Have you lost faith in Tesla?

[Dilly]

I do find the tesla vision related comment’s interesting. My experience is that I have far far far less issues with phantom braking with the latest software than I did with 2022.20.X.

Also auto high beam being significantly upgraded since then.

That said, I don’t know what the answer is because once you update, you can’t go back if you do have problems.

It does seem to be an inexplicable lottery!

 

[qwickshot]

The way I see is if you get loads of phantom breaking with radar, you’ve got nothing to lose really.

Might as well benefit from the other big improvements to the UI and auto high beam etc.

 

[Simavon]

I do find the tesla vision related comment’s interesting. My experience is that I have far far far less issues with phantom braking with the latest software than I did with 2022.20.X.

Also auto high beam being significantly upgraded since then.

That said, I don’t know what the answer is because once you update, you can’t go back if you do have problems.

It's a mixed bag for me. I think that phantom braking when passing an HGV is much reduced. But the overall quality of the cruise control is reduced. It's often quite erratic about accelerating (small acceleration, pause, accelerate a bit more etc), and doesn't react in a comfortable way to changes. And there are some serious phantom braking events. Shadows seem to be a problem and you can get a fairly hard deceleration. I do think the AHB has improved, but I'd say it's only brought it up to the standard our Prius had in 2016.

 

[DeejUK]

I used to rave and rave and rave about Tesla. At least one person got one as a result of my ravings. However, now whenever anyone asks I tell them 'don't get one' and tell them of my experiences. More than one person has decided against a Tesla as a result, and I know my experiences aren't new or novel.

This resonates strongly with me. Good (I think?) to know I'm not the only one, just a shame that it has to be this way.

 

[khyros]

Why do you think this?

The current hardware may not be enough to achieve full self driving but I believe Tesla will be the first to achieve full autonomy. The fact that it is taking Tesla so long to even get to where they currently are, proves how difficult of a task achieving full autonomous driving is.

I'm currently on a 2,000 mile road trip from Portland to San Diego and back, and have been very impressed with the latest FSD performance. It's actually incredibly useful, and I don't need to worry about navigating anymore. I use to struggle with navigating San Diego, but now I can let my brain turn further into mush while my car takes me to where I need to go. I still need to babysit it, but I don't need to look at or listen to navigation instructions anymore. I always kept the verbal instructions muted anyway.

I feel like FSD is on the cusp of being truly amazing. I think even if it takes five years from now, that Tesla will still beat the competition, to having an affordable consumer FSD solution.

Roads in the US are very different. All that training being done there will hardly apply in Europe. We'll need many years to get FSD up to working order in most if not all European countries.

 

[rincewind]

Roads in the US are very different. All that training being done there will hardly apply in Europe. We'll need many years to get FSD up to working order in most if not all European countries.

I live just outside Epping, and can't imagine FSD working on the B roads around me. As it is, lane departure and collision warning gives far too many false positives. Drives my missus nuts. She goes from 'I love how this car is so smooth' to 'bloody car, made me jump' within a five minute time span.

 

[pgkevet]

I live just outside Epping, and can't imagine FSD working on the B roads around me. As it is, lane departure and collision warning gives far too many false positives. Drives my missus nuts. She goes from 'I love how this car is so smooth' to 'bloody car, made me jump' within a five minute time span.

B roads, ha! 8 don't see it working on many A roads here. One classic bit is 30 limit through short village with 90 Deg bend, then back to national speed. Ahead 250 yards is a blind corner into a chicane. So car accelerates from 30 to 60, starts into the tight bend and hands back a 'difficult' situation.

 

[Whyone]

Driving the back lanes of the South Hams has my car in a continuous state of impending nervous breakdown!

 

[Pink Duck]

I’m not convinced that current FSD Beta could even get my car out of the driveway and on to the local private road beyond, let alone everything after that, particularly a multi-lane traffic-controlled circular interchange with faded line markings and dual-carriageway on-ramp featuring toucan/horse crossings.

