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

[Barklikeadog]

We can track that as the EV fleet ages, the current stats are the only reliable guide.

As battery technogies improve, the risk of fire will get lower, there is at least 20-30 years of solid improvement. In relative terms EVs are like 1930s ICE vechicles.

For example as EVs more to LFP chemistries, the risk of fire should get lower.

The current stats for safety, fires, etc are constantly bragged about and it's not a true comparison.
Can't compare 6 figure income 40-70 year old luxury car driver to the general population.
That driving demographic is several times safer no matter what they drive.

 

[mongo]

for those of us not quite up to speed
does this mean they have about $1.1 Billion short, the first 4 rows
about $28.5 Billion in puts next 2 rows
about $29.5 Billion in calls next 2 rows

the puts and calls somehow “balancing out” the first 4 rows

that to me seems a lot of $ especially if an unknown % part is merely leveraged.

can you leverage say 15x so the ~$29 Billion is actually ~$1 Billion so what seems a “safe hedge” is actually quicksand crumbling over a precipice? over even smoke and mirrors

the only real money are the first 4 rows of ~$1.1 Billion ?short? possibly “hypotheticated and re-hypotheticated”. (counterfeited/“nekkid short”) multiple times facing both rising stock price and rumblings of a share dividend so he has to either deliver or fail to deliver FTD.

i apologize as i am just a beginner here, why after an amazing amount of pain i’m only a low 10^6 not mid 10^7 HODL and accumulate kinda investor

it’s a 3 day weekend investment wise

I am new to SEC filing divination also, so grain of salt. Your position summation/ aggregation is correct. The 13F only reports long positions, so written options and short positions are not listed. Thus, we could be seeing one half of spread positions, or they could be paired as straddles or strangles (at much higher cost).

SEC Form 13F
SEC.gov | Frequently Asked Questions About Form 13F

 

[Maarten]

OK, 1 Model S on fire all over the news.
Now, in the Gulf of Mexico: boiling seawater.
Not to speak of what kind of contamination is going into the sea.
Much better to invest in a future with a company like Tesla? I think so.

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

I'd imagine most car fires are impact-related fires, and over time FSD improvements will both reduce impacts, and reduce the severity of impacts that still happen. If robotaxis ever happen, its likely that the dangerous driving young cash-poor demographic aren't going to be the ones owning and driving cars anyway,

 

[EVWatcher]

"Soon".

https://twitter.com/x/status/1411280212470366213

This coming after his two weeks joke and then Tesla putting it on a meme-shirt in less than a few hours soon had better mean less than 7 days. Its getting long past absurd.

 

[EVDRVN]

I'd imagine most car fires are impact-related fires, and over time FSD improvements will both reduce impacts, and reduce the severity of impacts that still happen. If robotaxis ever happen, its likely that the dangerous driving young cash-poor demographic aren't going to be the ones owning and driving cars anyway,

One odd comment. “He saw smoke coming from the back seat” so the fire was burning and made it through the pack and into the car but no warnings occurred on the dash? Seems it would light up like crazy with all the many faults and sensor fails before intrusion into the cabin. Errors should have been going long before a fire is noticed.

 

[Buckminster]

Great close to this Morgan Stanley note from this morning:

"We believe the next 2 to 3 years of EV growth will largely be dictated by who has access to the greatest volume of low cast batteries, reliably sourced. Using a bread-truck analogy for battery cells, we think successful EV players will be the ones closest to the bread-truck. Tesla owns the bakery."

View attachment 680707

Worth a re-post.

Here's a little weekend napkin math for your consumption. I set three scenarios for vehicle production and came up with some estimates of possible share prices by year end using a price/sales multiple.

Bear Case: simply assumes zero production growth through Q4

Base Case: carries through Q2 to Q1 production growth of 14% through Q4

Bull Case: assumes 15% growth in Q3 and 30% growth in Q4. Banks on rapid S/X re-ramp and additional model Y line in Shanghai

View attachment 680941
Total vehicles produced
Bear Case: 798k
Base Case: 888k
Bull Case: 930k

View attachment 680942
Big assumption to arrive at revenue numbers is 57,220 rev multiplier. I used Q1 total revenue (10.3b) divided by vehicle production (180k). Quick and dirty.

