
Tesla Beats Delivery Forecast with 52% Quarterly Surge - adventured
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-02/tesla-beats-delivery-forecast-with-52-quarterly-surge
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jhallenworld
It's impressive, really. This is the year that I've really started to see
Teslas around here (Boston- there's a showroom in the Natick Mall). On the one
hand, the car is risky: expensive battery, limited range / charging options,
luxury car service cost. On the other, they found a niche: the coastal rich
who are willing to use them as their daily commuting car.

They are cheaper than Maseratis, which I've also been seeing a lot of lately.
When looked at this way, people are willing to take the risk on the cheaper
car. Even so, if car sales are a zero-sum game, I think BMW is the one being
hurt by them the most.

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wishinghand
> luxury car service cost

I was under the impression that they have less service costs due to fewer
moving parts. Or maybe it comes out all the same since there's less to
service, but when something does need servicing it's more expensive than
usual.

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mikeash
Tesla charges $600 for their annual service, or $450 if you prepay four years
in advance. This is a bit high, especially considering that they do very
little. However it's not mandatory, especially the first year.

What's likely to be cheaper is long-term repair costs. No muffler
replacements, no leaking head gaskets, no timing belts making an attempt at
freedom.... But whether that actually works out remains to be seen.

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jberryman
> No muffler replacements, no leaking head gaskets, no timing belts making an
> attempt at freedom

FWIW I've only ever changed the oil on my 2006 Ford Focus.

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mikeash
You should have at least had transmission oil changed, fuel and air filters
changed, brake pads and rotors (I count this because the brakes on an electric
car driven by a normal person will last 150,000 miles or more), and probably
new spark plugs by now.

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GutenYe
Where can I find the figure in China, I'm very interested in it.

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chatmasta
Best stock investment I ever made! Whoop whoop!

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sixQuarks
Having worked in the stock-trading world and seeing some of the murky things
that go on first-hand, I would not be surprised to learn that many of the
negative comments we see every time Elon Musk is mentioned is due to a
concerted effort by short-sellers.

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x5n1
I personally think Telsa's car business is bound to fail when the majors
decide to compete. But that's a more long term strategy.

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epistasis
Having dealt with lots of the "majors'" new car models lately in rentals, I
doubt that they have much to bring to the table anymore. The amount of
stupidity in design is astounding. I think that once Tesla scales, it will
completely demolish any of the other US car companies. Toyota and Honda may be
able to compete.

I'm really really hungry for competence in both manufacturing and design,
which is something that is sorely lacking in the current large US car
companies. Based on their current track record, Tesla has a much better chance
of delivering than Ford or GM.

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forgetsusername
> _The amount of stupidity in design is astounding_

Please, elaborate on all the design stupidity that the Tesla solves.

I've test driven a Tesla. It's awesome, thanks to the amazing torque delivery
that comes from electric motors. It's a paradigm shift for a long time car
guy, and has to be experienced to be understood.

..but, other than that...it's just a luxury car. What exactly has it "solved"
that every other car company is still doing "stupidly"?

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threeseed
The Tesla is not a luxury car.

It may have a luxury price and technically it is very impressive but the
interior quality is ridiculously poor for a car this expensive. I've sat in
Hyundai and Daewoos that had better quality finishes and leathers.

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cblock811
Nice to hear some good news for the guy after his rocket exploded.

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NorthNeutron
Everything takes trial and error to develop.

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elwell
You wouldn't say that if your Tesla got stuck in acceleration and the brake
didn't work.

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TrevorJ
Pretty hard to compare two vastly different arenas like that. In space flight
even mature platforms have a 1%-10% failure rate.

Because of the physics involved, rockets operate at the very edge of the
capabilities of the rocket. Modern auto's don't have this issue: you can drive
at highway speeds all day long without stressing the materials in your engine
anywhere close to the edge of the operating envelope. In short, from an
engineering perspective car's _aren 't_ hard any longer.

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a8da6b0c91d
Good thing they're making up the per unit losses with volume.

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greglindahl
They make money on cars (gross margin). They lose money on R&D and expanding
the production line.

Any car company growing this rapidly would lose money. Any car company this
small designing a new model would lose money.

I know why so many financial commenters harp on and on about Tesla losing
money. What mystifies me is why so many HN commenters do the same, given that
most of us are startup people. Many startups lose money for the same reasons.

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damoncali
Most car companies include R&D in COGS. So it's fair to point out that Tesla
does not.

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msandford
Most car companies already have mature vehicle platforms (engines,
transmissions, chassis and body experience, etc) to work off of and thus only
have to charge R&D for a particular car against that car.

When you're developing a new car you have to do a lot of general R&D and a lot
of car-specific R&D. What gets charged against the car and what are considered
general? Who gets to decide? Why would they decide in a particular way?

