There's actually a really good Model Y discussion on the automotive board right now with real owners. I was unable to check how many were Chinese communists however.

https://texags.com/forums/46/topics/3442625/1#discussion

nortex97 said:

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WolfCall said:

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Will all EV owners be fined and given suspended sentences when Trump is elected?

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Sure why not? Ev reparations!

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But according to Trump, he handed out those subsidies when he was President.

Kansas Kid said:

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nortex97 said:

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WolfCall said:

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Will all EV owners be fined and given suspended sentences when Trump is elected?

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Sure why not? Ev reparations!

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But according to Trump, he handed out those subsidies when he was President.

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I forgot to ask if Hybrid owners will be given a smaller fine and no suspended sentence.

Electric-powered cars are not on the road to a renewable and clean future. They are powered by lithium-ion batteries that will pose a real threat to the environment if continued to be manufactured at the rate of current gasoline-powered cars.Apr 26, 2023

$71K for a BMW i-3 battery? LOL.

nortex97 said:

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$71K for a BMW i-3 battery? LOL.

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But but but … we were assured on here repeatedly that batteries lasted halfway to forever and EVs are an overall lower cost of ownership.

nortex97 said:

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$71K for a BMW i-3 battery? LOL.

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A poorly selling car that has been manufactured in 3 years has a ridiculously niche cost to repair.


Always read Nortex' links folks

5 figures for Tesla battery replacement. Notwithstanding the voiding of warranties. Oooo boy.

bobbranco said:

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5 figures for Tesla battery replacement. Notwithstanding the voiding of warranties. Oooo boy.

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And it lasts 300 to 500 thousand miles. And comes with an 8 year 120,000 mile warranty.

Teslag said:

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bobbranco said:

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5 figures for Tesla battery replacement. Notwithstanding the voiding of warranties. Oooo boy.

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And it lasts 300 to 500 thousand miles. And comes with an 8 year 120,000 mile warranty.

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That's nice, but money doesn't grow on trees.

When I was growing up in the 1950's, Texas still did not require car insurance.
That meant that a poor person could, and often did, drive a $200 vehicle to work.
If there was wreck, the old car was simply junked - of course, if you were driving an expensive car or car with a loan on it then you had insurance.
This, combined with the strong post WW2 economy, made upward mobility a reality.

The only thing that is cheap now is Chinese crapola.

LOL, despite not having the stupid UAW trash to deal with, Tesla struggles;

Quote:

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As Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly ponders layoffs, recent financial reports from U.S. automakers show the leading electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer lags in the amount of revenue generated for each of its employees.

Tesla reported almost $97 billion in revenue last year, equivalent to just under $690,000 for each of its over 140,000 employees.

By comparison, General Motor generated over $1 million in revenue for each of its 163,000 employees in 2023, and Ford Motor raked in $937,000 for each of its 173,000 workers.

Investors became increasingly worried about soft demand for EVs and increased competition after Tesla in January warned of "notably lower" sales growth this year.

With Tesla increasingly focused on costs, the company has asked managers whether each of their employees' positions were critical, stoking layoff fears, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.

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I thought they had room to cut prices because they were making so much money and EV costs keep going down?

Tesla does a lot more of their subassemblies in house than the traditional automakers so they should have more direct labor costs than other automakers. For example, they use their own production shop to make seats. The other automakers outsource partly to get around the UAW and its high costs of labor.

If as a CEO I want to drive my revenue per worker high, it is easy to do. Just use contract labor for everything. Profits will be crap but you will look like a star to Nortex.

I assume you also had a concern about Twitter when he let laid off/had walk out the door about 85% of the labor.

What's the word? Devastating?


Was about to post the same thing. Traditional auto is like a spiderweb of production sourcing components from a variety of suppliers and the brands you know are primarily just vehicle designers and final assembly companies that operate in support of a financial services company.

Tesla by contrast is an actual vehicle manufacturer. They also are operating a growing battery business and energy business that supplies grid storage to utilities with production capacity doubling by the end of the year.

Teslag said:

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bobbranco said:

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5 figures for Tesla battery replacement. Notwithstanding the voiding of warranties. Oooo boy.

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And it lasts 300 to 500 thousand miles. And comes with an 8 year 120,000 mile warranty.

