- Tesla will "win" the race(either to self driving, or some magical EV adoption level, or the gigapress will let them sell cars for half the price of other mfgs) and then swallow 90%+ of the market. Other auto manufacturers will just disappear or something, and will live in Tesla's shadow forever.
- Tesla makes robotaxis and everyone on the planet will simultaneously want to own a Tesla as well as pay for rides in rented Teslas. Again this argument usually rests on the assumption that Tesla will do the impossible and no other manufacturer will ever keep up.
- Tesla is a (software, navigation, power, battery, robot, mapping, AI, etc) company. They will take all of their tech an monetize it. This of course will not require any overhead and Tesla will make 110% profit on every market they enter, which, of course, they will dominate and no other existing manufacturers will be able to compete.
If you call out a Tesla fan on this, they will cycle back and forth between some variation of those arguments until you give up. Generally the Tesla fan has quite a bit invested in Tesla(via stock or just $10k beta test fees), and they argue as if conceding the argument will destroy their investment and prevent humans from colonizing Mars.
I think it's worth mentioning that Tesla doesn't just compete against other auto manufacturers. They (currently anyway) compete against public transportation systems and well designed, walkable cities. They seem to be a better solution than, say, IC cars, but in the long run we may see the world moving away from personal vehicles, electric or not. If nothing else, as cars become more intelligent, they become smaller, lighter and cheaper. Tesla may not have much advantage when we're all whizzing around in self-driving mopeds or whatever the future provides us.
What future expectations? As it is priced right now, the only way that makes sense is if Tesla starts selling more than _every other automotive manufacturer, combined_.
That's insane, and not going to happen.
"So short the stock", people say.
And then Tesla fans act like shorting TSLA is something akin to a capital crime and at the very least should be forbidden by the exchanges or the SEC, from the reactions that come from it.
It's a cheap shot that you seem to like to reiterate. What's the source you have that unions are the most problematic issue to automakers' profitability?
If every other car company has to deal with unions then its only a matter of time until they are as well. The only way they can prevent that is to pay more than the other places but then their profits wouldn't stay high.
I guess Tesla thinks they can afford a package attractive enough to compete with unions and then not needing to pay the dues will tip the scale in favor of keeping the company union free.
Then they will keep the agility they need so they can switch to things like gigapress or other labor-saving processes and lay off/reassign a bunch of workers in order to continue their relentless cost-cutting and process simplification.
Tesla values agility - of course all employers say that in order to escape unions, but Tesla is one of the few companies that is actually agile, rather than just talking about needing to be agile. It's amazing how fast they change production processes, and being union free is a big part of that.
Not sure whether this will work out for Tesla or not, since workers value stability and job security.
Both are valid goals. I'm also interested to see how Tesla will compete against the flood of cheap EVs that will be coming from China. Doug Munro is convinced that they will dominate the US market:
https://teslanorth.com/2021/11/07/china-evs-coming-for-u-s-a...
The next 10-20 years are going to be very hard on autoworkers and all the supporting industries, from parts suppliers to their suppliers, and the entire vast supporting industry which is about 5% of US employment and the single biggest component of our manufacturing sector.
It's also not clear how we can keep a defense industry in this country without auto-manufacturing.
Please learn the definition of “excess profits” before harassing me more.
Every company you mentioned is worth significantly less money than Tesla. And where does VW rank in revenue to market cap? A quick glance shows Apple makes about 80% more revenue than VW, and has a market cap 25x higher. The money isn’t going to shareholders.
Consider they are also selling solar, batteries, insurance, and likely in home robots, ride sharing, and energy trading down the line. They may also resell their tech and software down the line as well.
There is also the general over valuation of the market at work, which is not evenly distributed between companies. Too much money without enough places to go.
https://youtube.com/c/MunroLive
Their heat pumps and giga press are first of their kinds. They were things the old players said would never work and are now trying to adopt.
It's also worth pointing out that Tesla's have a lower accident rate than the national average.
I can't find anything that says other manufacturers said "heat pumps won't work".
> It's also worth pointing out that Tesla's have a lower accident rate than the national average.
What does this have to do with innovation? Many of the vehicles on the road have lower accident rates than the national average.
Tesla is also notorious for vehicle accident and safety stats being misleading, and doubly so when its around the topic of AP/FSD.
It's not that heat pumps won't work, it's about pump technology. This is actually the thermal management system, used for both heating and cooling. Sandy generally has great commentary on the auto industry. He's quite genuine
Every auto company misleads, at least Tesla is being a leader
The point about accident rates is in context of unwitting beta testers. There are many drivers on the road, many of who make the road unsafer. That fact should also be considered when discussing road safety. If FSD beta is better on average, then the roads are getting stepwise safer.
I'm sure he does (I say that sincerely). But he's also the same Sandy who was very anti-Tesla until his wife got one and he put a whole lot of his investment portfolio in TSLA stock.
> There are many drivers on the road, many of who make the road unsafer.
Many of those drivers may make poor choices, etc. But we're not touting them as role models or desired behavior. FSD is meant to be better, and is still _actively_ trying to do things that are dangerous to drivers and pedestrians.
> If FSD beta is better on average, then the roads are getting stepwise safer.
The sheer amount of stupid decisions I've seen from FSD on YouTube etc. is shocking. The only thing more stupefying is watching people actively "allowing" it to do stupid things for "views", their own inattentiveness, or for some misguided notion that they're somehow "contributing" to "training" the car.
Like pro tip: When your car has run a red light at the same intersection the last three times, don't let it do it a fourth time just "to help the project". That's irresponsible, reckless and outright dangerous.
Tesla flat out refuses to release any statistics that would actually be able to prove, or disprove, an actual fair comparison of the safety of FSD/AP. Instead we get these cherry picked miles driven where AP is touted as being safer - on the (unspoken) subset of miles where it didn't disengage because it couldn't drive or the driver decided it was safer to disengage because of the AP's driving, versus "human drivers, all miles, all conditions".
There's (relatively) few accidents for human drivers on well-painted, well-maintained roads in the California sunshine. And similar for AP/FSD.
There's a lot more accidents for human drivers on poorly painted and maintained roads in a Pittsburgh winter. And there would be for AP/FSD too, if it wasn't disengaged a large majority of that driving.
But Tesla happily lumps the sum of driving of "Human drivers in California sun and Pittsburgh winter" and says that mile-for-mile, AP/FSD is better because it had fewer accidents, even though most of those miles were accumulated in the California sun. Anyone who completed high school statistics would know this wasn't a fair comparison, but Tesla has pushed it for years.
This is slightly misleading as the average vehicle is much older and with many fewer safety features. It would be more accurate to use a comparable vehicle.
Eh? The Nissan Leaf used a heat pump since the second (2013) version. And I don't think it was the first (though it may have been the first production one).
Generally very low margin.
> batteries
Generally extremely low margin.
> insurance
Low margin
> and likely in home robots, ride sharing, and energy trading down the line.
Speculative.