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

[ZachF]

"Electric vehicle maker Lucid Motors is in talks to go public through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition companies run by former Citigroup rainmaker Michael Klein, according to people familiar with the matter."

That language would make me very cautious about assuming it's real.

TBH, given how the current market is treating EVs, it would probably benefit Lucid and Rivian to go public. They could probably easily raise several billion in an IPO.

 

[hacer]

There is a difference between having a system that works all over (Mobileye is not there yet either) and being competitive with Tesla. Mobileye uses more expensive power-hungry lidar and computers. I'm not sure how many watts it consumes but, if it's too high, it could limit it's use to gas cars only.

Even if they get the power low enough to make it practical on EV's, you have the problem of cost. Integrating roof-top lidar into the bodywork so it doesn't cause excessive aerodynamic drag is not cheap or convenient. The lidar is not cheap. Cost is typically an important consideration when determining competitiveness as well as it's suitability to be used on EV's in actual commercial service.

Actually Mobile Eye is working on a vision based solution with no lidar. They also are not the least bit power hungry - their power levels might be lower than Tesla's. What they don't have is the vast real-world driving data (and ability to collect same) that Tesla does.

 

[willow_hiller]

Actually Mobile Eye is working on a vision based solution with no lidar. They also are not the least bit power hungry - their power levels might be lower than Tesla's. What they don't have is the vast real-world driving data (and ability to collect same) that Tesla does.

That, and they keep incorporating non-scalable bits of technology in an attempt to make impressive demonstration videos. For example, they rely on a special traffic light that transmits its status to their vehicles once every 0.4 seconds: Mobileye plans Telematics units on Traffic Lights - Israel Electronics News

Once installed on the traffic lights in Jerusalem, Pointer’s units will transmit the traffic light status every 0.4 seconds. Events will be recorded in real-time on the experimental vehicles in order to verify the traffic light color. The contact between both companies encompasses hundreds of telematics units and over 86,000 daily broadcasts. Ilan Goldstein, CEO of Pointer, explained that the traffic light network “will offer an additional layer of data for autonomous vehicles moving on Israeli roads today, as well as those moving worldwide in the future.

 

[Todd Burch]

I think:

1. Waymo is currently the furthest along as far as autonomous capability *within a specific area* is concerned (geofenced).
2. Tesla is currently the furthest along in terms of worldwide autonomous capability, data gathering, aerodynamics, and system cost/potential profitability.
3. Mobileye is the closest competitor to Tesla in the autonomous driving space, at least as far as an affordable, widespread implementation is concerned.

I still believe Tesla will win because of (2).

 

[scaesare]

@scaesare
perhaps also as nodes in local VPP's as PV and battery combo's build out.

That would indeed be slick to see if they use the storage for that.

Have you gotten your roof covered with PV and a battery in the garage yet?
we got a 1.13kw system in 1999 and a 11,655 system 19 years later @1/4 the cost and 10x the power.
battery is awaiting me convincing the boss we need one...

Unfortunately no... the economics still don't quite seem to be at the point where the cost of the system would be such that monthly outlay is less than my utility cost... so I'm still sourcing from Dominion with thei renewables plan. With Tesla's recent pricing it's a lot closer, however.

(This is OT so if you have any further thoughts on Solar in our area, we should probably discuss in another thread, thanks)

 

[Nocturnal]

Well that's odd. IB offers an "impact dashboard" that shows how your stocks impact your favorite causes like clean air and how it avoids things you don't like such as CO2 emissions. (you select the ones you care about) According to IB, Tesla is neutral towards my goals of promoting clean air, ocean life, and avoiding emissions and fossil fuels.

I think:

1. Waymo is currently the furthest along as far as autonomous capability *within a specific area* is concerned (geofenced).
2. Tesla is currently the furthest along in terms of worldwide autonomous capability, data gathering, aerodynamics, and system cost/potential profitability.
3. Mobileye is the closest competitor to Tesla in the autonomous driving space, at least as far as an affordable, widespread implementation is concerned.

I still believe Tesla will win because of (2).

And of course Tesla has a small lead over Waymo in terms of fleet size.

 

[traxila]

I wish that was the case. Unfortunately there's too many corrupt people in the country and government looking after only themselves. There's way too much load shedding going on and the summers there are unbearable. Pakistan is a ripe country for solar and Tesla would make an absolute killing if only the country wasn't so self destructive.