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Does not charge me up one bit.

nortex97 said:

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LOL, despite not having the stupid UAW trash to deal with, Tesla struggles;

Quote:

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As Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly ponders layoffs, recent financial reports from U.S. automakers show the leading electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer lags in the amount of revenue generated for each of its employees.

Tesla reported almost $97 billion in revenue last year, equivalent to just under $690,000 for each of its over 140,000 employees.

By comparison, General Motor generated over $1 million in revenue for each of its 163,000 employees in 2023, and Ford Motor raked in $937,000 for each of its 173,000 workers.

Investors became increasingly worried about soft demand for EVs and increased competition after Tesla in January warned of "notably lower" sales growth this year.

With Tesla increasingly focused on costs, the company has asked managers whether each of their employees' positions were critical, stoking layoff fears, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.

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I thought they had room to cut prices because they were making so much money and EV costs keep going down?

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I hadn't even thought of this aspect, but not having to deal with the UAW is a HUGE advantage for Tesla, not just in the EV field but in the vehicle field in general.

The UAW HAMMERS the Big 3 as well as the other car companies that do manufacturing in the US. They add not just a cost, but a roadblock...

I spent 30 years working in industries with unions (notably the United Aerospace Workers) and the work slowdowns they inflicted were legendary. Five day jobs always took six days (because they got a day of OT to do it). The "that's not my job" mentality is pervasive (and don't you make it YOUR job either, or you'll get a grievance filed on you).

Being away just from that mindset, let alone the pure financial cost, helps Tesla immensely.

Unions and Dealerships makes the OEMs non competitive adding thousands of $$ per car. They are outdated dinosaurs with little value but "too big" to fail. This will be OEMs demise. How do you expect to compete when the playing field is not level?

Also, what does income per employee mean anything? Profit per employee means much more.

If I have 1 employee and income is $1M but lost $2M, that is nothing to brag about.

If I have 1 employee and income is $1M and I made $1M, then that is a great business.

Medaggie said:

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Unions and Dealerships makes the OEMs non competitive adding thousands of $$ per car. They are outdated dinosaurs with little value but "too big" to fail. This will be OEMs demise. How do you expect to compete when the playing field is not level?

Also, what does income per employee mean anything? Profit per employee means much more.

If I have 1 employee and income is $1M but lost $2M, that is nothing to brag about.

If I have 1 employee and income is $1M and I made $1M, then that is a great business.

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Even profit per employee is not a good measure although better than revenue. Just outsource all of your accounting, HR, IT, logistics, and other labor intensive jobs and your profit per employee magically goes up while your profits potentially go down.

See a company like Apple that has no manufacturing personnel. They outsource all of their manufacturing of devises. How much lower would their numbers be if they included all of the workers overseas making iPhones, iPads and watches?

Of course its a dumb metric but just shows you how some would go out of their way to find any "gotcha" points to discuss.

Medaggie said:

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Unions and Dealerships makes the OEMs non competitive adding thousands of $$ per car. They are outdated dinosaurs with little value but "too big" to fail. This will be OEMs demise. How do you expect to compete when the playing field is not level?

Also, what does income per employee mean anything? Profit per employee means much more.

If I have 1 employee and income is $1M but lost $2M, that is nothing to brag about.

If I have 1 employee and income is $1M and I made $1M, then that is a great business.

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The biggest thing to me is I have read so much about how automated the manufacturing process is for Tesla, use of robots, gigapress etc., and a lot of the metals refining/mining of course is done in China by non-Tesla employees, so functionally they should have very very low labor input per vehicle produced for the battery/powertrain, yet somehow they are not generating revenue at even the same rate as the legacy car manufacturers. That is, again, quite an insight.

Some could reasonably be attributed due to their process of scaling up/growth in sales as they bring on new plants/facilities (not just for cars), yet at the same time that still betrays some again of the 'revolutionary' PR as just spin. Compared to the legacy american mfg's, for instance, Tesla builds a lot more of it's cars sold globally in China, so I would expect those plants to also be very productive per worker per vehicle (and their prices per unit should also be higher than these comparisons), but I guess not.

Maybe someone has a better statistic for 'man hours required to produce' for instance a Model Y vs. a Ford Explorer or BMW X5 or whatever (I don't want to get into a debate about comparable models), I dunno.

https://insideevs.com/news/562848/teslafremont-most-productive-plant-northamerica/amp/

They're more productive by being nut to butt producing cars, or alternatively you are using an overly simplistic metric for determining efficiency.

nortex97 said:

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Medaggie said:

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Unions and Dealerships makes the OEMs non competitive adding thousands of $$ per car. They are outdated dinosaurs with little value but "too big" to fail. This will be OEMs demise. How do you expect to compete when the playing field is not level?

