Does Ford Have an EV demand issue?

[firsttruck]

The UAW's initial demands are just wages comparable with the increase in profit the big three have experienced since their last negotiations in 2009 resulted in concessions from the Union.

Remember, Tesla shares profits with its employees via stock options.

-Crissa

In my experience most regular workers do not think they can afford to buy stocks and other workers are even almost deathly afraid of risks of stocks.

Tesla claims Tesla workers make more when stocks are included but is that true for vast majority of workers or are a few workers who invested early and reaped huge gains skewing the average?

Do all Tesla line workers automatically get stock options or do the workers have to buy the options?

If the workers have to buy the stock options, how many workers actually buy any significant quantity.

Sponsored

 

[HaulingAss]

I agree with most of your points short term. I was talking long term. Even then, it would require some restructuring, watering down design, more automation and may be some new tech for them to be competitive. By then UAW may push more jobs back outside U.S. despite the tax incentives. As aggressive as Tesla is, I seriously doubt they can hold on to their current EV market share unless all other OEMs shoot themselves in the foot (some probably will but not all).

What do you mean by "watering down design"? Because for legacy auto to become competitive enough with Tesla to cause price pressure on their Cybertruck would require a refining of their designs, not a watering down. Legacy needs to make each part do more. Currently they have the dead weight of the body of the bed and the cab contributing nothing to the strength and rigidity of the chassis.

The other OEM's don't have to prevent themselves from shooting themselves in the foot, they have to re-invent themselves to become efficient manufacturers. Tesla's overall marketshare has been climbing rapidly, every year since they sold their first Roadster in 2008, a period of 15 consecutive years of marketshare increase. That's not about to stop.

Oh, wait, err...I just noticed you were speaking of their "EV" marketshare (as if thats relevant). There is no seperate EV marketshare, there is only auto marketshare. Because the market is vehicles and consumers can choose an EV or an ICE to meet the same needs. Have you ever seen anyone suggest that Tesla would maintain 70% of all US EV sales as EV sales continue their rapid growth? I haven't, so it's non-sensical to suggest that they would even try to maintain that. In fact, they are begging other manufacturers to step up to the plate and make MORE EVs. They even gave them access to the best fast charging network in the world that they built with their own money!

 

[davelloydbrown]

In my experience most regular workers do not think they can afford to buy stocks and other workers are even almost deathly afraid of risks of stocks.

Tesla claims Tesla workers make more when stocks are included but is that true for vast majority of workers or are a few workers who invested early and reaped huge gains skewing the average?

Do all Tesla line workers automatically get stock options or do the workers have to buy the options?

If the workers have to buy the stock options, how many workers actually buy any significant quantity.

There is a young service tech who has been to my place to service my M3 a couple of times. He was formerly an employee of one of the OEM's and switched to tesla because he didn't see a future with the OEMs.

As a tesla share holder I asked him about his ownership of tesla shares. He told me that they had the opportunity to buy shares quarterly at their low point for that quarter. He said he buys all the shares he can afford and knows employees who are very wealthy with tesla shares.

 

[Sirfun]

What do you mean by "watering down design"? Because for legacy auto to become competitive enough with Tesla to cause price pressure on their Cybertruck would require a refining of their designs, not a watering down. Legacy needs to make each part do more. Currently they have the dead weight of the body of the bed and the cab contributing nothing to the strength and rigidity of the chassis.

The other OEM's don't have to prevent themselves from shooting themselves in the foot, they have to re-invent themselves to become efficient manufacturers. Tesla's overall marketshare has been climbing rapidly, every year since they sold their first Roadster in 2008, a period of 15 consecutive years of marketshare increase. That's not about to stop.

Oh, wait, err...I just noticed you were speaking of their "EV" marketshare (as if thats relevant). There is no seperate EV marketshare, there is only auto marketshare. Because the market is vehicles and consumers can choose an EV or an ICE to meet the same needs. Have you ever seen anyone suggest that Tesla would maintain 70% of all US EV sales as EV sales continue their rapid growth? I haven't, so it's non-sensical to suggest that they would even try to maintain that. In fact, they are begging other manufacturers to step up to the plate and make MORE EVs. They even gave them access to the best fast charging network in the world that they built with their own money!

