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I'm sure Tesla make amazing cars (I don't drive so no horse in this race) - but I still don't really understand why Tesla is a 1.3T company and Ford is a 77.4B

by neom 5y ago

I'm sure Tesla make amazing cars (I don't drive so no horse in this race) - but I still don't really understand why Tesla is a 1.3T company and Ford is a 77.4B company.

verdverm 5y ago
Tesla is more than an auto company, they demonstrate faster innovation, they are more capital efficient and scale faster than was thought possible. Consider they are also selling solar, batteries, insurance, and likely in home robots, ride sharing, and energy trading down the line. They may also resell their tech and software down the line as well. There is also the general over valuation of the market at work, which is not evenly distributed between companies. Too much money without enough places to go.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > Consider they are also selling solar Generally very low margin. > batteries Generally extremely low margin. > insurance Low margin > and likely in home robots, ride sharing, and energy trading down the line. Speculative.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  A lot of that "innovation" is just "move fast and break things". Tesla has pushed out and then reverted how many FSD betas in response to issues? It's not surprising that so many people are disconcerted by the concept of being an unwilling beta tester for Tesla (by virtue of sharing the road), a company that clearly has disturbingly little acceptance testing for the software they're releasing.
  - verdverm 5y ago
    I'd recommend Sandy Munro for the more physical innovations. https://youtube.com/c/MunroLive https://youtube.com/c/MunroLive Their heat pumps and giga press are first of their kinds. They were things the old players said would never work and are now trying to adopt. It's also worth pointing out that Tesla's have a lower accident rate than the national average.
    - FireBeyond 5y ago
      > Their heat pumps and giga press are first of their kinds. They were things the old players said would never work and are now trying to adopt. I can't find anything that says other manufacturers said "heat pumps won't work". > It's also worth pointing out that Tesla's have a lower accident rate than the national average. What does this have to do with innovation? Many of the vehicles on the road have lower accident rates than the national average. Tesla is also notorious for vehicle accident and safety stats being misleading, and doubly so when its around the topic of AP/FSD.
      - verdverm 5y ago
        https://youtu.be/eGffUODWWSE https://youtu.be/eGffUODWWSE (octopump) It's not that heat pumps won't work, it's about pump technology. This is actually the thermal management system, used for both heating and cooling. Sandy generally has great commentary on the auto industry. He's quite genuine Every auto company misleads, at least Tesla is being a leader The point about accident rates is in context of unwitting beta testers. There are many drivers on the road, many of who make the road unsafer. That fact should also be considered when discussing road safety. If FSD beta is better on average, then the roads are getting stepwise safer.
        FireBeyond 5y ago
        > Sandy generally has great commentary on the auto industry. He's quite genuine I'm sure he does (I say that sincerely). But he's also the same Sandy who was very anti-Tesla until his wife got one and he put a whole lot of his investment portfolio in TSLA stock. > There are many drivers on the road, many of who make the road unsafer. Many of those drivers may make poor choices, etc. But we're not touting them as role models or desired behavior. FSD is meant to be better, and is still _actively_ trying to do things that are dangerous to drivers and pedestrians. > If FSD beta is better on average, then the roads are getting stepwise safer. The sheer amount of stupid decisions I've seen from FSD on YouTube etc. is shocking. The only thing more stupefying is watching people actively "allowing" it to do stupid things for "views", their own inattentiveness, or for some misguided notion that they're somehow "contributing" to "training" the car. Like pro tip: When your car has run a red light at the same intersection the last three times, don't let it do it a fourth time just "to help the project". That's irresponsible, reckless and outright dangerous. Tesla flat out refuses to release any statistics that would actually be able to prove, or disprove, an actual fair comparison of the safety of FSD/AP. Instead we get these cherry picked miles driven where AP is touted as being safer - on the (unspoken) subset of miles where it didn't disengage because it couldn't drive or the driver decided it was safer to disengage because of the AP's driving, versus "human drivers, all miles, all conditions". There's (relatively) few accidents for human drivers on well-painted, well-maintained roads in the California sunshine. And similar for AP/FSD. There's a lot more accidents for human drivers on poorly painted and maintained roads in a Pittsburgh winter. And there would be for AP/FSD too, if it wasn't disengaged a large majority of that driving. But Tesla happily lumps the sum of driving of "Human drivers in California sun and Pittsburgh winter" and says that mile-for-mile, AP/FSD is better because it had fewer accidents, even though most of those miles were accumulated in the California sun. Anyone who completed high school statistics would know this wasn't a fair comparison, but Tesla has pushed it for years.
