Are we not talking about the way cool new Tesla lorry and Roadster?

[Macroni]

Tesla is a good product and definitely viable moving forward.... it needs to be part of a bigger entity just like Porsche did when they sold to VW....

[legion]

Originally Posted by Macroni

Tesla is a good product and definitely viable moving forward.... it needs to be part of a bigger entity just like Porsche did when they sold to VW....

A company that loses money on every unit produced and has never made a profit is the definition of not viable.

Tesla and Sears are in the same boat right now. Both have lost money for years, and both have no realistic path to profitability.

[Macroni]

Originally Posted by legion

A company that loses money on every unit produced and has never made a profit is the definition of not viable.......

Is Uber viable.... Is Amazon viable...... tech has a different definition of viable....

and that does not mean I miss your point. It has been my criticism of Uber since it has laid wreckage to the Taxi industry around the world....

[sugarwood]

On a raft in the quarry
Slowly sinking
Back of a lorry
Holy hitching
Dreadfully sorry
Apple scrumping
Born in the war
Birthday punching

Out of my brain on the train
Out of my brain on the train

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR5v4yyPV6Y

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Shaun @ Tru6

Walmart has ordered 15 trucks. If that testing goes well, trucks will save Tesla. UPS and FedEx must be watching Tesla carefully.

Only if the US gubmint pays for those trucks with our tax money.
I'm sick and tired of sponsoring that company just so some people can play make-believe feel good.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Macroni

Tesla is a good product and definitely viable moving forward.... it needs to be part of a bigger entity just like Porsche did when they sold to VW....

Since you obviously have trouble differentiating reality from fantasy, can I borrow $100?

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Shaun @ Tru6

It's not the government's money, it's your money! Government is perhaps best at taking $ from voters and giving it to special interests that fund their campaigns.

That why when states and cities give tax breaks to Disney, Hugh has to pay more in taxes.

GE getting $25M in tax breaks from Boston, that money has to be made up somewhere.

Amazon being thrown billion $ tax breaks for the second headquarters...

Ultimately we only have ourselves to blame for not demanding election reform, spending reform, accountability when grants and tax breaks are given, etc.

Fact is whether it's a new football stadium or a Fortune 500 move or technology driven grants or gross mispending on military, we can all cry and complain but nothing is going change until voters have their own K Street representation.

Or serious government reform which is obviously laughable.

You talk of tax breaks, that means the gubmint lowers a company's tax rate so they don't have to pay as many taxes for a period of time.
They get to keep a little bit more of their own money.

That is most decidedly NOT what is going on with tesla.

See, tesla doesn't pay ANY real taxes, because they are not really profitable.
No real income, no real income taxes.

What they get, (besides the $7500 cash rebate for each car sold) is millions and millions of dollars in GIFTS.

The gubmint doesn't tell them they can keep more of their own money, the gubmint GIVES them other people's money.

The gubmint gives tesla huge amounts of carbon credits, credits that according to the gubmint laws tesla doesn't NEED.

So tesla sells these carbon credits to other companies that need them to comply with the gubmint laws.

They rake in so many millions from these carbon credits it would take all day to count them.

And who ultimately pays for these credits?

People who use electricity pay for tesla's credits.
People who use gasoline and diesel and jet fuel pay for these credits.
People who use cement pay for these credits.
People who use natural gas pay for these credits.

WE DO!

Then we throw in the ZEV credits which are a direct gubmint gift, and that keeps them afloat, barely.

But that's OK because the intentionally ignorant among us get to FEEL GOOD about it.

[ZAMIRZ]

Originally Posted by legion

A company that loses money on every unit produced and has never made a profit is the definition of not viable.

Tesla and Sears are in the same boat right now. Both have lost money for years, and both have no realistic path to profitability.

This (part in bold) is factually incorrect.

Tesla's automotive gross margin, while quite low, is positive.

My $.02: There is a path to profitability, it's mostly dependent on how much of the market Elon wants to capture before he pulls back on the connected electric-ecosystem expansion.

[sammyg2]

Zero-Emission Vehicle Credits: The One 'Product' That Tesla Actually Earns A Profit On
by Tyler Durden
Aug 7, 2017 10:05 PM

As we pointed out last week when Tesla reported its Q2 earnings, making products that actually generate a return on capital for shareholders isn't a strong suit of the Silicon Valley powerhouse.

In fact, Elon Musk managed to burn through a record $1.2 billion of cash in Q2 alone, or roughly $13 million dollars every single day.

But, as Bloomberg points out today, there is at least one product where Tesla manages to earn a staggering margin of roughly 95%. It's called a Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) credit and it's pretty much the only reason that Tesla managed to 'beat' earnings in Q2.

