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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  857 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Vaporware car is best car

    I'm not interested in equating the market cap with the cost-per-vehicle like you are.

Naaah yer not interested in math. Aptera had 4,000 orders in 2008. They couldn't get a 150m gap loan to go into production. They were also breaking even, not losing a billion a year. Ford Transits? They sell a hundred thousand a year - we agree on that. But Ford sells 4.2 million cars a year. The four largest rental companies buy about two million cars a year. 30,000 Ford Transits? Tesla just signed to sell 100,000 to Hertz. "Ford doesn't have a contract for 30k vehicles." They don't have to, they sell hundreds of thousands to Avis every year, year in, year out, wax on , wax off.

    To me, market cap today is only a measure of the rabidity of the fan base.

Correct! That much foaming at the mouth is never a good sign, though. Keep in mind: Tesla is somehow worth more than all other car companies combined, and Rivian is somehow worth $20b more than Ford, even after Ford said they weren't interested in helping Rivian build trucks. Fortunately anything publicly listed is basically a stock holding company at this point so Ford's shareholders made out.

Here's the thing, though. Nobody wanted an electric car back when Chevy was making them. Nissan has had Leafs out for ten frickin' years. And you're entirely okay disregarding all of this so you can inhale the hopium. Yeah - there's something else to it: the protest vote you responded to immediately.

But you can't simultaneously argue that people are shooting these stocks to the moon because they hate cars, and also argue they're shooting them to the moon because they represent value. Rivian is worth $102b because people, including you, think it'll be worth MORE when kermudgeons like me see the error of our ways. And here's my beef: dumb shit like Rivian keeps cool shit like Aptera from happening. It's strength through marketing and it's bullshit.