If there is 1 company that will survive well enough what Tesla will bring to the table in the next few years, it's Volkswagen IMO.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
- Status
If there is 1 company that will survive well enough what Tesla will bring to the table in the next few years, it's Volkswagen IMO.
Reciprocity
Active Member
Thats awesome, but much cheaper to have people park away from the facility and have regular shuttle buses from the facility.
No, they don't have to share the superchargers. For one thing, right now, only Teslas are at all capable of using the superchargers. How do you share something that no one else can use?
Also, why on earth would the commercial charging providers want to keep away potential customers, just because they drive Teslas? What's more likely to happen (and is already happening) is that they are quite happy to take the Tesla owners' money.
And charging networks are already popping up all over the place. In theory, I wouldn't have any problem driving all over Europe with a CCS-equipped car. However, there's rarely more than two 45 kW chargers at each location, which means that if more than two cars arrive at the same time, you're in for a lengthy wait. And every charging provider has a different payment system. Different RFIDs, apps, payment over the counter, etc. It's not at all user friendly.
With a Tesla, you plug in and the car starts charging. Then if you don't have unlimited free supercharging, your credit card will be charged at some point. It doesn't get more user friendly.
And with 6-40 superchargers at each location, you can be quite sure you won't have to wait. And if you do have to wait, it won't be a long wait.
Tesla has sold vastly more Model S/X than the Volt/Bolt/Ampera/Ampera-e, globally. And in the US, I arrive at the difference being less than 5k units, and Tesla will be ahead in around 3 months.
And sure, there are other things than batteries that matter, but they are important. And Tesla is not only the largest EV battery manufacturer. They also make more inverters/chargers/motors than anyone else. That's even before they start making the Model 3. When they more than quadruple volume next year, there won't even be any competitors breathing down Tesla's neck.
Well, for one thing, cars is only one part of their operation. They also make solar roofs and stationary storage batteries. The Tesla Network is also likely to be quite big eventually. Also, margin-wise, BMW would be a better comparison, and Tesla making 40% of the cars BMW makes should give them at least 40% of their valuation.
But as I said, Tesla has no intention of settling for just 2% of the market. Tesla could just as easily be making 10 million cars per year in 2050.
The Bolt has one advantage over the Model 3, and that's the hatch. I think the Model 3 should have been a liftback sedan. Aside from that, everything points to the Model 3 being better on every single metric. In some areas, like charging speed, vastly better.
But we can't know the future. We will just have to wait and see what happens. (But by the time we know what has happened, it will be too late to make money on the events.)
I suspect you are right. Below is how that site at the end of six rail lines appeared earlier this year on Google Maps.
Reciprocity
Active Member
A new type of FUD? This is an actual headlilne:
Model 3 Can Propel Tesla Inc (TSLA) Stock to $300 by 2018
The title seems overwhelmingly positive! It says.. TM3 can PROPEL, which is a good thing... Tesla Inc (TSLA for short) Stock to $300 (wow thats a big number) by 2018. You mean all the positive TM3 sales will cause the stock to go down 10%... wait.. WTH. Is this a new breed of FUD? I am truly intrigued. I dont know if I should buy or sell my stock.
Model 3 Can Propel Tesla Inc (TSLA) Stock to $300 by 2018
The title seems overwhelmingly positive! It says.. TM3 can PROPEL, which is a good thing... Tesla Inc (TSLA for short) Stock to $300 (wow thats a big number) by 2018. You mean all the positive TM3 sales will cause the stock to go down 10%... wait.. WTH. Is this a new breed of FUD? I am truly intrigued. I dont know if I should buy or sell my stock.
Dynastar
Member
Isn't the ID's "250 miles" NEDC vs Tesla's EPA?
I'm not sure you can avoid that being a bottleneck if you have people in there.
$300 is a headline typo. The article indicates he meant $400. Headlines are usually written by editors rather than article authors.
