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No need for CHI either.
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The cars could still run BlackBerry's real-time QNX OS, and have both CarPlay and Android Auto interfaces like many do now. No need for a JV.

Would could should. You are not saying much I don’t think. Apple might show us something interesting.
 
Would could should. You are not saying much I don’t think. Apple might show us something interesting.
Well, VW has deployed many of their own driver assist technologies already years ago.

They also want to build their own battery gigafactory.
 
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Electric van? Boy that's gonna be a pain in the butt.

So not only will I have to blotch out all the windows and put a mattress in the back, I'll THEN have to worry about finding a charging point and make sure the battery is topped up if I take an impromptu long drive into the woods.

No thanks. I'll stick with diesel and an emergency can.

Good thing they have a whole market full of cars already made just for you. What was even the point of this comment?
 
I'm guilty of blaming Amazon for not having any profits quarter after quarter, for many years. That criticism didn't age well.
Also, as another poster mentioned, profit is not Musk's goal - he is only interested in replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy - if some other companies EVs end up wining, he is fine, so long as the oil industry dies.
Really, unless Tesla goes bankrupt, criticizing its lack of profits is a losing proposition.
Amazon still has a sky high valuation and doesn’t make nearly enough money to justify it, but Amazon always had AWS with almost zero competition for years...and AWS is not capital intensive.

Making cars is about the most competitive business there is and they are still burning tons of cash, actually more as they make more cars.
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Huh??????? No they haven't. Electric smart driving cars haven't dominated the market, Tesla's are notoriously unreliable, have quality control issue especially related to fit and finish and paint quality, and car infotainment can still be improved upon. And Apple has WAYYYYYYYYYYYY more cash than Tesla and that's not remotely debateable. Tesla is stuck in the luxury car segment, still sketch to take long trips in an electric car and EVERYBODY is waiting for battery tech to advance. Plenty of time for Apple to come into the fold. BTW Apple's niche would be smart/autonomous driving which Tesla hasn't nailed. It's also possible Apple could do autonomous driving and combined with car infotainment, partner with a car company with greater manufacturing capability than Tesla.
Tesla’s build quality lags the market, particularly the luxury market.
 
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but self-driving cars will NEVER happen without modifying the actual infrastructure.

This. This will be understood clearly if anyone has seen the movie Minority Report. Cars themselves cannot be self driving without the whole system around them changing.
 
In the same way I never trust any of you phone addicted primates to actually pay attention to something outside of Instagram or Twitter while operating a car.

EDIT: You've got the hastag to prove it...
Jokes on you putz. I use an old fashioned flip phone.
 
The whole point is you wont be driving it. You’ll “hey Siri get me a car,” one rolls up, you throw your stuff in it and get in, it takes you where you are going, and you get out. You are automatically charge with Apple Pay, you don’t have to park it, the car goes and gets someone else, and you move on with your life.

Google is already there.
 
They should give the driver all the radar and info goodness.
I could do with all that stuff now.
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That is EXACTLY what the future of self-driving cars will look like. If you own such a car, you might want to turn it into a driving office (when driving to work) or into a living room with a home theater (when driving home from work) or just a rolling bar. However you're going to use it, you won't be using it as a traditional car because driving and steering the vehicle yourself won't even appear on your radar screen. It will about doing something fun or useful (or even sleeping) during the commute. So, yeah, a self-driving van would make PERFECT sense.
I can see manufacturers of self driving cars as suppliers to public transport. People will only own one if the fairs are priced too high or the service is poor.
 
LOL! Wrong.

I have installed a period-original UK Radiomobile AM/FM radio (circa 1965) with a modified connection to an iPhone SE which connects via a 3.5mm headphone jack.

I can play my playlists off the iPhone SE off the original (mono) speakers (two front, left and right, and one behind the rear shelf)

Looks all original (and you can see the 3.5mm headphone jack, wrapped on the right ready for plugin to an iPhone SE that lies on the hidden shelf to the left):

View attachment 822907
Sir, that is truly awesome. :)
 
Amazon still has a sky high valuation and doesn’t make nearly enough money to justify it, but Amazon always had AWS with almost zero competition for years...and AWS is not capital intensive.

