Elon Musk $41B offer for Twitter

[off_again]

soupdragon1 said:

EddieSteadyGo said:

soupdragon1 said:

Byker28i said:

Or is it there's better built cars for the same money, and other cars that are cheaper now the Asian players are in the market?

And that too.

Removing indicator stalks in the European market wasn't the cleverest move either. A lot of headwinds for Tesla. The cars are getting stale and updating the dash mounted iPad every once in a while just won't cut it. Customers want to see more than that, they want a MkII rather than a mild update.

Not sure it is Asian competitors. For example, BYD EV sales for the quarter were down 43% from last quarter and 13% from this time last year.

And not sure it is indicator stalks either. Model 3 production was still slow in Q1 whilst they were ramping up lines, which is also why they are not supporting the finance deals on them, effectively making them more expensive than a Model Y.

There is a demand issue though, or at least a lack of demand to support the 50% growth rate, which is what much of the share price is based on. Fundamentally, putting aside the newspaper commentary, Q1 wasn't a "bad" month. Most car companies would love to sell circa 400,000 full EVs at a median selling price somewhere around $50,000.

I also think at the current share price ($164/share) they are a decent buy and they will be quite a bit higher this time next year.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportat...

I think the share price will be lucky to be half that $164 in 12 months time. Unless they pull a rabbit out of the hat with FSD or robots (highly unlikely IMV) they are on a downward spiral, and a compact car won't save them. Like I said in my original post, the cars are getting stale and mild refreshes aren't the answer. This is in a landscape of huge Govt subsidies, so when Govts pull the support, Tesla will literally be gasping for air.

It wouldn't surprise me if they need to raise capital this year. I'm 50/50 that they run out of money and go negative cash flow this year.

My opinion is probably in the middle of both of you. Yes, Q1 was a miss for a company that was expected to drop in volume, but not by this much. And additionally, their model range is looking very limited with competitors looking like viable alternatives.

Here in the Socialist Republic of California, every other car is a damn Tesla and its showing. I remember a few years ago that the most common brand that people traded in for a Tesla was Toyota and then the most popular model was the Rav4. Of course, you could spin this as Toyota is dying and Tesla will 'kill them'. Of course its much more nuanced than that. Yes, Rav4 and Prius models are being traded in, but these are buyers who look for appliance like cars.

Forgetting China for a moment (because you cant get a Chinese brand EV here), if you want a drivers EV, there are a few. You want a smooth ride, there are a few. You want a bigger model that doesnt look like its from 2014, there are plenty! That range is going to be the death of Tesla. They need to refresh the S and X quickly. People are dumping them like they are made of lead and jumping into a mix of other EV's. Because Tesla wont break them out, 'other models' were 17,000 and that includes the CyberTruck by the way. Rivian, who also had a bad quarter, sold 13,000 EV's at a MINIMUM of $70k (and they still make a loss on each one). Tesla could make a lot of money quickly by tapping that premium market.

And as for the 3 and Y? Yeah, once they were fairly bold statements as design, but been out and about in Sacramento and San Francisco in the last few days - Kia EV9's, Merc SUV's and so on - these are the ones that are getting sold now. I saw ONE refreshed Model 3. They have a problem and dont seem to be addressing it. As a result, sales will drop and likely for a few more quarters.

And seriously, Tesla, please please please, stop increasing and decreasing and increasing the price of your cars in the USA. It annoys buyers and its cratering your resale values. Shows how short term they are and not really customer focused. Chevrolet dropped the price of their SUV EV and what did they do? Refunded customers the amount..... thats how to do it.

[mko9]

WestyCarl said:

KarlMac said:

The plan for Tesla was always to flog the technology and charger infrastructure to a. Established OEM as a way for them to shortcut the R&D. The fact that all the major OEMs didn’t fall for it and went their own way means there’s no plan for the next gen of the Model 3 etc… because someone else should have been building them. we’re now in the ‘Elon flinging st at a wall’ stage of product development.

What happened to the HGV?

