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

[Mader Levap]

AND Netherlands, Belgium....and Cayman Islands & Hong Kong! Here's a better resolution map, from the Veygo source:
https://www.veygo.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/the-worlds-most-desired-motors.jpg

Problem with their methodology is that in certain countries Google has small market share. Most obvious example is China, where Google is about 1.5% and Baidu rules.

 

[KarenRei]

This video of his was puzzling. From the math I’ve read, solar + storage very well could power the energy needs of the world.

It can, according to an endless array of peer-reviewed studies**. And nuclear is obscenely expensive, and pairs poorly with renewables, due to rampup/rampdown speeds and its need to run at near-100% capacity factor at all times to achieve its already-poor economics (the lower its capacity factor, the more expensive still its power becomes).

The most expensive structures on Earth are all nuclear power plants - a number are even more expensive than the LHC. The only thing more expensive than the most expensive nuclear power plants isn't on Earth, but above it (the ISS) You can get far more power for your money, for far faster, by building solar panel or wind turbine factories and buying all the output from them.

** There is some nuance. You need significant long-term storage if you want to reach 100%. Without large-scale, long-term storage - only short-term, plus uprating of today's existing dams - you can still get 80-90% penetration rates at low prices by a mix of geographically-distributed solar and wind with HVDC linkages. The remaining gets filled in mainly by natural gas peaking, which is low carbon.

 

[VValleyEV]

Has to be a bit more fact based and a bit less conspiracy theory alike though. Something like:

Every time you are wondering why cash-printing Tesla is still rated "sell" by investment banks:

"A new study shows that in the years since the Paris climate agreement, banks have paid $1.9 trillion to finance fossil fuels."

US banks pledged to fund renewable energy, but they still spend way more on fossil fuels
​

I.e. anchor the information to easily verified facts and point out the heavy conflicts of interest, such as:

Trivia: can you list the 120,000,000,000,000 reasons Wall Street has to mislead about Tesla products?

Answer: ~120 trillion dollars is the estimated market value of the fossil fuel industry and related industries: mineral rights, reserves, distribution infrastructure, car factories supported by trillions of dollars in financing (loans), and over 100 billion dollars of media advertising over the past 10 years alone.​

Feel free to use these.

THIS.

Any such campaign would have to be solidly fact-based, all facts easily verifiable and unambiguous, very well-distanced from conspiracy theory medía.

To be most effective, IMO needs to be a series of very short pieces, each choosing a different angle.

I wonder if some very general positive pieces about Tesla and EVs could be added in such a series, same style just a couple of facts and implications in each piece. Possible candidates in no particular order

• Size of company, current cash and annual cash generation projections relative to ICE manufacturers. (conventional wisdom is Tesla is small, cash-strapped and teetering on insolvency)
• Debt relative to income, compared to ICE - I have read here that Tesla has debt amounting to 2 years of production vs maybe 10 years for typical ICE.
• Size of Tesla battery production compared to industry
• Manufacturing margins
• Explosive growth compared to ICE
• Estimates of global EV market and projected growth
• Power utility efficiencies/emissions levels relative to gasoline - Yes, Virginia, driving an EV will reduce emissions drastically.
• List of people who have changed their mind about Tesla
• ??

 

[tinm]

Sure. Can go with a good "1-2 punch" of a two tweet chain... 1st tweet along the lines of the broad general point in the tweet I shared, 2nd tweet a hard hitting data point like the two you presented. The point is not to get lost in the weeds of the million false narratives the bears won't even have an intellectually honest debate about, but, instead, hammer home that they are heavily biased players not debating but pushing programming designed to protect massive amounts of money in the "fossil fuel economy."

For literally years, there's been very basic core misinformation messaging to try to stifle the capacity to respond to the bear messaging,

1. Tesla supporters are naive, "cult" members, fan boys, fan girls, emotional "true believers"

2. Elon Musk is a narcissistic, childish, volatile, defensive, dishonest, and at times brutal head of a company teetering on bankruptcy. You 'should' dislike and distrust Musk, the company, and the cars they make.

