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

[mars_or_bust]

Do you think that US tax incentives to buy Hybrids is what accelerated this?

Partially yes - just more proof that the big three are dragging their feet regarding electrification.

But even without it I think Elon would be going for the jugular - this crisis due to high interest rates and thus low car sales are an ideal time to destroy the Detroit dinosauri. Mass produce excellent cars at prices so low that people will not want to buy any other car.

It seems to be an approach he decided on only in the last year.

Personally, I am very happy about it. It will likely keep the SP lower than it should for probably half a year or so (for the same reason Amazon SP was low for a long time employing similar tactics), but afterwards the SP should go much higher than it would otherwise.

Could be of course completely wrong...

 

[Knightshade]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1698211917444133258

They also now say drive itself almost anywhere with "minimal intervention" (ie level 2 at best) when in 2016 they said FSD would deliver drives itself almost anywhere with no driver intervention (l4 at least).

Upside is they should be able to recognize 100% of FSD revenue now immediately for new sales (and probably all post march 2019 sales)- at least in markets they've actually made city streets available (all of NA now, more supposedly coming soon)

Downside it's yet another nail in the coffin they're anywhere near delivering >L2.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Finally, one major reason I have been very long on TSLA is their very conservative accounting, open disclosures and conservative financial practices. TSLA is always open, even when people like us argue for an endless variety of imprudent practices. Sadly, TSLA has toyed with very long term loans, for example, but not enough to lose too much money and even then they don’t toy with reduced credit quality.

I'm interested to see how the longer loan tenors work out. If EVs truly are expected to have a longer useful life then it makes more sense to have the longer loan tenor match the longer asset tenor than it would lending long against an ICE vehicle. That said, I'm very glad they are only testing this in small volume until some performance history is built up against what is partially a new asset class and hope they are putting enough of a risk premium on the loans to compensate for the higher risk.

 

[SPadival]

The "Yup" heard round the world!!!! *

This is enormous good news.

As soon as "round the world" also includes Europe... we are WAITING for FSD! Mind I remind Elon that Switzerland and Norway have one of the highest Tesla-per-person-ratios in the world?

* World as in World Series (Major League Baseball)

Fixed it for ya.

 

[cab]

They also now say drive itself almost anywhere with "minimal intervention" (ie level 2 at best) when in 2016 they said FSD would deliver drives itself almost anywhere with no driver intervention (l4 at least).

Upside is they should be able to recognize 100% of FSD revenue now immediately for new sales (and probably all post march 2019 sales)- at least in markets they've actually made city streets available (all of NA now, more supposedly coming soon)

Downside it's yet another nail in the coffin they're anywhere near delivering >L2.

How does "minimal driver intervention" align with the "Robotaxi" concept (and Musk indicating all of the existing cars would increase in value dramatically as they became robotaxis)? I'm not trying to be contrarian, I legitimately want to know since the word "driver" alone seems to be the opposite of Robotaxi. One could argue that "minimal intervention" is just them being realistic as there will likely always be use cases where intervention is needed....they just need to be few enough that it isn't a big deal.
Maybe the term "driver" will end up somewhat similar to what Waymo does - i.e. "remote" intervention (like a drone pilot) of some kind. Of course, in some cases I think a physical person ends up showing up (saw that in a Cruise video recently). To further speculate, with enough of these on the road, it could be there is a whole team of Tesla employees divided into two groups:

1. The Remote "Drivers" - these remote people would be folks who intervene whenever the car indicates it needs assistance or a passenger does. Obviously, you would hope the number of "remote" drivers to cars would be relatively small.
2. The Local "Physical" Intervention Team - These would be folks the remote drivers would contact to come and physically deal with a Robotaxi when the issue could not be resolved remotely. Day one, this might be a decently sized team (i.e. costly), but as the software gets better and better, it would ideally shrink dramatically. Indeed, software improvements might first be targeted to any situation where a "physical" intervention was needed, and then situations where a remote intervention was needed... it will likely come down to severity/safety of issue and labor impact.

Heck, I probably just described what Waymo does!

 

[Krugerrand]

No statistics, but my experience was going from hybrid to PHEV, then to BEV. Cautious steps. Nevertheless, I bought my first Tesla after only a couple of years with a PHEV. Had to plug it in way too often to get much electric driving. My brother-in-law now drives the PHEV, and he plugs it in.

I believe you in terms of private use. However, quite a while back someone actually posted information about the usage of hybrids as company cars and essentially the companies took the tax breaks while the employees rarely plugged in.

 

[winfield100]

Some people are fine with it. You aren't. You have made it crystalline that this is how you feel and I fully support your right to your opinion.

Please, repeat yourself as many times as necessary to make you feel better about this. As you wrote, "It's the weekend," so posting additional echoes of your opinion at every instance of a conflicting post is perfectly acceptable if you find it soothing to do so.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”

some of us have over 64 years of muscle memory about stalks on the steering column and where the turn signal indicators are

It's bad enough that folk's rarely use turn signals, now they have an excuse not to.

 

[totoro722]

I believe you in terms of private use. However, quite a while back someone actually posted information about the usage of hybrids as company cars and essentially the companies took the tax breaks while the employees rarely plugged in.

I believe that. My neighbor across the street in California has a PHEV similar to what I had. She has no place to plug in.