I'm not sure that's true as all Tesla have stated anyone can use the tech in their patents without penalty.

The Tesla charger has been adopted as the North American standard by almost every automaker. I think the only holdout is Stellantis (Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, Fiat, Ram, etc.)

[LivLL]

Anyone know what metric “organic traffic” means to a layman?

[off_again]

LivLL said:

Anyone know what metric “organic traffic” means to a layman?

It can mean different things to different people, but it is supposed to refer to the traffic to a website that is not from a paid source. Since Twitter does advertise, but from what I can see, their spend has reduced, this metric should increase. In fact, it is not a metric (based on the widely used term) that you want to measure anyway.

Great, you are getting more traffic that you didnt pay for. Great. But what you need is engagement, people staying on the site for a period of time, impressions of adverts (and not the 1 second count that Twitter has for 'watching an ad'). These are the useful measures and from what I could get before I got locked out of my free account, its down across the board for Twitter. So traffic volumes are down, engagement is down (though it could be up based on how you rate it) and ad spend on his site is down.

So yeah, an other classic random manipulated stat from Musk that means nothing and shows nothing. I would suggest that the 3.3bn number is incorrect, but hey, he makes stuff up all the time. So yeah, you are getting more visitors (and dont forget that Twitter has always counted impressions differently to everyone else) from sources you didnt pay for. And thats great because?

It looks pretty bad for Twitter:

https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/twitter-ad-reven...

Revenue is down and continuing to drop.

[LivLL]

The comments on his post are pretty damning, mostly about the number of bots spamming the platform and how it’s infested with porn and ads for junk products.

[off_again]

LivLL said:

The comments on his post are pretty damning, mostly about the number of bots spamming the platform and how it’s infested with porn and ads for junk products.

Yeah it’s pretty terrible now. Musk said he was going to fix the bot problem. Then he declared it was fixed. But then it got worse and here we are.



And the ads that are being carried on Twitter are getting scammier by the week. Good job the community notes feature (added by Musk) solves that.

[Byker28i]

It's OK, Musk has gone back to handing out free blue ticks without asking
https://www.rawstory.com/x-free-blue-check/

[Byker28i]

off_again said:

LivLL said:

The comments on his post are pretty damning, mostly about the number of bots spamming the platform and how it’s infested with porn and ads for junk products.

Yeah it’s pretty terrible now. Musk said he was going to fix the bot problem. Then he declared it was fixed. But then it got worse and here we are.



And the ads that are being carried on Twitter are getting scammier by the week. Good job the community notes feature (added by Musk) solves that.

[5 In a Row]

off_again said:

And as for the 3 and Y? Yeah, once they were fairly bold statements as design, but been out and about in Sacramento and San Francisco in the last few days - Kia EV9's, Merc SUV's and so on - these are the ones that are getting sold now. I saw ONE refreshed Model 3. They have a problem and dont seem to be addressing it. As a result, sales will drop and likely for a few more quarters.

And seriously, Tesla, please please please, stop increasing and decreasing and increasing the price of your cars in the USA. It annoys buyers and its cratering your resale values. Shows how short term they are and not really customer focused. Chevrolet dropped the price of their SUV EV and what did they do? Refunded customers the amount..... thats how to do it.

Is it possible that since many still see Tesla as a tech company that they also do?

They might've been thinking that they fit into that whole 'I prefer iPhones to the alternatives' type of blind brand loyalty but in the car world I don't think that's anywhere like as strong (although I do know some people who will only ever go to, say, the Merc garage, etc)

[LivLL]

Byker28i said:

off_again said:

LivLL said:

The comments on his post are pretty damning, mostly about the number of bots spamming the platform and how it’s infested with porn and ads for junk products.

Yeah it’s pretty terrible now. Musk said he was going to fix the bot problem. Then he declared it was fixed. But then it got worse and here we are.



And the ads that are being carried on Twitter are getting scammier by the week. Good job the community notes feature (added by Musk) solves that.

