Stock surge makes Tesla the world’s most valuable automaker
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/07/stock-surge-makes-tesla-the-worlds-most-valuable-automaker/:
One share of Tesla stock traded for more than $1,130 on Wednesday, pushing the company's market capitalization to nearly $210 billion. That sent Tesla's market cap past Toyota, which is worth either $170 billion or $203 billion, depending on how you count it. Tesla is now the world's most valuable car company.
It's a remarkable milestone for a company that sells far fewer cars than its leading rivals. Toyota and its subsidiaries sold 10.7 million vehicles in 2019, while Volkswagen and its subsidiaries sold almost 11 million vehicles. Tesla sold a comparatively tiny 367,500 vehicles last year.
Tesla stock leaps again on unexpectedly strong delivery numbers
Tesla has surprised Wall Street again with better-than-expected delivery numbers. The electric carmaker delivered 90,650 vehicles in the second quarter of 2020, up slightly from the 88,400 vehicles delivered in the first quarter. This despite the fact that Tesla's main factory in Fremont, California, was shut down by county officials for the first half of the quarter.
Tesla's stock leapt at the news. After closing at a record high of $1,120 yesterday, Tesla's shares rose above $1,200 in pre-market trading on Thursday morning.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @09:03PM (14 children)
We're used these days to companies being worth billions of dollars even though they lose money hand-over-fist, but most of those companies are "service" companies that don't actually make anything. Now, we have a company that actually makes something, and even though they churn out a pitiful number of units, because they were expected to churn out an even more pitiful number of units, they beat expectations! They're worth BILLIONS! They're losing money, but they're worth BILLIONS! They're much more valuable than a company that not only makes similar stuff, but they make a lot of it and make money doing it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @10:38PM (1 child)
Bubbles have existed and will always exist. The ones who live in them, are they to pitty for they are forever gullible and like hamsters running in the drumwheel? Or to be envied, for their lives are happy and they cant see the bitter truth beyond their short eyesight?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2020, @01:48AM
Except previous bubbles weren't propped up by the government. Judging by the state after the forced shutdowns, and regime risk in trying to operate, record valuations are not something to happen naturally.
This year, the "market' is only down by 3.5%, but when you take the stocks of the S&P500, equally weighted, that portfolio is down 11%. Only very few shares end up making the headlines and projecting confidence.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday July 03 2020, @12:22AM (10 children)
I wonder if the market isn't right about this. Maybe Tesla is worth more than Toyota, because battery electric vehicles are the future of personal transportation. Tesla is way ahead of everyone else. If they haven't already, BEVs are close to surpassing gasoline powered vehicles for most use cases.
One thing I have learned is that charging stations are of little value. There would have to be a lot more, and they'd have to charge much faster, or you'd have to stay a long while. And I sure don't want to spend 2 plus hours shopping in a retail store. Work is a good place to recharge, except that why would you need to, because it surely isn't that far away from your home. If your commute is over 50 km, maybe you ought to move closer. Even motels, one of the few places you'd stay long enough, rarely have charging stations, and in any case, the BEV is still impractical for a typical American road trip where you might want to cover 1000 km in one day. (And that's because the plains are hot, boring, and, in some places, especially the high plains, stinky with oil and cattle, just a place you have to pass through to reach the mountains.) A long range Tesla might be able to do that, but even it would need at least 1 and probably 2 half hour stops to charge. But I digress. Any more, I only charge my car at home. If the electric doesn't have the range to make it a round trip, I take a gas burner.
I also get the sense we're rethinking our transportation needs, spurred in part by the pandemic, but more by the sheer expense of automobile ownership. Why commute when you can telecommute? What's the point of travel, really? Restocking the pantry? Going to school? Sight-seeing? Visiting relatives? So you can feel like you're making progress, to somewhere, even if you are really just driving in circles? Any more, when I happen to see the sort of car commercial that tries to show how very much fun driving is, like on a beautiful, curvy, and lonely mountain road, I just laugh. The far more common driving experience is rush hour hell, in which you swear at all the other drivers for cutting in front of you and slowing you down (and probably collect a bit of ill-will for the things you're doing to them even if you didn't mean it), and sit in traffic jams, knowing that the trip is taking 50% longer than it would if it wasn't rush hour.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2020, @01:26AM (1 child)
> ... BEVs are close to surpassing gasoline powered vehicles for most use cases.
Except for:
+ First cost, battery electrics are still considerably more expensive than equal-sized & optioned gas cars. Remember someone has to buy it new, before the rest of us have a chance of getting one used.
+ Resale value, battery electrics (with possible exception of Teslas) depreciate much faster than gas cars.
+ Privacy, most battery electrics all "phone home" to some extent just because they are new, where older gas cars can still be found that don't.
+ If you don't think the three points above are "use cases", then I'll add one of those--vastly reduced range in cold weather.
