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

[StarFoxisDown!]

Every morning red. When there are a couple of green days it will be erased within two days. Tesla is doing great. Record this, record that. New products, great margins etc.

Management can say what they want on earnings calls about expecting record deliveries and NOT having a demand problem. Markets don’t care and go down anyway. Yet, some fringe site is reporting about demand issue citing “people familiar with the information” and markets go down more than 5%. Despondent, that is what I am starting to be. Sometimes I feel like throwing in the towel and be done with it.

A few years back we were also in a situation where the stock price was pressed down by relentless FUD. That was somehow different than today. Tesla was in a much more vulnerable position back then. Heck, it didn't even make a profit and cash glow was not there.

I have to sell this month to pay another big bill. My tax free acvount will be depleted of TSA with this share price.

The whole market is a sham this year. For months and months they are talking about the coming recession or even depression. The markets have been anticipating this. We are now in Decrmber, where is it? Deficit down, unemployment down. Inflation is getting under control. When will markets say: “ we were probably wrong?” Pfffff.....

Going to be hilarious to watch the excuses given if the next CPI print comes in cold while employment/economy stays strong.

Each month that goes by, inflation keeps dropping while employment/spending doesn't. Eventually the charade will be exposed and all the bears will go back into hibernating.......wait 10 years for the next time they can say "Aha I was right!"

Hilarious for everyone except the mass amount of people that have been wiped out due to leverage over the past year

 

[elasalle]

Going to be hilarious to watch the excuses given if the next CPI print comes in cold while employment/economy stays strong.

Each month that goes by, inflation keeps dropping while employment/spending doesn't. Eventually the charade will be exposed and all the bears will go back into hibernating.......wait 10 years for the next time they can say "Aha I was right!"

Hilarious for everyone except the mass amount of people that have been wiped out due to leverage over the past year

Does economy going back to normal, folks going back to work post covid have any thing to do with employment staying strong as compared to covid lows ?
+Oh and portfolio shattered, and no one getting doles anymore ... might also be big incentives

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Does economy going back to normal, folks going back to work post covid have any thing to do with employment staying strong as compared to covid lows ?

There's definitely some of that dynamic but in the end, if inflation comes back down soon enough, it won't matter. As we're clearly seeing across all parts of inflation, it was all supply side driven. Inflation was going to come down dramatically irregardless of whether the jobs market cratered or not.

 

[NicoV]

An interesting article about the current energy situation in Belgium and Europe: Belgische verbruiker hield in november gaskraan stevig dicht
While this may be off-topic (so far the mods haven‘t deleted my previous posts on this topic), I believe the energy situation in Europe is a proxy for the demand for Tesla cars in Europe: as long is the situation is under control, I don’t think the demand in Europe will be terribly affected by the energy situation.
The article contains a graph of how much Europeans have limited their natural gas usage. On average, the natural gas usage (of october and november) is down over 20% compared to the previous 5 years. The Netherlands was down -30% in November.
The article has data (for Belgium) who is saving gas: gas based electricity generation is only down -3.8%. Industry down 15.8% and households and small businesses down -21.8% on a YTD basis. Total down over 30% just for November.
The first cold spell is starting rather late, which has a positive impact on the gas reserves in Europe: down to 91% now versus the peak of 95% halfway November. My interpretation is that Europe will prevent a cold-drama this winter, and will exit the winter with higher reserves than expected (a positive fact because in the summer of 23 the reserves need to be increased without any Russian gas).
In the short term, the nuclear situation in France is still worth keeping a eye on. Their nuclear generation has increased to 60%(37GW) of their capacity, but that is below their target and is causing stress for the neighbouring countries which are now exporting 13.5GW to France.
As a result, the natural gas prices are increasing, and the electricity prices are also increasing.
The French don’t seem to be terribly worried, since November was the best month for Tesla sales this year (maybe even ever, I didn’t check).

 

[wipster]

I swear almost all headlines regarding Tesla or TSLA are sensationalist and only reflect part of the story. Case in point:

Dow Jones (screaming at me at e*Trade)

Tesla Bulls Hate News About EV Recalls. They Need To Relax -- Barron's.com​

Rewrite (from same article)

Tesla Bulls Point Out Most Tesla Recalls Solved With Over-The-Air Software Updates, No Need To Go To the Dealer​

The headline's the grabber and only half or less of the story.

 

[Mike Smith]

Great details and thanks for protecting this person's identity.

'He's worked for Elon for 9 years. He's one of the few qualified, graduate engineers they can find who likes being on the road a lot. He's stuck with Tesla through it almost dying 4 times over.'

"Protecting his identity"

 

[elasalle]

There's definitely some of that dynamic but in the end, if inflation comes back down soon enough, it won't matter. As we're clearly seeing across all parts of inflation, it was all supply side driven. Inflation was going to come down dramatically irregardless of whether the jobs market cratered or not.

yup inflation can be coming down , even as employment shows spike just because of prior covid history ...

