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

[sundaymorning]

Last chance for GM?

ELR dead.
Volt dead...

GM electric vehicle strategy last chance for Cadillac's success: executive

Bob lutz, dying.

 

[TradingInvest]

I think BlackRock is likely to be increasing TSLA shares and will end up to be one of the largest shareholders. Shorts can't push the stock down too much.

 

[gora321]

They all thought Tesla would start advertising. nope.

Tesla rather decrease sale price for advertising costs. Notesla buyers are paying advertising costs within sales prices. Better?

 

[Beltsbear]

Karen, thanks for taking the time to look at this.

I think anyone doing real valuation work on Tesla was already aware that Solar City had raised money by selling off future payments from their customers via financial products- I know I was. Would it be accurate to say that this is all that the article is referring to (despite using a term, "variable interest entities" I'd not been familiar with before), and that the billion dollar figures Cunningham mentions are not coming out of revenues from products Tesla will be selling in the future, but, rather these already known agreements to sell future revenues from Solar City products sold in the past? More to the point, basically zero impact on my estimates of Tesla earnings based on future sales of products?

Yup. The payments to those vie’s come from payments from solar panel profits from systems solar city owns. This is a big nothingburger.

 

[S3XY]

Dana was fishing for dirt - asking laid off SpaceX employees to reach out to her - so that she can blow it into a mountain.

I have little respect and regard for elks of Dana Hill, Laura Klodney, Charles Grant or Linette Lopez. I think they are more scummier than Mark BS. Atleast Mark BS is a short seller, so we expect him to lie and be dishonest - a trait expected of all short sellers. But these so called journalists are expected to be unbiased and whatever they write is taken more seriously than the twitter feeds of short sellers and their friends. They hide behind and use the power of MSM to do the same shenanigans of the short sellers. That is despicable behavior.

@bonnie blocked me from Twitter because I disparaged Dana and Laura on her twitter feed. That is fine. I just follow @Reciprocity and that is all the news I need for Tesla.

She recently unblocked everyone so this may no longer be the case.

 

[anthonyj]

Dana was fishing for dirt - asking laid off SpaceX employees to reach out to her - so that she can blow it into a mountain.

I have little respect and regard for elks of Dana Hill, Laura Klodney, Charles Grant or Linette Lopez. I think they are more scummier than Mark BS. Atleast Mark BS is a short seller, so we expect him to lie and be dishonest - a trait expected of all short sellers. But these so called journalists are expected to be unbiased and whatever they write is taken more seriously than the twitter feeds of short sellers and their friends. They hide behind and use the power of MSM to do the same shenanigans of the short sellers. That is despicable behavior.

@bonnie blocked me from Twitter because I disparaged Dana and Laura on her twitter feed. That is fine. I just follow @Reciprocity and that is all the news I need for Tesla.

I respect Mark BS way more than those "journalists". Mark BS is so funny and ridiculous that I think he's secretly long. He must be having a blast trolling longs all day

 

[BioSehnsucht]

Note that the bad low temperature (below freezing point) behavior of heat pumps is not an inherent property of heat pumps, but that of the commonly used refrigerant gas R-134a (formerly HFC).

If a different refrigerant gas is used then no resistive heater is required.

Ironically the best such refrigerant gas I'm aware of is ... CO₂ in hypercritical state.

There's even a commercial product with a CO₂ heat pump: a German company making high-end geothermal heat pumps. (The advantage of CO₂ in a geothermal solution is that it replaces the separate glycol loop as well.)

Anyway, AFAIK the solution is patented by that German company, which limited the more widespread use of CO₂ refrigerant in heat pumps.

Hence my "beyond the working range"

I had a heat pump in my last house. I guess it was okay for Texas weather generally but those couple of REALLY cold days in the winter you needed the "emergency heat" because basically that unit was useless for heat below freezing.

The are other units on the market that can go well below freezing, even without the superior CO2 tech, but I didn't realize that was something I needed to look out for when I had to replace my HVAC in that house ... live and learn (preferably from others' mistakes, not my own!).

