I rode in a Model 3 a few weeks ago.  It has to be super annoying to have to go through a touch screen for EVERYTHING - music, heat / a/c, etc. etc.

 

Unfortunately the Chevrolet Bolt interiors look just as cheesy as the inside of a Chevy Cruze, from what I can gather.  I had to rent a Cruze back in January and the thing was a cheese puff.  The Ford Focus I have has a much nicer interior for a car in the same class. I've thought about going by the Chevy dealership to look at the Bolt just for the heck of it but I know the interior is going to piss me off.  I don't have a driveway or garage right now so it's not really realistic for me to own an electric car.  My workplace is hardcore blue collar (lots of motorcycles, trucks, etc.) so running a chord out to my car from the maintenance dept past the smoker's hut would direct even more heckling in my direction than I receive now! 

 

Tesla to lay off 9% of workforce:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1006597562156003328/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fs.yimg.com%2Fos%2Fyc%2Fhtml%2Fembed-iframe-min.2d7621e2.html

Their stock was trading at ~$354 earlier today, now down to $344.

 

What drives us is our mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable, clean energy

 

Says man selling flamethrowers - http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-flamethrower-already-being-misused-2018-6

The stock price has never made any sense.  Young, naïve guys have been fooled into thinking that this company is a lot more than it is because the stock price surged irrationally high about four years ago.  They think it's tech.  It's not tech.   

Elon Musk has the last laugh as Tesla stock pops 40% from its low

 

http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/12/investing/tesla-model-3-stock-elon-musk/index.html

Elon Musk has the last laugh as Tesla stock pops 40% from its low

 

http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/12/investing/tesla-model-3-stock-elon-musk/index.html

 

So did he buy during the dip?  If not, and if he didn't sell anything, then he hasn't earned a dime.  Neither has any longtime Tesla stockholder, since the stock doesn't pay a dividend. 

 

Tesla is not making money.  It has never made money.  It might never make money.  Buying Tesla stock isn't an investment, it's speculation.  It has always been speculation. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The "last" laugh?  I was unaware that we're at the end of time or that Tesla has reached any kind of conclusion or endpoint.

 

The stock has indeed advanced quite nicely from its low.

 

Therefore, I sold a little bit more today.  Well, that's obviously not the only reason.  But I certainly think it will be a while before it pops another 40% from here.

Ford fires back at Elon Musk after he compared a Ford factory to a morgue (TSLA)

 

Business Insider  Mark Matousek,Business Insider Thu, Jun 28 12:54 PM EDT

 

 

Mark Truby, Ford's vice president of communications, responded to Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Thursday after Musk compared a Ford factory to a morgue.

"I think there's a good vibe — I think the energy is good; go to Ford, it looks like a morgue," Musk said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Truby alluded to the new production line Tesla built under a temporary, tent-like structure and took a veiled shot at Tesla's production issues in his response.

"No doubt the vibe is funky in that 'makeshift tent,' but it's not bad either across the street at the #FordRouge plant where a high quality, high-tech F-150 rolls off the line every 53 seconds like clockwork. Come check it out @elonmusk," Truby said on Twitter.

This past weekend I saw someone who doesn't have a driveway recharging their electric BMW with an extension chord running straight out the front door. 

Any [charging] port in a storm.

This past weekend I saw someone who doesn't have a driveway recharging their electric BMW with an extension chord running straight out the front door. 

 

I don't have a driveway currently and wondered how this would work if I were to get an EV.  I'm in a fairly high pedestrian area but on a side street.  Guess there'd be the risk someone could just come by and unplug it?

Most EVs have a plug lock.  So someone could unplug it from the wall (if someone thought you were using an outlet you weren't supposed to, for example), but not from your car and walk away with the cord (unless of course you leave your car unlocked and they just turn the plug lock off inside the car).

I talked to the lady who owns that car.  She says that it's 3 years old and she bought it used last year for $18,000 (it was $50,000 new) with only 15k miles on it.  It has a 90-mile range and she regularly drives it to Yellow Springs.  There is a fast charger up there that recharges the car in 20 minutes.  There is also one at UC but she didn't feel like going up there and just ran a chord out her front door. 

