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Musk endeavours

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odysseus2000
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Re: Musk endeavours

#148837

Postby odysseus2000 » June 29th, 2018, 2:50 pm

BobbyD

2 years fuel consumption after the VW diesel 'hitch' really doesn't give any useful information on new car sales.


The chart goes to the end of 2017, and at that point diesel was almost twice the volume of petrol.

I doubt the changes brought on by VW have dramatically changed this.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#148844

Postby BobbyD » June 29th, 2018, 3:16 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
BobbyD

2 years fuel consumption after the VW diesel 'hitch' really doesn't give any useful information on new car sales.


The chart goes to the end of 2017, and at that point diesel was almost twice the volume of petrol.

I doubt the changes brought on by VW have dramatically changed this.

Regards,


You find it hard to reconcile reports of very significant drops in diesel purchases with your chart of fuel consumption.

If people stopped buying diesels today diesel consumption would barely change.

You are using a chart of a lagging indicator which barely includes the most significant factor in diesel drop off, let alone any chance for it to influence engine buying patterns or for those changes to filter through in to reduced fuel consumption.

That chart can not show you what you are saying it doesn't say....

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Re: Musk endeavours

#148860

Postby odysseus2000 » June 29th, 2018, 4:24 pm

BobbyD
You find it hard to reconcile reports of very significant drops in diesel purchases with your chart of fuel consumption.

If people stopped buying diesels today diesel consumption would barely change.

You are using a chart of a lagging indicator which barely includes the most significant factor in diesel drop off, let alone any chance for it to influence engine buying patterns or for those changes to filter through in to reduced fuel consumption.

That chart can not show you what you are saying it doesn't say....


The chart shows that the consumption of diesel is about twice that of petrol and so all the stories one reads about diesel sales collapsing are inconsistent with the chart.

Yes, if folk stopped buying diesel or the fuel was banned there would be a dramatic change both in the ratio of hydrocarbon usage and in engine choice, but this isn't currently likely.

Currently if everyone wants electric there isn't enough supply. If Tesla can demonstrate they have learned how to make cars, the funding opportunities for their proposed Asia and European factories ought to be very good.

The problem is more for legacy autos. With such high levels of diesel consumption, do they stop making diesels and go all electric, casting aside all the investment they have made to make diesel engines?

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Re: Musk endeavours

#148873

Postby odysseus2000 » June 29th, 2018, 4:40 pm

Tesla cuts the price of some of the model 3 range:

http://fortune.com/2018/06/27/tesla-model-3-cheaper/

In the exact playbook of Henry Ford!

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Re: Musk endeavours

#148928

Postby BobbyD » June 29th, 2018, 8:04 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:Tesla cuts the price of some of the model 3 range:

http://fortune.com/2018/06/27/tesla-model-3-cheaper/

In the exact playbook of Henry Ford!

Regards,


...except the producing 10,000 cars a DAY part....

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Re: Musk endeavours

#148934

Postby odysseus2000 » June 29th, 2018, 8:29 pm

...except the producing 10,000 cars a DAY part....


Ford had a five day work week, so if he was making 10,000 cars a day for 250 days, he would have made 2.5 million cars per year, taking him 6 years to make the 15 million model T's that he did make, rather than the 19 years it actually took.

Sure Tesla production is low now, but the question is can it made a lot more and can that knowledge be exported to factories in Asia and Europe?

Given that Ford was operating with out any of the technologies that we have, but with a very much simpler design, it is difficult to speculate how production numbers going forwards will develop.

We should get some short term numbers at the end of this month.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#148960

Postby BobbyD » June 29th, 2018, 10:22 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:Sure Tesla production is low now, but the question is can it made a lot more ...


That is rather the point that others have been making... and so far there is zero evidence to suggest that Musk has got the slightest grip on the problem, although credit where credit is due he has actually publicly admitted that it is a problem. Perhaps he has been reading this thread...

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Re: Musk endeavours

#148999

Postby dspp » June 30th, 2018, 10:28 am

odysseus2000 wrote:
Given that Ford was operating with out any of the technologies that we have, but with a very much simpler design, it is difficult to speculate how production numbers going forwards will develop.

We should get some short term numbers at the end of this month.


1. If you strip a Tesla S down it is an amazingly simple design. The Tesla 3 has less in it. There is a possibility that these Teslas are simpler builds than the old Fords, with the exception of the seat build.

