2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[Value Ev]

There is no reason for me to respond to your garbage post with facts. It's very clear you are a troll, and not a particularly good one.

It's very easy to cherry pick statements to prove a point, when you ignore all context surrounding the events you refer to. The same myopic logic is used by climate skeptics (paid liars/shills) who attempt to use "data" from a non random moment in time to create doubt about scientific facts.

Yes, it is very easy for me to use facts that are provided by Tesla to prove a point as I did in my post.
There is no context to support your claim they didn't miss when they said "we are re-affirming 50k" in October 26th and missing that by 3k just 9 weeks later.

You are right, there is no reason for you to reply to my post with facts since you don't have any. The best you have is some blah blah about client deniers, shills, and lame excuses.

I didn't expect anything better from someone who drinks the koolaid rather than looking at the facts

 

[Waiting4M3]

This is Tesla.

Q. "Elon, you just blew out Q3 projections for deliveries and were cash flow positive - what next, trip to Disneyland?"

Elon. "Nope, we'll completely realign the factory to replace our industry leading AP1 product with the hardware that is so advanced it won't even be fully functional for a year....."

Q. "....errr....and in Q1?"

Elon. "In Q1 we make Model S & X Submersible!"

------

The sceptics and bears will say, "How can they build and deliver a million cars when they can't deliver 25,000?"

The believers and bulls (and likely Tesla) would say, "We can never dream of delivering a million cars unless we fail relentlessly on the way. Design, design, design....innovate, innovate, innovate....and yes....frustrate, frustrate, frustrate."

I believe, but wouldn't mind a couple of quarters of boring good #s prior to M3's "relentless failure" and the beginning of falling up to a million cars.

If you aim for 25K but only delivered 22K, then the obvious solution to deliver 1 million cars is to aim to deliver 1.14 million cars

 

[anticitizen13.7]

One way to look at the results is that Model S sales are essentially flat or slightly declining yoy. The ~26k increase in deliveries over 2015 is entirely because of the newly added Model X in 2016. This, after pulling all sorts of demand levers.

Given that the general trend in the automotive marketplace has been away from Sedans and towards Crossovers, this would hardly be a surprise. Sales of Honda CR-V are now in the neighborhood or will exceed sales of Honda Accord. Other car manufacturers are experiencing the same shift.

I don't read much into the "demand lever" debate. All automakers constantly do things to move metal, whether it is dealer cash on the hood, or adding Apple CarPlay to the multimedia system, or a more substantial mid-model refresh to a particular generation of car. They might not iterate hardware as rapidly as Tesla, but a company like Honda is a much bigger ship to manage.

 

[theschnell]

We're back to more sizzle than steak. Hopefully the stationary storage side of things can ramp up faster and easier than the automotive side. I think that is a definite possibility, but I have learned with Tesla that you believe it when you see it. They always do what they say they will do, but they are always behind schedule. M3 will at best deliver to all SpaceX and Tesla employs, and maybe a handful to customers this year. At best. I would love to be wrong but I will be utterly shocked if I am wrong.

 

[neroden]

Fidelity lowered interest rate for borrowing TSLA shares from 2.5% to 1.0%. This seem to indicate that they expect demand for borrowing shares for shorting to go down. There were 318k shares available at 8:04am, and within 4 minutes shares available to short went down by 17k, so so far short sellers seem to take the bait...

Something funny going on here. Short interest seems to keep going up (though we won't find out for sure until the next report) but the brokerages seem to have no trouble finding shares to lend any more. We aren't seeing the "securities lending fully paid" offers we were seeing before.

One theory: there are now more longs who are buying shares on margin. If you're buying on margin the brokerage can lend your shares out without paying you anything. If we previously had mostly longs who were buying fully-paid, and now lots of longs are buying on margin, we would see this result...

 

[techmaven]

We're back to more sizzle than steak. Hopefully the stationary storage side of things can ramp up faster and easier than the automotive side. I think that is a definite possibility, but I have learned with Tesla that you believe it when you see it. They always do what they say they will do, but they are always behind schedule. M3 will at best deliver to all SpaceX and Tesla employs, and maybe a handful to customers this year. At best. I would love to be wrong but I will be utterly shocked if I am wrong.

Steak is the production amount, especially that the production rate back to 2,200+ avg, which indicates that at times, the line ran much faster than that. This is setting up Q1 to be phenomenal quarter.

 

[neroden]

Unlikely. Discharge and charge rates are almost never symmetrical, and charging C rates are almost always much more limited than discharge rates. Also short term discharge C rates for acceleration are not sustainable over the lengths of time that would be seen during charging, so that comparison isn't valid even if charging C rates were equal. I'm quite sure the pack charge rates for existing Tesla vehicles are ultimately limited by the charging C rate at the cell level.

