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

[AndrewZ]

It's just over 6x longer, but it's a different scale so it's not apples to apples comparable.

The top bar is FSD + Humans

The bottom bar is Humans

There is no bar for FSD on it's own. That might be between the two or it might be worse than humans, we just don't know.

Since Day 1 I've been on here arguing that these stats, first Autopilot and now FSD, are full of selection bias and other confounding factors that make them not at all apples to apples.

But this is not really the way Tesla is portraying the stats in the tweet

https://twitter.com/x/status/1631063252875505669

I also don't know what these stats mean exactly in terms of what was operating... On the 4Q22 earnings call it was stated that FSD Beta has driven around 100million miles outside of highways. If we are to take the tweeted metrics in the way most people likely take them, that means there have been somewhere around 31 FSD Beta accidents that have been serious enough to deploy airbags and I find that difficult to imagine in the context of urban driving -- I've heard of no such accidents outside of highways, and you'd think at least some City Streets accidents would be all over the media and in O'Dowd's tweet history.

Makes me suspect these FSD Beta miles driven per accident are not distinguishing between the Autosteer on City Streets stack and the Autopilot highway stack, and there's nothing on the graph to suggest it does. When you have FSD Beta it is all-encompassing and flips between the stacks based on road type, so it's not like you activate Autopilot vs FSD Beta. You activate FSD Beta, and it decides which stack is active.

I don't know why they'd portray Beta this way, but the numbers don't make sense to me if we're just talking about City Streets.

 

[Singuy]

You might want to study the manufacturing, sourcing, distribution and sales processes. Then study a bit about Tesla battery management systems. Those might give clues. You might then honestly know why only Ferrari and, sometimes, Porsche come close to Tesla margins. It makes no sense if you equate Tesla to other OEMs.

In 2013 it was a mess. Tesla didn't have much of a supply chain and vertically integrated or die. However despite all that they managed a positive gross margin of over 20% from all the chaos. Tesla didn't even know how to manufacture cars at mass scale then. So it's a miracle how they ran such a lean ship and I have no idea wtf these start ups are doing today.

 

[Singuy]

8x the price of what?

Battery packs.

 

[unk45]

I assume by when you say "Some" argue BYD makes profits on it's EVs....it's a certain Twitter account

Literally no one else in the world think BYD makes any profit on their EV's.

You might want to study their financial statements. Unless you’re suggesting fraud that ‘literally no one else in the world’ believes their accuracy it does indeed appear that they make money on EV’s. Obviously nit like Tesla does. Obviously it’s not easy to assess each business line. Their busses alone are certainly major profit centers, nit least because of a very high scale in China and in several markets worldwide. Perhaps part of the difficulty is that their car line is successful in China but not so much elsewhere. However, those who examine their vertical integration think they are quite profitable in selling batteries for stationary storage and BEV use, plus small batteries for smartphone and the like.

Study their financials and you might become another believer that BYD are a financially successful going concern. One need not desire to be a customer to understand that.

 

[Words of HABIT]

No link provided, you can look it up if you want to give Al Root and Barron's clicks.

Summary of article:
1. Ford recalling 1,280,726 vehicles to fix front brake hoses that could break.
2. Tesla has had a lot of recalls and their stock price and corporate image is doing very well.
3. Therefore Ford shareholders should not be worried.
4. Yes, but Tesla has OTA updates which require near zero expense and near immediate response/resolution time.
(Article states "99% of Tesla recalls over the past year have been fixed via software", although this % seems quite high, certainly the vast majority of recalls fixed by OTA updates.)
5. Oh, but Ford's 1,280,726 vehicles recall requires said vehicles to be brought in to their Dealers for costly and time consuming repairs of this safety issue.
6. But that is still ok, because Tesla has recalls, hence the title of the article.

You simply can't make this carp up. Al Root and Barron's get their clicks. Ford is put in a good light. And best of all Tesla, which has nothing to do with this recall, is unfairly tarnished.

What Ford (and most other OEMs) just don't get, is that all the carp in the World won't solve their steady demise due to their inferior, out of date, products. Ford stock today is trading at the same price as it was back on June 1st, 1995. No share appreciation over 27.5 years. Yes, they have their dividend for now, however at their current rate of decline they will soon be unable pay out their dividend and when that happens Ford stock will crater.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

 

[Singuy]

You might want to study their financial statements. Unless you’re suggesting fraud that ‘literally no one else in the world’ believes their accuracy it does indeed appear that they make money on EV’s. Obviously nit like Tesla does. Obviously it’s not easy to assess each business line. Their busses alone are certainly major profit centers, nit least because of a very high scale in China and in several markets worldwide. Perhaps part of the difficulty is that their car line is successful in China but not so much elsewhere. However, those who examine their vertical integration think they are quite profitable in selling batteries for stationary storage and BEV use, plus small batteries for smartphone and the like.

