Wiki FAQ: TSLA Investor Discussions

[Wiki]

This is the FAQ for TMC's TSLA Investor Discussions threads.

The purpose of this set of forums is to discuss items and issues relevant to investment of TSLA stock, factors affecting the stock price and personal forecasts of quarterly earnings report results. The main thread is Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the 2019-2020 Investors' Roundtable.

Posting Behavior

Any TMC member in good standing can post a message to any forum without review. Each forum is moderated, with varying moderation standards applied to each subforum. It is expected that messages posted are in good taste, not offensive to others and relevant to the forum in some way. Personal attacks and innuendo (whether intended or not) will be dealt with swiftly. Language and images used should be safe for viewers to see in the work environment. Since this is an international forum, it is not uncommon for messages to contain English spelling or grammatical errors, and it is considered to be a personal attack to ridicule or correct them, so long as their meaning is clear.

The Main Thread

The main thread is a high volume thread, with up to hundreds of postings per day. Expectations are that anything posted there has direct relevance to investors and the investing process. If you have something to post there, it is expected that you review recent unread posts to make sure that someone else has not already posted the information. When posting an offsite link, always provide a description of what is at the link and justify why you are posting it. Don't just post an isolated link without your own comment or description. If multi-message argument or debate occurs on some tangential subject, the messages will likely be moved to another subforum. Some tolerance to off topic subjects is shown outside of US trading hours (evenings and weekends), but respect, dignity and good taste are still the standard. It is considered good practice to mark off topic postings with a line containing "OT" at or near the beginning of the message.

This is not a chat room. It is expected that each message should have content of interest and somehow contributes some value to an observing user, who is typically a TSLA investor. A "me too" message is of low interest. Posting your personal buy/sell strategy might be of interest (as long as it does not duplicate someone else's), but providing personal details including actual stock purchases, stock sales, how much you made, net worth and where you live is probably not a good idea.

Copyright

Do not copy substantial portions of an external article to your message. If you find an external item of interest, provide your version of a summary and link to the information. Don't just copy it.

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt ("FUD")

FUD is high volume on some external sites. Posting your own "original" FUD here, especially on the main thread, is a quick way to be sidelined, put on probation and/or see your message(s) deleted. Just posting a link to Seeking Alpha with no justification is a recipe for an immediate ban. It is somewhat acceptable to describe a "new" FUD issue at an external site as long as it is clearly labelled for information and/or discussion, but this is still a place where angels fear to tread. Please don't tell us that a Tesla pollutes more than an ICE car or that Tesla is going bankrupt or that there is a lack of demand for one or more Tesla Models. We've all heard it before. Yes we have. There is a special thread dedicated to discussion of rumors and FUD: Articles re Tesla—Fact or Fiction?

Moderation

Moderators potentially take action after an irrelevant or offensive message is posted.
A moderator can move, reassign or delete posts, and can put a posting user on probation, suspend posting activities ("ban") a user from posting for a short period of time or execute a permanent ban after one or more warnings. A person on probation will have each of their postings reviewed before being accepted to the forum. If you are new to the forum and want a quick start, the moderators (who have to read every post) have a special thread for copies of Moderators' Choice: Posts of Particular Merit


Glossary of Acronyms, Terms and Abbreviations

General

• AP - AutoPilot
• ASP - Average Sales Price
• AWD - All Wheel Drive
• BEV - Battery Electric Vehicle
  
• CT - Cybertruck
• EAP - Enhanced Auto Pilot
• EM - Elon Musk
• FSD - Full Self Driving
• FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
• GF0 - Original Fremont Factory
  
• GF1 - Gigafactory Nevada
• GF2 - Gigafactory New York
  
• GF3 - Gigafactory Shanghai
• GF4 - Gigafactory Berlin
• GF5 - Gigafactory Texas
• HW3 - FSD Hardware version 3.
• ICE - Internal Combustion Engine (or a vehicle that has one)
  
• LR - Long Range
• M3 - Model 3
• MCU - Media Control Unit
  
• MIB - Made in Berlin/Brandenburg Gigafactory
• MIC - Made in China (Shanghai) Gigafactory
• MIF - Made in Fremont
• MR - Medium Range
• MS - Model S
• MX - Model X
• MY - Model Y
• OT - Off Topic
  
• PHEV - Plug-in Hybrid Vehicle
• PUP - Performance Upgrade Package
• RORO - Roll On/Roll Off vehicle transportation vessel
• RWD - Rear Wheel Drive
• SC - See SvC, SpC
• SpC - Supercharger
  
• SR - Standard Range
• SvC - Service Center

Financial

• 10Q, 10K - Quarterly or Annual (resp.) financial filings
• CAGR - Compounded Annual Growth Rate
• CAPEX - Capital Expenditures
• COGS - Cost of Goods and Services/Cost of Goods Sold
  
• DTA - Deferred Tax Asset
• EBIT - Earnings before Interest and Taxes
• EBITDA - Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization
• EPS - Earnings per share
• GAAP - Generally Accepted Accounting Principles
• GM - Gross Margin (see Gen'l Motors below)
• OPEX - Operations Expenditures
• SBC - Stock Based Compensation
• SGA - Sales, General & Administrative Expenses

