11 ms·

I'm Betting on Elon

124 points by danielodio 14y ago

cjbprime 14y ago
My problem with the "I'm betting on Elon" approach is that the market is clearly already betting on Elon, to the point of somewhere between 10-40x a sensible company valuation. If you buy now, you're betting on a clearly ridiculously-optimistic valuation being not quite ridiculously-optimistic enough. You're not the first person to have considered that the company might be successful and grow exponentially in the future -- that's already priced in to the stock! Talking about long-term bets, it would be interesting to read about how the electric car future might tie into the driverless car future. My understanding is that we'll have many fewer cars around in the driverless future, even if the cars that we do have are electric.
- rthomas6 14y ago
  Exactly. Tesla being successful in the future doesn't necessarily tie in to making money on the stock, except over the scale of decades.
  - danielodio 14y ago
    I'm taking that type of view on this stock. - DROdio
- sachingulaya 14y ago
  Investors are surprisingly pessimistic. I am heavily invested in TSLA. I got out right before earnings call because CEOs like Elon don't seem to care about meeting Wall Street's expectations. I'll buy more in a week or two when the market is more favorable. Almost all of the criticism I read of TSLA is regarding their financials. There is a lot of room for sentiment and investor confidence to improve. Things I care about(like Elon's track record & ridiculous amounts of ambition, improvements in battery technology, not using dealerships, the supercharger network, etc.) don't ever get mentioned. Wall street seems to care about whether they'll be able to meet production goals, the amount of cash they have on hand to continue operations, etc. Most importantly, as more consumers take delivery of their Model S' I'm expecting investor confidence and awareness to improve. They'll "see" the demand with their own eyes. My father is already mentioning to me that his friends are seeing Model S' pop up around town and people are talking about them. They want to know what it is. It's extremely common for retail investors to buy stock based on products that they see being used. You're right in that I'm betting solely based on investor confidence improving. In my opinion, there is no other metric on which to price a stock.
  - supercanuck 14y ago
    I think the NYT affair started cementing the idea of brand loyalty into the minds of their customers. US consumers love an underdog they can get behind in an "us vs them" type storyline.
    - danielodio 14y ago
      The NYT article is the best thing that could've happened to Tesla. Any news is good news. Being irrelevant is the thing that kills startups. - DROdio
  - carbocation 14y ago
    Did you get out, or did you purchase shorts? Getting out seems to be painful from a taxation perspective, assuming you're net positive.
    - dopamean 14y ago
      You hit the nail on the head with your question here. This guy does not sound like someone who really know what he's doing in the market. If you had already made the decision that you believe in Tesla and want to invest there is no reason to be buying and selling the stock based off of earnings reports. Particularly if you believe (as this guy does) that the CEO is not particularly concerned with Street estimates. Just buy and hold.
      - jusben1369 14y ago
        Well there are a lot of people who are long on a volatile stock who will get in and out to maximize their return in/cost basis etc. Holding and never exiting is another option but hardly makes you "unsavvy" if you're trading in and out. Having said that I agree options would be a better strategy if you feel comfortable that you can predict the short term market direction.
      - RobAtticus 14y ago
        I too got out before earnings, and I'm not really sure where you get the idea that he doesn't know what he's doing. I got out because I was up 20% (my target when I initiated the position) and my trailing stop was hit around the time the NYT story came out. I had set the trailing stop prior to earnings because their earnings typically lead to sell-offs because they aren't profitable (yet) and they were going to come up short of their initial estimates for cars delivered 2012 (even though it was revised down, people would still hold it against them). It had had a nice run in the weeks prior, so a correction seemed reasonably plausible anyway. It's just how the market goes, and I figured (correctly) that even if my stop got hit, it meant I would have an opportunity later to get back in at a lower price. I believe in Tesla, but I also realize that there are going to be dips along the way that I can capitalize on. I think they'll turn a profit this quarter, and if they keep on track, their earnings reports won't be as volatile (at least in the negative direction) and I won't sell beforehand.
- millstone 14y ago
  The market is betting more heavily against Elon. TSLA is the ninth most shorted stock - see http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3062-nasdaqshort-highlites.html#shortF http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3062-nasdaqshort-hig... . It's so heavily shorted that there's a possibility of a short squeeze, which I would find quite delicious - not because I own TSLA, but because I want to see people hoping for failure get screwed.
  - cryowaffle 14y ago
    Even a stock that is ninth most heavily shorted isn't necessary heavily against. The market is very very very long TSLA, they have bought into the idea and given it a lofty valuation as a result. People who are short are just balancing the optimism... it's not like they just want failure for failure's sake.
  - damoncali 14y ago
    What makes you think that being short on a stock is the same as hoping for failure? I hope Tesla is fantastically successful, but I would consider shorting it if I were doing such things these days. They're two totally separate things.
    - millstone 14y ago
      I don't think they're separate. Shorting a stock means you make money from the stock's decline, and therefore from the company's failure. You hope to make money from your investment, so you hope for the company to fail, at least indirectly. Furthermore, shorting a stock can harm the firm. Big short positions drive down the stock price, which affects public sentiment (their stock is down, they must be failing, I won't buy their car because they may not be here next year), makes it harder for them to retain employees, makes it harder to raise money by issuing more stock or bonds, etc. By shorting a stock, you are contributing to that company's failure (though of course the effect is miniscule for retail investors like me). I would not buy even a undervalued stock for a tobacco company, because I don't want to support producers of tobacco products. And I don't want to impede progress in electric cars by shorting their producers, even if I think their stocks are overvalued. There's plenty of other investments available that align my finances with my hopes.
- Tyrant505 14y ago
  When you buy stock, you should scale in. He is clearly someone comfortable now with his purchase, if it dips, as far as he is concerned its on sale, scale in.
