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

[Mars ☰mperor]

192+1021+5788 = 7001

 

[Silent Ludicrosy]

wild guess: the pickup truck floats (duck).

You might be on to something DUKW - Wikipedia

 

[pdq]

I presume here you are referring to Elon here? Elon followed both the letter and the spirit of the settlement contract and court order, if fact both he and Tesla did significantly more to comply than the settlement required.

Fact Checking: I respect your opinion, but that is simple your opinion.

The SEC also has an opinion and is in direct conflict with yours.

I have tremendous respect for Elon as he revolutionized the auto industry, for which I will give him sole credit, but he is a loose cannon.

 

[EVNow]

You might be on to something DUKW - Wikipedia

A tourist attraction in Seattle.

Ride the Ducks of Seattle

 

[lklundin]

Elon Musk on Twitter

"Amazing work by Tesla Delivery teams, especially in Europe & China! Most insane logistics challenge I’ve ever seen. Thanks also to many country & city officials for your help this weekend! Super appreciated."

Also with the discussion on TMC I was curious about the local week-end deliveries, so this Saturday afternoon I swung by the Munich Service Center. It is normally closed on week-ends and when I got there at 17:20 there was no one there other than two super-charging Model S 90 owners. One confirmed that the service center handles deliveries. Both charging stalls also had the CCS plug (and were sharing the power).

The site had 7 Model 3s, out of a total of about 40 Teslas. All but one of the Model 3s had plates on them, one had a nasty dent in the frunk lid, each would require an external cleaning prior to delivery.

While I was there chatting with the Model S owners an 8th Model 3 stopped by, on loan until Monday. (Driver said something to the effect of: "The're gonne have to pry this car from my cold, dead hands").

This all left me with the impression that Munich already has delivered what is going to be delivered within Q1.

To get some impression of the Model 3 ASP, I gave each of the Model 3s a look:
None had the white interior.
5 AWD, 3 grey, 2 black, 4 aeros
3 P (incl. the black loaner), one red, one grey, no aeros

PS. Price of P (over AWD): 10k8 €, price of non-aero (for non-P): 1k6 €, price of grey: 1k6 €, price of red: 2k6 €. Averaged over 8 cars, that adds 5375 € to the base AWD price, which is currently 53800 €.
PPS. For the above Model 3s, any EAP + FSD would be added to their ASP.

 

[dgodfrey]

There's a Bezos quote that I think applies to Tesla here. I can't recall the exact phrasing, but something along the lines of when Amazon first launched the products which were the beachheads on which they'd build AWS, Bezos thought that if they were lucky they'd have two years before the big boys started competing.

They got seven years. And now AWS is entrenched as the market leader, and Google and Microsoft are working to catch up.

Seven years just doesn't happen, and yet Tesla got an even longer head start. Forget the Roadster--it has been nearly seven years since the Model S began production, and we're only now starting to see actual competition--for the early Model S. No one is competing on the full Tesla feature set and product line, nor on Tesla's volume. And no one is going to in the immediate future.

Had the incumbents taken Tesla seriously when the Roadster shipped, and begun copying in earnest the Model S immediately, they'd have been in a far better position to crush the new guy, or at least be producing products on par with Tesla.

Now? Well, just look at AWS. Warren Buffett said of Bezos in 2017:

"[Bezos] thought he would have two years of runway. He got seven years. You do not want to give Jeff Bezos a seven-year head start."

The same applies to Elon Musk, JB, Jerome, et al.



It's almost as though there's a method to the madness...

Side note: any of you near local delivery centers, consider dropping off some care packages today. I've brought donuts, bagels, etc at prior quarter ends, and the teams generally seem to appreciate it a bunch. They're surely working harder than most of us this week...

