Is FSD refundable

[Knightshade]

Any explanation why Tesla was $800 6 months ago and today, but was $1200 3 months ago if it's tied to fundamentals and awesome Q4 performance?

Because markets move in cycles.

Which is why looking at short term trends demonstrates you don't understand long term growth....(or you keep intentionally focusing on short term because you realize it's the only way to make your argument look less silly).

Tesla is up roughly 20,000% in 10 years. Up almost 1500% in 5 years. Almost 500% in 2 years.

The long term fundamental growth story is pretty obvious to anyone willing to look.

Month to month short term trends are market noise, not relevant to long term fundamentals or investment.

Google is down almost 20% from this years high- did their fundamentals collapse, or is that just a blip in the ticket for short term thinkers? Even Apple is down over 10% YTD, did iphone "fundamentals" suddenly change? Of course not.

That's OBVIOUS from the fact that Tesla has less profit/sales than Toyota, yet 5X the market cap.

Tesla has much higher profit per sale than Toyota.

And higher still than Ford or GM.

And Teslas sales keep growing >50% YoY, while everyone elses are declining.

I'm not sure obvious means what you think.

Why would they value future vehicle sales so highly

The same reason Apple, with a minority market share in phones reaps most of the profits

Teslas margins are massively better than everyone elses.

Why is Tesla's 12 month average P/E 125X

Because you're looking backward.

P/E has been dropping rapidly, and will continue doing so all year.

(PEG is likely a better measure of a growth company though, and that's quite a bit lower for this year)

. Tesla's current value basically requires it to take over 100% of passenger vehicle sales on the planet.

That's complete nonsense.

Since Tesla is making 2-5x the profit of other car companies they only need a fraction of the total sales to beat them in profits.

See again Apple.

Apple takes 75% of smartphone profits despite 13% market share, says report

New research from Counterpoint claims that Apple managed to capture 75% of smartphone profits in Q2 2021 despite only accounting for 13% of mobile shipments last quarter.

www.imore.com

Apple is only 13 percent of global smartphones sold.

But 75 percent of all smartphone profits


Tesla has stated they want to be selling ~20 million cars by end of decade.

Q4 was 2.9b non-gaap profit (ex the one time stock thing).

That's almost 12 billion annual profit on ~1 million vehicle sales

Scale that to 20 million vehicles and you get 240 billion in annual profit.

That's ten times Toyotas annual profit.

But Teslas market cap is only 2.5x higher.

Suggests Tesla stock is actually quite cheap right now



And again- that's JUST the car business.

Energy will be an increasing profit contributor. Solar will once the chip stuff is sorted. Insurance will too as it expands.

So will subscription revenue from an app/game store.


All of that is with $0 value from FSD.


If they DO actually get that working at >L2 the value really goes nuts. But it's perfectly excellent without it too.

 

[gearchruncher]

All of that is with $0 value from FSD.

Yep. Zero of Tesla's stock is valued due to autonomy. That's why articles like this exist, opening like this:

The fundamental flaw in this common mindset is the assumption or categorization of Tesla as fundamentally a car company. If this is true, then Tesla must be compared to other car companies to reach a proper valuation.

However, Tesla should be viewed as a disruptive technology company developing artificial intelligence (AI) for autonomous driving, or Full-Self Driving (FSD) in Tesla’s terminology. FSD will be a technological innovation akin to the shift from horses to automobiles in the early 20th century, and so could be worth trillions of dollars.

Or With FSD V9, Tesla Is Becoming An AI Robotics Company
Or why "FSD" exists 19 times in Tesla's FY 2021 10-K filing, with things like:

Future Consumer and Commercial Electric Vehicles

We have also announced several planned electric vehicles to address additional vehicle markets, including specialized consumer electric vehicles in Cybertruck and the new Tesla Roadster and a commercial electric vehicle in Tesla Semi. We plan to continue leveraging developments in our proprietary Full Self-Driving (“FSD”), battery cell and other technologies.

