Amazon is a false comparison.

Amazon has pulled a not insignificant net profit of a few billion over its existence. Tesla has never pulled a net profit for even a single quarter (at least without cooking the books).

Amazon has been reinvesting profits into massive expansion of their business at an exponential rate Tesla…

Capital investment does not affect profitability - only depreciation of capital investment affects profitability. The explanation that they aren’t profitable because they’re investing in expanding their products and facilities is horribly false. That affects cash flow - NOT profitability.

All those investments are fine - but they’re capital investments. They don’t get written off against current earnings - they’re depreciated over the life of the equipment.

The point is that they aren’t making *anything* - they’ve never been profitable and they aren’t even close to it. They’re losing money hand over…

Don’t you love people who actually use that excuse for why they’re nowhere close to profitability 12 years into existence?

Sure. But that doesn’t explain their massive losses. That just hits cash flow.

Nothing wrong with an Escape - very reliable apart from MyFordTouch.

Sure - pre orders started years ago for the Model X and they only now announced pricing... and deliveries are nearly 2 years behind schedule.

1st: No, that is ludicrously expensive.

And are any Tesla fans paying attention to the company’s inability to hit promised on-sale dates and price points in their excitement over the Model 3?

4th: That could be a very smart move. Look at the medical providers in the Detroit area. Henry Ford and Detroit Medical Center dominate Wayne County. You’ve got a few others providing regional service in outlying areas and counties, but realistically, most people live within a reasonable drive of just one or two…

Why? They’ll never make the promised date, and they’ll never make the promised price, either.

Those orders are non-binding and fully refundable.

Actually, when the model X was announced, it was said to be on par with the Model S. Then they got rid of the cheap versions of the Model S, and now we’re up to more expensive than the model S.

Years late and much more expensive than promised - that’s been the story for both the model S and the model X. Why anyone…

How about the F-150? Not a perfect analogy, but as they made the switch to the current design, they were severely restricted on capacity. As such, they pushed higher end models more than base models. Yes, the base ones were available - but not very common.

Complete teardown and rebuild of a Ford 4.6L DOHC V8. Took about a week and a half... and was oddly enough the first significant repair of anything automotive I had done. Pretty darned easy, though, when you have the complete factory manuals. They’ll walk you through every single step in great detail.

$1.2712 trillion as of the last treasury report (http://www.treasury.gov/ticdata/Publis…)

1) The borrowing cost is absolutely still relevant if the bank and dealer are separate. Why? Because banks are still borrowing money to fund a loan. The dealership will lose nothing unless the bank proves that it was involved in fraud. The bank has to see massive default rates before it can’t afford to service the…

There is an ENORMOUS difference between the baked in number for homes vs. cars.

How? The home default rate never even approached where the subprime auto default rate has been for decades. Home prices were assumed to always go up - car values are always assumed to go down. Length of term makes a massive difference as…

Here’s the catch - the scenario I outlined above, where default rates would have to skyrocket - that’s how high the default rate would have to go before the bank would be unable to collect enough money to pay the bonds that they had issued that were backed by the loans (ie, the securities you’re worried about).

Sure -but we aren’t seeing default rates exceeding the baked in number.

We aren’t seeing default rates get worse.

And default rates have to get MUCH worse before they threaten the stability of the bank. They’d actually have to increase to well over 450% of current levels before the banks lose money in that scenario…

Sure - but the terms of the loans basically guarantee the banks still make a hefty profit even while claiming they lose money. How? They’re borrowing at low rates and charging much higher rates.

So, for example, say the bank lends someone who is subprime $20,000 at 15% over 8 (!) years for a car with a value of $20k.…