That article on zh was posted because it's one of the few articles pointing out Tesla value as a company.

As it is, Tesla market cap is 237Billion USD.

Some comparison...
BMW is only 38 Billion Euro
Mercedes is 40 Billion Euro
Toyota is 22.3 Trillion yen
and the VW is 73.1 Billion Euro

Look at Tesla.
It's still fairly new.
At one point, due to insane company cash burn rate, the company nearly died... this was like last year, no?

So the logical question one should ask is whether Tesla should be the biggest market cap stock ?

Is this a fair question or not?

And it's not whether one is bull or bear over the stock... yes?



Ahh.. the quality issue.

When one see the stock, Tesla, priced the most valuable, one needs to check out if there's any problems with the car or not?

Isn't this not a fair risk assessment one should have taken?
If the car is problematic, sooner rather than later, people would NOT buy.

Model 3 had issues and now the latest Model Y.
That's where the risk I see.
You said build quality can be addressed.
Yes I agree.
But judging the current complains, it certainly looks like Tesla is concentrating its effort on producing, sacrificing quality control.
It needed the turnover to satisfy the stock market... but it would appear its risking its very customers...
Getting a faulty car right off the factory leaves a very bad taste for buyers...
And with social media... these stuff can spread very negatively...

which brings us back to the market issue...
given the quality of the cars sold..
should Tesla market cap be so big?
Yeah... some had pointed out that Exxon Mobil cap is only 187 Billion USD.
Tesla market cap at 237 Billion?

Well, you gotta be honest with yourself and ask... wait a minute.. is Tesla over valued?


my 3 sen

try telling that to the old school automakers. it's like telling the old uncle what he's been doing for the last 50 years of his life can be improved

If you have chance to visit any of major car manufacturer would fascinate to find the extend of their r&d include ev, self-drive, etc. the reasons why legacy manufacturers didn't introduce more ev models is lack of demand and would be losing ten of thousands $ per e.v built, not a sustainable or sensible business.

This post has been edited by icemanfx: Jul 17 2020, 09:44 AM

They will tel ya "IT'S OLDE SCHOOL VALUATION!"

The new norm is "THE SKY'S THE LIMIT!"

How so? Do you have examples of which tech that can be easily copied?

While I'm sure not every tech is exclusive, as most companies do license and do patent sharing agreements, Tesla is the leader in automated driving data, leader in battery management, biggest investments and consumer in battery manufacturing, highest range and efficiency. All these are valid if you believe that EVs are the future.

While I'm not sure which major car manufacturer you have visited, I have worked in Continental AG's ADAS division and was in charge of the thermal and mechanical simulation of their radar, lidar, infra red and camera sensor modules. I have left the industry in end of 2015 so my points here may not be valid. However, here are my thoughts and facts based on my first hand experience. Their R&D is not as vertically integrated as Tesla's. Legacy auto such as BMW, Daimler, VW, Toyota depends on their suppliers to innovate. They push their requirements to suppliers and suppliers will make a product as general as possible to accommodate as large a client base as possible. This tends to make the products generic and mediocre as Daimler's pricing and volume will be different than Toyota's pricing and volume.

The amount of effort the auto makers put to make the tech "theirs" is minimal at best. They do not want a fully integrated approach but rather want to have each module give just a signal or identifier to their central "intelligence". This is difficult as there is no feedback loop. Each sensor may come from different suppliers and the amount of effort to integrate all into a cohesive system is close to impossible.

Hence, the approach of VW in recent years to invest in their id.3 OS. This will make the suppliers be merely hardware manufacturers instead of also software providers. The modules will be "dumb" and VW will provide the "intelligence". This is also what Daimler and Nvidia will be pursuing, however, Nvidia will also be selling their products to other auto brands so Daimler will likely only have a few years of leadership (as with their tradition all the while).

Next is the batteries. Plenty of people thinks that just buying the batteries and putting it in the car will make it run. However, Tesla has a deep understanding of the full battery and drivetrain. They are designed to work closely together. Their main product is actually the battery management system. How they could optimise and detect each of the cell's voltage and health is a proprietary knowledge that no other auto maker can leverage. This is because they buy the "energy" system as a black box. They let the suppliers do the management and they have no idea how to maximise the potential of the battery based on their drivetrain and vehicle. Hence you see the lower efficiency across the non Tesla brands.

Next is the continuous product improvement cycle. Legacy auto works in the 7 year product development cycle with a couple of facelifts in between. Any improvements in efficiency and tech will be planned around those milestones. Tesla works like a software company with the agile and skunkworks methodology. They foresaw that over the air updates can bring continuous improvements to the product and applied them to their manufacturing processes as well. They are not stuck with the rigid bureaucracy of the legacy auto. This brings visible and non visible improvements to their products which smoothes their demand. This is also why legacy auto have to depend on the dealership model. The dealers buys stock continuously and holds inventory so that the factories can continue producing. Otherwise, consumers will keep holding their purchases to the next facelift instead of buying the product as they need and the factory will have peaks of demand which they cannot cope, which in turn will make consumers turn to other brands.

That's my 69 cents of opinion and facts.

This post has been edited by kelvinlym: Jul 17 2020, 10:21 AM

tesla battery is from panasonic and another china supplier. they may have exclusive agreement but not for unlimited time or unconditioned.

the issue with ev currently is limited range and too expensive to produce.