 

[30seconds]

Last chance for GM?

ELR dead.
Volt dead...

GM electric vehicle strategy last chance for Cadillac's success: executive

Bob lutz, dying.

Pathetic last chance - instead of making it core to the company’s strategy deliver a late to market vehicle in the most crowded space.

 

[MartinAustin]

Too simplistic.

When Musk & Tesla were the darling of MSM a few years back, Tesla wasn't advertising either.

It was a differerent phase of the oft-quoted sequence -

#1 First they ignore you,
#2 then they laugh at you,
#3 then they fight you,
#4 then you win.

Tesla has finally, without ANY doubt, crossed over from #2 to #3.

CNBC's Fast Money had two amazing segments about Tesla. First, the Phil Lebeau report mentioned above. Melissa Lee teased the first segment this way - "The biggest carmakers are going electric, with General Motors and Ford among others trying to take on Tesla; but can the other car stocks catch up?" What the heck??? Where was the tone from 9 months ago? If it wasn't "Elon Musk has done something else crazy that we now need to associate with a negative outcome for Tesla" or "Tesla is losing money, will they go bankrupt" or "problems for Tesla as Jaguar reveals its new SUV" etc. etc. Anyone wanting to spread FUD would never be wording the teaser that way.

Phil Lebeau's segment almost wholeheartedly showed that Tesla is in front and they're REAL... not, in actual fact, a wobbling jello with Crazy Elon at the helm. I could hardly believe my eyes as I watched. Cadillac president admitted that Tesla have gotten "into the minds of consumers." Admitting that on TV must have been a tough cookie to swallow. Can you imagine the table-pounding going on at the marketing meetings? Cadillac is the epitomy of legacy manufacturers, selling substandard cars that maintain the status quo of wearing out after a few years, and dealerships who live off maintenance, and a large marketing push in print, TV, and movie product placement etc. is required to get into the minds of consumers. Tesla OTOH has done exactly that with nothing but twitter, facebook, a website, and Elon Musk.

CNBC have clearly gotten the message that Tesla are ahead. They will probably shift their position to one of admitting that Tesla is solidly ahead, but will keep the drama going by constantly exaggerating the significance of rivals' efforts. Still tough to be fair to a car company which gives them zero dollars... versus Cadillac, Ford, Daimler, BMW etc. etc. who give them lots of money all through the year.

Second, the Cathie Wood segment where she finally got her chance to strut around and peacock, vindicated that Ark's position was right all along. Wood kept pressing the significance of Tesla's lead over the rest, including battery costs & technology, AI for autonomous driving, and the Autopilot miles already driven/data sent back to Tesla. You gotta admit, it's hard to imagine scenarios where rival companies work harder and faster than Tesla are working, and actually eclipse Tesla to get in front.

Melissa Lee asked "I mean, comparing a Bolt to a Model 3...?" and she was almost laughed out of the studio. 9 months ago, mention of the Model 3 on CNBC never came without also mentioning production problems or delays. Her question today referenced the 2017 North American Car Of The Year. Remember when the MSM (including CNBC) was crowing that Chevrolet was beating Tesla to the affordable EV? I wonder if industry automotive journalists will ever be held to account for such an obvious sell-out.

Final note - Melissa Lee has always struck me as someone who appears to put herself last in line to throw mudballs at Tesla. Often leaving open the possibility that Tesla may be getting unfairly portrayed. I found out recently that she is married to Ben Kallo from Baird, who has been a Tesla bull for years. Surely they have talked over the dinner table and she has a lot more detailed opinion of them than her co-hosts.

Final final note - to come back to EVNow's comment (which I agree with)... in 2012/2013 Tesla was nothing but an inconsequential observation. Their juicy exploits could be reported and would have no effect on their advertisers. Fast forward to 1.1% market share in USA in 2018, and the legacy advertisers are making a lot of noise behind the scenes, asking to make sure Tesla is portrayed badly at every possible opportunity - in exchange for advertising buys.

