unless you have actual, GAAP numbers that say otherwise?
Everyone here talks about how much more complex an IC vehicle is compared to an electric vehicle, because of all the extra parts in the motor, gear drive, etc. Note that in one month - December 2017 - Ford produced about 9 TIMES more F-150s than the first 10K Model 3s. And that is just ONE model of vehicle from a smallish auto maker.
FYI - BASF has a good overview on this, and what's typical for plastic mold toolings that run 1MM+ lifespans. Think about it - if a tool lasted 100K shots or so, and you're making 10MM+ parts a month (like some of the consumer electronics products out there, or even automotive like relay bodies and such), you'd go through 100 tools a MONTH. Given a typical 30-40 day lead-time to cut, polish, dial-in, and harden a tool, you'd need upwards of 4000 days of work per month just to keep the product rolling. That's a very large tool shop that is 100% dedicated to just that part.
One transducer I designed is used for a major headphone company. It uses a plastic frame. They shoot about 6MM units a month with it, and the tool typically is replaced every other month (8 cavity tool). They get about 1.5MM shots from that single tool. Tooling life that is under 1MM for a hardened tool is really indicative of either the wrong process OR a bad tool design.
Sharpening, rebuilding, cleaning a tool is a few day job at most; cutting a new tool is typically 40-50 days (or longer, if it's a large sheet metal press process). Tools will last quite a long time, and if your tooling lifetime is impacting your ability to make product - then you're either using the wrong process, have a crappy tool engineer - or both. And yes, products I've personally designed ship in the 500K+ per month range individually (collectively, somewhere around 4MM per month).
Then you've never actually built anything, have you? Most injection molds made from from hardened steel will flow hundreds of thousands to millions of shots. It's quite common in consumer electronics to do that; for example, when i worked at SONOS they used to regularly get 2.5MM shots from a plastic tool before redoing it. Steel stamps can last just as long, for one product I do I regularly get 750K stamps out of a forge tool, pressing 12mm thick 1008 steel plate (disc shape, 83mm ID/175mm OD). Of course, when you're making 400-500K units a month, you need that kind of longevity; most big-volume manufacturing doesn't have the luxury of only doing 2K units per week...
Toolings typically last for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of operations. Tesla should still be on its first toolings UNLESS they've redesigned parts, forcing tooling changes or new tools altogether.
Hint: Nearly all of the US mainline carriers are "evil", as it's on a spectrum. Their primary goal is to extract as much money as they can while providing as little as possible (without angering you enough to jump to a competitor.)
That is pretty much the goal of ALL businesses, and individuals. You do as little as possible for as much as you can. I know, some will say "but I make sure I cover ALL my work, give 110% effort" etc. but do you also forgo billing 90% of your time? 30% of your time? 10% of your time? If not - you're trying to get as much as you can for as little as you do...
Personally, I use Verizon because I get great coverage wherever I go - and my business partners with T-Mobile and AT&T often have issues in NYC, Las Vegas, and Minneapolis. So - I go with Big Red because whilst it is more expensive, I can at least always use it.
Slashdot Mirror
When was the last Windows OS update that broke external display connectivity?
It may SEEM like a minor Update; but it rolled-out eGPU support for macOS; so OBVIOUSLY there were some fairly "deep" changes to the whole Display Framework; so, breaking a couple of THIRD PARTY display products is pretty much a foreseeable thing.
No, it is not. When Microsoft rolls out a new OS, it's pretty much 100% backwards compatible with all hardware as-is, and in the case that the default settings don't work, you can run it in an older compatibility mode and continue on. Even parallel and serial ports - heck, GPIB and 488! - are still supported.
Just indicates that Apple is about to announce a new tethered monitor that Just Works... No need for that DisplayLink thing anymore - heck, it doesn't even work!
Got a new Macbook? It's USB-C only - even for displays. No choice if you have newish Mac hardware...
He raised him wrong?
No no no, you're all wrong. The gross margin is all that matters and if you have a positive gross margin then everything is great and your company will never die! Rei has said as much - and that you don't understand a margin is different than profit. Gross or net... Too many of the Tesla fanatics love to talk about a 25% gross margin, but fail to acknowledge the 20% loss on every product sold, at the end. It's not just capitalization of the factory (NUMMI was nearly complete in the first place), but advertising, marketing, distribution, and other costs that will never really go down, even as shipments go up.
Extrapolating from a one-time event to a historical norm is rather dubious, don't you think?
Gross margins prove the economic case for your products; operating margins remain negative until you've grown large.
False. Many companies, small and large alike, start off with positive profit margins, or manage to become profitable within a few years (not the 13+ of Tesla). On one hand you and the Teslerati keep arguing that Tesla is the biggest and owns the market, yet here you argue they are too small to make a profit - meaning the market really is small, too. Which is it? Are you happy that Tesla dominates an essentially-zero-sized market, or are you happy they are losing money on every car they sell because growth?
Standard practices is to do soft tooling first, especially at proto stages. THEN you do a hard tool so you can hold a tighter tolerance, reduce wear and tear on the tool, etc. over time. The cost differential is about 20-30%. Unless you mean that Tesla is shipping with soft-tooled parts? With consumer electronics, you typically do soft tools for prototype and EVT stages, sometimes for DVT (mostly hard tools for DVT), and hard tools for PVT and mass production - because it gives you the best insight into long-term production tolerances you'll get from your process and thus informs what your product will do over time.
Where's the numbers? I posted my link - the margin is negative when you use actual, real GAAP numbers. ANYONE can claim a product "makes profit" if you discount massive amounts of overhead and expenses required to make that product... Blow away infrastructure, marketing, NRE, tooling, pensions/stock options, and you can make anything look good! The reality is, though - you cannot do that. At least per GAAP. That's called fudging the books, and Tesla got into a lot of hot water over that, a few years ago. And so now they report the truth - and the truth is that they lose money on every car they sell.
