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

[Fact Checking]

I fundamentally disapprove of the 'app' concept because running someone else's code on my device means that one more unknown entity can take control of my device (as such I run only open-source apps on my non-Android/non-IOS phone).

Apps are a fact of life though - should we also insist that the word 'hacker' should retain its original meaning of a skilled UNIX developer and 'hacking' means an expert changing code ad-hoc? Why fight windmills of very strong social trends?

In that sense I'd trust a Tesla provided and Tesla authenticated app more than I'd trust browser based functionality: browsers are huge code bases with thousands of historic vulnerabilities, while apps on the other hand:

• Apps run code Tesla provided. Browsers can easily be redirected, can embed ads which often are standalone 'apps' themselves, often malicious, etc.
• Apps typically are sandboxed, so even if they are malicious or vulnerable they only have access to what the sandboxing framework allows. And yes, modern browsers do sandboxing and other forms as isolation as well, but with an app the sandboxing and isolation is obvious, not just a design promise.
• Web pages tend to rely on a huge maze of third party functionality. Let's consider amazon.com for example, I just checked, the main index.html embeds links to and functionality from 40 external websites, only few of which are controlled by Amazon. tesla.com's main index.html is better: "only" 3 external references: service.force.com, www.google-analytics.com, www.googletagmanager.com.
  
• Well written native apps also tend to be faster and more obvious to use than browser based web functionality, and there's also fewer UI artifacts such as a 'back' button, 'reload' and various browser functionality the webpage has no control over.

So while I support web based approach for 'platform' functionality such as e-commerce, for specialized functionality such as service interactions and remote car control and configuration apps are perfectly fine too, and can result in a more 'premium' user experience as well on most platforms.

 

[RobStark]

VW exec: 'Level 5 will never happen globally'


VW says driverless vehicles have limited appeal and high cost | Reuters

Same story different headline.

 

[Mars ☰mperor]

Daaaaaaaayum this is too funny

Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[Nuclear Fusion]

Jim Cramer Explains How Short Sellers Manipulate Stocks — Like Tesla (TSLA) | CleanTechnica

 

[Antares Nebula]

Tesla Shanghai assembly plant to be completed in May - government official

ReutersMarch 6, 2019
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Tesla's upcoming vehicle assembly facility in Shanghai is expected to be completed in May this year, a Shanghai city government official said on Wednesday.

Chen Mingbo made the comments on the sidelines of an annual parliamentary meeting in Beijing.

He said the facility expects to start up production on some of its manufacturing lines by the end of the year.

Tesla Shanghai assembly plant to be completed in May - government official

 

[bhtooefr]

You did not cite a single example of Elon being wrong about the capabilities of existing software and hardware, which is pretty amazing given how much Elon is talking about all the technical details, compared to other CEOs.

Wasn't "3 months maybe, 6 months definitely" a promise of FSD diverging from EAP on HW2?

That still hasn't happened AFAIK (almost 26 months later) and is dependent on HW3 now - if I'm correct, that is a case of Musk being incorrect about the capabilities of the existing hardware (although not the software).

 

[paulch]

You may be right. I know Musk's policy re advertising. But when you have revolutionary new products, you can't rely on the media or word of mouth only. The former may confuse or give negative spin, and the latter may not reach scale quickly enough. Revolutionary and/or controversial products need proper communication and education by the company. Apple advertised the first Mac (1984 commercial) and also the latter generation of revolutionary products with the second coming of Steve Jobs (ipod, imac, iphone, etc.). Apple and their products are well know, but they knew they have to advertise and even create their own stores. They can't rely on the media, the public, or other store clerks (Best Buy) to sell their revolutionary products.

I know two people personally who are very smart but don't follow Tesla closely and when I was talking to them about it, one thought that Tesla was going bankrupt and another thought that Musk was a psychopath. But once I explained things to them rationally and with evidence, they were convinced, with one of them even buying stock in Tesla.

The fact of the matter is that the shorts and media smear campaign has unfortunately been very effective to at least create doubt and hesitation on the part of your average consumer (and investor). Maybe Tesla advertising (and beyond just twitter) is the only way they can change this narrative. They need to hire some really good ad agency, like Apple did, and communicate a cool, slick message that shows the full advantage of a Tesla EV over other EVs and over other cars period.

