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Re:Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings by tgsovlerkhgsel on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @05:19PM (#28936794)
I think seeing Tesla as only a car company is a mistake.

They're a car company, but also a battery company, which means they have the potential to be huge in everything that requires batteries (e.g. cars manufactured by others, grid scale electricity storage) even when they don't make the final product.

I'm not even sure that the car business will be their main business in the long term.

Re:Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings by arcticbull on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @05:56PM (#28937301)
If you sum the market cap of any leaders in any of those spaces you won't get anywhere close to Tesla's current valuation let alone fully realized valuation.

I'll include them as an AI company once their FSD model stops trying to kill YouTubers.

- Utilities: PGE is worth 22B.

- Insurance: Libery Mutual is 16B.

- Robotics and AI: ABB is 71B.

- Batteries: Panasonic is 30B.

- Cars: Toyota is 288B.

- Financing: Included in Toyota's valuation.

Ok so, if we sum all of these mature businesses together we get $427B, less than half of Tesla's current market cap. That's one heck of a bull case when you consider Toyota ships literally 10X as many cars as Tesla does, and all those other companies, you know, exist.

Anyone else I should huck onto the pile? There's still a half trillion dollars in market cap to make up for after all.

Re:Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings by trhway on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @06:58PM (#28937935)
You miss that Tesla is better in a given space than any of the leaders you mentioned. And not just better. More importantly, and this is why it is better, is that Tesla is a tech company in each of those spaces - eg. PG&E is an utilities company while Tesla is a tech company in the electric energy space. That is the half-trillion you're looking for.
Re:Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings by tgsovlerkhgsel on Thursday October 21, 2021 @02:56PM (#28949305)
E.ON seems bigger than PGE (assuming you go by market cap), and I have no clue who is actually the biggest. And these each seem to represent one single regional power company.

OTOH, I didn't realize Tesla's market cap has grown that big. That is indeed kinda insane.

Re:Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings by DennisP on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @07:03PM (#28937991)
The battery market is going to grow drastically if we keep building more wind/solar.
Re:Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings by arcticbull on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @07:07PM (#28938040)
Fingers crossed we lean into nuclear instead but I suspect that won't happen to the extent it needs to.
Re:Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings by panick21_ on Thursday October 21, 2021 @06:00AM (#28942372)
Haha, I want this as well but sadly we are not going in that direction. Basically no way to really invest in nuclear. Not enough hype for SPACs.

Still hoping for the SpaceX of nuclear to emerge.

This is my biggest 'beef' with Elon, I much rather he work on nuclear then trying to make solar roofs.

Re:Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings by arcticbull on Thursday October 21, 2021 @07:17PM (#28951995)
Rooftop solar is funny because it's by far the most dangerous kind of solar. People fall off installing those all the time. The deaths per TWh of generated electricity is a few orders of magnitude greater than nuclear. Industrial scale solar is still less safe than nuclear, but not by nearly as much.
Re:Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings by DennisP on Friday October 22, 2021 @05:10PM (#28962770)
Unless things change drastically at the NRC, we're not likely to have a SpaceX of nuclear in the US. Somebody like Seaborg might pull it off though.
Re:Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings by panick21_ on Monday October 25, 2021 @02:58PM (#28991683)
By far the most likely are the Canadian companies. I really like Terrestrial Energy and Moltex Energy.
Re:Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings by DennisP on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @03:02PM (#29004748)
Yep they're strong contenders. Canada's regulators have been pretty friendly.

This presentation by Seaborg is pretty interesting though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Dz9sfBKEg

Re:Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings by kibwen on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @06:31PM (#28937672)
Ultimately Tesla, like Apple, is a fashion brand. Once you've established your brand to the upper class, thereby causing the middle class to covet your product in order to signal a higher social status, the actual product that you make doesn't especially matter. Tesla is happy to forfeit the low-end EV market to other automakers just like Apple is happy to forfeit the low-end phone market to Android: low-end products are forced to compete on scale and become commodities with low margins, whereas fashion products can command much higher margins, and the existence of low-end competitors only serves to further cement your fashion brand as upper-class.
Re:Tesla Q3 2021 Earnings by misiti3780 on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @05:44PM (#28937138)
agree, they are an AI Company, a car company, an energy company (potentially), and a battery company.