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Just finished listening to the 3-part elon musk interview podcast from last week. A bit odd.

In first episode when Elon was asked about stock price, he wasn't exactly hiding his disbelief and you could pretty much hear his shrug. Definitely wasn't providing any support for the current stock price.

He seems to not really follow EV competitor output, which I found simultaneously awesome and worrying lol. Said he didn't really follow that sort of thing and was asking the interviewer what was going on in terms of competitor shipments and sales.

Why does that worry you? Elon's expertise is not in valuing equities, If anything this was great relief that he had a new answer maybe after some talks with board members etc.

When you're winning a race, one of the worst things you can do is constantly look behind you wondering where the competition is. You lose sight of where your headed and it could easily cost you first place. Keep your stride. Eyes on the finish line.
 
Just finished listening to the 3-part elon musk interview podcast from last week. A bit odd.

In first episode when Elon was asked about stock price, he wasn't exactly hiding his disbelief and you could pretty much hear his shrug. Definitely wasn't providing any support for the current stock price.

He seems to not really follow EV competitor output, which I found simultaneously awesome and worrying lol. Said he didn't really follow that sort of thing and was asking the interviewer what was going on in terms of competitor shipments and sales.

The more time I listen Elon I think the more I think he is playing this smart. He says he wants the competitors to step up and is willing to help etc but I think the reality is he is fiercely competitive. Look at his reactions to Taycan (Plaid) and Nikola (Semi Production). On prices and margins same thing. He says he wants cheaper cars and thin margins in the same week he drops the lower price Y likely be cause they can sell every high margin car they make.
 
I actually love Elon's little Twitter episode with Bernie. Good or bad, Elon got press and so did Bernie. You know who didnt get press? Trevor. That guy so desperately tried to bait him into some sort of confrontational exchange but all he got back was dead silence. You never want to give a nobody the satisfaction of riding your stature. Heres Elon spitting against Senator Sanders and what does Trevor get? A couple alleged Twitter trolls here and there. They say its the villains that make a superhero.
 
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ARK models are using robotaxi at $2.50/mile

upload_2020-7-3_14-7-16-png.560134

If you do the math you will see Sam is modeling that 1.5 hours per day as 31.8 miles/day averaging 21.2 mph. Slightly slower than I said previously.
 
I actually love Elon's little Twitter episode with Bernie. Good or bad, Elon got press and so did Bernie. You know who didn't get press? Trevor. That guy so desperately tried to bait him into some sort of confrontational exchange but all he got back was dead silence. You never want to give a nobody the satisfaction of riding your stature. Here's Elon spitting against Senator Sanders and what does Trevor get? A couple alleged Twitter trolls here and there. They say its the villains that make a superhero.

What I found interesting is that Robert Reich was pushing the screenshot of the 2015 LA Times FUD piece (conveniently, it cropped out the date of publication and the byline) long before Bernie Sanders got it. I assume someone within the Bernie team heard about the Reich play, or maybe Reich handed it off to Sanders people knowing Sanders has a louder megaphone. Either way, there is a concerted effort to trash Musk by focusing on his wealth but I doubt they are actually serious about taking on (taxing) Musk specifically, I suspect they know he's untouchable. But they want to further their agenda and they're using Musk to do so.

What is odd is where Reich and Sanders wind up in terms of the optics on climate change and the transition to EVs. The subsidies argument is every TSLAQ's, climate denier's, auto and truck OEM's, oil and gas lobbyist's, franchise auto dealer lobby's -- and Republican's -- original talking point with regard to trashing Tesla and the "threat" it poses, and, trashing Tesla means trashing EVs in general. Musk is no doubt also pissing off every defense contractor with the ongoing SpaceX wins and popularity. And StarLink is a colossal threat to the Big Telco ISPs. And Tesla Network is a giant threat to Uber/Lyft. And oil and gas is dying and will die quicker if the EV transition accelerates. Oh, and then there's the power utilities vs. Tesla Energy/Solar.

I don't believe for a moment Reich and Sanders came up with this idea on their own.

It also occurs to me that these guys know what is going to happen to Musk's wealth if/when the S&P puts Tesla in the 500.

Is someone who's going to get hurt by Tesla's insertion into the S&P 500 leaning on public figures to hurt Tesla? Put another way, who ISN'T pissed off and scared of Tesla right now?

The company must be doing something right given how much momentum the company has achieved, and where it stands in terms of market cap relative to every other OEM.

A good time to be long the stock, I think. Not advice.
 
