CNBC reporting progress on Las Vegas contracting with a Boring Co.
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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
Aren`t they upgrading all HW2 owners who paid for FSD in advance to HW3 for free though? And if you did not purchase FSD yet, you`ll get the HW3 included when you chose to do so.
Who has been harmed here?
In addition, our brains have figured out how to handle legislative problems quickly and easily.
You know, after the announcement about them prepping to build Superchargers in Iceland, the more I think about it, the more I think we're about to become a Tesla Nation (sales are currently low because you can't service them here, there's no Supercharger network, and people have had to import their own) - potentially one of Tesla's highest market penetrations in the world. We have:
- Norway-like EV incentives (a gas car costs ~40% more than an EV of the same base price)
- High per-capita income (not as high as Norway, but still high on a global scale)
- The fastest "competing" chargers in the country are only 50kW.
- Low speed limits mean that the time between stops is so long that most people would want to stop anyway after going through a Tesla's range. E.g. no inconvenience.
- Surprisingly long travel distances (the Ring Road takes about 15 hours nonstop to drive all the way around)
- Everyone wants to at least be able to drive the Ring Road; it's sort of a minimum requirement for owning a car here. And why PHEVs have been much better sellers than BEVs thusfar.
- Long "side trips" away from the Ring Road (Snæfellsnes, Vestfirðir, Austfirðir, etc) call for long ranges
- Winters not super-cold, but long and snowy. Very windy. Mountainous. Having a good range-buffer for adverse conditions is important here.
- AWD is very popular here
- Lots of apartment-dwellers in-town with no access to charging (boo!); those who own cars want to be able to minimize how often they have to stop at a fast-charger in town (aka, range), and how long they have to be there (Superchargers). 50kW and Leaf-like ranges don't cut it for most people.
- Tow package
- Air suspension (more clearance when needed)
- Greater native ground clearance (snow, unpaved roads)
- True offroad vehicles (not "city SUVs")
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Singer3000
Member
Some obersvations:
- Tesla has always come good against gross margin targets. Only 5 weeks ago Musk repeated guidance for 25% average gross margin for Model 3, specifically in the context of substantial volumes of SR in the mix.
- Even if that statement was false and they need to make it up on lower opex, it is better to generate the same operating cashflow / net profit from 10k lower spec sales than 5k higher spec sales. And I don’t just mean because it’s better for planet earth. I mean because higher unit sales engender future demand for the product set, as we move along the technology adoption curve. It also boosts positive word of mouth for Tesla’s brand specifically. Finally, it provides more miles of data to feed the FSA neural networks.
- Listen to the posters who say that the greatest driver of demand is price. My own awareness of Tesla’s brand, it’s products and my desire to go electric are no doubt in the top percentile of the population. But no way I’d drop $50k on a car even though I could afford to.
- Selling entirely online is a new departure for the industry. Good. We all bought TSLA because of its innovation culture didn’t we? If it’s a misstep it can be reversed but I suspect this fuss will be forgotten very quickly and will be emulated in turn by others.
- While some more cautious posters here are nervous about margins and demand, most seem to have developed a severe case of the willies because they have failed to separate Tesla from TSLA. Tesla is too busy executing beautifully to worry that TSLA is being hammered by short selling (+60% in one day did we agree on?). Align your interests with the goals of management by buying shares in cash with a long term view of the fundamentals. Breathe. Relax.
- There is still too much nonsense in the media about Tesla going bankrupt. The FT had yet another beauty today saying that the true cash balance is now only $500m. This sort of thing can impact demand if enough people believe there won’t be a Tesla around long enough to service their car. I doubt that anything other than the ruthless accumulation of market share and consequent delevering will do much to shift this narrative. Launching SR, the extraordinarily fast progress of Shanghai and hopefully an aggressive ramp for Model Y are just the ticket.