Making cars is about the most competitive business there is and they are still burning tons of cash, actually more as they make more cars.
"Amazon always had AMS" - no they did not. Amazon was founded in 1994, AMS appeared in 2006 and took quite a few years after that before AMS was making real money. My posts about Amazon never making profits date back way before AMS.

Making gas cars is a very competitive business. Making EVs in 2019 has very little competition. The number of EVs available in the US right now is tiny, and Tesla owns the market. The assumption that Tesla will be killed by some future gas car company EV is, again, not going to happen because of US car dealerships, which you keep refusing to address because you can't.

Again, Tesla could get killed in the future by a company that does not make gas cars and thus does not have car dealerships - but it will have all the challenges Tesla has right now.
 
"Amazon always had AMS" - no they did not. Amazon was founded in 1994, AMS appeared in 2006 and took quite a few years after that before AMS was making real money. My posts about Amazon never making profits date back way before AMS.

Making gas cars is a very competitive business. Making EVs in 2019 has very little competition. The number of EVs available in the US right now is tiny, and Tesla owns the market. The assumption that Tesla will be killed by some future gas car company EV is, again, not going to happen because of US car dealerships, which you keep refusing to address because you can't.

Again, Tesla could get killed in the future by a company that does not make gas cars and thus does not have car dealerships - but it will have all the challenges Tesla has right now.
They had AWS when the stock really started moving. Before that, AMZN was a bubble and lost most of its value.

Regardless, AMZN is still overvalued and has a lot to prove from an earnings perspective.

Again, Tesla has not taken advantage of being first to EV. When the hit boys come in, Tesla will be just another company making EVs.

Currently, they are a cash burning, largely unprofitable company with a lot of hopeful investors and very little to show for it.
 
Well let's see if they can get their share price up to $360 to avoid that $900 payment due if they don't.

I'm not sure how much control they have over their own valuation. The market doesn't seem to react at all to product announcements from Tesla - it only reacts to analysts saying Tesla is worth X or financial reports that Tesla has earned Y.

Maybe revealing new stuff in March will boost their valuation, but... IDK. The Model 3 reveal in 2016 only lead to the share price increasing ~10% from $225 a week before to $250 a week after. The Semi and Roadster reveal didn't cause anything - they were at $303 a week before and $315 a week after, with no discernible signal in that noise.

I expect they'll simply pay the $900M.
e-tron


Dude, the "real" players are becoming electrified.
Until now, Tesla has had easy sailing without all-electric, real-player competition.

But now count-in Audi, MB, BMW, with their forthcoming all-electric onslaught, all to show by the turn of this decade -- and that is just the "Germans".

And add the new, standards-based, high-power commercial infrastructure (150 kW, 300kW future) to remove all range-anxiety.

Tesla will now have to put on the "big-boy pants" and compete head-to-head, without Federal subsidies.
Good luck to them.

Just my view.

Audi (R8, plus the VW E-golf since Audi is just a brand of VW), MB, and BMW (i3, i8) have all been selling electric vehicles for nearly a decade. They're not just now entering the market, they've been trying and failing for years.

Tesla already did away with range-anxiety 7 years ago with the 120 kW supercharger network. I've used it for weekend trips from Boston to Toronto and from Boston to Virginia Beach. Tesla is already in the process of switching over that network to use CCS at higher rates.

The federal subsidies don't matter for actual Tesla competitors. Tesla is already selling 400K vehicles per year. Those subsidies phase out once you sell 200K EVs total. BMW has already sold 100K, which means they're only 100K from the phase out. If they're actually competing with Tesla, that means those credits will last 3 months - Tesla will have that as a disadvantage for a very short time, if BMW is serious about competing with Tesla and not just producing a token number of vehicles. Same deal with Audi and MB, although since they're further behind BMW, if they suddenly started competing with Tesla, they'd have that advantage for about 6 months.


Keep telling yourself that. Tesla has survived because investors are willing to put up the money while they lose money, but it will be about earnings in the end.

...

Selling more cars is actually bad from a cash flow perspective.

View attachment 822921

Uh... you know your chart is a year old, and that Tesla actually has been cash flow positive since June of last year? Can't tell if you're a short and intentionally sharing misleading information, or if you're guillible and were mislead by shorts...
 
They had AWS when the stock really started moving. Before that, AMZN was a bubble and lost most of its value.

Regardless, AMZN is still overvalued and has a lot to prove from an earnings perspective.

Again, Tesla has not taken advantage of being first to EV. When the hit boys come in, Tesla will be just another company making EVs.

Currently, they are a cash burning, largely unprofitable company with a lot of hopeful investors and very little to show for it.

Tesla has made a profit in the last two quarters. Tesla stated in the last investment call they will repay the $900 million balloon debt payment in cash next month. The more you post about Tesla the more you read like a Tesla stock short seller.

A couple of posters have put the question to you and you have yet to answer. How is it the "competition" is going take over the EV market when their battery costs are nowhere close to Tesla's? Why will their dealerships sell an EV over a more profitable ICE car? GM ran into that problem trying to sell Bolts. You know, the one they lost over $9K per car.
 
Tesla has made a profit in the last two quarters. Tesla stated in the last investment call they will repay the $900 million balloon debt payment in cash next month. The more you post about Tesla the more you read like a Tesla stock short seller.

A couple of posters have put the question to you and you have yet to answer. How is it the "competition" is going take over the EV market when their battery costs are nowhere close to Tesla's? Why will their dealerships sell an EV over a more profitable ICE car? GM ran into that problem trying to sell Bolts. You know, the one they lost over $9K per car.
I am not short Tesla. Tesla lost money for 2018. 2 quarters of profit is just that. They made small amounts of money after losing large amounts of money. They have a long road to go to justify their valuation.

Wait until Tesla's subsidies run out. Then we'll see how much people want them and how much money they'll lose.

Tesla hasn't done well enough for being first. Other manufacturers will find a way when they need to, which is not now.
 
Sir, that is truly awesome. :)
Thanks.
A labor of true love -- But only on Weekends.

[At present, fighting the Automatic Choke System (cold start carburation) -- made of five, typically-English, complex interlocking analog systems where at least one is refusing to play nice. And new replacement parts are now unavailable. LOL!]
 
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Why even bother? Tesla is going to be far ahead of any car Apple could put out. They've missed their chance.


At what point will folks stop announcing that "it's too late. Apple missed its chance, etc.," ? Every single time Apple has shown them wrong (e.g.,see smart phone :)). Problem is that people don't understand how business/markets work, e.g., market success isn't determined by who gets the most attention or even who has the first model out. Most importantly, the autonomous vehicle market, with everyone using essentially the same tech, and software being the differentiator, will be impossible for any one company to monopolize. Tesla has massive competitors with many more resources pouring billions into R and D, mainly for software, including Google, Uber, GM, Ford, VW, etc. In fact, Audi claims it has produced the first truly Level 4 vehicle on the road. (Every day Apple autonomous vehicles are driving thousands of miles on the road, and they have millions of virtual miles on simulators.)

Tesla admittedly hasn't yet produced a single Level 5 (aka "Level 6" to those who count cars with no driver assist AI as "Level 0"), and even by Elon's optimistic pronouncements is not going to be until early 2020. Further, many would place Tesla really still at Level 4 or even Level 3. But even if Tesla had produced such a vehicle, last year Tesla struggled to produce about 250K or so cars in a worldwide market of over 80 MILLION vehicles sold.

And yes, Tesla has more miles on the road with advanced driver assist technology, the basic hardware is not unique to Tesla and most of it is now ubiquitous in the car industry. For example, every Toyota, down to the cheapest Corolla model has the same basic hardware of Lidar, etc.

So no, it's not too late for Apple or any of the dozens of companies developing autonomous vehicles.
 
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