Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[lklundin]

That wouldn’t be the route, I don’t think. He’s saying it left going north out of Fremont, the investor day event is at HQ in Palo Alto. That’s on the other side of the bay, for those who don’t know.

Picking up someone who pays for a ride ?

 

[lklundin]

Nah. I expect world peace to come from cheap 24/7 solar and energy independence.

So still on Musk’s ‘to do’ list.

This transition would include a period of turmoil while a bunch of failed petro states come to grips with their new reality. To get an idea, one can take a look at Venezuela. Russia has always caused tragedy for its neighbors, so I hope they don't sink too far into chaos.

 

[lklundin]

"On several occasions something has fallen into one of the 16-foot mixers — which contain a blend of chemicals including volatile lithium — inside of the plant"​

If someone wrote "volatile lithium" in the context of lithium ion cell production, then that is highly misleading. While metallic lithium is highly reactive, that has nothing to do with the lithium salts that are being scraped up from salt flats and used in the battery cell production.

If Linette Lopez wrote the above it could just be due to her ignorance.

 

[ReflexFunds]

Note that Tesla will probably only honor that price to the original owner. So generic resale value won't go up - only "can you please upgrade FSD before we move the car to my account" would achieve that I think, which is possible with family and friends, but probably not with non-trusted strangers such as used car companies buying your used car.

This is true, but owners would be highly incentivised to upgrade to FSD prior to selling their car. If the upgrade adds significantly more to the resale value than the upgrade cost then it is an easy decision.

 

[Singer3000]

I find these

Two (slight) possibilities for Monday:

1) Tesla announces they'll be licensing Autopilot to other car makers (especially in China).

2) Tesla announces they're spinning off Autopilot
-GM raised $5B from Cruise spin off, valuing it at $14.6B. Imagine what Autopilot would be valued at.

It makes no sense to have Autopilot only available in 1-2% of cars. If it makes driving twice as safe then it's a safety feature that should be available in all cars. And Tesla would make a fortune.

Speaking as a shareholder, both of your proposals should be declined.

 

[Cobbler]

Shorts dug up a Form 144 filed April 15th by Gracias that he is going to sell another 50k shares over the next weeks.

Is that a fake? If so, that should be illegal?

If not, wtf?

 

[Tslynk67]

As usual you are getting confused between reverse-matter and anti-matter.

Doesn't-matter

 

[Prime_Number]

Some of the leaks in the past ~6 months would point in this direction, but I'd still put the probability somewhere around 30%.
.....
The true business model for Tesla to follow is Airbnb - but that requires true FSD. So I think Tesla will (or should) only start Tesla Network if they get permission to run an FSD based service in certain carefully selected areas with a real driver (the customer) picking up the car, but with FSD allowing the car to slowly go back to the owner or to the next pickup point, empty, without a "safety driver".

So I think the Tesla Network will be introduced the following way:
.....

Also let us not forget the cost of parking in large cities. On the low side it can cost $20 a day for parking ($5,000 a year for 250 business days). Try parking in Manhattan for less than $50 a day ($12,500 a year) !

Even being the safety driver of a car that picked you up and that you could drop off in front of your office would be worth thousands of dollars of SAVINGS per year.

 

[Tslynk67]

Interesting, but I have some reservations. There could be an annoyance factor with timid FSD.

The part I do like about timid driving is that you are pounding on the safety angle.

I think a case can be made for a safety augmented mobility service with a driver. Shadow mode becomes Safety Augmented Mode

I think initially it will very much err on the side of caution, but if one can sleep, or read, text, etc., then I expect the smoother driving experience is probably appreciated.

 

[Pras]

If you ever worry about TSLAQ folks...don’t, at least not for their smartness! Case in point, see the below.

 

[Tslynk67]

Elon really tried to change from ‚overpromise’ to ‚underpromise’ and ‚deliver‘, but that also didn’t help.

Why?

Because now we are changing to overexpect upfront every upcoming event and leave no space for deliver a surprise. Everything possible, impossible and alienlike feature is discussed and expected to come true, so there’s only more disappointment to unfold.

For the 22nd, I expect showing some FSD features like Navigat on Autopilot or Advanced Summon to be presented to investors, who also may test the system and ‚maybe‘ some teaching about the new HW3 with a bit of a timeline. Nothing more!

This leaves room for getting satisfied even if there is no suprise!

Please calm down everyone.