Self-Driving Development

We have expertise in developing technologies, systems and software to enable self-driving vehicles using primarily vision-based sensors. Our FSD Computer runs our neural networks in our vehicles, and we are also developing additional computer hardware to better enable the massive amounts of field data captured by our vehicles to continually train and improve these neural networks for real-world performance.

Currently, we offer in our vehicles certain advanced driver assist systems under our Autopilot and FSD options. Although at present the driver is ultimately responsible for controlling the vehicle, our systems provide safety and convenience functionality that relieves drivers of the most tedious and potentially dangerous aspects of road travel much like the system that airplane pilots use, when conditions permit. As with other vehicle systems, we improve these functions in our vehicles over time through over-the-air updates.

We intend to establish in the future an autonomous Tesla ride-hailing network, which we expect would also allow us to access a new customer base even as modes of transportation evolve.

Or the fact they specifically call out delayed FSD development as a risk to the business:

We may also experience similar future delays in launching and/or ramping production of our energy storage products and Solar Roof; new product versions or variants such as the recently updated Model S and Model X; new vehicles such as Tesla Semi, Cybertruck and the new Tesla Roadster; and future features and services based on artificial intelligence, such as new Autopilot or FSD

But yeah, Tesla's stock price treats FSD as worth zero, and their market cap is just based on the clear trend that they will be so profitable per vehicle forever, and that competition won't ever apply downward pressure to that, and that if FSD just never works, they will still be equally as amazing because they somehow broke the car industry completely and forever.

Given the future is so unquestionably bright for Tesla and their per-unit profit, I guess it's shocking they aren't valued even more than Apple, right? You all in on 100% of your retirement on Tesla stock given it has no other option but to go up 4X in the next few years as their volume and profit per vehicle goes up?

Why is it so unacceptable to acknowledge that a bunch of Tesla's valuation is in the hope that they will lead actual L3+ autonomy and this will be a major part of the future business? Maybe because we all know that is at massive risk and unlikely to happen in the next decade, so it makes the current valuation look really risky to invest in?

 

[Knightshade]

You've put a remarkable amount of effort into misunderstand and/or misrepresenting both mine and others arguments.

Responding to my actual specific math with opinion pieces was especially funny


BTW since you're so focused on P/E I'm stealing this bit from the investor thread

---stolen content---
TSLA hit a peak of a TTM P/E of about 1200 in early 2021 and is at 157 today and if the share price stays at this level, depending on how Tesla executes in terms of deliveries for Q1, that TTM P/E could drop below the 100 level. It will definitely drop way below 100 after Q2's earnings. So about a total of 12-15 months for the TTM P/E to compress well over 100.

Now let's look at Amazon. Amazon hit it's peak of TTM P/E of 3600 in 2012. It's P/E actually went to N/A because Amazon posted a few quarters of negative EPS. But we're still going to use that peak because well that was the peak. It then took 6 YEARS for Amazon's TTM P/E to go under a 100
---end stolen content---



Obviously every investor will have their own definitions on how they value the company, but fundamentally lots of folks who actually invest massively more $ than anybody here, including running large funds, manage to find Teslas market cap perfectly reasonable (or even undervalued) while expressly putting $0 value on L3+ FSD

Consider ARK for example, here's their valuation modeling from just over 2 years ago:

Tesla Price Target: Tesla's Potential Trajectory During the Next Five Years

Based on new research, ARK is sharing our latest model to clarify what we believe is Tesla’s potential. A Tesla price target of...

ark-invest.com

They model a bunch of scenarios- most WITHOUT self-driving cars.

The highest value model without self driving cars still puts shares at $3400 by 2024.

So the fundamentals support such a price if Tesla simply executes everything else very well and never gets to self driving.


Now, the models that include self driving are even higher, obviously. But they rate the chances of those as low.

A year later they updated their projection, with an even higher target assuming no self driving, for 2025.

Though they now rated their "no self driving" and "with self driving" models as 50/50 equally likely.

Still, just the no-self-driving one easily justifies a large (larger than todays) market cap without FSD being needed.

You all in on 100% of your retirement on Tesla stock given it has no other option but to go up 4X in the next few years as their volume and profit per vehicle goes up?