2. I look forwards to the production & cashflow numbers. This is a very interesting game to watch from the sidelines.

regards, dspp

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Re: Musk endeavours

#149050

Postby odysseus2000 » June 30th, 2018, 2:06 pm

1. If you strip a Tesla S down it is an amazingly simple design. The Tesla 3 has less in it. There is a possibility that these Teslas are simpler builds than the old Fords, with the exception of the seat build.

2. I look forwards to the production & cashflow numbers. This is a very interesting game to watch from the sidelines.

regards, dspp



Very interesting comments suggesting that model 3 production can be raised dramatically. It would be nice if Tesla were able to make more Model 3 than Ford made model T's & to do it more quickly.

Given the advances since Ford's days in numerous areas one kind of feels it should happen, & if so legacy auto is in big trouble.

It is even more fun to watch from the inside having re-bought some after the recent market slide!

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Re: Musk endeavours

#149070

Postby PeterGray » June 30th, 2018, 3:06 pm

Given the advances since Ford's days in numerous areas one kind of feels it should happen, & if so legacy auto is in big trouble.

I still fail to see why you think this creates a significant problem for existing auto cos. It's something that is probably simpler than what they already churn out in vast numbers. Most of the tech is the same. The power unit differs, but many large autocos are already producing electric, and hybrid cars. It's no great step. They routinely build new production lines for new models very 5-10 years. I can't see why most large autocos should have any problem switching from mainly HC powered to mainly electrically powered?

(And given Musk's views on intellectual property as made clear by the farting unicorn incident, I'd presume that if he does actually have a significant lead in any specific area in terms of tech, that he won't complain when others copy it!)

Peter

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Re: Musk endeavours

#149099

Postby odysseus2000 » June 30th, 2018, 5:09 pm

Peter Gray
I still fail to see why you think this creates a significant problem for existing auto cos. It's something that is probably simpler than what they already churn out in vast numbers. Most of the tech is the same. The power unit differs, but many large autocos are already producing electric, and hybrid cars. It's no great step. They routinely build new production lines for new models very 5-10 years. I can't see why most large autocos should have any problem switching from mainly HC powered to mainly electrically powered?


Yes, this is all true, but legacy auto isn't making electric cars In the kind of volumes that matter.

If, and it is currently a big if, Tesla start to churn out thousands a day then they will rapidly, if the cars sell & all indications are that they will, become a major player. They are currently a similar Volvo sized business having come from nothing.

Legacy auto can build lots of new lines & hire lots of new people, or they can shut down legacy tech & move all their employees to new electric lines & in both cases they will take big hits to their p&l. If they start doing this then who would buy a legacy car that will likely be taxed to enter more & more cities with punitive fees. Folk are talking about wanting to put a £100 a day fee on an hgv with a Diesel engine to go into a city. I doubt many haulage business can handle that.

Meanwhile if Tesla are turning out thousands per day at good margins, as evidenced by recent price cuts, it will not be long before they become a dominant supplier with every political shot against hydro carbon cars being a tail wind for them.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#149107

Postby BobbyD » June 30th, 2018, 5:43 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:The chart shows that the consumption of diesel is about twice that of petrol and so all the stories one reads about diesel sales collapsing are inconsistent with the chart.


It really isn't. Somebody buying a petrol or electric car doesn't reduce diesel consumption.

Somebody not buying a Diesel doesn't reduce diesel consumption.

Diesel consumption is reduced when an existing Diesel car is driven less or taken off the road.

Dieslegate first made the papers in Sept '15. Your graph ends 15 months later.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#149110

Postby BobbyD » June 30th, 2018, 5:59 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:Yes, this is all true, but legacy auto isn't making electric cars In the kind of volumes that matter.

If, and it is currently a big if, Tesla start to churn out thousands a day then they will rapidly, if the cars sell & all indications are that they will, become a major player. They are currently a similar Volvo sized business having come from nothing.

Legacy auto can build lots of new lines & hire lots of new people, or they can shut down legacy tech & move all their employees to new electric lines & in both cases they will take big hits to their p&l. If they start doing this then who would buy a legacy car that will likely be taxed to enter more & more cities with punitive fees. Folk are talking about wanting to put a £100 a day fee on an hgv with a Diesel engine to go into a city. I doubt many haulage business can handle that.

Meanwhile if Tesla are turning out thousands per day at good margins, as evidenced by recent price cuts, it will not be long before they become a dominant supplier with every political shot against hydro carbon cars being a tail wind for them.

Regards,


There are 80 odd million cars produced a year world wide.

The production target Tesla can't hit represents 0.325% of worldwide car production.

To hit 1% of Worldwide sales Tesla would have to get to 5000 cars a week, and the triple its output.

