Economy Last days of Tesla. Closing a dozen solar plants. Loses deal with Home Depot.

Can't wait to see what Apple has up their sleeve. They got big projects going on and are stealing talent from Tesla by the bushel.

Apple hired scores of ex-Tesla employees this year, and not just for its car project
  • Dozens of current and former Tesla employees have left for Apple since late 2017.
  • They're not only going to work on Apple's secretive autonomous driving project, but on other products as well, according to a source.
  • Employees offered several reasons for the wave of departures, including lagging compensation and stock price growth.

Apple has attracted scores of employees away from Tesla since late 2017, including manufacturing, security and software engineers, and, more recently, supply chain experts, according to several current and former Tesla employees and LinkedIn data.

This Tesla talent is not only going to Apple's stealthy vehicle initiative, Project Titan. Apple also generally needs software, display, optics and battery-tech talent for its other products.

While Apple contracts out much of its manufacturing, the company seems to be taking steps to more tightly control manufacturing processes and equipment used to make their products, said one current Tesla engineer who has kept in touch with colleagues now working for Apple.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/23/apple-hiring-many-tesla-employees-not-just-doug-field.html


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Apple hood ornament coming soon.
 
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Is it Tesla's last day yet?​

Tesla shares soar on third-quarter profit that beats Wall Street expectations

Dawn Kopecki | Oct 24 2018

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Tesla shares soared by more than 12 percent in premarket trading after the company reported a surprise profit for the third quarter as CEO Elon Musk made good on his promise to start turning regular profits in the last half of the year.

The company’s earnings report, released after the markets closed Wednesday, also showed better-than expected car sales and a faster timeline on its Model 3 production. The electric car maker said its midsize Model 3 sedan, which it hopes to produce on mass scale, was the best-selling car in the U.S. when measured by revenue and the fifth best-selling car in terms of volume.

Musk told analysts on a call it was an “incredibly historic quarter” for the young car company. It was welcome news for investors following an otherwise a tumultuous few months. The company’s shares settled after the markets opened but were still up by about 6 percent in morning trading.

Here’s how the company did compared with what Wall Street expected, based on average estimates of analysts polled by Refinitiv:
  • Adjusted earnings: $2.90 a share vs. an expected loss of 19 cents per share
  • Revenue: $6.82 billion vs. an expected $6.33 billion
Tesla posted net income of $311.5 million, or $1.75 per share, compared with a loss of $619.4 million, or $3.70 per share, a year ago. Revenue surged 70.5 percent from $4 billion from June and more than doubled from a year ago.

After one-time adjustments, Tesla earned $516 million during the quarter. It was Tesla’s third profitable quarter and compares with an adjusted loss of $520 million during the same period last year.

Musk previously said the company would become sustainably profitable by now, having had just two profitable quarters prior to Wednesday’s report since it went public in 2010. The company confirmed that it also expects to generate a profit during the fourth quarter.

Production rates improve

Tesla gave investors hope that its production rates will improve, saying that the number of labor hours to build the Model 3 fell by more than 30 percent from the second to the third quarter, and it took less time to build than the Model S sedan and Model X sport utility vehicle — another first for the company.

The electric car maker has been struggling to ramp up production of its Model 3 sedan, telling investors Oct. 2 that it made 53,239 of the vehicles during the quarter. That fell just shy of its goal of producing an average of 5,000 a week, but the company said it built more than 5,300 during the last week of the quarter.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/24/tesla-earnings-q3-2018.html
 
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Is it Tesla's last day yet?

Tesla just announced a giant new battery
By Mark Matousek | July 30, 2019​

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Tesla on Monday announced its largest battery product. Called Megapack, it's designed to simplify the installation process for large energy-storage projects.

Each Megapack can store up to 3 megawatt hours of energy and convert up to 1.5 megawatts of energy from a direct current (DC) to an alternating current (AC) so homes can use it. Tesla had previously used its industrial-size Powerpack batteries for large-scale projects, but says the Megapack has 60% more energy density.

