Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Tesla is “overvalued” according to the Nordea Global Climate and Environmental Fund.
Tesla Is Dropped by Climate Fund That’s Beaten 97% of Its Peers
By Jonas Cho Walsgard
3 October 2017, 00:13 GMT+10 3 October 2017, 08:01 GMT+10
Tesla Inc. is overvalued, according to a climate fund that has beaten 97 percent of its peers.
“We don’t see upside,” Thomas Sorensen, who manages the Nordea Global Climate and Environmental Fund, said by phone on Thursday. “What’s needed in cash flow generation to get to the current valuation — we don’t see that happening.”
With more and more climate-friendly products and services coming to market, investors are having a hard time valuing new technology. Tesla’s 60 percent share rise so far this year is testament to investor enthusiasm even as it reported losses in both the first and second quarter. But the turmoil created by the electric car’s rise that roiled traditional carmakers now means greater risk for all manufacturers.
“It’s going to be a race to the bottom for the whole industry,” he said. “In this big transition period, it’s very tough to point out the winners and the overall profitability of the sector. The risks are too high.”
…
This is not the first time investors have expressed concern about competition in the electric car market. Back in July this year analysts expressed concern about Tesla’s ability to compete against the likes of Volvo.
… Tesla will soon have more competition coming from major carmakers, Barclays Plc analyst Brian Johnson said.
“We’ve long argued that Tesla as an EV company is not truly disruptive, in that legacy carmakers will eventually wake up and offer fully electric vehicles by the early 2020s,” …
Read more: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/08/electric-car-maker-tesla-share-price-plunges/
Earlier today WUWT reported about how Tesla “narrowly” missed their Q3 model 3 delivery target by 83%.
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Don’t allow the Tesla cultists to color your view of electric cars, which, although you would never know it from looking at a Tesla vehicle, are intrinsically cheaper and simpler and more reliable
than any other type of vehicle. I mean, is anyone going to shed a tear because electrics don’t need a transmission, exhaust system, massive cooling system, or drivetrain maintenance? Drivetrain repairs are simple and virtually never required. Already a Tesla Model S has managed to log 350,000 miles without the need for such things as oil changes, tune-ups, anti-freeze changes, etc. Batteries have a lifetime expectancy of well over 15 years. Current DCFC (Direct Current Fast Charge) chargers can recharge to 80% in half an hour using a 120 KW charger. Now the SAE Combo protocols – CCS – are being upgraded to allow for 350 KW chargers. Tesla has hinted at 80% recharges less than 15 minutes, probably less than 10. Porsche has already built some 350 KW chargers for their E Mission electric. But fast recharges are really of value only when travelling, or if unable to recharge at one’s residence. Apartments and condos, especially, will install Level 2 chargers (regular 240 Volts) for certain. Installing a Level 2 charger at your residence isn’t very expensive – wire it yourself (pretty simple) would run around $500-$600. With a 60 amp feed, recharging can occur at a rate of around 14 kWhrs per hour – roughly 50 miles. Right now, the cost of batteries is around $150 to $190 per kWhr, depending upon exactly what is included in the cost – battery container, cooling system, etc.
A normal sized vehicle (not a Tesla Model S heavyweight – 5000 pounds, 3 MPKwHr) like the Chevy Bolt gets at least 4 miles per kWhr (with a 60kWhr battery). At 12 cents per kWhr, fuel costs are 3 cents a mile for the Bolt – or 30 miles for 90 cents. Can your gas car travel 30 miles on 90 cents worth of gasoline? Mine requires more than three times as much and it weighs almost exactly the same as the Chevy Bolt.
Tesla is now entering a whole new ballgame, one in which they no longer have a virtual monopoly. What they also shortly will not have is their $7500 buyer’s tax credit. But virtually all of their future competitors (sans GM and Nissan) will have a $7500 price advantage (in the U.S.)
and there are going to be LOTS and LOTS of competitors. GM the other day announced 23 all electric models by 2022, including a 2022 electric Corvette, A count of other automakers showed over 100 electric models already announced within 3 or 4 years. And there will be more, I’m certain. BMW and Mercedes alone will acount for 22 models – every model BMW makes will have an electric drivetrain version available. Mercedes is building a battery factory in Alabama.
THOSE are the real reasons Tesla stock is overpriced – it’s price assumes a continuing monopoly by Tesla in the EV field. THAT ain’t gonna happen. An electric car is virtually identical to a gas powered car – BMW illustrates that in its assembly line, which will be able to produce either an electric, a hybrid or a gas powered model on the same assembly line at the same time.
In fact Tesla has not a single patent that any other automaker would have any need for in building an electric car. Tesla is defenseless against the competition. Tesla is NOT a high tech company.
And they don’t have the experience in removing production reliability problems.
