smk4565

Because they can get a Model 3 or Y for cheaper and the Model S is old. I think Model S could use a bigger update than it got, the did a mid cycle refresh a few years back, and when it was time for a new one, they did another mid cycle refresh. Personally I hope Mercedes buries Tesla the way they did most of the other luxury brands. I am not a Tesla fan. I am just being realistic that it isn’t going to be so easy. The Tesla Model S does it now, the Mercedes EQ S will do it. End of list.

How many sedans on market today do 0-60 in under 2 seconds? Or forget sedans, just cars in general? The Rimac in Europe but not here yet and the Model S. How many EV's have a 400+ mile range? Only the Model S. How many even hit 325 miles or more? Only Tesla's. No one has caught up yet. And they might, but Tesla won't stand still either. Better be fast because Mercedes is going to break that 6:43.6 record in the next couple months.

Corvette C8 Nurburgring time: 7:29.9 Corvette C7 Z06 Nurburgring time: 7:13.9 Mercedes-AMG GT Black Series Nurburgring time: 6:43.6 Get back to me when the Corvette beats the AMG GT.

Cybertruck will be on sale before the F150 Lightning or the electric Silverado, and Cybertruck does some cool stuff, I think people will buy it. The Tesla Roadster is 3 times the cost of a Corvette, also anyone that is a Tesla fan, won't buy an ICE car, so they aren't buying Corvettes, plus the Model S is faster around a track than a C8. Also when is the Corvette going to take the Nurburgring record? Right now it is 42 seconds a lap slower than the AMG GT Black series, which in a few months will be Mercedes 2nd quickest car. Corvette has good performance per dollar, always has, but it isn't some world killer sports car. The Veyron has a 275 mph top speed, the Corvette's is like 200. The Corvette does 0-124 mph in 12 seconds, the AMG One does it in under 6. And even if they build a 1,000 hp Corvette in a few years, the Rimac Nevera is on sale now with 1,900 hp and an 8.6 second 1/4 mile time.

Ford, GM and VW combined have 4 EV's for sale right now, and that is even counting Bolt and Bolt EUV separately. Tesla has 4 too, and none of what Ford, VW or GM has is as good as what Tesla has right now. No one caught Tesla yet. Also you are just assuming that if Ford and GM or VW build EV's people will start buying them and shelling out $50k for a small SUV like the iD4. People in the USA aren't buying the Tiguan in any big number and that is a $25,000 SUV, why are they going to spend double Tiguan money, for an SUV the same size and performance as a Tiguan? People still buy brand names. Toyota still has a better brand image than Ford or Chevy for example. Tesla has a better brand image than any mainstream car, and better than most of the luxury cars. Saying Ford or Chevrolet are going to go head to head with Tesla is like saying Ford is going to go head to head with Lexus and Audi and charge Lexus and Audi prices and get people to pay it. It isn't going to happen. And yes the Mach-E will get some initial sales bump but Kia, Hyundai, Toyota, Honda will all jump in there too, and those brands do pretty well.

I know the SLS had some beginnings when they were merged. But Daimler never told Dodge they couldn’t build a new Viper, Daimler walked with all those other platforms, they could have spent their own money on a new Viper. They could make a Viper now. You say they make all this profit yet haven’t put out a new vehicle that isn’t a Jeep in like 5 years. They were probably making money in the 90s I assume. Also Daimler had a dumb CEO then who was fired shortly after that merger.

Daimler paid $37 billion for Chrysler and sold it 9 years later for $7.4 billion because Chrysler was losing so much money. The fact that Daimler was willing to take a $30 billion loss just to get rid of it shows how bad their financial situation was. Also that no one was willing to pay over $7.4 billion for the company, which needed government bail out 2 years later. Daimler got nothing from Chrysler, Chrysler didn't make any money, and they didn't use any of those platforms or powertrains, other than the joint work on the ML and Jeep Grand Cherokee, which the ML got 2 new platforms before the Grand Cherokee got one. If Chrysler has so much money, why did it take until 2022 model year for Jeep to update a chassis from 2005, why is the Charger still on a 1990s Mercedes platform? Why doesn't Chrysler lead the market in EV? Why don't they have an all new Charger every 6 years like Toyota puts out a new Camry every 6? https://money.cnn.com/2007/05/14/news/companies/chrysler_sale/ Here you go, in 2006 Chrysler had a $1.5 billion loss, while DaimlerChrysler overall had a $7.3 billion profit. So the Daimler side made $8.8 billion while Chrysler lost $1.5.

Daimler gave them the 300/Charger/Challenger and Grand Cherokee, which is what that company is build on outside of the Ram 1500. Italy gave them the Dart/200/Cherokee and Renegade. Without Fiat and Daimler, Ram would be just the 1500, Dodge would have been the Journey and Caravan, and Chrysler would have been the Town and Country/Pacifica. Jeep would have had the Patriot and Compass and Wrangler.

They split up because they knew Chrysler wasn't worth keeping. Chrysler got the Charger/300 platform, the Grand Cherokee platform and the Crossfire from Mercedes. Outside of the Ram 1500, their 2 most profitable vehicles of the past 15 years are because of Mercedes. And then Fiat gave them the Promaster and Promaster City, the platform the for the Dart/200/Cherokee, the platform for the Renegade. Chrysler has mooched off other companies for 20 years, and now all the Chrysler/Dodge/Jeeps will get Opel and Peugeot underpinnings and engines.