 

My house is nearby and doesn't have a driveway either.  The problem for me is that it's difficult to get a parking spot in front of my own house.  If I bought a Model 3 or Chevy Bolt I could just charge the car once per week at a 220V public charger.  But the older electric cars like the BMW only have a 90-mile range so that wouldn't work. 

 

BTW the Chevrolet dealerships in Cincinnati appear to be required to keep a Chevy Bolt on their lot at all times, since I never see more than one, and I never see zero.  In 2020 a used 2018 Bot will probably be a really good buy...certainly a much more practical vehicle than a 2012 Nissan Leaf or a 2016 BMW.  https://www.mccluskeychevrolet.com/inventory/2018-chevrolet-bolt-ev-lt-fwd-5d-hatchback-1g1fw6s00j4119310

 

What's hilarious is that in this nearly year-old video, the guy states the Model 3 price at $35,000.  No, that was a typical Musk lie.  Tesla has yet to sell a single Model 3 under $40,000, if not $50,000.  The Chevy Bolt is actually $35,000~.

Speaking of the Bolt - https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/chevrolet-bolt-ev-production-increase/

 

General Motors will increase production of the Chevrolet Bolt EV electric car by 20 percent in response to higher-than-expected demand from customers. Buoyed by healthy sales in the US, Canada and South Korea, GM said that global Bolt EV sales in the first half of 2018 are up 40 percent year-over-year.

 

I assume the Bolt is an actual EV unlike the plug-in hybrid Volt?

^Yeah, they crazily named two totally different cars almost the same word. 

 

Volt: plug-in hybrid

Bolt: all-electric

 

Also, I suspect that worry over the lack of a network of chargers for the Bolt is less of an issue in 2018 than it was last year when the car was introduced.  It's pretty easy to find charging stations with a phone...the last time I checked there were over 15 places to charge pretty evenly spaced around Cincinnati.

 

My parents live exactly 250 miles away from me, so if I had one I'd just plan on taking a lunch break at a charger roughly halfway there.  Once you figure out where the chargers are, I assume that it's pretty easy to get into a routine. 

 

I do worry about the incredible depreciation rate of EVs, in part due to the fact that newer generations are so much better.  I did still order a new Model 3.  But I still sometimes wonder if I should have gotten a used S, just so someone else could take the initial depreciation hit.  This is the first new car I've ever purchased, and many times as expensive as all previous cars I've ever bought combined.

^Meanwhile, continued cheap gas and cheap credit are pointing more and more U.S. buyers to crossovers and SUV's.  So the used market for compact and subcompact cars is amazingly soft. 

 

I mean, only $11,000 for a car (after talking the guy down) with only 20,000 miles on it:

https://www.woodysanderford.com/used/Ford/2014-Ford-Focus-39d308eb0a0e0a170417f929db18635f.htm?searchDepth=3:39

 

I have a 2012 Focus that got to 120,000 miles before I had to take it in for anything other than brakes.  That level of reliability is just incredible compared to cars from the 80s and 90s. 

 

Buying inefficient SUV's right now are a huge mistake. Cheap gas is not going to last forever.

 

That being said, these vehicles are fast becoming the mini-vans for millennial families.

^They're going to be about as cool as minivans in a few years too

Buying inefficient SUV's right now are a huge mistake. Cheap gas is not going to last forever.

 

That being said, these vehicles are fast becoming the mini-vans for millennial families.

 

Large purchases are emotional.  People have this idea that a candy bar in the checkout lane is an impulse buy, but housing and vehicles are, too.  People bend logic to justify these purchases to themselves, and cheap credit makes it all possible. 

 

Minivans got popular because station wagons weren't cool.  Then SUV's got popular because minivans weren't cool. 

