> For Musk to hit all of his targets, Tesla would need to build about 430,000 Model 3s by the end of next year. That’s more than all of the electric cars sold planet-wide last year.
> Even if half of the Model 3 inventory shipped to other countries, 2 U.S. sales under Musk’s targets would outpace the BMW 3 Series and the Mercedes C class—combined.
> To sell that many $35,000 sedans in the U.S. “would be absolutely unprecedented based on what we know about car markets today and how people spend their dollars,” said Salim Morsy, electric car analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “It could happen. I’m pretty sure it won’t.”
If they could pull this off this might be a great investment by Tencent.
It's also great for the car industry and environment as well. Especially considering their work on automated driving. If they get that many cars on the road it would give them a ton of data and a big advantage/lead in AI over other companies. But it could also be setting the bar too high and setting them up for failure (even though they might otherwise have nailed targets).
Regardless, as a design fan it would be interesting to see so many Teslas on the road. They are great looking cars.
Model 3's will sell literally as fast as Tesla can push them off the production line. The pent up demand for this thing is insane. Over 400,000 people have already paid $1000 deposits on their cars.
The only thing that could possibly stop Tesla is their own inability to deliver.
The model S is a beautiful car, but it's a luxury toy. I'll venture that most Model S owners have at least one additional car. If you're in the market for a 35k sedan though, you're looking for a commuter and family car that needs to be reliable. Having it out of commission for three weeks while the one repair shop within 50 miles waits for a backordered part is unacceptable.
I'm bullish on Tesla and Musk.
Edit: I should add that the product extends past the car itself. The whole direct to consumer, transparent pricing, no haggling, will win over a new generation of buyers.
My second concern is aftermarket serviceability. I would never buy a car that the manufacturer could later remotely disable (leaving me with no recourse) just because they feel I've breached their ToS or something. Tesla is far too much like Silicon Valley software companies in that regard - 99.9% of the time "you'll be fine", but the other 0.1% of the time you're screwed and there's no way to fix it.
Probably not many. So Tesla will do just fine too.
That quote implies people won't choose to buy that many Model 3's. We know there are almost that many pre-orders, so it's not a question, and it's not something to be doubted. It's a fact people will spend their money that way.
An interesting follow up would be investigating how much those subsidies cost or earn for the governments that provide them e.g. if you can provide all your electricity from homegrown hydro electricity rather than imported gasoline, then how much money does it save you to have an EV on the road. Is all that value being passed onto EV users?
It's not going to do anything great for the environment and we've been over this on previous Tesla threads (years ago). Driving electric cars instead of hybrids in areas where the electricity is primarily derived from unclean sources is not better than hybrids for the environment.
Some of the widely reported research about the power generation and electric cars is flawed [1]. Electric vehicles and hybrids come out about even in the worst markets, like Missouri [2]. But nearly everywhere else, an electric vehicle is better for the environment. People don't always consider that the electric grid is moving away from coal [3], which means your electric car will get greener during the time you own it without you having to upgrade it.
[1] http://midwestenergynews.com/2016/04/20/minnesota-study-chal...
[2] http://blog.ucsusa.org/rachael-nealer/gasoline-vs-electric-g...
[3] http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2016/08/renewab...
As of two years ago the only country where that was the case was India. Right before that, South Africa and China both became clean enough for EVs to be an environmental net positive.
Power produced in the US is some of the cleanest in the world, and getting cleaner every day as coal plants are decommissioned. We are well above the environmental net benefit line.
> Driving electric cars instead of hybrids in areas where the electricity is primarily derived from unclean sources is not better than hybrids for the environment.
There are no longer significant areas where this is the case. Even most coal markets in the US are clean enough (not sure what will happen with new de-regulations). The US, on average, is by far clean enough.
Source: I'm a hybrid vehicle powertrain engineer
ICE cars are far less efficient than fossil-fuel power plants, due to the weight/size restraints of a car-engine form-factor. Given this, electric cars actually do emit less energy than cars that burn fossil fuels.
But frankly, you're looking at this the wrong way - most electric cars are at the start of their life, and have at least 10 years' worth of use, if not 20 or more. Given that renewables will inevitably become a major portion of the electricity grid within 10 years (and realistically, almost certainly within 5), they'll become more efficient in the future, and make renewables reduce even more CO2 emissions, since they're punting petrol away, too.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16K4gNhy_AN8Eg4Ov3z7p...
They are expected to generate over 90% of their value after 2020 [0]. There's the expectation that Elon Musk will definitely deliver, that Tesla market share will not be eaten up by other carmakers when they seriously start releasing electric vehicles. The expectation that electric and not another form of energy, such as hydrogen, will dominate, etc.
There's a lot that could go wrong and a lot of unknown variables. Then again everything might turn out fine, the point is that no-one know for sure.
[0] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UBQtFu...
They've been "serious" for a long time. Chevy has been selling the Volt since 2010. If they were going to muscle out Tesla they would have done it by now. And it's not just about technology. Tesla has the customer reputation that companies like GM will never have again.
Hydrogen is unlikely to win, it's fair to say that it has already lost [1]. The hydrogen economy was mostly a myth [2]. 95% of hydrogen is made from natural gas [3].
[1] http://www.salon.com/2016/11/19/who-killed-the-hydrogen-car-...
[2] http://www.triplepundit.com/2010/02/hydrogen-is-not-the-fuel...
[3] https://energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-natura...
Tesla has been around long enough that it can no longer be replaced by a large company that just throws a ton of money and talent at it. They're too far ahead. There's no substitute for the raw amount of time Tesla has spent developing its product.
This is true of many startups, especially in a low rate environment. It's the "Terminal Value" in the calculation that drives value. Of course the Terminal Value also is extremely volatile, and changes a lot to small changes in inputs.