If Chrysler was so profitable, why did they need a bailout in 2009, and get sold to Cerberus, then sold to Fiat? And Daimler dumped them. Stellantis is their 4th owner in 15 years, an Chrysler hasn’t been able to survive on their own since the 90s and if it was such a cash cow, parent companies wouldn’t keep selling it off to get rid of it.

Unless Stellantis breaks out brand profit we don’t really know what they make. But I assume the models that had tooling paid off years ago are profitable. At some point though you have to update products, and if FCA had so many profitable models, why did they never have any cash? And it seemed when Sergio was alive he feared the company would collapse without a merger, and merger (or takeover) is what they got.

It is heavy but faster around Laguna Seca than a Corvette ZR1 and a McLaren P1. And that is a confirmed time. And the stopwatch doesn’t lie. The Model S Plaid prototype had a time on the Nurburgring ring of 7:13, the production version might hit break 7 minutes from what rumors are which no American car has ever done. But we need an official time to see where it falls.

The Tesla Roadster with Space X option will have a 0-60 of 1.1 seconds. So good luck Dodge. Dodge can’t make a car that goes around a corner, which is their problem, they are a one trick pony and they play led that trick well for several years squeezing money out of an old car but EV is just burying the V8 and V12 in straight line speed. Can’t beat Tesla in a straight line, have to beat them in corners when it comes to performance.

Carlos Tavares can make money without Ram, so maybe or maybe not there will be an EV Ram soon, could be 5-10 years from now. Will be interesting to see what Stellantis does, they don’t really need 10 or 12 brands, I think some will eventually die, and I think most of these brands will get badge jobs like GM did in the early 2000s, where a Chrysler and Citroen are identical cars with different grills but sold in different countries rather than the same country like Ford/Mercury.

He has asberger syndrome. And maybe he is reducing his carbon footprint and ditching mansions. Maybe he will make a living space at the factory or live in a hotel, or just rent that place in Texas they think he is at. Who cares where he lives.

GM was riddled with debt and pension obligations they couldn't pay. Sales numbers didn't matter. And yes stock prices can be manipulated, but who manipulates them, the 1% that own most of the stock and control the money. It isn't right that the top 1% have 15 times more money than the bottom 50% or that 10% of the people own 88% of the stock, but that is how it is. The other 90% of us don't really matter, if some billionaires bought Ford Motor and liquidated it, lay off 200,000 people, all to serve as a means to juice Tesla's stock price, the top 1% get richer, the stock market goes up, and 200,000 middle class families get screwed. But this happens every day, how many business has Amazon put out of business and Bezos gets richer and richer while mom and pop businesses go bust. I don't like, it, but it is how it is until there is a drastic change in the system. Because CEO's get stock bonuses and stock awarded to them. And in this case, the CEO owns 22.4% of the company. He gets billions of dollars in stock just if they turn a profit. It isn't fair, but that is what happens.

It's still $600 billion. And look at how Elon manipulates the markets. A month ago he was divorcing bitcoin and the price cut in half. No doubt he (and Tesla) were buying in low and building up more, and right on cue, he tweet yesterday that Tesla will accept Bitcoin when 50% is mined with renewable energy and the price is up 10% yesterday and 8% today. And 3-4 months from now, Elon will tweet some meme he finds funny and say Tesla is accepting Bitcoin and the price jump again and he'll cash in. And it's wrong that he does that, but these boneheads online react to whatever he does and that is how the money flows. Tesla's debt is like $10 billion, they aren't like Lehman brothers that was taking advantage of Wall Street deregulation and defrauding people basically. Elon Musk has 22.4% ownership of Tesla, 227M shares out of the billion or so outstanding. You can google it.

1 billionaire owns 22.4% of the outstanding shares as of December 31, 2020. 227,131,935 shares to be precise. And where do other billionaires put money? In Mutual funds and institutions. According to Forbes.com: According to the latest Fed data, the top 1% of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion (or 30.4% of all household wealth in the U.S.), while the bottom 50% of the population holds just $2.1 trillion combined (or 1.9% of all wealth). The Fed estimates that the wealthiest 10% of Americans hold more than 88% of all available equity in corporations and mutual fund shares (with just the top 1% controlling more than twice as much equity as the bottom 50% of all Americans combined).

I am not saying they can make anything happen, but I am saying the power in this country is with the super wealthy, like it or not. And a $600 billion company is not going to come crashing down because it would cost them too much. Lordstown Motors will also probably never amount to anything.

The wealthy and well connected, the billionaires out there, they would never let Tesla fold, they'd lose billions. If Tesla went bankrupt, it would hurt the wealthy far more than if Ford and GM and all 3,000 of their dealers closed on the same day. Look at the pandemic, when 10s of millions of people were out of work, the billionaires added $1 trillion in wealth. The super rich aren't going to take a multi-hundred billion dollar loss on Tesla folding, thus Tesla will never fold.

I am just defending reality. They did before for a slower Corvette ZR1.

I don’t really care if Tesla goes bust or not. But they aren’t going to go bankrupt or stop selling cars. It just isn’t going to happen.

Well if Tesla runs into financial trouble, they can just get a government bail out like GM and Ford did, and Chrysler did twice.

I know that is how they have done it, doesn't mean they will always do it. I am not concerned with their financial health, and investors wouldn't have put $600 billion into this company if they were concerned either.

Tesla has near $20 billion in cash, no cash flow problem.