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

[2daMoon]

All they have to do is find one really great use case for the Bot. I don't think that's too much to ask in the next 6 years.

As soon as the bot gets put to work doing something useful, TSLA will skyrocket. FOMO is a powerful motivator.

Unless the bots become sentient and unionize the way those other bots* have done.
*The UAW (United Autonomous Workers)

/s

 

[Xepa777]

Has anyone posted this yet? Great article on the $25k car with a timeline as recent as this summer https://www.axios.com/2023/09/08/walter-isaacson-elon-musk-book-excerpt

 

[Featsbeyond50]

People don't believe it yet. Like you said, your friends say FSD is not ready for robotaxi. I have FSD and I agree with your friends.

But when your friends start to change their tune, that's when people start to believe that robotaxi is around the corner. That's your "buy" signal, if you see it in time.

I never said I have friends.

 

[Featsbeyond50]

A lot of uncertainty with robotaxi and it's not just about the self driving technology. Waymo and Cruise are losing a boatload of money per year. So we don't know how much operating expense a Tesla network will cost, and how profitable robotaxies are. Even after Tesla started saying "FSD is now L5, we have over 50 million disengagement free miles" or whatever..this is not the end of it..it's just the beginning.

Lots of bad actors will get their hands on a FSD enabled car and tries to make them fail. A 10x safer than a human still means plenty of crashes per year to give MSM their organismic headline. It will be years before regular folks start trusting a Tesla to drive them so demand will be low. The good news is there will be millions of FSD enabled cars on the street fighting FUD, however accidents will be highlighted and the first FSD caused injury will see TSLA stock hitting the uptick rule.

With that being said, I do agree the forward looking market will reward Tesla will something if robotaxi is rolling out, but not as much as you think after the initial pump n dump phase.

Finally someone agreeing with me. It's just weird you don't know it.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Papa put the max pain at 245, however this guy's app says 247.5. Looking like 247.5 is the winner.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/16cjfn8

@Papafox MaxPain figure is as of 07:00 ET on Thu, Sep 07, 2023. He's in Hawaii, and typically post his daily update about 18 hrs after Options Open Interest data is first visible on the web.

 

[Singuy]

Finally someone agreeing with me. It's just weird you don't know it.

I actually find FSD licensing to be the actual bullish event. It will actually help reduce FUD if every driver experience it, and MSM usually having a hard time targeting technology everyone uses. This will help the adoption of a robotaxi future, and Tesla will get their cut no matter which company's car enables the robotaxi business.

 

[CorneliusXX]

Here is the source, from this past January:

JPSartre on Twitter: "Costumer pay at 40% @ Contract execution. Tesla expense 40% CATL & Production 40% = offset costs of production (lithium price pass thru) B/S neutral = $0 revenue / cost 1 - 20% shipped 2- 20% installed 3- 20% commissioned Each payment will be recognized as 100% margin/MP" / Twitter | (2023-01-27)​

I think you're likely right about the nature and details of the Contract, with the price tied to commodity costs. Nonetheless, both Customer and Vendor are well-served by this type of long-lead contract.

Cheers!

I had a read of those X's and am not sure I interpret them the same way. It sounds more like the Xer is saying the following:

• Tesla prices megapack for $x (with a 60% margin)
• Tesla charges megapack customer 40% of $x as a deposit
• Tesla uses the 40% of $x to pay for cells
• Tesla earns the remaining 60% of x as it delivers on the contract

Or to put it another way, they sized the deposit to match cell cogs to make the deal working capital neutral. However, I don't see anything that suggests Tesla is obligated to drop Megapack pricing if cell costs decrease. If I'm understanding it correctly, they could keep the megapack price the same and "increase their float" or drop the 40% deposit to just cover cell cogs while maintaining the original megapack price as far as I can tell.

Don't get me wrong, I love that the market will (broadly) follow the cell cost decline curve and flood the industry with storage to get us away from fossil fuel - but I don't see a pricing pass-through between cell price and megapack price - and Tesla should extract as wide a margin as they can while fully ramping production.

 

[navguy12]

I can't tell if you're serious.

It doesn’t matter to the OP if you can tell if they are serious; it only matters to the OP if they can tell if they are serious.*

*With a nod to Francis Ford Coppola (screenwriter for the movie Patton).

 

[FreqFlyer]

A lot of uncertainty with robotaxi and it's not just about the self driving technology. Waymo and Cruise are losing a boatload of money per year. So we don't know how much operating expense a Tesla network will cost, and how profitable robotaxies are. Even after Tesla started saying "FSD is now L5, we have over 50 million disengagement free miles" or whatever..this is not the end of it..it's just the beginning.

Lots of bad actors will get their hands on a FSD enabled car and tries to make them fail. A 10x safer than a human still means plenty of crashes per year to give MSM their organismic headline. It will be years before regular folks start trusting a Tesla to drive them so demand will be low. The good news is there will be millions of FSD enabled cars on the street fighting FUD, however accidents will be highlighted and the first FSD caused injury will see TSLA stock hitting the uptick rule.

With that being said, I do agree the forward looking market will reward Tesla will something if robotaxi is rolling out, but not as much as you think after the initial pump n dump phase.

I am old enough to remember what the 60 minutes unattended acceleration piece did to Audi's reputation in this country for decades. And it was not even real, people were stomping on the wrong pedal. I could see that same media hysteria and frenzy after a FSD Robotaxi crashes into a soccer mom's SUV with three kids in the back. Fair or unfair, FSD has be better than "perfect".

 

[CorneliusXX]

I'll be shocked if Bot is contributing anything this decade.

I think autonomy is going to be everything you think it is, I just think it will take longer than you think.