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"cost" to owner and "cost" to customer are different obviously.... (also cost to Tesla if they have to build additional urban superchargers, have attendants to charge undriven cars, handling the actual network, etc)


Aand the link I posted did some math and found that the tesla owner would be losing money if they charged $1.11 a mile or less.

Other folks think $/1 mile will be hugely profitable with plenty of room to go cheaper.

Because largely everyone is guessing about the cost of a lot of things that don't even exist yet against demand numbers nobody really knows beyond existing taxi data.


Teslas replacing existing "real" taxis and rideshares in major dense urban cities is the easy case.

There should be no concerns with making that hugely profitable if/when they reach L5, even if it will require the costs I mentioned earlier to support it.

But the amount of demand for that isn't nearly enough in the US to require "millions" of robotaxis.... it'll actually require LESS of them than we have regular taxis since the RTs can run (barring charging/maintenance) 24/7 if they wish to, while most individual taxis or rideshare cars don't operate nearly that much- meaning one RT can replace multiple uber/lyft cars for example.... so even if total demand went UP the total number of CARS doing the job is likely lower for that case.


You won't need "millions" of robotaxis here unless/until you've got a working model where suburban, and even rural, folks- in areas of low population density- can use the service and have it be a legit replacement for owning a car. That's a much, much, heavier lift- and moreso the more rural/less dense you get on population.

As I mentioned- even NYC, arguably the best case in the entire nation for not owning a car and having LOTS of easy transit options, is home to almost 2 million privately owned cars ANYWAY.

So you not only have to get the folks in less dense places convinced they don't need a car- but also have a business case where an RT sitting around in an area they might only get a few calls a day makes any sense because there's just not that many folks around and many are still hanging on to a car/truck/minivan or whatever- or make a business case where folks will be ok waiting 20-30 minutes for an RT to arrive because they live someplace there's not usually enough demand for service.







No more than others from what I've seen.




I live in a place like that.

An RT would have a lot more trouble paying for itself where I live than it would 30 minutes away in a "real" city.

Many folks out here have a truck they actually use as a truck- (hauling loads of dirt or gravel- pulling a ZTR out of mud/ditches, moving equipment around on acres of land, etc)... an RT can't replace that.

Roundtrip for me to work is about 75 miles... at $1/mile it'd cost me $75 per day to ditch my car for a robotaxi, even if I never went anywhere else.... That's not a sane option at all.

So the tesla network wouldn't really serve those cases at the numbers bandied about.


Now absolutely- For folks who live someplace they only drive 10 miles a day anyway, and don't need to do "work" with the vehicle throughout the day- and the population density supports the business model- $1/mile might well be a gamechanger where they ditch owning a car

(though I've yet to see anything that could be called anything but a total guess on how many people that is).

But again that's mostly just replacing the existing lyft/uber/taxi drivers at lower cost... and since one RT can replace 3-5 of those cars, you'd need demand to increase like 10-20x before you approaching needing millions of RTs.

For many folks- they'll just keep owning cars though, especially the less dense a population you live in.


And even in dense areas- look at the NYC example. ~2 million people own private cars. In NYC. Where owning a private car makes 0 sense and there's TONS of cheap public transit options.

People really like owning a car. Often a specific car- which is why folks buy things more expensive than corollas.





For shorter distances? Probably. Not so much long haul. Not to mention to most folks their time has value so a 12 hour drive instead of a 1 hour flight doesn't make a ton of sense even if cost was the same (and it wouldn't be at that distance).

But I mean- I can do that TODAY on a bus. Most people don't.




Again- you can do that cheaper than flying on a bus (or even a train some of the time) right now

Most folks still drive though.

Why would that change?

If you read Mudede's posts about parking last year—one that discussed the fact that Seattle drivers spend 58 hours per year looking for parking, and another along the same lines titled, A Quarter of Seattle Drivers Are Searching for Parking

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/20...seattle-and-i-am-guilty-of-owning-one-of-them
 
Look at his reactions to Taycan (Plaid) and Nikola (Semi Production).
Both of those Tesla products were in planning YEARS before these wannabees opened their unworthy gaze.

Taycan was a reaction to Model S, not the other way around. And its a hard fail, since it fails to compete on the strengths of Model S, while being hamstrung on track performance by the need to not out-perform Porsche's ICE vehicles.

Nikola is a scam, wrapped in a lawsuit, inside a fraud.
 
I just saw on Tesla's website that Germans, Belgians and others can order the Y, and it says: "The start of production is planned for the beginning of 2021." The beginning of 2021, wow. Is that new?