Has been for a while.

Long enough that even with the current dip the only thing that's changed is how many times over it's made me a millionare.


You sound really bitter you missed the boat.

 

[Supcom]

All this talk about Tesal stock prices should help those who get FSD refunds decide where to invest the money.

 

[gearchruncher]

They model a bunch of scenarios- most WITHOUT self-driving cars.

Yeah, and their 12% probability model has them hitting autonomy and $22K per share, giving them a market cap of 23T, almost 8X of that of Apple, the most valuable company ever. Just $3,100 for every human on earth. Yeah. Totally unbiased, logical analysis.

If that's their model with autonomy, why believe a $3400 "target" with autonomy? Plus, it just proves my point that the company is an autonomy play- it's worth 7X as much with autonomy in the "target" - you truly think that current valuation is just waiting for autonomy to become true before it considers it in valuation, while simultaneously factoring in future manufacturing possibilities?

Long enough that even with the current dip the only thing that's changed is how many times over it's made me a millionare.

Well, at least we now know why any negative news about Tesla has you on the endless defense. Glad it has worked out for you though!

You sound really bitter you missed the boat.

You just said Tesla has at least 4X upside ($3,400 "target"), and more like a 28X upside, right? How has the boat been missed? Investment boats are only missed when all the growth has already happened and the valuation already reflects the future expected growth, yet here you are both saying Tesla is undervalued and also no longer a good investment.

 

[Knightshade]

Yeah, and their 12% probability model has them hitting autonomy and $22K per share, giving them a market cap of 23T, almost 8X of that of Apple, the most valuable company ever. Just $3,100 for every human on earth. Yeah. Totally unbiased, logical analysis.

If that's their model with autonomy, why believe a $3400 "target" with autonomy?

Because it was correct?

See, I knew you'd trip yourself up with your own obvious ignorance

The $3400 no-robotaxi target was pre-split.

Which means that's $680 post split.

Which it hit. Exceeded in fact.

As I say they then updated their target a year later higher, again without requiring self driving. Their $3400 target WITHOUT self driving ended up being too conservative, so they raised it.




tl;dr- the stock is worth this much and more WITHOUT FSD.

it's worth a ton more with it. Which should be pretty obvious to anybody who actually understands the numbers.


Which you just proved you don't, so thanks for that




I doubt you're self aware enough for that

Plus, it just proves my point that the company is an autonomy play- it's worth 7X as much with autonomy in the "target"

You really ought to stop using words you don't understand.

Google would've be worth more if Glass had taken off. That doesn't mean they're an eyeglass play.

Lots of very successful companies have future things they would increase their value if they work out, but don't change the fundamental valuation of their existing business if they don't.


Lemme see if typing this slower helps you?


ARK had the company worth roughly what it's worth today without FSD


Which debunks your claim todays value has somehow built FSD working out into the price.


It hasn't.


There's obviously some HIGHER value not built into the current price that the stock could go to in the future if they make FSD work >L2. But that's not priced in.

Like I told you from the start and you keep somehow pretending to misunderstand.... (though increasingly it looks like you're not pretending)

- you truly think that current valuation is just waiting for autonomy to become true before it considers it in valuation

....what?

The current valuation I cited was without any autonomy ever. It's quite similar to the actual stock price. Because fundamentally the company without FSD is worth that.


There's also a higher one that is possible with autonomy but that is not the current price


Where, specifically, are you getting lost?

You just said Tesla has at least 4X upside ($3,400 "target"), and more like a 28X upside, right?

No, I didn't.

I did manage to get you to admit you've no idea what you're talking about and couldn't be bothered to read any sources provided, nor understand a stock split happened and what that means

How has the boat been missed?

I didn't miss it. I made 7 figures many times over on it.

I mean you seem to have missed it, which explains why 99% of your posts are about how Tesla sucks I guess.... but that's your own fault. All the info has been there for a while.

Investment boats are only missed when all the growth has already happened and the valuation already reflects the future expected growth, yet here you are both saying Tesla is undervalued and also no longer a good investment.

