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Q2 earnings call discussion

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I'm on the Q2 earnings call now, and there are lots of interesting nuggets. For example, the top 5 non-Tesla trade-ins to buy a Model 3 are:
  1. Toyota Prius
  2. BMW 3 series
  3. Honda Accord
  4. Honda Civic
  5. Nissan Leaf
What interested Elon the most about this is that these are mostly trade-ups, i.e. people buying a more expensive car than they have now. It's not people switching to an EV version of a Mercedes or Audi (except for the BMW 3).

What else did you find interesting on the call?
 
I also found this extremely interesting and one of the critical items of the call. This means a few things.
  1. The obvious: people are upgrading a class up and spending more money than typical for a Tesla, thus expanding the market segment, at least for now.
  2. Proves the demand for electric cars. This is really critical as it implies those wanting EVs are not the ultra wealthy (as people like to point out) and the fact that people are not buying existing evs (regulation models) is more due to lack of market supply than demand. I think many on this forum realize that, but really drives that point home.
  3. There will most likely be a huge, as predicted, demand for the SR as it seems people believe in the brand and/or are really looking and understanding at the true TCO of an EV.
There are other reasons I think this is a big point, but those were the three I had the time to type out:)
 
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Up 9% after hours, the shorts are probably livid and loading their FUD cannons. :D

I found the size of the PG&E battery to be very interesting, I hope we get some stats from it when it's operational.

Yup

upload_2018-8-1_19-4-7.png
 
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Some of my takeaways:
  1. HW3 is a computer drop-in replacement for S/3/X (no need to change out cameras and sensors) and is 10X more powerful than HW2. This gives the AI team more room for growth.
  2. The AP team hinted on their immediate pipeline:
    1. on-ramp to off-ramp capability, including self-initiated auto-lane change.
    2. Also "more engaging" safety features and verbiage like "making AP not just about taking away the drudgery of driving, but about making it fun too."
    3. Elon chimed in with traffic light/stop sign recognition
    4. The ability to make hard right turns is live in a dev release, but not at a safety level good enough for public release.
  3. Some FSD features and firmware V9 is estimated for an "early access release" in 4 weeks and continued rollout by September. Sounded pretty promising over the call.
  4. Biggest bottleneck is Model 3 bodies, but sounds like they've mostly overcome the issues: Elon reported producing ~800 bodies in a 24 hour straight build session.
 
I'm on the Q2 earnings call now, and there are lots of interesting nuggets. For example, the top 5 non-Tesla trade-ins to buy a Model 3 are:
  1. Toyota Prius
  2. BMW 3 series
  3. Honda Accord
  4. Honda Civic
  5. Nissan Leaf
What interested Elon the most about this is that these are mostly trade-ups, i.e. people buying a more expensive car than they have now. It's not people switching to an EV version of a Mercedes or Audi (except for the BMW 3).

This is so important, it shows you there's demand for the Model 3 from all segments of the population. Before some suggested Model 3 would have issues with demand because they would run out of people able to afford $50k cars. But this shows you people are trading up big to get this s3xy Model 3.

I don't think people realize that this Prius, Accord, and Civic market is much bigger than the premium sedans market. For Tesla to be able to tap into that, it shows what they are doing is working, and people really want the Model 3's.
 
The biggest "news" I think - which is still TBD - is that they claim the latest numbers support Tesla not needing an outside capital infusion. They reiterated all upcoming CapEx will be "self-funded", although he admitted that the new Gigafactories would likely be funded by local debt, e.g. borrow from the Chinese and local EU governments. They also said upcoming debts due, like $900 M in early 2019, will be paid internally "and we'd still have a healthy positive net cash flow" even after paying off their debts.

The expectation they'd need a capital raise was the biggest issue pushed by the bear media such as CNBC.

If they can deliver positive cash flow by Q3, which Elon said he was "very confident" about, then we've passed the floor.
 
Any info on HW3?

That's the computer hardware across all models?

Yes, they had both leads for hardware and autopilot on the call. They've completed development on a "drop-in replacement computer [chip]" that is connector-compatible with all three models. It provides an order-of-magnitude (10x) more computing power with no other physical adjustments - largely by doing more processing on the chip than was previously done via computer simulation in software. It enables the computer to process full frame rates of all camera and sensor input in real-time. "I'm very excited by what Andrej [Karpathy] and his team will be able to do with this" said one of the leads on the call.
 
Any info on HW3? Curious when it’ll be added and if they’ll replace the units in Model 3’s that already have HW2?
They haven't said what the process will be for upgrade other than plug and play. Sometime next year. Current speculation is that they will only upgrade folks that purchased FSD. Which would explain why it is more expensive to upgrade after the fact now.
 
