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

[lklundin]

Russia is in the Paris Climate Accord and got hit heavily by climate change last year.

Also, Russia has vast mineral resources, including - yes you guessed it - nickel. In fact, some years ago Russia was the World's leading nickel producer. So it's quite possible that Tesla would like to get their hands on some Russian nickel - maybe in the form of locally produced cells, if need be.

Btw, most of what I know about geopolitics seems to come from Stephen Colbert:

 

[MikeAtkinson]

Epic thread by ICannot_Enough ( James Stephenson) on twitter:

Thread by @ICannot_Enough on Thread Reader App

I'm forecasting 178,254 deliveries in Q1 and almost 875K deliveries for 2021. That's 75% deliveries growth YOY.

Detailed bottom up financial forecast for this year.

 

[RobStark]

Russian nickel is the dirtiest on the planet, by a wide margin.

 

[Lycanthrope]

Weekend story time!

Was minding my own business watching some WandaVision videos on YouTube at a supercharger when a white Model S with chrome delete caught my eye. Not uncommon seeing chrome delete around here but then I noticed the manufacturer plates so I started to pay attention to the dash as he drove by and I saw the screen poking up above the dash...!!!

A Plaid S in the wild! Or at least a refreshed long range since it didn't have a spoiler. I talked to the driver for a couple minutes as he was plugging in but he couldn't share...well anything...except that it was headed back to Fremont which is about 325 miles away. Haven't heard of any sightings this far away from Fremont so was super excited to spot it.

I grabbed the video from my BlackVue. It's a bit hard to see since it was night but you can see the refreshed front facia pretty clearly as he drives by. At the time of this posting YouTube is still processing the 4k version of the video but the 1080p version is available.

Up close the exterior changes, while subtle, looked pretty slick IMO.

4K works for me, but are you telling me you didn't go over and investigate/film close-up, dude!!

One thing, have they updated the tail-lights, could you tell? By that I mean are they a still looking like separate LED's, or do they have the soft look that you have with the MX?

 

[UkNorthampton]

Employment is tricky there are forces pulling in opposite directions:-

• Aging population / eventual population decline - fewer workers.
• Space and other new industries - more jobs
• Africa/India improving living standards - larger global market, and more workers
• Automation, Robots , AI - fewer workers required

Wil may need a UBI, unless it turns out there are enough jobs for everyone., the best hope for full employment is space travel and other new industries create a lot of new jobs.

Winner take most economy.

So many manager, admin, shop, physical, driver jobs will go.

UBI is best idea, allows people to take time off/go part-time to look after young or old family, allows retraining.

Some jobs will remain, some will be created, some much the same but it will be very UNEVEN.

Whole sets of people will lose jobs. In some countries that also means healthcare, pensions.

There's also another aspect... most people I know are spenders, always in debt, 'what if I die at 40', unable to cover small surprise (inevitable) life events such as illness, unemployment etc. A few people (like many reading this) are savers - and even then investors in S&P500, dividend shares (Shell, BP, Exxon etc) will be quite different from disruptive innovation investors.

There will be lots of upset from the changes that are here/coming.

UBI / Freedom Dividend / Citizens' Income is a way to avoid some of the worst social upsets that affect everyone (even the financial/jobs winners).

Otherwise, bad actors could rabble rouse a few luddites to get some anti-Tesla ideas & that could get ugly. As investors in Tesla it seems sensible to ease the transition via UBI, renewables jobs (solar).

I agree with Andrew Yang that direct retraining has proven not to work. Creating renewable jobs creates training needs that have practical value & likely to be much better for people and companies.

 

[petit_bateau]

It's pretty obvious that Brian121 is Chinese and it's a good opportunity to understand how the Chinese think as they are culturally bread to be different. Remember that time a Chinese coworker (not born in the US) raised hell in front of their boss? Probably not as stereotypically Chinese people are rule followers in the face of authority like how they were raised to be as such in the mainland. The people actually enjoys government intervention and large governments. They also enjoy authoritarianism as they see it as efficiency, taking the politics out in which it's proven to stifle specific goals (they watch Republicans and Democrats battle back and forth with zero progress toward anything after 4 years as they build transformative sustainable energy infrastructure at record speed). Every time I hear politicians say "how can we have the Chinese have the fasted rail system while we fall behind?" How? Politics...The CCP doesn't believe in negotiations, they just do and it's done. How did the government stop Covid? They shut down the citizen of a particular area. If you don't have a negative test you can't buy food...while you can't even get people to wear masks here. Like I said, what the CCP wants they get..they want near zero Covid cases they will get it no matter how much freedom they take away.

Citizens are used to falling in line and just cares about similar goals, which is money and status. Honestly I have never heard any of my relatives wishing there's more human rights or freedom as they don't really care about such things as much as an American would. Propaganda works, and having many Chinese citizens driving Mercedes S classes just reinforce that propaganda.

Unfortunately this kind of upbringing doesn't lead to a lot of creativity and thinking outside of the box, hence all the IP stealing.

The Chinese are no more or no less 'bred' or indoctrinated than are US-ians , or for that matter Europeans. Which is to say that all cultures tend towards norms and individuals conform to those norms in order to achieve individually beneficially outcomes. And similarly leadership cadres and factions in all cultures wage their power struggles, to a greater or lesser extent in the open or otherwise.

I have watched - and listened - as senior people, and not-so-senior-people in China have openly criticised the premiership of Xi Jinping and the factional struggles within the CCP. Both in public venues and in private ones, in China and outside China.

Not all paths have to be the US-ian one.

 

[22522]

I would guess it's just open a presence there. There is no Tesla in Russia at the moment. No sales centers, nothing. The Teslas that have been imported privately to Russia are serviced here, in Helsinki.

1) Please remember that Space X satellites are not geosynchronous.

2) That essentially means that they will cover a lot of the earth as a by product of covering the part of the earth that can pay for it.

3) Russia may be covered for free as a part of this by product.

I have no idea how much the Russian government controls the internet, but incremental cost is just the hardware.

Tesla wins hearts and minds if they put it Elon Net in all the schools.

 

[OrthoSurg]

I would guess it's just open a presence there. There is no Tesla in Russia at the moment. No sales centers, nothing. The Teslas that have been imported privately to Russia are serviced here, in Helsinki.

Well, I guess the deal will work to sell Teslas in Russia if Tesla accepts to service Ladas in their service centers :X

 

[kbM3]

Woo hoo!

Conclusion? Still shareholders...

That video was recorded in 2019. If I had to bet, Mark and Martin sold some, if not all, of their TSLA shares during the GigaRise of 2020.

 

[aubreymcfato]

And let's be real. Nobody on this forum can say jack about environmental costs. Sure we all care about it (or almost all of us) and are making changes but if we cared THAT much we wouldn't be driving cars, or taking vacations, or living in large homes. Glass houses and all that.

I respectfully disagree.
Not everyone here has thousands-feet homes, or multiple cars, or fly more than once in several years, or eat a cow per month... Not here to judge - I know what my personal sins are - but there are differences.
Environmentally, there is a difference between ICEs and a EVs; there are differences between a cruise-loving frequent-flyer and someone who is not.
I thought for a forum like this those difference were important: if not, we should just believe in high-growth stocks, whatever the companies behind them.

 

[jbcarioca]

...
We don't like it. But we cannot ridicule them to think this improve their life. And to some degree, it is very tempting for me to say that somehow I would like to sacrifice my privacy a little bit if we can catch 30 year murderers too.

FWIW, I have lived in 16 countries during my life. To any objective person it should be clear that societal values differ among people on many different grounds. Some people in some countries think their own systems are superior to all others. Some simply know there are differences. Those comments may seem off-topic but they are not.

Tesla is a multi-cultural company, more so every day. Tesla has thus far been adept in coping with California, New York and Texas (same country, different cultures), Beijing, Shanghai (ditto, those two cities are distinct worlds though outsiders often don't see that- check history!), Brandenburg and broader Germany and so on. Tesla benefits by the trip-national outlook of Elon plus a wide variety of national, linguistic and cultural differences among senior staff.

The preceding paragraph is in large part explaining how Tesla consistently has been results than do most others in places considered to be difficult. These attributes become more important as Tesla matures.

Consider that Tesla has managed too obtain some wildly improbable advantages:
1. Tesla seeks EV advantage with European energy market push
2. 100% owned China operation
3. Tesla granted electricity generation licence in the UK - Energy Live News

There are many more examples, perhaps most obvious in accomplishments, specifically the seemingly unprecedented speed with which Fremont, Sparks, Shanghai, Brandenburg and Austin have been/are bing completed.

Cultural rigidity and jingoism would have derailed any of these, probably all of them.

So, the message of all this is that Tesla works very hard to deliver the best environment for workers, host governments and customers. They are not perfect.

Tesla does not and certainly will not attempt to impose any specific cultural perspectives anywhere.

Finally, the first human right in the US is 'life'. When a country imposes specific restrictions to avoid communicable disease and protect against criminal attack some see detail of human rights because they may well confuse 'license' for 'freedom' so permit the former in defense of the latter.

This is not intended to be a polemic for any given view. It is an explanation, in part, for the success of Tesla that differentiates it from almost all others. This advantage is as difficult to replicate as are several of the technological ones. This is a 'moat'.

 

[MABMAB]

That video was recorded in 2019. If I had to bet, Mark and Martin sold some, if not all, of their TSLA shares during the GigaRise of 2020.

Thanks, you know as I watched it it seemed familiar. Date with CNBC was recent so I thought maybe it was newer.

 

[Mokuzai]

4K works for me, but are you telling me you didn't go over and investigate/film close-up, dude!!

One thing, have they updated the tail-lights, could you tell? By that I mean are they a still looking like separate LED's, or do they have the soft look that you have with the MX?

Hah I did investigate close up, but the driver said no pictures. I didn't notice anything different with the rear tail lights.

 

[Thumper]

I'm confused. Why no pictures in real life? They have photos on the website!

 

[Nocturnal]

I respectfully disagree.
Not everyone here has thousands-feet homes, or multiple cars, or fly more than once in several years, or eat a cow per month... Not here to judge - I know what my personal sins are - but there are differences.
Environmentally, there is a difference between ICEs and a EVs; there are differences between a cruise-loving frequent-flyer and someone who is not.
I thought for a forum like this those difference were important: if not, we should just believe in high-growth stocks, whatever the companies behind them.

The point is that we are all making some kind of compromise and aren't doing anywhere near to what we could do to lower our carbon footprint. We all believe the grid will be super clean soon because of cheap and plentiful renewables right? Then this problem will sort itself out just fine.

 

[aronth5]

AND your carpet.

By the way, what on earth would be the benefit of powered seat recliners/raisers? The most frantic of car users alter that configuration how often? Twice, thrice a week? And in exchange for the dependability and simplicity of a gravity hook-and-latch you get the complexity of a motorized mechanism? This is not windows we're discussing here. I sincerely hope not to see such.

My older dad would not agree. Folding down and especially lifting up the seats is difficult for him, but I do get your point.

 

[dhrivnak]

The point is that we are all making some kind of compromise and aren't doing anywhere near to what we could do to lower our carbon footprint. We all believe the grid will be super clean soon because of cheap and plentiful renewables right? Then this problem will sort itself out just fine.

no sir as many of us are working diligently to consciously lower our carbon footprint. Personally we are down 89%. And 90% lower than the average US household.

 

[EnzoXYZ]

It's pretty obvious that Brian121 is Chinese and it's a good opportunity to understand how the Chinese think as they are culturally bread to be different. Remember that time a Chinese coworker (not born in the US) raised hell in front of their boss? Probably not as stereotypically Chinese people are rule followers in the face of authority like how they were raised to be as such in the mainland. The people actually enjoys government intervention and large governments. They also enjoy authoritarianism as they see it as efficiency, taking the politics out in which it's proven to stifle specific goals (they watch Republicans and Democrats battle back and forth with zero progress toward anything after 4 years as they build transformative sustainable energy infrastructure at record speed). Every time I hear politicians say "how can we have the Chinese have the fasted rail system while we fall behind?" How? Politics...The CCP doesn't believe in negotiations, they just do and it's done. How did the government stop Covid? They shut down the citizen of a particular area. If you don't have a negative test you can't buy food...while you can't even get people to wear masks here. Like I said, what the CCP wants they get..they want near zero Covid cases they will get it no matter how much freedom they take away.

Citizens are used to falling in line and just cares about similar goals, which is money and status. Honestly I have never heard any of my relatives wishing there's more human rights or freedom as they don't really care about such things as much as an American would. Propaganda works, and having many Chinese citizens driving Mercedes S classes just reinforce that propaganda.

Unfortunately this kind of upbringing doesn't lead to a lot of creativity and thinking outside of the box, hence all the IP stealing.

And having seeing your response I’m guessing you too are chinese but probably don’t support CCP as much or lived outside of China a litter longer than the OP. I had nearly the same thoughts reading the OP as your response. Scary!

 

[Singuy]

And having seeing your response I’m guessing you too are chinese but probably don’t support CCP as much or lived outside of China a litter longer than the OP. I had nearly the same thoughts reading the OP as your response. Scary!

Yes I am Chinese. I lived through the Tian Men square incident as a little child and have lived in the US since then. Much has changed and the China I knew being more inline with NK is no longer as such. I do believe the CCP is definitely cut throat when it comes to their dealings. However I also can't deny the wealth and FREEDOM( (yes but only vs before) the current government has brought to their people vs when I was there 30 years ago having trouble with running water and food security IN Beijing. This is one of the main reasons why the people will fall in line more than revolt like back late 1980s. The lesser of two evils, no freedom and being poor vs less freedom and being wealthy. Everyone rather choose the latter.

Honestly if we were to compare China when Mao was in power, the China of today is almost like anarchy in comparison. My grandmother spent a good portion of her young life kissing up to the CCP by working 2x as hard in their "training camps" just so they wouldn't terminate her for coming from a family of wealth, in which the CCP completely dismantled. The amount of brainwashing back in the days were ridiculous, in which we see so little of nowadays on Chinese television with hundreds of variety vs just a few propaganda channels back in the days. Just the other day my mom was telling me how a friend was extremely frustrated and actually became ill all due to a lack of tears when Mao died. She was afraid of being shamed or worst thrown in Jail. China is actually livable today, not so much decades ago.

 

[Nocturnal]

no sir as many of us are working diligently to consciously lower our carbon footprint. Personally we are down 89%. And 90% lower than the average US household.

Point stands.