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

[Unpilot]

Damn it all to hell...This has been a crappy week.

 

[Paul_SF]

Damn it all to hell...This has been a crappy week.

“Aren’t you entertained?” - Musk Oct 2022

 

[Silent Ludicrosy]

So we know the drop Monday wasn’t from Elon selling. Could it have been Larry Ellison selling to commit additional funds to Twitter? He’s not on the board anymore and owns < 5% so he wouldn’t have to file a form 4 or 13D with the SEC. Back on 4/20, he was open to Elons recommendation on how much to commit to Twitter.

 

[y_naught]

Could we maybe have a turbo version?

Isn’t that called “plaid”?

 

[dm28997]

Almost all rivian vehicles recalled. Steering issues?
Cybertruck can't come soon enough.
TGIF

 

[Todd Burch]

Almost all rivian vehicles recalled. Steering issues?
Cybertruck can't come soon enough.
TGIF

Coincidence that the news came out on a Friday evening? Wonder how long they waited putting drivers at risk before they announced it at a time where they hoped it would be forgotten by Monday.

 

[Knightshade]

This would have been a much bigger problem if they were already closer to producing and delivering on that 25,000 target, they saved money when you really think about it

Bullish

Ironically, they WERE pretty on target for that 25k at least production-wise before this (and possibly still will be if they already have a fix for the issue and they aren't needing service/repair folks to build or delivery new trucks)

Q1 production was 2553
Q2 production was 4401 (up ~72%)
Q3 production was 7363 (up ~67%)

If they scaled up for Q4 only by the smaller of the two jumps (67%) then Q4 production would be 12296

Totaling up to... 26,613 for the year.


They do still have the issue of they're losing $ on every truck and will for at least another 1-2 years due to being stuck with pre-order pricing though.

 

[Singuy]

Ironically, they WERE pretty on target for that 25k at least production-wise before this (and possibly still will be if they already have a fix for the issue and they aren't needing service/repair folks to build or delivery new trucks)

Q1 production was 2553
Q2 production was 4401 (up ~72%)
Q3 production was 7363 (up ~67%)

If they scaled up for Q4 only by the smaller of the two jumps (67%) then Q4 production would be 12296

Totaling up to... 26,613 for the year.


They do still have the issue of they're losing $ on every truck and will for at least another 1-2 years due to being stuck with pre-order pricing though.

You sure it's 1-2 years and not longer? Tesla managed to make a gross profit on the freaken roadster! They had positive gross margins on 3k Model S deliveries. Rivian has over a -100% gross margins. I don't think increasing the price can fix this issue. For every dollar they earn, it cost them over 2 dollars to earn it. This is a huge disparity that I don't think operation leverage and economy of scale can fix. There's something really wrong. It seems like they are giving away a 220k car for 100k and need to start taking away complexity asap.

 

[MP3Mike]

Ironically, they WERE pretty on target for that 25k at least production-wise before this (and possibly still will be if they already have a fix for the issue

They say the solution is just tightening the fastners more... So they were just under torqued. The question is why. Did they spec it wrong or was the assembly station setup incorrectly?

 

[NicoV]

Really a shame Europe doesn't have the infrastructure to collect and store that wind energy

Why do you think there is no such infrastructure? There is a lot of interconnection, and even more is planned/being built. E.g. Belgium is building an energy island in the North Sea to provide more interconnection between Denmark, UK and Belgium (Kunstmatig energie-eiland in Belgische Noordzee: 'een wereldprimeur').
Basically the entire European grid is interconnected from Gibraltar to Ukraine.
A good mechanism to deal with surplus green energy is demand steering, witnessed by the negative pricing in BE and NL today.

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1578562473984393217

Elon just honing his entertaining skillz. Buy US govt and move it to Mars next?

 

[NicoV]

In a previous post you spoke about Germany's plan for LNG, but I think the cited articles were from May. Are they implementing their plans?

I don’t remember anything in the news but this month old article claims the first 2 will become operational this month and next month: German government announces fifth floating LNG terminal
IIRC, previous articles had ‘before the start of 2023’ as timing.
The article reports about a fifth floating LNG terminal located where North Stream 1 comes to land.
So we can expect news about the first ones becoming operational any day now.
The German language now has the new word ‘teslageschwindigkeit’.

 

[ToTheStars]

Why do you think there is no such infrastructure? There is a lot of interconnection, and even more is planned/being built. E.g. Belgium is building an energy island in the North Sea to provide more interconnection between Denmark, UK and Belgium (Kunstmatig energie-eiland in Belgische Noordzee: 'een wereldprimeur').
Basically the entire European grid is interconnected from Gibraltar to Ukraine.
A good mechanism to deal with surplus green energy is demand steering, witnessed by the negative pricing in BE and NL today.

