General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[sub]

California to become first U.S. state mandating solar on new homes – Orange County Register

"In addition to widespread adoption of solar power, the new provisions include a push to increase battery storage and increase reliance on electricity over natural gas. Among the highlights:

• The new solar mandate would apply to all houses, condos and apartment buildings up to three stories tall that obtain building permits after Jan. 1, 2020.
• Exceptions or alternatives will be allowed when homes are shaded by trees or buildings or when the home’s roofs are too small to accommodate solar panels.
• Solar arrays can be smaller because homes won’t have to achieve true net-zero status.
• Builders installing batteries like the Tesla Powerwall would get “compliance credits,” allowing them to further reduce the size of the solar system.
• Provisions will encourage more electric use or even all-electric homes to reduce natural gas consumption. State officials say improved technology is making electric water heaters increasingly cost-effective."

Vote on this is May 9th, expected to pass according to this article, but, I don't know how accurate that is.

Correct me if my math is wrong, I've had solar for 7 years, my math says it paid for itself last year completely. If you assume 15% return on your money in CA (I got a little better) but you can finance with the purchase of a newly built home at ~4-5%, you're getting paid to buy a home with solar due to interest rate arbitrage. Much easier to build the houses from the start with solar, I do not know if Tesla tile roof math will work but my guess is it's break even minimum.

 

[johnnyO]

Tesla's efforts to develop an AI chip have largely flown under the radar but I think it is a mistake to underestimate them. The chip has clearly been in development for more than two years (since Keller joined Tesla) and in December Elon spoke very concretely about the advantages of the Tesla AI chip:

Musk dodged a question from WIRED Thursday about the nature and exact function of the chip his team is working on. But he did say it had features that address shortcomings of graphics chips that limit their efficiency—perhaps a reference to Nvidia. Musk said Tesla engineers calculate their chip will match the performance of existing products while consuming a tenth of the power, and costing a tenth of the price. Musk Says Tesla Is Building Its Own Chip for Autopilot
​

Tesla and Elon have been dropping hints for some time about how serious Tesla is not just about AI software but hardware. In the Q3 ER letter, they said:

The Tesla AI team, which is fundamental to achieving full autonomy, strengthened dramatically this year, with a number of the world’s best AI engineers and researchers joining our company. We plan to continue building Tesla AI until it is one of the best teams in the world, not just in automotive, where Tesla is already the leader, but across all industries. This applies to both software and hardware. Tesla - Current Report​

And with Keller's departure this week, Tesla made clear that AI hardware is about to become even a bigger priority:

“Tesla is deeply committed to developing the most advanced silicon in the world and we plan to dramatically increase our investment in that area while building on the world-class leadership team we have in place.” Tesla’s VP of Autopilot and chip guru Jim Keller is leaving, another former Apple chip designer is tapped
​

While we don't know the exact circumstances around Keller's departure, as others have mentioned he has a habit of leaving once the main design challenges of a project have been overcome and leaves implementation to others. After he left AMD in September 2015 the first product with the new Zen chip architecture he designed came to market about a year and a half later (Feb. 2017).
Zen (microarchitecture) - Wikipedia

(FWIW, since Keller left AMD its share price has increased about 6X.)

Given Tesla, Keller and Elon's track records and Tesla's clear commitment to developing a killer AI chip IMO there is a high likelihood that Tesla will be coming out with a powerful AI chip that surprises the market in the foreseeable future, perhaps (speculatively) in the next 12-18 months. I think the market is currently valuing Tesla's AI silicon project at about zero.

I suspect Tesla is going to move beyond the silicon MobilEye delivered with AP1 and what nVidia has in their PX2. I would not be shocked to see something akin to the Google TPU being wrapped around something like the open-source RISC-V ISA and making far more effective use of the silicon real estate. SDC AI is going to need massive amounts of parallelism and redundancy to meet ASIL-D certifications. I bet Google is already there.

 

[jhm]

Taking a break from covering Tesla and its competitors due to personal reasons: Value Portfolio Announcement - ValueAnalyst | Seeking Alpha

TSLA remains to be my largest personal holding. I have never been more confident in Tesla's future.

On a completely unrelated note: ValueAnalyst on Twitter

I wish you all the best in your personal endeavors. Seek balance in all things, my friend.

 

[EnzoXYZ]

Media makes money from advertising, period.
WS banks make money from fees, period. Fees come from raising capital (if they are lucky) or from investors churning shares - either buying or selling, period. The WS analysts are paid clowns to get people into the circus of collecting fees.. Once you realize that - life becomes easier.

So the real clowns are the people they supposedly “serve.”

 

[sundaymorning]

California surpasses the U.K. to become worlds 5th largest economy.

California now world's 5th largest economy, surpassing UK

How is this relevant to Tesla investment? Guess which state is buying the car and the stock in quantity? Just a hunch.

 

[Curt Renz]

 

[shrspeedblade]

So the real clowns are the people they supposedly “serve.”

Check out the maintenance fees for many managed funds, many Wall Street firms are serving up something!

 

[sundaymorning]

Finally a few new competent analysts are speaking up.

 

[SteveG3]

Correct me if my math is wrong, I've had solar for 7 years, my math says it paid for itself last year completely. If you assume 15% return on your money in CA (I got a little better) but you can finance with the purchase of a newly built home at ~4-5%, you're getting paid to buy a home with solar due to interest rate arbitrage. Much easier to build the houses from the start with solar, I do not know if Tesla tile roof math will work but my guess is it's break even minimum.

sub, I didn’t follow 100% what you were describing here as 15% return on your money.

 

[Curt Renz]

Finally a few new competent analysts are speaking up.

Pierre Ferragu may be new to New Street Research, but he was quite highly regarded as a Sanford Bernstein analyst for ten years. Although he is apparently new to coverage of Tesla.

New Street Research bios: Your New Street Team – New Street Research
Farragu at TipRanks: https://www.tipranks.com/analysts/pierre-ferragu

 

[scaesare]

Elon Musk on Twitter

Schmidt's comments in that thread...

 

[ValueAnalyst]

Who wants candy?

Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[Zaxxon]

Elon Musk on Twitter

LOL. I mean, I'd sure like to retire this year. But...

 

[Iceman]

Who wants candy?

Elon Musk on Twitter

We have seen this before. He dont joke about this. He'll sell using boring company style online campaigns and he'll sell for millions. Tesla will be a huge customer with candy in all customer spaces. Candy bag with new cars.

I like

 

[AlMc]

Elon Musk on Twitter

LOL. I mean, I'd sure like to retire this year. But...

EM is certainly entitled to have a little fun/relax but I feel he may have started the with the Cino de Mayo partying a bit early.

Time to take a break from tweeting

 

[Zaxxon]

EM is certainly entitled to have a little fun/relax but I feel he may have started the with the Cino de Mayo partying a bit early.

Time to take a break from tweeting

 

[generalenthu]

This.

 

[HG Wells]

This.

DAM !
Banks are closed. I wonder how much I can borrow from a pawn shop.
Got to get it to the broker by market open monday !

Not advice. Invest only what you can afford.

 

[Starno]

Elon
Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[bhtooefr]

But I thought moats were lame.

Edit: Oh, I see the context in the other thread.