Yes what you say is true and applies to the entire world from what I can tell.

Does not change the fact that the cheapest new electricity on the market is solar and it will continue to get cheaper. Don’t see how the haters can change that.

 

[jhm]

A single, tender shoot of green, so begins a new day of watching the grass grow.

 

[elasalle]

ARK sold more TSLA today:

View attachment 627108

The percentage of TSLA holding is now:

• ARKW: 9.99%
• ARKQ: 11.99%
• ARKK: 9.93%

So they, barely, dropped under 10% on two of their funds. (At least until tomorrow. )

Disruption is the word of the day, $$ flowing into ARK. More $$, means less they have to sell.
If ARK emulates BlackRock, watch out

 

[Driver Dave]

You know you’ve been trading a lot lately when you see this and think you can play it.

 

[kbM3]

Short interest increased from the period 12/15/2020 (share price $633) to 12/31/2020 (share price $701).

The short amount is skyrocketing to values never seen before. There are 15 million shares shorted more in this time period, probably to help the S&P inclusion, but what do I know.

• Shares shorted from 45.280.000 to 60.620.000
• Float shorted from 5,96% to 6,99
• Amount shorted from $28.641.897.500,00 to $42.526.142.400,00

Again very different from what Ihor reported https://twitter.com/ihors3/status/1340031937436672002.
Because Ihor is consistently wrong, it makes no sense for me to keep following him.

There is a lot of noise about shorts on Twitter, so there could be an increase in interest to short $tsla. My thoughts are it had to do with the S&P inclusion. We have the same amount of shares shorted as on 15.09.2020 but the share price is $350 more, this is very positive.

Overview of the short interest from the last few months:
View attachment 627124

Ahh, so that's why we're all millionaires....

Actually June 2019 saw 40M shares pre-split (200M shares post split) shorted.

 

[Unpilot]

I'm getting whiplash watching this stonk!

 

[Khamul]

Disruption is the word of the day, $$ flowing into ARK. More $$, means less they have to sell.
If ARK emulates BlackRock, watch out

And that's without us poor Europeans not being able to invest in them. Really, really wish I could. Nevertheless, very impressive and encouraging.

 

[dl003]

The risk of a big correction is overblown. Looking at the 20-day return chart, the only times you'd have lost money (paper loss) buying TSLA were just before the COVID crash and the option fueled tech rally in late August. Absent a nasty macro event, we're looking at maybe a 10% correction at most.

 

[Boomer19]

I think:

1. Waymo is currently the furthest along as far as autonomous capability *within a specific area* is concerned (geofenced).
2. Tesla is currently the furthest along in terms of worldwide autonomous capability, data gathering, aerodynamics, and system cost/potential profitability.
3. Mobileye is the closest competitor to Tesla in the autonomous driving space, at least as far as an affordable, widespread implementation is concerned.

I still believe Tesla will win because of (2).

i think there will likely be different solutions that different ‘customers’ purchase. cities/transport authorities, individuals, etc may choose any of those options... closed end or open ended solutions.

 

[Todd Burch]

MMs clearly want to keep us at $850 this week.

 

[dhrivnak]

@MC3OZ
while not Tesla focused per se, an 83 megawatt Solar farm is being built (about 1.5 square miles) a few miles from the intersection of Interstate highways I-81 and I-64, 30 miles west of Charlottesville, Virginia and about 150 miles SW of washington DC that purportedly will have batteries, they are also building Ventura battery project in California while may be largest in the world for a short while.
ie, this stuff is hitting non-linear log growth phase
View attachment 627145View attachment 627145

Largest at 83 mW are you serious??? China just brought on line a 2,200 mW solar farm. World’s largest solar plant goes online in China We are not even in the same ball park.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

The battle of the dip has been won! There shall be a dip today!

 

[jerry33]

Yes what you say is true and applies to the entire world from what I can tell.

Does not change the fact that the cheapest new electricity on the market is solar and it will continue to get cheaper. Don’t see how the haters can change that.

Well, there is a bill before the Texas legislature to tax any electricity not produced by gas. Pretty much an admission that fossil fuels are no longer economically viable.

 

[2daMoon]

This morn my pittance of a 401K transfer to Roth completed. I bought 1 share at $849.

Which resulted in an immediate SP drop to 838, in case anyone buying that dip wanted to thank me.