Responding to TFA, Tesla stock price is in a bubble. If you are trading in it now, your like-minded ancestors probably bought tulips back in the day.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2020, @05:14AM
Tesla mostly won't sell repair parts. I don't understand why resale isn't terrible as a result. Insurance costs are inflated too.
I guess they've managed the status symbol marketing well enough and that works despite the financial disincentives.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 03 2020, @01:43AM (2 children)
Disagree. The chinese are churning more units than Tesla [wikipedia.org] and a major player in the market BYD Auto [wikipedia.org] has way more diverse offer on the eV market and is expanding [autocar.co.uk] even in US [electrek.co]
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Friday July 03 2020, @03:34PM (1 child)
On range, Teslas are far ahead of all the others. Roughly 330 miles for the long range Tesla model 3, vs, at the most optimistic, 250 miles for the best BYD vehicles.
There is a very new entrant, the Xpeng P7, which can have a range of up to 440 miles.
Of course range isn't the only thing that matters. Yet Tesla is pretty far ahead on other things, such as battery longevity, and recharge times.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday July 03 2020, @11:11PM
The Chinese use LiFePO4 [wikipedia.org] - about 14% lower energy density that LiCoO2 or LiPo, but a slower degradation rate (longer life time in cycles) and they don't suffer thermal runaway - the latter makes them more forgiving to minor abuses when charging (BYD claims 20min to 80% charge, 40min to 100% charge)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2020, @02:43AM
1000km? If you're going across the country, 1000 /miles/ in a day is easy. I see fuel cells winning in the end for this reason. Freight haulers want electric motors in their trucks, but low range and long recharge are huge drawbacks. 1/4 of the battery capacity of a Tesla, with a fuel cell as the generator, would be my best guess for what will be common in 10 years.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Friday July 03 2020, @03:55PM (3 children)
The ICE manufacturers literally make multiple orders of magnitude more cars every year than Tesla can even dream of at the moment.
They're doing that for a reason - in 15-20 years, most countries have announced that ICE cars won't be able to be manufactured any more. So they're making the most of their investment, tooling, patents, etc. while they can.
When ICE manufacturers *properly* switch to electric production (rather than token concept cars, which is all they're really making), Tesla is just a smudge on the balance books.
Also, they're waiting for the battery breakthough - Tesla holds nothing of worth in terms of patents, their batteries are just lithium batteries that you can make/get anywhere. Whoever owns the patent on the *next* battery tech can screw money out of all their competitors for a decade.
The big guys are just toying with Tesla. Let them invest heavily in manufacturing and not approach 1% of even Ford's capacity. Let them put all their risk into autopilot and everything else and sort out the legislative side. Let them build all their battery factories and try to compete (that's not akin to Ford building an engine factory of their own, it's more like Ford trying to build an aluminium refinery of their own - they let other people handle those kinds of commodity items for a reason). Let them throw money into charging stations and lay the infrastructure for everybody (for all Ford care, Tesla could own the entire world's electric car charging infrastructure - they'll pay them a pittance for a patent on a connector, and then it's not different to petrol companies owning all the petrol stations to them... Ford doesn't try to refine oil and produce its own petrol and sell it to the end-user... why would then?)
And just hold back until the market actually wants electric (less than 1% of car sales worldwide, and far less than 0.1% of all the cars on the road). Then sell off the old ICE stock, move all the manufacturing to electric, flood the market so hard that Tesla's pittance of a market share will never recover - and you have ten or more years in which to do all that, privately test your own models, research battery techs (Ford's R&D is huge compared to Tesla), wait for the infrastructure to appear and hold out until it makes business sense to move.
Tesla aren't a threat to any established ICE car manufacturer. They're just sitting on the sidelines making *real* money hand-over-fist, with almost no debt, waiting for the consumers to start accepting them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2020, @05:46PM
we'll see. karma's a bitch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2020, @07:07PM (1 child)
No, they are not. They are scared shitless of Tesla not because Tesla makes EV cars. They are scared because Tesla makes these cars *efficiently* and is getting better.
Ignoring Tesla now is like ignoring SpaceX a decade ago - low budget, no connections company. Today SpaceX is killing the rest of the field. Tesla cars are not Model 3. They are iterating that Model 3 and improving it while the others don't have anything to even start in the race.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Sunday July 05 2020, @01:50AM
Ford, on their own, literally sold more cars in every month of 2019 than Tesla sold in the whole of 2019 - it's best ever year.
Telsa would have to multiply their sales by 12 over the course of 2020 to even be a threat akin to one major ICE car manufacturer. There are a dozen companies selling those kinds of amounts of cars. Tesla are small-fry. Sure, they might grow and suddenly take over the market. But you think Ford are just sitting there going "Oh, no, whatever can we do?" Ford's R&D budget for the last couple of years could probably make every Tesla car ever made in Tesla's history.
