Musk endeavours

[Howard]

Bloomberg suggest some other outcomes if Tesla fails or is sold. They suggest that Tesla's engineering advantage isn't that significant and it would be a positive outcome for profitable European companies such as Mercedes, BMW and Continental.

Is it significant that these are fairly heavyweight US commentators making this point?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... stein-says

regards

Howard

[BobbyD]

Bloomberg suggest some other outcomes if Tesla fails or is sold. They suggest that Tesla's engineering advantage isn't that significant and it would be a positive outcome for profitable European companies such as Mercedes, BMW and Continental.

I wonder whether it would be a positive or a negative for Pana?

[odysseus2000]

A US view on Tesla’s attraction for a European Manufacturer

http://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/03/bernstei ... -sold.html

regards

Howard

Toni Sacconaghi, Berstein's analyst has been negative on Tesla for ages. He ended up in a fight with Musk on a recent conference call when Musk refused to take his question.

Modern design is about quality, not quantity and Tesla have some very good people. The situation is so different from the days of drawing offices and masses of technical staff. Now one guy with Fusion 360 can create more and better stuff ready for Computer Aided Manufacture than as ever before been possible and Tesla are innovating like crazy. They have just announced new rear cast sections replacing several body panels in the rear of the 3.

Everybody want Tesla dead so they can go back to getting their money out of all the investment in tooling making ice. All the comments need to be seen in light of this.

Additionally all this stuff about how Tesla has lost shareholders a lot of dosh has been seen through the prism of the current bear market where many stock holders are getting creamed and this is also troubling all auto sales.

Personally I become more confident in Tesla by the day.

Regards,

[Archtronics]

People where using cad software in the 80s it’s hardly a innovation by Tesla, and if there using fusion 360 that probably explains there productions nightmares.

[odysseus2000]

People where using cad software in the 80s it’s hardly a innovation by Tesla, and if there using fusion 360 that probably explains there productions nightmares.

Yes, CAD is so 20th century, but as I mentioned Computer Aided Manufacture is mostly 21st century and with some good software and i use Fusion 360 a lot and find it the best I have ever used, one can easily create very accurate parts very quickly, leading to faster presses, moulds etc for production. As I mentioned earlier Tesla have moved on to substituting several panels on the 3 with one aluminium casting. They type of thing is relatively new to autos, a lot coming from Aerospace, in this case from SpaceX. E.g. the Titanium rocket motor assemblies are made by laser fused titanium 3d printers. All of these advances cut down on the number of engineers needed and put more emphasis on recruiting good people who can make things happen.

Regards,

[Archtronics]

Fusion is fine for hobbyist and design type businesses, it lacks the depth required for complex engineering work, companies of Tesla’s size won’t be using off the shelf solutions anyway.

Three panels in one casting sound like over complication to me and a nightmare if you have a crash and need to replace the whole panel.
That would be fine if it’s the premium model but not the el cheapo one, reminds me of Saab redesigning the vectra.

[odysseus2000]

Archtronics
Three panels in one casting sound like over complication to me and a nightmare if you have a crash and need to replace the whole panel.
That would be fine if it’s the premium model but not the el cheapo one, reminds me of Saab redesigning the vectra.

Yes, but it is all about making the product as cheap as possible. If one piece can replace 3, then there are savings in fixings, fitting, stock components etc. Whether this will lead to more expensive crash repair, who knows, but the primary game of all manufacturers is to get the cost price down, not specifically to assist auto repair processes in the event of an accident. This all dates from the time of Henry Ford, where he tried to make stuff that was cheaper to replace than repair. Folk like me who like to repair stuff, loathe this kind of thought, but most folk don't repair stuff and simply want the lowest cost option.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Tesla new supercharges give 411 miles per hour:

https://twitter.com/Nadeshot/status/1135424455172272128

Regards,

[dspp]

1. Can you give me a link to this rear end part replacement by a casting please. Are you sure you mean casting by the way ?

2. Some of my friends & peers from university have gone to Tesla, and in the normal way some of them have since moved on. They were at the top of the US auto game when they were funded by their employers to go to uni, and they most definitely were excellent engineers. My points are that the wetware pool is shared amongst these OEMs, and Tesla has been able to cherry pick the cream of the crop. They will have been using the best COTS tools available, and innovating for inhouse tools as well. So Tesla will be at worst at parity with legacy in people & tools.

3. What we are seeing in Tesla is disruptive. It is moving the breakeven point for a globally competitive small/medium auto company firstly downwards in volume terms. It will then reset it higher in volume terms as it gains further scale in cells. It is a very neat strategic trick as it has the effect of lowering the volume fence at the point when Tesla want it low, then raising it against any/all followers once safe. Mind you it has not been successfully completed as a mission, so there is plenty of risk still on the table.

regards, dspp

[BobbyD]

3. What we are seeing in Tesla is disruptive. It is moving the breakeven point for a globally competitive small/medium auto company firstly downwards in volume terms.

