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Tesla has about $9B in debt. They are not an attractive takeover candidate. They've never turned an annual profit.
by golfer 7y ago
Tesla has about $9B in debt. They are not an attractive takeover candidate. They've never turned an annual profit.
- azinman2 7y agoApply bankruptcy and sell the assets for cheap... Id imagine many would want to pick up the remains...
- golfer 7y agoSpecifically what remains? They are basically the only OEM pushing self driving without lidar. Their manufacturing facilities are childish compared to other large automakers. Solar City, powerwall, and the solar roof are huge money losers and barely make a dent in the P&L statement. Maybe just the brand name? But will the brand have the cache once it suffers bankruptcy? Maybe it will.
- newsoul2019 7y agoDid you mean cachet?
- sliken 7y agoSeen the Cornell paper "Pseudo-LiDAR from Visual Depth Estimation: Bridging the Gap in 3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving" or the more consumer friendly "Elon Musk Was Right: Cheap Cameras Could Replace Lidar on Self-Driving Cars, Researchers Find"? Looks like a pair of cheap cameras with good stereo separation (distance between the cameras) provides very similar data to Lidar. All without the giant domes on the roof (like the waymo cars).
- dan678 7y agoNot in scenes with poor lighting, not in rain, not in fog, not in scenes with poor surface variation, and not at the ranges needed for safe on highway driving.
- sliken 7y agoSure. Problem is cameras are more similar to humans. So a camera based system will drive more like humans, and be less dangerous. If you use a Lidar based system and conditions are great for lidar, but terrible for cameras it's going to be very dangerous to mix autonomous lidar cars with human driven cars.
- dragonwriter 7y agoThat's why you should have LIDAR and cameras, if nothing else so the car can use the cameras to predict and adjust to the condition-driven changes in behavior of the human drivers.
- notatoad 7y agoSupercharger network, and associated licensing of supercharger tech to other EV brands
- pbreit 7y agoFirst US car company in 60 years, electric at that. Best crash test ratings. Highest owner satisfaction. First US-owned factory in China. Built in about 6 months. Ability and willingness to use OTA updates. Willingness and ability to put auto-pilot on the road for consumers. Ridiculous performance. Better chip than Nvidia. Top 2 auto battery supplier. Best selling lux car in US (ICE or EV). Dramatically better battery efficiency. No dealerships. Online ordering. Plausible FSD story. Camera-based autonomy. $35k price point.
- bufferoverflow 7y agoNeither did Amazon for many years. They are scaling up.
- golfer 7y agoTesla Net Income, Millions... Q1 2019: -702 2018: -976 2017: -1,961 2016: -675 2015: -889 2014: -294 2013: -74 2012: -396 2011: -254 2010: -154 2009: -56 2008: -82 2007: -78 Amazon had losses for 5 years in the beginning of their existence, and then showed profit
- golfer 7y agoUgh stupid HN formatting. Sorry about that
- hi5eyes 7y agoyou’re confusing a company with no growth to a company that reinvested to become an industry titan
- _Codemonkeyism 7y agoTesla has no network effects as a marketplace and doesn't drive competitors out of the market. Both things Amazon traded their profits in for.
- dd36 7y agoIt has both those things. It’s literally devouring market share from similar class vehicles of competitors. The network effect is also happening slowly.
- _Codemonkeyism 7y agoFrom my point of view Tesla hasn't driven BMW, Audi or Mercedes out of business in the last 15 years, but I didn't take a look at their recent numbers, perhaps they already have.
- paganel 7y agoVW Group’s recent Audi e-tron has to 30-40% lower range than a Tesla 3 (~200 miles vs ~325 miles) and as such I would totally see them putting forward the money to buy Tesla in order to bridge this big technological gap.
- cjhopman 7y agoIf you think that's a $10 billion gap, you're delusional.
- sliken 7y agoAccess to the Panasonic battery supply is likely worth a pretty penny. I've been hearing about battery supply problems from Jaguar and Audi already.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> Access to the Panasonic battery supply is likely worth a pretty penny. Licensing/partnership contracts are often written so that they don't automatically survive changes of ownership, which makes buying into such a partnership by acquisition less than reliable.
- paganel 7y agoI may be delusional but I actually own a VW Group car, I know of people who make their living on mostly repairing VW's past mishaps (stuff like this [1]), I have no stake whatsoever in Tesla's future financial success, and as such I can tell you that VW (and the Germans generally speaking) are way, way behind in terms of EV technology compared to Tesla because stuff like this it's not in their engineering DNA. $10 billions is a pittance, it gives you two thirds of Whatsapp or the entire Skype before it was acquired by MS (adjusted for inflation), so I don't think I'm delusional when I'm saying that it is not a great sum to pay when the future of your entire industry depends on you being best at building EVs (and Tesla now is the best). I've had the same discussion on places like /r/cars, i.e. that Tesla doesn't sell cars, it sells batteries and the accompanying software (with some wheels attached to the whole thing), while companies like VW, MB or BMW have almost no clue on how to build the best batteries, never mind the best software, they're only good at building cars (and lately not so good even at that), which is an industry on its way out. [1] https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/threads/tsi-engine-problems.999564/ https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/threads/tsi-engine-problems....
- fengb 7y agoMuch worse than that: their (pre-market) valuation is 44B and takeovers require shareholder agreement, usually at least 20% premium to the market — I'd wager the ask price would be a lot more but let's be conservative... 53B buys you a 9B debt.
- philwelch 7y agoIf they were forced into liquidation you could buy the brand and IP and whatever else was of value at a discount.