I'm referring to zero-emission vehicle, or ZEV, credits. California and several other states require that a certain proportion of the vehicles sold by an automaker emit no greenhouse gases. These cars earn the automaker credits, and if they don't have enough to meet their quota, they can buy extra ones from someone who does. As Tesla only makes vehicles that run on batteries and emit nothing, it usually has a surplus for sale.

The profit margin on these is very high, perhaps 95 percent. The implied $95 million of profit equates to about 58 cents a share. Tesla reported a loss of $1.33 per share this week -- beating the consensus forecast by 55 cents.

This isn't the only time ZEV credits have played a big role for Tesla. Looking back to early 2013, selling credits has given Tesla's earnings extra oomph in many quarters, likely taking them above consensus forecasts in some (on an implied basis, assuming that 95 percent margin):

After selling $0 worth of ZEV credits in 1Q 2017, Tesla managed to sell $100 million worth in 2Q with roughly $95 million, or $0.58 per share, flowing straight to the bottom line.

Of course, this isn't the first time that ZEV credits played a huge role in padding Tesla's earnings. Who can forget Q3 2016 when a $139 million in sales pushed Tesla's earnings into positive territory for the first time in years?

One notable period there is the the third quarter of 2016. This was the one where CEO Elon Musk exhorted his employees to "throw a pie in the face" of Tesla's critics by delivering thumping results. It worked, although at the cash-flow level it also owed quite a bit to suppliers.

But ZEVs provided a big tailwind: At $139 million, Tesla booked more revenue from selling the credits that quarter than any other. Using my margin assumption, they added 84 cents per share to earnings, turning a loss of 13 cents into a profit of 71 cents.

In short, as taxpayers we're all doing our part to help the environment by enriching one eccentric billionaire in Silicon Valley...which presumably makes sense to some politicians in Sacramento.

Zero-Emission Vehicle Credits: The One 'Product' That Tesla Actually Earns A Profit On | Zero Hedge

[GG Allin]

Originally Posted by island911

Shaun, UPS builds their own trucks, and have started pilot testing electrics.

They don't build their own semi tractors and as far as I can tell they're not loyal to any one manufacturer. I do see a lot Mack's and Freightliners though.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by legion

A company that loses money on every unit produced and has never made a profit is the definition of not viable.

Macroni was talking about the PRODUCT, not the company.

"Tesla is a good product and definitely viable moving forward.... it needs to be part of a bigger entity just like Porsche did when they sold to VW...."

[cairns]

A good product makes money for the manufacturer. Bad products don't survive in the marketplace.

Any moron can sell something at a loss. And Porsche wasn't exactly sold to VW either.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by cairns

A good product makes money for the manufacturer. Bad products don't survive in the marketplace.

No.
Manufacturers use profits from profitable product lines to develop new product lines, some of which are profitable, some are not, and some just enhance the image of the company. A problem for Tesla is that it can't sell 100k Malibus to help finance a few thousand sports cars.

[flipper35]

Originally Posted by NutmegCarrera

Johnny Lieberman has some pretty interesting comments about the ridiculous torque claims.
On instagram.

Roadster looks nice, but $250k - not really a topic for me.

The first units are $1,000,000 and the down payment for a place in like to purchase one is $250,000. After the Founders Edition, or whatever they call it, is sold out then they become $250k cars.

At this point I think all subsidies for "alternative" anything should go away. Ethanol, wind, electric cars, fuel cell cars. People have been doing this long enough to know how to do things the right way. Pull the subsidies and stimulate real technological evolution.

[sammyg2]

Stop it Sammy, we love kool-aid!

Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies
Jerry Hirsch
By JERRY HIRSCH
MAY 30, 2015 | 8:00 AM
Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies

Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space.
And he's built those companies with the help of billions in government subsidies.
Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups.
"He definitely goes where there is government money," said Dan Dolev, an analyst at Jefferies Equity Research. "That's a great strategy, but the government will cut you off one day."

The figure compiled by The Times comprises a variety of government incentives, including grants, tax breaks, factory construction, discounted loans and environmental credits that Tesla can sell. It also includes tax credits and rebates to buyers of solar panels and electric cars.
A looming question is whether the companies are moving toward self-sufficiency — as Dolev believes — and whether they can slash development costs before the public largesse ends.

Tesla and SolarCity continue to report net losses after a decade in business, but the stocks of both companies have soared on their potential; Musk's stake in the firms alone is worth about $10 billion. (SpaceX, a private company, does not publicly report financial performance.)

Musk and his companies' investors enjoy most of the financial upside of the government support, while taxpayers shoulder the cost.
The payoff for the public would come in the form of major pollution reductions, but only if solar panels and electric cars break through as viable mass-market products. For now, both remain niche products for mostly well-heeled customers.
Musk declined repeated requests for an interview through Tesla spokespeople, and officials at all three companies declined to comment.
The subsidies have generally been disclosed in public records and company filings. But the full scope of the public assistance hasn't been tallied because it has been granted over time from different levels of government.