A system of Megapacks is more cost-effective and can be installed faster than a fossil-fuel power plant, Tesla says, and the Megapacks can store energy generated by wind turbines or solar panels. The electric-car and energy company will use Megapacks in a California installation operated by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company and designed for use when demand for energy from local grids is greater than their supply.

"Battery storage is transforming the global electric grid and is an increasingly important element of the world's transition to sustainable energy," Tesla said in a blog post on its website.

In 2017, Tesla used Powerpacks to install in Australia what it says is the world's largest lithium-ion battery to support local energy grids. The project reduced costs by almost $40 million during its first year, Tesla says.

Storage has come to account for anincreasingly large percentage of Tesla's energy business, which also includes solar panels. While solar installations have declined in recent years, installed storage-capacity has increased.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-announces-megapack-giant-new-battery-product-2019-7
 
Elon Musk Tweeting on Tesla Production Raises Questions on SEC Deal

  • CEO writes he hopes to make 1,000 roofs a week by year-end

  • Posts on production numbers need pre-approval under agreement
The tweet appears to fall under the scope of Musk’s amended accord with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Under the agreement, Musk must get pre-approval from a Tesla securities lawyer before posting production figures that haven’t been disseminated before.

Neither Tesla nor Musk previously issued a projection for how many roofs the company will produce by the end of this year. Representatives for Tesla didn’t immediately respond when asked whether Musk obtained pre-approval before sending his tweet. Judy Burns, an SEC spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Musk reached the revised deal with the SEC after the agency claimed he was in contempt of a settlement stemming from allegedly fraudulent tweets sent almost a year ago about taking Tesla private. Without running a post by Tesla counsel ahead of time, the CEO tweeted in February that the company would make half a million cars in 2019. He drafted a clarifying follow-up tweet hours later, with the help of a lawyer.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...sla-production-raises-questions-on-sec-accord
 
Is it Tesla's last day yet?

Tesla Model 3 Is #3 Best Selling Vehicle In California
November 30th, 2019 by Loren McDonald

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While it seems like everyone is focused on the number of $100 deposits that the Tesla Cybertruck has garnered, for me, what is more impressive is that an electric vehicle — the Tesla Model 3 — was the #3 best selling vehicle in California through September.

The California New Car Dealers Association recently released its California Auto Outlook report (data from IHS Market), which shows some positive and also surprising findings. Perhaps at the top of the list is the exciting news for EV advocates that the Tesla Model 3 was only about 300 units short of being the second best selling vehicle in California for the period of January to September 2019.

California has long marched to a different beat, with pickups like the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado selling well but not close to the top of the charts like they are in many other US states. Despite 70% of vehicle sales in the US being pickups, SUVs, crossovers, and vans, sedans took the top 5 spots in sales year to date (YTD) in California.

There are many anecdotes (including from personal friends in the market for a new Tesla) that a lot of Tesla inventory is headed overseas. So, Q4 remains a mystery for Model 3 sales in California, but the hot-selling sedan could end up as high as the #2 top selling vehicle in 2019, or could possibly drop down to #6. Regardless, even though we are talking about EV-crazed California, it is clear such a high sales ranking is still quite impressive and exciting news in the realm of EV adoption.

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Nearly as impressive as the Model 3’s number 3 sales ranking is that Tesla overall ranked 6th for vehicle sales in California with a 4.1% market share. Tesla’s market share in California is nearly 3.5 times its 1.2% share across the entire US. While a lot can happen in the next two years, it is highly possible that, with the expected launch of the Tesla Model Y in Q4 of 2020, Tesla could surpass both Nissan and Chevrolet for the #4 spot in vehicle sales in California by the end of 2021.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/cleant...-vehicle-in-california-through-september/amp/
 
People have been predicting Tesla's demise from day one. They've always been wrong.
 
This is why Steve Jobs was so great. Focus. What is focus? Focus is about saying NO. Musk said yes to everything. No focus. Now he is

I don't get your point.. Tesla is shutting down some things would indicate they are not saying "yes" to everything.

Jobs was famous for canceling products, he also would say "yes" to any interesting idea... and if it didn't work out he would pull the plug.
 
This is why you don't take stock advice from people on a Karate forum. ;)

Yeah, this post didn't age well.