Both points are designed to frame any conversation you might try to engage in with a FUD influenced neighbor, coworker, etc., BEFORE the conversation even begins. If you don't enter the conversation conceding much of point 2 as a given, than your neighbor in their head goes to ("oh, I got a Kool Aid drinker here" and proceeds to tune you out and simply wait for you to stop talking).

This ground has been tilled for years, and with nearly all of mass media pushing it.

Note that nobody ever accuses anyone of being a "conspiracy theorist" for dismissing virtually all longs as "true believers," "fan boys," etc. despite these claims never having been substantively backed up. There's a place for the short pithy to the point phrase that sticks in people's minds. AND, unlike the bears, if we get challenged for substance to our pithy phrase, we've got a deep strong case based on facts and reason.

Best path I see, somewhat neutralize "cult" "fanboy" etc. type messaging the simple message,

Trillions of dollars of business partnership built over a century with the "fossil fuel economy" drives media and banking to flood us all with misinformation about Tesla, Elon Musk and their products.

I'm sure some here could make that much smoother and more concise... "The Fossil Fuel Economy and Trillion Dollar Cronyism in the Media and Wall Street," "The Fossil Fuel Economy's Trillion Dollar Media and Banking Reality Distortion Field"...

The underlying details being

1. Media and Banking (WS) have massive financial conflict of interest in their "coverage" of Tesla due to their century plus business relationship with the "fossil fuel economy" where trillions of dollars have exchanged hands.

2. You've been exposed to a silly amount of media coverage about Tesla and Elon Musk, haven't you? Always doom and gloom and disaster imminent, right? [I don't know about Europe, but, in the US it's been so off the charts in volume, I'm very confident most people already have wondered why they are constantly hearing about this guy Musk and Tesla]

3. Number 2 is not an accident. Media and Banking "coverage" has a massive bias to protect the "fossil fuel economy."

Speaking of cult-like behavior, it doesn’t help the cause when a bunch of Twitter accounts portray Musk as the Messiah, even photoshopping old Christian paintings and superimposing Musk’s face in them. There’s an increasing amount of that on Twitter and I sure wish these folks would cut it out and focus on critical thinking and facts to combat the fud/misinformation.

 

[KarenRei]

Speaking of cult-like behavior, it doesn’t help the cause when a bunch of Twitter accounts portray Musk as the Messiah, even photoshopping old Christian paintings and superimposing Musk’s face in them.

That is, of course, parodying the people who call TSLA fans "cultists".

 

[madodel]

Speaking of cult-like behavior, it doesn’t help the cause when a bunch of Twitter accounts portray Musk as the Messiah, even photoshopping old Christian paintings and superimposing Musk’s face in them. There’s an increasing amount of that on Twitter and I sure wish these folks would cut it out and focus on critical thinking and facts to combat the fud/misinformation.

There is an incredible amount of stupid stuff on Twitter. Just look at all the dumb posts by people begging Elon to give them a tesla. Or the scammers posting with fake accounts for cryptocurrency scams. The difference is that the people posting these inane posts aren't being coordinated by the richest most evil corporations as the Teslaq trolls and other assorted lying haters.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

Speaking of cult-like behavior, it doesn’t help the cause when a bunch of Twitter accounts portray Musk as the Messiah, even photoshopping old Christian paintings and superimposing Musk’s face in them. There’s an increasing amount of that on Twitter and I sure wish these folks would cut it out and focus on critical thinking and facts to combat the fud/misinformation.

I suspect there maybe some fishy origins of the really out there "cult" behavior. No doubt I am sure there are some off the wall people but it sure seems convenient FUD fodder. Spammed accounts? Fake accounts? Short accounts? Maybe...maybe not.

Dan

 

[ggr]

Moderators or TMC programmers: need links please to the original posts and threads from:

Moderators' Choice: Posts of Particular Merit

Since you cannot reply in that thread. Otherwise, very difficult to quote and reply in the original thread. Have to go searching for that post in the appropriate thread. Too hard. And so I (being my lazy self) did not bother.

Mod: Great idea, and easy to do at the time. I will certainly do this for the future. Unfortunately really hard to do after the fact. --ggr

 

[ZeApelido]

Guys, I can't believe no one mentioned the biggest news from yesterday...

Elon says Teslaquila is still coming!

P.S. I hate tequila.

P.P.S. Will buy 10 bottles.