Total revenue
Bear Case: $45B
Base Case: $50B
Bull Case: $53B

View attachment 680946
I used a price/sales range of 18, 20, and 30. About 18 p/s ratio was the low point we hit in April. I like a p/s ratio of 20 for Tesla long term. Lastly a p/s ratio of 30 was about the peak we hit at the beginning of the year.

Estimated end of year share price range
Bear Case: $853-$1422
Base Case: $950-$1583
Bull Case: $995-$1659

Lastly below is the corresponding market cap estimates
View attachment 680953

*Best taken with a grain of salt

P/S has made sense for TSLA up until now. Trouble is P/E ratio is going to make even $1600 look crazy low. 30% margins can't be hidden under the cost of 20 machine learning developers any longer.

I agree. I think over time we will see it decline into the high single digits. My 2030 target is 1T revenue with an ~8x p/s.

I got to my $125T 2030 estimate using P/E ratio again. I am increasingly less embarrassed about it to...

 

[mongo]

One odd comment. “He saw smoke coming from the back seat” so the fire was burning and made it through the pack and into the car but no warnings occurred on the dash? Seems it would light up like crazy with all the many faults and sensor fails before intrusion into the cabin. Errors should have been going long before a fire is noticed.

There was a previous vehicle fire in Norway caused by an HV short. If the Plaid is set up like 3/Y with a HV electronics penthouse on the top of the pack under the rear seat, then a thermal event could start there and then spread to to interior and pack (as opposed to starting in the cells).
Tesla Identifies Cause for Model S Fire in Norway

A fire in France was due to an improperly tightened human made connection.
Tesla says Model S fire in France was due to 'electrical connection improperly tightened' by a human instead of robots - Electrek

Same thing happens in home electrical systems (more recently EV charging sockets).

 

[ZachF]

The situation.... misting the ocean when it is on fire.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1411088251557978114

"We accidentally set the ocean on fire" is probably a good point of reevaluation when it comes to fossil fuel addiction...

 

[PeterJA]

Just a basic question. How complicated would it be for Tesla to have some kind of 'fire detection' system, maybe a thermometer that freaks out over 200 degrees or sudden absurd voltage change in the pack. It would direct you to park safely and exit and the screen could even show how to activate the door handles to exit (as well as unlock the car). Seems a ridiculously cheap investment. If the data is recorded you would also have a timeline of how fast it was going when it apparently started heating up, etc. Even if they don't have a hardware sensor some kind of detector for strange battery data seems an easy OTA.

Or maybe they already have this?

Tesla already has such sensors in the battery pack, or at least they used to in Model S. In November 2013, a Model S driver ran over a trailer hitch that punctured the battery. CNet reported:

Shibayama said that he struck a three-pronged trailer hitch in the middle lane of the interstate. He continued:​

About 30-45 seconds later, there was a warning on the dashboard display saying, 'Car needs service. Car may not restart.' I continued to drive, hoping to get home. About one minute later, the message on the dashboard display read, 'Please pull over safely. Car is shutting down.'​

He said he had time to remove his possessions, even though, he said: "About 5-10 seconds after getting out of the car, smoke started to come from the front underbody of the car." ​

​

Next, he said he got 100 yards away and, some two minutes later, the car caught fire. ​

A few months later, Tesla added an underbody shield that bounces away trailer hitches and crushes concrete blocks.

Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S | Tesla

www.tesla.com

IMO, all this makes yesterday's report of a fire with no warning (and strangely locked doors) an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence to be believed.

Edit: @mongo pointed out in a DM to me:

If the fault was in (or impacted) the 12V subsystem, that could take down all the user facing elements (so no warnings) including the power door latches, thus requiring the use of the manual door release.​

​

 

[ZsoZso]

Edit: @mongo pointed out in a DM to me:

If the fault was in (or impacted) the 12V subsystem, that could take down all the user facing elements (so no warnings) including the power door latches, thus requiring the use of the manual door release.​

​

Hmmm, that is a good point. I wonder if Tesla could add a 2nd 12V battery located somewhere in the rear end of the car as a redundant backup, to make sure safety features/door-locks continue to be powered in case one of them get damaged in an accident.