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  >>You're not the first person to have considered that the company might be successful and grow exponentially in the future -- that's already priced in to the stock! This is actually a flawed view, because it assumes perfect information by all market participants. George Soros goes into quite a bit of detail in the second part of his General Theory of Reflexivity. You should read it. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/dbc0e0c6-bfe9-11de-aed2-00144feab49a.html#axzz2KKjKwq14 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/dbc0e0c6-bfe9-11de-aed2-00144feab4... Relevant excerpt: "Let me state the two cardinal principles of my conceptual framework as it applies to the financial markets. First, market prices always distort the underlying fundamentals. The degree of distortion may range from the negligible to the significant. This is in direct contradiction to the efficient market hypothesis, which maintains that market prices accurately reflect all the available information. Second, instead of playing a purely passive role in reflecting an underlying reality, financial markets also have an active role: they can affect the so-called fundamentals they are supposed to reflect. That is the point that behavioral economics is missing. It focuses only on one half of a reflexive process: the mispricing of financial assets; it does not concern itself with the impact of the mispricing on the so-called fundamentals. There are various feedback mechanisms at work which may validate the mispricing of financial assets, at least for a while. This may give the impression that markets are often right, but the mechanism at work is very different from the one proposed by the prevailing paradigm. I claim that financial markets have ways of altering the fundamentals and that may bring about a closer correspondence between market prices and the underlying fundamentals. Contrast that with the efficient market hypothesis, which claims that markets always accurately reflect reality and automatically tend towards equilibrium. There are various pathways by which the mispricing of financial assets can affect the so-called fundamentals. The most widely travelled are those which involve the use of leverage—both debt and equity leveraging. These pathways deserve a lot more research."
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
There is a lot of Elon love on HN - but the analysis here is fundamentally correct - bet on winners. And Elon will either win big or blow up big. Its a pretty good bet IMO. And I am amazed to see the "relentlessly resourceful" tag be dropped casually in here - even if the author is part of the SV-mafia its still amazing what impact one mans' essays are having. So that makes two people to bet on ...
VeejayRampay 14y ago
Besides the stocket market evaluations and all those considerations, I have to say that I am amazed how spoiled America is sometimes. How I wish we had such an entrepreneur in Europe, someone willing to shake the status quo and speed up the process of making the future happen. Tesla is a company that is trying to make AMERICAN electric cars, he should encouraged and cheered. People with some money and liberal views should be jumping on those cars, it's History in the making, a true revolution. I really hope he suceeds, that'd be an encouraging sign that science and technology can actually have a good impact on climate and consumer practices vis à vis greenhouse gases and the approach to modernity.
- omonra 14y ago
  But he is encouraged and cheered - the valuation of his company vs Ford is precisely the indication of it. Nothing says "I believe in this guy" like actually putting money down & buying the company stock.
- monkeyfacebag 14y ago
  > he should encouraged and cheered. Is that not happening already? From the article: "Tesla's current market value is 250 times higher than it would be if it were being valued as a car manufacturer rather than an idea whose time is about to come." Of course, we're also talking about a company that received a $465 million loan from US taxpayers so it's not like we're hanging him out to dry.
  - VeejayRampay 14y ago
    You're right about that. I was actually addressing the general attitude of the American public as well as pundits' and car enthusiasts and writers with regard to Tesla and the immense promises it brings to the game. I don't know, I might just be naive about this but god, if Tesla were a French company created by an awesome entrepreneur from my homeland, I'd be over the moon and overlooking the little mistakes, the agitation over the tiny tremors of the stock market. Tesla Motors is bigger than "reports from the market", in my opinion it's a total game changer in a world that hasn't evolved much in the past 40/50 years (at least in terms of groundbreaking mutations in the core technology), the automobile industry and something that I am (obviously) really excited about. Tesla speaks VOLUMES in the rest of the world about America's capacity to still be #1 in terms of science, innovation, vision at the beginning of the 21st century, I just wish people were more enthusiastically backing the company at all times, this is something the USA should be proud of. Then again, the article addressing the financial/economical aspect of it all, which makes my comment off-topic and on the "that's cute" side :)
BrainScraps 14y ago
I'm also a Musketeer. I think the company as a whole executes brilliantly, but I decided to allocate a good chunk of my (measly) portfolio to TSLA as a result of Elon's track record and vision. I wonder if we'll soon see a prospectus for the "Musk Fund" containing only companies that he's been involved in...
dkroy 14y ago
My first thought for this was, wow cool looking site. I then played around with the responsive nature of it.
- danielodio 14y ago
  What did you think? It's a new blogging platform called SETT. I'm sure @tynan the creator would love to get your thoughts on it. - DROdio
tomasien 14y ago
The absolute best way to buy stocks is to wait until something happens in the market that seems to be based on emotions and then bet the other way. 2 best examples I can remember where I noticed this was when Citi was at $1 despite the fact we knew the bailout was coming (I bought, but not enough) and when Facebook was at $17 because investors kept getting hammered with "Facebook hasn't figured out mobile" shit over and over. Didn't buy then because I was super broke (http://tommy.authpad.com/the-one-year-anniversary-of-sleeping-in-the-freezing-cold-without-power-or-heat-in-the-middle-of-a-crime-scene http://tommy.authpad.com/the-one-year-anniversary-of-sleepin...)
- eCa 14y ago
  Of course, the difficulty is in picking the low point.
  - tomasien 14y ago
    Oh I don't mean try to find the bottom! I mean try to find when something seems to be happening purely out of emotion, as in a stock going down for no discernible reason short of a weird investment environment I.E. FB and all its bad press post IPO and CITI pre-bailout
  - tomasien 14y ago
    Finding the bottom doesn't matter, that's impossible so don't even think about that. Just say "the market doesn't seem to be operating rationally today, I'll bet against it"
    - djloche 14y ago
      There's always support at 0.
eCa 14y ago
That page is in an eternal redirect loop (FF19/Win7). With a redirect to self every three seconds it is not easy to read.
- elteto 14y ago
  Also in Chrome / W8
  - MattGrommes 14y ago
    I had to hit Escape a bunch of times before I caught it at the right time and it stopped.
- mixedbit 14y ago
  Yes, in Firefox it is impossible to scroll down.
  - tynan 14y ago
    Hey, I created the blogging platform he's running on. Would you mind giving me some details on the scrolling problem you're having? Do arrows, mouse wheel, and scroll bar all not work?
    - baking 14y ago
      Firefox 19.0 and XP here with cookies and javascript enabled. I can scroll down but it jumps back up to the top and nothing I can think of (holding the scroll bar fixed, etc.) keeps it from bouncing up.
    - mixedbit 14y ago
      @baking description was more accurate. While scrolling, the browser jumped back up. But it works now, so it must have been caused by a bug in their redirect loop that is described in this thread, not by the blogging platform bug.
