The 3 will start at $50k next year.
Tesla privately concede China are going to own this field in the not-too-distant future (well, at least the non-automated part of that field). By 2030 it will be 10-15k (AUS).
(I failed to ask if that figure was inflation-adjusted or not.)
Yeah, Tesla are just the pioneers. EV is starting to build momentum. Nothing will stop it now. China will rule the world with transport and battery tech. Be interesting to see where Musk is in 10 years. I doubt he will be a successful car tycoon. He could do worse than start working on water availability.
Tesla have no real inclination to chase mass market.
They make fancy gadgets for rich white men - and they know it. The share market will catch on soon and theyâll probably crash hard.
This is also arguable.
All depends on the margins of the lithium.
A few of the big auto companies are cooling on EV significantly.
No worries for China though. They own Australiaâs (and some of the worldâs) richest lithium deposits already.
So your EV will come from a Chinese company rather than a US one. And certainly not an Australian one with the Tories closing down what industry we had on the one hand and flogging off our lithium on the other,
Interesting. Havenât been following this exactly. Is it because of the price of batteries?
$$$
Take out the various subsidies, offsets and grants and full electric arenât stacking up to petrol or diesel. Yet.
Lithium price is in decline and has been for a few years.
Hyundai are talking sub 50k. I would think this will fall as they get some mass.
You will also be able to walk into a dealer test drive and buy one, not pay 2.5k and hope that some point in the future you might actually be lucky enough to get your carâŚ
I suspect eventually the shareholders for Tesla wonât pony up any more money, the banks wont be interested and Tesla will end up as a brand name owned by another company.
As for Toys for rich white boys, when BMW. Mercedes, Range Rover, Audi and Lexus all have eletric cars, how many of those owners are going to change to Tesla enough to keep a 55 billion dollar company busy? Thats roughly the same market cap as BMW. BMW made 2.08 million cars last year Tesla 95,350.
Who said comedy doesnât pay??
Frank Sinatra : " And now the end is near, and as I face the final curtain ".
Elon Musk is a total fraud
DONâT be fooled. So far, Tesla billionaire Elon Musk has only been successful at tricking people into thinking heâs a success.
Maureen Callahan
NY PostJULY 22, 20189:45AM
ONE disastrous tweet has finally revealed Elon Musk for what he is: a fraud.
Enraged that a British cave diver called his idea to rescue the Thai soccer team for what it was â âa p.r. stunt [with] absolutely no chance of workingâ â Musk took to Twitter and called him a âpedo.â
Just like that, Teslaâs market value plummeted by $2 billion.
Musk has been in business since 2002. His stated goal is nothing short of transforming humanity through his products: his electric cars, space travel, and an underground high-speed Hyperloop system.
He has yet to succeed at anything but somehow spins every failure into proof of imminent success. His only accomplishment has been this decades-long Jedi mind trick.
Tesla is best known for blowing deadlines and consistently falling short on production.
In November 2017, Bloomberg reported that the company burns through $500,000 per hour. For two years now, Tesla has been suffering an epic talent drain and in May, two top execs â one the liaison with the National Transportation Safety Board â walked out the door.
Thatâs to say nothing of the human toll.
In March, a Tesla driver was killed while test-driving an auto-piloted Model X, the impact fully decimating half the car. Then in May, the NTSB announced an investigation after two teenagers were killed in a Tesla Model S after its battery caught fire following a crash. A similar accident claimed a driver two months prior, with California firefighters reporting that the Tesla battery kept reigniting itself days after the smash.
Californiaâs Division of Occupational Safety and Health opened its third investigation into workplace safety at Tesla Inc. in July after employee complaints. Two investigations have been ongoing since April, yet Musk took to Twitter to boast that Tesla was now building its cars in a tent.
âNot sure we actually need a building,â he tweeted. Meanwhile, he was âback to sleeping at the factoryâ to hit production deadlines.
This is a genius?
Tesla was founded in 2003, but the worldâs largest automakers quickly surpassed Muskâs vision for electric vehicles. Tesla will never catch up. Shareholders are finally catching on.
So should the government, which reportedly gifts Muskâs companies with an estimated $4.9 billion in subsidies.
Star investor Jim Chanos called Tesla a âwalking insolvencyâ back in 2016. He doubled down in December, saying Tesla is âheaded for a brick wall.â
SpaceX â which Musk touts as replacing NASA and colonising Mars â has been a literal failure to launch. So many of its rockets have burned up or crashed that Musk, for reasons unknown, has made a blooper reel.
As for that Hyperloop, most experts say itâs impossible and unnecessary. âIt gives me pause to think that otherwise intelligent people are buying into this kind of utopian vision,â Harvard professor Jose Gomez-Ibanez told MIT Technology Review in 2016.