I routinely block ads, I’m sure others do too but there just an enormous amount of cheap tat vendors willing to pay to spam the content feed. I’m finding myself more and more being turned away each time I use the app.

[98elise]

KarlMac said:

The plan for Tesla was always to flog the technology and charger infrastructure to a. Established OEM as a way for them to shortcut the R&D. The fact that all the major OEMs didn’t fall for it and went their own way means there’s no plan for the next gen of the Model 3 etc… because someone else should have been building them. we’re now in the ‘Elon flinging st at a wall’ stage of product development.

What happened to the HGV?

What makes you think chargers are hard to develop? They are fundamentally simple.

Tesla developed their own charging network as Musk realised that it was a barrier to adoption.

The "HGV" is in production, but in limited numbers at the moment.

[off_again]

Hmmm, what is Tesla doing?

Widely reported that they are dumping the idea of a lower cost model, so no Model 2 or anything soon. But they are going to concentrate on self-driving taxis.?

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportat...

The market didnt like that:





While the market analysts say that EV adoption is stalling and what is needed is affordable models, Tesla decides to change track. Weird. They are in a fantastic position to capitalize on where they are. But no, time to do minimal refresh on a couple of models and scrap one that could sell well.

[EddieSteadyGo]

off_again said:

...
While the market analysts say that EV adoption is stalling and what is needed is affordable models, Tesla decides to change track. Weird. They are in a fantastic position to capitalize on where they are. But no, time to do minimal refresh on a couple of models and scrap one that could sell well.

It seems they aren't scrapping it, just concentrating on making the version without a steering wheel. Very big gamble. Musk will have sight on what is coming after FSDv12, so either his is stupid, or he knows something we all don't.

[CoolHands]

There is no full self drive system and in my opinion never will be. So that seems unlikely

[EddieSteadyGo]

CoolHands said:

There is no full self drive system and in my opinion never will be. So that seems unlikely

I thought that too. But have a look at FSD v12 videos; it's a big step forward from the old version. It is very new, so they likely have a lot of improvements in the pipeline. Plus they are not now "compute constrained" so they can now process a lot more training videos to improve the model. Whether you think they will achieve it or not, I think that is now why Musk has changed his strategy.

[p1stonhead]

EddieSteadyGo said:

off_again said:

...
While the market analysts say that EV adoption is stalling and what is needed is affordable models, Tesla decides to change track. Weird. They are in a fantastic position to capitalize on where they are. But no, time to do minimal refresh on a couple of models and scrap one that could sell well.

It seems they aren't scrapping it, just concentrating on making the version without a steering wheel. Very big gamble. Musk will have sight on what is coming after FSDv12, so either his is stupid, or he knows something we all don't.

The former.

[captain_cynic]

CoolHands said:

There is no full self drive system and in my opinion never will be. So that seems unlikely

I've always said the self driving car is this generations "flying car"... just around the corner for the last 50 years.

[paua]

captain_cynic said:

CoolHands said:

There is no full self drive system and in my opinion never will be. So that seems unlikely

I've always said the self driving car is this generations "flying car"... just around the corner for the last 50 years.

flying cars go back to at least 1999 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXZaAuyuYmQ

[AW111]

So Elon "Funny meme" Musk has announced the launch of the robotaxi

On the 8/8.

Hah fking hah Elon. He would know as well as his nazi-adjacent sycophants just what 88 is used to represent.



Anyone care to defend him? It could just be an inadvertent mistake, and he just happen to randomly pick a date that online Nazis use to represent Hitler. :rolleyes;

[Al Gorithum]

AW111 said:

So Elon "Funny meme" Musk has announced the launch of the robotaxi

On the 8/8.

Hah fking hah Elon. He would know as well as his nazi-adjacent sycophants just what 88 is used to represent.



Anyone care to defend him? It could just be an inadvertent mistake, and he just happen to randomly pick a date that online Nazis use to represent Hitler. :rolleyes;

I must admit to not knowing that 88 was a thing.