As an investor but not a fan of Tesla, I share his view. "Maverick CEO" just means that he's unpredictable and has made several major pivots before, so expecting Tesla to follow the trajectory of existing car manufacturers is quite imperceptive.
And my post is about how these things are just said, without any evidence. I thought this is a forum of critical thinkers? And yet we have people saying that "well, it's not really a car company" or "but Elon!" trumps actual data.
>so expecting Tesla to follow the trajectory of existing car manufacturers is quite imperceptive
This isn't about the path to get there. At the end of the day, cars are cars, and Tesla isn't the only one building EVs now. To think that they are going to, somehow, have margins in the multiples of existing companies in both the automobile, solar or battery business requires explanation. "Elon is unpredictable" isn't one.
The commenter above is right on this one and it is not a subjective statement. This is a fact.
Of course, most of the revenue today is generated from selling cars. But we were talking about the value of the company. And this includes expected _future_ returns. And, obviously, Tesla has more than just aspirations. They have built a large part of the Gigafactory already.
Honda certainly is not a car company - but much more than this as well. This was not a good example for your case. Same with GM. I am not sure if your intention was to list companies that are much more than car companies? You were just making my case.
You were talking about what Tesla is. Despite its aspirations, Tesla is a car company right now.
> I am not sure if your intention was to list companies that are much more than car companies?
That was my intention. The discussion was about how we can't compare Tesla to GM or Honda because Tesla "isn't a car company". My point is that those other companies are not either, and so that is not an argument to reject the comparisons out-of-hand.
It often feels like the people discussing Tesla have zero experience with some of these other companies.
> No amount of metrics can or will justify a company like Tesla's current stock price. At this juncture, you are mostly getting into a wild ride.
FWIW, as a "fan" I've made a great return on my investment in the wild ride.
And this is incorrect. It's very easy to model things like "What if every person on the planet buys a Model S every year at X price and X margins.", and create a valuation model from there. Then make more reasonable projections.
This dismissal of numbers here is disturbing. Believe it or not, Tesla isn't the most original company ever to grace the earth; it has to do business in the business world like everyone else.
And here's the thing: TSLA is priced to become one of the biggest car companies on the planet. Anything short of that, from an investment standpoint, is a failure. If Tesla achieves that..your returns will be mediocre, even though the company has been wildly successful. What is the difficulty in understanding that?