[TidingSStables]

Don't get me wrong, I think the Cybertruck will sell. It's just not for me.

When fuel ⛽ prices goes back up after elections that will change your mind.

 

[Atlant]

When fuel ⛽ prices goes back up after elections that will change your mind.

But why the Cybertruck in particular? Why not a Ford F-150 Lightning? Or a Chevy electric Silverado? Or the now-impending Dodge electric RAM that may or may not come with an ICE range extender?

People here are complaining that the Hyundai Ioniq 5 has weird styling and they'd never buy it for that reason but compared to the Cybertruck, the Ioniq 5 is completely mainstream. The Cybertruck? THAT is some seriously weird, affected styling that is only likely to appeal to a very particular set of tastes. (People who missed out on buying a Delorean?)

 

[TidingSStables]

But why the Cybertruck in particular? Why not a Ford F-150 Lightning? Or a Chevy electric Silverado? Or the now-impending Dodge electric RAM that may or may not come with an ICE range extender?

People here are complaining that the Hyundai Ioniq 5 has weird styling and they'd never buy it for that reason but compared to the Cybertruck, the Ioniq 5 is completely mainstream. The Cybertruck? THAT is some seriously weird, affected styling that is only likely to appeal to a very particular set of tastes. (People who missed out on buying a Delorean?)

Ford EV truck has a pathetic low towing rate and Chevy is also inefficient which you may as well go diesel. Dodge Stellantis is too late in the game and will come in 2025.

Cyber truck is form over function. Most dependable old trucks in the heirloom are beaten up and that’s the market they are chasing. If you want a pretty truck go for a Rivian.

 

[Spin]

When fuel ⛽ prices goes back up after elections that will change your mind.

No it won't. When you have 4 guys in a truck on a trip the fuel cost is split 4 ways. Using vacation days for "Guy trips" necessitates getting where your going quick, playing, and getting home quicker. No way are we waiting to charge when we could spend that time getting dirty!

 

[Atlant]

Ford EV truck has a pathetic low towing rate and Chevy is also inefficient which you may as well go diesel. Dodge Stellantis is too late in the game and will come in 2025.

But physics is physics so if the Ford truck's range sucks when it's towing some arbitrary trailer, then the Cybertruck's range will suck similarly when it's towing the same arbitrary trailer; it's not like Ford is foolishly pulling the trailer wrong. Starting with more range will help, but the proportionality must still hold.

 

[TidingSStables]

But physics is physics so if the Ford truck's range sucks when it's towing some arbitrary trailer, then the Cybertruck's range will suck similarly when it's towing the same arbitrary trailer; it's not like Ford is foolishly pulling the trailer wrong. Starting with more range will help, but the proportionality must still hold.

Tesla Semi defies laws of physics and is passing us by if true, says Daimler's head of trucks

Daimler has several electric truck programs in the works and today it revealed the latest progress on the eActros heavy-duty electric trucks....

electrek.co

 

[Atlant]

Tesla Semi defies laws of physics and is passing us by if true, says Daimler's head of trucks

Daimler has several electric truck programs in the works and today it revealed the latest progress on the eActros heavy-duty electric trucks....

electrek.co

Semi =/= Cybertruck

And the Elektrek headline doesn't really fairly quote Daimler's Head of Trucks.

 

[Squidward]

No!! The real problem here, with all companies that share this problem, is found in how tough it is to invest when the company is so very tied to just one guy. That always creates this potential extra volatility.

For better or worse. Elon Musk is Tesla. If you invest here you accept that no small part of your risk is with him when you invest in this company. When things are going well everyone loves the genius owner who turns all he touches to GOLD and when things start to slid we hear plenty of calls to remove or limit him.

Remove him as CEO? Hey, you could......but the resulting loss of confidence would almost certainly be catastrophic for shareholders.

Tesla's real issue here isn't Elon Musk. It's found in the disconnect between the company and it's equity valuation placed on it in daily trading of it's stock. For a very long time now, yeah just 10 years or less but still that's a long time in the world of EVs, Tesla was the name and no competitors worth motioning even existed.