- tynan 14y ago
moakleaf 14y ago
Well... If the profit margin guidance for the next quarters is correct, and they are not hit by anything unexpected, the company should be trading at around 15 P/E by the end of 2013 at the current share price. Which would be great... But that means that there isn't likely to be any significant share price growth until then. One problem with that analysis is that they have overpromised and underdelivered a bit in the past. Another issue is that they only got 6000 new reservations in the last quarter. For them to have significant growth they need a lot more. And this is in a quarter where they were awarded car of the year and got fantastic reviews (except that NYT one). I bet these reasons, combined with a standard sell-off of a stock that has increased by a lot the last quarter, and that you now really have to be patient for another or two quarters before anything significant happens, is why the stock is down today. Personally, I am disappointed by the number of new reservations. I think it is far too low for a car with such stellar reviews. I had hoped they would have more than 20000 reservations currently. 15-16000 is not even enough to use their full capacity for the year, so they need to start selling more. I had also hoped the production rate would have been higher. 400 cars per week is also not enough in the long run. Elon talked about reaching 500 by the summer, and that really isn't that great. He also said that theoretically they didn't need to get more reservations in 2013, as they would have enough to use up their capacity. That also worried me. I have seen analyst say they will produce 30000 cars in 2014. If that is the case, the share price is really not going to move a lot from current levels. Because the growth is just too small. So I think a lot of shareholders feel like me, that the growth isn't significant enough. I guess we need to wait another couple of quarters before we can say anything.
- Shivetya 14y ago
  It is a hundred thousand dollar, its not like the market is large. Sure there are many buyers out there with good money to spend but there are far more exciting cars in that price range. Finally, its electric ONLY. Supercharger network or not, your tied to cord. To put their numbers in perspective versus their losses and debts, they want to sell nearly twenty thousand cards this year. Mercedes sold more than that in January just in the United States. Toyota sells that many cars in four days, US alone! There are also stories about supplier problems, something small volume cars suffer a lot. Sure the luxury market doesn't put up those numbers but the brands there are well established and storied. Tesla is neither. Tesla's fate is probably to be bought by Mercedes or similar. Someone who has the ability to put a large number of these on the road, with a large support network, and a trusted name
codex 14y ago
The lesson I draw from Tesla is that it's possible (even straightforward) to produce an amazing car if you're willing to lose a ton of money on each one and your competitors (mainstream auto makers) aren't. I say this because Tesla has, to date, been poor at controlling costs, enough so that the feds (Tesla's creditors) are concerned about their balance sheet, and Wall Street has hammered the stock. For example, Tesla used to lose $30M a month. Last quarter it brought in hundreds of millions more in revenue, but still lost ~$30M a month. At some point, they hope to stop losing money, but then they're about to create two new products which will also incur large R&D costs. To date, Tesla has lost about a billion dollars, or $50K per car sold, assuming they sell 20K cars next year. So to a consumer, Tesla's cars look amazing compared to what else is on the market (after all, they're losing money on each one, which their competitors are unwilling to do); to an accountant, the company looks worrysome, and to an investor, the company looks like either a tremendous deal or a fantastic lemon, depending on the investors views about the size of the market, competition, and ability to control costs. At current rates, they will have more liabilities than assets three months. Once Tesla can reign in their costs they can rewrite this story, and there's a good chance they can. Whether they can make electric cars more cheaply than mainstream automakers in the long term is, in my mind, an open question.
- dman 14y ago
  Entering a market with entrenched players is hard. Your competitors have economies of scale and you dont.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  Note that Toyota also lost money for several years on the Prius as is GM on the Volt http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/10/us-generalmotors-autos-volt-idUSBRE88904J20120910 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/10/us-generalmotors-a... - there is a learning curve to play in this space. Since everyone is keeping their technology private it won't be cheaper for later entrants. There will be an experience curve for the manufacturing which will lead to it becoming increasingly productive and cheaper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects#The_experience_curve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects#The_ex... As a comparison Boeing is reported to have an experienced a curve of 84% (costs decreasing 16% every time production units doubled) on the 777. Tesla doesn't have the legacy manufacturing infrastructure and can use far more automated methods, especially if they manufacture a large amount of the car themselves instead of outsourcing. It will be interesting to see what Tesla's numbers turn out to be.
rdl 14y ago
I love Tesla as a company, but TSLA as a stock is broken. There seems to be serious manipulation going on -- right before long annual options expiry, the price drops, then pops right after. There was shadiness the previous year related to a drop, then announcing a departure of some mid-level exec, then a pop. I generally stick to options for playing things like AAPL, TSLA, etc. where it will move based on some specific accomplishments, but TSLA is one I own as stock directly.
quux 14y ago
Sometimes I feel like Tesla is the NeXT of cars. Technologically impressive, but ahead of its time. In 15 years electric cars will have much more market share, question is, will Tesla still be there leading the pack? Maybe they can reverse acquire some ailing car company ;)
- dman 14y ago
  In an alternative fictional universe Elon will be hired by Honda to survive a near death spiral and will then bring in the team from Tesla to create Honda 2.0
kirpekar 14y ago
At the end of the day, you are only "betting". When you know something for sure, I'll pay attention.
- danielodio 14y ago
  When we know it for sure, the stock will be in a much different place. - DROdio
tokenadult 14y ago
