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

[TheTalkingMule]

I have to wonder if some of that EV materials increase might also be due to much stronger demand now that so many other auto makers are building EV's too? The supply network needs time to react to such a demand increase before materials continue downward.

That's 60% covid disruption/gouging, 30% fake oil shortage, and 10% real tightness.

 

[Knightshade]

I dug up the CHANGES that were proposed during the last session.

87(R) HB 4379 - Introduced version - Bill Text

Yup.

And you'll note it amends both pieces of law (the occupation code and the transport code) that I previously cited in my last post, including quoting the penalties currently in them for selling without a dealers license and GDN that Tesla can not currently obtain but the proposal you cite would allow them to obtain.


Ideally the TX legislature can actually manage to pass it when next they meet in 2023, but until then the law is what it is (and before someone else suggests it, no an EO can't fix it either)

 

[heltok]

Regarding Andrej, he is awesome and a magnet for talent. But he is not the head of autopilot/Autonomy, that’s Ashok:

1:05:00

I’ll bump my old post:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/eashokkumar
Leading the autonomy software team for the Tesla Autopilot.

My team's main focus areas are:
- Creation of large scale automatic ground truth pipelines to train neural networks with massive amounts of diverse, high-quality data. Use this fleet-learning approach to replace potentially brittle run-time algorithms with robust learned models.
- Developing an accurate and detailed geometric and semantic understanding of the world using the best of both machine-learned and engineered models.
- Building robust, causal, predictive models for other agents in both geometry and semantic state spaces.
- Decision making, motion planning, and control modules using state-of-the-art AI techniques including methods for high-dimensional search, trajectory optimization, reinforcement learning, model-predictive control, etc.

Another important leader:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1413894389299023874

https://www.linkedin.com/in/milankovac/en
Both a manager and a technical contributor, I've brought up Tesla's successive Autopilot HW2 and HW3 generations of computers and software stacks, integrated them across all Tesla vehicle types and pushed them all the way to mass-production. I've been regularly shipping software updates to hundreds of thousands of vehicles across the world, including compute optimizations, new features, and system stability fixes.

I've been scaling Tesla Autopilot's software- and hardware-in-the-loop continuous integration infrastructure, and developed productivity tools to accelerate our R&D team's development cycles towards full-autonomy.

I currently report directly to Tesla CEO.

In particular, I currently lead:
- Overall System Software & middleware (C/C++ middleware, IPC, process scheduling, Logging, Watchdog, ...)
- Computer Vision system software (GPU kernels for post-processing, Neural Network integration, C++ Compute Graph Framework for efficient compute scheduling across multiple devices)
- Camera software stack (across all Tesla vehicle types)
- Platform Software (Linux kernel/drivers, security, power, board bring-up)
- Continuous Integration infrastructure (automated & on-demand support of regression tests, performance tests, Simulation tests, with scheduling on either x86 emulation, as well as on true hardware-in-the-loop setups)
- Build System (including remote-caching)
- Performance & optimization (responsible for the Autopilot framerate across all platforms)
- Telemetry (on-vehicle data capture software, and back-end ingestion services)
- Machine Learning infrastructure (training stabilization & scalability, workflow automation)
- Tools (sensor clips visualization, data plotting for logs analysis or live debugging)

(Just copypasted what was written a while ago, might have changed since, maybe the change is of interest)

So basically:
Andrej: Train neural networks
Ashok: Generate dataset for neural networks and do control
Milan: Software 1.0 surrounding software 2.0 to deploy on HW3 and DOJO

EDIT: adding this piece from TheInformation in 2019:

• Guangzhi Cao, who previously worked on iPhone cameras at Apple, develops software to process image data that comes from cameras on Tesla’s cars.
• Frank Havlak is one of the clear leaders of Autopilot. He is in charge of controls, which make sure the vehicle’s steering, braking and acceleration respond correctly to the Autopilot software decisions.
• Ashok Elluswamy, who was trained in robotics and learned about computer vision on the job at Tesla and is now effectively the senior most neural network researcher under Mr. Karpathy. Mr. Elluswamy helped develop the automatic lane change feature for the original launch of Autopilot.
• Mark McClelland works on the path planner, which determines the path the vehicle will travel based on what the Autopilot perception system “sees” on the road. He has been hard at work preparing for the recent update that allows a driver to type an address and let Autopilot take over the driving to follow the navigation instructions when the vehicle is on a highway.
• CJ Moore runs the “integration” team, which acts as the liaison between Autopilot and the rest of Tesla. He makes sure, for instance, that Tesla’s user-interface team, which designs the digital displays of information in the Tesla vehicles, including those about Autopilot, gets the correct measurements from the Autopilot system in real time. He also is responsible for quality control to identify and assign fixes to bugs discovered by the company’s test-track drivers and, later, by “alpha testers,” or real customers who get early access to Autopilot software before updates are pushed to all customers. And those discovered by Mr. Musk, of course.
• Zeljko Popovic, who works for Mr. Bowers, was a liaison between Tesla and Mobileye early in the life of Autlopilot, said a person briefed about it. He recently had been running a team that helped bring together data from cameras, radars and ultrasonics, known as sensor fusion, so that Tesla’s Autopilot software algorithms could use that data and decide how the car should drive.
• Drew Steedly is responsible for “geometric vision and perception.” That means he tries to make sure the sensors are calibrated correctly and provide useful data. Mr. Steedly is based in Seattle, and while the employee list does not reflect it, he appears to be overseeing Mr. Popovic’s work, according to a colleague.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

I wonder if Elon knows that Valve is notorious for rarely ever finishing and releasing any actual products. Comparing any team, group, or company with Valve isn't a good idea.

 

[Usain]

@Usain - You are the only person to whom I would recommend buying a Bolt over a Tesla, not because it's a better car; but for the smiles - I mean the name just works.

You are now officially Usain Bolt.

Yeah, I'm also Usain on the Bolt forums. So when I got a Tesla I just decided to use the same identity here.

 

[Featsbeyond50]

You guys know this bot is for Mars right? There's been just enough boring to practice for creating Mars habit, now I assume you'll find the same will be true with these robot slaves.

Oh geez, looks like I need to go back to my old signature.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Jason Yang - YouTube has released a new Giga Shanghai video:

(March 26 2022) Tesla Gigafactory 3 Shanghai 4K Video

IMO, @bentv_sh (Wū wǎ) likely had his Giga Shanghai drone fly-over priviledges revoked due to posting several long-dwell-time vidz of Product exiting the pipeline... a "proprietary/confidential" info violation.

Too bad, hope he mends fences before the Model 2 factory build starts on the East side of Phase 1/R&D (a.k.a. the "dirt pile")

EDIT: There's a new dirt pile in the far SE, too. Here's a view from the SW, looking ENE This plot is big enough for another production line of some type.



Cheers!

 

[Sofie]

@Mengy is saying the share price (P) will likely not go up in line with the earnings (E) this year.

The P/E ratio, or share price divided by annual GAAP earnings per share, as shown on Yahoo Finance and elsewhere, is currently 206.21, which is $1010.64 divided by $4.90, the GAAP earnings of the trailing 12 months.

This year, the Earnings per share will increase perhaps by a factor of 2.5, from $4.90 to ~$12.25 (my guess). If the Price of a share doesn’t also go up by the same factor, to around $2500 in my example, then the P/E will be compressed: it will be a smaller number.

Many people would agree that Tesla’s P/E ratio will continue to compress, perhaps to around 70 over the next few years, as Amazon’s did between 2015-2020, as @The Accountant noted in this helpful series of posts:

Tesla Valuation Based on 5 Year Outlook

I am going to break up my valuation work into 6 posts. Please refrain from responding until I have completed the 6 posts so as to keep a continuous string. Edit - Done posting - feel free to comment

teslamotorsclub.com

Thank you!
So is this what Wallstreet has also already figured out and is why they try to hold us under their thumb everyday so tightly, or are they just constantly trying to buy in at a lower price before we take off? Maybe it’s a mix of both? Lol

 

[ByeByeJohnny]

Jason Yang - YouTube has released a new Giga Shanghai video:

(March 26 2022) Tesla Gigafactory 3 Shanghai 4K Video

IMO, @bentv_sh (Wū wǎ) likely had his Giga Shanghai drone fly-over priviledges revoked due to posting several long-dwell-time vidz of Product exiting the pipeline... a "proprietary/confidential" info violation.

Too bad, hope he mends fences before the Model 2 factory build starts on the East side of Phase 1/R&D (a.k.a. the "dirt pile")

Cheers!

But but but I clearly remember someone, well you actually, say that those video clips were worthless in a post when I asked what we could learn from those specific videos?