 

[Tslynk67]

My brother texted me the blog below by Bill Cunningham posted on Seeking Alpha.

I generally don't pay any attention to Seeking Alpha, and I'm extremely confident there's no such day of reckoning coming.

That said, given my brother specifically asked about whether there's anything concerning with this one, and given that quickly scanning Cunningham's previous SA blogs it doesn't seem like he just posts blatant obvious nonsense, I don't want to simply dismiss this blog... no day of reckoning I'm confident of, but, some considerable liability I've not been aware of, not impossible.

For me what he writes about gets into quite technical accounting details heavily involving Solar City financial arrangements ("Variable Interest Entitiies" according to Cunningham). To be honest, it would take me many hours to study up and try to answer my brother's question... and it might turn out that all that time was spent just to discover a more jargon filled version of typical Seeking Alpha gibberish bearish false narratives.

If there's anyone here who already has the knowledge base to just read this blog in a few minutes to determine if there's anything uncovered of substance in it, I'd really appreciate your opinion on it.

Tesla's Day Of VIE Reckoning Approaches - Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) | Seeking Alpha

For SA articles, a precis of what's said would be great, because I'm never going to click that link. Sorry.

 

[Brando]

How many of those old nuke-powered Navy subs and surface vessels are still in service?

you can google search, but I did see that 9 atomic sub have sunk (US & Russian of course) 9 reactors, ~200 missiles with multi-warheads how many? 8 or more each, nuke tipped torpedoes.
Howard Hughes ship Glomar Explorer - Wikipedia tried to salvage Soviet K-129, but I think all 9 still on the bottom. Only as I think I remember reading, so if you want exact numbers you'll have to research on your own, but you get the idea. List of sunken nuclear submarines - Wikipedia

Any surface vessels with reactors sunk? good question.

One good book I read: Atomic Accidents (nearly makes this agnostic believe in God, so so lucky so far)
https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Accidents-Meltdowns-Disasters-Mountains/dp/1605986801

PS- I may have doubts about God, but his fan clubs? plenty of them to disappoint.

 

[Bet TSLA]

I swear the market knows what my option positions are, and moves the SP just to hurt me! Warning to everyone - I sold a lot of puts for 2/15 with 320 SP, so expect the SB to be just under 320 on that day....

Not understanding you. If the stock price closes just under 320 on 2/15, you made a brilliant trade. You can buy back your puts for a few cents and you'll have made even more money than if you had bought the shares represented by those puts (presumably highly leveraged) plus the premium. Yum! What would make you look somewhat stupid is if it closes at 400 that day. Then you left $80+ per share on the table -- you should have written 400 puts rather than 320s, but at least you made a bunch of money. And, of course, you'll look really stupid (plus lose money) if it closes at $250.

 

[Brando]

Somewhat against my intention I find myself contributing to this interesting but OT debate, I will try to stop before we get too far into the EU trading day.

What the grid sees as "storage" can be more than just actual storage (e.g. pumpage storage in connection with hydro, or battery banks or other schemes).

A really powerful concept is just a fair and open market for electricity combined with long distance power transmission (together with ideally a variety of types of electricity production).

Being able to buy and sell electricity from your neigbors is effectively like having storage, what it takes is a serious investment in the grid interconnectors - and a properly regulated market, with proper pricing that reflects demand and supply.

In Northern Europe (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and the 3 baltic countries) this works pretty well, the power exhange is called Nordpool.

The market needs to work properly though. Otherwise one country may at a windy moment where power costs very little in a neigbboring market decide to shut down their connection to that neigbor to protect (higher priced) deliveries from its own electricy suppliers (leaving their own population to pay more).

