Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2014

[Papafox]

As a pilot with decades of experience with autopilots, I can tell you that the autopilot has not ruined the joy of flying. Rather, it is a great device to turn on for the tedious portion of the flying (cruise) or to assist when the weather is really junk. I typically hand-flew jet airliners up to altitude for the pure joy of being connected to the machine, for feeling it be an extension of myself. I gave autoland less than 1% of my landings because that's the most fun part of all. When automobiles come out with suitable autopilots, the same sentiments will hold true. People will love to hand drive on the winding country roads and enjoy the acceleration as their foot pushes the pedal at highway onramps. We'll use our automobile autopilots during the same situations pilots currently use airplane autopilots: during the tedious times or when the automation can make the experience safer and more manageable. At least in the United States I don't see big brother government forbidding manual driving anytime soon any more than I expect the FAA to forbid manual flying. I look forward to autonomous driving for the tedious times and look forward to turning it off for the rest of the time.

 

[StephenM]

As a pilot with decades of experience with autopilots, I can tell you that the autopilot has not ruined the joy of flying. Rather, it is a great device to turn on for the tedious portion of the flying (cruise) or to assist when the weather is really junk. I typically hand-flew jet airliners up to altitude for the pure joy of being connected to the machine, for feeling it be an extension of myself. I gave autoland less than 1% of my landings because that's the most fun part of all. When automobiles come out with suitable autopilots, the same sentiments will hold true. People will love to hand drive on the winding country roads and enjoy the acceleration as their foot pushes the pedal at highway onramps. We'll use our automobile autopilots during the same situations pilots currently use airplane autopilots: during the tedious times or when the automation can make the experience safer and more manageable. At least in the United States I don't see big brother government forbidding manual driving anytime soon any more than I expect the FAA to forbid manual flying. I look forward to autonomous driving for the tedious times and look forward to turning it off for the rest of the time.

Great perspective Papafox! Thanks for that :smile:
It does seem very logical to me how you laid it out.

 

[gym7rjm]

I don't see an outright ban. But insurance companies very well could set lower premiums for self-driven vehicles. So if you want to drive your car yourself, you pay more in insurance for that privilige. Also if you do get into an accident with a self-driven vehicle, your legal opponent will have a ton of sensory data to document in court. So if may be quite rare for a self-driven car to be found at fault. So basically the liability you assume for the thrill of driving your own car may become too costly for most. Just a theory. Not sure I buy it or even like it.

I welcome the change, perhaps we can start to make a significant dent in the horrendous 30,000+ motor vehicle deaths we have each year in the US alone. Although the rate has been trending down over the past 25 years, 30,000 is unacceptably high IMO.

Anecdotally, I have mentioned to friends that self-driving cars are the future in our life time. Each time the response is tepid and they are skeptical a computer could drive better than themselves. It is very clear to me that computer algorithm will outperform human decision making skills, reaction times, or poor judgement. While the general public might take some time to warm up to the idea, I cannot wait until our personal and public transportation systems are more automated.

Furthermore, how much productivity is being lost each year sitting in a car in traffic or on a long haul trip?

 

[Derek Vinyard]

Tesla Motors expands its Hong Kong operation

Even if HK is mentioned here, I think the overall Asian potential could be tremendous.

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Tesla Motors expands its Hong Kong operation
2014-09-25 10:13:11.610 GMT


