LeX2K

I find it interesting that you tend to take an interest in Musk personally, why? CEOs in general are abrasive, arrogant or sometimes worse but you only focus in on Elon Musk.
Musk started an electric car company and rocket company from scratch I think he might know what he's doing.
The auto industry has never had an all electric mass market car company before, also Lutz said Tesla would be bankrupt by now.
Jaguar, Audi, Tesla and others use a glycol based liquid in a cooling loop. Without it the charge times will be much longer.

EZZ

I love how the uninformed wish Musk would be out as CEO. He helped engineer critical core technologies in Tesla that is still years ahead of any major auto manufacturer. He's an absolute genius and may be an oddball, but still the heart and soul of the company. As I recall, a Maverick Jobs was removed from Apple. How'd that turn out? Silicon Valley has learned to never ever ever ever force a founder out.

Toys4RJill

How so? Tesla is not making money. They just announced more losses. Tesla is also closing retail stores.

LeX2K

I bet almost no one knows or realizes that Elon does a great deal of design and engineering himself, compare that to just about any other CEO. Say what you want about him personally but the man is a genius.
Tesla makes money on their cars the build to sell price is good. They lose money because of start up costs.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

You’re good at conflating unrelated things. Tesla’s profitability or lack thereof has almost nothing to do with whether they sell direct or not, but i’m glad they don’t use dealers and i’m sure elon musk wants to retain control as much as possible of the message, the presentation, and as much revenue as possible.

Moreover, about ‘closing stores’, that was their plan at one point, but they reversed course and didn’t.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a2...losing-stores/

About their profitability, Tesla is still building out their expensive factories in Nevada and China. They continue to build out and upgrade their charger network. They’re dealing with shrinking EV tax credits, tariffs, and a turbulent regulatory environment, different in each country. They’re trying to do really difficult things. So it’s not that surprising they’re losing money, just like amazon did for two decades. Amazon is a good parallel actually because they could have shown a profit but instead chose to plow all free cash and leveraged money back into the business. Boy did it ever pay off. The amazon parallel fails though because amazon is actually very diversified where tesla isn’t so much.

EZZ

They would lose even more money if dealers were involved. They would have to share the profits so either they would have to increase prices losing sales or make even less per car. Dealerships will be in a lot of hurt once EVs become mainstream. They heavily rely on service departments so what happens when EVs BARELY need servicing. The dealerships model will die when EVs become mainstream. Good riddance.

Toys4RJill

And this gets back to the issue of Tesla right now, they do not make money. So their dealer network is not successful. I am not a fan of dealers, I would rather by via no-haggle. But for the masses, third party dealers bring down prices for the consumers.

LeX2K

Short term thinking as it has been pointed out many times Amazon was not profitable for 2 decades. And their start up costs were far far lower.

EZZ

Tesla makes money on their cars. They lose money on their infrastructure build out and factory buildout. If they had a dealer franchise model, they would be worse off. Simply saying Tesla loses money so their business model doesn't work is very naïveté. Shows lack of understanding in their business.

mmarshall

Wrong. Apparently you don't follow my posts. I have posted, numerous times, on the sins and abuses of Ferdinand Piech at VW, Henry Ford II's fiefdom/dictatorship when he ran Ford, Lee Iacocca's double-talk when he ran Chrysler, Mercedes' Dieter Zetsche's abuse of the Daimler/Chrysler partnership, John DeLorean's cocaine-running to support his failing company (though he claimed to the day he died that it was a set-up), The inexcusable manner that GM and Ford are both being run today, and numerous other examples. I don't sugar-coat situations that don't deserve to be sugar-coated.

I'm not criticizing his past along those lines. At one time, he was a brilliant entrepreneur, and he indeed founded a company that produced some electric vehicles (and battery/power-systems) of remarkable range and capacity. But it was also founded on some very questionable principles of company-organization, and somewhere along the way (might have been his latest girl-friend....who knows?)....something came into his life that simply went to his head, and he has been on a downward spiral ever since.

Much of what Lutz predicted has already come to pass, although it is true that Tesla is not bankrupt yet. Their stock, though, is classically overpriced, and in a bubble. And, with all of the assembly-line defects in the Model 3 and Model X, they are going to lose a ton of money in warranty work.

Toys4RJill

So overall...Tesla is losing money? And how much are they in the hole?

EZZ

They were cash flow positive so no, not his quarter. They are losing earnings due to depreciating their past capex. You do understand the difference right?

Toys4RJill

How much are they in the hole?

https://ycharts.com/companies/TSLA/total_long_term_debt

EZZ

They have $13B in debt with an equity value of $40B. What's wrong with that? Nowhere near financial distress. Debt is cheap so they are maximizing shareholder value. Better than issuing more equity and diluting shareholders. They are also cash flow positive even after servicing that debt. I don't understand what you're trying to get at?

Toys4RJill

What I am getting is that, I see many comments lamenting the dealer set up...or the service set up...(which is fine) ...then I hear that Tesla has this revolutionary way of selling direct...I just contrast that with the idea that they are not making profit...and I further read there are no discounts available...I truly do not see Tesla becoming successful with a dealer model...but that is just my opinion.