âTheyâre up against the airlines, and airlines donât need to install hundreds of miles of track.â
Rocket scientist and aerodynamic engineer Leon Vanstone has called the Hyperloop yet another Elon Musk hustle.
Writing in Fortune, Vanstone asked: âIs it possible to build a Hyperloop train into a 200-mile underground tunnel on a reasonable timeline that moves people in 29 minutes [from DC to New York] and isnât prohibitively expensive? Probably not.â
Musk infamously does not take criticism well and refuses to be questioned or challenged â three lethal traits in a leader. On a conference call with analysts in May, Musk dismissed questions about Teslaâs diminishing capital and other dubious claims with name-calling.
âExcuse me,â Musk said. âNext. Boring boneheaded questions are not cool.â
Teslaâs stock plummeted 5.6 per cent after that performance. They also dropped 5 per cent after an April Foolâs Day tweet in which Musk announced Tesla had gone bankrupt.
âElon plays by his own rules,â a former Tesla exec told The Washington Post, âbut I think he underestimates the weight of his own words.â
Muskâs attempts to insert himself into the Thai cave rescue show he has less intelligence and even less humanity than we realised.
He finally apologised on Wednesday for his disgusting accusations against the hero diver, but only after shareholders demanded it and not without accusing the diver of lying, insisting his own efforts werenât p.r.-driven but âan act of kindness.â
Oh â and that the sub he built was âto specifications from the dive-team leader.â
In other words: Musk isnât sorry and nothing is ever his fault.
Business as usual.
âyeah, well youâre a pedoâ - musk probably.
Musk calling his company Tesla, is like Google having the motto âDonât be evilâ
There is an incredibly interesting sociology experiment at play here.
Seeing how people are reacting to Musk and by extension Tesla because of this.
Werenât the solary batttery thingies in South Australia a success?
Just catching up on this thread. Havenât read the article but have read it in his book and his response. She asked for a raise, he gave her a month off and did her job to see if he needed her, decided he didnât and then have her redundancy complete with 52 weeks of paid leave. Wouldnât have thought thereâs much wrong with that
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-asks-suppliers-for-cash-back-to-help-turn-a-profit-1532301091
Tesla Asks Suppliers for Cash Back to Help Turn a Profit
Electric-car company, in memo, asks supplier to return a meaningful portion of money spent since 2016
A Tesla Model 3 on display at an auto show in Beijing earlier this year.
A Tesla Model 3 on display at an auto show in Beijing earlier this year. PHOTO: JASON LEE/REUTERS
By Tim Higgins
Updated July 22, 2018 9:50 p.m. ET
354 COMMENTS
Tesla Inc. TSLA -2.08% has asked some suppliers to refund a portion of what the electric-car company has spent previously, an appeal that reflects the auto makerâs urgency to sustain operations during a critical production period.
The Silicon Valley electric-car company said it is asking its suppliers for cash back to help it become profitable, according to a memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that was sent to a supplier last week. Tesla requested the supplier return what it calls a meaningful amount of money of its payments since 2016, according to the memo.
The auto makerâs memo, sent by a global supply manager, described the request as essential to Teslaâs continued operation and characterized it as an investment in the car company to continue the long-term growth between both players.
While Tesla said in the memo that all suppliers were being asked to help it become profitable, it is unclear how many were asked for a discount on contracted spending amounts retroactively. Some suppliers contacted about the request said they were unaware of such a demand.
Tesla declined to comment on the specific memo. But it confirmed it is seeking price reductions from suppliers for projects, some of which date back to 2016, and some of which havenât been completed. The company called such requests a standard part of procurement negotiations to improve its competitive advantage, especially as it ramps up Model 3 production.
The surprising requests raise further questions about Teslaâs cash position, which has dwindled after it struggled to boost production of its first car designed for mainstream buyers, the Model 3. After months of delays, Tesla last quarter reached its longstanding goal of making 5,000 Model 3s in a single week, which, if sustained, will help it generate cash.
Auto makers and suppliers have complicated relationships, each fighting for the best deal under immense pricing pressure. Supply-chain consultants say sometimes auto makers will demand a reduction in price for a current contract going forward or use leverage of awarding a new deal to get upfront savings on a contract. But they say it is unusual for an auto maker to ask for a refund for past work.
Dennis Virag, a manufacturing consultant who has worked in the automotive industry for 40 years, said a solicitation like Teslaâs could put suppliers in financial peril and jeopardize its future supply of car parts.
âItâs simply ludicrous and it just shows that Tesla is desperate right now,â he said. âTheyâre worried about their profitability but they donât care about their suppliersâ profitability.â
Tesla has sought to balance its desire for rapid growth with paying for the expensive launch of new vehicles and building out infrastructure to compete against much larger auto makers.
