ABATTBQ11 said:

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This is why I'm not sold on Tesla

https://www.thedrive.com/news/38579/these-repair-bulletins-for-teslas-quality-problems-are-downright-embarrassing-and-serious

Too many quality control issues, some of which are pretty serious, with seemingly no desire to improve their QC process. Other manufacturers, particularly Toyota and Honda, figured out QC a LONG time ago and build it into everything they do. It blows my mind that they could deliver vehicles missing nuts on key suspension parts or still have spontaneous glass shattering issues.

People may love the cars, but I feel like they won't put up with this kind of stuff forever. It's like buying a $50k vehicle com Harbor Freight with how hit or miss they can be.

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Highest customer satisfaction in the industry. I don't think they can maintain that across the entire population if they don't fix these issues, but I think they're a few years away from that being a major barrier to purchasing.

I also think that by the time that happens they'll be producing cars out of Texas/Berlin/Shanghai at scale and that those factories are going to crank out higher quality cars than Fremont has, because they were built from the ground up to meet Tesla's manufacturing needs rather than adapted from another auto manufacturer. Perhaps that's optimistic.


I also think if you're looking at Tesla as just a car manufacturer then you're missing a large piece of the story, but that's mostly speculative with proof of that speculation expected by year end. If it doesn't come or progress isn't made towards it then the stock will probably slow.

TSLA seems to be going up and up and up.
Is there any reason for this?
Is it a good time to get in? Or is a crash in the offing?

I know you're exaggerating to a degree, but there's space in between the first group and the second group. A lot of people that are invested are buy/hold for 10 years and even if the stock price is at 600 in 6 months they believe it will be at 2500-3500 by 2030.

That's not outrageous if you believe they'll achieve full autonomy/launch a ride hailing service/create an App Store for in car entertainment or have "micro transactions" to keep people entertained during rides.

The stock is out ahead of their current capabilities, but being in before they achieve those capabilities is why people are buying. You are rolling the dice on Tesla's engineers/vision though.

ETA: I think the current issues with the company are far easier to resolve than the problems they've already solved, and they are definitely years ahead of other companies as far as the actual underlying engineering of EVs, where they lack is the finishings. I have more faith in Tesla solving those problems, than a company like Ford closing the gap in battery/drivetrain/software/total integration of systems, because Tesla is solely focused on EVs in their automobile sector and Ford is split between EV, Hybrid and combustion, and their dealers are not properly incentivized to sell and EV that isn't going to make them money long term.


I wouldn't put money on Tesla I wasn't totally okay with losing. It's why I reduced my 100k option holding (11k initial investment) down to 20k in September. Had I held those options they would be worth 2.5x what I sold them for, but there's no way I would've been able to live through the last couple of months with that percentage of my portfolio swinging that wildly. Right now I'm just having fun watching it move.

Look at the valuations of electric vehicle companies. Look at the number of new electric vehicle companies in the past 1-2 years.

Tesla's PE is 1,500.
The past 12 months low to today's high is 1,000%

But it isn't just Tesla, it's the whole electric vehicle sector in my opinion.

NIO past 12 months low to high 2,000%... PE ratio n/a. NIO has market cap about 33% of Toyota's but with only about 5% or less of the projected 2021 sales.

And some other startup with a 16 billion dollar valuation before its even produced a single vehicle.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-27/tesla-nikola-nio-and-fisker-there-s-a-bubble-in-electric-car-stocks

EV company valuations are bonkers. I agree with this author that EV is in a bubble.

hph6203 said:

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I know you're exaggerating to a degree, but there's space in between the first group and the second group. A lot of people that are invested are buy/hold for 10 years and even if the stock price is at 600 in 6 months they believe it will be at 2500-3500 by 2030.

That's not outrageous if you believe they'll achieve full autonomy/launch a ride hailing service/create an App Store for in car entertainment or have "micro transactions" to keep people entertained during rides.

The stock is out ahead of their current capabilities, but being in before they achieve those capabilities is why people are buying. You are rolling the dice on Tesla's engineers/vision though.

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I'm for sure exaggerating.

