Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

[ev-enthusiast]

With all these off topic posts, jokes, trolling, responses about trolling, false information shared by some users, FUD and so on this thread finally became useless to me.
Using an ignore list helps a bit but is not sufficient.
IMO over the last couple of years this thread changed from a great resource to a mess.

 

[sdtslafan]

Burst of VINs issued for Model S over past 30 days. See Model S Deliver Tracker thread.

1609xx issued on 9/10
167745 issued on 10/11

Annualized rate over 81,000 for Model S alone.

This is great news!! More happy drivers on the road, more word of mouth, more new customers, etc.

Is this a positive feedback loop that will continue?

Let's see where things go!

 

[postpast]

They should just code the 'Post Ratings' on our Profile into the user section on the left panel of the screen.....

Before Autoblog was bought by AOL and went to hell, they had a big rpm gauge under each users name that showed their cumulative rating score. It was fantastic, yet in the five years since they got rid of it, I haven't seen it anywhere else. Great idea, and not sure why more forums don't use something similar.

 

[FluxCap]

With all these off topic posts, jokes, trolling, responses about trolling, false information shared by some users, FUD and so on this thread finally became useless to me.
Using an ignore list helps a bit but is not sufficient.
IMO over the last couple of years this thread changed from a great resource to a mess.

Sadly, I believe this was the goal of the trolls. So I'm hanging around a bit longer in spite of them.

 

[vgrinshpun]

I do not think neither your claim that you are data driven, nor that Oberklasse segment has been seeing declines over the years hold any water.

As seen from the data presented below, the Oberclasse segment sales (without Model S) were experiencing steady increase after the crash of 2008, all the way to 2014, where the trend was rather abruptly reversed. Since 2014 sales of Oberclasse segment are in decline which is matched exactly by the growth of the deliveries of Model S.

(the 2016 sales below are based on 9 month sales adjusted to yearly sales based on the 12 month / 9 month ratio of sales in 2015.)

The bottom line is that the Bloomberg chart, and a more comprehensive chart below are vividly demonstrating the obvious. Tesla is sucking air out of the Oberklasse segment in US. This means that stuffing another type of massage or aroma therapy into the coach propelled by technology from the last century is miserably failing at attracting people able and willing to spend $100k on an a sedan, all the while Model S growing their deliveries in US by about 50% per year, taking whopping 25% of the segment last year, on a way to increase it's share of the pie to a phenomenal 35% this year. The entry level luxury segment is next. The kill shot was not fired yet, but we are awfully close...

EDIT: Updated chart - fixed error for Model S 2016 (9 month) deliveries.

View attachment 198409

Here is an update to the Oberklasse sales in US:

1. I've discovered error in the underlying data and corrected total for 9 Month 2016 deliveries of Model S - it was overstated at 26,905. The corrected number is 21,246. With this correction Model S took over 30% of the Oberklasse sales.
   
   
2. My original spreadsheet included line for Maserati Quattroporte, but since data were available for 9 Month 2015 and 9 month 2016 only, the line was hidden. It is now shown in the spreadsheet below.
   
   
3. I added graphical representation for the point made up-thread: that losses in sales of the Oberklasse peers in 2015 and 2016 are almost exactly ofset by the Model S gains. The new chart shows Model S deliveries (Red), Oberklasse Peers Sales (Blue - Oberklasse less Model S), and total sales, i.e. Oberklasse plus Model S (Green).
   
   As seen from the Chart Oberklasse sales enjoyed increasing sales since 2002, peaking in 2007. The recession took quite a bite from the segment sales, which bottomed out in 2009 and were on the rise until 2014 when there was a pronounced reversal. The interesting thing is that combined Peers and Model S sales are reaching plateau at the same level as Oberklasse did in 2005 - 2007. Yet another indication of how much existence of Model S seem to deny sales to the Peers in Oberklasse segment. As you can see from the chart, this phenomenon unfolds now for three years, starting in 2013. This is pretty long period of time if one wants to claim pure coincidence.

P.S. I am fully aware of the importance of avoiding playing into the troll agenda of sabotaging and disrupting this Forum, flooding out intelligent and balanced discussions with irrelevant generalizations and grand standing. However, having done research of how Model S performs against the peers, I felt compelled to lay out the data, as discussion IMO was severely lacking without it.

 

[vgrinshpun]

It appears that a pretty significant piece of information from the original article in the October issue of the Manufacturing Leadership Journal did not make it into the Electrek digest.

"Tesla produced about 51,000 vehicles last year, and is currently at a run rate of about 2,400 vehicles per week."

At some point the Market should read the writing on the wall, one would think...

I've reached to Jeff Evanson, VP of Tesla IR to confirm the "current run rate of about 2,400 vehicles per week" mentioned in Manufacturing Leadership Journal. Here is his response:

There was a misprint in Manufacturing Leadership Journal. We have a recording of entire interview and current run rate was never discussed. Looking into where Manufacturing Leadership pulled this figure and asking them to correct their piece. Our Q3 guidance for peak production was 2,200 cars per week and 2,400 in Q4.