Also, what does income per employee mean anything? Profit per employee means much more.

If I have 1 employee and income is $1M but lost $2M, that is nothing to brag about.

If I have 1 employee and income is $1M and I made $1M, then that is a great business.

---

The biggest thing to me is I have read so much about how automated the manufacturing process is for Tesla, use of robots, gigapress etc., and a lot of the metals refining/mining of course is done in China by non-Tesla employees, so functionally they should have very very low labor input per vehicle produced for the battery/powertrain, yet somehow they are not generating revenue at even the same rate as the legacy car manufacturers. That is, again, quite an insight.

Some could reasonably be attributed due to their process of scaling up/growth in sales as they bring on new plants/facilities (not just for cars), yet at the same time that still betrays some again of the 'revolutionary' PR as just spin. Compared to the legacy american mfg's, for instance, Tesla builds a lot more of it's cars sold globally in China, so I would expect those plants to also be very productive per worker per vehicle (and their prices per unit should also be higher than these comparisons), but I guess not.

Maybe someone has a better statistic for 'man hours required to produce' for instance a Model Y vs. a Ford Explorer or BMW X5 or whatever (I don't want to get into a debate about comparable models), I dunno.

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Scale is part of it but the real issue is they do a lot of their own subassemblies. There is a lot of labor in those parts. Think of making a seat. Your not only have to make the frame but then you have to cover it which is a lot of labor relative to the revenue generated. There are many other examples.

I don't know why you bring up metal refinement other than your obsession with China. No manufacturer makes their own metal historically and that actually is a low labor intensity per dollar of revenue anyway. An oil refinery doing 300,000 bbl a day would generate around 300mm per day of revenue depending on oil price and would have less than 1000 employees so it does $300k per day of revenue. Metals refineries aren't that productive per employee but they are still high compared to manufacturing.

I am in no way an expert but I see so many variables to production/profit.

I know Tesla has most of their car and R&D done in house down to most parts. OEMs are essentially final assembly which is a fraction of labor that goes into making a car.

Here is a quote from a business mag, "Toyota unseated Tesla as the most profitable car company in the world when it announced its earnings for its most recent fiscal quarter on Tuesday. (Aug 2023)"

I assume this was 2023Q2. Toyota sold 2.3M in the quarter while Tesla sold about 450K vehicles.

Give me Tesla business any eventhough they made alittle less profits.

During the video, the host asks how long it takes for Tesla to build a Model Y electric crossover at the China factory. Reportedly, it takes about two and a half hours from the very first station to the end of the final assembly. The Giga Shanghai employee in the video interview shares:

Quote:

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"I think from the first station to the last station, it takes about two and a half hours to finish all the stations."

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While that may sound like a long time since you've probably heard that cars come off the assembly line every few minutes at some automakers, that's not the same. Those numbers don't include the entire process from start to finish, which can typically take an average of 18 to 35 hours per vehicle.

People think Tsla is a car maker which is what they do but they are as much a manufacturing company with all of the advancements they put into making a car.

Tesla is building and deploying vehicle chargers, building and testing humanoid robots, building and delivering and managing grid storage systems, building and designing electric motors, batteries, simulation software, and autonomous vehicle software. Their sales teams are all entirely in-house as opposed to GM who sells through to dealers. Their next-generation vehicle is going to have custom-designed manufacturing robots other than the humanoid robot. Service and repair employees. Chip designers for both their supercomputer and their in-vehicle video processing chips.

There is an outrageous amount that goes into building a vehicle and there is an outrageous amount that has been outsourced by the legacy auto companies. That is a business model that functions well when the engineering problems that exist in the vehicle production have largely been figured out and you can then put it on autopilot with incremental minor gains that occur on a multi-year timeline, but when you're trying to drive the cost down and adaptations occur on a week by week, month by month basis as well as major shifts that occur on multi-year timelines then it's better to keep it in house until the process is relatively standardized.

Revenue per vehicle is an incredibly blunt tool to understand efficiency, as evidenced by the fact that GM, Ford, VW, and the rest are struggling to match Tesla on cost per value for electric vehicles.

