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

[ZachF]

Disagree, a small village of 200 people probably have 100-200 vehicles between them, some will be special purpose or business vehicles (perhaps half), but that still leaves 50-100 which could be replaced by Robotaxi, so a small village could easily support 5-10 Robotaxi.

Agree that some people prefer small cars and that the centers of some European and Asian town and cities are really only viable for small cars, but this shouldn't be overstated. SUVs are common, so are mid-large luxury cars, workmen use Sprinter/Transit vans as does home delivery networks .

There seems to be significant markets for VW Golf (14% shorter than Model 3) and VW Polo (20% shorter than Model 3) sized cars. Much smaller than a Polo is probably not possible while still keeping Tesla's excellent crash safety. While these sizes will be a bit cheaper to produce, because of less weight leading to smaller battery, I think that they won't be a lot cheaper than the Model 3 to buy, perhaps 7% and 15%. This is because I think they will still be premium cars, with FSD hardware, a great infotainment system, soundproofing, performance, range, etc.

By concentrating on vehicle longevity, Tesla can produce cars with a very low total cost of ownership, that is more important than sticker price IMHO, as most people buy cars with finance, cost per month is what is most important, and low cost of ownership is massively helped by low depreciation.

Many people don’t choose auto purchases on economics alone, if they did everyone would only buy used Toyota Carollas. Nobody would buy $100k cars.

Robotaxi will take a good chunk of passenger miles, but large numbers of people will still want their own car, especially in more wealthy countries like the US where it is more spread out and incomes are around 2x higher than Europe or Japan.

In the USA where there is essentially one car per adult, I could see Robotaxi taking ~40% of that.

In Europe where there is ~0.7 cars per adult, I could see that dropping to under 0.3 and Robotaxi and public transport/bikes for the rest.

China has about 0.4 cars per adult, I could see that too dropping by about half and Robotaxi doing the rest. The biggest boost to mobility from Robotaxis is going to be in the middle income countries where only a minority of people can afford a car, but a Robotaxi with cents per mile usage cost will be within their reach.

 

[Mengy]

This CPI reading hopefully paints the picture that inflation peaked, and hopefully that was bottom. 8:30 Eastern if I’m not mistaken

Yep, coming out any minute now...

 

[ZachF]

@cliff harris
You are not looking for a model that could work, you are explaining how your model does not work.

Robotaxis need not solve 100% of transportation to be revolutionary, 99,99% is more than enough.
Even just 10% of miles traveled is a revolution already that changes a lot of things.

Robotaxis share as a total percentage of passenger-miles will likely be highest in middle income countries where most people can’t afford a car but most could afford rides on Robotaxis with much lower per-mile usage costs. As you go higher on the income ladder, personal cars will be a larger percentage of total cars.

 

[ninefiveone]

why does it make more economic sense for those 100 people to own cars they don’t use 90% of the time?

The business model is that robotaxi is an order of magnitude cheaper to operate, etc than a personal car, and certainly ICE taxi’s etc.

Whether that turns out to be true remains to be seen but you seem to basing your entire argument on a cost basis rooted in current cost of ownership of ICE’s rather than the forecast cost of ownership.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Consumer Price Index Summary - 2022 M04 Results

CPI seems to have come in at 8.3%

 

[cliff harris]

Dont get me wrong! I think robotaxis will be amazing and a HUGE revenue earner for tesla, and also super-popular all over the world. My only point is that we are not looking at a future of just robotaxis and super-pricey cars for the rich who want the luxury of a personal car. There is a third segment there, where people would flipping LOVE to rely on robotaxis, but the geography does not work.

You see this already with a lot of really BAD beaten up old cars in rural communities, where people would love not to have the expense of owning a car personally, but they need to have one. In my experience, only the wealthy in central london bother owning a car, but where I am, EVERYONE has one, even if its an old rustbucket

I think building a small personally-owned model 2 is low on teslas agenda, but I bet they already have vague plans for it.

 

[Discoducky]

Consumer Price Index Summary - 2022 M04 Results

CPI seems to have come in at 8.3%

Higher than expected, thus pre-market going south.

But it is not much higher than expected, so lets hope cooler heads prevail.

 

[bkp_duke]

Consumer Price Index Summary - 2022 M04 Results

CPI seems to have come in at 8.3%

Core at 0.6. That explains the substantial market drop. Prediction was something like 0.4.

