burritoLover wrote: ↑Mon Oct 25, 2021 10:41 pm
Soysauceonrice wrote: ↑Mon Oct 25, 2021 9:50 pm
burritoLover wrote: ↑Mon Oct 25, 2021 8:18 pm
sjl333 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 25, 2021 8:13 pm
The logic of comparing Tesla to other Automakers is so flawed….
Enlighten us.
It's really simple; they aren't a traditional car company and the car isn't comparable to the traditional car most are used to. It sounds a bit cliché, but you just have to own one to understand. I was never a Tesla fanboy, but once I test drove one and now after owning a Model 3 for a year, I really can't see myself going back to a traditional internal combustion engine car. The acceleration is excellent, as is the idea of never visiting a gas station again (other than for a potty break on a long road-trips). The software in the Teslas, along with the OTA updates, are years ahead of any of the traditional car makers. Their charging infrastructure is significantly more developed, and this is key, far more
reliable than competitor networks such as Electrify America. When I roll up to a supercharger, I don't have to wonder if the chargers are out of order. Every single supper charger I have stopped at was working, 100% of the time. That isn't true of the competing networks.
If you believe electric cars are the future, and I do believe that they are, then Teslas have a massive lead that the GM and Fords of the world won't easily catch up to. I attribute this to the fact that Tesla is 100% all in on electrification. That focus allows them to do what they do extremely well, whereas the legacy automakers are still focusing on traditional cars and making electric cars a side-hobby.
None of this justifies the company being worth a trillion. They're almost certainly over-valued. But to compare them to the traditional auto-makers is severely missing the point.
I own a model 3 performance and everything you said about it I agree with (except they do have superchargers that go out of service). And I believe that EVs are the future. That’s irrelevant - the internet was undoubtedly the future during the dot com bubble and has so vastly impacted every facet of our lives over the next 20 years - even more than anyone could have imagined. Yet a company like Cisco, poised to be the “shovel seller during a gold rush”, whose fundamentals were vastly superior then as compared to Tesla now, was a terrible investment going forward.
The comparison to Apple is misguided too. Tesla had a monopoly on EVs - key word “had”. A number of EVs have been released from other manufacturers since and Tesla is poised to get knocked off their pedestal by the likes of the 22’ Lucid Air with the first over 500 mile range EV (520 mi EPA tested) and Rivian being the first EV truck for sale - beating Tesla’s much delayed Cybertruck.
Tesla’s supercharger network also is losing its advantages - other charging competitors are moving into the space and growing rapidly and even Biden wants to subsidize a massive EV charging network across the country.
Maybe their biggest asset is their self-driving technology which they could license to others. But Tesla has over-promised and under-delivered on this feature SO many times, it has become almost laughable. And the government is also not so keen on them using their customers to effectively beta test self-driving changes - which is a potential risk.
Bottom line, it doesn’t matter how promising a company’s future is if you overpay for the privilege of owning the stock. Your returns can still be crappy even if Tesla lives up to everthing you expect.
There are a few trains of thoughts that I think deserve to be fleshed out and made clear. 1) Based on what we know about how to value a company, Tesla is certainly overvalued. I don't think anyone will have any issues with this statement. My main beef lies in how readily detractors are willing to dismiss the company
because the stock is so detached from reality. Which brings me to point 2) Tesla can be both overvalued, and revolutionary at the same time.
In regards to their super-chargers going out of service, I know that they do go out of service. But the key point is that I never show up to a supper-charger to be surprised that it is out of service. Why is this ? Because the software of the Tesla tells me which supper chargers are down for service. It even tells me how busy each stop is, in real time, and allows me to make an informed decision on whether I want to stop at this charger, or skip it for a less packed charger down the road. I never roll up to a supercharger finding that it doesn't work, because if a supper charger doesn't work, my car tells me so and allows me to avoid it. If you were in a Mustang Mach-E for example, your car cannot tell you this information, because Ford does not control their charging network. There's that pesky tech advantage rearing its head again. For an example of a real world test that compares the networks, MKBHD did a great video on this. The differences in the experience is night and day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXzuFprlyrw
You haven't really explained why the comparison to apple is misguided. Tesla can be Apple, or it can be Cisco. As others have pointed out, a car isn't a phone. But comments like those have the benefit of a decade and a half of foresight. If we were honest, how many of us in 2007 prophesized the seismic shift in our daily lives that the iphone and its smartphone progeny started ? You can say a car is just a car. But a phone in 2007 was also just a phone. If you asked the me of 2006, I would have no idea how my clam-shell nokia phone would revolutionize anything. All i used it for was to call my parents and text my college buddies. And just like Tesla, the iphone had its fair share of "me-too" clones (anyone remember the Blackberry Storm ?) and yet 15 years later, the iphone is still doing fine, despite the fact that it has hefty competition and that, from a features standpoint, an android phone can do everything an iphone can.
You say that it's laughable how often Tesla has overpromised and under-delivered on their FSD promises. This is a very valid critique. But what is also just as laughable to me, is how often people trot out the mantra of "just wait until the REAL car companies do electric cars!". I've heard that mantra for years, and the Tesla "Killers" have consistently underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, I bought my Tesla because I am worried about the environment. I *want* Ford, Rivian, Lucid, GM, etc, to succeed, but the cars are either so new we can't really judge them (the Rivian Truck and the Lucid Air) or they have been disappointing (polestar). So yes, Elon has consistently under-delivered on his FSD hype, but so have the supposed Tesla killers. All have over-promised, and under-delivered.
It needs to be said again. The stock price doesn't make any sense. It is not worth 1 trillion today. But, based on what the company is doing now, I can certainly see it being worth that valuation some day. The ironic part is, the day I think the company is worth that trillion, the market might tell me it's worth 10.