However, not that I want to get into an argument of valuation, but a stock price of $3,500 would be a fully-diluted market cap of somewhere around $3.5 trillion. Just to throw some numbers out there (all numbers are today's valuations):

Combined market cap of the top 25 auto manufacturers, ex-Tesla: $1.2 trillion
Market cap of Apple (app store and a few phones): $2.2 trillion
Combined market cap of Uber and Lyft: $115 billion
Combined market cap of Panasonic, CATL, and LG Chem (batteries): $240 billion
Market cap of First Solar (largest US-based solar manufacturer): $11 billion

Total of all of the above: $3.766 trillion

Apple's app store revenue is about $50 billion of the $275 billion of total revenue Apple earns, so, depending on what valuation you want to put on just the app store component of Apple's overall valuation could reduce that to around $401 billion (based on percentage of revenue).

I use this not necessarily to say its overvalued, but to illustrate my point that Tesla's current stock price of $816 would imply that Tesla is worth ~42% of the sum of every single one of those companies that it theoretically competes with (using my very roughly estimated Apple app store valuation of $416 billion). If you factor in that most of those companies also have other streams of revenue aside from what they compete with Tesla in, it just gets worse.

Again, not saying it's impossible for it to get there, or new streams of revenue to be developed that we're currently unaware of, it's just difficult for me to see how the stock price could continue to go up from here, based on any semblance of reality. But again, I've been wrong the entire past year about this, so what do I know?

It's priced as the worlds largest battery maker, software company, and automaker combined, when it is none of those things. And likely won't ever be any of those things, let alone be all 3 simultaneously.

bmks270 said:

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It's priced as the worlds largest battery maker, software company, and automaker combined, when it is none of those things. And likely won't ever be any of those things, let alone be all 3 simultaneously.

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I mean, I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say that if could be all of those at some point. What I'm trying to say is that it being all of those is currently priced in, so where's the room for stock price growth?

Edit: just read that you basically said the same thing in your first sentence.

I fully admit it's a bet rather than investment if you're putting money into Tesla and I wouldn't be putting in any money I was relying on into it. Excess cash that's going to luxury/fun purchases I have no problem with. This isn't necessarily an argument against you, because I agree it's speculative, but for anyone that looks at the stock and says "I don't understand this":

Uber/Lyft
When you compare a Tesla autonomous driving service versus a company like Lyft or Uber it doesn't really match up for a couple of reasons. Tesla could undercut Uber and Lyft on price, because the maintenance/cost of a mile driven for an EV is substantially lower than for the average car. Then you tack on that the service does not have to pay an operator for their time (just the time of their vehicle) and they can be cheaper and more profitable than Uber or Lyft. Almost to the point that it would be cheaper for a person who owns a combustion vehicle to order a Tesla "rideshare" (without actually sharing the ride) than it would be to drive themselves.

There are a lot of trips that a person (many females) wouldn't use an Uber/Lyft for because of safety reasons that they would easily use an autonomous vehicle for. Again, purely speculative, but that's the multiplier for that line of business. You could imagine a subscription service that reduces the cost per trip and gives priority to trips, which would normalize revenues.

They have to achieve autonomy for any of that to come to fruition.

Battery Manufacturing:
The largest battery manufacturers in the world are currently delivering batteries largely for smaller portable devices. The demand for batteries is expected to 10x or more over the next 10 years. Plenty of growth potential there. And it's not so much battery manufacturing that is Tesla's advantage, it's that they've secured technology, securing and growing capacity with partners, which gives them an edge over other auto manufacturers on cost, leading their vehicles to be cheaper for the value long term.

Auto:
The cost of an EV is projected to reduce to price parity with a combustion vehicle within 5 years, and the margins on sale are better than most auto brands, comparable to most luxury auto brands. With the cost of manufacturing an EV falling (much) faster than a combustion vehicle, you could be looking at a company selling vehicles in the price range of a Camry with the margins of a BMW. That's worth extra over what current auto valuations achieve.

App store:
This is really just a kicker over auto, and I doubt will ever be a substantial source of revenue, unless you include software sales for self driving.


There is also energy delivery/storage potential with operating massive batteries and trimming price fluctuations throughout the day, which hasn't really been mentioned.


Here's the Ark Invest article on how they came up with their 2024 base case price target of $7000, which is a pre-split price target ($1400 post-split). They have a bull case price target of $3000+ with a 25% likelihood by 2024. They've grown more optimistic about Tesla given what they've done through this year/what other auto manufacturers haven't done. More of a what's the thinking from people smarter than I am.

https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/tesla-price-target/


It may be a massive bubble or it may be a massive bargain. No one knows, but I look at a guy that landed a rocket and made electric vehicles mainstream enough that Ford is making an electric F-150 and I'll take a flyer bet on him.