I don't see Ford - or anyone else - pushing out a dozen models of electric car, comparing them against Tesla left, right and centre, providing incentives to people to use them rather than Tesla... they're not even on the road map. They're biding their time and catering for the only market that's selling. They aren't going to cut a million cars a quarter just to start making a car that in many markets most people can't afford, charge or use for their intended purpose. You can't have a Tesla without a lot of electric parking spots nearby - my town has precisely 12 slots... not locations, 12 chargers. Most of them not fast charged. 100,000+ people are expected to share 12 chargers, all in the middle of town (and some in things like supermarkets that close at night, etc.).
Tesla is a blip, which will have a very noticeable turn when/if it starts to take over. And I highly doubt that Ford et al are just sitting on their laurels. And when they decide it's profitable, they can push over 10 times what Tesla has ever made in its best year in a couple of months - and at that time, all the others will also push - in my market that's BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Citroen, Dacia, Fiat, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Lexus, Mazda, MG, Mini, Renault, Nissan, Seat, Skoda, Smart, Suzuki, Toyota, Vauxhall, Volkwagen, Volvo... and those are just the ones that sell ordinary cars to ordinary people.
You really think all those companies, some a hundred years old, many churning out ten-times what Tesla has ever managed to do, with hundreds of times more cars on the road than Tesla has ever produced in its entire history, are all just going to be saying: "Oh, well... now that Tesla has taken over all our sales, maybe we should look at electric cars"? With an ICE ban just 5/10 years away in some markets?
(SpaceX is a radically different industry with very few players and very few customers).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Dr Spin on Friday July 03 2020, @01:16AM
Pump and dump is a far more profitable business model than actually making stuff.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @09:21PM
Not the first time Tesla has blown up [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by sjames on Thursday July 02 2020, @09:46PM (4 children)
Brace for impact. We will soon be flooded by "news" generated by short sellers informing us that Tesls uses puppy bvlood in it's batteries and that Musk has terminal athlete's foot.
It may well be overvalued (probably), but at least they actually produce something.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @10:01PM (2 children)
What is bvlood?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 02 2020, @10:34PM
Simple left slipo.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Funny) by acid andy on Thursday July 02 2020, @10:42PM
I think it's something Trump has in his covfefe.
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Thursday July 02 2020, @10:20PM
Or Musk will just tweet that the stock price seems too high.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @10:32PM
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @10:38PM
Market cap is just what the last buyer paid time number of shares.
The title implys that this makes makes them worth this for all the shares.
It is also plausible that the buyer overpaid, perhaps hoping for a greater fool?
Tesla has some serious skills, but they are also showing the way for others to replicate it at much greater scale.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Thursday July 02 2020, @10:55PM (2 children)
As I read this it sounds like the author claims Tesla is better because it makes more money per car sold than any other auto maker. Is that actually a good thing?
If the other companies it would seem that "not as lean" would mean, "more people employed."
This might be one of the extreme examples of how the system can reward, and even get people excited about profits going to a very few people.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday July 02 2020, @11:24PM
Who could be doing something more productive. This is one of the selling points about UBI, if you care far more about paying people than what they do, you might as well pay them to do nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2020, @02:46AM
Tesla doesn't have to bribe the UAW (yet). All that cash adds up.
(Score: 5, Touché) by leon_the_cat on Thursday July 02 2020, @11:45PM
From 2019
GM Tesla
Production 7,718,000 vehicles 367,500 vehicles
Revenue 137.237 billion 24.578 billion
Net income 6.732 billion −862 million
Assets 228.037 billion 34.309 billion
:P
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tizan on Friday July 03 2020, @03:23AM
Who remembered the .com bubble...
May be Tesla is viable but to be more viable or valuable than Toyota today is nuts
Market is economy on short time scale can be totally illogical... May be a shed is more valuable in Beverly hills than in Louisiana...but a shed is a shed in case of car companies
...like everything else in the .com bubble era...it will crash to something reasonable if it is viable or die out
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2020, @01:44PM
i wish i could buy a tesla where i live.
unfortunatly the local government treasury (finance department) is heavly invested in fossile fuels since they still own half of all shares of the "oil business". thus there is little incentive to "free the consumers" from oil and gas dependancy.
i go shopping about every 3 days (with a toyota hybrid). the calorie despensery is overpriced and 27 km round trip.
i just installed 3 x 310 watt solar panels with micro grid tie inverters and get a average of 3 kwh per day.
if a tesla does 7 km per kwh ... then i can nearly go "shopping for free".
ofc the problem is that netmetering is not a thing here. solar is tolerated at best, must be reported and the honest spinning disk meter is switched to a mafia meter that ignores excess "outflowing" current ...