Are you drunk or something?

I never, ever, said it was no longer a good investment.

I said the opposite of that-- that it continues to be undervalued if you run just the existing business line numbers forward.

Now, if they do ever get FSD >L2, it's insanely undervalued.... but it's still a great investment without it because the entire rest of the business is so solid.


Now- I don't expect it's going to do another 5-10x in a single year without FSD.... so you missed that boat these last couple years. Was a fun ride for those of who got on in time though.


But the company projects continued 50% CAGR for years going forward, and profit margins are many times higher than anyone else in the industry.... plus as I mention energy is going to start showing significant profit contributions since they've got an entire new megapack factory under construction in Lathrop, CA, plus their insurance business is scaling to more states and countries.

None of which factors FSD at all. It'd certainly be a massive bump if it happens, but it's not required for the company to keep piling up massive profits.


Anyway, if you're genuinely interested in educating yourself about investing in the company, you ought to take further discussion here:

Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

what is the main catalyst for TSLA to drop today? Increasing production in spite of pandemic shortages, soon to open GF in Texas and Germany, and as supply chain improves production costs are dropping, so hence TSLA drops too.

teslamotorsclub.com

If you're just interesting in more errors of fact and trolling, carry on here I guess

 

[Suns_PSD]

I only keep my cars 2-3 years. I will be probably be on my 5th car or dead by the time L4/L5 FSD happens. Also, how is it safer if only the Tesla owners have FSD? What about all the other drivers on the road without FSD?

Other drivers & their insurance are responsible for the accidents they cause, obviously..

 

[Suns_PSD]

That is fantastic but I am not sure how FSD realistically goes from being worth $5k to $12k to $100k? They can charge that but then how many will be able to afford it? So is the plan to take a Toyota Corolla for $20k and add FSD for $100k? So folks are going to be driving around $120k Toyota Corollas? This is absurd unless you are talking 50 years from now.

Furthermore, it is silly to think that other car manufacturers will not able to build compelling EVs or autonomous driving features. These companies have access to great talent in the industry and I am sure there is more than one way to tackle this problem.

I think a self contained Uber car with no driver is worth $100K as a business/ money making venture.

Obviously the market for self driving cars at $100K is exceedingly small.

It's mind blowing to me that people have paid $12K for the potential of FSD, that in all reality won't exist during the time their new car is still functional.

 

[gearchruncher]

It's mind blowing to me that people have paid $12K for the potential of FSD, that in all reality won't exist during the time their new car is still functional.

It's even more mind blowing that they paid $12K and this comes with no promise that Tesla will put L3+ on their car even if Tesla develops it and has it for sale tomorrow. It's literally just for L2 city streets autosteer.

I think a self contained Uber car with no driver is worth $100K as a business/ money making venture.

A base Uber is about $1 per mile. $100K for the car, plus energy cost, plus insurance, plus maintenance means over 100K miles your cost will be way above $1 per mile.

Think about it this way: 100K miles at 30MPH takes 3,333 hours. To cover $100K over 3,333 hours is $30 per hour. You can hire a taxi driver for a lot less than that as Uber proves. Autonomy needs to add less than $10 per hour to make sense vs a driver. This can partially be via reduced insurance or losses, or better utilization of the asset (but people don't need rides at 2am), but one way or another, you can't charge more than a human costs, and you can hire a lot of human time for $100K.

 

[Bouba]

I think one of the reasons that Tesla shares (and anything with Musk’s name on the letterhead) are worth what they are worth is the famous buggy whip speech

 

[rxlawdude]

It's a free market, and pricing is set by that market. It's the reason your house goes up in value, and the reason gasoline prices change constantly. Supply and Demand.

Your comment seems to ignore this fact. Based on it, you must believe anything priced over your personal "threshold" is ridiculous and anyone that purchases anything over that threshold is insane or wasting money.