 

[debrooker]

Swindon's magic roundabout

might be off on a tangent with this

 

[MrBadger]

Driving the back lanes of the South Hams has my car in a continuous state of impending nervous breakdown!

So that's very human like behaviour then

 

[DeejUK]

I haven't been on here in months, but just came back to ask for some advice about a repair that my MX needs.

I thought I'd just put a post script on this thread after having read the Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk. A lot of the things that I read in the book confirmed some of my thoughts about why I've gone off Tesla's products. My initial thoughts about Elon making bold proclamations in the hope that they'd become true, and to boost Tesla's share price, appear to have been accurate. The simplification they're pursuing to increase manufacturing scalability and profitability are fair enough, but don't align with my idea of good customer experience (I want turn stalks damnit! ). Some of the technical decisions as a result of Elon's micro-managing are not to my taste (removal of ultrasonics).

I developed more empathy for Mr. Musk as a result of reading the book, and doing so made more sense of Tesla's products and history.

I hope y'all are well, and are enjoying your cars. I think I'm going to drive my MX into the ground for all the time that free supercharging is honoured. We got £1,800 of free charging last year!

 

[Jason71]

I haven't been on here in months, but just came back to ask for some advice about a repair that my MX needs.

I thought I'd just put a post script on this thread after having read the Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk. A lot of the things that I read in the book confirmed some of my thoughts about why I've gone off Tesla's products. My initial thoughts about Elon making bold proclamations in the hope that they'd become true, and to boost Tesla's share price, appear to have been accurate. The simplification they're pursuing to increase manufacturing scalability and profitability are fair enough, but don't align with my idea of good customer experience (I want turn stalks damnit! ). Some of the technical decisions as a result of Elon's micro-managing are not to my taste (removal of ultrasonics).

I developed more empathy for Mr. Musk as a result of reading the book, and doing so made more sense of Tesla's products and history.

I hope y'all are well, and are enjoying your cars. I think I'm going to drive my MX into the ground for all the time that free supercharging is honoured. We got £1,800 of free charging last year!

How does the free £1800 of fuel stack up against the repair bills?

 

[DeejUK]

How does the free £1800 of fuel stack up against the repair bills?

Unfavourably!

 

[Sean.]

I was gonna say been there got the T-shirt but yeah.

@DeejUK Re the CV boot, you have other options rather than Tesla doing the repair. You will be paying a very high hourly rate at Tesla, even if another garage (like Cleevely) obtains the parts at non-discounted / trade rates.

 

[2020M3SR]

I'm a car enthusiast overall but my Forecasting is based on trends, historical caps, seasonal trends and other boring stuff, but there is some cross transferable skills that you can apply to anything really.

To do a proper forecast, I mean, a really good one, you're talking about a bill of at least a few £million for the market research alone, let alone, the data analysis of the market research followed by follow ups to come to a conclusion.

Big automakers will invest in such market research and the analysts. Mercedes have had a strategic rethink of market positioning lately, and there is absolutely no way this is via a board of directors sitting around, shooting the breeze and agreeing a long term road map.

No, the board will be presented with a wealth of market research, modelling, ranges, volume and revenue forecasts, full balance sheet projections to name just a few.

When you're making £billion decisions, you'll spend quite a few £m making sure you get it right.

But long story short, I wouldn't invest in any automaker at all right now. Price trends have reversed globally, used car prices are dropping fast globally and you can see discounts from everywhere.

Tesla are selling sub £50k MY from inventory right now, VW are selling ID4 for sub £35k today (drivethedeal.com) so the momentum shift in customer behaviour is very obvious. When momentum shifts to the negative, then previous forecasts likely become obselete, so then you look at trend/trajectory

I don't have market research data, brand scores by region, economic data by region or anything resembling proper forecasting tools, which leaves me with a back of a fag packet forecast.

