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

[M|S|M MYP]

Sounds like he's got one of uncle Leo's QKID machines...

"Adrian Mora in Denver bought his first Tesla shares in July 2022 after hearing hype around the electric Semi trucks the company started delivering late last year"​

The other guy (bold mine):

"The 68-year-old retired landscaper first started investing in Tesla Inc. in 2012 after hearing about Elon Musk, who wasn’t nearly as famous at the time. Over the next decade he put about $100,000 into the stock, and his investment value ballooned to about $3 million at the peak in November 2021.​

​

Then came the plunge, as the pandemic-era tech bubble began to unwind. Coyle’s son, who got into trading during the 2020 retail frenzy, implored him to sell. But he held on, believing in Tesla’s long term potential. He’s now lost about $1.5 million in paper gains."​

So what he's saying is that he's 15x up on his original investment, that's not a loss, right, or am I missing something here??

Other than the small amounts of money involved, this could be any of us here

this could be any of us here - Multiplied by exponential factors

 

[thesmokingman]

That website is called financial-advisor, yet this story is like a cautionary tale of how not to trade and think about trading.

 

[ZeApelido]

Bullish sign has been activated:

Elon Musk Fan With 2,900% Gain Sees $1.5 Million Wiped Away

Tesla stock has hammered the fortunes of retail investors who stayed loyal to the once high-flying company.

www.fa-mag.com

Pft. Have any of them received a call from their broker to evaluate if they are mentally stable enough to continue to trade options after a major loss?

Rookies.

 

[Max Plaid]

If only they interviewed folks at TMC

How do we know they're not posters here?

 

[thesmokingman]

Let's let it ride, yolo into a crashing market!!

 

[JRP3]

At what point will the bullish hypobaric chamber here admit there are serious demand problems?

Maybe when there is more than a day or two of production in inventory? Tesla may have an issue but I'd say it's a bit too early to tell.

 

[JoRoMo]

Bit too early now agree, but march 1st with just 30 days left in quarter might also be a bit too late.
I am sure there are many lessons to be learnt from Q4.


cheers!!

But we still have Q2, right? And many from there on…

 

[Max Plaid]

Maybe when there is more than a day or two of production in inventory? Tesla may have an issue but I'd say it's a bit too early to tell.

If I was in the US and looking to buy a new EV now then I've be expecting $7500 tax credit and waiting until it was confirmed I would be getting it. Seems obvious no? Lots of folks just waiting

 

[ZeApelido]

Pft. Have any of them received a call from their broker to evaluate if they are mentally stable enough to continue to trade options after a major loss?

Rookies.

Me watching my stock account circa 2021 - Dec 2022.

 

[Drumheller]

Usually not a fan of reading the tea leaves of Elon's posts and likes over there as I think many of them are not about Tesla. However, this one caught my attention. It's a message from Dec 23rd that Elon just liked a few minutes ago. Q4 earnings call is the 25th.

Perhaps I'm guilty of wishful thinking here.

 

[thesmokingman]

Disney is going thru a serious board fight, activist investor nuttiness so...

 

[petit_bateau]

I appreciate you are in that industry, but as others have pointed out, and your recent post tends to indicate, you you appear to be rather dismissive/insulting regarding Tesla's efforts. It's not entirely clear to me all the reasons are objective.

Would you mind articulating what makes the Solar Tile "nonsense"?

I'm dismissive because after many many years of effort Tesla (aka Solar City redux ) have managed to create a 0.1% market penetration on a product that is practically only relevant to a minority of customers in a minority of countries. And in any case as far as I can see most of the real work underlying the product is either not being done by Tesla at all, or is being copied by others at speeds that even China would ordinarily find noteworthy. Meanwhile the rest of the solar industry took the other 99.9% of the market, then sold their left overs to Tesla for most of Tesla's claimed 0.1%.

That's not dismissive or insulting. That is just the data.

If I want to be dismissive, believe me you haven't heard what I really think of this product.

You completely hinge your argument on the 6% "cost overstatement".

Three words for you - exchange rate fluctuations.


Do this analysis without assuming someone is in the UK, and do it for the US customer in USD, and your argument evaporates regarding "cost overstatement". Plus, these numbers could have been SPOT ON when the white paper was written. There have been a lot of currency fluctuations in just the past 6 months. The publication date is just listed as "2022". That covers a TON of ground on currency fluctuations, as 2022 was one of the most volatile since 2008.


EDIT - ninja'd by @mongo

I simply did the exchange rate on today. If I'd picked any other date everyone would be all over me for cherry picking.

This logic is incorrect. Even if the power electronics hardware for the comparison case actually does cost 6% less than Tesla stated, that still does not translate to the overall LCOE being 6% less, because power electronics hardware cost are only a fraction of the overall cost structure.

Using your numbers for an 8 kW system, let’s suppose that Tesla overstated the hardware costs of the competition by around $200. Does that error increase the lifetime LCOE estimates by 6% ($0.007/kWh per Tesla’s white paper)? No. $200 is on the order of 1% of the total ~$20k upfront pre-subsidy cost of a typical 8 kW rooftop solar project.

An 8 kW system can be expected to generate at least about 30 kWh per day or 11,000 kWh per year. In the first ten years that $200 amortizes to about $0.002/kWh if we throw in some interest costs and assume some efficiency degradation. The system will be productive much longer than 10 years of course.

There are other factors to consider that might bring into doubt Tesla’s claimed overall cost savings but this particular argument is flawed.

Darn. You are absolutely right that I need to take the total system cost into account. I must have been having a brainfart moment.

OK. I'll redo the calc if you can show me the inverter specsheet so I can compare it with the SE one.

Tesla Solar Inverter Notes
I did some more research today.