The big difference though between Amazon competing with the entrenched retailers e.g. Walmart, Sears, Target, etc. and what's happening now in the automotive industry is that Walmart would not cannibalize their corporate base if they were to add online sales in addition to their brick and mortar. I think we can see that evidently became the case but,
As much as we see the parallels between the necessity to adapt for each industry,

• Retail shifting from big box stores to online
• Automotive shifting from ICEV's to BEV

the retail industry had much less at risk to adapt to the inevitable shift in consumer preferences. Yes, 7 years is a heck of a head start but it's a lot more difficult to change your entire product lineup, basically starting from scratch and possibly alienating your clientele than to open up new opportunities that have very little effect on your bread and butter, IMO. I'm not a retail expert however so it could be much more difficult than I'm thinking.

Excellent idea about the treats. Wish I was closer to a sales center as I would most certainly join in. It's probably a good thing I don't leave near one though as I would be dropping in all the time for no apparent reason other than to just smell the electrons, Rather than spend countless hours in front of my computer typing drivel but getting a better education than I ever paid for.

 

[2virgule5]

Also, regarding that RealVision video, it's worth noting that the show host Grant Williams, who views Tesla as a complete fraud, is a Managing Director of a Singapore hedge fund company called Vulpes. It would be interesting to find out if they are short TSLA.

Vulpes Investment Management - Homepage

Is there even the slightest doubt that's not the case?

 

[pnungesser]

I think Elon is subtly criticising the SEC. They're either a lame duck or an overbearing gorilla. Probably Friday night speculation as he unwinds.

Why does everyone keep talking about "lame" ducks. Those birds are anything other than lame.

 

[Lessmog]

Why does everyone keep talking about "lame" ducks. Those birds are anything other than lame.

I believe that expression has to do with an impotent President ...

<ducks>

 

[Lessmog]

Anyway, that's not why I looked in here now:

ValueAnalyst Retweetade
Vincent‏ @vincent13031925 13 minför 13 minuter sedan


This is the best picture ever!!

A Tesla Semi delivering Tesla

I love it and it’s happening $TSLA #Tesla #Semi

Edit 3 I meant to put the attribution to Vincent first and the pic last but got mixed up. App:s.

 

[SW2Fiddler]

Well, at least they are waiting for the Q1 numbers to be a miss before going public.

First rule of thumb-on-the-scale club:
“A win must never feel like a win”

Look at GM and their lost opportunities.

Saturn would have been an electric car lineup I’d have driven to Tennessee to sign up to own the first.

SL3 premium long range sedan, SS3 the affordable 200mi one, and later an SW3 ...
Saved Buick instead...

edit* y’all know that Franz designed the Saturn Sky?

 

[CorneliusXX]

Why does everyone keep talking about "lame" ducks. Those birds are anything other than lame.

It's a defense strategy of ducks. They pretend to be injured to attract predators away from their babies and then fly off once the predator is far enough away.

The political meaning has varied somewhat to mean that the current authority has little power

 

[RobStark]

Unlike most manufacturers, they're constantly fine-tuning their pricing structure to ensure low inventory levels, while they maintain production at maximum.

Most manufactures obscure constant changes in pricing with kickbacks, holdbacks, and prizes for reaching sales goals(this allows dealers to discount without squeezing margins). They also change prices publicly on a monthly basis with subsidized leasing and cash-on-hood to try to keep inventory at 60 day levels.

But sometimes putting lipstick on a pig won't move the bacon.

 

[Doggydogworld]

View attachment 391956 Anyway, that's not why I looked in here now:

ValueAnalyst Retweetade
Vincent‏ @vincent13031925 13 minför 13 minuter sedan


This is the best picture ever!!

A Tesla Semi delivering Tesla

I love it and it’s happening $TSLA #Tesla #Semi

Edit 3 I meant to put the attribution to Vincent first and the pic last but got mixed up. App:s.

Next SeekingAlpha article: "Tesla Semi Can Only Haul 4 cars vs. 8-10 for Typical Semi"

 

[SW2Fiddler]

I think Elon is subtly criticising the SEC. They're either a lame duck or an overbearing gorilla. Probably Friday night speculation as he unwinds.

I got duck duck.