Stock and Corporate

• AH - After Hours
• ASP - Average Stock Price
• ATH - All Time High
• BMWYY, $BMWYY - Stock symbol for BMW
• CATL - Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (battery supplier)
• DDAIF, $DDAIF - Stock symbol for Daimler
• ER - Earnings Report, usually comes out after market hours on 3rd or 4th Wednesday of the quarter
• F, $F - Stock symbol for Ford
• FCAU, $FCAU - Stock symbol for Fiat Chrysler
• FOMO - Fear of Missing Out. Strategy of buying in late, after a recent increase in stock price
  
• GM, $GM - Stock symbol for General Motors. Take care reader won't be confused with "GM" above
• GS - Goldman Sachs
• HMC, $HMC - Stock symbol for Honda Motor Company
• HODL - Hold On for Dear Life, as in "Buy and HODL"
  
• IV - Implied Volatility
  
• LG, LG Chem - S. Korean battery manufacturer
• MM - Market Makers. Large players in the stock market, sometimes involved in price manipulation
• MMD - Mandatory Morning Dip. Dip in TSLA price most mornings due to manipulation
  
• MS - Morgan Stanley
• NSANY, $NSANY - Stock symbol for Nissan
• SP - Stock Price
  
• TM, $TM - Stock symbol for Toyota
• TSLA, $TSLA - Stock symbol for Tesla
• TSLAQ, $TSLAQ - Stock symbol used (derisively) by shorts and FUD generators, describing TSLA in the format used for a bankrupt company
• VIX - Volatility Index
  
• VWAGY, $VWAGY - Stock symbol for Volkswagen

Batteries, Battery Chemistries

• CTP - Cell To Pack
  
• LFP, LiFePO4 - Lithium Iron Phosphate
• NCA - Nickel Cobalt Aluminum (short for LiNiCoAIO2 cathode, graphite anode)
  
• NMC - Nickel Manganese Cobalt
• 18650 - first battery type - used in Model S and X - from size 18 mm x 65 mm
• 2170 - second battery type developed for Model 3, also used in MY - size 20 mm x 70 mm
• 4680 - third battery format intro at Battery Day - tabless design, expected at GF4 Berlin

As of March 2021, the following is a summary of chemistries that are in use or proposed to be in use

• NCA 18650 Panasonic (Japan) Fremont
  
• NCA 2170 Panasonic (Nevada) Fremont
• LFP Prismatic CATL Shanghai
  
• NCM 2170 LG Chem Shanghai
  
• (TBD) 4680 Tesla (Roadrunner) Berlin

As of March 2021, the batteries are or will be in use in the following vehicles

• Fremont S LR+/P 18650 NCA
  
• Fremont X LR+/P 18650 NCA
  
• Fremont 3SR/LR/P 2170 NCA
  
• Fremont Y LR/P 2170 NCA
• Shanghai 3 SR+ Prismatic CATL LFP
• Shanghai 3 LR/P LG Chem 2170 NCM
• Shanghai Y LR/P LG Chem 2170 NCM
• Berlin Y LR/P 4680 (TBD)

 

[ggr]

Mod: the moderators are very grateful to @XHabjab for putting this all together. Postings in this thread will be moderated, so if you have suggestions, try to post... they will get worked in to the first post if applicable. No other discussion in this thread.
-- ggr.

 

[Bet TSLA]

HW3 - Hardware version 3. Prerequisite MCU version for FSD.

Might want to fix this. AP hardware is something entirely different from the MCU.

 

[MABMAB]

I think there should be better tolerance of FUD. One should understand the other side, consider other arguments, they help sharpen or dull ones own opinion. There is a chance that at some point in time TSLA will not be a good investment. Not allowing FUD of any kind only makes this cult like. One should not be closed minded. A focus of such should be on the validity of the points raised much like a TSLA annual report discusses risks associate with the investment, why should such risks (aka FUD) not be openly discussed?

 

[XHabjab]

I think there should be better tolerance of FUD. One should understand the other side, consider other arguments, they help sharpen or dull ones own opinion. There is a chance that at some point in time TSLA will not be a good investment. Not allowing FUD of any kind only makes this cult like. One should not be closed minded. A focus of such should be on the validity of the points raised much like a TSLA annual report discusses risks associate with the investment, why should such risks (aka FUD) not be openly discussed?

I disagree for several reasons:

• The main thread is a high volume thread. Participants and moderators are continuously trying to reduce the volume of "stuff" you have to wade through to capture the meaningful things. There are restrictions on off-topic ("OT") posts for example, which may be informative, of broad interest, contain humor or similar things that might be considered of value. If you are a FUD proponent, don't feel singled out. There are lots of other things that are pushed out of the main thread.
• Having said that, FUD is the worst kind of cholesterol in the junk clogging the pipes. It is mostly rediculous, repetitive, persistent, negative, blatantly false, nonsensical and a general waste of time. We've all heard it before. There is very little interest in it, and that's not because we're all a bunch of fanbois.
• I think you'd be surprised that most of us here really do understand the "other side". Education or extra tolerance not required.
• Note that the FAQ above says to feel free to post a pointer to a "new" FUD thought at an external site. Just don't come up with a new way to say there's no demand or bankwuptcy imminent. The mods will decide, and most participants applaud this.
• The FAQ above also points to the approved thread for discussing FUD and it's close relatives.
• If you have a point to make that might not be to either Tesla's or TSLA's favor, then make it. It may or may not be considered FUD. The mods will handle it as needed. The style of your message will have a lot to do with how it is accepted. Just make your statement based on real facts, with references if possible and not with obviously cherry picked details or junk science. Your point needs to be relevant to the thread.