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More negative news on Tesla drawn from interviews with short sellers. The journalist on this is famous for working with Jim Chanos, the short seller who was inv

More negative news on Tesla drawn from interviews with short sellers. The journalist on this is famous for working with Jim Chanos, the short seller who was involved in exposing Enron. He is shorting Tesla and thinks it's the next Enron, and got this journalist to push his short narrative. I don't buy it. The economics of solar are great long term, and selling it with electric cars makes a lot of sense because a) EV buyers use a lot of power, and can save a lot of money with solar b) the electric car batteries also work great for storing solar energy to use at night What they're offering to consumers with their new $50 a month solar rental program is the ability to have a completely off the grid sustainable energy solution for your car and your home. That is huge. Have you heard about the multi-trillion dollar petroleum industry? Also the cars drive themselves better and better every day. Go try it. It's not perfect, but the car fucking drives itself with an object detection neural net and some traffic law heuristics. It's fucking amazing. Go try it if you don't believe me This short bet will blow up in their faces

xkjkls 7y ago
> The economics of solar are great long term Why? It seems like a flooded and commodified utility market, the opposite of something with great economics.
- kjksf 7y ago
  This is "no one goes there anymore because it's so crowded" argument. Solar is big business and will become even bigger (because the economics are great and becoming even better). Commodity or not, some company will make good money there. That company could be Tesla. As to blanket "commodity" argument: McDonald sells hamburgers, Coca-Cola sells flavored water in a glass bottle and StarBucks sells coffee in a plastic cup. There's money to be made in commodity businesses if you are big enough, have the economies of scale and the leading brand.
  - xkjkls 7y ago
    > This is "no one goes there anymore because it's so crowded" argument. This is a very true argument about the margins/economics of a business. If it is easy for competition to enter, it becomes very hard to make a high-margin, valuable business out of it. > As to blanket "commodity" argument: McDonald sells hamburgers, Coca-Cola sells flavored water in a glass bottle and StarBucks sells coffee in a plastic cup. All of these have substantial moats in either brand, training, or real estate. In what way does Tesla have any of these (brand matters far less for larger financial decisions like this) and why is it any advantage to any of these areas to have this attached to an electric car company? And in this area, they already are no longer the leading brand, and have fallen behind many other solar companies.
- omarforgotpwd 7y ago
  I'm talking about the economics of powering cars with renewable energy rather than oil: http://ieefa.org/bnp-paribas-oil-losing-the-economic-battle-with-renewables-evs/ http://ieefa.org/bnp-paribas-oil-losing-the-economic-battle-... Whether the panels themselves are a commodity doesn't matter -- it may actually be advantageous by lowering the capital cost required for installation. The user wants to buy the whole experience -- the panels, with a home battery to store and serve as a backup maybe, and a car all controlled through one app. Right now you can go on Tesla.com and in five minutes you can order a Tesla for lease at $399 / month and rent a solar system for your roof at $50 a month to fuel the car. You're completely off the grid, prepared for the apocalypse, and no polluting the air. That's very compelling.
  - xkjkls 7y ago
    I'm talking about the economics and moat that Tesla has itself, with which the fact that the panels are a commodity matter a great deal. This makes Tesla a servicing/financing company, and why do they have a systematic advantage at that over competition? That doesn't seem like a high margin business that is going to justify Tesla's lofty valuation (especially when their solar installations have gone down close to ~90% since the acquisition of SolarCity, and their competitors now have greater market share than they do).
    - omarforgotpwd 7y ago
      One advantage they have is that they try and pre-assemble systems into fixed 4 kw systems that are easier to put together on site Another advantage they have is a very simple online ordering system -- try getting a quote for solar somewhere else vs ordering on Tesla.com another advantage they have is asthetics and also integration with the same app you use to control your car
      - xkjkls 7y ago
        > Another advantage they have is a very simple online ordering system -- try getting a quote for solar somewhere else vs ordering on Tesla.com Is this really a long term advantage? One, producing a website to have simple online ordering is not a problem for any company on this sort of scale, and two, how big an advantage is this? This isn't a sort of purchase on a whim like a new book on Amazon, these are long term planning decisions for a given family. They're going to do the math and figure out what might actually be best for their electricity usage, home, and financial situation. Simple ordering isn't that huge of an advantage. > another advantage they have is asthetics Again, why is this something not easily copied? > and also integration with the same app you use to control your car Is this really that big an advantage? I don't know who is making multi-thousand dollar a year decisions based on this.
tim333 7y ago
Having seen Chanos interviewed on Tesla, I don't think he thinks it's the next Enron, just a loss making car company which will struggle. He's a long short investor who is basically long the S&P500 so he doesn't need Tesla to go to zero, just to underperform the market which it has done during his period of being short. He's also recently bought call options on the stock as a hedge against it shooting up.
- xedeon 7y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx6GJADrflk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx6GJADrflk

xkjkls 7y ago

> The economics of solar are great long term Why? It seems like a flooded and commodified utility market, the opposite of something with great economics.