Good news is that it's up another 5% today, which rounds out a solid 20% this week, or $160B in market cap.

That seems justifiable.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/mercedes-meets-co2-target-with-late-year-surge-in-ev-sales/ar-BB1cyJDe

(Bloomberg) -- Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz complied with Europe's tighter emissions limits last year as a late surge in plug-in vehicle sales spared the world's largest luxury-car maker from fines.

Mercedes delivered about 160,000 plug-in hybrid and fully electric cars in 2020, with the fourth quarter accounting for roughly half of those deliveries

https://www.businessinsider.com/volkswagen-unveiled-an-autonomous-ev-charging-robot-with-eyes-2020-12

Tesla Volkswagen unveils autonomous charging robot.

Imagine the stock bump if TSLA did this.

The old players are still innovating.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/tesla-loses-top-spot-to-volkswagen-in-norway-ev-sales/ar-BB1cvYo1

Tesla falls to second place in EV sales volume in Norway.

I finally jumped into Tsla Stock after thinking about 2 yrs ago when they were around $100 presplit or $20 currently. What pushed me into buying their stock was when I bought my first Tesla.

Everything everyone says about the QC/fit/finish is correct. My car definitely has gap issues and other QC issues. Didn't notice any big paint issues but I am sure if I took it under bright lights I would. But to 99% of the people who looks at my car, they would not see any paint/gap issues.

I will tell you that when I drove my tesla(I would speculate the majority of people), it was by far the best/handling car compared to my two previous BMWs. It is not even comparable for essentially the same price. I will never go back to an ICE car again for my daily driving.

Tesla is like the Iphone. Initially people doubted the iphone compared to the flip phone. Everyone thought they were over valued. They couldn't figure out how they could make $$$ to justify valuation. Apple obviously is not valued just b/c it makes computers or iphones. It is valued b/c of the other tentacles they have and the ecosystem they have created. Tesla is no different. Once I got an Iphone, I never left. Same with Tesla. I see my Tesla as much as a tech device as a car.

Also, I am riding Tesla in the long term. It has nothing to do with them making a better care. Their value has nothing to do with this. It is the Tentacles that they are starting to develop. Just like Apple, People can try to copy the Iphone and even make a better phone, but they just do not have Apple's Ecosystem. Tesla's Supercharging network alone creates an ecosystem barrier that most other EV makers will never get over. The value of their growing supercharger network is underestimated.

Tesla is def a tech company. Just their mountain of driving data and tech derived from this is invaluable. People may try to copy full autonomous driving but they do not have the real life data Tesla has.

If they achieve Full self driving/Robotaxi, the profit will be astronomical. Other car makers and the airlines will be decimated. Oil companies will be decimated. They will essentially be destroying a large swath of the biggest industries today.

If they achieve low cost, efficient batteries/solar, there will be alof of large industries disappear.

Just as Amaz disrupted B&M, Appl disrupting Media/entertainment/telecom. Tesla potentially could disrupt many major industries.

john32f said:

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Good news is that it's up another 5% today, which rounds out a solid 20% this week, or $160B in market cap.

That seems justifiable.

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Cope

well that was refreshing.

I agree and have had minimal issues with my car, especially when compared to established Audi but don't get me started on those cars.

Personally I love their approach to the build of the car rather than trying to shoehorn tech in to minimize cost.


I also bought stocks in it last year and have been pleasantly surprised at how well it's performing. It's not normal how fast it's gaining which obviously can't continue to happen which means this isn't a buy and forget type of stock. regardless, it's been fun so far.

Posted this earlier to the main stock thread but it didn't get much interest. I was curious to line up TSLA's recent run up to one of the dot-com darlings. I chose Qualcomm as it tends to come up in a lot of summaries of the dot com boom and felt it more appropriate to use something that was actually pulling in decent revenues delivering a physical product but might have had overinflated outlooks. "normWeek" is number of weeks since 1/1/98 for QCOM and 2/25/19 for TSLA. The y-axis normalizes closing price such that it would reflect relative growth of $1 invested in week #0. While history doesn't necessarily repeat itself and who knows what's going to happen, I was pretty surprised to see how closely the curves lined up.

Funny you mention that, I've been trading Tesla based off the Qualcomm fractal for most of the year. This from one of my guys:

Tesla going up 2000% over the next year? Holy crap

Carlo4 said:

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Tesla going up 2000% over the next year? Holy crap

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2011's chart is pre-split, so only 500%

Qcom worth more today than back at that Peak. I will take that

Investors who haven't been crushed in a bubble are jumping on the hype.