I hope you can evolve your understanding and see how the free market works - why goods and services are priced the way they are, and how everything fits together to create our society. How that "ridiculous" price goes towards paying programmers, engineers, and assembly workers so they can afford to buy goods and services for their families - which in turn allows those companies to pay their employees so they can provide for their families, and so on down the line. It also helps raise the stock value for Tesla, which brings money into the investment accounts of countless people. Some of these people are counting on that investment for their retirement (401K, 403B, etc), are using that investment to help save for a down payment for their first house, or yes for the rich who are using it to buy private jets and yachts (which again pays employees who build them).

So be careful about saying something is ridiculously priced - it's priced right where the market says it should be.

Were TSLA priced based on this new FSD price.

 

[Knightshade]

A base Uber is about $1 per mile. $100K for the car, plus energy cost, plus insurance, plus maintenance means over 100K miles your cost will be way above $1 per mile.

Think about it this way: 100K miles at 30MPH takes 3,333 hours. To cover $100K over 3,333 hours is $30 per hour. You can hire a taxi driver for a lot less than that as Uber proves. Autonomy needs to add less than $10 per hour to make sense vs a driver. This can partially be via reduced insurance or losses, or better utilization of the asset (but people don't need rides at 2am), but one way or another, you can't charge more than a human costs, and you can hire a lot of human time for $100K.

You really can't though.

A typical human works 2000 hours a year full time.

A robotaxi can work 24 hours a day. And in many places there's certainly need for rides at 2am (though obviously not as many as 2pm)

But even if it only works 16 hours a day, that's 2x a human, and you blow through those 3333 hours in far less than 1 year (and obviously the car lasts a long more than 1 year)


Plus an EV has much lower operational and maintenance costs than the typical uber vehicle.

That's on top of the potentially lower insurance costs if FSD is significantly safer than human drivers.

You also get to expand your markets too. Taxis in places it currently makes no sense to HAVE a taxi, because your "idle" cost is far far lower than a human driven ICE taxi.


Again to be clear I don't think RTs will be here anytime soon.

But if you assume they exist, the financial case for them being very profitable is pretty easy to make....(and many have, in considerable detal)

 

[Bouba]

The problem with Robotaxis is that if the car needs replacing by the time that the 100k has been recouped then you have to buy another FSD as well as a new car....
Please please Mr Musk...let’s make Robotaxis work by making FSD transferable

 

[Suns_PSD]

GMs Q4 21 revenue was 33.58 billion, with 1.7 billion in net income.

Teslas Q4 21 revenue was 17.72 billion, with 2.32 billion in net income.

Tesla had half the revenue but 50% more profit (and would've been ANOTHER 15% higher but for a one-time charge for Elons exercised stock option grants)

GM is guiding for 2022 to be about the same as 2021. Tesla is guiding for significantly more than 50% growth.

Because one still almost entirely sells ICE vehicles with declining demand and narrow profit margins, and one entirely sells EVs with massive demand and massive profit margins.

Over at Ford, if you remove the profit from their finance arm, they actually LOSE money on the car business- and much of their Q4 profit was provided by the mark to market gains from holding Rivian stock (which has since declined quite a lot)

Again that's only going to get worse for legacy as they sell fewer ICE vehicles where they actually make a decent profit, but keep having problems profitably scaling up EVs.


If you don't understand why Tesla is the most valuable car company you're just not paying attention.

And that's valuing FSD at $0.00, and entirely ignoring the energy business that's likely to have a pretty big year with megapack expansion.

I'm admittedly not an expert.

However looking at 2021 in total, GM had 127 billion in revenue with 14.3 billion EBIT profit (before taxes) where-as Tesla had 54 billion in revenue with 5.5 billion in EBIT profit. So similar profit margins.

More to the point however, Tesla made much of that money money selling Bitcoin & emissions credits, instead of actual cars. Best I can tell 1.5 billion of their 2021 net profit was from emissions credits alone. Another article said .5 billion in Bitcoin profits but then another stated that dropped later in the year.

GM forecasts earnings 'at or near record levels' in 2022 as chip shortage eases

GM forecasts 2022 operating profit of between $13 billion and $15 billion.

www.cnbc.com

Tesla reports record yearly profit but warns that supply problems persist.

