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

[hobbes]

Hmmmm, think they might be trying to set a record? Good choice in drivers.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1403750020965310464

View attachment 672935View attachment 672936

It looks like they should better choose an unknown driver.

 

[hobbes]

How should the car reliably know the screen failed ? Imho impossible

Inside camera looking at screen, the rest the NNs can figure out .

 

[Pezpunk]

That's a lot of stuff!
Surprised we can see the sun and moon.

space is big.

 

[kbM3]

But I really hope the top speed is electronically limited to a GPS-geofenced race track, advanced driver's school training is required, and a signed consent form is on file. I bet you know which vlogger I'm thinking of...

Cheers!

THEORETICALLY active safety measures could improve so much it would be safe to let your 12 year old take the wheel at 200 mph in the city

‘’That’s if steering, braking, throttle is completely over-rideable by the car. Although my first part was said (partly) in jest, this part would be an important criteria to enable consumer vehicles to enter boring tunnels.

 

[Curt Renz]

CNBC - 2.5 hours ago: GM, Ford are all-in on EVs. Here’s how their dealers feel about it

Excerpt:

Many auto dealerships are embracing the electric vehicle transition, but there are concerns about costs to be paid, staff training and impact on lucrative service department business.

 

[jbcarioca]

Perhaps but that doesn’t tickle my sense on why I should believe they have a position to work with. Of course behind any discussion made here in a few sentences we all have a background intuition that differs about just how catastrophic the ICE market could become as it becomes evident that buying an ICE is very short sighted and the used market flushes with cars dumped especially to claim new EV subsidies and that propagates upstream to new sales. I haven’t done concrete work on Stellantis yet. Just relaying my current expectations. I can;t even name their best selling EV off the top of my head.

Too bad. Here is the former PSA BEV short term plan:

About Us

Our mission is to provide freedom of movement for all through distinctive, versatile, and sustainable mobility solutions.

www.groupe-psa.com

That excludes their commercial vehicles which have a different plan.
Under Stellantis their platform strategies are already being expanded and NA (Jeep and RAM mostly) has several models under way.
Zero doubt that they are well behind the Chinese. Zero doubt that they are depending on Chinese expertise3 is several major areas.

Structurally Stellantis, GM, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai/Kia are deeply dependent on Chinese market BEV expertise including sales. There is copius documentation behind paywalls from places like Automotive News and MarkLines, among many others.

Most of us seem blissfully unaware that GM is far more dependent on China than they are on the US, with China accounting for as much as 45% of worldwide sales.

GM China Sales Jump 69 Percent During First Quarter 2021

Marking an important recovery with respect to Q1 2020, which was severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

gmauthority.com

GM also is deeply dependent on their Korean operation for small vehicle global design.
So, GM will end out surviving nicely, whether or not the NA lagging lineup ends out quickly adapting. Specifically keep in mind that the Bolt and the upcoming Hummer and pickups are really attempts to ignore all GM's BEV and small vehicle talent. The successful GM markets, China and Brazil are the stellar two, are not closely connected to the NA idiots, but they are closely connected with each other. Despite the NA issues, China origin Buicks do well and, perhaps oddly, Cadillac does well in China:

Cadillac Set A New Sales Record During 2020 In China

Marking five consecutive years of growth in the country.

gmauthority.com

There is much that would be off topic to Tesla. Still, Tesla is the only one to have China integrated with global operations and product development. Tesla will benefit disproportionately, no doubt, because they build what China wants most.

What we should realize is that China is producing and designing the vehicles that will end out competing most seriously with Tesla. GM, Stellantis, Daimler Benz and all the others need not go broke, not even BMW. They'll all begin to source and depend on China-market designs, technology and production technologies. They in fact already do.

My last point: we all glory in Tesla's Giga Presses as we should. We all hear about IDRA, the Italian face of Giga Presses. What is far less easy to discover is that IDRA is 100% owned by a Hong Kong base LK technologies, which really is the driver. So, nobody is anxious to discover that it really is Chinese technology that Tesla has been using to make such huge successes.

Please stop imagining that Tesla will end out THE dominate vehicle brand globally and that their innovation is all about California.

There was good reason to go to China and devote inordinate attention to that country. The Tesla mission depends on absolute attention to a sustainable future. That depends more on China than it does on any other country.

Shout at me, disapprove, dislike. Please, please do your homework before making the attacks.

 

[StealthP3D]

Do we know, for sure, that it sells at a massive loss? I don’t doubt it but haven’t seen any factual numbers anywhere.