 

[Thekiwi]

Pretty interesting charts

https://twitter.com/x/status/1508129846676766722

Be aware that the “MicroMobility“ twitter account (along with many in that particular community) are rather anti-EV cars.

In their opinion the best solution to climate change and congested cities is public transport + “micromobility“ (which is essentially bikes/e-bikes/scooters and things of that variety). They view EVs like Tesla’s as essentially the same as ICE cars In many ways.

While I have no issue with the promotion of bikes/scooters etc as a solution, trying to equate EVs to ICE cars is taking things to an extreme level that I think most here would disagree with. I would love a Tesla e-bike though

Oh and that graph at first glance makes it look like all parts of a battery are getting more expensive, but in reality if anyone looks at the individual components of that stack, it is mostly the “cathode” at the bottom of the stack that has risen steeply - everything else has remained fairly steady or shrunk.

 

[heltok]

I guess we are in some pretty serious supply chain issues, Giga Shanghai closing is just the tip of the iceberg. Shanghai is having a pretty hard time dealing with BA.2:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1508256306783678465

The ports are struggling:

‘More chaos’ to come for global shipping if China’s virus lockdowns persist

Shenzhen and Hong Kong ports are seeing their worst delays in months as China clings to its hardline coronavirus restrictions, congestion that is likely to have knock-on effects for global supply chains, analysts say.

www.scmp.com

I would expect a lot of supply chain issues. And getting from 3k(conservative chinese figures) to zero with Omicron will not be easy. Even if they manage to get R from 1.5 to 0.25 it will take a long time to get to zero. People in China are hurting a lot:

Like last time this will spread over to US ports. And now we also have Russia and a need to reroute a lot of traffic of oil, gas, coal and other products. Plus Ukraine supply chain issues which already are messing up the German car industry.

Imo we can expect high inflation(higher than CPI if you measure things the rich consume as they have collected most of the newly minted tokens the last decade now fighting the lower supply). It’s gonna be a rough time until China decides to abandon zero covid policy. And given what they have seen in Hong Kong(which is China) I don’t think that will happen until Xi is reelected later this year.

How COVID Exploded in Hong Kong

With startling speed, a success story turned tragic. What went wrong?

www.newyorker.com

 

[Criscmt]

So that factor is not now against me

Valuations now are not comparable to the dotcom era. Not even close. Anything and everything with a .com was sky-high regardless of whether it had decent prospects to become a real company with real and growing profits. So, no, I don't see a lot of good parallels between then and now. The entire mood is different.

I do think real estate will decline over the next 3 years. Hard to say what the major stock indexes will do but it doesn't look scary to me, maybe the indexes will under-perform their typical average, maybe they will even be down over a two-three year period. I'm not predicting that as no one knows. Any concerns along those lines are just more reasons to hold a fast-growing company like TSLA. You want to hold companies doing the disrupting, not the ones being disrupted. If the major indexes are flat to down it will because a number of index components are being disrupted. New technologies, new business models, new consumer behaviors, etc. Those are not good reasons not to invest, they are reasons to be selective about where you put your money, as always. It seems like one should be able to time the market but right when things might seem the bleakest the market can take off like a bull on steroids. You really never know. All those financial prognosticators love to act like they know what they are talking about but the economy loves to prove them wrong.

I believe in reacting to new learnings and new perspectives that inform the future of business and profits, of winners and losers. I don't believe in reacting to the market or the economy (except as it impacts the above). Time in the market beats trying to time the market. Sell companies that are not the future, buy ones that are. Don't over diversify and stay the course. The markets have always rallied out of trouble and they have faced far more turbulent times than anything that is visible now. Don't try to second guess them, it only works until it doesn't.

Not even close. The dot com bubble was insane - random companies would announce "we're creating a web page!" and their valuations would sky rocket over night. Companies with no revenue were going public left and right. It was a giant speculative gold rush with little thought about how any of these companies would actually pull off what they said they wanted to do.

Compare that to Tesla which is very profitable and growing 50%+ a year. That puts it more in a league with Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon than the dot coms.

There is definitely a lot of speculation that EVs are the future, and people are making bets accordingly on unproven companies like Rivian and Lucid. But Tesla has shown that there is a real business there and it isn't just hype like it was in the dot com era. I'd start to get worried about a speculative bubble if companies like IBM, Johnson and Johnson, or Netflix announced they were making EVs and their valuations tripled as a result.