The carmaker had a profit of $5.5 billion as sales of its electric vehicles kept soaring, especially in China and Europe.

www.nytimes.com

Tesla Made a Mountain of Money Selling Credits and Bitcoin (Not So Much in Cars)

Tesla made more money selling emissions credits and bitcoin than selling cars in the first quarter of 2021. Here's how that works.

www.autoweek.com

Tesla Regulatory Credits Revenue Boosts Profits And Margins | Fundamental Data And Statistics For Stocks

Tesla's secret weapon of sales that you may not be aware of. Discover what automotive carbon credits are and the effect on gross margin and profitability.

stockdividendscreener.com

Lastly, I'd add that where you see a dying company that has topped out in GM, I see a company that has tremendous room to grow EV market share and reduce their reliance on purchasing credits, hurting Tesla profitability in 2 ways.

What Tesla no doubt has is amazing growth and probably a lot lower legacy expenses.

The most appealing things about Tesla's to me are the charging network, and the direct to consumer strategy.

 

[Knightshade]

I'm admittedly not an expert.

However looking at 2021 in total, GM had 127 billion in revenue with 14.3 billion EBIT profit (before taxes) where-as Tesla had 54 billion in revenue with 5.5 billion in EBIT profit. So similar profit margins.

Weird take using EBIT.

My #s were specifically from Q4 though--- GMs haven't changed much, Teslas have improved considerably and are expected to continue doing so.

But even ignoring that- GM guidance for 2022 is basically flat profits.... Tesla is continuing to guide for >50% year over year growth.


But if you wanna look at whole-year, here's a perspective for you-- GAAP net income per delivered car:

GM: $1600
Tesla: $5900

And nearly all GMs income on those are legacy ICE cars with declining sales. Teslas are from EVs growing >50% YoY right now.

More to the point however, Tesla made much of that money money selling Bitcoin & emissions credits, instead of actual cars.

Again, not really.

Emissions credits have been a declining percentage of Tesla profits for a while now. In fact they only make 314 million from them in Q4..... the same Q they took a one-take 340 million dollar charge due to stock based compensation.

Though it's always been weird people act like the credits don't count. Does GM income from finance not count? Those aren't cars. Of course it does. There's nothing magic about one dollar versus another.

Tesla did do a one-time bitcoin sale halfway through last year- just to test liquidity, but again that's a one-off- and wasn't even part of the Q4 numbers at all.

Lastly, I'd add that where you see a dying company that has topped out in GM, I see a company that has tremendous room to grow EV market share

I mean, they sold a total of 26 EVs in Q4 2021.

So they sure DO have a lot of room to grow!

The fact they've spent years issuing press releases about investing billions and billions to be an EV leader, and they only spit out 26 cars last quarter, is however not a great sign.

Currently, GM only has one EV for sale. And it costs north of $100,000 and they're making them in tiny tiny numbers (the Humvee).[/QUOTE]

 

[EVNow]

It's even more mind blowing that they paid $12K and this comes with no promise that Tesla will put L3+ on their car even if Tesla develops it and has it for sale tomorrow. It's literally just for L2 city streets autosteer.


A base Uber is about $1 per mile. $100K for the car, plus energy cost, plus insurance, plus maintenance means over 100K miles your cost will be way above $1 per mile.

Think about it this way: 100K miles at 30MPH takes 3,333 hours. To cover $100K over 3,333 hours is $30 per hour. You can hire a taxi driver for a lot less than that as Uber proves. Autonomy needs to add less than $10 per hour to make sense vs a driver. This can partially be via reduced insurance or losses, or better utilization of the asset (but people don't need rides at 2am), but one way or another, you can't charge more than a human costs, and you can hire a lot of human time for $100K.

Why not look at actual analyst models ? How does $200k value for a real robotaxi sound ?

ARK Contributes Its Financial Autonomous Taxi Model to GitHub

ARK's autononmous taxi model explains its estimates that a ride in an autonomous taxi will cost consumers 26 cents per mile.

ark-invest.com

 

[gearchruncher]

Why not look at actual analyst models ? How does $200k value for a real robotaxi sound ?

