Musk endeavours

[BobbyD]

Mercedes Tesla partnership on electric Sprinter?

https://electrek.co/2018/11/19/tesla-me ... elon-musk/

Regards,

Why wold they partner up with a company doomed to collapse?

[odysseus2000]

Which one is doomed to collapse and why?

Regards,

[BobbyD]

Which one is doomed to collapse and why?

Regards,

I seem to recall somebody saying, repetatively and at length, that legacy car makers were living on borrowed time, and the German automakers didn't know what was about to hit them... don't recall who though.

[odysseus2000]

Which one is doomed to collapse and why?

Regards,

I seem to recall somebody saying, repetatively and at length, that legacy car makers were living on borrowed time, and the German automakers didn't know what was about to hit them... don't recall who though.

Yes, legacy makers are vulnerable, but Mercedes is not a legacy car maker like VW is and sells to folk prepared to pay very high margins for the Mercedes name such that it is imho one of the car makers most likely to do well as its cars only have to fight Tesla and not all the upcoming Chinese, Malaysian and low cost Tesla as well which is what VW will have to do.

BMW is also a bit of high margin addicts car, but imho it doesn't have the range and resources to compete effectively with Tesla and is stuck with its UK plants as well making stuff that will be hit by lower cost imports

GM in the States is another legacy maker that I expect to have another bankruptcy following on from many others. Ford too could get hurt.

Regards,

[DiamondEcho]

Is there a website where one can compare brands/models and say 'total cost of ownership' over perhaps 1, 3, 5 years?
We'll be buying a car likely next year and it'll be neither German (nor French), but it'd be useful to line up British (JLR + ?) versus Japanese brands/others...

[BobbyD]

Which one is doomed to collapse and why?

Regards,

I seem to recall somebody saying, repetatively and at length, that legacy car makers were living on borrowed time, and the German automakers didn't know what was about to hit them... don't recall who though.

Yes, legacy makers are vulnerable, but Mercedes is not a legacy car maker like VW is and sells to folk prepared to pay very high margins for the Mercedes name such that it is imho one of the car makers most likely to do well as its cars only have to fight Tesla and not all the upcoming Chinese, Malaysian and low cost Tesla as well which is what VW will have to do.

BMW is also a bit of high margin addicts car, but imho it doesn't have the range and resources to compete effectively with Tesla and is stuck with its UK plants as well making stuff that will be hit by lower cost imports

GM in the States is another legacy maker that I expect to have another bankruptcy following on from many others. Ford too could get hurt.

Regards,

Sorry that's right Mercedes aren't a car manufacturer at all, but a sales and marketing team selling badly engineered vehicles for ridiculous amounts of money... Still not sure why Tesla would be interested...

[odysseus2000]

I seem to recall somebody saying, repetatively and at length, that legacy car makers were living on borrowed time, and the German automakers didn't know what was about to hit them... don't recall who though.

Yes, legacy makers are vulnerable, but Mercedes is not a legacy car maker like VW is and sells to folk prepared to pay very high margins for the Mercedes name such that it is imho one of the car makers most likely to do well as its cars only have to fight Tesla and not all the upcoming Chinese, Malaysian and low cost Tesla as well which is what VW will have to do.

BMW is also a bit of high margin addicts car, but imho it doesn't have the range and resources to compete effectively with Tesla and is stuck with its UK plants as well making stuff that will be hit by lower cost imports

GM in the States is another legacy maker that I expect to have another bankruptcy following on from many others. Ford too could get hurt.

Regards,

Sorry that's right Mercedes aren't a car manufacturer at all, but a sales and marketing team selling badly engineered vehicles for ridiculous amounts of money... Still not sure why Tesla would be interested...

Tesla get a new market for their technology.

Mercedes get a better power unit for their Sprinter van without having to pay the development cost.

If the article is right Mercedes had a similar deal before, took an equity stake & made out like bandits. Perhaps they would like a rinse & repeat.

Regards,

[Howard]

Is there a website where one can compare brands/models and say 'total cost of ownership' over perhaps 1, 3, 5 years?
We'll be buying a car likely next year and it'll be neither German (nor French), but it'd be useful to line up British (JLR + ?) versus Japanese brands/others...