From the blog post, "Tesla stock is down almost 10% today, after its 2012 earnings report became public. Tesla missed its projections and investors hammered the stock in response." I guess that's what you call contrarian investing. Sometimes that works just fine. Sometimes that doesn't work so well. People who have extra money to buy speculative stocks can make their own call on this, I guess. I found it interesting that there were many news reports about the Tesla fourth quarter results call yesterday. "Tesla 4Q net loss widens on costs for new car" http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-02-20/tesla-4q-net-loss-widens-on-costs-for-new-car http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-02-20/tesla-4q-net-loss-... "As Tesla Eyes Profit, Elon Musk Wants to Punch Himself in the Face" http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-20/as-tesla-eyes-profit-elon-musk-wants-to-punch-himself-in-the-face http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-20/as-tesla-eye... "Loss Widens at Electric-Car Maker" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323549204578316082000311770.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732354920457831... "Tesla’s Earnings Indicate Some Customer Cancellations" http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/teslas-earnings-indicate-some-customer-cancellations/ http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/teslas-earnings-indic... "Tesla posts revenue of $306 million, larger-than-expected loss" http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autos-tesla-2012-earnings-announced-20130220,0,7725.story http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autos-tesla-2... So, yeah, some investors will read all that and still bet on Tesla's stock having a rising value over their investment time frame. But customers who are thinking about buying the car might wonder if the company has enough financial strength, while losing money on every car it sells, to provide long-term customer service and the promised completion of the Supercharger network, etc. If it's your money, spend it how you like, but be sure to diversify for maximum safety.
Skoofoo 14y ago
It's not hard to bet on a massively successful entrepreneur.
3am 14y ago
The idea that TSLA's valuation should be modeled in the same was as Ford, GM, et al is so preposterous that I have trouble comprehending how someone can make the point in an honest fashion. I think TSLA is richly valued and I would not buy it now (nor do I own shares), but saying it should have a similar P/S or EV/FCF to F is like saying that VMWare is overvalued by virtue of it having a higher valuation than HP.
brown9-2 14y ago
Of course, every other person who bought stock in a company after bad news where the company ended up going on to fail had the same reasoning: - critics don't understand the master plan - I'm betting on CEO X, and the market just doesn't understand him/her
Scaevolus 14y ago
The page refreshes itself continuously. How did you even manage that? (I block 3rd party cookies)
- tynan 14y ago
  I created the blogging platform he's using... the redirect is supposed to happen once to set a cookie from the platform, but apparently isn't working. Would you mind telling me what browser/version/os you use so that I can replicate and fix this?
  - davecardwell 14y ago
    Not the grandparent, but it does it in Google Chrome v26.0.1410.10 dev on Mac OS X Lion v10.8.2 I have third-party cookies blocked.
    - tynan 14y ago
      Thanks for the info and sorry for the bad reading experience... looking into it now.
6ren 14y ago
Elon isn't competing against Ford. He's competing against Exxon. EDIT mkt cap: Ford 47.24B https://www.google.com/search?q=f https://www.google.com/search?q=f Exxon 398.83B https://www.google.com/search?q=xom https://www.google.com/search?q=xom
- thematt 14y ago
  Here's a contrarian investment approach: if what you say is true, then buy Exxon. The only way electric vehicles and the "green" movement maintain momentum is if oil prices stay high. Consequently, Exxon wins.
- Lambdanaut 14y ago
  There's not really a dichotomy here. He's competing against both.
blumentopf 14y ago
A minor correction to this article, to the best of my knowledge Mercedes-Benz uses batteries produced by Deutsche Accumotive (a joint-venture of Daimler and Evonik) both in the smart electric drive and the forthcoming B-Class E-Cell. The Tesla batteries were only used in pre-production smart electric drives, as a replacement for the old ZEBRA NaNiCl batteries.
niggler 14y ago
Full Disclosure: I shorted a few weeks ago when the NYT article came out and covered today. I would not bet on TSLA the stock just yet. They can be successful and profitable and yet still not come close to the current stock price (P/E contraction, future equity dilution). Most importantly, the thing which stemmed the drop today was a short-sale restriction (a circuit breaker after it falls 10%) What would be a buy signal for me is when the car cost can be brought down to the 35-40K range (which, based on reports from mercedes benz and bmw, is the most profitable segment)
chris_mahan 14y ago
I betted on Elon and bought TSLA at 16, 22, 28, and 33. When I saw the CEO of Toyota with Elon behind the same podium, I knew he had been vetted by the best in the business. Ref: http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/lh9s3JaOMRr/Gov+Arnold+Schwarzenegger+Tesla+Motors+Make/lVfYHyKChJZ/Elon+Musk http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/lh9s3JaOMRr/Gov+Arnold+Schwar...
colmvp 14y ago
I think it's weird to bet on the person instead of the company. I'd hate to be in a company or team where outsiders focused on one person.
- jasonyeh 14y ago
  That has its peeves/perks, people don't want to say they work for apple anymore just to avoid the attention; a company of one.
timdorr 14y ago
From the article he references: "Are there that many luxury car buyers out there who are willing to live with the limitations of an electric car? It seems doubtful to me." Limitations? What limitations? I've been driving mine for 2 months and it's been a freeing experience. It doesn't go as far? My old ICE didn't go as far on a tank and required 10x the cost to fill up. I no longer feel guilty about driving to the grocery store a few miles away because I know I'm running my car at it's least efficient state. I just took a trip this weekend to some relatives in another part of my state (GA) with no concerns about range or having to compromise to extend it. Google Maps in the car has already saved me many times from heading into bad traffic (I would never remember to check traffic on my phone beforehand). Honestly, if I'm being limited in some way, I'm not seeing it.
- untog 14y ago
  Limitations? What limitations? They are overwhelmingly obvious. The simple fact is that 'filling up' is harder to do- there are far, far fewer stations, and the actual act of charging takes a not inconsiderable amount of time. The cost argument is valid, but the point is that luxury car owners are less likely to worry about the price of gas, given that they are already rich enough to buy a luxury car. I'm not saying you are wrong in your assertions, clearly the car suits you well. But to suggest that there are no limitations flies in the face of all evidence.
  - revelation 14y ago
    What evidence? The evidence shows very clearly that the majority oft people drive less than 80 miles a day. To suggest that ICE cars have no limitations in these ranges does indeed fly in the face. of all evidence.
    - untog 14y ago
      But you've just gone from "no limitations" to "no limitations as long as you travel within 80 miles". So 80 miles should be considered a limitation, no?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
rabbitonrails 14y ago
Elon is betting on SpaceX.
droithomme 14y ago
I'm looking forward to purchasing a Volkswagen XL1. http://theage.drive.com.au/motor-reviews/worlds-most-efficient-car-20130222-2ev0a.html http://theage.drive.com.au/motor-reviews/worlds-most-efficie... Since it gets 261 MPG, I can drive across the entire United States and only make one stop for refueling, using around 9 gallons of diesel for the whole trip. Driving with a friend at 60mph and bringing a sack lunch, we can even make the trip in only 38 hours since there will be no overnight recharging stops. And when the 5.5kWh Lithium Ion battery fails, it will only cost 1/15 the replacement cost of a 85kWh Lithium Ion battery.
scottschulthess 14y ago
"Tesla absolutely will get to Ford's volume production numbers with this strategy" really? maybe eventually. we are a ways off from mass market all electric vehicles.

