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

[Krugerrand]

Have a disclaimer at the bottom in fine print saying “as shown is 43k”. I think other car commercials do that.

That’s possible. Thing is Tesla already gets flak for doing things like that. They get flak for giving prices after tax incentives and fuel savings with * pricing below. That’s the same as OEMs advertising base price in an ad and then * at the bottom with the real price no where near the big fonted advertising price.

That practice is considered by some to be slimy. I’d rather Tesla not play the game of typical OEMs, ever.

Tricking people, seeming to give people things and then taking them away, adding fine print, all of that is something I’d like to see go away entirely.

What’s wrong with just saying, our car can do such and such and the price is x? If you don’t need it to do that fancy stuff then it will cost you y. Period, end of story.

Your whole premise was wanting Tesla to show a base car doing stuff a base car can’t actually do to suck people into wanting it and then surprising them with the ‘real’ price. I’d rather Tesla be above that. I don’t like when other companies do it to customers (or me) and it makes me not trust any advertising at all. Let’s be above that.

 

[neroden]

I'm sure more details will be disclosed, but until then let's attempt to read between the lines and speculate about the sum:

• The exact wording in the FT was:
  • "Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has agreed to pay Tesla hundreds of millions of euros so the electric carmaker’s vehicles are counted in its fleet in order to avoid large fines for breaking tough new EU emissions rules."
    
  • "Analysts at Jefferies forecast FCA could face fines in excess of €2bn in 2021 when the new targets become law. "
• The Financial Times is owned by "The Nikkei" Japanese business media giant with opaque ownership - Japanese old money I suspect?
• The source of the story was FCA. To FCA this is probably a negative story, and they'd want to break it slowly, with a drip-drip of details.
• Tesla is probably under NDA until they must file financials. No big motivation for them to leak.
• "Hundreds of millions of euros" is 200m-900m. "Hundreds of" technically includes 200-999m, but above 500m the "more than half a billion" would be more appropriate.
• FCA's motivation is probably to downplay the figures: this is an extra cost. If it was only 200m then I'd expect them to leak that. If it was say 300m then they could say 'low hundreds of".
• FCA probably has no motivation to exaggerate the sum.
• Hence my guess: 400-600m euros, which is $450m-$670m.
• Less or more is possible as well, but I'd be surprised if it was below 300m: FCA would leak it immediately, plus it's too low compared to the looming 2 billion euros fine per year.

The big question: why keep this secret? It would come out in Tesla financials anyway.

Speculation only. Not advice. Might have to eat crow.

The FT journalist tweeted "low three digit hundreds of millions" so I figure 300 million EUR. I also now think that's a one-time payment for 2019 pooling. Speculation only.

 

[jhm]

I wonder what kind of antediluvian stories they will tell about us 1,000's of years from now due to our Species continued efforts to raise ocean levels. Perhaps the next Noah's Ark story will be about a Great Man that attempted to start a collective consciousness movement towards a more sustainable planet with TE & TM but the Fossil Fuel and ICE Dark Forces from Sodom and Gomorahh (Detroit, WS, and Germany) protected by their army of paid trolls tried to burn him on the Cross (the SEC hearings). But Elon arose from the dead 3 days later with FCA news and saved the planet from beyond

View attachment 394692

What's a qbit?

 

[neroden]

Man, I can't imagine what Tesla execs are thinking. I expect them all to horde their options like a dragon hordes gold**, and live only on their salaries, without the luxuries that selling options could provide them, and without any diversification to their portfolios.

Our banned "friend" has clearly never heard of a Rule 10b5-1 plan. Straubel has his stock sales on autopilot, basically, selling his stock options/restricted stock. He still owns an enormous amount of core stock -- more than I do.

Linda Rice appears to be selling *all* of her shares on her 10b5-1 plan, which is probably a monumental investment mistake on her part. All the others are hanging onto large core positions.

 

[neroden]

You have to understand that once your rich, the mindset can be different for some. If you already have millions or tens of millions, you would never put that all in one place. Tesla will likely succeed, but there is no guarantee. Once you made it, so to say, the smart thing is to diversify. Why stress? Also we don't know why some of these folks are cashing in. As they say, insiders sell stocks/options for many reasons (tax, upcoming purchases, diversification, etc.), but they buy only for one. I really wouldn't read too much into these options sales. Many of the top executives, including Elon and JB still hold significant shares/options.

JB has been giving a lot of money to charity apparently.

 

[Steve m]

What's a qbit?

A qubit?

Ah think they are the basic component of a quantum computer.

 

[neroden]

OT

China offered Elon a 'green card', but its not clear if he accepted it. Since you can only vote for one party in Chinese elections, its also unclear if there would be additional benefits to holding citizenship.

That's not quite how Chinese elections work. It's much slicker than that.

You can actually vote for one of several parties all of which have agreed to support the Communist Party (eyeroll) or you can vote for independents who have been pre-approved (eyeroll). But you only vote for the local council. The local council you elect votes who to send up to the next level... so even if 49% of you voted for one of the smaller parties, the guy they send up to the next level is Communist Party. If somehow you send a nonconformist or radical up to the level 2 council, then the same thing happens when going to level 3. Because there are IIRC four levels, it's impossible to influence the top level.

Multi-level representative democracy is pretty ineffective; it allows for "options" at the bottom level which are then rendered irrelevant by the time they get to the level which has any power. Very useful for those in power. They don't have to pull out the "big stick" of banning parties or candidates which oppose the CCP leadership policies very often (obviously, nobody is allowed to openly oppose the CCP, but you can say that the leadership is making mistakes). They do sometimes resort to the big stick, but usually they can just use the election system to neuter them into meaninglessness.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Wrong.