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I'm on the Q2 earnings call now, and there are lots of interesting nuggets. For example, the top 5 non-Tesla trade-ins to buy a Model 3 are:
  1. Toyota Prius
  2. BMW 3 series
  3. Honda Accord
  4. Honda Civic
  5. Nissan Leaf

(my first post)
I just picked up my Model 3 last weekend. I didn't do a trade-in, but I just got rid of my Nissan Leaf (lease expired last month) and kept my Prius plugin. So do I count for two of the five above? :) Most probably I counted as none of them since I didn't do a trade.
I did a 3 year lease on the Leaf with the expectation of the Model 3 release date way back then. I miscalculated by only a few weeks.

Mike
 
I'm on the Q2 earnings call now, and there are lots of interesting nuggets. For example, the top 5 non-Tesla trade-ins to buy a Model 3 are:
  1. Toyota Prius
  2. BMW 3 series
  3. Honda Accord
  4. Honda Civic
  5. Nissan Leaf
What interested Elon the most about this is that these are mostly trade-ups, i.e. people buying a more expensive car than they have now. It's not people switching to an EV version of a Mercedes or Audi (except for the BMW 3).

What else did you find interesting on the call?
I was one of those non trade-ins and I was driving a Honda Accord. My car before that was the Honda Civic. Both of those saved me a ton of money through the years for me to be able to afford my Model 3. :)
 
I was one of those non trade-ins and I was driving a Honda Accord. My car before that was the Honda Civic. Both of those saved me a ton of money through the years for me to be able to afford my Model 3. :)

That’s how it’s done.

While there is a Model X in the family I’m gonna say it belongs to the wife as she went from an Accord to Audi Q5.

MY MODEL 3 was proceeded by a 2007 Mazda 3. :)
 
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I'm on the Q2 earnings call now, and there are lots of interesting nuggets. For example, the top 5 non-Tesla trade-ins to buy a Model 3 are:
  1. Toyota Prius
  2. BMW 3 series
  3. Honda Accord
  4. Honda Civic
  5. Nissan Leaf
What interested Elon the most about this is that these are mostly trade-ups, i.e. people buying a more expensive car than they have now. It's not people switching to an EV version of a Mercedes or Audi (except for the BMW 3).

What else did you find interesting on the call?

This list wouldn't be much different than someone buying a 3 series/C Class/A4 (other than the Leaf). The majority of car buyers come from the same segment or upgrade from the lower segment. Prius/Camry/Accord will show up on many lists just because there are so many in circulation.
 
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For example, the top 5 non-Tesla trade-ins to buy a Model 3 are:
  1. Toyota Prius
I suspect that nearly all Prius owners are officially embarrassed by now to merely be driving a hybrid. In my ~7 years of LEAF ownership, I always felt badly when I pulled next to a Prius, since his owner still had to buy gasoline. Of course, Prius trumped LEAF in terms of use case flexibility. But now it must be really really painful to be a Prius owner, knowing that Model 3 completely annihilates any use case for owning a Prius. Can Toyota sell any Priuses anymore, particularly once M3SR is available to get the price on ~par with a Prius? Is Prius...dead?

To date, I've been enjoying watching BMW lose share nearly 1:1 as each Model 3 hits the road.
It's now going to be fun to watch Prius also lose volume; I hadn't expected it yet it makes perfect sense that hybrid owners are a relatively easy upsell into Model 3.
 
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I suspect that nearly all Prius owners are officially embarrassed by now to merely be driving a hybrid. In my ~7 years of LEAF ownership, I always felt badly when I pulled next to a Prius, since his owner still had to buy gasoline. Of course, Prius trumped LEAF in terms of use case flexibility. But now it must be really really painful to be a Prius owner, knowing that Model 3 completely annihilates any use case for owning a Prius. Can Toyota sell any Priuses anymore, particularly once M3SR is available to get the price on ~par with a Prius? Is Prius...dead?

To date, I've been enjoying watching BMW lose share nearly 1:1 as each Model 3 hits the road.
It's now going to be fun to watch Prius also lose volume; I hadn't expected it yet it makes perfect sense that hybrid owners are a relatively easy upsell into Model 3.
Almost as many M3 was sold in July as the number of Prime sold in 2018.

I'm surprised to see that the Volt is outselling the Bolt for 2018.

Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard
 
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Personally, I previously had a reasonably-well-optioned VW Jetta, but I traded it for a Civic for the year or two until my M3 was ready because I wanted my extra blood money from VW for Dieselgate while the gettin' was hot. ;)

I wonder how many others basically went for something that got good mileage and had good trade-in value while they waited for their 3.
 
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Almost as many M3 was sold in July as the number of Prime sold in 2018.

I'm surprised to see that the Volt is outselling the Bolt for 2018.

Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard
Thanks for that link; I hadn't looked at it in a while.
Can you imagine how astronomically expensive it is for all those other companies (the BMWs and Volvos of the world) to be putting a bunch of money into EV development, and only to sell a few dozen units each month?! It's super bizarre to me, and a great example of entrenched companies not being able to let go of the status quo in order to ensure their stronger future. Seriously, go hard or go home!
 
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