Well, we'll agree to disagree. I'm pretty sure they're not. Most of the upgrades in later models have been at pack level, and there's a reason for that.

 

[neroden]

For reference I'm working on a pack right now that has over 1000 individual cells in it, the cells can discharge at 110C... for about 1 second, 50C for about 10 seconds and 20C continuously if the starting temperature is reasonably low or they are actively cooled. These cells aren't supposed to be charged at more than 4C per the manufacturer but you could probably charge them faster for brief periods, at specific limited SOC values or at specific temperatures.

(Emphasis mine)
We already know that Tesla actively cools its cells. Capiche? The limiting factor isn't going to be the cells.

 

[drinkerofkoolaid]

Yes, it is very easy for me to use facts that are provided by Tesla to prove a point as I did in my post.
There is no context to support your claim they didn't miss when they said "we are re-affirming 50k" in October 26th and missing that by 3k just 9 weeks later.

You are right, there is no reason for you to reply to my post with facts since you don't have any. The best you have is some blah blah about client deniers, shills, and lame excuses.

I didn't expect anything better from someone who drinks the koolaid rather than looking at the facts

I chose my name as a quip against those who said Tesla would never sell 20,000 vehicles annually. I've been around from the beginning and pay close attention to facts. You should give it a try.


Should I remind you that all of the reasons production delays occurred and things were moved back were due to factors beyond Tesla's control or Tesla going out of its way to continually improve its vehicles?

Want me to remind you that some of the delays were due to suppliers that didn't believe Tesla was serious about its projections?

Perhaps I should remind you that Tesla is having to devote energy to fighting NADA and oil industry backed lawsuits, and is still best in class and was within 1.5% of meeting official guidance?

1.5% is basically a rounding error and doesn't take into production of the Powerwall, the number of 100KWH Model S and Model X sold, or any other factors?

A number of people on here suggested Tesla might have "missed" because people of people being away on vacation. Want to say this is an excuse instead of a valid reason?

I guarantee we'll find it more tomorrow. Go back under your bridge. Your trolling is not beneficial to the conversation.

Point proven.

 

[TrendTrader007]

Something funny going on here. Short interest seems to keep going up (though we won't find out for sure until the next report) but the brokerages seem to have no trouble finding shares to lend any more. We aren't seeing the "securities lending fully paid" offers we were seeing before.

One theory: there are now more longs who are buying shares on margin. If you're buying on margin the brokerage can lend your shares out without paying you anything. If we previously had mostly longs who were buying fully-paid, and now lots of longs are buying on margin, we would see this result...

i got shares on margin but Fidelity does not lend out my shares on margin, only the fully paid ones. i find it hard to believe that brokerages can lend out your shares on margin. seems highly unlikely to me

 

[neroden]

Actually, that would be REALLY good for Tesla since there's a group consisting of about 40% of the U.S. population that thinks Tesla is an "Obama Loser Car Company" because Romney said so in one of the 2012 POTUS debate. If Tesla was suddenly a Trump-loved company, a whole new market would open up.

Just for an example - my wife is in the medical field. Like me, she is very conservative/libertarian so we talk to a LOT of conservatives about Tesla. Last week, when she and some colleagues were discussing the wreck that Tesla AP predicted, an anesthesiologist spoke up and said that the problem with electric cars is that they catch on fire "all the time". My wife explained that Tesla cars had a much lower rate of fires than gas cars, and that Nissan nor Chevrolet had experienced any fires in their electric cars. He then said that if they were so great, the gov't wouldn't need to pay people to buy them. Again, my wife explained that actual facts show that GM and Ford receive FAR more subsidies than Tesla. His final comment got to the heart of the matter - "I will never buy an Obama car, so it's a moot point. Let's drop it."

We're talking about a guy that makes in excess of $250k a year - not some podunk trailer park trash.

Geez! This just shows that someone can make a lot of money and still be a total anti-intellectual closed-minded fool. Wow.

 

[neroden]

Missouri dealership problem: Electek

Since a portion of Kansas City is in Kansas and St. Louis borders Illinois, if Missouri remains obstinate Tesla could move those stores just a few miles to the neighboring states.

It would be wise to open those stores anyway just to point this out. Also, store in Toledo to make a point to the government of Michigan.

 

[neroden]

i got shares on margin but Fidelity does not lend out my shares on margin, only the fully paid ones. i find it hard to believe that brokerages can lend out your shares on margin. seems highly unlikely to me

Look it up. Read your actual margin agreement -- you have probably never done so. Part of the typical margin agreement is that the brokerage can lend your margined shares out at any time without telling you and without paying you. Though in fact it doesn't even need to be in the agreement -- why do you think margined shares *have* to be in street name (i.e. owned by the brokerage) and not in your name? One of the reasons is so that they can do this. Where do you think they *normally* get the supply of shares for short-sellers? In most stocks they never do "securities lending fully paid", they *just* use shares from people who buy stock on margin.