People who got crushed in 2000 and 2008 are raising flags.

Medaggie said:

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Qcom worth more today than back at that Peek. I will take that

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Yeah, but in the interim decades there were better investments.

I posted data above showing that there is tons of competition in the space and Tesla is losing market share in mature EV markets.

bmks270 said:

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Medaggie said:

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Qcom worth more today than back at that Peek. I will take that

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Yeah, but in the interim decades there were better investments.

I posted data above showing that there is tons of competition in the space and Tesla is losing market share in mature EV markets.

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I bought a ton (for me) of Volkswagen this week once I saw how well they were doing in Norway. I'm a big believer in EV space, this looks like a little company that might have some legs

If you put $100,000 into TSLA when this thread was started, you'd have $1.5 million right now

Anyone have a time machine?

more fun with QCOM. I looked for news stories on the trading day (12/29/1999) of it's last gigantic surge where it closed to an adjusted (stock has split 8x since then) $82.38 from prior day's $62.88, with volume more than double typical recent values (which were already high leading up to the split).

https://money.cnn.com/1999/12/29/technology/qualcomm/#:~:text=29%2C%201999&text=NEW%20YORK%20(CNNfn)%20%2D%20Shares,over%20the%20next%2012%20months.&text=Qualcomm%20is%20the%20developer%20of,%2C%20or%20CDMA%2C%20wireless%20technology.

What I find fascinating are the triggers, which seem to be a 4:1 split set to take effect following trading day and a new sky high price target from analysts. An analyst that day set a price target at $1000 (or $125 using the same split-adjusted scale as above).

"'The value of Qualcomm is that their technology is going to be the technology of choice for the next generation'" Piecyk said in an interview with CNNfn Wednesday morning."
" Among the potential risks for Qualcomm, Piecyk said, are that the blistering growth in the wireless market may not hold up and a competitor may step forward "with a better mousetrap. However, he said he does not think either of these outcomes is likely."

A more skeptical analyst with a meager target of $600 ($75 adjusted value) said: " "The big differentiating factor with Qualcomm is that you dont care who wins, said Cena, because it will supply any of those companies. "All the competition is its customers."

moving on:
12/30, day of split, opened with another gap up to $92 but eventualy close to $80.875 on even higher volume.
12/31, NYE, opened at $85.5, closed at $88
1/3/2000 QCOM hit it's peak that would hold for ~20 years. Enormous gap open at $99.63 after he holiday break, touching exactly $100 as the day's high before dropping to $89.66. Big down trend after that took about 6 months to find it's bottom of $25.75 on 8/23/2000, about 75% off of the year's high. That was the low point in 2000, although it touched a little bit lower in 2001.

bmks270 said:

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Medaggie said:

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Qcom worth more today than back at that Peek. I will take that

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Yeah, but in the interim decades there were better investments.

I posted data above showing that there is tons of competition in the space and Tesla is losing market share in mature EV markets.

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Is that a real advantage, or is it a matter of production/delivery limitations for Tesla coming from USA/China relative to a company headquartered in Germany? Given that the E-Tron has sold terribly in the US relative to any model in Tesla's lineup you choose to compare it to, it's not entirely clear. That's not even taking into account the fact the E-Tron still gets a 7500 tax rebate, and none of the Tesla's do.

Until both companies are actually mature or approaching maturity in their production it's all speculation. Given the specs of the ID.3 and E-Tron and pretty much every model announced by traditional auto, it doesn't look like they're competitive offerings. The ID.3 is probably the closest competitor, but I would still opt for a Tesla, personally.

Also, Tesla's autonomous charging prototype was shown over 5 years ago, don't understand why you think it would be a stock price driver. Solve vehicle autonomy and then announce an autonomous charging plug that would be retrofit onto the existing super charger network? That would drive the stock price up to a degree.

corndog04 said:

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I bought a ton (for me) of Volkswagen this week once I saw how well they were doing in Norway. I'm a big believer in EV space, this looks like a little company that might have some legs

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Audi eTron
Volkswagen ID.3
Volkswagen ID.4
Volkswagen ID.BUZZ
Porsche Taycan
Skoda Enyaq 4

They own Electrify America and Ionity.