pokerhobo 5y ago
Ford has almost $100B debt and $46B in cash with net profit margin of 2.3%, gross profit margin 8% with revenue down year-over-year. Tesla has $14B debt with $16B cash 5.2%, gross profit margin per vehicle is 30% with revenue increasing >50% year-over-year. Tesla is priced for future expectations.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  > Tesla is priced for future expectations. What future expectations? As it is priced right now, the only way that makes sense is if Tesla starts selling more than _every other automotive manufacturer, combined_. That's insane, and not going to happen. "So short the stock", people say. And then Tesla fans act like shorting TSLA is something akin to a capital crime and at the very least should be forbidden by the exchanges or the SEC, from the reactions that come from it.
  - kolbe 5y ago
    Not true. Tesla could also profit more per car than all others. They could achieve this simply by being non-union. Or they could achieve it by winning the autonomous vehicle wars. They could even achieve it by not being a car company (e.g. a battery or charging station or solar company). It's not as simple as adding up all the other car company valuations.
    - piva00 5y ago
      This is the 2nd jab at unions you take in this whole thread. It's a bit mind-boggling as if unions were the demise of automakers then Audi, Porsche, Volkswagen, Mercedes and so on would never have been profitable given Germany's union environment... It's a cheap shot that you seem to like to reiterate. What's the source you have that unions are the most problematic issue to automakers' profitability?
    - elp 5y ago
      What's magical about Tesla that its going to stay a non union shop? If every other car company has to deal with unions then its only a matter of time until they are as well. The only way they can prevent that is to pay more than the other places but then their profits wouldn't stay high.
01100011 5y ago
It's a lot of circular logic and wishful thinking. A lot of it boils down to something like: - Tesla will "win" the race(either to self driving, or some magical EV adoption level, or the gigapress will let them sell cars for half the price of other mfgs) and then swallow 90%+ of the market. Other auto manufacturers will just disappear or something, and will live in Tesla's shadow forever. - Tesla makes robotaxis and everyone on the planet will simultaneously want to own a Tesla as well as pay for rides in rented Teslas. Again this argument usually rests on the assumption that Tesla will do the impossible and no other manufacturer will ever keep up. - Tesla is a (software, navigation, power, battery, robot, mapping, AI, etc) company. They will take all of their tech an monetize it. This of course will not require any overhead and Tesla will make 110% profit on every market they enter, which, of course, they will dominate and no other existing manufacturers will be able to compete. If you call out a Tesla fan on this, they will cycle back and forth between some variation of those arguments until you give up. Generally the Tesla fan has quite a bit invested in Tesla(via stock or just $10k beta test fees), and they argue as if conceding the argument will destroy their investment and prevent humans from colonizing Mars. I think it's worth mentioning that Tesla doesn't just compete against other auto manufacturers. They (currently anyway) compete against public transportation systems and well designed, walkable cities. They seem to be a better solution than, say, IC cars, but in the long run we may see the world moving away from personal vehicles, electric or not. If nothing else, as cars become more intelligent, they become smaller, lighter and cheaper. Tesla may not have much advantage when we're all whizzing around in self-driving mopeds or whatever the future provides us.
kolbe 5y ago
Unions have, and always will, take the excess profits of Ford/GM for themselves. Even if Ford is a better car company, its shareholders will never get to see the money from it.
- soco 5y ago
  Which is why VW, Mercedes, Citroen, Fiat, are all bankrupt and their shareholders live under bridges. Or wait...
  - kolbe 5y ago
    Hi. Welcome to America. The laws/rules are different here. I have a feeling German unions aren’t run by literal mobsters, either. Please learn the definition of “excess profits” before harassing me more. Every company you mentioned is worth significantly less money than Tesla. And where does VW rank in revenue to market cap? A quick glance shows Apple makes about 80% more revenue than VW, and has a market cap 25x higher. The money isn’t going to shareholders.