Ferrari shipped 9,251 cars last year and made a $904 million profit...

Or are they less than small?

It will then reset it higher in volume terms as it gains further scale in cells. It is a very neat strategic trick as it has the effect of lowering the volume fence at the point when Tesla want it low, then raising it against any/all followers once safe. Mind you it has not been successfully completed as a mission, so there is plenty of risk still on the table.

In a BEV world batteries will be an off the shelf commodity, eroding any advantage Tesla has with scale.

[PeterGray]

Modern design is about quality, not quantity

At present it's far from clear that Tesla can produce at the quality that's going to be needed to be a sustainable business while at the same time producing in sufficient quantity to be profitable. Those boring European and Far Eastern "old auto" manufacturers have been showing how to do it for years. Tesla may be able to get to that point, but I struggle to see how they will do so with someone as flaky as Musk at the helm.

[odysseus2000]

1. Can you give me a link to this rear end part replacement by a casting please. Are you sure you mean casting by the way ?

2. Some of my friends & peers from university have gone to Tesla, and in the normal way some of them have since moved on. They were at the top of the US auto game when they were funded by their employers to go to uni, and they most definitely were excellent engineers. My points are that the wetware pool is shared amongst these OEMs, and Tesla has been able to cherry pick the cream of the crop. They will have been using the best COTS tools available, and innovating for inhouse tools as well. So Tesla will be at worst at parity with legacy in people & tools.

3. What we are seeing in Tesla is disruptive. It is moving the breakeven point for a globally competitive small/medium auto company firstly downwards in volume terms. It will then reset it higher in volume terms as it gains further scale in cells. It is a very neat strategic trick as it has the effect of lowering the volume fence at the point when Tesla want it low, then raising it against any/all followers once safe. Mind you it has not been successfully completed as a mission, so there is plenty of risk still on the table.

regards, dspp

Listen to this pod cast on YouTube (no video, only audio) from 30:50

https://youtu.be/s41qWOb7pVQ

where Elon describes manufacturing improvements & says casting which did surprise me given the energy cost to melt aluminium over pressing, but that is the word he used.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

There are two assertions being made all the place:

1) Legacy auto is producing high quality cars. They are not, almost all legacy auto has switched to the lease model, make a car that will be good for a lease then become a money pit, forcing punters to buy another. If you don't believe me go talk to a few mechanics & ask them for their opinion on legacy auto after the lease period, only Toyota continue to make stuff that lasts.

2) Batteries are a commodity. This ain't true. Musk says on the pod cast I linked that if they had the y now they would have no batteries for it. There are not sufficient batteries world wide, they are currently not a commodity.

Regards,

[Archtronics]

There are two assertions being made all the place:

1) Legacy auto is producing high quality cars. They are not, almost all legacy auto has switched to the lease model, make a car that will be good for a lease then become a money pit, forcing punters to buy another. If you don't believe me go talk to a few mechanics & ask them for their opinion on legacy auto after the lease period, only Toyota continue to make stuff that lasts.

Sounds like a great business model to me.... if it was true.

[dspp]

3. What we are seeing in Tesla is disruptive. It is moving the breakeven point for a globally competitive small/medium auto company firstly downwards in volume terms.

Ferrari shipped 9,251 cars last year and made a $904 million profit...

Or are they less than small?

It will then reset it higher in volume terms as it gains further scale in cells. It is a very neat strategic trick as it has the effect of lowering the volume fence at the point when Tesla want it low, then raising it against any/all followers once safe. Mind you it has not been successfully completed as a mission, so there is plenty of risk still on the table.

In a BEV world batteries will be an off the shelf commodity, eroding any advantage Tesla has with scale.

1. There will always be niche manufacturers. Not all the existing ones will survive the transition. Scaling a niche player to mass player is generally pretty unhappy: see Aston Martin.

2. Cells are not a commodity right now in an industrial-significant volume. Between the 'now' situation, and the 'future' situation, a generation of engineers will come & go and so too may a lot of companies. There is certainly sufficient time for investors to make or lose money, hence our needing to think the pathways through carefully up front and position accordingly. Access to cells at scale is going to be a key factor, just as controlling the entirety of the gas chain is for the upstream gas industry (fields - transmission pipeline - distribution system - market). One doesn't necessarily need to own every piece of the chain, but you do need to be able to prevent a ransom position emerging at any stage in the chain. Hence all the positioning going on. And in this at the very least Tesla have a first-mover-to-scale advantage and a clean-sheet advantage and a no-legacy-to-defend advantage. That's not to say that the legacy ICE dino juice players have no cards, but they don't have all the cards.

regards, dspp

[odysseus2000]

There are two assertions being made all the place:

1) Legacy auto is producing high quality cars. They are not, almost all legacy auto has switched to the lease model, make a car that will be good for a lease then become a money pit, forcing punters to buy another. If you don't believe me go talk to a few mechanics & ask them for their opinion on legacy auto after the lease period, only Toyota continue to make stuff that lasts.

