There are a lot of really good examples that illustrate this. Sometimes there's little tweeks that need to be made, other times it's drastic changes, like the Honda Fit. Take the new Ford Mustang for example. Different countries have different laws. If you go to the UK, the Mustang's tail lights will be different than here in the States, a reflection of those laws. I remember when the Tata Nano became internet famous for being so inexpensive that people were all "when are we gonna get the Tata Nano in the States! That thing would sell like hot cakes." Only, it took car people to point out that one, the car was a piece of shit brand new, and two, to bring it to the States and bring it up to our safety standards would inflate the price to about $11,000. No one is gonna pay $11,000 for a brand new car that sucks balls right out of the gate. Similarly, GM, Nissan, and an ass ton of other countries sell cars in South East Asia and South America without what we think are standard safety features, such as airbags. Just like the Nano, those safety features add a lot to the price that would suddenly make the cars unaffordable to their target markets. A lot of those same countries don't pay the same mind to safety as we do either, especially when it comes to cars and work place safety. I know entering the American Market isn't easy, every now and again I check up to see how Mahindra is doing in their attempts because it's like one big joke of high expectations and embarrassing broken promises. Here's where I can't understand how it's so hard. Let's take California for example. I might be wrong on the exact specifics, but I think I remember the gist well enough. I'm pretty certain CARB is the organization I'm thinking about. At various times in America's history, California has had stricter emissions standards than the rest of the country (which makes sense, seeing as how they argue that your office chair will give you cancer). Car manufacturers here in the States saw they had two options. Either they build a set of engines that'll work for California and a set of engines that'll work for everyone else or they build a set of engines that work for both, knowing California is stricter. So, if America has stricter safety standards, especially for frontal impact, pedestrian safety, and roll over, wouldn't it be easier to just design platforms with those standards in mind, period, and then scale back when possible for less strict markets? Same concept applies for emissions, though I know Europe and the States tend to trade back and forth every few years as to who has more stringent emissions laws. I honestly can't imagine that designing platforms with America in mind first would make things that much more expensive, especially if you can use those same platforms and tweak them a little bit to make vehichles that'll work for other markets, such as the Chevrolet Montana/Tornado. Granted, the Montana is based off the Opel Corsa, but I don't think it would be that hard to turn the Chevrolet Cruze into a pickup for Mexico and Latin America. The whole stocks thing for Tesla is crazy when you actually write out those numbers and put them in front of me. Even with bioemerl's explanation, which seems very plausible, Tesla stock sounds like a stupid gamble, especially when companies like Ford and Toyota have proven to be able to whether financial difficulties throughout the decades. All it takes is the price of Lithium to jump through the roof or one of Tesla's parts suppliers royally screwing up to put the company in real jeopardy. I thought we learned from the Dot Com crash that it's a dumb idea to invest in a company that isn't returning money.
It's simpler than that, actually. To meet California emissions all you need to do is tilt the emissions/power balance in favor of emissions. Backintheday this meant air pumps to scavenge stuff out of the exhaust, leaner carb mixture, and generally a bunch of shit hanging off the exhaust side of things that provided greater flow restriction (but decreased NOx, particulates, CO, etc). Manufacturers were happy to pass this along to dealers, and dealers were happy to pass this along to customers, and nobody was happy. It's the exact same issue you discuss with the Tata - if you wanted to hang all the shit necessary to get that thing up to NHTSA snuff, Tata would have to make that up somewhere in the price. Manufacturers were perfectly happy to let Californians know they were paying more than everybody else for their cars because they were trying to pressure California into relaxing CARB. But it doesn't work that way across governments. Tata doesn't get to add "Federally mandated safety and emissions equipment: $11,000" to their stickers and not make Tata (and India) look like a shithole. Especially when there are four fine manufacturers that have no difficulty whatsoever meeting American emissions and safety standards. And how many cars are you going to sell? There's the tricky part. Let's take Hyundai. Last month they sold 75,000 cars in the US. They sold 100,000 in the rest of the world. Hyundai went hard into the US market and it paid off. Mitsubishi? Quickest figures I can see say they sold 50,000 cars in the US in the first six months of 2015. Let's assume they finished out the year even, for 100k cars. they sold 400,000 cars worldwide. So yeah - it seems like a lot of business to give up - but remember, they had a plant in Illinois until last July. Now they're going to have to ship all that stuff across the ocean. TESLA: So nobody is investing in Tesla. They're speculating in Tesla. They're buying the stock now to sell it later when it's worth more. "Later" could mean "Later this year." It could mean "later this month." It could mean "later today." And they could have already sold the stock, without owning it, so that they can buy it later at a lower price and pocket the difference. That's the nature of short sales, and 1/4 of all the interest in Tesla is currently short. Put another way: one in four people with money in Tesla are expecting it to lose value. Here's what "investing" looks like: http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/gm/dividend-history That's reliably giving back ~30 cents a share every 3 months. Considering the stock is about 30 bucks, GM is good for a consistent yield of 1%. Not spectacular, but that means if you on 10,000 shares of GM (worth a third of a million dollars), every three months you pocket 3 grand. Here's Tesla: http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/dividend-historyEither they build a set of engines that'll work for California and a set of engines that'll work for everyone else or they build a set of engines that work for both, knowing California is stricter.
