Re:GM says it will put fleets of self-driving cars in cities...
by cmrdporcupine on Friday December 01, 2017 @12:39PM
(#15825582)
Yes, parent poster was laughable. Though I will give him only this one thing. Tesla is positioned better than anybody else on battery supply. GM can produce as many EVs as they want when they decide to do it, as they have a lot of factories and sales channels, and as seen with the Bolt they have just-in-time production and mass manufacturing mostly figured out ... unlike Tesla. But GM is dependent on LG Chem to actually make the batteries, and from what i've ready LG Chem has already announced their plans and it's not enough to make hundreds of thousands of vehicles for next year (though maybe the year after...)
But I also do not think Tesla can pull off a significant ramp up on the Model 3. I think numbers for next year will be below 100,000.
Re:GM says it will put fleets of self-driving cars in cities...
by mikestew on Friday December 01, 2017 @01:07PM
(#15825792)
But GM is dependent on LG Chem to actually make the batteries, and from what i've ready LG Chem has already announced their plans and it's not enough to make hundreds of thousands of vehicles for next year (though maybe the year after...)
That's a damned fine point, as it's the one part of the supply chain GM doesn't control and can't take in-house over the short term. So we end up with a company that can build the hell out of some cars, but is constrained on batteries. Another has lots of batteries, but is still wet behind the ears when it comes to making cars. Hey, I have an idea...
Re:GM says it will put fleets of self-driving cars in cities...
by cmrdporcupine on Friday December 01, 2017 @03:29PM
(#15827086)
I know eh? But at Tesla's ridiculous market cap, it's more likely Tesla would buy them (crazy!) than the other way around. And I can't see that happening, or working well at all. Whatever departments put together the Volt and the Bolt seem like some kickass engineering teams. But not so much the rest of GM, which looks like a pretty typical internally dysfunctional mediocre large corp from a distance.
Then again, Tesla is showing all the signs of a company that has grown too fast and with too much hubris.
Well, if we're just going to pull stuff out of our arses, why not millions? Millions! of Model 3s sold in 2018!
For our readers at home, if you ever wondered what a real-life example of "FUD" looks like, this is as close as you'll come without a time machine to the 80s to witness IBM's marketing in person. Instead of making a valid comparison based on the reality of today, let's talk about what might happen tomorrow. And since tomorrow isn't here yet, we can make up whatever shit we want. Whether it's the capabilities of the new mainframe IBM's releasing next year, or how many cars Tesla is going to sell next year. Because comparing current products to what your company might produce next year is super easy when I can't buy a Model 3 today.
But more to the point, as a TSLA shareholder I find the idea of bringing up GM's losses laughable. Do you really want to go there, talking about who's making money manufacturing cars and who isn't? 'cuz I got some balance sheets you might want to take a look at.