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comment by b_b
b_b  ·  3008 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why Electric Cars Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think

    I hope Tesla gets it right. 200miles in a $30k EV will be a game changer.

The chances of that a low and looking lower all the time, but on the bright side, GM, Nissan, Ford, Toyota all will have high range, inexpensive cars on the road pretty soon.





kleinbl00  ·  3008 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm curious as to your reasoning. They're about to have a shit-ton of batteries via the gigafactory, absolutely no one is holding them to any kind of build quality standards (I've yet to hear anyone say anything nice about the X) and aside from the batteries, an electric car is basically a car with all the expensive shit taken away.

Chevy has to sell the Bolt for $37k because they need to make money on it. Tesla has proven time and time again that they can sell cars at a loss and Wall Street throws roses at them. Presume the Model 3 costs Tesla $50k to build and they sell it for $33k. At $17k lost per car, their valuation is still $153k per car sold.

b_b  ·  3008 days ago  ·  link  ·  

My reasoning is multi-factorial, but it mainly rests on exactly this:

    Chevy has to sell the Bolt for $37k because they need to make money on it. Tesla has proven time and time again that they can sell cars at a loss and Wall Street throws roses at them. Presume the Model 3 costs Tesla $50k to build and they sell it for $33k. At $17k lost per car, their valuation is still $153k per car sold.

Tesla has more in common with a Ponzi scheme at this point than with an auto manufacturer. Combine this stratospheric unit loss with the fact that their CapEx is coming in hundreds of millions, if not billions, below their own estimates of what it needs to be to reach their build targets, and you have a recipe for non-delivery. The say themselves that they want to deliver 400,000 units by 2018, but it's really difficult to imagine how that could possible take place when they're so far behind on tooling the plants and everything else that capex was slated for. No matter how long a leash Wall Street gives them, the house of cards can't stand forever. Building cars is hard.

kleinbl00  ·  3008 days ago  ·  link  ·  

So basically our point of contention is how many vehicles Tesla will deliver before the bloom is off the rose. I think they might just shine it on.

Remember, the Dodge brothers nearly sued Ford out of business... until he turned around to his dealers and said "fuck you you stock parts now" and shipped them the factory floor's worth of spares FOB.