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

[TheTalkingMule]

Sounds like this person is as good at analyzing AI as Gordo is at analyzing TSLA. Makes sense they would hang out together.

"If an analyst could analyze.....he wouldn't be an analyst!"

Someone said this here about 6 years ago and it made more sense than anything I've ever heard.

 

[Artful Dodger]

and it's at least good to quickly silence his lies.

How's that workin'?

You may refute his lies, but you can't silence a paid liar.

 

[FireMedic]

Currently on the configurator...

• Model S LR : March-April
• Model S Plaid : Jan-Feb
• Model 3 SR+ : January
• Model 3 LR : November
• Model 3 Perf : 5-6 weeks
• Model X LR : March-April
• Model X Plaid : March-April
• Model Y LR : January
• Model Y Perf : 5-6 weeks

Looks like they are prioritizing the performance models. I wonder how many people choose the performance to get it sooner that ordinarily would get a non performance if there was no difference. Margins should be really good.

That was my situation with both of our purchases. Got the model 3 performance because the wait was one month instead of four months for the non-performance…
Got the model X even though we weren’t “ready for it”, because it was being offered with free lifetime supercharging.
I know it’s just anecdotal evidence; but because it was my experience it gives me great confidence in the sales team and the process (Read: I will ignore the noise and just HODL).

 

[Singuy]

That was my situation with both of our purchases. Got the model 3 performance because the wait was one month instead of four months for the non-performance…
Got the model X even though we weren’t “ready for it”, because it was being offered with free lifetime supercharging.
I know it’s just anecdotal evidence; but because it was my experience it gives me great confidence in the sales team and the process (Read: I will ignore the noise and just HODL).

Lots of people. At least you are getting something for the money unlike the 10k mark up dealers are imposing on new cars. A peer just ended up getting the performance due to the shorter wait time and has zero intention flooring the car as she is a soccer mom.

 

[Maitri982]

Did anybody other than me catch what wa one of the very significant non-AI related things Elon said?

He said that their production of cars was already mostly robotic, but that they will be producing the structure of the car in two parts with the press and this will reduce labor in making the car by 60-70%!!!

This is major cost reduction, margin booster!!

 

[Carl Raymond]

Worth watching for Douma's enthusiasm:

At approx 22min mark:

They discuss what is harder, the software or the hardware. Boston dynamics has some good hardware, but simplistic software. Tesla is way ahead on robot software, on the cusp of cracking FSD. With so much of the software problem solved, and with hardware the easy part, it’s easy to project that Tesla will be first to market with a cheap (enough), useful, humanoid robot.

tldr
Tesla is the world’s leading humanoid robotics company, despite the fact they are yet to make a prototype!!

 

[Chunky Jr.]

The bot is listed as being 5’8” which happens to be 4’20”. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

 

[traxila]

White collar sedentary lifestyle is the new smoking. Personally, never smoked, having slaved over a computer for 30 years for 10 hours per day, multiple heart attacks ensued, finally made me leave my successful albeit stressfull position to work outdoors as a part time labourer and after six months could not be in better health and physical condition.
Life expectancy in US is at a 20 year low (due to covid, but also other factors such as sedentary lifestyle).
When Tesla Bots are in our homes, lets hope these humanoids allow us to do the outdoor physical things we love to do, and not just to pamper us.

Glad you found your groove. May it continue to pay you dividends.

Life expectancy is at decades lows due to the horrors of opioid addiction and opioid overdoses. These are almost all young people dieing.

 

[ZeApelido]

Um I would like to know more...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1429313916992065538

 

[MP3Mike]

He said that their production of cars was already mostly robotic, but that they will be producing the structure of the car in two parts with the press and this will reduce labor in making the car by 60-70%!!!

No, he says it would reduce the body in white line by 60-70%. And that line is mostly automated, so it won't reduce labor much.

 

[Captkerosene]

Just curious, if Bot had been IPO'd with lots of publicity and fancy demo's, what would the program be worth? Something to think about.

 

[generalenthu]

For anyone curious about wafer scale chips that Dojo is, here is an interesting article from New Yorker about Cerebras, a start up trying to build such chips. Talks about the same packaging and cooling challenges that Tesla touched on.

I would be interested in seeing how this compares to Dojo of course. (Cc: @Singuy)

The World’s Largest Computer Chip

In the race to accelerate A.I., the Silicon Valley company Cerebras has landed on an unusual strategy: go big.

www.newyorker.com

Edit: thanks to @ammulder for pointing out that it's not a wafer scale chip.

 

[hobbes]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1429090696972152832

Interesting that the Drive Unit building also is labelled "cell" now. Assuming this sign is mostly for deliveries, could this be a hint that they are starting to set up test lines for cell production there until the actual cell building is done? Or just as a store for equipment?