Sep. 25, 2014 (Xinhua) -- U.S. electric vehicle
manufacturer Tesla Motors said Thursday that it has expanded its
Hong Kong team to meet the company's long-term goal to provide
sustainable transportation in the city.
Tesla Motors set up its Hong Kong office in 2010 followed
by a service center in 2011. The Hong Kong team is expanding to
cope with a growing demand for electric vehicles in the city and
its workforce has increased from 10 to 50 people in the past
three years.
Vice President of Tesla's China operations Veronica Wu said
that the company's workforce will exceed 100 by the end of this
year. The company has recently hired a region director for Hong
Kong to head the rapidly expanding team.
Wu said geographically Hong Kong is a very small city, so
customers only need to recharge their cars once a week
basically, which makes their products especially appealing.
Tesla Motors's Model S sedan, with three different kinds of
capacity of batteries, is now available in Hong Kong.
"In addition, we appreciate the first registration tax
exemption for electric vehicles in the city, and that also
allows us to set a very competitive price in the market," she
said.
She said Hong Kong could potentially be the place to
showcase the success of electric vehicles to the rest of Asia.
The Hong Kong government is very open to the idea of electric
vehicles and very committed to supporting sustainability. "I
think that Hong Kong will be a reference city in Asia Pacific in
terms of electric vehicle use."
The California-based Tesla Motors was founded in 2003 by a
group of Silicon Valley engineers who wanted to prove that
electric vehicles could overcome recharging and low-speed
problems.

Copyright 2014 XINHUA NEWS AGENCY

By Janet Ong
Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Co. expects workforce to expand to
over 100 people by the end of the year, Veronica Wu, vice
president of Tesla’s China operations says, according to a
statement on the Hong Kong government website.
* Co. recently moved to office of over 10,000 sq foot in Tsuen
Wan; hired a country director for Hong Kong

 

[TD1]

Autonomously driven cars will be on the road in less than three years. Adam is right to be concerned.

Elon is right to be concerned.

There will simply be fewer cars to serve the same number of people.

I'm not going to comment on the conspiracy theory, but even Elon has changed his tune of partial autopilot vs. complete autopilot. Can't knock analysts for following his lead.

Scenario:
Google opens its own "Uber" with the SDC technology, they will design, engineer and manufacturer (contractor) a fleet of dedicated SDCs. Those cars will be designed completely different than consumer cars.
They will be robust und sturdy, the goal would be to minimize maintenance as much as possible. They wont have a fancy paint, or other luxery items that consumers usually pay topdollar for.
After all its just a "robot" that is extremly sturdy and uses only little electricity.
Its obvious that a SDC will use much less wh/m than a regular driver, the acceleration curve will always be the most optimal, the wear on the tires and breaks will be reduced as much ass possible, and this "smooth" driving will also reduce general wear in other components in the car. Those cars will be engineered to last well over a million of miles.

Now Google will use this fleet, with the goal to replace 90% of the current cars.
We are talking about Google here, those guys work on that technology because they want to disrupt the world and not because the want to offer a neat feature or replace the regular cabs.

To reach that goal they will price their SDC usage extremely competitive. They will also go after the daily commuters and optimise fleet usage to the peek hours.
Owning an own vehicle will become a luxury like owning an own Plane.

I could imagine that they will include an free "idle" time of lets say 50h/month where you can leave your stuff in the car and go do smth else while the car waits for you or just drives charging up.

We will be at the point where people ask them self why they should come up with a large amount of money like 20-30k when they can just subscribe to the Google Fleet for around 200$ flatrate.

In the end the market for Cars should shrink significantly.
The amount of cars produced per year will be extremely low. And the car will become a commodity since the Fleet managers are engineering and ordering the cars. The will act as rational as it gets.
The manufacturers will outbid each other to be able to supply to the Google Fleet.
There will be no room for the manufacturers to make money with usesless options, maintance, perfomance versions or other irrational items that regular consumer tend to buy.

Sure there will be people left that will keep driving their own car, but this will be consider "rich"



Think about the fact that with a Google Fleet, you can order a different car for a different purpose every time you drive.
-Alone to the city? get the two seater!
-With surfboard and friend to the beach? get the van!
-4 people to the city? get the sedan like
-300 miles trip to antoher city? get the longdistance van, with comfy seats that can be turned into a bed.
etc.