*If* real world AI is the limiting factor we should see bot revenue before Robotaxi revenue. Getting a bot to do some boring repetitive task should be much easier than Robotaxi.

 

[2daMoon]

I am old enough to remember what the 60 minutes unattended acceleration piece did to Audi's reputation in this country for decades. And it was not even real, people were stomping on the wrong pedal. I could see that same media hysteria and frenzy after a FSD Robotaxi crashes into a soccer mom's SUV with three kids in the back. Fair or unfair, FSD has be better than "perfect".

Only, Audi didn't have data to prove what actually happened. Tesla does.

Perfect is an awkward target to pursue. People are much too clever at finding new and unique ways to extinguish life, accidentally.

One or two orders of magnitude should be enough of a convincer to win trust. Folks understand odds well enough to know a good thing when they see it. There is plenty of data going back over a century to use as a measuring stick.

 

[Singuy]

I am old enough to remember what the 60 minutes unattended acceleration piece did to Audi's reputation in this country for decades. And it was not even real, people were stomping on the wrong pedal. I could see that same media hysteria and frenzy after a FSD Robotaxi crashes into a soccer mom's SUV with three kids in the back. Fair or unfair, FSD has be better than "perfect".

Better than perfect is impossible as some accidents are unavoidable(until all cars on the road are robotaxies). Also the longer you wait, the more people will die. Making it 11x safer than humans or 100x safer than humans before rolling out = hundreds out of thousands of death that could have been prevented. Musk will do the right "macro" thing while people fight over the irrelevant "micro" thing. His mindset is already at "it's okay if we get sued". Shareholders just need to buckle up for the ride cause it'll be bumpy. Anyone thinking TSLA will just go to the moon while Musk/Tesla will be championed are living in fantasy land.

 

[Artful Dodger]

There is no way to get that look using the folding methods used for CT.

There is a way: Metal Foam - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

When Tesla starts building their own large stainless steel metal foam injection molding machines, they'll nolonger need IDRA presses, and they'll be very close to casting an entire car in one or two shots.

 

[2daMoon]

There is a way: Metal Foam - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

When Tesla starts building their own large stainless steel metal foam injection molding machines, they'll nolonger need IDRA presses, and they'll be very close to casting an entire car in one or two shots.

Ah, right! I had forgotten about that. Thanks!
Maybe I should have further clarified, "not possible with rolled sheet SS"... though I did specify "using the folding methods used for CT"

 

[uscbucsfan]

There is a way: Metal Foam - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

When Tesla starts building their own large stainless steel metal foam injection molding machines, they'll nolonger need IDRA presses, and they'll be very close to casting an entire car in one or two shots.

I believe Sandy Munro said that they couldn't do that with the Stainless they are using on the CT because it's so thick. It would crack.

Maybe I'm misremembering.

 

[wws]

Only, Audi didn't have data to prove what actually happened. Tesla does.

Perfect is an awkward target to pursue. People are much too clever at finding new and unique ways to extinguish life, accidentally.

One or two orders of magnitude should be enough of a convincer to win trust. Folks understand odds well enough to know a good thing when they see it. There is plenty of data going back over a century to use as a measuring stick.

Back in the mid-'80s, I owned an '81 Audi 5000S. One of the nuances of that car was the drivers floor mat would gradually slide forward enough that it would start to jam the gas pedal. Solution? Reach down, pull the mat back, and it would be good again for a few more weeks/months. When the 60 Minutes hit piece came out, I thought "I bet it was just someones floor mat sliding forward...".

These days many cars, including Tesla, have floor mats that securely snap into the floor of the car. So it will never be an issue.

 

[CorneliusXX]

I don’t know what you mean by “loan lease”. Anyway, average tenor of leases is much shorter than is average loan tenor, almost without exception. Every OEM that securitizes loans and leases does have publicly available data. Looking at such data can allow you to post fact rather than conjecture. The FSD subscription vs purchase ignores take up rates for both while assuming that the subscriptions are at the expense of purchases. Factually there is not enough publicly available data to test that conjecture.

I haven’t time to look up the public data now. searching for “Tesla securitizations” will give you links to the data. In them you’ll find average origination generic FICO scores, average tenors, collaterization substitution rates, and much more. Fir that matter almost every major OEM has such data for the US, which has the most active securitization markets.

Sadly I have. From the Moody's Pre-Sale (TALT 2023-A) (for others on this site - everyone with a business email can sign up for this for free btw)

• W.A. FICO is 773
• W.A. Original Tenor is 35 months

Compared to a range of other auto securitisations:

• FICO is better that the other Americans but worse than the Germans
• Loan/lease tenor is shorter than average (a good sign in terms of risk)

Tesla isn't doing great on the RV performance - but the difference only seems to kick in after 2 years. Maybe it is EV cost decline curve causing this or something else. BMW sucks.

 

[Artful Dodger]

I believe Sandy Munro said that they couldn't do that with the Stainless they are using on the CT because it's so thick. It would crack.

Maybe I'm misremembering.

The brittleness of SS sheets arises after the cold rolling process. Metal foams are formed with molten (liquid) stainless steel. Cracking is not an issue in forming metal foams.

Also, I sincerely doubt that Sandy Munro has any experience with injection-molded metal foams, as no one in auto or aviation is using the technique in mass production (Sandy's background is tools & die making).

The added value of metal injection moulding

The added value of metal injection moulding

www.foundry-planet.com

But with Tesla's First Priniciples approach to enginneering, I have no doubt they'll consider the technology for a future generation of cars.

 

[EVMeister]

LFG (says Elon):

https://twitter.com/x/status/1700249373626835303

 

[2daMoon]

LFG (says Elon):

https://twitter.com/x/status/1700249373626835303

The gang's all here. Let's ... go!

Maybe we need a song like the Mickey Mouse club had...