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

[Singuy]

Sounds like you're fearing a situation like in WW2 where factories and mineral suppliers were mandated by the government to divert resources and production to the war. I can assure you that's not the case here.

1) Currently almost all of Tesla's mineral sources/contract are outside the US. I believe Tesla only has one contract with US mineral miner.
2) Tesla entire production is already the focus of the would be Defense Act.
3) If the government does provide incentive and quick regulation to start mining minerals in the US, who do you think is going to be able to take advantage of it and benefit from it? All of legacy auto and the EV newcomers outsource their battery cells/pack. Tesla is the only one actively producing their own battery cells/packs here in the US.


To reply to myself here, I realized this morning if he was in fact talking about internal projections.......then he's referencing the projections that Tesla gave analysts back in Dec. 65% of 934k deliveries is 1.5 million. That's the exact guidance that was given to analysts.

No doubt, Tesla only gave guidance that they thought for sure they could beat. They've been sandbagging guidance for a while now. So if Tesla is giving guidance to analyst of 1.5 million, then they were likely around targeting around 1.6-1.7 million deliveries.

Well it still depends on if those internal projections are recent or not. Back in Dec we didn't have a supply chain issue that's caused by a war to deal with. So if these internal projections are more recent, then it's more significant. Analysts are discounting companies to miss guidance, hence why we see stock price dropping across the board.

 

[Bet TSLA]

Well, the term "founder" is not really well-defined. Apparently Elon is officially a co-founder of Tesla because that was what was agreed to by the parties concerned, in 2009, six years after the company was founded:
Tesla Motors founders: Now there are five

The company did not reveal any details of the resolution, except to say that there are now five, rather than two, agreed-upon "founders" of Tesla.

In addition to Eberhard, other founders include current CEO and chief product architect Elon Musk, current chief technology JB Straubel, Marc Tarpenning, and Ian Wright.

 

[willow_hiller]

Anyone know what Tesla gives on FSD trade-ins? In an Earning's Call, rumors of zero value were dismissed but I never saw an actual credit figure

It adds about $6k to the trade-in value:

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/s8297x

 

[Nocturnal]

I get the excitement for new battery pack car, but I'd rather have well proven tech and product. perhaps there will be some wrinkles to iron out

It's a gamble on both sides. The part that tips the scale for me is the insight into the new factory it would give me. Oh well, even if I wanted to cancel to push for an Austin car I wouldn't right now because I'd probably be waiting another 3+ months.

 

[mongo]

If you aren't there at the founding of the company you aren't a founder. This is really simple stuff, there is no legitimate case to be made otherwise. If I start a company today and you invest in it or get hired 8 months later you aren't a founder.

Of the three, only Elon was a part of the company when Tesla was created.
At this point, who cares about Tesla Motors.
/s?

 

[CanadaEV]

I wasn’t completely sure before, but this is why I never, ever, click on a Business Insider link…

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

Tesla didn't actually become Tesla until Elon showed up. Without Elon the Tesla we all know and love wouldn't exist. It was just a company with the name Tesla until he got there.

That's my signal to the mods to delete this and all off the other recent founder posts. You're welcome.

 

[capster]

We need to invoke the Defense Production Act to build Cybertrucks:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1502690789675130885

Perhaps those not-saleable pre-production cars from GigaBerlin might be put to good use by these good folks defending their homeland in Ukraine?

 

[2daMoon]

You’re absolutely right. I think most people mean to complain about the pedantry of the term as used to discredit Elon. It’s a boring argument.

No, no.

Elon founded Boring Co. for sure!

 

[jerry33]

Timing. Simple as that. You can't redefine a term. The company was founded before Elon was involved, he came along about 8 months later.

After 13+ years, aren't we tired of this topic by now?

 

[nativewolf]

Perhaps those not-saleable pre-production cars from GigaBerlin might be put to good use by these good folks defending their homeland in Ukraine?

That's a clever idea. Someone that tweets should tweet that to the PM of Ukraine...

 

[JRP3]

All the time we've been complaining about GigaBerlin delays who knew it was actually being fast tracked?
Posted for the irony:

Elon Musk’s Gigafactory Shows the Hollowness of Green Capitalism

Last Friday, authorities gave the go-ahead for Tesla’s Gigafactory near Berlin. The fast-tracked approval for the electric auto plant makes a mockery of environmental and labor standards — but suits the agenda of superficially “greening” German industry.

www.jacobinmag.com

 

[Chunky Jr.]

Well, the term "founder" is not really well-defined. Apparently Elon is officially a co-founder of Tesla because that was what was agreed to by the parties concerned, in 2009, six years after the company was founded:
Tesla Motors founders: Now there are five

The company did not reveal any details of the resolution, except to say that there are now five, rather than two, agreed-upon "founders" of Tesla.

In addition to Eberhard, other founders include current CEO and chief product architect Elon Musk, current chief technology JB Straubel, Marc Tarpenning, and Ian Wright.

