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smk4565

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Everything posted by smk4565

  1. Tesla's challenge is China and BYD for sure, and also high interest rates and macro economic factors that impact everyone. Tesla's other challenge is only have 4 products, 2 of which are in the $75-100,000 range and have a base level 670 hp motors. The number of people shopping for 670 hp is a rather small part of the market, like less than 1%. That leaves 1 sedan and 1 crossover. So clearly they need a cheaper vehicle, a pick up, an affordable 3 row SUV, maybe a van, the roadster, etc, to fill out a model line up so they can have a body style and price point to attract a wide variety of consumers. The competition from other brands isn't even a problem for them right now, the 210 hp Equniox RS EV FWD is the same price as an AWD Long Range Model Y for example, that's DOA for the Equinox. The BZ4X/Soltera are not competition with their 200 mile range, the Mach-E isn't selling and is having its production cut, EV6 sales are down 15% this year. And legacy OEM's are losing money on EV's and scale won't save them, that is why they are all cutting back, they have to stop the losses.
  2. Now I wonder if the $34,995 Equinox will ever exist, since only the RS is available at launch, and I don't think the 1LT will ever be made for 2024 model year, then for 2025, all of a sudden the 1LT will go from $34,995 to $38,995.
  3. Right, Tesla will make a lot of money from being the new largest "gas station"
  4. EV sales are 8% of the market in the USA, 25% in California. EV’s are 14% of new cars sales in Europe and 31% in China. Guess what the #1 volume market was for GM and VW? China. But GM and VW are bleeding sales over there. You can barely get an ICE car for $20k, that won’t buy you a base Corolla, but let’s say $25k gets you a Civic, Trax, Kona, etc. If someone builds a $30k sticker price EV in North America, the $7500 tax credit is applied point of sale starting in January, now we have a $22,500 EV that is cheaper than ICE. If the domestics don’t figure it out, the Chinese already have.
  5. GM market cap $37 Billion. Tesla market cap $650 billion. Of course GM and Ford are delaying their EV's because they lose money on them, and people don't want their overpriced EV's. Hyundai just cut Ioniq 6 prices by $4,100 because people don't want a $50k Hyundai sedan when a Sonata is $30,000. So they have chosen to soldier on and just lose more money per unit to keeping the factory running. Mercedes dealers are complaining about the EQ series since they are too expensive and not aspirational products. Although Mercedes total sales are down 1.8% this year and their EV's are up 339% to nearly 15% of their total volume. ICE is dying off, all the more reason Mercedes needs to get their EV house in order and get better pricing, because once those aren't the new car on the showroom, people will lose interest at that price. Legacy auto might get away with a 1 year delay in sales as long as they use that 1 year to improve the product and get lower manufacturing cost. If they are just trying to kick the can down the road and worry about it later, they will be too late to catch up. And it isn't just in the US, in China the EV's are taking over, which is why GM, Ford and VW have lost about half their sales volume over there in the past 5 years, they can't compete on price over there. BYD is already into Europe, and again VW can't compete on price. Eventually BYD will come to the US too and they'll bring the price war with them.
  6. Tesla deliveries are up 45% this year. No other car company has 45% growth. It is a myth that EV’s don’t sell, everyone else’s EV’s aren’t selling. And if for some reason Tesla got in trouble, they would get a government bailout like GM and Chrysler did.
  7. Blazer 2LT gas awd is $39,495 and a Blazer EV 2LT awd is $56,715. So I guess it is more like a 40% increase. And of course Tesla had it hard at first they had to start from scratch, buy a factory, etc. Legacy auto already has factories and workers and tooling and paint booths, distribution network, etc. And Ford just announced today they lost $36,000 on every EV sold in Q3 and will be cutting Mach-E production. Hard to get economies of scale when you cut production. And they are going to keep getting credits because Ford and GM are cutting EV production and delaying EV’s and Stellantis nowhere to be found at a time when the CAFE numbers are going up.
  8. This is probably the type of thinking that occurs at GM, Ford, Stellantis and Toyota. They think Tesla isn’t a threat so don’t worry about them. They are all in for a rude awakening.
