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

[guidooo]

I don't see the stock moving much either way until the 22nd. The snakes are to good at hissing. God I hope I'm wrong.

I don't know. But If the market doesn't value it, there are plenty other things making April 22nd a nice day for party.

It's earth day
It's very close to 6 months ago that the Citron turn went public. Think that's worth a celebration too
And it's investor autonomy day created by Tesla. Think whatever the market thinks of it, it should be fun

 

[azaz]

Could definitely see this FSD pump ending in a cap raise.

think odds are pretty low (like 20% maybe) but Tesla might wanna safeguard against a recession

 

[Dan Detweiler]

I don't know. But If the market doesn't value it, there are plenty other things making April 22nd a nice day for party.

It's earth day
It's very close to 6 months ago that the Citron turn went public. Think that's worth a celebration too
And it's investor autonomy day created by Tesla. Think whatever the market thinks of it, it should be fun

It's also my wife's birthday but that's kind of off topic. lol!

 

[StarFoxisDown!]

Why not get excited about one or two big features? If they come out and demonstrate Nav On Autopilot type functionality on surface streets that would be huge. Why do we all want to set ourselves up for disappointment? We, as bulls, should be excited about any major development. None of the competition seems to be doing anything significant. Let the bears do all the unrealistic expectations. That's what they're good at.

Dan

Oh i would be excited by just one or two fsd features like that. I'd be totally pleased with that because it would very much mean they are on track for feature complete by the end of the year

As an investor, considering the short number is nearing all time high again, I would love for elon to catch them blindsided by full fsd

 

[Dan Detweiler]

Oh i would be excited by just one or two fsd features like that. I'd be totally pleased with that because it would very much mean they are on track for feature complete by the end of the year

As an investor, considering the short number is nearing all time high again, I would love for elon to catch them blindsided by full fsd

Wouldn't we all!

Dan

 

[M3Rider]

Why does Waymo have a valuation of over 100 billion when everything you wrote most certainly applies to them as well? Perhaps more so.

Agree. Don't know why. I guess a lot of people think that if they can figure out search, they can definitely do self driving too

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Market only cares about deliveries, production, market share and revenue. If a capital raise alleviates those concerns then it is net bullish. Also if real FSD is shown on the 22nd and Tesla Network seems like a possibility, then a capital raise is warranted and super duper bullish. Like the most bullish bull you’ve ever seen. Tesla Network kills every bear argument that ever existed. No more demand problem, no more cash concerns due to cap raise, etc.

I’ll believe FSD and Tesla Network when I see it though. One thing keeping me hopeful is that they are hosting autonomy day as close to 4/20 as possible. Almost as if it was planned to smoke some bears. I don’t think Elon wants bears to be happy on national Tesla day 4/20

I’d keep my expectations in check. Elon said *feature complete* by end of year. I wouldn’t expect them to just suddenly have it done 8 months early.

My expectations are some internal FSD-esque features. Stopping at stoplights/stop signs, maybe some course set up in their parking lot that the car can maneuver through.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

Oh i would be excited by just one or two fsd features like that. I'd be totally pleased with that because it would very much mean they are on track for feature complete by the end of the year

As an investor, considering the short number is nearing all time high again, I would love for elon to catch them blindsided by full fsd

I tell you one thing...if, by some miracle they do demonstrate FSD, I would bet the price of FSD would quadruple by the end of the year.

Dan

 

[dc_h]

I read a Swedish study a while ago. It calculated the yearly cost for a EU trucking company keeping one semi running. Distance used was 130000km which required 1,5 full time drivers.

Cost for a year including everything from salaries, fuel and semi was around 100k usd. 50% was fuel and maintenance. 22% was salaries. An electric self driving semi cuts at least 60% of cost and likely a lot more since it can be kept running non stop.

That salary number doesn’t work. 1.5 people at 22% of 100k is 15k annual salary. The savings should be higher. Cost should be about 200k with labor maintenance and depreciation.

 

[Fred42]

Mercedes is selling buses with solid state batteries! I was unaware that anyone was this far along with development.

Mercedes Scores Record Order For eCitaro: Some With Solid-State Batteries

 

[Papafox]

My take on Q1 production issues is that in January we did see a combination of North American demand weakness (from Q3, Q4 demand pull-forward related to tax credit expiration) and reluctance by some buyers to accept 2018-dated M3s that was complicated by some type of parts shortage for European Model 3s. So, Tesla got off to a slow start. The first price cut did little to stir immediate demand. The introduction of SR and SR+ plus the second price cut changed the situation with a definite increase in demand.

At some point in Q1, cell shortages likely became a factor.
Consider that 63K M3s at about 80KWhs and about 14,000 S&X @ 100KWh (these are very rough numbers) yields a need for about 6.4GWhs of cells during the quarter, but only about 6GWh of cells were made by Papasonic (Elon's 24GWh/4 quarters).

 

[Cosmacelf]

So Elon is ~100% confident on his approach towards autonomy but why is Google/Waymo following a different approach? The answer, I think, lies in the genesis of their efforts towards autonomy.

Elon's approach:

• Elon said he felt he needed to pursue autonomy because in his mind non-autonomous vehicle would be less valuable than autonomous vehicle in the future. So not to pursue it may even defeat his primary mission of electrification.
• Once he realized the need to pursue it, as usual, he followed first principles thinking.
• Broke down the problem and started solving for each individual lego piece the best way possible -
• Collecting huge data (the very basic requirement for NN training) by putting in required hardware from the very start on every vehicle even if the customer decides to not pay for AP/FSD,
• Developing a very specialized NN chip for over 3 years,
  
• Hiring the best AI researchers to build the algos (probably the easiest decision).

