Tesla posts $700 million first quarter loss

This kind of loss is not a sustainable business model. The well runs dry eventually.
Investors will be wanting a return and have to be losing their patience.

"Analysts expected that Tesla would lose in the neighborhood of 69 cents per share in the first quarter, but Tesla’s real numbers, released today, were much, much worse than that. Tesla lost $2.90 a share, or $702.1 million in the quarter"


No matter your opinion of tesla, there is no denying that this company is having major issues.

They are also coming out with their own insurance for the cars.
If I had to venture a guess why, its probably related to the autopilot system.

"In response to a subsequent question about the safety of Autopilot, Musk said Tesla gives more details about safety to insurance companies."

jalopnik.com...

Should be an interesting year for Tesla.

a reply to: Bluntone22

You know how to make a million dollars in business? Start with $701 million dollars!

a reply to: Bluntone22

His bragadocious ways are going to come back to bite him. He violated agreement with the SEC to not share materially relevant information about the company without first having it approved by a securities attorney (by tweeting that they expected to sell 500,000 cars this year).

His executives and board of directors come and go like drifters who hitch rides on the train from one state to the next. Tesla has major issues and is incredibly overvalued as a company and as a stock.

No matter your opinion of tesla, there is no denying that this company is having major issues.

Yeah and it's name is Elon Musk.

I hope they make it. They are far ahead of any of the ICE competitors and by most measures, people love their cars. I appreciate that they've shown there is a market for a real electric car, not the half-ass stuff the legacy car makers had been pushing.

They will be fine as long as investors are in it for the long haul and they keep innovating. Amazon didn't make money for years. Apple at one point was near failure.

If I were in the market, I'd buy a Model X, but I have an aversion to car payments.

a reply to: Edumakated

I dont care if they sink or swim but I didnt like the tax break people got for buying a tesla.

a reply to: Bluntone22

I don't believe any business is sustainable at those quarterly losses (not named Uber). They are projected to lose money again in Q2, and will likely needs$2.5 billion in fresh capital in Q3 to help keep things ,moving forward. Tesla needs a guy like Jeff Bezos behind them. Jeff privately funds Blue Origin (rocket company), and I'm sure he could do wonders for Tesla.

At least this jackass is doing his part to catch pedophiles with his sooper awesome mini sub. I'd definitely invest in any company he heads up.

originally posted by: Bluntone22
a reply to: Edumakated

I dont care if they sink or swim but I didnt like the tax break people got for buying a tesla.

Yeah, I don't think government should be subsidizing anything... but that is another topic.

The issue is infrastructure. That's killing them.

I wanted a Tesla... I mean I wanted a Tesla bad! But when I looked into the idea of buying one, I began to see practical problems.

• The range is sufficient for most things I need a car for, but if I wanted to take a trip, where could I recharge it? There's a gas station on every corner, but where are the recharging stations? There are some, possibly enough to get by with now, but they are in locations where locals can find them, but not so much travelers.
  
  
• If there's a breakdown, I can't take the car to a mechanic... I have to take it to the nearest Tesla dealer, which for me is either Hotlanta or Nastyville. That's one hell of a tow bill!
  
  
• If that repair takes longer than a few hours, which I would deem likely, I'd be looking at having to place my life on hold and stay in a hotel somewhere until it was fixed, or having to rent a car to get home and still be able to travel, then get back to wherever my car was.
  
  
• Tesla keeps their information pretty quiet from what I can tell, so I couldn't fix minor things at home, even though I am quite capable given the technical data needed.
  
  
• I cannot just buy a Tesla. I have to order a Tesla, which means placing the order and waiting until my car is ready. Recent backlogs show that the time I would have to wait could be substantial.
  
  
• Musk's suggestion recently that he might ask those waiting on their cars to make another deposit is just... wrong. I would never agree to that. He made an agreement with me and took my money; now he keeps his end of the bargain. Period. End of paragraph. End of Chapter. Close the book. It's done.
  
  
• If I want to test drive a Tesla, I have to travel to a dealer, again, for me, Hotlanta or Nastyville. That's a whole day's trip, just for a test drive. If I want to test drive a Challenger or Camaro, I can do it within the space of an hour.
  
  
• If Tesla does go out of business, which seems likely with all the bad decisions and bad financial news coming out, where can I get parts or have it repaired? Nowhere. My $100,000 car is a paperweight.

Elon Musk needs to realize that, while I love many of his ideas, he is not instilling confidence in his ability to follow through on his promises. He cannot go against present infrastructure and expect to win. There are multiple industries that have matured now surrounding cars: repair services, parts supply, fuel, etc. These industries are essential to the success of all of the 'normal' cars out there, and trying to shortcut them is a sure-fire way to destroy one's opportunity to actually make a difference. If I, as someone who was once so excited about the possibility of maybe owning a Tesla, cannot find any way to justify the potential issues to own one, he has no base and no chance to become anything more than a footnote in history like the Chandler, the Studebaker, etc.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

$100k is a lot of money for a car I gotta plug in.
That and 10 below Indiana snow.

You mean Elon Musk is a shameless self promoting confidence trickster? Who would have thought?

There's a reason he gets kicked out of all his economically non-viable businesses when he presents his scientifically-unfounded bond villain-like schemes.

At least he's good at marketing and hype building. Gotta give him that.

Teslas are a dime a dozen around my parts. They are everywhere. Once you've driven / ridden in a Tesla, you will understand why people like them.