It's just an educated guess as Ford, like most makers, doesn't break out the numbers. If Ford was making money on them at the current price point, they would make more of them. I doubt the loss is massive since it's a relatively low volume product. They are making them for the emission credits they don't have to buy.

Based on the hoses alone, someone has to hook all of those up, wrap 'em and secure them. When the frunk liner is pulled out it looks like a cross between someone's low-budget plumbing repair project and a work of modern art depicting society's current mental health. I think the factory down in Mexico must have a lot of experienced hosers working there. We can assume they don't work for $5/hour but they are probably pretty proficient and fairly fast. So that's good. But there are four pumps under that frunk and a bunch of other complexity (all made by suppliers, I'm sure).

Then there's the big battery and all that crappy software that has to be costed over very few vehicles.

 

[printf42]

It looks like they should better choose an unknown driver.

Some say he is a clone with engineered DNA from all greatest drivers in the history, but it could also be from all the worst drivers.
All we know is, it’s called FSD.

 

[nativewolf]

It's faint praise to say Ford did a better job that VW or GM. And the Bolt was a pretty good car (looks aside) - it just wasn't done by GM. The EV1 was a good car too, for the era. But that was a quarter century before the Mach-e and both GM EVs came out before Tesla made the Model 3 so it's not clear to which GM car you are comparing the VW to. Maybe the Mach-e is a better car than the ID4, maybe not, we would be splitting hairs and it might end up coming down to software, which is a work in progress for both of them. It might also come down to personal preferences as I don't think either of them has a clear technological lead. The VW can probably sell closer to the price it cost to produce than the Mach-e. To me that makes it the "better car". Just because Ford is willing to take a big loss on every Mach-e they sell doesn't make it better. You need to look at it like an investor, not an auto consumer.

Even Tesla's original Model S did not have the cluster-suck of hoses the Mach-e has. And the Model S was the better car, nearly a decade earlier. Blaming the Mach-e's hoses on that it's their first effort seems to miss the mark. I think it's revealing as to how they design and engineer vehicles. It's a corporate cluster-suck, just like their hose problem.

I'm not a Ford basher, I grew up in a "Ford family", the two cars I learned to drive on were Fords and my first car was a Ford, the legendary "grandma's car" with only 35K miles, always garaged, never driven in inclement weather and immaculately cared for. She gifted it to me when she could no longer drive. And I bought a new Ford F-150 in 2009. I don't have a problem with Ford's reliability, at least not with their legacy ICE cars, it's the engineering choices they make that tell me they are behind VW in many ways. But we are splitting hairs with the Mach-e vs. ID4. Volkswagen will get a much higher percentage of their investment back on the ID4 vs. Ford on their Mach-e and yet both cars allows their respective manufacturers to gain experience with EV's. So which company made better choices? My main point that instigated this rant was the fact that the Mach-e won the range test does not indicate a technological lead because they did it with a battery of nearly 100 kWh in size. The fact that less than 90% of it is useable actually argues against them having a lead in EV's. When you have little experience and little data you cannot maximize value because you don't know what you are doing.



The F-150 can't be judged yet as it's a work in progress. I don't know how you can judge the F-150 based on the Mach-e considering you were excusing it's issues as a "first effort". And selling every Ford Lightning they produce is not a good measure of how good it is when it will be manufactured in such small quantities. A better measure is whether it could outsell the Cybertruck. Because if Ford can't sell more F-150 Lightnings than Tesla can sell Cybertrucks, well to me, that indicates Ford didn't succeed. Pickup trucks is Ford's market to defend. I don't see them selling many at all, at any price, as far as the eye can see. Selling all they make is not a useful metric if they can't or don't or won't make very many. I hope I'm wrong but consumers like to get more for their money and corporations don't like to bleed money. It comes down to delivering value which is difficult to do when you blow billions on advertising and marketing, have a huge and inefficient dealer network to support and are lacking in the ability to design and engineer to first principles. It all comes down to the ability to offer value to the consumer.

