Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[FastEddieB]

Not so long ago, I posted this:

That up to now, Tesla has had a “Master Plan” involving more Gigafactories, more models, Semi production and the like. Recently they seem to be “thrashing around” with lack of focus and erratic pricing and policies and layoffs.

Recent developments certainly haven’t helped in this regard, with firings of “new product” and Supercharger employees. Maybe there’s “method to the madness”, but the perception of loss of direction clearly doesn’t inspire confidence.

I’m even more discouraged now. Still not selling but not motivated to buy in the current environment.

 

[NicoV]

99*12=1188 USD per year and user gives 2.4 billion USD in additional revenues per year if we count on 2 million subscribers

26,000 sold cars per month * 12 * 40,000 (approximate average selling price) would give 12.5 billion USD in additional annual revenues.

Or am I missing something?

100% margins versus 10% margins.

 

[CitizenKane]

100% margins versus 10% margins.

Yes, right. 2 billion in profits is definitely good. But still not huge in itself perhaps.

 

[NicoV]

Yes, right. 2 billion in profits is definitely good. But still not huge in itself perhaps.

It’s a revenue stream the competition doesn’t have for the foreseeable future. So it’s a competitive advantage.

 

[nativewolf]

But you do seem to be intimately informed about the internal metrics and finances of twitter, a privately held company. Or did you just assume all that because CNN says so?

Because it isn't private, bond holders numbers are widely reported and discussed. Twitter is hiring like crazy, also widely reported. Advertisers stopped ads on Twitter. No secret. If you don't have your head in the sand these things are all easy to see. What I don't know: how long EM has to fix twitter before the debts due. The other stuff though is public enough.

 

[jerry33]

My speculation is that SC stations were being built at locations not very well thought out, resulting in poor utilization which triggered Elon's termination code. We recently got a brand new 16 stall station located in a dead mall's parking lot (shady part of town). I have been monitoring the place and the utilization is very poor while an 8 stall station 5 miles down is packed. Local FB group has commentors stating the station is a dumb location and warned others to be careful, not to get robbed while charging. So when there's too much expansion too fast, we end up getting these duds that cost the company millions of dollars. So I think he will get his new team or whoever is left to fully study the data and expand where there's a need and pick new locations more carefully.

Except for apartment dwellers there's little need for a Supercharger within 50 miles of home. More are needed for traveling and where there are a large number of folks without access to home charging. Expanding existing is great for packed Superchargers, but not for underutilized ones. I suspect that the poor choices may be due to some quota of opens per month rather than focusing on needed locations.

 

[nativewolf]

Yes, right. 2 billion in profits is definitely good. But still not huge in itself perhaps.

But it is clearly not 100% not even close. The effort to maintain FSD will be significant.

 

[2Pearls]

100% margins versus 10% margins.

Not sure it is 100% margins. Last I read, Tesla was buying $10B+ in Nvidia GPU’s/chips for training and end to end neural nets, And Dojo costs, along with all the people power to put all this together.

 

[Artful Dodger]

A common refrain: "My cousin is buying a new Tesla Model 3 after receiving an FSD demo from my Dad today"

https://twitter.com/x/status/1785545326398726614

 

[FastEddieB]

Maintenance / expansion on existing popular sites might also make more sense.

Not sure about that.

For example, they opened 24 stalls in Powell, TN, north of Knoxville. Two other Supercharger locations nearby, though this one has easy I-75 access while the others don’t.

Still, this is still just north of a Supercharger “desert” I mentioned before. That “desert” is frequented by tens of thousands of vacationers weekly from Atlanta, Macon, and points north and south. In GA alone, Jasper, Ellijay, Blue Ridge and Blairsville all have popular tourist attractions - including the Bigfoot Museum!

Anyway, a Supercharger location somewhere along that route seems like it would be a higher priority than just more stalls near Knoxville, already well served.

 

[NicoV]

Not sure it is 100% margins. Last I read, Tesla was buying $10B+ in Nvidia GPU’s/chips for training and end to end neural nets, And Dojo costs, along with all the people power to put all this together.

True. It’s 100% margin on each additional subscription sold. Welcome to the world of software.

 

[jerry33]

I also feel F and GM stabbed them in the back after getting to free-load on the network by starting the 'consumers want hybrids and PHEVs not EVs"

I think the point was to get NACS to be a universal standard to keep it from becoming another CHAdeMO.

 

[Artful Dodger]

"I think we should replace the current CEO who has been right 99.9% of the time, and put a guy on the board who's right 0.1% of the time. Then we'd have it all."
- Broke Investor

 

[Todd Burch]

I know you were being sarcastic, but, as a guess, >70% of the quarters he was in charge of A business, have been on negative profit.