So in a country like Spain where the domestic electricity producers have a lot of influence on the regulators, this is unlikely to function well. In a country like Norway, this has worked well for decades. The Chinese - with their strong, centralized regulation - also show good progress in ingesting large amounts of wind power into their grid by using long distance power transmission.

check out The control room
Important information
Please note that the data presented on this page is not completely accurate and instantaneous. Our purpose with the control room page is to illustrate phenomenon in the electricity system and provide insight into the work in our real control room. If you have other requirements for electricity market data, we recommend our statistics page as well as the Nord Pool website

 

[lklundin]

At least here in the states, "heat pump" is usually used to refer to a device that can both cool as well as heat, versus just cool. If it just cools, it's just an air conditioner. Technically, both varieties are heat pumps, but that's not common usage here.

It would be nice if Tesla had heat pumps as they can potentially be more efficient than resistive heating but realistically you still need the resistive heaters for when the temperatures are too cold, beyond the working range of the heat pump system. LEAF and Prius both have heat pumps I believe.

OK, so inaccurate daily jargon aside, the Model 3 has a heat pump.

At first I was simply going to argue that Tesla wouldn't be so stupid to build in a heat pump in the Model 3 and then deliberately limit its usability to only cool the passenger compartment.

But then I rewatched Ingineerix's review of the Model 3 cooling and refrigerant system.

I encourage everyone else to do the same,

When he says (at 0m45s) of the cooling system "the water can actually be cooler than ambient" (he goes on to correct his 'water' to 'glycol') that sounds a lot like the heat pump can move heat arbitrarily (as opposed to being limited so it according to some convention would be an air conditioner).

This is explained with some more details starting at 4m20s, basically the refrigerant system has two loops, a standard one for the A/C and a second one for extracting heat from the car's glycol-based cooling system.

I guess the design surrounding the 'Superbottle' really is quite remarkable - and surprising to a lot of people also on TMC.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

Not understanding you. If the stock price closes just under 320 on 2/15, you made a brilliant trade. You can buy back your puts for a few cents and you'll have made even more money than if you had bought the shares represented by those puts (presumably highly leveraged) plus the premium. Yum! What would make you look somewhat stupid is if it closes at 400 that day. Then you left $80+ per share on the table -- you should have written 400 puts rather than 320s, but at least you made a bunch of money. And, of course, you'll look really stupid (plus lose money) if it closes at $250.

You're mixing calls for puts. When you sell a put, you've given someone else the right to sell a stock to you at a fixed price. In the US stock market, this can happen at any time.

At under 320, he'll be forced to buy the stock at $320 (even if the stock had dropped to under $300 that day). If the stock stays above $320 and rises to $400, he'll at least collect the put premium.

Writing a $400 put would ensure that he'd have to buy the stock at $400 at anytime between now and Feb 15th! Not a good move.

 

[Brando]

Daimler Truck CEO Daum talks about Tesla:

“They’re fun; it’s an interesting market. We take every competitor seriously; Tesla has proved they really have the tenacity to really go through huge losses to capture the market. But trucking is a difficult business. They will learn the hard way; trucking is not like passenger cars where one size fits all. There’s a lot of variety in trucking… the United States is a highly competitive market, so as I said, they’re fun,”

What is Daum's message? Because Daimler is no fun, trucks have worse specs but they have a larger variety of trucks they will compete and win against Tesla? Because they sell today 500k per annum but Tesla just started they will win the race?

I understand that there are decades long relationships between the large carriers and Daimler beside others but if the costs per mile is lower and the flexibility how you can use a truck is increased why should they stay with Daimler? Not to mention that Tesla will build the charging network as well. Lately I read that Daimler gave up on platooning which is no surprise to me because they do not have an AP like system that works and known to be not good with SW.

Also, isn't it a sign how nervous Daimler is talking in length about Tesla now, stating before the Tesla truck cannot be true, specs are a lie and defy physics?

If we compare the specs in passenger cars most of the competition actually I do claim all are behind. If we look at the truck business the Semi versus the Daimler Trucks is an order of magnitude more behind.....

Tesla Semi receives warning from Daimler Trucks CEO on 'difficult' trucking market

One of the most important Tesla Team employees (and he does the SEMI of course) after 8 years you'll have to do a lot of reading/searching to find all the projects Jerome is/has worked on at TESLA.