The model that has the vehicle cost at $20-70K? Where in the model does it say a real robotaxi could cost $200K and be profitable against a human driven one?

From that article:

Autonomous Sensor Suite: ARK expects the additional cost of an autonomous sensor suite [2] to be roughly $5,000 in the next several years as the technologies scale and mature.....If full autonomy becomes possible without LiDAR, as Tesla expects, then sensor costs will be materially lower than our base assumption.

They're already assuming sub $5K with a max of $20K. Yet Tesla is at $12K and we're talking about $100K.

Maintenance and Fuel: ARK expects all autonomous taxis to be electric vehicles.

This is irrelevant as EV's can be human driven too, and the same cost reduction occurs. It is an argument that all transport will get cheaper with EV's, but that just lowers the competitive cost of a human driven vehicle.

Autonomous taxis could be occupied more than 50% of the time, 10 times more than the 5% utilization rate on average of personally owned cars.

Uhh, why are we comparing autonomous taxis to personal cars instead of existing human driven taxis? What utilization do they get? How does autonomy increase that utilization vs humans driving, when utilization is driven more by inconsistent peak demand?

Autonomous cars probably will travel more than 100,000 miles per year and will last roughly 5 years

500K miles on the AVERAGE vehicle? While having maintenance at 2 cents per mile on a $45K car? $10,000 in maintenance over 500K miles. A Tesla Model 3 windshield is $1200+, and the average windshield in the USA doesn't make it 100K.... But again, this has nothing to do with autonomy.

The analysis also assumes every single mile of those 500K is paid by a customer. No driving to charging spots. No moving to the customer or parking. This model doesn't take any of that into account.

Autonomous taxis could be occupied more than 50% of the time, 10 times more than the 5% utilization rate on average of personally owned cars.

Uhh, why are we comparing autonomous taxis to personal cars instead of existing human driven taxis? What utilization do they get? How does autonomy increase that utilization?

Then... 53% utilization rate? So the AVERAGE car will have a passenger in it 12.72 hours a day? All while dealing with charging and the fact that the fleet will have peak utilization in the morning and evening, and to deal with that peak there will be a massive oversupply at 3AM? And much less use on weekends? People's needs to travel at specific times can already be seen from when traffic jams occur- people will not take autonomous taxis at times they aren't already using private cars.

Speaking of all of that- 100K miles a year is 275 miles a day. To do that in 12.72 hours, you need to average 21 MPH. That's not happening in any kind of dense urban environment. And then the model suggest that 90% utilization is even possible!

So yeah, not sure I see that they really did a great job here justifying a $200K robotaxi vehicle price. The only thing autonomy does is replace the human. A human is $15 an hour. Does your cost of autonomy cost more than $15 an hour? The big fudge here is saying that autonomy will cost only $5K and will last 20,000 hours. Of course it pays out if you can make that work, but that is so insanely far away from where we are in price and reliability that it's pointless. Why would Tesla sell a system like that when they are already getting $12K for L2 that maybe on average lasts 4,000 hours?

 

[raptor5244]

I'm admittedly not an expert.

However looking at 2021 in total, GM had 127 billion in revenue with 14.3 billion EBIT profit (before taxes) where-as Tesla had 54 billion in revenue with 5.5 billion in EBIT profit. So similar profit margins.

More to the point however, Tesla made much of that money money selling Bitcoin & emissions credits, instead of actual cars. Best I can tell 1.5 billion of their 2021 net profit was from emissions credits alone. Another article said .5 billion in Bitcoin profits but then another stated that dropped later in the year.

Lastly, I'd add that where you see a dying company that has topped out in GM, I see a company that has tremendous room to grow EV market share and reduce their reliance on purchasing credits, hurting Tesla profitability in 2 ways.

What Tesla no doubt has is amazing growth and probably a lot lower legacy expenses.

The most appealing things about Tesla's to me are the charging network, and the direct to consumer strategy.

Good points.