Yes, could I suggest that you look at the personal lease costs for 3 or 5 years for the cars you are interested in. Once you have a shortlist it's worth considering the extra monthly costs to include service and maintenance. These costs will be similar to, or surprisingly, in my experience, less than buying the car at the best discount you can get from a dealer (say 15% or more) and selling at the end of 3 or 5 years.

Having leased cars personally for Mrs H and my last three cars, I admit to being a convert. I understand the reason brokers can offer good deals is because they buy literally hundreds of cars a year, mainly to supply company customers.

However, be warned, the costs of leasing the major German brands tend to be significantly less than their competitors because of their reliability and high residual values after 3 and 5 years. It may influence you in their favour!

A good site to start comparing costs is https://contracthireandleasing.com.

regards

Howard

[BobbyD]

Yes, legacy makers are vulnerable, but Mercedes is not a legacy car maker like VW is and sells to folk prepared to pay very high margins for the Mercedes name such that it is imho one of the car makers most likely to do well as its cars only have to fight Tesla and not all the upcoming Chinese, Malaysian and low cost Tesla as well which is what VW will have to do.

BMW is also a bit of high margin addicts car, but imho it doesn't have the range and resources to compete effectively with Tesla and is stuck with its UK plants as well making stuff that will be hit by lower cost imports

GM in the States is another legacy maker that I expect to have another bankruptcy following on from many others. Ford too could get hurt.

Regards,

Sorry that's right Mercedes aren't a car manufacturer at all, but a sales and marketing team selling badly engineered vehicles for ridiculous amounts of money... Still not sure why Tesla would be interested...

Tesla get a new market for their technology.

Why wold Tesla want the reputational risk of being associated with the purveyors of expensive poorly engineered vehicles? Or does dealing with Musk cast a new light on the quality of their products?

[Howard]

Sorry that's right Mercedes aren't a car manufacturer at all, but a sales and marketing team selling badly engineered vehicles for ridiculous amounts of money... Still not sure why Tesla would be interested...

Tesla get a new market for their technology.

Why wold Tesla want the reputational risk of being associated with the purveyors of expensive poorly engineered vehicles? Or does dealing with Musk cast a new light on the quality of their products?

The sensible answer, to help Ody out, is that Mercedes commercial vehicles have a brilliant reliability record across the world, possibly second to none.

And Tesla have a really bad record for reliability at the moment. So they would benefit from the link with the Mercedes brand.

At the moment, any logistics company would need their head examined if they replaced their diesel van/lorry fleet with Tesla vehicles. They'd probably perform worse than Network Rail!!

So it will be interesting to see if Mercedes help Tesla out with the Sprinter project. Europeans aren't stupid and are quite good at negotiating as others are finding out, so Mercedes are likely to drive a hard bargain.

regards

Howard

[odysseus2000]

BobbyD Why wold Tesla want the reputational risk of being associated with the purveyors of expensive poorly engineered vehicles? Or does dealing with Musk cast a new light on the quality of their products?

What risk?

Mercedes like Peugeot, built their reputation on making the best cars in the world.

But in both cases it was not a good business and both have made less well engineered vehicles since.

Mercedes did better than Peugeot as they worked hard on their marketing and upped prices aiming to sell into affluent consumes such as Medics, Dentists etc who would keep their cars for a short period of time before getting another. This has worked well for Mercedes and will likely keep working well as Mercedes have proved themselves very good at saying how well their cars are made and getting into formula 1 etc etc.

Tesla have no repetitional risk in this kind of business.

Regards,

[BobbyD]

Tesla get a new market for their technology.

Why wold Tesla want the reputational risk of being associated with the purveyors of expensive poorly engineered vehicles? Or does dealing with Musk cast a new light on the quality of their products?

The sensible answer, to help Ody out, is that Mercedes commercial vehicles have a brilliant reliability record across the world, possibly second to none.

And Tesla have a really bad record for reliability at the moment. So they would benefit from the link with the Mercedes brand.

The problem with the sensible answer is that the insensible question is based on Oddy's previously posted opinions of Mercedes... therefor admitting Tesla have a problem, or that any other company might have a long and sccessful future ahead of it is cheating!

[odysseus2000]

Howard
The sensible answer, to help Ody out, is that Mercedes commercial vehicles have a brilliant reliability record across the world, possibly second to none.

And Tesla have a really bad record for reliability at the moment. So they would benefit from the link with the Mercedes brand.

At the moment, any logistics company would need their head examined if they replaced their diesel van/lorry fleet with Tesla vehicles. They'd probably perform worse than Network Rail!!