How many multi-billion dollar businesses have you started, tough guy?

Give us the rundown, I’m intrigued.

Also, name all the space and car companies that start out making profits.

Nah, forget it. I suspect you will not understand the point I am trying to make.

 

[Todd Burch]

Elon is in “Demon Mode”. As his ex-girlfriend said, it’s harsh, but it gets sh** done.

Bingo!

If you want to understand the man, you need to first understand the man. Sun Tzu, no?

 

[FEERSUMENDJIN]

Not sure about that.

For example, they opened 24 stalls in Powell, TN, north of Knoxville. Two other Supercharger locations nearby, though this one has easy I-75 access while the others don’t.

Still, this is still just north of a Supercharger “desert” I mentioned before. That “desert” is frequented by tens of thousands of vacationers weekly from Atlanta, Macon, and points north and south. In GA alone, Jasper, Ellijay, Blue Ridge and Blairsville all have popular tourist attractions - including the Bigfoot Museum!

Anyway, a Supercharger location somewhere along that route seems like it would be a higher priority than just more stalls near Knoxville, already well served.

We will have to see what Elon identified as the problems with the current team. He has in no way indicated that the intent is to cut down on SC investment overall. There may have been poor strategy for the roll out of new chargers with the departing team. We have seen some evidence of this. Also the huge install base of 150KW chargers need to be changed very quickly. This makes a huge difference to site throughput and the efficiency of road tripping. In the UK the opening up of the network to other EVs has been incremental, but on the day after the firing, a huge number of sites , including some real hotspots were suddenly opened to non Tesla charging. This may give an insight into where his head is. With charging at SC being about half that of the competing DC charger providers, this has put a huge pressure on the cost models of the competing charging networks in a single stroke. This is the way.

 

[Todd Burch]

True. It’s 100% margin on each additional subscription sold. Welcome to the world of software.

Don’t exaggerate, Nico.

It’s only like 99.98% .

 

[Mengy]

Yeah, everyone continue armchair quarterbacking about how to run a business profitably and get stuff done.

Teach Elon the way, he has a really poor track record at running profitable businesses.

I think in this case, many of us are simply very confused as to the "why". Superchargers were a profitable division of Tesla on their own, one absolutely required for EV adoption, not only for Tesla now but every OEM in the US. To fire the entire SC team out of nowhere, well I think its understandable that many people are both confused and concerned about this.

Elon might have very good reasons and he might have a great plan, unfortunately no one seems to know what that is currently. Thus, people here trying to create reason out of what appears to be madness.

 

[Dangerous Fish]

Not so long ago, I posted this:


Recent developments certainly haven’t helped in this regard, with firings of “new product” and Supercharger employees. Maybe there’s “method to the madness”, but the perception of loss of direction clearly doesn’t inspire confidence.

I’m even more discouraged now. Still not selling but not motivated to buy in the current environment.

Have you considered that the new product and supercharger teams may have lost direction and that's why swift and decisive action had to be taken instead of spending months trying to rectify it (if it was rectifiable).

Could this be similar to a building project where you've gotten to a stage where the walls are being built in the wrong place, using the wrong materials by the wrong workers and the project manager has been assuring you all along (while you've been busy on other stuff) that everything is going to plan and it'll all be finished on time to the agreed spec. but actually it's become clear that it's not gone the way you hoped and your budget is under a lot of pressure.

You can either carry on spending the agreed budget with them and hope they deliver in the end.
Or fire just the PM and hope a new one gets the problems fixed with the existing workers (if they are any good).
Or maybe just start with a new, smaller, more capable team who will have a fresh approach to the job with a new agreed budget.
Sometimes pausing construction, cutting your losses and starting fresh is the best approach.

Open questions (for anyone):
If SuC rollout/expansion (NOT maintenance) was paused for 3 months from now, what affect would that have?
Which inter-city routes in U.S. are not served by SuCs currently?
How many of the "500 " SuC employees were taken on in the last 6-12 months?
How has SuC usage grown as a result of opening them up to non-Teslas?
How many over-utilized SuC sites are there compared to under-utilized ones?
Is there a stockpile of SuC hardware somewhere or are they built only when new sites are being readied?
What is the backlog of parts required to build new SuC hardware?

If there's a report someone can link to which answers all of these questions, I think it may help

 

[H Mak]

I did get the emails, must be your account settings. I am registered to see (and fondle) the CT at Glasgow and Edinburgh at beginning of June. The SC team emailed me afterwards making it clear they are going to try and sell me a model 3 or Y

I've booked for the Manchester one. Not sure about the fondling though