  9. They make gas powered cars now, they won’t be in 10 years. Also the only companies making more profit per car than Tesla are BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The car manufacturing business has relatively low margins. Hyundai/Kia for example make about $700 profit per car. As that ICE business shrinks, not sure how many EV losses that is going to fund. And they just cut Ioniq 6 by $4,000 to line up closer to the Model 3.
  10. Maybe they know how, but are unable. The Escalade EV is 50% more than the ICE version, the Blazer EV is 50% more than the ICE version. You can’t raise prices 50% and not expect sales to tank. They have to get the cost out first to get the volume they need. Kind of a catch 22.
  11. Tesla isn't losing money, they have made $7.1 billion dollars of net income so far this year, so they should end the year with about a $9 billion profit if Q4 looks like Q3, and it could be a $10 billion profit if they have a good quarter. They don't need subsidized, they are easily making money, and they have a growing product line to expand revenue. And energy generation and distribution is a small % of their business, but it is high margin and they are about to double or triple that part of the business with all these other OEM's putting Tesla charging plugs on their cars. Elon lost money since the stock price dropped, but I don't think Elon cares about losing money, he wasted $40 billion on X for no reason, he could have bought GM for $39 billion at today's price if he wanted to flush money away. This is why Tesla is dangerous. They are profitable at about $5k per car now, Elon might not care if they cut prices another $5k per car and make $0 on the car, if he can make the money on charging and selling FSD software that has huge margins. Basically give away a free iPhone to make money on subscriptions and apps. The other companies can't do that, or afford to get into a price war with him.
  12. Ford lost $1.33 Billion on EV's in Q3. But it isn't just the bleeding money, it is that F150 Lightning demand is basically gone, and the Mach-E has very little demand. The dealer near me has 19 of them, all with customer cash offers from Ford, why the dealer isn't throwing in $5k off on top of that I don't know. And I don't have any faith or loyalty to Musk, but it is pretty clear that Tesla is highly profitable and with quickly rising sales volume, while no one else can seem to figure out EV's. And you have GM delaying the Equinox EV to next year some time, the Silverado and Sierra were pushed back a year, Mercedes dealers complaining about how the EV's are as aspirational or desirable as the gas cars and they are too expensive, Hyundai/Kia dealers have EV's piled up on the lots. The same thing is true at all these OEM's, they make EV's that don't look like the rest of the brand, or aren't eye catching enough, then they cost 25-50% more than the similarly sized ICE car on the same lot, and they are heavy, with less range and performance than a Tesla. Cadillac Escalade starts at $82,000, the Escalade EV is $130,000. These Escalade EV's will sit around on dealer lots also, unless they only make about 2,000 of them a year. All these OEM's need to suck cost out of these EV's but seem clueless on how to do it.
  13. All that over engineering to get a vehicle that is heavier, slower, more expensive and has less range than their closest rival. And that gets outsold 10-1 by their key rival in just the USA. Globally it is like 20 to 1. Ford knows how to do pickups and commercial vehicles, and I give them credit on the Bronco and Bronco Sport, they built desirable products there and the Maverick is a big win because small trucks and trucks under $30,000 don't exist anymore and with high interest rates and inflation it was the right product at the right time. But outside of that, they don't have a lot going for them.
  14. Ford breaks out their EV financials, Ford themselves say their EV's will lose $4.5 billion dollars this year. (or $1.125 billion per quarter) Ford has sold 46,671 EV's through Q3 at a loss of $3.375 Billion, which is actually $72,314 dollars lost per car sold. Tesla meanwhile making billions in profits on EVs:
  15. The Mach-E is built on the GE1 platform which is a heavily reworked Ford C2 platform, which is what underpins the Escape and final generation Ford Focus, Corsair, Bronco Sport, Maverick, Edge, etc. Probably also why it is a few hundred pounds heavier than the Model Y they were trying to copy.