I think because right now, Tesla is still production constrained, they can't make cars faster enough to meet the demand, so it does not make sense to advertise now, remember Tesla had to anti-sale Model 3 when in production hell. Maybe Tesla will start advertising after GF3 is online and are producing 1 million cars per year.

Another consideration is: if Tesla gets self-driving capability ready, it will revolutionize into a completely new product, self-driving car compared to non-self-driving car is like car versus horse. News will be everywhere, thus likely will drive huge demand just with self-driving capability, once approved by regulators, I think Tesla will operate its own fleet to provide ride and rental service, so maybe Tesla will not need to advertise at least in the next 5 years.

 

[mrdoubleb]

Apps are a fact of life though - should we also insist that the word 'hacker' should retain its original meaning of a skilled UNIX developer and 'hacking' means an expert changing code ad-hoc? Why fight windmills of very strong social trends?

In that sense I'd trust a Tesla provided and Tesla authenticated app more than I'd trust browser based functionality: browsers are huge code bases with thousands of historic vulnerabilities, while apps on the other hand:

• Apps run code Tesla provided. Browsers can easily be redirected, can embed ads which often are standalone 'apps' themselves, often malicious, etc.
• Apps typically are sandboxed, so even if they are malicious or vulnerable they only have access to what the sandboxing framework allows. And yes, modern browsers do sandboxing and other forms as isolation as well, but with an app the sandboxing and isolation is obvious, not just a design promise.
• Web pages tend to rely on a huge maze of third party functionality. Let's consider amazon.com for example, I just checked, the main index.html embeds links to and functionality from 40 external websites, only few of which are controlled by Amazon. tesla.com's main index.html is better: "only" 3 external references: service.force.com, www.google-analytics.com, www.googletagmanager.com.
  
• Well written native apps also tend to be faster and more obvious to use than browser based web functionality, and there's also fewer UI artifacts such as a 'back' button, 'reload' and various browser functionality the webpage has no control over.

So while I support web based approach for 'platform' functionality such as e-commerce, for specialized functionality such as service interactions and remote car control and configuration apps are perfectly fine too, and can result in a more 'premium' user experience as well on most platforms.

We may be taking this a bit too OT, but my 2 cents:
Tesla could find the middle ground and have a limited app store where they allow a well defined set of applications to be made available by the companies who own that service. That is, 10-30 apps relevant for car usage.

Prime example is all the major music and video streaming apps, so people can leverage their own subscriptions vs. Tesla`s own regional contracts. Also, navigation apps like Waze for those who still like that over Tesla`s own. It is very disappointing when I see $100k Teslas running around with cellphone holders stuck to the windscreen for navigation because Tesla`s sat nav is just bad, taking them on stupidly complex routes and not having good enough traffic data (their words, I have no experience). Maybe even some home automation and shopping apps (like Amazon) would make sense.

If these are big, well established players (Spotify, Deezer, Netflix, Amazon... and their regional market specific equivalents like e.g. in China) the risk is smaller and manageable as these companies have the staff to fix apps quickly and their utmost self-interest is to keep the apps secure. It would require though, that Tesla`s OS can run Android apps. If they insist on their own, custom platform than they may get a few launch partners but end up like Windows Phone where these companies don`t bother fixing and enhancing apps for a few 100k or few million users.

Later if this is successful, there is customer demand and Tesla has the capacity to screen them, they could open the store up to others, but this is a nice to have only in my book.

 

[Fact Checking]

Wasn't "3 months maybe, 6 months definitely" a promise of FSD diverging from EAP on HW2?

That still hasn't happened AFAIK (almost 26 months later) and is dependent on HW3 now - if I'm correct, that is a case of Musk being incorrect about the capabilities of the existing hardware (although not the software).

Here's the exact exchange:

Elon Musk on Twitter

Tom Randall: "At what point will "Full Self-Driving Capability" features noticeably depart from "Enhanced Autopilot" features?"

Elon: "3 months maybe, 6 months definitely"​

He was clearly talking about future speed of development, not about current capabilities.