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/24/consumer-reports-ranks-tesla-near-bottom-for-reliability.html
@usurbrain
Supply and demand. You can either program a price limit for charging AND discharging your EV and power wall. Using only ‘green’ power when available will be cheaper, but unreliable. Or you can pay for reliable power whatever the cost.
oops, wrong reply button
Whilst I accept most criticism of Tesla, Consumer Reports is a total hack job. I wouldn’t trust them to adequately test a penny from a goose. They’re almost as disengenuos and corrupt as the BBB (Better Business Bureau for unawares).
“With a 60 amp feed, recharging can occur at a rate of around 14 kWhrs per hour ”
Five hour charge would consume 70 kWh while the typical UK home uses less than 5 kWh daily.
Where all the electricity is going to come from, since the UK’s greed is often running at its limit as it is.
More like 13kWh daily for an average UK home I think. That will go up of course when they ban natural gas for domestic use (most use it for heat and cooking).
my bad, thanks for the correction
instead “less than 5 kWh daily”
I should have said ‘ less than 15 kWh daily’
Yes, I always find it amazing that here in Ontario, Canada, our hopeless Liberal government advises us to cut down on electricity use…at the same time hyping electric cars (not to mention subsidizing $100,000 luxury vehicles).
I guess they DO believe they’ll run on unicorn farts.
That is what “smart” meters have been invented for. As soon as everyone has one, variable pricing will be introduced. To ‘manage’ the Duck Curve.
Today, EV’s are only affordable for people who do not need subsidies to afford one. When the prices drop and the ‘little people’ start using EV’s, the days of night time charging from cheap coal power will end.
– on a sunny day at noon, when your roof’s solar panels are working best, the 15 minute price will be -0.10/kWh.
– on a foggy winter day, when all the wind and solar fail, it will be 1.00/kWh.
– and when the residential transformer gets hot, the price will jump to 10.00/kWh to force EV’s and water heaters to switch off until the transformer has cooled down.
You can also bet on it, that it will become illegal to enter a congestion zone without having a dedicated parking spot with EV charger. That way all cars can trickle charge 23 hours a day and basically getting their power from a solar roof 50km away.
13 kilowatt hours daily electrical household use in the UK? What in the blue-eyed world are you Brits doing? Don’t you turn the lights off EVER?
I get billed by the kilowatt hours per month. My most recent bill (September) has a total usage of 6.9 KwH for the entire month, and I leave my computer running all day, use a full-sized fridge, clocks everywhere (stove, microwave, computer, phone) not to mention charging my cell phone routinely.
What in the world are you doing to use that much electricity????
RLu How do you manage the “Duck” curve when the EV will be parked in a parking lot at the persons place of employment or the parking garage the co. provides/ he rents?
@usurbrain
Supply and demand. You can either program a price limit for charging AND discharging your EV and power wall. Using only ‘green’ power when available will be cheaper, but unreliable. Or you can pay for reliable power whatever the cost.
@sara
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household-electricity-consumption
Germany has a household usage of about 3500 kWh/year but that is without methane for heating / cooking.
In the US typical household power consumption is about 11,700 kWh each year, in France it is 6,400 kWh, in the UK it is 4,600 kWh and in China around 1,300 kWh.
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/household1.gif
Sara October 4, 2017 at 7:52 am; I’ve seen you use this figure before on another post but I’m afraid it must be wrong. 6.9 kWh for the whole month is less than 230 Watt hours per day or less than 10 Watts average. The Samsung RSG5UUMH ‘American Style’ fridge freezer has an annual power consumption of 538 kWh or about 45 kWh/month on its own. Your monthly electricity bill would be about $1 for 6.9 kWh. I think 609 kWh is probably closer to the mark (still well below the US average that vukcevic quotes below). Most people here use low energy bulbs or LEDs so power consumption for lighting is very low.
https://www.sust-it.net/power-consumption-price-comparison/samsung/RSG5UUMH
They are only cheaper if you don’t count the cost of replacing the battery pack every few years.
And that the states/Feds are not collecting their 50% taxes like they do on gasoline or Diesel fuel.
A bit negative, MarkW, as we have come to expect from you. Agreed, those big lithium batteries haven’t really been tested over time yet. But there are 20-year old Prius’s still on the road with original (nickel-hydride-lanthanum) batteries. Even stolid lead-acid batteries have come very far. When I started owning cars in the 1960s, you could expect 4 years out of a car battery, 5 if lucky (in a cold country). Now my big V8 pickup truck has a battery that’s survived starts in chilly northern Ontario for 10 years and counting.
Modern batteries are amazing. And no reason to suppose they won’t keep getting more amazing as time goes by.
I think the biggest objection to electric vehicles is if you live in a country where everyone will have no choice but to have electric cars. Then “they” will start requiring trucks to be electric, then bulldozers and backhoes, buses and trains. And home or commercial/industrial heating with oil or gas, and cooking with natural gas will be outlawed. Where is all the electricity going to come from? At a rough guess, we’d be looking at a 3- or 4-fold increase in electricity production (without fossil fuels of course). Perhaps there will be a resurgence of nuclear power, but the greens don’t seem to like the only carbon-free baseload options (nuclear and big hydro) for generation. Makes you wonder if “they” have thought it through, or whether in fact there is another agenda.