Mercedes E class outsold Tesla S, and I believe Audi A6 and A8 did the same as well. BMW's luxury series - 5/6/7 sedans - outsold the Tesla S (note that BMW splits up their "high end" models into 3, whilst Tesla has a single model - compare luxury-to-luxury would be the 5/6/7 versus the S). MOST cars sold - IC or EV - are econoboxes for a reason - most people don't want to dump that much money into a vehicle. Looking at ALL new passenger vehicles sold in the US (cars and trucks), the average is around $36K - about half that of the entry-level Model S. And for every new car sold, there are about 2 used cars sold - and they average around $17K. The Model 3 MAY make a dent, but it starts at the average new price, and is really well out of the average price most people want to pay (about $24K, between new and used).
Huh. The graph I link to shows MARGIN. It is NEGATIVE. And guess what - with a negative margin you CANNOT have profit! Margin is simply a ratio of profits to revenues, and when that is negative - there is no profit. YOU should learn what margin and profit really is, because you continue to actually lie (and at this point, the number of times you've been corrected and continue to state the same thing, it IS, in fact a lie) about the financial realities. Please post ANY GAAP numbers that show I'm wrong. Go ahead - the profit margin is negative.
Skipping proto tooling would be a big gamble for a well-established company; for a start-up, that's suicide and IMHO just further confirms the team at Tesla really doesn't have much experience in manufacturing.
Telsa has yet to actually BUILD 100K model 3s. Elon says they can finally deliver at that rate - but it's not been seen yet (his weasel words "If things go as planned today" actually hint that they may not hit that rate).
So you're saying that Tesla has been lying to the SEC for years? The average margin on S and X was 25%. Their overall automotive margin is down to 18%
Those are lies, Rei - plain and simple. I've called you on them before and you still spout them. The reality is that Tesla has had exactly ONE profitable quarter in the last 5 years (when they booked the Model 3 preorder income), and average about a -13% loss. That's straight from the GAAP numbers from their annual reports. If you have other numbers - put them up.
Or the market simply does not support the demand for that many full EVs. Hybrids seem to be catching on left-and-right, especially here in China (where I am right now), but pure EVs are still lagging - presumably because of the charging and range issues.
a vehicle designed to - like the S and X - turn a profit 25% margin
Designed to turn a profit, sure - who doesn't design to turn a profit? The problem is, Tesla has had exactly ONE profitable quarter in the last 5 years, and that was when the booked all the pre-order sales for the Model 3. Historically, they're running about a -13% profit margin. That's the fact - unless you have actual, GAAP numbers that say otherwise?
Everyone here talks about how much more complex an IC vehicle is compared to an electric vehicle, because of all the extra parts in the motor, gear drive, etc. Note that in one month - December 2017 - Ford produced about 9 TIMES more F-150s than the first 10K Model 3s. And that is just ONE model of vehicle from a smallish auto maker.
FYI - BASF has a good overview on this, and what's typical for plastic mold toolings that run 1MM+ lifespans. Think about it - if a tool lasted 100K shots or so, and you're making 10MM+ parts a month (like some of the consumer electronics products out there, or even automotive like relay bodies and such), you'd go through 100 tools a MONTH. Given a typical 30-40 day lead-time to cut, polish, dial-in, and harden a tool, you'd need upwards of 4000 days of work per month just to keep the product rolling. That's a very large tool shop that is 100% dedicated to just that part.
One transducer I designed is used for a major headphone company. It uses a plastic frame. They shoot about 6MM units a month with it, and the tool typically is replaced every other month (8 cavity tool). They get about 1.5MM shots from that single tool. Tooling life that is under 1MM for a hardened tool is really indicative of either the wrong process OR a bad tool design.
Sharpening, rebuilding, cleaning a tool is a few day job at most; cutting a new tool is typically 40-50 days (or longer, if it's a large sheet metal press process). Tools will last quite a long time, and if your tooling lifetime is impacting your ability to make product - then you're either using the wrong process, have a crappy tool engineer - or both. And yes, products I've personally designed ship in the 500K+ per month range individually (collectively, somewhere around 4MM per month).
Then you've never actually built anything, have you? Most injection molds made from from hardened steel will flow hundreds of thousands to millions of shots. It's quite common in consumer electronics to do that; for example, when i worked at SONOS they used to regularly get 2.5MM shots from a plastic tool before redoing it. Steel stamps can last just as long, for one product I do I regularly get 750K stamps out of a forge tool, pressing 12mm thick 1008 steel plate (disc shape, 83mm ID/175mm OD). Of course, when you're making 400-500K units a month, you need that kind of longevity; most big-volume manufacturing doesn't have the luxury of only doing 2K units per week...
Toolings typically last for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of operations. Tesla should still be on its first toolings UNLESS they've redesigned parts, forcing tooling changes or new tools altogether.
Hint: Nearly all of the US mainline carriers are "evil", as it's on a spectrum. Their primary goal is to extract as much money as they can while providing as little as possible (without angering you enough to jump to a competitor.)
That is pretty much the goal of ALL businesses, and individuals. You do as little as possible for as much as you can. I know, some will say "but I make sure I cover ALL my work, give 110% effort" etc. but do you also forgo billing 90% of your time? 30% of your time? 10% of your time? If not - you're trying to get as much as you can for as little as you do...
Personally, I use Verizon because I get great coverage wherever I go - and my business partners with T-Mobile and AT&T often have issues in NYC, Las Vegas, and Minneapolis. So - I go with Big Red because whilst it is more expensive, I can at least always use it.
Shut up and enjoy your crumbs...
Yes - the Red Wizard!