124 points by danielodio 14y ago

My problem with the "I'm betting on Elon" approach is that the market is clearly already betting on Elon, to the point of somewhere between 10-40x a sensible company valuation. If you buy now, you're betting on a clearly ridiculously-optimistic valuation being not quite ridiculously-optimistic enough. You're not the first person to have considered that the company might be successful and grow exponentially in the future -- that's already priced in to the stock! Talking about long-term bets, it would be interesting to read about how the electric car future might tie into the driverless car future. My understanding is that we'll have many fewer cars around in the driverless future, even if the cars that we do have are electric.

rthomas6 14y ago
Exactly. Tesla being successful in the future doesn't necessarily tie in to making money on the stock, except over the scale of decades.
- danielodio 14y ago
  I'm taking that type of view on this stock. - DROdio
sachingulaya 14y ago
Investors are surprisingly pessimistic. I am heavily invested in TSLA. I got out right before earnings call because CEOs like Elon don't seem to care about meeting Wall Street's expectations. I'll buy more in a week or two when the market is more favorable. Almost all of the criticism I read of TSLA is regarding their financials. There is a lot of room for sentiment and investor confidence to improve. Things I care about(like Elon's track record & ridiculous amounts of ambition, improvements in battery technology, not using dealerships, the supercharger network, etc.) don't ever get mentioned. Wall street seems to care about whether they'll be able to meet production goals, the amount of cash they have on hand to continue operations, etc. Most importantly, as more consumers take delivery of their Model S' I'm expecting investor confidence and awareness to improve. They'll "see" the demand with their own eyes. My father is already mentioning to me that his friends are seeing Model S' pop up around town and people are talking about them. They want to know what it is. It's extremely common for retail investors to buy stock based on products that they see being used. You're right in that I'm betting solely based on investor confidence improving. In my opinion, there is no other metric on which to price a stock.
- supercanuck 14y ago
  I think the NYT affair started cementing the idea of brand loyalty into the minds of their customers. US consumers love an underdog they can get behind in an "us vs them" type storyline.
  - danielodio 14y ago
    The NYT article is the best thing that could've happened to Tesla. Any news is good news. Being irrelevant is the thing that kills startups. - DROdio
- carbocation 14y ago
  Did you get out, or did you purchase shorts? Getting out seems to be painful from a taxation perspective, assuming you're net positive.
  - dopamean 14y ago
    You hit the nail on the head with your question here. This guy does not sound like someone who really know what he's doing in the market. If you had already made the decision that you believe in Tesla and want to invest there is no reason to be buying and selling the stock based off of earnings reports. Particularly if you believe (as this guy does) that the CEO is not particularly concerned with Street estimates. Just buy and hold.
    - jusben1369 14y ago
      Well there are a lot of people who are long on a volatile stock who will get in and out to maximize their return in/cost basis etc. Holding and never exiting is another option but hardly makes you "unsavvy" if you're trading in and out. Having said that I agree options would be a better strategy if you feel comfortable that you can predict the short term market direction.
    - RobAtticus 14y ago
      I too got out before earnings, and I'm not really sure where you get the idea that he doesn't know what he's doing. I got out because I was up 20% (my target when I initiated the position) and my trailing stop was hit around the time the NYT story came out. I had set the trailing stop prior to earnings because their earnings typically lead to sell-offs because they aren't profitable (yet) and they were going to come up short of their initial estimates for cars delivered 2012 (even though it was revised down, people would still hold it against them). It had had a nice run in the weeks prior, so a correction seemed reasonably plausible anyway. It's just how the market goes, and I figured (correctly) that even if my stop got hit, it meant I would have an opportunity later to get back in at a lower price. I believe in Tesla, but I also realize that there are going to be dips along the way that I can capitalize on. I think they'll turn a profit this quarter, and if they keep on track, their earnings reports won't be as volatile (at least in the negative direction) and I won't sell beforehand.
millstone 14y ago
The market is betting more heavily against Elon. TSLA is the ninth most shorted stock - see http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3062-nasdaqshort-highlites.html#shortF http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3062-nasdaqshort-hig... . It's so heavily shorted that there's a possibility of a short squeeze, which I would find quite delicious - not because I own TSLA, but because I want to see people hoping for failure get screwed.
- cryowaffle 14y ago
  Even a stock that is ninth most heavily shorted isn't necessary heavily against. The market is very very very long TSLA, they have bought into the idea and given it a lofty valuation as a result. People who are short are just balancing the optimism... it's not like they just want failure for failure's sake.
- damoncali 14y ago
  What makes you think that being short on a stock is the same as hoping for failure? I hope Tesla is fantastically successful, but I would consider shorting it if I were doing such things these days. They're two totally separate things.
  - millstone 14y ago
    I don't think they're separate. Shorting a stock means you make money from the stock's decline, and therefore from the company's failure. You hope to make money from your investment, so you hope for the company to fail, at least indirectly. Furthermore, shorting a stock can harm the firm. Big short positions drive down the stock price, which affects public sentiment (their stock is down, they must be failing, I won't buy their car because they may not be here next year), makes it harder for them to retain employees, makes it harder to raise money by issuing more stock or bonds, etc. By shorting a stock, you are contributing to that company's failure (though of course the effect is miniscule for retail investors like me). I would not buy even a undervalued stock for a tobacco company, because I don't want to support producers of tobacco products. And I don't want to impede progress in electric cars by shorting their producers, even if I think their stocks are overvalued. There's plenty of other investments available that align my finances with my hopes.
Tyrant505 14y ago
When you buy stock, you should scale in. He is clearly someone comfortable now with his purchase, if it dips, as far as he is concerned its on sale, scale in.
enraged_camel 14y ago
>>You're not the first person to have considered that the company might be successful and grow exponentially in the future -- that's already priced in to the stock! This is actually a flawed view, because it assumes perfect information by all market participants. George Soros goes into quite a bit of detail in the second part of his General Theory of Reflexivity. You should read it. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/dbc0e0c6-bfe9-11de-aed2-00144feab49a.html#axzz2KKjKwq14 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/dbc0e0c6-bfe9-11de-aed2-00144feab4... Relevant excerpt: "Let me state the two cardinal principles of my conceptual framework as it applies to the financial markets. First, market prices always distort the underlying fundamentals. The degree of distortion may range from the negligible to the significant. This is in direct contradiction to the efficient market hypothesis, which maintains that market prices accurately reflect all the available information. Second, instead of playing a purely passive role in reflecting an underlying reality, financial markets also have an active role: they can affect the so-called fundamentals they are supposed to reflect. That is the point that behavioral economics is missing. It focuses only on one half of a reflexive process: the mispricing of financial assets; it does not concern itself with the impact of the mispricing on the so-called fundamentals. There are various feedback mechanisms at work which may validate the mispricing of financial assets, at least for a while. This may give the impression that markets are often right, but the mechanism at work is very different from the one proposed by the prevailing paradigm. I claim that financial markets have ways of altering the fundamentals and that may bring about a closer correspondence between market prices and the underlying fundamentals. Contrast that with the efficient market hypothesis, which claims that markets always accurately reflect reality and automatically tend towards equilibrium. There are various pathways by which the mispricing of financial assets can affect the so-called fundamentals. The most widely travelled are those which involve the use of leverage—both debt and equity leveraging. These pathways deserve a lot more research."

