If Tesla Is the Apple of Electric Vehicles, Volkswagen Bets It Can Be Samsung

Re:If Tesla Is the Apple of Electric Vehicles, Volkswagen Be... by arcticbull on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @09:36AM (#26491002)

Not to mention this belies a misunderstanding of Apple's business model. Tesla owns 80% of the electric car market and makes zero profit. That sounds an awful lot like Android's place in the market (72% market share, 30% of profit share) [1] Samsung only has 17% profit share - nobody else makes any money.

Apple's always owned the entirety of the profit in the entire global smartphone space.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2019/12/22/global-...

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Re:If Tesla Is the Apple of Electric Vehicles, Volkswagen Be... by Gravityloss on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @09:41AM (#26491064)

Tesla had about 18% market share in October and it's probably gone down from there.

https://electrek.co/2020/10/30/tesla-tsla-market-share-globa...

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Re:If Tesla Is the Apple of Electric Vehicles, Volkswagen Be... by arcticbull on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @09:49AM (#26491185)

Indeed, I was using the US numbers [1] - my bad.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-cars-ev-registratio...

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Re:If Tesla Is the Apple of Electric Vehicles, Volkswagen Be... by agumonkey on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @10:13AM (#26491497)

I wonder if the alleged China made 25000$ model will change that.

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Re:If Tesla Is the Apple of Electric Vehicles, Volkswagen Be... by Gravityloss on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @12:44PM (#26493632)

And the Berlin gigafactory. It seems the casting machines are already being installed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8kjwRExLl0

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Re:If Tesla Is the Apple of Electric Vehicles, Volkswagen Be... by jcims on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @09:56AM (#26491283)

How is investment in growth (e.g. gigafactory construction) recognized financially?

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Re:If Tesla Is the Apple of Electric Vehicles, Volkswagen Be... by marvin on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @03:48PM (#26495989)

It's recognized by investors who try to make an honest assessment in order to make good investment decisions. Thankfully, this is not a popularity contest.

By any reasonable non-pedantic measure, Tesla has actually been quite profitable over the last couple of years. They've put their entire profit towards building additional production capacity. Of course, they've also used the current investment climate to make capital raises that are bigger than their profits.

IIRC, Tesla have reported profit and cashflow minus capital spending for the last few years, and these numbers show what you expect: A business that's very profitable from a per-unit perspective.

The market cap is a different question, but let's treat that as a separate question.

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Re:If Tesla Is the Apple of Electric Vehicles, Volkswagen Be... by arcticbull on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @10:12AM (#26491485)

I'm more curious how investment of carbon credits (the only source of profit) which are soon to no longer be required by their competitors, in speculative bubbles (e.g. Bitcoin) which are primarily fueled by Chinese coal plants is accounted for. I'd love to have coffee with their Master of Coin.

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Re:If Tesla Is the Apple of Electric Vehicles, Volkswagen Be... by mavhc on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @05:02PM (#26496737)

There's been no increase in coal usage in China in 10 years though

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Re:If Tesla Is the Apple of Electric Vehicles, Volkswagen Be... by arcticbull on Wednesday March 17, 2021 @05:08PM (#26496807)

Sounds like there could have been a coal decrease. That's not a great argument IMO as they have been investing heavily in alternative energy production, especially hydro and solar. Coal usage needs to go down to zero, and anything that impedes that process is maddening to see.

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