He about to go all Spruce Goose on sumbody.

 

[Doggydogworld]

Seems totally unrealistic to me too:

• S/X is still build to order to a large degree, so how would Tesla end up with 7k extra units?
• 7,000 units would also tie up about $700m of (much needed) working capital.
• There's no ships underway AFAIK, and new S/X orders have May and later delivery times. I.e. most S/X production spoken for.

And he's one of the more bullish analysts.

In addition, they stopped making the most popular variant (75D) and said they cut production hours at the factory.

Ship pics showed few S/Xs, and the stalkers haven't shown us lots filling up with S/X. Unless Musk bored a new tunnel in secret, where would that 7k of new inventory hide?

 

[humbaba]

GMs system will only work on well mapped roads.

True, but for ride sharing that isn't such a big deal -- Tesla's approach is IMO better and is certainly more generalized. But, in principle, it would work out just fine for them.

 

[mrdoubleb]

New from Reddit:
Hundreds of cars end of quarterly delivery push | Tesla North Houston

 

[humbaba]

Is there any doubt that a car with a computer that can run complex nurel nets couldn't un encrypt the needed data?

Apple encrypts their iphones... Your key should be on your cell phone and encrypted there... Your encrypted phone data should be backed up to the cloud...

If you can get into your phone you can get into your car data... If you lose your phone you can get a new one and restore your data...

It would be very difficult then for a 3rd party to access your private data from off a wrecked Tesla.

[edit: somehow I missed your confusion that running neural networks had anything to do with encryption. For the record, it doesn't. As to a 3rd party accessing data from a wrecked Tesla -- I never once said it was easy (or that it was hard). Its not even clear to me what data is stored (the blurb seemed to be including USB thumb drives which is a separate, however related, issue. But it is an issue. At least to those that give a fig about privacy.]

You misunderstand how Apple's secure enclave works -- in particular, secrets are not stored in cloud backups. This is complicated by Apple's iCloud keychain which does store secrets (encrypted) in the cloud. If you can restore the data from the cloud, why do you think someone else cannot? (Rhetorical, the answer is long and off topic)

But: does every Tesla owner use an iPhone? Really, this is all implementation detail and it quickly gets away from you. Particularly in discussions like this one. While it is entirely possible for Tesla to design and implement a reasonably secure solution, this discussion exemplifies the original impetus of my posting: it isn't as easy as saying "use encryption." It also isn't as easy as saying, "Just tie it to Apple's ecosystem."

Using Apple to store secrets is really a minor part of the problem: I already outlined the significant issues in a general way. While implementation details will certainly bite the unwary, trying to suss out implementation in a forum like this is simply not going to succeed. Nor does it need to. As I already pointed out, when Tesla did have a security issue (the problem with their first remote unlock implementation) they addressed it.

What I'm trying to say is:

• sure, encryption is likely to be a part of any solution
• but there is no easy fix
• you have to look at the whole issue
• problem is too large and involved to resolve via casual discussion

 

[humbaba]

Can you define very difficult and which private data. The average user can't easily access the data but there are people that can access all the cars data, video, phone records, every item a dealer can get an even more. That info can be accessed remotely as long as the 12V system is up and running and the supporting devices work. However on an ICE it is not that easy to get deep data as it resides in the ABS computer and other areas and there is no general bus to access it. Toyota guards this data vigorously. In fact access to Tesla data is going on all the time in the salvage business. This is a major privacy concern when you have not cleared personal data but a more important one when there is an accident and litigation. On an ICE this extraction would require a subpoena. However on a Tesla with the car on it can be accessed very easily. As far as I know Tesla will not release this yet they also use it for their own benefit to clear themselves, I am not clear if they need an owner permission to do this.

Why do you think it would require a subpoena for a Toyota and not a Tesla?
What is your legal basis for this claim?
Can you even answer the question as to who owns the data?
If you are really so concerned, why not educate yourself to at least a rudimentary level on the subject rather than trying to spread FUD