"We turn the impossible into the misspelled." - Elon Musk
'Wholesale'. Dealers buy them, yes.I wish it was just them. There are over 100+ in the Ford search for Lightning within 200 miles of my zip code. The dealers don’t buy them, so it’s not a lot of sweat on the dealer. Most of them don’t appear to be ordered by dealer and just allocations from Ford. As for ICE having 200+, that’s not a huge deal as they churn a lot of inventory, that’s probably less than 2-3 weeks of inventory.
But definitely have concerns about seeing the same VIN in November as I saw in August when I was there for service. Whoever does their floor planing loves the rent charge.
That's a lease you are talking about and it comes with a major down payment. Also, saying "by today's standards" doesn't address the issue I was speaking to, affordability. The trucks aren't selling because the value being offered is not high enough. And a part of that is the high interest rates built into the lease payments. You can't take that out of the equation by saying "by today's standards" and there is a very specific reason for that: most new vehicle purchases are discretionary. People buy them because they are tired of driving an older vehicle and everything that entails (they don't have to buy, they buy because they want to). The sluggish sales are a direct result of current economic conditions making the price too high to entice buyers. People want the electric trucks, they just can't justify the price.
No, see above, they need to offer the new truck buyer more value to encourage them to buy. That's why Ford was selling them far below the cost to produce in the first place. But now, with higher interest rates and less money floating around, buyers need even more value offered to pull the trigger.
Again, the value offered is the problem with demand, not that people wouldn't love to get a new EV truck. Manufacturing cost is the root of that problem.
The UAW is living in dreamland if they think they can stop the EV revolution. The reason they don't want EV's is because it reduces their power and financial might by reducing the labor required to build a vehicle. This has nothing to due with the trucks sitting on lots.
Ford did not split off their EV division because the company is "so divided", they split it off because they realized that the ICE division would become a financial drag as they lose economies of scale. They want investors to see the growth of the EV division seperately, rather than see total profits declining simultaneously with sharp declines in total unit volumes. They want investors to focus on the growth of EVs, not the decline of ICE. It has nothing to do with the company "being divided".
There is no doubt Tesla has better access to hire engineers with superior talent, particularly when it comes to being adept with the latest engineering technology. Software does not run itself and Tesla gets the brightest engineers from the best engineering schools in the world that already know how to use the latest and greatest engineering tools.
Tesla absolutely has proven their model holds up to high volumes. Do you know what it means to have the best-selling vehicle, car or truck, gasoline or electric, in the entire world? Ford has over 100 manufacturing facilities around the world for engines, transmissions and chassis, widely spread out, that create their higher total volume, and they have not had the best-selling model globally for many decades. Tesla already does far more volume per facility than Ford, on average. To say that Ford does volumes that Tesla can't even fathom is just so wrong it's hilarious. Elon is all about high volume, which is why he didn't splinter the production systems by having 8 or 10 different models already, he's building maximum volume per model, before adding new models.
That's just false. Tesla costs capital expenditures using the same GAAP accounting rules Ford must use. They cost the buildings and equipment over the expected utility life/unit volume of those assets, just as Tesla must do. And, no, Ford does not pay cash for their new battery plants, maybe you missed the 9-billion-dollar governemnt loan to build Ford's joint venture battery plant. Ford is losing big bucks on every EV has little to nothing to do with accounting, and everything to do with inefficient manufacturing and supply chains and their inability to offer new car buyers enough value to scale profitably. They have run the numbers themselves, and even their internal, overly optimistic projections informed them they could not reach EV profitability until the end of this decade. But, by then, Tesla will have even more scale and more effciciency and be able to offer even more value to consumers.
That's a false perception caused by how hard legacy auto sales were hit during the supposed Covid parts shortages. Tesla grew production and sales through the same challenges.
If you think Cybertruck sales might not reach 100K-200K per year, then you think Tesla is making a big mistake by not cancelling production of the CT. And that's exactly what Elon would do if a rational analysis told him the venture would not be strongly profitable. The fact that he is proceeding with production tells us he believes it's headed for long-term profitability. And anyone who knows anything knows not to bet against Elon Musk. It would take some real arrogance to sit on the outside, without the benefit of everything known to Elon Musk, and tell him he was making a big mistake. My conclusion is that Cybertruck is very likely to exceed a run-rate of 200K annually, by 2025.
The fact that Ford needed to recover from Covid tells you how weak their supply chains were. That reflects poorly on management. Don't get me wrong, I like Jim Farley as a person, but it's ridiculous to think he's on the same level as Elon Musk. If he were, Ford would not still be recovering from Covid, they would be expanding production of each model above pre-Covid levels (like Tesla), and building EV's profitably (like Tesla), while simultaneously building out their own multi-billion dollar charging network (like Tesla) rather than riding on Elon's coat tail. They would also be preparing for the future by funneling some of their profits into the future of automotive, supercomputing, AI robotics, and automotive software. Instead, they will be licensing these things from Tesla, if they survive at all.