So what do we make of this?

green on Twitter

 

[jerry33]

I only trust Bruce Willis with the job of saving humanity from an asteroid.

Nah, that's Stellvia.

 

[jerry33]

The problem is what EM sometimes feels is super awesome and groundbreaking - the market dismisses as silly.

The iPad was dismissed as silly as well.

 

[Vitold]

So in the initial form (but I'm really just guessing here), I'd imagine something like this:

• Tesla Network could self-insure and the customer EULA could act as a binding contract to make the driver liable for damages that they cause. They'd display it prominently, there might even be a short voice message before the driver can operate the car, and voice recognition would require the driver to answer "yes, I agree", and maybe sign their name on the screen or something. They'd be required to have a valid driver's license, and they have to be legally able to drive at that moment. (True for 90%+ Americans.)
  
• Tesla Network might also require binding arbitration process before having to sue a customer for material damages. This usually makes it much cheaper and more reliable to recover small claims (which most traffic accidents really are).
  
• "Always On Sentry Mode" recordings would offer robust evidence that regular insurance companies almost never have - so even during a major accident or major damage they'd have objective evidence from several cameras, plus telemetry and an internal camera recording. This is why I think they rolled out Sentry Mode so quickly.
• Owners could be offered various convenience features, such as a new "loaner" car the moment there's a customer-induced accident with the car. I.e. it won't stop generating revenue just because a customer crashed the car.

So I think they can reduce their actual liabilities and legal costs immensely via these technological measures, plus they'd observe it during the prototype phase to see how much of an actual problem it is. The key observation is that video and audio evidence is both a powerful deterrent against abuse, and excellent evidence in any dispute resolution process.

Tesla also being a car company gives them unparalleled degrees of freedom to make this both profitable and convenient.

What you describe is a variant of Zipcar where car comes to you vs you going to the car. Efficiency would come from not needing expensive parking spots and much better utilization. Could be a solution for many cities.

I do not like the idea of safety driver at all. Car either drives itself and assumes all liability or passenger is the driver -no gray areas where liability is hard or impossible to define.

 

[SebastianR]

Any company that cares about their emissions should mandate/ prefer their employees to use a Tesla ride sharing network. I know my organization would encourage that since we offset all our carbon emissions and are pretty religious about eliminating single use plastics...

Many European companies install car chargers to support employees buying EVs.

As to how to roll this out? I like @Fact Checking and his proposal. You could even add a layer of demand lever / confidence building to this by making access to the network Tesla car owners only at first: that way as a owner I have the confidence the person using my car knows the car. It would also be awesome if my home profile is automatically applied to any car sharing car. So if I own a car in NYC, I can get a car off the Tesla Network in SFO, it would have seat, mirror, HVAC and music settings from my car the moment I open the door with my app on my phone.

And since this is software only, Tesla could draw people into this by making it is free to participate and use if your own car gets used the same time/miles you use.

How many folks would buy a car and add it to the network to never need a rental on the other side of “fly-over-land”?

 

[Vitold]

I find these

Speaking as a shareholder, both of your proposals should be declined.

I have read a rumor that Tesla licensed their nn accelerator to Samsung.

 

[jerry33]

Any company that cares about their emissions should mandate/ prefer their employees to use a Tesla ride sharing network. I know my organization would encourage that since we offset all our carbon emissions and are pretty religious about eliminating single use plastics...

Unfortunately, companies in the U.S. that have this philosophy are as rare as hen's teeth.

 

[bdy0627]

I haven't seen a good explanation why Fidelity and T Rowe sold so many shares in the past few quarters. I would guess those selling combined with shorts would have dropped the price more than it is now. Who is buying then? Retail investors like me probably added some shares, but how can this counter the big selling?

The huge amount of short covering over Q4 must have helped a lot. T Rowe Price sold about 3,259,209 shares over Q4 and Q1. Shares shorted dropped from 34,056,805 on 10/15/18 to 25,571,716 on 12/31/18. Seems like the short burn ended up really just keeping the stock from crashing down below the trading range when there was a huge amount of institutional selling. I don't know what offset the selling in Q1, must have been some institutional buying, particularly with shares shorted climbing back up to 32,740,424.

 

[jerry33]

I have read a rumor that Tesla licensed their nn accelerator to Samsung.

If that is true, there should be a massive profit. I rather doubt it is though.

 

[dgodfrey]

New Shortsville Times headline: Reasonableness pants factory to be opened in China soon

These would sell like hotcakes at the Tesla store alongside the short shorts.