Jeff Evanson
Tesla IR

 

[RMan]

Without going into too much detail, I like I suspect many others enjoy the insights and knowledge posters provide on this thread. @Username exemplifies the type of poster that attempts to render this resource useless.
He/she is unable to self moderate (one post an hour should be more than enough to express opinions).
Isn't it time for the moderators to push the forever ignore button?
Although I expect we will see a @User added to the @value list of paid trolls.

 

[TNEVol]

I have been here a few years and rea almost every day but dont post much. I think the creation of the demand thread and the FUD articles served the purpose of getting those arguments off of this thread while still have a place for discussion. As i recall the moderators permitted the first few posts which had some news and then banishised the rest of the talk to a dedicated thread. We could have easily saved multiple pages by simply creating an "Autonomous in 5 years?" thread and move that discussion there. I also recall wholesale movements to "snippiness". I dont want to shut anyone up but when a topic turns into show me your engineering degree we have gone beyond informative.

EDIT excused the typos --- a couple of Glenlivets

 

[FluxCap]

I've reached to Jeff Evanson, VP of Tesla IR to confirm the "current run rate of about 2,400 vehicles per week" mentioned in Manufacturing Leadership Journal. Here is his response:

There was a misprint in Manufacturing Leadership Journal. We have a recording of entire interview and current run rate was never discussed. Looking into where Manufacturing Leadership pulled this figure and asking them to correct their piece. Our Q3 guidance for peak production was 2,200 cars per week and 2,400 in Q4.

Jeff Evanson
Tesla IR

Thank you Vlad, you are awesome.

 

[Mike Smith]

12.5B is a very conservative number. Esteemed Forbes contributor Bertel Schmitt estimates Tesla will need to spend $28B by 2020 on Tesla stores alone (give or take a few billions). On page 2:

Tesla's Billion-Dollar Problem: Who Will Sell And Service All Those Cars?

Thank you to the editors at Forbes for running this well-reasoned article.

 

[vgrinshpun]

Just to add a taste of how Model S performs against the peers in Switzerland. The significance of picking Switzerland is that it is neutral territory: it does not have automobile manufacturers, so the national pride does not skew sales, and also as far as I know does not have special incentives for BEVs. As seen from the table below Model S took a whopping 42% of the segment, handily beating sales of Audi 7/ Audi 8 / BMW 6-Series / BMW 7-Series (yes, combined) or all Oberklasse models from Audi and MB combined. Any demand discussions IMO has to be conducted with this perspective in mind.

auto-schweiz: Autoverkäufe nach Modellen

 

[JeffreyY]

Burst of VINs issued for Model S over past 30 days. See Model S Deliver Tracker thread.

1609xx issued on 9/10
167745 issued on 10/11

Annualized rate over 81,000 for Model S alone.

This is great news!! More happy drivers on the road, more word of mouth, more new customers, etc.

Is this a positive feedback loop that will continue?

Let's see where things go!

How do you check VIN #s?

 

[vgrinshpun]

Thank you Vlad, you are awesome.

 

[Xpert]

I've reached to Jeff Evanson, VP of Tesla IR to confirm the "current run rate of about 2,400 vehicles per week" mentioned in Manufacturing Leadership Journal. Here is his response:

There was a misprint in Manufacturing Leadership Journal. We have a recording of entire interview and current run rate was never discussed. Looking into where Manufacturing Leadership pulled this figure and asking them to correct their piece. Our Q3 guidance for peak production was 2,200 cars per week and 2,400 in Q4.

Jeff Evanson
Tesla IR

So they produced 25k cars in Q3, 2,200 peak, averaging 1,923 cars per week for 13 weeks. Q4 2400/wk peak, its safe to say average would be about 2,200/wk, with 1 week shutdown so total 12 weeks of production, 22k x 12 = 26,400 cars produced, plus 5.5k in transit, which will be more than enough to make target of 50k for 2nd half.

all of this will be clearer at ER. With TE ramp looming in Q4, TSLA at $200 is a gift.

 

[vgrinshpun]

So they produced 25k cars in Q3, 2,200 peak, averaging 1,923 cars per week for 13 weeks. Q4 2400/wk peak, its safe to say average would be about 2,200/wk, with 1 week shutdown so total 12 weeks of production, 22k x 12 = 26,400 cars produced, plus 5.5k in transit, which will be more than enough to make target of 50k for 2nd half.

all of this will be clearer at ER. With TE ramp looming in Q4, TSLA at $200 is a gift.

Historically, there are 12 production weeks in each quarter. In Q3 they produced 25,185 vehicles, or 2098 cars/week. This is consistent with their guidance, given that they started at roughly 2,000 per week and peaked at 2,200.

