[dkrich]

Agreed. I think most of Tesla's appeal comes from branding and the Elon Musk appeal and not merely from the fact that it is an electric vehicle.

As an example: had Ford released the Model S and sold the exact same volume with the same revenue and profit/loss, would they have added $3 billion of market cap with yesterday's earnings report? I for one doubt it.

So as much as people like to compare the Model S to the iPhone, I don't think the analogy fits. The Model S is not really a revolutionary vehicle in the way the iPhone was a revolutionary phone. Six years after its launch, every phone on the market looks like an iPhone. Even though the auto market has much longer sales cycles (several years for most cars) so one shouldn't expect to see an immediate market saturation, I don't think Tesla has a real sustainable advantage over other auto manufacturers the way Apple had over Dell/Samsung/Motorola because plenty of car companies in Tesla's price range already have the cool factor and the product is not different enough today to take over the market.

All that said, I love what Elon Musk is doing and plenty of companies have been built on brand alone so I'm certainly not writing off Tesla. I'm just arguing that people should check their expectations. I think the company is severely overvalued at current stock prices.

[rtpg]

>had Ford released the Model S and sold the exact same volume with the same revenue and profit/loss, would they have added $3 billion of market cap with yesterday's earnings report? I for one doubt it.

With all due respect Ford has been around a lot longer, and could produce a lot more , so could (potentially) sell a lot more. Tesla's selling those numbers because they're starting from scratch, and thus don't have the capacity to sell more.