There is no money in DCFC. It isn't a business in itself and 3rd party DC charging stations and EVSE technologies have been a complete waste of money thus far. If you go and analyze the DCFC business as if you were going to go open up 100 or 1,000 charging points, you'll quickly come to realize the issues, most of which are insurmountable even with volume. The number one issue is that the vast majority of charging will be done at home or at level 2 near someone's home at very low rates. Next is the cost of the EVSE's which are quite high outside of Tesla Superchargers relative to their power. You figure out how much utilization rate you must have in combination with per kWh rates and you'll find that it is nearly impossible to make any money.
Tesla builds in the cost of their DCFC network into the vehicles up front and therefore operates the their DCFC network on a completely different business model. Also, no DCFC network will want to exclude Tesla owners since they represent roughly 95% of long distance BEVs on the road and over 50% even in 2020 or 2022. Many of the vehicles that can DCFC don't make regular trips beyond the range of their home/near home AC charging.
This is very different than the gas station model and many people really have a hard time understanding the very real differences and what that means for the business model.
Finally, prospective and existing buyers constantly talk about the Tesla Supercharger advantage. The burden of proof is then on you to negate this.
Ah, this starts to get to the heart of the EV issues. Prey tell, what motors and what battery cells go into the Volt? How is that different than what goes into a Bolt? How is that different than the batteries and motors that would be necessary for say, an all electric BMW 5/6/7 series or Audi A6/A7/A8? I don't think you know the very real differences between the EV technologies that go into a PHEV like the Volt and a BEV like the Bolt or Model 3/S/X.
In 2016, Tesla sold 28,896 Model S's and 18,233 Model X's in the U.S. according to InsideEV's estimates. That's about 47k and they rank #1 and #3. Chevy sold 29,000 or so Volts, Bolts, Spark EV, and ELR's. That's not even close. YTD in 2017, Tesla sold 11,195 Model S's, 8,945 Model X's which are ranked #1 and #4 for just over 20k. Chevy is at almost 19k. So Tesla is ahead in 2017 too, and that's without any Model 3 volumes. Recognize also the ASP differences as well as the number of kWh shipped.
If GM was able to sell 4x the number of EVs than it does now, does it have the battery supply to do so? The answer is no. The Bolt's battery cells and pack are made in South Korea by LG. LG's Ochang plant has been chronically underutilized and so the Bolt nicely takes up a lot of the extra capacity. But if GM wanted to ship 100,000 Bolt's, they would not be able to do it. The LG expansions in China and Europe are pretty much already spoken for by other customers. The Michigan expansion is pretty small and again, likely taken up by FCA, Ford, and the Volt's expansions.
Therefore, the trajectory of production rate is vastly different between the Tesla and the rest. You can see this in the estimates of when the $7,500 federal tax incentives will start to sunset for the various companies. Thus far, Tesla has sold 131,564 qualifying EVs in the U.S. while GM has sold 133,557. That's pretty even. However, since 2015, Tesla has sold 92,000 and GM has sold 57,000. Tesla's rate of sales is increasing while GM's has stagnated. Tesla is likely to cross the 200,000 threshold to trigger sunset in Q1, 2018. During that quarter and the next, Tesla will likely sell somewhere around 100,000 at full tax credit, or almost as many as they sold in all the years previously. They will then sell even more of that at 50% tax credit. GM is on track to cross that threshold sometime in 2018, likely 2-3 quarters behind Tesla. But their annual rate at that point is still likely anemic at around 30,000 to 40,000 a year.
If you look at a Bolt, it's a heavily modified variant of the Gamma 2 platform. It has some parts commonality where millions of these are built. But if you look at the most expensive parts of the Bolt, you'll see that the costs are amortized over a build rate of ~25,000 annually. That's the battery cells, pack, BMS, motors, infotainment, body controllers, and chargers. None of these are shared with the Volt, Spark EV, CT6, or ELR. None of these enjoy volumes and therefore cost savings of scale befitting one of the largest automotive companies in the world.
This is a different discussion. First, Tesla clearly does testing with LIDAR. They don't feel it is worth it (yet). The fundamental path finding and routing algorithms as well as a slew of object recognition has to be done with cameras and not LIDAR. The validation of the various nets with respect to these aspects is worthy of the data collection, even if LIDAR is eventually incorporated into the solution. You do have to look at the LIDARs that are on the market and what they actually provide for ADAS. But this discussion can be very long in itself. Suffice it to say that Tesla is likely in the forefront of ADAS and autonomous driving. Note that Mobileye's REM won't really kick of data collection until the EyeQ4 ships, which is in vehicles in late 2018. Also note what Mobileye has said about the kinds of data they will collect and compare/contrast against what Tesla is collecting with AP2.
