odysseus2000 wrote: IMHO considering Tesla as just a car company is not how it is valued by Wall Street.
Tesla obviously isn't valued as a car company, the question is 'is Tesla even a car company' because solar panels and static storage don't justify its price either, and are about to hit some serious competition from major transnational companies.
odysseus2000 wrote:Regarding margins, according to Munro who did an independent strip down and reverse engineer of a model 3, Tesla are selling them at 20% margin, rather than a loss. If you can verify that model 3 do sell at a loss then I would change my belief.
Unless there's been an update Munro said that teh car COULD have a 30% margin, IF it was built on a major line. He used Fremont under GM/Toyota as his model when pricing, but Tesla have over twice the staff for a considerably lower output.
The Model 3’s profit potential as assessed by an outsider like Munro is impressive—but it comes with a huge caveat. Tesla hasn’t let Munro visit the company’s car factory in Fremont, California. So Munro created his estimates as if the Model 3 had been built in an average Toyota or GM plant. Tesla has far more employees than Toyota and GM had when they jointly ran the same Fremont factory, and that inefficiency could hinder profits.
Tesla has roughly 10,000 employees in the Fremont plant. At their peak, Toyota and GM had 4,400 workers who made 450,000 cars a year at the same facility, said Ron Harbour, senior partner with consulting firm Oliver Wyman. Tesla, he said, has way too many workers.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... -decisionsHe also said:
Many of the problems stem from unconventional choices made by Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk. “If that car was made anywhere else, and Elon wasn’t part of the manufacturing process, they would make a lot of money,” Munro said in an interview. “They’re just learning all the old mistakes everyone else made years ago.” Munro said he admires Tesla’s technology, so he sent the company a pro bono list of 227 suggested improvements.
Take the steel and aluminum frame at the bottom of the car, a design meant to increase safety. Tesla's battery already sits in the floor and adds stiffness, Munro said, so Tesla made the car heavier and more expensive without getting much benefit.
The aluminum trunk well, meanwhile, is made from multiple pieces held together with rivets and weld points instead of one lighter, cheaper fiberglass trunk preferred by other carmakers. The rear wheel well on the Model 3 also features nine pieces of metal riveted, sealed or welded together. The Chevy Bolt? It has one stamped piece of steel.
“This body is their single biggest problem,” Munro said. “It’s killing them.”
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Musk has described consultants working for Tesla as “barnacles” that need to be scraped off, but Munro is the rare outsider who did get his attention. After he put out an initial report in April, identifying problems with the design of the Model 3, Musk’s team arranged a call. The manufacturing analyst warned the Tesla chief that his car was heavy, too expensive and needlessly complicated to assemble. According to Munro, Musk replied that he had already fired the engineer responsible for the body’s design.
“Not fast enough,” Munro recalls saying, adding in the interview that Musk, “never should have hired him.”
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... -decisionsodysseus2000 wrote:Looking at the Jaguar, that it is outsourced and built on a third party line, leaves me feeling that it can not be of remotely similar quality to a Model 3 which has very good safety crash test results.
The ipace has a 5 star NCAP rating,
https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/jaguar/i-pace/34193 just like the S class whichit beats in all 4 individual categories (Adult occupant, Child Occupant, Pedestrian, Safety Assist).
There's footage of the line it is built on in a video I linked to back when we were talking about the cost benefit of building electric vs ICE. I doubt outsourcing to a line which is building both BEV and ICE at the same is the cheapest or most efficient way to do it, but it's a very modern automated line not some dirty old garage stuffed full of outdated salvage from a previous project, or a tent.
odysseus2000 wrote:IMHO focusing on the examples of poor finish etc on model 3 is a mistake as these things will be put right.
They should never have been wrong.
odysseus2000 wrote:The Audi e-tron as far as I know is not available till 2020.
Audi e-tron Jumps to #4 in Germany in January — #CleanTechnica Electric Car Sales Report
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https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/16/au ... es-report/-
https://cleantechnica.com/files/2019/03 ... ll-Feb.png