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

[Bet TSLA]

Rob Maurer is consistently well-informed, well prepared, and knows how to shut up and let his interviewee do the talking.

I can occasionally stand to listen to Dave Lee's interviews, but only by fast forwarding past him talking.

So far as I'm concerned, the fewer others that are involved in a Rob Maurer - Elon Musk interview, the happier I'll be. And, I think, the more likely we are to come away having learned something useful and interesting.

And to be clear where I'm coming from, this was the best Elon interview ever: Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, nerding out with Elon. This was in 2019, after the previous Starship update.

 

[Ogre]

Rob Maurer is consistently well-informed, well prepared, and knows how to shut up and let his interviewee do the talking.

I can occasionally stand to listen to Dave Lee's interviews, but only by fast forwarding past him talking.

So far as I'm concerned, the fewer others that are involved in a Rob Maurer - Elon Musk interview, the happier I'll be. And, I think, the more likely we are to come away having learned something useful and interesting.

I hear you. One of my absolute favorite Tesla interview series is the ones where he interviews Pierre Ferragu. Pierre‘s insight is super spot on, but between his accent and often complex topics can be hard to follow. Rob does an amazing job working with him and laying things out. Just A+

I do like Dave Lee a lot, but I can understand why you might not.

 

[Nocturnal]

And, coincidentally, my delivery date just got pushed up a couple of weeks. Hmm.

Mine has been showing as 3/19-3/31 for a month or so now. Ordered on 12/24 and it had said mid-February at the time.

I've had a sneaking suspicion that mid-march would be the start of deliveries based on this and a few other data points. When is your car scheduled?

 

[ThisStockGood]

Yes. And I should correct my earlier post - this doesn't bode well for start of Austin production, which has already occurred; this bodes well for the start of Austin deliveries. I need to recalibrate my thinking on Austin; the factory appears to already be permitted for production. It's simply vehicle certification and whatever internal metrics that Tesla has that is holding them back from delivering cars to customers.

Some quotes, first from Elon during Q4 2021 earnings call:



Secondly, Joe Tegtmeyer - who I would consider the authoritative Twitter source on Giga Austin - in a couple of tweets today:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1493298785304391681

https://twitter.com/x/status/1493298472644132866

Folks, I'm thinking Austin deliveries are probably very close now.

Seems so. Loving it.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Late morning /early afternoon walk down engaged.

Yes, 11:24 a.m. was TSLA Intraday High, then walked down straight to Friday's Close:

As is their usual practices, shortzes took back half of the TSLA intraday gains. They are the tax.

Ummmm stock doing pretty nicely. Over $900 by end-of-day?

Lol, you literally 'called-the-top' within 1 minute of your post: nicely sussed.

Cheers!

 

[ByeByeJohnny]

And to be clear where I'm coming from, this was the best Elon interview ever: Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, nerding out with Elon. This was in 2019, after the previous Starship update.

Yes, you could tell Elon loved talking to Tim and to some degree seemed to enjoy talking to Munroe about technical stuff as well.

I think it will be hard to get Elon to be excited talking about financials and long term concrete plans. It needs to be someone that can steer an interview and Rob is absolutely the right guy for that. Dave is also good, and has the right mindset that he would be a valuable second interviewer. I really don't see the point of anyone else since I prefer to keep this focused on the non-technical side of things.

 

[ByeByeJohnny]

It would appear that Austin has beaten Berlin to the finish line, despite having starting the race half a year late!

More like three months based on breaking ground. Considering Berlin was expected to need an extra 18 months for permits by anyone not named Elon I'ld say Berlin is still ahead by a wide margin.

 

[obie_fl]

I agree would like to see just Rob and Dave maybe Jordan from TLF for his technical knowledge.

I always wondered why Elon hasn't hired Tim Dodd at SpaceX. They seem to have pretty good chemistry.

Nice that $TSLA had a good day in light of the Macros. I agree with some here and think we are going to trade sideways or even down for a while. But I'd be OK with a pop up. I'm that dead investor so don't really care what is does in the short term.

 

[Prunesquallor]

Dial your expectations. Jonas knows.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1493216293264236550

 

[wws]

LOL! And I thought the 'nostrils' on the i3 were bad...