  16. Kia EV9 concept debuted in November 2021. Not yet at dealers. And the Mach-E is bad product built on an ICE platform, they rushed it because Tesla was so fast on the rise. Model Y outsells the Mach-E like 20-1 worldwide so I wouldn't call the Mach-E a success story, especially since Ford loses $60,000 on each one they sell. Also Kia EV6 US sales through Q3 are 14,798, down from 15.7% from last year. Tesla Model Y US sales are 284,000. If Kia is so good, why are they getting outscored 284-14? The facts are Tesla is mopping the floor with these OEM's and I don't see how any OEM outside of BMW and Mercedes makes an easy transition to EV's because the EV's are too high priced and too low volume compared to their ICE counterparts. And even then, I don't think it will be all that easy for Mercedes or BMW, but they are lucky that Tesla isn't coming for them, Tesla is coming for the mass market.
  17. 4 years concept to production is pretty common in the industry. Also Cybertruck is an all new product with a new manufacturing process, so they had toe work all that out. Plus it is bulletproof as confirmed today by Elon that they emptied an entire Tommy Gun magazine into the side of one. And the tri-motor has over 1,000 hp making Ram TRX and the F150 Raptor R look like weak sauce.
  18. Musk himself uses V12. I don't think he would use a product that would kill him. Also Tesla crash test ratings are best in industry if it does crash. And if Tesla's way isn't right, then whose is? Mercedes is the leader in the clubhouse with a mapped roads level 3 system that works to a max of 40 mph. That's probably another year to get it to all the states (and European countries outside of Germany) and then another year to get it up to 60-80 mph, another year to expand use cases. And everyone else tends to run 5-10 years behind the S-class in technology.
  19. Yes it will be slow at first, Tesla said 125,000 a year next year, but I feel like that will be the run rate at the end of 2024, and the 250,000 a year might not be until 2025. But keep in mind the Silverado EV production at Orion is being delayed to late 2025, so looks like just low volume of Silverado work trucks until then and GM sold 13 Silverado EV's last quarter. Cybertruck could easily be the best selling electric pick up in 2024 even with them slowly ramping, F150 Lightning sales fell off the cliff and they cut back production on those.
  20. No, 6 million accidents and 40,000 deaths a year is about the average for the USA. November 30th for Cybertruck!
  21. If we had only self driving cars on the road, and no human drivers, and self driving cars led to 30,000 traffic fatalities per year, that would be an improvement over humans. There are on average 6 million car accidents per year in the USA. Zero chance in hell that self driving cars crash 6 million times per year.
  22. I watched FSD v. 12 live and it worked except for 1 intervention. And v12 is in a testing phase, it isn't on sale, so no one is test dummy for that. v12 looks like the real deal to at least a use anywhere level 3 system since it doesn't need mapped roads. And the robo-taxi they are working on would have to be level 5, and that seems to be on the horizon for 2025-26. FSD v.11 that they currently have is in no way worth the $12,000 cost since it is level 2, a lot of cars have level 2 systems for way less money.
  23. I watched about a half hour of Elon being driven by the car, he had to intervene 1 time during the part I watched, and it was all neighborhoods and regular traffic, none of it was on a divided highway. Yes it is experimental still, but it seems pretty close. I think Tesla gets to level 4 before Mercedes does and Tesla is going to be offering this on mainstream cars, compared to Mercedes who is doing this higher up in the luxury market.
  24. The current FSD version 11 is level 2 and that runs on lines of code like these other systems. FSD version 12 that Elon did his livestream in the car, runs off AI and the supercomputer interpreting what the cameras see. Thus you can drop a car anywhere on an unmapped road and set a destination and the car can still drive to it. And it is hands free, vision free, driver doesn’t have to do anything. That is where Tesla leapfrogs Mercedes because FSD v12 looks like a Level 4 system and that could be out before Mercedes gets level 3 under 40 mph nationwide.
  25. Additional food for thought, the Cadillac Lyric which has the same length and width as the EV9 (though EV9 is taller), starts at $62,000 for the AWD trim and a Luxury 3 AWD is $72,000. These are 500 hp and over 300 miles range, and come with a $7500 tax credit. The Kia is priced higher than a Cadillac even before the $7500 credit. I don't see the great value here in paying $7500 more than a Cadillac for a Kia. And biggest miss ever that the Lyric wasn't a 3-row at that size, that's actually the only reason to buy the Kia over the Cadillac.
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