There’s no reason to assume those batteries will get better over time.
It’s a mature technology.
The only cost savings will be from greater volume and the vast majority of that savings has already been acquired.
PS: Don’t blame me for being negative. I’m just pointing out reality to those who don’t want to see it.
Smart Rocks
What information do you base on to state some Prius cars have never needed battery changes? With “20 years old”, you’re making the claim original model Prius’s have had no battery work, at all.
Great overview comparing Tesla to its competitors, however you forgot the most crucial comparison, an overpriced electric compared to my dirt cheap Honda FIT which costs me nothing to drive ($5/100km) and outperforms an electric in every meaningful test of real world driving.
Tesla may continue to penetrate the luxury, virtue-signaler market, but attempting to appeal to the mainstream will find it in competition with cheaper, reliable cars that run forever like corollas and civics.
At the same time as the Greens are trying to move away from stable base load electricity generation and supply to intermittent wind and solar, they are pushing electric vehicles greatly increasing demand for stable base load electricity supply. The supply must be in place before the demand can be satisfied and that includes those without garaged parking and the local ‘domestic’ power supplies that are suddenly required to provide current loads up to 10 times normal.
And the majority of that energy comes during the day – when EV’s are parked in a parking lot – not at home next to the $3,000 high speed charger.
EV will never work other than as a second car. Calculate the charge time of any EV made today or in the “Dream” stage. They are talking about 100 KWh batteries for several hundred miles travel between charges. That means pushing in 80 or 90 KW in 5 to ten minutes. That is 10 to 20 KW per minute. That is over 80 amps. That means heavy gauge, number 6, copper wire, three of then plus ground wire, bigger than the typical flexible line used on a mid sized RV, ~2 to 3 inch diameter. Is the average person going to plug that in? Now how much current will you need at the typical service station to charge 4 or five vehicles at once. Think about the line at gas stations on the turnpike service plaza. Are you going to wait an hour just to spend another 1/2 hour to charge your car?
And still, every battery i have read about has charging time limitations on them and data shows that fast charges decrease battery life. Worse think about how warm your cellphone gets when pumping in 1 – 2 amps. Now multiply that by several hundred. W can be easily converted to energy. Energy / Time can be converted to heat.
It won’t work for anyone who doesn’t have a place to charge it at home. Period.
Replace the battery with a fuel cell burning gasoline, and you have a winner. The only catch is that the fuel cell does not exist – yet.
Not so, curious one. See http://www.ballard.com
It’s not 5-10 minutes, it’s overnight. Only on rare occasions will someone need to charge at a station. Those who do huge amounts of driving, or lots of long distance driving, won’t buy an EV. And over time, restaurants and cafes will over charging spots, both as a revenue generator, as well as a way to draw traffic.
More likely a third car, so that you still have two cars when your EV is stuck in the garage charging.
That will also force people to clean out their garage to park their car(s) inside else someone steals the electricity.
There is another problem facing Electric Vehicles that run on Lithium ion batteries – that being the availability of cobalt a key component of the batteries. Each Tesla requires several kilograms of cobalt per car, an element for which there is not enough production to produce the “planned” number of batteries in 2 years time, let alone batteries for electrical network backup. For the electric car industry to be viable beyond 2020 a major new source of cobalt needs to be found and exploited, or a major breakthrough in battery technology is required.
And then there are the largely unknown effects of intense low frequency EMF exposure (e.g. from electric vehicles) on the human body…
Extremely low frequency fields (ELF fields):
The previous conclusion that ELF fields are possibly carcinogenic, chiefly based on childhood leukemia results, is still valid. There is no known mechanism to explain how electromagnetic field exposure may induce leukemia. The effects have not been replicated in animal studies.
http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_risk/committees/04_scenihr/docs/scenihr_o_006.pdf
Not this nonsense again?
If there were sell-able tax credits for green development on Pluto, Musk would be offering that too and taking advance orders for the trips.
Full of crap?
http://www.smh.com.au/business/innovation/general-motors-executive-says-elon-musks-selfdriving-claims-are-full-of-crap-20171005-gyvd7n.html
Team a doing a great job in driving the EV market. Its detractors say it will be affected by the big car manufacturers. Absolute rubbish – digital camera makers helped decimate the traditional heavyweights. And new entrants like Dyson would also not be entering the market … but they are:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41399497
Team a doing a great job in driving the EV market. Its detractors say it will be affected by the big car manufacturers. Absolute rubbish – digital camera makers helped decimate the traditional heavyweights. And new entrants like Dyson would also not be entering the market … but they are:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41399497
Team a = Tesla
Hah! Musk wants to rebuild the Puerto Rico electrical grid using his storage batteries. No numbers are stated as to the cost. …https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/06/elon-musk-could-help-puerto-rico-electricity-hurricane-maria.html