New York state is spending $750 million to build a solar panel factory in Buffalo for SolarCity. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company will lease the plant for $1 a year.
It will not pay property taxes for a decade, which would otherwise total an estimated $260 million.
The federal government also provides grants or tax credits to cover 30% of the cost of solar installations. SolarCity reported receiving $497.5 million in direct grants from the Treasury Department.
That figure, however, doesn't capture the full value of the government's support.
Since 2006, SolarCity has installed systems for 217,595 customers, according to a corporate filing. If each paid the current average price for a residential system — about $23,000, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists — the cost to the government would total about $1.5 billion, which would include the Treasury grants paid to SolarCity.
Nevada has agreed to provide Tesla with $1.3 billion in incentives to help build a massive battery factory near Reno.
The Palo Alto company has also collected more than $517 million from competing automakers by selling environmental credits.

In a regulatory system pioneered by California and adopted by nine other states, automakers must buy the credits if they fail to sell enough zero-emissions cars to meet mandates. The tally also includes some federal environmental credits.
On a smaller scale, SpaceX, Musk's rocket company, cut a deal for about $20 million in economic development subsidies from Texas to construct a launch facility there. (Separate from incentives, SpaceX has won more than $5.5 billion in government contracts from NASA and the U.S. Air Force.)
Subsidies are handed out in all kinds of industries, with U.S. corporations collecting tens of billions of dollars each year, according to Good Jobs First, a nonprofit that tracks government subsidies. And the incentives for solar panels and electric cars are available to all companies that sell them.
Musk and his investors have also put large sums of private capital into the companies.
But public subsidies for Musk's companies stand out both for the amount, relative to the size of the companies, and for their dependence on them.
"Government support is a theme of all three of these companies, and without it none of them would be around," said Mark Spiegel, a hedge fund manager for Stanphyl Capital Partners who is shorting Tesla's stock, a bet that pays off if Tesla shares fall.

Tesla stock has risen 157%, to $250.80 as of Friday's close, over the last two years.
Musk has proved so adept at landing incentives that states now compete to give him money, said Ashlee Vance, author of "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future," a recently published biography.
"As his star has risen, every state wants a piece of Elon Musk," Vance said.
Before his current ventures, he made a substantial sum from EBay Inc.'s $1.5-billion purchase of PayPal, the electronic payment system in which Musk held an 11% stake.
Soon after, he founded SpaceX in 2002 with money from that sale, and he made major investments and took leadership posts at Tesla and Solar City.
Musk is now the chief executive of both Tesla and SpaceX and the chairman of SolarCity, and holds big stakes in all three, including 27% of Tesla and 23% of SolarCity, according to recent regulatory filings. The ventures employ about 23,000 people nationwide, and they operate or are building factories and facilities in California, Michigan, New York, Nevada and Texas.
Tense talks
The $1.3 billion in benefits for Tesla's Nevada battery factory resulted from a year of hardball negotiations.
Late in 2013, Tesla summoned economic development officials from seven states to its auto factory in Fremont, Calif. After a tour, they gathered in a conference room, where Tesla executives explained their plan to build the biggest lithium-ion battery factory in the world — then asked the states to bid for the project.
Nevada at first offered its standard package of incentives, in this case worth $600 million to $700 million, said Steve Hill, Nevada's executive director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development.
Tesla negotiators wanted far more. The automaker at first sought a $500-million upfront payment, among other enticements, Hill said. Nevada pushed back, in sometimes tense talks punctuated by raised voices.
"It would have amounted to Nevada writing a series of checks during the first couple of years," said Hill, calling it an unacceptable risk.
With the deal imperiled, Hill flew to Palo Alto in August to meet with Tesla's business development chief, Diarmuid O'Connell, a former State Department official who is the automaker's lead negotiator.
They shored up the deal with an agreement to give Tesla $195 million in transferable tax credits, which the automaker could sell for upfront cash. To make room in its budget, Nevada reduced incentives for filming in the state and killed a tax break for insurance companies.
Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and Musk sealed the agreement in a Labor Day phone conversation. Hill said it was worth it, pointing to the 6,000 jobs he expects the factory to eventually create.
The state commissioned an analysis estimating the economic impact from the project at $100 billion over two decades, but some economists called that figure deeply flawed. It counted every Tesla employee as if they would otherwise have been unemployed, for instance, and it made no allowance for increased government spending to serve the influx of thousands of local residents.
A $750-million factory
Musk has similar success with getting subsidies for a SolarCity plant in Buffalo, N.Y. The company currently buys many of its solar panels from China, but it will soon become its own supplier with a new and heavily subsidized factory.
An affiliate of New York's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany will spend $750 million to build a solar panel factory on state land. SolarCity estimated in a corporate filing that it will spend an additional $150 million to get the factory operating.
When finished in 2017, the 1.2-million-square-foot facility will be the largest solar panel factory in the Western Hemisphere. New York officials see the subsidy as a worthy investment because they expect that it will create 3,000 jobs. The plant will replace a long-closed steel factory.
"The SolarCity facility will bring extensive benefits and value to this formerly dormant brownfield that provided zero benefit to the city and region," said Peter Cutler, spokesman for Empire State Development, New York's economic development agency.
SpaceX, though it depends far more on government contracts than subsidies, received an incentive package in Texas for a commercial rocket launch facility. The state put up more than $15 million in subsidies and infrastructure spending to help SpaceX build a launch pad in rural Cameron County at the southern tip of Texas. Local governments contributed an additional $5 million.

