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

[RobStark]

Right, the number of gas stations is a function not falling ICE sales, but of the fraction of cars on the road being ICE.

So if a car lasts e.g. 15 years, then that needs to be factored in to the decline in gas stations.

.

We know Norway imports a significant number of used BEVs.

It is likely Norway exports a significant number of used ICEv.

As a whole the EU exports a significant number of used ICEv to Africa and the Middle East. Probably to Europe East of the EU as well. This will likely increase as used ICEv values decrease in the EU due to banning of ICEv in city centers and transition to BEV.

 

[pnungesser]

Its expensive to clean up an old gas station site. Almost bought one by accident. It had a gas station in the 1930's and I thank my closing attorney for finding that out.
Could easily cost 1-2 hundred grand to have soil removed and disposed of.

Modern gas stations all are required to have either above ground storage tanks or double walled buried tanks. Leaking underground storage tanks (LUST) should have been removed years ago except for abandoned sites. In the US there should be little ground contamination from LUST at today's operational stations and their should be little cost for remediation when they are shutdown. Remediation at old LUST sites has been going on for years.

 

[HG Wells]

Local gas station with sink hole.

Massive hole swallowing gas station could grow as rain continues

 

[AndyH]

Denmark numbers.
M3 in March: 306
Tesla total 2109: 413

M3 was 2nd best in it's class in March trailing the VW Passat by 58 units.

 

[Unpilot]

Local gas station with sink hole.

Don't you mean "stink" hole?

 

[ggr]

I insist on defending Bloomberg here because they haven't adjusted their estimates after the report - they adjusted their Q4 model shortly before the Tesla report (in light of last minute VIN registrations), but not "after" Tesla's numbers were released on January 2.

Here's my problem with the "adjustment". They claim that their figures are a moving 13-week average. Well, that adjustment not only changed the last number, it changed the previous 12 weeks as well. In other words they were wrong for almost the entire quarter but then claim that the result was accurate. This is BS.

 

[Singer3000]

Modern gas stations all are required to have either above ground storage tanks or double walled buried tanks. Leaking underground storage tanks (LUST) should have been removed years ago except for abandoned sites. In the US there should be little ground contamination from LUST at today's operational stations and their should be little cost for remediation when they are shutdown. Remediation at old LUST sites has been going on for years.

In the UK there’s loads of ex petrol stations that are sitting rusting. Not necessarily because there is contamination but because there might be. No developer can be bothered to acquire the site and go through the expensive planning process, only to risk failing the environmental permitting and having to remediate. It’s a growing and annoying problem in a place with insufficient housing stock and tough restrictions against building on previously undeveloped land.

 

[lascavarian]

Regarding Q1.

Regarding Q1 numbers and what the street is thinking, CNBC's Phil Lebeau mentioned a number in an on-air segment this afternoon. It was quick but I think he said 79K.

Today Bloomberg's Q1 estimate is 79k, mine is 80k.

Tomorrow we might learn how much of a fool VINology made of both of us.

It seems like Lebeau was thinking 79k (if I got that right) back on the 19th

 

[lklundin]

Hope not to upset anyone or _anything_, but are we all in silent agreement to not mention the current SP on this thread?

 

[Fact Checking]

It seems like Lebeau was thinking 79k (if I got that right) back on the 19th

It's unclear whether that's total production (or deliveries), or Model 3 broken out?

 

[lascavarian]

It's unclear whether that's total production (or deliveries), or Model 3 broken out?

Completely agree. If (and it is an "if") I heard it right it is unclear of the exact reference. It was quick and brief and it would be interesting to listen to it again. It caught my attention because it seemed early and might be setting an expectation.

 

[ggr]

I don't think screenshots exist that show the Bloomberg estimate change after Tesla reported, right?

The wayback machine is interesting to point to the Bloomberg page. When you look at old versions, some of the material is off-page and points to the current contents of the bloomberg page, but much of it is what was there at the time, including estimates. I wish I had more time to spend looking back at it and analyzing. You might like to poke around.