Study their financials and you might become another believer that BYD are a financially successful going concern. One need not desire to be a customer to understand that.

ByD needs to be at least at 10% operating margins using Chinese workers, building in China, and selling to mostly the Chinese. If not then it's a DOA trying to compete in western markets. Once they set up shop paying westerner wages and putting up with their capex cost and red tape, BYD will go back to losing massive amounts of money.

Tesla is at least around 12% in Western countries 20+% in China for OM.

 

[gsmith123]

Makes me suspect these FSD Beta miles driven per accident are not distinguishing between the Autosteer on City Streets stack and the Autopilot highway stack, and there's nothing on the graph to suggest it does.

But Tesla literally said...

a Tesla with FSD Beta engaged experienced an airbag-deployed crash about every 3.2 M miles

...so either they're really misrepresenting the stats or it really is just FSD Beta. I find it hard to believe even Tesla would be quite this misleading with the stats.

I do agree with your broader point that there are so many confounding factors that make the limited data Tesla supplies super hard to make sense of.

(Things are going to get worse with V11 "single stack" to because now everywhere is FSD Beta, so there's going to a be a dramatic step change in how many miles are low risk, easy highway miles).

that means there have been somewhere around 31 FSD Beta accidents that have been serious enough to deploy airbags and I find that difficult to imagine in the context of urban driving

This doesn't seem that unreasonable. Urban driving doesn't necessarily mean low speed, dense urban downtowns. I've probably driven most of the miles I've driven on FSD Beta on high speed arterial roads going 30-50 mph (because FSD is a lot better on these roads than tricky downtown driving and higher speeds = more miles). T-Bone collisions in this kind of driving are shockingly common and I think 30 mph would be more than enough to trigger airbags.

Still surprised no video of any of these incidents has surfaced, but I guess the amount of FSD Beta testing driving done is just sooo much more than the amount that gets documented.

 

[Hiline]

Battery packs.

Are you saying Tesla battery packs are 8x the price of competitors’ battery packs?

Do the other battery packs cost $3k?

 

[Words of HABIT]

The market is very jittery of late. The recent banking crisis has only added to the uncertainty. Alternative investments such as Gold, Silver and Bitcoin are spiking with the fall of Silicone Valley Bank, Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank. Other financial institutions such as First Republic Bank and Credit Suisse Group are faltering. In this environment of high inflation, higher interest rates (but not high from an historic perspective as per below FRED graph), I see TSLA making a major breakout to the positive upon reaching each of these steps:
A) Mass production/delivery of Cybertruck - 2024
B) Ramp of of Tesla Energy - 2025
C) Mass production/delivery of $25k car - 2026

We have been spoiled over the last 17 years with artificially low interest rates. The preceding 40 year period had much higher interest rates. Long term TSLA will be fine. Shorter term (6 - 12 months) is anyone's guess. Whatever TSLA, Tesla is unstoppable, near zero debt, producing products that matter for the new millennium, and I am simply glad to be along for the ride. If you are not sleeping well at night, you are not investing correctly within your means. De-leverage. Stay off margin. Keep well.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Are you saying Tesla battery packs are 8x the price of competitors’ battery packs?

Do the other battery packs cost $3k?

He's saying that Tesla battery packs 10 years ago were 8x the price of Tesla's current packs.

 

[Ogre]

Are you saying Tesla battery packs are 8x the price of competitors’ battery packs?

Do the other battery packs cost $3k?

When Tesla was selling as few cars as Polestar, battery packs cost 8x what they do now.

In other words, Tesla managed to have positive gross margins and much lower operating losses when they had much much higher battery costs.

 

[Tachyon]

I assume by when you say "Some" argue BYD makes profits on it's EVs....it's a certain Twitter account

Literally no one else in the world think BYD makes any profit on their EV's.

But, but, Gandalfosaurus says BYD is a slam dunk phenomenal buy than TSLA since they don’t cut prices .

 

[Singuy]

Are you saying Tesla battery packs are 8x the price of competitors’ battery packs?

Do the other battery packs cost $3k?

No I am saying in 2013 when Tesla delivered 20k cars, battery packs like for like kwh was about 8x more expensive.

 

[AndrewZ]

But Tesla literally said...



...so either they're really misrepresenting the stats or it really is just FSD Beta. I find it hard to believe even Tesla would be quite this misleading with the stats.

