Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2015

[JRP3]

So...in my obsessive quest to analyze all available clues and information in advance of Thursday's "range anxiety" press conference I've decided to look back to December's Roadster 3.0 upgrade announcement ( http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/roadster-30 )

What we know:

* Tesla was able to boost range of Roadster to 400 miles with a 70kWh pack

Except they weren't able to do that. The Roadster will not get 400 miles of range, unless it's at 45 mph on the flat, maybe, and the range boost was not only from the battery pack but required aerodynamic modifications as well as rolling resistance modifications.

 

[sundaymorning]

After listening to Elon's comment on software update and Thursday's release being a small fraction of hardware, I'm inclined to think the news will disappoint. A few puts were bought as insurance.[/QUOTE]

I never thought I would see the day:wink: but I think that was a wise move. To balance my and your puts I bought some March 20 200s calls when we had the big dip today. This is my 'just in case in am wrong about the impact of the press conference' play.

I still have leaps for 2017, so long term wise I'm in a very good position. The few puts were bought with some extra cash as insurance, I wouldn't have done this if it weren't for oil doing so poorly. My concern with oil is poor macroeconomics and not Tesla related. The other reason was because memories of a dip after "D" announcement is still fresh in my mind, and I don't know if you guys remember this, but Tsla also dipped after the "supercharger" announcement. It also dipped after the highly anticipated "revolutionary financing". All these reasons mentioned may be trivial due to TSLA already being at a huge discount, so the opposite may occur. Especially if Elon gives some insight on "other things" during Q/A, he may even use this platform to set us up for the stationary storage announcement. Who knows.. whether those puts turn profitable short term or not, it'll be eventually sold to buy more Tsla

I can't believe this, you guys bought Puts?...no way!

I closed mine Monday morning at the open:biggrin:.

Glad to see you back, wise decision.

 

[jhm]

Stock closed down about $1 on average volume. It looks like buyers are resisting the temptation to run up the price in anticipation of the press conference Thursday. So whatever "hype" there may be in this forum, it is not translating into a price run up. I actually don't think there is much hype here. There's alot of curiosity and imagination, but stock expectations seem tempered.

 

[sundaymorning]

Stock closed down about $1 on average volume. It looks like buyers are resisting the temptation to run up the price in anticipation of the press conference Thursday. So whatever "hype" there may be in this forum, it is not translating into a price run up. I actually don't think there is much hype here. There's alot of curiosity and imagination, but stock expectations seem tempered.

I agree. I think members are just happy to hear something positive in an era of non-stop negative attacks. If we stick around with Tsla long enough, these periods will be trivial and a footnote in the company's history. I was hoping for a "D" like squeeze, but that air has been sucked out of the room for the time being.

 

[TSLAopt]

I agree. I think members are just happy to hear something positive in an era of non-stop negative attacks. If we stick around with Tsla long enough, these periods will be trivial and a footnote in the company's history. I was hoping for a "D" like squeeze, but that air has been sucked out of the room for the time being.

What if the announcement was that new generation batteries with more range will all be exchanged for our old ones (for the entire fleet) which tesla will recycle for energy storage solutions? Wishful thinking, but possible...would be a lot of shipping of big battery packs all over the world to and from Fremont.

 

[sundaymorning]

What if the announcement was that new generation batteries with more range will all be exchanged for our old ones (for the entire fleet) which tesla will recycle for energy storage solutions? Wishful thinking, but possible...would be a lot of shipping of big battery packs all over the world to and from Fremont.

That sounds too good to be true, but if anyone were to do it, it would be Tesla. TBH I would rather hear about lithium air improvements, setting us up for Gen3. Giving away free batteries can only hurt short term due to expendatures, I don't want to give bears more ammo.. if battery improvements are mentioned to get rid of range anxiety I think the stock can move up, but I'm not expecting any of that to drastically occur with current chemistry. What baffles me is Elon's statement about getting rid of range anxiety, that software update needs to live up to its name. Can Tsla engineers be that good? I understand that Tsla owners really have no anxiety over range, but the average Joe is still very uninformed. Perhaps his statement was directed towards model S owners, and not the average Joe?

edit: I should also add that expenditures were of some concern even with the roadster upgrade, and we only had 2,500 of those. Imagine 70-80k model S?