They just demoed today a prototype of their autonomous charging robot. Personally, I think this is kind of dumb, but they're copying the Tesla snake charger thing that was never produced.

They've made massive investments in battery supplies and research.

If you're a fan of EVs, I don't know how you could be more bullish on VWAG. They're the fastest growing large EV manufacturer. Their shared MEB platform allows them to crank out a ton of new models in a very short manner of time.

That said, I'm not a fan of German cars, but from a EV investment perspective, it's hard to say they're doing anything wrong. They're basically copying Tesla, but ramping much more quickly and don't seem to have the quality, service, and reliability issues Tesla still struggles with.

I think EV adoption will increase more quickly than what's currently projected, so it's weird to me that VWAG is the only large legacy manufacturer that really seems to be going full bore in that direction. In terms of global EV market share in 2021, it's going to be VWAG and Tesla, and then a distant third. The speed with which VWAG has ramped up their EV production proves that the legacy manufacturers can quickly catch up, but for now, it's pretty much a 2 horse race. If WVAG substantially closes the gap on Tesla in 2021 (as is projected), in regards to EV production, stock valuations of the two will get very interesting.

Apple and Samsung sells about the same amount of phones in the US but apple valuation is 7-8x more.

Tesla valuation has very little to do with numbers of car sold. It is their ecosystem, future revenue stream, autonomy, solar, etc. Vwag is essentially a car company.

If Tesla is valued like other car companies, I would buy the car but not the stock. That is why tesla is 4x market cap over Toyota. To make it just a car company, they would have to sell somewhere 4x the amount of toyotas which very would could never happen.

Medaggie said:

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Apple and Samsung sells about the same amount of phones in the US but apple valuation is 7-8x more.

Tesla valuation has very little to do with numbers of car sold. It is their ecosystem, future revenue stream, autonomy, solar, etc. Vwag is essentially a car company.

If Tesla is valued like other car companies, I would buy the car but not the stock. That is why tesla is 4x market cap over Toyota. To make it just a car company, they would have to sell somewhere 4x the amount of toyotas which very would could never happen.

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I agree completelyTesla's valuation is not based on current results, but very lofty expectations of the future. What I meant to convey in my message is that, until some of those future expectations start becoming reality, if VWAG closes the gap on Tesla in terms of production, it becomes more difficult to justify the difference in valuations. As of Q3, 87% of Tesla's revenues were from auto sales (a percentage that has actually increased since a year ago), so it's a fair comparison to make at the moment.

Apple was also worth around $100 billion and made more money than Tesla currently does right before they released the iPhone. It's hard to disagree with Orbitz in that so many of the next 10 years of expectations are already built into the current stock price as if they've already been accomplished that it's hard to see price upside from here based on any reality. I don't recall anyone in 2007 with a price target on Apple of $2 trillion. In fact, Apple didn't cross the $1 trillion mark until 2018, when their TTM net income was ~$60 billion.

Don't get me wrongI hope all of Elon's lofty ambitions come true, as I'd love to use them. I think we can all agree that increased competition benefits the consumer, so any true EV or Tesla fan should welcome competitors with open arms. I'm happy to be proven wrong on Tesla.

Medaggie said:

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Apple and Samsung sells about the same amount of phones in the US but apple valuation is 7-8x more.

Tesla valuation has very little to do with numbers of car sold. It is their ecosystem, future revenue stream, autonomy, solar, etc. Vwag is essentially a car company.

If Tesla is valued like other car companies, I would buy the car but not the stock. That is why tesla is 4x market cap over Toyota. To make it just a car company, they would have to sell somewhere 4x the amount of toyotas which very would could never happen.

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Okay, what do they do besides cars?
They are valued larger than the worlds car companies and battery makers combined. What else do they do? What is their revenue from each sector?

Quote:

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"The big differentiating factor with Qualcomm is that you dont care who wins, said Cena, because it will supply any of those companies. "All the competition is its customers."

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This sounds exactly like Tesla fanboys.

It's just not something I see ever happening. Other companies will make their own batteries and autonomous software and hardware. They will stop buying Tesla emission credits when their portfolio of their own electric vehicle offerings increases. When the competitors no longer needs to buy emission credits from Tesla, Tesla will go back to having negative earnings. Tesla hasn't shown positive earnings without selling credits.

Tesla's biggest asset today is its equity price. Tesla should be issuing shares to build a huge cash reserve at today's valuation.

