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

[Ogre]

This plan doesn't work in the Supercharger desert where Superchargers are few and far between. You need far more than 20 minutes in a V2 SC to make it from Salina to Lincoln or Ardmore to Perry (Ardmore is often full with a waiting line, and there have been electrical outages at Perry and Salina that I've been caught in. Neither was the SC's fault, but still not able to charge.)

Don’t open those stations to 3rd parties until there are enough adjacent stations.

In general that’s the fix regardless, Tesla needs to fill those gaps. Similar issues here, but those stations are rarely crowded so my suggestion wouldn’t kick in regardless.

 

[elasalle]

HODL and playing DEAD. So don't even need to be on TMC all the time

All original shares intact. Piggy bank shares converted to leaps are down 80-90%, but giving it a year or so, ... cheers!!

 

[GOVA]

Ask your uncle.

Tesla Astrology.

(sorry)

Thanks.

 

[Rarity]

Not sure if related: Does Elon have investment, ownership or advisory for OpenAI? And if so, then Microsoft is essentially paying Elon, from money it shorts on tesla?

I read @Artful Dodger's source and it is very confusing and at points contradictory. To sum up, Elon was a co-founder of OpenAI and was one of its big early funders. He was also the original Chairman and at times the CEO. When founded, OpenAI was a non-profit organization.

Andrej Karpathy was also a part of the original OpenAI team. When Elon convinced Andrej to come to Tesla, it created tension with some funders because Tesla was a for-profit entity and they thought that OpenAI should be more neutral rather than a farm team for Musk Inc.

When it became clear that the quality of machine learning was proportional to the size of the models and therefore the magnitude of compute, OpenAI determined that it needed to spend a great deal of money on compute resources. The magnitude of spending was thought to be greater than a non-profit could attract through donations and therefore they decided to change OpenAI into a for-profit entity. Musk disagreed with this approach and he amicably parted ways with the organization after what was I'm sure spirited conversations.

Since OpenAI is a private company, we do not know who is on the cap table. We do not know if Musk retains any share in the company. We have heard that the ownership structure of the company is atypical, but we really do not know for sure. For instance, we have heard that there is a profit cap of 100x for shareholders.

Moral of the story: Elon is OG AI in Silicon Valley. You should not be surprised at him originating or supporting AI or AI safety efforts going many years back (e.g., Deep Mind). You should also not be surprised at him having a conviction about how AI should be done and him knowing most of the major players in the field very well.

 

[Ogre]

Thoughts on the $500 price increase for LR AWD Y? At one level, reduces opportunity to get buyers to max out options and get as close to $55k as possible--previously one could select two $1000 options (from white seats, tow hitch, different color). Now can only select one option and price will max out at $54,490 (vs $54,990 with two $1000 options options).

I suspect this is more to "encourage" everyone who placed an order to keep the order as-is, so Tesla can better plan what to build to maximize output for this quarter. And this will reduce build complexity, which may help them increase production rate. Lastly, may also encourage anyone who is on the fence to get their orders in asap, for fear the price will be bumped up again. So I guess there are multiple good reasons to increase price.

It means a lot fewer red Model Ys on the road so it’s easier for me to find mine. I like it.

Also, its $500 extra margin per car. Very likely a 1% bp increase in margin per vehicle. Maybe the difference of 22% and 23% margin on these. (Or pick your numbers, I’m not trying to predict margins right now). I like that too.

Tesla can focus on cranking out those few SKUs which are under $1000 in volume and and order with 2 or more options gets the express treatment.

Wins across the board.

I'd say it's good from a production point of view, but the price increase drastically reduces customer freedom when configuring a MY now, so I'd also say it's bad from a consumer point of view. Personally I'd rather Tesla just let the price where it was as it seemed optimal to me yesterday.

Everyone who is worried about getting the Model Y price under $55k is getting prices which are lower than launch pricing and easily the best value EV on the market. I think it’s hard to argue “bad from a customer point of view” with any Model Y at this point.

 

[Captkerosene]

Are there any chances Tesla can compete fair and square with the Chinese EV makers once its production lines are fully optimized in a few years, so that we don't have to fear the Chinese coming in and taking over the US market?

Yes, the secret is getting more out of an hour of labor ... not getting an hour of labor for less. See: FSD, AI and Optimus.

 

[Captkerosene]

Don’t open those stations to 3rd parties until there are enough adjacent stations.

In general that’s the fix regardless, Tesla needs to fill those gaps. Similar issues here, but those stations are rarely crowded so my suggestion wouldn’t kick in regardless.

Whatever we do, we need to make sure non-Tesla owners understand the absolute contempt we feel for them.

 

[ElectricIAC]

Whatever we do, we need to make sure non-Tesla owners understand the absolute contempt we feel for them.

Pave the Tesla spots, non-tesla spots can be in the mud or loose gravel?

I think differential pricing would be enough of a deterrent to charge campers.

 

[Cosmacelf]

What an odd thing to hold up a Model Y sale - Parking features???
So if it doesn't get better, no sale? Then what?