Tesla launched this product two years ago in Jan 2021, as indicated by an Electrek article I found and a few other sources. Tesla's warranty document revision 1.0 is dated 7 Jan 2021 too. It looks like tesla.com has had this for a long time Tesla Solar Inverter | Tesla.

So, why are we suddenly hearing about this again? It appears that for some reason Tesla recently decided to publish this whitepaper. Why they're doing it now instead of two years ago, I have no idea. The whitepaper is dated just "2022" on the document itself, but its URL address is "https://...blah blah blah.../Tesla-Solar-Inverter-Architecture-White-Paper-NA-EN-12212022" indicating that it was published on 21 Dec 2022, which seems likely considering that this whitepaper hasn't been discovered by the online Tesla community until now.

[Edit: Maybe published now because Tesla is now selling it to third-party installers]
View attachment 894957


Tesla claims their inverter has reduced the all-in LCOE for home solar by 3-8% relative to competing systems. That isn't a massive difference overall, but if much of that cost improvement feeds into gross margin then it has been making a substantial difference for the profitability of Tesla Solar. The gross margins were thin to begin with, so a 5 or 6% boost is big and might double the profitability. If so, this has clearly been a materially contributing factor in Tesla's aggressively low prices for solar projects in the US and their price-match guarantee.

I don't have enough expertise in this area to evaluate how Tesla's inverter stacks up against other string inverters or how much their expertise and scale in power electronics really translates to cost and performance improvements as Tesla claims. It's one thing for Tesla to say that switching design architecture from having electronics on the roof under each panel to string inverters simplifies and saves money these days, but it's another to say that Tesla's string inverter solution is better than other string inverters.

Tesla claims the advantages over other string inverters are:

• Higher reliability
• 2x the standard number of MPPTs for high production on complex roofs
  • (4 per inverter)
• Lower minimum input voltage per MPPT for enabling shorter strings of a few as two panels
• No neutral wire for simpler installation
• Seamless software integration with other Tesla Energy products

For any engineers who want to try tackling such a comparison, here is the official technical spec sheet for the inverter and its integrated emergency shutdown device, dated 2 Feb 2022. We can take further discussion to the engineering thread.

Eff darn. So this is a 2-year old marketing rehash of the old inverter. It isn't even a new inverter.

I rest my case. And my head in my hands.

Tesla Energy division; subdivision Residential = smoking impact crater

0.1% penetration of solar PV itself; and managed to turn a 70% lead in residential storage into a .... 14% one.

It shouldn't have been this way.

Who led ?

 

[AndrewZ]

If I was in the US and looking to buy a new EV now then I've be expecting $7500 tax credit and waiting until it was confirmed I would be getting it. Seems obvious no? Lots of folks just waiting

I think people are waiting for the cost to come down period whether it's through the IRA incentives, which come with all sorts of potential unknowns, or through discounts.

The vehicles were $7500 cheaper in the US two weeks ago with no IRA complexity. Why would someone pay $7500 more today than someone who bought the exact same thing two weeks ago? This is the danger of deflation that Elon has mentioned, people catch a whiff of prices coming down and they stop buying in anticipation of further price reductions. Someone who knows how the quarterly cycles work, if they don't absolutely need a vehicle right now then there's all the reason to wait because the pressure to move vehicles will only increase as the end of the quarter approaches and Tesla needs to hit delivery targets to bring in revenue and to satisfy investors.

Stable 2% inflation is best, it ensures people don't excessively delay purchasing things because it's safe to assume prices will slowly increase over time. Crazy inflation is bad, gyrating between crazy inflation and deflation is very bad for the economy.

 

[bkp_duke]

I simply did the exchange rate on today. If I'd picked any other date everyone would be all over me for cherry picking.

Should have been no exchange rate. Bulk of Tesla Solar sales are in the USA. You should have priced everything in USD.

 

[Cattledog]

this could be any is most of us here - Multiplied by exponential factors

FTFY

 

[petit_bateau]

Should have been no exchange rate. Bulk of Tesla Solar sales are in the USA. You should have priced everything in USD.

I can get a price on the relevant SE inverter today in GBP and check for any distributor malarky. I'd have had to wait 4-hours (and call in some favours) to do that in USA. And in any case the UK-GBP version should advantage Tesla so no-one should be complaining.

 

[thesmokingman]

FTFY

Except where the guy is thinking of cutting his losses at the lows. Need a bigger /S for that *sugar*.

 

[Nocturnal]

Didn’t see this posted. 94k people got to experience a Tesla, possibly for the first time.

Tesla vehicles moved almost 100,000 people inside Boring Company tunnels at CES

Tesla vehicles moved almost 100,000 people inside the Boring Company tunnels under Las Vegas in only a few days during...

electrek.co

Usually not a fan of reading the tea leaves of Elon's posts and likes over there as I think many of them are not about Tesla. However, this one caught my attention. It's a message from Dec 23rd that Elon just liked a few minutes ago. Q4 earnings call is the 25th.

Perhaps I'm guilty of wishful thinking here.

I can't remember the last time that we had an alleged Elon hint that turned out positive.

 

[M|S|M MYP]

Except where the guy is thinking of cutting his losses at the lows. Need a bigger /S for that *sugar*.

The same type of guy that wants to 'get rich quick' thinking 6 months is investing.

 

[MABMAB]

I thought you might've had some thoughts on what you posted or somebody else might've been able to share some wisdom. I don't know who that person is or why or if we should pay attention to them. There have been far too many contrarian viewpoints on how TSLA will trade in the short term, find it hard to put much weight in any of it at the moment. Not that it really matters to me as I'm not much of a trader, but I still find it interesting.

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