 

[MP3Mike]

I think the statistics do show people use plug-in hybrids as EVs as much as possible. There may be fleet exceptions but most get the majority of miles, electric. One study I saw had the Volt traveling more EV miles than the all electric LEAF. Another study in 2017 shows more EV miles logged by Chevy Volts than the Tesla Model S. In March, EV Drivers in the U.S. crossed 11 Billion total e-miles driven since 2010. - driving 1 billion of those miles in the last three months.

I come at this being both a Volt owner and now a RAV4 Prime owner. https://avt.inl.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/EVProj/eVMTMay2014.pdf Chevy Volt Owners Drive More Electric Miles Than Nissan Leaf Drivers: Why?

The Volt was an exception, GM wanted to call it an EREV, Extended Range Electric Vehicle, since it has a large battery for a PHEV and could do a lot of people's daily driving all on battery.

 

[dhrivnak]

The Volt was an exception, GM wanted to call it an EREV, Extended Range Electric Vehicle, since it has a large battery for a PHEV and could do a lot of people's daily driving all on battery.

And the RAV4 Prime has even more plug-in range. For the tax credit you needed the 13kWh battery.

 

[Gigapress]

I think the point is that yoke and stalkless steering columns barely passed muster on the S and X; they will be a huge product defect in the 3 and the Y, especially in Europe, as they WILL be panned for the safety compromises they present . . . .

But, as Elon said, "All input is error" and he is NEVER wrong. /s

1) Do you have objective, non-speculative evidence that they are hazardous? If so, why would your estimate be more likely to be accurate than Tesla’s? They receive detailed data on every single crash that happens in the fleet and relentlessly optimize for safety well beyond basic regulatory requirements.

2) Do you have evidence that Elon personally drove this decision? I can remember Franz mentioning in an interview a few months ago that he likes it and the design team wanted fewer buttons.

 

[SPadival]

Ooof

https://twitter.com/x/status/1698426065385844828

 

[SarahsDad]

Upside is they should be able to recognize 100% of FSD revenue now immediately for new sales (and probably all post march 2019 sales)- at least in markets they've actually made city streets available (all of NA now, more supposedly coming soon)

From Tesla's Q2 10-Q:

"Deferred revenue is related to the access to our Full Self Driving (“FSD”) features and ongoing maintenance, internet connectivity, free Supercharging programs and over-the-air software updates primarily on automotive sales, which amounted to $3.17 billion and $2.91 billion as of June 30, 2023 and December 31, 2022, respectively.​

​

Deferred revenue is equivalent to the total transaction price allocated to the performance obligations that are unsatisfied, or partially unsatisfied, as of the balance sheet date. Revenue recognized from the deferred revenue balance as of December 31, 2022 and 2021 was $256 million and $121 million for six months ended June 30, 2023 and 2022, respectively. Of the total deferred revenue balance as of June 30, 2023, we expect to recognize $747 million of revenue in the next 12 months. The remaining balance will be recognized at the time of transfer of control of the product or over the performance period."​

So maybe a positive revenue bump for Q3?

 

[SunnylandY]

OT my neighbor was razzing me about a news report that a couple of Teslas burned after being submerged in salt floodwaters around the Tampa area. Super annoying.
Please excuse the interruption, I just needed to vent.

 

[Todd Burch]

OT my neighbor was razzing me about a news report that a couple of Teslas burned after being submerged in salt floodwaters around the Tampa area. Super annoying.
Please excuse the interruption, I just needed to vent.

And how would ICE cars have fared had THEY been submerged in salt water? (Hint...not well).

 

[SO16]

OT my neighbor was razzing me about a news report that a couple of Teslas burned after being submerged in salt floodwaters around the Tampa area. Super annoying.
Please excuse the interruption, I just needed to vent.

Just tell him: “thanks, I’ll try to avoid submerging my car in the ocean for extended periods.”

 

[insaneoctane]

Doesn't look like a real truck. Missing grease, smoke, bugs, and about 50 lights.
Plus, where's the CB antenna?

Don't forget that gnarly rat-a-tat diesel sound with the easily coaxed turbo symphony....

 

[MC3OZ]

I've tried to make some (hopefully) educated guesses about the Tesla Lithium refining process here:- Investor Engineering Discussions

Please correct any errors, or make comments in that thread.

 

[ls7corvete]

OT my neighbor was razzing me about a news report that a couple of Teslas burned after being submerged in salt floodwaters around the Tampa area. Super annoying.
Please excuse the interruption, I just needed to vent.

Mine did fine. I had to wade through knee deep water to get home. Obv, stopped driving before that.

OT/tldr. Tesla did just fine through Idalia.

 

[Bobfitz1]

I wonder if the 50% new parts indicates if the Hiland has a front and rear casting?

Tesla cars will soon drive themselves. That is why there has never been any HUD, never been any 360° camera view while parking, and stalks are disappearing. In a few years, steering wheel/yoke will be gone too and we won't care all those things are missing... we will be busy doing other stuff (like taking another swig of our beer) while we ride.

Meanwhile, car brands where you have to do the driving yourself will look like dangerous antiques.

"Manual driving" will still be do-able in a Tesla via the touchscreen - for cases when FSD can't get you out of some mess

While I wouldn't care to drive very long distances or hour plus twice a day commutes, why do folk who buy a vehicle that drives and accelerates like a dream, look forward to the day when no steering wheel makes driving and fully enjoying the experience impossible?