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

[Prunesquallor]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1389926549822992384

That's...........just embarrassing.

Saw some on Twitter saying Ford was sending Mach-E's to Europe/Norway to offset EU carbon penalties and that's the reason for the continual decline in sales......which makes no logical sense. Ford still has access to the full EV tax credit here in the US and they don't sell that many cars in Europe so it's not like their fines would be big over there. There was a report (that Ford put out themselves to try and bring attention to it) that they started delivering to Norway, but it was only like a couple hundred Mach-E's. Simply put, there's just no demand in the US for the Mach-E

Just imagine what's going to happen to Mach E's sales in the US when Tesla get's access to the tax credit again.......

No wonder the Ford CEO was on Twitter for the past couple of weeks throwing constant shade at Tesla.

I can’t find it now, but I clearly remember an article from a year ago or so where Ford laid out the EU-first strategy. The penalties were killing them and the Supercredits are only around for a couple more years.

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

My understanding is that they can sell about 20K this year in US, the rest of the production is earmarked for EU where they need the EV credits more.
So based on that, if you subtract the first 3 month of sales and divide by 9 for the rest of the year, you get an average of 1297 per month they can sell, so expect the numbers to keep going down.

In short: they are production constrained.

See what Henchman just posted. There's tons of supply available in the US right now and they can't move them.

We'll see about the European numbers. I don't think there's going to be that much demand for them there. Especially as we get close to Q3 and there's signs of Giga Berlin starting some Y production, I think a lot of consumers looking for a EV SUV will opt to wait for the Model Y.

Granted we don't know their shipping cycle yet but not off to a great start -

https://twitter.com/x/status/1389957614914605064

I say not off to a great start because we just got a tweet from Ford themselves like 2 weeks ago showing hundreds of Mach E's in Norway ready for delivery. And if I remember correctly, Ford is starting with Norway first since it's the most EV friendly country in the EU

 

[thx1139]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1389926549822992384

That's...........just embarrassing.

Saw some on Twitter saying Ford was sending Mach-E's to Europe/Norway to offset EU carbon penalties and that's the reason for the continual decline in sales......which makes no logical sense. Ford still has access to the full EV tax credit here in the US and they don't sell that many cars in Europe so it's not like their fines would be big over there. There was a report (that Ford put out themselves to try and bring attention to it) that they started delivering to Norway, but it was only like a couple hundred Mach-E's. Simply put, there's just no demand in the US for the Mach-E

Just imagine what's going to happen to Mach E's sales in the US when Tesla get's access to the tax credit again.......

No wonder the Ford CEO was on Twitter for the past couple of weeks throwing constant shade at Tesla.

EV Tax credit helps customers. It doesnt help Ford. Not paying as much in fines in Europe saves Ford money. Now as for Europe I see that Ford so far has sold 169 Mach-Es in Europe so far. Now how many have arrived in Europe? I dont know, but with how many they made in February more then 169 should have arrived by now.

 

[elasalle]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1389926549822992384

That's...........just embarrassing.

Saw some on Twitter saying Ford was sending Mach-E's to Europe/Norway to offset EU carbon penalties and that's the reason for the continual decline in sales......which makes no logical sense. Ford still has access to the full EV tax credit here in the US and they don't sell that many cars in Europe so it's not like their fines would be big over there. There was a report (that Ford put out themselves to try and bring attention to it) that they started delivering to Norway, but it was only like a couple hundred Mach-E's. Simply put, there's just no demand in the US for the Mach-E

Just imagine what's going to happen to Mach E's sales in the US when Tesla get's access to the tax credit again.......

No wonder the Ford CEO was on Twitter for the past couple of weeks throwing constant shade at Tesla.

I am wondering if somebody put lipstick on a Pig. Applies to VW 1D3 and 4 as well

Those looking at performance/efficiencency obviously will not be buying these.

Saw my 1st Mach-E while driving this weekend, not that bad from the outside though.