Only Tesla can tell you what's in store for next year, and same for VW and everyone else. They'll keep their very expensive market research to themselves.

So armchair analysts like me make the best with the limited info we have. For me, that's splitting out deliveries and backlog by qrtr to get to customer orders. That's the true demand. Then you can see if you can spot a trend.

It's about looking for clues, like in the UK when MY was released and the 2022 Q1 UK allotment didn't even sell out and as boats were unloaded, people were still able to buy them. That was a red flag.

Outside of the limited data at your disposal, you can apply some assumption if you want. I didn't do that in my previous post but here is an example.


MY is a new model for EU. The pent up demand while people waited for the release was satisfied in 2022. Lots of moves from M3 to MY customers too. So the 'one offs' are already satisfied. Tesla don't have that benefit in 2023, so thats a headwind in terms of 'where is the growth coming from?'

Its a simple sum for 2023 volume:

2023 sales = new customers + retained customers

With the new model Y in 2022, that would have given Tesla a boost from new customers as well as M3 to MY retained customer boost. That won't dissappear 2023, but the initial new product bounce is behind us now.

Thats a key headwind. A possible, and quite likely boost, is that the market for EVs expand, because that's the trend. And while the 2022 new MY boost was great for Tesla, its not like customers will dissappear completely. It's just that there is a hard to quantify one off initial sales boost in the 2022 numbers which needs backed out. However, the expanding market for EVs might be enough to offset that.

Hard numbers for customer orders 2022:

Q1. 435k
Q2. 261k
Q3. 167k
Q4. 250k


So you put all that into the mix and its fair to say that none of the armchair analysts can give you something to hang your hat on as we're only scratching the surface really. I keep talking about Tesla but BMW, VW and the rest, it's a similar story with different numbers.

Based on my own knowledge and experience, if I had to invest in some companies right now in this economic climate, it would be Tesco, Sainsbury and Walmart. How boring is that?

People need to eat though

I've done my own personal review for the year ahead, and as a shareholder of Tesco and Sainsbury, hasn't worked out too bad for the past year. So I thought I would just share a little bit about what that is for the year ahead, hence my quote from this time last year.

I mentioned last January, I wouldn't invest in any automaker at all and the likes of VW, Merc, BMW haven't set the world alight, to put it mildly and anyone buying would have lost money, unless they happened to time the market in and out. Tesla (share price) actually did really well in 2023 as it had tanked hard prior to that so anyone that caught the bottom will have done very well. It pretty much trebled from its low at one point which is pretty crazy. I'm not a fan of that sort of volatility which is why I would personally avoid but fill your boots if you are into that sort of thing. In hindsight, of course I wish I had of bought Tesla at the bottom and the sold at the top but damn, the risk of getting it wrong frightens the life out of me!

I touched on used car prices dropping but I couldn't have imagined the used price of EV's dropping as much as they did. I expected used prices to drop but I didn't expect them to drop as hard as they did. ICE cars dropped significantly too but overall, it was fairly easy to predict as used prices were just bonkers and had risen way beyond where they typically would be, so that air had to come out at some point, which it did, to the surprise of nobody, really.

Anyway, back to the review of performance since this post last year (where I recommended Tesco, Sainsbury and Walmart lol):

Tesco: 225 to 294 today +31%
Sainsbury: 217 to 275 today +27%
Walmart: 142 to 165 today +16%
Tesla 123 to 184 today +50%

I wouldn't collect dividends, instead I reinvest them into increasing my share allocation so I haven't included dividends in the above, but Tesco is a good dividend play as well as a good performer

After review, I'm holding Tesco and I expect more upside with a price target of 350 (tempted to set a sell at 345)

I still like Sainsbury core business but not so keen on the Argos performance so I'm just going to hold. I'm not as confident for SP growth in comparison to Tesco so I'll probably wait for full year results and then decide

Walmart is an interesting one. The big chat in investing these days is automation, robotics and AI which could transform global productivity. On one hand, you could try and fish out a winner is these sectors but I look at it a little differently, from a de-risk point of view (I don't like risk, I just want to retire early!)

