a little more Tesla news

Hey that's Fake news :^) (sorry couldn't help myself.)

There was an article in the local paper about Tesla looking for money at the solar city plant that's being built here in Buffalo.

~10's of millions compared to the billions he is going to need.

George H.

Appropriate. Tesla is a fake company.

Hey, it's only a newsgroup.

His Rocket ship company seems to be doing all right... maybe he can sell that off?

George H.

Everything is Awesome about electric cars except for that which is not awesome. It's been that way for a hundred years

What about all those deposits?

Isn't Trump all about subsidies? I believe that is how he made his fortunes. Certainly it wasn't by running a casino...

He doesn't need to sell anything. John likes to report on every ripple in the stock. It is expected that Tesla will issue more stock before the end of the year to finance operations into 2018. There is *very* likely the introduction of the Model 3 will make the company hugely profitable. They've already taken deposits on something like 400,000 cars! That is more than 4 years of production.

Has John ever made a product that had 4 years of high production lined up before it was even on the market? I'd say Musk knows a lot more about make cars and money than John ever will.

I guess that's really going to piss you off when Trump pulls the subsidies for Tesla. You can spend the next four years wringing your hands

cars! "

Yup, but they are hard to build. I mean extremely hard to build. Try it.

Better yet, watch them go into bankruptcy with all those people's money.

That is how business is done these days.

The electric cars that are actually profitable are made by GM, anyway.

I've never really understood why people are so obsessed with Tesla when perfectly practical electric vehicles that are price-competetive with ICE cars even without subsidies, that you can buy on the lot right now (or are already in pre-production), are available from other manufacturers (ahem, GM.)

It must be because Musk is just such a cutie-pie.

What makes you think the GM electric cars are more profitable than anyone else's? Tesla is not making money because they are building a new car fab as well as a battery fab. If you factor in the start up costs for the GM electric cars, I doubt they have made any money yet. They just have a huge established petroleum powered vehicle business to fund the start up costs.

When Tesla has sold a half million or so of the Model 3, they should be profitable. The current state of their income is not unexpected. Only JL is making a big deal of it.

You are talking about the hybrid Volt? When did it become price competitive?

Easy, most people lease rather than buy outright these days, and EVs are cheap to lease (even without the 'subsidy' they would be), cheap to "fuel", and cheap to insure. I'd still be killing it on savings vs an equivalent ICE car even if the Volt cost thousands more.

Why does JL call it a "subsidy" when it's a regular Joe getting a tax cut for supporting business, rather than a business not paying its taxes?

Anyway, the revenue generated from the federal tax credit doesn't go into GM's pockets for the most part. It goes to support LG Chem workers in lousy foreign countries with names like Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Texas...oh shit!

Well, they seem to have been telling their shareholders they've been turning a profit on them since late 2015, at least.

It's a strange mentality to turn one's back on a solid, profitable company with competitive products already available for sale in favor of erratic, cash-burning little Tesla.

I guess everyone is just hoping to get in on the ground floor of the next Google. I'm not really an optimist at heart, though.

yeah, and they never own it. way to go, douchebag.

Lol! You seem to read what you want to read. The article you reference is bearish on GM stock at a time they reported record profits. But then they are good at reading what the report really said, "The fourth-quarter earnings were helped by a $3.2-billion one-time accounting credit and were more than five times the $1.1-billion net income the company reported in 2014's fourth quarter."

You have to watch out for crazy stuff like a one-time $3.2 billion accounting credit. Companies can do the same thing with losses, shove them out of the way until they take a one-time write off, then magically they are back on track.

I would also point out this article says nothing about the profitability of the Volt. An interesting note is, "...how autonomous will be enabled, and we agreed that it will start in a car-sharing type of environment." *THAT* is how I see transportation happening in the future. Rather than owning your own car, they will be rented not much differently from cabs, or possibly a subscription service where you buy a "share" in a car pool and get to use them as needed/available.

In many places taxis are heavily regulated not just for safety, etc, but to prevent an oversupply. If that is extended to autonomous, shared vehicles it can restrict competition and result in high prices. Autonomous vehicles should be able to put traditional taxis out of business because of the savings in driver costs.

I wonder how autonomous vehicles that will poke along at exactly the speed limit for miles and miles, are going to fare here in Massachusetts around some of the most aggressive drivers on the planet.

If you don't do 10 mph over the posted speed limits around town here you're a dead man - I think the impatient tailgaters will just lose their minds and start driving into them or shooting them.

Do they do that with little old ladies?