 

The real problem with SUV's isn't the gas, it's the depreciation.  The things are horrendously expensive and magnificently profitable for the car companies.  They along with pickup trucks are what is keeping the UAW alive.  So there is a broad vested interest in ensuring that Americans keep spending huge money on highly profitable vehicles. 

 

Right now a new electric car, including the Bolt (which is actually $35k unlike the $50k+ Tesla Model 3), cannot save as much money on gas as it loses in depreciation as compared to a slightly used traditional compact car.  People justify the purchase with the gas savings but the gas savings are minimal.  It's at most $2,000/yr...a $50k car depreciates by more like $20k its first year.  A 2018 Tesla Model 3 will be worth about $15k in 2021.  So $35k lost in depreciation to save...$6 or maybe $7,000 in gas. 

 

I've noticed over the past few years the use of the term "honest" in describing vehicles as praise. Like a single-cab, 2wd truck without a ton of options is an "honest truck" whereas a 4x4 four-door Ford King Ranch is a "dishonest" vehicle. Same way how a minivan is "honest" whereas a crossover is "dishonest".

 

An all-electric car is considered more honest than a hybrid for example since it is free of additional systems and complexity, while a lot of hybrids (non-plug-in especially) are dishonest since many of them that weren't designed as hybrids first have the extra weight and complexity but little of the fuel-economy benefit. Things like full-size pickup trucks and SUVs that have had the hybrid drive added as an afterthought are "dishonest"

 

We never used to have to call vehicles "honest" or "dishonest" in the old days.

 

 

Of course any new car depreciates greatly in its first year.  The people who lose the most value on cars are those that drive them for only 1-2 years and trade them in, beginning the rapid-depreciation cycle anew.  But the critical question for electric cars is whether they depreciate more quickly than gasoline cars of similar prices.  I think the Model 3 will hold its value better than both (a) previous generations of electric cars, and (b) similarly priced ($55k-ish for current orders) gasoline cars like an Acura RLX.  But I have no illusions about it holding its value, in absolute dollar terms, like my old 2001 Nissan Altima that I bought after it already had 100k+ miles on it.  Because I bought that car for $7200 and got another 75,000 miles out of it, and the Model 3 will depreciate by probably that much the moment I drive it home.

 

If I get 10 years out of that Model 3, it will have cost me about $5000 per year in ownership costs, plus whatever I pay in operational costs (and having driven a LEAF now for three years, I can vouch that the operational costs of an electric car really are materially less than an ICE car, though of course my old Altima was quite old and my LEAF had only 33,000 miles on it when I got it, not 103,000).  So tires, suspension, etc.  And we're all only on this planet for so long.  Those 10 years will be a significant portion of my prime earning years (let alone family-raising years).

We never used to have to call vehicles "honest" or "dishonest" in the old days.

 

Well the WWII vets definitely hated Japanese cars, much more so than German cars.  I remember my grandfather getting upset when my mom parked the 1980 Toyota Tercel (our only car, back when a lot of people still only had one car...but we were one of the only houses around with a 2-car garage) in his driveway. 

 

 

Tesla is going big in China

 

For the first time, China will let a foreign automaker open up shop without a Chinese company as its partner.

 

Tesla has plans to open a plant in Shanghai that will one day crank out 500,000 vehicles a year — enough to rival the company's main plant in Fremont, California.

 

https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/10/news/companies/tesla-china-factory/index.html

The big risk of buying a used electric car is that we don't really know how well the batteries are going to hold up over time. And depending on how fast battery technology advances, it's going to be extremely expensive to get a replacement battery pack. If/when I get a Tesla I'm almost certainly going to lease a new one to avoid those problems.

And depending on how fast battery technology advances, it's going to be extremely expensive to get a replacement battery pack.

 

 

Most if not all of the hybrids do not let you operate 100% via the engine after the battery dies.  However, I work with a guy with an old Prius who had his battery replaced for around $2,000.  Obviously, a Prius battery is much smaller than one for a full electric, but the expense might not be as high as people fear. 