 

[KarenRei]

Guys, I can't believe no one mentioned the biggest news from yesterday...

Elon says Teslaquila is still coming!

P.S. I hate tequila.

P.P.S. Will buy 10 bottles.

Love the image that he was replying to

 

[dc_h]

Seems totally unrealistic to me too:

• S/X is still build to order to a large degree, so how would Tesla end up with 7k extra units?
• 7,000 units would also tie up about $700m of (much needed) working capital.
• There's no ships underway AFAIK, and new S/X orders have May and later delivery times. I.e. most S/X production spoken for.

And he's one of the more bullish analysts.

I guess I’m confused about this S/X thread. I think Tesla has reduced production and making about 16,000 vs 25,000 a year ago. Cutting production and focusing on the 100 battery they’ve reduced shifts and possibly shifting to a single assembly line finally.
Cutting the 75 would shift demand to the left, while reducing the price of the 100 would shift demand to the right. The net should be about 1/3 less demand, which seems in plan. The long term plan could be to create more space in Fremont, improve SX margins or create room for a new 120 series car, the Mega.

 

[goinfraftw]

Last day of Q1, 2019.

What happened in Sept/2018?

• TSLA spiked at $379 in August/2018, then drove low to $263.24 in Sept/2018, and came back to $337 at the end of Oct/2018.
• 8/7/2018: Funding secured tweet by Elon Musk
  
• 9/27/2018: Tesla shares plummet after SEC files fraud charges against Elon Musk
• 10/16/2018: SEC settlement approved regarding Elon Musk tweet.
  
• Q3, 2018 IR update: Tesla's best-selling quarter ever.

This is the Google Trends chart for today.

So, the question comes up: what's happening in this quarter, and going to happen with Q1/2019 IR update, that's leading to such ridiculous volatility?

 

[Krugerrand]

Forgot to mention: one guy had a really badly scratched front bumper. He knows that Tesla will make it right, but it made him annoyed about the bad delivery experience many people have. The general consensus seems to be that this end of quarter nonsense needs to stop.

This won’t stop if and until the planet is blanketed by EVs. Yes, horrible, awful, unexpected experiences. But here’s the thing, there’s not a single other automaker/dealership location delivering this amount of cars and hasn’t been for a century.

If another automaker/dealership location had thousands of cars to deliver during an entire quarter, they too would be struggling with too much work and not enough hands.

I get that people have come to expect a certain car buying experience but what’s going on (this Tesla EVolution) isn’t normal.

Perspective. Context. Understanding. Patience. Humor. And gratitude that so many are banding together to try and fix that which we’ve messed up.

 

[Fact Checking]

I guess I’m confused about this S/X thread. I think Tesla has reduced production and making about 16,000 vs 25,000 a year ago. Cutting production and focusing on the 100 battery they’ve reduced shifts and possibly shifting to a single assembly line finally.
Cutting the 75 would shift demand to the left, while reducing the price of the 100 would shift demand to the right. The net should be about 1/3 less demand, which seems in plan. The long term plan could be to create more space in Fremont, improve SX margins or create room for a new 120 series car, the Mega.

I agree that this is a possible outcome, but short term freakout and hyperventilation about the "S/X collapse in demand of -40% from 27k to 16k! " is probable: S/X generated half of Tesla's operational cash flow in Q4.

They'll merrily ignore the higher margins countering much of the cash generation shortfall (and there's a 4 weeks gap until the Q1 earnings report which would most effectively falsify the margin concerns), and probably months until the advantages of freeing up equipment and workers at Fremont become apparent.

So it's useful to predict, expect, analyze and prepare for such outcomes in advance, so that there's less surprise and less danger of bullish post-hoc rationalization. It also takes the edge of any short side concern trolling and news nullification attempts, at least in this tiny bubble of rational safe space with a bullish tint.

 

[Prunesquallor]

THIS.

Any such campaign would have to be solidly fact-based, all facts easily verifiable and unambiguous, very well-distanced from conspiracy theory medía.

To be most effective, IMO needs to be a series of very short pieces, each choosing a different angle.