 

[erha]

Scenario:
Google opens its own "Uber" with the SDC technology, they will design, engineer and manufacturer (contractor) a fleet of dedicated SDCs. Those cars will be designed completely different than consumer cars.
They will be robust und sturdy, the goal would be to minimize maintenance as much as possible. They wont have a fancy paint, or other luxery items that consumers usually pay topdollar for.
After all its just a "robot" that is extremly sturdy and uses only little electricity.
Its obvious that a SDC will use much less wh/m than a regular driver, the acceleration curve will always be the most optimal, the wear on the tires and breaks will be reduced as much ass possible, and this "smooth" driving will also reduce general wear in other components in the car. Those cars will be engineered to last well over a million of miles.

Now Google will use this fleet, with the goal to replace 90% of the current cars.
We are talking about Google here, those guys work on that technology because they want to disrupt the world and not because the want to offer a neat feature or replace the regular cabs.

To reach that goal they will price their SDC usage extremely competitive. They will also go after the daily commuters and optimise fleet usage to the peek hours.
Owning an own vehicle will become a luxury like owning an own Plane.

I could imagine that they will include an free "idle" time of lets say 50h/month where you can leave your stuff in the car and go do smth else while the car waits for you or just drives charging up.

We will be at the point where people ask them self why they should come up with a large amount of money like 20-30k when they can just subscribe to the Google Fleet for around 200$ flatrate.

In the end the market for Cars should shrink significantly.
The amount of cars produced per year will be extremely low. And the car will become a commodity since the Fleet managers are engineering and ordering the cars. The will act as rational as it gets.
The manufacturers will outbid each other to be able to supply to the Google Fleet.
There will be no room for the manufacturers to make money with usesless options, maintance, perfomance versions or other irrational items that regular consumer tend to buy.

Sure there will be people left that will keep driving their own car, but this will be consider "rich"



Think about the fact that with a Google Fleet, you can order a different car for a different purpose every time you drive.
-Alone to the city? get the two seater!
-With surfboard and friend to the beach? get the van!
-4 people to the city? get the sedan like
-300 miles trip to antoher city? get the longdistance van, with comfy seats that can be turned into a bed.
etc.

I like this story, but in order for this to be the reality you need 100 % autonomous driving for every single city on the entire planet. I think that will still take quite a bit of time. More than enough for Tesla to become a huge automaker as well as the leading autonomous vehicle company.

 

[pGo]

Three different kinds of battery capacity in Hong Kong? Is Tesla introducing s40 there?

 

[Cattledog]

I like this story, but in order for this to be the reality you need 100 % autonomous driving for every single city on the entire planet. I think that will still take quite a bit of time. More than enough for Tesla to become a huge automaker as well as the leading autonomous vehicle company.

I would be interested to see what the algorithm churns out that computes the number of cars necessary to accomplish 100% autonomy if not a single person changed their patterns of living, working and playing. You's have to size the fleet for peak loads at rush hour, and then figure out all the drive times/distances so that cars could get to a new position in time for their next pick-up. You'd want to optimize the roads/signalization and where do all those suckers go to sleep? Are there massive distribution centers where they go and charge? Do you rent your garage to them at night (assuming it's not now a man cave).

I think some things appear clearer to me:

1. These cars will be niche players for years after they get rolled out, and it will be years before that happens (3-10?).
2. It would be way better if these cars were electric from a servicing/maintenance standpoint.
3. There will be a place and $ for the higher end version of this (Tesla's secret autonomous master plan anyone?)
4. I think the world will still need well over a billion of these personal transporters
5. Full or 99% autonomous driving is about a century away - technology is not, will and $ to implement is. A high percentage (>50%) might be half a century away. A good percentage (>10%) might be 25 years away.
6. First country to implement #5 - probably Norway!

 

[Derek Vinyard]

Three different kinds of battery capacity in Hong Kong? Is Tesla introducing s40 there?

I've stopped here for a second, too. Don't think they will re-activate the 40kwh. I think they rather mean the three batteries which are being offerred in terms of engine power (hp), thus 60, 85 and 85P.