 

[SebastianR]

From reddit:

 

[Fact Checking]

Hope not to upset anyone or _anything_, but are we all in silent agreement to not mention the current SP on this thread?

Yeah, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: the Tesla stock price is a quantum system that is in a superimposition of multiple states until we measure it, when it collapses to one of the possible states - and the more we are trying to pin down its value the more volatile it gets.

(There's a TSLA extension to that law: the 'collapse' of the stock price can often be literal, and volatility is larger to the downside than the upside. This phenomenon is not fully understood yet, but it's speculated to be connected to a parallel universe only known by its initials: T.S.L.A.Q.)

Quantum physics is unclear on the question of whether thinking about the stock price counts as a measurement and will affect its value.

 

[Hock1]

It's unclear whether that's total production (or deliveries), or Model 3 broken out?

You beat me to it. Are these 79K-80K numbers delivery or production estimates?

 

[jbcarioca]

IIRC when Elon announced the opening of the first V3 he implied that very rapid network expansion would now happen together with V2 installed base improvements. The sudden increase in new construction seems logical anyway since Northern Hemisphere Spring has come so prime construction season has arrived. Notice that most of the new ones in the last weeks have been Northern ones. Does it not happen thus every year?

I don't know about other northern places, but the ground is still frozen here. Also, the latitude looks to be pretty widely varying on these.

As to whether there's some seasonal pattern in the data... it doesn't look like there is.

In proof that Karen is correct and I am completely wrong, I offer these charts in evidence:
supercharge.info

 

[lascavarian]

Completely agree. If (and it is an "if") I heard it right it is unclear of the exact reference. It was quick and brief and it would be interesting to listen to it again. It caught my attention because it seemed early and might be setting an expectation.

Just a bit further to this, i sent an email to Phil on 3/22 trying to get a clarification but no response. Probably a bad email address. I got the date wrong since my post here was the 19th and I changed the number it seems. Probably one of those things we will never know...

**********************
Hello Phil,

Appreciate your reporting on vehicles.

On the 21st (I think) you were reporting on some Tesla issues and you mentioned some expected production or delivery numbers for Tesla in the first quarter. I think I heard you say 69,000 as what was expected.

Did I hear that correctly?

I have been trying to find a video of your comments but haven’t seen anything online.

Thanks for your time,

 

[Pras]

Hope not to upset anyone or _anything_, but are we all in silent agreement to not mention the current SP on this thread?

Could it also be that some short fund managers, (e.g. Einhorn) must have waited till end of Q before they started to cover (partially at least)?

 

[Fact Checking]

Here's my problem with the "adjustment". They claim that their figures are a moving 13-week average. Well, that adjustment not only changed the last number, it changed the previous 12 weeks as well. In other words they were wrong for almost the entire quarter but then claim that the result was accurate. This is BS.

No, that is not what they are saying, and the details matter:

"Note: We use a 13-week trailing average to assess the weekly production rate. The raw weekly data are subject to temporary fluctuations and don't represent our best estimate of current output. Source: Bloomberg"​

Note "assess" weasel wording - i.e. their estimator calculates a weekly production estimate - which they use in unspecified ways to arrive to their graph through the quarter. This necessarily means that as the estimate changes so does their quarterly production graph change for that particular quarter. It's not a "history", but an estimate for the whole quarter.

Anyway, as I wrote it in my other post I agree that the Bloomberg tracker was hard to read and not transparent enough. They improved this in Q1 and now we at least have a clear idea of what they are estimating - for the last ~2 weeks they were estimating production of around 79k.

The accusation of them changing their 61k estimate retroactively is not true: they arrived at that figure 3 days before Tesla's January 2 report, and it remained unchanged until the report.

 

[defc0n]

jumping higher while macros are declining, interesting..