 

[printf42]

Here is what GJ said “I talked to a neural net researcher this morning… He said that if Tesla is using a simulation, which they said they are, they’re 20 sigma behind waymo”

It seems likely that the NN researcher was not familiar with what Tesla is doing and they answered an ill posed question from GJ.

Original quote of said researcher could be like:
”No No, I am pretty sure Tesla uses mainly real world clips for training, if they are using simulation, they would be 20 sigma behind Waymo, which clearly is not what we are seeing.”


At this point I start to feel CNBS is secret TSLA long. Else it makes no sense to keep giving GLJ air time, only explanation is they want to show him as special exhibition.

 

[engle]

I'd like to challenge our savvy readers to use rental pricing info from Google TPU (or other) to back into a financial model of what this rental income stream could be worth for Tesla. This could provide investors with a way to financially value Dojo.

Hi @jhm I don't have time to create a spreadsheet, but here are the raw Google TPU v2 and v3 numbers so someone else can do this:

Pricing | Cloud TPU | Google Cloud

I'm not showing Iowa (us-central1) because v3-32 is not available there. Either sold out to customers, or $GOOGL is using all the v3's they have in the USA to support their services. This explains what a Google TPU Pod is. Google also seems to be using their TPU v4's themselves - Sundar said they would not be available in Google Cloud to later this year -- ramping up the supply, I presume?

 

[Artful Dodger]

Ironic, because in Detroit its 1984, and everyone is snoozing...

Cheers!

FTFM.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Maybe start with COGS. I presume that, initially, half of line / manufacturing jobs could be performed by robots (climbing to perhaps 90% in the asymptote, wot, 5 years?).

Cost of labor (as others have mentioned), includes vacaction, sick-time, pension, stock options). This should be easily modeled.

Cost of robots is R&D + CapEx. Model cost-of-capital at perhaps 2%/yr? I'd start with a $100K robot in Year 1 and decreasing to $20K by Year 5.

Good luck! Interested to see your results.

Cheers!

Okay (upon reflection), maybe 10% of production line jobs could be done by robots in the 1st year, increasing to perhaps 50% after 5 years.

But the overall principle of adding robots to the workforce IS NOT to replace human workers, it is to enhance their value. The number of humans can remain constant, but their productivity is multiplied when freed from dangerous, repetitive, and boring jobs: just train a NN for a robot, turn over the task, and supervise the work. Eventually, just check the results.

Humans will have the greatest value as teachers, trainers, and problem-solvers. New and better techniques to do a job (or even to eliminate the need for the task), is what we humans do best.

Cheers!

 

[engle]

Don't think it is quite that simple. A prospective tenant of mine works in Fremont Factory as a tech on the team that maintains the production robots (e.g. Kuka and that other commonly deployed type). He said (hearsay from me!) they are constantly either breaking down or needing re-alignment, etc.

There will be teams of humans required in some sort of ratio: 1 human for every B Bots to maintain them, too! This will be especially true if said Bots are performing dangerous jobs, IMHO.

Okay (upon reflection), maybe 10% of production line jobs could be done by robots in the 1st year, increasing to perhaps 50% after 5 years.

But the overall principle of adding robots to the workforce IS NOT to replace human workers, it is to enhance their value. The number of humans can remain constant, but their productivity is multiplied when freed from dangerous, repetitive, and boring jobs: just train a NN for a robot, turn over the task, and supervise the work. Eventually, just check the results.

Humans will have the greatest value as teachers, trainers, and problem-solvers. New and better techniques to do a job (or even to eliminate the need for the task), is what we humans do best.

Cheers!

 

[FS_FRA]

Currently on the configurator...

• Model S LR : March-April
• Model S Plaid : Jan-Feb
• Model 3 SR+ : January
• Model 3 LR : November
• Model 3 Perf : 5-6 weeks
• Model X LR : March-April
• Model X Plaid : March-April
• Model Y LR : January
• Model Y Perf : 5-6 weeks

Looks like they are prioritizing the performance models. I wonder how many people choose the performance to get it sooner that ordinarily would get a non performance if there was no difference. Margins should be really good.

Picture in Germany is this:

• Model S LR : Q1.2022
• Model S Plaid : Q1.2022
• Model 3 SR+ : September 2021
• Model 3 LR : December 2021
• Model 3 Perf : September 2021
• Model X LR : Q1.2022
• Model X Plaid : Q1.2022
• Model Y LR : September 2021
• Model Y Perf : Early 2022

So looks like the boats from China had loads of M3 SR+, Perf and Model Y LR on board.

 

[SN_8]

Not posting it here, but humorously Troy continues to jump to conclusions about Cybertruck timing... in a Twitter thread explaining why he was previously so wrong when he jumped to conclusions about Cybertruck timing.

Unpopular Opinion - There is more value in being aware of GoJo's/tslaq talking points than in paying attention to the likes of Troy/Sawyer that are are most often wrong with both their rumormongering and analysis.