Going to be another rough day in the markets. Good buy opportunity, however.

 

[Mengy]

To those who disagree, I still want to know the economics. Explain to me what I am not seeing here. A small village, 100 people, 30 go to work in the morning rush hour with >1 hour commutes. How are these people relying on robotaxi? How is it economic for a robotaxi to be sat idling in a small village, unused 90% of the time?

The robotaxi's won't sit idle anywhere, they move where they are needed. They'll drive into that small town in the morning to take those people to work, then the RT's will drive back to areas with more populace and customers, and then in the afternoon the RT's will head back to pick those people up from work and take them home.

RT's don't need to stay in areas, they can drive around to wherever they are needed! With electric transportation the costs per mile become so low that this becomes economically viable.

 

[bkp_duke]

Higher than expected, thus pre-market going south.

But it is not much higher than expected, so lets hope cooler heads prevail.

Core inflation was much higher than predicted. Deflates the argument that "we have peaked". That's what the market isn't liking.

 

[Featsbeyond50]

To those who disagree, I still want to know the economics. Explain to me what I am not seeing here. A small village, 100 people, 30 go to work in the morning rush hour with >1 hour commutes. How are these people relying on robotaxi? How is it economic for a robotaxi to be sat idling in a small village, unused 90% of the time?

I love uber, and use it a lot when on holiday. robotaxis would be even better, but I still own a car, because the nearest taxi company to me is 20 minutes drive away. Even assuming greater penetration of robotaxis than existing taxis, its still going to be somewhere other than a tiny village.
People in remote areas are NOT going to commute by robotaxi, or rely on them. They will buy EVs. It feels like a lot of people are blindly believing elon and Cathy predicting the death of personal transport, without ever having spoken to someone in a rural community.
San francisco and California are the the entire world!

I don't like it when people disagree with a post born from a differing perspective. In your case, the perspective of living in a small rural community. Please carry on.

 

[ZachF]

Ugh. More stagflationary readings…

 

[CHGolferJim]

I've been debating doing the same. I bought a bunch of different ARK for my mom after my father passed away suddenly 15 months ago. I thought I would be safe and put some of her money in funds managed by an expert. They are all down 60%. Can't decide if I continue to hold them or cut the losses and put all the money into TSLA now....

It’s a tough decision for me, too. I keep thinking that if and when tech/growth recovers (when interest rates plateau and/or we reach the mid-point of the so-called recession), the ARK portfolios could double faster than TSLA. I think it’s mostly that I’m just fascinated with technological disruption and liked Cathie Woods’ approach. I’m tempted to double down, but probably the intermediate course of HODL is what I’ll continue to do.

 

[BornToFly]

Hopefully more notes actually correlates with improved performance.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1524217684803690496

Hopefully FSD Beta will be greatly expanded. In the interview, Elon said if you want to see where FSD is now, just try it. I WANT TO!!!! I've been waiting with a 99 or 100 score for months! June will be three years since I paid for it!

(No, I'm not bitter at all, that everyone I know that bought their first Tesla recently has it, but I still don't).....

 

[thx1139]

Ugh. More stagflationary readings…

Huh? Stagflation comes with high unemployment. We have very low unemployment and 11.5 million open jobs.

 

[elasalle]

Huh? Stagflation comes with high unemployment. We have very low unemployment and 11.5 million open jobs.

Damaged portfolios likely means more people gonna come back into labor market ..

BTC now ~ 29K, so Tesla likely needs to take an impairment as well ...

.. while we missed CPI this month will likely show a bigger drop with all the tightening FED has put in place ...(so need to wait another 30 days .... life goes on )

 

[Accident]

Bitcoin dropping fast too. It's within 2% of a new impairment.

 

[bro1999]

Bitcoin dropping fast too. It's within 2% of a new impairment.

Is "impairment" some crypto speak I don't know about?

 

[TheTalkingMule]

We've seen a lot of head fakes recently. Super green that then plunges. I think we see the opposite today. Too many big players had plans for a bounce bi think they'll continue on with their plan as we often see shorts do. Green by 10am is my guess.

 

[mongo]

Is "impairment" some crypto speak I don't know about?

Tesla has to record financial losses on Bitcoin based on the lowest price it hits while they hold it. So, if it goes lower than the previous low, Tesla takes an accounting loss.
Gains are only recognized if BTC is sold.