My friend’s wife ran into a wall in her Model 3 because she didn’t hear the beeps one day. Blamed the car for not beeping of course. So, yeah, apparently an important feature.

 

[mongo]

No idea. I’ll see him in April. It will be interesting to see what he does. He is looking at a few models and I know he has plans on taking the Mach e for a drive. Time will tell.

Relatedly, USS don't work if muddy...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1617679312261615617

 

[Cosmacelf]

Are there any chances Tesla can compete fair and square with the Chinese EV makers once its production lines are fully optimized in a few years, so that we don't have to fear the Chinese coming in and taking over the US market?

The Chinese have a lot of problems trying to enter the US market. Tarrifs, IRA, brand, no service infrastructure, to name four huge ones.

 

[Cosmacelf]

What is TA?

Technical Analysis.

 

[kanweg]

Not sure if any of that is true. I believe it is closer that IRDA educated Tesla on the proper use an application of the gigapress. The company has been around for a while and probably knows a little bit about metallurgy. Not as much is the smartest guy on the planet that knows more about manufacturing than anybody, I’m just saying they have a little bit of experience.. so are you saying Tesla holds the patent to this process and/or the metallurgy? I don’t think people just order it from a catalog but if that’s your belief, I can’t argue with you. Also, the 24 is just for the gigapress, they manufacture other presses, and I was under the understanding that Tesla works with two different manufacturers of presses

Tesla does have a patent application for an aluminium alloy: WO2021150604

WO2021150604 DIE CAST ALUMINUM ALLOYS FOR STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS

An alloy composition comprising Al is described, wherein the alloy comprises a yield strength of at least about 130 MPa and a bend angle of at least about 20° at a 3 mm section thickness when as-cast and without further processing. Processes for forming the alloy are also described.

patentscope.wipo.int

(As an aside, having seen several of Tesla’s patent applications, I think Tesla should consider hiring better patent attorneys.)

 

[CHGolferJim]

Had an interesting conversation with a former work mate. He did a test drive in a 2023 model Y. (He has been in ours). He was dissapointed in the lack of parking sensors and parking tech for the price and class of the car. I was surprised to hear they hadn’t been restored to the new cars. I though the plan was to do all that with cameras.

Anyway. He has put his purchase plans on hold until he gets some clarification from tesla via email.

So is there a plan or is that just the result of an all vision car?

Thoughts?

Does Tesla answer emails in Canada?

 

[Discoducky]

Updated with @petit_bateau numbers and Tesla's compiled analyst numbers:

View attachment 899220

What are the top things separating yours and James GAAP forecast? Your non-GAAP is very close.

 

[Rarity]

Following up on OpenAI as it relates to Elon and Tesla, my guess is that notwithstanding the parting of ways, he wanted Dojo to provide the compute for OpenAI rather than Microsoft. Remember that he tweeted a question about compute costs to the OpenAI team. Maybe Dojo isn't ready quite yet, but it may be ready in the future for an OpenAI funding round. Or maybe Tesla simply lost the bidding on this round. I noticed a few weeks ago that Elon started following Satya Nadella on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1599669552081960960

More broadly, Musk may view Dojo as a democratizing agent for AI. As stated, the quality of models scales with their size and therefore compute resources devoted to the training. This perceived fact drives centralization because only the biggest organizations have the capital for table stakes to play at this level. Reducing the cost of compute available to everyone (or at least more people) thus has a powerful democratizing effect.

 

[Eugene Ash]

Another change for German leasing is that whereas previously they were offered by Santander Bank, now Tesla finances the lease. That is one use of Tesla’s growing cash position. Loans are still through Santander.

View attachment 899203

Santander is one of biggest subprime auto lenders. They are probably feeling the pain both in p&l and balance sheets as used car prices collapsed and delinquencies are up sharply in subprime segment. End of cheap liquidity.
Tesla has done and held leases before, and now they have the capital too.

 

[MountainRatMat]

No idea. I’ll see him in April. It will be interesting to see what he does. He is looking at a few models and I know he has plans on taking the Mach e for a drive. Time will tell.

I know someone that would not buy a Model Y because of no traditional blind spot monitoring. Tesla's aren't the perfect car and not everyone is going to buy one.

We need to keep this in mind as investors and fanboys (or at least I am a fanboy, I'm assuming many on this forum are as well). Also, there are a lot of people that won't buy a Tesla because of Elon or because they want to drive dirty gas cars (I don't understand this reason but there are a lot of people that use it).

 

[JRP3]

Elon Musk said he could've sold his SpaceX shares to take Tesla private when he took the witness stand again to defend his 2018 "funding secured" tweets in a lawsuit filed by the automaker's shareholders.

Elon Musk says his SpaceX shares would've funded his plan to take Tesla private

Musk also said that Tesla's $420-per-share price in his infamous 'funding secured' tweets wasn't a weed joke.

finance.yahoo.com

It was always obvious that Elon had more than one way to fund the purchase should it have gone forward.

 

[Webeevdrivers]

Does Tesla answer emails in Canada?

No idea who he sent it to. Maybe the person at the delivery centre where he test drive it. So in answer to your question, don’t know.