Dividend History information is presently unavailable for this company. This could indicate that the company has never provided a dividend or that a dividend is pending.
I have to say, I really think South Korea has some pretty impressive game plan with cars going on right now. i know Kia and Ford were tight for forever and when Kia went bankrupt and Hyundai bought the shit out of them shutting out Ford, I wouldn't be surprised if the Korean government played a hand in that. Now, almost 20 years later, both companies are doing great, with Hyundai focusing hard on the States (which you've shown me they're doing even better than I first thought) and Kia being pretty successful both here and in Europe. The quality of their cars are improving, their public image is improving, and Hyundai just recently created a luxury division much like Lexus, Acura, and Infiniti. Both brands have shown it's more than doable, but the success is hard earned and definitely isn't something that's gonna happen overnight. I wonder, as far as Tesla and their shares are concerned, if speculating in them is the greatest idea. If I'm wrong, with short sales, if you don't strike when the time is right, you're stuck holding a bunch of worthless stocks. The problem is, no one really knows when the time is right so a lot of it boils down to luck. That sounds just as crazy as actually investing in them.
South Korea is more than willing to subsidize the shit out of heavy industry to establish an industrial basis. They recognized that they could either compete toe-to-toe with Japan or be a vassal state of Japan and they went as fascist as they needed to. It worked - they have an industrial base to rival Japan's now and a much younger workforce. They also want to be the ones to sell to China when China gets its shit together. Everybody I know who plays the ponies has made some coin on Tesla. It's always about timing. Thing about Tesla is you aren't betting on Tesla's actual performance, you're betting on the market reaction to Tesla. Wanna see the /b/ of investing?
Everyone (at least in cars) seems to be shifting their game plan to focus more on China, and to a lesser extent, India as emerging markets. The politics behind it are really weird, diplomatically and economically. It's very interesting. I'm on mobile at the moment, so I can't post links, but for example Buick as a brand name is seen as desirable, the Chinese are more than willing to create bootleg versions of popular vehichles, and as a reflection of China's passion for making knock off products, a lot of car companies are nervous to work with China for fear that their patents and technology will be lifted and the Chinese government won't intervene. I've learned bits and pieces about this over the years as I read car blogs, but when I think about it all at once, it feels very overwhelming. I'm not judging anyone who does this, with Tesla's stock or any other stock. I know the stock market has tools built in that encourages this type of behavior. There's something about it though, that makes it seem kind of immoral to me. I feel like maybe treating companies like speculative commodities like gold or oil keeps us from appreciating their real value, and that's the products they offer and the jobs they create. I think owning something makes you responsible to feel concerned for its well being, and that if you decide to own part of a company, you do so not just because you expect it to do well, but because you want it to do well because you value it. I think thats where I'm getting my difficulty wrapping my head around short stocks and how they work. That's probably a really naive way to look at stocks though.Thing about Tesla is you aren't betting on Tesla's actual performance, you're betting on the market reaction to Tesla.
You can look at it that way. You'll get creamed, but you can look at it that way. A better way to look at it is as a method of passive income that has grown ever more important as interest rates cease to reward savers in any meaningful way. Monetary policy is such that your government is deliberately fucking you if you expect to be able to put your money in a savings account and expect to live off of it in the future. That's one perspective, anyway. Me? I hate shorting. Perhaps it's because I short things because I hate them, not because I actually have any real insight into their performance. Bet you haven't heard this one before. (link is dead; here's the content)
I don't think Korea could have stayed in the market without government backing and support from other divisions. They were loosing tons of money on their extended warranties and horrible lease residuals. They are probably making ok money now that the brand has finally stabilized and their quality has gotten a lot better but before that they were burning though lots of money. I think thats basically what it takes to get established in an industry that has such a high barrier to entry. You have to burn lots of money until you have enough volume and knowledge to finally make money.
Shoot. That sounds a bit like Tesla's strategy at the moment.They are probably making ok money now that the brand has finally stabilized and their quality has gotten a lot better but before that they were burning though lots of money. I think thats basically what it takes to get established in an industry that has such a high barrier to entry. You have to burn lots of money until you have enough volume and knowledge to finally make money.