That's only 39 miles per day, on average. If that's heavy commercial use, it just highlights how some people over-estimate the amount of range a truck needs to be commercially viable.
Dealers don’t put their own money up or get them titled is what I mean. Banks float the cash for floor planning and Ford allocates DSO. The risk is minimal to the dealer if they sit. They pay a small fee for the privilege of a bank holding their inventory until it sells. It’s not like a dealer is writing a check to Ford for each one.
I think it’s an old South Afrikaner term for Cylon…
Musk: “now, back in 2019, we said 6.5’ bed and 500+ miles, but we crunched the numbers and none of that is statistically necessary. Similarly, in 2019, we said ‘exoskeleton,’ but we’ve crunched the numbers and what it told us is, ‘exosekletons’ are better.”
I can’t even spell real words!!
And if the buyer looks at the monthly payment in and of itself, they have missed the actual difference in “monthly” costs. Look at the cost delta in payment AND fuel AND maintenance AND…
I like this double misspelling.
Tesla guy offstage *whispering*: “it’s exosekeltons, exosekELtons”
Compared to the cost of other vehicles, it’s cheap. You can hardly lease anything for that price. And no, interest rates don’t have much bearing on leases. Residual value does. Leases are derived on rent charges from captive lenders. They aren’t subject to prime rates like loans. Look at how the money factor converts, it’s pennies. I pay $1,200/mo for my F-350 in contrast and $750/mo for my Lightning.
The lack of value is that an ICE truck is cheaper and more capable. Why would someone pivot?
You really have no concept on the grasp of the UAW do you? They can and likely will invade Tesla and succeed considering their history. They also now bring a large pay and benefit package that Tesla isn’t close to. Would you unionize if I doubled your pay and cut your hours in half? $28/hr starting, $40/hr top end, OT options, COLA adjustments, profit sharing bonuses that have been in excess of 10k, etc.
How on earth did you come to this conclusion? LOL. The ICE stuff is paying for the EV development and construction costs. It makes good money. Ford is paying the price for building now, Tesla ran ragged for years building buildings. Ford is rolling the billions of construction into the COGS. Jim Farley has been clear on that point in earnings calls.
Absolute BS. Tesla attracts loyalists and abuses their work ethic with caffeine pills, IV’s, promises of wealth and stocks. Read the forums on Team Blind and stuff. The culture and work expectations there are toxic. The talent is just bordering on acceptable. Their claims of AI mastery are unimpressive and out of date. I worked at Apple, I worked with Tesla engineers. Not impressed. No Lidar? Idiots would have had FSD done years ago. This is my entire life, computer vision. Tesla is working with dated hardware and dated methods wasting precious cash trying to differentiate in hardware and they are terrible at it. They should have used AWS or GCP to train models, not build their own data center or chips. Amazon and Google are much, much, much further ahead in chip making.
Uhh. What? F-150? Ford sells in excess of a million trucks a year alone. More than double what Tesla makes.
Wow, you don’t pay attention to the bond market much? Tesla finances most things and also takes free government money, not loans. They have it easy.
Ok, now you’re just going full fan boy if you don’t realize some of that is distraction. AI Robots? Distraction. Supercomputing? What the in the hell is the point? My iPhone has more Tensor power than the entire car. Google, Apple, nVidia, Amazon all make chips leap years ahead of Tesla and operate at a scale well beyond Tesla. Tesla’s AI is verging on antique status. 10,000 GPU’s? That’s like 1 closet of Amazon? Amazon could give Tesla more compute than it has in spare capacity to train computer vision. Apple has chips in the Apple Vision head set that can do multi-sensor object detection, fusion from lidar and 12 cameras and do it with less than 5 ms of latency. Do you have any idea how far ahead of Tesla that is? All of that is a hype game for the stock. FSD, has been ongoing for so long that it’s hard to remember. Never mind the fact that they have multiple investigations and probes on this.
If Tesla made as many vehicles or as complex or vehicles or as critical of vehicles, the supply chain argument would hold up. Ford makes critical infrastructure that runs our country, Tesla does not. Ford makes the ambulance you ride in, the delivery truck that delivers, the police that protect you, the contractors that fix your house, etc. It’s apples to oranges.
Odd, I see green sales from Ford, not Tesla.
Tesla is benefitting from timing. Nothing more. Ford beat them to market with a cheap EV, guess what, no one wanted an EV when the fed wasn’t pushing it and it wasn’t a status symbol to own one. AI? Tesla has been struggling with the most basic form of computer vision, object detection, due to their own ignorance. Tesla made the market, but others will take it in the long run. And all it would take is one advancement past Electric to destroy Tesla. What if we had 100 mpg cars tomorrow? The Agile lead, Joe Justice, built one 10 years ago that did 100 mpg. What if we shift political climate and abandon the electric push? Peace out Tesla.