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

There is a lot of Elon love on HN - but the analysis here is fundamentally correct - bet on winners. And Elon will either win big or blow up big. Its a pretty good bet IMO. And I am amazed to see the "relentlessly resourceful" tag be dropped casually in here - even if the author is part of the SV-mafia its still amazing what impact one mans' essays are having. So that makes two people to bet on ...

VeejayRampay 14y ago

Besides the stocket market evaluations and all those considerations, I have to say that I am amazed how spoiled America is sometimes. How I wish we had such an entrepreneur in Europe, someone willing to shake the status quo and speed up the process of making the future happen. Tesla is a company that is trying to make AMERICAN electric cars, he should encouraged and cheered. People with some money and liberal views should be jumping on those cars, it's History in the making, a true revolution. I really hope he suceeds, that'd be an encouraging sign that science and technology can actually have a good impact on climate and consumer practices vis à vis greenhouse gases and the approach to modernity.

omonra 14y ago
But he is encouraged and cheered - the valuation of his company vs Ford is precisely the indication of it. Nothing says "I believe in this guy" like actually putting money down & buying the company stock.
monkeyfacebag 14y ago
> he should encouraged and cheered. Is that not happening already? From the article: "Tesla's current market value is 250 times higher than it would be if it were being valued as a car manufacturer rather than an idea whose time is about to come." Of course, we're also talking about a company that received a $465 million loan from US taxpayers so it's not like we're hanging him out to dry.
- VeejayRampay 14y ago
  You're right about that. I was actually addressing the general attitude of the American public as well as pundits' and car enthusiasts and writers with regard to Tesla and the immense promises it brings to the game. I don't know, I might just be naive about this but god, if Tesla were a French company created by an awesome entrepreneur from my homeland, I'd be over the moon and overlooking the little mistakes, the agitation over the tiny tremors of the stock market. Tesla Motors is bigger than "reports from the market", in my opinion it's a total game changer in a world that hasn't evolved much in the past 40/50 years (at least in terms of groundbreaking mutations in the core technology), the automobile industry and something that I am (obviously) really excited about. Tesla speaks VOLUMES in the rest of the world about America's capacity to still be #1 in terms of science, innovation, vision at the beginning of the 21st century, I just wish people were more enthusiastically backing the company at all times, this is something the USA should be proud of. Then again, the article addressing the financial/economical aspect of it all, which makes my comment off-topic and on the "that's cute" side :)

BrainScraps 14y ago

I'm also a Musketeer. I think the company as a whole executes brilliantly, but I decided to allocate a good chunk of my (measly) portfolio to TSLA as a result of Elon's track record and vision. I wonder if we'll soon see a prospectus for the "Musk Fund" containing only companies that he's been involved in...

dkroy 14y ago

My first thought for this was, wow cool looking site. I then played around with the responsive nature of it.

danielodio 14y ago
What did you think? It's a new blogging platform called SETT. I'm sure @tynan the creator would love to get your thoughts on it. - DROdio

tomasien 14y ago

The absolute best way to buy stocks is to wait until something happens in the market that seems to be based on emotions and then bet the other way. 2 best examples I can remember where I noticed this was when Citi was at $1 despite the fact we knew the bailout was coming (I bought, but not enough) and when Facebook was at $17 because investors kept getting hammered with "Facebook hasn't figured out mobile" shit over and over. Didn't buy then because I was super broke (http://tommy.authpad.com/the-one-year-anniversary-of-sleeping-in-the-freezing-cold-without-power-or-heat-in-the-middle-of-a-crime-scene http://tommy.authpad.com/the-one-year-anniversary-of-sleepin...)

eCa 14y ago
Of course, the difficulty is in picking the low point.
- tomasien 14y ago
  Oh I don't mean try to find the bottom! I mean try to find when something seems to be happening purely out of emotion, as in a stock going down for no discernible reason short of a weird investment environment I.E. FB and all its bad press post IPO and CITI pre-bailout
- tomasien 14y ago
  Finding the bottom doesn't matter, that's impossible so don't even think about that. Just say "the market doesn't seem to be operating rationally today, I'll bet against it"
  - djloche 14y ago
    There's always support at 0.

eCa 14y ago

That page is in an eternal redirect loop (FF19/Win7). With a redirect to self every three seconds it is not easy to read.