Kimbal Musk told the childhood story of Elon regularly breaking timing promises and being late to school, which Kimbal worked around by secretly turning the clock forward in the morning by 10 minutes, so that Elon wouldn't miss the school bus.

If Elon cannot be trusted with "will be there in a few minutes!" promises, he definitely cannot be trusted with 3-6 months forward looking statements about complex high-tech capabilities.

Also note that Navigate on Autopilot on-ramp-off-ramp, while originally promised to be part of EAP, is arguably part of FSD features, and this was released around September 2018. Tesla has no reintroduced "Autopilot" (without the 'Enanced' qualifier), lumped FSD features under 'FSD', and rewarded EAP owners with grandfathering them into the promised FSD-alike features and with a low price upgrade path.

Back then in 2018 I made the argument real-time that NoA is conceptually part of FSD, not Autopilot, and I predicted that it would eventually become part of the FSD feature-set formally as well - which it did a couple of days ago.

So was this a bad timing prediction by Elon? Absolutely. Was it a false promise? Not at all.

 

[avoigt]

Tesla’s upcoming vehicle assembly facility in Shanghai is expected to be completed in May this year, a Shanghai city government official said on Wednesday.

Tesla Shanghai assembly plant to be completed in May: government official | Reuters

 

[mrdoubleb]

Tesla Shanghai assembly plant to be completed in May - government official

ReutersMarch 6, 2019
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Tesla's upcoming vehicle assembly facility in Shanghai is expected to be completed in May this year, a Shanghai city government official said on Wednesday.

Chen Mingbo made the comments on the sidelines of an annual parliamentary meeting in Beijing.

He said the facility expects to start up production on some of its manufacturing lines by the end of the year.

Tesla Shanghai assembly plant to be completed in May - government official

This is insane. The only thing I can think of is that they are pre-assembling bigger steel or concrete panels, building blocks somewhere off-site and they will be able to raise the structures very quickly like that. Even so I can only imagine the structures ready by the end of May, with manufacturing lines being installed after that.

 

[SPadival]

"Purchase intent on SR debut date is 28% higher than when Model 3 was first announced"

TDA Network @TDANetwork

 

[Carl Raymond]

Apps are a fact of life though - should we also insist that the word 'hacker' should retain its original meaning of a skilled UNIX developer and 'hacking' means an expert changing code ad-hoc? Why fight windmills of very strong social trends?

In that sense I'd trust a Tesla provided and Tesla authenticated app more than I'd trust browser based functionality: browsers are huge code bases with thousands of historic vulnerabilities, while apps on the other hand:

• Apps run code Tesla provided. Browsers can easily be redirected, can embed ads which often are standalone 'apps' themselves, often malicious, etc.
• Apps typically are sandboxed, so even if they are malicious or vulnerable they only have access to what the sandboxing framework allows. And yes, modern browsers do sandboxing and other forms as isolation as well, but with an app the sandboxing and isolation is obvious, not just a design promise.
• Web pages tend to rely on a huge maze of third party functionality. Let's consider amazon.com for example, I just checked, the main index.html embeds links to and functionality from 40 external websites, only few of which are controlled by Amazon. tesla.com's main index.html is better: "only" 3 external references: service.force.com, www.google-analytics.com, www.googletagmanager.com.
  
• Well written native apps also tend to be faster and more obvious to use than browser based web functionality, and there's also fewer UI artifacts such as a 'back' button, 'reload' and various browser functionality the webpage has no control over.

So while I support web based approach for 'platform' functionality such as e-commerce, for specialized functionality such as service interactions and remote car control and configuration apps are perfectly fine too, and can result in a more 'premium' user experience as well on most platforms.

In order of preference:
A trusted well written app.
A trusted well written web site.
An unknown web site.
An unknown app.

Apps can do things device browsers cannot, like access your docs.
Which is why apps rank first and last. You want your trusted app to have greater power, but you def do not want your untrusted app to have greater power.

 

[Fact Checking]

This is insane China.

FTFY.

Examples:

Major train station in China built overnight:

200 excavators in China accelerating a project to reduce traffic disruption:

Chinese bridge built in 2 days:

57-story skyscraper in China going up in 19 days:

Elon meeting with China's prime minister wasn't just a photo op:

And the premier's offer to give Elon a Chinese Green Card wasn't just a polite gesture. China wants to accelerate the EV transition, at Chinese speeds. I pointed out the significance of China's support for the Gigafactory in December already.