I ordered my Y in Januari and got a call (in dutch) 2 months ago because the prepayment hadn’t been completed. When I asked they told me all European Y’s would be coming from giga Berlin. Don’t know how much these dutch sales people know but that was what they had been told
 
I ordered my Y in Januari and got a call (in dutch) 2 months ago because the prepayment hadn’t been completed. When I asked they told me all European Y’s would be coming from giga Berlin. Don’t know how much these dutch sales people know but that was what they had been told


85AFE4F6-1D17-47E3-BCAF-A3F2B27DFB60.jpeg

In the sales agreement they sent me on Jan 15 they also state that production will start beginning of 2021
 
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Again consolidating replies to reduce thread churn



Can you think of an example where transport costs for suburbanites is dropped 90% and it didn't lead to a fundamental shift in transport dynamics?

The car created the suburbs.

Suddenly people could live "outside the city" in much lower density housing- but still work there.

But you've got multiple levels of density that will all be very different cases for RTs- discussed a bit further down after addressing your other remarks-




Or the fact that people in RT's get hours of their day back? This is fundamentally reducing the cost to live for the vast majority of the population - it's like the rise of no-frills airlines or the invention of the subway.

But NYC has a subway already (in addition to TONS of cheap buses, plus less cheap taxis and ubers)

And yet still also has ~2 million privately owned cars. In a city where traffic averages less than 5mph.


Pretty clearly people are very very attached to owning cars, even when it's a dumb option.

So handwaiving "Everyone will just stop having cars and use RTs" doesn't appear to fit any human behavior we've seen so far.

Certainly SOME folks will.

About the density cases I mention:



1) Dense urban cities (best case)- Places like NYC.... here you'll get almost immediate (once folks are confident in safety anyway) replacement of virtually all taxis and rideshares almost overnight. This is cash cow territory big time.

One RT runnning 24/7 replacing 3-5 uber cars running different shifts (or 1 taxi cab running 3 shifts) is a no brainer in that environment.

And it's easy to set up some urban supercharger locations with say one attendent that charges cars an cleans em out paid by Tesla

But again- some folks will still keep cars- because they do TODAY even when they've got cheap subways that are usually faster than cars. Certainly there's be plenty of 0 car households here- but there already are.

This is a cash cow for Tesla... and the best case for someone buying a bunch of RTs and just running them AS RTs all day every day.... but you're talking hundreds of thousands of RTs in the US there- not millions.



2) Suburbs- There'll probably be reasonable use here... because there'll likely be "enough" Tesla owners to provide reasonable available most of the time near enough to where most of these folks live or are coming from.

The charging/cleaning depot issue is a little harder (or more expensive) because of loss of density/sprawl.... but probably still doable at a slightly lower profit margin than dense cities.

But probably most folks that live here are not getting rid of their cars.

Much more likely, as another poster mentioned- is many of these that are currently 2 or 3 car households might drop down to 1 car households. I suppose you might get a small % that go 0 car but not a ton.

That's not gonna lead to the 50% drop in new cars someone else suggested though- as those folks don't usually have 2-3 new cars- tends to be one newer and one older for most.

This is the best case for actual "regular" Tesla owners to let their cars run as R/Ts when they know they won't need them for hours.


3) Rural areas. Places where it's going to be a LOT less likely you can have an RT at your house in 5-10 minutes if you want one. Places where enough centralized cleaning/charging stations making economic sense will be tough too.

And where a lot of folks use vehicles for practical work/purposes an RT can't replace.

0 car households aren't coming in any numbers worth mentioning here. A tesla owner in such an area might choose to put his car on the network when they're not using it, but I expect demand would be relatively low outside of fri/sat nights when they'd do a ripping business driving folks to/from bars and such.


I just can't see how you think that provides a only moderate impact.

I hope I made a fair case for exactly that up above.

Impact will vary.

Pretty big in dense urban areas... moderate (but certainly significant depending on % of 2-3 car households it can drop 1)... and very scant in rural areas.



At the very least, econoboxes disappear for virtually everyone who doesn't need to store a lot of stuff in their vehicle. All the 2nd and 3rd household vehicles disappear where people are not using them to get to work. Parents stop buying dangerous vehicles for their kids.


I agree dropping 2-3 car households to 1 is significant... probably not 50% drop in new car sales significant though as you're not gonna get that impact everywhere.

As to econoboxes vanishing- now you get somewhat to the detailed financials.

