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

[EVNow]

OT :

Yes it is OT. Btw parliamentary systems and the US division of powers system are quite different. It makes sense for a prime minister to have to resign if they’ve lost confidence of the parliament as a whole since a prime minister has so much more legislative power than an American President. The US system is different and has worked and continues to work just fine.

It is definitely a different system.

But saying it has worked fine is not correct - at all. It is simply more status quo oriented and of all the western democracies, least democratic & most like an oligarchy. Routinely policies that have high approval do not get implemented - like stricter gun laws(2/3rds), net neutrality (80% of Republicans !).

The House just passed the bill to make the Mueller report public unanimously by 420 - 0. ONE senator has put a hold on it in the senate ! If this is not a broken system, I don't know what is.

 

[Causalien]

The why is irrelevant, the result is the same. June is going to be a mad dash once more and the promise of Elon that it won't ever happen again is just that : an empty promise.

It's probably cheaper to book ships full and in batches than to spread it out over the quarter. Not my expertise

 

[MP3Mike]

Not necessarily:

• Q2 will have a lot more deliveries in the U.S., induced both by seasonal pattern, by Standard Range availability, by HW3 and by possible refreshes.

Don't forget about people in the US trying to get the $3,750 tax credit that drops in half starting in Q3. That should drive some additional US demand.

 

[Sudre]

So I am deliberately not writing this as a reply to a certain member who posted something similar recently as this is not about them, but rather a general observation. There is a well known practice/tactic when trying to win arguments where the basic hypothesis is weak or flawed. This is also often used to spread FUD or - actual - fake news and is used in disinformation campaigns as well.

The strategy is quite simple: once you've presented the the false narrative you wish to seed.....

Thanks for pointing this out so very well. I have been thinking the same thing about demand but wasn't coming up with a good way to phrase it. Personally I just don't understand why people were falling for the demand bull. Tesla is only going to make at most 10K likely only 7K M3 a week this year. The USA better start slowing in demand or the rest of the world will have to do without.

 

[printf42]

The why is irrelevant, the result is the same. June is going to be a mad dash once more and the promise of Elon that it won't ever happen again is just that : an empty promise.

My interpretation is Q1 filled up the overseas delivery pipeline so they want to engineer a big end of Q push to make numbers look not that bad.
Going forward since the pipeline is already filled there is no need to do any end of Q push so delivery will be smoothed out more evenly throughout the Q.
Or, they won’t care about QoQ numbers anymore after April 20th.

 

[EVNow]

The Model Y Performance that I ordered last week is now 1K euro more expensive (Belgium)

I don't remember exactly how much the configuration I ordered was. That is not in the order confirmation either. Hmmm ...

 

[Off Shore]

LOL. Sorry for laughing. But I honestly can’t wait for the tax credit to exit stage left already, for Tesla at year end and for LGM a bit later.

15k would provide liability sufficient to allow credit for 4 Tesla’s right now, or 2 Tesla’s and one Bolt right now, or ...even more! from Q3 thru Q4.


Be careful on quarter of purchase, too. Credit’s $3750 per Tesla in H1 2019 vs. half that in H2 2019.



LOL sorry again for the chuckle! $3750 is of course valid until end of second quarter. Phases down to $1,875 for the rest of 2019.

Come On 2020!! Confusion reigns in 2019 and must constantly be reined in.

And you imagine that will change in 2020? Now I'll laugh

 

[Fact Checking]

I was just stating a fact from someone’s misquote. But of course people like to hate on the person just trying to state facts that goes against people’s bias towards something.

Sorry, but you didn't just "state facts", you mixed facts with opinion:

And let’s not argue that the no-cost or cheaper cost paint options from the other brands are “built into” their car prices; that’s ridiculous. Metallic paint does not cost $1,500-$2,500 to produce. This is one area Tesla milks money.

"Tesla milks money" is your opinion which happens to be a false characterization as well: Tesla primarily uses paint options to subsidize lower priced base models, just like California customers who pay the $1,000 delivery fee are subsidizing East Coast customers who get their cars delivered for the same $1,000 (which costs much more in reality).

Tesla does this not to "milk money", but to increase the affordability spectrum of their offerings. They do this in a hope of selling high-margin options such as AutoPilot and FSD.

Tesla would only be 'milking' customers if they had no realistic option to avoid choosing a non-black color.

Tesla would probably be milking their customers if the Standard Range $35,000 car was painted neon pink:

... and every other color would be $2,500 extra. (That kind of pricing scheme wouldn't just be the obvious 'milking' of customers, I'd consider it outright extortion.)

With black being an entirely reasonable color, and it is in fact the most popular car color in the U.S. and in the E.U., subsidizing that color instead of a less desirable color is in fact a very customer friendly approach.

So you mixed facts and opinion, and when people disagreed with your opinion you started pretending that they are disagreeing with your facts, and started attacking/name-calling them. Not cool.

 

[ZeApelido]

Wait a minute - haven't you been claiming that Q4 sales (86,555 vehicles) were higher than the steady-state demand due to pull-forward demand from Jan-Mar of 2019? The current product mix has far less gross margin and revenue per vehicle than 2018Q4, so even if sales eventually reach that Q4 level operating cash flow will be less until unit sales increase well beyond the Q4 level.

Can we discuss more pertinent questions?

Like, why do you have a user name that means butter goose table?

