I'm still sticking in but have a short price of 143. Patience is a virtue but it does seem TSLA has lost it's momentum. It's not constantly on CNBC any more...

Overvalued imo for sure, Musk even said it him self. look at the dot com boom and all stocks how that worked. this is similar, a new aswesome technology unlike any other how do you price it? i see at as 120$ stock

Depending on Q3 will determine ALOT of how the price will go.

the way i see it if Q3 beats expectations the stock will remain in a similar state, and if its below expectations it will drop to a more reasonable price and our rally will be over, until the Apple vp engineer makes something awesome.


Also charging stations are the main concern.

Contrary to my previous post here is a very very interesting article.

Essentially saying how its not overvalued. Forget fundamentals and this is why...

Very strong angle. good read.
http://www.investnaire.com/?q=groups...ty-check-depth

Pure electric cars are a lot less complex than gasoline cars, and it's not close. There's a drive train and a battery pack, both not very complicated, and the rest is nothing.

I don't see how this can be true. They're using off the shelf laptop batteries. How hard can it be? This isn't precision engineering like an internal combustion engine and its support components.

What specifically is amazing about what Tesla does?

Musk does seem to be a lateral thinker when it comes to improving process engineering and design (look at SpaceX - which bodes well for a car maker), but I'm not seeing anything near an "incredible moat".

I simply don't see how control, engineering and failure avoidance in off the shelf battery tech can be so complex. Can you give some technical details about why this is so hard and why others are so far behind?

Too bad the "failure avoidance" couldn't avoid the car catching on fire when it ran over something that was so small that nobody could find it.

if its so easy, why is that electric bmw so crappy compared to the model S? I like BMW, but i would never buy their car, even tho it looks cool. I much rather have the tesla.

And how the hell can you know electric cars are less complex? In what ways are they less complex? I always see you making these claims about tech like your some inside engineer who knows it all and has inside knowledge, what are your sources? The batteries arent their edge btw, its the proprietary system that cools them, and lets them use cheap batteries. If you claim expertise at least get your basic facts straight lol.

Again if its so easy to get around that, why has no other car maker copied this? Why is there no bmw like this with the same range and specs? Why didnt BMW throw 500 million in their R&D and rolled out a 300 mile range sports car for 80k like tesla did. There is obvious demand. People who cannot afford it are buying the model S. And the model S clearly competes with gasoline cars.

Not saying they have a rock solid moat btw, but i think they have some serious first mover advantage. They have the advantage of the prop tech of cooling, so they can use cheap batteries, and they have the advantage of a custom charger network that prevents their cars from setting on fire. Bmw either has to take risks by building their own network, or pay tesla to use theirs. Untill you have a succesfull car that sells, it seems risky to set up the network right? This seems more like a first mover advantage tho, that buys them a few years. Once competition has the car that will sell, this will only be an advantage for another 6months to a year tops.

Edit: another thing tesla haters forget is pricing power. If tesla will come with a 35k$ model, and GM comes with a 30k$ model, people will still buy tesla. Or at least, they wont lose most of their market share. Tesla represents quality, and doing the impossible. And alot of people will buy those cars simply because they love what Musk is doing. Stock is still very overpriced obviously.

edit2: i see bmw i8, which is the only serious competition so far, is hybrid with a crappy 20 mile range electric engine, and will cost 130k$ lol.

It's a hybrid, which are crap by definition (you don't need an expensive second engine when you have gasoline).

WTF? Morishta made the confident claims, I am simply questioning them and asking for backup for his claims. Read my post again. The points I do make are non controversial. How many ****ing components do you think go into making petrol reliably run the wheels, vs a bunch of batteries and an electric motor? If you think an electric car is harder to manufacture or more complex than an internal combustion engine plus its support systems, or god forbid a hybrid, don't invest in car stocks, OK?

You think other people can't cool batteries???

Because they believed, rightly, that there would be no mass market for pure electric vehicles. It simply wasn't acceptable, in the minds of car makers and consumers that were asked, to have cars that can run out of juice and be stranded after a few hours driving, or take 1/2 an hour to recharge. You can argue whether that attitude is right or wrong, but it hasn't been proven right yet on the numbers (see below).

Because there's no money in it. In case you missed it, Tesla is still losing lots of money, even with subsidies, despite having the market leading (in fact only), pure EV.

In certain very small markets. You need to understand that 60 million cars are produced annually. Tesla are currently producing 25,000/year, less than 0.05% of the worldwide car market, and losing money doing it.

Only because no one gives a **** about them so far. The numbers don't scale up to profitable levels - not even 0.2% of the global car market in the absolute best case - due to the limitations of battery tech and capacity.