I think there biggest issue will be how the legacy car manufacturers respond. Audi, Porsche, Jag, etc all have been trying to launch a competitor but they have not really had much success in doing so.

Once Tesla gets their manufacturing built out I think they will be ok if they can keep staying a step ahead with innovative products.

I like electric cars because I don't have to fill up constantly and the performance / reliability is far higher than a ICE car. I could careless about being "green".

originally posted by: Bluntone22
a reply to: TheRedneck

$100k is a lot of money for a car I gotta plug in.
That and 10 below Indiana snow.

100k is a lot for a car period. Plug in vs gas is irrelevant.

originally posted by: Bluntone22
They are also coming out with their own insurance for the cars.
If I had to venture a guess why, its probably related to the autopilot system.

Probably, nobody is willing to offer insurance for autopilot cars, so Tesla has no choice but to self-insure them.
From an insurance industry standpoint, the uncertainly & risk are still way too high. Basic issues, such as who would be at fault in an accident (the driver or the automaker?) are still up in the air. And it will be many years before we have enough data to make a meaningful judgement on how safe self-driving cars really are.

As for Elon Musk, I've been saying it all long: he's a great visionary, but a terrible businessman. I'm not convinced he even knows what he needs to do to make his company profitable.

originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan

originally posted by: Bluntone22
They are also coming out with their own insurance for the cars.
If I had to venture a guess why, its probably related to the autopilot system.

Probably, nobody is willing to offer insurance for autopilot cars, so Tesla has no choice but to self-insure them.
From an insurance industry standpoint, the uncertainly & risk are still way too high. Basic issues, such as who would be at fault in an accident (the driver or the automaker?) are still up in the air. And it will be many years before we have enough data to make a meaningful judgement on how safe self-driving cars really are.

As for Elon Musk, I've been saying it all long: he's a great visionary, but a terrible businessman. I'm not convinced he even knows what he needs to do to make his company profitable.

There are several hundred thousands Telsa's on the road. I've yet to hear a story about anyone who hasn't been able to get insurance.

I'm sure there is some liability concern or Musk is just looking to continue to vertically integrate like they've done with the dealership model. Providing insurance is just another revenue stream. They probably figure they can insure a captured audience cheaply and if you look the demographics of the typical Tesla buyer, they probably have fewer claims overall. Skimming the most profitable customers from the insurance industry...

Here are the problems for Tesla, as I see them:

* Musk needs to play nice with the SEC. His Twitter war with the SEC absolutely will -- 100% likelihood -- end up biting both him and Tesla on the ass.

* Anybody else would have gotten fired by the board by now. (Look at the meteoric fall of Carlos Ghosn for comparison.) The only thing saving Musk's keister is the cult of personality around him. The stock would probably lose half its value if Musk was ousted.

* The Model S is really damn old by automotive standards, and the Model X is starting to show some gray hairs. Tesla isn't spending nearly enough to develop new models, or at least freshen up their existing models. And it's showing: sales of the S and X are well down from their peak.

* The X, in particular, has a significant design flaw: those gull-wing doors. They are prone to mechanical problems, and they tend to hit people on the head. This happened to my wife when Tesla had a Model X on display at the Woodward Dream Cruise a couple of years ago.

* We still haven't seen the $35,000 version of the Model 3. No secret why: Tesla is unprofitable as it is; selling cars for less money would only make the cash burn even worse.

* Tesla has raised & lowered prices several times in the past year. This reeks of desperation.

originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan
Here are the problems for Tesla, as I see them:

* Musk needs to play nice with the SEC. His Twitter war with the SEC absolutely will -- 100% likelihood -- end up biting both him and Tesla on the ass.

* Anybody else would have gotten fired by the board by now. (Look at the meteoric fall of Carlos Ghosn for comparison.) The only thing saving Musk's keister is the cult of personality around him. The stock would probably lose half its value if Musk was ousted.

* The Model S is really damn old by automotive standards, and the Model X is starting to show some gray hairs. Tesla isn't spending nearly enough to develop new models, or at least freshen up their existing models. And it's showing: sales of the S and X are well down from their peak.

* The X, in particular, has a significant design flaw: those gull-wing doors. They are prone to mechanical problems, and they tend to hit people on the head. This happened to my wife when Tesla had a Model X on display at the Woodward Dream Cruise a couple of years ago.

* We still haven't seen the $35,000 version of the Model 3. No secret why: Tesla is unprofitable as it is; selling cars for less money would only make the cash burn even worse.

* Tesla has raised & lowered prices several times in the past year. This reeks of desperation.

They do need to refreshen the Model S some. However, the tech in the car is still light years ahead of ICE cars. A 2014 Tesla still does more than a 2020 Mercedes S class tech wise...

The cool thing about electric cars though is that it is fairly easy to do a sheet metal redesign because you have hardly any of the mechanicals of a normal ICE car. A tesla without a body looks literally like a skate board.

In fact, there have been discussions (not with Telsa necessarily), but electric cars would take "kit cars" to a whole new level. You could literally just get the underpinning and then put practically any body style on the car fairly easily. think having interchangable bodies without having to upgrade an entire car.

Elon is trying to be an American success. Do you see SOROS doing the same ?? Elon is a patriot, SOROS is not.
Why would you not support what he's doing ? Or wish Him ill ?

a reply to: Bluntone22

Well that's one heck of a write off ...... Love how these rich folk never make any money .