I honestly thought Tesla might end up bankrupt with the COVID economy. I doubted they would reach their projected sales target for the year, but they definitely proved me wrong. Tesla hit the targets and revenue sky rocketed. But their profit is still extremely slim and shakey.

Their rising revenues is a result of increased vehicle sales, not expansion into new sectors. Their solar revenues actually declined for a while.

Tesla originally promised the electric semi to be released at the end of 2019... well... where is it? Their model S sales, their high margin product, have plummeted and needs a refresh.

For all of the optimism surrounding the technology, there are a lot of counterpoints that may be red flags.

hph6203 said:

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ABATTBQ11 said:

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This is why I'm not sold on Tesla

https://www.thedrive.com/news/38579/these-repair-bulletins-for-teslas-quality-problems-are-downright-embarrassing-and-serious

Too many quality control issues, some of which are pretty serious, with seemingly no desire to improve their QC process. Other manufacturers, particularly Toyota and Honda, figured out QC a LONG time ago and build it into everything they do. It blows my mind that they could deliver vehicles missing nuts on key suspension parts or still have spontaneous glass shattering issues.

People may love the cars, but I feel like they won't put up with this kind of stuff forever. It's like buying a $50k vehicle com Harbor Freight with how hit or miss they can be.

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Highest customer satisfaction in the industry. I don't think they can maintain that across the entire population if they don't fix these issues, but I think they're a few years away from that being a major barrier to purchasing.

I also think that by the time that happens they'll be producing cars out of Texas/Berlin/Shanghai at scale and that those factories are going to crank out higher quality cars than Fremont has, because they were built from the ground up to meet Tesla's manufacturing needs rather than adapted from another auto manufacturer. Perhaps that's optimistic.


I also think if you're looking at Tesla as just a car manufacturer then you're missing a large piece of the story, but that's mostly speculative with proof of that speculation expected by year end. If it doesn't come or progress isn't made towards it then the stock will probably slow.

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They have high satisfaction because their customer base is essentially tech savvy individuals with disposable income who like being the first to own cool new things. They're willing to look past a lot of issues because of the cool features. The vast majority of buyers will not tolerate pieces falling off, the suspension falling apart, or their glass shattering just because the car has cool computers and automation (at an extra cost). They also have some shady and deceptive practices that will not fly outside the Teslarati (see bottom).

I'm not entirely sure their other plants will deliver higher quality vehicles. High quality QA/QC is a mindset and culture. Toyota, Honda, Subaru, and others build it into every process they create. Read The Toyota Way for an idea of how their manufacturing revolves around efficiency and quality. It might blow your mind. Fremont being adapted from other auto makers has little to nothing (really nothing) to do with their quality issues. Once they moved out, the facility was essentially a shell. Tesla created their own production lines, machinery, toolings, and processes, so everything coming out of Fremont is their baby. If there are problems with the line or designs, there is nothing preventing them from changing it. ETA I think a big part of the problem here is Tesla's culture and approach. They're trying to slap a car onto technology. They see the manufacturing of the vehicle as secondary to the technology in it, but it is first and foremost a car. For all of the iPhone comparisons, the iPhone wouldn't have sold very well if you had a good chance of getting one that was totally mangled out of the box or had its screen fall off 3 months into owning it. The iPhone was incredibly successful because it was amazing technology but also a very high quality product. Steve Jobs took every aspect of it, function AND form, very seriously. Tesla seems to only be focusing on one half.

I know they're more than just an automaker, but that's essentially their core business. They make a lot of batteries and will be a big player in that space in the future, but they are heavily invested in auto manufacturing and scaling that up. If they can't get quality higher, other manufactures are going to catch up with better products. Consumer Reports put GM's Supercruise ahead of Tesla's autopilot last year, the second time they've done so. It's not like there aren't other competitive options out there anymore. To scale up and start delivering revenue and profit to match their valuation, they need to fix their QC problems.



They're doing well, but I question their long term viability. Most of their manufacturing problems are things that all of the other automakers solved decades ago. They also have some super shady practices. See this. They've also been known to reclassify warranty repairs as "goodwill" so that they are not counted against their cars for lemon laws. There's also the whole batterygate thing that is still unresolved, and the problems with their solar roofs and Project Titan. Their behavior gives me a lot of pause. It's not exactly abnormal for large companies, but Tesla is not a normal large company. They have a sky high valuation based on potentially replacing a bunch of companies. If they're going to scale up to do that, they'll have to stop cutting corners eventually.