 

[Crowded Mind]

Faraday Future "production" prototype unveiling should start soon.

Live stream:

or www.ff.com

Edit: They have a reservation page up with two different reservation options.

Summary:

• "We are not a car company, we are a technology company reformatting the the future of mobility"
• Just like last year, bragging about the number of patents they have filed - 2,000
• Showing video of breaking ground on their factory. It was literally just a bunch of vehicles driving around in the desert, then a CGI of the exterior.
• Really focused on "creating more than a car", showed this concept map:
• 
• FF 91 is the name. $5k priority reservations.
• Two antennas and multiple modems for fiber like connectivity constantly
• Has lidar + AI. Facial recognition.
• 
• They aren't saying full self driving. "Driver valet" - specifically talking about parking itself.

• Certainly not a beautiful car.
  
• Demo of it finding a parking spot and parking itself. Was fairly smooth.
• FF91 has "fastest DC charging", 200kW capable. Peak charge rate 500mph.
• 130 kWh battery - 378 "EPA adjusted" range. Don't know exactly what the adjusted part means.
• 1050 peak HP
• 2.39 second 0-60
• 0.25 drag coefficient
• 5250mm length, 3200mm wheelbase, 2006mm width
• 151 cubic ft interior volume

 

[LargeHamCollider]

(Emphasis mine)
We already know that Tesla actively cools its cells. Capiche? The limiting factor isn't going to be the cells.

Cooling can only do so much, you're free to believe otherwise but I'm >99% sure that the cells themselves are the limiting factor a majority of the time. You could verify this yourself with a testing regime using equipment that costs under 1k, the equipment would be a little ghetto but it would work. Also the endless sphere forum is a good resource for real data on nca 18650s.

 

[TrendTrader007]

Look it up. Read your actual margin agreement -- you have probably never done so. Part of the typical margin agreement is that the brokerage can lend your margined shares out at any time without telling you and without paying you. Though in fact it doesn't even need to be in the agreement -- why do you think margined shares *have* to be in street name (i.e. owned by the brokerage) and not in your name? One of the reasons is so that they can do this. Where do you think they *normally* get the supply of shares for short-sellers? In most stocks they never do "securities lending fully paid", they *just* use shares from people who buy stock on margin.

alright you are probably right. thanks for the explanation

 

[neroden]

Two reasons why the Clean Power Plan is going to be implemented:
(1) Attempting to stop it is illegal and willl lead to lawsuits by states (it was developed under court order in Massachusetts v. EPA)
If Trump kills Clean Power Plan, legal action ensues, warn 15 states
(This is new news)

(2) Nearly all of the utilities are already on track to meet it without really trying, anyway.
Most states on track to meet EPA Clean Power Plan, but political & legal contention remains
CLEAN POWER PLAN: For many utilities, court action 'doesn't really change anything'

This is the sort of thing which I seriously doubt Trump would bother to pick a fight over. Get sued by 15 states trying to stop something which has proven so easy to comply with that most states are already in compliance? Why?

 

[neroden]

Cooling can only do so much, you're free to believe otherwise but I'm >99% sure that the cells themselves are the limiting factor a majority of the time. You could verify this yourself with a testing regime using equipment that costs under 1k, the equipment would be a little ghetto but it would work. Also the endless sphere forum is a good resource for real data on nca 18650s.

Why do you believe this? Your *own* information said otherwise. You outright stated that you were working with cells which could be discharged continuously at very high rates (20C) if they had sufficient cooling, on batteries which the manufacturer said were good for 4C.

Why are you so skeptical of the ability to charge Tesla's cells, whose development has been optimized for power, at not-really-very-high rates given sufficient cooling? The improvement in charging rate needed to get to a 5-minute fill (12C!) may be unreasonable, but to 15 minutes (4C)? It doesn't seem much higher than what we already know is possible.

 

[neroden]

Well they pulled many demand triggers so I hope it was "particularly strong." AP2.0, end of free Super Charging, cost increase in the U.K. etc. They are going to run out of magic demand bullets except for price decreases in the near future IMO.

Well, it would be nice if they brought the price back down to the original price. Price of a comparable Model S has gone UP since I bought mine in 2013, and up substantially faster than inflation. Would probably vastly increase the market for the car to bring that price bracket back down a little.

 

[neroden]

Minor production issue. More importantly,
It now takes longer to ship a car in the USA than to manufacture it .

Time to take an eye to shipping logistics.

Musk said that being able to charter ships rather than waiting for space on other ships would improve the overseas shipping logistics. Something similar should apply with domestic shipping logistics and *trains*.