 

[Christine69420]

I say not off to a great start because we just got a tweet from Ford themselves like 2 weeks ago showing hundreds of Mach E's in Norway ready for delivery. And if I remember correctly, Ford is starting with Norway first since it's the most EV friendly country in the EU

They have sold 41 now in May, and 88 so far in 2021.

All EV sales in Norway can be browsed here in more or less real time: Registreringer av nye elbiler i Norge

And yes - many EV makers sell most of their European car quota to Norway. We have 3 categories of EV buyers; Tesla, Anything but Tesla and the presumably largest group which just want a decent car.

 

[thx1139]

See what Henchman just posted. There's tons of supply available in the US right now and they can't move them.

We'll see about the European numbers. I don't think there's going to be that much demand for them there. Especially as we get close to Q3 and there's signs of Giga Berlin starting some Y production, I think a lot of consumers looking for a EV SUV will opt to wait for the Model Y.

Granted we don't know their shipping cycle yet but not off to a great start -

https://twitter.com/x/status/1389957614914605064

I say not off to a great start because we just got a tweet from Ford themselves like 2 weeks ago showing hundreds of Mach E's in Norway ready for delivery. And if I remember correctly, Ford is starting with Norway first since it's the most EV friendly country in the EU

Question then is why have only 88 been registered so far in Norway?

 

[Curt Renz]

Benzinga - 3 hours ago: Unusual Options Alerts - TSLA

Excerpt:

For TSLA (NASDAQ:TSLA), we notice a call option trade that happens to be bullish, expiring in 2 day(s) on May 7, 2021. This event was a transfer of 286 contract(s) at a $685.00 strike. The total cost received by the writing party (or parties) was $230.2K, with a price of $805.0 per contract. There were 2476 open contracts at this strike prior to today, and today 10454 contract(s) were bought and sold.

 

[mblakele]

Looks like STLA confirmed the EU pool story today. However "is ending" doesn't make the time horizon as clear as I'd like.

Stellantis' Revenue Jumped 14% as It Navigated the Chip Crisis

[...] Chief Financial Officer Richard Palmer said that Stellantis is ending its deal to buy European emissions credits from Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), as it now expects to sell enough zero-emission vehicles to meet regulatory standards on its own. The move will save the company about 300 million euros ($360 million) per year, roughly two-thirds of which would have gone to Tesla, Palmer said.​

​

[...] Stellantis said that it will present more details around its electric-vehicle plans at an "Electrification Day" on July 8, and it will report its full first-half financial results on Aug. 3.​

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

EV Tax credit helps customers. It doesnt help Ford. Not paying as much in fines in Europe saves Ford money. Now as for Europe I see that Ford so far has sold 169 Mach-Es in Europe so far. Now how many have arrived in Europe? I dont know, but with how many they made in February more then 169 should have arrived by now.

For sure, I definitely understand why Ford would want to have a good amount of it's production headed to Europe.

However, the EV tax credit should be driving demand for the Mach E in the US. But when there's 1200 available right now with such limited production so far, you know there's a serious issue with demand at this point.

One last thing to point out and I'll leave this topic alone, but Ford's sales have been declining in Europe for a while now including a big drop in 2020(though to be expected somewhat with covid unless of course you're Tesla). With the chip shortages and the fact that Ford has been phasing out their sedans in favor of trucks/large SUVs, I just don't see Ford's Europe 2021 sales being enough for the carbon fine to be as dramatic as some make it out to be.

 

[woodisgood]

The California grid has another big issue few people have touched on. Between conservation efforts, rising energy efficiency, lots of solar customers, utilities are seeing declining demand for (utility supplied) electricity. At the same time, with rising fire danger the utilities are seeing rising costs for maintaining the grid.

The utility business model is to collect money by selling electrons. But the electrons themselves are only a fraction of utilities' costs. Most of the cost is building and maintaining infrastructure. So in California utilities are facing a serious squeeze because they have to pay more costs while selling fewer kWh worth of electrons.

