Tesla to Produce 'Affordable EV' by 2016

Every date Elon Musk gives is a rough target date.

 

I toured the factory last week and checked out a P85 for an hour. In line for an X and tried to talk Elon into letting me have a demo S until my X is built.

 

That's in the nature of a volatile stock, that sometimes it is over-valued and sometimes it is under-valued. It presents an opportunity to day-traders if they can time it right. It is also a trap for day-traders who cannot predict the movements. All it does to the company is reinforce the volatility, as day traders pass money around among each other, mostly from the naive to the savvy.

What is certain is that if the company is successful (as I expect Tesla to be, JMO) the stock will continue to rise in the long term, though if you buy in at a moment when it is way overvalued it may be a year or even two before you are at break-even.

True. Tesla tends to produce amazing cars of exceptional quality a year or so after their early target date. This is very frustrating for early adopters who can't wait to get one, and it gives fuel to the stock volatility as every new delay hits the price, and every new milestone boosts it.

I love my Tesla, but I did not like the engineering prototype that I viewed and rode in something like 4 or 5 years before I bought mine. The prototype was exceedingly uncomfortable to sit in and the battery-cooling system was very loud. The two-speed transaxle was broken and locked out. (That was eliminated in the 1.5 version but was responsible for a big delay in delivery.) Then, two years ago, tired of the lack of power in my Xebra (it slowed down to 6 mph going up one busy steep hill downtown!) and frustrated with Nissan's failure to deliver my Leaf and the constant stream of delays in the electric Porsche, I decided to check out the Tesla again. By this time they were on the 2.5 version (the final version of the Roadster) and it was a world of improvement: Much more comfortable to sit in, quieter, no shifting. My point being that they saw the problems in the prototype and fixed them. This is characteristic of a responsive company. And though financial problems came close to closing them down (at one point Musk put his last million dollars of his own money into the company) they pulled through (thanks in part to a government LOAN, now all paid off way ahead of time) and IMO they are now solvent. I do not expect them to pay dividends in my lifetime, but I expect them to grow by leaps and bounds as they continue to be the leaders in innovation in BEVs.

You got to meet Elon Musk? Cool. If I could meet him I'd thank him for building my car.

 

Tesla stock is down another 5% today. If you own it time to lock in the profits. It is a great company just the stock got a little hyped up in my opinion

 

Stock is down on rumors tesla may do a recall and a fix. Musk is going to talk soon, and is likely to say the rumors are false. We should know soon.

 

Musk stated that recall rumors are false, and tesla S is 5 x less likely than in a gasoline car. Stock is up slightly after hours on the statement.

 

Sell the stock just because it's down 5%????? That's ridiculous. Of course, if you really think you can time the market, selling on the bumps and buying in the valleys, good luck to you. It's a lot like switching aisles in the supermarket because it looks like the other one is moving faster. Inevitably, the one you move to will move slower. I own TSLA for the long haul, and I fully expect it to keep going up in the long run. There will be sharp ups and downs, because new companies are always volatile. (And yes, a decade since inception, and 6 years since marketing its first car, qualifies it as a new company.) But selling to "lock in" a bit of profit "locks out" all future profit, unless you plan on buying back in at the bottom of the next trough, and if you can predict when that will be you are probably already a multi-millionaire based on past market-timed trading.

Not to mention that the time to "lock in" those profits was before the price drop. Sell before it drops, and buy before it rises. Since I cannot predict those times, I invest for the long term and sit on my investments.

 

I presume you meant "...fire in a Tesla S is..."


Not surprising the rumors are false, since there's nothing to "fix." Cars did exactly as they were supposed to do when struck by big honking chunks of iron in the road.

 

Yes, the strange part of the interview was where he said people expect bevs to be safer than gasoline cars, that they are held to higher standards. I wonder how many cars would have occupants walk away from that really bad mexican crash. Not a good interview, but he said some things that needed to be said, and stock is up from when news of the crash happened. Tesla is now getting more fairly valued. Another fire and it will go down, but I am sure they are investigating to see if they can make the cars even safer. The bigger risk is the supply of battery cells from panasonic, but long term they can as rumored second source with samsung, or if that doesn't work for bluestar they could cut a deal with JCI, lg chem, or build their own.

 

Tesla Motors, Inc. (TSLA) PE Ratio - NASDAQ.com

Tesla price to earning ratio 14,469.80$

Ford Motor Company (F) PE Ratio - NASDAQ.com

ford price to earning ratio 10.30$

Toyota Motor Corp Ltd Ord (TM) PE Ratio - NASDAQ.com

Toyota p/e 17.23$

Auctions are great when you know a bargain, but terrible when you are the bargain.