 

[dha]

What if the announcement was that new generation batteries with more range will all be exchanged for our old ones (for the entire fleet) which tesla will recycle for energy storage solutions? Wishful thinking, but possible...would be a lot of shipping of big battery packs all over the world to and from Fremont.

That would not be an OTA update. Elons tweet made it clear that Thursday's announcement would be related to an OTA update.

 

[anticitizen13.7]

My crawling display begs to differ with the idea that they are using only a small percentage of the computing power. The browser is basically unusably slow. The Nvidia chips they are using they sourced in what 2010?

Keep in mind that the Model S probably has many processors operating in different subsystems. It may very well be the case that some subsystems are underutilized, while the nVidia Tegra3 that has to handle the main 17" display is clearly getting maxed out in many usage cases.

The Tegra3 is ancient by today's standards. It's cores are basically the same ones used in the Apple A5 processor (iPhone 4S generation, 2011). Now that I think about it, Model S also has the same level of cellular connectivity as the 4S: a HSPA+ baseband chip. While I'm sure much of Model S has evolved, the center touch screen still seems stuck in the iPhone 4S era. Hopefully that'll be changed big time with the Model X.

Overall I'd say Elon's statements today probably have no influence on stock price. Everyone appears to be waiting for Thursday, and speculating madly in the meantime.

 

[yesla]

OK new guess for the OTA update.

Musk has installed some sort of "time travel" device in Model S, allowing drivers to "reset" to beginning of the day should the battery end up dead before arriving at destination. And the device requires an update to activate. Tomorrow never dies.

Do we live in a simulation? :scared:

 

[jhm]

OK new guess for the OTA update.

Musk has installed some sort of "time travel" device in Model S, allowing drivers to "reset" to beginning of the day should the battery end up dead before arriving at destination. And the device requires an update to activate. Tomorrow never dies.

Do we live in a simulation? :scared:

Sorry, but the time travel function requires a 1.21 jiggawatt charge to activate.

 

[austinEV]

[scene: Thursday press call]

Elon Musk: "Thank you members of the press for taking the time today. I am very excited to talk about something that can revolutionize the Model S fleet. My world class team of engineers has found a way to power a Model S purely off of internet speculation. Each character written on the internet generates 1mW/h of pure renewable energy. The entire fleet has been running all week on nothing but the fuel from my objectively tame tweets on Sunday!

In an unrelated note, in two weeks I am going to speak about an previously undisclosed dash bezel detail.

Thank you again for your time."

 

[maoing]

Meeting with Tesla Mgmt today

None of what I'm sharing is under NDA. This is all publicly available information.
The lion share of the discussion was on financials and projections.I did find it interesting that they are continuing to grow their customer support infrastructure by 50% this year (makes us happy).
R&D is still a major part of spending - primarily on X and model 3 (Model 3 timeframe is still 2017 and that date is important to keep their partners in the gigafactory happy)
X debuts in 3rd quarter - with the lionshare of deliveries in 4th
I get the feeling that X is going to be extremely innovative and that a lot of what they are learning while building X is getting put back into the S with the updates. The X delays seem to be about quality and we can't argue that. At one point it was mentioned that Elon will look at the prototype and the say it really should do this... and that may mean a huge overhaul of the production platform.
As a consumer and an innovator, I love this. As a project lead this would give me ulcers. As an investor, well, I suppose I'd take up meditation and assure myself the wait is worth it.

 

[TSLA_Hopeful]

I did some thinking and I think the announcement will be on two fronts.

1) The navigation system that plans the supercharger route.

2) An upgraded "range" mode that automatically regulates the speed a driver drives at as to maximize range. Imagine a computer factoring in all the inputs and calculating optimal driving speed, and all you have to do is steer.

 

[FANGO]

What if the announcement was that new generation batteries with more range will all be exchanged for our old ones (for the entire fleet) which tesla will recycle for energy storage solutions? Wishful thinking, but possible...would be a lot of shipping of big battery packs all over the world to and from Fremont.

What if Tesla has secretly invented a teleporter and they're going to give one to every customer and also the teleporter will come with a million dollars?

Can we please dial back the crazy a little? This isn't going to happen. Nor is a lot of the other crazy speculation here. This is the same stuff that caused the D pump and dump. Luckily it doesn't seem to be catching on, except with chowdry.