Company Update September 7, 2018 Jerome promotion to President, Automotive.

Before coming to Tesla, Jerome was responsible for creating and running the most successful semi truck program in history at Daimler’s Freightliner division.

September 7, 2018
Jerome Guillen has been promoted to President, Automotive, reporting directly to me [Elon]. In his new role, Jerome will oversee all automotive operations and program management, as well as coordinate our extensive automotive supply chain. Jerome has made major contributions and acquired deep knowledge of Tesla’s operations over the past eight years at our company, from being the first Model S Program Manager to managing all vehicle programs, then all vehicle engineering and worldwide sales & service. Recently, Jerome played a critical role in ramping Model 3 production, leading what almost all thought was impossible: creation of an entire high-volume General Assembly line for Model 3 in a matter of weeks.

 

[avoigt]

It was a differerent phase of the oft-quoted sequence -

#1 First they ignore you,
#2 then they laugh at you,
#3 then they fight you,
#4 then you win.

Tesla has finally, without ANY doubt, crossed over from #2 to #3.

CNBC's Fast Money had two amazing segments about Tesla. First, the Phil Lebeau report mentioned above. Melissa Lee teased the first segment this way - "The biggest carmakers are going electric, with General Motors and Ford among others trying to take on Tesla; but can the other car stocks catch up?" What the heck??? Where was the tone from 9 months ago? If it wasn't "Elon Musk has done something else crazy that we now need to associate with a negative outcome for Tesla" or "Tesla is losing money, will they go bankrupt" or "problems for Tesla as Jaguar reveals its new SUV" etc. etc. Anyone wanting to spread FUD would never be wording the teaser that way.

Phil Lebeau's segment almost wholeheartedly showed that Tesla is in front and they're REAL... not, in actual fact, a wobbling jello with Crazy Elon at the helm. I could hardly believe my eyes as I watched. Cadillac president admitted that Tesla have gotten "into the minds of consumers." Admitting that on TV must have been a tough cookie to swallow. Can you imagine the table-pounding going on at the marketing meetings? Cadillac is the epitomy of legacy manufacturers, selling substandard cars that maintain the status quo of wearing out after a few years, and dealerships who live off maintenance, and a large marketing push in print, TV, and movie product placement etc. is required to get into the minds of consumers. Tesla OTOH has done exactly that with nothing but twitter, facebook, a website, and Elon Musk.

CNBC have clearly gotten the message that Tesla are ahead. They will probably shift their position to one of admitting that Tesla is solidly ahead, but will keep the drama going by constantly exaggerating the significance of rivals' efforts. Still tough to be fair to a car company which gives them zero dollars... versus Cadillac, Ford, Daimler, BMW etc. etc. who give them lots of money all through the year.

Second, the Cathie Wood segment where she finally got her chance to strut around and peacock, vindicated that Ark's position was right all along. Wood kept pressing the significance of Tesla's lead over the rest, including battery costs & technology, AI for autonomous driving, and the Autopilot miles already driven/data sent back to Tesla. You gotta admit, it's hard to imagine scenarios where rival companies work harder and faster than Tesla are working, and actually eclipse Tesla to get in front.

Melissa Lee asked "I mean, comparing a Bolt to a Model 3...?" and she was almost laughed out of the studio. 9 months ago, mention of the Model 3 on CNBC never came without also mentioning production problems or delays. Her question today referenced the 2017 North American Car Of The Year. Remember when the MSM (including CNBC) was crowing that Chevrolet was beating Tesla to the affordable EV? I wonder if industry automotive journalists will ever be held to account for such an obvious sell-out.

Final note - Melissa Lee has always struck me as someone who appears to put herself last in line to throw mudballs at Tesla. Often leaving open the possibility that Tesla may be getting unfairly portrayed. I found out recently that she is married to Ben Kallo from Baird, who has been a Tesla bull for years. Surely they have talked over the dinner table and she has a lot more detailed opinion of them than her co-hosts.

