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Originally Posted by aturnis

I think you're ignoring the fact that traditional OEMs spend over $50 billion per year in advertising and Tesla spends $0. Their growth has been organic to this point. I'm still shocked at how many people I come across who've never heard of them, or have, but don't know s thing about them. Tesla has a supply problem, not a demand problem. 7,000 orders last week. That's 100% of current known production capacity.

Also, Teslas products have great margins. MUCH better than industry average. They just invest >100% back into the company. The Silicon Valley model may not be for other OEMs, then again, they have fully deployed manufacturing capacity and haven't really done much innovating since electronic fuel injection.

I'll never understand the "Tesla will die" argument.

First, the tax incentives are icing, obviously not necessary given their customer bases willingness to shell out huge sums of cash for the cars. Other OEMs might have that problem as they don't offer much else beyond transportation, but Teslas will become a value proposition. 20 years ago nobody thought they'd ever spend $600-800 on a phone, or $2,000 on a TV, but here we are.

Mostly though, it's that the private investors who have already committed billions aren't going to let Tesla sink with nearly $25 billion in reservations sitting on the table. Not to mention that Tesla hasn't even begun to leverage all of its assets at this point.

Tesla also has a lower debt to equity ratio than the industry average. Ford on the other hand is nearly double average.

I am 100% rooting for Tesla to become the dominant auto manufacturer and seller in the world. Being blind to their challenges won't help them get their any faster. MOney talks and bullshit walks. If they can't produce a product in sufficient quantity and quality at a price point that allows them to consistently sell enough units to become profitable they will go to the huge graveyard of great theories that couldn't become practical.