Tesla has found a niche due to overcapacity in particular battery factories, which essentially gives them a limited number of heavily under priced batteries they can put in their cars. Other car makers rightly have no interest in competing for this finite resource. And despite this niche and their clever exploitation of it, Tesla is losing money. If you had a billion dollars, would you invest in this technology/strategy and expect to get your money back, plus profit?

It doesn't buy them a few years, it buys them one half of one quarter of **** all. If a viable battery format for cars existed, charging stations would sprout like mushrooms.

Haters?? This isn't a Katy Perry forum.
No one but a handful of buyers is going to make $30K-$70K car purchases because "they love what musk is doing". Yes, he has attracted a handful of fanclowns, but this isn't a $100 iPhone (with subsidy). It's 300-700x more expensive than that.

Again, a hybrid is not competition for a pure EV. A hybrid is a gasoline car with an expensive piece of **** battery attached on for no good reason at all. It's a big fat fail.

Everything that is great about Tesla Model S is great because they are a pure EV. Like I said earlier, watch one of the review raving about Model S, and put the comments under two columns: pure EV benefits and Tesla specific benefits. It's nearly all in the first column. When other car companies start coming out with them, you'll see how little actual advantage Tesla has.

Just had a read of some of Tesla's patent applications. There is nothing in there of particular interest that I can see, or particularly difficult. All of the cooling/monitoring stuff I see is trivial. Examples:

This stuff is just silly. I can't see a moat here. Perhaps someone else can point me to some patents or tech that prevents other engineers from achieving the same thing (reliable monitoring, reliable cooling, reliable drive systems) in a short time frame. Everything I've read is engineering 101 and can be achieved in many ways.

That's not to say they won't do a SpaceX in the EV world and beat out others in process engineering, but the car industry seems a lot more sophisticated and efficient than the fledgling space industry for this stuff. They're producing 60 million cars a year already against tight competition.

And any advantages they could have, Musk seems happy to sell or license cheaply. His goal is cheap worldwide EVs - Tesla is just a vehicle for that goal and he doesn't seem to care if they succeed or fail. Just listen to the last conference call, for example.

I think your missing my point. You said its easy to make a tesla S for other car companies. And i said, if its as easy as making a regular gas car, why has no other company done it so far? And i questioned your technical knowledge on this subject. Probably should exchange complex for easy. Obviously gas cars are more complex, but they are easier to build.
If the problem of cooling batteries was that easy then why isnt it solved yet by other car companies. And why do they keep releasing these crappy overpriced hybrid cars? Why isnt BMW simply postponing for a year, adn then releasing a 300 mile range full eletric bmw?

And by large demand, i meant if you look at the price of the car. Porsche sells 130k cars a year, and they make a profit right? I seriously doubt there isnt that much demand for the Tesla S once they manage to fully realize production facilities. You also forget they have 20% gross margins, and they just need to scale up.

And where do you get there will be a long term shortage of batteries? There is a short term shortage, but i cannot find any good source why this will be a long term problem. ANd please no vague statements.

and finally:
to quote henry ford here:
They should have listened to the grandfather of car manufacturing here. And any of these companies could have captured a niche market of up to several 100k electric cars per year here. You claim its easy, but they looked into it and figured that they couldnt make a good 300 mile range electric car. So thats why i think its not as easy as you claim it is.

Other whise they would have said: 'oh we gotta cool some batteries? no problem, easy as pie! make it happen!' .

Now I agree TSLA is showing cracks. Trend is somewhat negative right now.

Looking to buy at $150.

You and Morishta are the ones throwing out bull**** claims with no evidence. I am simply asking for your evidence, while providing my opinion. Case in point:

Proof of this? Proof of Tesla's "moat"??

Why did Microsoft design a working, simple, intuitive tablet, comparable to the iPad, in 2009, and then scrap it?

Your premise seems to be that if other companies could technically do something (as yet unprofitable and with as yet an unproven market), they would. That Tesla is only company that can technically do this. That's a ******edly hand wavy premise, frankly.

If you think Tesla has come up with some ground breaking technology, rather than simply cleverly deciding to use a one-off seriously under priced oversupply of an aging batteries on fully depreciated manufacturing equipment (and hence artificially cheap), then tell me what this amazing ground breaking technology is that others can't do, and I will eat humble pie.

You say 20% gross margin like it's a good thing. Given the ongoing capex costs, it's not. And scale up to what? They're spending huge amounts of capex for what, exactly? If you read the article below, cheap batteries top out well below 100K cars. Then what? Pray?
Cost is the reason this will be a long term problem. You aren't looking too hard if you can't find any source on battery availability:

Putting Tesla Motor's Gargantuan Battery Supply Problem Into Perspective

Is a good summary. The key point:

What happens when cars start sucking up a substantial percentage of raw materials? Hint: the cost of the raw material goes up. What happen when you need to build new plants and can no longer rely on fully depreciated assets for production? Hint: the cost of the end product goes up a huge amount.

