4 ms·

GM, Ford, Volvo etc. are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Most electric F-150 sales will take away super-profitable non-electric F-150 sale. Profit

by kjksf 5y ago

GM, Ford, Volvo etc. are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Most electric F-150 sales will take away super-profitable non-electric F-150 sale. Profit is made from scale and for the first few years they won't have scale for electric version so every F-150 electric sold will take away F-150 profit AND add a loss of their own. That will be very bad for their quarterly balance sheet and Wall Street will slaughter their stock price. That's the good news. The bad news is: if they continue to drag their feet on transition to 100% electric cars, they might delay the problems by a few quarters but when the problems hit, they'll hit ever so harder. A year ago Ford's official position was that making their own batteries makes no sense, they'll just buy the best and cheapest batteries from suppliers. Today they're talking about 240 GWhr battery production in 2025 from JV with SK Innovation. I have my doubts they'll achieve that. Tesla started JV with Panasonic in GigaFactory Nevada in 2016 and it took them 4 years to scale up to 35 GWhr. Both Ford and SK Innovation are novices at this so they don't have my benefit of the doubt. Even if they execute on those 240 GWhr by 2025, it's still only about 20% of what Tesla is planning by 2025.

runako 5y ago
Agree with most of this. The key difference from (say) 2018 is that the incumbents are necessarily in a "bet the company" phase with respect to EVs. No matter who wins, it's clear that at a minimum it's going to be a tough bit of competition for Tesla. Cybertruck vs F-150 Lightning in particular could go either way. F-150 has a ton of brand equity among people who already own trucks. It will not help Tesla that F-150 Lightning w/300 mile range will be effectively ~$17k cheaper at launch. Similar compares are likely to play out against Model X and eventually Model 3 and Model Y. > Tesla is planning by 2025 I own Tesla stock, but nobody can take seriously their projections 4 years out. (Remember that we were supposed to be awash in fleets of self-driving taxis for the last couple of years.)
- nickik 5y ago
  Funny how people always use self-driving to claim anything Tesla says will not happen. Yet other predictions did come true. Tesla has managed to keep up its growth up for quite a long time even when people made fun of them for their claims. Self-driving is fundamentally different to scaling manufacturing. They are still globally outselling VW by 2x in terms of BEVs and GM and Ford are not close. In my opinion neither F-150 or Cybertruck will have a demand problem for years. So it really doesn't matter what the performance-vs-price is 'at launch'. Overall the Cybertruck is very competitive.
  - runako 5y ago
    > Funny how people always use self-driving to claim anything Tesla says will not happen. They used this differentiator to presell hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars of nonexistent software to their customers. It wasn't a one-time gaffe by the CEO. It's absolutely fair game. (But if you don't like that, pick one of their other products and compare initial the initial announcement to the actual first availability. They miss their initial dates, it's part of their culture of setting dates very aggressively.) Again, I'm very pro-Tesla. I can also recognize that their projected timelines are fantasy, even when they ultimately end up delivering in the end. > They are still globally outselling VW by 2x in terms of BEVs and GM and Ford are not close. As a Tesla shareholder, this comparison is silly. None of those legacy manufacturers have released "real" EVs yet. An EV Jetta vs Model 3 is the interesting compare, and it's still likely some years out.
    - nickik 5y ago
      I understand the complaint, but it really has nothing to do with the question about manufacturing scaling. > None of those legacy manufacturers have released "real" EVs yet. This is simply not true. ID3, ID4, Mach-E are very real, BMW, Mercedes have also released vehicles of that class. Including from China, Geely (Volvo, Polestar) BYD, Xpeng and so on. These are all build on competitive platforms that the manufacturer hope to reuse the next few years. Its just that in the US, many of these are almost not sold so in the US Tesla has a huge market share. In Europe Tesla market share is already far lower.
syshum 5y ago
The Gas and Electric Truck will share alot of parts. I know they are billing it as "completely new" but there is far too much of "this is the same old F150" for me to believe we will not see many many many many of these parts in the 2022/2023 Gas F150's when they are released. It would not make any business sense for the 2 trucks to not share most of the interior, body panels, wheels, breaks, etc etc etc. Hell I I would not be surprised if the Frame is not the same, just the gas version omiting the battery between the frame rails. >A year ago Ford's official position was that making their own batteries makes no sense, they'll just buy the best and cheapest batteries from suppliers. A year ago they did not suffer massive shutdown due to supply chain issues, I think you will be seeing many manufacturers wanting more and closer control over the supply chain for their factories. This means ford will want battery manufacturers to be close to their F150 factories in the US, which likely means they will need to front some capital to get these companies to build said factories that do not exist today
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  > A year ago they did not suffer massive shutdown due to supply chain issues, I think you will be seeing many manufacturers wanting more and closer control over the supply chain for their factories. This means ford will want battery manufacturers to be close to their F150 factories in the US, which likely means they will need to front some capital to get these companies to build said factories that do not exist today Hence the article here where Ford announced massive battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee closer to their other plants. Though Ford's biggest supply chain issue right now is still processor chips. Maybe Ford also needs to also invest in a big semiconductor fab stateside. I know some minds in Kentucky and Tennessee that have wanted such a facility for some time, if Ford is interested.