Sounds like a great business model to me.... if it was true.

The problem with the "lease" model is that most car drivers begin their career with an older car & then if this gives them good service they later buy a new car from the same maker. When someone buys a legacy motor well past its lease date one rapidly finds that it is a money pit & ones opinion of the brand is forever tarnished. Ask folk who bought a second hand BMW, or a Mercedes about their opinion of the brand. Folk who bought VW both had the quality issues & the certainty that if a diesel they had had a liar & criminal ladling out money from their account as well.

Regards,

[dspp]

1. Can you give me a link to this rear end part replacement by a casting please. Are you sure you mean casting by the way ?

Listen to this pod cast on YouTube (no video, only audio) from 30:50

https://youtu.be/s41qWOb7pVQ

where Elon describes manufacturing improvements & says casting which did surprise me given the energy cost to melt aluminium over pressing, but that is the word he used.

Regards,

Thanks Ody. You are right he is talking about going from al & steel stampings to al castings in the rear underbody. I get 70 parts to 4 (2 casts + 2 joiners), then 70 parts to 1 with the bigger casting machine. Maybe I am hearing him wrong and it is 17, but the accent is kinda fuzzy and merican. Reduction in weight and improvement in NVH. That must be the rear body area where the 3 is decidedly iffy if you look at the teardowns, so they are clearly addressing it, probably also motivated by what it takes to get the 3rd row of jump seats into the Y. Sounds like it will need to be some impressively thin wall / large area castings to achieve this. So I stand corrected.

thanks again, dspp

[BobbyD]

3. What we are seeing in Tesla is disruptive. It is moving the breakeven point for a globally competitive small/medium auto company firstly downwards in volume terms.

Ferrari shipped 9,251 cars last year and made a $904 million profit...

Or are they less than small?

It will then reset it higher in volume terms as it gains further scale in cells. It is a very neat strategic trick as it has the effect of lowering the volume fence at the point when Tesla want it low, then raising it against any/all followers once safe. Mind you it has not been successfully completed as a mission, so there is plenty of risk still on the table.

In a BEV world batteries will be an off the shelf commodity, eroding any advantage Tesla has with scale.

1. There will always be niche manufacturers. Not all the existing ones will survive the transition. Scaling a niche player to mass player is generally pretty unhappy: see Aston Martin.

But that doesn't alter the matter that manufacturer's manage to exceed break even quite happily at a far lower scale than Tesla, while Tesla fail to even break even, so to talk about Tesla lowering the break even point for small/medium manufacturers makes no sense.

2. Cells are not a commodity right now in an industrial-significant volume. Between the 'now' situation, and the 'future' situation, a generation of engineers will come & go and so too may a lot of companies.

Didn't say they were. If BEV take up is that slow Tesla are screwed.

[Archtronics]

There are two assertions being made all the place:

1) Legacy auto is producing high quality cars. They are not, almost all legacy auto has switched to the lease model, make a car that will be good for a lease then become a money pit, forcing punters to buy another. If you don't believe me go talk to a few mechanics & ask them for their opinion on legacy auto after the lease period, only Toyota continue to make stuff that lasts.

Sounds like a great business model to me.... if it was true.

The problem with the "lease" model is that most car drivers begin their career with an older car & then if this gives them good service they later buy a new car from the same maker. When someone buys a legacy motor well past its lease date one rapidly finds that it is a money pit & ones opinion of the brand is forever tarnished. Ask folk who bought a second hand BMW, or a Mercedes about their opinion of the brand. Folk who bought VW both had the quality issues & the certainty that if a diesel they had had a liar & criminal ladling out money from their account as well.

Regards,

I don't really have to as a household we have several of those brands between 5-10 years old, no major problems with any of them.

Personnal experience is irrelavent anyway, feel free to post some actual statistics of the "terrible" legacy quality compared to tesla because the only one I could find puts Tesla 27th for reliability.

[redsturgeon]

Cars last much longer these days than they used to and are much more reliable. I look around and see many cars of ten years old and older on the roads, they still look good, no rust and I don't see then constantly breaking down on the side of the road. My daughter's Ford Ka, on of the cheapest mass produced cars from a mass market producer was great at 100k on the clock and still going strong. An acquaintance who fell on hard times was forced to keep his Ka running over 170k miles...no problem.

I personally only keep cars for about three years and 50k but at that age and mileage it is unusual that much has gone wrong and they drive like new. My new Golf on a two year lease will no doubt go on for many more years after I give it back.

John