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

[Zhelko Dimic]

Amazing, isn't it?

Question for old-timers. How similar is this week compared to the dark days of 2014-2019? I was an investor then, but had a much smaller position and didn't hang out here (I know, I know).

How can sentiment be THIS BAD? Is Wall Street that short-sighted? Is this the time to leverage up by trading shares for LEAPs? I don't do margin, thank goodness.

This feels (to me) like nothing-burger compared to late '15, early '16.
Could be a function of my personal exposure though, I used to do some serious leverage at the time.

 

[Thekiwi]

Elon has a long history of predicting full self driving just around the corner. This earnings call was the second time he said he’d be “shocked “ if it is not there within a year.

Elon Jan 26, 2022 (earnings call)
“And there's several profound improvements to the FSD stack that are coming, you know, in the next few months. So, yeah, I would be shocked if we do not achieve full self-driving safer than human this year. I would be shocked.”

Elon, April 2019: "I think it will become very, very quickly, maybe even towards the end of this year – but I'd say, I'd be shocked if it's not next year at the latest – that having a human intervene will decrease safety,"

A pessimist may infer that since his first prediction failed, his second prediction can be disregarded . To be fair, there are numerous examples, from the 2017
coast-to-coast demonstration drive, to robotaxis operating somewhere before the end of 2020, to several successive “two weeks” predictions. He’s admitted to being optimistic in his predictions.

However, he’s become more guarded with bold FSD predictions since at least the summer of 2021. He even joked about the two weeks on one occasion. It has been embarrassing, he knows it, and he has seemingly taken it to heart. So why risk his reputation now on another bold statement?

The first time he said he’d be shocked if it wasn’t superhuman by next year, they had just introduced navigate on Autopilot. Highway driving required very few interventions. Extrapolating to city driving was quite a leap, as it turns out. Now it’s easier to extrapolate. There are very few new behaviors to be learned, so it’s mostly extrapolating how long it will take to get the number of interventions down to a certain level. Much easier! Elon knows much more than we do, and since the extrapolation is much simpler now, I think this is the time Elon will finally get it right.

Essentially he is the boy who cried wolf in regards to FSD completion predictions, so no one can really blame wall street for not believing it this time, even if it turns out to be true (which the betas indicate might be possible given their rate of improvement).

Of course what this means is when it is actually delivered, it should theoretically be an immediate massive upwards pressure factor on the stock price, alongside the rapidly increasing earnings already in progress.

 

[Tommy O]

Here are my key takeaways from the earnings call. Note that I have merely become rich from holding TSLA for a number of years now.

1. I am now very likely to become kilorich.
2. Pretty likely to become megarich.
3. Possibility now on the table to become gigarich.

If number 3 comes true, I will teraLOL.

 

[samppa]

I used a 3rd part fast charger here today.
This sugar just keeps getting worse.. 3rd party charging has alwaya been a big mess, but this is even worse now.

Here's the steps:
1) install their charging app, register, id with bank app
2) add credit card, accept with bank app (1&2 were done beforehand)
3) arrive to recently opened charger, 3 ccs stalls (I'm in europe, car is a model Y), everyone is empty
4) park at stall 1, open app. App only lists stalls 3&4. Some tech issue.
5) move car to stall 3.
6) open app. find the location (this actually worked automatically with phone gps, amazing). Initiate charge.
7) app says it wants to reserve 30€ on my credit card in order to start charging. And that has to be separately approved at online bank app.
8) open the f***n bank app and approve 30€. finally it says: "connect cable in 3 minutes to start charging".
9) connect cable. no charging, message appears "unknown error"
10) I'm not gonna give up. Try cable 4, don't need to move car.
11) Do steps 6-9 again. Woohoo car starts to charge! Even at good speed of about 150kw.

Ffs. This is a big mess. And every operator has their own apps etc. By the time I got the charger to actually start, I probably would have had half the battery charged at a supercharger..

