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

[neroden]

Never seen so many FUDsters over in the comment section of .

Tesla slashes retail employee compensation, seemingly pushing them out instead of layoffs

Seems like a totally reasonable way to go about it to me. No idea why people have a problem with it.

 

[Curt Renz]

The Tesla share price is now more attractive for potential participants in a privatization deal. Such deep pocket entities may appreciate the plans for new models and configurations, while short-sellers and weak longs moan about them. Elon's renewed battle with the SEC might be motivating him to reconsider privatization.

 

[mongo]

Ehm current is speed of the electrons, see: Drift velocity - Wikipedia

You're mixing up the speed of the electromagnetic waves vs the speed of electrons
More here: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-s...much-time-it-would-take-for-the-light-to-glow

From your link

In physics a drift velocity is the average velocity attained by charged particles,

Current is the number of electrons passing a point in a given amount of time.
Drift velocity is analogous to a river: A wide river has a lower flow speed for the same volume than a narrow river does. A fast moving river has more water molecules passing at a time. However, water is not-compressible whereas a wire has way more electrons than the number moving due to current.
Perhaps a better example is gas through an orifice. More flow is more molecules, due to higher density, but they are still moving at the speed of sound (until the chamber pressure on Merlin or Raptor get high enough, then it goes supersonic and non-compressible and starts increasing the exhaust velocity, thus imparting more momentum onto the Falcon/ Starship, but I digress).

More electrons does not mean faster electrons. Or I'm wrong, physics was a while ago

 

[Open Interest]

OK, I give up, what the heck are FIT credits?

Federal income tax?

 

[scaesare]

As I gaze in wonder at the absolute lack of any rationale for this stock price, it occurs to me that part of this is that Elon and Tesla's motivation is fundamentally different than just about every other business.... and certainly all the other auto manufacturers.

While everybody else cuts prices, rolls out new models, adds features, etc... in a cadence and order designed to maximize profits, Elon is doing it to save humanity.

While he recognizes Tesla needs to be viable in order to complete that mission, it's a factor, not the factor. He's smart enough to know that the pace of innovation will help ensure Tesla's success long term (SIlicon Valley model), even if it compormises profit or share price short term (Detroit business model).

The problem is, everybody is holding up Tesla's actions against typical business methodology, and drawing incorrect conclusions.

Now don't get me wrong... I think a bunch of the analysts and financial talking heads actually know better, and are espousing this false narrative deliberately, in order to further their agenda... but because of the atypical goals and mission of Tesla, the larger audience buys it, and hence the ongoing false thesis gains traction and is able to continue.

Sooner or later they won't be able to maintain the charade, but it's going to take an "Amazon" moment for that to happen...

 

[ggr]

Ehm current is speed of the electrons, see: Drift velocity - Wikipedia

You're mixing up the speed of the electromagnetic waves vs the speed of electrons
More here: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-s...much-time-it-would-take-for-the-light-to-glow

Great first post. Greatly incorrect, that is. The speed of the individual electrons is actually quite small, but the charge of one moving pushes against the next one and moves it too. So the movement propagates quickly, allowing current to flow. And the amount of current has nothing at all to do with the speed (which mostly depends on voltage), because most of those electrons are literally moving in parallel, which is why a wider wire can carry more current.

 

[voip-ninja]

283.19 USD −11.60 (3.94%)

I'm calling this the bottom - never ever ever to go lower. Need to buy an edible hat.

283.01 now.

<283 looks likely.

 

[neroden]

There's protest going on in China about the price cut ranging from ~7k to 50k USD.

I saw similar complaints on reddit from owners in Taiwan and Australia...Not sure how I feel about this - sure, the owners purchased the vehicles at a price agreed by both party, but this is just human psychology.

I thought Tesla should have learned better from last time with the model 3 performance price cut and with Fred pulling a fred on tesla...


BTW - what does everyone think about the across the board price cut? I believe Tesla must have modeled impact to product mix with the price cut. At the end of the day I think the pricing change was done to maximize net cash flow given production capacity (i.e. improving take rate of higher margin model by reducing price gap from a lower trim, thus improving total net cash flow).

Tesla never gets the timing on these right. I think they're doing bettre than before, but they still never seem to get the timing right.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

283.01 now.

<283 looks likely.

Oh we're going down to 280 at least

The macro's have been trending up over the past 2 hours, Tesla - the other way

 

[Navin]

To me this is part of the problem. Tesla is trying to fight demand perceptions but on website it’s shoes 2-4 weeks for m3. Fix the issue

 

[Tslynk67]

Alright let the record show that I just purchased X number of 332.50 calls for .22 a piece with March 8th expiry. Yolo, and whatnot

The price of a decent night out - well worth the punt!

 

[neroden]

• A NN training dataset, once collected and labelled, defines the capabilities of the network - and a training dataset is growing monotonously, so capabilities are never 'lost'. With conventional software the speed and cost of development scales with project size: the larger the project, the harder it is to expand it. This is not true of neural networks - they only depend on the training data set and available (off-site) training computing capacity.

Unfortunately, you can also train them *wrong*, and it's really really hard to *retrain* them if you've embedded an incorrect behavior into the NN. This is the problem with the way almost everyone is doing their "automated driving". They need super-experts in safe driving to be telling them *what the NN should be doing*; they do not have them; so they are mistraining their neural networks. Those mistrainings are going to be a complete bear to remove.