For the Q4, assuming that average run rate will be 2,300 cars per week for 11 weeks, the total production will be 25,300. Assuming that they will partially empty the transit pipeline similarly to Q4 2015, we can assume 27,500 - 28,000 deliveries in Q4.

Yes, TSLA at $200 is a gift.

 

[mmd]

and also as far as I know does not have special incentives for BEVs.
auto-schweiz: Autoverkäufe nach Modellen

It only takes few minutes to check the assumptions first before publishing. (1 CHF = 1.01245 USD)
Government incentives for plug-in electric vehicles - Wikipedia

Switzerland has a car import tax which is 4% of the purchase price (before adding the VAT) which is waived for electric cars.[140][141] Since Switzerland consists of 26 cantons which have their own legislature, additional incentives for plug-in electric vehicles differ between the respective regions. The current list can be downloaded from the website of the Swiss Department of Energy.[142]

There are no additional incentives on the actual purchase price, but some cantons offer road tax cuts. The Swiss road tax is a yearly recurring fixed amount calculated based on the specifications of the tax payers car. Currently, only the cantons Glarus (GL), Solothurn (SO), Ticino (TI) and Zurich (ZH) are completely waiving the tax for plug-in electric vehicles.

Calculation example for Zurich
Based on a usual car with the following specification:[143]

• Engine: 2 L
• Total weight: 1800 kg
• Energy efficiency: C
• Year: 2013

The resulting tax to be paid per year will be SFr 278. Hence when calculating with a life expectancy of 10 years, the car owner in this example might save around SFr 2,780 when buying a plug-in electric car.

However, since the tax on fossil fuels are relatively high in all European countries, including Switzerland, there is still an indirect, but quite strong incentive for car buyers to decide for energy efficient vehicles.

Based on the following examples:

• Fuel economy: 7.8 L/100 km (30 mpg-US) unleaded
• Driving habits: 15,000 km (9,300 mi) per year
• Fuel tax: SFr 0.7312 per liter (SFr 2.7679 per gallon)
• Carbon tax (since January 1, 2014): SFr 0.1414 per liter (SFr 0.5353 per gallon)

The resulting taxes on the burned fuels will be around SFr 1,021 per year, which results in SFr 10,210 over the car's 10-year lifetime.

 

[ggr]

(1) Depending on the amount of time someone has spent here, it may not be apparent if another person is trolling or not. A lot of people don't know much about Tesla and won't be able to easily spot arguments that have been debunked a million times already. The openly aggressive trolls (ones who flame, insult, and use abusive language) do get banned. Accounts dedicated to spreading FUD are just harder to monitor.

If they haven't been around long, they won't have had a chance to be ignored by very many people yet. So this is illogical. On the other hand, some trolls are so obvious one might choose to ignore them based on their first post... I did that once.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

Historically, there are 12 production weeks in each quarter. In Q3 they produced 25,185 vehicles, or 2098 cars/week. This is consistent with their guidance, given that they started at roughly 2,000 per week and peaked at 2,200.

For the Q4, assuming that average run rate will be 2,300 cars per week for 11 weeks, the total production will be 25,300. Assuming that they will partially empty the transit pipeline similarly to Q4 2015, we can assume 27,500 - 28,000 deliveries in Q4.

Yes, TSLA at $200 is a gift.

Although the math supports it, I think they won't try to drain the pipeline to reduce the end of Q4 stress and just hit 26,500. That would still yield 51k H2! Although your number would permit them to hit the 80k for 2016 goal.

 

[mmd]

12.5B is a very conservative number. Esteemed Forbes contributor Bertel Schmitt estimates Tesla will need to spend $28B by 2020 on Tesla stores alone (give or take a few billions). On page 2:

Tesla's Billion-Dollar Problem: Who Will Sell And Service All Those Cars?

Thank you to the editors at Forbes for running this well-reasoned article.

There is some truth to this. Service centers must be expanded and workers must be trained well before volume production and deliveries begin. Tesla can't wait till the last moment if it is planning to produce 100k-200k model 3s in 2nd half of 2017.

As an anecdote, one of my colleagues got a new fascia model S in August. Says, he mainly bought the car for AP. He is not quite happy with quality of trims, molding etc. and is frustrated that he can't even get into service. He is now trying to return it using the guarantee program, even though (I think) he will lose the sales tax on the car. So, yes, service centers must be established well before launching the cars.

 

[mrdoubleb]

@vgrinshpun thanks for the research and the charts. I think the main conclusion is that Tesla sales past beyond the nuisance phase and are now deeply hurting the Big 3 Germans who normally control that market. People often point to how profitable those companies still are despite Tesla - which may be true, but every Model S sold is a lost sale for them. So it's lost revenue/profit either way - and it's a loss in the most profitable segment.

At first Tesla was ignored as a garage firm, then they ridiculed it for lack of luxury/quality. The first year Tesla beat them it was all about "bit these are only early adopters, this is not sustainable". What's going to be their excuse now?

I can't wait to see the X cause the same damage to the luxury SUV market.