One of the reasons California is pushing electric cars, buses, and trucks is that it can help stem the falling demand for electricity. If more people in California have EVs, utilities can sell more electrons to cover their fixed costs and the price per electron can go down. But right now the proportion of EVs in the fleet is still low single digits, even in California.

Eventually, when batteries are everywhere, the utilities can cut some of their transmission line costs, but like universal EVs that's still decades in the future.

So in the long run the utilities may have a viable business model again. But for the time being the only way for utilities to cover their expenses is to extract more money per electron from their current customers, solar and non-solar. California has this valley of pain to get through over the next 10-15 years before the happy EV/solar/battery future can be a real economic positive.

From personal experience, there is a lot of truth to this. We're trying to upgrade to a 200A main on a regular suburban street, and PG&E has stuck us with well over a thousand dollars of administrative fees and other costs that they are unable to explain for a project they initially only charged $75 for (a new wire drop from the pole). Then something suddenly changed and they decided they needed "engineering" and a number of other "administrative reviews" and trumped up the bill from under $100 to over $1200. They cannot explain what exactly they needed to "engineer." It is plainly obvious they are trying to grab pennies from whoever and wherever they can.

 

[dm28997]

They have sold 41 now in May, and 88 so far in 2021.

All EV sales in Norway can be browsed here in more or less real time: Registreringer av nye elbiler i Norge

And yes - many EV makers sell most of their European car quota to Norway. We have 3 categories of EV buyers; Tesla, Anything but Tesla and the presumably largest group which just want a decent car.

Just out of curiosity what happens to the ICE vehicles in the EU. In the US Tesla was getting something like 90% ICE vehicles to trade for the M3s and MYs.
From my understanding the Netherlands build the cost of recycling into the purchase price for some items.
Seems there will be a ton of scrap to deal with in the US and the EU. I hope there is a good environmental remedy for this issue. Would a junkyard be a good investment?

 

[mekberg]

Looks like STLA confirmed the EU pool story today. However "is ending" doesn't make the time horizon as clear as I'd like.

Stellantis' Revenue Jumped 14% as It Navigated the Chip Crisis

[...] Chief Financial Officer Richard Palmer said that Stellantis is ending its deal to buy European emissions credits from Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), as it now expects to sell enough zero-emission vehicles to meet regulatory standards on its own. The move will save the company about 300 million euros ($360 million) per year, roughly two-thirds of which would have gone to Tesla, Palmer said.​

​

[...] Stellantis said that it will present more details around its electric-vehicle plans at an "Electrification Day" on July 8, and it will report its full first-half financial results on Aug. 3.​

So $60 million a quarter- got it. Yet there are 5 top stories in the Google TSLA search about how Tesla's profits are in jeopardy because of this.

 

[The Accountant]

Looks like STLA confirmed the EU pool story today. However "is ending" doesn't make the time horizon as clear as I'd like.

Stellantis' Revenue Jumped 14% as It Navigated the Chip Crisis

[...] Chief Financial Officer Richard Palmer said that Stellantis is ending its deal to buy European emissions credits from Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), as it now expects to sell enough zero-emission vehicles to meet regulatory standards on its own. The move will save the company about 300 million euros ($360 million) per year, roughly two-thirds of which would have gone to Tesla, Palmer said.​

​

[...] Stellantis said that it will present more details around its electric-vehicle plans at an "Electrification Day" on July 8, and it will report its full first-half financial results on Aug. 3.​

Just 2 months ago on March 3 Richard Palmer the CFO said,
"Yes, Carlos. So Charles, we had costs of credits in 2020 of around 300 million for Europe, most of which were Tesla, and we have a similar number in 2021. It goes down, but not significantly"

On the Oct 28, 2020 earnings call, FCA CEO Michael Manley said,
"In terms of volumes for next year, I don't want to forecast those at this moment in time. But it does lead into your second question, which is, are we locked with Tesla? Yes, we are. We put in a multi-year strategy......... But we are effectively locked with Tesla"

I'm interested to see how this plays out. Nonetheless, as @mekberg pointed out, it's only $60m of the quarterly $500m Reg Credit Income...so I see Reg Credits remaining healthy this year,

 

[Artful Dodger]

So $60 million a quarter- got it. Yet there are 5 top stories in the Google TSLA search about how Tesla's profits are in jeopardy because of this.