Also note that the Gigafactory is being built by a state owned construction firm, and there's credible speculation that they are building it and the surrounding infrastructure for free, leased back to Tesla under very favorable terms. I.e. no GF3 construction capex at all - Tesla pays for the machines and equipment.

This is probably why Tesla guided that they can get to 3,000 cars/week in Shanghai for a ridiculously low $500m level of capex spending. Just to put that figure in perspective: 3k/week is 156k/year, 50% higher than the annual Model S/X manufacturing output after the Model S/X expansion in ~2016 - which cost billions of dollars of capex.

This is also probably why Shanghai won the Gigafactory bid, not Guangzhou, despite Guangzhou (reportedly) offering a $3b unsecured loan, free electricity, water and other utilities, no strings attached. Shanghai still won the bid, and now we know why.

The 2 billion dollar Shanghai local loans to Tesla with a lower interest rate than the central bank interest rate was the icing on the cake.

 

[aubreymcfato]

This is maybe silly, but if people are stingy like me the SR has a good advantage:
you know that this is the bottom, that they are not building a new car that's cheaper (at least in the next 2-3 years).
This eases the mind a lot.

Also, the car will be probably competitive with other EVs in Europe: why buy a Leaf for 30k€ and need another car for long distances when you can have a Tesla 3SR for 40k€?
And I'm not even talking about Audi/BMW/Mercedes, although, in that case, Tesla should do a much better job in marketing and maybe advertising, because perception of quality is very different, people don't know EVs, etc.

 

[KarenRei]

Wow! Just woke up and saw this re-tweeted by Vincent, so not sure if this was posted yet. I have a feeling NIO stock is not going to like this today:

"EV startup $NIO abandons plan to make its own cars.
The company won’t build a factory in Shanghai after all, and is off to a slow start in 2019"

EV startup NIO abandons plan to make its own cars

"Chinese EV startup NIO no longer plans to make its own cars, the company announced Tuesday. Plans to build a factory in Shanghai — where Tesla is currently constructing the third Gigafactory — have been scuttled, and NIO will instead continue using its current contract manufacturer, state-owned automaker JAC Motors."

I said it then, and I'll say it again: it constantly baffled me why people were throwing that kind of money into NIO. That sort of market cap for a company that was a glorified IP-and-design shop with a no-name brand? Might as well throw your money in a furnace.

Amazing the number of people I ran into who didn't even realize that NIO wasn't even manufacturing its own cars yet had invested money in them.

 

[Tslynk67]

View attachment 383387 EV startup NIO abandons plan to make its own cars

Chinese EV startup NIO no longer plans to make its own cars, the company announced Tuesday. Plans to build a factory in Shanghai — where Tesla is currently constructing the third Gigafactory — have been scuttled, and NIO will instead continue using its current contract manufacturer, state-owned automaker JAC Motors.

It’s a stark change in direction for the young company, which started making its first car, the ES8 SUV, for the Chinese market last year. NIO also just went public on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2018.

& this is the EV that gets pumped on CNBC ..

 

[Fact Checking]

Apps can do things device browsers cannot, like access your docs.

At least Android apps can only access their own documents by default, accessing other apps' files is a separate 'dangerous' permission that is prominently prompted for and has to be opt-in permitted by the user:

Permissions overview | Android Developers

"A central design point of the Android security architecture is that no app, by default, has permission to perform any operations that would adversely impact other apps, the operating system, or the user. This includes reading or writing the user's private data (such as contacts or emails), reading or writing another app's files, performing network access, keeping the device awake, and so on."​

(There's one hole I'm aware of in that principle: Android apps can access external web pages with no special prompting IIRC.)

Of course this assumes a non-rooted device and a freshly updated OS with no root hole - which are major sources of risk.

 

[Fact Checking]

"Purchase intent on SR debut date is 28% higher than when Model 3 was first announced"

TDA Network @TDANetwork

Are there any details about how they measured purchase intent of potential Model 3 customers?

 

[mongo]

Hey ya'll (and me), there are other topical threads for in depth AP FSD discussion: