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

[neverdone]

NHTSA Recall of touchscreen failures

U.S. asks Tesla to recall 158,000 vehicles for touchscreen failures

Sort of old news to us Tesla owners. I received an email from Tesla regarding this on my 16 Model X and the replacement of the emmc a while back. Tried to have the service bulletin performed but being told the parts are backordered.

Edit: Adding link to Tesla's support page
Warranty Adjustment Program

I am having a couple recall items done next week; steering bolts, and glass glue. I also asked to get the eMMC replaced per this service bulletin. I have had several black screens that will eventually come back after reboot. But Tesla will only replace if their diagnostic has a high enough "score". Otherwise, Tesla will just reflash the chip. I have an "old" 2016 XP90D, vin ...274. I plan to get a new X this spring and plan to sell my X to my brother in-law. Miles is about 90K. The service bulletin only applies if less than 100K miles. So I feel bad about selling my X to my relative where the chip will most likely fail within a year. I guess I could just give my brother in-law 1 share to pay for the repair.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

So you are saying there's a chance..Wonder why they are delaying the announcement though. It's not like there are a bunch of inventory cars. I think there was another report on twitter saying a refreshed model X is expected in March 2021. Where is @gabeincal with his drone? We need you to investigate the parking lots

If I had to guess......and this is with the thought that it's a full refresh....they need to run the production lines in trial mode for a week or two to make sure there's no issues. If the changes are substantial, it's not like they can just turn the production lines back on at full speed.

Or......if we get a surprise early earnings date announcement, then they're holding off the S/X news till earnings

 

[Fobble]

I haven't seen this mentioned here: House impeaches Trump for second time — with some GOP support

Any ideas on how the market and/or TSLA will react?

This article seems to think it will be a non-issue: Why stock market remains unfazed as Trump sees historic 2nd impeachment

I think this is a non-event for the stock market tomorrow, especially when Trump has only one more week in office. Only 2 things that the market cares the most lately: Vaccines and stimulus package.

 

[Curt Renz]

Well that explains the after hours 9 point drop. You know, because 158k screens obviously costs about 8billion in market cap....

Indeed, the reduced market cap hugely exceeds the expense to Tesla for the recall. Reactions by traders and algobots to after-hours news are typically met with quite thin interest for the other side of a trade. Hence the frequent irrationality witnessed post-market resulting in sharp quick moves. That's usually corrected during regular trading the next day.

 

[Skryll]

[...]Only 2 things that the market cares the most lately: Vaccines and stimulus package.

but not the rule of law? To me it does remove a lot of volatility.

 

[jerry33]

I went digging for info about this awhile back (year or more?) and found a study from Kansas regarding road wear on a few specific highways that carried a lot of agriculture related trucks.

The equation they arrived at (over a few hundred pages of methods and data) was that road wear was a function of time (i.e. weather) and commercial truck axles (more axles and tires spread the weight out over more of the road, and reduces the wear / damage to the road).

Cars and light duty vehicles were such a small rounding error on road wear that they counted less than weather (which is to say, ignored in the equation).


I believe that vehicle related wearing of roads varies with the 4th power of axle weight. Thus the importance of having more axles the heavier the load is. Really heavy vehicles with few axles is the absolute worst for road wear.

You might have noticed cement trucks (and others) with axles that can be lowered and raised? Lowering the axles spreads the weight out over a better area. It is probably a requirement for operating the vehicle, or is probably at minimum a necessity for a lower licensing cost for the vehicle. Raising them back up saves tire wear and improves fuel efficiency.


Conclusion - road taxes for light duty vehicles and everything lighter is a subsidy for the commercial road based transportation industry.

Pretty close. However, there is also damage to roads by frost heaves and subsidence in areas with soft ground. (The U.S. doesn't pave to a one metre depth the way Germany does.)

 

[Bouboule]

8M km per day for cars averaging 19,300 km per year amounts to 53 km/day each. So that would take 151,000 cars doing this constantly where every single one is fully self-driving equipped and with data/storage and telematics to report 100% of all driving. So over 25,000 cars for each OEM. That's setting off my smoke detectors! Besides that, virtually none of that mileage could actually be self-driving. It would all have to be passive observation while the owner drives. Otherwise we'd be hearing about these 151,000 self driving cars out there from these other OEMs.

Not full self driving data obviously, but more data than I thought.

From Wikipedia, here is the list of clients of their latest chipset EyeQ4:

• NIO Pilot[86][87][88]
  • NIO ES8
  • NIO ES6
• Li Xiang One
• Nissan's ProPilot 2.0 [89][90]
• BMW Driving Assistant Professional[91][92]
  • X5 (2019 - 2020)
  • 3 Series (2019 - 2020)
• VW Travel Assist[93]
  • Volkswagen Passat (2019-2020)
  • Volkswagen Golf 8 (2020)
• Ford Mustang Mach-E (2021) [94]
• Ford F-150 (2021)

 

[Artful Dodger]

After-action Report: Wed, Jan 13, 2021: (Full Day's Trading)

Headline: "TSLA Buoyed by S&P Benchmark Funds"

Traded: $28,202,012,918.37 ($28.20B)
Volume: 33,314,576
VWAP: $846.54

Close: $854.41 / VWAP: 100.94%
TSLA closed ABOVE today's Avg SP
TSLA MaxPain (7:00 A.M.): $500 (+$30 from Tue)

TSLA S&P 500 Weight: 2.009157% (Jan 12)
Mkt Cap: TSLA / FB $809.896B / $716.744B = 113.00%
Note: Yahoo Finance yet to update TSLA Mkt Cap re shares issued Dec 11th (SEC Filing)
​

CEO Comp. Status: (est'd Mkt Cap including Dec 11th shares)

TSLA 30-day Closing Avg Market Cap: $686.64B
TSLA 6-mth Closing Avg Market Cap: $441.28B

Mkt Cap req'd for 7th tranche ($400B) likely achieved on Tue, Dec 29, 2020
Nota Bene: Operational milestones are req'd for this tranche.
​

'Short' Report:

FINRA Volume / Total NASDAQ Vol = 50.1% (49th Percentile rank FINRA Reporting)
FINRA Short / Total Volume = 59.1% (55th Percentile rank Shorting)
FINRA Short Exempt ratio was 0.30% of Short Volume (45th Percentile Rank Exempt)​

Comment: "TSLA zoom-climbs on P.M. buying to pace S&P 500 Index gains"

QOTD: @JamesBrown "Buy some shares and forget your password"

View all Lodger's After-Action Reports

Cheers!

 

[Nocturnal]

Refresh could be everything BUT cosmetic We would have no clue in such a case. Maybe the model S and X cars being produced right now have 4680 batteries, better performance, longer range, faster charging.
Until they announce a change in specs, who would know?
TBH model S/X are such a rounding-error in teslas production from here onwards that I doubt senior management wants to spend bandwidth on redesigning the interior right now. Getting cybertruck & semi out, and ramping GF3, then berlin, then Tx... where is the time to even look through design mockups for elon? and thats forgetting the other billion companies he runs...

Hard to imagine they would add structural batteries (assuming that they will only use 4680 in that manner) and not do a fairly large cosmetic change. I think the S/X exteriors are still pretty nice (always good to see updates of course) but the S interior at least feels super dated.

 

[kengchang]

Hard to imagine they would add structural batteries (assuming that they will only use 4680 in that manner) and not do a fairly large cosmetic change. I think the S/X exteriors are still pretty nice (always good to see updates of course) but the S interior at least feels super dated.

Tesla just renewed agreement with Panasonic Japan line, not likely to be 4680

 

[StealthP3D]

In actuality Tesla’s side cameras are capable of viewing objects over 93M miles away

That may be true but it takes sunlight 8 minutes and 30 seconds to reach the camera lens. Tesla's cameras are not magical and cannot overcome the laws of physics. That's why it's always better to use a real human eye to drive with. Because a camera can't see as far and the time delay could be fatal!

/s

 

[mejojo]

Especially since it isn't the screen that needs replaced, it is the Tegra daughterboard that Tesla charges $120 for. Total cost, including labor, is closer to $400.

They charged me $1700 to replace mine a few years ago, but I'm pretty sure the actual cost of doing the replace should actually be closer to your number. I informed them that i knew that it was the chip issue but there was no acknowledgment of a general problem at the service level.

They have told us in a recent email that the cost will be refunded in the near future.

 

[The Accountant]

End of 2021 seems a long time to wait for what should never have happened in the first place...


Nasdaq TSLA short interest will go down by about ~19m shares in the first March report.
Does this mean someone has to buy 19m shares?
@The Accountant can you please confirm that this won't be booked as profit.