by neom 5y ago

I'm sure Tesla make amazing cars (I don't drive so no horse in this race) - but I still don't really understand why Tesla is a 1.3T company and Ford is a 77.4B company.

verdverm 5y ago

Tesla is more than an auto company, they demonstrate faster innovation, they are more capital efficient and scale faster than was thought possible. Consider they are also selling solar, batteries, insurance, and likely in home robots, ride sharing, and energy trading down the line. They may also resell their tech and software down the line as well. There is also the general over valuation of the market at work, which is not evenly distributed between companies. Too much money without enough places to go.

rsynnott 5y ago
> Consider they are also selling solar Generally very low margin. > batteries Generally extremely low margin. > insurance Low margin > and likely in home robots, ride sharing, and energy trading down the line. Speculative.
FireBeyond 5y ago
A lot of that "innovation" is just "move fast and break things". Tesla has pushed out and then reverted how many FSD betas in response to issues? It's not surprising that so many people are disconcerted by the concept of being an unwilling beta tester for Tesla (by virtue of sharing the road), a company that clearly has disturbingly little acceptance testing for the software they're releasing.
- verdverm 5y ago
  I'd recommend Sandy Munro for the more physical innovations. https://youtube.com/c/MunroLive https://youtube.com/c/MunroLive Their heat pumps and giga press are first of their kinds. They were things the old players said would never work and are now trying to adopt. It's also worth pointing out that Tesla's have a lower accident rate than the national average.
  - FireBeyond 5y ago
    > Their heat pumps and giga press are first of their kinds. They were things the old players said would never work and are now trying to adopt. I can't find anything that says other manufacturers said "heat pumps won't work". > It's also worth pointing out that Tesla's have a lower accident rate than the national average. What does this have to do with innovation? Many of the vehicles on the road have lower accident rates than the national average. Tesla is also notorious for vehicle accident and safety stats being misleading, and doubly so when its around the topic of AP/FSD.
    - verdverm 5y ago
      https://youtu.be/eGffUODWWSE https://youtu.be/eGffUODWWSE (octopump) It's not that heat pumps won't work, it's about pump technology. This is actually the thermal management system, used for both heating and cooling. Sandy generally has great commentary on the auto industry. He's quite genuine Every auto company misleads, at least Tesla is being a leader The point about accident rates is in context of unwitting beta testers. There are many drivers on the road, many of who make the road unsafer. That fact should also be considered when discussing road safety. If FSD beta is better on average, then the roads are getting stepwise safer.
      - FireBeyond 5y ago
        > Sandy generally has great commentary on the auto industry. He's quite genuine I'm sure he does (I say that sincerely). But he's also the same Sandy who was very anti-Tesla until his wife got one and he put a whole lot of his investment portfolio in TSLA stock. > There are many drivers on the road, many of who make the road unsafer. Many of those drivers may make poor choices, etc. But we're not touting them as role models or desired behavior. FSD is meant to be better, and is still _actively_ trying to do things that are dangerous to drivers and pedestrians. > If FSD beta is better on average, then the roads are getting stepwise safer. The sheer amount of stupid decisions I've seen from FSD on YouTube etc. is shocking. The only thing more stupefying is watching people actively "allowing" it to do stupid things for "views", their own inattentiveness, or for some misguided notion that they're somehow "contributing" to "training" the car. Like pro tip: When your car has run a red light at the same intersection the last three times, don't let it do it a fourth time just "to help the project". That's irresponsible, reckless and outright dangerous. Tesla flat out refuses to release any statistics that would actually be able to prove, or disprove, an actual fair comparison of the safety of FSD/AP. Instead we get these cherry picked miles driven where AP is touted as being safer - on the (unspoken) subset of miles where it didn't disengage because it couldn't drive or the driver decided it was safer to disengage because of the AP's driving, versus "human drivers, all miles, all conditions". There's (relatively) few accidents for human drivers on well-painted, well-maintained roads in the California sunshine. And similar for AP/FSD. There's a lot more accidents for human drivers on poorly painted and maintained roads in a Pittsburgh winter. And there would be for AP/FSD too, if it wasn't disengaged a large majority of that driving. But Tesla happily lumps the sum of driving of "Human drivers in California sun and Pittsburgh winter" and says that mile-for-mile, AP/FSD is better because it had fewer accidents, even though most of those miles were accumulated in the California sun. Anyone who completed high school statistics would know this wasn't a fair comparison, but Tesla has pushed it for years.