Tesla is only concerned with TOTAL market share. EV market share is a tool that the spreaders of FUD use.

 

[Crissa]

Do all Tesla line workers automatically get stock options or do the workers have to buy the options?

Yes and... yes?

That's how stock options work. They are given as part as a compensation package. When they 'vest' you have a chance to buy them, when you do, you have to pay the income tax on them at the time they vested (not the time you sold them).

Usually the holding period is long enough that selling them is more than buying them.

Fixed salaries based on good times may translate to more layoffs in bad times.

Right now they have wage rates based upon the worst times and increases below inflation.

The Union accepted lower wages in the bad times of 2009, why shouldn't they get part of the profits in the good times?

-Crissa

 

[firsttruck]

There is a young service tech who has been to my place to service my M3 a couple of times. He was formerly an employee of one of the OEM's and switched to tesla because he didn't see a future with the OEMs.

As a tesla share holder I asked him about his ownership of tesla shares. He told me that they had the opportunity to buy shares quarterly at their low point for that quarter. He said he buys all the shares he can afford and knows employees who are very wealthy with tesla shares.

Yes, we know that some Tesla workers have become fairly wealthy.

But is that common?

Do 80% of workers (not management or executives) each have actually paid to buy a significant amount of Tesla stock options.

If these stock options are offered to 90% of regular workers but only 5% of these workers actually buy a significant quantity of stock options then the whole argument that Tesla pays more is flawed.

Stocks and finance are not taught in regular schools and most parents never bought stocks and didn't teach their children who are the young workers of today.

Since Tesla became consistently profitable I have tried to get regular people to buy Tesla stock and nobody will buy. The ones that have the money (not rich but not poor either) are scared because they think all stocks are gambling. To them even long-term investment in stocks is gambling. They will buy real estate and new ICE luxury cars/SUVs/pickups but not a single share in any stock (Tesla, Amazon, Google, ...).

Even in late 2022 and early 2023 when Tesla was at once-in-lifetime bargain not one person would buy even one share!

 

[cvalue13]

keep dropping the price ford. what do they expect when they announce the much improved T3 truck is just around the corner with Tesla plug and supercharger access sans adaptor...

It’s …

… exactly what they expect

 

[cvalue13]

Yes, we know that some Tesla workers have become fairly wealthy.

But is that common?

Do 80% of workers (not management or executives) each have actually paid to buy a significant amount of Tesla stock options.

equally anecdotally, I’ve seen former Tesla many workers saying they left because the share comp was forced and used more as stick than carrot (eg when appeals court found Musk illegally threatened that employees would lose stock options if they unionized, or employees were fired a day before beating).

which is to take no side, but only to suggest there seems at least two sides to the story RE “we pay better” - as you are wondering

 

[scottf200]

I received this email from Ford suggesting that they have dropped the prices on all Lightning trims.

To be honest, with all the options available it is hard to figure out what the final price will be and when it will be delivered.

As I am a second day reservation holder, I think I will wait a bit longer to see what the CT costs.

i smell desperation

Look at the drop of various Tesla models. Below is just 2023!!

TMX: $41K = 121K - 80K
TMS: $30K = 105K - 75K

 

[Tiberius]

its not the MSRP that tells you if there's a demand problem. It's the stealership markup amount that tells you that. It used to be $20K, wonder what it is now ?

 

[Diehard]

What do you mean by "watering down design"?

Sometimes (not always) manufacturers have to chose between reducing the cost of production and achieving other objectives (safety, convenience, luxury, reliability and future cost/ease of maintenance). If their competition always choose to prioritize reducing manufacturing cost and the difference in other objectives is not noticed or valued by consumer, to survive the competition manufacturers have to either change public perception or make different design choices to stay competitive.

I appreciate my center display and some of my buttons. If they disappeared on the next gen F150 and were replaced with one center display and was offered to me for $10K less, I would probably learn to live without them and enjoy the $10K saving more than mourn the loss of my buttons but I would consider that a watered down design. I am not trying to convince you to have the same preference as me and respect your taste if you don't. Just answering your question on what I meant.

I agree with you on that to stay competitive manufacturers need to do more with less but my point was when competition gets cut throat, sometimes they just do less with less.