Does Ford have that ability? Or will it be a government bailout? Time will tell.

why I said hopeful for the f150. The mach-e does somethings better than the first model 3 which did things better than the S, the 3 which frankly...was a bit of a mess early on ..it just had engineered improvements constantly making it better. Even now the paint shop in Freemont is not consistently great. Model Y was what the 3 should have been in an ideal world. Mach-e isn't so bad and does give Ford somewhere to go. From a point of reference it is their Roadster. They are 15 years behind and have 5 to get close (I give all the legacies 5 years to transition or have nationalistic moats). They did not win the range test, the M3 did. VW ID4 is a hack, it also had a big battery, it went a shorter distance, the battery is heavy, the vehicle is heavy, the car was designed to hold diesel motors. The fact that they are trying to hack a diesel motor platform into an EV shows that accountants are running things and they couldn't get a new platform out as fast as Ford. Tesla has shown the legacy companies that they musk move faster. Ford moved faster than VW and I find that indisputable. Ford is a much smaller company than VW Group.

I find your measures of declaring Ford a success or not a bit ....odd. You realize that if Ford f150 outsells the cybertruck that Tesla is in deep dodo? I mean it would a disastrous thing for Tesla; stock would tank and they'd look much more like an auto company. I don't expect Ford to do so simply because there aren't enough batteries. Ford will be battery constrained for another 3-5 years no matter how hard they move. So for Ford it is enough to sell every ev f150 they can make. That's enough to move the company and that furthers a sustainable industrial policy for humanity. Will it save them from bankruptcy? Maybe not but what would emerge should be successful. I see Ford as the first legacy to do something worthy of notice. I expect the f150 to be quite ok, pickups are what Ford does best. It would do wonders for Ford if they could maintain a waiting list for the ev F150. What I saw from VW does not show me that the company wouldn't throw EVs to the grinder if they could get away with it.

 

[dhanson865]

Of course, I don't have a refresh S, so I'm piecing this together like the rest of us, but I don't think that is the case. The manual excerpt states:

"In most situations, these buttons are not available until you press one of the gear buttons to activate it. When active, the LEDs associated with each gear illuminate..."

It sounds to me like these buttons can be used without a failure; they just require a double press to prevent inadvertent activation.

Well let me give you this clue from the videos we've already seen. You can't even see the buttons in most lighting conditions unless they are active. You'd be trying to double press a seemingly random spot on a blank area of trim.

There are ways to activate the buttons, but they aren't anything you are going to do as a primary method of changing gears. You'll adapt to the screen method before figuring out how to even find the darn redundant backup buttons that are hidden in plain sight.

When they say the buttons aren't available, they mean they are practically invisible. Like you can't even see them if they aren't backlit.

 

[Paul_SF]

Here is the link to original pdf:

拓普集团 ：拓普集团关于投资者交流会召开情况的公告 网页链接 - 雪球

ææ®éå¢ ï¼ææ®éå¢å³äºæèµè交æµä¼å¬å¼æåµçå¬å ç½é¡µé¾æ¥

xueqiu.com

Now you can Google translate it, ok?
Alright let me do that:
Q: A Corp is in China, how’s the order?
A: No, A Corp did everything right, they have at least 5 years lead. These “problems” are temporary, orders are normal.


Above is the official release, but I found a few other unofficial meeting minutes floating around, which are far more interesting, for example this one:

拓普集团 投资者交流会纪要 2021年6月8日 拓普集团 投资者交流会纪要参会领导：董事长邬总日期：2021年6月8日产品结构：减震、声学套件、汽车底盘、汽车电子、热管... - 雪球

ææ®éå¢ æèµè交æµä¼çºªè¦åä¼é¢å¯¼ï¼è£äºé¿é¬æ»æ¥æï¼2021å¹´6æ8æ¥äº§åç»æï¼åéã声å¦å¥ä»¶ã汽车åºçã汽车çµåãç管çï¼2+3ï¼è½»éååºçä¸å¡ä»ç»è½»éååºççå£åéèµäº§å£åï¼èµ·æ¥æèµ5亿åï¼å大å 工工èºï¼å¯¹è®¾å¤ã人åãææ¯è¦æ±é«æ¶é´ä¸ï¼3å¹´å...

xueqiu.com

• Heat management solution(Octovalve) starts to deliver to Tesla in Jan 2021, 500k units for 2021, San hua is the only other heat solution supplier.
• Tesla 2nd GF in China is almost done deal, now picking among three possible locations, likely would be XiongAn(in HeBei province).(TuoPu build new factories close to customers to supply them, so they probably has heads up of next factory plans)
• Parts orders for CyberTruck already started.

Can’t believe Tesla suppliers are spilling beans just like that and we don’t even know…

Definitely XiongAn! The best smart city of the future obviously needs the best transportation and manufacturing.
Thank you for the details!

 

[Curt Renz]

I'm not supporting this movement, just passing along the story.