IMHO few of the SB commercials, EV or otherwise, were any good. Of the EV-oriented ones, the Kia ad was perhaps the best. The others were pretty cringeworthy. As a TSLA shareholder, I'm really happy that Tesla does not advertise. (Though it would be cool to show Jay Leno drive his Plaid to the dragstrip and set a new EV drag record, or have fun driving Roadster or Cybertruck with Franz or Elon.)

Called it: Kia's cute robot dog won the Super Bowl of car commercials

 

[Nocturnal]

Dial your expectations. Jonas knows.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1493216293264236550

How long did it take him to go from his $10 bear case PT to being realistic?

Bullish.

 

[ZsoZso]

Dial your expectations. Jonas knows.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1493216293264236550

Oh, I have dialed back my expectations on (the predictive abilities of) "Adam [10,500] Jonas" long time ago...

(or did I misunderstand the proposition?)

 

[NicoV]

That's not going to work. Parking garages are filled with gas tanks now, and that will switch to more batteries in the future. Cars need to not catch on fire spontaneously in parking garages. Tesla is at that point now, with a million cars out there and 1 a year doing that. VW is at a rate 100x higher which is not acceptable.

The article also said that the fire department claims that just adding sprinklers to the parking garage would have contained the fire to just the car. I don’t think it’s a bad idea to have sprinklers in big buildings, irrespective of what may cause a fire.

 

[Ogre]

From the Department of Unfair Comparisons: How long before Austin out-produces Ford and GM’s EV 2022 production combined?

Considering Ford has parked their Mach E production and GM is only selling the Hummer right now… maybe 2 weeks?

 

[printf42]

If Dave is excitable, what would Gali be called? Super cool that he got his hands on a couple 4680s. They appear to be damaged/rejects, so I'm not sure how useful testing them would be.

Tesla should discharge/disable these rejects and sell them on Tesla store, maybe 420 Doge a pop?
I came up with a name:
“Not a battery (but still poisonous if eaten)”

 

[Carl Raymond]

Rob Maurer is consistently well-informed, well prepared, and knows how to shut up and let his interviewee do the talking.

I can occasionally stand to listen to Dave Lee's interviews, but only by fast forwarding past him talking.

So far as I'm concerned, the fewer others that are involved in a Rob Maurer - Elon Musk interview, the happier I'll be. And, I think, the more likely we are to come away having learned something useful and interesting.

To get past the standard Elon answers we’ve all heard numerous times, some questions from Jordon (The Limiting Factor) and James Douma (self described “deep learning dork“) might help break new ground.

I’m keen to learn Tesla’s LFP form factor and production strategy.

On FSD I’d like insight into why they are confident of success when version after version makes the left turn onto fast busy roads seem like a mission requiring paid up life insurance. There must be something they know that we don’t.

 

[Featsbeyond50]

Mine has been showing as 3/19-3/31 for a month or so now. Ordered on 12/24 and it had said mid-February at the time.

View attachment 769075

I've had a sneaking suspicion that mid-march would be the start of deliveries based on this and a few other data points. When is your car scheduled?

I agree. My EDD range is April 15 to May 13.

 

[Maarten]

Testing phase is over.
Apparently the results were positive.
In The Netherlands Tesla has opened all the Superchargers for other car brands now.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Out of state. That's for certain

I'm not so certain. Zoom in on the tractor in this picture from today: that's a day-cab, which makes it less likely to be a long-haul route, more likely to be ~300 miles (max radius w/o overniting due to driver rest laws)

Do you remember that recent tweet from the Texas Gov'n pictured with Elon, saying he's been to the State Capitol? Abbott would look bad if, just weeks later, there was a local delivery snafu. What's the advantage to Gov'n Abbott to making any announcement vs just permitting deliveries? He won't have to fight with TX Legislators Dealers if presented with a fait accompli. And it won't be huge volumes until next year.

Cheers!

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

I'm not so certain. Zoom in on the tractor in this picture from today: that's a day-cab, which makes it less likely to be a long-haul route, more likely to be ~300 miles (max radius w/o overniting due to driver rest laws)

View attachment 769095

Do you remember that recent tweet from the Texas Gov'n pictured with Elon, saying he's been to the State Capitol? Abbott would look bad if, just weeks later, there was a local delivery snafu. What's the advantage to Gov'n Abbott to making any announcement vs just permitting deliveries? He won't have to fight with TX Legislators Dealers if presented with a fait accompli. And it won't be huge volumes until next year.

Cheers!

Just a fyi, both Oklahoma and Louisiana borders are about 300 miles from GigaAustin