Legacy auto can build cars. It can build diesel cars, and it can build petrol cars, and it can build electric cars.

It builds what it makes most sense to build. At the moment that is mainly petrol, when it makes most sense to build mostly electric, guess what they will build? Some of them are quite good at building cars. Producing a simpler product really isn't going to phase them.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#149176

Postby odysseus2000 » June 30th, 2018, 11:53 pm

BobbyD
It really isn't. Somebody buying a petrol or electric car doesn't reduce diesel consumption.

Somebody not buying a Diesel doesn't reduce diesel consumption.

Diesel consumption is reduced when an existing Diesel car is driven less or taken off the road.

Dieslegate first made the papers in Sept '15. Your graph ends 15 months later.


Kind of confused here.

In most cases a sale of a new car is to someone who part exchanges their old car for a new one. So if, as the media anecdotes suggest, diesel cars are declining in sales, then drivers who had diesels are switching to alternative fuels, either petrol or electric or hybrid.

Depending on the age of the traded in car it is either scrapped or sold to a new owner who then sells or scraps their previous car, so that eventually an old car is scrapped.

As far as I can tell someone buying a none diesel car must lead to less diesel fuel sales in the chain of car sales that follow every new purchase.

Also the RAC data goes to the end of 2017, which is 25 months later than the dieselgate first press stuff if that began in Sept of 2015.

Additionally all new diesels now have a tank of distilled water & urea along with a fuel tank. This fluid is squirted into the exhaust gases & dramatically cuts emissions and the engine won't run without this, making dieselgate obsolete.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#149180

Postby odysseus2000 » July 1st, 2018, 12:28 am

BobbyD
There are 80 odd million cars produced a year world wide.

The production target Tesla can't hit represents 0.325% of worldwide car production.

To hit 1% of Worldwide sales Tesla would have to get to 5000 cars a week, and the triple its output.

Legacy auto can build cars. It can build diesel cars, and it can build petrol cars, and it can build electric cars.

It builds what it makes most sense to build. At the moment that is mainly petrol, when it makes most sense to build mostly electric, guess what they will build? Some of them are quite good at building cars. Producing a simpler product really isn't going to phase them.


Yes, but a lot of the growth market for cars is outside of the US, UK and European markets and in China it is being serviced by Chinese makers producing electric cars.

The US car market in 2017 was about 6.7 million units. see e.g. https://www.statista.com/statistics/199 ... ince-1951/

If Tesla can produce 5000 cars a month, that is 60,000 cars per year, or about 1% of the US market, if they can make 5000 cars a week, that corresponds to 240,000 cars a year, about 4% of the US market.

Does this number matter? In 2007 US car sales were 7.5 million, by 2009, they were down to 5.4 million, a reduction of 2.1/7.5 = 28%, enough to bankrupt GM.

If Tesla can continue to raise production and get to anywhere near the levels that Ford reached in the first decades of the 20th century then GM & Ford have to deal with a big competitor that in a few years could put them into a 2008 type sales recession. If legacy go electric now then they have a big transition to cope with and will have to make large battery factories with some lead time that will delay them. If they delay the transition they can have their lunch and dinner eaten.

One can do similar sums in Europe, e.g. for the German auto industry. Only the Chinese who already have substantial electric production look to be untroubled if Tesla can start to make lots of electric cars.

If Tesla margins remain at around current levels they will make a very large amount of money and if they follow Ford and become more efficient so that they can both produce more and for less so that they can cut prices, the troubles for legacy auto get worse.

It is all well and good to argue that legacy auto can make cars, but for the moment they are not making enough electric and that imho makes them vulnerable to Tesla.

Of course the short interest in Tesla shows that many disagree with my thesis which is fine, but I have looked at the numbers and I am not arguing about what legacy auto can do, but about what they are doing and as I see things legacy is not doing enough and is too complacent.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#149187

Postby BobbyD » July 1st, 2018, 2:19 am

odysseus2000 wrote:In most cases a sale of a new car is to someone who part exchanges their old car for a new one. So if, as the media anecdotes suggest, diesel cars are declining in sales, then drivers who had diesels are switching to alternative fuels, either petrol or electric or hybrid.

Depending on the age of the traded in car it is either scrapped or sold to a new owner who then sells or scraps their previous car, so that eventually an old car is scrapped.


...or the number of cars on the road going up.

odysseus2000 wrote:As far as I can tell someone buying a none diesel car must lead to less diesel fuel sales in the chain of car sales that follow every new purchase.