- Everyone here seems to have forgotten about the SEC case. Mr Market has assuredly not. Musk’s day to day input being degraded by regulators is the one thing that should be giving sleepless nights. I am simply staggered when I read investors here who don’t appreciate that Musk’s brand and Tesla’s brand live and die together. Let’s hope this board’s consensus that the case is a dead end is right. Musk stepping down strikes me as unlikely but of more concern is that the SEC at some point cause the privatisation to rear its ugly head again. I would sulk indefinitely if that happened, unless and until I could figure out another way to bridge the gap in the kids’ colleague fund.
I can't speak for market perceptions, but I strongly disagree that "Musk's brand and Tesla's brand live and die together." Tesla lives and dies by how competitive its products are. Nobody's out there shopping for an EV and thinks, "Well, I think Competing Brand has a better EV, but I'm going with Tesla because of Elon". I actually find far more people who rule out Tesla because of Elon.
I love Elon's strategic approach. But he could drop dead tomorrow and Tesla would continue making and selling the best EVs on the market, and customers would keep buying them. If the person who follows isn't as strategic, then we might end up with an Apple-style situation where Apple started lagging on innovation after Jobs' death. But given Apple's share price, that's not exactly any sort of nightmare scenario to investors.
Distance driven is the wrong metric. The correct metric is situations. A stop light is a situation, driving on the highway is a situation, lane change is a situation. 99% of situations is likely correct.
Sounds great, but not without authorization by insurance and approval by authorities for unpiloted driving. That will take years after all technical issues are worked out.
Sweden is at zero, interesting why
edit: The first Tesla Model 3 was handed over to happy Swedish customers yesterday, February 28. Above is one of the very first customers Patrik Ryzko with his car that he posted on the Facebook group Tesla Model 3 Sweden. After a lot of rubbish with the Transport Agency, Model 3 has now been typed in…
FWIW, I've not had and particular problems with the Nav App once they allowed disabling of toll roads. But even before that I had very few instances of complex routes. (Unlike the Toyota Nav which sometimes would route you thousands of miles extra). The traffic data is pretty reasonable and has, on occasion, saved me hours during a trip when it routed me around some major highway collisions. I don't doubt that it's not perfect in every area because a car Nav app needs to work even when there is no wireless service, so it relies on an in-car database. The obvious fix is to download the latest route information (not traffic) when a new destination is set, but that could take a long time and it also assumes that you are in wireless range when setting destination, so the in-car database is what they have to go with.
My thought is that a lot, but not all, of the "cellphone holders stuck to the windscreen" are just because people have heard of problems, or it's what they're used to in other cars.
Great! Too bad all of our BS off topic posts make it almost impossibly time consuming.
This is not a hugh project but since only one regulator (Clark Co) has to approve it, it could proceed quickly. LV would be a nice confirmation project. Since it is for a new massive convention center, it would get a lot of visibility. It could demonstrate/confirm how traffic is benefited.
I hope it doesn’t get super bottled up in a regulatory delay.
Fact Checking
Well-Known Member
Great, one more historically reliable "strong buy" indicator went green:
Very much. And like him, current Tesla longs will probably turn out to have been in early.
The difference is naturally that Michael Burry bet against the US economy, while the bets of Tesla longs are aligned with the US economy.
Probably not because the dealer association will use the lack of lobbying to promote more restrictive legislation. If anything, they will need to spend more in this area (at least until the dealer network starts to collapse and the association runs out of funds). That's why Elon is going for the kill with the lower prices.
Just noticed that Elon's sister is loading cars right now.
TOSCA Current position (Vehicles Carrier, IMO 9605798) - VesselFinder
TOSCA Current position (Vehicles Carrier, IMO 9605798) - VesselFinder
Great post, but just like Tesla is too busy to worry about TSLA, it’s also too busy to worry about general perception. Yes, the tsunami of FUD must be lowering demand for its cars, but Tesla can’t produce enough cars to fulfill even a lowered demand. Hence, no advertising. By the time Tesla production gets near fulfilling demand, the general perception will have been changed by years of Tesla success.
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