It's not super obvious to me where you'd bill things even if they're
ostensibly just for the Model S because in another year or two they might
release a Model S2 with not a lot of R&D because they just stole parts from
the Model S, Model X and Model 3.

Not saying it will happen, but it could. Then the R&D costs would be too low
on that car and they'd have to go back and adjust their gross margin back as
far as they've been selling the other cars and then the whole thing is a
nightmare since I'm pretty sure the SEC won't let you do that.

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damoncali
It's not a indefensible position. But it is _different_ , and makes direct
comparisons more difficult.

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greglindahl
The numbers released to the public include enough information to make direct
comparisons. The problem is that it's really apples-to-oranges: large, not-
growing-very-fast car companies are a very different beast from small,
rapidly-growing, risky new entrants.

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shampine
And my back button was hijacked.

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Shivetya
The model X is the bogeyman in Tesla's house. If they fail to start deliveries
by September as they have indicated they will likely not make their sales goal
for year. The suspect in the X delay is the gull wing doors which like the
ragtop they had before, Elon's insistence on particular features again is
causing production issues.

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pbreit
"Elon's insistence" has also created a $35b company. I think anyone would
happily delay a car launch to both improve the car and increase the company's
long term value.

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ElComradio
A high-risk $500M loan from Uncle Sam (read: You and me, against our knowledge
or direct choice) has created a $35B company, in which we the investor have no
stake.

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efuquen
I don't understand why this is getting downvoted. The 'loan' the US made was
extremely high risk and taxpayers got a terrible ROI for the amount given and
the risk taken:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/tesl...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/tesla_is_worse_than_solyndra_how_the_u_s_government_bungled_its_investment.html)

Edit: I am a big fan of Tesla, SpaceX, and the feats Elon Musk has
accomplished, but I don't think that means one can't be critical of him, his
companies, or the way taxpayer money might have been spent to prop them up.
It's undeniable that if the US govt had received some equity stake taxpayers
could have more equally shared in Tesla's success, and I don't think there
would have been anything unreasonable about that.

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epistasis
It's getting downvoted because it's unnecessarily inflammatory, and ignorant
of common practices with many other companies, both for companies that are
well-established and for companies that bringing forth strategic emerging
technologies.

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ElComradio
Please describe how it is inflammatory.

Please describe how I implied Tesla was the only company who benefits from
government largess.

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rostov
In my opinion, based on Tesla's maintenance cost today, it's a fancy toy for
rich people.

It's out of reach of general consumer and when it comes to saving planet by
consuming electricity, not gas in US I am skeptical. What I want to find out
is a green house effect from 1 mile per gallon of gas vs. 1 mile per kWh off
produced electricity. Considering US electricity is produced by coal burning
plants, which are considered primary green gas effect contributors.

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pjscott
Expensive-toy prices are just barely keeping demand down to levels they can
supply. They're using that money to ramp up production and lower their future
costs. The long-term plan is to sell to progressively cheaper segments of the
market, as they get rolling.

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rostov
For years Tesla refused to make public it's sales numbers, after going public
it's reluctantly doing so. I have read from 2012 to 2014 it's sales numbers in
tenth of thousands per year. In comparison Mercedes Benz sells its gas powered
toys in hundreds of thousands per year.

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usaphp
So many downvoted comment, looks like nobody wants to accept the reality...

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joshuapants
Or maybe people just downvote comments that contain the infamous "gratuitous
negativity" and have no real substance to temper that with.

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MajorLOL
Moral of the story in this comment section;

Negative comments about Tesla will be down voted upon detection.

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mikeash
I think you mean, comments which state falsehoods will be downvoted.

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aresant
What a perfect PR headline.

Exciting, confusing, non-specific.

"Wow a 52% quarterly surge, Tesla's on fire!"

I thought that meant they sold 52% more cars than Q1.

But what they really are saying is "Tesla sold 52% more cars in Q2 2015 than
Q2 2014"

And they are still less than halfway through year end's target 2 quarters in
which analysts feel certain they will not hit without the Model X release (2)

With all the discussion around the Unicorns preferring to stay private how
much of a factor must avoiding the colossal pain in the ass of having to
engineer this kind of financial-speak every quarter on top of just trying to
run your business.

(1) [http://www.ibtimes.com/tesla-motors-inc-tsla-likely-
miss-201...](http://www.ibtimes.com/tesla-motors-inc-tsla-likely-
miss-2015-delivery-target-55000-model-s-model-x-cars-1881582)

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damoncali
That's generally what people mean in finance - YOY growth. Otherwise you get
seasonal data problems (pretty much every retailer's Q4 is huge relative to Q3
because of Christmas, for example).

As always, dig deeper. Tesla isn't out of the woods yet.

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jws
That is the case. But I think the word "surge" is confusing people. If it said
"up 52%" I'd assume year on year. But somehow "surge" implies a change in
continuous state.