kjksf 7y ago
This is "no one goes there anymore because it's so crowded" argument. Solar is big business and will become even bigger (because the economics are great and becoming even better). Commodity or not, some company will make good money there. That company could be Tesla. As to blanket "commodity" argument: McDonald sells hamburgers, Coca-Cola sells flavored water in a glass bottle and StarBucks sells coffee in a plastic cup. There's money to be made in commodity businesses if you are big enough, have the economies of scale and the leading brand.
- xkjkls 7y ago
  > This is "no one goes there anymore because it's so crowded" argument. This is a very true argument about the margins/economics of a business. If it is easy for competition to enter, it becomes very hard to make a high-margin, valuable business out of it. > As to blanket "commodity" argument: McDonald sells hamburgers, Coca-Cola sells flavored water in a glass bottle and StarBucks sells coffee in a plastic cup. All of these have substantial moats in either brand, training, or real estate. In what way does Tesla have any of these (brand matters far less for larger financial decisions like this) and why is it any advantage to any of these areas to have this attached to an electric car company? And in this area, they already are no longer the leading brand, and have fallen behind many other solar companies.
omarforgotpwd 7y ago
I'm talking about the economics of powering cars with renewable energy rather than oil: http://ieefa.org/bnp-paribas-oil-losing-the-economic-battle-with-renewables-evs/ http://ieefa.org/bnp-paribas-oil-losing-the-economic-battle-... Whether the panels themselves are a commodity doesn't matter -- it may actually be advantageous by lowering the capital cost required for installation. The user wants to buy the whole experience -- the panels, with a home battery to store and serve as a backup maybe, and a car all controlled through one app. Right now you can go on Tesla.com and in five minutes you can order a Tesla for lease at $399 / month and rent a solar system for your roof at $50 a month to fuel the car. You're completely off the grid, prepared for the apocalypse, and no polluting the air. That's very compelling.
- xkjkls 7y ago
  I'm talking about the economics and moat that Tesla has itself, with which the fact that the panels are a commodity matter a great deal. This makes Tesla a servicing/financing company, and why do they have a systematic advantage at that over competition? That doesn't seem like a high margin business that is going to justify Tesla's lofty valuation (especially when their solar installations have gone down close to ~90% since the acquisition of SolarCity, and their competitors now have greater market share than they do).
  - omarforgotpwd 7y ago
    One advantage they have is that they try and pre-assemble systems into fixed 4 kw systems that are easier to put together on site Another advantage they have is a very simple online ordering system -- try getting a quote for solar somewhere else vs ordering on Tesla.com another advantage they have is asthetics and also integration with the same app you use to control your car
    - xkjkls 7y ago
      > Another advantage they have is a very simple online ordering system -- try getting a quote for solar somewhere else vs ordering on Tesla.com Is this really a long term advantage? One, producing a website to have simple online ordering is not a problem for any company on this sort of scale, and two, how big an advantage is this? This isn't a sort of purchase on a whim like a new book on Amazon, these are long term planning decisions for a given family. They're going to do the math and figure out what might actually be best for their electricity usage, home, and financial situation. Simple ordering isn't that huge of an advantage. > another advantage they have is asthetics Again, why is this something not easily copied? > and also integration with the same app you use to control your car Is this really that big an advantage? I don't know who is making multi-thousand dollar a year decisions based on this.

tim333 7y ago

Having seen Chanos interviewed on Tesla, I don't think he thinks it's the next Enron, just a loss making car company which will struggle. He's a long short investor who is basically long the S&P500 so he doesn't need Tesla to go to zero, just to underperform the market which it has done during his period of being short. He's also recently bought call options on the stock as a hedge against it shooting up.

xedeon 7y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx6GJADrflk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx6GJADrflk