 

[Ogre]

I used a 3rd part fast charger here today.
This sugar just keeps getting worse.. 3rd party charging has alwaya been a big mess, but this is even worse now.

Here's the steps:
1) install their charging app, register, id with bank app
2) add credit card, accept with bank app (1&2 were done beforehand)
3) arrive to recently opened charger, 3 ccs stalls (I'm in europe, car is a model Y), everyone is empty
4) park at stall 1, open app. App only lists stalls 3&4. Some tech issue.
5) move car to stall 3.
6) open app. find the location (this actually worked automatically with phone gps, amazing). Initiate charge.
7) app says it wants to reserve 30€ on my credit card in order to start charging. And that has to be separately approved at online bank app.
8) open the f***n bank app and approve 30€. finally it says: "connect cable in 3 minutes to start charging".
9) connect cable. no charging, message appears "unknown error"
10) I'm not gonna give up. Try cable 4, don't need to move car.
11) Do steps 6-9 again. Woohoo car starts to charge! Even at good speed of about 150kw.

Ffs. This is a big mess. And every operator has their own apps etc. By the time I got the charger to actually start, I probably would have had half the battery charged at a supercharger..

Reading your post and I want to hit about four of these guys.

Makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. I end up using these chargers every once in a while and I have yet to have a good experience.

 

[obie_fl]

Interesting few days. I'm personally bullish as ever picked up a LEAP this morning. It occurs to me we may see Optimus working in a Gigafactory long before we see Robotaxis. Maybe instead of licensing FSD to other manufacturers Tesla just sells them an Optimus that can drive...no sensor suite required.

 

[samppa]

And that was a new, recently opened charger.

We also still have some older 50kw chargers made by Ensto.. with those here is how to start the charger:

1) push green button
2) id with a tag
3) open car charge port
4) connect cable to car
5) push green button within 10 seconds
6) if lucky and stars correctly aligned, charging starts

If you fail to do these steps exactly, the charger will initiate handshake at the wrong time, fails to start charging and usually crashes..

 

[Discoducky]

And that was a new, recently opened charger.

We also still have some older 50kw chargers made by Ensto.. with those here is how to start the charger:

1) push green button
2) id with a tag
3) open car charge port
4) connect cable to car
5) push green button within 10 seconds
6) if lucky and stars correctly aligned, charging starts

If you fail to do these steps exactly, the charger will initiate handshake at the wrong time, fails to start charging and usually crashes..

I'm so thankful for superchargers and the amazing experience (and yes, I've had to wait at some), I've been using them since 2013 without an issue!

I gave up on Blink years ago, as well as Aero Environment. ChargePoint still works well for me as Google is outfitted with hundreds for employees.

 

[woodisgood]

I don’t doubt Tesla’s prowess in mechanical design and the ability to make the robot from scratch, but do we know if there were decent humanoid bots from the RoMeLa @ UCLA that could have served as a launching point? It’s taken BD quite a while to get their bipedal bots to do what they can, and while Optimus doesn’t need to have the physical abilities of a warrior, seems it’s not trivial either? Prototype this year seems awfully quick when much of the key talent wasn’t even onboard until after AI Day.

Pretty insane that this thing might be a reality this soon.

EDIT: Actually browsing the RoMeLa website seems possible Optimus could just be based mostly on Charli as a starting point. That would certainly explain the rapid timeline.

 

[petit_bateau]

No, according to Deutsches Banks's note, bullet 3 should be:

• Model 3&Y become the mass market car due to cost decreases associated with localization, new batteries, efficiency and scale.

bekommen is tricksy in German

 

[Zero CO2]

Interesting few days. I'm personally bullish as ever picked up a LEAP this morning. It occurs to me we may see Optimus working in a Gigafactory long before we see Robotaxis. Maybe instead of licensing FSD to other manufacturers Tesla just sells them an Optimus that can drive...no sensor suite required.

 

[nativewolf]

Correct, it is currently the wild, wild West. You can decide to either race into that and say, “There were no rules that said we couldn’t!“ or you can work with the regulatory body that has expressed a desire to establish regulations to make them reasonable and logical.