The key part of the above sentence isn't AI, robotics or automation, the key part is global productivity. I've no intention of trying to pick a winner like the internet bubble at the turn of the millenium, I like the idea of picking which companies could really see a benefit of reaping the rewards of technology like this. And that's where the likes of Walmart comes in. An incredibly solid, if somewhat boring company but its an industry that's extremely heavy on payroll as part of its cost base.

Logistics sector too stands to have an incredible productivity boost if this tech works out, so my eyes would turn to the likes of Fedex for example. I really like this sort of investment play. You can buy a solid company that stands to benefit greatly from emerging technology without actually having to pick the winner of who is going to actually deliver said technology. If the tech fails though, and doesn't deliver, you still own Fedex and Walmart, whos share price doesn't even depend on the success of the technology anyway. So you're kind of hedging your bets and its a relatively risk free way of getting a good bit of exposure to the potential of this emerging tech, without actually trying to pick the winner.

Microsoft completely transformed the offices of today via Microsoft office but it wasn't just Microsoft who benefited from the enormous productivity boost it created, anyone who got on board with it also seen huge gains. The banking sector for example, which was heavily labour intensive back then, would have made enormous cost savings. Microsoft became a behemoth, but they made the entire planet more productive, and its important to acknowledge that too.

So back to Tesla

I have a very rough price target of $40 for their car business and I'm not totally convinced on their AI or robotics so I couldn't possibly talk myself into investing in them. That would maybe change though if I seen something tangible but that's not clear. And when the CEO is trying to raise $6B for an AI play with xAI, its a straight up conflict of interest in my opinion. Maybe Mr Musk is hedging his bets with 2 different companies but I don't like the noise and uncertainty of what we're seeing right now.

So overall, Tesla is a 95% no chance buy for me right now. I'm still going to hold Tesco and if I sell Sainsbury, I might look at buying Walmart, Fedex and possibly look into what other companies stand to make a killing should this new revolution gain momentum. So rather than trying to pick a good horse, I think I'll just pick a good rider because a good rider will have the luxury of which horse he decides to ride

I know its a bit off topic post, sorry about that, but I hope you found it interesting

Anyone else disagree and think Tesla is going to win in AI/Automation/Robotics?

 

[boombap]

Anyone else disagree and think Tesla is going to win in AI/Automation/Robotics?

Been invested in Tesla for almost a decade since 2016, have sold some and added more through the peaks and troughs.
People were saying Tesla was going to $10 back then too.
Initial investment is up 10x.

The reason I’m still in is twofold:
1) cheaper model will sell exponentially more than the 3/Y, like those cars did compared to S/X. It’s a very simple affordability/demand/manufacturing volume calculation. Everyone else (except BYD) is way behind.

2) the car business is probably the least interesting part of the company, even though I still expect it to at least 5x from here in terms of volume.
The energy division is where the megabucks will be and it’s only just getting started, Powerwall will be some but Megapack is the big opportunity.
I’m not so interested in Solar, it’s all about the batteries and once Tesla has ramped their own cells and capability to manufacture them in volume, then it’s a giant money printer, as it’ll be the only auto manufacturer outside of China with the capability to do so.

Any moonshot that happens beyond that with FSD, robots etc. is just gravy.

Also not concerned with the separate AI company; this isn’t even the first time Elon has done this, he was a founding member and then then rage quit OpenAI, which he now regrets, so is starting over. Nothing to see here.

 

[GeorgeSymonds]

Mod coment: there is an investor sub forum on TMC where discussions on owning Tesla shares, and any rational for buying, holding or selling shares should be had.

I think this thread would be better served keeping it to buying or selling Tesla products in the U.K.