cwerdna wrote:SageBrush wrote:cwerdna wrote:
Sure, when the company has lost north of $5.5 billion so far (maybe $6 billion, need to update my spreadsheet) and has racked up debt of over $10 billion (see page 59 of
http://ir.tesla.com/node/18946/html). They lost over $700 million last quarter alone (see page 5 and note those figures are in thousands).
It's "easy" to create products with great performance, provide good service and create a great SC network when making money or just breaking even "doesn't" matter.
Ahem.
Build a Gigafactory
Build a PV factory
Build not one but TWO car production lines
Build out the Supercharger network at a pace unheard of, a magnitude faster than all the others combined.
... And expect to be profitable from Q3 onwards.
Sigh... I already went thru this before:
http://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=509755#p509755 and
http://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=509813#p509813.
The fanboys like to claim Tesla is profitable with their cars. Ok. There is positive gross profit. But that ALREADY subtracts out the amortized cost of the above capex. Building all those things you described comes out of CASH and doesn't directly by itself upfront count as part of expense. For vehicles, it is spread out over time as part of cost of automotive revenues which fanboys like to point out is profitable and also make the claim that margins are higher than everyone else. (But, it seems like other automakers (at least Ford and GM, haven't checked all others) don't have a separate line item for R&D. They include it in cost of automotive revenues, so of course their apparent gross margin will be lower and Tesla's will be inflated.)
You keep a spreadsheet on Tesla's losses per quarter?
"The fanboys"?
and, with that, I'm outta here...
I love my Tesla. My Leaf would just be "ok" if it weren't losing battery capacity to the point of being useless for us. Thanks to my experience with Nissan over this and the 2g -> 3g upgrade and my great experience for the past 5 months with my Model 3, next car will be another Tesla.
If being happy with a product because it looks good, performs well, and is better than any of the EV competition (at least for the foreseeable future) makes me a fanboy, then so be it. I was considering a new Leaf for our second car next year just six months ago. Never again, and I will steer everyone away from them now.