Talking about 2050 is likely too difficult to make a coherent investor's thesis. Looking through to 2020 through to 2030 is probably a more interesting time frame. You have to then break up Tesla into its business units for 2020 through 2030. Patrick Archambault did this while he was at Goldman Sachs in 2014, before the current analyst:
Tesla Motors Inc CEO Elon Musk: Jobs, Ford Or Maytag Repairman?
That was written in 2014 before the transformation with solar and semi as well as the full effects of autonomous driving was considered.
It's like wondering if the next iPhone will sell. Sure, there is a chance it will disappoint. Sure.
Reciprocity
Active Member
Solid article as usual. I think when you look at competitors coming in the future you hit the nail on the head by enlightening the reader to the fact that its a moving target and that Tesla is moving faster then most. But you could go one step further to actually talk about 7% per year improvements in battery energy density, and thus cost savings per year. So if you go out 3 years, you could discount Tesla's costs for the most expensive part of the car by a compounded 7% per year.
Reciprocity
Active Member
$300 is a headline typo. The article indicates he meant $400.
Leave it Curt to actually read the article. I have a Zero FUD policy at lunch time. I dont want to lose my lunch or spit food out of mouth while I laugh. And hear I thought they actually invented a new way to trick investors.
ValueAnalyst
Closed
ValueAnalyst
Closed
Thank you for the kind words.
Agreed. I alluded to that a bit at the end, but don't wanna make too many assumptions on published articles too out into the future. I tend to be a bit more upfront with my true positivity on Tesla's future in my service, Tesla Forum, and here. I may type up a separate article later on battery density improvements and tie in the Tesla now vs. future competition as you suggested. The problem is most SeekingAlpha readers won't even know what battery density means... completely different crowd than here.
I can bring SA to TMC to save everyone a trip.
MXWing (Long/short/equity/arbitrage/value analyst)
Chinese do it 40% cheaper. (Do WHAT 40% cheaper no idea, but sounds like a compelling and scary number)
Volkswagon will have a Gigafactory by 2045.
Lead acid battery invented in 1859, Tesla nothing new or compelling.
Full disclosure: I am short TSLA via Puts
(1 contract at 50 strike in J19)
----
ValueAnalyst
Closed
The actual target in the body of the article is $400... some editor stuffed up.
This fits into something I've been wondering. How will Tesla get all these Model 3 vehicles shipped fast enough to avoid a perpetual traffic jam.
This building is being placed where the rail car loading area was (thanks Curt). Assuming plant layout was mostly optimized, this would be the wrong end for incoming raw goods. So I'm going to guess this is the buffer system where Model 3 will go before shipment. So how many cars can they fit in it (federal tax credit maximization)?
It would be nice to know if the rail tracks were pulled, or just covered with gravel for protection/ ease of construction. If the large single story area has room to loop the rail cars, loading could be faster than splitting the rail-cars into 6 lanes and then reconnecting.
Also, will Elon go more 3-D with a Vert-A-Pac style rail car?
edit: credit to Curt on the rail line location/ change
2nd edit: plural, not possessive...
Last edited:
RobStark
Well-Known Member
Waiting4M3
Active Member
Can we say Bob may be a little BoltHurt?
Waiting4M3
Active Member
Tesla is cutting out the middle man. In contrast, GM has ~3000 dealerships, and each dealer can make ~$1M per year pre-tax profit according to NADA data in 2013, so GM is giving away $3B a year to the dealers.
Tesla owns their own stores, IIRC they have something like 300-400 stores? If each one is as profitable as a GM dealership, we're looking at $300-400M of profit that Tesla kept for itself, with a modest PE of 20, this translates to $6-8B, or 10-15% of the market cap. I never hear the talking heads on CNBC talking about that.
Last edited:
- Status
Similar threads
- Sticky
