Thoughts on TESLA

[Mr. Tightwad]

The above is an example of shaming language.

[bobandsherry]

And the above is example of what someone posts when someone disagrees with them.

[Aerides]

Mod Hat on:
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The mod team has been unusually lenient with this thread, given the high interest and engagement from so many members. While many of the points raised clearly bring out some contentious discussions, for the most part, members have avoided taking things personally, or engaging in off topic sniping.

However, the above few posts are failing to avoid that behavior. Please take that stuff offline, elsewhere, to allow this thread to continue for those that are enjoying the actual discussion topic.

/mod had off
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[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cessna152 The chart, with the exception of 2015, depicts an exponential growth in number of plug-in cars on the road. But its approximately linear you say, not exponential! True - but the chart is of plug-in SALES. That is, the rate of plug-ins being added to the roads isn’t some constant like 30,000 per year. The number being added appears to proportional to the number already on the road. The definition of exponential is a value x whose rate of change with respect to y (dx/dy) is proportional to its value at each y ( x(y) ). Graph the total number of cars on the road from the sales values in that graph and see if it doesn’t look roughly exponential. I would expect production capacity as measured in cars/day to only increase linearly initially while the number of cars increases exponentially - again, initially. Real curves like this look like S shaped curves as limits are reached.

I thought you were right that a geometric increase in EV sales would result in an exponential increase in cumulative EV fleet, but I put this in a spreadsheet, and it seems the opposite.

Is there something wrong in this? 1st column is 10% growth in sales each year, 2nd column is cumulative fleet, 3rd column is year-year fleet growth, which decreases.

x 1.1

100 100.000
110 210.000 2.100
121 331.000 1.576
133 464.100 1.402
146 610.510 1.315
161 771.561 1.264
177 948.717 1.230
195 1143.589 1.205
214 1357.948 1.187
236 1593.742 1.174
259 1853.117 1.163

Regardless, I'm pretty sure that the context of the conversation was about sales being 'exponential', not the fleet.

-ERD50

[Cessna152]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ERD50 I thought you were right that a geometric increase in EV sales would result in an exponential increase in cumulative EV fleet, but I put this in a spreadsheet, and it seems the opposite. Is there something wrong in this? 1st column is 10% growth in sales each year, 2nd column is cumulative fleet, 3rd column is year-year fleet growth, which decreases. x 1.1 100 100.000 110 210.000 2.100 121 331.000 1.576 133 464.100 1.402 146 610.510 1.315 161 771.561 1.264 177 948.717 1.230 195 1143.589 1.205 214 1357.948 1.187 236 1593.742 1.174 259 1853.117 1.163 -ERD50

My statement “The number being added appears to [be] proportional to the number already on the road,” is wrong. The integral (or derivative) of an exponential is another exponential, while a linear increase in factory production P such as P(t) = k*t yields a quadratic increase over time when integrated with respect to time t.

So the graph would suggest quadratic growth in total cars, not exponential.

Oddly, your spreadsheet has an exponentially increasing factory rate which yields an exponentially increasing number of cars on the road:

teslas(t) = integral(100*(1.1^t), dt)
teslas(t) = 100*(1.1^t)/ln(1.1) + C

Too lazy to work out the definite integral to get C. Wouldn’t jibe with your spreadsheet numbers anyway, which is discrete rather than continuous summation.

[Lakewood90712]

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/29/tesl...-vehicles.html

Wow look at that December 2018 photo. Elon needs to grow out the beard to hide the Double Chin, or hit the gym and loose those holiday / car factory pounds.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobandsherry ..... Tesla Has Just 4 Weeks to Rally 21% or Pay $920 Million on Bonds So with 1st day under $300, and with each day it remains under $360, that just puts further pressure on the stock price to increase or Tesla to unload a lot of cash. The day of reckoning is coming.... let's see what the 4th Qtr earnings show tomorrow, could be disastrous for the stock -or- could be the propulsion that TSLA needs.

I wasn't aware of this 20 trade-day day averaging (ending Feb26th?). So that means that for every day at ~ 300, to hit an average of 360, they need a day at, let's see, 360 +60 = 420? Wait a minute. 420? Doesn't that ring a bell?

-ERD50

[ncbill]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound Porsche just announced its new Taycan EV would get 60 miles of range from a 4-min charge. This is done by Porsche's own supercharger that can pump power at a stupendous rate of 350 kW, about 3x that of Tesla's superchargers. Filling up the battery to 80% would take 30 minutes. Range is 300 miles. Where does one find these Porsche superchargers? They will be initially at Porsche dealers. This Taycan will be available later in 2019. Price: $90K.

This is another problem (at least here in the USA) - there is no Level 3 charging standard.

Tesla has established a de facto standard, but that doesn't help other manufacturers...or consumers who buy non-Tesla EVs.

And given what companies charge for Level 3 charging those EV owners who don't have "free charging for life" instead opt for much slower Level 2 charging at their home/work.

[JoeWras]

Oh, here we go again. Create a "service" that requires constant interaction (i.e. money coughed up) by your customer and creates a proprietary ecosystem.

Maybe that's what has kind of got under my skin. At least with my ICE, I can go to any service station anywhere to fill up.

Seems like you can't buy anything these days without the provider forcing you to engage with them (example: security systems requiring phone app). Now cars. It is bad enough that ICE cars have plenty of proprietary gadgets (example: keys) that can't be easily fixed independently. Now, let's go to the fuel source.