Chief Executive Elon Musk has said he wants to avoid raising additional cash, promising the company can become cash-flow positive with the continued Model 3 build rate and turn a profit in the second half of the year. Many analysts expect Tesla eventually will need to raise more money.
Tesla has been burning cash at a rate of about $1 billion a quarter, and finished the first quarter with $2.7 billion in cash on hand. Tesla pledged to pare back planned capital expenditures this year to less than $3 billion from $3.4 billion last year. Its loss attributable to common shareholders in the first quarter was $710 million, the fifth consecutive quarter of record losses.
Tesla will need to pay down a $230 million convertible bond this November if its stock doesnât reach a conversion price of $560.64, and a $920 million convertible note next March if the stock doesnât reach $359.87. Shares closed Friday at $313.58, and are down about 4.5% over the past 12 months.
As part of Teslaâs bid to become profitable, Mr. Musk cut Teslaâs workforce by 9% in June and promised to slow other spending as well. Heâs become focused intently on becoming cash-flow positive, a person familiar with his thinking said.
Last month, he told employees in an email: âWhat drives us is our mission to accelerate the worldâs transition to sustainable, clean energy, but we will never achieve that mission unless we eventually demonstrate that we can be sustainably profitable. That is a valid and fair criticism of Teslaâs history to date.â
As a younger company, Tesla indicated it had trouble getting the attention of some of the most important suppliers. Mr. Musk has complained in the past that he wasnât getting parts makersâ best teams, but he has said that changed with the Model 3.
Tesla has made changes with its suppliers in the past to help preserve its cash position.
In August, Mr. Musk told analysts Tesla was able to negotiate longer payment terms to about 60 days for Model 3 parts, in what he described as âthe nirvanaâ that would allow the auto maker to make the car and get paid for it before the bill is due to suppliers.
âObviously, thatâs like the promised land right there,â he said.
It really really really doesnât.
Battery prices p/watt and watt p/kg are plummeting at a rate of knots. Re: that and your (totally wrong?) figures on loss per car:
http://www.autonews.com/article/20180717/RETAIL/180719816/tesla-earnings-musk-manufacturing
EDIT: for the lazy
Tesla Model 3 critic flips view, sees possible 30% profit margin
4-5 minutes
The rollout of Tesla Inc.âs Model 3 electric sedan over the last year was plagued by delays and doubts over whether it could ever be profitable. Now, one of carâs most outspoken early critics has changed his view.
Munro & Associates, a small Detroit-area firm that disassembles new cars and analyzes them down to the nuts and bolts, came out in April with damning findings that the Model 3 was poorly built and â even worse for Teslaâs long-term outlook â costly to build. On that second point, at least, founder Sandy Munro has reversed course.
Upon further analysis, his firm has found that the sedan can be profitable. It may even have the potential to make a 30 percent margin, which would be unmatched by any other other battery-powered vehicle.
âA lot of crow is being eaten around here,â Munro said in an interview posted Monday by âAutoline After Hours,â a show streamed weekly by a Metro Detroit broadcaster. âNo electric car is getting 30 percent. Nobody.â
Munro said the systems that impressed him most were the tight integration of circuit board components, which he calls âa symphony of engineering,â and the efficiency of the battery developed by Tesla and Panasonic Corp. Munro also pointed to a comprehensive side-by-side comparison of the parts and materials used by the Model 3, General Motorsâ Chevrolet Bolt, and BMW AGâs i3, in which the Model 3 comes out favorably.
The Munro report echoes a teardown published in June by German magazine WirtschaftsWoche. That analysis, conducted by German car engineers, found that the Model 3 costs about $28,000 to build â $18,000 for materials and $10,000 for production. The cheapest Model 3 currently available starts at about $50,000, though a $35,000 version is planned by around the end of this year.
CEO Elon Musk has based his prediction that Tesla will be profitable in the third and fourth quarters of this year on its ability to produce 5,000 of the sedans a week. The company exceeded that threshold in the last week of June, producing 5,031 units, but has yet to prove it can sustain those numbers. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek last week, Musk said Tesla should be able to reach mass production without much strain in August.
Tesla has set a long-term target for the Model 3 to earn a 25 percent gross margin. In May, the company said it expected a âslightly lowerâ margin in the âmedium termâ because it dialed back automation in certain areas of manufacturing the car, boosting labor costs.
Tariffs, higher commodity prices and a weaker U.S. dollar also may drag on the sedanâs profitability, though consumers were paying more for it on average than Tesla expected, Musk and CFO Deepak Ahuja wrote in their quarterly letter to shareholders.
âThe Model 3 is profitable,â Munro said. âI didnât think it was going to happen this way.â
Car companies have been screwing parts suppliers for ever, nothing to see here.