Kudos to TS for for sticking his neck out though and being wrong in public.

And he'll be right eventually. We might just all die of old age first.
 
But will Elon's cult of personality survive, though?

You bet it will.
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...because if you say otherwise, you're a pedophile.
 
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

Steve Jobs


I say this to my CEO all the time. I email him this quote and say “this is another good idea Steve Jobs would kill”.
 
This is why you don't take stock advice from people on a Karate forum. ;)
I agree 100%, because idiots like you will try to laugh without realizing the stock is the same price today as when the OP was made, thus making your money far underperform the market in that time.
Sucks to suck?
 
There are so many Teslas on the road here. pretty much all Model 3s. I was just thinking about this the other day as I was driving my gas guzzling Camaro SS.

Oh well, I'll be trading in my Camaro for a brand new gas guzzling Camaro in a few years.
 
There are so many Teslas on the road here. pretty much all Model 3s. I was just thinking about this the other day as I was driving my gas guzzling Camaro SS.

Oh well, I'll be trading in my Camaro for a brand new gas guzzling Camaro in a few years.
It's some iPod heard mentality shit at this point, sans the revolutionary change from CD to MP3 part.
It's more like going from Discman to iPod but if the iPod could only charge at certain locations.

I'm all for a practical electric car revolution, but Tesla is pure poser consumerism trying to capture the millennial overspender.
 
It's some iPod heard mentality shit at this point, sans the revolutionary change from CD to MP3 part.
It's more like going from Discman to iPod but if the iPod could only charge at certain locations.

I'm all for a practical electric car revolution, but Tesla is pure poser consumerism trying to capture the millennial overspender.
I was telling my gf the other day that I'm willing to bet that 90 percent of the people driving those things don't give two shits about the environment. It's just another tech status symbol like air pods or some other flavor of the day.
 
I was telling my gf the other day that I'm willing to bet that 90 percent of the people driving those things don't give two shits about the environment. It's just another tech status symbol like air pods or some other flavor of the day.
or they have solar power at home to charge their car and are basically getting around for free, instead of sucking at the teat of gas and electric companies. It's the American way.
 
This is the problem no ones especially the big 3 ever going to say starting or running a car company is easy especially an electric car company. Recently GM's head of EV development wrote an OP-ed piece saying that for electric cars to succeed 3 things need to be solved.

Forbes automotive writer tore into the OP-ed hard but as they talk about California I live across the country an Model 3's are popping up everywhere.

Cost is still an issue and recent tweets by Elon seems to back the idea it's not getting much cheaper. The Cybertruck is huge in size and has a massive battery but remains a 40,000 dollar plus item.

A lot of people where hoping that the big three or VW was going to run over Tesla. It seems other manufacturers are running into manufacturing delays or rising prices. Part of the reason Elon points to is manufacturing.

The gigafactory was in his word was the most complex product any of his companies to date. Elon points to the decade of investment in engineering in manufacturing of the product.

No one other then people internally has seen the machines that insert and assemble the battery modules or the drives. When people see the manufacturing they see finished modules being installed into rolling chassis then being attached to the body.

Tesla been able to assemble 1200 battery packs a day from one factory. Elon said at one time the robots move faster then the human eye. That means over 8,000 cells X 1200 a day.

That's almost 50 percent of the world's output of Lithium batteries. Panasonic and Tesla are at each other at going forward because Tesla needs 8 million plus cells a day.

These issues others are running into who's going to make the cells at volume levels they need. Ford said Mustang Mark-3 production going to be limited to 50,000 cars a year due to battery shortages.

Tesla as CEO of VW recently stated achieved was unprecedented an Porsche CEO VW subsidiary stated the same thing. Even huge deep pocketed manufacturers have admitted to the difficulty it takes to achieve what Tesla is doing.

Tesla revenue will continue to be challenged as they continue to build more factories at about 1 a year. We could be talking over 10 of these things around the world.

But through all of it Tesla moves forward in a challenging direction while trying to secure materials to build them.
 
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I don't care one way or the other about Tesla, but that truck is hideous.
 
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