Featured Dashboard summary through June 2017

what is driving fusion sales? they can't give them away forever. amazing.

 

They might be able to as long as the F150 sales stay up.

Looks like everything dropped since last month.

 

hybrid sales up 10% for the first half compared to 2016. phev sales up 44%, and that should go up if toyota ships more primes and trains more dealers. bev sales up 29% and that should increase significantly in the 4th quarter if tesla is able to ramp up model 3 production. If trends continue plug-ins + hybrids will be at an all time high in 2019 in the US. Of course the other part of this trend is 2019 is the year that plug-ins may outsell conventional hybrids. Fusion, Niro, Accord, prius prime, bolt, and highlander were the biggest gainers (in that order) compared to last year. I don't really know what is happening with the fusion and highlander, the others are new vehicles.

 

For that to happen, CA needs to extend free HOV green and white stickers beyond 2019, which they will probably do.

 

bloomberg did a very optimistic piece about ev's on tv yesterday. fairly in depth covering manufacturers and countries.
i nearly fell out of my chair.

 

Bloomberg?...better fasten your seat belt

 

How's it doing today Bob? down a frac, after big down.
Tesla is a speculative stock, but I'd say it is a critical time for them

 

Simple, in my opinion:
A well built large car at a "reasonable" price.
Fuel economy is good for a car that size.
It rides and handles great. It has good power if you push it.

Oh....and I quite assure you that they aren't "giving them away".

I have one of each (Fusion Hybrid and Prius C) and am extremely happy with each.......for somewhat different reasons.

 

great car, but been around for quite awhile. something has changed in the past year or so.

 

they rated tesla as the number one company in ev's. highest technology, and small enough to be nimble.

 

Could you comment on the driver's seat comfort between the two? I know that comfort is subjective, but curious on this aspect as my wife is in search of a comfortable seat with good lumbar support.

 

have her try the hycam, my wife has a bad back and loves hers.

 

The seat in the C either fits you or it doesn't. Not much adjustment at all. And little lumbar support IIRC.

The Ford has a 9 way electric seat (I think that's the number) and any car with a "premium" drivers seat should be a lot better than a non-adjustable one.

The C bothers me a little after a couple of hours. The Ford not so much.

 

With the big down turn of over 20% this week, tesla is still up by 46% this year so far. Does it deserve 46% ... No. Its a momentum stock, and I really think momentum has broken. It was looking for any bad news, and this week we got some. 1) production problems at the battery factory made Q2 shipments lower than expected, 2) Tesla reinterated some healthy claims of production increases next year, things that mean the model 3 will require more investments and stock dillution, 3) Goldman came out with analysis that they thought the stock was wildly overvalued and it might drop to half, 4) IIHS said tesla's car was only acceptable in small offset crashes, tesla tweated against the test (IMHO legitimately, but Forbes took a different take).

All this pushed the stock down.

Net of all the news this week - model 3 shipments in Q4 and 2018 will exceed most expectations from a week ago, but that pushes out profitability of tesla and increases risk to stock holders. Tesla will have to sell the model 3 with less than full federal incentives in 2019, and probably only get half incentives Q4 of 2018. Fall in tesla's stock price is probably rational. This is probably only good news for plug-in sales.

Other Tesla news that is good for plug-in fans, the deal is that tesla will supply Australia with a 100 MW / 129 MWH battery to stabilize the grid and more efficiently use wind power in southern australia. They will build and install it 100 days from contract. The low price of $250/kwh means the gigafactory probably has over come their production problems, and costs for lithium batteries for the new model 3 probably are less than $200/kwh as predicted.

 

Deals can be found on the Fusion around me.
I think the Highlander finally moved away from only having one, overpriced hybrid trim to multiples like the Camry. So people can buy one without the temptation of upgrading to a RX.