 

[DriveMe]

One odd comment. “He saw smoke coming from the back seat”

Must be “an accidental spontaneous combustion of linens on the back seat” like in this Mazda.

Investigators: ‘Accidental spontaneous combustion’ caused early morning car fire

HURLOCK — A car fire on the Eastern Shore is being blamed on “accidental spontaneous combustion of linens on (the) back seat,” according to investigators.

www.stardem.com

 

[Todd Burch]

The current stats for safety, fires, etc are constantly bragged about and it's not a true comparison.
Can't compare 6 figure income 40-70 year old luxury car driver to the general population.
That driving demographic is several times safer no matter what they drive.

It is not hard to scale the statistics for the number of accidents in that fleet of vehicles as a whole, ie X% of accidents result in vehicle fires.

 

[mongo]

Hmmm, that is a good point. I wonder if Tesla could add a 2nd 12V battery located somewhere in the rear end of the car as a redundant backup, to make sure safety features/door-locks continue to be powered in case one of them get damaged in an accident.

The manual handle is the redundancy. Unless going to full dual actuators with dual power sources, there is a single point of failure somewhere in the chain.

I've made a theead to discuss further:
Plaid thermal event

 

[Barklikeadog]

It is not hard to scale the statistics for the number of accidents in that fleet of vehicles as a whole, ie X% of accidents result in vehicle fires.

So..... what are the numbers if it is so easy to do?
Do you have a database of accidents/fires based on driver demographic, type of auto (luxury sedans) and average age of vehicle (2-3yrs)???
Please inform us

 

[JRP3]

Generalized self-driving is a hard problem, as it requires solving a large part of real-world AI. Didn’t expect it to be so hard, but the difficulty is obvious in retrospect.

Neroden did...

 

[Singuy]

Neroden did...

Neroden: Didn't know making money off Tesla shares was going to be so hard. Sold at 45 dollars...RIP.

 

[Knightshade]

This was my second trip to the service for the same problem. They call me to pick up my 3. When I pick up my 3 from Tesla Service, I tested autopilot right away, same damn problem still occur, video record the scene.
Came right back Tesla, show service advisor the record, she said "not good enough because autopilot or FSD not suppose to work in city street, it suppose to be highway only", (what??!!!)

I mean- it literally says that in the owners manual- so he's right.

Changing that is what the FSDBeta stuff is about- but the public/release firmware is intended only for use on controlled access divided roads like highways.

1. He has FSD beta: "drives to work without intervention"
"works really well on the highways, but needs more improvement in city street" I ask him which beta version he has, "do you have v9?" he doesnt seem to know or wanna tell me.

Even Elon is only on an alpha V9- a random Tesla service guy doesn't have it.

He might have 8.x- but hilariously, in context of his remarks about highway vs city behavior- the Beta code doesn't change anything compared to the release code for highway driving (I guess he was not aware of this).

He IS right it needs more improvement in city streets- the only place the beta was actually doing anything at all- which is why V8 stopped being developed further and we're waiting for 9 now.

2. After removal/separation of Mobileye, it set back FSD/autopilot couple years. Did not know what happen between Tesla and Mobileye.

Long story, posted about pretty extensively many places if you wish to look into it. But appears the most accurate of his remarks

3. Tesla is targeting doubling vehicle sale this year and next year. "1M this year, 2 next, 3M, 4M so on"
I ask is that Tesla internal target? "yes"

I'm reasonably sure a service manager has no idea what Teslas own, unannounced, internal production targets are years into the future..... plus, as others have remarked, 2 to 3 to 4 is not a doubling

 

[Buckminster]

2 weeks > soon?

or

Soon > 2 weeks?

 

[Knightshade]

2 weeks > soon?

or

Soon > 2 weeks?

Answer to soon begins about 47 seconds in