 

[roblab]

Scenario:

Sure there will be people left that will keep driving their own car, but this will be consider "rich"

Think about the fact that with a Google Fleet, you can order a different car for a different purpose every time you drive.
-Alone to the city? get the two seater!
-With surfboard and friend to the beach? get the van!
-4 people to the city? get the sedan like
-300 miles trip to antoher city? get the longdistance van, with comfy seats that can be turned into a bed.
etc.

Who is going to keep these cars clean? What happens if your Auto Car drives up after just having delivered a drunk party to another address, and there's vomit all over inside -- or worse? What happens if one of the drunks was so bombed out that they are still in the car when it comes to get you? Or some wacko has decided to use your car to, Oh, I don't know. You can draw weird scenarios. People can be nasty dirty animals. They don't give a rip about who they share with. If no one is watching, anything goes.

That's why I want my own car. Autonomous is fine, but it's mine. No you can't eat in here, or drink. Wipe your feet.

 

[Twiddler]

I can envision a tiered service. At the low end, you would have 'anything goes' with vehicles that are sent in to a regional cleaning and inspection site periodically (say every night or every so many hours of service), but in general they would be no-frills vehicles, and you would be more likely to be dealing with other people's messes. I would imagine however that the interior of all of the vehicles could be monitored, to ensure that there are no 'lingerers' in between services. In the next tier, you could have the executive line - luxury vehicles that are inspected, cleaned, and re-stocked with refreshments in between each client.

 

[eepic]

It looks like the volume on Tesla is extremely light today at barely over 1mm after 40 minutes of trading, so the price movements are essentially the stock being dragged around with the NASDAQ movements (due to being in the NASDAQ-100 index).

 

[chickensevil]

Man the market is just all over the place this week... First housing market looks, bad... we drop. Housing market looks great! we rise... Now today unemployement seems to be on the rise and Durable Goods Orders has fallen causing a massive sell off again.

 

[twinklejet]

For those without access to the order book, i'm seeing at least 61,000 shares on a buy limit of $246...

 

[TD1]

Who is going to keep these cars clean? What happens if your Auto Car drives up after just having delivered a drunk party to another address, and there's vomit all over inside -- or worse? What happens if one of the drunks was so bombed out that they are still in the car when it comes to get you? Or some wacko has decided to use your car to, Oh, I don't know. You can draw weird scenarios. People can be nasty dirty animals. They don't give a rip about who they share with. If no one is watching, anything goes.

That's why I want my own car. Autonomous is fine, but it's mine. No you can't eat in here, or drink. Wipe your feet.

The Google Fleet service will keep it clean.
Its trivial to implement a camera in the interior that makes a picture before and after each drive and a software that quickly checks if the interior is clean and empty.
They could also use infrared cameras to see if the seats are wet.

In addition to that the cars will only be usable with real name Accounts. Therefore bad customers could be excluded from the service. That would encourage everyone to behave proper and keep the black sheep out of the system.
Since all the cars will be standardised Google could build cleaning robots that vacuum the cars every night or after incidents in the cars.

Again: We are talking about Google here and not GM. Im sure they will come up with technical and business model solutions that I cant even think of right now.

The banality of the arguments reminds me of the ICE vs. EV discussion with folks that arent informed about EVs.
For us Tesla fans, its crystal clear that EVs are the future and not ICE or Hydrogen.

I read and watched a lot of talks about SDCs and for me its crystal clear that as soon as an reliable Level 4 (fully autonomous, no need for a steering wheel) SDC comes to the market. From that point in time 10-15 years later 90% of the people will use a Fleet Cars.

1. Fewer Car Accidents: This is where it all begins. For all the sales pitches on convenience and novelty, the real benefit of driverless cars for drivers and society is the promise of drastically reducing the number of accidents causing death, injury and property loss. Estimates of those costs vary—one recent study pegged the financial cost to Americans at $871 billion a year, including “594 billion in societal harm from the loss of life and the pain and decreased quality of life because of injuries.”