The $2.50/mile cost ARK had? Probably someone struggling living in an apartment is gonna stick with a $5000 used Civic that he hopes to get another 50,000 miles out of.

Even at $1/mile cost to rider it might be a near thing for some econobox owners.

But I could absolutely see impact there being bigger or smaller based on where the real number comes out.





Thanks for the links- interesting stuff. Two notes from there.... one is it says about 10% of traffic in Seattle is rideshare cars just driving around waiting for a fare....(since, tying into the first link- there's no place for them to PARK and wait for one).... which suggests there's maybe a few too many of em.

Also suggests in such cities even robotaxis will need to keep moving when between fares- which kills that idea they'll just sit around not burning range between pickups.

Not an issue if Tesla sets up the urban charging/cleaning stations discussed- other than it means the notion they'll be running 12 hour shifts on a single charge seems even more an unrealistic fantasy.

Oh- and that last link I'd especially encourage others to read..... It's exactly what I'm talking about. A car owner who knows it doesn't really make "sense" for them to still keep their car. But they're keeping it anyway. Nothing about RTs would really change any of the justifications they give for doing so either.



Comparing private car ownership v public transport is a little unfair because you are getting nowhere near the same quality of product.


YMMV I suppose- but I usually find taking the subway in NYC the superior product... it's faster and easier.

I think you'd be insane to privately own a car there... and yet a couple million people still do even if it's not the rational choice.

Humans aren't always that rational. If they were a lot more expensive cars would be corollas instead.


See that link from Steve M up above this reply where one such owner explains why they're not giving up their car even though it'd make sense for them to do so.

I think some of the RT predictions expects a lot more math and rational behavior than people generally exhibit.


But private car ownership vs taxi is much closer and the economics are probably not that different. When RT comes around you get close (or better if your free time is valuable) to the same product for a far cheaper price.


For an econobox owner, sure... but the guy who is paying $400 a month in NYC to park his Porsche? Naah... sitting in the back of any taxi isn't the same product at all.

You're also going to have some rich folks in those places who stick to having a live driver for prestige reasons (or because the driver does other stuff for them), but only so much you can do about them.




The FSD talk is getting out of hands, no one is saying it would 100% happen in Elon time. But not modeling TN is like not modeling App Store in 2008, you can find good reason to dismiss it, but you would be very wrong.

I guess the difference is in 2008 the App store actually existed. Neither the TN nor FSD (in the RT sense) exist yet.

And most of the nuts and bolts details were already known in 2008 (cost to be a developer, the share of $ Apple would take, etc).

So in 2008 you could start FROM 2008 and come up with some reasonable fact based predictions of what it might do to Apple revenue and by extension share price.

I believe it will come sooner or later, I don’t know how much impact it will be beside it’s going to be huge. It would also have deeper impact in city planning, how and where people live etc.

But that's exactly the point being made here.

I agree it'll come sooner or later. But I don't "know" how much impact it'll have.

Neither do the several folks insisting THEY somehow do.



The impact of a service that charges $2.50 a mile will be different from one that charges $1 a mile.

The impact of a service whose COST (to operate) is 10 cents a mile will be different from one that costs 50 cents a mile.

The impact of a service that comes next year when most folks are still driving garbage ICE vehicles will be different from one that comes 10 years from now when a much larger % of cars are EVs.


Thus it's much more challenging to include TN/RT in predictions of near/mid term Tesla revenue- and impact on SP- as compared to the much more real-product-real-numbers perspective one would've had in 2008 regarding the app store.


(If you want a good parallel THERE- Tesla has floated the idea of their own app store as the fleet grows... that's a lot easier to model... and really the only technical detail that would need "solving" is storage as some apps would be difficult/impossible to run off a USB2 storage device which is the best speed in any current Tesla for external storage).




more of someone trying to push an agenda. My finger is hovering over ignore button.


Then your sense does not match what's been said so far by most in the discussion. Heck most folks seem to agree in general on most parts of it-

RTs are coming at some point.

Tesla's got the best path to having them (in more than a few geofenced cities anyway) of anybody making/selling cars today.

They're going to be a cash cow for the company when they arrive.

Mostly seems just differences of opinion in degree and specific numbers on points 1 and 3- and to what degree one can or can not figure them into thoughts on future SP moves... it's only a select few that are on the "anyone who isn't 100% optimistic of a perfect flawless execution future ahead of schedule is a FUDster" train




First lemme say thank you VERY much for providing a source.