I wonder if some very general positive pieces about Tesla and EVs could be added in such a series, same style just a couple of facts and implications in each piece. Possible candidates in no particular order

• Size of company, current cash and annual cash generation projections relative to ICE manufacturers. (conventional wisdom is Tesla is small, cash-strapped and teetering on insolvency)
• Debt relative to income, compared to ICE - I have read here that Tesla has debt amounting to 2 years of production vs maybe 10 years for typical ICE.
• Size of Tesla battery production compared to industry
• Manufacturing margins
• Explosive growth compared to ICE
• Estimates of global EV market and projected growth
• Power utility efficiencies/emissions levels relative to gasoline - Yes, Virginia, driving an EV will reduce emissions drastically.
• List of people who have changed their mind about Tesla
• ??

There are, I think, two different audiences for this type of piece.
1) Investors
2) New potential car buyers

I’m more interested in 2). Folks that never really considered buying a Tesla (like myself six months ago) are not particularly interested in manufacturing margins, debt/income, etc. A few things that they might (I did) find of interest (this is rather USA-centric):

a) Current Tesla sales compared to other EVs
b) Current Tesla sales compared to in-class ICEs
c) Current pricing
d) NHTSA safety findings
e) Anti coal-burning narrative
f) Easily understood measure of company solvency and growth
g) Size and growth of Supercharging network and ease of at-home charging
h) Servicing availability

a)-e) say: these are popular, affordable, safe, environmentally-friendly cars.
f)-h) address orphanage and range anxiety (h is the toughest IMHO)

When my wife mentioned she had seen more and more Teslas driving around town, this is the research *I* did. I can’t for the life of me figure out why Tesla doesn’t put this kind of FAQ page on their website.

 

[AZRI11]

Do you think that without a title it would somehow stop his tweeting? Yeah, I don't think so either. He is what he is and what he is has made his companies great.

Dan

I don't want to restrict his first amendment rights. He would still be able to express himself on twitter. He's not gonna be CEO forever, 2 years tops. Could announce it now to through cold water on any SEC attempt to remove him.

 

[jbcarioca]

Apple just cancelled their wireless charging pad because the engineering was too difficult. It was shown 2 years ago. Are you sure 5 years? A car seems more difficult. Maybe Samsung can do it in 5 years

Samsung did it more than 20 years ago, really a badged-engineeered Nissan Maxima, then were bought out by Renault. Remember Samsung is a giant conglomerate, producing li-ion batteries also.

 

[KarenRei]

Made a quick spreadsheet for estimating production and deliveries based on estimated paint shop capacity:

Q1 deliveries estimator

So for example, with the following four config values:

Paint shop sustainable capacity (vehicles per week), averaged across Q1 7500
Percentage uptime for the paint shop 95%
*Additional* inventory in Q1 9000
Percentage of typical quarterly S+X production in Q1 70%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total production 92625
S+X production 17500
3 production 75125

Total deliveries 83625
S+X deliveries 15800
3 deliveries 67825

(IMHO, 7500/wk paint shop is pretty optimistic)

Note that the spreadsheet assumes that S+X and 3 are equally likely to be left over as inventory... but we may end up with different inventory ratios for each.

 

[Fact Checking]

Could announce it now to through cold water on any SEC attempt to remove him.

Not gonna happen I think, Elon has a really good shot at the judge throwing cold water on the SEC's attempts to harass him ...

Oral arguments are held in Judge Nathan's courtroom at 2pm ET April 4 (Wednesday Thursday next week), and the judge must issue a ruling within 60 days, but I'd expect a decision within ~20 days after the hearing the latest, with a chance for some kind of indication or preliminary ruling from the bench.

 

[KarenRei]

Edit to the above: paint might be a bit more capable than I give it credit for. The last tweet from Vicki on the subject, not long after she was laid off:

You and I both know it’s not gonna happen in Fremont. Even if the paint shop worked perfectly without a break down anywhere along the line they struggle to get out 1200 cars a day GA can’t build any more cars than they can pull from paint.

Also, from elsewhere:

The entire factory may shut down but paint never stops lol ....it’s true

1200*7 is 8400/wk. Still, doubt that they averaged anywhere near 8400k/wk during uptime all quarter, and I doubt that uptime was much more than ~95% this quarter. I'll stick with 7500/wk.