MSM stories are full of misinformation and deliberate lies. We here at TMC estimated the FCA carbon credits to be about €2B over 2 years.

The SMALL lie is the simple omission that there are literally a dozen other manufacturers that need to buy carbon credit, and the price is going up. Tesla will continue to sell ALL the EU carbon credits they can deliver, and the price will continue to go up as EU rules tighten.

The BIG lie is that Stellantis is counting on PHEV and Supercredits to cancel out their future fines. Big News: the EU is re-rating PHEV credits because people aren't pluging in to charge, they are just being used as gas cars with a carbon fine exemption.

Well, that's going away mon ami. But c'est la guerre if you think Tesla will let you back in the pool*.

Cheers!

*there is a no-peeing-in-the-pool clause in the contract w FCA.

 

[Curt Renz]

Teslarati - yesterday: MD Raffles M-3 as Vaccine Incentive

Excerpt:

A family physician in Buffalo, New York, is attempting to incentivize the COVID-19 vaccine by giving away a Tesla in a raffle. Normal raffle prizes usually won’t top this one, as a flashy and high-tech Tesla will be the prize for one lucky winner who is willing to get vaccinated.

Dr. Raul Vazquez of Urban Family Practice in Buffalo, New York, had an idea to bring awareness to and hopefully encourage more people to get the COVID-19 vaccine: Everyone who gets vaccinated will be entered into a raffle and the winner will get a new Tesla.

 

[skybluecgreen]

May get the SN15 launch today:

EDIT: vehicles now approaching which according to the hosts is not a good sign for it happening today.

 

[WattsHappening]

See what Henchman just posted. There's tons of supply available in the US right now and they can't move them.

We'll see about the European numbers. I don't think there's going to be that much demand for them there. Especially as we get close to Q3 and there's signs of Giga Berlin starting some Y production, I think a lot of consumers looking for a EV SUV will opt to wait for the Model Y.

Granted we don't know their shipping cycle yet but not off to a great start -

https://twitter.com/x/status/1389957614914605064

I say not off to a great start because we just got a tweet from Ford themselves like 2 weeks ago showing hundreds of Mach E's in Norway ready for delivery. And if I remember correctly, Ford is starting with Norway first since it's the most EV friendly country in the EU

Do we know how Ford calculates 'sales' in the EU? I believe here in the states, Ford recognizes sales revenue when they ship to a dealer, not when the dealer sells to the end customer. Is it the same in the EU?

The combination of US sales numbers and data that suggest many are still available at dealers support the lower April sales figures, regardless of their EU strategy. They basically stuffed the channel in previous months.

 

[StealthP3D]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1389926549822992384

That's...........just embarrassing.

Saw some on Twitter saying Ford was sending Mach-E's to Europe/Norway to offset EU carbon penalties and that's the reason for the continual decline in sales......which makes no logical sense. Ford still has access to the full EV tax credit here in the US and they don't sell that many cars in Europe so it's not like their fines would be big over there. There was a report (that Ford put out themselves to try and bring attention to it) that they started delivering to Norway, but it was only like a couple hundred Mach-E's. Simply put, there's just no demand in the US for the Mach-E

Just imagine what's going to happen to Mach E's sales in the US when Tesla get's access to the tax credit again.......

No wonder the Ford CEO was on Twitter for the past couple of weeks throwing constant shade at Tesla.