cont.

[sammyg2]

Included in the local subsidies is a 15-year property tax break from the local school district worth $3.1 million to SpaceX. Officials say the development still will bring in about $5 million more over that period than the local school district otherwise would have collected.
"That's $5 million more than we have ever seen from that property," said Dr. Lisa Garcia, superintendent of the Point Isabel Independent School District. "It is remote.... It is just sand dunes."
Crucial aid
The public money for Tesla and SolarCity factories is crucial to both companies' efforts to lower development and manufacturing costs.
The task is made more urgent by the impending expiration of some of their biggest subsidies. The federal government's 30% tax credit for solar installations gets slashed to 10% in 2017 for commercial customers and ends completely for homeowners.
Tesla buyers also get a $7,500 federal income tax credit and a $2,500 rebate from the state of California. The federal government has capped the $7,500 credit at a total of 200,000 vehicles per manufacturer; Tesla is about a quarter of the way to that limit. In all, Tesla buyers have qualified for an estimated $284 million in federal tax incentives and collected more than $38 million in California rebates.
California legislators recently passed a law, which has not yet taken effect, calling for income limits on electric car buyers seeking the state's $2,500 subsidy. Tesla owners have an average household income of about $320,000, according to Strategic Visions, an auto industry research firm.
Competition could also eat into Tesla's public support. If major automakers build more zero-emission cars, they won't have to buy as many government-awarded environmental credits from Tesla.
In the big picture, the government supports electric cars and solar panels in the hope of promoting widespread adoption and, ultimately, slashing carbon emissions. In the early days at Tesla — when the company first produced an expensive electric sports car, which it no longer sells — Musk promised more rapid development of electric cars for the masses.
In a 2008 blog post, Musk laid out a plan: After the sports car, Tesla would produce a sedan costing "half the $89k price point of the Tesla Roadster and the third model will be even more affordable."
In fact, the second model now typically sells for $100,000, and the much-delayed third model, the Model X sport utility, is expected to sell for a similar price. Timing on a less expensive model — maybe $35,000 or $40,000, after subsidies — remains uncertain.
"Some may question whether this actually does any good for the world," Musk wrote in 2008. "Are we really in need of another high-performance sports car? Will it actually make a difference to global carbon emissions? Well, the answers are no and not much.... When someone buys the Tesla Roadster sports car, they are actually helping to pay for the development of the low-cost family car."
Next: Battery subsidies
Now Musk is moving into a new industry: energy storage. Last month, he starred in a typically dramatic announcement of Tesla Energy-branded batteries for homes and businesses. On a concert-like stage, backed by pulsating music, Musk declared that the batteries would someday render the world's energy grid obsolete.
"We are talking about trying to change the fundamental energy infrastructure of the world," he said.
Musk laid out a vision of affordable clean energy in the remote villages of underdeveloped countries and homeowners in industrial nations severing themselves from utility grids. The Nevada factory will churn out the batteries alongside those for Tesla cars.
What he didn't say: Tesla has already secured a commitment of $126 million in California subsidies to companies developing energy storage technology.
jerry.hirsch@latimes.com
Twitter: @latimesjerry

Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies - LA Times

[cairns]

No.
Manufacturers use profits from profitable product lines to develop new product lines, some of which are profitable, some are not, and some just enhance the image of the company. A problem for Tesla is that it can't sell 100k Malibus to help finance a few thousand sports cars.

Yes. And you're obfuscating. The fact is that none of Tesla's products make a profit. That's not the same as selling a loss leader to improve your image or penetrate a market or for whatever reason or using profit to develop a product that may or may not be profitable.

[Macroni]

Why is Porsche/VW developing an all electric car?

[Tobra]

Why isn't the German government paying them to do so?

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by Macroni

Why is Porsche/VW developing an all electric car?

Because Germany and the rest of Europe will soon ban petroleum powered vehicles from urban areas. They will be required to make electric cars to survive. Like the USA mandates all cars have tire pressure monitors.

It will be very interesting to see what Porsche VW Audi, Mercedes and BMW come up with without huge US government subsidies.