Self driving mishaps publicized in Super Bowl ads. Welp. Errybody knows about it now, not just TexAgs.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4462211-boycott-tesla-super-bowl-ads-target-self-driving-technology/amp/

Shoefly! said:

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Electric-powered cars are not on the road to a renewable and clean future. They are powered by lithium-ion batteries that will pose a real threat to the environment if continued to be manufactured at the rate of current gasoline-powered cars.Apr 26, 2023

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Why is lithium bad for the environment?
Ecological devastation is a bleak reality


Drilling for lithium


This leaves local communities and wildlife parched. Sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide used in lithium extraction penetrate the soil and water, poisoning ecosystems and endangering species.Oct 30, 2023

Shoefly! said:

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Shoefly! said:

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Electric-powered cars are not on the road to a renewable and clean future. They are powered by lithium-ion batteries that will pose a real threat to the environment if continued to be manufactured at the rate of current gasoline-powered cars.Apr 26, 2023

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Why is lithium bad for the environment?
Ecological devastation is a bleak reality


Drilling for lithium


This leaves local communities and wildlife parched. Sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide used in lithium extraction penetrate the soil and water, poisoning ecosystems and endangering species.Oct 30, 2023

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Because oil extraction has never caused environmental damage. Have you read the amount of water needed for fracking?

Kansas Kid said:

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Shoefly! said:

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Shoefly! said:

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Electric-powered cars are not on the road to a renewable and clean future. They are powered by lithium-ion batteries that will pose a real threat to the environment if continued to be manufactured at the rate of current gasoline-powered cars.Apr 26, 2023

---

Why is lithium bad for the environment?
Ecological devastation is a bleak reality


Drilling for lithium


This leaves local communities and wildlife parched. Sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide used in lithium extraction penetrate the soil and water, poisoning ecosystems and endangering species.Oct 30, 2023

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Because oil extraction has never caused environmental damage. Have you read the amount of water needed for fracking?

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That's not a pic of oil extraction causing environmental damage. That's a pic of Saddam trying to prevent the US from kicking his ass in Kuwait.

So we go to one environment problem to another? Which is worse? I don't know.

Then fine, explain these away.

Shoefly! said:

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So we go to one environment problem to another? Which is worse? I don't know.

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Let's face it, driving and other modern life issues have environmental consequences. I have been clear I don't think EVs will save the environment but I also don't pretend that oil and frankly any mineral extractions don't cause harm either.

Current extraction methods involve pumping underground brines into evaporation pools and allowing the sun to concentrate the brine, at which point the brine is refined into usable lithium. Water is lost through both the evaporation process and the refinement process. That process is too slow to meet the demand of the EV business. Current extraction and refinement investments are going into direct lithium extraction (DLE), where water is pumped underground to surface the underground brine water, which is then pumped through a membrane concentrating the brine on one side of the membrane and fresh water onto the other side of the membrane. That freshwater is then used to both extract the underground brine water and to wash the resulting concentrated brine, reducing the amount of water utilized significantly, because it is a more closed-loop system.

Tesla is opening up an acid-free lithium refinery that they say is going to cut costs of refinement by 30% and significantly improve the ecological impact of lithium refinement from spodumene concentrate.

When production increases more investment goes into the production process, which can result in higher yields/faster production while also improving the environmental impact because the safeguards can be spread over more units of production. The above DLE process is not dramatically different than desalination processes and can result in a driving down of the cost of fresh water production in places that have access to salt water, but limited access to fresh water. Production of batteries drives down their cost through efficiencies and scale, which improves cost of other battery technologies that are less suitable for vehicle implementation but are ideal for grid storage improving the reliability of intermittent energy production methods like wind and solar.

Tragic. Another one up in flames.

https://fox5sandiego.com/traffic/tesla-goes-up-in-flames-during-crash-20-year-old-driver-killed/amp/

techno-ag said:

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Tragic. Another one up in flames.

https://fox5sandiego.com/traffic/tesla-goes-up-in-flames-during-crash-20-year-old-driver-killed/amp/

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How does a driver crash a Tesla in California on a street with the same name as the Lakewood Church shooter and on the same day?

If all was market driven, we wouldn't be discussing any of this, and no one would care. People would buy what they want, when they want, for as many different reasons as there are buyers.

Governmental involvement (which includes union regulations and support) is the only discussion point, and the discussion is that it shouldn't exist.