 

[jhm]

So we are learning that the Model S contains hardware waiting for activation through software upgrades. This explains four things:

1. It can properly be called a firmware upgrade because both hardware and software are engaged.

2. Tesla can dial up demand at a moment's notice simply by activating new functionality.

3. The hardware enhancements are rolled out secretly in advance of announcemence so as avoid obsescence of existing inventory. This would be more complex to orchestrate with dealers who might sit on inventory past obsolescence.

4. Resale value is preserved by loading cars up with hidden hardware years before activation. The cost of that hardware is essentially an option on future capability. CPO program may have an inherent advantage turning on new functionality at low cost.

 

[vgrinshpun]

So we are learning that the Model S contains hardware waiting for activation through software upgrades. This explains four things:

1. It can properly be called a firmware upgrade because both hardware and software are engaged.

2. Tesla can dial up demand at a moment's notice simply by activating new functionality.

3. The hardware enhancements are rolled out secretly in advance of announcemence so as avoid obsescence of existing inventory. This would be more complex to orchestrate with dealers who might sit on inventory past obsolescence.

4. Resale value is preserved by loading cars up with hidden hardware years before activation. The cost of that hardware is essentially an option on future capability. CPO program may have an inherent advantage turning on new functionality at low cost.

The other reason for #3 is that it might follow the natural cadence of the development, i.e. hardware is ready for deployment before the process of developing and validating the software is completed.

This is unique for auto industry and offers another little understood (outside of this Forum) competitive advantage to Tesla.

 

[vgrinshpun]

Stifel is out with a new note today. Digest from StreetInsider.com is included below (bold highlight is mine).

Stifel is out with commentary on Tesla Motors (Nasdaq: TSLA) following a conversation between CEO Elon Musk and NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) CEO Jen-Hsun Huang on Tuesday afternoon. The firm maintains a Buy rating at $400 price target on the stock.

Analyst James Albertine summarized the coversation and offered thoughts about what Tesla's press conference on Thursday (3/19) might be about: We believe TSLA's call this week will emphasize several advanced software updates, which can work to extend TSLA's competitive advantage in the arena of semi-autonomous vehicles, in our view. Based on our recent tour of TSLA's primary production facility, we believe TSLA has made significantly more progress as it relates to battery cell production and optimization (via unique to TSLA real world testing) than some investors recognize/are willing to give credit. Simply put, we are less concerned about new peer product announcements (many of which are due for production in 2017-2018) as we believe TSLA's core competitive advantage is part and parcel to its progress to date (should become more clear over time in the form of market share/sales ramp, we think).

Albertine also noted: TSLA is perhaps in a more advanced competitive position (as it relates to driverless technologies) than we realized. TSLA referred to driverless vehicles as essentially a “solved problem”; it seems the solution is more hardware based on the backbone of existing software that continues to “learn/adapt” to real-life situations. Our first takeaway, is that TSLA, unlike the majority of its OEM peers, can currently transmit semi-autonomous driving features via over-the-air updates to existing Model S vehicles (active cruise etc.). However, long-term TSLA believes a fully-autonomous driving solution will require both additional hardware (a more complete sensor suite) and software (further development of NVDA processors/adaptive learning), which can make a case for regulatory approval (the critical “bogey” as further product testing/discussion could span decades, in our view).

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on Tesla Motors click here. For more ratings news on Tesla Motors click here.

 

[uselesslogin]

Meeting with Tesla Mgmt today

Model 3 timeframe is still 2017 and that date is important to keep their partners in the gigafactory happy

Thanks Maoing. As a future Model III owner I also want to thank Panasonic and other Gigafactory partners in pushing Tesla into the merely awesome version and an on-time release. (OK on-time release is yet to be seen but I am far more hopeful it will be close after the comments on the last conference call and this.)

 

[surfside]

So we are learning that the Model S contains hardware waiting for activation through software upgrades.

are you referring to elon's comments at the GPU conference? because if you look at the context of those comments, he is talking about updates to the car's autonomous driving capabilities, which is clearly not the entire fleet. i love the notion that there is a ton the car's existing hardware can't do already, but i have a hard time believing he was referring to my 2+ year old model s.

i'm hoping your source re: hardware waiting for activation is somewhere else and i am wrong, just want to clarify...

surfside

 

[hockeythug]

Waiting for a webinar on european high yield and leveraged finance to start. Same holding music as the TSLA conference calls.