A big bunch of people are trying to spread rumors that Tesla is going to collapse so that the stock price for Tesla will finally drop.
Tesla is overvalued. I’m a big fan of them, but they do not have the inherent worth of Toyota, which has vastly more revenue, factories, market share, 10 times the R&D budget, 10 times the employees, and is the most respected automaker in the world. Yet at the moment Tesla’s market cap is similar.
So a bunch of people have been trying for months now to make the bubble pop now rather than in a year from now when their short options have expired. In the long run, Tesla’s market value will most likely be corrected down to it’s true worth (maybe 20% of the value of Toyota at best), but for people who have sold Tesla short, if it doesn’t collapse now, they will lose whatever they spent on options.
Of course, “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”
In particular, pretty much anything from Seeking Alpha can be dismissed. They make no secret that they mostly hold a short position on Tesla. Yeah, maybe some of their coverage is true and maybe it’s not, but I’m not going to decide based on their word.
I’m fairly certain that Tesla is subject to various dirty union tricks. My company is no stranger to this–some union or other didn’t like that we contracted some non-union food service people. The union dug up some FUD on our company and paid some professional protesters to march outside of our HQ. It was pretty lame and transparent but it wouldn’t surprise me if it did cause some measurable harm.
Right after their last earnings would have been a great time for the TSLA bubble to pop, if it were going to. Investors mostly stayed put.
The comparison was of 2 companies greatly oversold to the public by “visionaries”.
It isn’t that Tesla hasn’t turned a profit. they weren’t expected to have positive cash flow until next year. That was based on meeting production numbers they planned on this year. It’s mid-November and they’ve only made a couple hundred Model 3’s. Instead of generating revenue from this they’re still spending money on it. They don’t have the infrastructure to service the cars once they make it to market. It’s a financial house of cards.
This isn’t an Apple release that’s a few days late. it’s a consistent pattern of overselling a product that’s late to market and when it arrives there are quality issues. They’re changing from a low production/high value product to a mass produced product with slimmer profit margin.
Magiver said something that’s been giving me food for thought. Where do you go to get serious repairs done? The thing is what about a Tesla aside from the driveline, or warranty, would require anything but a “normal” car mechanic? The suspension isn’t radical, body work is body work, and if it’s a dead battery or motor problem a mobile repair crew or shipping to a repair facility is a possibility.
I have a Subaru, as do many others here, and the nearest dealer is 300 km (180 miles for you holdouts), away. When my co-worker’s 2015 WRX died, SOC flat-bedded it to the dealer at their expense.
I’m presently waiting on parts for mine due to my wheel playing not so nice with a curb after the first snowfall here and bending suspension bits so I’m acquainted with the pitfalls of lack of dealerships nearby.
Electric motors are generally super reliable, and the batteries appear to be so as well. So is the lack of a repair facility nearby that critical, really?
Also, mechanics rated to work on hybrids can realistically fix a Tesla for the most part. There’s a youtube channel I followwhere the host tore down a Model S to the frame and rebuilt it. For the most part, it’s pretty plug and play. You just unbolt and remove failed modules and bolt in the replacement modules, and if you have the special Tesla software that they are legally required to publish to mechanics in some states, the car will just tell you what the error codes are. And the error codes are extremely accurate - Tesla has 2 way digital communication with every important system in the model S, and each module is self-diagnosing.
Basically the main things that require Tesla specific knowledge are :
a. The correct procedure to not risk electrocution. All hybrids and EVs have high voltage power sources.
b. How to actually read the trouble codes, how to reflash the body control module and other critical modules
c. Where to get parts.
(c) is actually the big problem. Right now, Tesla are being dicks and will not sell their high voltage components to anyone but their own mechanics. This will probably change but that is the present situation.
Certainly soon enough aftermarket shops will spring up. Just as there have been “foreign car repair” places in the US from the 1950s even though prior to about 1970 European-made cars were <5% of the US fleet and Japanese cars were 0% to within our sampling error.
When the Japanese vehicles first invaded there wasn’t much place to get them fixed either. Dealers were few and far between. But oddly enough, all the “Helmut’s German car repair” and “Antonio’s Fiat” joints learned to cope quickly. And because most (not all) Japanese cars were sold by dealers to nearby customers, the supply of Japanese (or Japanese-capable) car repair places also grew up in the same areas, albeit with some months’ lag. The same areas where a critical mass of customers was forming and growing at the same time.
Early adoption has up- as well as downsides. This chicken-and-egg cars vs. repair shops issue wasn’t an insurmountable obstacle to past manufacturers entering markets. It won’t be this time either. Obstacle? Yes. Insurmountable? No.