We could point to Musk's ill advised walk into the cesspool of Twitter. We could point to any one of his various eccentric behaviors as a problem that has created the fall in Tesla's share price but in reality all we'd really be pointing at are reasons to suggest why it's happening more quickly than it might have if he were a little more traditional in his CEO roll.

Ultimately Tesla was almost certain to see this fall in valuation eventually anyway.

Alan Greenspan's "irrational exuberance" line comes to mind. Before the latest fall in value Tesla was valued at more than all other car companies in the world combined. Priced as if all would be competition would fail to ever happen and eventually we'd all be leaving our ICE powered cars and trucks behind in favor of a new Tesla replacement.

CRAZY RIGHT? Of Course it was....competition is going to be FIERCE going forward. Tesla is still the leader and it may even stay there for quite awhile but they are no longer the only game in town and all the big players have a crap load of EV products coming to market now and over the next couple of years.

Bottom line: this fall was coming for Tesla's valuation. Doesn't mean the company is in trouble, doesn't mean Elon Musk needs to be blamed....... it's just a simple return to reality for a lot of pretty short sighted silly investors who paid way too much and pressed the market cap of Tesla to insane valuation over the last couple of years.

Removing Elon Musk wouldn't have prevented this and removing him now or in the near future wouldn't return company to insane valuation. Even from here, after a dramatic fall, it's still easy to argue Tesla as far too richly valued vs it's actual prospects going forward.

Lesson is simple. Stock pricing can easily get pretty disconnected from the real prospects and current condition of business at any company and when a company is as hot a topic as Tesla has been.....WOW!!

Semi =/= Cybertruck

Count me as one who thinks physics is still physics. That aside, I hope for now that the semi prototypes fail to sell. There is a limited capacity of materials and supplies for batteries and other EV components. I would prefer to see them go toward increasing supply and reducing the costs of passenger vehicles first.

 

[Atlant]

Count me as one who thinks physics is still physics. That aside, I hope for now that the semi prototypes fail to sell. There is a limited capacity of materials and supplies for batteries and other EV components. I would prefer to see them go toward increasing supply and reducing the costs of passenger vehicles first.

You raise an interesting point! More generally, that idea (of limited raw materials) has actually been raised as an argument that it might make more sense to build more medium range electric cars than fewer long-range electric cars so build five “100 mile” cars rather than one “500 mile” car. These are questions society as a whole should be considering.

(Me, I'd like to see America make a lot more use of intermodal freight transport where the long-haul trucking is done on railroad piggyback vehicles but in America, the trucking lobby works against that happening more broadly so we send tractor-trailers all the way across the country on our roads.)

 

[His_Stigness]

There's probably some spare change lost in the seat cushions of his company car.

That rattle isn't spare change, it's just poor build quality.

 

[Froggy]

Hmmm? Elon cashed out several billion of Tesla stock before the crash. He has the opportunity to buy back stock at a fraction of the high price. The sheer number of sales that Tesla is capable of will carry them through a rough patch. Sucks for his investors though.
My opinion on Tesla semis is this. Limit sales to the West coast port cities initially. Let their tractors hitch to cargo units at the port and carry them East just far enough to clear the cities. Then dump the loads at shipping hubs where they either get loaded on trains or on standard semis. That way they only need charging on either end and the pollution is moved away from urban areas.
I have no opinion on the Cyber truck.
This might motivate Elon to sell adapters to CCS users, recouping funds from the sales and the recharging. His NACs is a pipe dream though. We should rightly revolt if VW agrees to it.
At a certain level wealth is self generating. Elon and his stockholders will recover. Elon will turn twitter over to a business head who agrees to censoring only very limited matters, openly posted.

 

[Nycturne]

Hmmm? Elon cashed out several billion of Tesla stock before the crash. He has the opportunity to buy back stock at a fraction of the high price. The sheer number of sales that Tesla is capable of will carry them through a rough patch. Sucks for his investors though.

As pointed out, Tesla was waaaay overvalued. A correction is/was overdue, and you could argue there’s still a lot of future growth baked into Tesla’s current stock price.

But I wonder how much of that stock Musk sold went into Twitter, which itself is now overleveraged by a non-trivial margin because of the amount of debt used to buy the company. So it’s not exactly clear how much benefit Musk himself got cashing out when he did.