The bottom line is Tesla is enjoying early mover advantage. You see this in a lot of industries when there is market disruption, it happens all the time in the tech industry. The auto industry was long overdue for a change. However, this idea that Tesla is going to completely dominate the entire auto industry long term seems shortsighted to me. Of course it is more challenging for the existing ICE based manufacturers to transition their business to BEV. Tesla would be challenged as well if they had an existing ICE based product line, customer base, dealer network and investors to please as they transition their business. The tipping point is upon us thanks to Tesla and now you have companies like GM going all in on EVs. Mission accomplished if you are Tesla, that is really what they were after from the start.

I realize there are a lot of Tesla fans on this forum, myself included, but I have no doubt that we will see many other automakers offer compelling EV products. They all have talented designers and engineers that will be able to build great vehicles offered in many different trims to meet all kinds of customer use cases and budgets. In many ways an EV is a more simple product to build. In fact, I would expect the traditional automakers with their manufacturing experience to build a better all around vehicle with better build quality, fit and finish with a lot more options. The market is too big for one company and not everyone wants to drive around the same looking Tesla. It already gets referred to as the iPhone of cars. Just pick your color.

Furthermore, this idea of of ICE based vehicles not being in demand is misguided as well. I just saw a pair of new Toyota Tundras at a local dealer each sell for $21,200 over MSRP with $10k non-refundable deposits. This transition is going to take a while and I look forward to seeing sport car EVs, a wide range of pickups and SUVs, Dodge is supposed to launch "E-Musclecars", which should be interesting. We have new entrants from Rivian, Lucid, Polestar and Apple is rumored to release a AI based vehicle in 2025. I really hope all these manufacturers do well because I will be bored to tears if we only get to drive Teslas the rest of our lives.

 

[EVNow]

I'm admittedly not an expert.

However looking at 2021 in total, GM had 127 billion in revenue with 14.3 billion EBIT profit (before taxes) where-as Tesla had 54 billion in revenue with 5.5 billion in EBIT profit. So similar profit margins.

LOL.

I suggest looking at auto margins.

Won’t be surprised if Tesla makes more profit than Ford & GM, combined, in 2022.

ps : pls come to finance thread to talk about this. Don’t want to derail this thread.

Near-future quarterly financial projections

This post is all about paint shop. It may be placed in another thread entirely, but I put it here because this single process is responsible for nearly as much saving as the entire GigaPress process, but seems a large amount less sexy. There have been massive advances from Fremont to Shanghai...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[Suns_PSD]

GM: $1600
Tesla: $5900

And nearly all GMs income on those are legacy ICE cars with declining sales. Teslas are from EVs growing >50% YoY right now.

I mean, they sold a total of 26 EVs in Q4 2021.

So they sure DO have a lot of room to grow!

The fact they've spent years issuing press releases about investing billions and billions to be an EV leader, and they only spit out 26 cars last quarter, is however not a great sign.

Currently, GM only has one EV for sale. And it costs north of $100,000 and they're making them in tiny tiny numbers (the Humvee).

[/QUOTE]

These points in particular are where a lot of our divergence in opinion comes from it seems.

What I see is a GM that is fully committed to growing the EV segment and can really only go up from here. A LOT in fact.

Not saying that Tesla won't continue to grow as well, it's just that people that wanted EVs in particular WANTED Tesla's in spite of their high prices, poor service support, outrageously inaccurate claims & even worse build quality. In fact Tesla continued to grow even though fuel was very cheap for years. These were not people saving money no more than me choosing the diesel engine in my pickup option 'saves money' (tip, it really doesn't), it was about what they wanted more than anything else. And I get that.

Now you are reaching a point where the general population, not driven as much by enviro consciousness nor leader personalities, will be shopping for EVs. The panache of a Tesla will not be a primary motivating factor.

EV makers will now have to compete on value, build quality, serviceability, lease terms, buddies discounts, Costco auto buy program, etc.

Tesla has a fantastic head start in the EV space, and their leader deserve tremendous credit for his vision and guidance. But to think that freakin' GM will just roll over and not pursue this market fully and with considerable success, is being willfully blind.