Tesla buys batteries from Panasonic, CATL and LG Chem currently. They have exclusivity but their strengths are not in manufacturing of the batteries. They are constrained by batteries because demand is high nowadays. In 2015 they knew that supply of batteries will be constrained hence they went out to invest and build the Nevada facility. That effectively doubled the supply of batteries worldwide. It has never been their strengths as the battery will turn into a commodity (like fuel). What they wanted to do all these while is to invest in the battery management. Hence, they worked closely with Panasonic with their first cells to make sure their supply is not constrained. Later, they'll just let the battery suppliers do their thing and they'll buy the batteries. However, they're not stopping as they do have J. Dahn heading their research of newer chemistry. While nothing has been shown as yet, many promising prototypes are available. The step from lab to factory will be key. Hope we'll see more on 22 September.

Name me another automaker which has that vision. Nowadays we see CATL announcing factories in Europe to be closer to the German auto makers. The EV will come. It's just now up to which auto maker to rise up to that challenge and be really serious in taking a piece of the pie.

Model S is 400 miles, that's 650km per charge. Supercharger network for road trips is available in all Tesla markets. Range anxiety is now moot.

Tesla is the only manufacturer to have brought down the battery price to $100/kwh. They're still working to bring it down further, plus increasing energy density and life of battery.

The $100/kwh price point has been touted to be the magical number when EV will be on par with ICE vehicles. Let's see what battery day has to offer.

Edit: Added the battery information

This post has been edited by kelvinlym: Jul 17 2020, 11:10 AM

650km range is barely or not enough from kl to penang and back in a day.

tesla has funding to subsidize loss making e.v but not legacy car manufacturers. when e.v is profitable to produce, for certain big boys will introduce more models.

another issue faced by e.v owner is decay of battery. hybrid car battery could be replaced individually but not e.v. currently, e.v battery could only replaced by manufacturer.

This post has been edited by icemanfx: Jul 17 2020, 11:00 AM

Don't you need to stop to rest? Aren't you gonna stop at your destination? Can't spare the 1 hour to charge?

Why is EV not profitable? Have you seen Tesla's gross and net margins? They're definitely higher than the mean of the auto industry. Why would the legacy auto with the "enormous" amounts of money not want to get that kind of margins?

Auto makers are still not serious enough. Their ICE investments still need to be written down. They put forward plenty of excuses such as no profitability, consumers want a choice, no infrastructure, range anxiety etc instead of pushing the envelope with actually solving those issues, which Tesla has been doing. While I don't think that Tesla will take over the world, but they will definitely be the one to chase.

Number of cars produced and sold by telsa is way below its capacity, its profit is more of engineered and short term/quarterly.

nissan leaf e.v is available locally. true believer should buy to experience.

Do you have numbers showing that cars produced by Tesla is below its capacity?

Tesla does not have a dealership network to "massage" the sales. They report production and deliveries every quarter and their delivery numbers are conservative as they only record it when the paperwork is done. Tesla fans also track delivery numbers via VIN numbers, China has people in the DMV to count the cars, Europe and South Korea has owners who follow the ships.

With all due respect, what made you think that Tesla has more production capacity? They're building factories left and right and they have low inventory numbers (except during Q1 and Q2 this year due to Covid).

I've driven my colleague's Nissan Leaf in 2012 and used the Smart EV occasionally in Germany as a car sharing service to know how an EV feels. Since that day, the engineer in me believed that EVs will be the future, albeit there are still technical challenges at the time.

The annualized total vehicle production rate in Fremont (based on 104,891 produced in Q4) is at over 415,000 per year.

https://insideevs.com/news/395889/q4-2019-t...nment-capacity/

Yup, that's what the guidance was in Q1. They were confident to comfortably exceed 500k in deliveries this quarter before the virus situation. Their annualised installed capacity of 600k+ is just enough to supply that guidance.

So far, 180k delivered H1. If look at it linearly, it will be 360k this year (basically flat YoY). But there were closures in Q1 and Q2. Assuming H2 production and demand returns, They could comfortably reach 420k delivered. Short of the target guidance of course but not surprising considering the economic conditions. If they hit that, it would be already a win as it is higher than last year. It's a long shot though.

oh yeah... I do know what you mean...

for the record... Tesla closing price on 17th June is 1500.64 or a market cap of 278 Billion....

easily beating many OLDE SCHOOL STOCKS....

Disney market cap is 215 Billion...
Coke market cap is 198 Billion...
PepsiCo market cap is 185 Billion...
Anheuser Busch market cap is 105 Billion...



It be interesting to see to visit back this market cap issue one year later....

* tag keyword: bookmark *

Say kelvin, tesla cars made in China, are they sold in US?

No.

excellent understanding of tesla. a lot of people still think they are a simple auto maker. far from true. i was quite impressed with the racing game in car that used the steering, brakes and accelerator pedal as game controls.

that just means the steering, brakes and accelerator pedal are not connected to typical legacy systems like in normal cars. it's built differently from ground up, just that from the outside it looks like a typical car

True to that. They even get revenue from their charging stations too but if not mistaken all these stuff pale in comparison to their automotive session.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg....-hitting-record

15k cars registered in China in June, up 32%.

The electric-car company raced past Toyota Motor on July 1 to become the world's most valuable automaker. Its market capitalization hit $332.9 billion on Monday -- as large as Japan's seven biggest auto manufacturers combined.

Tesla's stock chart calls to mind dot-com companies during the 1999 boom and bitcoin's meteoric climb in 2017, but its gains have some basis in reality. The transition from internal-combustion engines to electrics is a real trend, which partly explains why investors have remained steadfast as the company's valuation approaches tech-giant levels.

But expectations of high growth cannot fully account for Tesla's exponential rise. It appears that some investors have bought into the stock with the belief that someone else would buy it from them at an even higher price.

Who this "someone else" is seems clear: passive investment vehicles such as index-linked exchange-traded funds.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Gr...a-shares-ascent