Most likely they will have to scrap and replace the data set at least once (more, I think they've already done it at least once with the HW changes).

 

[Buckminster]

283.01 now.

<283 looks likely.

I didn't see it so it doesn't count!

 

[anthonyj]

View attachment 382909 To me this is part of the problem. Tesla is trying to fight demand perceptions but on website it’s shoes 2-4 weeks for m3. Fix the issue

If the cars are sold out for Q1 delivery, Tesla should release a statement ASAP. Otherwise this is not a good look

Will start hedging my position tomorrow because it looks like the floor is about to break. When I take off the rose colored glasses, I see tons of uncertainty in Tesla’s short/medium term financial future. Long term I think they will do fine, but Q1 might be a shocker

 

[voip-ninja]

As I gaze in wonder at the absolute lack of any rationale for this stock price, it occurs to me that part of this is that Elon and Tesla's motivation is fundamentally different than just about every other business.... and certainly all the other auto manufacturers.

While everybody else cuts prices, rolls out new models, adds features, etc... in a cadence and order designed to maximize profits, Elon is doing it to save humanity.

While he recognizes Tesla needs to be viable in order to complete that mission, it's a factor, not the factor. He's smart enough to know that the pace of innovation will help ensure Tesla's success long term (SIlicon Valley model), even if it compormises profit or share price short term (Detroit business model).

The problem is, everybody is holding up Tesla's actions against typical business methodology, and drawing incorrect conclusions.

Now don't get me wrong... I think a bunch of the analysts and financial talking heads actually know better, and are espousing this false narrative deliberately, in order to further their agenda... but because of the atypical goals and mission of Tesla, the larger audience buys it, and hence the ongoing false thesis gains traction and is able to continue.

Sooner or later they won't be able to maintain the charade, but it's going to take an "Amazon" moment for that to happen...

It doesn't matter how much Elon wants to save humanity if a bunch of poor decisions result in fewer people buying the products and hurts the company through perception of weak demand, not caring about customers who spent a lot more on the product, etc.

I can assure you that the investors who have loaned Tesla billions of dollars over the last ten years aren't concerned that they won't be around to collect on their loans. They want to get paid.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

To me this is part of the problem. Tesla is trying to fight demand perceptions but on website it’s shoes 2-4 weeks for m3. Fix the issue

That's the estimated time within which a new customer could expect delivery. It's a real number and quite helpful. You want them to make their sales process less helpful to customers?

 

[mongo]

Unfortunately, you can also train them *wrong*, and it's really really hard to *retrain* them if you've embedded an incorrect behavior into the NN. This is the problem with the way almost everyone is doing their "automated driving". They need super-experts in safe driving to be telling them *what the NN should be doing*; they do not have them; so they are mistraining their neural networks. Those mistrainings are going to be a complete bear to remove.

Most likely they will have to scrap and replace the data set at least once (more, I think they've already done it at least once with the HW changes).

Based on my understanding of Karpathy's SW 2.0 talk, they retrain the entire NN on every check in of new test cases, labeled data, and features added. So there is no removing of mislearning, rather the old NN is completely discarded and redone.

My personal hope: they then put their NNs in a virtual environment and have have them drive against each other to see if they crash.

 

[voip-ninja]

That's the estimated time within which a new customer could expect delivery. It's a real number and quite helpful. You want them to make their sales process less helpful to customers?

There are 5,000 Model 3s (roughly) available for immediate delivery. Tesla should update the website to show that most configurations of P, DM and MR Model 3s are available for immediate delivery or as fast as Tesla can ship the product to the customer.

 

[scaesare]

It doesn't matter how much Elon wants to save humanity if a bunch of poor decisions result in fewer people buying the products and hurts the company through perception of weak demand, not caring about customers who spent a lot more on the product, etc.

I can assure you that the investors who have loaned Tesla billions of dollars over the last ten years aren't concerned that they won't be around to collect on their loans. They want to get paid.

Those are the same folks who probably didn't understand why Amazon was innovating, reducing prices, spending more to drive efficiencies, and expanding their product mix even when there wasn't any competition, at the expense of profits for a couple of decades.

 

[Tslynk67]

Anecdote:

My current Model 3 has 3-4 squeaks and rattles, which I’m guessing will be difficult for service to fix, plus it needs the glass roof replaced from a rock.

Because I thought that I would like white interior and Aeros, I decided to treat myself and trade-in for a new one.

I went online and it immediately was asking for credit card info before I identified my trade-in, which I’m obviously not willing to do.

Since I recently moved to Orlando, I thought I would just go to the dealer. They immediately told me I would not get a good trade-in valuation from Tesla (even though I’m trading in a Tesla) and suggested CarMax.

Now I’m faced with going first to CarMax to get a quote which will expire in 7 days, which I’m assuming would be well before my new Model 3 would be ready.

Too much friction. This has to be solved. Were I not a die-hard Tesla fan, I would be very tempted to go somewhere else.

As it is, I will probably just keep my car.

I got a fabulous trade-in deal from Tesla when I bought my Mode X - that was Belgium, of course, might be different in the US of A.