These rockets are far superior to their ancestors. With orbital factories around earth, and regular deliveries of colonization supplies, the network is vast, complex and efficient.
Starting with battery manufacturing on earth, all the colonization components required of earth are delivered to the orbital factories where humans and robots work in a beautiful synchronized effort to prepare each packet to Mars. Batteries and other components are delivered to orbit. They are then constructed into the various machines to be delivered to mars on the massive Falcon-33s that will haul them to Mars.
The autonomous Tesla Landers are quite complex, they have impressive batteries, but its their job which is more impressive.
Once orbiting Mars, the payload shall be unpacked and deployed to the surface, where they will continue the construction of the massive solar arrays which already have a large contingent of batteries to slurp up the solar energy and store it for all the other needs of the build-out.
The project has been going on for decades, but we are starting to see some serious results in this phase...
The original idea was laughed at, but it was all backed by sound science and a simple phased approach:
* Develop seed infra at home; Batteries, rockets, robots
* Consumerize these to fund later phases
* Proof-out orbital autonomous delivery services via the ISS
* Commoditize space tourism, popularize it with celebrities
* Exploratory missions to Mars
* Develop orbital manufacturing capabilities, where supplies can be delivered autonomously
* Build Ultra-heavies in orbit, modularly to avoid launch costs from surface (required tethering technology to be developed)
* Deploy communication relay probes between spatial bodies
* Deliver initial robots to surface of Mars, they prep for solar install
* initial solar install to feed robot population already on surface
* Add batteries
* further infrastructure to follow, but with a working autonomous robot service group ready to build out
We are now at the deployed battery stage, the Organization is now preparing the life support systems for long-term human colonization, and within the next 25 years, we will have a permanent Human Civilization2 on the planet Mars... perhaps, Again?
Shorts can get very cranky and righteous about each little bit of slippage. But as long as new enthusiasts keep showing up, and old ones feel lenient, it's hopeless to insist on strict accountability. Even a short-lived burst of optimism is sufficient to arrange more funding, so manana always seems within reach.
Worst case: you're shorting Amazon. The bulls were right, and you go broke.
Best case: you're shorting something like Energy Conversion Devices, which eventually did run out of money and file for Chapter 11 in 2012. Shorts had been predicting its demise since the 1970s. That is a long time to wait.
Shorting generally should only be for companies whose solvency is in doubt.
With options, you could be right on direction, and still lose money.
What's amazing are the longs seeing capital raises at mediocre terms as a wide open positive.
This is still so uncertain, and I for one wouldn't feel comfortable even guessing, never mind guessing with real money.
http://www.volcube.com/resources/options-articles/what-is-op...
The stock is detached from reality.
It's my understanding that this was another offering, so, essentially, Tesla sold 5% to Tencent at an average price of $217 and change. Current shareholders get diluted. Prices go up.
I don't get it, but I'd love an explanation. Were people, prior to these capital raises, concerned Tesla couldn't raise any more money? That would make sense, but certainly isn't the sentiment I gathered from my travels.
Tencent was a major investor in Magic Leap and the Saudi Sovereign Fund invested heavily in .coms in early 2000. It is definitely not a sell signal, but I would not buy what Tencent is buying.
[edit] I'm speculating, but I don't think TenCent could have gotten as big as it has without the blessing of the Chinese government. That is the basis for my view.
Yes, and Tencent is betting on it, since Tesla Chinese market sales has just broken $1B [1], soon Chinese market will be Tesla's biggest market with Chinese government's policy leaning on supporting EV industries in a MAJOR way. Win-win!
http://fortune.com/2017/03/03/tesla-one-billion-sales-china/
This was my immediate question as well. Is this purely an investment for its portfolio or is there a strategic element as well? I imagine being able to send/receive messags on WeChat as the beginning of something more.
There may be some synergystic stuff from time to time (ex: Yahoo! Japan), but most of the time it's a pure investment move to amp up their returns.
Berkshire plows the cash flow from their insurance business into acquiring businesses (though they get a controlling stake), Softbank plows its telecom cash flow into speculative VC bets, and Tencent seems to be plowing its own revenue into VC bets as well.
If the CNY crashes for whatever reason they can dump the stock and flip the currency for a lot.
It may cost $1.7B but it guarantees continued access, whereas throwing technical exfiltration (ie: hacking) and manual exfiltration (ie: mole in Tesla staff) whose resources are limited and unpredictable.
It's also a good financial investment.
And I thought "A _rapper_ has just bought $1.7billion worth of Tesla shares???" and was all ready to make "Has Tesla already become the Cristal Champagne of car brands?" gags...
Still, half a billion return in two weeks on a 1.7 billion play is pretty nice money...
I mean, they bought all of league of legends. Their primary driver is most likely "let's make money".
China has massive pollution, and most homes/businesses that have access to direct sunlight. (Yes--I know solar works 50% on cloudy day. It doesn't work well with a lot foliage coverage. China looks barren of trees--sadly.)
My hope is those solar tiles come down drastically in price. My hope is the average roof will be cost effective to put said tiles up.
I think those solar tiles will be Tesla's Trump card. It will probally be in four years, or more in the United States. We will need a new president. (I was for Trump putting Coal miners back to work, until I found out the problem is not regulations, but automation. Actually, I want clean air. We need a better way of supporting people affected by the elimination of old ways of doing things; like a Basic Income.). Sorry about being all over the place, but there are no simple answers. Trump is just finding this out.
I think Tencent saw a long value in the stock, even though their citizens will not likely buy Tesla's tiles. They will buy the cheapest knock-off as usual, but the rest of the civilized world will buy Tesla's product.
(I don't know what patents are on these new Tesla tiles, but I bet they are seen as a valuable commodity, even to a cheating society like China.)
