Pretending Tesla isn't a car company and SpaceX isn't a satellite services company (Internet, maybe mobile) is wild stuff. The only real profits are from those traditional industries. All the sci-fi hype is for investors and fanatics.

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kevin_thibedeau 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Those are just side projects. SpaceX is now an AI company. All their phony future revenue projections are dependent on magic numbers cooked up by a drug addict who convinces people to believe his stream of lies.

	▲	pussylover69 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[flagged]

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derefr 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

FYI, Tesla makes a large fraction of its profits off the margins from selling grid-scale ("Megapack") batteries to utilities; renewable energy projects (buffering energy generated by e.g. private wind farms); and most recently, data centers (where they act either as giant battery-backed UPS systems, or as reservoirs between on-site power generation and fluctuating on-site demand.)

They probably have also been trying to penetrate the military energy storage market (a.k.a. "tactical microgrids"), but so far they haven't. They need more vertical integration for that. Right now they don't own battery-cell manufacturing, so the defense contractors that build ruggedized battery packs skip them and go straight to sourcing from the battery-cell manufacturers.

(Fun fact: Tesla's Gigafactories as physical spaces produce a ton of battery cells, but Tesla itself doesn't. Tesla leases space in its Gigafactories to cell manufacturers like Panasonic, who actually produce the cells, so that Tesla can then directly consume some of the cells produced into battery packs, without any intervening logistics costs.)

It's always been my own personal stance that Tesla is a battery company, that happens to sell some of its battery packs in the form of cars. (Remember that 80% of the depreciated value of an EV is its batteries.) The cars were never the core of Tesla's business model; they were a useful vertically-integrated B2C demand-sink they used to bootstrap their B2B battery sales business.

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jordanb 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Value the company by the sizzle not the steak. And before it fails completely fold it into the next grift. Sounds far fetched but it's been working for Elon for years.

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malfist 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Anyone with half a brain can see him stacking his house of cards higher and higher, but yet the market and investors love him.

You can't tell me there's a rational reason there's a common headline of Tesla missing forecast and guidance but still going up after earning report

	▲	FabHK 44 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> stacking his house of cards higher and higher Indeed. What I find particularly grating is that Tesla seems rather overpriced, but if SpaceX acquires it, it'll provide the Tesla investors with a nice exit. (And SpaceX of course is a very long shot that's in any number of retirement portfolios by virtue of its rash index inclusion.)