 

[joefee]

I think the conference call this quarter will exceed the lower expectations for global demand for S 3 X Y! I continue to accumulate shares and will buy again @ 245 if TSLA drops after the CC. Shorts have fully paid for my S and my M3 and I'm looking forward to them paying for my new roadster !!!!

 

[ReflexFunds]

Yes, that kind of agrees with my method working back from Norway data.

Don't believe the hype. There are no plans in place and those that are will be discarded, changed and mutilated as new circumstances present themselves. This company will never enter a steady state without a change of leadership. Look no further for evidence of this than the number of ships currently on the water. None. Zero. Zilch. Come June it's once more going to be all hands on deck for a mad dash and there will again be some kind of excuse ('we just launched SR for Europe' seems a convenient one), some kind of pat-on-the-back-sorry-you-are-incredible leaked email from Elon and then the next quarter will roll on again.

For those trigger happy to disagree : I am making not a single value statement in this post. It's just factual observation.

I'm sorry, but whether you turn out to be right or wrong, factual observations about the future do not exist.

 

[NicoV]

I don't remember exactly how much the configuration I ordered was. That is not in the order confirmation either. Hmmm ...

It’s on your ‘My Tesla’ page for your reservation.

 

[EVNow]

An anecdote.

Attended a kid's birthday party yesterday. Two new 3s. One of them traded in their X - easier to drive. The other one surprisingly turned out to be my neighbor ! I had talked to him a couple of months back about getting an EV. He had rejected the idea and wanted to get a BMW X5. But he thought more about it, test drove 3 and liked it. Immediately ordered and got one - he didn't even ask me about it again.

Moral of the story : talk to folks you know about getting EVs. Even if they seem not open to the idea, the very fact of you talking to them makes them open to the idea.

 

[EVNow]

It’s on your ‘My Tesla’ page for your reservation.

Thanks for that.

The config I ordered was $56k - AWD, White & 7 seats. Now it is $57k. Hope they make it in 2020, instead of 2021.

 

[Sudre]

Let’s not start this classic deflection of argument. It’s what the shorts like to do. You can do this with them.
In your mind then, no one is allowed to compare Tesla to any other car in the world on any basis.
Not sure why I just bothered to respond.

It appeared to me that comparing cars was exactly what was being done. When comparing cars one does not just look at the cost of paint. When I compare cars I look at the total package for the cost I am paying. SO when someone asks to see a list of cars that do XYZ for $$$ they are comparing. When someone is unhappy about pay extra for paint... that's not comparing. If that is the only thing one wishes to compare then go buy the cheaper paint cars in white.

One example. The new Nissan Leaf with the extend range (S plus or whatever). If I buy that car with comparable options I am paying more no matter what color I choose. One can pick any color M3 you want and still be cheaper.

BUT hey.... go ahead and just compare paint upgrade cost. LOL.

 

[Fact Checking]

Don't forget about people in the US trying to get the $3,750 tax credit that drops in half starting in Q3. That should drive some additional US demand.

Good point: $3,500 is the median federal tax liability IIRC, and the $35k SR will probably enable a lot of families with lower levels of tax liabilities to get basically 10% off the price of their car.

For them this is still a "full" tax incentive.

Lots of people who simply couldn't even dream of buying a Tesla will now have the opportunity to get it 10% less expensive.

Could be a busy quarter in the U S. ...

 

[mongo]

Come June it's once more going to be all hands on deck for a mad dash and there will again be some kind of excuse ('we just launched SR for Europe' seems a convenient one), some kind of pat-on-the-back-sorry-you-are-incredible leaked email from Elon and then the next quarter will roll on again.

For those trigger happy to disagree : I am making not a single value statement in this post. It's just factual observation.

Is that future present tense, and unvalued excuses?

As long as in transit has a cost to it, and as long as the balance sheet is sensitive that level of cost, overseas cars will ship starting at beginning of quarter and arrive though near the end of the quarter. However, as production rates increase, the shipments can happen earlier in the quarter. As GF3 comes on-line, the number of cars being shipped may also decrease (though, due to trim level, maybe not by much). The EU parts issue probably didn't help either...

Give Tesla another quarter or so, and their balance sheet will be less impacted by ship with cars and things will be able to even out.

 

[AudubonB]

Yeah, I realize that you are playing the devil's advocate in a sense, but Norway begs to differ on the first point:

On the second point, while EVs help with global warming, both global warming and EV transition will happen with a very high likelihood.

Yes, EV-friendly policies can speed up the EV transition like in Norway, but EV transition is going to happen anyway, even in the U.S. that does everything it can do on the policy level to help the incumbents.

In the end there's going to be a list of the largest players in the trillion dollars EV industry and the bear case has trouble explaining why Tesla won't be among those players.

So I consider the "rational bear case" entirely discredited.

Can anyone defend the "rational bear case" please? No genuine Tesla bears left here I think, there were only trolls who got themselves banned.

 

[NicoV]

Fwiw: a (Dutch) guy is complaining on FB that he just ordered a Model 3 and got a delivery date in August. High demand, or Tesla playing it safe with the delivery date?

 

[Electric Dream]

Fwiw: a (Dutch) guy is complaining on FB that he just ordered a Model 3 and got a delivery date in August. High demand, or Tesla playing it safe with the delivery date?

Configurator says May delivery at the moment... Where did he get August from?