I do agree with your broader point that there are so many confounding factors that make the limited data Tesla supplies super hard to make sense of.

(Things are going to get worse with V11 "single stack" to because now everywhere is FSD Beta, so there's going to a be a dramatic step change in how many miles are low risk, easy highway miles).



This doesn't seem that unreasonable. Urban driving doesn't necessarily mean low speed, dense urban downtowns. I've probably driven most of the miles I've driven on FSD Beta on high speed arterial roads going 30-50 mph (because FSD is a lot better on these roads than tricky downtown driving and higher speeds = more miles). T-Bone collisions in this kind of driving are shockingly common and I think 30 mph would be more than enough to trigger airbags.

Still surprised no video of any of these incidents has surfaced, but I guess the amount of FSD Beta testing driving done is just sooo much more than the amount that gets documented.

There was also this tweet

https://twitter.com/x/status/1482817514476347392

And this

https://twitter.com/x/status/1439042334155497474

Maybe it is accurate and just adding the sheer volume more users blew up the likelihoods of accident numbers accumulating, definitely true there are far more Beta users than people uploading videos etc if there are 400,000 cars driving it.

Seems so crazy to never see them though. I’ve seen Beta curb rims, I’ve seen it hit plastic posts and do no damage, I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of a single airbag-deploying crash. Maybe there’s selection bias in that too with increased vigilance among the people who record or even just engage with the community.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Can you think of any other law that is so universally ignored?

SEC Regulation SHO?

Jaywalking

A.K.A. Jaywalking on Wall St.

 

[samppa]

But Tesla literally said...



...so either they're really misrepresenting the stats or it really is just FSD Beta. I find it hard to believe even Tesla would be quite this misleading with the stats.

I do agree with your broader point that there are so many confounding factors that make the limited data Tesla supplies super hard to make sense of.

(Things are going to get worse with V11 "single stack" to because now everywhere is FSD Beta, so there's going to a be a dramatic step change in how many miles are low risk, easy highway miles).



This doesn't seem that unreasonable. Urban driving doesn't necessarily mean low speed, dense urban downtowns. I've probably driven most of the miles I've driven on FSD Beta on high speed arterial roads going 30-50 mph (because FSD is a lot better on these roads than tricky downtown driving and higher speeds = more miles). T-Bone collisions in this kind of driving are shockingly common and I think 30 mph would be more than enough to trigger airbags.

Still surprised no video of any of these incidents has surfaced, but I guess the amount of FSD Beta testing driving done is just sooo much more than the amount that gets documented.

If FSD Beta decides to drive into a tree, and as driver I slam on the brakes, disengaging fsd beta, but car still hits the tree, is it an accident on fsd beta or not?

 

[heltok]

If FSD Beta decides to drive into a tree, and as driver I slam on the brakes, disengaging fsd beta, but car still hits the tree, is it an accident on fsd beta or not?

We collect the amount of miles traveled by each vehicle with Autopilot active or in manual driving, based on available data we receive from the fleet, and do so without identifying specific vehicles to protect privacy. We also receive a crash alert anytime a crash is reported to us from the fleet, which may include data about whether Autopilot was active at the time of impact. To ensure our statistics are conservative, we count any crash in which Autopilot was deactivated within 5 seconds before impact, and we count all crashes in which the incident alert indicated an airbag or other active restraint deployed. (Our crash statistics are not based on sample data sets or estimates.) In practice, this correlates to nearly any crash at about 12 mph (20 kph) or above, depending on the crash forces generated. We do not differentiate based on the type of crash or fault (For example, more than 35% of all Autopilot crashes occur when the Tesla vehicle is rear-ended by another vehicle). In this way, we are confident that the statistics we share unquestionably show the benefits of Autopilot.

 

[Artful Dodger]

But, but, Gandalfosaurus says BYD is a slam dunk phenomenal buy than TSLA since they don’t cut prices .

Dinosours always say that while selling their stake just before the asteroid hits.

Bad News for Tesla! BYD Announcing Price Cuts as EV Price Wars ... www.fool.com › investing › 2023/03/12

 

[Hiline]

When Tesla was selling as few cars as Polestar, battery packs cost 8x what they do now.

In other words, Tesla managed to have positive gross margins and much lower operating losses when they had much much higher battery costs.

No I am saying in 2013 when Tesla delivered 20k cars, battery packs like for like kwh was about 8x more expensive.

I see. Did Tesla achieve this primarily through government incentives?

 

[CorneliusXX]

I see. Did Tesla achieve this primarily through government incentives?

942 comments and you're only just learning about cost decline curves and Wright's Law?

Congrats - you're one of today's lucky 10k.