Benzinga - 3 hours ago: 'Clear Manipulation For Amusement's Sake,' Crypto Group Trying To Oust Elon Musk As Tesla CEO Says There's Sense Of 'Betrayal'

Excerpt:

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk has ruffled enough feathers with his fervent tweets on cryptocurrency that a group has launched a whole new project aimed simply at putting an end to his alleged market manipulation. Benzinga talked to the people behind StopElon (STOPELON) on their ambitious plans to oust Musk as the CEO of Tesla and "rid the world of cryptocurrency manipulation."

 

[JustMe]

Fun fact: Tesla began construction of the northernmost Supercharger in the world in Honningsvåg, Norway, at 71 degrees N. Latitude. That’s well over 1,000 miles further north than the northernmost SC in North America- Edmonton Canada! Isn’t it quaint?

Who’s up for a road trip?

 

[StealthP3D]

why I said hopeful for the f150. The mach-e does somethings better than the first model 3 which did things better than the S, the 3 which frankly...was a bit of a mess early on ..it just had engineered improvements constantly making it better. Even now the paint shop in Freemont is not consistently great. Model Y was what the 3 should have been in an ideal world. Mach-e isn't so bad and does give Ford somewhere to go. From a point of reference it is their Roadster. They are 15 years behind and have 5 to get close (I give all the legacies 5 years to transition or have nationalistic moats). They did not win the range test, the M3 did. VW ID4 is a hack, it also had a big battery, it went a shorter distance, the battery is heavy, the vehicle is heavy, the car was designed to hold diesel motors. The fact that they are trying to hack a diesel motor platform into an EV shows that accountants are running things and they couldn't get a new platform out as fast as Ford. Tesla has shown the legacy companies that they musk move faster. Ford moved faster than VW and I find that indisputable. Ford is a much smaller company than VW Group.

I don't think VW learned any less by saving money on their first EV (which they were only making to learn the ropes and reduce emission credits). Using an ICE platform was a cost-saving move, not an indication of their lack of engineering prowess.

I find your measures of declaring Ford a success or not a bit ....odd. You realize that if Ford f150 outsells the cybertruck that Tesla is in deep dodo? I mean it would a disastrous thing for Tesla; stock would tank and they'd look much more like an auto company. I don't expect Ford to do so simply because there aren't enough batteries. Ford will be battery constrained for another 3-5 years no matter how hard they move. So for Ford it is enough to sell every ev f150 they can make. That's enough to move the company and that furthers a sustainable industrial policy for humanity. Will it save them from bankruptcy? Maybe not but what would emerge should be successful. I see Ford as the first legacy to do something worthy of notice. I expect the f150 to be quite ok, pickups are what Ford does best. It would do wonders for Ford if they could maintain a waiting list for the ev F150. What I saw from VW does not show me that the company wouldn't throw EVs to the grinder if they could get away with it.

I agree, the apparent lack of battery supply does complicate the matter. I do believe even if Ford had as many batteries as they wanted at current prices they couldn't make the Lightning a success vs. the Cybertruck or sell it at a profit across the Lightning range. But I'll never be able to prove it because Ford really doesn't have many batteries at their disposal. And that is Ford's strategic error, not bad luck.

 

[nativewolf]

It's just an educated guess as Ford, like most makers, doesn't break out the numbers. If Ford was making money on them at the current price point, they would make more of them. I doubt the loss is massive since it's a relatively low volume product. They are making them for the emission credits they don't have to buy.

Based on the hoses alone, someone has to hook all of those up, wrap 'em and secure them. When the frunk liner is pulled out it looks like a cross between someone's low-budget plumbing repair project and a work of modern art depicting society's current mental health. I think the factory down in Mexico must have a lot of experienced hosers working there. We can assume they don't work for $5/hour but they are probably pretty proficient and fairly fast. So that's good. But there are four pumps under that frunk and a bunch of other complexity (all made by suppliers, I'm sure).

Then there's the big battery and all that crappy software that has to be costed over very few vehicles.

You are making too big a deal out of the hoses. They spent huge $ to create a totally new vehicle. This expense has no relation to reg credits. Just none. Ford has shown, unlike GM and VW and Toyota, that they are going to make EVs. You have to start somewhere and you have to hurry, they did both. It is low volume as there are no battery packs floating around the world and they have never sold an EV. Nothing wrong with low volume if you are starting out: Roadster was low volume, model S was low volume. Neither volume predicted the Model Y being a potential multimillion unit sales/year in 2023. The question is where does Ford go from here. VW could not even clear space in the "frunk area" for a frunk and Sandy even said right in the video that Ford front was better than VWs. Also that Ford frunk situation is something that can be improved as is the frunk itself. You can't fix the VW ID4 frunk area.