17 Ways Driverless Cars Could Change America


I could also imagine that in about 20 years, the first countries or cities will start to ban Human driven cars.
Because its just to dangerous to tolerate Human driven cars.

 

[jhm]

While we're fantasizing about self-driven cars, it may be useful to think about which application and markets will be simplest and most profitable to enter first. It seems that individual people movers could be the most complex and least profitable application to consider. I would recommend we consider low hanging fruit among commercial fleets for shipping goods.

Here is one straightforward application Tesla could nail, an autonomous shipping platform. Basically expand the skateboard design to be large enough to put a shipping container on. So the wheels, battery pack, motors and computer would all be beneath the platform. A company wishing to make a delivery could simply call up an ASP, load a shipping container, place container on ASP. The ASP takes the container either to its destination or to an intermodal terminal where the container is placed on a train or ship. It is received at another intermodal terminal, where it is placed on another ASP and taken to its final destination. This would primarily eliminate the need for truck drivers, which might cost an employer $100,000 or more per year to insure, compensate, train and manage. Moreover, the ASP would share other advantages with other EVS such as low maintenance cost, low energy cost, and zero emmissions, particularly advantageous in congested urban areas. It would not be hard to work through the logistics of recharging ASPs (Supercharging at docking stations or battery swaps for long distance routes) and they would be available virtually 24/7. Basically, what Tesla needs is is to develop the self-driving technology and to drive down the cost of battery packs. Once the total cost to own and operate beats traditional trucking, there should be ample demand.

 

[jhm]

For those without access to the order book, i'm seeing at least 61,000 shares on a buy limit of $246...

Um, that would be me. Actually, I wonder if someone was trying to defend the price against attacks.

I've been hoping the price would drop down to $240. I've been accumulating at $250, but would like some short to make my day.

 

[Curt Renz]

...Actually, I wonder if someone was trying to defend the price against attacks...

During the final few hours today a bid to buy over 100,000 shares of TSLA at $246.50 remained unaccepted. So that level seems well defended.

Today TSLA moved down only slightly more than the NASDAQ and less than General Motors. There was no fresh TSLA news, just an ebb tide lowering all ships.

Regarding the overall market, today's sharp down move amid high trading volume for Rosh Hashanah and extremes in the Tick, TRIN and VIX are reminiscent of July 31. That may indicate a washout preceding a general rally commencing quite soon. Rosh Hashanah may have kept some potential buyers away today and could again tomorrow.

 

[bonaire]

The primary items at hand are: Report of August sales/imports out of China, record breaking US sales in Sept. and quarterly sales unit beat. But won't see any word on that unless they pre-announce before earnings, which they should consider doing next week if it is so. The trading today in TSLA was almost a mirror of the /ES (e-mini S&P futures) chart. I am a seller of puts (quasi-long). I don't want to have to short into their strike price so I do hope to see a rebound soon. I don't know if China has the strength alone to bring it up (especially after the recent GS report). But the sales are strong in the USA now with many service centers packed with cars and Fremont delivering dozens or so per day. TSLA is boyed by the continued algorithmic trading patterns and market strength would bring it up again. This does look like a summer swoon versus a correction. But the strength of the dollar is going to play against any value stocks for a little while. Weaker dollar, higher market and vice-versa. TSLA also has to look at dollar strength as a small problem with current foreign exchange upon deliveries to some other nations.

 

[maoing]

I doubt we'll have China August/Sept. sales number, we never got it. Instead we had imported Model S number for Q2, but nothing leaked for Q3 unfortunately. I saw in one of the reports (in Chinese), there are 8 Delivery Specialists in Beijing service center and each of them have ~140 customers to track after ordering to delivery. Right now China has 5 service centers in total, so I guess the ballpark outstanding order number is around 140x8x5= 5600. If we put conservative number 5000, so it's not too much away from GS's estimation 4000.