The word vaporware rolls off the tongue, but it's not quite fitting, pipe dream seems more appropriate.

Not discussing the product, just the market.

 

Tesla is down about 30 %from the high. Great car great company but time to sell and keep an eye on it and when the stock hits $50 buy again and capture the momentum.

 

A p/e ratio is a pure number. Not a dollar amount or a number with a dollar sign after it, which doesn't actually mean anything at all.

Tesla has just begun earning a profit. With an established company, the p/e ratio is a meaningful number. With a start-up company that has just begun to turn a profit, and is still re-investing nearly its entire cash flow into R&D and infrastructure, the p/e ratio is meaningless.

My mom started a company. For five years it required a constant inflow of money. It took ten years before it was making enough money to live on, and it was not a technology company like Tesla that has a very long lead time for R&D and plant production. My mom's company had no stock so there was no p/e number, but if you had taken the investment to profit ratio at 10 years it would have been huge, and at 5 years (a comparable number given the different situations of a tiny two-person business compared to a high-tech auto company) the investment to profit ratio would have been astronomical.

The numbers above are meaningless because you are comparing an infant company that is putting everything into establishing itself, with established companies operating in a steady state.

In spite of the astronomical investment-to-profit ratio of my mom's company when it was at the same stage Tesla is at now, it supported her and my step-father for nearly half a century, and a decade after it began turning enough profit to support them their house was paid off and they had a very considerable savings.

Quoting p/e for a company at Tesla's stage of development is just FUD.

 

This reminds me of a thread over at a Tesla chat board, on the topic of the stock. Every time the stock goes down there are people predicting that the bottom is falling out and it's time to sell. And every time it goes up there are other people predicting that now it's going to go through the roof. But what actually happens is that being a volatile stock it bounces up and down, up and down. And in the long term it climbs slowly up as the company grows and sells more and more cars.

The volatility is an opportunity to make a bundle day trading... or lose your shirt. Depending on how well you can predict the ups and downs. And the amount you can make is about the same as the amount you risk losing. Gambling is gambling, whether it's day trading on the stock market or at the craps table in Vegas. Investing is buying for the long term. It has its risks, which is why a smart investor has a diversified portfolio.

I own TSLA because I like what the company is doing. When you buy and hold you are betting on the success of the company. When you buy and sell, buy and sell, you are betting on the vagaries of the stock market, which is notoriously similar to dice.

 

In any event Elon is buying Bel Air real estate

Elon Musk’s new house in Bel Air | SiliconBeat

 

Looks like Elon agrees with Daniel and thinks Tesla is a good buy

Elon Musk defends Model S, says Tesla stock is a ‘good deal’: live blog recap - The Tell - MarketWatch

Reminds me of my Apple stock buy. Bought the stock for $75 watched in run to above $600. Started to believe the hype that Apple will be at $2,000 in a year. Finally sold at $380. Made a nice profit. It is above $500 now.

 

I've never met anyone who admitted to losing money day trading. Apparently everyone always makes money when they buy and sell stocks. I've also never met anyone who admitted to losing money in Vegas. Apparently everyone always comes out ahead.

I'll pass on both get-rich-easily schemes.

Of course, if you actually do know ahead of time what a stock is going to do, then more power to you. But stocks never do what I expect them to, so I stay away from that game.

In Pushkin's The Queen of Spades, Herman the German says "I refuse to risk the necessary in pursuit of the superfluous." He has enough to live on, but his pals want him to play cards with them. Gambling is always a bad idea, be it cards or stocks. But again, if you can make money on the ups and downs of the market, more power to you. You'll be able to afford a Tesla and help move the country towards a future of electric transportation.

 

Interesting Forbes article

Tesla: Take The Nearest Exit With The Stock - Forbes

 

^ If that guy knew what he was talking about he'd be a multi-millionaire instead of writing articles giving advice to other people.

 

George Clooney is getting beat up by Elon as well and probably for good reason

 

Clooney bought the first Tango, a small two-seat EV built right here in Spokane. I heard a rumor that there were a lot of problems with it. Commuter Cars, builder of the Tango, is a tiny company in desperate need of capital (or was last time I spoke to the owner a year or two ago). They operate from a workshop in an old warehouse. I don't much like the looks of the car. It costs about 2 1/2 times as much as a fully-loaded Model S but only has 1/3 the range. But Clooney's would have cost only about as much as a Tesla Roadster. The price of the Tango has doubled since they started making them.

Commuter Cars - The Tango, ultra-narrow electric car for commuting; 0-60 in 4 seconds