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

[ZachF]

Here is the interactive one:

Energy Literacy

 

[Krugerrand]

Since we have so many investors here, many of whom are frighteningly undiversified outside of Tesla.... How do you move past the inevitably that during the pursuit of FSD, Tesla will have crashes and deaths. This will be true during beta, while the driver is still technically responsible and afterwards when the vehicle is responsible. Mathematically speaking, there will be crashes and deaths no matter how good FSD is because no matter how many "nines" they get, crashes and deaths will always be > zero. The media will unfortunately eat these stories up. Just wondering what this inevitably does to our portfolios?

The same way I moved past the first fire, the first not-a-recall, the first GS/MS/Moody’s downgrade, the first lawsuit, the first funding secured, the first journalistic hatchet job, the first lie, the first ‘stock price is too high’, the first disappointing ER, the first demand has plateaued, the first ‘I did not inhale’, the first NHTSA review, and the first ‘AP was on’ death in a Tesla:

whiskey in hand
smile on my face
finger pushing buy

 

[JBRR]

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston...imeline-austin-factory-opening-next-year.html

 

[ZachF]

BTW, if you look at that flow chart I posted, the share of petroleum usage by agricultural, construction, and industrial equipment is larger than what air travel consumes.

Tesla tractors/excavators/bulldozers?

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Again, residential energy use is only a small slice of the pie.

An aluminum smelting facility will literally use the same power as a city of one million people. There are server farms that use the same electricity as a cities of a few hundred thousand. The grid isn't going anywhere.

The primary power source of future America will probably be fields of PV in the desert southwest.

That's energy usage, not the services required to make them go. Residential will hold tons of margin potential as half the people move nearly all their consumption to home generated. The other chunk might source from community solar. There's a lot of waste in there that can be converted to future margin.

I like to use sales cost in residential solar as a good example. There's $1.5B in completely counterproductive sales cost floating out there waiting for a home. And that's out of an immature marketplace. There isn't nearly that level of waste in utility or even commercial scale solar.

Tesla is going to crush that $1.5B in sales cost over the next 18 months, and retain 1/10 of it as pure margin.

 

[Krugerrand]

I had the chance to write a whole page in a national (Italian) newspaper about Tesla battery day.
I tried to underline the importance of batteries, single-point-of-failure of the electric transition.
And explained Wright's Law.

Hopefully some folks will be interested in what Tesla is doing, beyond clicbait headlines.
View attachment 593315

Thank you for that but I’m pretty sure Tesla isn’t making pianos.

 

[ZachF]

The same way I moved past the first fire, the first not-a-recall, the first GS/MS/Moody’s downgrade, the first lawsuit, the first funding secured, the first journalistic hatchet job, the first lie, the first ‘stock price is too high’, the first disappointing ER, the first demand has plateaued, the first ‘I did not inhale’, the first NHTSA review, and the first ‘AP was on’ death in a Tesla:

whiskey in hand
smile on my face
finger pushing buy

Too busy counting gains for FUD?

 

[Lessmog]

Thank you for that but I’m pretty sure Tesla isn’t making pianos.

Correct, not a single button or key in sight.

 

[ZachF]

That's energy usage, not the services required to make them go. Residential will hold tons of margin potential as half the people move nearly all their consumption to home generated. The other chunk might source from community solar. There's a lot of waste in there that can be converted to future margin.

I like to use sales cost in residential solar as a good example. There's $1.5B in completely counterproductive sales cost floating out there waiting for a home. And that's out of an immature marketplace. There isn't nearly that level of waste in utility or even commercial scale solar.

Tesla is going to crush that $1.5B in sales cost over the next 18 months, and retain 1/10 of it as pure margin.

I agree it's going to be a major source of potential revenue... I just disagree that it's anywhere on the order of the auto sector. Especially if TaaS comes into play...

 

[Tslynk67]

I doubt they would have inked the deal if there wasn't at least a working prototype.

"Prototypes are easy"

 

[Tslynk67]

As well as, and I say this with no trucking experience, I have a feeling those Walmart trucks are not going around the country on random, mostly unpredictable paths like a consumer vehicle would. They may have specific routes between logistics depos, harbors and railway terminals, warehouses and Walmart stores.

In such a scenario, most charging will be done overnight at the base, but should there be a need for a few Megachargers, they will know along which routes to build those. Also, as the energy requirements of such a beast would be pretty significant with considerable lead time on the utilities behalf, I would think such work has already been in progress for many many months or years since the unveiling of the Semi.

Agreed - they're always going between hubs or perhaps from ports/train stations, it's the final-mile UPS types that have the random routes.

 

[Khamul]

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston...imeline-austin-factory-opening-next-year.html

"City documents suggest the project could be completed as soon as May 1, 2021. "
Now that's what I like to hear! Isn't Berlin set for July? I can't keep up with all these factories anymore.

 

[Unpilot]

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston...imeline-austin-factory-opening-next-year.html

Paywalled

 

[Krugerrand]

Too busy counting gains for FUD?

Stopped counting; can’t count that high. We count by island (or mountain), yacht, and tiki bar acquisitions now. The difference between counting singles vs counting 1,000 dollar bills.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

Stopped counting; can’t count that high. We count by island (or mountain), yacht, and tiki bar acquisitions now. The difference between counting singles vs counting 1,000 dollar bills.

Got the mountain...working on the house to go on it.

Dan

 

[phantasms]

Seems like today is going to be, like yesterday, another Friday. I wonder why the push down so early in the week.

 

[henchman24]

Seems like today is going to be, like yesterday, another Friday. I wonder why the push down so early in the week.

Have to push down as far as possible for the beat on Friday.

 

[Cobos]

I'm curious about something Gene says in this video and I've heard others say. He says this BD presentation was 9.4 on a 1-10 scale of complexity, while the autopilot day was 9.8.
This might be because my background is in Chemistry, but I work at an Oslo high school with medium level students aged 16-19 (like all Norwegian high schools). I marvelled at how simplified this BD presentation was how they had made complex stuff very very simple. I thought this could be used for my 16yo sophomore students in compulsory generic science. While the chemistry was too simplified to be used by my chemistry students. I would rate the BD presentation a 4 or 5 on his scale. And I know Gene Munster seems to know his Tesla stuff.
So my question is this so easy to understand for me simply because it's well aligned with my knowledge base and speciality? Was this a simple presentation for you guys? Or are actually even the competent analysts that weak on what I would say is general science? If that is so how can they say anything about Tesla?

PS: I would rate the AP presentation as a high 9 as well, and I do have decent programming and computer hardware knowledge.
PSS: This is not written as a look at me I'm smart thing, but I'm genuine wondering?

 

[M|S|M MYP]

The leader was just a little upset that people were underwhelmed by battery day.

 

[M|S|M MYP]

As per my TD account, Walmart is increasing semi truck order to 130 units.

Walmart Canada more than triples order of Tesla Semi Trucks