So this is the actual problem here.

Wrong.

Tesla should be able to do this, but apparently can't manage to make enough Euro-spec models.

Wrong

Right

Again, the problem is that production isn't up to the target rate. Otherwise we would have seen 30,000 cars shipped to the EU.

OT: Meow

 

[Krugerrand]

Well I actually work at the European Commission, and I have no idea whatsoever...

That’s because they usually don’t let the guy who mops the floors, empties waste baskets and scrubs the toilets into the boardroom meetings, so understandably you know nothing.

 

[neroden]

OT

Weekend OT - Climate Change

Russia’s Massive New Gas Plant on the Arctic Coast

See Russia’s massive new gas plant on the Arctic coast

I found this really interesting, especially that China and France are partners.

Shows that Putin is acting like the CEO of an oil company, not like the leader of a nation.

Sad. The article has quotes saying "This is more vanity for Putin than reality".

But it does show we have to continue bringing down the costs of electric heating so that natgas is uncompetitive at any price. More heat pumps.

 

[hacer]

The FT journalist tweeted "low three digit hundreds of millions" so I figure 300 million EUR. I also now think that's a one-time payment for 2019 pooling. Speculation only.

45 million has zero digits of "hundreds of millions"
245 million has one digit of "hundreds of millions" (that digit is 2)
1245 million has two digits of "hundreds of millions"
21245 million has "three digits of hundreds of millions"

If Elon had tweeted something like this the SEC would be screaming. /S

 

[scaesare]

Factor in another 3-7% battery progress?

Yeah could be... There's been some thought they are counting on that for Roadster 2.0 & Semi...

 

[scaesare]

..

on the related point. I just came from a 120 mile road trip (2 adult 2 kids, mildly hilly areas but mostly highway, ac on but outside was nice 69F, almost all on NOA). My 3LRD gave a never before mileage of 246wh/mi. I am suspecting that the recent software upgrade added to the efficiency of the motor. So don’t discount that over time the efficiency gain can happen from improvement in motor and related software.

Cool... Good info.

That would seem to support the idea the Y will have better efficiencies than that graph indicates...

 

[Singer3000]

The FT journalist tweeted "low three digit hundreds of millions" so I figure 300 million EUR. I also now think that's a one-time payment for 2019 pooling. Speculation only.

And yet the most recent guidance is still for a loss in Q1... To be honest I don't care if the payment came in Q1 or comes in Q2 (e.g. "FCA agrees to pay within 60 days of the date of this agreement"), if we end up with the 4-quarters needed for S&P inclusion once June results are filed.

Also interesting is that Tesla must have hoarded A LOT of ZEV credits by now, with just $100m sold in 2018. Does anyone stateside have a feel for whether the buyers are sitting on their hands until they find out if the regime will survive, or some other reason? A lot of Model 3s were shifted in the applicable markets in Q3 (and Q4) and it doesn't look like many of those credits have been sold at all.

Based on history alone, one might expect that Q1 saw some substantial ZEV sales. Blue is the quarterly ZEV sales, green is the past four quarters divided by 4.

 

[jhm]

A qubit?

Ah think they are the basic component of a quantum computer.

 

[c041v]

For anybody wondering about the Calgary Service Centre... sounds like it is indeed just an HR issue with the old staff. Could not determine more. No plans to close the Service centre there and the new team will be in place for Monday.

Source: Calgary Sales Employee

 

[TNEVol]

Personal ego?! I mean Musk was laughing at them so they wanted to teach a lesson. They just jumped the gun. Too bad for them!!

Edit: I am sure they were waiting to find a bad tweet since the cbs interview. The moment they saw anything with production number they jumped at it.

Totally agree
Ego

 

[erthquake]

And yet the most recent guidance is still for a loss in Q1... To be honest I don't care if the payment came in Q1 or comes in Q2 (e.g. "FCA agrees to pay within 60 days of the date of this agreement"), if we end up with the 4-quarters needed for S&P inclusion once June results are filed.

Also interesting is that Tesla must have hoarded A LOT of ZEV credits by now, with just $100m sold in 2018. Does anyone stateside have a feel for whether the buyers are sitting on their hands until they find out if the regime will survive, or some other reason? A lot of Model 3s were shifted in the applicable markets in Q3 (and Q4) and it doesn't look like many of those credits have been sold at all.

Based on history alone, one might expect that Q1 saw some substantial ZEV sales. Blue is the quarterly ZEV sales, green is the past four quarters divided by 4.


View attachment 394822

Q2 still needs to be GAAP profitable (even if only $1) for S&P inclusion, as long as Q1 loss isn’t worse than $550M. And I’m not sure we can ever count on significant ZEV credit sales going forward unless the program is restructured so that OEMs can’t bank them as easily.

 

[BBone]

For anybody wondering about the Calgary Service Centre... sounds like it is indeed just an HR issue with the old staff. Could not determine more. No plans to close the Service centre there and the new team will be in place for Monday.

Source: Calgary Sales Employee

Thanks for the info. Based on my experiences we won't get more from the company on this as it is a Canadian HR issue. And the employees usually won't talk either especially if they got a severance package which usually has a NDA as well. So my suggestion is that we don't draw inferences from this for or against the employees or the company as we simply don't know. BTW glad to hear that Calgary is still a growing SC for Tesla as it is an important hub out West for Canada.

 

[Carl Raymond]

I don't think I've seen this before. Cleantechnica gets top billing right now when news results are sorted by relevance. I assume the ranking is based on traffic visible to google - users who select this article following a google search, and users logged in to their google account who browse this article.

I'll take this as a positive sign that the public is learning which news sources can be trusted for Tesla news.