 

That said, manufacture and disposal of the batteries is not a particularly planet-friendly activity, and since the rest of an electric car is the same as a traditional car (lots of steel, rubber, and plastic), the thought that all-electric cars are green is a bit of a fallacy.  Similarly, windmills and solar panels require a lot of energy to manufacture and dispose of. 

For my LEAF, Nissan's official replacement cost is $5500 plus installation.

 

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/10/04/nissan-leaf-replacement-battery-will-cost-5499/.

 

Real issue with that is that the KBB value of the whole car is under $9000 at this point.

^I assume that the Bolt/Model 3's battery will be more expensive to replace because they are much larger.  I think. 

For-profit Duke Energy offering $3,000 incentive for the purchase of Nissan Leafs:

https://www.duke-energy.com/_/media/pdfs/energy-education/pev-nisson-leaf-discount-flyer-customer.pdf?utm_source=questline.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=multi_leaf-discount_2018-jul_537&utm_content=multi_ref_ql_2018-jul

 

Crazy.  So just like how oil companies promoted gasoline-powered cars, we might now see the for-profit electric utilities incentivize electric cars because they know that you're going to be buying almost all of that power from them. 

For my LEAF, Nissan's official replacement cost is $5500 plus installation.

 

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/10/04/nissan-leaf-replacement-battery-will-cost-5499/.

 

Real issue with that is that the KBB value of the whole car is under $9000 at this point.

 

 

Does the price of the batteries change with the dips and spikes in the lithium market?

I'm not sure.  That's the only real data point I have ... and I don't actually intend to replace my LEAF battery because I'll have my Model 3 by the end of the year, so this isn't something I've spent much more than 5 minutes of Googling looking at, and I doubt I'll ever spend much more than that, at least with respect to that particular battery.

For-profit Duke Energy offering $3,000 incentive for the purchase of Nissan Leafs:

https://www.duke-energy.com/_/media/pdfs/energy-education/pev-nisson-leaf-discount-flyer-customer.pdf?utm_source=questline.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=multi_leaf-discount_2018-jul_537&utm_content=multi_ref_ql_2018-jul

 

Crazy.  So just like how oil companies promoted gasoline-powered cars, we might now see the for-profit electric utilities incentivize electric cars because they know that you're going to be buying almost all of that power from them. 

 

Duke's rebates on light bulbs actually have the opposite effect. I just got 20 or so LED bulbs for 4 cents a piece. They use a fraction of the electricity the CFL and handful of old incandescent bulbs I'm replacing used. There's got to be some reason they do this but I can't figure it out:

 

http://www.energyfederation.org/dukeenergy_oh_res/july-promo.html

I got a rebate ftom first energy when I bought a new high efficiency washing machine.  I can't figure out their motive either.

I'm sure electric companies appreciate anything that will help take some of the strain off of the nation's already-overtaxed electric grids. A brown- or blackout is probably worse to their bottom line than losing a few cents from people using more efficient lightbulbs.

Electric cars sure as hell won't help that!

I got a rebate ftom first energy when I bought a new high efficiency washing machine.  I can't figure out their motive either.

 

They'd like to even out the peaks as much as possible.

Actually, I have it on good authority from people I trust within FirstEnergy that they've done load projections involving a widespread shift to electric cars and it actually won't put anywhere near as much additional strain on the grid as people may be assuming.  (I phrased it as asking whether they consider EVs a major future source of new revenue, of course.)  I'm surprised to hear about that electric company subsidy for new electric cars, honestly.

Hmmm, at $2 for a full charge (which might not be needed every day) that might double MY electric bill, but a lot of people with large/old houses are paying $250 a month or more.

 

Meanwhile, this month one of my stores' electric bill will be $700 while the other's will be $350.

$2 for a full charge is a bit on the low end.  In Ohio, residential customers are usually paying around $0.14/kWh.  So about $3.36 for my 24 kWh LEAF or $14 for a top-of-the-line Tesla Model S with a 100 kWh battery.  But of course, those can go even longer between charges, so what really matters is total miles driven and miles per kWh.