Tesla's overall marketshare has been climbing rapidly, every year since they sold their first Roadster in 2008, a period of 15 consecutive years of marketshare increase. That's not about to stop.

Oh, wait, err...I just noticed you were speaking of their "EV" marketshare (as if thats relevant). There is no seperate EV marketshare, there is only auto marketshare. Because the market is vehicles and consumers can choose an EV or an ICE to meet the same needs. Have you ever seen anyone suggest that Tesla would maintain 70% of all US EV sales as EV sales continue their rapid growth? I haven't, so it's non-sensical to suggest that they would even try to maintain that.

I understand that much of what I say may be "non-sensical" but I say it anyways. I disagree with you on your point that there is no separate EV market. When I was car shopping, I decided that I wanted an EV as my next car. Of course if all EVs were over $200K, I would end up buying an ICE. In fact I had a back up ICE in mind but I was basically shopping in EV market. So in my opinion, even though the price will definitely play a roll on how much an average shopper place one leg in ICE market and how much in BEV, I do consider them distinctly separate markets for most shoppers.

The point that I didn't seem to be able to get across successfully is that when Tesla started selling cars, they were the only game in town as far as EVs are concerned and didn't have to worry about competition with a few roadsters at high price on the road. Today most manufacturers are still struggling with getting their EV volume to a respectable level. But number of non-tesla EVs on the road is no longer zero and non of them can deny that consumers are interested.

Tesla numbers had nowhere to go but up since 2008 when you look at the total car market. The reason people look at and talk about EV market share is that if you expect the total car market to be an EV market somewhere down the road, the EV market share is a leading indicator of what the total market will look like. The smaller that market share for Tesla becomes the more influence other EV/car/truck prices will have over Tesla pricing.

All that said, I agree with your point that this influence when OEMs get to volume production will be mainly a function of how efficient they will be.

 

[Crissa]

The thing is, you prove there isn't a separate EV market - if it didn't fill your needs, you wouldn't go without, you'd get an ICE powered vehicle.

EV in that case is just something that makes the vehicles more attractive to you. Just as I don't want to buy an ICE vehicle and have refrained from replacing my car - I still have an ICE car.

-Crissa

 

[GlockandRoll]

I worked for Ford for years, and bought several on A-plan for myself and family while there. We all had problems of one sort or another. Years later, after the memory of the mechanical problems had faded, I ordered a 2015 Mustang Ecoboost premium with the performance package. I loved the car, the way it handled and looked and drove, but the damned thing spent 2 months in the shop out of the 1st 8 I owned it so I lemon flawed it. The lemon law group, who represented me, said Ford keeps their lights on and is responsible for the bulk of their business. Not long after that, a friend bought a Shelby GT350 and Ford put 3 engines in it before buying it back. My brother-in-law lemon flawed his Raptor, and they also bought back my friend's F150.

You would have to be insane to buy an EV from Ford, in my opinion.

 

[GlockandRoll]

But... it was a great looking, driving, daily driver, when it worked.

 

[davelloydbrown]

I worked for Ford for years, and bought several on A-plan for myself and family while there. We all had problems of one sort or another. Years later, after the memory of the mechanical problems had faded, I ordered a 2015 Mustang Ecoboost premium with the performance package. I loved the car, the way it handled and looked and drove, but the damned thing spent 2 months in the shop out of the 1st 8 I owned it so I lemon flawed it. The lemon law group, who represented me, said Ford keeps their lights on and is responsible for the bulk of their business. Not long after that, a friend bought a Shelby GT350 and Ford put 3 engines in it before buying it back. My brother-in-law lemon flawed his Raptor, and they also bought back my friend's F150.

You would have to be insane to buy an EV from Ford, in my opinion.

Yeah I am pretty hesitant to buy an EV from Ford or GM. I put a deposit on the silverado EV because I was getting frustrated with the CT wait. As I am a second day reservation holder, I am hoping to get my CT in the latter part of next year which will probably be about the same time the silverado EV's come out.

My M3 was the 28 K one built during production hell in early 2018 and I have had absolutely no problems with it. I only trust Tesla for EV's and will never buy another ICE.

Sponsored