pokerhobo 5y ago

Ford has almost $100B debt and $46B in cash with net profit margin of 2.3%, gross profit margin 8% with revenue down year-over-year. Tesla has $14B debt with $16B cash 5.2%, gross profit margin per vehicle is 30% with revenue increasing >50% year-over-year. Tesla is priced for future expectations.

FireBeyond 5y ago
> Tesla is priced for future expectations. What future expectations? As it is priced right now, the only way that makes sense is if Tesla starts selling more than _every other automotive manufacturer, combined_. That's insane, and not going to happen. "So short the stock", people say. And then Tesla fans act like shorting TSLA is something akin to a capital crime and at the very least should be forbidden by the exchanges or the SEC, from the reactions that come from it.
- kolbe 5y ago
  Not true. Tesla could also profit more per car than all others. They could achieve this simply by being non-union. Or they could achieve it by winning the autonomous vehicle wars. They could even achieve it by not being a car company (e.g. a battery or charging station or solar company). It's not as simple as adding up all the other car company valuations.
  - piva00 5y ago
    This is the 2nd jab at unions you take in this whole thread. It's a bit mind-boggling as if unions were the demise of automakers then Audi, Porsche, Volkswagen, Mercedes and so on would never have been profitable given Germany's union environment... It's a cheap shot that you seem to like to reiterate. What's the source you have that unions are the most problematic issue to automakers' profitability?
  - elp 5y ago
    What's magical about Tesla that its going to stay a non union shop? If every other car company has to deal with unions then its only a matter of time until they are as well. The only way they can prevent that is to pay more than the other places but then their profits wouldn't stay high.

01100011 5y ago

It's a lot of circular logic and wishful thinking. A lot of it boils down to something like: - Tesla will "win" the race(either to self driving, or some magical EV adoption level, or the gigapress will let them sell cars for half the price of other mfgs) and then swallow 90%+ of the market. Other auto manufacturers will just disappear or something, and will live in Tesla's shadow forever. - Tesla makes robotaxis and everyone on the planet will simultaneously want to own a Tesla as well as pay for rides in rented Teslas. Again this argument usually rests on the assumption that Tesla will do the impossible and no other manufacturer will ever keep up. - Tesla is a (software, navigation, power, battery, robot, mapping, AI, etc) company. They will take all of their tech an monetize it. This of course will not require any overhead and Tesla will make 110% profit on every market they enter, which, of course, they will dominate and no other existing manufacturers will be able to compete. If you call out a Tesla fan on this, they will cycle back and forth between some variation of those arguments until you give up. Generally the Tesla fan has quite a bit invested in Tesla(via stock or just $10k beta test fees), and they argue as if conceding the argument will destroy their investment and prevent humans from colonizing Mars. I think it's worth mentioning that Tesla doesn't just compete against other auto manufacturers. They (currently anyway) compete against public transportation systems and well designed, walkable cities. They seem to be a better solution than, say, IC cars, but in the long run we may see the world moving away from personal vehicles, electric or not. If nothing else, as cars become more intelligent, they become smaller, lighter and cheaper. Tesla may not have much advantage when we're all whizzing around in self-driving mopeds or whatever the future provides us.

kolbe 5y ago

Unions have, and always will, take the excess profits of Ford/GM for themselves. Even if Ford is a better car company, its shareholders will never get to see the money from it.

soco 5y ago
Which is why VW, Mercedes, Citroen, Fiat, are all bankrupt and their shareholders live under bridges. Or wait...
- kolbe 5y ago
  Hi. Welcome to America. The laws/rules are different here. I have a feeling German unions aren’t run by literal mobsters, either. Please learn the definition of “excess profits” before harassing me more. Every company you mentioned is worth significantly less money than Tesla. And where does VW rank in revenue to market cap? A quick glance shows Apple makes about 80% more revenue than VW, and has a market cap 25x higher. The money isn’t going to shareholders.