Seriously? No one quotes the failures, who say much the same thing.

Am I impressed with Tesla, the car, the company, its vision? Hugely. Do I think they're likely to be a large scale commercial success? Absolutely not. And you apparently agree:
At a net loss after capex. Sounds like a good proposition!

I claim it is unlikely to be harder than the engineering of a hybrid, with a battery, electric drive, plus a far more complex gasoline engine and all of its supporting components.

You know this how?
Dumb reasoning, sir.

Cooling and monitoring batteries is easy, dude. There are a large number of ways to monitor (temperature, pressure, electrical resistance). There are a large number of ways to cool (liquids, heat pipes, contact plates). There are a large number of ways to build for reliability (shielding, isolation, routing around bad cells, contact breakages via pyro, emergency venting + containment). This isn't space age engineering. It's well understood, and what isn't can be easily worked out. These are simple chemical reactions and current flows with extremely well understood characteristics. It's way simpler than building an internal combustion engine, let alone its support components.

Similarly, electric motors are possibly the most well understood and optimized devices in existence. They power everything from milliwatt devices through to hundred megawatt devices use for ship propulsion, pumping, etc. There are billions of them in existence.

That's all there is to the car. That plus some simple electronics, some decent drive train engineering, and some software, is the entire car. It is exactly this simplicity which allows Musk to even play the game with the high cost of batteries.

Is there complex engineering? Of course. Is it something other car manufacturers would have trouble doing? Absolutely not. It's a joke to suggest otherwise.

I think you've missed the boat. Much more likely to go to 100 than 200 if it it gets to 150

I never even thought of this angle.

Long term value play for me at around $150. Of course depending on Q3 report and so on.

Ha. Value! Brilliant. Even if everything goes right, 5 years from now this valuation wouldn't be a value play

There are a lot of bears in this thread, including myself. But do you guys see anything on the options chain you like? That is the question. Shorting TSLA ain't cheap.

The aforementioned is what perplexes me the most about the Tesla stock run up. If Musk has made one thing clear, it is that he is not in the EV game to make money. More importantly, nothing he has done thus far has contradicted that statement. e.g. The super charger network is free and to Tesla owners and will "always be free." wtf, who says that?

I love what the guy is doing and I think he is a visionary, but the only money I would invest in Tesla is buying a bad ass car.

/laymanviewpoint

Many gas stations make a tiny or no profit on gasoline sales. They make their money with convenience items and addons like $10 car washes.

Compare that to the super charger network. Firstly, it's free because EV cars are already enough of a PIA that they don't need another negative to add to the list.

But more importantly, just as gasoline is often not the biggest profit maker for gas stations, electricity doesn't need to be the biggest profit maker for Tesla charging stations. Think about it: the super chargers still keep a Tesla owner stranded for 20 minutes to get only 50% capacity somewhere. These are the sorts of people who can afford to blow 100K on a 2nd or 3rd car - and they are captive audience in your parking lot.

This is a good point, and frankly not something I had considered. But if Tesla can ever bring the Model E to market in large quantities the dynamic changes considerably.

All I am saying is it does not seem wise, financially, to offer up free fuel forever in the infant stages of a car company. It is however a great thing to offer if your goal is the proliferation of the EV.

I doubt many tesla owners will be taking him up on the free charges. It's not like gas. Charging at a station will be huge inconvenience. Who wants to wait around for 30 minutes while that happens? Most people buy these as second cars or realize that their commutes are short enough it doesn't matter so they charge each night at home when it's convenient.

The idea is to have enough stations to make tesla viable for long trips.

Charging station lines sound like a great place for Tesla owners to talk about their cars for hours.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news...ar-innovation/
At least according to MIT Tesla has a huge technological moat. Their battery tech is innovative enough that companies such as BMW are licensing it. GM has created a panel to study Tesla.
Tesla's partnership with Panasonic is NOT for run-of-the-mill lithium batteries.
All this said...is TSLA worth $160 a share? Not to me.

Isn't this an oxymoron? As in you are willing to get into a position at 150 for long term value but it is dependent on a short term 3rd quarter earnings report and the stock is at 162. So i am guessing you are hoping for a bad Q3 report?

I will hold Tesla for the next 4 years or so until the cheaper mass market car comes to market. I think with the nationwide expansion of the super charger network and a direction to a lower cost vehicle while improving on margins, Tesla could be a very large company in the not so distant future. Add to that the huge demand coming from China and a developing super charger network in Norway and the rest of Europe. It might take additional debt or equity to get there but that would prob just be a buying opportunity for someone with my views.

Rick

It's a pretty major deterrent to buying one for us. The lack of supercharger stations really limits the way you plan trips. Petrol is just so convenient.

That said, most of my driving is <1 hour, but still - we would need another car, which sort of defeats Musk's vision.

You might get your wish tomorrow.