Fact Checking brought up this topic here on TMC in January 2020. I concluded then that the gains from the Convertible Note Hedges would not be included in profits but would go straight to the Balance Sheet into Equity. See my post below from 2020.
I looked at the most recent 10K and Tesla states again that the gains would not go to the P&L:

"As these transactions meet certain accounting criteria, the convertible note hedges and warrants are recorded in stockholders’ equity and are not accounted for as derivatives."​

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

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

NHTSA Recall of touchscreen failures

U.S. asks Tesla to recall 158,000 vehicles for touchscreen failures

Sort of old news to us Tesla owners. I received an email from Tesla regarding this on my 16 Model X and the replacement of the emmc a while back. Tried to have the service bulletin performed but being told the parts are backordered.

Edit: Adding link to Tesla's support page
Warranty Adjustment Program

stuff like this makes me glad that I'm participating in the wheel.

 

[capster]

Here is Chris Harvey, Head of Equity Strategy at Wells Fargo Securities, reasoning by analogy that Tesla is going the way of AOL. Must be one condescending damn fool to think many retail investors will swallow that one. Short much Wells are ya?

CNBC: Tesla will become the new AOL, Wells Fargo's Chris Harvey warns

Guess he couldn’t find someone more junior to embarrass themselves publicly. Maybe his job is on the line for other equally good ‘predictions.’

At least it’s a break from oh-my-but-the-panel-gaps and GM-is-going-to-open-a-can-of-EV-wupass-any-minute-now.

 

[OrthoSurg]

What are the maths on the recall cost?
185k screens at $1000 each
185k hours of work at $200/h each?
Around 200M cost? Any estimates plus or minus or that’s in the ballpark?
With the 2 recent capital raises and plenty of liquidity, will the effect on stock price be temporary and minimal? New investors will be happy and buy the dip?

 

[MXWing]

TMC thread on ARKX that should start trading around 3/29/2021 (75 days from 1/13 filing)
(just another manic monday)(bet they have BPTRX)

Starlink IPO

ARKX owning BPTRX would be paying ARKX Management fees that would be paying BPTRX Management fees for 3% SpaceX exposure.
You'd get Tesla, Zillow, and Vail Resorts as part of the space investment package!

Can we get some more meat on the SpaceX bone please??!

 

[JRP3]

What are the maths on the recall cost?
185k screens at $1000 each
185k hours of work at $200/h each?
Around 200M cost? Any estimates plus or minus or that’s in the ballpark?
With the 2 recent capital raises and plenty of liquidity, will the effect on stock price be temporary and minimal? New investors will be happy and buy the dip?

Especially since it isn't the screen that needs replaced, it is the Tegra daughterboard that Tesla charges $120 for. Total cost, including labor, is closer to $400. (And a lot of them have already been replaced under the warranty adjustment program or by people paying to upgrade to MCU2.)

Even if none had been replaced yet that would cost ~$19M in parts and ~$44M in labor at the rates they charge customers. So I have to figure that the cost to Tesla to perform this requested recall would be under $50M. (And at that it would come from their warranty reserves, so it shouldn't impact the financials.)

Hopefully they will address the cost of this in their Q4 earnings report.

 

[MP3Mike]

What are the maths on the recall cost?
185k screens at $1000 each
185k hours of work at $200/h each?
Around 200M cost? Any estimates plus or minus or that’s in the ballpark?

Nope, already covered above. The screen isn't a problem. The repair currently costs ~$450 out of warranty. ($120 parts, $330 labor.) Figure that parts/labor are probably marked up 100%, so it would cost Tesla $225/car. Or ~$35M to replace them all. (Which would come out of the warranty reserves.)

And a significant portion have either already been replaced, upgraded to MCU2, or have been totaled. So it would be less expensive.

 

[UrsS]

" . . . it is the Tegra daughterboard that Tesla charges $120 for. Total cost, including labor, is closer to $400."

Wait a minute. If Tesla sells the daughterboard for $120 it should cost them somewhere between $12 and $60. Normal mark-up for parts between manufacturing and end user are 100% or more.
Labor is what? About 2 hours? (I really do not know) that would be $40 to the mechanic and about the same in payroll expenses, add $10 per hour for the shops space = $100 total labor. So total cost to Tesla per replacement is more like $150 or so. Also not all 158,000 cars manufactured with this defect are still on the road, and many have surpassed the 100,000 miles mark.
My guess is 50,000 actual warranty repairs at a cost o $150 each = $7.5million.

That is how I see this, no big deal.