Final final note - to come back to EVNow's comment (which I agree with)... in 2012/2013 Tesla was nothing but an inconsequential observation. Their juicy exploits could be reported and would have no effect on their advertisers. Fast forward to 1.1% market share in USA in 2018, and the legacy advertisers are making a lot of noise behind the scenes, asking to make sure Tesla is portrayed badly at every possible opportunity - in exchange for advertising buys.

Thanks for your post and insights, really interesting and I agree.

Cathie has in a very consistent and balanced way identified the key differentiators and pointed them out in interviews with CNBC before. From that perspective there is not really news in the statements for most here but the really interesting part is indeed the responses and questions from the hosts which did change very much. I talk about behavior change here.

For years they did repeat the narrative and invited people they could spun the story about a doomed Tesla but now they start to ask the right questions like: "why can't other automakers catch up?". That question will be repeated in the future many times and may be followed with a new story line about Tesla is ahead and the others are trying to catch up but don't manage.

CNBC may fall back in their old narrative talk from time to time dependent whom they interview but it feels like a new story may emerge they will report on.

Tesla is a great name for the media as it makes them pay their bills. Not directly with ads but people listening to interviews and absorbing other ads they get paid for. For that reason the more sensational and unbelievable the story is the better as the click rate will go up. For most people its a sensational story that Tesla is ahead of the industry therefore I hope that this will be the new storyline they are building for 2019.

Quite boring for all of us here as its been right in front of our eyes all the time but nobody wanted to believe us but now the story has a chance to go mainstream. That mainstream, reporting can be very helpful for demand as well as an influence on investors.

After the ER and the 2nd time positive numbers its difficult to stick to a story of Tesla is doomed. CNBC is more and more repositioning themselves. With the 3rd positive quarter ER in May they still will fish for sensations or something negative but the financial stability story will be gone forever.

Below another interview from December where she 2 times briefly touched on Tesla.

One of the best analysis I heard so far. Very smart Lady!

 

[Tslynk67]

Amy Fiscus on Twitter

This will probably have an impact on markets

Jeeze Putin is so far up Trump's ass it beggars belief. How long is American going to continue with this nonsense?

On topic: looks like colour options for S/X have been reduced, unless this was something happened earlier that I missed. I see this:

So metallic black definitely gone now, maybe one more??

 

[uselesslogin]

Jeeze Putin is so far up Trump's ass it beggars belief. How long is American going to continue with this nonsense?

On topic: looks like colour options for S/X have been reduced, unless this was something happened earlier that I missed. I see this:


So metallic black definitely gone now, maybe one more??

Nah, you missed something. That happened back in September.

Tesla reduces exterior color options to speed up production

 

[lklundin]

Your Favorite Short with another impressive article.

Volkswagen's Electricity Price Undercuts Tesla's Superchargers By 35% To 66% - Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) | Seeking Alpha

Right off the bat, is he assuming a constant kW charge rate regardless of SoC? I love him.

As ridiculous and pompous as he appears and as misleading and manipulative as he writes, he actually has a point with the above article.

Per Tesla's own information that he is citing, Supercharging can be quite expensive, e.g.
0.26 $/kWh in California,
Supercharging

Is that not significantly more than what residential electricity costs there?

Per the same page, Texans pay 0.20 $/min, so at 120 kW that works out to 0.10 $ / kWh, a much better price.

In the Munich Tesla store I was told 0.17 € / minute, i.e. 0.085 € / kWh @ 120 kW. (Mod: edited at user request. --ggr).

No one on TMC needs to be disappointed, the Whale man is making a misleading comparison with VW because he compares their theoretical, future charging powers with Tesla's actual (and by now quite old) charging power. So by the time VW's charging materializes, Tesla Superchargers can be expected to be faster.

Still, I had expected the Supercharging in the USA to be cheaper.

Also, by always charging by the minute Tesla would discourage Supercharging when the battery starts to be full, i.e. when it starts to be a waste of everyone's time - in addition to simplifying their pricing. So that would make sense to me.