elteto 14y ago
Also in Chrome / W8
- MattGrommes 14y ago
  I had to hit Escape a bunch of times before I caught it at the right time and it stopped.
mixedbit 14y ago
Yes, in Firefox it is impossible to scroll down.
- tynan 14y ago
  Hey, I created the blogging platform he's running on. Would you mind giving me some details on the scrolling problem you're having? Do arrows, mouse wheel, and scroll bar all not work?
  - baking 14y ago
    Firefox 19.0 and XP here with cookies and javascript enabled. I can scroll down but it jumps back up to the top and nothing I can think of (holding the scroll bar fixed, etc.) keeps it from bouncing up.
  - mixedbit 14y ago
    @baking description was more accurate. While scrolling, the browser jumped back up. But it works now, so it must have been caused by a bug in their redirect loop that is described in this thread, not by the blogging platform bug.
tynan 14y ago

moakleaf 14y ago

Well... If the profit margin guidance for the next quarters is correct, and they are not hit by anything unexpected, the company should be trading at around 15 P/E by the end of 2013 at the current share price. Which would be great... But that means that there isn't likely to be any significant share price growth until then. One problem with that analysis is that they have overpromised and underdelivered a bit in the past. Another issue is that they only got 6000 new reservations in the last quarter. For them to have significant growth they need a lot more. And this is in a quarter where they were awarded car of the year and got fantastic reviews (except that NYT one). I bet these reasons, combined with a standard sell-off of a stock that has increased by a lot the last quarter, and that you now really have to be patient for another or two quarters before anything significant happens, is why the stock is down today. Personally, I am disappointed by the number of new reservations. I think it is far too low for a car with such stellar reviews. I had hoped they would have more than 20000 reservations currently. 15-16000 is not even enough to use their full capacity for the year, so they need to start selling more. I had also hoped the production rate would have been higher. 400 cars per week is also not enough in the long run. Elon talked about reaching 500 by the summer, and that really isn't that great. He also said that theoretically they didn't need to get more reservations in 2013, as they would have enough to use up their capacity. That also worried me. I have seen analyst say they will produce 30000 cars in 2014. If that is the case, the share price is really not going to move a lot from current levels. Because the growth is just too small. So I think a lot of shareholders feel like me, that the growth isn't significant enough. I guess we need to wait another couple of quarters before we can say anything.

Shivetya 14y ago
It is a hundred thousand dollar, its not like the market is large. Sure there are many buyers out there with good money to spend but there are far more exciting cars in that price range. Finally, its electric ONLY. Supercharger network or not, your tied to cord. To put their numbers in perspective versus their losses and debts, they want to sell nearly twenty thousand cards this year. Mercedes sold more than that in January just in the United States. Toyota sells that many cars in four days, US alone! There are also stories about supplier problems, something small volume cars suffer a lot. Sure the luxury market doesn't put up those numbers but the brands there are well established and storied. Tesla is neither. Tesla's fate is probably to be bought by Mercedes or similar. Someone who has the ability to put a large number of these on the road, with a large support network, and a trusted name

codex 14y ago

The lesson I draw from Tesla is that it's possible (even straightforward) to produce an amazing car if you're willing to lose a ton of money on each one and your competitors (mainstream auto makers) aren't. I say this because Tesla has, to date, been poor at controlling costs, enough so that the feds (Tesla's creditors) are concerned about their balance sheet, and Wall Street has hammered the stock. For example, Tesla used to lose $30M a month. Last quarter it brought in hundreds of millions more in revenue, but still lost ~$30M a month. At some point, they hope to stop losing money, but then they're about to create two new products which will also incur large R&D costs. To date, Tesla has lost about a billion dollars, or $50K per car sold, assuming they sell 20K cars next year. So to a consumer, Tesla's cars look amazing compared to what else is on the market (after all, they're losing money on each one, which their competitors are unwilling to do); to an accountant, the company looks worrysome, and to an investor, the company looks like either a tremendous deal or a fantastic lemon, depending on the investors views about the size of the market, competition, and ability to control costs. At current rates, they will have more liabilities than assets three months. Once Tesla can reign in their costs they can rewrite this story, and there's a good chance they can. Whether they can make electric cars more cheaply than mainstream automakers in the long term is, in my mind, an open question.

dman 14y ago
Entering a market with entrenched players is hard. Your competitors have economies of scale and you dont.
rogerbinns 14y ago
Note that Toyota also lost money for several years on the Prius as is GM on the Volt http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/10/us-generalmotors-autos-volt-idUSBRE88904J20120910 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/10/us-generalmotors-a... - there is a learning curve to play in this space. Since everyone is keeping their technology private it won't be cheaper for later entrants. There will be an experience curve for the manufacturing which will lead to it becoming increasingly productive and cheaper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects#The_experience_curve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects#The_ex... As a comparison Boeing is reported to have an experienced a curve of 84% (costs decreasing 16% every time production units doubled) on the 777. Tesla doesn't have the legacy manufacturing infrastructure and can use far more automated methods, especially if they manufacture a large amount of the car themselves instead of outsourcing. It will be interesting to see what Tesla's numbers turn out to be.

rdl 14y ago

I love Tesla as a company, but TSLA as a stock is broken. There seems to be serious manipulation going on -- right before long annual options expiry, the price drops, then pops right after. There was shadiness the previous year related to a drop, then announcing a departure of some mid-level exec, then a pop. I generally stick to options for playing things like AAPL, TSLA, etc. where it will move based on some specific accomplishments, but TSLA is one I own as stock directly.

quux 14y ago

Sometimes I feel like Tesla is the NeXT of cars. Technologically impressive, but ahead of its time. In 15 years electric cars will have much more market share, question is, will Tesla still be there leading the pack? Maybe they can reverse acquire some ailing car company ;)

dman 14y ago
In an alternative fictional universe Elon will be hired by Honda to survive a near death spiral and will then bring in the team from Tesla to create Honda 2.0

kirpekar 14y ago

At the end of the day, you are only "betting". When you know something for sure, I'll pay attention.

danielodio 14y ago
When we know it for sure, the stock will be in a much different place. - DROdio

tokenadult 14y ago

From the blog post, "Tesla stock is down almost 10% today, after its 2012 earnings report became public. Tesla missed its projections and investors hammered the stock in response." I guess that's what you call contrarian investing. Sometimes that works just fine. Sometimes that doesn't work so well. People who have extra money to buy speculative stocks can make their own call on this, I guess. I found it interesting that there were many news reports about the Tesla fourth quarter results call yesterday. "Tesla 4Q net loss widens on costs for new car" http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-02-20/tesla-4q-net-loss-widens-on-costs-for-new-car http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-02-20/tesla-4q-net-loss-... "As Tesla Eyes Profit, Elon Musk Wants to Punch Himself in the Face" http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-20/as-tesla-eyes-profit-elon-musk-wants-to-punch-himself-in-the-face http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-20/as-tesla-eye... "Loss Widens at Electric-Car Maker" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323549204578316082000311770.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732354920457831... "Tesla’s Earnings Indicate Some Customer Cancellations" http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/teslas-earnings-indicate-some-customer-cancellations/ http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/teslas-earnings-indic... "Tesla posts revenue of $306 million, larger-than-expected loss" http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autos-tesla-2012-earnings-announced-20130220,0,7725.story http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autos-tesla-2... So, yeah, some investors will read all that and still bet on Tesla's stock having a rising value over their investment time frame. But customers who are thinking about buying the car might wonder if the company has enough financial strength, while losing money on every car it sells, to provide long-term customer service and the promised completion of the Supercharger network, etc. If it's your money, spend it how you like, but be sure to diversify for maximum safety.