Yep. I have been at several companies where they gave very senior people the title of co-founder months after the company was founded as a way to recruit them. It is a very common practice in Silicon Valley.

 

[Skipdd]

All the time we've been complaining about GigaBerlin delays who knew it was actually being fast tracked?
Posted for the irony:

Elon Musk’s Gigafactory Shows the Hollowness of Green Capitalism

Last Friday, authorities gave the go-ahead for Tesla’s Gigafactory near Berlin. The fast-tracked approval for the electric auto plant makes a mockery of environmental and labor standards — but suits the agenda of superficially “greening” German industry.

www.jacobinmag.com

Full of falsehoods…then I saw who the author is:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR​

Peter Schadt is a secretary Germany's DGB trade union. His doctoral thesis on "The Digitalization of the German Car Industry" has just been published in German by PapyRossa.

 

[PeterJA]

...and Elon's difficulty in admitting when he's wrong, specifically in regards to lidar....

...Finally, saying Elon doesn't like to admit he's wrong is absurd, because he does so more than any other leader I've ever seen. This is on of the main reasons I'm invested. His whole philosophy is based around assuming that everything is wrong and we're trying to become less wrong. Examples: saying the original plan for Tesla was "based on two false premises", completely scrapping the mobileye relationship, admitting to over-automating the original Model 3 line, cancelling the carbon fiber starship and starting over with stainless steel. Clinging to the same rationale when none of the premises have changed is not stubbornness, it's rationality.

Steve lost a lot of credibility in my mind after this interview. I had higher expectations for him, although I did enjoy the interview overall.

I think it's worth repeating that Elon does NOT have "difficulty in admitting when he's wrong," based on everything I've read or seen with my own eyes about him since 2013.

To @Gigapress's list of examples, I'll add Elon's multiple statements that Model X was over-engineered, and Sandy Munro's description of Elon's behavior in a SpaceX meeting that Sandy witnessed.

Anyone who claims Elon has such "difficulty" should immediately lose credibility.

 

[JRP3]

Anyone who claims Elon has such "difficulty" should immediately lose credibility.

Sure, just discount someone who's actually known him and worked with him for a very long time.

 

[PeterJA]

Sure, just discount someone who's actually known him and worked with him for a very long time.

When that someone is invested in LIDAR, and his only example of Elon's "difficulty" regards LIDAR, yes I will.

 

[feigen66]

When that someone is invested in LIDAR, and his only example of Elon's "difficulty" regards LIDAR, yes I will.

LIDAR doesn't really work in humid environment.

Previously I have collected data for NAVTEQ, the team was aquired by Apple, with very expensive $500K high resolution multi-spectrum lidar on top, everytime it rain we just stopped data collection.

Yes, there's technique to separate out noise from the humidity, called "machine learning"

Also Waymo recently announced data labelling challenge for "camera only" solution. This should give you very strong signal that they are preparing to move away from LiDAR to vision only system.

Sign in - Google Accounts

As for LIDAR getting cheaper overtime, I am not so sure. Cheaper LIDAR like Luminar has way shorter range and angular resolution than the expensive model I used. The cheaper the model, the more reliance on AI to "clean up" the signal, and you have to pair with vision more.

Does it sound like making a problem any easier?

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Lot of discussion going on in Twitter verse about the new Y EPA model. Given that what we’ve seen produced out of Austin so far isn’t Performance trims, at least over the past 3 weeks or so, I think we all assumed those were LR Y’s. Maybe they aren’t……..could be we’re looking at a structural 4680 LFP battery in those.

All of these assumptions I’ve seen for the amount of 4680 cells made so far point to about 1 million cells being enough for 1,100 Y’s. But those assumptions were based on the Y being P or LR trims. What if by doing SR instead, the 1 million cells supports production of 1800-2000 Y’s? Tesla could ramp production much quicker that way.

I find it quite humorous that many on Twitter seem to think it’s a bad business decision choice. They’re misinformed and do not understand the difference between gross margin and operating margin. Tesla has fixed operating costs at Austin. The quicker they can ramp revenue and thus profits to cover the operating costs the better.

If Tesla can only average say 1,000/week of the LR/P version of the 4860 Austin made Y but can do 1800/week by doing LFP 4680 Y, then even if the gross margin is say 10% less, operating margin would be much much better.

 

[MP3Mike]

If Tesla can only average say 1,000/week of the LR/P version of the 4860 Austin made Y but can do 1800/week by doing LFP 4680 Y, then even if the gross margin is say 10% less, operating margin would be much much better.

Yep, this is like when the Model 3 was limited because of Panasonic having problems making enough good cells so they introduced the Mid-range Model 3 so that they could keep the factory production rate up; producing as many vehicles as possible with the limited number of cells available. Once enough cells were available they discontinued the Mid-range variant.

The other advantage is that it is a new trim/model such that people can't try to delay their order to get a GigaTexas built Model Y like so many are talking about. They would have to cancel their order and place a new order for the lower range version.

This could also be why they decided to cancel the RWD Model Y.