That simply doesn't follow for any number of reasons. For brevity let's consider one. Not all drivers are identical. Some Drivers drive hundreds of miles a day, some go half a mile to the shops and back once a week. Lots of the former switching would over time result in a large decrease in diesel consumption. Lots of the latter wouldn't budge the needle. But if they buy a petrol and sell the car, 6 years old, one careful lady owner, 1000 miles on the clock to somebody who has a 20 mile each way commute then diesel consumption will actually increase ...and who knows what is getting scrapped two cars further down the chain, the petrol/diesel ratio isn't constant across the years.

odysseus2000 wrote:...and in China it is being serviced by Chinese makers producing electric cars.


That statement is ever so slightly misleading....

What percentage of Chinese new car sales are electric?

odysseus2000 wrote:If Tesla

If Tesla

If Tesla


If Tesla can do what Legacy auto does for a living... which so far they can't then they will be less far behind legacy-auto, assuming legascy-auto is kind enough to sit still and wait for Tesla to catch up, and Tesla don't run out of tents.

odysseus2000 wrote:It is all well and good to argue that legacy auto can make cars, but for the moment they are not making enough electric and that imho makes them vulnerable to Tesla.


Enough according to what criteria? They sell what they build, and unlike Tesla they build what they sell.

It's easier to make an electric car than an ice car, and they have a nice long transition to practice in because nobody else can build cars in volume at the moment. Hell VW could have a production line somewhere assembling and desembling the same 5000 cars a week, week after week, as an experiment to develop their electric production understanding and what would secure Tesla's medium term future wouldn't even be significant enough for them to tell anybody.

Your theory requires Tesla to suddenly develop world class production acumen, and legacy-auto to simultaneously lose it. It's like saying that Real Madrid are a threat to the All Blacks if they suddenly learn how to play Rugby to test standard and the All Blacks simultaneously turn in to a bunch of association footballers. It could happen, but I wouldn't put money on it, and certainly not as long as Musk continues to believe he's a car guy.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#149207

Postby PeterGray » July 1st, 2018, 8:56 am

Legacy auto can build lots of new lines & hire lots of new people, or they can shut down legacy tech & move all their employees to new electric lines & in both cases they will take big hits to their p&l. If they start doing this then who would buy a legacy car that will likely be taxed to enter more & more cities with punitive fees. Folk are talking about wanting to put a £100 a day fee on an hgv with a Diesel engine to go into a city. I doubt many haulage business can handle that.

Your argument assumes that there will be an almost overnight switch (or at least within a few years) to electric. I really don't see that happening. It will be an incremental process, over several years. Big auto can cope with that, no problem. Nissan/Renault were producing around 500 a day last year ago and are aiming to sell about 3000 a day within 4 years - plus similar numbers of hybrids. They expect around 40% of output to Europe and Japan to be electric or hybrid within 4 years, and within 7 to the US. OK, Nissan are ahead of everyone else (including Tesla at the moment), but don't think for a moment that the biggest car manufacturers don't have this well in hand. If I was buying an electric car tomorrow (which I wouldn't yet) it would probably be a Nissan - not any existing Tesla.

I simply do not accept that Tesla represents the sort of radical shift in technology that Musk would like everyone else to believe. He may be good at trying out new tech, but he's even better at self promotion!

Peter

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Re: Musk endeavours

#149208

Postby johnhemming » July 1st, 2018, 8:58 am

Getting the grid electricity to power these cars is not that easy at large numbers.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#149240

Postby odysseus2000 » July 1st, 2018, 11:23 am

johnhemming

Getting the grid electricity to power these cars is not that easy at large numbers


I see this idea a lot.

The problem with the grid as is, is that electricity can not be stored, so there is a huge amount of waste, but with electric cars one creates a storage system.

All of this can be powered from renewables, solar & wind in the UK.

As was discussed earlier, one could power all of China using solar & storage from about 1% of the land area of China.

As far as I can tell it is no longer about if, but about when this happens.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#149247

Postby PeterGray » July 1st, 2018, 11:44 am

The problem isn't just power generation. It's getting the power to the cars. The infrastructure isn't there. What % of cars in the UK are parked on streets, frequently away from the house of the owner - perhaps 50% or possibly more. Who is going to install charging points at 5m intervals down most inner city residential streets? And "charging point rage" could well prove an interesting new phenomenon!

These problems can be solved (or at least in part) but it will not be fast. It will be at least a decade, and I'd think longer, before electric cars become a majority of those on the roads in the UK. Hybrid might well be the better technology for the next 10-20 years.

Peter


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