No one is saying that Ford is going to be better than Tesla...as for me I'm just surprised that the mach-e is not a pig.

 

[kbM3]

Interesting that their is so much weight savings in the LR.

Is there anything official from Tesla stating it is using the 18650 cells.

That's a super interesting analysis, very enlightening.

Either Tesla had a breakthrough with the 18650's or the 2170's for the new S/X, or yes they might be using the 4680's afterall. Whatever the breakthrough was Tesla hasn't talked about the details of it openly yet, and THAT TOO is very interesting because it would be very positive news.

From YouTube's Tesla Economist

What is Tesla Not Telling us About Plaid Delivery Event?​

TLDW: If it is not 4680s then there is some serious special sauce in the new battery tech chemistry (in 2170 form factor probably, but that's not what is important). If that is true, some surprises are in store for the existing M3/ MY when the new tech is fully migrated there.

Some interesting comments:

Andy Onions : One of the Plaid event attendees was talking to Franz about the batteries and when he asked about 4680s, Franz just smirked and said nothing. One assumes there is some magic there, but 60% improvements don't come from the same form factor.

Max Pelletier: And someone on Reddit commented he spoke with a Tesla engineer at the event and he said it was 2170s.

It is obvious Tesla doesn't want customers focusing on the pack size to cell form factor. That is because some customers can convince themselves not to buy a car when it has a cell form factor that they imagine is inferior.

For the weight savings in the Model S there is a simple explanation, clever design and intense optimisation of every aspect of the vehicle.
There were lots of gains to be had because Tesla has learnt a lot since 2012. No doubt the battery is a big part of it. bit not the only optimization.
My guess is Tesla has somehow cut a signicantly amount of weight out of the car body, HVAC, trim etc. it all adds up.
Even the new 12 battery probably saves a significant amount of weight..

Agree 100% with @MC3OZ . I initially really liked the Tesla Economist videos, but I’m noticing more and more sloppiness like this exact thing.

 

[StealthP3D]

You are making too big a deal out of the hoses. They spent huge $ to create a totally new vehicle. This expense has no relation to reg credits. Just none. Ford has shown, unlike GM and VW and Toyota, that they are going to make EVs. You have to start somewhere and you have to hurry, they did both. It is low volume as there are no battery packs floating around the world and they have never sold an EV. Nothing wrong with low volume if you are starting out: Roadster was low volume, model S was low volume. Neither volume predicted the Model Y being a potential multimillion unit sales/year in 2023. The question is where does Ford go from here. VW could not even clear space in the "frunk area" for a frunk and Sandy even said right in the video that Ford front was better than VWs. Also that Ford frunk situation is something that can be improved as is the frunk itself. You can't fix the VW ID4 frunk area.

No one is saying that Ford is going to be better than Tesla...as for me I'm just surprised that the mach-e is not a pig.

I'm not surprised the Mach-e is low volume. But the story we were told by the "experts" was that Ford and GM knew how to make cars in "real" volumes and making an EV was easy for them. When they wanted to make EV's they would just flip the switch and churn out superior EV's by the millions. This was the prevailing "wisdom" and not all that long ago!

As long as they hooked the red wire to "positive" and the black wire to "negative" it would be all good.

 

[Prunesquallor]

... Tesla has shown the legacy companies that they musk move faster. …

I see what you did there.

 

[jbcarioca]

Fun fact: Tesla began construction of the northernmost Supercharger in the world in Honningsvåg, Norway, at 71 degrees N. Latitude. That’s well over 1,000 miles further north than the northernmost SC in North America- Edmonton Canada!

Who’s up for a road trip?

I showed this to my spouse, including the nearby visitors center and suggested we should go there. She declined.
The astounding point is that this is furthest north place in continental Europe. Queensland, New Zealand is one of the furthest South points too.
Superchargers are in Kazakstan. Tesla is rapidly making Superchargers the leading indication fo where stars will be coming. All they need to do is triple production soon!

 

[Singuy]

Do we know, for sure, that it sells at a massive loss? I don’t doubt it but haven’t seen any factual numbers anywhere.

Ford net income went from 1.1 billion to negative 2 billion q1 2020 because their sales declined 12.5%. They can't even make a profit selling half a million cars PER QUARTER. So no they are not making any money moving 35k units of Mach E this year.