I agree with you on the great power line infrastructure. But I don't think we can store energy this way, right? By transporting it across the continent, we can't save energy generated with solar panels in the middle of the day to use it again at, let's say 20:00.

I'm even more interested in seasonal energy storage. How can we store the abundance of energy generated in the summer to heat our buildings in the winter?

 

[petit_bateau]

I agree with you on the great power line infrastructure. But I don't think we can store energy this way, right? By transporting it across the continent, we can't save energy generated with solar panels in the middle of the day to use it again at, let's say 20:00.

I'm even more interested in seasonal energy storage. How can we store the abundance of energy generated in the summer to heat our buildings in the winter?

There is this stuff called wind power that is most common in Winter.

 

[NicoV]

I agree with you on the great power line infrastructure. But I don't think we can store energy this way, right? By transporting it across the continent, we can't save energy generated with solar panels in the middle of the day to use it again at, let's say 20:00.

I'm even more interested in seasonal energy storage. How can we store the abundance of energy generated in the summer to heat our buildings in the winter?

Europe is far away from having eliminated fossil fuels (although more and more countries have longer and longer periods of not requiring fossil fuels) so there is no immediate need for seasonal energy storage.
Personally I think the solution is overcapacity and just wasting what you don’t need may be cheaper than trying to store it seasonally.
The EU hydrogen plans seem to go in this direction. Build out a lot of wind and solar overcapacity. Generate green hydrogen when the electricity demand is less than what’s generated by wind and sun. Use it for industrial processes and home heating. Efficiency wise it’s wasteful. But it fits with Elon’s long term vision of plentiful and cheap electricity. If electricity is plentiful and cheap, efficiency is less of a concern than currently.

 

[Matias]

I agree with you on the great power line infrastructure. But I don't think we can store energy this way, right? By transporting it across the continent, we can't save energy generated with solar panels in the middle of the day to use it again at, let's say 20:00.

I'm even more interested in seasonal energy storage. How can we store the abundance of energy generated in the summer to heat our buildings in the winter?

Hydropower. You don't even need pumped storage.

 

[Baumisch]

On Thursday, I checked out a Lyriq. I was quite impressed with the appearance inside and out and with the roominess. Sitting in the Y afterwards, I felt like I was in an economy car.

The MSRP of the Lyriq AWD version is $1,000 less than the Y LR (before dealer markup). This price comparison might lack significance though, as GM plans to make few 2023 Lyriqs, and prices will go up for 2024 with 2024 production starting in the spring.

To get to my point, in the future Tesla might benefit from having higher priced deluxe versions of the 3 and Y, along with lower priced plainer versions. If priced appropriately, this could give them similar average margin per car, higher unit sales, higher total margin, and some room to delay introduction of a new cheaper vehicle that might have lower margins than previous vehicles.

Same problem here - got my MY LR 1 week ago, sold my P85+ a month ago - was driving a 2020 BMW for 3 weeks (MSRP ~60k same as Y) - the Y is simpler to operate, and drives better - but boy do I miss premium feel, HUD, rain-sensor And curve-headlights etc …. And car play is actually great too

 

[MABMAB]

Ok, looks like a slow weekend, guess everyone is tired of the week, and not in a mood to come on TMC.
Only want to back this tweet:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1578478096314880000

Had a drive yesterday in busy traffic in a route I don’t usually take.
FSD beta did:

• Stop and go on lights, follow the car in front perfectly, I didn’t feel any urge to press any pedal to override how it drives.
• Speed up before it changes into the faster lane.
• Sway in the lane slightly to the right to go around a car stopped in left turn lane but protruding a bit, without slowing down.
• Automatically cleans the windshield during a red light, because it senses the front cameras are dirty
• Slow down a little when a car waiting to turn left occludes the pedestrian crossing, just in case that car was waiting a pedestrian, exactly the way I would do it.

Let’s keep our eyes on the target, FSD is truly next level now comparing to the first few Beta releases, and this is before they put Dojo in use and collect data from all their cars.

No matter what happens to the world, at some point the velocity will just get us out of the gravity well, then to the moon and beyond.

Just HODL.
Or better yet, buy more and HODL

Uh, so what was new?

 

[Prunesquallor]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1578564011859533824

I knew that.

 

[petit_bateau]

I've had a look at the possible implications of stronger than expected competition from China (or anywhere, but most likely China) and the results are on the BEV Competition thread at post #4834. This link will take you to the correct page, but you will then need to scroll down to get to the right post.

Tesla BEV Competition Developments

..... but Munro is a highly experienced automotive engineer who knows what he's talking about. Until the subject turns to electronics or software. Fortunately he leans more on other staff members in those areas these days.

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