smk4565

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.

The just delivered the first Plaid models, fastest 0-60, fastest 1/4 mile of any production car, safest car in the world, infotainment has as much power as a PS5, 187 miles of charge in 15 minutes, faster around Laguna Seca than a McLaren P1 or a Corvette ZR1. I'd say he gave some tangible gain. Sure there are features it doesn't have, and it would be nice if Tesla had more models or if the Model S had more of a change to the body styling, but people are still buying and it's still the fastest car with a lot of tech.

Musk doesn't have a sales problem or a demand problem. If he couldn't get $140k for a Model S, he wouldn't price it that way.

I thought high transaction prices were a good thing? And since there is no negotiation or incentives with Tesla, that is the sale price, plus options of course.

100% they need to keep coming out with updated versions of the existing models, and also more models because consumers like to be able to pick from more than 4 vehicles. And the truck and roadster will help. But there is a reason most car companies have a dozen or so models because they want to appeal to every buyer. Tons of EV competition is coming, but the EV market is growing. EV sales in the USA are like 500k units a year, on a SAR of 17 million or whatever it is. By 2025 EV's might be 4 million units a year, Tesla could still double their volume with all these other entries coming. I think the people that need to be worried are those late to the EV game, or without funds to pump into EV's, small companies like Mazda and Subaru, cash strapped companies like Nissan, not sure what Stellantis is doing, but being run by the French I imagine a green push will be coming, but will they be too late?

I thought it was about average sale price, not base MSRP, because base models doesn't exist? 5 of 6 Cadillacs start under $49k. Only 1 of 4 Tesla's starts under $50k. And yet people want to claim Cadillacs bring more money than Teslas? As if every Cadillac sold is maxed to limit in options, and every competitor is only selling base models with zero option, that isn't happening. Probably like 60-70% of any car's volume is the mid-level trim, the base price is false advertising, like the Jeep Wagoneer that starts are $59,900 but has a $2100 destination charge so really it starts at $62,000 but they don't want to advertise that, and probably the base model isn't even built unless custom ordered so the $3,000 "convenience" package is added on, and now it is $65,000 is the real world cheapest version, but the magazine ad says $59,900. And I just picked that as an example, 100% of car companies to that.

The GLS outsells the GLB, and almost outsold the C-class, but I think the C-class was maybe down to a new model coming, or maybe just no one buys sedans anymore too. You also realize C-class and GLC are priced the same as a Lexus RX or Cadillac XT5, which are the best sellers for the competition. And I looked at my local dealer, they have about 10 or so GLB250's all around $47-49k, the C300s and GLC300s are around 50 to low 50s and obviously the AMG's are more but that is low volume. Mercedes can't be akin to General Motors because Mercedes is 1 brand. GM since its inception has been a group car car companies/brands.

Do the bulk come from cheaper models? Their top 5 sellers in Q1 2021: #1 GLE #2 GLC #3 E-class #4 C-class #5 GLS Those 5 cars are 71.1% of their sales volume, 3 of them have ATP of $75k or higher. And 46.9% of their total sales are models with over $75k ATP.

GLE has a $75k ATP according to iseecars, the E-class has the same price structure so I imagine its the same, and GLE and E are 2 of their top 3-4 sellers. GLS's is $95k and it sells about as well as a GLA that transacts in the high 40s, so average those 2 together and that is about $70k. AMG GT 4 door wasn't around 3-4 years ago, and new G-wagon since then that has sold well, so that should offset the A-class. $64k average seems to make sense. S-class is down now due to the changeover and there aren't any to sell since Europe got the first production run of the new S-class but it is arriving here this summer.

Well Daimler only has 1 car brand. They don't have Smart car in the USA anymore.

Per Kelly blue book, the Automotive ATP's and you can see who is in first. And Mercedes is at 2% in the USA because they aren't a volume brand. Although I bet Mercedes has a higher market share in Europe than GM.

4.4 Billion Euros is $5.36 Billion, because math. And Daimler numbers are all together, much like GM doesn't split out Cadillac brand profit, they all get lumped in. Once Daimler Trucks becomes one company, and Mercedes-Benz becomes another, then maybe it will be very easy to see Mercedes numbers. Also Asia is Mercedes biggest market, you can't just say drop their #1 market and they aren't that much. Also Mercedes outsells Cadillac 2 to 1 in Cadillac's home market. How are Cadillac sales going in Europe on Mercedes home turf? A better use of ATP is within segment, so for example the GLS has a $95,807 ATP for Q1 of 2021, and the Escalade's is $99,396. Escalade sells in 20.2 days on average, GLS 19.9 days, so those 2 are very close. And better to argue head to head in a segment than brand to brand, when brands have a wide difference in product usually. Plus I don't know why brand ATP matters, Maserati has a fantastic ATP, probably over $90,000 and they might not even be around in 5 years, and they might not even turn a profit.

The Model S Plaid is still crazy fast, the Model S Ludicrous mode was like 3 years ago and that is still crazy fast. Tesla does have the Roadster coming, and that has the Space X rocket package that can make it do 0-60 in 1.1 seconds. The Model S Plaid is also faster around Laguna Seca than a McLaren P1, which is again crazy for a sedan. I'd love for AMG or Porsche to make a car faster than the Model S, but I actually don't see it happening. Perhaps though they can beat them in ride, handling, steering and braking and produce better lap times on a track, but in a straight line, I am not sure anyone is beating Tesla, and for sure not with the Space X package if that does what Elon says it will.

And Cadillac didn't outsell Tesla and Mercedes why? If Tesla is so bad, why do they outsell Lexus, Mercedes, BMW and Audi in the USA? Tesla outsold Dodge too, a brand with much cheaper cars. Mercedes sold 2.087 million cars in a "very bad year", I bet a lot of luxury car companies wish their bad years were 2 million units sold. Daimler made $5.36 billion in profit Q1 of 2021, compared to $3 billion for GM and $3.2 billion for Ford. $7 billion for Toyota, but they are also a bigger company than all those other guys.

That is a USA figure, for passenger vehicles. $64,900 for Mercedes. That does not include Freightliner or Western Star. The site simply broke down automotive ATP by corporation, Diamler, BMW, Toyota, GM, etc. But I don't know why ATP matters for a brand, Porsche's ATP is $94,000, Land Rover's is $78,000, Jaguar's is $63,000. So what? It just means they have small lineups of expensive cars, with no lower priced cars. And $64,900 might not even include the Sprinter and Metris, maybe that is just their cars, it didn't specify, but the Mercedes sales chart always lists both, so I assume ATP would include both, just like I'd assume Ford commercial was included in Ford's number. I don't really care about ATP for a brand, but the Metris has the lowest ATP of any Mercedes and Sprinter is probably 4th lowest, including them HURTS the Mercedes ATP. And even with commercial bands dragging them down, they are still higher than BMW, Lexus, Cadillac, Audi.

$64,900 with Metris and Sprinter included, as they too are Mercedes.