I've been following this quite closely and, unless Ford is carefully throttling deliveries to reservation holders to maintain appearances of strong demand (which is certainly possible), the slowing sales are due to supply in the US, not demand. Because it's taking them a long time to fulfill pre-orders and many are still not filled yet. But it's also obvious that demand is not huge (the Mach-e is a very expensive car for what you get) so it's possible this is just Ford playing games to keep perceived demand high. There is at least one large shipment of cars that's been sitting in a European port for well over a month and yet they haven't sold a single Mach-e in the EU as of the end of Q1. I think they are waiting for software updates.

The roll-out of the Mach-e has been a bigger boondoggle than the Model 3 ramp and yet the media is strangely silent on this issue. It's almost as if they are still hoping the Mach-e might still be a threat to Tesla.

My impression is that a fair number of US Mach-e reservationists are starting to get buyers remorse and many that have not taken delivery are backing out of their reservations. Many bought it primarily because they wanted an EV but hated Tesla or they liked the Mach-e styling better than the Model Y. Now they are realizing Ford over-promised and under-delivered. Phone as a key is not even close to as functional as it was this time of the rollout of Model 3 (most admit they don't even use the feature because it's so unreliable), the Ford phone app is terribly flakey, Plug and Charge almost never works so they can't use the free miles Ford gave them, the software in the car is non-sensical in many ways, the remaining range metric is completely unreliable because it works like it does in Ford cars and Trucks, it adjusts the remaining range way higher than reality if you have been descending out of the mountains and adjusts it scarily low if you just climbed a mountain pass such that it can never be relied upon, even by a reasonably experienced operator. There is no way to convert the percent of battery charge remaining into miles without doing the math in your head or using this inaccurate "remaining miles" display. A large percentage of the cars have glass roof panels that are misaligned with the top edge of the windscreen such that it makes excessive wind noise and I don't think Ford is considering this a warranty defect. Most of the center touchscreens make a buzzing noise that is irritating to most when the car is parked. The suspension is tuned in an odd way that causes it to feel bouncy on typical highways above 50 mph such that the headlights will be fluctuating up and down while other cars on the same road have steady beams. You can't use the Ford charging cord on a 240V 30 amp outlet in your garage. Even with an adapter the car will try to pull too many amps and trip the breaker (there is no manual way to reduce charge current in the car).

People who thought they didn't care about the extra efficiency offered by Tesla are now learning it requires sitting at the Level 2 charger another 25% longer to get the same number of miles. Same with fast DC charging.

The list goes on.

This is really too bad for the transition to sustainable transport because I think it will cause some of the Mach-e buyers to be turned off from EV's for future. purchases. I know it's difficult, but Tesla owners need to resist the temptation from strengthening the "us vs. them" tribe mentality by acting like superior douchebags. Just support their decision to go electric and tell them it doesn't matter which EV an individual gets, as long as they are happy with it.

 

[EVNow]

Just 2 months ago on March 3 Richard Palmer the CFO said,
"Yes, Carlos. So Charles, we had costs of credits in 2020 of around 300 million for Europe, most of which were Tesla, and we have a similar number in 2021. It goes down, but not significantly"

On the Oct 28, 2020 earnings call, FCA CEO Michael Manley said,
"In terms of volumes for next year, I don't want to forecast those at this moment in time. But it does lead into your second question, which is, are we locked with Tesla? Yes, we are. We put in a multi-year strategy......... But we are effectively locked with Tesla"

I'm interested to see how this plays out. Nonetheless, as @mekberg pointed out, it's only $60m of the quarterly $500m Reg Credit Income...so I see Reg Credits remaining healthy this year,

If Tesla is getting only ~10% from FACE - where was/is it getting rest from ? China is new, CA ZEV credits are mostly out ...

 

[EVNow]

the remaining range metric is completely unreliable because it works like it does in Ford cars and Trucks, it adjusts the remaining range way higher than reality if you have been descending out of the mountains and adjusts it scarily low if you just climbed a mountain pass such that it can never be relied upon, even by a reasonably experienced operator.

LOL. Sounds like 2011 Leaf.