Reading it I do note it says "In the 10 cities analyzed"

Which is interesting because they're all fairly large cities... so 27 mph seems faster than expected.

The explanation offered of why those speeds have gone UP is given as:

Your source said:
The explanation for this increase in speed? This may be a result of the locations of expanded coverage areas – longer trips that involve more use of highways for example, increasing the overall trip speed


Which seems to confirm what I suggested earlier... as these services get out of dense urban city centers into suburbs- average speed increases (as does trip length).

I expect if they had data for less dense cities (or specifically for suburban areas) they'd see even more of an increase in speeds.

And I expect they're going to keep a healthy charge buffer to insure the RT can always get back to "home" or an attended station with say 10 or 20% left on the battery for safety.

Ideally whomever over at Tesla is doing any planning for the Tesla Network regarding need for adding attended charging stations has even more solid data on this to figure out where they're going to make the most sense to start building, and how many they're likely to need in any given area.
 
Tesla charging is about to explode with the new announcement. : teslainvestorsclub

Businesses that want to attract Tesla drivers would pay $500 for the wifi wall charger and installation. ANY Tesla can plug into them and charge at the slower rate and the business will receive a check from Tesla to cover the costs of the electricity (that was charged to the driver by Tesla initially).

My understanding is that previously Tesla used to install destination chargers and the business used to pay for electricity.

If charging Tesla drivers a fair price for electricity includes recovering the installation cost over say 5-7 years, there is no net cost to the installing business.

I think it is mainly aimed at apartments blocks where a bank of chargers can be shared with each driver paying for the electricity they use.

But this may lead to more L2 chargers at airports and motels.
 
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I'm hoping we can manage to get through tomorrow at least without these endless idiotic claims of manipulation around Tesla not yet being included in the S&P 500.

For the ignorant among y'all, please read Rob Maurer's piece regarding this. The main take-aways are that the S&P committee will act when it feels like it and not before, and that the average delay from a company reporting earnings justifying inclusion to inclusion being announced is 43 days. If Tesla's inclusion happens in average time, that means in early September. Anything before that would be early.

Please stop with all the misdirected angst.
 


Not only is this an outstanding idea from Tesla in the first place- it's doubly great for owners not just for more charging options- but also for really good parking spots

Since these chargers need to be in range of the business wifi network they can't stick em at the far back of the lot like a lot of places seem to do.

(and I'd hope any business bothering to spend the $ would also be reasonably willing to enforce the Tesla-only parking for those spots too)
 
The more time I listen Elon I think the more I think he is playing this smart. He says he wants the competitors to step up and is willing to help etc but I think the reality is he is fiercely competitive. Look at his reactions to Taycan (Plaid) and Nikola (Semi Production). On prices and margins same thing. He says he wants cheaper cars and thin margins in the same week he drops the lower price Y likely be cause they can sell every high margin car they make.

The lower priced Y being dropped is temporary I think. Good way to bring people off the fence that were debating whether or not to wait for the cheaper Y, but also I think what is currently called the LR RWD will actually become the entry level cheap Y fairly quickly (After battery day reveals tech that enables practical extra long range Y & 3 models.)
 
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Tesla charging is about to explode with the new announcement. : teslainvestorsclub


My understanding is that previously Tesla used to install destination chargers and the business used to pay for electricity.

If charging Tesla drivers a fair price for electricity includes recovering the installation cost over say 5-7 years, there is no net cost to the installing business.

I think it is mainly aimed at apartments blocks where a bank of chargers can be shared with each driver paying for the electricity they use.

But this may lead to more L2 chargers at airports and motels.


great info @MC3OZ

Anyone have an official Tesla link detailing how this will work ? And if it’s offered in Canada ?
 
great info @MC3OZ

Anyone have an official Tesla link detailing how this will work ? And if it’s offered in Canada ?

The Reddit post includes a screen shot of (claimed) official correspondence for Tesla it says:-

Coming Soon....

Reimbursement - Opt-in to charge users fair price for electricity they use when charging.

It seems legit most Reddit users are taking it seriously, it makes logical sense..

The key words are "Coming Soon" and "fair price"...

I imagine it will start in the US, but Canada might be 2nd cap off the rank...

The correspondence was sent to someone who reached out to the Tesla charging team, of you operate a business in Canada it is worth doing that.

EDIT: One user on Reddit pointed out (and I agree) that this move is also an ice-breaker between Tesla Energy and the installing business. In many cases Solar and/or a Powerwall (or several) might be a logical next step.
 
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