So it will be interesting to see if Mercedes help Tesla out with the Sprinter project. Europeans aren't stupid and are quite good at negotiating as others are finding out, so Mercedes are likely to drive a hard bargain.

regards

Howard

If you goto a mechanic and ask him about the Black Death, he/she will frown and then rant about Mercedes. All of the diesel engines they made with 6 mm stretch hold down bolts suffer from the Black Death: diesel fuel getting past the injector and gluing the injector in place so that it is hard to get out. I have not heard of any Mercedes Sprinter with the arrangement running to high mileage with out this problem. Mercedes however left enough material in the head that one can heli-coil the threads to 8 mm which usually fixes the problem. I have done this on my own Mercedes and it must have made Mercedes a lot of money in doing the adaption and in selling a new set of injectors as they recommend replacing all of them.

Still people believe Mercedes are the best engineered vehicles in the world even if they are not in my experience at the top of owners reliability experience.

Whether Tesla are unreliable or not is unclear. Sure there are numerous articles saying they are but based on very limited data and it is unclear how objective the surveys are. One thing is currently certain: Tesla are selling very well.

Regarding replacing diesel with electric the answer is that diesel vans are subject to congestion and pollution charges, electric are not. That means that soon diesel vans will be history.

The rational for a Tesla/Mercedes tie up is that Tesla have no small Sprinter type van but have the model Y coming shortly which is a pickup, currently the most common selling vehicle in the US. Hence if Tesla can flog bits engineered for the Y to Mercedes they have another income stream.

Regards,

[Meatyfool]

Model Y is not a pickup, it is a small SUV.

Meatyfool..

[odysseus2000]

Model Y is not a pickup, it is a small SUV.

Meatyfool..

Yes, thank you, you are right and I am wrong.

There has been a lot of talk about a pickup and at some point I got the two mixed up although I have read rumours that a pickup is coming.

Regards,

[Howard]

A couple of interesting developments in the news this week.

Tesla have reduced their prices in China as reported by the FT.
"The California-based electric carmaker said on Thursday it had reduced the prices of its Model S and Model X in China by 12 to 26 per cent respectively."
https://www.ft.com/content/847a4e02-ee1 ... 6339d835c0

Obviously the major reason for this is the the tariffs imposed by the Chinese government on US-made goods. But it suggests that Tesla are having to compete much harder to sell their premium models in a market which is becoming tougher for them.

The other interesting fact to emerge is that in the last quarter, California buyers accounted for 27% of Tesla sales worldwide. Whilst this is an impressive result it also indicates how exposed the company is to their affluent local market, untypical of the rest of the world.

https://electrek.co/2018/11/22/tesla-sa ... ket-share/

In California, Tesla sold 44,000 cars year to date up to end September. This compares with Honda’s sales in California of 189,000 and Toyota’s sales of 257,000. BMW sold 50,000 in the state and Mercedes 58,000 in the same period.

It will be interesting to see how Tesla’s worldwide sales develop. We won’t have to wait too long to see if their success in California is repeated across the USA and then beyond.

regards

Howard

[BobbyD]

Tesla's really clear descriptions of their autopilot as a level 2 driving aid and not an actual autopilot which will drive the car for you and accept legal responsibility appear to have got lost somewhere in their Dutch translation.

A subdistrict court in Midden-Nederland has reiterated, in its second statement, that the driver using his mobile phone in a Tesla car on autopilot should indeed be fined. The driver, in defense, argued that this should not be the case as the autopilot was on and should be considered the responsible driver. He noted that there was software to ensure the car can steer and brake, without the need for human intervention. The court disagreed. The driver was earlier given a fine of EUR 230.

- https://www.telecompaper.com/news/dutch ... t--1270570


...and a new Tesla plane has been spotted: https://edition.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney ... c-orig.cnn

[odysseus2000]

Musk on close Tesla came to bankruptcy during Model 3:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1066854745397182465

(may have to select the box that says you accept sensitive media to play the short video)

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Musk on going to Mars:

https://www.axios.com/elon-musk-mars-sp ... 109ce.html

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

[expletive deleted] can run entire stadium from a battery:

https://flipboard.com/@bloomberg/[expletive deleted] ... omberg.com

I believe there is a huge market for storage& that Tesla will get a chunk of it.

Regards,