[oneill225]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeWras Oh, here we go again. Create a "service" that requires constant interaction (i.e. money coughed up) by your customer and creates a proprietary ecosystem. Maybe that's what has kind of got under my skin. At least with my ICE, I can go to any service station anywhere to fill up. Seems like you can't buy anything these days without the provider forcing you to engage with them (example: security systems requiring phone app). Now cars. It is bad enough that ICE cars have plenty of proprietary gadgets (example: keys) that can't be easily fixed independently. Now, let's go to the fuel source.

Charging will look less and less proprietary over time because there is no market incentive to isolate charger use. From the car maker perspective, more available charging locations is a selling point and from the charging provider perspective more compatibility means more business.

Generic charging systems (like ChargePoint) are being built-out as we speak and adapters allow the use of different providers. I think a single standard will eventually win out, but it will take time for market forces to play out. Some good info on charging:

https://insideevs.com/ev-charging-free-observations/

https://insideevs.com/tesla-12000-su...1400-stations/

[NW-Bound]

Level 2 chargers are quite OK for in-town driving, and one can have one at home without spending much (but not in Europe where people do not have a garage or carport, and have to look hard for street parking spaces).

Tesla set the precedent for supercharging, but other car makers do not want to use it. They instead gang up to define a standard. It is likely Tesla will have to adopt it to be compatible. It's similar to the battle of the VHS and Betamax videotape formats.

[Nick12]

My thoughts is I hope Tesla goes down the tubes. Fox News is reporting another incident this time in Las Vegas where the driver was filmed behind the wheel fast asleep while the Tesla he was in was operating in its semi-autonomous Autopilot mode.

[oneill225]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nick12 My thoughts is I hope Tesla goes down the tubes. Fox News is reporting another incident this time in Las Vegas where the driver was filmed behind the wheel fast asleep while the Tesla he was in was operating in its semi-autonomous Autopilot mode.

Along with their 40,000 employees? I hope you can find your happy place.

[Nick12]

Unemployment is all time low.

[bobandsherry]

Tesla shares fall after company posts fourth-quarter profit that misses expectations, beats on revenue

Quote:

Here's how the company did compared with what Wall Street expected: Adjusted EPS: $1.93 versus $2.20, according to average estimates compiled by Refinitiv Revenue: $7.23 billion versus $7.08 billion, according to average estimates compiled by Refinitiv

[bobandsherry]

77 below zero Polar vortex yields deadly cold as thousands endure power cuts travel issues mou.png
With the arctic blast hitting the midwest, I wonder how much the range is reduced due to this level of cold.

But I guess the good news is without oil the EV engines aren't impacted by thickening of the lubrication and with no anti-freeze the not susceptible to seeing freeze ups.

[ransil]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobandsherry Attachment 30682 With the arctic blast hitting the midwest, I wonder how much the range is reduced due to this level of cold. But I guess the good news is without oil the EV engines aren't impacted by thickening of the lubrication and with no anti-freeze the not susceptible to seeing freeze ups.

Saw model 3 leaving my work place parking lot after work today, was 5 deg F. No idea how far he had to drive.

[Running_Man]

TSLA earnings are interesting, while not bad in and of themselves, the quote that by the end of next year they will be making 7,000 cars a day is verbatim what they said 15 months ago in the 3rd quarter 2017 call. So that indicates not expecting a whole lot in growth for 2019 to me as the claim was in 2018 that they would be making 10K cars a day by end of the year.

But overall the earnings report seems fairly good and makes the five year bond appear to be a decent investment. Of course it is difficult until you get the actual SEC report and get figures that you cannot lie about without going to jail.

[ERD50]

(edit- cross posted with some of the same points that RM just made)

Earnings is out. TSLA was up today, down a bit in aftermarket as I type, and bouncing around some. My observations based on this live blog:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/te...of2&yptr=yahoo

Forecast for all of 2019 - 360,000 to 400,000 cars delivered.

With 83,500 in Q3 and 90,700 in Q4 2018, that's really not much, if any growth. Sure, it will be year to year growth as much of the 2018 sales were in the last half. But if you figure they should be able to maintain a 90,000/Q run rate, especially with EU/China coming up, this seems really underwhelming, no?

Tesla is hoping for sustained rate of 7,000 Model 3 cars produced a week by end of the year.

Hmmm, they hit 5,000/week through much of Q3/Q4, So 'hoping for' 7,000 by EOY does not seem like much progress. And if total vehicle numbers are not growing, seems that 7,000 eats into other higher priced models? 7,000 times 13 weeks in a quarter gets you to 91,000 in a quarter. On the high end of 100,000/Q that's less than 1,000 'other models' a week.

Seems to be baked in the stock price. We will see if anything new comes out of the Conf Call & QA.

-ERD50

[bobandsherry]

This news story, note the quote of "maximum production rates" for model 3.

Tesla misses on earnings, says it will produce the Model 3 at 'maximum production rates' (TSLA)

Remember, this is after he's announced cut of 3,000 employees, so guess that's lowered the bar as to what the "maximum" could be. And seems then to indicate that demand is lower. The info shared above by RM and ERD50 seems to point then that 7,000 is the maximum level of demand for Model 3 or the current factory would limit production to 7,000. That's 84,000/yr - nice but def not exponential growth that some have mentioned Tesla would achieve. I'm wagering that demand is slowing because if demand was truly higher, Tesla would increase production rates (and wouldn't have let 3,000 trained employees go). But that's just me being negative on the ability of Tesla to continue to grow to support the $300+ share price.