There was a dot com bubble and it has been popped already. Basically most of Ark's holdings were part of this bubble. It all started with her etf getting Tesla right, which led people to think any of her holdings will be the next Tesla. So people foolishly bid up every company ARK held to insane levels using stimulus money. Companies with revenue closer to a 1 percenter household became multi billion dollar companies. All of these companies are down 80% from their highs and will most likely not recover to ATH ever. So all of the companies on Wall Street went through this massive correction already and today is the result of what is left.

Thanks for your replies.
I am more interested in the cash levels during dot-com bubble. The kind of money that was pumped into the system the last two years, in fact even prior to that (QE post GFC), both Monetary, and Fiscal, seems unprecedented. Was there even nearly as much cash injection into the system, positive wealth effect, retail trading activity, going into dot-com bubble? Of course, I understand that inflation wasn't as high as it is now.

 

[WADan]

EXCLUSIVE U.S. boost fines for automakers not meeting fuel economy rules in Tesla win

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on Sunday reinstated a sharp increase in penalties for automakers whose vehicles do not meet fuel efficiency requirements for model years 2019 and beyond.

www.reuters.com

 

[Singuy]

Thanks for your replies.
I am more interested in the cash levels during dot-com bubble. The kind of money that was pumped into the system the last two years, in fact even prior to that (QE post GFC), both Monetary, and Fiscal, seems unprecedented. Was there even nearly as much cash injection into the system, positive wealth effect, retail trading activity, going into dot-com bubble? Of course, I understand that inflation wasn't as high as it is now.

Considering the US actually had a surplus vs a deficit in the year 2000, I don't think there were a lot of free money given out to people in the way of stimulus as the economy was booming.

 

[Oveeus]

Seriously? You think Gary doesn't know. You should read up on the history of robotic hands, you've got a long long wait for the machine you want. Mass production isn't the issue. Invention is the issue. They have to invent something that does not exist.

Robots or humanoid robots aren't new. It exists from the days of Honda's ASIMO where a robot is capable of performing human-like activities.

There are also robot hands/arms capable of performing human-like tasks (although they might not do it the same way as human) with incredible precision, but they cost, no pun intended, more than an arm and leg.

The problem has always been the price. ASIMO, which does nothing much other than walking around costs a few million dollars. And even if it could probably help to carry your groceries/shopping bags when you are in the mall... I doubt anyone would want to spend seven figures for it.

On the other hand, the first Roomba was a $200 robot vacuum. It does one thing and one thing only... suck around your house. People not only had no problem paying $200 for it, there are many other premium models on the market that are now 1000+.

So, the problem for robots is how to mass-produce it while achieving certain functions that people would find its price tag justifiable.

Imagine if BD's Cyberdog is only 2500 or 5000... would you not get one? I'd get one just for the sake of having the scariest patrol dog in the neighborhood. And that's all I'm asking... $2500-5000, programmed to do nothing but patrol a set perimeter 24/7. But sadly they cost more than 10x that.

 

[MC3OZ]

So, the problem for robots is how to mass-produce it while achieving certain functions that people would find its price tag justifiable.

Yes, I expect that is the challenge Tesla is taking on.

Low price hopefully comes from being generic, efficient and designed for mass production.

Experience in designing and building mass produced cars, is very helpful, being generic comes in part form being software based.

Being efficient comes in part from being lightweight. Specifically light weight arms, Which in turn means a smaller battery, which helps with lower cost.

It isn't easy, but Tesla seems to have the required skill set and resources.

Tesla also has the ability to attract talent as needed.

Price tag isn't an issue initially as bots will be used internally. Or those that buy them will pay an early-adopter premium, and hope that software upgrades unlock more potential. Arms/hands can be upgraded as improved designs emerge.

 

[Thekiwi]

Elon has Covid again. Mild.

 

[Cult Member]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1508090207723462656

https://twitter.com/x/status/1508085112381927426

As I have heard on the news, there is one exception: if the employees work and sleep in a closed area on the company premises. A production stop could be prevented if this possibility is used.

 

[lascavarian]

Elon has Covid again. Mild.

Third time?

 

[JusRelax]

Third time?

You know what else has a third time? This is the third time that Reuters has updated their original article regarding Tesla's Shanghai factory closure by creating a brand new article instead of just actually updating the original article, LOL.

FUD tryhard much?