 

[Gigapress]

Companies are known to have PR departments.

“Conventional wisdom says to do X and therefore Tesla should do X. No further reasoning required.”

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

yup inflation can be coming down , even as employment shows spike just because of prior covid history ...

It's the single most frustrating part about this. The Fed has essentially done enough at this point to get its soft landing that they want. In fact they've done too much as far as I'm concerned. All they have to do is just pause rates now and just say "We're going to give it a couple quarters and see what happens"

 

[Eugene Ash]

It is thought that some of the phantom-braking events were caused by the 'vertical stripe' nature of the radars that were previously in use, so that (say) a bridge over the road would be interpreted as an object on the road. I had previously speculated that shifting to an AESA-style radar which gives the height dimension as well would allow that issue to be addressed. This was at the point where an AESA-style radar was being released to the vehicle market by one vendor.

However that was not at the time adopted by Tesla and instead, at much the same time Tesla chose to go vision-only. My memory is that Tesla's rationale for going vision-only was that the update frequency from vision was far higher than from radar. This led to a lot of problems integrating the two data streams. That explanation fitted OK with similar issues that are well known in other areas - for example integrating returns from multiple radars with varying characteristics, locations, communications-sharing latencies, etc. and so was a very plausible explanation. (An additional benefit was - I think - reported as the power reduction, and of course the cost reduction, and a minor mass reduction).

If Tesla are now going to add back a radar then they must think they have solved that update frequency problem. (And that the advantages of having a radar outweigh the cost/power/mass penalties).

A characteristic of more advanced AESA-style radars is that they can "track-whilst-scan" and the frequency of observing different parts of the world can be different. This could be very useful in some circumstances.

Even if Tesla have chosen to set aside radar in use for the time being that does not necessarily mean Tesla are not continuing to pursue R&D in that area, and that radars (or whatever) might one day return to the sensor mix. I've no idea if that is what is going on with this rumour, but it is interesting.

====
Personally I don't think it that likely there would be two different software stacks for the different vehicles. It is of course possible, but it is not that attractive from a software maintenance/development perspective. Just imho. We have seen in the past that the sofware has the capability of accepting a variety of sensor locations, and a wide spread of body sizes and shapes. So Tesla built-in the ability for one software stack to be delivered to a multiplicity of vehicles.

One word: platooning

Spoiler: platooning

I worked for an air defense/radar company back in my youth. It just dawned on me, that radar reflections are faster than pixel comparisons. What if i wanted to set a distance between two semis to 1. Voila, a platoon with slipstream! One driver, twice the load! How is that for a changed economics of transportation?

 

[M|S|M MYP]

Look on the bright side y'all, at least $TSLA's chart isn't this bad

 

[Todesbuckler]

Seems like the additional China incentive worked well:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1600547830875049984

 

[MikeC]

Some projections for Thailand, first deliveries in February. This thread also has price comparisons to top selling cars:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1600530321669115911

https://twitter.com/x/status/1600539036019347457

 

[M|S|M MYP]

At these prices, why would anyone want to buy a new/used ICE vehicle.

 

[dhanson865]

Looking at this site to see what insights I get, here is 2022 (YTD) by car in Germany.

Open EV Charts

 

[H Mak]

“Conventional wisdom says to do X and therefore Tesla should do X. No further reasoning required.”

And we know what the old sage said about conventional wisdom ...

 

[elasalle]

Look on the bright side y'all, at least $TSLA's chart isn't this bad

View attachment 882510

smells like carvana, sold some $3 jan 23 puts for $.60... .. contrarian play ... last year it was a darling

 

[dhanson865]

Looking at this site to see what insights I get, here is 2022 by car in Germany.

Open EV Charts

View attachment 882515

and one for the planet (all countries) 2022 (YTD)

 

[elasalle]

Some projections for Thailand, first deliveries in February. This thread also has price comparisons to top selling cars:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1600530321669115911

https://twitter.com/x/status/1600539036019347457

All good, but why not in Dec


+ Bjorn commentary about Thailand ..

 

[insaneoctane]

Elon was crystal clear about why the Semi wasn't delivered earlier - there was not battery supply for it. It was either deliver 12 x Model Y . . . or one Semi, with the same number of cells (approximately).

We all wanted the semi earlier, but battery supply was a key factor, and will continue to be a constraint for years to come.

Seems like that decision seriously challenges Tesla's commitment to the mission because they chose to deliver 12x MYs instead. That decision, when comparing emissions only of 1 semi vs 12 MYs, seems like Tesla should have prioritized the semi. Instead, they chose to build out more of a foundation with multiple car producing factories. I must admit, it is complicated....