People like to paint Tesla as rebellious and irresponsible, especially those that wish to smear FSD Beta as some kind of danger to society, but the truth is Tesla is much more likely to want to be a part of the solution in this regard than the problem. And that will be better for Tesla in the long-run anyway.

Oh I don't know...Tesla is going to want emerging rules to favor Teslas capabilities. I don't see a quick FSD rollout but then again, I think Tesla will be there first. I also believe first means a lot in this battle. I also think it's a huge business risk as regulation of FSD is sure to happen. No rules today is easy...there are no solutions. No rules with 5 million cars doing FSD...that's going to trigger regulations and I suspect Tesla will prefer national regulations vs patchwork state regs. So federal. And while spacex is doing a great job on navigating through nasa, tesla has not been quite as savvy at navigating. Gm might not have a technological lead but I bet they spend much more money on political campaigns to either party than Tesla has since inception. Politics is pretty much pay to play. GM and more recently Ford, are paying and playing. Tesla is outside looking in and EM is complaining. It's pretty simple.

 

[Thekiwi]

One thing I haven’t seen discussed on here - what’s everyone’s thoughts about Elons stated goal that they want cybertruck annual production capacity to be 250,000?

Does that seem low or about what people were expecting? If they are still intending to offer the single motor variant under $50k, that number seems low to me.

maybe its just for the initial single assembly line? (And more will be added as demand dictates)

 

[EVMeister]

Some of you may have missed this thread just posted by Tesla on Twitter. Not new information but nicely presented and good to see them proudly promoting their ongoing achievements.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1487181414927933440

 

[Singuy]

People are flighting to safety in droves. Visa was up 10% today, now trades at a higher trailing and forward PE than big tech. Thanks to "no other alternatives", people are just creating random bubble assets all over the stock market to generate gains from trend traders I think.

 

[Ogre]

One thing I haven’t seen discussed on here - what’s everyone’s thoughts about Elons stated goal that they want cybertruck annual production capacity to be 250,000?

Does that seem low or about what people were expecting? If they are still intending to offer the single motor variant under $50k, that number seems low to me.

I don’t want to say he is low-balling, but he’s lowballing.

You are totally right, at 250k they are going to have the same issues they have now with the Model Y.

It’s likely that’s their initial “Volume Production” number and they will slowly move up from there.

 

[2daMoon]

Okay, first of all a proclamation I never thought would be uttered on this forum...

THANK GOODNESS IT'S THE WEEKEND!​

Secondly, regarding Optimus SubPrime, from what I gather a lot of the functionality will be dependent upon FSD development. So, there is one feature from the cars which the Bot will be tied to in regard to a development timeline. Having FSD on the fast track bodes well for little Opti too.

I just hope that the engineers will also bring one other feature over from the cars, because, what could possibly be more fun than a plastic pal with a Fart Mode option?

 

[MP3Mike]

One thing I haven’t seen discussed on here - what’s everyone’s thoughts about Elons stated goal that they want cybertruck annual production capacity to be 250,000?

Of course Elon didn't actually state that did he? Toni asked a question stating that he thought Elon said Cybertruck production would be 250k, and Elon didn't address that part of his question.

 

[Ogre]

Some of you may have missed this thread just posted by Tesla on Twitter. Not new information but nicely presented and good to see them proudly promoting their ongoing achievements.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1487181414927933440

Not a complaint, but that is just the Twitter version of the shareholder letter which was along with the results.

 

[Ogre]

Secondly, regarding Optimus SubPrime, from what I gather a lot of the functionality will be dependent upon FSD development. So, there is one feature from the cars which the Bot will be tied to in regard to a development timeline. Having FSD on the fast track bodes well for little Opti too.

Ideally the fart mode would be random. Then it would have to say “Oh My” and wave it’s hand.

I’m pretty sure touches like this will endear it to some people who would otherwise hate robots.