Google's approach:

• On the other hand, I think Google went into autonomous vehicles primarily because of one of their expertise - MAPS.
• Google probably thought because they have spent so much of their resources on building out the maps of the entire world - what next, what other ways to montize this expertise?
• Answer - build even higher resolution maps and leverage their own AI researchers (also best in the industry) to work on rest of the stuff to pursue autonomy.
• I think they will achive autonomy but it will be stuck in Geofencing and it's just not easily scalable.
• Also not to mention the LIDAR approach which will help them to achieve local maxima, but still really have to solve vision to really grind towards global maxima.
• I think the partial reason to select LIDAR was because they think solving vision was very difficult - primarily becuase of unavailability of huge amounts of data (including weird edge cases that simulation just can't predict and only real world data can provide).

I am just guessing if Google had started on automomy from a blank sheet of paper, they would have followed a similar approach as Elon's (maybe by partnering up with an auto manufacturer to setup the hardware to collect the real world data).

FYI, google’s project wasn’t initially an internally developed project. They hired the researchers that won the initial DARPA challenge. So they started with an existing code base which included lidar. If they had started from a clean sheet they might not have used lidar...

 

[KarenRei]

Mercedes is selling buses with solid state batteries! I was unaware that anyone was this far along with development.

Mercedes Scores Record Order For eCitaro: Some With Solid-State Batteries

And there are electric aircraft flying with lithium-sulfur batteries, and have been for years. That doesn't mean that the tech is ready for prime-time.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

FYI, google’s project wasn’t initially an internally developed project. They hired the researchers that won the initial DARPA challenge. So they started with an existing code base which included lidar. If they had started from a clean sheet they might not have used lidar...

Interesting that a couple of years ago all the talk was that LIDAR was mandatory if you wanted level5. Many still feel that way, but I think the tide of popular opinion may now be changing.

Dan

 

[RobStark]

Does anyone watch TV anymore?

When not on this thread I watch some TV.









Sometimes I watch live sports on tv and read this thread at the same time.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

When not on this thread I watch some TV.









Sometimes I watch live sports on tv and read this thread at the same time.

Watching Atlanta United as I type!

Dan

 

[30seconds]

I’m not expecting much in terms of stock movement from FSD event. I think cash utilization in Q1 followed by Q2 deliveries are the important near term events.

I’d like to see cash grow (net of bond repayment) in Q1 and deliveries to hit all time high in Q2. If Q1 cash declines significant (net or bond) then the worry shifts to the Q2 financials.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Mercedes is selling buses with solid state batteries! I was unaware that anyone was this far along with development.

Mercedes Scores Record Order For eCitaro: Some With Solid-State Batteries

I looked up the solid state battery manufacturer and found this quote on their technology page: “The battery’s base cell is a sizeable unit with an energy capacity similar to a traditional car’s lead battery.”

Okay then...

 

[generalenthu]

My take on Q1 production issues is that in January we did see a combination of North American demand weakness (from Q3, Q4 demand pull-forward related to tax credit expiration) and reluctance by some buyers to accept 2018-dated M3s that was complicated by some type of parts shortage for European Model 3s. So, Tesla got off to a slow start. The first price cut did little to stir immediate demand. The introduction of SR and SR+ plus the second price cut changed the situation with a definite increase in demand.

At some point in Q1, cell shortages likely became a factor.
Consider that 63K M3s at about 80KWhs and about 14,000 S&X @ 100KWh (these are very rough numbers) yields a need for about 6.4GWhs of cells during the quarter, but only about 6GWh of cells were made by Papasonic (Elon's 24GWh/4 quarters).

The numbers are not adding up for me. S&X cells don't come from giga. At 24 gWh, Tesla should be able to make 75k cars per qtr., unless Elon is quoting burst capacity and not average.

 

[defc0n]

My take on Q1 production issues is that in January we did see a combination of North American demand weakness (from Q3, Q4 demand pull-forward related to tax credit expiration) and reluctance by some buyers to accept 2018-dated M3s that was complicated by some type of parts shortage for European Model 3s. So, Tesla got off to a slow start. The first price cut did little to stir immediate demand. The introduction of SR and SR+ plus the second price cut changed the situation with a definite increase in demand.

At some point in Q1, cell shortages likely became a factor.
Consider that 63K M3s at about 80KWhs and about 14,000 S&X @ 100KWh (these are very rough numbers) yields a need for about 6.4GWhs of cells during the quarter, but only about 6GWh of cells were made by Papasonic (Elon's 24GWh/4 quarters).

Wonder if there is any chance in the future Grohmann could have a try at producing cells in addition to packs? Panasonic has admitted recently last year that it was their failure to bring up adequate cell production.

Is it wrong for me to question if Tesla is actually able to find buyers for all the cars they could produce given cell production today? At least for the higher model trims.

I think *pre-leasing* higher model trim demand in the US had certainly maxed out. With introduction of leases, it could very well get interesting again.

With leasing as well as lower trim models unleashed, we should get an idea about steady state demand soon. After that, we can decide if more traditional advertising should finally be utilized.

With GAAP accounting, are you pretty much boned with leases initially, or have they tweaked that?