FWIW the stuff Teslas have had quality problems with are things like door mechanisms, interior/body electronics, and I think the Model S has had suspension issues on older years.
So, basically the same stuff that fails on an ICE car.
people tend to vastly overplay the whole “EVs are so much simpler!” card. but they really aren’t. yes, you don’t have all of the moving parts of an engine and transmission, but on the vast majority of cars those things rarely fail or cause problems. A great many cars get junked when their owners get sick of the constant nickel-and-dime repairs; e.g. “I just spent $800 on struts last month and now you’re telling me I need to spend another $600 on control arms and tie rods?!? I’m sick of this thing.”
That’s my point exactly. The physical aspects are things any competent mechanic will be able to deal with and if the diagnostics and fault tree analysis the car does itself are even remotely like the stuff I worked on the F-18 Hornet, then as SamuelA points out, getting parts is the bottleneck, which is no different than a limited availability vehicle (like LSLGuy was alluding to) and the attendant risks thereof.
Now, I’m better off than most in that I would have no hesitation wrenching and replacing parts myself because of my background and my seeming ability to not want to buy whatever the dealers here have on offer. There’s too many pickups roaming the streets for nothing but toy hauling and groceries here as it is. My dilemma and primary impediment to ordering a Model 3 is the wait time. Realistically, I have two more years to wait even if I had my $1k down from the start due to my location, and deep in my heart , I want a Model S which is not going to happen unless I win the lottery.
Amusingly, they also commonly have problems with their battery. Not the big one, though. The standard 12v lead-acid that every Tesla still includes because all of the off-the-shelf components still run on 12v, and it’s convenient to have a small buffer.
Yeah I read about that. I guess Tesla assumed the car would always (or nearly always) be plugged in when sitting, and didn’t manage key-off load for the 12 volt electronics. repeated deep discharges will kill a lead acid battery in short order.
Actually, it doesn’t matter if it’s plugged in when sitting. Still slaughters the battery. The problem is that for fairly solid engineering reasons, the 12 volt lead acid battery is used to power the primary electronics as well as a bunch of accessories that Tesla can just buy from suppliers.
So the electronics draw right from that battery, discharging it, then periodically the DC-DC converter pulls power off the high voltage pack to recharge it. I do not know why it cycles and why they can’t bypass that battery if the HV pack + DC-DC converter is healthy, but that’s how it works in the S.
The issue is that this ends up being a discharge to about 50% and a recharge of the 12V battery a couple times a day. Doesn’t matter if you plug it in. Eventually this causes the battery to fail - within around 6 months to a year and a half or so.
I read they “fixed” the issue by reducing the power draw from the electronics while the car is idle. This reduces how often the battery cycles and extends it’s life to more usual numbers.
well then that’s just stupid; every other hybrid/PHEV/EV has a 12 volt storage battery which they keep charged through a DC-DC converter, and none of those murder the battery. “Solid engineering” indeed.
Well, it’s still better than the Leaf where they “forgot” to put in proper thermal management for their main battery, causing it to die way faster than it should. And that battery isn’t a $50 replacement.
I suspect the story is a little more complicated than is known publicly, anyway. Could easily be a combination of factors, each of which would have been fine on their own but combined led to worse-than-expected degradation.
Dude, I’m the one that brought it up in the first place. I’m not completely oblivious to Tesla’s failings. You’re the one creating a strawman; no one ever claimed that Tesla’s engineering is perfect. Everyone, no matter how big or well-respected, screws up sometimes. I’d be deeply suspicious of any organization that didn’t make stupid errors from time to time.
Hopefully the Model 3 shares suspension parts with other Tesla’s or better yet another manufacturer. The part that concerns me most is the electrical control module. It’s a critical component that can’t be found at a local parts store.
If they don’t have any physical repair shops then they will have to farm out warranty work to existing garages. Probably a national chain they can contract with. They can warehouse parts the same way by partnering with a chain parts store.
What they can’t afford in the short term is a major recall. If they don’t have the infrastructure of full service dealerships then it’s going to be chaos.
what, exactly, is the “electrical control module?” because modern cars have lots of those. the last bus query I did on a Lincoln Continental showed it had 40.
He means the drive unit motor control module. The thing that converts from high voltage DC at about 400 volts and supplies a 3 phase AC waveform to the drive unit, with 500 amps of current. Each channel uses dozens of silicon carbide mosfets, the whole thing is water cooled, etc. Verydifficult, virtually impossible to make a knockoff that meets any reasonable level of quality for safety standards at these power levels.