by kjksf 5y ago

runako 5y ago

Agree with most of this. The key difference from (say) 2018 is that the incumbents are necessarily in a "bet the company" phase with respect to EVs. No matter who wins, it's clear that at a minimum it's going to be a tough bit of competition for Tesla. Cybertruck vs F-150 Lightning in particular could go either way. F-150 has a ton of brand equity among people who already own trucks. It will not help Tesla that F-150 Lightning w/300 mile range will be effectively ~$17k cheaper at launch. Similar compares are likely to play out against Model X and eventually Model 3 and Model Y. > Tesla is planning by 2025 I own Tesla stock, but nobody can take seriously their projections 4 years out. (Remember that we were supposed to be awash in fleets of self-driving taxis for the last couple of years.)

nickik 5y ago
Funny how people always use self-driving to claim anything Tesla says will not happen. Yet other predictions did come true. Tesla has managed to keep up its growth up for quite a long time even when people made fun of them for their claims. Self-driving is fundamentally different to scaling manufacturing. They are still globally outselling VW by 2x in terms of BEVs and GM and Ford are not close. In my opinion neither F-150 or Cybertruck will have a demand problem for years. So it really doesn't matter what the performance-vs-price is 'at launch'. Overall the Cybertruck is very competitive.
- runako 5y ago
  > Funny how people always use self-driving to claim anything Tesla says will not happen. They used this differentiator to presell hundreds of millions (billions?) of dollars of nonexistent software to their customers. It wasn't a one-time gaffe by the CEO. It's absolutely fair game. (But if you don't like that, pick one of their other products and compare initial the initial announcement to the actual first availability. They miss their initial dates, it's part of their culture of setting dates very aggressively.) Again, I'm very pro-Tesla. I can also recognize that their projected timelines are fantasy, even when they ultimately end up delivering in the end. > They are still globally outselling VW by 2x in terms of BEVs and GM and Ford are not close. As a Tesla shareholder, this comparison is silly. None of those legacy manufacturers have released "real" EVs yet. An EV Jetta vs Model 3 is the interesting compare, and it's still likely some years out.
  - nickik 5y ago
    I understand the complaint, but it really has nothing to do with the question about manufacturing scaling. > None of those legacy manufacturers have released "real" EVs yet. This is simply not true. ID3, ID4, Mach-E are very real, BMW, Mercedes have also released vehicles of that class. Including from China, Geely (Volvo, Polestar) BYD, Xpeng and so on. These are all build on competitive platforms that the manufacturer hope to reuse the next few years. Its just that in the US, many of these are almost not sold so in the US Tesla has a huge market share. In Europe Tesla market share is already far lower.

syshum 5y ago

The Gas and Electric Truck will share alot of parts. I know they are billing it as "completely new" but there is far too much of "this is the same old F150" for me to believe we will not see many many many many of these parts in the 2022/2023 Gas F150's when they are released. It would not make any business sense for the 2 trucks to not share most of the interior, body panels, wheels, breaks, etc etc etc. Hell I I would not be surprised if the Frame is not the same, just the gas version omiting the battery between the frame rails. >A year ago Ford's official position was that making their own batteries makes no sense, they'll just buy the best and cheapest batteries from suppliers. A year ago they did not suffer massive shutdown due to supply chain issues, I think you will be seeing many manufacturers wanting more and closer control over the supply chain for their factories. This means ford will want battery manufacturers to be close to their F150 factories in the US, which likely means they will need to front some capital to get these companies to build said factories that do not exist today

WorldMaker 5y ago
> A year ago they did not suffer massive shutdown due to supply chain issues, I think you will be seeing many manufacturers wanting more and closer control over the supply chain for their factories. This means ford will want battery manufacturers to be close to their F150 factories in the US, which likely means they will need to front some capital to get these companies to build said factories that do not exist today Hence the article here where Ford announced massive battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee closer to their other plants. Though Ford's biggest supply chain issue right now is still processor chips. Maybe Ford also needs to also invest in a big semiconductor fab stateside. I know some minds in Kentucky and Tennessee that have wanted such a facility for some time, if Ford is interested.