Skoofoo 14y ago

It's not hard to bet on a massively successful entrepreneur.

3am 14y ago

The idea that TSLA's valuation should be modeled in the same was as Ford, GM, et al is so preposterous that I have trouble comprehending how someone can make the point in an honest fashion. I think TSLA is richly valued and I would not buy it now (nor do I own shares), but saying it should have a similar P/S or EV/FCF to F is like saying that VMWare is overvalued by virtue of it having a higher valuation than HP.

brown9-2 14y ago

Of course, every other person who bought stock in a company after bad news where the company ended up going on to fail had the same reasoning: - critics don't understand the master plan - I'm betting on CEO X, and the market just doesn't understand him/her

Scaevolus 14y ago

The page refreshes itself continuously. How did you even manage that? (I block 3rd party cookies)

tynan 14y ago
I created the blogging platform he's using... the redirect is supposed to happen once to set a cookie from the platform, but apparently isn't working. Would you mind telling me what browser/version/os you use so that I can replicate and fix this?
- davecardwell 14y ago
  Not the grandparent, but it does it in Google Chrome v26.0.1410.10 dev on Mac OS X Lion v10.8.2 I have third-party cookies blocked.
  - tynan 14y ago
    Thanks for the info and sorry for the bad reading experience... looking into it now.

6ren 14y ago

Elon isn't competing against Ford. He's competing against Exxon. EDIT mkt cap: Ford 47.24B https://www.google.com/search?q=f https://www.google.com/search?q=f Exxon 398.83B https://www.google.com/search?q=xom https://www.google.com/search?q=xom

thematt 14y ago
Here's a contrarian investment approach: if what you say is true, then buy Exxon. The only way electric vehicles and the "green" movement maintain momentum is if oil prices stay high. Consequently, Exxon wins.
Lambdanaut 14y ago
There's not really a dichotomy here. He's competing against both.

blumentopf 14y ago

A minor correction to this article, to the best of my knowledge Mercedes-Benz uses batteries produced by Deutsche Accumotive (a joint-venture of Daimler and Evonik) both in the smart electric drive and the forthcoming B-Class E-Cell. The Tesla batteries were only used in pre-production smart electric drives, as a replacement for the old ZEBRA NaNiCl batteries.

niggler 14y ago

Full Disclosure: I shorted a few weeks ago when the NYT article came out and covered today. I would not bet on TSLA the stock just yet. They can be successful and profitable and yet still not come close to the current stock price (P/E contraction, future equity dilution). Most importantly, the thing which stemmed the drop today was a short-sale restriction (a circuit breaker after it falls 10%) What would be a buy signal for me is when the car cost can be brought down to the 35-40K range (which, based on reports from mercedes benz and bmw, is the most profitable segment)

chris_mahan 14y ago

I betted on Elon and bought TSLA at 16, 22, 28, and 33. When I saw the CEO of Toyota with Elon behind the same podium, I knew he had been vetted by the best in the business. Ref: http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/lh9s3JaOMRr/Gov+Arnold+Schwarzenegger+Tesla+Motors+Make/lVfYHyKChJZ/Elon+Musk http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/lh9s3JaOMRr/Gov+Arnold+Schwar...

colmvp 14y ago

I think it's weird to bet on the person instead of the company. I'd hate to be in a company or team where outsiders focused on one person.

jasonyeh 14y ago
That has its peeves/perks, people don't want to say they work for apple anymore just to avoid the attention; a company of one.

timdorr 14y ago

From the article he references: "Are there that many luxury car buyers out there who are willing to live with the limitations of an electric car? It seems doubtful to me." Limitations? What limitations? I've been driving mine for 2 months and it's been a freeing experience. It doesn't go as far? My old ICE didn't go as far on a tank and required 10x the cost to fill up. I no longer feel guilty about driving to the grocery store a few miles away because I know I'm running my car at it's least efficient state. I just took a trip this weekend to some relatives in another part of my state (GA) with no concerns about range or having to compromise to extend it. Google Maps in the car has already saved me many times from heading into bad traffic (I would never remember to check traffic on my phone beforehand). Honestly, if I'm being limited in some way, I'm not seeing it.

untog 14y ago
Limitations? What limitations? They are overwhelmingly obvious. The simple fact is that 'filling up' is harder to do- there are far, far fewer stations, and the actual act of charging takes a not inconsiderable amount of time. The cost argument is valid, but the point is that luxury car owners are less likely to worry about the price of gas, given that they are already rich enough to buy a luxury car. I'm not saying you are wrong in your assertions, clearly the car suits you well. But to suggest that there are no limitations flies in the face of all evidence.
- revelation 14y ago
  What evidence? The evidence shows very clearly that the majority oft people drive less than 80 miles a day. To suggest that ICE cars have no limitations in these ranges does indeed fly in the face. of all evidence.
  - untog 14y ago
    But you've just gone from "no limitations" to "no limitations as long as you travel within 80 miles". So 80 miles should be considered a limitation, no?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

rabbitonrails 14y ago

Elon is betting on SpaceX.

droithomme 14y ago

I'm looking forward to purchasing a Volkswagen XL1. http://theage.drive.com.au/motor-reviews/worlds-most-efficient-car-20130222-2ev0a.html http://theage.drive.com.au/motor-reviews/worlds-most-efficie... Since it gets 261 MPG, I can drive across the entire United States and only make one stop for refueling, using around 9 gallons of diesel for the whole trip. Driving with a friend at 60mph and bringing a sack lunch, we can even make the trip in only 38 hours since there will be no overnight recharging stops. And when the 5.5kWh Lithium Ion battery fails, it will only cost 1/15 the replacement cost of a 85kWh Lithium Ion battery.

scottschulthess 14y ago

"Tesla absolutely will get to Ford's volume production numbers with this strategy" really? maybe eventually. we are a ways off from mass market all electric vehicles.