Tesla to start selling roofs:
https://electrek.co/2016/08/09/tesla...oof-elon-musk/

It's quite a good idea on the surface. In practice, maybe not. Be interesting to see if they take off. A whole roof as solar modules seems like a large oversupply of electricity. I imagine the cost will be very high for a whole roof, which means financing, which brings us back to square one with SCTY.

Tesla supercharging stations with almost certainly use SCTY roofs going forward.

I predict financial wizardry to create a subsidized market to keep SCTY afloat.

The entire gigafactory and every other plan TSLA will ever build will have it as well. It makes sense for them to use solar roofs on their facilities. Question is if it would have been cheaper to do it from scratch if this is the only benefit.

It would have almost certainly been cheaper to do from scratch. But that won't really matter. SCTY will (most likely) be a footnote in the story of Tesla.

Does Tesla just come up with some new angle to get investors excited every 3 days?

Their PR alone makes me think the company is just a large cap pump and dump.

Test drove a Telsa model A with auto-pilot the other day. All I can say is wow, fabulous.

I read somewhere that their PR strategy is something like "don't pay for ads, write something viral on twitter every week, rely on customers to spread the word". It definitely is cheaper than what their competitors are doing.

Say what you want about their potential future, but at least a lot of people are talking about them.

Mark Faber summed on the long term prospect of Tesla very well a couple of days ago:
Tesla will have no battery advantage since they have no capital and do no research in batteries. Electric drive motors are irrelevant - a standard high performance electric motor linked to a large-enough battery will become a commodity.

Then the only differentiator left is cabin and component quality relative to price, which the major car makers have completely wrapped up and crush Tesla on due to their vast supply networks and economies of scale.

You must be an exceptional moron if you think that Renault-Nissan is the company that comes out ahead of Tesla.

Lumping up every ****ing car company in the world into the potential competitors of TSLA makes your own argument invalid.

If you think that Nissan, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Fiat, Peugeot, Hyundai and whatever low level car company exists will be able to compete with Tesla, you are a moron of epic proportion and have no ****ing idea how the car industry works.

TS, you have proven that you are clueless. This article proves your opinion but is low on facts. If you don't understand the difference between Daimler and Nissan, you are not allowed to open your mouth.

There are companies that have legitimate skills and will be able to compete with Tesla. But there is no US car company that will and of the Germans we'll have to see who'll be able to.

Tesla will be shipping more cars than Porsche in 2 or 3 years. They'll maintain, at a minimum, a luxury sports EV line known for speed and technology.

That has a lot of value, judging by luxury brands that nearly died (see Jaguar) in past, probably in the low 10 figure range.

Except Tesla will have caught up enough in cabin and component quality when the other companies have caught up to Tesla in the production of EVs.

Ah yes, Marc Faber. His newsletter is named the DoomBoomandGloom report. Or something.That's not weird at all. Faber circa 2009:

Yea dude seems totally credible.

I will say that Tesla is the most divisive company in where otherwise very intelligent investors don't think much of the company. It's just something that hasn't been done before and people will try to draw comparisons like hybrid engines or other fads in the industry without realizing there isn't a comparison to be made. You don't have to buy the company, but shorting it is insanely idiotic in my opinion because of the incredible upside.

Yes, they make really dumb decisions like SCTY, but they also have a product that is and will be far superior to anything on the market for a number of years. The EV market will rapidly take over the new car market much faster than a lot of people can fathom.

most of those 'low level car companies' spend more in yearly R&D than tesla has spent over the time of their existence. of course they'll be able to compete with (and most likely beat) tesla if and when EVs become a profitable market. but believe whatever lets you sleep at night.

Even if that is true, if it is all they maintain then how is that worth close to 35B?

And if their market value got cut in half or 2/3rds, couldn't they be a buyout candidate for a cash-rich tech company?

I never said Tesla is worth 35B. I am saying people like TS overstate their case when they insist Tesla is worth 0.

Guys, let's make this really simple. An electric car is:

1. A battery pack
2. An electric drive unit
3. Everything else like a normal car - where you generally get what you pay for in terms of quality and features (there's a reason a BMW is much nicer than a Fiesta, or a Model S with its big pad and cool electronic features nicer than a $25,000 car).

Please explain to me in which categor(ies) Tesla have an advantage in their feature to price ratio, and why, once the majors start ramping up EV production.

Do any of the bulls think Tesla is ahead in all three?

I think we all just disagree that on the ramping up. I don't think they will be able to just "start ramping up EV production."

I thought the auto industry was super complex, now it's supposedly extremely easy to build such a car.

Tesla will have 1 and 2 inhouse that's a huge advantage.

Volkswagen announced in their strategy 2025 that they want to build their own battery factory because that is a key component of an EV and they want to produce this inhouse.

BMW shows with their i3 that they have no intention of taking EV serious. The car looks hideous. Recently, they mocked Tesla in a TV ad - you don't do this if you don't take them serious.

I think if your a tesla investor and your ignoring ToothSayer's posts you will be in a world of hurt eventually.

I'm a huge Elon Musk fan and find most his youtube videos pretty motivational and as much as I want to be a Tesla investor no way at even half half the valuation it has now. Its just absurd.

Bmw I think more or less just experimented with the i3 EV. I think the i8 show's their more serious about it and once they start putting electric engines in their new 3 or 4 Series models it will just kill tesla.

The i8 has a 5.2 KWh battery and less than 50km range and costs more than a Tesla. What are you talking about?

Just an example:


What is cool about Tesla is that even while they started far behind they very fast caught up and a 2012 Tesla Model S pretty much is equally technologically advanced in many aspects to most cars from Mercedes, BMW, Porsche from 2016.

Meanwhile VW has millions of cars that can be unlocked via simple radio hacks:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37057689

Yeah, it's not axiomatic that the incumbents will be able to curate world-class software organizations---much less integrate them into software-centric design teams.

It's not even axiomatic that the incumbents can curate world-class electrical engineering teams.

The best data point available on software is their Autopilot-equivalents, which are all being panned as trash in head-to-head comparisons with Tesla.

As for electrical engineering/batteries, the only incumbent brave enough to muster a real data point has been GM...and, well:



In reality, there just isn't any hard evidence that the ICE incumbents are capable of great software-centric car design and battery tech.

It's fair enough to assume they will get there. But as of 2016, the evidence is lacking.

I mean, there are plenty of SOFTWARE COMPANIES that can't muster a world-class software organization. I'm at a loss why we would assume that every old car maker will snap their fingers and have one the moment they feel like it.

Isn't battery tech suppose to become a commodity at some point? Isn't that the Tesla rhetoric driving the absurd (forecasted) decreases in cost? (Didn't solar have the same issue?)