 

I think the Jevons Paradox might come to the aid of the morose electric company here, though.  The fact that EVs are so much cheaper to drive on a per-mile basis makes some trips that you might have declined due to sticker shock suddenly look much more doable, once EVs are actually capable of trips of that range (my LEAF obviously isn't because it can barely handle any trip that leaves Summit County).  But obviously they have more serious market researchers looking at this than me with my opinions and an Internet connection.

Yay, more induced demand.

I'm sure electric companies appreciate anything that will help take some of the strain off of the nation's already-overtaxed electric grids. A brown- or blackout is probably worse to their bottom line than losing a few cents from people using more efficient lightbulbs.

 

I know a guy who works in electrical grid security for the U.S. Government (and who hacks foreign grids) who said the stuff about the "grid" is all rubbish.  It's the for-profit utilities wanting public dollars to upgrade their systems instead of them paying for it themselves. 

 

But the kicker is that the antiquated characteristics of power transmission across the United States and Canada is actually our best defense against foreign attacks.  A "modernized" system would use just one system for the entire country, and so there would be just one target to attack.  As-is, there are endless local details to power transmission that makes it impossible for a foreign entity to orchestrate a widespread blackout. 

 

So it's kind of like how our local voting variations make it impossible for a foreign agent to substantially affect a national election.  Not only does each state have its own way of doing things, each county often uses different voting machines.  Different manufacturers, different model years, different paper backups.   

 

I'm sure electric companies appreciate anything that will help take some of the strain off of the nation's already-overtaxed electric grids. A brown- or blackout is probably worse to their bottom line than losing a few cents from people using more efficient lightbulbs.

 

I know a guy who works in electrical grid security for the U.S. Government (and who hacks foreign grids) who said the stuff about the "grid" is all rubbish.  It's the for-profit utilities wanting public dollars to upgrade their systems instead of them paying for it themselves. 

 

But the kicker is that the antiquated characteristics of power transmission across the United States and Canada is actually our best defense against foreign attacks.  A "modernized" system would use just one system for the entire country, and so there would be just one target to attack.  As-is, there are endless local details to power transmission that makes it impossible for a foreign entity to orchestrate a widespread blackout. 

 

So it's kind of like how our local voting variations make it impossible for a foreign agent to substantially affect a national election.  Not only does each state have its own way of doing things, each county often uses different voting machines.  Different manufacturers, different model years, different paper backups.   

 

Yeah, but the computers that store the voter registrations are all running Windows 95!

Computers?  You mean repurposed card catalogs from public libraries, right?

Phase-out of federal tax breaks imminent for Tesla:

https://apnews.com/181514df80ab40418efe7405e9d2ebb4/Tesla-Model-3-buyers-lose-patience-and-maybe-tax-credits

 

So the Bolt, etc., are about to become much more affordable than the imaginary "$35,000" Model 3. 

 

This is looking more and more like a pump-and-dump scam.  All of the Model 3 reservations boosted Tesla's stock price, along with the promise of the $35,000 base model, but it looks like we're literally never going to get the $35,000 car.  We're likely to see zero under $40,000, or possibly $45,000. 

Musk is like terrible boyfriends whose mouths just go and go then only deliver 5% of what their mouths said as actual actions.

Are you implying that Tesla investors were unaware of the imminent phase-out of the tax credits?  I've been an investor since 2014 and I've been aware of the phase-out rule since then, including in 2016 when I made my Model 3 reservation.

I'd say a lot of non-investors and perspective customers were.

I'd say a lot of non-investors and perspective customers were.

 

And prospective customers. 

I knew I screwed that up

Are you implying that Tesla investors were unaware of the imminent phase-out of the tax credits? 

 

Either they were unaware or they were so caught up in the hype that they didn't care. 

 

I read a book on the American car industry around 2012 that explained in some detail how there is no money to be made in mid-sized and compact cars.  And so when Tesla announced their plan to make mid-sized cars, I knew they were doomed.